The cover was still warm, and it still felt alive, just like the contract, when I touched Taltorak again the next day. No Guardian popped out this time, so I forced my way past the revulsion and opened it to the first page, a full page of symbols that looked like Arabic? How old was this damned thing?
I turned a few pages and tried to jump ahead, quickly realizing there was no correlation between the number of pages and the physical properties of this book. It was still a thick book, but the thickness seemed to stay the same no matter how many pages I turned.
“How am I supposed to learn magic from this thing if I can’t even read it?”
“Start from the back and go forward until you see writing in French. Anson assembled a kind of toolkit for himself: basic attack and defense magic he copied from earlier sections and improved over time. It should be relatively simple to read his instructions and learn what he left for you, once you can read French.”
“And there’s nothing here written in English? My grandfather didn’t leave me anything to work with?”
Lydia looked uncomfortable and then just said, “No. I never saw Jim write in the book.”
I started from the back this time, intent on looking for French words. I expected it to take a while, but the book seemed to turn its own pages for me until I was staring at a precise script, each introducing a set of magic runes that seemed to glow a little bit brighter than the text around them.
Clearly there were some advantages to working with a haunted book, but it still annoyed me to be struggling with handwriting interpretation in a language I didn’t know.
“There has got to be an easier way to do this,” I grumbled.
“This is much easier than what previous generations had to do,” Lydia said. “Jacob had to start with a Latin toolkit assembled centuries before the book was given to your family. Most of his early casting was devoted to disease prevention, purification magic, and manipulation of inanimate objects. The Roman scholar who assembled the Latin toolkit was quite practical, focused on giving mages basic tools to be useful in everyday life.”
“Wait, purification of what?”
“Ancient apprentices started with simple spells for preserving food, purifying water, repairing objects and cleaning physical bodies. All healing magic starts with purifying the area, and the spells used to purify meat can be easily adapted to clean parasites and ill humors out of human beings. Cleansing spells are much quicker than bathing, but everyone still prefers to immerse themselves in water when they can.”
“I like the idea of starting with practical magic, but that means I have to learn at least two new languages before I can even get started, and one of those languages is dead.”
“Most of your ancestors learned to read and write Latin as part of their early schooling. Jim was the first one in your bloodline who had to learn it as an adult. It was quite a struggle, convincing him to buy books and learn it the hard way. He eventually took some night courses at a local college, but he was a difficult student. He seemed to associate ignorance with virtue, as if every book he read somehow made him less of a man.”
“There has got to be a better way to do this,” I repeated, as I paged through old Latin toward the front of the book.
I had a glimmer of an idea, but it would require an extended conversation with Evan, and if it was possible, surely someone smarter would have done it already.
* * *
I started with the most basic test I could think of. I opened the book wide, centered a tiny camera over it, and tried to take a picture. The result was completely washed out, like the book itself was glowing with a blinding white light.
I fiddled with the contrast for an hour, but even with the background adjusted, the runes were a blurred, incomprehensible mess, even when I could make them out against the paper. The paper wasn’t actually paper, of course. It felt warm and pliable. God help me, it was even a little moist, like I was turning pages made from living skin.
I tried every camera I had in the apartment and had no better luck. Nothing from my collection of old phones could improve it. The floating camera I used for video calls could render the edges of the book in fantastic resolution, but capturing the pages and runes was like trying to take a picture of the sun. But you can take a picture of the sun, if you use the right filter. Could I find a visual filter for magic?
I was in way over my head here, so I assembled a list of questions and made an appointment to talk with Evan Coleridge. I told him I had some technical questions about how magical knowledge was written and passed down and he interpreted my curiosity as a good sign.
I met him in his office and asked him to take out his tantalum box filled with spell cards. I opened it, pulled out a card at random, Restoring Material Integrity, and put it back.
“Evan, what would happen if I put a light and a camera in this box and closed the lid? You said the tantalum blocks out magic, so would the runes show up in a photograph like any other writing?”
“It would look that way to a mundane observer,” Evan said. “But what we see as runes of magic are really just the two-dimensional surfaces of symbols that reach into fourth and fifth-dimensional space. That’s why they must be copied by hand, because only mages have the right brain chemistry to perceive and duplicate the symbols behind the symbols.”
