Chapter 7: Sicarius

I leaned against the wall and looked out at the wizarding shops down the main street that lead to the castle. There were stores for buying magic books as well as wands. I watched a young wizard walk past me practicing some form of western card magic. I looked up at the tall wall that I was leaning against, trying to get a view of the castle that dwelt just beyond.

“No need to look so angry.”

My eyes flashed to Toby, “Why shouldn’t I be? I’m a wizard too, so why wouldn’t they let me in?” I glared at the sandy path. When we had arrived at the castle Magia and Gildar were welcomed in, along with the girl, but Toby and I were forced to stay in the main town outside of the wall.

“You do know they made us wait outside because we’re still dressed as assassins. Even if you can do magic you revoked you title as a magician almost fifty years ago. On top of that I can’t do magic.”

I raised my head, “Yeah, but how could they know that I revoked my title? Also, you can see souls, that should count for something.”

“They keep very good records, especially good records of Eternals like us. And I don’t think soul seeing counts as a form of magic, sorry.” Toby said kindly.

“Yeah, yeah I know.” The wind stirred. There was a foul feeling on the wind as dark clouds covered the sun.

For a moment it seemed there was no noise in the bustling wizard capitol. Everything was drowned out by a sudden surge of dark power. I grabbed Toby and pulled him to the ground as something exploded behind us. A large rock landed inches away from Toby and I.

I cleared the dust from my eyes and saw the whole town in a panic. I carefully stood up and narrowed my mind sight to where the explosion had come from. My senses narrowed on the throne room of the castle behind us. There were five energy signatures, one that I recognized as Magia and another as Gildar. An extremely powerful light presence that I could only guess as Xanvan. Then there was one large dark magic signature that I couldn’t identify and a signature that didn’t seem to have a type, but seemed to be limited in the amount of magic they could conjure.

I was snapped back to reality when Toby tapped me on my shoulder. I turned and pressed both my hands on the wall. “Perdere” I murmured, and a magic circle formed on the wall. I grabbed Toby and took a few steps back from the wall. I snapped my fingers and a small portion of the wall vanished into a swirling black dust. I slid through the gap and Toby followed. As soon as we were both through I touched his hand and transferred the memory of the location of the throne room

“Take a look around for me.” I said, then ran over to the wall of the palace. I watched him scale the wall to my left and get into the second story window. I looked at the wall in front of me, quickly finding hand holds that would allow me to get into the third story, I swiftly ascended the wall.

As soon as I was inside I noticed a surprising lack of magic energy from the surroundings. There weren’t any guards around either. I cautiously walked through the hallways and studied all the symbols on the walls. Most of them where signs of protection against dark forces, but others were for enhancing the flow of magic in the body or increasing magic power. I sensed around the castle with the help of the symbols and found Toby half way to the throne room, then I felt that Magia’s magic was dropping drastically. I abandoned being cautious, sprinting down one of the main halls I met up with Toby.

“Did you find anyone?” He asked “Because I haven’t found a single person. Well, except for the souls in the throne room”

I was breathing heavily and the air stung my lungs “No, I haven’t seen a single person.” I rasped. “I’ve only sensed the seven people in the throne room, the rest of the building seems to be empty.” Suddenly one of the magic sources began to attack itself, “Wait, what is this?” I said under my breath “One of the powers is… destroying itself.”

“What? Wait, you said you only sensed seven people in the throne room?” He confirmed.

I nodded, curious at what he was getting at.

“When I looked around earlier there were eight souls in the throne room.” He looked around the next corner as we continued through the hallways

“How can there be eight souls but only seven people?”

We rounded the final corner and came face to face with two large doors that marked the entrance of the throne room. I walked up to the doors and pressed on them, hopping they would open easily. “Dang it.” I said, the doors didn’t even budge.

“What?” Toby asked.

“It’s locked.” I pressed my hand against the door, seeing if there was some form of magic I could use to unlock the door. I looked about half way up the door and saw a sign that safeguards against shadow magic. It was stronger than all the others I had encountered earlier, I figured Xanvan himself had created this one, there would be no way for me to get around this.

