Victor stared at the words scrawling across the page in horror. As he continued to read them over and over, they began to shift, forming a completely new message.

What’s wrong?

Victor’s mouth had gone dry, making it difficult for him to speak. “I can’t just… I can’t consume a woman’s soul.”

How had he even… how had he ‘harvested’ it in the first place? It must have happened when he killed her… This was way too much.

Why not? It’s not as if she wouldn’t have just been recycled by Creation anyway.

Victor glared at the page. “You want to turn me into a monster.” Like Lord Grantly. Like his father.

Once more, the ink swirled and shifted.

No. Monsters are to be feared by people.

Victor continued to glare. “Yes, because people definitely wouldn’t fear a soul devouring necromancer.”

Monsters are to be feared by people. You are to be feared by monsters.

And then Victor was plunged back into darkness.

Staggering, he tried to remain upright — but it was a losing battle, and he collapsed to the muddy ground on his knees. The book slipped from his hand, and Victor sobbed.

He hadn’t asked for this. All he wanted was to claw his way to a slightly better life, straining just high enough that he could help push others to heights he himself would never reach.

Yes, he had turned to crime — but it wasn’t as if the Empire and its law wasn’t already immoral and corrupt. Victor was generally willing to compromise — but the past two days had strained his usual flexibility to the verge of snapping.

The woman — Victor realized he didn’t even know her name, even if there was no reason to — she had attacked him. She had threatened him, she had threatened his family, who were now undoubtedly in the clutches of the monster she worked for.

But he didn’t want to hurt her.

And yet…

He had killed her all the same. Destroying himself as well wouldn’t change that, and his purpose in life was still far from finished. If her death couldn’t be undone — well, the least he could do was make it count for something.

His resolve now hardened, Victor reached into his mind and tugged on the newest mental limb granted by the book. As he did so, he realized he could feel an alien presence attached to it.

Her soul.

Unlike the other odd additions lurking in the dark recesses of his mind, the soul had absolutely none of that strange sensation of familiarity. It was distant from him, only bound to him on a tether, without being integrated into his sense of self.

With a sigh, Victor pulled.

The best way he could describe what happened next was that the soul unraveled. It felt like pulling on a loose thread of fabric, the action of yanking on a small, innocuous piece causing the whole structure to crumple apart.

A rush of foreign energy surged through him, raging throughout his body and mind. While at first it felt fairly cold and neutral, it rapidly warmed up to him, becoming one hundred percent his own.

Newly invigorated, Victor stood up and dusted himself off. Dismissing the tome, he rubbed his hands together in anticipation.

The horror of destroying an actual, literal soul with such careless ease was still horrifying, but the fact that it felt pretty good served to lessen the psychological impact.

…He would probably have to be careful about that.

While Victor felt like he was more physically energetic than he had been since — well, for as long as he could remember — he could also tell that the vast majority of the soul’s energy now resided within his own spirit.

It was odd, being aware of his own soul. Belatedly, Victor realized that what he had been calling his mind was really a misnomer. His mind gave the commands, but it was his soul which felt and moved the intangible limbs of his magic.

Victor spared a glance around. It was still perfectly dark, of course, reminding him of his original reason for summoning his Focus — he needed light.

Raising his hand again, Victor conjured fiendfire.

Crimson flames leapt to life above his palm. Concentrating, Victor shut his eyes and honed in on his soul and the magic coursing through his body to fuel the spell.

He could tell that arcane energy was continually being consumed — but when he focused on the reservoir within his soul, he couldn’t observe any change. It didn’t feel like it was going down at all.

But it had to be, because the spell was consuming energy — which meant that the amount of energy he had gained from devouring the soul had been comparatively massive. That was good to know, he supposed.

Victor was still rather shaken by what he had just done, of course — but he was also rather emotionally exhausted — though he didn’t doubt he would pay for his current detachment dearly at some point in the near future.

With nothing else to do at present, Victor decided it was time to begin exploring. Unfortunately, there wasn’t really any indication that any direction was better than any other — aside from the lake, of course.

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Frowning, Victor considered his options. One idea was to walk straight away from the lake, further into the darkness. Another was to stick to the shore as a guide to avoid getting lost.

After several seconds of deliberation, Victor decided to try the latter. If circling the lake gained him nothing, he could always venture off afterwards — but it could potentially be much harder to find the lake again if he left it behind.

Keeping his hand outstretched to continue channeling the spell, Victor set off, keeping the edge of the lake several paces to his left. For a brief moment, he worried about wasting time going in circles if the lake turned out to be identical in all directions — but then he realized that the soft, muddy terrain was keeping his footprints.

Despite his newfound stamina, he began to grow tired of keeping his hand outstretched in front of him after what felt like several minutes. Frowning, Victor stopped, staring at the brilliant ball of ruby fire with a contemplative expression.

Did he actually have to keep it just above his hand?

Experimentally, Victor dropped his hand to his side while concentrating on willing the fire to remain exactly where it was.

The spell remained completely stationary, to his immediate delight.

Willing the ball to keep the exact same position relative to his own body, Victor began slowly walking forward — and the fire kept pace with him, always just half an arm’s length ahead.

Victor grinned. As he continued walking, he willed the fire to move over to his side, and it obeyed. Sticking out his arm, he had it spin in circles around the outstretched limb.

Magic was truly wonderful.

Next, Victor willed the flame to shoot off into the distance. Obeying immediately, the spell rocketed off — before slowing down barely an arm and a half’s length away and then rebounding backwards, slowly drifting back towards him.

