Book 2, Chapter 55

I didn’t get much done that day, not after I finished reading that book. Details were light after that one passage, mostly speculation since it appeared that nobody quite knew exactly what had happened after Ammun had blown an entire moon out of the sky and sent it raining down on Manoch in a thousand-thousand pieces.

There was the immediate aftermath to the kingdom of Ralvost itself, which the historian who’d penned the book had personally lived through and was able to give an anecdotal account of how bad things had been. But as far as the rest of the world went, there was little new information to be gleaned from that book itself.

I needed to verify this story somehow, not necessarily the actual events themselves, but that the fallout was accurate. It provided an explanation for the missing moon that no one seemed to be aware was gone and the lack of ambient mana in this area, but there were other, less apocalyptic, possibilities. If what I’d just read was accurate, it meant there was no escaping this mana shortage, and that I should expect all of my equipment, research, and preparations left waiting for me back at the Night Vale to be gone. The whole area might not even exist anymore if Ammun had used it as his base of operations for his insane world-core-tapping plan.

There was one thing I thought I might be able to prove. I’d been wondering about that underground lake ever since I’d found it, but I’d had too many other things taking priority over investigating it. That wasn’t likely to change any time soon, but once I had the time to make the proper preparations, I was going to see what exactly was sitting at the bottom of those cold, monster-infested waters. Could it be a big chunk of moon falling from the sky that had destroyed this city?

I had guesses and theories about a lot of things, but the one question I couldn’t answer was how long it had been between my death and reincarnation. At this point, I had to throw out all my working knowledge of soul invocations on the subject. It was obvious that, for whatever reason, the spells had failed me. Or rather, I should say that parts of them had worked, and other parts hadn’t. I was still on Manoch; that was irrefutable.

But centuries had passed, so many that my old life was forgotten history. Normally, I would have thought that meant I needed to measure my disappearance in millennia, but if I assumed the apocalypse really had occurred in my absence, it was also reasonable to assume a great deal of knowledge had vanished at the same time. On the other hand, I didn’t have any other region to compare to Derro. Things could be exponentially worse here than other places due to a chunk of moon crashing down in the middle of the city.

“Or they could be better,” I muttered to myself, suddenly struck by an idea. What if I’d actually gotten incredibly lucky to be reborn here? The moon core had to have landed somewhere. If it was still in one piece and generating mana, wherever it landed might be the most mana-dense area on the planet. Best-case scenario for me, the moon core had landed on Derro, intact and functional, just waiting for someone to claim it. It would generate mana at a rate that was absurd compared to any living creature.

Even as I had that thought, I shook my head. Given the size of Amodir’s core, it would almost had to have been broken apart for anything to survive for a thousand miles of its impact. Chances were that if there was a piece of Amodir at the bottom of that lake, it was small and either not the moon core or merely a broken shard, dark and inert.

My thoughts went round and round in circles into the evening while I sat there and generated mana. I left my wards long enough to find something to eat, then hunkered back down and munched on the food in annoyance. Perhaps I’d given the Wolf Pack too much credit, but I’d really thought I was starting to get a good read on their strength.

Maybe they were just too busy putting out whatever fires I’d caused and focused elsewhere. With a sigh, I settled back down and pulled out Velvet’s coded journal to work on that some more. Had I ever thought codebreaking was fun? Maybe years ago, but it was just tedious now, especially since I wasn’t using any divinations to assist so I could conserve my mana.

* * *

I dozed in spurts all evening, ten minutes here, twenty there. There was no telling when I’d need to react, so I slept lightly. Finally, sometime well after midnight, the tattler ward I’d placed all the way around the building tripped.

Whoever they were, they were dressed all in black with a mask covering their face. They scaled the outside of the building easily and quickly and slipped into the room I was resting in through a hole in the ceiling. They were so good that, even watching, the biggest sign of movement I caught was the shadow of one of their limbs as they entered from the roof.

The assassin’s mana core was shrouded exceptionally well, the best I’d seen yet since reincarnating. It was almost a perfect shielding, so much so that I decided it was worth the expense to use life sight to keep track of them. I quickly cast the spell, then frowned when I picked up interference from an enchanted object the assassin was wearing.

It was the mask, I decided. If the one Yano had been wearing was a prototype, this one was the masterpiece. It was making it difficult for me to even keep track of the assassin, though some argument could be made for their own skill and the fact that I was handicapping myself by pretending to be asleep.

