Lieze broke away from her studies to enjoy the blissful silence surrounding her.
The interdimensional space within the Portable Home was perfectly isolated. She had nothing but the burning candlelight to remind her that the world hadn't been caught in a wonderful stasis. Her mind was clear of worry, focused entirely on the trove of tomes and grimoires splayed out on her desk, filling the air with the nostalgic, musty scent of old paper.
She'd moved all the necessary amenities into the space over the course of a few days. The only thing that prevented her from spending every hour of every day in the magical cube was its lack of a kitchen. Two weeks after her ascent from the dungeon, an abundance of loneliness had given her the time she needed to set her priorities straight once and for all.
She settled into a routine of waking up, sourcing a meal from beyond the privacy of her room, and spending the rest of the day continuing her research into the origin of Scions using the tome she and Lüngen had liberated from the laboratory beneath the castle. She had learned much of the world's secretive history, and especially of those who had taken it upon themselves to preserve those secrets - namely, the Sixteen Sages.
Furainé was the strand that connected Tonberg's exhaustive history to the old masters of sorcery. Though it could not be said who sired her, she was unmistakably the progeny of a Sage. Lieze connected the anecdotes of countless scholars across the city's lifespan and read between the lines of their seemingly innocuous compilations of poetry and scripture to conclude that the Sages had played a crucial part in the creation - or perhaps the maintenance - of the Scions.
Furainé was a collector of curios before her life came to a tragic end at Lieze's hand. As the daughter of a Sage, her aptitude for any particular school of magic was extraordinary. Over the course of decades, she assembled a corpus of myths and theories documenting her estranged family. Was she searching for the true identity of her mother and father? Or did she undertake the task out of spite for those who had abandoned her - attempting to unravel the veil of mystery that had obscured the Sages for so long?
Lieze didn't care for the answer. Furainé had graciously performed the most tedious and time-consuming task of all, and for that, she was somewhat grateful. All that remained was to piece the puzzle together - quite a troublesome undertaking in and of itself, thanks to the Sages' insistence on clouding their intentions with so much useless prose.
The effort fatigued Lieze. At first, she hungrily interpreted the meanings behind every word of the Sages' rare and priceless journals, but as days turned to weeks, she found her momentum being stalled by clusters of ingenious, philosophical walls imposed by the old masters. More and more often, she found herself sitting back in her chair and staring off into space, where her dried-up mind escaped into thoughts of a more personal persuasion.
She hadn't spoken to Drayya in-
"No." She slammed her hands down on the desk, "No, no, no."
She forced the topic to disintegrate, forcing her eyes to return to the exhaustive entries. The time for private, emotional thoughts was over. She was Lieze Sokalar - master of the Order and the woman who would lead the world into beautiful ruin. She was not 'human'. She was not 'real', or 'personable'. If necessary, she would overcome her weaknessess through sheer force of will. A few hours of rigorous study would distract her from the frivolity of her humanity.
Her current area of investigation encompassed the writings of the late Eustace Marda, whom Lieze was referencing against Varkid, second of the Sixteen Sages. She had identified a string of cyphers which connected the former's theories of divine geometry with the latter's maddening diagrams, setting her on track to unearth the meaning behind the esoteric episodes of divine communication supposedly experienced by Merid, the third of the Sixteen Sages and Varkid's alleged half-sister, who…
…
Lieze blinked, and the paragraphs before her lost all meaning. The train of consciousness she'd been scribbling with one hand onto a bare sheet of paper had transformed into an unreadable mess. It wasn't the first time she'd completely lost track of her own objective, but her addled mind refused to accept that it could have been caused by anything relating to stress.
She cracked open the dam of her thoughts and allowed a tide of daydreams to flow in. She hadn't so much as exchanged glances with Drayya since they cleared the dungeon two weeks ago. They had been working separately ever since - she became engrossed in her studies, whereas Drayya turned her attention to culling and strengthening the Order's army using [Necromantic Alchemy].
They had an argument. A very childish and ridiculous argument, but one that Lieze refused to back down on. She was correct, after all - no matter how friendly they seemed to have become, there was no denying that Drayya was a major factor in contributing to Lieze's apathetic outlook on life. She was a tormentor. A wicked, self-absorbed woman. Lieze had every right to despise her, no matter how much she apologised.
That should have been the end of it. But if things were so simple, Lieze might have never turned out the way she did. For all her past abuse, Drayya's attempts to reconcile had never come across as anything less than completely genuine. Indeed, there were times when Lieze was reminded of the faultless relationship they'd shared as children and beyond. But how much of that authenticity was the result of Lieze's newfound strength?
