Eldren swung and cracked another zombie over the head with the Staff of the Novice, splitting its skull as more animated corpses pressed in.

“Baltran, how many more bullets do you have?” he asked over the growls and groans of the horde.

“Not enough,” said the dwarf. His blond spikes of hair were beginning to wilt and drooped with sweat. Eldren watched him reload Twister with one hand while he fired another round of shots with Fang. Ink was occupied with four zombies who had staggered forward and whirled her blades around to dispatch them.

“Wait to shoot,” Eldren said.

“What?” Baltran asked. “Wait to shoot at the zombies trying to kill us?”

“Trust me, just hold off for one second.”

Eldren stuffed his hands into his pocket and grabbed the Eyepiece of the Strategist. The horde of zombies around them was so awash in bright, thick green movement field lines that it looked like a bowl of spaghetti. Making any sense of their future movements would be impossible. Luckily, it wasn’t their motion that he wanted to anticipate.

“Load the bullets,” Eldren said. Baltran didn’t ask questions. He held the gun up and glanced back at Eldren, waiting.

Eldren focused on the air right in front of the pistol barrel. He would have to be fast to see and visualize this.

“Now!”

Baltran pulled the trigger.

Thoughtlift!

A sudden green movement field line appeared and Eldren quickly visualized the small lead sphere flying upward into the air above them. His mana drained to 8. As he had suspected, the bullet was not heavy enough to drain as much mana as lifting the chess pieces had in the shrine.

He maintained concentration and his fingers tingled. Continuing to move the bullet for an extended period would continue to drain his mana. He had to be fast. Closing his eyes, he visualized the route he wanted to the small lead sphere to travel.

Baltran stood in awe as the zombies around him began to collapse and topple onto one another their heads and chests bursting open. Ink lowered her knives and watched, too. Eldren closed his eyes, picturing the bullet whizzing through the air at full speed, passing through rotten flesh and bone. It zipped through the horde under his telekinetic control turning, changing directions, weaving among the corpses, and passing through them as if they were made of paper. His mana continued to decrease. 6 then 4 then 1 then 0.

The bullet dropped softly out of the air onto the grass about ten meters away. The three companions now stood back to back in a ring of newly dead undead corpses. Eldren’s telekinetic bullet had hit every single zombie. He opened his eyes as the birds chirped in the trees above them.

“Was that you or me?” Baltran asked, his mouth agape. Ink smacked the dwarf over the head. “I’m just saying,” he grumbled. “I’ve been trying to work on my trick shots.”

“Looks like you learned something useful down there after all,” she said, patting Eldren on the back. “That—” she paused, “That was bloody cool! Nice work, wiz kid!”

* * *

The rest of the afternoon and evening passed uneventfully, which was fine by Eldren. They left the cemetery to stay the night away from the piles of rotting zombies. Ink had slipped into the woods for a while with her crossbow, returning with two green and brown pheasants, while he and Baltran set up camp and gathered firewood.

The provisions from Slad’s store included a small wooden cask of ale, which they now split amongst them. With grease from the roasted pheasant running down his chin and a few tin cups from the cask, Eldren was feeling optimistic. He had done it. He had completed his first spell shrine and learned a spell.

“So, what’s next?” He looked down at Ardos who was napping on the grass by the fire for warmth.

“We find more shrines, you get the spells, and I map them,” Ink said.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

“First, we need an aetherfind,” the tortoise mumbled, half-asleep. “I was not able to locate other shrines. Only mages from the academy are given the aetherfinds when they set out on their final test — the pilgrimage to fill their spellbook.”

“Ardos,” Eldren said as he absently stared up at the sky, hoping to see stars, but the cloud cover was unrelenting. “Why does the Church of the Iron Square lock up spells in the first place? Why go through the trouble to put the spells in these dungeons?”

“Control, lad.” It was Baltran who answered. He leaned back against a log and took a huff from a small, copper-banded wooden pipe. He paused and then blew a smoke ring up into the air. “It’s about controlling access to magic. They split it all up and only their approved mages can learn it.”

“That’s correct,” Ardos said. “Long ago, everyone could do magic. Everyone was born with a spell word, unique to them.”

“Everyone was a wizard?” Ink asked, ripping a piece of pheasant with her teeth.

“Not quite,” Ardos said. “Everyone knew a spell — a singular spell. Nobody knew more than that.”

