The sun was still up, but Stella went in anyway. The sight she found wasn’t much better than the one she’d fled. Four elderly burn victims lay on the floor by the fire, shifting and groaning in pain. Maw lurked behind the fire, a couching pile of fur, watching them with his beady eyes. Brown bundles lay in a pile by the wall, shifting and emitting various squeaking sounds. A single skeleton watched over the pile, grabbing bundles that fell off and putting them back on the pile.

One old woman spotted Stella. She propped herself up. “Stella, will the sorcerer heal us? Will he make me young again?”

Stella froze. What could she say? It was obvious to Stella that Elrick intended to kill these people and harvest their potential. There was nothing Stella could do to prevent that, but telling her the truth of the matter wouldn’t bring her any comfort. So she lied. “You’ll feel healthy and young soon enough.”

The old woman smiled. A blackened skeleton came to her, offering a sleeping draft, and she took it thankfully. She returned the empty bottle. Then she fell limp. Maw twitched, licking his lips. The skeleton gave potions to the other three, and Maw crept around the fire. When the last victim fell asleep, Maw pounced. His mouth opened wide, scooping up the old woman and biting through her middle. Her legs fell to the ground, blood pooling rapidly underneath. Maw opened his mouth again, no trace of the woman’s top half, and gulped down the rest of her. The pearl between his eyes glowed brighter, and he licked up the pool of blood with relish. That done, he turned and took a bite out of the next victim in line.

Stella hurried toward the stairs, eager to escape the grisly scene. She could hide in the library until sundown.

A skeleton blocked her path and pointed toward the cellar. She stopped. “What?” she hissed.

It jabbed its finger at the cellar.

“I’m going to bed.”

“No, you’re not,” Elrick’s voice called from the cellar. “I need you down here.”

Stella scowled and made to push past the skeleton, but it grabbed her and pulled her down to Elrick. The rattles of many working skeletons echoed from below, and the scent of death assaulted her nose. A pile of small corpses lay by the table, the blackened remains of the children Elrick had killed with his fireball. More lay on the table, along with the fireball’s one adult casualty. Fidus wore a satisfied expression in death, sure to the last that Elrick would grant Sorpon victory in exchange for his life. The skeletons had cut him open and pulled out his organs, storing them in jars, leaving only his heart and liver in the body cavity. They did the same to the children on the table.

Elrick stood by the table, holding a bottle of hunger potion. He took a swig, then held it out to Stella. “I need you to help me process these.” He pushed the bottle into her hands.

Stella shook her head, horrified. “You need to stop this. It’s monstrous.”

Elrick waved a hand. “The people will keep throwing their lives at me no matter what I do. I might as well make use of them.”

“But these are children.”

“And?”

“They had their whole lives ahead of them!”

“Exactly. They’re pooling with potential.”

“And you think that’s worth their lives?”

Elrick snorted. “The fanatics would kill them if I didn’t. I’d much rather take their energy for myself than let those grovellers get it.”

Stella’s stomach twisted. She had to get out of this somehow. “I’ve already had my lesson today. Let me go study in the library instead.”

“Not this time. You’ll never have any promise in magic if you don’t practice. Besides, with your help, the task will take less time and yield more energy.”

“I’m not doing it.”

“Yes, you are.”

“No, I’m not.”

Elrick drew himself up, looking sternly down at her. “I’ve said before that I have no use for an unwilling servant. If you continue to resist my orders, I will have no further use for you.”

“And then the fanatics will replace me, and you’ll have to start over.”

Elrick drew his lips to a line, thinking. After a pause, he said, “A deal, then. If you agree to help me with this task, both now and in the future, I will free your mother from the fanatics’ prison.”

Stella gaped, her stomach relaxing. Her mother’s freedom? The offer was more than she could have asked for. With her mother free, she wouldn’t have to worry about Vatran. Her four-week deadline would disappear. She could spend as long as she needed under Elrick’s tutelage, learning magic and studying his defenses, and Laurel would be there to welcome her when she returned home, mission complete. Her mother’s freedom and security would take a huge weight off her shoulders.

But was that worth helping Elrick “process” the corpses of children? Stella looked over the table again, the sight making her stomach clench again. It was sick for the sorcerer to use anyone this way, least of all children. But they’re already dead, part of her thought. It’s not like I can help them now. And he’s right: the fanatics would have drowned them if he hadn’t killed them himself.

“Fine,” she said, taking a swig of the hunger potion. Elrick took Fidus’s liver, gesturing for Stella to start with the children. The flavor was easier on her tongue than her first one that morning, and she was finished before Elrick was close to halfway through his. He stopped to hand her a small diamond from his cloak. Stella gathered the well of energy into her hand and stared in amazement. The orb of light was bigger than a watermelon. It felt ten times as powerful as the energy she’d harvested that morning. “Wow,” she breathed.

