by James Hunter
The ice Mage convulsed violently the whole time, his body shaking like a leaf in a strong breeze, his head flopping, his teeth chattering uncontrollably. His friend lasted ten minutes or less before his knees buckled and gave out, dropping Finn to the floor. He was unconscious, but his hands never left the glass tubing. Instead of rushing to Finn’s aid, Octavius just watched, arms crossed, an amused smile on his face.
This was brutal beyond belief, and he and Finn had been sentenced to an hour of this every single day for a month. If Sam had any second thoughts about betraying the College, they vanished the instant his hands were finally pried away from the glass. He grimaced as he regarded his palms. The skin was as raw and red as if he’d just had them pressed against a hot stovetop for the past hour. A notification icon flickered in the corner of his eye, and he brought it up on instinct.
Skill increased: Mana manipulation (Beginner III). Your training under Mage Akora has paid off in spades, and thanks to an iron will and a hard head, you’ve thrived where few others could endure. Great work!
Skill Gained: Channeling (Novice I). Congratulations! Through focus and use, you have learned to effectively channel your Mana! At seventy-five percent spell cost per second, you can maintain a connection to a spell that would otherwise use up the Mana allotted to it, increasing its effect over time. -.2% Mana cost and +1% spell damage per second per skill level.
“That will be enough for today, I suppose.” The Archmage magnanimously declared, his voice sounding like a gong in the otherwise quiet chamber. “Octavius, get these miscreants out of my presence this instant. Oh, and Octavius, I shouldn’t need to say this… but I will. These two are your responsibility as Peak Student, which means their failures are partly your own as well. Ensure they cause no further trouble of any sort, or it is you who will be up here replenishing The Accords with your Mana. That is abundantly clear, I hope.”
“Yes, Archmage,” Octavius replied, his voice as frigid as an arctic blizzard. “I will guarantee they never put one toe out of line again.”
The Earth Mage glowered at them. “Now, both of you. Up. Your presence in this hall is a stain, and I shall see it removed.”
Finn gained his feet with a groan, his legs wobbling, face slick with sweat. Sam followed a moment later but couldn’t quite seem to get his balance. His legs felt as limp and useless as wet noodles. He took one tentative step and reeled to the side, nearly falling off the raised dais, which would’ve been a fitting end to this terrible evening. Octavius caught him by the arm, his fingers digging into Sam’s flesh as he dragged him away from the edge.
“You won’t get away from me that easily, Novice. Now march,” Octavius growled in a low tone. He gave Sam a rough shove, spurring him into motion. “You’ll be cleaning toilets until you fall asleep in the porcelain bowl.”
As Sam headed down the stairs, trailing after Finn, he had to suppress a wicked smile. Clutched in his hand were a set of keys, carefully lifted off Octavius’ belt as the Peak Student manhandled him. If he was going down, he was going to burn as much of this place down as he could in the process—especially Octavius’ budding career. As Sam’s dad often said, ‘Play stupid games, win stupid prizes’. These Mages had played a very stupid game, and now they were about to get the most fitting prize of all.
Chapter Twenty
The rest of the day passed in a whirl of chores and classes, interspersed by the briefest moments of rest where Sam was allowed to scramble for a bite of hard bread or a sip of water. He had his regular classes to attend for the day, of course. Today it was a session at Mana Manipulation and Mana Coalescence, which was pure murder after the session with The Accords earlier. Then there was dungeoneering, but every other second was chores or ‘working parties’.
Not that there was anything even remotely fun about those parties. Octavius shuffled him from one miserable activity to the next. Toilets and bathroom patrol, followed by grounds maintenance, followed by kitchen detail… on and on and on. Octavius seemed to have transformed into a being fueled entirely by spite and vindictiveness.
But all of that is about to change, Sam thought darkly. He had missed breakfast and lunch but had managed to grab a meager dinner while working the kitchen line, shoving food into his face while the senior Kitchen Mage, Nesren Misrokovy, was busy elsewhere. He’d just finished his shift and—mercy of mercies—he had no other chores for the day. It was late, creeping up on nine at night, and he was supposed to be up bright and early at five in the morning for another turn at draining his Mana into The Accords.
