Saraf could already feel the tension headache forming behind her eyes, fists clenching beneath the table they had taken over when Isenius and his advisors had left them to ‘deliberate over the fate of their people’. The ungracious prick— nothing they did for him or their kingdom was ever enough, and now he had dropped this responsibility solely upon them in the final hour.
This didn’t feel like a cry for help though, it felt like a trap, and the last members of their once-thriving covens were blindly rushing towards it for their own individual reasons.
“Might I remind you all the last time we summoned the aid of demons, they destroyed the world,” she interjected into the current debate that had turned towards supporting Naon’s insane plan.
“This isn’t a portal,” Naon replied appeasingly, spreading his hands. “It’s a single demon.”
“And what guarantee do we have this single, powerful demon can be controlled,” Saraf retorted, trying to contain her frustration.
“With your help, I can bind him to me. He will be tethered to my mortal body, but his power would be mine to command.”
Shocked silence met his statement, dread pooling at the base of Saraf’s chest. “You would allow the Abyssal Prince to take possession of your body?”
Their history was tatters in the wind, but they had gathered enough of those slips of knowledge to piece together that Orias had been the very first to step through that portal the Warlocks had opened centuries before. He had organized the legions as they spilled out onto their virgin lands like a river of nightmare, and had been the guardian who had stopped them from closing it initially.
How their ancestors had defeated and bound the demigod they had named the Abyssal Prince to his own bone, shaping it into a blade had never been discovered, but the weapon had always been so feared it had remained untouched.
Until now.
“Yes,” Naon replied immediately, without hesitation to her question. “Just as the dagger is a fraction of his body, only a small remaining part of his soul is imprisoned inside of it.”
“Absolutely not,” she responded, ignoring the nods of agreement that were being offered around the table. “That dagger may just be a fraction of what Orias once was, but it’s the fraction so powerful that it couldn’t even be destroyed!”
“Saraf,” Xalu interjected, and she turned towards the mahogany-skinned Warlock. He leaned forward entreatingly, ebony dreads now bone-white at their roots snaking over his shoulders. “We are going to die here if we continue to do what the General demands. At least with Naon’s plan, we will go down in history for what happens this day.”
She looked around at her brethren, and knew the tide was against her.
“At least offer him a halfling’s corpse to take possession of,” she pleaded desperately. “That would guarantee us some measure of control over it rather than risk yourself.”
Naon’s patience frayed, his expression darkening.
“We are out of time,” he pointed out, motioning towards the wall of canvas that did nothing to quiet the sounds of battle raging around them. “While we squabble here, the remainder of our army is being slaughtered.”
“Then we can leave, shadow-step home—“
“And be branded as traitors,” Orick finished for her, turning to regard her hurt expression calmly.
“They will hunt us down, every last one of our kind for that betrayal. Besides, none of us are strong enough to draw the sort of power shadow-stepping would require any longer without risking the burning.”
“I can turn them,” Naon offered in the silence Saraf was taking to gather her emotions back under control. “With Orias’s power, I can turn that entire army back into ours.”
The Cambion’s had been their slaves previously, and thus the Kingdom’s enslaved military by proxy. Warlocks had held their leashes via soul-magic, dispatching them to fight against the very demons that had sired their race. They had been so brutally effective it had afforded the humans time to begin to rebuild, to recover. Over the centuries following that First War between the Mages and Warlocks, their slaves had continued to hone their martial abilities, massacring the legions and driving those that survived further and further back from the now-established Human realm.
Those tethers had frayed with distance and time and treachery of man. With the threat of attacks no longer looming, the Warlocks had found themselves embroiled in a different kind of battle, more nefarious and even more fatal; political war.
He read the defeat in her expression, turning back to the group as he took the lead.
“Come, we don’t have much time,” Naon urged, heading out the tent purposefully. Saraf hesitated, watching as they filed eagerly behind him, like sheep behind their shepherd.
We truly have become the sheep, she thought to herself hopelessly, letting Orick take her hand and guide her out into the gloriously sunny day. The scent of blood and death was heavy in the cool breeze, the sounds of battle so close she thought at every turn they would come upon men fighting for their lives. Yet Naon lead them through the encampment safely, and onto a trail that rose towards a ridge.
Struggling physically up the ascent they were all out of breath by the time they reached the top of the gentle hill, another reminder of how much they had lost over the last few months.
Naon let them rest for a moment as he pulled out Orias’s dagger from its sheath at his hip. He drew the dulled edge across his wrist, yet it paired his flesh easily. Lifting the blade into the air he released it, but instead of clattering to the ground it floated in the air, positioning itself between his spread arms. Instinctively they spread, forming a loose circle around the hovering weapon.
“Brothers, Sisters, give me your power.”
