There, Liv faced off against the oncoming tide of living shadow, and as I drew closer, she reached into one of the liches’ bodies with a glowing hand. After a brief flash of light, the lich’s shadowy form collapsed in on itself, turning to nothingness.
Miles flew in to join her, blasting a second lich with a bolt of vivid white spirit energy. He then caught the lich’s life essence in his hand, draining it in an instant and causing the shadow to dissipate. Spirit magic might look less flashy than my own fire magic, but it was regarded as the most lethal sort of magic for a reason. Even a lich had no resistance against it if the spirit mage was strong enough—which Miles certainly was. His lean form glowed around the edges, as ethereal and bright as the liches were dark and shadowy. It didn’t hurt that he was able to draw power directly from the node near the castle, intended solely for the Death King’s personal use—with one brief exception involving a transporter spell which I wasn’t sure he’d entirely forgiven me for.
When the last lich evaporated beneath Miles’s spirit magic, Ryan and Liv ran over to the gates separating the castle grounds from the rest of the swampland.
“How’d they get in?” I walked over to join them, my sock-less feet slipping around inside my shoes. “What happened to the liches on security duty?”
“Judge for yourself,” said Ryan.
I squinted into the darkness and nearly gagged when I realised what I’d thought were bushes were two heaps of bones and rotting flesh lying in front of the gates. “Were those liches?”
“You remember I mentioned cantrips which can make the undead fall to pieces?” Liv strode forward, her mouth twisting with distaste. “The cantrips return the liches to life, only for their magic to eat them from the inside out.”
“Fuck.”
If Harper had been on guard duty, she’d have met a similar demise, but she wasn’t one of the Death King’s security liches. They never would have had the chance to defend themselves, not if the cantrip had been deployed by someone who’d then fled the castle’s grounds before they were spotted.
“Those cantrips only work on the dead.” Felicity, the Water Element, strode up to join us, her blue-lined cloak rippling behind her and the Earth Element, Cal, on her heels. “That means if humans had been on guard duty, they wouldn’t have been affected.”
“There are only four of us,” Cal pointed out. “If we’re going to take over security, we’ll have to take long shifts.”
“Then we’ll do it,” said Ryan.
Shit. How am I supposed to find the elves and guard the castle at the same time? The Death King already expected me to negotiate with the Houses as well as the elves, but he was as vulnerable to those cantrips as any other lich. Only now did it hit me how much of a threat they might pose to the Court of the Dead.
“It won’t happen again,” Liv said firmly. “Not if I have anything to do with it.”
“Who even created those cantrips?” I asked.
“A vampire who got what was coming to him.” Liv crouched beside the bodies, reaching past the piles of rotting flesh to pick up a coin-shaped cantrip, and then holding it up so we could all see the faded markings on its surface.
The Family’s signature stared back at me. No way. “I thought all the cantrips with their mark on them were destroyed.”
“Whose mark?” Liv said, as sharp as always.
“Long story.” If the Death King hadn’t already told her, then I didn’t have the energy to relate my entire sorry history to her. “They’re called the Family, and they like to put their signature on things.”
“Hawker was using them before,” Miles added. “Might be him.”
“Exactly.” But I didn’t think so, somehow. This felt… personal. Maybe it was paranoia talking, but given the Family’s flair for the dramatic, it wasn’t too out there that they’d decided to remind me of their existence by leaving their signature outside the gates to my new home. As if I could ever forget.
Liv continued to glare at me, but I’d never been involved in the Family’s cantrip creation schemes and hadn’t even known about them until I’d met one of the victims of said schemes in the flesh. Still, I’d never expected the Family to openly target the Court of the Dead. Their usual method in times of conflict was to watch from the shadows and then swoop in to scavenge the ruins. Either they wanted to play a more central role this time, or they were mad enough at my spurning them that they didn’t care if they angered the Death King. Unless someone else had used the cantrip and intended the Family to take credit. Whatever the case, I met Liv’s stare until she shrugged and returned to the castle. Then I walked over to Miles, whose transparent form was almost invisible in the gloom.
