Warlocks of the Sigil (The Sigil Series Book 1)

by Peri Akman

  He had to carefully read the log of every city he travelled to, just in case someone was there who would send his body into spasms.

  No one knew, though, minus Asim. It would be simple to tell everyone. They’d nod and accept it. Then they’d probably nod even more knowingly at Asim knowing before them, because everyone liked to think that just because they were close friends they were engaging in scandalous activities behind closed doors.

  Hah. Ahahahah. Hah.

  Jerks.

  But then the pity would come. The assumptions he couldn’t do it. The assumption that somehow he was less capable because of every little messed-up factor that made his life just a little harder.

  The illusion was kept, and everyone was happier.

  Except him, of course, but who cared about what he thought?

  The warlocks were drawing the appropriate symbols on the ground, reading from books, chanting.

  It was mostly random. They were guessing for the most part. Normally, Quinn would never go for such a thing. Specificity was important. Plans were important. Knowing exactly what would happen was the most important thing, especially with this.

  But they had a hidden weapon. Him.

  Being the Mimic Mage had its perks. One of them was being able to pick up any magical skill, and being able to identify it fairly competently.

  Through a few years of minor experiments, and a few clever outside sources, he and Asim had been able to deduce several components in how to successfully cast black magic.

  Quinn wasn’t really sure why it was called black magic, but in this case, it fit. If it went right, they’d have direct control over every demon within a couple miles’ radius. Heck, if they were lucky, the entire Alliance.

  He had put too much effort into this to fail. He had done the research. Way too much research. Whose bright idea was it to monitor a warlock’s intake of books anyway? Thank the gods for Pharias and his connections...

  Granted, sure, he was doing exactly what the government didn’t want them to do, but they weren’t doing this to place a curse or a pox or anything of that nonsense.

  This was going to unambiguously help people. Maybe then, once that was all taken care of, they’d realize that wow, just because magic could do bad things didn’t make magic bad! An astounding circumstance!

  It had only taken them several millennia to realize it about the warlocks. Quinn was not interested in waiting that long for this too.

  The whole mess disgusted him every time he thought of it. There was culture to these things. Dozens of civilizations that looked at rituals and made them an important part of daily life. Now it was just yet another alternative form of magic that was being exterminated.

  He shook his head slightly. He couldn’t focus on that. Couldn’t focus on the back deals and debt he had fallen into because of this. He had to focus on the project at hand. Focus on the good being done. Focus on the fact that no matter what, he was surrounded by his friends. By people who cared about him. By people who were willing to stick their necks out for the sake of his wild schemings.

  Quinn cracked his neck. The headache was getting worse. He needed more medicine now.

  “I’m gonna step out for a bit, can you handle things, Zyne, Isani?” Quinn asked.

  The two love birds nodded.

  “Yeah, sure thing, Kole,” Zyne said, smiling gently.

  So many warlocks in one room was a good thing.

  But the cumulative effect was not.

  The second Quinn stepped out of the room, he knew this was not going to end well. He dashed outside of the building, and turned the corner before it happened.

  He gagged, and began to vomit ferociously. The neverending stream just didn’t let up, straining his throat. Every time he coughed, more came out.

  Finally, with his stomach contents absolutely emptied, he straightened forward. He staggered slightly, trying to keep his balance.

  Oh, such a delightful combination of sickness.

  Zyne had a projectile liquid they could expel, ranging from poisons to solidifying objects. This was produced in their stomach.

  That was strike one.

  Then there was one of the other warlocks. Prelsie. She didn’t eat at all. She just photosynthesized everything.

  And that was strike two.

  Then there was Asim, whose stomach composition was just slightly different, as a side effect of how air travelled through him.

  Aaaand strike three from the best friend!

  Why he thought that he could keep anything down in this atmosphere was beyond him.

  He loved them all, but gods, there was something painfully sobering about realizing his own people made him sick twenty-four seven.

