I couldn’t know for sure if I was being gullible or if I was level-headed, but the man who’d kill my father was now speaking to me about worldly matters. It was all a bit strange, to see that I’ve become that way. Eric from some years ago would either kill or be killed.
“That reminds me,” Sven said after we spoke about the One ritual, “mother cut me off from all of her knowledge. But from what I learnt before, and from my visions, there appears to be a creature seeking death. I hadn’t paid much attention to him in particular, but I know he is far past my strength. His name is Ren, and I can’t tell you the exact circumstances that led to it, but I can see your friend’s woman being killed by him. You’d better give him the death he seeks before that happens.”
I looked forward instead of staring at my hands. My friend’s woman? August? Melissa? “You saw this?”
Sven simply nodded.
Ren? Killing Melissa? He was strange, for sure. And, what he did at that town in Hyzek doesn’t exactly scream ‘loyal’. What’s his story? I rubbed my chin. “I’ll heed your words, Sven.”
“So,” the enigmatic man turned to face me, body and all, “truce?” He stuck his hand out.
I looked at it for an uncomfortably long time for I knew all too well that shaking that hand meant burying my desire for vengeance and going back home empty-handed to mom. Could I do that? Could I shake the hands of the man who took my father’s life? Yes, I could, yet I didn’t. The witch wanted me to take her place, a place that meant ensuring balance throughout the worlds of this realm, something Sven was currently doing, albeit on a smaller scale. For me to succeed her, should I not discard emotions which impair rational thinking? Would it not be childish to kill a man for doing something even I would do just because what he did affected me personally? “I, cannot shake your hand. I agree with your ideologies, flawed as it may be. Yet, I cannot put aside my desire to kill you so soon.” I stood up and Riftwalked back to August in Hyzek.
He was seated on a small bench in Ansul with Melissa. They were on a bit of a mound, overlooking the beautiful amber-coloured ocean as the sun set. I know for certain he picked up on my presence, and Melissa probably did as well, but neither of them even budged. With a gentle exhale, I summoned Hydra. It’s been far too long since I simply spent time with her like that, and I figured this was perfect. I gave everything a rest. No worries about protecting family, no worries about day-to-day, no worries about incoming threats or the fate of the world or balance. Instead, I just let this moment happen and appreciated the soft and mellow evening breeze.
Fate, however, had different plans in mind for us.
A slow and intentional bright source of light appeared on the horizon, growing closer and closer. It gave off an eerie and unsettling vibe. August, Melissa, and Hydra were on guard but they knew it wasn’t anything overly dangerous. Soon, a figure began forming, a winged figure.
“Should we get rid of it before it reaches land?” August asked, summoning his sword out his inventory and having it float in the air with space manipulation.
“N-no,” Melissa stood up slowly, “can’t you feel it? It isn’t hostile.”
Both August and I raised a brow of perplexment at her. “No offence but, you’re not exactly a mage or a holy warrior with five hundred quint usage,” I said, finding it weird that she’d know the incoming thingy wasn’t hostile.
“Uh,” August shrugged, “gotta agree on that one.”
“You’re supposed to side with your woman, you little shit!” Melissa pulled both his cheeks apart like a kid. “I get where you’re both coming from, and I can’t explain why I know, but I know.”
August and I gave each other strange looks and shrugged it off. I sent Skyer to make the creature’s journey faster, and when it finally arrived, what do we see? A demon. It felt different from the ones aiding the warlocks in battle. Its feet weren’t feet, but hooves, yet it stood as a bipedal demon – if we could even call what it did standing. It could barely keep upright. Some very weak light manipulation gave it just enough juice to stand on its own. The sharp horns and bones protruding through its discoloured ecru skin were quite dark, drawing a high contrast.
It suddenly began speaking some sort of language none of us could understand. Its ghoulish green eyes seemed to focus a lot on Melissa, which I was finding increasingly strange. Just after Sven warned me about Ren killing Melissa, some random demon shows up out of nowhere that doesn’t even look to be allied with those responsible for the attack on Hyzek. This was all very suspicious and strange, but perhaps the strangest thing of all was that every now and then, Melissa would nod.
“What? Are you half demon?” August chuckled, “Don’t fake understanding him if you don’t know.”
“A-actually…”
August’s arms drooped haplessly, “Are you serious?”
