Keiran

I left two transmission stones with the council to be given to whoever they saw fit. One was immediately claimed by Oramo, which I supposed made sense. The man in charge of keeping the town safe would probably be the best person to react in the event of an attack. The rest argued over who should take the other stone, but I tuned that out.

While they were arguing, the councilman at the far-right end of the table, the one who’d thrown out the two farmers with magic, stood up and walked over to me. “Gravin,” he said with a bow of his head. “My name is Lishav. I oversee the school and training halls for our students in town.”

“An important job,” I said. “I’ve noticed you haven’t had much to add to this discussion.”

He chuckled softly and shook his head. “No, I’m afraid it’s all outside my area of expertise. I actually wanted to talk to you about something else.”

“Something involving magic, I’m assuming.”

“Yes. I’m afraid I’m quite predictable in that manner.”

“Most people looking for my help usually have problems of a magical nature,” I said.

I left unsaid that the magical problems people in this life had were so basic that any standard academy instructor from my previous life could have solved them immediately. The idea of bothering an archmage for help… Well, it didn’t matter anymore. That time was long past, and it’d be another generation or two after I got the world core fixed before civilization even approached the level I’d known.

“It’s two things, really. Your sister donated some of the books you gave her after she was done with them, and we’ve had copies made for instructing new mages, but there are some things in there none of us can quite figure out, and Senica is… How to put this delicately… She does not have the temperament to go into education.”

I couldn’t help myself. I started laughing so hard that it interrupted the argument the other councilmen were having, one which my father was struggling and failing to referee. “That’s a nice way of saying she’s impatient and reckless to a fault. I imagine the fact that she’s so smart fools people at first, but as soon as you get to know her, you realize the truth.”

“Something like that,” Lishav said with a sickly smile. “This isn’t a pressing issue, of course. If things take a turn for the worst, I suppose it won’t matter at all, but since this is the first opportunity I’ve had to speak with you personally, I wanted to bring the matter up and see if you would be willing to help.”

“Give a few guest lectures? I can’t promise when I’ll have time, but I’m not against the idea.”

“That’s delightful to hear. If you could get a message to me when you have time, after this whole…” Lishav waved a hand vaguely in the air. “This whole everything is resolved.”

“I’m sure I can find a way,” I said dryly. “What was the second thing?”

“Yes, that! I noticed that when you were outlining plans for defending New Alkerist, you didn’t include any sort of shelter for the children. I was hoping I could convince you to convert the school’s basement into a place like that.”

I hadn’t thought to for a very simple reason: if the attackers overpowered the ward stone before I arrived to personally fend them off, the whole town was going to die. Though, if I was able to repel Ammun’s forces, that didn’t mean that they’d do no damage at all. It couldn’t hurt to get the children out from underfoot, not unless some unscrupulous mage decided to target them while they were all grouped together.

“I think I can do something to help with that,” I mused aloud, my mind whirling with plans. Just warding a stone box in the ground wasn’t going to be enough. It would be best if it had sensitive wards that would teleport the whole room to a hidden location should anyone breach the basement. I could stock it with supplies to last a week or two so that I could fetch them after the fighting died down.

It couldn’t be in my demesne. That might give some attacker a way to bypass my own defenses. Nor should it be anywhere nearby, not when there was every possibility that Ammun’s forces would continue to besiege the valley. Still, it was a big island with a lot of mountains. I could find some inconspicuous location.

“Alright, I’ve got a few ideas,” I told Lishav. “I’ll need to do some prep work, but when I come back to deactivate the teleportation platforms, I’ll do the work for your school as well. Clear out anything you might have stored in there beforehand and clean the place as best you can.”

“Thank you, Gravin. You can’t know how much it warms my heart to see you care.”

I did my best to fake a smile, but didn’t reply. I didn’t so much care about individual kids as I felt they shouldn’t be the victims of the battles between adults. It was worth going out of my way to help them if it meant keeping a few six-year-olds alive.

After Lishav resumed his seat at the table, I grabbed Father and said, “I’m going to get started on the work around here. I’ll be home in a few hours to discuss things further with you and Mother. Here, take one of the transmission stones for the house. Use it immediately if you even think there’s a problem.”

“Gravin…” Father began. He hesitated and shook his head. “Be safe, son.”

* * *

Most of my work on New Alkerist was just setting up the various things I’d made in my crucible earlier and making sure they were ready to connect to the new ward stones I was putting in. Swapping those out took more time than anything else, but when I was done, the town had far more robust barriers and wards than anywhere else on the island, not including my own demesne. It also had a number of tall, thin pillars that appeared blank on the outside, but which had thousands of runes inscribed in their hollow cores. Those were tied in with the wards to target hostile mages, a tricky and demanding task since I had to make sure they didn’t accidentally kill one of the locals.