Saraf choked back a sob as Orick was the first of them to respond, using his own dagger to cut into his arm. Blood welled and rose, twisting into threads that wended their way towards Naon and fed into his wound. Around her the other Warlocks followed suit, until she was the last.
Orick handed her his knife, and she met his gaze. There was so much regret there, so much hope and love.
She hadn’t even known it had been happening, but at some point in time during this campaign Orick had fallen in love with her. And she with him, she realized. Her breath caught in surprise, and he nodded in affirmation.
When this is over, his eyes seemed to say, softening. When there is once again time.
Without looking away from him, she sliced into her wrist. The connection to Naon was immediate, but it wasn’t until the line of blood reached him did she feel her power become his to command, his to control.
Her heart thudded, skipped, and then began to hammer furiously in her chest. There wasn’t enough air, her lungs no longer strong enough to provide. She swayed, and Orick stumbled closer to grasp her so they could brace against one another.
“Naon-n, s-stop,” Ifrin, the youngest of them managed as she collapsed to her knees. Her death knell was nothing more than an exhaled squeak, skin turning to parchment and eyes shriveling into hollowed sockets as her corpse fell onto its side, continuing to curl in on itself.
“Proud Saraf,” Naon taunted, and she wrenched her horrified gaze away from the corpse that was now a smoking heap. “Arrogant Saraf, always thinking you were so much better than me.”
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
Xalu was the next to fall, reaching a clawed hand towards Naon as if begging for mercy, but the man didn’t look away from her to witness the death.
“Do you know how long I've been waiting for this? Gathering strength, for this?”
She gasped, understanding his meaning. They were not the first ones he had bled the power out of. How many Warlocks he had murdered, she could only imagine.
“I will be the most powerful warlock in existence, and you will be nothing. You will be forgotten.”
Behind him Isenius and Zidaii crested the hill together, not bothering to hide their approach as their weapons and armor clanked noisily. Saraf stared in disbelief, the two males coming to stop behind Naon as one by one the warlocks fell, their life sucked from their bodies. In the distraction Orick gripped her arm over the wound her life was draining out of to restrict the flow.
“Almost done,” Naon crooned to his silent audience, now fully restored and hale. As if this had all been planned.
Zidaii glanced to Isenius who took the cue, the Commander unsheathing his sword as he approached Naon and buried it without hesitation into his back.
The Warlock arched, mouth gaping in a silent scream.
“Yes, you are,” Isenius responded victoriously. Naon twisted violently, surprising even the older man as he splayed his palm over his face.
The connection wavered, and Orick turned to her desperately. Free from Naon’s control his blood switched direction and began pumping into her open vein he held beneath his palm.
“I curse you,” Naon seethed in Daemonic, the two-toned sound of his voice grating like an iron file across her brittle bones. He lifted Orias’s dagger and dug through Isenius’s armor like it was made of clay to sink into his chest, the man held immobile by the dying warlocks will.
“I curse your bloodline.”
Panic laced through her again as the flow switched, Naon’s damning words twisting the summoning, driving the power he had stolen not into the blade, but into Isenius.
The blue sky dimmed as if clouds had covered the sun, yet there was not a cloud in the sky. Instead the sun seemed less bright, less powerful as Nuada’s Moon suddenly burned red, casting its empowered glow upon the world and bathing everything in blood.
Nuada— oh Goddess, what is happening?!
Zidaii moved, but Saraf’s attention shifted as foreign magic set the hairs on her arms erect, an ancient feel to it as it wrapped around her and flexed. Shock rolled through her as she realized it was coming from Orick.
She might have screamed, but the power that whipped her flesh mercilessly drowned out any sound she made. Involuntarily she was pulled into whatever this spell he was sacrificing himself to make.
The last thing she saw before the crease in space shut was Orick sliding to the ground, his corpse igniting without flame and turning to ash on the wind.
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Jalen jerked away from the book and into the back of his chair, gasping for breath as he fought a wave of dizziness that threatened to pull him down like it had Saraf at the end of that memory.
Gone, they were all gone. In a matter of seconds, they had been betrayed, and betrayed once more.
He pushed the heels of his palms against his eyes to try to ease their burning, shocked at the depth of his empathy as he took another slow breath to try to calm. This wasn’t some story— this had been someone’s life. Though they had been slaughtered nearly five hundreds year prior, to him it felt like it had been just minutes ago. Saraf was now on her own, alone.
Or was she?
Jalen’s attention shifted to the death record sitting before him. It had been weeks since his first meeting with Edever, and it had taken every second of that time to get his head to stop reeling from what the Constable had told him.
Some of it was still unbelievable. Fantastical even.
“There is an unknown society dedicated to culling any newborns whose eyes are the tell-tale cobalt.”
