Twisted Magics (Terra Chronicles Book 1)

by J. C. Jackson

  It was quick, but again I caught Rathal’s glare in Silver’s direction. It had to be an arcane versus divine disagreement between them. That was the only logical reason I could come up with. Though Silver did not have a problem with me. I pushed the thought aside as it was only a distraction.

  Papers and books were scattered about. Likely he did not care about hiding them since few would be able to read it.

  I spoke first, moving a few pages to see more of the arcane theory, “This describes the arcane side of those bombs at least.”

  Silver simply nodded and he looked paler. I would have to ask him later what was written.

  “Looks like we have our man. Now just to find our Archmage. Ket, I don’t care if you wake Retanei. Get on the phone and describe to her the last location that you saw him teleport to,” Savanas ordered.

  Time passed quickly. I called Retanei as ordered. Initially, she sounded groggy, but it disappeared quickly when I started explaining why I called. After, I started reading more of the papers, but Savanas stopped me. She wanted everything collected - we could go through it back at the office.

  As we started to leave with evidence bagged, the captain stopped me. “I’m man enough to admit when I was wrong. Sorry, kid. I’m damn glad you are on our side.”

  I smiled and bowed to him. I was not sure what to say at this point. We had so much work ahead of us that I tabled my curiosity about the ship. I had a big enough puzzle to put together in the evidence bags.

  ~*~

  Once we got back to the office, I started copying the documents left behind by now Archmage Browne.

  Silver watched as I touched each document with one hand while keeping my other hand on the computer, using my power to copy the information. I could tell he had questions, but he held his tongue.

  Rathal, however, did not and asked, “When did someone develop spells to use with technology?”

  I needed to concentrate and took a moment to signal for him to wait. This would not take long, but unlike the books I copied as full volumes, I did notes individually. Also copying directly to the computer took more effort than my old method of storing information.

  Once I finished, I put in a call to Lockonis.

  “Heya, Ket. What can I do for you?” Lockonis’ usual chipper self greeted me.

  Taking a deep breath, I organized my thoughts to give her warning her within requesting the favor. I said, “I’ve added some new files to the library. They’re from Browne - he’s the caster.”

  “Oh, this should be juicy. I’ll fix the files so they show up in searches. By the way, thank you so much for the horrors we received this morning. I wasn’t that fond of breakfast,” Lockonis said.

  I forgot the files were being uploaded to the central servers. Though access would have been limited to the team working on it and of course those who had access to everything like Vince and Lockonis. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know anyone else was reviewing the case.”

  “Vince got me started this morning to see if I couldn’t give some help from this end. Warped use of magic,” I could clearly hear the revulsion in Lockonis’ voice. “Listen, Ket, I don’t know if anyone has told you you’re doing an amazing job - especially given the circumstances. Just don’t put yourself at unnecessary risk. I don’t think any of us were prepared for this. Necromancers? That’s something we haven’t seen since the war. Any clue on where this is coming from? There have been no warning signs at all.”

  Dark auburn strands fell in my vision. I brushed the stray lock of hair out of my face and looked up at Silver, signaling to him to pull up a chair. I said, “Not really. I saw something in the documents referencing either ‘True Gods’ or ‘Ancient Gods’ the wording is weird.”

  Lockonis noted, “I’ve read Savanas’ interview with the first officer who said something about he overheard the crew members who volunteered to deliver Browne his food talking about them also. He thought it might just be in relation to some new video game. They were among the dead.”

  I had not read those documents. Perhaps I should take the time to read the rest of the case file. It might have a piece of the puzzle I was missing.

  The typing in the background got louder from Lockonis. She changed topics, “In those pictures, that Elven guy with the silver hair - he’s cute. What’s it like to work with a paladin?”

  I looked up at Silver who now sat at the side of my desk between me and Rathal. I felt the heat rise in my face. I did not understand my reaction, but I was dealing with Lockonis and she often could get past my barriers and confuse me. I redirected, “Um, I better get back to work.”

  “Awe, you’re no fun. He’s right there, isn’t he? I bet you’re turning a lovely shade of red. Okay, I’ll be done in about half an hour. Bye!” Lockonis said and hung up before I could say anything further.

  “Are you feeling ill? Your face just became flushed,” Silver asked and put the back of his hand to my forehead.

  I shifted away, but caught the glare that was coming from Rathal. It was annoying and I wished that they would work out their problem, but it was not my place to interfere.

  I said, “I’m fine. Lockonis just likes to tease me when she can. She’s going to fix the files and make them available for search.”

  “This library, you said it was from the Arcane College?” Silver asked. Rathal rolled his eyes in the background.

  Savanas was busy, but she likely saw everything going on. It was something I noticed in the short time I had been here.

  Ah, yes, I could see where this might be viewed as a problem. “It’s a copy of the Arcane College’s library. They don’t have access to this one. Oh, shoot, I wanted to ask her about that.”

  “Ask her about what?” Savanas asked. Well, I was not wrong about her perception.

  “The Arcane College’s involvement. They were still referring to him as Magister, but he couldn’t have had those robes without direct authority from the Circle of Magi,” I said.