Yes. That was the thought. If Lieze was still 'herself' - still inept, still more trouble than she was worth, would Drayya have been pulling her hair and studding every sentence with ceaseless insults like before? She couldn't imagine a world in which the answer was anything less than an unconditional 'yes'. And for that reason, she couldn't bring herself to accept the girl's attempts at reconciliation.
Too much time wasted, Lieze shook her head and stood up from her desk. As pathetic as it made her feel, she needed to unload those thoughts onto someone who would not only understand them, but be willing to sort them out on her behalf. There was only one individual she was half-convinced would be capable of doing so.
Lüngen sat in the Golden Flagon, blowing on his pipe and enjoying a cluttered collection of short stories, novels, correspondence, and treaties which surrounded his little wooden table like a throne of binding and yellowed paper. He had once told Lieze that he read simply for the pleasure of reading, and so he extracted as much enjoyment from an incomprehensible thesis as he would from a child's journal. Lieze wondered if he even recalled a quarter of what he perused.
Fatherly as he was to the young necromancer, he could tell with a passing glance that Lieze hadn't arrived to make simple conversation. He swept a stack of tomes off the chair to his right and waved his hand in a fruitless attempt to scatter the bitter smoke lingering in the air. He did not greet or welcome her, and instead listened patiently as she repeated to him the events of the previous fortnight with impassioned vigour.
When Lieze fell silent, she crossed her arms as a firm recollection pushed her to become more frustrated than ever before. Lüngen picked at the rim of a scab forming on his bald spot and used his fingers to tap a discordant tune onto the table's surface.
"Well…" He began, "It sounds to me like the kind of thing you'd have forgotten about if it really didn't bother you so much. If Drayya is your comrade, and you wish to exsanguinate any of the bad blood remaining between the two of you, then naturally, you should forgive her. If not, then cast aside any pretences of camaraderie and devote yourselves to the pursuit of necromancy."
Lieze sighed, "It's more complicated than that."
"Hah!" Lüngen grinned. His ugly, yellowed teeth were out of place, stained with the remnants of something fatty and stringy, "Yes. Isn't it always? If indeed we mortals are cursed with one thing, then it must be our ability to complicate matters. We fight for the perfection of our selves, and in doing so, inevitably clash with the perfection of others' selves. Where we see 'solutions', others may see ruin and chaos. Where we see 'peace', we are inclined - or perhaps forced - to introduce conflict. That is what it means to be emotional."
Lieze took in a deep breath, lungs filling with pipe smoke. She despised Lüngen's habit with all of her heart, but it couldn't be denied that the fog spreading through every inch of the room added to his image as a scholar.
"I don't like it." She said.
"No. I doubt most of us do." He concurred, "-But if it was not for that, then we would not be human. Indeed, it may very well be good or bad depending on the circumstances, but as I'm sure you know, it is neither productive nor worldly to have an abundance of one or the other."
"What do you think I should do?"
Lüngen chuckled, "Is that what you came to ask me?"
"I can't wrap my head around these matters of emotion like you can." Lieze explained, "Silence and apathy have been implanted into me. I no longer desire to be anyone other than myself. But Drayya wants me to become like an earlier version of myself - a version that she happily destroyed over the course of more than a decade."
"It may surprise you to hear that I don't bother myself with a lot of 'thinking' nowadays." Lüngen replied, "It's a habit of age. I don't think you'll understand what I mean until you're just as old and decrepit as me. I like to think simply and present simple solutions, to preserve the 'youth' that never was, and can no longer be. But your 'youth' is still in your own hands, Lieze, and that strikes me with a temptation to push you towards the so-called 'right' path. But I can't bring myself to interject the imperfection of youth, troublesome as it may be. If I were to do so, then I would be intruding upon the beauty of what it means to be young and foolish."
"I'm not so sure about 'youthful'..." Lieze muttered, "I'm twenty-two."
"A twenty-two year old may as well still be in a crib by my measure." Lüngen joked, "No - it is only by the grace of your youth that you are still as much of a fool as you are."
Lieze frowned, "I thought you said you liked simple answers? This doesn't sound so simple to me."
"Do you like young Drayya, Lieze?"
She paused, "...What do you mean by that?"
"What do you think I meant?"
"Nothing. Obviously." She shifted the topic, "She's an ally."
"A friend?"
It was a forbidden question to someone so embarrassed by her own sensitivity as Lieze. A friend? She didn't want to answer that. But how much of that desire was dictated by the impenetrable status she needed to maintain? Could the leader of the Order of Necromancers call anyone a friend? In the face of her soldiers, in the face of her armies? Absolutely not.
But in the presence of Lüngen?
"...Yes."