Dread of Spirit: Rise of the Mage - Book One

by Jason Bilicic

  “Of that I have no doubt,” Micah said, frowning as he recalled being totally dominated by Kelc earlier in the day. “But the big priest. We don’t know what he can do.”

  “Yes, but we only need to free Shaia. I will delay him, lead him away…something. You just make sure she escapes.” Kelc turned to face the vampire. “I’m not asking you to risk yourself overmuch. Just help her to safety and run like fury. Just go. Carry her if you have to.”

  Micah wanted to object. These priests could kill him. His eyes dipped to the snowy ground for a moment before rising up to meet Kelc’s. He nodded. “I can give a short attack and then escape with your sister, I believe, if you create enough distraction.”

  “I’ll create distraction,” Kelc told his gaunt companion. “They’d be safer had they kidnapped me.”

  “I’ll attack the one holding her chain. He is a man but he is likely a skilled priest. If they detect me I should be able to tell before I begin and I can return to you. If they don’t, then you will have to sense for me and when you do…whatever you’re going to do, I’ll attack.” Micah unconsciously began flexing his fingers. “I’ll take at least one of them with me.”

  “You get her,” Kelc said. “You’re sure you can hit him and get her?”

  “I must,” Micah responded. “She’s held by iron chain. I cannot sunder iron. It absorbs spirit. That’s why it is used.” The vampire waved at the skiver on Kelc’s belt. “You should know this well enough.”

  Kelc considered the black knife. He had at least his father’s spirit held captive within the metal. “Something noble,” his father had said. Rescuing his own daughter? Kelc thought. He nodded. “Yes.” He pictured his father, but even now he could not stop memories of getting beaten by the man from accompanying those last moments where Varrl had obviously given his life to aid Kelc.

  “Hells.” A realization for his current straits overwhelmed the young man. How had his life changed so drastically in such a short time? The transformation from Symean son to full blown dark practitioner had been a quick one. Stranger still was that everyone knew of it, everyone in the family at least. “Except Kreg.”

  Micah glanced at Kelc upon hearing him, but looked away, back in the direction of the Thannonites. Kelc also looked in their direction though they lay behind a veil of heavy snow, but he suddenly wondered about his brother.

  Can Kreg feel these giant waves of spirit rolling across the grasslands? He was east of us. Is he out here somewhere looking for all of us? These evil priests, Micah, me and Shaia. “None of us should have ever been in this fool nation. How can all of this have even happened?” he mumbled to himself. Everything he had been taught about Symea seemed to be crumbling in some manner or another. “And all of it in what? A half year? Greeching hells.”

  He drew his skiver from his belt and held it tightly. Would that he could simply use his father’s courage for a time, that might be enough. His hand trembled as he considered telling Micah to begin his efforts to approach the priests.

  “They have your sister, fellow,” Micah said, his eyes moving from the black dagger to Kelc’s face. “They have her and they are torturing her.” The vampire nodded, his eyes reflecting yellow for a moment as he cocked his head in a way that suggested Kelc needed to grow resolved on attacking. “You need to release your fear and wield anger.”

  Kelc couldn’t be sure but he thought the side of Micah’s face pulsed, as if it suddenly bulged outwardly for a moment.

  “Find the rage,” said the gaunt man, turning from Kelc, his hands clenching and unclenching. “Find it and use it for all its worth.” Micah stretched his head to a side, forcing it to visibly shake as if vibrating until he managed to straighten up. His voice gained an airy hiss as he spoke, looking straight away from his companion. “I am going. I await your attack.” The vampire leapt forward into the blizzard, vanishing in an instant, but his voice seemingly drifted back to Kelc’s ears. “Now, fellow. They’ll kill her.”

  Kelc stood alone in the snow, his skiver in both hands. He shook, though whether from fear or cold he could no longer tell. “Damn it,” he growled. “Damn it all!” He ripped his scimitar from its sheath and slashed at the snowy air. “It’s time,” he announced. “Shy. I love you. I do. Forgive me if…” He stopped. His blades again tore through the air, catching wet spots as they obliterated snowflakes. “Just…Forgive me.”

