Demon's Throne
Page 43
Eventually, they reached a large circular room. Several grand magisters stood within. Only two chief enforcers were within, including Maliah’s. Shouting and heated voices escaped through the door the moment it entered.
“What the bloody hell are you all shouting about?” Graem yelled. “Are we fucking discussing the future of the League, or debating over a goddamn research paper?”
The room fell silent at Graem’s outburst.
“Indeed. I believe we all know why we’re here,” a towering figure said in a deep baritone—Maliah Jyarvic, the archwarlock of the Malus League.
Maliah had dark skin, which was rare in the archipelago. But that was the least of what made him stand out.
His eyes glowed bright red, just like Graem’s, as did his ruby-crested scepter. His hair and beard was a similar white, but neatly trimmed and kept very short. Unlike Graem, Maliah’s body showed no signs of old age or heavy wear, but the similarities were apparent at a glance. The archwarlock wore a bulky robe covered in golden runes, and simple pants and a collared shirt beneath that.
“War,” Graem said as he strode into the center of the room.
Mave followed him, while Nick ducked across to Maliah’s side. The doors shut automatically behind them.
“What happened to ‘discussing the future of the League,’ Graem?” Maliah asked.
“This is the future of the League,” Graem said. “The last time you pulled something like this, you sent us against Gorgria. Elias died for that mistake.”
“That is something that I regret,” Maliah said, a grimace crossing his face. “You know that as well as anyone. Elias was my friend. Without him, none of us would be able to live here. The Malus League wouldn’t exist. I won’t forgive Gorgria’s bitch-queen for what she did to him.”
Graem held back a scowl. His face had begun to soften, but the moment Maliah swore revenge, it had hardened back into its craggy, fierce appearance.
Elias had been the Grand Magister of the Tower of Black Cognition before Graem, but had died during the Malus League’s ill-fated assault on Gorgria. Afterward, Mave had joined the tower and befriended Graem. There was deep history between Graem and Maliah.
“We’re not here to discuss Gorgria or its bitch-queen,” Maliah said. He waved his scepter, and a newcomer stepped out from the shadows of the room.
Mave recognized her as a Calosceme knowledge devil. But she’d never seen a knowledge devil look so terrified. Mages commonly used knowledge devils as sources of information, sometimes summoning them for weeks or months at a time.
“Then who are we invading?” Graem asked.
“Nobody. Yet.” Maliah smiled, and it promised endless cruelty upon somebody. “But we all know that war must come.”
The other mages murmured, and their voices soon began to rise.
“Silence!” Maliah’s scepter glowed and a booming noise rung out across the room.
Mave’s helmet glowed, and it automatically reduced the intensity of the noise. Most other mages winced. They held their hands to their ears and cursed. Graem was one of the few exceptions.
“This King Talarys has created a problem for us,” Maliah explained. “He has crushed Compagnon and seized our smuggling operation. While we have some sources remaining, the reality is that we are cut off from the rest of the world. Our supplies of magical catalysts are dwindling. Difficult times will soon be upon us.”
“Can’t we work with him?” Graem asked. “If he’s an infernalist, he might be amenable to a deal.”
“Perhaps. But his allies despise us, and his actions have been anything but receptive to us.” Maliah frowned for a moment. “It is disappointing, I must admit. I had hoped that a powerful new mage on Kavolara would be a great ally.”
“We don’t know that he’s an infernalist,” Graem said.
“True.” Maliah stroked his chin for a few moments. “As I said, war must come. We need to gain the strength to provide for ourselves, and not be cowed by Gorgria or others. I have been working on a solution with another grand magister you all know very well. If you’ll follow me, I have somebody to introduce you to.”
Somebody?
Everybody followed Maliah through several chambers, until they were deep inside the inner sanctum of his tower.
Right now, they were deep inside his workshops. This was where Maliah undertook his personal research. Mave had never been this deep.
Maliah used magic to unlock a thick steel door that glowed with dozens of runes. The feeling of the magical wards deactivating rumbled through Mave’s body. A chill ran through her.
What could possibly be inside this room that needed wards as powerful as an entire mage tower?
Maliah stepped inside, but the knowledge devil refused to. The little devil’s body shook as she stood outside the door. Everybody else followed Maliah, but stopped the moment they entered, only to be shoved inside by the next mage.
The reason became clear to Mave when it was her turn.
The corpses of several Calosceme knowledge devils were strewn about the room. Mave recognized them due to their distinctive appearance. Their wrists and throats had been slashed open, and some were missing chunks of flesh.
A truly massive figure, easily twelve feet or more in height, stood inside a glowing red circle. Mave recognized the circle as one used for infernal summoning, but its complexity was orders of magnitude greater than anything she’d seen before.
The infernal inside it wore a strange set of armor swathed in cloth. Elven runes were woven into every inch of the cloth, and even more were engraved into the armor itself. The infernal’s head was that of a hawk, with a beak large enough to bite off a man’s head. Its talons were of a similar size, and likely capable of slicing through steel.
“Gentlemen, I’d like you to meet our newest associate,” Maliah said, gesturing toward the infernal with his scepter, “the Demon Lord Grishaw.”
END OF BOOK 1
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Flip a page or two to read a brief afterword where I talk about where this book came from. There’s a bit of history to this series, which is why I included an afterword.
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Afterword
Many years ago, I wrote a story online. It was a lot of fun. Like most unplanned stories, it went off the rails and died without an ending in sight when real life got in the way. But I learned a lot about writing, found a fun niche, and people enjoyed it.
Years later, I wrote a different story. This one still went off the rails, particularly as I was going through a very rough time in my professional career, but this one had a lot more promise. I wanted to come back to it.
The book you just read (you did read it, right?) is the novelization of that second story that I wrote years ago. Or the beginning of it, anyway. There are more books to come in this series, but there is a planned ending, lots of interesting plot arcs, and a bunch of characters I really want to introduce.
Converting a story that helped shaped my writing, and that was also what eventually led me to publish harem books, wasn’t an easy task. A lot of difficult decisions were made. Characters were cut. Other characters were altered. Plot lines were adjusted.
The other weird
thing was learning just how much this story influenced my other books. I explicitly borrowed certain aspects from this story’s world for the Empire Reforged series, but I didn’t do that for Heretic Spellblade.
So it was fairly strange to see so many similarities. The magically built castle; the reliance on an external source of power; the mysterious guiding being that may or may not be an ally; and the power behind the Labyrinth has its own matching oddness in Heretic. Guess I’ll need to try harder to be original with my next series.
Regardless, Demon’s Throne is something that I loved, and being able to revisit it and finish it is something I didn’t think I’d be able to do. There are major plot holes and problems I can fix, characters that vanished in the original that now get to be fleshed out properly, and the writing is of far higher quality.
I loved writing this book, probably more than anything else I’ve written in a long time. I won’t say that I enjoyed editing it that much, but that’s nothing new. Demon’s Throne will be a great series to write more of, although it would certainly be a lot easier to write if people love it and buy a lot of copies.
Thanks for reading, and I sincerely hope you enjoyed the book.
Please leave a review if you enjoyed the book, as those are of incredible importance. If this is the first book of mine you’ve read, maybe check out my Heretic Spellblade series. You’ll love it, if you loved this book.
K.D.
Books By K.D. Robertson
Heretic Spellblade Series
Heretic Spellblade 1
Heretic Spellblade 2
Demon’s Throne Series
Demon’s Throne
An Empire Reforged Series
Emperor Forged (Book 1)
Emperor Awakened (Book 2)