Soon Joana showed up next to Van Dijk as she seed to have sothing to tell him.
She intercepted him just beyond the training ward’s arch, where the corridor opened to a slice of tower view, the far away academy a gray in the darkness of the night. Her cloak slled of dirt and steel. Van Dijk’s hands were already clean; the man shed the traces of work like a snake its skin.
"You got ti?" Joana asked as they walked up the Black Tower’s spiral staircase.
The stair wound upward with the old rhythm of stone laid by patient hands. Their steps fell into asure, hers a fraction heavier, his a precise economy of motion.
"Just finished training Ludwig so I’m free."
"Oh, how’s he doing?" Joana asked.
Her tone was casual on the surface, but curiosity sharpened it. She had watched enough students to feel the shape of promise even at a distance, and Ludwig was far above the average student.
"He’s a monster... to say the least..." Van Dijk said.
He did not smile when he said it. The word landed without embellishnt, as if he were filing a catalog entry under a correct heading.
"That’s high praise coming from you..."
"Yes, he deserves it. When I teach him one thing he learns ten. His use of simple spell into complex applications allows him to go beyond his own limitations. It’s like he hasn’t even seen the ’Wall’ yet."
Van Dijk’s fingers sketched an absentminded shape in the air, the geotry of a problem being articulated. The Wall: that inevitable place where effort ets the fixed line of talent. The idea of soone who had not yet even glimpsed it made his voice go reflective.
"Really? This young and hasn’t even seen the wall of talent?"
Joana’s breath made a faint fog in the stairwell’s colder pocket. She had t prodigies who sprinted early and stalled, and workhorses who found their stride late. This description did not fit either.
"Yes, it’s frightening to a point. After all, only when one hit their wall will they stagnate and start developing more to try and go beyond it. But so far, it’s like a dry sponge that’s absorbing anything and everything. I wonder... if he keeps this up, he might actually go beyond the Eight Circle of magic..."
He kept his eyes on the steps as he said it, as if saying such a thing too directly might tempt the tower to shake. Beyond the Eighth was the province of footnotes and legends; even to speculate tasted like hubris.
Joana’s eyes widened. "That’s not sothing even you managed."
"Yes, which is why it’s making feel a bit more invested in teaching him more. So far he’s already dabbling in fifth tier magic with knowledge of sixth but he can’t use it yet."
There was no jealousy in it, only the quickened breath of a scholar who had found a puzzle that justified years of attention.
"Wait I didn’t feel fifth magic circle from him though." Joana said.
"Its due to his special body, he can build circles in his heart now, the Heart of Wrath, and can further empower them with the Nephilium Circuit on his body. He basically has two circuits where every mage has one..."
He tapped two fingers lightly against his breastbone, an absent diagram. The explanation ca out clipped, as if he were simplifying a treatise into a paragraph for a bright student outside the discipline.
"Now you lost , I’m not that knowledgeable in magic..." Joana said with an awkward tone.
"Basically, in his own Circle it’ll be impossible to have anyone capable of matching him in firepower. All he needs now is ti to grow, and so challenges..."
Van Dijk’s voice softened on the last word. Challenges were both curriculum and crucible. The tower had plenty of one; the world would supply the other.
"Speaking of challenges..." Joana said as she handed a docunt to Van Dijk.
The parchnt was stiff, the seal unbroken, A phoenix seal... imperial. That alone made Van Dijk’s face turn sour, then with the tip of his nail, he slit it, opening the cotent. A faint scent of resin lifted as the wax cracked. He scanned, and the careful control of his face creased so more.
The mont master Van Dijk read them, his face crumpled up completely as if the mother of all bad news just presented him with an unwanted gift.
"So... he’s finally making a move. This aught to be interesting," but his words didn’t match the angry expression of his face.
The line between his brows stayed cut deep. He folded the docunt once, twice, slid it into his coat. The stair turned above them, promising more stone and thinner air. They climbed.
The two headed up the tower to continue their discussion.
Their voices faded into the spiral, a thread drawn upward through the tower’s throat. Doors whispered shut behind them; the wards settled like a cat resuming its coil.
***
So ti later, Ludwig sat down on the floor, looking through the Umbral Codex, reading up more about the spells that the Lich had left inside.
He chose a square of warm stone near a lamp niche, back to the wall out of habit. The Codex was heavy in his lap, more artifact than book; the cover drank light rather than reflected it. When he opened it the first ti, it always exhaled a cool, papery breath that slled faintly of damp cellars and crushed nightshade. Script crawled and settled, diagrams shifting like constellations finding their rightful shape.
In here the work of the Lich that Mot killed and Ludwig ransacked. The lifelong effort of a great mage, compiled and condensed into a grimoire that was absorbed into the Umbra Malvolu Codex Necros.
Though he had tried many tis before to make the lich’s soul speak and bind to his will sa as happened with Thomas, it would appear that the Lich’s soul was far too... strong headed.
He had coaxed, commanded, needled, and even threatened it; the thing in the lantern responded to none of the leashes that kept Thomas at heel. Pride was a harder collar to buckle than hunger, and in this case even the threat of anhelation or worse, sending him back to Necros. He rubbed the ache out of his forearm with his thumb and turned a page.
So he had to rely on himself to learn the spells left behind by another apostle.
He traced the architecture of a working with a nail, mouthing ratios and asures as if tasting them would help them stick. The staff lay across his thighs, warm now from his skin, its alien grain a quiet reminder that this was borrowed power stitched to stubborn will. Yet, unfortunately, the words were far too elusive and complicated. Without the lich’s own efforts to assist him, most of these lines would remain a puzzle until Ludwig finds a way to solve it.
Nothing but ti and experience can fix that, or maybe a way, a way to make the Lich speak. Difficult, but not completely impossible...
A grin crept up on Ludwig’s face as he realized sothing. The Knight King was also a difficult person to appease and handle, but h,e too fell for Ludwig’s "charm." Who knows? The sa trick might just work again.
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