That wasn’t going to happen. Not ever again. Instead of heading to his room, Sam patted at his pocket, feeling the bulge of the brass keyring he’d lifted off Octavius. It was only a matter of time before the Peak Student noticed the keys were missing—if he hadn’t already—so now was the time to act before anyone inside the College could prepare.
Sam worked his way through the dimly lit hallways, heading for the library just as he had so many times before. The hallways were mostly empty at this hour—though a few Scribes and Apprentices scuttled about—but still, he walked quickly, head down, trying not to draw any unwanted attention. The whole while his heart beat like a jackhammer inside his chest, and white-hot adrenaline coursed through his veins. He felt as though everyone was stealing sidelong glances at him, and he couldn’t help but wonder if they somehow knew about the caper he was going to pull off.
It was paranoia, he knew, but as another wise wizard once said, ‘Just because you’re paranoid, that doesn’t mean there isn’t a monster about the eat your face’.
There was one potential pitfall to his scheme that Sam couldn’t completely discount—Octavius. Sam had absolutely no idea where the Peak Student was at the moment; if Octavius found him in the library, it would without a doubt spell disaster. Sam licked his lips and picked up his pace; that was just another reason to move quickly. He rounded a familiar bend, and a wave of vertigo slammed into him like a shield bash. The whole world wobbled, and his legs quivered frantically as the gravitational distortion marking the transition to the Annex washed over him.
That unfortunate feeling was one thing, among many, that Sam wouldn’t miss about this place. He hated going through the Annex, but there was a little-known corridor that connected to a secondary entrance to the Infinity Athenaeum and chances were slim Octavius would ever go this way. The Peak Student was too ‘good’ to trek through the Annex if it could be helped. Sam followed the runic markers on the archways until he eventually slipped into a hallway that dead-ended at a simple doorway, far less grand than the proper entrance to the library. With bated breath and sweat-slick hands, Sam pulled the door open and popped his head into the library.
He half expected to see Octavius waiting for him in the foyer, surrounded by a squad of sword-wielding guards waiting to clap Sam in irons and haul him off to the prison. But no. The entryway was empty, save for wizened Mage Solis sitting behind the librarian’s desk, his bearded chin resting on his chest and his eyes closed. He was snoring loudly, the sound like a whirling buzzsaw; on the desk in front of him was his copy of The Riveting Adventures of D.K. Esquire: Dungeon Delver. He’d fallen asleep while captivated by a good book, a plight Sam could sympathize with from lots of personal experience.
Of every Mage in the College, gentle, kind-hearted Solis was the only one Sam would even remotely miss—not accounting for Finn, who was just as much an outsider as Sam himself. Honestly, Sam felt a little bad for what he was going to do since there was a slim chance that Mage Solis might take some of the heat for it. Hopefully, the responsibility—and therefore the punishment—would fall squarely on Octavius, but there was no way to be certain of that. Mage Solis was the Chief Librarian on night shift, after all, but Mage Solis was a Master, so if there was any fallout at all for the elderly book lover, Sam was fairly sure it would be minimal at most.
Steeling his nerves, Sam stole into the library, padding across the mosaic floors toward the hulking, black steel doors covered
in glyphs and runes of power, guarding the restricted floors—a section that contained the most coveted treasures of the College, a section Sam just so happened to have the keys for, thanks to Octavius.
That was one of the College’s major shortcomings—one among many—when it came to the College’s Novices. They treated the neophytes like garbage while simultaneously entrusting them with unprecedented power and untold secrets. They never even thought twice about doing so because the Senior Mages were so arrogant that they couldn’t ever conceive of the notion of a Novice bucking the system in any significant way.
Sam was about to teach them a painful and costly lesson for their short-sightedness. Octavius’ keys let him into the Prime Chamber with its colorful portals, all in different hues. Mage Solis never even stirred, to Sam’s relief.