Nothing was going to match the mysteel pillars I’d scavenged and modified. I doubted even Ammun’s tower had reactive defenses that good. Of course, being an unaging, unsleeping lich who couldn’t leave the tower meant he didn’t really need reactive defenses. He could just take care of any issues personally.

Unfortunately, the pillars had been built in a world full of mana, and using them to their full capacity wasn’t really feasible, so I’d do my work quickly, prepare my family for what was to come, and get back to my demesne as soon as possible. I had plenty of work to do on my own, and the best thing I could do right now was get back to gathering as much mana as possible. Either it would power my defenses and keep me alive, or it would be used to forge a resonance point so I could move my core to stage seven.

By the time I was done, the sun was fully down, and anyone still working was doing so by the light of three moons. I flew across New Alkerist to land in the backyard, where I found Mother and Nailu sitting in their garden. Well, Mother was sitting. Nailu was doing laps around a row of tomato plants while slapping the leaves with an open hand and trying not to stumble over his own feet. Senica hadn’t been kidding when she’d said he’d be walking any day now.

Mother jumped to her feet when I landed, and I saw mana stirring inside her. Then she realized who I was, and the tension left her. “Gravin! You gave me a scare. With the news… I thought you might be one of those mages from far away come to abduct us.”

“Someone might actually try that. It probably won’t be for a few weeks at the earliest, but it’s best to watch for trouble. That’s actually why I’m here. I have some stuff to—”

Nailu crashed into my leg, or rather, into the shield ward around my leg, in an attempt to hug me. I quickly let him through before the magic sent him flying away, and he latched onto me. “Grah-vuhn,” he gurgled.

“Close, sweetie,” Mother said.

“You know, nobody calls me that outside of New Alkerist,” I commented.

“I know. I don’t care. We named you Gravin. That’s your name.”

“Grah-vuhn!” Nailu said again, this time more insistently.

“Alright, I suppose that’s fair.” I lifted Nailu up with telekinesis and he started giggling as he kicked and squirmed his way through the air. “I’m assuming Father and Senica are inside.”

“Senica is… somewhere,” Mother said with a sigh. “She’s at that age.”

“The age where she’s starting to become an adult and make her own decisions about where to go, what to do, and who to be with?”

“Yes. That age. The age where she gets into trouble thinking she knows better than all those stupid, out-of-touch adults, but then when something blows up in her face, she comes running to her parents to help her out.”

That age had been around nine for me in my first life, except for the part where I had parents to help me out. I couldn’t help but wonder how my life would have turned out back when I’d been Keiran if I’d had a family like my current one. I’d probably have been happier, but a lot of my early drive to excel had been caused by negative emotions – revenge, bitterness, spite.

Maybe I still would have made it to archmage, just as a more well-adjusted individual who didn’t indulge in necromancy, mind control, arson, and mass murder. There had been many, many stories casting me as the villain when I was young. Most of them were more-or-less accurate, too.

“I do need to speak to all of you,” I said. Nailu spun around, flipping over and over while he laughed and tried to grab at me with each rotation. “Yes, even you.”

“I don’t think Nailu’s going to be able to help much just yet,” Mother said.

I shook my head. “Doesn’t matter. This isn’t about getting help from you. It’s about keeping you safe. I don’t really have time to be waiting for Senica to come back on her own, but I’m sure I can find her and bring her back home.”

It didn’t take more than a minute to locate her. And Juby. And then I immediately killed that scrying spell. “You know what? Let’s actually wait half an hour or so,” I said quickly. “That should be fine.”

Mother quirked an eyebrow at me. “What… Uh, what’s going on there? See something interesting?”

“We’re not going to talk about it,” I said. “We’re not going to mention it. It never happened. There is no ‘it.’”

Hopefully, Senica had taken the time to practice the spells in that book I’d given her a few years ago. It seemed like she was going to need them.

“Speaking of ‘it,’ when are you going to bring home a special someone for us to meet?” Mother asked.

I did my best not to wince. My last relationship had ended on such a sour note that in all the centuries I’d lived after it, I’d never formed a serious bond with another person again. The stronger I’d gotten, the harder it had been to even entertain the idea. The power disparity was so stark that it felt shallow and pointless.

Things weren’t looking any better in my new life. “I don’t think that’s likely to happen,” I said.

“Well, that’s too bad. Nobody deserves to be lonely their whole lives.”

“I can think of a few people who definitely do.”

Our conversation ended right then and there, interrupted by my baby brother, who started urinating wildly as he spun in the air like a top. I immediately regretted my decision to let him through my shield ward.