Zenith of Sorcery-Chapter 4Interlude - Adria

Interlude 4

Adria

Gaius sat in his office, hands folded over his mouth, reading the report in front of him for the fourth time. A deep frown marred his face. An unknown creature of massive size and power leaving the planet. An ancient dwarven vault unearthed beneath the mountain, full of strange corpses. A friendly dragon visiting the White Dragon Clan. And, of course, Marcus King in the center of it all.

“You should have taken care of him when he first came back,” a voice said behind him.

“Shut up,” Gaius told Herodian, though without any real heat. He understood the sentiment, but… “Haven’t you seen the recording? If we had sent anyone after him, we’d be done for.”

“You think our assassins would fail?” Herodian asked. He sounded honestly curious. “Besides, surely you don’t think he’d go after you in the city itself? The wards here are ancient and strong.”

“And what? I’m supposed to stay here forever, afraid to step outside lest he gets his hands on me the moment I step one foot outside the wards?” Gaius countered.

That was no way to live. He imagined what the other academy leaders would say, or even the other elders. The sheer humiliation of it all…

“Besides,” Gaius continued. “Assassinations are not the way. I didn’t even kill Gnaeus, you know that. It’s not worth the risk.”

Some considered Gaius to be ruthless and immoral, but he insisted he was simply sensible. And sensible people did not make powerful enemies and risk their reputation if they didn’t have to. There were smarter ways to go about dealing with your political enemies. If he wanted to have Marcus killed, he would simply declare him an enemy of the academy and send a battle group to execute him out in the open.

That said, that whole incident with the Crystal Mountain and Thunder Hall… that really didn’t work out how he had hoped for. What Gaius hoped for was that these two forces would kill Marcus’s students and wreck his base, preferably immediately after arriving, when they realized he wasn’t present. That way he could claim to be caught by surprise and simply offer his condolences, while internally celebrating. Crystal Mountain and Thunder Hall would take the brunt of his ire in that case, even if Marcus suspected he had dragged his feet a little in his response.

However, no matter how long Gaius waited, neither side wanted to make a move. Even Thunder Hall, famed for their bloodthirstiness. As far as Gaius could figure out, Thunder Hall was there mostly for the purpose of goading Crystal Mountain into doing something stupid, as well as inciting conflict between them and Marcus. Something they succeeded at, though perhaps not to the extent they were hoping for.

Gaius was not blind to what Marcus was doing. He had watched him closely since he came back, and while he did drop his ambitions for leadership of the Great Sea, he was clearly building a faction for himself. Moreover, this faction was placed far outside of Adria itself, composed of people with unclear loyalties. Gaius didn’t need this. A faction of unclear loyalties led by a powerful elder who used to be his rival… it would be best for him if that went nowhere. So when he saw Thunder Hall and Crystal Mountain besiege Marcus’s tower, he was ecstatic. If those two destroyed the tower and killed his students, Marcus would probably not immediately recruit another gaggle of orphans to be his students, and if he did, he would place his school in Adria where it was safer, and Gaius could keep an eye on him more easily.

Alas, he had assumed too much. In retrospect, he should have just accepted things weren’t going the way he wanted to and intervened. As it was, he ended up being too obvious and now Marcus was outright ignoring him.

What an… unfortunate situation. In reality, Gaius didn’t actually want Marcus as an enemy. He just wanted him to be… more irrelevant.

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“Do you think he was already a seventh rank mage when he first came back?” Herodian asked.

“I do,” Gaius said. “Admittedly this isn’t his usual attitude, but it’s obvious he has developed a taste for hiding his power in his long absence. There are several reports of him presenting himself as a simple travelling mage of moderate rank.”

It was hardly the only change in the man, after all. Gaius had always thought of Marcus as an ascetic, chaste adept, completely dedicated to pursuit of magical excellence, but it turned out he had gone and sired a daughter for himself at some point in his travels. With an elf, no less! Well, he supposed this sort of thing was to be expected: few could resist the lure of carnal pleasures, after all. Still, it was a reminder that he really shouldn’t assume too much about the man after he had spent six years wandering the world in exile.

A guard came into the room to bring a stack of letters to him and Herodian moved to take them in his stead. It was very common for either Herodian or Cornelius to handle such things, so the guard thought nothing of it. He simply bowed after handing the letters and left.

“What do we really know about what happened on that mountain?” Gaius asked.

“You have the report,” Herodian told him. Gaius glared at him. “What do you want me to say? The report is quite detailed, and it says a lot.”

“It doesn’t say why the orcs were so far down south, why the dwarves wanted the dragon so badly, how we missed an ancient dwarven vault in our territory for so long, or what kind of creature could blow a hole in a mountain and fly off at such ridiculous speeds.”

“We didn’t miss the vault,” Herodian said. “We knew it was there, but nobody could get it to open.”

“Until Marcus came along,” Gaius pointed out.

“Until he came along,” Herodian nodded. He opened a letter, glanced through it for a few seconds, then threw it on the corner of Gaius’s desk.

“Who is the dragon?” Gaius asked. “Is she a long-term ally or a new arrival? And is she associated with Marcus or Beortan?”

Not that there was much difference in Gaius’s eyes. Beortan was firmly in Marcus’s camp, even if he was more of an equal partner than a subordinate. Still, if Beortan had had a dragon ally for a long time now, it would indicate that their spy networks had a major hole somewhere, because they’d never noticed anything of the sort until now. It would make more sense to Gaius if this dragon was some ally that Marcus had made in his six years of exile, and who he was now introducing to his closest ally.

“Beortan claims she helped him resolve the situation, and is here on his behalf,” Herodian noted. “He is cagey about her, but our spies among his clansmen think her presence might lead to major advances in Elder Beortan’s capabilities.”

“Anything from the dwarves?” Gaius asked.

“We don’t even know how to contact them,” Herodian said. “Maybe they’ll show up at some point to ask for their machine back. Overall, I don’t think this is worth worrying about. Still, the dwarves do keep turning up in the Silver League often these days. I’ll see about gathering some more information about their powers and polities. Getting informants in northern territories is a pain, but it’s better to waste some assets than to be caught completely off-guard like this in the future.”

“Try to find out how all these forces could slip past our observation posts without alerting anyone, too,” Gaius told him.

“Right,” Herodian said.

In truth, they both knew that the Bloodstone Mountains were very hard to secure, and that things like this could easily happen again. It had been this way for a long time. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to chew out the guards at the border posts every once in a while to make sure they weren’t completely asleep on the job.

“We need to talk to him,” Gaius concluded.

“He doesn’t want to talk to you,” Herodian pointed out. He read through another letter. “Why not simply order him to show up and explain himself? You’re his leader after all.”

“A leader should never give an order that he knows will not be followed,” Gaius said. “Not unless I plan to actually follow through with a punishment in response, which I don’t.”

Although he had misjudged the situation with the hostile forces besieging Marcus’s tower, he didn’t think the situation was irreparable. He wasn’t lying when he told Marcus that Great Sea could use his help. Certainly some of the other elders thought this, as he had caught some rumors of a number of them thinking about trying to recruit him for their ends. Nevertheless, there was still time to salvage the situation.

“No, as frustrating as this is, we should give him some time to respond. Perhaps send him another letter or two, as pathetic as that sounds,” Gaius said. “If he still isn’t responding in a few months, then-”

“Actually, there is no need to wait that long,” Herodian said, staring at one of the letters.

“Oh?” Gaius perked up. “Did he finally write back?”

“In a sense. It’s just one sentence… it says he is coming over to Adria with his students.”