  In a way he should be thankful, there were plenty of friends who weren’t here who probably would have made it worse. He couldn’t think of it in his current sickness, but he was sure there was someone who could make it worse.

  Quinn reached into his pockets and took out his flask. A rancid smell came from it.

  There was only enough for a few more sips.

  He’d have to buy more as soon as possible, otherwise he was not sleeping any time soon.

  After a few minutes of collecting himself and making sure he didn’t throw up again, Quinn walked back into the building.

  By this point, it was practically done.

  “Good job, guys,” Quinn said. He was really impressed. They had followed his instructions exactly. He really did have a lot of power here. He found himself grinning from ear to ear.

  “Okay, let’s get started, places everyone!” Quinn ordered. “Lorah, I want you on me, and only me, got that?”

  Lorah saluted Quinn.

  Lorah was a specialized enhancer. Which meant that he could make other people’s powers better, but, in this case, only one person. So Lorah was going to focus on Quinn, and Quinn’s powers were going to easily quadruple in strength. More than enough to carry the ritual with a bit of support.

  Lorah stood with Joldienne, the other enhancer. She was a generalized enhancer, which meant her range was better, but she didn’t give the same boost as Lorah.

  But with Joldienne boosting Lorah, they were definitely going to get some interesting multiplications going on.

  There were entire books on how to use enhancers to reach epic proportions of magic, but they were all rather hard to pull off. After a certain point, it just got plain old dangerous.

  Currently, in their group, there were four effective enhancers. Lorah, Joldienne, and Quinn, twice over.

  Quinn was boosting everyone via Joldienne, and boosting Joldienne specifically, through Lorah. A boosted Joldienne was boosting everyone further, and so on and so forth.

  It was once theorized that with two enhancers, they could bounce off each other to make any spell deadly with epic proportions.

  But, as it turned out, life was not that easy to break. There were different wavelengths, and stacking effects were not additive nor multiplicative.

  It was all very complicated, and in many libraries there were several dozen texts talking about the individual forms of enhancing and how each one interacted with each other.

  Quinn would like to say he had read them all, but that would be a terrible lie.

  From previous experimentation, they all knew that Lorah capped off at double or triple his normal enhancing before it started to dwindle in effectiveness. Joldienne could evidently keep going indefinitely, but after a few stackings she began risking brain aneurysms.

  So all three of them had to be very careful. Luckily for them, this was not the first time they had practiced such a routine.

  “All right, everyone, let’s not destroy the world, shall we?” Asim said before winking at Quinn.

  The ritual started, and everything began to shine.

  Quinn immediately focused on expanding his energies. Gods, there were so many, external, internal, specialized, generalized, every magical affinity was like its own unique little star.

  And b
y star, he of course meant a fireball that burned everything it touched and blinded him every time he tried to look at it.

  But they were little, so it was okay.

  Power emanated from Quinn at unprecedented amounts. Twenty unique powers, all clocking into overdrive upon overdrive, all to break some barrier that was only theorized to exist. Everyone was doing exactly what they were supposed to be doing. They were holding hands and chanting.

  For five minutes, they continued without stopping.

  And then it happened.

  Quinn could see them.

  There were exactly 1,034 demons currently in Larenx. Most were in the sewers, chatting and sleazing about. Some were possessing the mundane folks. None were replacing anyone yet; that was good.

  “Stop!” Quinn uttered.

  And they stopped.

  Every last one of them stopped moving. Unmoving creatures, meant to wreak havoc, powerless because of the cumulation of a scheme that should have never worked. But it had! It had!

  Quinn laughed. “It’s working! Guys, it’s working!” he shouted.

  The demons flailed in confusion.

  But the warlocks surrounding him took breaths of elation and excitement as they continued their own part.

  “Demons, I want you to vacate any bodies you're possessing,” Quinn uttered.

  The demons that were possessing bodies left. Hah! It was working! Oh gods, it was working!