She shrugged, “I don’t know how I know what it’s saying, but I do. ‘Those who weaved me into the fabric of existence have entrapped spirits.’ I’m not sure what it means, but that’s what it’s saying.”
“Great!” I pouted, “More dumbass riddles. So, dude,” I turned to August, “Sven killed my dad, yada-yada, he told me Ren would try to kill Melissa so I came back here.”
“What the… what the fuck? Wait, what the fuck? Okay,” he rubbed his forehead with his index and thumb and summoned a clone to guard over Melissa whilst he totally gave me his attention. “Let’s roll back a bit here. Sven killed Flynn? Did you kill him?”
“Yes. No.”
“How’d he know Ren would try to kill Melissa?” August questioned whilst we faced Melissa and the demon.
“He mastered mind magic and can see a bit into the future, and I’m willing to bet this demon is gonna get her involved in this whole ordeal.” I rubbed my palm upwards my forehead to destress, “And, right now, I’m not sure what it’s telling her, but based on Mana Perception, it’s not telling a single lie.”
What an interesting situation this was. What could it possibly be telling her that would end up with her being Ren’s target? I squatted down and thought long and hard about my code of ethics and what it meant to me. Who are you, Eric? Could I really say that I have any less of a fucked up moral compass than Sven does? I asked myself and looked up at the demon. Fuck this! I’m not going to take fate’s dick lying down. I won’t have people die just because of some stupid ethics…
Despite my resolve, I waited patiently until the demon was done talking to Melissa and immediately forced it to sleep. I began mapping its mind, but I wasn’t just trying to learn its entire life story, no. My goal was anything related to Melissa, and the more I focused in on her, the faster and more efficient I would consume the demon’s knowledge. My concentration became so tunnelled that I could no longer really hear anything from the outside.
That’s when a new mind spell became available to me. I could now select criteria, like a person or place, and search the target’s knowledge for anything relating to the criteria. Unlike mapping a subject’s mind and learning all their memories, Scour was a simple filter, which singled out one thing and gave you knowledge based on that filter. As a result, the results were near instantaneous compared to mapping someone’s mind through manipulation. The month or so I took to map Annie Kidman’s mind would’ve been shaven down to around five seconds to one minute depending on how broad the target’s knowledge of the criteria was.
I learnt some very interesting things about Melissa, but none of them really explained why she could understand the demon’s language. When I turned around, finally done with getting the information I needed, I found Melissa in tears. Well, I don’t blame you. Anyone would cry if their parents’ souls were part of some grand soul well to power the very demons that are now attacking your home.
Yeah, that is what happened. In the demon lands, there was a creature that looked exactly like Madam Jelly. Let’s just call him Mister Jelly. Even with the knowledge I gained, I couldn’t figure out why the demons captured Mister Jelly, but I’m willing to bet they’re keeping him for ransom, and the ransom is the souls of Hyzek’s holy warriors. That would explain why there were so many holy warriors in the soul well.
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The demon apparently found that a certain faction of the demonic domain had too much control over the soul well, and found that they would only misuse it for their own selfish reasons so he sought out holy warrior souls that still had next of kin in order to convince them to take up arms with him and other rogue demons in order to release the souls from the soul well. And where were these other rogue demons? In the world of Pargat, where Ren is from, hiding from their corrupted overlords until they could form a coalition to destroy the monopoly on the soul well.
I was beginning to see how everything connected now. Warlocks had forced contracts with low-sentience demons and consensual contracts with high-sentience demons, just like the laws of contracting spirits. All of the demons we’d seen so far were low-sentience ones that the demonic overlords allowed to be used by the warlocks of Pargat in return for, of course, the souls of the warlocks’ enemies.
Melissa had just about finished telling August what I just learnt, and this was basically our recruitment into a demonic rebellion. Despite knowing this, Melissa’s mind seemed to be made up about going there. It was obvious piece of her wished that she could somehow resurrect her parents whose souls were helping to fuel the demons once she retrieved them.
August probably didn’t doubt that this new revelation was true, but he seemed to have his doubts about her parents being able to come back to life. However, he knew that fire in her eyes would never extinguish, so he agreed to the demon’s offer. That’s when I chose to properly heal the exhausted demon.
