Warlocks of the Sigil (The Sigil Series Book 1)

by Peri Akman

  Kole was silent for a moment. “I’ve made my disdain clear enough that it doesn’t matter if I was the purest warlock of purity. She’s like Resiak. It’s not about what I am. It’s about her being right. How did you even gain her respect and convince her to listen to you?”

  “I did what I always do, one part apology, one part heavy passive aggression,” Asim said, smirking.

  “Oh, and it worked?” Kole asked, taking a swig from the flask.

  “Well, it worked well on her. Your apprentice got mighty angry though,” Asim replied.

  Quinn frowned behind the tree. What worked on her? He could barely remember the specifics, but he was pretty sure Asim had insulted him and Kole.

  “Tch, really? What happened?” Kole asked.

  “Oh, I said something about apprentices being irrational and ill-informed,” Asim said, reaching out for the flask. Kole inched it away from him before handing it over.

  “Pfft. Oh, and Quinn thought you were referring to him,” Kole said, idly playing with her walking stick.

  “Yeah. To be fair, that was what Dale was supposed to think too, as opposed to Cosime. So it’s not like it’s his fault.” Asim grinned in between sips.

  That… seemed counter-intuitive. How was pretending to insult Quinn beneficial to anyone?

  “Maybe one day you’ll realize you’re better off taking a stand in what you actually believe in, as opposed to playing the lying nice guy all the time, Wind Walker,” Kole grimly said, folding her arms.

  “And maybe one day you’ll realize me being the slimy nice guy is the reason you’re still alive,” Asim snapped, but without real venom.

  Well, wasn’t that just ominous?

  There was a silence as the two drank from the flask.

  “He really cares about you, you know,” Asim stated.

  “Who does?”

  “Your apprentice.”

  Quinn felt his heart stop. They were talking about him now? Why were they talking about him now?

  “Eh, not really,” Kole said dismissively.

  “No, seriously, Kole, he really does. He yelled at Dale and everything,” Asim assured her.

  Kole’s next reaction confused Quinn greatly. She made a small noise of confusion, and then muttered something that Quinn had to strain to hear:

  “I thought he hated me.”

  What in the world had given Kole that opinion? He wasn’t always nice to her, sure, but neither was she to him! They snipped at each other occasionally, and sure it was annoying, but he had assumed they had a mutual understanding! It was like your roommates at the Academy, you fought from time to time, sure, but that was just because you were stuck with each other a lot. It didn’t mean anything! Right?

  Asim laughed loudly. “Kole, you think everyone hates you. Believe me, he doesn’t.”

  “I’ve been nothing but obtuse to him, though. I lecture him all the time, I’m arrogant, I pick fights, I—”

  “You’re not Resiak,” Asim cut her off. “Being a bit rough around the edges is not the same as being him. You know that.”

  Resiak? Who was Resiak?

  Kole muttered something Quinn couldn’t make out.

  Asim patted her on the shoulder.

  “Thanks,” Kole continued to mutter, but in a voice Quinn could hear now. “I wish I could comfort you similarly about your kid but—”

  “Oh Alamiel, don’t get me started,” Asim practically croaked out.

  Quinn shifted uncomfortably. This was something he didn’t want to get involved in, but now he was unsure if he could seamlessly leave.

  Kole snickered. “What happened?”

  “I uh… made the mistake of thinking my silver tongue could get me out of any situation,” Asim stated, his eyes darting away.

  Kole stopped her snickering. “What did you do?”

  Asim sighed grandly. “The reason I picked Kay to be my apprentice was not because I thought our magic would go well together. It was because she was an outcast to some extent and like an idiot I thought I could… save… her.”

  “Save her?” Kole asked most likely raising an eyebrow under her bandages.

  “Kay’s seventeen and never hit the Academy defined term of puberty. I had a few suspicions, and I confirmed them with the doctors there—she never started menstruating. She still doesn’t,” Asim said slowly and carefully.

  “She’s intersex,” Kole supplied immediately.

  Inter-what? That was an unfamiliar term to Quinn.

