I stepped into the strangely silent city and felt my vision getting blurrier by the second. The dim lanterns lighting the streets were but a haze as everything began to swim before my eyes. My head was pounding, a rushing of blood so powerful it was drowning out all other sound. The strength in my limbs was disappearing fast, my muscles were too damn tired to scream. I felt a sharp pain in my stomach, like I was being stabbed by a burning serrated blade. I tried to scream but my jaw and neck locked up, all I could do was collapse to my knees. I tried to crawl forward a bit, a mistake. The pain forced me to collapse prone onto the ground. Drawing in quick breaths, tasting salty tears, I rolled over onto my back. I could feel my ribs moving in my chest as I completed even that simple movement. The world around me started to go black, the shadows creeping in from my peripheral vision.

“Get a stretcher for this one! RIGHT NOW!! Give me that numbing potion,” came a familiar voice, the city's alchemist and resident healer. The adrenaline was fading, I could feel the pain coming on. It was starting out dull, but with every passing second it grew and grew. Every breath was like inhaling crushed glass. Any slight movement of my body caused a sharp poking feeling. I could feel it, my previous assessment was wrong. I was pretty sure I had a collapsed lung. That demon apes’ fist probably sent splinters of bone throughout my body. Maybe even into my heart, from the pain I felt in my stomach there were definitely shards of bone lodged in my intestines.

The cuirass wrapped about my body did not help. It squeezed my already failing lung, making it harder to breathe. I assume that moving hurriedly through the forest had not helped my condition in any way shape or form. Probably made it worse to be completely honest. The alchemist's face loomed over me, blurry as it was; it was instantly recognizable. A long thick golden beard, bald egg head, and bushy eyebrows set above violet eyes from testing too many new concoctions.

“Liam, hey! Hey! Look at me,” he said, lifting a finger and holding it in front of me. “Focus on the finger, ok?” I tried to do what he said, but everything was too busy. “Yakob! We don’t have any needles left,”

“I’ll administer it by mouth. Shit, he’s far gone. Eyes on me, drink this,” he held up a muddy brown potion in a small bottle. Half the size of a shot glass, maybe a little more. He put his hand under my head and set the potion to my lips. He tilted the potion into my mouth and massaged my throat. Forcing me to swallow the vile concoction that tasted like it looked. Like mud and horse feces. As soon as it hit my stomach a numbness came over my body.

“I’m putting a tongue guard in your mouth so you don’t bite it off ok?” he said. I did not feel anything so I couldn't tell if he actually put anything in my mouth but I trusted him. I was probably drooling everywhere. Then I was moving, laying on something and being carried with haste. I passed out then, another effect of the potion.

When I came to I was in a bed, I seemed to be unconscious a lot of late. Looking back, it made some sense I suppose. Then I realized, I couldn’t see. I tried to get up but a strong sinewy hand held me in place. A voice, unfamiliar,

“Don’t move. We’ve used some healing potions to speed up the healing and to set the bones internally. It’ll take another hour to finish its work. You’ll be sore as hell, and it won’t feel nice to move at all for a few days. But, you’ll be fine.” That sounded good to me, but something else was bugging me,

“Ok, but why am I blind,” I replied. I heard the man sigh. There was a shifting of cloth then something was pulled away from my eyes. The sudden, bright, midday sun burned into my eyes. I quickly covered my eyes with my hand.

“I said not to move!” snapped the young man.

“Sorry! Sorry!” I said, dropping my hand and turning away from the window to look at the young man.

“Oh my God,” said the young man, putting his face in his hands. His complexion was darker than usual in these parts. Maybe the alchemist's apprentice. If that was the case I felt bad for the guy, Yakob’s penchant to experiment was not restricted to himself.

When he raised his head out of his hands, I saw I was right. One of his eyes was bright red, and fully red. The other was a perfectly normal grey, save for the shifting blood vessels like little worms in his eye. His curly hair was pure white, no doubt bleached by a potion.