We flew over to the base of the warlock operations where they had first gained a foothold. August and I cast a wide Mind Break, basically crippling both demons and warlocks. We then entered the main tent and I used Scour to try to locate Ren. He’d already returned to the Baruum Empire in Pargat, so we went there after Hydra returned to the spirit world.
After abusing my mind magic, we found that he was laying low in an inn off in the countryside. I pulled all four of us into a void plane and we entered the man’s room. The minute I shifted us back to the corporeal plane, he had his sword pointed towards my neck in the blink of an eye. “Impressive, Ren. But we’re not your enemy. You wish to seek death or something right? Well, I ca–”
The door to his room bust open, and in walked Dillon, the kid who ‘mistakenly’ summoned me to Pargat the first time, instead of summoning the Avatar of Chaos with his master’s blood like he was supposed to.
“You!” The boy became visibly angry and literally ran and jumped onto me, biting my forehead. I actually got a little scared.
“What kind of psychotic animal are you?!”
“Me?!” he emphasised. “You lousy-ass mage came and fucked things up you fucking motherfucker!”
“Oh yeah?!” I pulled him down and pinched his cheeks like I was trying to pull them off. “I wonder who’s the little shit that summoned me here in the first place?!”
Miranda, the warlock who we took prisoner came in right after with some groceries. She saw us bickering and only looked at us in pity.
“Hmm, so let’s see. The famous farmhand, a mage,” August began counting on his fingers, “a couple quint users, a warlock and a shorter warlock…”
“Hey!” Dillon argued snappily.
“And a demon,” August continued. “So, this is a very weird gathering and I feel like we should just share what our goals are right now, because I’m pretty sure we could help each other out.”
Dillon enthusiastically raised his hand as if he was attending school, “I’m here trying to convince this guy,” he pointed to Ren with his thumb, “to convince the Order of Warlocks to reprioritise their goddamn goals because some jackass came and fucked up the Star of Fahzul so now we have no defences against the growing threat of the other countries surrounding the empire!”
“W-wow! Very specific there, buddy,” August scratched his chin nervously. “What about you?” he asked Miranda.
“Me? I took a liking to this brat so I’m just trying to make sure he doesn’t become a martyr because of patriotism,” she smiled gently like what she just said had no weight at all behind it.
Geez, I knew the kid was determined, but would he really go that far?
“Well, what about you guys?” Miranda turned the attention in the room to us.
“Hmm, well,” August put a finger to his chin, “it’s mostly the same goal with minor differences. We all need to go to the demonic world to do something about the soul well. The soul well is a source of power for demons. This demon with us wants to bring balance back to his world, T’Ghuuz, and to do that we gotta do something about the soul well. This beautiful woman is interested in a couple souls that currently reside in the soul well. I’m making sure she’s safe and helping her achieve her goal. That dumbass mage has much of the same goals as I do, but I’m pretty sure he’ll end up knee-deep in some demonic power struggle or something. The reason we’re here is to ask Ren there if he knows of a way to get to T’Ghuuz since he’s part demon.”
Miranda’s eyes opened wide and Dillon just shrugged it off. “So that’s what it was,” Dillon commented, probably referring to Ren’s bizarre height and appearance.
A weird sound came from Ren, “That was supposed to be secret.” His diction was weirdly fast compared to when he spoke with Madam Jelly. It was normal now. Back then, he spoke at a snail’s pace.
I immediately looked at Dillon.
“What?” the boy retorted although I didn’t say anything. “I busted my damn brain trying to figure out some basic arcane magic because this dumbass Order of Warlocks don’t have any texts on it. I taught him how to project sound because his speech is, well, you know…”
“If anyone knows how to get to this T’Ghuuz you speak of, then it’s the Grandmaster Warlock of the Order, Reylin,” Ren advised. “The one behind the eyes of many has revealed to me what I must do in order to properly pass on to the afterlife, but before I do that, I must know that my sacrifice for this country has not been in vain. I must know why they kept her heart and misused it so… only then, will I seek my death, which lies in T’Ghuuz.” He sure was talkative now. “If you’ve the patience to wait, our paths will eventually converge in T’Ghuuz.”
Dillon released an exhaustive sigh, “Then I suppose we have business with Reylin. We will rendezvous right here in the morning. Be ready by sunrise. Also, this dumbass mage should be able to make Ren and that demon over there invisible, right?” the boy asked August.
