ONE
Monty was gone.
I turned to my hellhound and placed a hand on his massive head. That subtle touch was enough to bring me a small sense of comfort in the midst of the chaos I was feeling.
He nudged me, gently comforting me with his presence. We didn’t need words; I knew he was worried, not only about me, but about Monty.
Monty was gone.
It took a few seconds, but I got my breath under control and reviewed the immediate damage around me. My dawnward was gone, along with all of the darkmages that up until recently stood in this room with me.
Granted, they had been doing their best to eliminate me. I wasn’t missing them, but I did wonder where they went. When I saw the destroyed remains of their clothing, I had my answer.
Bloody hell, Monty. What have you done?
I turned slowly to take in all of the damage.
I sat in the middle of rubble and debris and remembered the amount of power that had obliterated the room I was in minutes ago.
We were in the roundhouse room, which looked more like a blown-out relic from a bombing run during World War Two than an ancient railroad turntable area.
I looked up to see hundreds of softly glowing green runes in specific clusters along the ceiling. From the creaking and the groaning, accompanied by small clouds of dust which fell silently all around the room, I figured those runes were doing some heavy lifting—literally—to keep the ceiling from caving in on us.
A low groan brought my attention downward.
My hellhound whined next to me as I looked at the figure lying on the ground near the center of the room. Darkmage Casmir, leader of the Nubilus Magus, was sprawled out on the floor. It took me a few seconds to process what I was looking at.
I stood slowly, barely trusting myself to stand without falling over. My body, which had dealt with the damage, felt unsteady, as if I were standing on a moving ship and I couldn’t get my feet under me.
My hellhound stepped closer to my leg and leaned into me, letting his body act as weight to anchor me.
I looked down at what remained of the darkmage.
Casmir, who looked like he was two steps away from being mummified, gazed up at me. He tried to say something and collapsed into a coughing fit that wracked his body.
He finally got the coughing under control and spat to the side. Mucus mixed with blood landed on the concrete floor. Bloody spittle covered his chin as he glared up at me. He wiped his face with a sleeve as best he could, keeping his gaze locked on me.
His gaunt face and body barely resembled the man he was minutes ago. The only thing that held energy and vitality were his eyes—they flared with rage.
He was a young man trapped in an old man’s body.
There wasn’t much room for pity in my heart.
The anger his eyes pierced me with paled in comparison to the rage I was barely keeping under control in my chest.
Everything in me wanted to erase him from existence.
This man was directly responsible for Monty being gone and possibly being a darkmage. Part of me, the darkest part of me, wanted to reduce him to dust. I took another deep breath and clamped down on the rage that raced through my veins.
Around me, TK and LD surveyed the damage as I crouched closer to Casmir.
“What did you do to him?” I said with a snarl. “Answer me.”
“What did I do to him?” Casmir replied before his laughter transformed into another fit of uncontrollable coughing. “It’s…it’s more ‘what did he do to me’. He killed me.”
“You’re looking pretty alive to me,” I said as LD gently pulled me back from Casmir. “A situation that can be easily remedied, trust me.”
“Easy, hombre,” LD said, shaking his head as he looked at Casmir. “That’s not going to get answers or Tristan back.”
“He tried to siphon Monty and then it all went sideways,” I said, my words blades that sliced through the air, looking for a target to cut and finding none. “He wanted power…he didn’t care what it did to Monty. All he wanted was more power.” I turned to face Casmir with death in my eyes. “No matter how much you have…it’s never enough, is it?”
Casmir looked away, an expression of shame flitting across his features. He knew. He knew that his actions deserved only one response from me.
It was a response I was only a trigger pull away from executing.
“He…he,” Casmir wheezed, “he siphoned me. My power, everything. He took everything…he even took…even took…the dark flame.”
Everyone focused on Casmir in that second.
“What?” I demanded. “Say that again?”
“You don’t…you don’t understand,” he said and broke into laughter again. It was clear he was losing his mind, or that the recent trauma of rapidly aging at Monty’s hands had shattered his mind. “I tried to siphon him, I really did. It almost worked, but then…then…I don’t know...he siphoned me, he didn’t stop…I thought he would stop…I wanted him to stop…but it was…it was like you said…it’s never enough.”
“What are you—?”
“He took the dark flame, my dark flame,” Casmir continued, caught in a loop in his deteriorating mind. “He took my dark flame.”
I looked at LD, then at TK.
“What is he talking about?”
“This is bad,” LD said under his breath. “We need to call the others.”
TK slowly shook her head.
“No, we execute a strict containment protocol until we know more,” TK said. “Those who know can be looped in, but if we call the others…”
“Things will escalate,” LD finished, looking down at Casmir. “I’d say this situation is fairly escalated as it is.”
“What is it?” I asked. “The others who?”
“If what he is saying is true,” TK said, looking at Casmir, “and given his questionable state of mind, I have no way to confirm this—it appears Tristan somehow siphoned the dark flame from him.”
“How is that even possible?” I asked. “I thought Casmir inherited it from some distant relative or something like that.”
“Inherited?” Casmir said. “Oh, no, no, no, no, it was here all along.”
Casmir tapped the left side of his chest in a rhythmic motion as if he was trying to send a message in Morse code.