“We’ve also given you, on top of the healing potions, some energy potions. Your body was at its limit, how you survived is beyond me,” he said “Just lay here and wait for an hour, and keep still,”

“What am I supposed to do for an hour? At least knock me out again,” I said with a chuckle. The apprentice reached into his pocket and pulled out a syringe with a cap on it.

“I can do that right now if you want,” he said, taking a step forward.

“Damn kid, I was joking,” I said with a smile. Looks like this kid took things a little too seriously.

“Oh,” he said, seeming a little disappointed and tucking the syringe back into the pocket of his lab coat. Seeing his disappointment another thought occurred to me, maybe he was as insane as Yakob. Scary.

“I like him.” came Khaos’ voice, unbidden.

“Hush,” I told him.

“Why are you so disappointed?”

“It’s a new potion Master Yakob made. It can be aerosolized by passing an electric current through it or heating it in general,”

“Why would you inject it into me then?” I asked and to that question, he smiled. Exposing his bright too white teeth.

“To see what it does in such a high dosage to a person. You wouldn’t be in any danger, it’s hard to produce and expensive, but we have a pill to reverse potion effects.” Yea, absolutely off the rails.

“You’re both fucking insane. Anyone tell you that?” I said incredulously.

“I really like him,” crooned Khaos in my mind. I ignored him.

“Yes, but we saved your life,” he said, spinning on his heel and walking away.

I had to give him that, whatever they pumped me full certainly worked. I didn’t feel like I was actively dying. I watched as he stepped out of the small room. As soon as the door closed I sat up and had a good look around my room. A small oaken table and a chair sat beside the bed. A large window at the foot of the bed overlooked the city, a sofa was pushed into the corner of the room, and beside it another small table. A nice room.

“I guess congratulations are in order,” Khaos said, his voice a sudden and unwanted intrusion.

“What for,” I replied, out loud. I could already guess at what he was going to say.

“You killed one of my followers! Not an easy task was it? Well, he was much stronger than you. No wonder you almost died trying to do it.”

“Thanks,” I muttered, feeling the newly grown eye where the first had exploded gently.

“You’ll be delighted to learn, however, that you’ve learned some new spells.” As soon as he said it, the book from before materialized above my lap. It landed on my legs with a heavy thud, I had completely forgotten about it. I must have lost it during the battle. Reaching out, I felt the cracked leather on the spine. It seemed different somehow, then it struck me. The snake was moving. It had done so before, but that was briefly. But now? It’s tongue slithered in and out. It seemed to turn to look at him before seemingly going back to sleep.

“Hurry up and open it, don’t you want to see what spells you absorbed from that guy’s tome?”

“Alright, let's see,” I cracked open the book. As before there were unreadable runes, but as I kept flipping through the book I saw some that my mind subconsciously deemed as unfamiliar. I kept flipping until I reached a blank page. Then I went back to the point where the runes were unfamiliar. I focused on them and felt a rush of information. The spell to summon a demon as he had, one to encase my sword in flame, the little puff of poison he had used towards the end of the battle. The torrent of information made me slam into the bed. I held my head groaning. Then, it felt as though some left my head. The sudden loss of the information made the pressure subside instantly.

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“What the hell was that,” I grumbled, sitting up again. The tome was still lying there, on my lap.

“You tried to memorize too many spells at once, you have a spell tome for a reason. I took the liberty of releasing a few from your memory,” Khaos said.

“Ok, lesson learned. How do I know what spells I have memorized?” I asked. The sensation of disappointment coming from Khaos was intense.

“Guess,” was all he said in reply. I focused on thinking about spells, and almost like a trance I saw the runes flashing across my eyes, and I understood them. None of the new spells were there. Working off of intuition, I placed my hand on the tome and focused on transferring spells. I pushed out the spell that caused my opponent to fear me and the one that summoned blades. I memorized the demon summoning spell, the poison mist one, as well as the flaming sword spell. The last two didn’t require any energy to use, or rather it was so little it didn’t matter. It seemed the effect of their strain on my mind was the same. That was nice I suppose.