Elrick smiled. “Put it in the gem.”

Stella found the order incredibly difficult to obey. It felt so good to hold that power in her hand. She finally managed it, leaving her feeling like a flimsy husk. She held the little diamond out for Elrick to take, but he shook his head, pulling a large emerald from his cloak. “You can keep that one. Put the rest of the energy you collect into this one.”

Stella gaped at the little gem in her hand. It shone more brilliantly than any she’d seen yet, and it held more power than she could imagine what to do with. And it was hers. The hollow feeling gave way to ecstasy. It was everything she’d never known she’d wanted, and it was hers.

A skeleton brought over a gold chain, holding out a hand for the gem. Stella hesitantly relinquished it, but needn’t have worried. The skeleton embedded the gem into a little mounting in the center of the chain, then returned it.

“Come on, now,” Elrick said. “Put it on and get back to work. The longer these sit, the more the energy decays.”

Stella hastened to put on the necklace. “I didn’t expect it to be so much.”

Elrick smiled again. “Younger people have more potential. The younger they are, the more time they had left to do things. That’s what energy is: the ability to do things.”

A skeleton took the heart from the child’s body, putting it in a large bowl. Others removed the body from the table, maneuvering it to pour the blood into a vat. They set the body to the side, then took another from the pile and set it on the table, cutting it open and harvesting the organs.

So the cycle went, Stella and Elrick harvesting potential energy from the livers, the skeletons moving the bodies along and storing the blood and other organs. Elrick didn’t get through half as many as Stella did, but from what he’d said before, it was more productive for her to do more than he did. She could harvest the energy more efficiently than he could, so her help made the process orders of magnitude more productive.

It wasn’t long before they were done, and the emerald glowed like the sun. Elrick tucked it into his cloak, immensely satisfied. At that point, Stella had a thought. “Why is potential energy stored in the liver?”

Elrick chuckled. “The liver isn’t the only place it’s stored. Every living tissue has potential energy, even plants and animal fur.”

Stella frowned. “Then why are we doing it like this? Why couldn’t we just eat plants?”

Elrick shook his head. “You misunderstand me. Eating plants would yield potential energy, yes, but not enough to be worth anything. You’d probably have to eat a whole tree to get even a noticeable amount of energy. Plants and most tissues are more useful in chemical magic.”

Stella looked over at the pile of exhausted corpses. “All that is for chemical magic?”

“No,” Elrick said. “We start with the livers because potential energy decays quickly in corpses. The liver is the easiest thing to harvest quickly, and I’d frankly rather get it over with first. The rest takes some more work.”

Stella raised an eyebrow. “What does that mean?”

Elrick smiled. “You’ll find out tomorrow. For now, I’ll just say that it’s a lot more appetizing than what we’re doing now.”

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

Stella considered that. A large portion of what remained was muscle. That pile of corpses was mostly meat. “I think I understand.”

“I’ll need your help every day. There’s still a lot to process. I’ll compensate you with a portion of the energy you harvest.”

Stella nodded immediately. “Yes, sir. Will you teach me how to use it?”

“What?”

“I want to learn spells. You’ve only taught me how to store energy. I want to be able to use it.”

Elrick shook his head, still smiling. “You’ve already had your lesson today, along with a hefty bonus. I might teach you another day. If you really want to learn to cast spells, go to the library and do some research. There are plenty of books on magic. Look for Basic Spellcasting. It’s got plenty of spells at your level.”

Stella nodded. “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” And she climbed the stairs without an objection.

On the ground floor, the skeletons were unpacking the bundles of offerings. Some were bottles and jars, which the skeletons took into the cellar. Other bundles contained small animals. The skeletons dissected some of the animals for parts, but most were fed directly to Maw. One was a live fox. It was tied well, but it wriggled for all it was worth. Its skeleton captor wrapped a bony hand around its throat, choking it out. It fell unconscious in a few seconds, and the skeleton tossed it to Maw, who crouched just briefly before gulping it down.

Stella paid the scene no heed. She had a mission. She was going to learn magic.

The library was a labyrinth of bookshelves. Stella knew her way around it in a directional sense, but she’d neglected the books up to now. She’d seen the library as an out-of-the-way bedroom rather than a resource. As a consequence, she knew nothing about how the books were organized. How would she find the book Elrick had named? The shelves had no labels, and many of the books had only decorative designs on their covers. She pulled a few out, only to find more confusion: the books weren’t ordered by topic, title, author, or even age.