August nodded in agreement.
“Good,” Dillon said as if I wasn’t right there listening, “getting to the headquarters won’t take more than a few weeks. In that time, those two should stay out of sight.”
~
I yawned, rubbing my back. Waking up so early was such a chore. Who died and put him in charge anyway? Ugh… Like planned, we all gathered in the room, but right before Dillon could open the door, I pulled him back with void magic. Of course, I wasn’t going to make that journey by carriage, not at all.
“He sent out some clones to find the headquarters last night, which means he knows where it is.” August explained, “Once he knows where it is, he can just teleport all of us there. Even though he’s a dumbass, he is without a doubt the strongest magic user I know to exist.”
And just as August said, we all teleported to the sealed off room of the grandmaster of warlocks. The minute we came out of the void, the floor came up and bound us, leaving only our heads in sight. The grandmaster simply continued flipping through the pages of some book. The robe worn was a deep carmine with subtle yellow patterns on it. The aesthetic really drove home that this was no mere foot soldier.
“I do appreciate a surprise every now and then,” the grandmaster said, and I realised the grandmaster was a woman. “Would one of you like to surprise me even more by giving me a reason not to kill you?”
“Ah, well I guess the self-appointed leader should do his job and speak for us, eh?” I said snidely, looking devilishly at Dillon.
“Man, I really do hate you,” he said.
“Oh? A child? Intriguing. Come,” she let him out of the cone of earth, “sit.” Quite the inviting smile she had. She even poured him tea. The boy was stiff as board in her presence despite getting the full and undivided attention of one with so much power and prominence.
“I am the Grandmaster Warlock of the Order of Warlocks, Reylin. And you are?”
“D-Dillon,” he stuttered and let out a grunt of frustration, punching himself in his leg to get his act together.
Well, this is mildly uncomfortable. I used earth manipulation to simply return the floor to the way it was, effectively freeing us. Reylin immediately flared her mana and was about to assault us, but Dillon asked that she stop and ignore us, and she did! She listened to him! Wow, that kid has a way with the ladies, huh?
Just like Reylin and Dillon, I made chairs for us all, and a nice round table, along with conjuring some ale. August and I relaxed and drank, and Melissa followed as she was used to our behaviour. Miranda shrugged and joined in. The demon was sceptical, using his tongue to carefully taste the beverage.
“I am, confused…” Ren said.
“Don’t worry,” Miranda reassured Ren. “He might be a kid, but that boy is probably capable of running the entire Order himself. I can’t quite explain it, but his intelligence, reasoning, and mental abilities are off the charts. It’s sad to admit as an adult, but he’s a lot smarter than I am. If you were true about your goals yesterday, then he will be sure to convey them.”
A few minutes into their conversation, and Dillon called Ren over, so he joined them. Some time passed, and all three of them came over to our table.
Reylin looked intently at all of us, “Which of you are the two responsible for taking the Star of Fahzul?”
“That would be us, Grandmaster,” August answered, pointing to himself and me.
“Tell me, does Ren Fahzul speak truth?” Grandmaster Reylin questioned. “Is the Star, or the heart, returned to the being it came from?”
“Yeah, it is. And this mage had to cleanse the shadow magic from it and made us fight the biggest wraiths imaginable!” August complained.
Her face totally lost its cool and it contorted at that statement, “It was cleansed of shadow magic? There’s no shadow magic in it anymore?”
“Well, no. If it wasn’t cleansed,” August explained, “the being it returned to would have died.”
“I see,” she tittered. “I see!” A hysterical laughter came afterward and she hugged Dillon tightly. What a playa! “Do you not see what this means?! The shadow magic invested in it acted as a font of power for us warlocks! Now that it’s lost that power, we no longer need to pursue it! There need not be any further deaths! The empress can go eat a dick!” She couldn’t get that smile off her face. “This is some of the best news I’ve received in a long, long time! I’m calling all of my precious members back!”
Well, that sounded great! Sounded like the Baruum Empire’s forces would be properly bolstered by the warlocks so they wouldn’t be invaded by the neighbouring countries in the future. Dillon got precisely what he wanted out of this.
Ren, however, looked discontent. “Grandmaster Reylin, tell me, is there someone just and fair who is capable of replacing the empress?”