  “Yeah, that was my thought. It would make sense too, considering the rest of her health exam… that’s not the point. So I waited patiently to bring this up, since I didn’t want to overwhelm her with it. I took this job specifically because it was a Prismatic Temple. I figured the idea of the grayshade identity could help her come to terms with it,” Asim sighed darkly as he talked.

  “What, a star child wasn’t gonna cut it?” Kole asked.

  “Ehhhhh. Look, I worship the Star Gods, but on a cultural level it didn’t seem like it would help her. Relating to a star child only works if you go from one extreme to the other. Grayshades are more middling, which I felt fit her situation,” Asim explained.

  “See, this is why I like you. You have a very professional view of religion,” Kole exclaimed happily.

  “I’m charmed,” Asim said in a tone that implied he was not charmed in the slightest. “Anyway, I decided to jump the gun, introduce her to the topic on the way here. It… got messy after that.”

  “How messy?” Kole asked, leaning in intently.

  “I believe the term ‘not a real woman’ came into it at some point,” Asim said somberly.

  Quinn winced slightly. That seemed a bit harsh. He wasn’t entirely following the conversation, but he was pretty sure if someone had said he wasn’t a real guy he’d be pretty annoyed.

  “Ooooooh. Asim. Nooooo,” Kole said, flailing.

  “I was trying to talk bigger picture. That she didn’t have to be, and there was no such thing as a real… but she wasn’t getting it and I kept trying to be more and more blunt and simplistic… but I messed up, and one mess up was all it took. We haven’t talked in a few days,” Asim sighed, and Kole nodded sadly in response.

  “Wow. Have you apologized?” Kole asked.

  “Profusely, but for the most part, I’ve been leaving her alone. I don’t want to pressure her into feeling like she is obligated to forgive me just because I’m her master,” Asim said with a shrug.

  Kole nodded in approval, before shaking her walking stick. The goggles came out of them.

  “Here,” she said, handing them to Asim.

  “Thanks?” Asim asked, clearly confused.

  “They’re for Kay. She’s an amplifier, right? I’ve been fiddling with her current skill set, it's pretty decent, she just needs more creativity. She currently has only been using it to stop her clothing from getting wet. She needs a bit more variety than that,” Kole said.

  “Maybe you could teach her for a bit. She might enjoy the change of pace,” Asim suggested.

  “Later. When this is all over with. And I’m not being thrown into constant panic attacks because of Dale,” Kole’s voice took a rougher turn when she hit Dale’s name.

  “Fair is fa—” Asim stopped talking for a moment.

  He looked around, his eyes narrowing. A gust of wind blew around the area, pressing on Quinn’s face.

  Kole’s eyes widened and she shot up, another gust of wind shot through the area.

  Oh yeah, they definitely knew.

  Quinn stepped out from behind the tree.

  The reaction was immediate, Asim and Kole visibly deflated with relief, with Kole even sitting right back down.

  “Oh, hey, Quinn. We’re both a bit drunk right now, so you have been warned,” Kole said immediately, waving at him.

  Quinn smiled awkwardly. “Sorry, I was just looking for you guys since you weren’t with the others.”

  Asim snorted, and downed the rest of the flask.

&nbs
p; “This gives us a better view of the orb, check it out—” Kole beckoned Quinn towards them.

  Quinn walked to the edge, and sure enough, there was a much clearer view of the entire lake. In the center was a discolored circle just barely lit by the moonlight, only visible because he was looking for it.

  “Huh,” Quinn stated. He craned his head around to look for the camp, but did not get a good view of it, as it was too obscured by trees. Well, that explained why they had immediately jumped to the idea that they were being attacked.

  “How long were you out here, anyway?” Asim asked, most likely as code for ‘what did you hear.’

  “Not long,” Quinn lied. “I mostly just wanted to stick around to tell you guys I have about three large crates’ worth of food.”

  Asim made a disgusted face. “That’s gonna go bad quickly.”

  “Naw. It’s heavily salted and in sealed containers, we’ll be fine,” Kole countered.

  “It sounds disgusting,” Asim said, wrinkling his nose.