Sam now had access to every level of the library, but he wasn’t sure where to go. He couldn’t tarry too long here; he’d managed to get in clean, but the longer he stayed, the better his chances of running into another Mage. The obvious choice was to head into the Sage’s section—that was where the most valuable tomes and treasures were—and he would head there… eventually. The problem was, most of those books were far and away too complicated for Sam. They were more powerful and rare, but he wouldn’t be able to understand or use them for ages.
There was a good chance this whole thing would go sideways, and he would have to reroll his character, but he wanted to at least make an honest go of it as a Rogue Mage. Would it be easy? No. But it couldn’t be much harder than being a Novice. He wouldn’t have access to the College and its myriad of classes or class trainers, so he needed to think about his short-term future, and that meant grabbing a few texts that were a little more immediately practical. So, the first stop was the tangerine-colored Student gate.
Sam opted to skip past the lower-level Apprentice gate since he figured he would learn some of the more basic skills and spells naturally, thanks to his class and his Instinctual Casting, but the Apprentice level spells were far more complicated. He’d also spent the most time on the Apprentice floor during his time as a research assistant to Octavius, so he knew exactly where he needed to go. He took a deep breath and slipped through the orange portal and into a section of the library that looked like something out of a medieval castle.
This section of the restricted library was all weather-beaten, gray stone—the floors, walls, and ceilings—accented by the occasional rug or tapestry, which showcased some of the more illustrious scenes from the Mage’s College history. One tapestry depicted a Mage with locks of flowing, black hair standing tall and proud on a spit of rock, his battle staff raised high in the air as a sea of deformed, pale faces flooded toward him. Brenward the Bold’s Last Stand against the Goblin Scourge. Another showed the current Archmage—although a far slimmer, younger, and more dashing version of the man—with a stately man wearing a crown, both standing in reverence before The Accords.
Sam broke into a slow jog, which put a strain on his stamina, but he didn’t have far to go. He hooked left then took a hard right, entering into a section of basic spells and Mage-form applications. The books were legion, but Sam had already mentally cataloged the list of titles he wanted to pilfer before moving on. His gaze skipped over dusty tome after dusty tome. Moving quickly, he plucked the appropriate books from the shelves, shoving each one into the handy-dandy Unending Flask of the Drunkard—the spatial container he’d picked up from Nick’s Knacks.
But the container only allowed him to carry an extra two-hundred pounds, and as anyone who has ever moved a box of books can confirm, they are heavy. These monstrosities even more so, since most of the volumes were thicker than phone books and bound in leather.
In went Fundamentals of Core Cultivation followed in short order by Brilliant Blossoms: A field guide to basic herbology; The Book of Lost Incantations, Rediscovered!; A Compendium of Magical Omens; and finally Compact Fundamentals of Elemental Magic, Aeolus Edition. There were so many more books that he wanted to take, but already he was feeling his skin crawl and itch as though there were eyes in every shadow watching him at his task.
“No need to be greedy,” he muttered to himself. Besides, he wanted to save room for anything particularly interesting he might discover up in the Sage’s section. Task complete, he backtracked to the Prime Chamber and made for his final destination—the burning, purple door at the end of the hallway.
As before, cold power rushed over Sam’s skin like arctic fire, but the sensation passed in a blink as he stepped out on to the semi-translucent floor constructed of violet glass. Since he’d only been on this floor a single time—and briefly at that—he wasn’t nearly as confident about where he should go or what he should grab in his grand escape. Well, that wasn’t entirely true.
He did have one item firmly in mind—the real treasure that would make this all worthwhile and hopefully sink Octavius’ good reputation for ages to come, the book locked away behind the crystalline bars. Sam had absolutely no idea what the book was—what spells or forbidden knowledge it contained—but anything locked up that tightly had to be valuable beyond belief.