“There is a magic rune that looks like an elongated letter R. Any child could make this symbol and put it on a piece of paper, and it would just be a simple two-dimensional shape with no magical properties. But this is just the surface representation of a full Rhion rune. The actual rune is transferred by a mental process as you inscribe it on the paper. Your hand makes the shape you see on the card while your mind is transferring the rest of it unconsciously - filling in the shape behind the shape.”
“But you said Ben Franklin made a magical printing press. Isn’t that just a series of two-dimensional shapes?”
“Franklin himself imbued those shapes with magic as he was carving and molding them. Franklin could print the runes of a spell on normal paper, but a mundane observer would only see the two-dimensional images. Mundanes can copy those two-dimensional shapes all day, but they can’t duplicate the shapes behind the shapes, so they can’t cast them, and no other mage could successfully cast from their copies.”
“But Franklin did it, for a little while? His blocks were able to transfer the full shape of a rune onto a piece of paper? He could actually print a spell with them, and cast from the copy?”
“So he claimed,” Evan said. “Although this experiment has not been duplicated successfully since. Some scholars suggest, and I am personally quite skeptical of this, that Franklin turned his press into a kind of enchanted item that was connected to his own soul. Thus, it only worked when Franklin himself used the machine, and every mage who was able to cast from one of his printed spells could only do so by making a bond with the soul of the man who carved the blocks. The copies only worked for his apprentices and close friends.
“Franklin supposedly turned his invention over to the Hellfire Club, and created a ritual so other members could cast from the copies, but those printed spellbooks only worked for members of the club, and the runes would still heat up if they were left out of the vault too long. The history I read said the fire that burned the club down in 1774 was started by an unshielded spellbook that caught fire in the library.”
“But if the press was enchanted… how the fuck do magic items work? I was told you can’t put magic in an inanimate object. They make movies about things like the Holy Grail and Odin’s Spear, and every horror movie starts with some kind of cursed object, but every wizard— sorry, every mage I ever saw on TV said it was impossible.”
“Inanimate objects cannot store magic on their own,” Evan said, “but physical objects can be used as a conduit for magic, if that item is connected to a living soul.” He paused and corrected himself. “I shouldn’t say living, since ghosts can maintain a connection with items after death, and spirits can permanently bond their souls with items instead of going to Heaven or Hell. This was considered the ultimate punishment for mages who committed horrible crimes - eternal servitude in a bound object.”
“Like the trope in all those fantasy games? Did anybody have a talking magic sword in real life?”
“A soul would have to be very strong to manifest a voice through an inanimate object. Enchanted objects do give off a kind of feeling, and some are even said to manipulate the feelings of humans who touch them, which is why all our museum exhibits are kept behind tantalum glass.
“Let’s say we found Gungnir tomorrow and you were able to steal it out of its case,” Evan explained. “You could feel the power of the Norse spirits inside, maybe even use their power to make yourself braver or stronger while you were holding the weapon, but you are forming a partnership with spirits, drawing magic through a conduit to Asgard, not tapping into magic from the object itself.
“We believe this is how supernatural abilities worked in the ancient age of heroes. There wasn’t enough magic on Earth to allow free-roaming savants, so all the ancient heroes had a connection with some kind of god or spirit who channeled magic from another plane.
“Some of them may have been literal gods on Earth, like Hercules, imbued with divine blood that gave him a permanent connection to Olympus, or like Achilles, who had a permanent bond with his mother, the sea nymph Thetis. When we say these heroes were blessed by the gods, we mean it quite literally, as many of them had pets or objects or guardian spirits who imbued them with power from beyond the Earth.”
“Could somebody do the same thing by making a connection to Hell? Could a demon bond with a human and give them access to an infernal power source?”
“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that question,” Evan said smoothly, “and you will never ask that out loud to anyone, ever again.”
So, that was a yes, confirmation that I had the perfect infernal power source sitting in my living room, just waiting for me to… plug in.
* * *
“This box blocks magic because it’s made from this metal? Tantalum?”
“Tantalum alloy, yes. Without tantalum blocking the energy, the runes on these cards would heat up and catch fire. Thus, the need to keep them in a shielded box in a shielded safe, and the paper used to make these cards is flame retardant. You could leave one of these cards sitting for days and it would just be a bit warm when you picked it up. We don’t tell students about the grace period, of course, and we expel anyone who is careless with the materials. We’ve had more than one fire in the dorms caused by students who tried to copy spells onto normal paper.”
“So, this tantalum stuff… is there a place I could buy it?”