A book of fundamentals would probably be well-used, she thought. With that theory, she started checking every book that seemed even slightly tattered. She fell into a rhythm: pulling down the book, reading the title, putting it back, and looking for another. After a few minutes, that rhythm almost cost her an important discovery. It was only after she’d returned the book to its place that she realized her mistake. It was a little book with a black cover. It hadn’t had a title. She pulled it back down.

The cover was soft, and little grains of it came off on her fingers. It was an old book indeed. When she cracked it open, she found Elrick’s own handwriting.

The Five Fae Hunters have finally accepted me into their ranks. It’s a dream come true. They’re so tight-knit. Everyone thought they’d never consider a new member. My potions must have impressed them. Just wait until they see what else I can do. People will start calling us The Six Fae Hunters. With our powers combined, we’ll rid Cernunnos of the Unseelie Court before the year is out.

Stella cocked her head, then sat down, settling in to read the book. It had to be written by Elrick. There was no question of that. But his manner of writing was so different from the way he spoke. The younger Elrick was excited, hopeful, and eager to please people.

The book was a journal, chronicling Elrick’s adventures as part of the Fae Hunters in Cernunnos. Cernunnos was one of the larger islands off the coast of Dracon. It had been inhabited by druids, fae, and barbarians until a few centuries ago when Cephaneian forces invaded and civilized them. Elrick’s adventure took place long before then.

Stella’s heart clenched as she read. Despite Elrick’s hopes, he never really felt like part of the group. Part of that came from the other Hunters’ tight structure, but the rest came from his own selfishness. He might not have seen it in the moment, but Stella saw it from her distant perspective as the reader. He complained that the other Hunters wouldn’t give him a bigger share of their spoils. They wouldn’t let him lead missions or claim the final blow on their foes. They only wanted him around for his potions and spells. His disappointment and resentment built up over several months of that dynamic.

One day, he sprung a trap left by the fae to capture the Hunters. Vines sprung up from the ground, tightening around his legs. Tinkling bells sounded, and the party knew the fae would soon arrive in overwhelming numbers to claim their prey. Elrick begged the Hunters to help free him, but their weapons were useless against the magical vines. They left him there. Desperate, Elrick drank a shrinking potion. Reduced to the size of an ant, he slipped out of the vines and ran after the Hunters. But with his little legs, it was a long while before he caught up. The fae of the Unseelie Court beat him to them.

Four of the Hunters were bound up in magical vines, their feet dangling inches from the ground as they hung from the branches above by more vines. They struggled and squirmed but to no avail.

The fifth Hunter was Alasdair, leader of the Fae Hunters. He was also bound, held by Bodach himself, chief of the Unseelie Court’s Dark Hunt. The rest of the fae were already gone. Bodach held a crystal dagger and used it to cut out Alasdair’s heart. The heart kept beating in the faerie’s hand, and Alasdair remained alive, horrified at the hole in his chest that didn’t even bleed. The faerie commanded Alasdair to stand. When the Hunter resisted, the faerie squeezed the heart, and Alasdair cried out in pain. Bodach repeated his command, and Alasdair obeyed. The faerie addressed the other Hunters, telling them that they would henceforth serve him as an elite unit in his army of human slaves. The Hunters defiantly refused, claiming they’d rather die. Bodach ordered Alasdair to kill them. Alasdair refused, and Bodach squeezed his heart. The lead Hunter cried out, but continued to defy the faerie. Angered, Bodach showed sharp teeth and bit Alasdair’s heart in half. The Hunter collapsed, dead. Bodach ate the rest of the heart, then conjured more vines from the ground to bind the remaining Hunters further, squeezing them.

Elrick chose that moment to strike. He sent forth the bolt of power he’d dreamed of dealing. Bodach disintegrated.

Elrick dismissed the effects of his shrinking potion and went to the pile of faerie dust. The Hunters expressed relief at seeing him and urged him to help them down.

But I was in no humor to help them. Quite the opposite, in fact. They had abandoned me to the fury of the fae. I had escaped by my own power. They had not, so they deserved to suffer exactly as the fae intended.

I had resisted the allure of human potential until then, but seeing how much energy Bodach took from Alasdair’s heart alone, I was ready to take advantage of the well before me. I set up wards around the area to protect it against the fae, then settled down to camp. Bodach’s knife would prove useful in helping me make the most of my newfound resources.