Toby walked up to me, “Couldn’t you use the spell you used earlier?”

 I almost laughed. His knowledge of magic needed to be improved greatly. “This door safe guards against that type of magic. Apart from that, I can only use that spell twice a week. When I used it earlier, that was the second time this week, well, today actually.”

He nodded his understanding. “Okay, so how do we open the door?”

“We don’t. We wait for someone to open it for us.” I crossed part of the hall and sat on the floor. Toby still stood next to the door.

“There doesn’t seem to be any sort of lock.” He said, trying to look through the crack between the doors.

“It’s locked with magic you dimwit, you won’t be able to crack it. Now shut up, I need to concentrate.” I summoned my power and created a magic circle on the ground. I focused on the energy signature my brother and I shared and built it into the spell, linking our mental thoughts.

“The number of souls just dropped to six…What are you doing?” Toby asked, turning from the door to examining the spell I was building around me.

“I’m building a spell that Magia and I used to use to communicate with each other.” I took another glance at the presences. “I can see six distinct people.” I refocused on the seal, not having time to dwell on the question of people.

‘Sicarius?’ I heard Magia’s voice in my head.

‘Sorry, long story short, we’re in the castle. We saw the explosion from outside and came to help, but you seem to be fine. Anyway, Toby and I are outside, you should let us in.’ Toby reached out to touch the circle, I slapped his hand and gave him a signal saying no.

‘You must be the one who denounced her title, even though you seem to be very talented.’ An unrecognizable voice said. The voice seemed old, yet it was filled with magic power.

‘Indeed I must. Who’s this?’ I said, quickly turning my minds attention to Magia. I tried to block out the third party, but I quickly felt my power draining.

“You okay?” I heard Toby ask from the wall to my left.

“Yeah fine. Just stay quiet.” He looked at me like I was an idiot, then made a face at me. I smiled and returned to my conversation.

‘That’s Xanvan, he’s keen on meeting you.’ Magia said, ‘Gildar’s going to let you in. Xanvan has some information for us concerning the girl. But for now, we need to head towards the Elves territory.’

 ‘Wait, what? I just reclaimed my title as the sixth head of the Council. If I leave now they’ll revoke it again. Why are we headed to the elves anyway, isn’t there a lot of friction between your two kingdoms right now?’

‘Yeah, sorry about this. But I don’t know why, Xanvan just said that we needed to take the girl to the elves. I’m just as confused as you are, trust me.’ As he finished his sentence the large doors opened to reveal Gildar in new blue robes that signified him as a potions maker. In his right hand he held his oak staff with the sapphire crystal that he almost always had with him. In his left hand he had a book that read Forbidden Potions in Latin.

“Nice robes.” I teased as I destroyed the circle at my feet.

He pulled at his sleeve, which resulted in a portion of the fabric falling off of his shoulder. I could see that he was still wearing his regular clothes underneath the royal blue robe. “C’mon, lead the way.”

Gildar turned around and lead us through the giant room, we turned around the back of the throne in the center of the room. I noticed a seal on the back of the throne that conceal a door. Gildar tapped the seal with the crystal on his staff and a door appeared in the stone. Gildar opened it and began to walk down the stairs that descended into a secret passage below the throne.

As we stepped into the darkness Gildar tapped his staff against the floor, instantly lighting the passageway. As we walked through the tunnel, cold water dripped from the ceiling and rolled down my spine, adding to a sense of foreboding that was building in the back of my mind. I knew there was something dark up ahead, I could just barely make it out. I knew something was wrong.

As the tunnel opened up ahead of us a warm light drifted lazily through the rocks. But the ominous feeling I had was only growing stronger. I could feel the same destructive power that I had sensed earlier. Only now, it was stronger. The power, whatever it was, was angry, powerful, and only wanted to destroy. I came to a standstill exiting the cave as the full force of the magic washed over me. My vision began to blur, like I had stood up to quickly. Then, it stopped. The energy was gone. I rubbed my eyes and looked up just as Magia and Xanvan exited the wagon.