“I hid it here,” Casmir said barely above a whisper, his hand flat on his chest now. “It was here…my secret. He took my secret. I couldn’t hide it from him, he was too strong…too strong for my defenses.”
“What is it?” I asked, softening my tone somewhat, realizing that he no longer possessed full control of his mind. “What do you have there? Can you show us your secret?”
He nodded and looked to either side as if making sure no one else could see what he was about to reveal. Slowly, gradually, he moved his arthritic fingers gnarled with age over the buttons and opened his shirt, exposing his bare chest and a set of intricate runes etched deep into his skin.
I knew better than to try and read these runes. They lacked a glow of any kind, but even dormant as they were, I could still feel the pulse of power coming from them.
They were too complicated for me to understand, but I used my innersight and saw the traces of the dark flame’s energy hovering over the runes.
What’s more, they appeared to be fading.
“Are they supposed to do that?” I asked, pointing. “It looks like--”
“They’re fading,” TK said. “It must be a side-effect of the transference.”
“Bloody hell,” LD hissed. “This is worse than I thought. Are you sure we shouldn’t get the rest of the—”
“I’m sure,” TK said, her voice steel. “We contain first. If it gets away from us, we’ll convene them.”
Whoever they were talking about sounded dangerous.
I couldn’t pay them too much mind in the moment because Casmir was doing his best to try and sit up. When the wheezing got the better of him, I helped him into a sitting position. His body was mostly skin and bones.
He felt as frail as he looked.
“Where did you get those runes?” I asked. “Who etched them into your chest?”
“Runes?” Casmir asked, looking into my eyes innocently. “What runes, I don’t have any runes. Why would I need runes?”
“We’re losing him,” TK said. “Simon, tell me exactly what happened.”
“You were here, you saw everything,” I said. “I mean, who fired that green orb?”
“I did,” TK said. “That was when I arrived. Tell me everything from your point of view. I may have missed something prior to my arriving. It always helps to have a different perspective.”
“I already explained—”
“Explain it, again,” TK said, her voice hard. “Go over it again, step by step. Retrace everything that happened.”
I broke it down step by step as I remembered what happened.
When I got to the part where I poured energy into the metal slab, TK turned to what remained of the slab, which rested on the floor near us.
“This slab?” she asked. “Do you know how Tristan was attached to this slab?”
I shook my head.
“All I know is that Casmir had him held in place,” I said, looking at the charred and disfigured metal. “It was covered in runes.”
TK picked up the piece and handed it to LD.
“We need to get this runically analyzed,” she said. “You know where.”
LD nodded.
“On it,” LD said, taking the piece and stepping to the side as he formed a gray teleportation circle. “Be right back.”
LD stepped into the circle and disappeared.
“This didn’t go as planned,” I said, looking at the destruction around us. “Where is Monty?”
“I wish I knew,” she said, looking around. “As it stands, the possibilities are numerous, and none of them are good, given his method of exit.”
“What do you mean?”
She pointed to a far wall that could only be described as the remains of a wall. In the center was a large crack that ran from floor to ceiling.
“Do you see?” she asked. “Look carefully.”
I looked at the wall with my innersight and was nearly blinded by the amount of power that blazed from the wall. A haze of bright violet and orange energy flowed from the crack, spilling out onto the floor.
“Monty?” I asked. “Did he—?”
“Yes,” she said. “Which means he’s using his power.”
“That doesn’t sound good.”
“It’s not,” she said. “The more he uses, the faster he accelerates the process he is going through.”
“Any chance he would check himself into Haven?”
“Unlikely,” she said. “The power coursing through him at this moment is substantial, but I doubt it has removed his sense of self-preservation. He would not go to Haven or Roxanne in his current state.”
“Where would he go?”
“That is a good question,” she said. “We’re going to have to follow the clues we have, before he becomes a full darkmage.”
“What do you mean?” I asked. “He’s already—”
“No,” she said. “You managed to interrupt the ritual, which means right now Tristan is fighting for his sanity and his life. If he surrenders to the darkness…”
“What?” I asked. “What happens if he surrenders to the darkness?”
She shook her head.
“Let’s find him before that happens.”
The tone of her voice let me know that pushing further on this topic wasn’t going to get me any answers. I decided to back off…for now.
She had mentioned clues—I decided to switch topics.
“You said there were clues,” I said. “What clues?”
“That slab was one, but the one that should provide us with more information are those,” she pointed to Casmir’s chest and what remained of the runes. “He didn’t inscribe them on his chest himself. They’re too intricate for that. Runes that complicated would require a Runemaster.”
“A Runemaster?” I asked. “Do we know where to find a Runemaster?”
“I don’t,” she said, shaking her head. “That information is closely guarded for obvious reasons. However, I know someone who knows where we could get the information we need.”
“Who?”
“An honorary member of the Ten,” she said, surveying the destruction around us again. “We don’t exactly get along, but we understand each other. She’ll help us, if I incentivize her.”
“Incentivize?” I asked, wary. “Why does that sound painful?”
“Because it is,” she said, glancing at me. “Don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll do fine. She hardly ever kills anyone in the first duel. She likes to call her duels ‘physical introductions’. If you survive, she’ll cooperate.”
“What happens if I don’t survive?”
“I’ll have to convince her to cooperate,” she said with a glint of menace in her eye. “Either way, she will give us the information we need.”
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