Page 48 of Magic Cursed
I examine our surroundings, but it doesn’t look any different from the rest of the book-shelved caves. “Whatever it is, it must be close. Both creatures were in this area for a reason.”
Daimis reads some of the titles nearest to him. “Let’s split up to cover more ground.”
We move in opposite directions, examining the books up and down the shelves as we go. While I do, my mind wanders to the speared tendril I’d sent out to the demonic creature. I’m not sure how I did it. I was angry, desperate, and panicked; scared for Daimis. Worst of all, I didn’t feel in control. I could have just as easily speared him. I try not to let myself dwell on the thought. I have to be more careful. I can’t let something like that happen again. I got lucky this time, next time I might not be.
Fifteen minutes later, I’ve only gone about five feet. We could be here for years and not read all the spines in the athenaeum. I sigh and my breath blows the strands of dark hair that fell in my face. I look up at a torch a foot away from me and notice the flames flickering every so often in the same direction, just as my hair had when I blew it. I put my hand in front of the flame and feel a slight breeze.
I turn around and examine the bookshelf opposite the flame. I start to pull out the books, they tumble to the ground one by one, their thuds echo in the cave. Something is here, I just know it.
Daimis rounds the corner in a jog. “You okay?” He asks, his blade out.
“Just checking a theory.” The next book I pull on doesn’t come out. It instead tilts forward with a definitive click. A section of the stone bookcase opens and a breeze flows into the cave. A hidden door. I push on the section, and it swivels open.
Daimis’s eyes widen. “Well done.”
He grabs the torch from the sconce with his free hand and we enter the hidden space. After walking through a long, narrow hallway, it opens up to a spacious cavern with a fast-moving river running through the middle. A bridge connects the two spaces.
The section closest to the entrance has shelves upon shelves of all kinds of things a magic user would use to aid in spell casting. Daimis crosses the bridge to the other side, while I linger examining all the items. Bundles of dried herbs, precious stones of varying sizes, live plants in pots, soil from all four continents, coral from the sea, and more. But the farther I walk, the stranger the items become; animal parts suspended in jars of water, a heart, eyes, teeth, ivory, antlers, bones, and skulls.
I stop at a row of jars with varying sizes of pixie wings. My stomach turns. The next shelf contains water sprite scales, ears, a troll hand, an ogre’s fingers, eyes, lips, organs, hair. . . I gasp at a deceased infant pixie floating in one of the jars, the umbilical cord still attached. There are other labeled jars filled with blood from all races, including humans. So much blood that whatever creature it came from wouldn’t have survived the loss of it. My own blood burns molten and I squeeze my hands into fists. How many deaths created these shelves of horrors?
Some of the more difficult spells need elements from the land and sea. I’ve never done that kind of magic myself, but I’ve seen Desmira do it from time to time. It was needed to create the wards that protect Hydenglen. But never has she used anything other than the natural elements. This is not magic, this is something more twisted, more sinister, and dark. This is madness. And what would the Regent be doing with items for spellcasting? He’s human, and he’s the one who banned magic in the first place. It just doesn’t make sense.
“Sky,” Daimis calls out.
I cross the bridge to the other side of the cavern. Daimis is examining books scattered on a large stone table. Some are basic magic books, but the others I have never seen the likes of before. I read one of the titles out loud. “Science and Biology.” I look up at Daimis. “Have you ever heard of such words?”
He shakes his head and opens the book, shuffling through the pages. He finds one with a picture on it that looks like a human with no skin and each of their innards are labeled. Heart, esophagus, lungs, and so on.
I open another book that looks like a journal. It’s similar to the human one, but the hand-drawn pictures are of a fae, pixie, ogre, water sprite, tree spirit, troll, and sorcerer. Next to each one is a list of their abilities.
Fae: Can spell cast with the proper incantation: the possibilities are endless. There are some bloodlines that are stronger than others. The strongest of the bloodlines are the leading fae families: the Kestras from Sands Passing in the East, the Drimaaks from the Stirk Islands in the South, and the Tanaris from Crystal Falls in the North. And the strongest known from all three is Laneya Tanaris, fae leader of Crystal Falls. The fae tire out quickly with larger spells. However, there are a select few fae who have been Dragon Touched who, with the help of their dragon, can store their magic in Faestone to be used at a later time without the consequence of tiring out. (Faestones: outlawed in Thaaryn. Naturally derived in fae territory to the North.)
I’ve never heard of Dragon Touched or Faestone before.
I skim the descriptions of each of the other magic-using races, already knowing most of this information through living with them. But my eyes land on Sorcerers and I read the passage closely.
Sorcerers: Can spell cast. Their strength of power depends on their ancestry. Much is unknown about Sorcerers’ abilities. Sorcerers were originally created from the unions of fae and humans. Over time, they became their own race, passing on their magic from parent to child. As with the fae, certain bloodlines are stronger than others. The strongest known sorcerers were Lord Ronaan Devoe and his daughter, Sahra Devoe, the origins of their ancestry magic include both the Drimaak and the Kestra bloodlines.
I didn’t know that we had Drimaak and Kestra bloodlines in our ancestry. My father never told me.
“Sahra,” Daimis whispers over my shoulder, and goosebumps form on my arms. He must have seen my name in the text. He leans in closer. I watch his eyes, wide and hopeful, as they move back and forth, reading the passage intently, like he’s searching for a piece of his old friend in it. Little does he know I’m standing right next to him.
“She was,” he says finally, his voice low. “She didn’t even know the power she had. Not within herself, and not over the people around her.”
He glances at me and his gaze lingers for a moment. I search his face, wondering why he talks about the real me with such reverence, with such fondness. My father killed his, and started all of this, but. . .
“You don’t hate her,” slips out of my mouth before I can stop it.
Daimis smiles a little. “At times I thought I did, but it’s only because she meant so much to me and I was a foolish child, not knowing how to handle it.”
I treasure each word and tuck them away tenderly in my heart, like I had each time I folded his note and put it in my box. Although I wonder if he would feel the same if he knew the magic that killed his father and released the shadow demons into our world, still existed—in me.
A muffled groaning comes from a door to our left that I hadn’t noticed before. Daimis and I lock eyes, both of us wordlessly pulling our blades out before making our way to the door. Daimis places his free hand on the door and I give him a nod to let him know I’m ready. He swings the door open and we both burst into the room, weapons at the ready, prepared for a fight.
The first thing to hit us is the smell: human feces, urine, and rotting flesh. I stagger back on instinct, covering my nose with my forearm, and fight back a gag. I stare in horror at the naked, emaciated man strapped to a table, laying in his own filth. The man is barely alive—but really, he shouldn’t be. No one should still be alive in his condition.
His chest is cut open and wrenched apart. His exposed ribs are cracked and jagged, as if someone had broken them and taken the severed pieces out to reveal what’s underneath, hisbeatingheart. There are other, older wounds on him that have been poorly stitched up. A particularly gruesome one stretches across the expanse of his forehead, as if someone had cut his head open and then sewed him back up. He’s missing three fingers on the hand closest to us, and his leg is mangled and twisted so badly that his entire foot and halfway up his calf is blackened, the tissue there already dead.