  “You’re military. You’ve honestly never eaten this type of stuff before?” Kole asked, more amused than annoyed.

  “I’m employed by the military. I’m not actually military. There’s a difference,” Asim muttered.

  This confused Quinn. “What is the difference?” he asked

  Asim rolled his eyes upwards as he thought of a proper way to word things. “I don’t go on the front lines. I can’t get deployed or drafted. They pay me per job I do, usually in the sense of ‘this area has been overrun with monsters please help us’ or ‘this warlock has been murdering people please stop them,’ that kind of thing.”

  “But you’re on a break now,” Quinn said, repeating what Kay had told him previously.

  “Yeah. I did it so that I didn’t drop Kay right in the middle of a warzone. Well, at the time it was ‘my future apprentice’, but you understand my gist. No one needs to experience a monster horde their first week in the real world.”

  Kole gave a soft cough.

  Right. Quinn had experienced a demon horde and a monster horde his first few weeks in the real world, give or take.

  That might have been one of the reasons Kole thought Quinn hated her.

  He couldn’t really see himself getting mad about that though. Kole had looked out for him every single time. The only times he had been in real trouble were when he had charged in on his own. Sort of.

  He definitely felt more confident, knowing he had the skills needed to fight off those creatures. On the other hand… most of that confidence had come from Ser Hero slicing through the creatures like they were nothing.

  Which made him immensely lucky. He had no right to judge Asim for his own choices. If anything, he probably should be judging Kole, since she had no way of knowing he’d be able to summon primed monster killers.

  It had all worked out in the end, and Quinn was a bit too tired to reason things out.

  In a few days this would all be over anyway, and they could have a chat somewhere else. To be fair to Kole, she had tried to go a peaceful route. They had gone to work at a hospital.

  It had just… derailed slightly.

  Quinn headed back to the camp and crawled into his tent to take a well-deserved rest. He must have been more tired than he thought; as soon as his head touched the pillow, his consciousness began to fade.

  His dream was uneventful, full of blinding lights, as he argued with Ser Hero about whether or not they were capable of beating the sun in mortal combat.

  Just as a solution was being figured out through a law of reality that Quinn had previously been unaware of, he found himself snapping out of the dream world. It took him a few seconds before he realized what had just happened—there had been a loud yelling and cracking noise.

  He turned to wake up Kole, only to find that she was not present in the tent. Which meant she was probably still up the hill with Asim. Quinn shook his head and slapped his face, trying to wake himself up. More noises and scuffling could be heard outside the tent.

  The scene Quinn staggered out to was not one that he was expecting. There were several guards from the Prismatic Temple, weapons drawn. One even had a lit torch. Kay was yelling, trying to reason with them.

  Cosime was behind Kay, hiding.

  At first Quinn didn’t see Dale, until his peripherals caught motion flickering in the distance.

  Above the lake, Dale seemed to be shooting several lances at what appeared to be another Cosime.

  Demons.

  His heartbeat quickened, his adrenaline feebly pumping through him as his sense of what to do began to form. Along with it, the realization that his attempts at casting were being crushed. The first instinct was to summon Ser Hero, but Quinn pushed that back. Instead he summoned the shield.

  Kay looked at Quinn, her eyes wide. In that split second one of the guards charged, and slammed a metal rod across Kay’s head.

  What? The guards were attacking them? Were they demons or possessed? Could magic positive people be possessed? He didn’t know.

  The guards jeered, yelling cruel insults at Kay. None of them seemed to be using the demonic tongue, however. The one with the torch went to light the tent on fire. Quinn quickly envisioned a small body of water, before dropping it on the collective group. The fire went out. Luckily for him, stopping a reaction didn’t need constant stimulation.

  Then the guards slowly turned to him. Some of them had pure black eyes, others had eyes that appeared to be bleeding.

  Within a split second, Quinn realized that there were doubles. For every bleeding guard there was an identical black-eyed guard.

