by Ryan McCall
He squawked in shock and she clutched his throat with her hand. She pushed him back against the wall. She murmured a quick spell and a red ball of fire encircled her other hand. She curved her fingers and aimed the ball at Darius’s face. “You have one chance to tell me what I want to know. Who is your master?”
He tried to grab at her fingers but he was reedy man and didn’t have the strength to pull her off him. “Tell me now. Or by Strathis I’ll burn off your hair. It’ll go fast because of the oils, but the pain on your scalp will last for days, I promise. Then I’ll burn your feet. Every step you take for months will be agonizing. If that doesn’t work, your body will still have plenty of skin left to burn.”
He stopped struggling and looked at her with dead eyes. “It was Kyle wasn’t it? That gave us away didn’t it?”
She had him now. “Gave who away? Your master? The sick fucker that raped Kyle and cut into his mind.” She was so close to finding out the truth. “Who is it?”
“It’s-”
But his voice choked off and he laughed. “It won’t work, I can’t tell you his name.”
Of course, he manipulates his victims so they’re unable to incriminate him thought Zuri. She took her hand away from Darius’s throat but kept the fireball aimed at his face.
“It’s too bad,” said Darius, “he was so close to being ready, the master was pleased with him. He would have been away and none of this would have happened, but his will was too strong.”
“What do you mean ready? Ready for what? What did your master do to him or to you for that matter?”
Darius laughed, she could see his eyes moving wildly as his mind became more unhinged. “It’s not only to fulfill his twisted desires you know. He gets paid for them, rather well in fact,” he said and he laughed again and slid down the wall.
His head tilted to the side as he kept laughing. She wasn’t going to get anything more out of him. She shook her head in frustration and dispersed her fire spell, Darius wasn’t even listening to her, his mind was too far gone. Who knows how long his mind had been dominated or how often it had been ripped into.
She pondered on what to do. Despite his poor mental state, Darius had given her clues to narrow down the list. It had to be someone who had been an authority figure since his days as a student, which left only two names. She found it impossible to believe either one of them could do that to Kyle. How could she find out for sure? She decided to try a different tactic to get around the mental safeguards placed on Darius’ mind.
“Darius, how often do you meet your master?”
He looked up at her. “Whenever he wants.”
“And when did he last ask to meet?”
He closed his eyes for a few moments and Zuri thought he would start his crazed laughter again, but he answered her question. “This morning before class.”
“And what did you do after that?” she asked.
“Research in my lab, and then I heard about those detectives coming back to continue the investigation and my head felt like it was going to explode.”
So he had been in his lab all day. Now came the hard part. “Have you seen Rai Chek today?”
“No I haven’t,” he replied. That cleared the head of teaching which meant…, no she had to be certain.
“Have you seen Archmage Feyton today?” He tried to reply but his throat choked and he couldn’t get out the words. That was it, his inability to say the words was all the confirmation she needed.
She trembled with shock. Archmage William Feyton himself had raped Kyle and ripped apart his mind. He had done the same to Darius and Strathis knew how many others, he had been at the school for decades.
She pulled Darius to his feet and slapped him, bringing him out his mumbling daze. He stopped, shook his head and looked at her with his usual intelligence rather than crazy idiot from a few moments ago.
“Paragon, I’m going to have to do something you may not enjoy and I apologize for it. I am truly sorry for what has been done to you,” she said.
He looked at her as if he had only now noticed her. “What in the hells are you talking about Ms. Abeliah? What are you doing in here anyway? This is my private room.” Feyton’s mental blocks were potent enough to erase the whole encounter from his memory.
“I’m sorry,” she said and rubbed the metal bracelet on her left arm before placing it on his chest. Thick, black shadows began to spill out. He gave a startled gasp before the shadows covered him from head to toe. In less than a minute his body was nothing more than an unmoving dark shape.
