Warlocks of the Sigil (The Sigil Series Book 1)
Page 39
Quinn winced, bracing himself for the impact. Sure enough, searing pain across his face occurred and then—it was gone. He blinked.
The pain stopped, and Kole crushed the contraption with her hand.
That wasn’t all that stopped. He could scream.
“Consider that gift one of two, Quinn,” Kole said, before looking at her broken walking stick top. “Gift two of two, is that you get all my items. It’s only fair, after all,”
Quinn summoned a mirror. It was weird and bizarre but it was the first thing he could think of. It began to fall, and he grabbed it. Even in the dark, he could make out his face.
Dark skin, grey eyes, thick nose, freckles all over his face.
But no tattoo.
It was gone. She had removed his tattoo.
There was still white on his face in the form of stripes, giving him the appearance of whiskers, but they didn’t glow.
He was free.
“Hey Quinn!” Kole shouted. “CATCH!”
She tossed him the top half of the walking stick.
Instinctively, Quinn caught it. The second it touched his fingertips, the shadows and Kole disappeared, leaving him in a free fall.
For a second he was falling, the next, he was caught by two winged-Ser Heros with a blanket.
“We have saved the damsel in distress!” the two cried out in unison, as they gently lowered him to the rooftop garden.
Once Quinn reached the ground, he banished them.
The orb in the staff shone in the light of the night sky. His grip on it tightened. Starved and weak, he mustered up the ability to summon a lamp. No one else was up here.
He shook the staff. Nothing happened.
He shook it again, mentally commanding all of the stuff to come out.
The result was automatic. His books, his pillow, his spare trinkets landed on the ground. Then six large crates landed on the ground with a thud.
Okay, that was way more than fifty pounds.
One box had assorted items. Syringes, bandages, food, powders, wax, rope, anything Quinn could imagine to solve a problem.
The rest had books. Lots and lots of books.
He picked up one of them.
THE HISTORY OF PRISMATICS
Another—
PHILOSOPHIES AND MORAL CONUNDRUMS: A STUDY OF BLACK AND WHITE
Another—
FORBIDDEN RITUALS
Quinn squinted. That one had a stamp mark on it. He brought it closer to the light.
“Not to be removed from the Grevelt Library”.
Well then.
He continued leafing through the books, but each one had a similar topic. Rituals, or religion, or studies on the Dark Queen and the Light King.
All this time. All that time she had been studying. Quinn had never seen her with a book before. Had she given up? Was she just that good at hiding it?
One by one, he absorbed the boxes back into the broken staff.
Then one caught his eye.
He reached down and pulled a small wooden box from a crate, engraved with a single name: Quinn.
What?
He opened it to find a mess of letters.
Dear Future Victim
I am sorry I am sorry I am sorry
That was all it said for a page.
He frowned, and turned to the next letter.
Dear Future Apprentice
I’m sorry that the reasons I will pick you are less than good. I tried to die, I really did, but She wouldn’t let me. I tried to stop her. I spent five years researching everything I could.
He turned to the next letter.
Dear Quinn of Haldon,
I don’t know when it will happen, but at some point you are going to be taken as the servant to a very powerful being. I don’t know if you’ll find out, but it’s my fault. Don’t trust me ever again.
It kept going.
Dear Quinn,
I’m updating the letter from before to let you know that I was lying to you about how I poisoned that demon in Shorne. Do not ever attempt that.
Another.
Dear Quinn,
It’s my fault that Sennta ended up in a coma. I’m sorry.
And another,
Dear Quinn,
I lied to you again. I told you the voices would be fine.
There were dozens of them, all written in an increasingly erratic writing style.
He closed the box, and put it back in the crate. He tapped the crate with the broken walking stick, and sat down on the cold stone ground.
Finally, he banished the lamp illuminating the grounds. The stars twinkled in the moonlight.
“Are you going to continue crying, Servant of the Light King?” Ser Hero asked from behind him.
“No. I think I’ve cried too much. I’m done for now,” Quinn replied softly.
“What will you do now? We can travel the world, if you want. Together, we will kill as many monsters and demons as possible,” Ser Hero suggested.
Quinn shook his head. “Two thousand years. No matter how much good I’ll do, I’ll have two thousand years to pay it back ten times over.”
“You underestimate my powers!” Ser Hero snapped.
“No. I don’t. And when you’re slaughtering people for two thousand years straight, I have no doubt we could easily destroy civilization,” Quinn replied.
Ser Hero quieted, as if unsure of how to reply.
They sat down, frustrated. “There must be something we can do! You could summon more of me! Fifty of me! Thousands of me!”
Quinn shook his head. “That won’t work, and you know it.”
“We have to try!” Ser Hero cried out. “I refuse to sit here and wait for our fate! It’s… it’s downright unheroic!”
“I didn’t say we wouldn’t try, there’s just no point in trying to brute-force it,” Quinn explained calmly.
“Then what?” Ser Hero asked, their eyes wide with wonder.
“I have enough books for my own private library. I have five years of Kole’s research. But most importantly, I have you,” Quinn said.
Ser Hero puffed their chest out in pride.
“No, not your killing skills, jerk. Your brain. You knew things I didn’t. You were a part of me that I didn’t know I had. But the Light King told me he removed my limits, right? I shouldn’t be making thousands of you, I should be making thousands of unique, living summons,” Quinn stated.
There was a silence.
“That… that could work,” Ser Hero admitted.
Quinn nodded and got up, extending his hand to his killer instinct.
“We’ve got five years to figure out a plan on how to beat the gods. Let’s make it a good one.”