  Darius passed by my desk, tossing a bottle of juice in the air and catching it as he walked. He stopped to ask, “You think the Arcane College was trying to cover for him?”

  “It doesn’t make any sense. Have they sent a representative to deal with the situation?” I asked. He might not know, but it was worth a shot.

  Darius paused and looked back at Savanas who gave the conversation her full attention. He asked her, “I haven’t heard of anyone, have you?”

  Savanas shook her head and got on the phone.

  While we waited, Silver looked at me and finally asked, pointing at the computer, “There are arcane spells to put information on there?”

  Rathal’s curiosity overrode his dislike of Silver temporarily. Though I heard a low growl from his direction. I had told him to wait, but I needed to finish my train of thought at the time. Then I had gotten distracted.

  “Sort of?” It was a difficult subject to explain to someone not well versed in arcane theory. I tried anyway, “There is a program I can send the information to but you need both the science and the magic to work in tandem. Since silicon is a crystalline substance, it takes information well and the program is able to read and process the information I’m storing. It’s a little more complicated than that, but…”

  I could tell by Silver’s face I lost him. Rathal raised an eyebrow.

  “It was a lot of trial and error to get it to work,” I admitted. And some sleep-deprived inspiration.

  Darius still hung by my desk, shaking his head. “Even I don’t know that much about computers.”

  The phone on my desk rang, causing me to jump slightly. Who would know me here? “Terran Intelligence Organization,” I said, not wanting to identify myself.

  “Oh good, you’re there. Savanas isn’t answering her phone.” It was Retanei and she sounded as if she had just run a race.

  “Savanas is on the phone with someone else. Are you okay?” It worried me to have her calling like this. Patience was something Retanei was well known for.

 
“Yeah, we’re fine. I found the clearing you described and wanted to report in. Can you put me on speaker?” It was common for Retanei to refer back to herself and her companion.

  There were simply too many buttons on this phone and I looked up to Darius for help. I said, “It’s Retanei. She wants me to put her on speaker.”

  Savanas finished her conversation and started making her way over.

  Darius took the handset from me and pushed a couple of buttons before hanging it up. He told her, “You’re on speaker now.”

  Even Brad and Rathal came over to listen.

  Savanas said, “Alright, you’ve got the entire team here. What do you have?”

  “We found the clearing that Ket described. There were nine people here last night. The camp was cold by the time we got here. I’ve tried tracking their path, but the fresh snowfall erased most of their tracks. I’m about a mile from the road out of the city and couple of miles northwest of the church.”

  Silver’s face paled at the mention of the church. I was guessing it was his church. It was pretty far out of town, but it was not uncommon for non-Elven run sanctuaries to be located away from the cities. They were not the most welcome in Elven territory, even in a mixed racial city like this.

  Retanei continued, “We scoured the area heading up to the church and out to the road, but we can’t find any other sign of them. It could have been a diversionary tactic.”

  “Alright, head back and we’ll figure out where we’re going from here.” Savanas then picked up the phone’s handset and set it back down, ending the call. Then she looked at me and waited.

  I almost forgot I was the supposed expert on mages, and specifically Arcane College mages. I said, “An Archmage could teleport a group. His distance would be shortened to a few miles with that many people. It would take a lot out of him unless he stored the cast in something, but he would still need prior knowledge of the area. Maps would only be able to give him so much information - it would almost be a blind teleport if that was all he used.”

  Now I lost everyone.

  Rathal was the one to speak first, “I thought stored casting was a lost art.”

  “The information still exists in the Arcane College’s library. I did some research on it for someone a number of years ago. I use a modified version of the spell to store information.” I went to pull up the library on the computer, but forgot it was down while Lockonis worked on it.

  Pulling my Arcane College pin out of my pocket, I got up. When I had enough room, I placed it on the floor and pulled my hands up and out from it, expanding a portion of the information stored in there.

  I also caught the thread leading back to me again, but ignored it for the moment.

  I explained, “In this format the information is more difficult to sort through, but…”

  I swiped at the faded versions of the books before me, sending them spinning around the room. I looked at the information somewhat recently when Lockonis and I were trying to convert the information to digital.

  “Um… here,” I said and pulled the book out - its color became opaque. The book hovered before me as I paged through it. “This spell is the one. The spells that could be stored would depend on the caster’s ability. It could be stored in any mundane item.” I turned it around to show the others. They all looked at me like I had grown another head.

  “Are you sure you were just a Researcher?” Brad asked and looked at me skeptically.

  Rathal glared at him and came closer to look at the book. He commented, “Wouldn’t it make sense for a Researcher to have easier access to a library of information?”

  “You have a point there. I just haven’t seen anything like it outside of the holographic projectors that science division has been toying with,” Brad admitted and seemed embarrassed by his previous statement. “Sorry, kid.”

  I just shrugged in response. At this stage, I did not care about the questions anymore.

  Rathal paged back and forth for a bit before saying, “This is way beyond me, but I can get the gist of it. So any item?”