“Those cantrips wouldn’t have any effect on you, would they?” I asked him.
“Unless I ask one of my Spirit Agent friends to turn me into a lich, no,” he said. “Which I have no intention of doing. I like being alive.”
“Good.” Liches were created by a spirit mage binding a person’s soul to an amulet—either their own or someone else’s—and turning them into a being which existed in limbo between life and death. Most were part of the Court of the Dead, which was open to any lich who agreed to surrender their soul amulet to the Death King. The Parallel was filled with enough dangers that even the dead tended to stick closely together, so almost all of them had opted to stay here in the castle.
One of said liches was my friend Harper. She’d been a fire mage before she’d died in battle, and Miles had offered to bind her soul to an amulet to give her a second chance at life. She’d said yes, and while she didn’t yet know if she wanted to make that decision permanent, she didn’t deserve to have the choice taken away from her again by some dickhead who thought it was funny to mark lethal cantrips with the Family’s signature.
“I should head back before Shelley throws a bucket of icy water over my head while I’m astral projecting,” Miles said.
“Is that likely?”
“Wouldn’t be the first time.” He stepped toward me and hugged me. His transparent arms passed through mine, leaving a faint chill in their wake, but his closeness helped to dispel my unease a little.
While he vanished back to his body, I re-joined the Elemental Soldiers in the castle’s grounds. Liv had already gone back into the castle, perhaps to find the Death King and tell him the threat was taken care of. Why he hadn’t come to fight himself was a mystery, but he hardly needed to fend off intruders when he had four Elemental Soldiers and an army of the dead at his service.
“Who wants to take the first watch?” asked Ryan. “We can trade shifts every six hours or so.”
“I’ll take the first watch,” I said. “I have things I need to do tomorrow.”
“I’ll join you, then,” said Ryan. “I think there should be two of us out at a time. Also, you might want to put some clothes on first.”
Right. I looked sheepishly down at my pyjamas, which I’d forgotten, but the others were more or less dressed in full uniform as though they’d expected an attack. I should have, too, but I’d let my guard down.
I was halfway to the castle when it hit me how quickly Ryan had decided to partner up with me to guard the castle. Did they still not trust me not to run off if their back was turned? Maybe not, but it’d be reassuring to have someone’s company through the rest of the night, in case the Family did show up in person.
If anything, this attack had reinforced my determination to find a way to be rid of them for good.
2
Dawn arrived without any more intrusions, which was a blessing. At the end of our shift, Ryan went for a run around the castle’s perimeter instead of going to bed like a normal person, since not even an attack in the middle of the night would cause them to break from their workout routine. As for me, I returned to the castle for a quick shower and then went straight to bed, but I barely managed a short nap before Ryan woke me by banging on my door. “Trix is here.”
“Give me five minutes.” I changed into fresh cl
othes and tied my long dark hair into a ponytail. These days, I dressed better than I had as a rogue, in the armoured uniform of an Elemental Soldier and with my red-lined cloak marked with the Death King’s emblem, which consisted of the symbols for the four elements surrounding a skull. Everyone always left out the fifth element, spirit, perhaps as an aftereffect of the last war.
I ran to the break room and grabbed a breakfast bar before going to meet Trix beside the gates. Ryan was already there, presumably intending to keep their promise not to let us go off alone. In fairness, I wouldn’t mind having the company of the Air Element, who looked a damn sight more intimidating than I did in their armoured uniform and green-lined cloak.
“Did you talk to your elf friends?” I asked Trix.
“Yes, and I found one who’s willing to talk to you,” he responded. “She lives in Arcadia.”
“Oh, good.” I’d hoped it wouldn’t take too long to find an elf willing to share their history with me, because my new guard duty schedule at the castle would make it hard for me to get away for long periods of time for the foreseeable future.