The assassin crawled closer, literally skittering across the ceiling to get right above me. Then, with no hesitation or time to prepare themselves, they dropped straight down on top of where I was laying.

Or rather, they dropped down to where a mirrored illusion of me was laying. I was actually hidden ten feet away behind a partially collapsed wall. I’d made my way between two chunks of stone that were leaning against each other to help protect myself from being spotted by anyone just casually looking into the building.

As soon as the assassin landed, the stone shape trap I’d threaded into the defective anti-scrying wards went off. The stone basically turned to water beneath their feet, just for an instant, dropping them into the floor up to their ankles before hardening again. Tendrils of flexible rock also reared up like striking snakes and lashed out at their arms to catch hold of them and hold them tight.

That did not mean the assassin wasn’t still dangerous. There were plenty of ways to fight without moving, and unless I missed my guess, this assassin wasn’t just a dull using fancy equipment. It wouldn’t really be safe to question them until I’d drained their mana core and fully disarmed them. But that was just what I was planning on doing. I’d had enough of being forced to kill cabal mages when they came after me.

I crawled out of my hiding spot and walked around the wall to confront my would-be killer. They were tall, about six feet or so if I was correctly accounting for how deep they’d sunk into the stone, but so thin as to appear starved. I noted a missing finger on one hand, which was curled around the open air as if it was holding a weapon or tool. There didn’t seem to be anything there, but sometimes things weren’t always visible to the naked eye.

Their face was hidden behind a mask, simple black cloth wrapped around the bottom half like a bandit trying to hide their identity from their victims, and a shawl with spider web patterns was draped around their head. If I had to guess, both the mask and the shawl were magical.

Hard brown eyes stared down at me, cold and passionless. This was a job to the killer, and their victim wasn’t a person. Killing me was a chore they got paid to do, not the snuffing out of a child’s life. Perhaps I’d misjudged the Wolf Pack, thinking they’d send one of their own to finish me off. Maybe they’d just hired a convenient killer. All my planning could be for nothing.

Even caught in stone like that, I was wary about magical attacks. My shield ward was fully recharged, but there was no such thing as too much defensive magic. As I approached, I split my focus between trying to read the assassin’s body language and keeping an eye on whatever was going on with their hand.

“Let me start by saying thanks for playing along,” I said. “I would have been annoyed at the wasted mana otherwise. Just to be clear, you’re a member of the Wolf Pack cabal, right?”

“I am,” they, or rather she, said.

“Assassination specialty? You’re good at dodging scrying and enhanced senses.”

“Flattering me will not save you.”

“Couldn’t hurt my chances. So, I’m curious. Did Velvet send you, or was it someone else?” That didn’t merit an answer, apparently, so I continued. “I left two messages, but I had to wonder if the second one would make it past him. Since it said I’d be open to ending the conflict once Velvet was dead, I figured he didn’t have a lot of incentive to pass that one up the chain.”

“That has nothing to do with why I’m here,” she said. “The master wishes to question you.”

“Oh? Are you offering me the chance to come along peacefully?”

“No.”

“I see,” I said, giving a significant look at her feet. There were plenty of ways to get free, but I hadn’t been just idly chatting. I’d been buying time by keeping my would-be assassin focused on me instead of on trying to free herself while I worked on a remotely cast mana drain. She must have sensed something, since the instant I connected the spell to her, she made her move.

Her body became insubstantial with a spell similar to my own phantasmal step, and she dropped through the floor to the ground level below. I tracked her with life sense and tried to keep the mana drain going on her, but the temporary core I’d tried to slip into her hadn’t stuck, and the spell fizzled without stealing any mana from her.

She didn’t even make it to the ground before a second spell, probably shadow leap or something similar, twisted her body through space into the dark corner behind and above me. Even with a scrying spell, I couldn’t see or hear her. It seemed her repertoire of magic focused strongly on evading notice and moving around in places she shouldn’t be able to get into. That was going to make her difficult to catch.

Life sense was still running, though, and I could vaguely feel her mana core. That pair of spells had taken a good chunk of her reserves, which really just meant I needed to keep the pressure on her until she was out of mana. It wasn’t as convenient as mana draining her, but the end result would be the same.

That was my plan at first, until I realized I hadn’t accounted for something: that weapon in her hand, the one I couldn’t see and wasn’t sure if it was really there. A second after she reappeared behind me, she dropped down to attack me, and that was when I confirmed the presence of some sort of magical weapon.

It went through my shield ward like it wasn’t even there, unraveling the magic that should have protected me and driving straight for my back.