Chapter 14: A New Betrayal

  ++Before I was anything close to adulthood, I already found myself chafing at the social constraints of a child. To have your life dominated by another is a fate I have never tolerated. I did not allow the Gods to inflict it on me, and I was certainly not going to accept it from my fellow humans. Being free of it, however, was far from as simple as it sounded. ++

  - From the writings of Isabel Vornholt, ‘The Great Lich’. 1,891 A.E

  Winzorth had been a distant target of mine for quite some time, though I was as of that moment still not old enough to go there by the reckoning of most magicians. Fortunately, I did not suffer any major obstacles for a while after my initial kidnapping. The days passed, and turned into weeks. Doctor Brown was finally fit to teach again, and if his movements were a bit stiff from the battle scars that apparently now covered much of his torso, he was still able to aid myself and Agrian as much as ever.

  More, perhaps. The Doctor seemed to have gained a new conviction about educating us since the ordeal.

  A new conviction, and a new curriculum. We were learning battlemagic now, or things that could easily be turned into it. Spell matrixes for the barrier-killing magic missiles I had seen used already, along with shielding, and reinforcements for shielding. Counters to everything we were taught the day before, then counters to the counters tomorrow. It was exhausting and unrelenting, a constant pressure to soak up everything laid out before us. Agrian, in particular, was driven by the danger we’d experienced. His boyish love of magic seemed buried now, compared to his fear of having to use it again.

  The trauma that Agrian experienced after that day needled me for reasons that I could not quite understand. I found it loathsome to see, and surprised myself by attempting to actually help the boy keep his mind off it. That, and my role in our escape, had apparently left him much more attached to me than before. More attached, even, than he seemed to be to our parents. It was almost impossible to separate him from my side after that, and wherever I went, my brother followed. For the most part he was inoffensive, nowhere near as rowdy or energetic as he had once been. I was not kicked anymore, that was certainly something.

  For the next few months, my exposure to the outside world became more limited rather than less. I had been looking forward to seeing more and soaking up additional information about Lachfel, and by extension Garamon, but the kidnapping left my parents paranoid and overly cautious. I was almost seven years old by the time I was allowed to go fully outside of the mansion’s grounds at all, and even then only with an escort of our new guards.

  Chief among them was Dave Blakely, who is to this day among the most violent living creatures I have ever encountered.

  When I went to the park with my mother or father, he would follow a short five paces behind us and sneer at everything that came nearby. More than once he accused a random passerby of planning to kill him. Not me, the former kidnapping victim who he was guarding, him specifically. I do not know why this was, and each day I saw him in action left me progressively convinced of his criminal insanity. He was, however, very good at his job. Or so my father claimed at least, which more or less secured him in the position regardless of any complaints.

  Winzorth remained on the winds of the Vornholt estate, and though it was far harder for me to eavesdrop now with my new guard, I still managed to overhear enough arguments between my parents to know that it was a source of heated debate between them. My mother seemed entirely eager to send us off to the Institute , which surprised me. She was certainly more affectionate than my father in physical terms, and clung to me almost pathologically even months after the abduction, but I gathered that she saw the academy as the best way she could keep me safe and secure from further attempts.

  My father was far less practical, insisting that he could defend myself and my brother here himself, and apparently taking it as a challenge when our mother continued to urge that we be sent to Winzorth. This set the tone for the next two years of my life.

  Training to exhaustion, now being pushed so hard that I was exerting my Vessel as much in lessons as I was out of them. Rests that consisted of deep sleep and voracious eating. Sparring with Agrian, the constant eyes of my family’s guards, a growing air of paranoia that was on the brink of setting my entire household into madness.

  I was long past my eighth birthday when the first big change came to the Vornholt estate. It was the last one I would have expected; my father finally lost an argument.

  Agrian and I were taken into his study together, and found that our mother was hovering beside the desk. The atmosphere was solemn and more than a little sad, though I could not help but detect a note of victory shining behind her eyes. What my father said to us next all but confirmed the reason for it.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “The two of you know that I love you both,” he began, eyes flitting between myself and Agrian almost hesitantly. It was not like him to be even almost hesitant about anything.

  “Are you going to send us to the Winzorth Institute after all?” I asked.

  He faltered, eying me, looking rather irritated all of a sudden. “...Let me finish, Isabel, don’t interrupt,” his tone was stern, and I was reminded yet again that I still had roughly a decade to go before I earned the right to engage in equal conversations by becoming an adult. Frustration simmering, I nodded and remained quiet.