“Why on Earth would you need to buy tantalum? If you’re planning on conducting some kind of magical experiment, please use one of my labs. Meddling with these forces at home can end with something much worse than fire.”
“Please show me a lab.”
If Newbury Tower had a fancy library full of helpful spirits and magic tomes… that’s not the one he took me through. The tower library was beautiful, with a strong 19th century feel to it, but none of the books were floating, and anything interesting was clearly stored elsewhere.
The labs were a series of octagonal pods all built around a central room, with secure hallways and honest to god hatches sealing them off from the central hub. Evan said the pods were made from concrete and lined with tantalum plates that kept things contained inside.
In its natural state, tantalum absorbed magic, but if you flipped a switch on the wall of a lab, you could activate magnets and reverse the process, allowing the plates to release stored magic and make things easier to cast while you were in the room. I remember admiring the elegance of it, allowing the released energy from previous experiments to feed back and help the next person.
But I wasn’t interested in casting anything. I was there to steal shit.
I told Evan I was going to practice levitation and convinced him to leave me alone. And just as I was hoping, the closet in the lab included a thick rectangle of tantalum glass. I unscrewed it from its mounting plate and slipped it into my backpack.
I had to wait until the crowds in the library thinned out, and since I had nothing better to do, I sat on a bench in the testing lab and read about ancient Greek heroes, the history of mage familiars, and the rise of superheroes in the 20th century.
The birth of Captain Cobalt seemed to mark a turning point in the way magic worked on Earth. Previously, mages and heroes needed some kind of divine connection to another plane to use their powers. Before 1941 or so, there wasn’t enough magic on Earth to imbue people with innate abilities, so everybody had to have a connection with some kind of god or angel. Even legends about Merlin said he was a half-demon who pulled his magic from Hell.
The Captain was the first to spontaneously manifest superhuman abilities, and the numbers had grown worldwide every year since. There was some evidence that Mystery Men vigilantes from the 1920s had enhanced strength and agility, but Captain Cobalt was the first true superhero.
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
He was followed by heroes who became the original Bluestar 1: Tom White with his energy blasts, Sandy Dennis with her mental powers, Jason Steiner, the first superhuman gun guy, and Charles Teller, the only one with a cool hero name: Plato the Juggler, with his ability to conjure geometric shapes out of solid magic.
This first team was followed by others in New York and Chicago, full of obscure heroes with marginal powers and terrible names, largely forgotten by anyone who didn’t drive by their statues every day.
The Bluestar program expanded to other major cities over the course of the next few decades, as more people with powers tried to get rich through bank robbery and kidnapping. By 2058, there were hundreds of active heroes nationwide, elevated above thousands of people who could walk through walls or set things on fire on a small scale, or use more impressive powers for just a few minutes at a time.
Evan said we were living in a kind of silver age for magic, as more and more students flocked to Boston to study. But that influx of mages and witches had made the city a target for demons, and now someone or something was conjuring monsters from the Charles River every other day, like some evil god was determined to provide Bluestar 7 with steady work.
* * *
I stayed in the lab until a recorded warning announced fifteen minutes to closing time and proceeded to the part I was actually going to feel guilty about. Stealing a pane of glass from a lab was bad enough, but this would be outright theft, with no way to sugar coat it.
I needed to sneak into a back room and steal a portable scanner used to digitize big books, and clearly, the term “portable” was relative. Newbury Tower was a high-trust environment, full of scholarship students who were allowed free access to just about everything, so it was childishly easy to slip into a scanning room and leave with a backpack full of stolen equipment, rattling gently against my tantalum glass.
I sent Evan an email as soon as I got home. “I accidentally destroyed a pane of tantalum glass in a practice lab and broke a book scanner when I levitated it by accident. Please bill my student account.”
I was opening myself up to some very awkward questions here, but Captain Cobalt would never steal, so neither would I.
Evan never said a word.
* * *
I got home, set up the scanner, stretched the flexible form of Taltorak to fit the width of it, and took my first shot. The picture was shit, totally washed out. Then I put the tantalum glass on it and tried again.
The page was still a mess, jumbled and useless. I cussed and threw a screwdriver across the room, yelling to no one in particular, as Lydia sat still as a statue, afraid to draw my anger onto her.
"The paper’s magic, too," I shouted at her as if it was her fault. "Fuck! The paper’s magic, too!"
Of course, the paper was magic. The writing should have been brighter than the background, but energy from the vellum was blotting them out. I spent two hours playing with the contrast again, adjusting the height of the scanner, moving the tantalum glass. I ran a thousand image filters, with varying degrees of success.