  Shaia focused on placing one foot in front of the other. Sometimes she intentionally placed her feet in the deep prints lefts by the men in front of her, giving her mind anything to focus on other than a future that ended with her body being ravaged by her captors and her violent death.

  Several times she had attempted to attach threads of spirit to the Thannonites, but for reasons she could not explain, her efforts fell from them as if there existed nothing in these men with which she could relate.

  “Faster,” growled Alec, the priest who currently held her chain, as he gave a quick jerk, nearly toppling Shaia. He shook his head as he looked away from her, his braid of reddish-brown hair swiping across his back. “Stupid…” The words fell beneath hearing.

  Shaia had run out of tears and her throat felt raw from sobbing, from sucking in great pulls of freezing air to fuel her sorrow. Now, she wanted only to die quickly. She had a plan, such as it was. She would anger them until one of these men lost control and either knocked her unconscious or killed her. With this lot, it shouldn’t take long.

  “Stop.” Kyn looked back through the line of priests, his black eyes driving fear through even his own men. Shaia shivered and lowered her eyes. “What the greeching hells? Do you feel that?” Kyn waited mere moments. “Herron?”

  “Yes,” said the brown-haired priest crisply. “It’s a challenge.”

  “A challenge,” Kyn said, sneering. “A name. Var…” He narrowed his eyes as if listening to something, covering most of his obsidian orbs. “Varrlson. Kelc Varrlson. This is no demon.”

  Shaia nearly passed out as her heart leapt in her chest. As if a shock passed through her entire existence, she rocked to the side and then the other as her sense of balance, sense of everything, seemed to have been altered all at once. Kelc, she thought. Dear spirits, my Kelc.

  Shaia reached out with her spirit, but the string again fell impotent, unable to seek her brother. So far as that sense could tell her, he remained dead. She raised her chin and looked at Kyn.

  “It’s a man,” said the lead priest. “He can wield spirit, that much is certain. This should be interesting, to say the least.”

  “We were all men once, Kyndron,” Herron said. “Are you sure this one hasn’t made a contract? Half the flow seeks him, it feels like.”

  “He’s a man,” rasped the tall priest, his lightless eyes dropping to Herron. Even the whites of his eyes were Black, Shaia saw. “Don’t ever question me. I’ll hand you his still-beating heart to prove that he still needs one.”

  “I…okay. But he wields a lot of power.” The brunette bent over enough to look at the smallest of their band. “And you, Grub, you greeching little skeesh pile! You told us there was nothing else out there after two of us felt that strange rebound off of the Delving. You said, ‘it is just the echo off of each other’s casting,’ you did.” Several priests laughed at Herron’s imitation of the smaller man’s voice. “We may have had a chance to catch this Kelc Varrl…whoever dazed or injured. Now he’s greeching screaming a challenge to Kyn.”

  Grub responded only by drawing a long curved sickle from his belt. He held it at the ready as his breath issued out of him in larger and larger plumes.

  “Enough! Both of you.” Kyndron snapped. “He’s moving around us.” The tall priest slowly spun to his left, turning only a bit as if his enemy passed the line of priests by only a stone’s throw away, which might be possible, Shaia thought, with the heavy snow continuing. “I could shoot him with a crossbow if we could see.” The big man sneered. “He right out there.”

  “Want me to go after him?” asked another
priest, one that had said not a single word since Shaia had been captured. A manicured beard, brown with streaks of grey, covered most of his face, and black armor, from his helm to his plated boots, covered the rest of him.

  “No, Errit,” Kyndron said with a quick nod to the man. “Let’s see what this fool has in store for us. Maybe he wants nothing more than to pass us by and exert some sort of territorial claim. We’re heading back out of Symea anyhow, or so it would seem to any observing us.”

  The heavily armored priest grunted agreement while pulling two bladed maces from his back.

  Shaia looked behind her. The priest, Kerrig, one of those that had beaten her, walked there, but behind him, only white snow. In front of her stood Alec, one hand filled with a coppered sickle, the other holding the chain that reached back, spit at a heavy iron circlet which attached the links which strung back to her shackles.