“How can I memorize more spells, without increasing the strain?”

“Practice, and I mean in real combat. The stress will force your brain to adapt. It also increases the capacity for spells, and makes you smarter apparently. You could use that, especially after your display last night,” Khaos snickered.

Ignoring his taunting, I put the tome aside. I wanted to test out these new spells, but considering their effects, including summoning a demon, it was probably best to hold off. I sat there, inspecting the runes in my mind. They were clearly a language, a language needs syntax, words are structured. And something told me if I could figure out these runes I could write my own spells. Not just develop them half-assedly from intuition and feel as I had been doing before. The most puzzling bit was that Sylvie’s textbooks had nothing of the sort. Which only led me to believe the ones I had in my tome were of a different kind. But the spells I knew before were also in my tome. Then it hit me. I needed to compare the structure of the spells I knew before to the ones I know now. Comparing spells with similar elements would likely be the best. I grabbed my tome off the side table and opened it to the pages for the fire bolt spell. It was a good three pages long. I glared at it, maybe intimidation would make it give up its secrets. Nothing happened. Khaos was strangely silent, but I assumed he was laughing at me. Asshole. I flipped to the light spell’s page. After all I had derived the flame bolt spell from the light spell, it was reasonable to assume I would be able to see what symbols were missing or extra and if the arrangement was different.

I flipped over to it, it was hardly more than a page long, which meant changing it to be a flaming bolt had made it double in complexity. I compared what was on the page, to what was in my mind. The first half page was the same, rune for rune. But then it started to deviate. Every few lines there were differences, sometimes it was several huge chunks that were completely different. Not to mention it was only one page compared to the fire bolt’s three. Clearly a lot of changes had been made. Tch. I couldn’t glean much, if anything from this. The only fire related other spell I had was the flaming blade one. Not expecting much, I pulled it up in my memory. The runes scrolled in my mind’s eye. In the physical world I flipped to the fire bolt’s pages. The fire blade’s spell was around three pages as well, which made it infinitely more useful. Surprisingly the first half page was the same as the light and fire bolt spells.

Comparing the firebolt and the flame blade spell, I found even more similarities. A Lot more than the light spell and the firebolt spell. I still couldn't tell what they did. But the first half page maybe had something to do with emitting light? It was the only constant across all three, and all three did emit light. Even if it wasn’t the main purpose of the last two, it was something they were perfectly capable of anyways. I needed more spells! As of now I didn’t have a large enough sample size. Maybe I’d wrack Sylvie’s brain for any fire related spells? I could also take an unrelated spell, say one that creates a ball of water, and try rewriting it with the light emitting instructions at the fore?

“Have you bothered to notice that they’re separated into passages, or were you waiting for me to point it out?” Khaos said gruffly. I looked down at the tome, funnily enough, I had been so absorbed with matching the runes, I’d neglected to notice that there were breaks in the text. The half page on the light spell was separated from the rest of the page by a line break. And in the fire bolt spell as well as the flame blade spell there were line breaks after a few lines on both. In my mind's eye however, it seemed I couldn’t see it at all.

Likely, as it was the only possibility that made sense, each passage must alter the spell in some way. The first made it emit light, and maybe had other effects I didn’t know of. After coming to the realization, I saw that the places I found similarity between the firebolt spell and the flame blade spell were all the exact same passages. Maybe they related to the nature of fire? Some must be involved in specifying the shape. Maybe others range and whether it could be used on a weapon. All this thinking was making my head hurt. I collapsed onto the bed with the tome on my chest. I was surprised to feel my back sticky and wet with sweat. I guess reading those runes wasn’t like reading normal words. I realized the motion hadn’t caused any of the pain I had been expecting. The one hour had passed a lot faster than I’d thought it would.