She pushed his body to one of the room’s corners and it shrank into the natural shadow, no longer discernible from other shadows in the room. The shadow trap would last eight hours. That was all the time she had do something about Feyton before he found Darius, cracked into his brain and unlocked the memory of this encounter.
Feyton was incredibly powerful and as archmage wielded considerable clout. She couldn’t take him on alone, she needed to bring this to people she trusted. But she didn’t have evidence.
Feyton had enemies at the school, no one could reach his position without doing so. Yadra Torres, the Paragon of Necromancy had had numerous disagreements with him and she had a strong sense of justice. Then there was Bracus Tor, the orc shaman and Warded Spiral’s representative with the Hydrus Scepters, the magical division of the imperial army. Archmage Feyton was well known as a racist towards the goblinoid races and it had caused problems for him. Added to that was how much Bracus was a stickler when it came to imperial laws of magic.
She left the room, making her way through the corridors of the tower as fast as she could. The shadow trap would hold as long as no one went looking for Darius. Yadra’s room was located on the second level of the tower and Bracus would be in the Blue Tower. She would talk to Yadra first and try to convince her. Then they could fetch Bracus and bring in the school’s security, one way or another Feyton would pay for what he had done.
“You realize how insane this sounds,” replied Yadra Torres after Zuri had finished explaining the entire story to her. The older mage’s oblique eyes had widened in shock with each detail that Zuri had revealed to her, goose bumps forming on her olive skin. She had a round face, moonlike in shape, common among Kordatian natives.
Her Kordatian ancestry went hand-in-hand with her field of magic. Death in native Kordatian culture was given a special reverence and they did not have the same level of squeamishness that Alkons did regarding necromancy.
“So you don’t believe me?” asked Zuri. She should have known how crazy she would sound.
“I didn’t say that. I said it sounded insane but not impossible. What I’ve had to put up with from the archmage in my time as paragon, I wouldn’t have put anything past him. He’s unscrupulous and amoral. But even this is a serious and outlandish accusation, Zuri.” She rubbed her hand through her short, black hair.
“I have to do something after what you’ve told me, but there needs to be unquestionable evidence. You’re correct, Bracus would be the best person to see. He’s friends with many of the Center’s guards. He’ll be able to convince them to follow his orders and confront Feyton.” She looked at Zuri, “It’s good you came to me first.”
“What do you mean?” asked Zuri.
“Well, Kyle was one of your favorite students. I could understand that you may feel the desire to do something sudden and irrational.”
Zuri realized that Yadra was insinuating something. “Like confronting the archmage myself?”
“Yes. If what you say is true, then I don’t think he would appreciate you bursting into his office and telling him you know all about it.”
On her way to see Yadra, Zuri had considered doing exactly that, but the rational part of her brain had won out. Not because it was right to go through the proper procedure, but because confronting a powerful mage like Feyton was not a good idea.
“What did you do with Darius?” asked Yadra.
Zuri winced. “I put him in a sha
dow trap, it will dispel in several hours.”
Yadra scolded her. “Zuri. You put a paragon in a magical trap! Do you have any idea of the disciplinary action you could face for that?”
“I didn’t have a choice, his mind had been corrupted by the archmage. If I’d left him to wander off, Feyton could have found out and stopped me.”
Yadra shook her head. “Under the circumstances I can understand. I can’t promise you that the rest of the Center council will though. We’d best go and see Bracus before he leaves then,” said Yadra.
“Leaves? Where would he be going?” Zuri had thought he lived in the Blue Tower.
“At this time of night he usually goes to the imperial army headquarters to submit his daily report,” replied Yadra. “Let’s go” She pulled on her ebony colored robe and ushered Zuri out the door.
***
Archmage William Feyton was in a foul mood. His day had been one problem after another. The out of control experiments in a hydromancy class, the Scepters demanding greater recruitment access to his students and two mastermages had resigned from teaching. Not to mention the watch officers continuing to poke their noses around in school.