The three of us used the node near the castle to transport ourselves to a street in the outskirts of Arcadia, near the large warehouses which housed the city’s markets. In the distance, the dark form of the citadel towered over the rooftops, the only landmark I recognised in the unfamiliar city. I knew Elysium backwards, but Arcadia’s winding streets confounded me, as did the labyrinth of tunnels underneath our feet. Trix led us to a brick terraced house at the end of a long street and knocked on the door.
A female elf with dark eyes and glossy hair answered. Her features were pointed and striking, and she wore simple cotton clothing with a pair of knives visible at her waist. Few people in the Parallel went around unarmed, even mages and elves, who came equipped with their own magical skills which outdid most weaponry.
“Hey,” said Trix. “This is Drina. Drina, meet Bria and Ryan.”
Drina eyed me suspiciously. “Who are you?”
“I’m Bria,” I said. “The Death King’s—”
“I know you’re with the Death King,” she said. “Both of you. You’re wearing his uniform.”
“Ah.” Her hostile tone made me regret wearing my armoured clothing and cloak. “We’re not here on his behalf.”
“Could have fooled me,” she said. “What do you want, then?”
I hadn’t expected a warm reception from my fellow elves, considering how I looked more human than elf, but Trix hadn’t forewarned me of her apparent dislike of the Death King.
“It’s really not to do with the Death King.” I reached for the pendant around my neck and deactivated the illusion cantrip. Her eyes widened a little as my pointed ears became visible, my features sharpening and turning elfin. “This is why I’m here.”
“The Death King hired an elf as his Elemental Soldier?” she asked.
“I’m half-elf, half-mage,” I clarified. “It’s the elves I want to talk to you about.”
“Oh?” Some of the hostility vanished from her expression. “You’d better come in, then.”
Whatever I’d expected from an elf’s home, it wasn’t the sight that greeted us on the other side of the door. Plants filled the entire room, more than I’d ever seen in one place in the Parallel before. Vines covered the walls like spiked, writhing snakes, while toxic-coloured flowers bloomed in the corners. A a single chair made out of what looked like a tree stump stood in the centre. Drina sat upon it, while the rest of us hovered awkwardly around the edges of the room, trying not to knock into any of the lethal-looking plants.
“What’s your issue with the Death King?” I asked. “He’s got nothing to do with the elves.”
“Do you have any idea what the spirit mages did to us?” she said.
Oh. The Death King had once been a spirit mage, before he’d died. “He’s not working with the spirit mages who started the war. Or the ones who are trying to start a second one, either. He actually sent me here to ask if any of the elves would be willing to help us take a stand against the rogue spirit mages.”
“He sent you to ask that, did he?” she said. “What gives you the impression I’m the spokesperson for all the elves in the Parallel?”
“I—” I looked at Trix. “Trix said you’d be willing to talk to me.”
“Not about being a soldier-for-hire,” she said. “I’m no fighter.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “I just want to know who I should speak to if I want to find elves who can fight. Is there not a leader of the elves, like the vampire lords? Or the Houses of the Elements?”
Not all the mages belonged to the Houses, of course, but I’d assumed each of the magical communities had representatives. The Houses would have been happier to lock me up than fight on my behalf, but a small part of me had hoped the elves might be different. Frankly, I didn’t know who they answered to, since the Family had taken care to avoid teaching me anything about how their communities worked. After all, they hadn’t wanted me thinking I might find allies among them.
“None of us knows where our Elders are,” she said. “They disappeared after the last war destroyed our forests, our relics, everything connecting us to our history. If any of them survived, they haven’t contacted the rest of us since before the war.”
My mouth parted. “Really?”
“What planet have you been on?” Drina gave me an eye-roll. “Did the elf side of your family tell you nothing?”