“You’re telling me every midwife in every town has been and will continue to murder babies?”
“Yes,” Edever replied somberly. “Warlock infants are not prevalent, but stillborns or complications while giving birth are quite common. It’s easy to masquerade their death and the parents would be none the wiser.”
Prove it, Jalen had demanded, and Edever proceeded to tell him of the death records that would’ve been coming in to his father’s office. For the Physicka yes, but only because they were wholly owned by a nefarious organization, if they weren’t the actual organization to begin with.
As he had flipped through the pages, the alarm over Edevers words lost its edge. There was no annotation, nothing to show one specific death was a Warlocks over what, as Edever had pointed out, could’ve been a complication at delivery.
It had all the markings to be one delusional man’s conspiracy theory gone out of control and yet…
His attention shifted to Saraf’s journal, disguised as a dead man’s documentary. Edever had said King Janius had used Naon’s folly as a means to kill all remaining Warlocks in the realm, and it wasn’t until later that the narrative had changed to what they were taught present day.
The whole foundation of that being the written history in Saraf’s cleverly masked tome seemed hypocritical.
Did that mean Saraf survived past The Day of Darkness? Did Athrioclites even exist, or did Saraf create a persona to hide behind? Would all the copies of this book react the same way this one does to blood?
His breath caught, letting his train of thought trip and zigzag across so many questions that when the door to the office swung open he nearly fell out of his chair in surprise.
“Whoah,” Darl remarked, pausing as he watched Jalen flail around in an attempt to get flying limbs and papers under control. “Been hitting the tea a little too hard lately, son?”
“No, just caught me off guard. Was engrossed in my reading,” Jalen managed, holding up Athrioclites tome for his father to see. At the sight of the book Darl’s smile became forced.
“Warlock history books? When did that become a subject in Accounting and Records?”
“Elective class,” Jalen offered with a bland grin, his stomach flipping when Darl stilled, no longer attempting to hold on to the good-humored facade.
“Which class is it?”
His mind emptied of everything but panic, opening his mouth to offer something, anything, but all that came out was a stammer before looking away in embarrassment. Finally he gave a strained laugh, tossing his arms in a shrug.
“Ok you caught me. It’s not for a class, I just have become really fascinated with that part of history. Not much is known about the Warlocks, you know? Nothing really survived that era.”
Darl nodded, his shoulders relaxing at the explanation as he turned to hang up his satchel by Jalen’s.
“Supposedly,” Jalen finished, wondering if his father could hear his heart pounding from across the room. Darl flinched at that word before continuing his task, staying turned away for a couple seconds before revolving back to assess his son.
Jalen was sure he was wilting beneath that stare, but he held firm, hoping his expression told a different story than the sweat-slicked palms flattened atop the desk were.
I know you know what I mean by that. And now you know I know, too.
What he knew, he honestly had no clue on, but his father capitulated. Shutting the blinds and locking the door calmly he came to the desk, sitting in one of the client chairs and folding his hands in his lap. It was a pose Jalen knew all too well; he was now in Business Mode.
He tapped on the death record before pushing it forwards. Darl’s eyes tracked the movement, remaining silent. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Relief flickered through his father’s eyes, and Jalen knew immediately he had asked the wrong question.
“I wanted to give you the choice, to make your own decision about your life before you decided to follow in my footsteps and take on the mantle of this business.”
“Well, I’m ready,” Jalen quipped, having no clue what that really meant. Darl smiled, as if he too, knew his son was unsure of what he was even asking about. His amusement vanished, sobering as he regarded Jalen in complete seriousness.
“If you go down this path, there is no backing out. You may think you have it all figured out, but there is more to this than what you think you know. Dark truths, even darker intents to preserve the greater good. Are you sure you’re ready, that you don’t want to finish school first?”
Jalen didn’t rush to answer. There is more to this than what you think you know. How true his father’s words were, on so many levels.
His decision to help Iscah had already altered the course of his life, and he knew even without this offer on the table between them, there was no going back. Childhood had been swept away by the memories of a long-dead warlock, and Iscah’s dreams he still didn’t have an answer for had snagged him in completely.
Ever since she had brought them to his attention, he had become ever increasingly aware of this own experience every night. Awareness had not amounted to action though, at least in his subconscious. Still he floated in that darkness, lethargic and at peace with it.
He wasn’t as resigned to his fate when awake.
“I’m ready, Dad.”
Darl nodded, somberly. As if he was mourning the loss of his child’s innocence rather than celebrating the next step of his life. Jalen felt the hairs on his arm rise in warning.
“Tomorrow I’ll reach out to our associates, let them know you’ll be joining us.” He stood up, attention lingering on the tome.
“These last few centuries of peace have come at a price. I hope you can understand that, when the time comes.”