  Kelc will attack somehow, Shaia thought, and I must do what I can to escape. He’s only doing this because of me. I must stand capable. Stand capable.

  Hysteria seemed to rise in her, replacing the sense of imbalance and light-headedness. Now, every passing moment seemed to stretch forward infinitely as if time lost all meaning. She and everyone around her stood still, only the plumes of hot breath gusting from most of the priest’s mouths that rose past falling snow gave any sense of reality to the moment.

  “He’s stopped moving,” Herron announced. “I can feel him reaching to us. Shields!”

  Several among the Thannonites raised their hands and began a chant under their breath. Whatever they did caused the hair on Shaia’s neck to stand on end.

  She looked back at Kerrig. He chanted. So did Alec. In front of Alec, Grub simply stood, a scowl carved across his features, a sickle in each hand. Herron and Kyndron also remained still, speaking no words, their eyes looking out to the southeast.

  “That’s different,” Herron said, “and yet…”

  “A dead,” Grub hissed, dropping into a battle stance, his sickles snapping into readiness. His eyes reflected a deep red for a moment as he frenetically scanned his surroundings. “Kyn! Lyatum!” The short bald man pointed just in front of Shaia with one of his sickles as he readied himself to pounce.

  His forehead bulged just before a spout of dark ether erupted simultaneously from his forehead and mouth, his entire head exploding into a cloud of black droplets.

  Herron howled before Grub’s body toppled, the brunette’s hands and feet exploding from his body, spouts of lyatum erupting from each appendage. “Het! No. Ehhh!” The undead priest suffered as he collapsed, his essence drawn from him.

  Faster than thought, the oily clouds of vapor coming from both Grub and Herron seemed to harden into sheets and collided into Will, passing though the man from each side.

  “Skeesh!” The word came out of him, high-pitched and weak before his torso and legs began to fall to the ground, cut cleanly from one another.

  All of that faster than they could blink.

  Just before Shaia’s eyes, a haze of purple vapor speedily rose. It coated Alec just before a man materialized, or not a man.

  Jaws came together ripping Alec’s throat in half, blood spraying from his neck forcefully.

  So contorted and enraged was the face before Shaia that she hardly recognized Micah. His clawed hand effortlessly bashed Alec’s dying body to the side and then, even as Kyndron and Errit charged up behind him, Micah turned to Shaia. Chain links clanked as they slid from Alec’s limp hands into the bloody snow.

  Rich brilliant scarlet ran freely from the vampire’s mouth, a mouth now filled with jagged grey teeth. “Come,” he said, his voice a guttural stridency that spiked her with fear.

  Kerrig’s heavy gloves closed around Shaia’s neck, tearing her backwards as she screamed, but Micah was much faster. One blood-coated finger, its dead flesh now capped by a dark steely claw, snaked out and struck Shaia’s forehead. Shaia’s scream cut off abruptly.

  Blackness.

  The roar of rage that cut through the snow-filled air nearly dropped Kelc to the icy ground. Not only a voice, but a spirit-based wave of power fueled by that rage crashed across the snowy grassland away from the big priest.

  Kelc fought, his eyes blazing purple. His hands, animated as if their motion helped to organize his thoughts, whipped through the air futilely trying to perform the actions his mind could.

  Fifty paces away, Kelc ripped the remaining essence of two undead into a coil which he flung around the tall priest’s neck, drawing it tight enough to shear the man’s head from his body.

  Instead, the Thannonite seemed to challenge Kelc’s control of the energy, cleaving the noose in half with angry willpower as he charged, bolting through the snow straight at the source of the attack.

  Kelc drew the vampiric lyatum into him and solidified it just before the charging priest, catching one of his legs in the thigh, gouging his flesh and dropping him.

  But the priest cartwheeled back to his feet, slowing little if at all, his powerful legs bludgeoning a path through the snow. “Where are you, Kelc Varrlson!” came the thunderous cry, the voice so potent and hideous to hear that it knocked Kelc from his spirit sense even as he backpedaled.

  Kelc cast his senses back out for only a moment, finding the large priest and the remaining remnants of spirit he could use before realizing an important truth: This priest could only find him when he used spirit.

