— Wow! I didn't know you were so knowledgeable about Water school spells, especially the more specialized ones.
— As you remember, Advisor Niroken was your colleague in the Water sphere.
One of the overthrown advisors in Valeria was indeed a Water mage, but Alexander's knowledge came not from him but from the captured archmage Gudius, who was a fan of various combat spells and collected all available information on them.
— Ah, Niroken! I should have guessed! He was the one who taught me "Viscous Mist" in the past. It's a pity about the old man, — the archmage continued nonchalantly after a brief pause, — But could you tell me what the advisors were at odds about?
"Not that I would know!"
A blood oath. An ancient magical ritual that had nothing to do with actual blood. It was a ritual of subjugation, by which a mage transformed their body into something akin to an artifact with only one owner, the person chosen by the mage themselves. It was called a blood oath due to the ignorance of outside observers.
The ritual was demanding in terms of magical energy, and a weak mage could only perform it by supplementing it with additional power. And where to get it? Correct — one's own blood, an ideal source of additional power. Thus, the subjugation ritual came to be known as a blood oath. Since the archmage knew that such a ritual was unrelated to vampires, he must have suspected that the old oath given to one of the now-deceased advisors was still in effect.
— I don't want to bypass it, Your Excellency.
The formal address in what was almost a friendly conversation put an end to the topic, indicating boundaries that should not be crossed.
— That is your right, Alex. I will not insist. But you should understand that I am interested in everything happening in Valeria, — with that phrase, the archmage turned to his companion and began discussing fashion with her.
Alexander was left to look out the window at the monotonous forest landscape and ponder what he had heard. If Dukon was not lying, it seemed that the orcish archmages were not just unwilling to fight but were actively sabotaging their king's orders. Archmage Kofg, an adept of the School of Life, who could offer nothing but healing spells, was understandable—Life school simply didn't deal in offensive spells.
But Archmage Khroman, an adept of the School of Blood, and Archmage Artill, an adept of the General School of Magic, could seriously harm the enemy with powerful and deadly spells. Especially "theoretician" Artill, who had at least a dozen of his own spell creations, some of which were combat spells according to Gudius. Analyzing the events of the summer was certainly interesting, but there were more pressing matters at hand that brought Alexander back to reality.
— Your Grace, are the rumors of Archmage Pikiron's death true? — Martha finally stopped chatting about fashion.
At the mention of the question, the vampire tensed up immediately. Not that this news would make vampires drop everything and fix the situation, but everything happening in the Uzmer Empire affected the rest of the world. Especially if it concerned the death of the Supreme Mage of the Empire, who had held his position for over two hundred years, and especially if this mage was the only Archmage of the Mind among humans.
If what the mage had said was true, it meant that not just an era but something much more significant had come to an end. After all, mentalists could not only delve into other people's minds and read their thoughts or memories. Although they almost always used their abilities for that purpose, from a vampire's perspective, it was like using a microscope to drive in nails.
Primarily, mentalist mages organized their own minds, which gave them such trivial abilities as absolute memory, incredible calculation speed, instantaneous memorization of any amount of information, and so on.
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