Then, just for the hell of it, I flipped the glass over. It made no sense at all, but the damn thing worked. The tantalum glass was polarized, so when I pointed the north end at the wall, the runes popped out, sharp and clear on my wallscreen. I couldn’t understand the language around them, but the runes and the writing were perfect. The ink was charged just enough to contrast with the paper, and the spells were brighter still.
It took me years to figure out what really happened in that moment, and it was honestly a bit depressing, when I realized nobody else could duplicate my experiment. I thought I had done something brilliant with the polarized glass, but I had not actually invented a scientific process for scanning magic runes into a computer.
The runes cleared up because after hours of touching it, my soul had bonded with the book, and the spirits inside Taltorak had finally figured out what I was trying to do. I could still claim a world record for what I pulled off that day, but it wasn’t what I had hoped for. I hadn’t made a breakthrough in scanning runes, but I was the first mage to ever form a magical bond with a data file, all because I was too lazy to learn Latin.
* * *
Once I had a clear picture, the rest was easy, relatively. I bolted the glass onto the scanner, got the camera in position and set the reader arm to turn the pages, one after the other.
It was barely ten o’clock, but the sun was down, and my eyes were burning. I set up my capture routine and told Jeeves to wake me if it jammed.
Lydia stopped me as I started down the hall. “Timothy, you’re supposed to be learning that book.”
I yawned wide and scratched my ass. “I’ve been working on the book all day. Hard part’s over. I’m goin’ to bed.”
* * *
The scanning process took the better part of a week. I just had to check the results every few hours to make sure the pages were going in. Taltorak was so big, it kept throwing the arm off, so I had to bolt the reader to the table I was using. Even then, the contrast was a little off, but I could fix that with software.
Eventually, the reader buzzed, and Jeeves said, “Scan complete.”
Taltorak was turned to its back cover, crooked from where the reader tried to pick it up. I closed it and handed it back to Lydia. She started to complain, but she didn’t quite understand what was going on. The book vanished and I sat down at my desk.
“Okay Jeeves, dump all scanned images into a folder called Taltorak. Encrypt it with my long password and require a physical confirmation - thumbprint if I’m at home, retina scan if I’m wearing contacts. No one gets in that folder but me, got it?”
Jeeves said, “Yes, sir.”
“Number the images and store them in a subfolder called ‘Raw’, one image per page.”
Jeeves said, “Done.”
“Convert them to text and combine them into one file.”
“Error. I don’t recognize some of these characters.”
“Treat the unknown characters as part of a new language. Build a font library and check the unknown characters against every language database you can find. Classify everything you can and leave the rest in that font.”
Jeeves said, “Three of the language libraries are demanding fees in advance.”
“Pay them. Anything under $200.”
“Done.”
“Compile the converted text into a document called ‘Taltorak Original’. Include images and unknown characters. Match sizes to the original layout.”
“Done.”
“Analyze this document.”
“This document is forty-five megabytes in size - 30,687 pages, 7,568,082 words, 34,143,872 characters, 241,574 paragraphs, 648,720 lines.”
I whistled. “Give me a language breakdown.”
“Forty-eight percent New Latin, ten percent Romanian, nine percent Old Latin, eight percent Greek, six percent Hebrew, six percent Unknown, five percent German, three percent French, two percent Italian, two percent Mandarin Chinese, one percent Japanese. Other languages, less than one percent.”
I cussed. “How many characters in that unknown font library?”
“One thousand two hundred and eighty-nine.”
“Could be worse. Display unknown characters.”
My wallscreen lit up like blue fire - an incestuous tangle of runes and symbols. I winced. “Change the color scheme to black on dull white. Highlight unknown characters in blue. Is there anything in this document that looks like an alphabet? Do any of these characters have names?”
“Seventy-two percent of these characters are listed in the first quarter of the document. Pages 1298 through 1791 are laid out like a reference guide.”
“Perfect. Scan the text surrounding these unknown characters. Search for anything that looks like a label. Assign a name to each character based on these results. If you get more than one name per character, add them as alternates. Choose primary by frequency.”
“Done.”
“Look for a character called Halper. H-A-L-P-E-R.”
“Found it, seven hundred and fifty-two times.”
“Search for a character named Alph. A-L-P-H. How many times does that character appear?”
“That character appears 3,912 times.”
