84 – Lysander

A glare of light snuck through the pulled-closed curtains and onto Lysander’s face, slowly dragging him out of a deep slumber. He came to with a stir, a grunt, and a smacking of lips, one eye cracking open to squint at the offending ray of white.

“[Telekinesis],” he mumbled.

With a flick of his finger, the curtains closed fully, blessedly blocking out the light beam. Thoughts foggy, he would have slipped back into unconsciousness if not for the crick in his neck. That same discomfort made him wonder why his neck hurt, which alerted him to his strange sleeping posture. As in… he was in a chair, slumped over a desk.

He jolted to his feet, awake in an instant. His office? How had he fallen asleep in his office? What time was it? The alarm faded as he pulled those answers one by one from his foggy, sleep-addled brain. He hadn’t overslept some important meeting—of which a number were scheduled, considering what had happened four days ago, and again yesterday. No, he’d slept through the night; that had been morning’s dawn rays bothering him.

When was the last time he’d fallen asleep working? As the Headmaster of the Thaumaturgical Institute, the premier magical academy of the human kingdoms, he was an outrageously busy man, but he also lived a regimented and efficacious lifestyle. There was little point in overworking oneself to the point of exhaustion. It was inefficient, objectively speaking, and Lysander sought efficiency above most else. How else could one attain greatness without using their time well? Even the longest-lived man couldn’t escape mortality. He had a specific number of years available to him, no matter how large that number may be, and thus they needed to be portioned out wisely.

He frowned down at the notes organized on his desk. They detailed his most recent theories on the nature of void energy and various theoretical workarounds. He eyed a dark spot of drool on the white paper and disgust curled his lip. An urge to tear out the marred pages and rewrite them struck him, but he didn’t have time to indulge that neuroticism, not with his current circumstances.

He shouldn’t have fallen asleep at all, busy as he was. But even Titled could only push away biological needs for so long. It seemed three days of constant mental strain was as far as his body allowed.

He structured his thoughts as he shambled over to his office’s attached restroom. As always, he had many tasks that needed attending. More than usual, even. Busy, busy, busy. He didn’t dislike a packed schedule; in fact he would claim the opposite. But perhaps not to this extent.

In front of the bathroom’s mirror, he cleaned himself up, straightening his robes and hair. His eyes paused when they caught on his grimoire hanging at his hip. It jogged his memory as to what he’d been dreaming of, five minutes prior.

Vivisari Vexaria. The Sorceress, and how she’d shattered that comfortable but harmful illusion of his youth. A century of life tended to fade memories, but that one remained vivid despite its age.

It had been decades since his subconscious had dragged up that particular sequence of events. Deducing why posed little difficulty: the Sorceress had returned to the world. No matter what the Archbishop was going on about. Lysander had been there himself for the first breach, fighting those otherworldly hordes, and he had once more witnessed mastery of the arcane that had humbled him so thoroughly that even days later he felt vaguely disgusted he called himself an archmage.

Arch. It should mean pinnacle. The greatest title that could be bestowed on a mage. What a farce, to assign that moniker to himself, after what he had seen.

But he knew that line of thought was illogical. He was an archmage. If a list of the ten most powerful and skilled users of the arcane across all the mortal realms were created, his name would undoubtedly be present. And as the youngest entry by far. He deserved the title of archmage. More than some others, even.

Still. What he had seen, that night four days ago… that magic.

Lysander was one of the best-suited men in the world for identifying powerful spells and categorizing them. Yet he had absolutely no idea what tier they had been, or even their general nature. There were depths to the arcane that he hadn’t begun to plumb—that he never would. It was a depressing thought, not just a humbling one.

He shook the malaise away. His mind was not so fragile as in his youth. He had come to terms with these facts of life, even if he found them unpleasant. Honor is found equally in the pursuit of greatness as in its attainment. The result is not all that matters. Remember this, Lysander, as all great mages must—lest your name be purged from the history books, as Lucorius’s was.

After freshening up, he collected the notebooks, tomes, and other scattered resources on his desk, then strode out of his office. His secretary, Priscilla, was present at her station on the other side.

“What do I have today?” he grunted in introduction.

The woman seemed neither offended nor amused at his ruffled demeanor and lack of greeting. They’d worked together for too many decades to be anything but totally comfortable with each other. She answered smoothly, not looking up from whatever document she was scribbling on. “Your schedule has been cleared, Headmaster. The High King requests your attendance for an urgent meeting this evening.”

Lysander digested that announcement. He was hardly unused to attending conferences with important people. The High King demanding a same-day meeting was certainly… unusual, though. “Did he say why?”

“Matters of state,” Priscilla replied. “Further specification was not provided, but the missive impressed on me that your absence would be highly displeasing, Headmaster.”

In the overly respectful communication that had become standard between nobility and Titled—the two powers of different types having learned how to deal with each other over the centuries—it was as close to an outright demand as the High King would ever make of Lysander. And thus had to be extremely important.

“I see.” He assumed it had to do with yesterday’s breach over Prismarche. Though that seemed to be stable. Aeris had returned and informed Lysander of the gist of what had happened, though there were several gaps in the man’s explanations. Lysander had theories why. “Anything else?”

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“No, Headmaster. Until third bell, the day is yours.”

“Hmph. Thank you, Priscilla.”

He wandered out through the front door, feet carrying him toward the nearest elevator. Tuning out the world around him—even the idle niceties he made with the elevator attendant—Lysander found his mind inexorably drifting toward the phenomenon of his captivation these past four days.

Void material. Void energy. The two seemed to be linked. The carapace channeled that force to produce incredible nullifying effects, but he had also seen several of those beasts emitting the energy in the form of ranged attacks or otherwise. He suspected an intrinsic link between the physical material and the energy; they were intertwined somehow.

Even depowered voidbeast carapace possessed fascinating properties. Properties he hadn’t come close to dissecting. What am I missing? The question itched at him. There was nothing he hated and loved more than a puzzle.

Absorbed in his thoughts, he essentially teleported to the ninth-floor garden annex. He stirred to awareness only after stone walls abruptly shifted to sunlit greenery. Coming back to consciousness, he scanned the hubbub with his dark gray eyes.

The void invasion had taken the dominant portion of the Institute’s attention, but the freshly carved hole in the spatial fabric took definite second place. As such, dozens of mages had cleared a space around the jagged black gash that even Lysander didn’t particularly enjoy letting his gaze linger on. The various researchers had set up desks, bookshelves, chalkboards, and other relevant furniture to aid in the study of their newest fascination. The garden had turned into a miniature research facility.