“I placed a seal on the door of the bedroom we put the girl in.” Said Xanvan, “From out here you won’t be able to sense the energy, but inside it’s not completely suppressed.” He looked back at the carriage with a concerned face.

“So I take it we’ll be heading to the Elves’ territory now.” Magia said.

It took a moment for Xanvan to respond, “Ah, yes. I would like to leave as soon as possible. So if you’re all ready we should really be heading out.” He said as he was stepping back into the wagon.

I walked over the Magia, “What’s his problem?”

“I’m not sure, I’ve never seen Xanvan act like this. He’s never been this serious before.”

“Well, there seems to be no point worrying about it, we should get on before Gildar leaves us behind.” I sighed, Magia nodded and walked into the carriage. “Toby, you coming?”

“Yeah, sorry.” He hurried on in front of me and I quickly followed him.

 

※

 

Once we had all settled down inside Gildar’s wagon, and Xanvan told Gildar where the carriage need to go, Magia asked the question that had been one everyone’s mind.

“So who is that girl? I mean, you called her Reaper, but who is that?” He asked.

Xanvan looked up from the book he had been studying. “Reaper isn’t a who, but a what. They’re an ancient mage species that’s been extinct for a little over a hundred years. As to who that specific reaper is, I have no idea.”

“Okay, but what’s a mage species?” I asked. I had read almost the entire contents of the assassin library and I had never heard of a mage species.

“Well, it’s kind of hard to explain but it’s basically a species that survives on magic.” Xanvan said, returning his book to the book shelf.

“So kinda like dragons?” Toby questioned.

“Exactly right, yes. Kind of like dragons.” Xanvan paused for a moment, “Except that reapers are a lot stronger than dragons, a lot more dangerous too.”

“Really!” Gildar exclaimed, popping up out of nowhere. “How much stronger?”

I looked around the room “Where did you come from?”

“A lot stronger. They were probably one of the strongest species to have ever lived…”

“Seriously, weren’t you looking after the girl? When did you get here?” I looked around but no one seemed to have noticed Gildar’s entrance.

“…Although, there’s not much I can tell you. There’s really not that much known about them.” Xanvan finished. Magia still didn’t seem satisfied, “Do you have any more questions, Magia?”

“Yeah, who was the skeleton guy?”

“Ah.” Xanvan replied, “Now that, I have a bit more information on. That shadowy figure used to be a young wizard named Madagran. He was a particularly talented young man, I almost recommended him for a position on the magic counsel.”

“So what happened?” Toby asked.

“Well, he was one of the few light wizards who had the potential for using crystal magic-“

“Whoa, wait, what?” I interrupted “Crystal magic is a lost art. Humans haven’t been able to use it for thousands of years.”

“Back when Madagran was first starting out it actually wasn’t all that uncommon for wizards to be born with a potential for crystal magic. Sure it was rare, but it still happened. Madagran was one of these few people, so, like all the others, we sent him off to learn with the best teachers.”

“Who’s that?” Magia asked.

Xanvan looked at him, “That would have been the Reapers. We had a deal with them that roughly translated to ‘we’ll leave you guys alone if you teach us how to use crystal magic’. During his training with the reapers, there was an accident. He was out exploring the caves one night when his mentor had specifically told him to say inside, during his exploration, he encountered a strange life form.

“It was something the reapers called a dark crystal. It’s a crystal that had somehow been infused with a corrupted soul. Madagran was tricked into touching the crystal, and it corrupted his soul as well, creating the entity you saw today. Even though it was entirely his fault the reapers took full responsibility and dealt with him in their own way…” He trailed off in thought. I could tell Xanvan didn’t want to talk about this anymore, I was impressed that we had gotten this much out of him.

“And… What way would that be?” Magia asked, oblivious to Xanvan’s resignation.

“They sealed him away.” He answered, then stood and went to one of the many rooms within the wagon. Closing the door as not to be bothered. We sat in silence.

“Seriously though,” I said, “Did anyone see Gildar come in?”

Author's Note

Does this chapter work well with the previous one?

Reviews

[theHobbit]

Yes! It really answers any questions that I could have come up with. I love the background stories!

[Zoë]

Thanks! I'm glad you liked it :)