  “...Yes,” my father said after a moment. “Both of you eventually, but for the time being only Agrian is old enough to go.”

  “I don’t want to!” he yelled, eyes suddenly wet with tears and limbs trembling with rage. “I want to stay here!”

  My father stiffened at that, glowering at his son. “Control yourself. You’re almost a man now, Agrian, I will not have my own son crying like a little girl.”

  My mother shot a glare at him, but my brother noticed only the chastisement. His gaze dropped, and I heard him sniffing for several moments as he fought to control himself. He managed it shortly, at least. My father was right about one thing, he was closing in on adulthood. “I don’t want to leave Isabel,” he said after another few moments.

  That was not so surprising to me, or apparently my parents.

  “I understand that son, but you can’t hide behind your little sister forever.” Baron Vornholt was trying for a sympathetic tone, and he was not very good at it.

  “I’m not hiding,” Agrian mumbled, though still he wouldn’t look our father in the eye.

  “You won’t be soon, in any case,” the man replied. “You will be shipping out in just two weeks, that gives you plenty of time to say your goodbyes and prepare for arrival. Trust me, Winzorth will be great for you Agrian. Better than great, it will make you into a man!”

  Having seen the calibre of this world’s other magician Institutes, or rather the calibre of men produced by them, I was rather sceptical.

  “Can I not go there as well, father?” I asked. Agrian whispered a word of thanks to me for distracting our parents’ humiliating attention, and I allowed the boy to go on thinking it was for his benefit.

  In truth, I simply worried about my future. The faster I gained strength, the better.

  “I’m afraid not, Isabel, no,” my father sighed sadly. “You’re too young by far. Even Agrian is only just of age to enroll. They are very strict about that, they don’t guarantee the best training they can provide by being lax about how they spend their resources and time.”

  I was naturally infuriated by this, doubly so because his explanation made no sense to me. Teaching a young magician was expensive and time consuming, yes, but it would always have better returns than its investment unless they were of the most pathetic talent imaginable.

  There was no talent greater than mine, and an arcane Institute should have been salivating at the thought of taking me into its fold. Something was wrong here. I resolved to investigate it further.

  Agrian burst into a rage as soon as we were free from our father’s study, and the boy quickly began informing me how unfair our treatment was. This was utterly repulsive, and I attempted, and failed, to free myself from his simian conversation . The boy was utterly inconsolable for several long minutes spent storming around and kicking various furniture and surfaces, forcing me to suffer the sight of his tantrum in silence as he ranted to me.

  Doctor Brown paid particular attention to Agrian for the weeks until he left, and Agrian paid particular attention to me. Both of these events were irritating, but I had other matters to concern myself with than them.

  Namely, I wanted to find a way of joining my brother in the Institute.

  My first course of action in this involved breaking into my father’s study and reading through his recent correspondences , hoping to find some direction for my own research. This led to me being more than a little surprised by what I found, but far from disappointed.

  Letters of acceptance for his application of Agrian the Younger to the Winzorth Institute, as I would have expected. I read through them and found that everything regarding my brother was unsurprising and in-order, particularly the unmasked excitement I saw in the Institute’s officials as they confirmed the boy’s level of magical talent and ability.

  This was all unsurprising. What needled me was the parts about myself. Isabel Vornholt, listed by name. Inquired about, by name. More magically gifted than even Agrian Vornholt, the officials had heard, and so rare a catch that they would be willing to bend their usual rules regarding the age of admission to have me start my education at the same time as my older brother, provided my talent was verified.

  I read all this, only to see my father writing back to deny their claims of my talent, deny permission to take me on as a student, and ask them not to inquire about me again during further correspondences.

  Fury was my immediate reaction, a boiling cauldron of rage bubbling in the pit of my stomach. I could easily guess at my father’s motives in lying to me and denying this form, but I did not care what those motives were. The simple fact was that he, in his misguided idiocy, was directly working against my plans, and that could not be forgiven.

  He was lucky that he was both responsible for protecting me those months earlier, and highly useful to my future as one of the Vornholt family’s members. Were it not for those two facts I may well have killed him in retaliation.

  Though I would not have been retaliating for a while, however I chose to do it. My priority now was made clear; I had to find a way to ensure that I was accepted into the Winzorth Institute, and I needed to do it soon.

  And, judging by what I had read here, I would somehow need to do that in direct conflict with my father.