They would find nothing beyond the suicide of course, but their presence had been disruptive. On top of all of that Alkon’s Minister of Treasury was due to visit tomorrow and he had to ensure nothing went wrong during her visit or he wouldn’t receive the increased imperial subsidy he had requested.
He needed something to take his mind off it all, an escape. He knew shouldn’t risk it right now, but it was the only release that would calm his stormy mind and let him relax. He leaned back in his velvet chair and sent a mental command to Darius to bring him a new student. He didn’t care who, Darius knew his tastes well enough, always delivering exactly what he craved.
Something was wrong. There was no response from Darius, as if something was blocking the command. There were only a few possible reasons for that and none of them could be good.
Feyton clenched his teeth in frustration, he did not need another problem. He closed his eyes and waved his hands while uttering an incantation. He reopened his eyes, a blue orb floated above his desk and awaited a command.
“Locate Darius Sidonius,” he said. The orb sped away through the walls. It back within minutes and returned to the exact position it had been floating before. Feyton put his hand in the sphere and the images of its path sped through his mind. From his office, through numerous hallways, a wooden door and finally inside Darius’s store room. He could not see Darius anywhere, but the location spell was never wrong, the man had to be in that room.
He would have to go there physically. Feyton stood up and walked out of his office. He would find out exactly where Darius was and scan every part of his mind to find out what had happened.
It took him time to get downstairs, his office was right at the top level of the Circular Tower. He didn’t waste time knocking and opened the door and shouted, “Darius!” The man wasn’t visible but that didn’t mean he wasn’t here.
Feyton slammed his green, metal staff at the floor and a wave of energy radiated over the room. This revealed Darius, he was hidden within a shadow trap in the corner. Feyton’s lips curled slightly, it was a pathetic attempt to hide someone. Nothing a third year student could not penetrate.
He thrust his left hand into the shadow. The pale, white glove that he always wore on that hand was a powerful magical artifact. It had the ability to disrupt many enchantments, though its range of effect was small. As the glove touched the shadow the trap fell away and Darius was released, he blinked his eyes several times and looked up at Feyton.
“Archmage, sir, I…What is going on?” said Darius, in a state of confusion.
“Shhh,” said Feyton, putting a finger to his lips. “That’s what I intend to find out.” He moved his ungloved hand towards Darius’ head. Darius saw this and panicked.
“No master, you…you promised me. You said if I provided you with fresh students, you wouldn’t do that again.”
“Yes I did. Unfortunately this is an emergency and I don’t have time to take the slow route past your mental blocks. Relax, its nothing you haven’t done before.”
“No…don’t!” pleaded Darius as the archmage’s hand wrapped around his skull. The hard tips of his fingers dug into the man’s scalp. Darius stopped pleading and started screaming.
When Feyton was finished, Darius lay there trembling. “So that young skylord has discovered our secret, I was not as careful as I should have been. I will have to deal with this immediately. She cannot be allowed to reveal what she knows. I will not let a skylord bitch ruin my life and everything I’ve built for the last forty years.”
He aimed his staff at Darius and said, “Sleep.” The paragon instantly fell into a deep sleep, his body calming. Feyton conjured another location orb and gave it an order. “Find Zuri Abeliah.”
Chapter 18
The Blue Tower was the oldest part of Warded Spirals. It was from the original Magic Center that was built in 1388. The stonework for the tower came from a quarry in the far north that mined a blue-hued, granite rock.
The natural color had been enhanced by paintwork in order for Warded Spirals to have a bright and welcoming look. Over the centuries the center had undergone multiple renovations and add-ons as it expanded and a violent hurricane in the late fourteen hundreds had collapsed many of the original buildings.
Nowadays the only remaining pieces were a single square tower and one set of rooms beside it. When each of the Center’s towers were given official names, it became the Blue Tower.
Bracus Tor listened patiently while Zuri made her case. His office was located near the top of the tower, so she had had plenty of time to think about the best way to tell him. “We cannot sit here and do nothing when the archmage has committed such grotesque crimes,” said Zuri.