  “Now I want you all to start… uh…” Quinn stopped. He had so many plans, but he realized what was important was making sure all these demons died. He had been thinking of interrogating them, but seeing all of them, seeing into their minds, their scheming and planning, it struck him to his core. They needed to die.

  “Start eating each other, and only each other. Last one eats itself,” Quinn said.

  Asim gave a scandalized cough at this, but no one objected. If it worked once, it could work again.

  One by one, the demons did exactly as ordered. Larenx was quickly on its way to being completely demon free.

  Quinn couldn’t wait until they took this somewhere busier, like Trell. He could only imagine the sheer amount of demons there.

  When suddenly, a voice interrupted his thoughts.

  What in all that is me is going on here?

  Quinn flinched, but held on fast. Had anyone said anything? He didn’t detect any new magic skills in his repertoire, so it wasn’t like there was some warlock guard nearby.

  … WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO MY SERVANTS?

  The voice screamed in his head, but he did not let up. Oh gods. Oh my gods, that was the Dark Queen. She was real. The Dark Queen was real. Quinn had always assumed she was some philosophical construct.

  In the real world, Quinn heard a scream. The circle broke, the concentration broke, and the last hundred or so demons faded away (man those buggers ate each other fast…)

  “Everything’s all right,” Quinn said quickly, trying to assure the warlock that just screamed. “It’s actually pretty cool what just happened—”

  “KOLE!” Asim yelled, pointing down to his feet.

  Quinn looked down. Rolling clouds of darkness seemed to be enshrouding him.

  He blinked down at it, hardly believing it to be real. “Well, that’s just weird,” he said, laughing awkwardly.

  He took a few steps out of the dark cloud.

  “See? Just an illusion,” Quinn stated. He would be lying if he said his heart wasn’t pounding though. But this was the Dark Queen they were talking about! She only existed in stories and the words of the demons. She wasn’t going to get off her metaphorical throne because of some frizzy-haired idiot who—

  His trail of thought was violently interrupted by a sudden pain shooting through his left shin.

  He looked down, and his eyes widened. A void-like pointed tip was jutting out of his leg, like someone had just shot a harpoon at him.

  It pulled. Quinn faceplanted onto the ground, chains wrapped around his shin, digging into the skin, burning right through it. He screamed in pain and sheer terror.

  The other warlocks panicked. Some ran. Some tried to help. Some clutched each other, frozen to the spot.

  Quinn clawed at the ground, desperately trying to get some sort of grip. His fingers dug into the crevices in the wood with all the force that twenty individual affinities could muster.

  Unfortunately, between the force of the wood, the forces of darkness, and the force of his bony frame, his fingers were the ones to give.

  Quinn’s fingers were forcibly ripped from the wood, only to be grabbed midair by Asim of Trell, who seemed to be using the force of a small tornado to keep himself grounded to one spot.

  Asim stared at Quinn, eyes filled with just as much terror.

  His hand started to slip.

  It was at this moment that Quinn realized it was futile. He was going to die. He shut his eyes and let his body go limp. His hands fell out of Asim’s, and the last thing that Quinn heard was his best friend screaming.

  He kept his eyes shut. He had hoped that death would be painless, but he hadn’t been expecting it to be this painless.

  Nothing. He felt… nothing.

  You can open your eyes now, a bored voice commanded him.

  Quinn hesitantly opened a single eye. And then the other, just to confirm what the first eye saw.

  The first sight was a massive throne, easily a hundred feet tall. Sitting on it, was the source of the voice. The Dark Queen.

  Quinn himself was floating above a massive pit, teeming with millions of demons. It was completely dark, and yet Quinn could make out every detail.

  And then, pain.

  Copious amounts of pain. The Dark Queen extended two fingers, and stuck them down Quinn’s throat, pulling something out.

  It was faint and wispy. She shook it, prodded it, dipped it in darkness, and then stuck it back in him. The pain faded.