I whistled again and slumped over my desk. “Evan said Alph was used at the end of every spell. If this scan is accurate, that means there are almost four thousand spells in this book. That’s insane. This isn’t a spellbook; this is an encyclopedia. It would take a lifetime to learn all this.”
“Several lifetimes, actually,” Lydia said. “Your ancestors only learned a fraction of it. Jacob learned more than anyone, but he could only read a few languages. But don’t get discouraged, you don’t have to learn everything at once. Just start with the French.”
Cleaning up Taltorak was tedious work, but I loved it. I spent the next few days troubleshooting bad handwriting and trying to identify obscure languages.
I thought I was burning up the text, but Lydia glared like an angry teacher, waiting for me to turn in homework. “Timothy, I’ve tried to be patient, but you really must get back to the book.”
“What? I’ve been studying the book all day.”
“No, you’ve been playing with your machines. You haven’t called for the book in days.”
“Playing with my machines? You think I’m surfing porn over here? I’m spending sixteen hours a day on this damn book! The OCR choked on Jacob’s handwriting, and I’ve got a machine in Scotland working on the Gaelic, but the English conversion is at sixty percent.”
Incredulous, Lydia said, “You translated half the book in three days? And how did you accomplish that?” She lifted a processor cube with her tail and put her eye to an I/O port. “You have an army of scholars in this little box?”
I snatched the block away from her and put the processor back where it belonged. “You don’t believe me. You really don’t believe me?” I should have let it go, but pride got the best of me.
“Jeeves, pull up the first page of Taltorak, the first page you were able to translate.”
The wallscreen lit up, bathing the room in white and blue. “This was written by a guy named Hegias, first century, I guess? He wrote it in Greek.” I read slowly, stumbling over the clumsy translation. “‘When embarking on research into matters arcane, the student must prepare the room of his flesh and the room of his mind to repel intrusion from beyond. Dark things walk the sky between, and they are drawn to the scent of wisdom. Guard your wiles and your work, or hungry shades will come to you, as they once came to me.’ Is that right?”
Lydia was very quiet. Not her usual knowing silence, but an honest flat-footed moment of dead air. I didn’t pay enough attention to that when it happened. She walked over and touched the giant projected screen, tracing the characters, looking back at me with awe or fear.
“Well? Is that right? Did I get the Greek right?”
Lydia said, “I’ve heard those words before,” still caressing the wallscreen. “Where did you find this?”
“What do you mean, where did I find this? I got it from your book, introducing the Greek part of Taltorak.”
She came around behind my desk and looked back and forth between me and the screen, staring at the scanner I had never bothered to put away. “You put Taltorak in the machine.”
I nodded.
Lydia flinched and put her hand to her mouth. There were certain bedrocks in her universe, and I had just smashed one of them to bits. “Timothy this is… this is very dangerous. When you manipulate the book in this form, I can’t observe it, I can’t protect it—”
“And you can’t tell what I’m working on.”
Lydia said nothing.
“That’s what bugs you, right? You can’t tell what I’m studying. Maybe I’m not learning fast enough. Or maybe I’m learning too much.”
“I have to consult with my Master.”
“Your Master can’t do shit,” I said. “I’m obeying the letter of my contract. He told me to learn the book, so I’m learning the book - the best way I know how.”
* * *
I thought all the unknown characters would be magic runes, but when I started to look at the book page by page, the first thousand pages were spells, paired with descriptive text that matched no known language at all.
That script didn’t have the simple, blocky look of magic runes; it had sweeping curves and dashes in it, almost like Arabic. I spent an hour manually searching language libraries, until I finally gave up and displayed them for Lydia.
“Do you know what language this is?”
“Enochian,” she said immediately. “And could you…” she looked distinctly uncomfortable. “Could you take it away, please?”
I tilted the window so only I could see it and asked, “What’s Enochian?”
“Angel script. I would be very surprised if your machines can read it. It’s only been taught to a few hundred humans, in the entire course of history. The Latin toolkit in Taltorak was made by a scholar who was taught Enochian but ended up in Hell.”
“But why would there be angel script in the first pages of a demon boo— It’s not a demon book. Holy shit, it’s not a demon book. Lydia, what the hell is this thing?”
Lydia said nothing.
“Lydia, is this an angel book? Did angels and demons make this thing together?”
She just stared at me.
“That silent treatment. That’s what you do when you’re not allowed to answer. Jeeves, isolate unknown characters in the first thousand pages of Taltorak. Is there a variation in brightness in those fonts?”