“No,” replied Bracus. “We cannot. But aside from this boy’s diary scribblings and the words of a broken mind, you have no evidence with which we can use to place him under arrest.”
Zuri was incredulous. “That isn’t enough?”
“It proves that someone has been raping and corrupting the minds of children at the school, but not the archmage specifically.” The orc flexed his dark, green arm and walked a few steps to place papers on his desk.
“However, such a serious crime goes against all imperial and magical laws and I cannot do nothing. I will have to go and see Arnette Essex, she is the deputy chief of the Scepters and a friend of mine. I know she will be as outraged at this as we are.”
“But what if it takes too long? Feyton could find Darius before you return,” said Zuri.
“I’m aware of that, but without Imperial Branch and several of the Hydrus Scepters as back up, there is little we can do. Did you expect the three of us to confront the archmage alone? If so, then you’re more foolish than I thought, Mastermage Abeliah,” and he laughed.
“He’s the most powerful mage in Alkos City, we wouldn’t stand a-,” his sentence was cut off as the wall behind him exploded outward in a shower of bricks and rushing air. A ray of purple light hit Bracus from behind and scorched him.
Zuri could feel the intense heat even though she was on the other side of the room. Bracus screamed in pain and collapsed to the floor, his back a blackened and charred mess.
Archmage William Feyton flew in through the opening and landed beside the orc. He looked down dismissively. “I never liked him, an orc has no place in my Magic Center. I should have taken care of him years ago, but that would cause me more headaches than it was worth.”
He looked back up at Zuri and Yadra. “So, I see you also recruited Paragon Torres against me as well, what a shame. Despite our differences paragon, I have always had the highest regard for your abilities as a mage. You are one of the most talented at necromancy I have ever seen. Your loss will be a blow to Warded Spirals but unfortunately a necessary one.”
He turned his gaze to Zuri next. “As for you
my dear, well I am disappointed but I can’t say I’m surprised. Poking your nose where it doesn’t belong is unbecoming of a mastermage. I had such high hopes for you.”
“Save your fucking breath archmage. I’m not interested in anything you have to say, you sick pedophile!” Zuri screamed at him. “How many? How many innocent children did you rape to satisfy your twisted desires? And on top of that you ripped into their minds so they wouldn’t be able to even remember anything about it!” Zuri let loose with all of the rage she had inside.
Feyton let out a long laugh, “You think the mental control was about protecting myself?” he laughed. “I’ll admit it’s an additional benefit, but not necessary for someone of my abilities. There are a dozen other ways I could protect myself.” Zuri stared daggers at him in response.
“Oh come now Mastermage Abeliah, don’t look at me like that. Everyone in this world has needs and desires, I tried to suppress mine for such long time, but working here in a position of power,” he shook his head. “The temptation became too much and I…stopped struggling. Stopped fighting against my own nature.
It was liberating, I had never felt so free. It wasn’t often at first but then I was approached by someone who had a requirement for gifted mages. Specific requirements that required delicate mental manipulation. I simply took advantage of the opportunity and indulged. It was wonderful.” He sighed with pleasure and Zuri shuddered in disgust.
“Then your favorite student turned to tarcaine. A horrible drug, it disrupts mental magic, the boy must have remembered everything in the clearest detail. I’m still not certain how I’ll explain this mess, but it shouldn’t be difficult. There’s a story that can explain all this.”
Feyton suddenly thrust out his staff and a web of green energy flew towards her. She beat her wings and lifted herself up as fast as she could. She was lucky, the spell only missed her by inches. She flew to the ceiling and touched the amulet on her wrist, activating a magical shield.
Feyton then turned his power on Yadra and let loose with shards of ice. The shards flew through the air and the necromancy paragon covered her head and face with her robes. The deadly shards melted upon impact with the enchanted fabric.