Stopping, Victor frowned. Trying again, he began pushing the flame forward — far slower this time, gingerly testing the limits of distance.

Once the flame was just about an arm’s length away, it began to slow. Furrowing his brow, Victor continued to push, and the spell obeyed, straining to inch farther and farther away from him.

Not much farther, and he couldn’t visually tell that it was even moving at all. Irritated, Victor pushed harder, and the flame crept forward — but not before a colossal spike of arcane energy surged through him, the spell consuming dozens of times what it had before.

Alarmed, Victor backed off, and the flame returned to his side.

Right. It has limits, and attempting to break past them has consequences.

With a sigh, Victor continued his walk around the lake. He would experiment more later — looking into his soul, he saw that his reserve of arcane energy had noticeably depleted — though fortunately, it appeared to be stable again.

Several dozen minutes passed by Victor’s crude estimation. He was now about halfway around the lake at this point — at least, that’s what he guessed based on the consistent, slight curvature.

A cobblestone walkway came into sight.

Victor could just barely make out the paved walkway through the dim red glow of his flame — as well as the small stone chest right at the water’s edge.

Victor stopped. While it was a relief to finally see a change in his dull surroundings, he was also wary — he was in the dungeon, after all.

The most unnerving thing was the chest.

The dungeon rarely gave rewards for free. Victor was no expert on delving, but he did know that. He also knew that traps could be just as common as monsters — and so, somewhat ironically, a seemingly unguarded chest screamed danger.

Approaching slowly, Victor eyed the chest cautiously — while also being sure to scan the pathway and the surrounding darkness. Not only could the chest be trapped, it was also the most interesting, exciting, and potentially dangerous feature — so in Victor’s mind, it only made sense to hide the real trap somewhere else.

But he made it up to just a couple paces away without issue.

Gingerly, Victor set one foot onto the cobblestones. Finding no issue, he took a deep, calming breath and approached the chest. It didn’t appear to be locked.

Victor was shivering now. Should I go through with this?

Part of him wanted to back out. But he needed to finally begin to confront danger, not run from it — and he needed every scrap of potential power he could get as well.

Firming his resolve, Victor kicked open the chest.

Nothing happened.

Peering inside, Victor saw that the stone coffer contained a smaller, metallic chest — and this one was locked. Running a nervous hand through his now dry hair, Victor considered what to do next. The metal chest looked small enough to take with him…

A loud splash made him leap back on instinct — just barely saving him from the jaws of a monster’s ambush.

The lake. He had completely forgotten about the lake.

Backing up as quickly as he could, Victor frantically attempted to put distance between him and his new attacker.

The rat hissed.

It wasn’t an ordinary rat like he was familiar with from the city streets above. No, this behemoth was at least the size of a guard dog, and had fangs at least as long as Victor’s fully extended hand.

Sickly green, engorged veins pulsed across its body, clearly visible under patches of matted, falling off fur. It’s eyes shone with an eerie pale green light, and then it opened its mouth and spat.

Leaping back again, Victor watched in terror as greenish globs of spit landed right where his feet had been a moment prior, hissing and sizzling on the cobblestones.

Victor continued to backpedal, and the rat followed him, dripping water as it went.

And then his back hit a stone wall.

Panicking, Victor whirled around, coming to face an intricately engraved stone doorway. Frantically, he tried to push, silently hoping that it would give — but the door remained completely motionless.

Turning around again, Victor prepared to run to the side — only to realize he had unknowingly backed into a slight alcove, and the colossal rat now had him cornered.

As the monster continued to approach, coming within just three paces, Victor realized he had only one way to fight back. The Fiendfire.

As the rat neared even closer, Victor flung the ball of crimson flame right at its face.

The spell rebounded, of course, as the monster wasn’t quite close enough — but his opponent still froze, clearly uncertain.

Waving the fire several more times at the repugnant rodent, Victor’s hopes rose. The monster seemed slightly intimidated, crouching down low and not moving any closer.

Breathing hard, Victor began to step forward, continuing to wave the ball of fire — perhaps, he could manage to get out of the alcove and find another way out of the cavern.

The rat spit.

Leaping back for the third time during the fight, Victor slammed back against the door, narrowly avoiding the sizzling green spit.

Seizing the momentary advantage, the rat pressed forward, Spitting again as it went. Now desperate, Victor leapt to the side — placing himself squarely into a corner.

Fuck.

As the rat circled around slightly, Victor realized that its range was greater than his. Which meant that he had only one way out.

Resigned to his fate, Victor called upon the entire might of the reservoir within his soul. The spell slammed into the invisible barrier, but Victor didn’t allow it to bounce back. Arcane energy surged through his body, the spell greedily gobbling it up as it pushed and strained against the limitations of distance.

Unaware of his desperation, or perhaps merely indifferent, the rat continued inching closer.

Victor began to despair. The flame was now completely motionless, no matter how much strength he poured into it — and he was pouring everything he had, as his soul was nearly empty.

The rat opened its mouth to spit.

The flame breached the barrier.

With a rush of accumulated power, the spell streaked straight into the jaws of the monstrous rodent, having completely broken out of the chains binding it.

As Victor sank to the stones below, the vicious rodent burst into crimson flames, giving one last defiant shriek before its life extinguished.

Exhausted both physically and spiritually, Victor failed to resist shutting his eyes, barely even registering the silvery, alien script manifesting within his mind’s eye.

Soul harvested.

Harvested souls: 1

Conjure Fiendfire has advanced to Rank 2!

Please choose between the following three spells.