  So there were possessed guards. Quinn inwardly cursed. This was bad, he had no idea how to deal with possessed people! The guards charged him, but the water vanished, and a tower shield replaced it. Quinn crouched behind the large shield just in time for a guard to crash right into the summoned barrier.

  Immediately, Quinn banished the large shield and swapped it for a smaller, more portable shield. He slammed his weight down onto the next guy.

  This one was possessed, and seemed to stagger back with less skill than the demon replica. Quinn wrenched the weapon out of the guard’s hand, a rather large knife. Small shield out, Quinn dashed over to Kay, and summoned a large metal box over the two of them and what Quinn assumed was the real Cosime.

  Quinn shoved the knife at Kay. “Here, use this on the black-eyed guys.”

  Cosime gave a small shriek, and Quinn realized that might not have been the best way to phrase it. Cosime had naturally black eyes, much like Kole did.

  “Demonic eyes. Not black eyes,” Quinn quickly corrected.

  “How the void are you so calm?” Kay sputtered at him.

  Quinn stared at Kay in confusion. Calm? Did he seem calm to her? He was freaking out!

  “And how are you casting your magic so easily?” Kay shouted a bit louder. “I can’t concentrate an ounce and you’re flinging spells left and right!”

  “Perks of being a super external warlock,” Quinn replied quickly. He did not mention that it was easier to cast things when he knew that if things really did get bad, he could just summon Ser Hero and be done with it. That would involve people finding out, which meant Asim finding out. Even if Asim and Kole were somehow magically friends, he wasn’t inclined to get questioned about it.

  With every passing second, the reasoning became a bit more nonsensical and needless. From outside the box, the guards banged the metal box. Unlike the ones who fed on Sennta, they were not strong enough to leave as big of a dent. However, they certainly seemed to be doing something.

  “OPEN THE BOX, FATASS!” a guard roared. Quinn winced. Well, that was rude. Why did demons have to always comment on his weight?

  “Yeah, stop hiding behind your stupid wall and let us in!” another yelled.

  “Coward!” jeered yet another.

  There were more insults, more shouts, more attempts at goading him into opening the box. If it weren’t for the fact that they seemed
to be slowly but surely be making dents into it, Quinn would have been heavily inclined to just sit in the box with the other apprentices and wait patiently for Kole and Asim to realize there was a problem.

  Cosime was sobbing, their hands covering their ears. “Stop,” they moaned, as the screams and yells got louder.

  Kay took a deep breath. “You protect Cosime, I keep them off?”

  Quinn nodded. He went to Cosime and sat next to them. He summoned the tower shield again, and with that, the box disappeared. Quinn caught a glance of Kay slicing the iron pole clean in two before hiding back behind the tower shield.

  In the distance, Quinn saw a literal tree come flying out of the air and crash into the lake. It seemed like Asim and Kole had problems of their own to deal with.

  Gods dammit, this was going to be tough. He quickly replaced the tower shield with a taller box, so that no one would attack them from behind.

  Cosime was breathing heavily.

  “Are you okay?” Quinn asked.

  Cosime shook their head. They sniffled slightly.

  Quinn gently placed his hand on their shoulder. “Hey, it’s gonna be all right. We’re safe in here.”

  They didn’t reply. For a moment, all was silent, until an explosion ravaged the top of his box.

  Quinn shot up, and tried to find the source. He replaced the disintegrating box with the tower shield again.

  Kay seemed to be holding up pretty well. Her jacket easily made any blade bounce off of her, and the knife was able to cleave through most weapons.

  And then a disc of black energy came careening towards her, and hit her in the back of the head. Kay staggered, allowing the guards to leap on her. Quinn turned his head to see the source, and saw a barrage of black discs flying in every which direction, coming from the lake.

  Dale was being held by several demons, who seemed to be an assortment of flickering Cosime and Dale lookalikes, with her head shoved directly underwater. She was flailing desperately, trying to fight off the demons that were piling on top of her. Black discs and lines and other sorts of odd energy shapes were flooding the air.

  Cosime screamed, their tattoo glowing brightly.

  This was bad. This was bad bad bad. It was too late to fight smart. He had to summon Ser Hero. He reached out and—