Adding in the fact that Octavius had threatened him with unending doom for trifling with the volume lent some serious weight to its likely value. So, Sam set off at a sprint—or what passed for a sprint as a Mage—down the hall, boots rapping softly on the floors with every footfall. While he ran, he scanned the towering bookcases, looking for anything that popped out at him. Most of the titles—when there were titles at all—were far too complicated for him to make heads or tails of—Unabridged Advice of Transfigurations and Metamorphing, Analytic Calibrations on Arcanum Amplatures, Essential Data for Vital Medimagic Sages.
Sam was sure the information in those arcane tomes was valuable, but he had no idea if the info was valuable to him. He did falter, however, as his eyes flitted over a volume that screamed Quest to the inner gamer inside him. Compendium on Protected and Dangerous Locations. Without properly perusing the pages, Sam couldn’t be sure what was inside the book, but if the title was even remotely similar to the content between the covers, then it had the potential to be a treasure trove. Literally. So, he popped that sucker into the flask after a brief pause then continued on his way.
Before Sam knew it, he was standing in front of a nook not much bigger than a broom closet, locked away from the world by formidable steel bars, which were further secured by a hefty, purple lock. Loitering on the stone pedestal beyond the prison bars was the burgundy book, crafted from strips of rough leather, all crudely stitched together so they formed a twisted, humanoid face. What were the chances, Sam idly wondered, that this thing was the Eternium equivalent of the Necronomicon? A book that would unleash some grand, unspeakable evil upon the world?
Based on looks alone, the chances were pretty high, Sam decided. But so what? As long as said unspeakable evil laid into the Mage’s College first, Sam would be fine with the outcome. Hey, maybe it wasn’t evil at all, and this was just one of those cases of never judge a book by its cover? Either way, this was the grand prize, and Sam was going to have it. Once more, he pulled Octavius’ stolen keyring from his pocket, quickly flipping through keys until he pulled up the purple crystal key that appeared—at least on the surface—to match the lock. A tremor raced up Sam’s arm, the hair standing up along his neck. This was it. The moment of truth.
Sam took a few deep breaths to calm his frazzled nerves, in, out, in, out, then slowly slid the key into the lock, accompanied by the soft rasp of stone scraping against stone. With a gulp, he twisted the key. *Click*.
Instead of opening, the lock simply dissolved in a shimmer of prismatic light, and as it did, the bars standing sentry over the nook began to glow with an amber light, which grew in brilliance by the second. The light intensified until Sam had to shield his eyes or go blind. After a few moments, which seemed to stretch on and on into eternity, the golden light gave one last dazzling flare, tattooing a purple after image across Sam’s vision—and he
’d had his eyes pressed tightly closed. When he cracked his eyelids a moment later, the bars were gone, vanished just as the lock had.
As for the book on the pedestal… it was moving on its own. Sam hesitated only a second before darting into the alcove and pulling the leather book from its resting place. The moment he did, the world erupted into chaos, and an alarm blared, ringing out like a thousand gongs struck as one.
Chapter Twenty-One
The sound filling the air was as loud as a thunderstorm, the boom of warning bells echoing up and down the hallways and bouncing off the high ceilings of the library. Welp, that probably wasn’t a good thing. Sam temporarily ignored the deafening racket of the alarms as he turned his attention to a prompt which had appeared in the corner of his eye:
Would you like to bond with the Bibliomancer’s Sacred Tome? Doing so will form a permanent soul bond and might annul previous contractual obligations. As you have found the book, you have obviously studied the possibilities and repercussions of this action. Yes / No?
What was this now, Sam wondered? He could bind with this strange thing? He wasn’t entirely sure what binding with an object entailed, nor what the long-term ramifications would be, but there was one thing he did know from endless campaigns as a gamer—when an ancient magic presented you with a chance to do something, you did it. Because obviously, you just do it. Here was a sacred book, secreted away in the Sage’s section and further locked down behind a set of mystical bars that required a special key to unlock. If that didn’t earn him some kind of secret, ultra-rare questline… then nothing ever would.
Every instinct he had screamed in frantic joy, so he only thought about for less than a heartbeat before pressing ‘Yes’.