“My parents are dead.” I fought to keep my tone free of my growing annoyance. I’d hardly asked to be raised by a pair of manipulators who’d buried my own history before I’d known it existed. “My parents died when I was a baby and I was raised by people who wanted me to stay ignorant of the elves and of my heritage. I know where they used to live, but their village was destroyed, and I don’t know if there were any survivors.”
She gave me an assessing look. “Don’t you have an Akrith?”
I blinked. “What’s that?”
“She doesn’t know?” She gave Trix an incredulous look. “Does she know nothing about us at all?”
“I told you,” I said heatedly, “I was raised as human, though the people who brought me up stretch the definition a little.”
Trix glanced between us. “I thought she knew more than she did. I’ll explain.”
An exclamation from Ryan made all of us jump. Several spiky vines had detached themselves from the wall, pointing at the Air Element like spears.
They held their sword aloft. “One of your plants attacked me.”
“Did you poke it with that weapon of yours?” said Drina.
“No,” the Air Element insisted. “Look, if they stab me, then they can’t expect me not to poke them back.”
The plants rustled against one another with hissing noises that sounded disconcertingly like snakes, while several glistening spikes hovered close to Ryan’s head.
“We should leave.” I’d rather listen to Trix’s explanation outside rather than risk us all ending up impaled by deadly plants.
“No,” said Trix. “We can stay longer if you like. Drina won’t mind.”
“I’m more than happy to leave,” Ryan said, with a disgruntled look at the offending plant. “Be seeing you.”
Drina gave them a look which implied I hope not, ignored me entirely, and then gave Trix a friendly nod as the three of us left the house and walked out into the narrow street.
“How am I supposed to have learned my history when I grew up without any connections to the elves?” I remarked. “What is an Akrith, anyway?”
“Akriths are petrified tree carvings taken from the heart of our Elder Trees,” Trix said. “Every elf has one, though our trees are all dead now.”
I glanced backwards at Drina’s house. “I don’t know if I ever had one. I’m half-human, and as your friend heavily implied, I’m no more an elf than the Death King is.”
“No, you would have had one,” Trix insisted. “Your elf parent would have giv
en you one on the day of your birth. It’s one of our surviving traditions. You were still living with your birth parents as a baby, weren’t you?”
“I was… but I don’t remember anything from that time.” If I’d had an Akirth, had the Family taken it away from me when they’d captured me from my home? Or was it still in the house I’d lived in as a baby, reduced to a ruin along with the rest of the village? “I know where my old home is, but it’s way out in the wasteland near the Family’s house.”
Ryan rounded on me. “That place? You never mentioned you grew up there.”
“I was born there, but the Family burned the whole place down and took me away when I was a kid,” I said. “Like I said, I barely remember. I thought the place looked familiar, but it wasn’t until I asked them directly that they confirmed my guess. Anyway, if I had an Akrith, it might have been buried in the wreckage. Either that or the Family took it for themselves, but they might not have known it was important to the elves at the time.”
“Do you remember the exact location of the house you lived in as a baby?” asked Trix.
I thought back. “No, but I do have a memory of the day the town burned, and I think if I went there, I could figure out the location. I remember seeing the citadel, which is the only building left standing.”
“The Death King said there’s nobody living out there at the moment,” Ryan said, “but that doesn’t mean the enemy won’t return. The nullifying cantrips we used on the citadels aren’t permanent.”
“No, it’s a risk, I’m not going to deny it,” I said. “If having my own Akrith makes the elves more likely to trust me, though, it might be worth it. Besides, I wouldn’t mind having a look in the place where I was born to see if my birth family left anything else behind. I doubt the Family are spending every waking moment searching the ruins for me.”
“They still have that wyrm of theirs, don’t they?” said Ryan.
“I can deal with the wyrm,” said Trix. “It won’t harm us.”
“You don’t have to come,” I insisted. “Either of you.”
Tower of Fire (Parallel Magic Book 3) Page 2