I felt really tired anyways, I guess reading those runes had tuckered me out. Interestingly, hopefully writing or editing spells wouldn’t cause any problems. Like suddenly passing out, that wouldn’t be fun. I felt myself drift off to sleep. I didn’t have any dreams, thankfully. I woke up to voices. They were trying to be quiet, but they were very bad at it. One lilting voice was familiar, as was the raspier voice of the city's wizard, Ghiraldi. I pretended to still be asleep.

“Touches of mana poisoning still linger messere,” came Sylvie’s voice.

“Even if he had learned small magic, illegally, even using them to a great extent wouldn’t cause that severe of mana exhaustion and poisoning,” came the old man’s reply.

“Perhaps it is…that.” Sylvie said, sounding worried.

“A distinct possibility. While I was researching his, let's call it a condition, the first thing I came upon was the word ‘warlock’. Do you know what a warlock is, child?” Ghiraldi asked with a small cough.

“No,” his apprentice answered.

“They are men who have contracted a greater force. Demons, angels, other celestial and infernal beings. Some even contract themselves with powerful nature spirits. ANd before you say anything, it is often not by choice. Do not hold him to it as though it is a fault, likely the being he is contracted to forced his hand through some means.”

“And what of the book that was beside his bedside? It clearly contains magic, but I cannot open it, and neither can you,” Sylvie asked.

“Maybe it contains the contract between him and this being, only available to the contractor and contractee. I need to do more research, maybe the capitol would have more information than a border city on such matters.” Ghraldi said, the musing evident in his voice. Slowly I opened my eyes. The first thing I noticed was that it was completely dark outside of the window directly in front of me. It had been around midday when I fell asleep, meaning I'd been in bed for almost twenty four whole hours now. I liked sleeping but this was something else. The voices to my side had died down, they’d probably noticed I was awake.

I felt a soft small hand on my shoulder and looked over to see my wife’s beautiful face hovering over me. Concern etched lines in her features, she clearly hadn’t slept if the bags under her eyes were any indication.

“Are you ok Liam?” Shae asked me. I reached over with my left hand and grasped hers in mine.

“I am now,” I said with a smile. She smiled at me, the worry erased from her face.

“If you’re saying cheesy lines like that then you must be,” she replied. She didn’t move her hand however.

“Liam, I have some questions. About what happened last night,” started Ghiraldi. I held up a palm,

“I’ll answer your questions, clearly you have some important questions. But in return, I get to ask you questions.

“That’s fine by me,” said the old man with a shrug. I gestured to him to continue. He cleared his throat.

“First, why do you have mana exhaustion? And mana poisoning?”

“I don’t know what either of those are,” I answered truthfully. He sighed,

“Mana exhaustion happens when you cast more powered spells than your mind and body can handle. Mana poisoning is similar, when you hit mana exhaustion, but force your body to keep producing mana anyways it becomes a toxin to yourself and starts destroying you, like a poison. Now answer the question Mr.Stonefel.”

“Interesting. Well, it’s because I used a lot of spells in a short amount of time,” I answered.

“Clearly, but where did you learn these spells?” he asked. In response I gestured to my tome.

“I received that after contracting with Khaos, when I read it I immediately learned a great many spells.”

“How did you read it, we cannot get it to open,” he responded.

“I don’t know why you can’t open it,” I leaned over and grabbed it over the side table, cracking it open. I showed it to Ghiraldi,

“Look, these runes are what the spells are written in.” The old man took a sharp breath.

“Those are ancient spells, that language written there. No one can read it, there are entire ancient libraries of magic lost to us. And you’re saying you can read these runes?” I sighed.

“Not really, when I look at them I just understand the meaning. As though it is directly imprinted onto my mind. It’s hard to describe,” I replied.

“Can you describe how you met this Khaos?”

“There are aspects I can describe, and some important ones I cannot. You will have to be content with what I can speak on.” I replied with a shrug. He waved his hand as a go ahead. I explained to him what happened in my dream, leaving out key aspects such as the terms of the agreement and my oath to hunt down Khaos’ followers.

“Now then,” I continued, “I think it’s my turn to ask you some questions."