  There, that’s better.

  “What! What’s better?” Quinn spat out, sobbing. “What did you do to me?”

  The Dark Queen frowned.

  You will refer to me as master from now on.

  “WHAT DID YOU DO TO ME?” Quinn screamed. Pain overwhelmed him again.

  “What… did you do to me… master?” Quinn asked.

  I merely removed all your silly weaknesses. Except for your leg. That will be a problem. But in time you’ll be a very useful weapon, I’m sure.

  The Dark Queen smiled at him.

  At this point, Quinn realized she didn’t even have a mouth to make these expressions with.

  Quinn glanced down at his leg, and nearly puked again. The skin was translucent, and his muscles were visible. The chain and blade wound scars were burned black.

  Now let’s see here… you killed nine hundred and twenty-six of my demons. Plus an assumed, what, extra hundred from past activities? And I just gave you quite a nice job there for your meat sack, so I’ll put that at an even thousand. All coming up to two thousand and twenty-six.

  Quinn blinked in confusion. What? What did this all mean?

  Oh, and of course transportation costs, that’s another five hundred. All in all, you will be serving me for two thousand, five hundred and twenty-six years. I think that sounds perfectly fair. It’s not even slavery if you think about it like that. Just long-term indentured servitude.

  No. Gods. Oh gods no. This couldn’t be happening.

  Now where to send you first… oo! I know! Nillinaukalara! It’s beautiful this time of year!

  Quinn had never heard of such a name.

  The Dark Queen was about to snap her fingers, when suddenly whiteness filled the area.

  Hun! What is the meaning of this! a deep voice snapped.

  A being of pure light. Oh gods. It was the Light King. Maybe he would get lucky and they were still in eternal combat with each oth—

  Did he just call her hun?

  What is the meaning of what? the Dark Queen groaned.

  That! the Light King yelled, pointing at Qu
inn.

  I have a right to get a slave, the Dark Queen replied, her voice a hiss.

  That’s not fair, I want one. We’re equal. And equal is the same! Gimme! the Light King demanded.

  The Dark Queen rolled her eyes, despite not having any eyes, either.

  I can’t. It’s a miracle this one was stupid enough to knock on my door. Am I just supposed to keep her on ice until you get one? the Dark Queen complained.

  Yes! the Light King responded.

  That is fair to neither of us, the Dark Queen snapped.

  Quinn couldn’t believe it. His brain was on fire. This couldn’t be real. He had to be hallucinating. It wouldn’t be the first time. This was all some sort of elaborate hallucination.

  What about her? the Light King asked, pointing to Quinn.

  Oooh, yes, I could order her to go find someone for me! the Dark Queen cackled.

  No! the Light King responded.

  What is it this time?

  You would be getting to control her, and then I would be behind; it’s not fair. the Light King whined.

  Well, I got her first, so no matter what I will always be better, the Dark Queen said.

  Then kill her and we’ll find new ones together! the Light King cried out.

  Quinn’s mind was in turmoil. His first instinct was to beg for life. Anything but death. But his second instinct was to let it happen. He couldn’t live this life. He couldn’t be a slave to the Dark Queen. Not for two thousand years.

  They talked back and forth, arguing incessantly, just like an old married couple. The thought utterly horrified Quinn. Had they always been together? Was it recent? Were the Prismatic Gods really the ones who sealed them away? He had so many questions, all as he counted down the minutes until he died.

  Okay, yes, so it’s settled. You will have limited control for five years, while she finds ME a vassal to match yours. Then I will also give him the allotted five years for generic freedom. However, I will be allowed sixteen percent less control over him during those five years than you will over her in the five years, and in total that will add up to me not needing to destroy my future vassal’s left leg! the Light King said happily.

  The Dark Queen nodded and extended her hand. It’s a deal, then?

  The Light King shook it violently, literally sending shock waves with every motion.