The account following bore much more resemblance to the sorcerer’s character in the present. He spent the next week brewing hunger potions, living off Alasdair’s remains, and storing the potential energy in his staff’s ruby. He paid no heed to the protests of the captive Hunters. When the corpse was exhausted, he took Bodach’s knife and cut down one of the remaining Hunters. The man was weak from hunger and dehydration and could offer little resistance as Elrick cut out his heart. Then, with the aid of the hunger potion, Elrick proceeded to cut off pieces of the man and eat them. The man screamed in pain and horror. With his heart still beating just a few feet away, he stayed alive for nearly the whole process. Elrick noted with satisfaction that his former hypothesis was correct: since the man was still alive, the potential energy decayed no faster than normal in living beings. He managed to get much more energy from the live man than he’d gotten from Alasdair. Once he’d eaten the muscles and liver, Elrick finally ate the heart, and the Hunter died. He didn’t bother with the other organs, leaving them lying on the ground.

I did the same with the other three. I’ve never felt such power before. My ruby glowed with the light of three suns. I felt like I could conquer the world.

But I don’t want to conquer the world. I want solitude. The Fae Hunters were the closest I’ve ever come to friendship or camaraderie, but they betrayed me. Solitude is the only answer.

I’ll leave Cernunnos for Dracon, seeking its harsh mountain range. A volcano is said to stand at the heart of it. No one will disturb me there.

At long last, I’ve found it: the infamous Vulcan, mountain of fire and smoke. I constructed a tower from its lava flow and made it my residence. Civilization is leagues and leagues away in every direction. No one will bother me here.

I’ve had a thought. Bodach used his knife to literally take Alasdair’s life into his hand. Presumably, he did the same with his human slaves. Thuban knows we fought many a party of the fae’s human slaves, only to find that our blows didn’t kill them. We had to cut them to pieces to stop them, and even then, the limbs would keep trying to attack us.

But I digress. My thought is this: cutting out the heart with Bodach’s knife kept the victim alive no matter what the body suffered, as long as the heart kept beating. Bodach used it as a weapon to control his victims, but would it work as a way to preserve life?

I’ve tried it with a fox. Its heart sits in a box upstairs, but it operates fine without it. I’ve burned it, poisoned it, and even cut off its head. It’s survived everything, and when I heal it, it’s as healthy as it ever was.

It’s been a month. The heart still beats in its box, and the fox still lives. I’ll give it another few months before trying anything drastic.

It’s been five years, and the fox is as healthy as ever. It should have died long ago just from old age, but I don’t think it’s aged, either. I think it’s time.

It worked. I’ve locked my heart in a box and hidden it away. I don’t feel any different, but that’s not entirely surprising.

Am I the first human to achieve immortality? I suppose we’ll see if I’m still here in a few centuries.

Stella was engrossed in the journal. She knew now how Elrick had survived the previous attempts on his life, and she knew how to kill him. She just had to find his heart.

She kept reading, hoping to find a hint to its whereabouts. Instead, she found a huge time skip. The ink on the next pages, though still very old, was much newer than the rest. It detailed the origins of the cult. People eventually found him, then started gathering outside his tower to shout requests at him. He tried to drive them away with fireballs, but many of them only seemed encouraged, even when he threw one into the volcano and turned the resulting skeleton into his slave.

The fanatics refuse to leave me alone. They say they’ve convinced the people that my fireballs constitute some kind of salvation. When I threaten to pick off all of the fanatics, they argue that the people would see that as a confirmation of their doctrine. There’s no way to get rid of them without expending my whole store of energy, but I don’t think even that will be enough.

I have an idea. It will take a lot of energy, and that will take a long time to collect, but it’s the best way to rid myself of this pestilence. Ironically, the fanatics have independently decided to help speed the process along. They brought a group of children to the assembly. How could I turn that down? The more often that happens, the sooner I’ll be rid of this cult. It will be glorious.

Footsteps broke the silence. Not the rattling of skeletons. Real human footsteps. Elrick was coming. Stella stuffed the book back into its place and turned to another shelf, pretending to be searching for a different book. What was the title he recommended again?

Elrick moved past her. “Haven’t found it yet?” He went a few more feet, then pulled a book off the shelf. “Here it is. Enjoy.” He handed it to her, then went back downstairs.

Stella stared after him, heart racing. He’d almost caught her. What would he do if he found out she knew his secret? Would he kill her to keep it a secret? Or would he recommend she cut out her own heart? Or would he force the operation on her, and then use her heart as leverage to make her follow his orders without resistance?

She shook her head and slowed her breath. She was worrying over nothing. Elrick had no clue she’d found his journal. She was safe.

Relaxing, she opened the book Elrick had given her. Basic Spellcasting. It contained instructions on drawing from stored power, as well as individual steps for performing a short list of easy spells. The list included spells for unlocking things, conjuring and shaping water, cooking meat, making small fires, summoning small objects, and locating things.

That last one was just what she needed to find Elrick’s heart. She propped the book open to that page and started practicing the movements it required.