  I pointed back to my pin sitting innocently on the floor and said, “Pretty much, but at least when it came to storing information, I found crystalline materials to hold the most. Metals being another good one.”

  Silver was the one who asked next, “You mean gems and the like? Jewelry?”

  “Yes, and it is innocuous enough that no one would think it out of place,” I agreed.

  Savanas leaned her hip against her desk. She said, “And when we spoke with him, he was wearing some of the gaudiest jewelry I have ever seen.” Her desk phone chose that moment to ring.

  Rathal gave me back the book and I returned everything to the pin.

  Silver reached down and picked it up, turning the pin over in his hand for a moment before giving it back to me. He said, “I really didn’t see that one coming.”

  I had ignored it before when I was intent on getting to the information, but the thread was bothering me. Turning the pin over in my hand, I did not see what could be creating it, but it was another mystery for another time.

  “Sorry, the digital library was down while Lockonis was updating it. I rarely use it anymore,” I said as I put the pin back in my pocket. “The digital library is easier to search and also contains my more current research.”

  “The Admiral is on his way up,” Savanas called out. I was not sure if that meant I needed to do anything special like salute or be prepared for a barrage of questions.

  Before I could decide on a course of action, Admiral Jonathan Scott strode out of the elevator as if in command of this office.

  Savanas moved to greet him, “Good of you to come, Admiral. We were hoping you could enlighten us to the Arcane College’s involvement.”

  “Outside of getting a call from one of their Circle of Magi representatives every hour on the hour to either register further complaints or check on the status of resolution? Maybe you can tell me why they thought they could order me to pull the TIO off and especially that one,” the Admiral said and pointed at me.

  Savanas did not seem overly happy about hearing that piece of information. She said, “Browne was not a Magister, but an Archmage. If Ketayl wasn’t here, we wouldn’t have known. He’s also the caster responsible for the bombing.”

  That settled the Admiral. “Good, now I have something I can use. I don’t suppose you have him in custody.”

  Savanas crossed her arms over her chest, keeping her face neutral. “No, my Rural Tracker is on her way back. Ketayl was able to track his last teleport. The camp was cold, but we have a search area now.”

  “Keep me informed.” With that the Admiral left.

  There was so much more to the investigation, but he seemed only interested in the end result. The big picture was what I was worried about. There must be more to it than bombing a restaurant. The chaos left was bad, but something told me the Archmage had a different end goal.

  ~*~

  Now what? We had the identity of the man we were looking for. Well, I thought we did. For him not to be in the records…

  I checked the library again - it was back up. Pulling up the records regarding the specific topic, I start following the trail I created to try and remember who I did the research for. Brown. William Bernard Brown to be precise. That’s why he kept emphasizing the spelling of his last name. Why would he try to deceive us on his name?

  Silver had moved to the desk across from me and was going over the documents we recovered. I must have made some sort of noise because he asked, “You have something?”

  “I have the Archmage’s real name. I remembered doing the research for someone years ago on stored spells. I generally ended up with workloads from the Archmages, which is why it hadn’t clicked before,” I said and wrote down the information, translating it into common.

  Retanei had gotten back a short while ago. She was resting and warming up after giving her full report. She asked, “So who is this guy?”

  “It was
the same name Rathal pointed out before. William Bernard Brown - no E on the end of his last name. He enrolled in the Arcane College roughly 30 years ago at the age of 23. He rose quickly through the ranks and…” I clicked through the information as fast as I could, Rathal came to hover over my shoulder.

  He leaned down to whisper, “So, does this mean you owe me?”

  I rolled back just enough in my chair to get Rathal to move and ignored him as I continued my report, “He has also been sent out on multiple assignments, but mostly to be a liaison with specific local governments - all in Human Territory. This was likely his first military assignment.”

  I probably should not have done that to Rathal, but his closeness only made it harder to maintain my control. This investigation needed to end soon as I was not certain how long I could hold. I needed to do more than minor casting to try and lessen the strain, but I doubted they had the facilities here to let me unleash. I actually was starting to miss Lockonis’ arcane combat training sessions.

  Savanas stepped in and told me, “Get the information to Darius so he can put out a bulletin. Rathal, stop bothering Ket and go get lunch.”

  He grumbled something as he moved away, stopping by his desk to grab his coat before storming out. I watched Rathal go as I handed the information to Darius who waited patiently in front of my desk.

  Darius gave me a smile and a salute before taking off with it.

  I wondered how effective a bulletin was going to be when dealing with an Archmage that was teleporting.

  “Retanei, go get something to eat and get some rest. You’ll need to be hunting again soon,” Savanas ordered her.

  It took Retanei more effort than I had seen before to get herself up. “Come on you two, you need to eat. Besides, there’s safety in numbers with the media vultures about.”

  Turning to Savanas to make sure she did not mind, she waved us off.

  I quickly saved my work and logged out, hurrying to catch up with the others.

  After hitting the button in the elevator, Retanei leaned back against the wall and closed her eyes - her arms folded over her chest. Silver was putting me under intense scrutiny for some reason. It felt like forever to get down to the main floor. I was the first out the door.