Eldren thought for a moment.

“You were born randomly with just one spell word?” he asked. “Does that mean some people had strong spells and others had weak spells?”

“Precisely,” Ardos said. “What spell word you were born with directly influenced your fate? Those with powerful spells, like the ability to create explosions or hurl fire, became elite battle mages, sought out by warlords and lords for their armies. Mind mages became wealthy merchants, excelling in business and trade negotiation. Others with lesser spell words, say with the ability to attract rats, stayed in their villages and carved out a living as they could. Other spell words were problematic of course, and wars often started throughout history when someone born with a particularly strong spell word, like the ability to raise the dead or the ability to create droughts, tried to conquer too much territory and inevitably provoked a resistance.”

“I don’t know a spell word,” Ink said, taking a swig of ale to wash down her pheasant.

“No, you don’t.” Ardos agreed. “Nobody is born with one any longer. The old texts aren’t completely clear, but it seems that spell words carried some sort of inheritable component. The exact type of spell itself doesn’t transfer from parent to child, but the magical ability does. People who have lost their spell words, however, give birth to children without spell words. Nobody has ever figured out why.”

“What happened to the spell words?” Eldren asked. He already had a guess.

“The Church of the Iron Square,” Ardos said darkly. “Their founding prophet, a man by the name of Daemon Kell, was born with a unique spell word—one which had never been seen before. He could absorb someone else’s spell word and take it from them.”

“And that gave him the ability to take and control all of the magic,” Baltran snarled. “O’course he could only take spells from humans. The rest of the magical races, he murdered in cold blood.”

Ardos nodded his scaly green head sadly. “Yes, Daemon Kell came to power. It was nearly impossible for kingdoms to mount a defense against one man who could cast so many spells when each other person had only one. As his power grew, so did his influence. He raised armies and swept across the land, absorbing the spell words of every conquered foe before razing their towns and villages. Finally, he marched his army against his final foe — the kingdom of the dwarves.”

Baltran looked visibly angry and stared into the dancing flames of the campfire as Ardos finished his story.

“The dwarves resisted. For years, the siege of their homeland dragged on. But Kell was too powerful by then with too many spells and too large of an army. When the Iron City fell, he proclaimed himself lord emperor of Aldimea in the iron square outside the palace of the slain king of the dwarves and renamed their city the capital of his empire.”

“He killed every last dwarf in the city,” whispered Baltran. “Man, woman, and child. Dwarf children are taught the story from the time they’re just wee helps. So that we remember. And so that we can one day repay the blood debt.”

Eldren thought about all of this for a moment as the fire crackled and embers drifted into the air among the smoke.

“You said the Iron Square doesn’t control all of the magic,” he said.

“Yes. I am part of a group called the Archivists,” Ardos replied. “My ancestors worked to gather spells ahead of Daemon Kell’s armies. We tried to collect the most powerful spells and protect them. Secret them away and prevent them from allowing him to grow his power further. We hoped that if we preserved enough of the ancient spell words, eventually someone would be born with the same powers as Kell to learn them.”

“And the witch-kind,” Baltran added. “That’s why the church is so keen to hunt ‘em down and brand them as enemies.” Ardos nodded. Eldren sat back. The more he learned the more questions he had.

“Wizards know lots of spells, though,” Ink said. “Do they all have this Kell guy’s power now?”

“Ah,” Ardos said. “This is the important part. Even with a nearly unlimited repertoire of spells could not cheat death in his old age. On his deathbed, he revealed the second half of his original birth spell’s power— a secret he had kept from everyone until that point. His birth spell word could not only absorb spells, but also allowed him to transcribe them; he could free them from the human body and, in turn, make it so that others could learn them, too.”

“So he built the spell shrines?” Eldren asked. “And hid the spells away?”

“Exactly. Nobody knew why the shrines were being constructed until he was gone. In his dying days, he transcribed each spell and had his followers hide them away in the shrines and establish the Assembly of the Magi. That way, the Iron Square could control access to magic. No single mage could become too strong, at least not without completing the trials at the shrines and the church knowing about it. It would be nearly impossible for anyone to re-learn nearly every spell word, as Daemon Kell had.”

“Except —” Eldren began.

“Someone who completed the shrines without the church knowing about it,” Ardos concluded.