“Yes, sir. Ninety unknown characters are twenty percent darker than the others.”
“Make a separate library for those ninety characters and call it Enochian. Change those to the default white on black background, while leaving the spell runes in blue.”
The Enochian characters turned black, leaving the spells standing out in blue between paragraphs of black text. The shapes were wildly different, like sets of Norse runes alternating with Arabic text.
“You said the Latin toolkit was written by a guy who could read angel script?”
Lydia couldn’t answer my questions, but fortunately, I didn’t need her.
The Latin toolkit in Taltorak started with a story about the book’s origin, supposedly translated from Enochian. It said the book was created by angels and given to the first men who could use magic. That’s why all the spells in the toolkit were harmless or benevolent.
The angels weren’t teaching men how to cast lightning bolts and fireballs, they were teaching them to use magic for healing, agriculture, and sanitation. The toolkit even had basic utility magic, like changing wood to metal or freezing water into ice.
The material transformation stuff immediately reminded me of Arthur Walton, and the tricks he used to build bridges with magic, shaping the initial forms from water, freezing them to ice, and eventually transmuting the ice to wood and steel.
But if this kind of construction was angel magic, did that mean…? Was the last living archmage protected by an angel covenant? Was Arthur actively working with Gabriel? Was he the only man in the world who could read Enochian?
All great questions that I was too shy to ask, since I didn’t have an easy way to get a message to the most famous wizard on Earth. If he wasn’t taking calls from Bluestar teams or the DMA anymore, there was no way he would respond to me.
The guy who wrote the Latin toolkit didn’t sign his name to it. I guess most of these guys didn’t want to put their names in a book that proved they had been damned to Hell, but he went into the history of Taltorak and told me all my assumptions had been wrong.
Taltorak was not created by demons. It was created by angels and stolen by demons. The first version had actually been a kind of angel trophy.
I read the next sentence three times and said, “This book isn’t made from human skin, it’s made from demon skin.” I looked at Lydia. “So, I don’t need to be afraid of this thing… but maybe you do.”
* * *
“This book is way older than the Bible,” I said, scrolling at random. “After the angel script, it looks like Egyptian hieroglyphics. Big chunk in Greek. And it looks like most of these guys had supernatural creatures as pets or partners. I know what a lamia is, but what the fuck is a qarînah? How desperate would you have to be to fuck a terrifying goat chick with one leg?” I flipped my display around to show Lydia. “Where would you even put a vagina on this thing?”
Lydia just glared at me until I turned it back.
“I think most of these things presented as familiars and spirit animals to start with. The sexual component came later, as the relationship between wizards and gods turned darker and more coercive. I guess the gods learned they could get a lot more out of their champions if they made their companions look like women.
“In these early passages, it sounds like consigning your spirit to this book was more of a reward than a punishment - an opportunity to learn magic from all these scholars who came before you, recording your knowledge and passing it on to other great wizards who hadn’t even been born yet. They make Taltorak sound like a kind of spiritual switching station that wizards could use to visit other planes after death. It didn’t turn ugly until the demons stole it and closed off connections between the book and all these other realms.
“This guy says angels created this thing to teach men magic, back before they were even called angels. Then everybody responsible for it was confined to Hell when Harut and Marut fell. Sounds like there was a third one who taught magic to early men, but repented so he didn’t fall. Doesn’t record his name here.”
His name was Azael, and he sits in judgment of any soul that dies tainted by this book.
“There were entire wars fought over this book in Hell, until it finally ended up with Asmodeus,” Lydia visibly twitched when I said the name, but I kept going. “Looks like he challenged Satan for the throne and got his ass kicked, imprisoned or destroyed. His princes looted his palace and fled all over Hell. Jacob says the guy with Taltorak made it all the way up to the first layer, until Baalphezar defeated him and took it. That was an amazing stroke of luck for your Master. The greatest magical artifact in history basically fell into his lap.”
“And I guess he made the most of it,” I shrugged. “Wrapping it up in a contract, giving it to my family, assigning you to manage them. Did Baalphezar come up with this on his own?”
“Most of it,” Lydia said. “Although I believe some of it came from a neighboring prince named Psongor Ylande. They were friends then.”
“But they’re not friends anymore?”
Lydia said nothing.
“That silent treatment again.”
“I’ll never lie to you,” Lydia said, “but there are some questions I am not allowed to answer.”