  Kelc swiped a mark through the snow, hurling spirit straight south in the hopes of creating a false trail and halted his spirit sense again, the oncoming enemy a mere twenty paces away. He then dived into the snow, burrowing into it, covering himself despite how freezing cold he already felt.

  All fell silent. Kelc knew the priest stood very near. A tingling in his groin echoed his nerves, a strange buzz he felt whenever he hid from anyone. Slowly, the sound of his own beating heart grew so loud to him that he wondered why his enemies couldn’t hear it.

  “Is he…” called a voice.

  “Shhhh.” One of them shushed the other harshly.

  Occasionally, Kelc heard snow creak and crunch under a boot from where he hid, but without accessing his spirit sense, he couldn’t tell where his enemies were.

  The moment stretched. Kelc lay in the snow afraid to move, afraid to even breathe. He clutched his skiver and his father’s spirit still lay within it, but what he could do to this opponent, he had no clue. He’d obliterated the two deads and then used their spirit to create a sort of blade that cut another man down. He tried a similar attack on the big priest and not only did the spirit blade stop at his flesh, the man had then disallowed it, forcing the attack back off of him.

  He is still there, Kelc told himself. This man is unnatural. He is still standing there, a few steps away, waiting for me to make a mistake. Just wait, Kelc thought. Shaia is safe. Micah took her underground. Just wait. Wait him out.

  Inside of him, a small discontent urged Kelc to check for his enemies. He could just dip into his spirit sense for the briefest moment. He could sit up slowly and try to look around. But he didn’t. He squashed the feeling. Wait, he told himself again. Just wait.

  The discontent grew. With time, the smallest and most fleeting thought or emotion can grow. This time, the need to know what was going on rooted deeper into Kelc with anxiety.

  No longer did he just feel he needed to check on things, but he began to consider paths unplanned. What if this big priest can force Micah and Shy back out of the ground? What if he can just attack them there? And I just lay here while they are killed?

  “No,” he breathed. The big priest was no normal man. Kelc thought of him more as a wolf, the greyish brown sort that would occasionally cross the plains. Patient.

  Kelc had once watched a wolf spy a Caldove in a tree, the large bird picking at a seed cone or something. The wolf settled under the bird and became invisible, its colored fur camouflaging it into the surrounding grass. Kelc’s father said that it would wait until the Caldove dropped to the base of
the tree to get fallen seeds and pounce. “Patience,” Varrl told him, “is the first virtue of a great warrior. Impatience will get you killed.”

  Now, those words rolled through his thoughts time and again, fighting against the anxiety and discomfort that besieged his patience.

  Images of Shaia being beaten and tortured paraded through his mind, her screams and wails alive in his waking dream. Micah, too, suffered for his efforts to help Kelc. The big priest held the vampire before him, drawing the ether from him, using his massive black sword to make incisions in the vampire’s flesh so he could draw the essence from him.

  No. Kelc moved his thoughts to his mother. He wondered where she was and hoped that she had arrived at the Honnok Peak of the Karrod mountain range. To be their guardian woman. What was the title she used? He couldn’t remember the word. He could picture his mother, see her tired green eyes, see the warmth and concern in them that he’d failed to notice for years. “Gen Jod,” he whispered, remembering. He hoped she was in some distant mountains with her family, whoever they were. He hoped she felt free. Happy.

  Freedom, he thought. How much difficulty the idea had caused him. Yearning for it had resulted in him chafing in his life, agitated by almost every restriction put upon him as a growing boy. Then, when he was forced to live free, the world responded with trial after trial. Perhaps, he considered, it was easier to live at home and deal with his father’s temper.

  A shiver passed through him suddenly and he decided that the air must have been dropping in temperature. Maybe it is after dark. Maybe it is time to get up, he told himself, or maybe not he temporized. Get up, he yelled at himself, his aching and frozen body motivating him. It is time.

  Kelc bit back his own grunting and moaning as he started to shift beneath the snow. He pulled his knees up slowly, trying to get them beneath him. He slowly raised his rump, lifting most of his weight with his elbows. Once he had his knees under him, he began to rise into a sitting position.