Домагой Курмаич - Mother of Learning

Eventually the incoming sulrothum swarm finally arrived at the scene and it was time to leave. Zach and Zorian tanked one of the javelin salvos from the group, just to show they could, and then teleported away.

But they would be back, and they would bring an army with them next time.

"Alright, now that everyone is here, we can officially begin," Zorian said, giving everyone present a cursory look. "I know that some of you have certain… misgivings about some of the people present, but it means a lot to me and Zach that you were willing to come here regardless."

He gave Alanic and Silverlake a look while saying that, as they were pretty much the people this was directed at.

After Alanic had abruptly left the meeting last time, the meeting had been wrapped up soon afterwards. It felt wrong to just continue the discussion without someone as critical as Alanic being present, so they mostly spent the meeting bringing Silverlake up to speed in regards to their plans and activities.

"I don’t know what you’re talking about, brat. Personally, I though the last meeting was a fun little reunion," Silverlake said. "It’s not my fault Alanic decided to be a baby for no reason. Really, one would think a grown man like him would be at peace with his own past by now. Not to mention–"

"Silverlake, please," Zorian interrupted her with a long-suffering sigh. "We’re here to talk about Quatach-Ichl and how to tackle him, okay? Let’s leave these kinds of personal discussions for some other time."

Preferably never. He shot Alanic a grateful look for not rising to her bait and sparking another confrontation. Alanic did not visibly react, simply pretending as if Silverlake did not exist.

"Indeed," Xvim said, tapping his finger at the table speculatively. "I assume you have some sort of a plan, already?"

"Only a basic outline," Zorian said. "We definitely need to surprise him, and it should preferably be done near the very end of the restart. Quatach-Ichl’s movements become increasingly predictable as the date of the invasion approaches and most of the Ibasan resources are already committed somewhere by that point, meaning that Quatach-Ichl will have trouble marshaling most of his underlings to defend him or send them in pursuit of us if we can recover his crown. As for the actual execution of the ambush… well, we first wanted to try catching him with a soul-severing bullet, since that could end the fight immediately if it works."

"Soul-severing… that’s the coin trick you used to disable him in the past, yes?" Xvim asked.

"I still can’t believe that actually worked," Kael sighed. "I had to reread that part of your notes three times to make sure I caught that correctly. I don’t know what my previous self was thinking, sending you against an ancient lich armed with that. It shouldn’t have worked."

"It was a pretty lucky win," Zorian admitted. "It only worked because Quatach-Ichl did not see me as a threat and thus decided to catch an object thrown at him in his hand instead of simply deflecting it away or shielding against it. I doubt I could engineer such a situation artificially and there is no way a coin is getting through his defenses during combat circumstances."

"Yeah, no way," Zach agreed. "I’ve tried to nail him with items in the past. No chance of him overlooking something like that while you’re fighting him. He often actually sends thrown items right back at you with a casual gesture. He is quite proficient with unstructured telekinesis."

"I’m not sure I understand how this maneuver is possible," Xvim admitted. "Unusual circumstances aside, you employed an elementary piece of soul magic to shut down a lich. Liches are famous for being fiendishly hard to deal with, so why did a thousand-year-old one fall so easily?"

"Because it wasn’t Kael’s little spell that exiled the lich’s soul back to his phylactery," Silverlake said. "It was his own soul defenses that did that. You may think that being vulnerable to a cheap trick like this is a weakness, but imagine for a moment what would happen if that coin the brat used was a fancy soul jar or the like."

"His soul would get captured and his phylactery would be useless," Xvim said. "I see. So liches like him make their defenses incredibly sensitive, so that even the slightest soul disturbance causes their souls to snap back to their phylactery."

"Precisely," Alanic said. "Losing a body and everything you had on your person is a blow to be sure, but it pales to the possibility of having your soul captured."

"Most people don’t carry a one-of-a-kind divine artifact like the crown of the first emperor," Zach noted.

"I’m sure Quatach-Ichl feels he can recover the crown from whoever claimed it off his… err, corpse," Zorian said. "Considering his level of power, he’s not too far from the truth."

"Besides, what good are awesome magical items like that if you’re not allowed to make use of them for fear of losing them?" Silverlake said. "I’d wear a fancy magical crown too, if I had one. Always wanted to try playing a princess as a little girl…"

"Unsolicited childhood fantasies aside, I’d like to remind you two that all liches are automatically powerful soul mages, and can adjust their soul defenses quite easily and rapidly," said Alanic. "If you hope to banish Quatach-Ichl’s soul back to his phylactery, you only have one attempt per restart to do so. After that the lich will be expecting such a ploy and will likely take necessary precautions against it."

"What about going one step further and making an actual soul jar in order to capture Quatach-Ichl’s soul?" Kael asked. "I mean, the last time Zorian tried this, he only had me to help and I’m… kind of a beginner at this. With Alanic and Silverlake here… well, they’re clearly both very capable soul mages, so perhaps they could make something more potent than that?"

Alanic and Silverlake shared a long, complex look before they both refocused on Kael again.

"No," Alanic sighed, shaking his head sadly. "You are drastically overestimating our skills. Aside from having your phylactery destroyed, the biggest danger to a lich is having your soul captured. They spend a great deal of their energies making sure that can’t happen under any circumstances. An old, experienced lich like Quatach-Ichl…"

"The only realistic way of dealing with him is destroying his phylactery," Silverlake finished for him. "Nothing else would work."

"I see," Kael said in a subdued manner.

"There is a reason why so many mages aim for lich-hood," Silverlake noted. "As far as methods of immortality go, having your very own resurrection point is hard to beat."

"Being undead is no true immortality, merely a twisted reflection of one," Alanic stated.

Silverlake harrumphed at him, but said nothing. Instead, she turned towards Zach and Zorian and gave them a speculative look.

"What?" Zach asked.

"Did you two ever think about just… soulkilling Quatach-Ichl? You know, that trick the third time traveler used on the aranea and such? It would neatly solve this problem, not just in this restart, but in all subsequent ones as well."

"We did," Zach nodded slowly. "The conclusion was that we have to be very careful with that. The headaches we had with Veyers had taught us that a person behind heavy wards is essentially untraceable. If we soulkill Quatach-Ichl and it turns out he begins the restart behind some heavy wards or a place that nobody knows about, the crown might become completely unrecoverable."

"Hmm," Silverlake hummed. "You should really try to track down his movements and bases some of these days…"

"I’m going to have to agree with her on this," Alanic said. "I know you say you’re stretched enough as it is, but even a mere chance of ridding the world of such an ancient lich would be worth throwing some effort in that direction. This is probably the best chance of anyone tracking down his phylactery in the foreseeable future."