Oathbreaker: A Dark Fantasy Web Serial-Chapter 15Arc 7: : To Hunt A Wizard

“Here.” Delphine raised her lantern and pointed to a section of wall. We stood inside the cramped confines of a catacomb tunnel, one of a labyrinth of similar corridors lying beneath Tol’s streets. It wasn’t quite as rank as Garihelm’s sewers, but the stale air still cloyed at my senses.

So did the ghosts. They practically boiled inside the niches, and more than once I’d had to use my powers to scare them away before Delphine noticed anything. Ghosts in burial grounds are normal, but the way I drew them was not.

Moving cautiously, mindful of my armored bulk and the narrow space, I shuffled up next to the scholar and studied the innocuous wall. “This will lead into the complex?”

The Priory had been in Tol a very long time. More than a century, and while they’d centered their operations in the northeast they’d always maintained an enclave here. This included a dungeon hidden beneath one of the town’s churches near the southern gate.

It was the morning after my encounter with the two immortals at Lyda’s Cathedral. I hadn’t slept. Neither, apparently, had Delphine. Her complaints about it taking days to find a way into the Inquisition’s storehouse turned out to be pessimistic.

“It’s an old escape route,” the doctor told me. “The wall is weak. The priorguard had it blocked off when they were restoring the old Inquisition complex beneath the town. Apparently they kept getting attacked by rattlewights. The catacombs in Tol are unusually active, and don’t like being disturbed.”

I glanced back at the tunnel behind us. “You could have warned me.”

Delphine sniffed. “What, are you afraid of the dead? Aren’t you some kind of warrior?”

“Most soldiers are afraid of the dead,” I noted dryly.

Delphine turned to face the wall. “Guilty consciouses, maybe?”

This woman really didn’t like me. Sighing, I followed the direction of her gaze. “Is this place going to be guarded?”

“This section? It shouldn’t be. Over the past year the Inquisition moved its focus to the Underbarracks, which is in the northern part of the town. They do connect, though, so I’d suggest we be quick.”

“Stand back.”

She did. Taking a deep breath, I reached into the shadows and found that cold place Catrin had shown me. It hurt to touch it, like sinking my hand directly into frozen water in the deepest, darkest part of winter. But I’d gotten better at it, faster, and pulled Faen Orgis out in a single smooth motion. Miasma still clung to it, sloughing off like muddy water as I lifted it up onto one shoulder.

Delphine stared at the weapon, clearly taken aback. “That’s… a faerie arm? Perhaps you are an elf.”

“When you decide for certain, let me know.” Taking several steady breaths, I focused my will into the weapon and reversed it in my hand, so the triangular wedge on the back of the blade faced frontward.

Reinforced with aura, the Hithlenic Bronze that made up my axe’s blade was tough as diamond. I used a minor Art, one not dissimilar from a technique a Glorysworn knight had used on me during my flight from Vinhithe almost two years before. It sent a tremor of energy into the point of impact, like a concentrated, precise explosion.

Relic Breaker had been a contribution by an ancient Knight of the Alder Table as a means to destroy powerful wards and cursed artifacts, not to break down flimsy walls in dusty catacombs. I used the tools at my disposal, even if they did have fancy names.

I struck the wall once. The stone shuddered as a molten glow spider-webbed out from the point of impact, then the wall collapsed forward with a shower of dust and more noise than I would have liked. Delphine and I both covered our faces, coughing and backing away from the cloud.

“I hope no one heard that,” the doctor grumbled as the dust settled.

“That spell isn’t meant for subtlety,” I shot back. I wanted to add that I’d used it to tear down castle gates before, and that what I’d just done took an immense amount of control. A pointless brag. I resisted the impulse.

Delphine didn’t reply. She scooted past me and moved into the space I’d just opened up, her expression focused. She wore the same functional physiker robes as the night before, though she’d added some tools and other accessories. Her light brown hair was done up in a bun, revealing her high forehead and the slender lines of her face.

We stepped into a large chamber. While there were some signs of neglect, it had clearly seen some use not long before. The ceiling was vaulted, there were new braziers set in the walls, and it lacked the same atmosphere of long decay as the tunnels behind us. I saw no signs of burial niches, telling me this was a more functional space. Several hallways spread out in different directions.

“That one leads to a set of tunnels that will take you to the Underbarracks,” Delphine said as she pointed at the left hallway. She then nodded to the right. “That goes to the spaces Master Hexer and I both used for our research. There are labs, studies, some storage vaults. I have material there the Priory has refused to let me collect.”

She caught my stare and scowled. “What?”

“How long were you and Lias working together?” I asked.

Delphine shrugged. “The Priory recruited me in the fall, just before winter really started, so a few months? I was living in the Amberhorns at the time, in a small village.”

“You know what they’ve been doing, right?” Without meaning for it to, my voice hardened. “The Inquisition has hurt people. Innocent people.”

To my surprise, Delphine didn’t react with defensiveness or anger. Her lips pressed tight as her eyes drifted past my face. “I know. I knew that before I agreed to help them, it’s just…”

“Just what?”

She shrugged. “The Presider convinced me that I could do some good with them, that they were trying to change things and become something… better. I knew I’d become complicit in whatever they did, whatever they had done, but I have my reasons.”

“Which are?” I pressed.

“Mine.” She refocused on me and frowned. “Your eyes…. their color is different.”

I blinked. Damn. The glamour must have weakened when I used my powers. “It’s just aura from when I broke the wall. It’ll fade.”

Shining eyes and other phenomena weren’t unique to Alder Knights. Anyone who uses magic will have a touch of otherness to them while using their abilities, and sometimes for a while after. I’d just have to pull my glamour back on when she wasn’t looking, and hope she wouldn’t question it. I didn’t want her knowing who I was, and I’d already ordered Vicar to keep his mouth shut. Anonymity would aid me, so long as I could keep it, and I did not trust this woman.

Delphine continued to stare at me, a crease between her eyebrows. I turned away from her and started walking to the rightmost hallway. “Where’s Lias’s study?”

She shuffled past me and took the lead again, taking us down a short set of stairs at the end of the next hall. The space below was more cramped, with the aspect of a dungeon. There were doors along the walls, each set in a shallow niche. Delphine produced a ring of keys from her robes.

“I’m not supposed to have these,” she told me.

“I will endeavor to keep my silence. Where are the guards?"

I'd come prepared to subdue any priorguard who might be watching over the labs, even kill them.

"We were already understaffed here before the synod began. This place is protected because it's secret, not because it's a fortress." Delphine moved down to the end of the hall and opened up a particularly large, strong door of oak reinforced in iron. “Master Hexer put wards on this door, but the inquisitors have already removed them. Apparently, there were injuries.”

“Lias could be very protective of his spaces,” I agreed. I recalled when I’d broken into his sanctum in Garihelm, and almost been torn apart by Marions.

Delphine opened the reinforced door and went inside. I followed her in, and—

And I became lost in a memory for a moment.

It was the same. The exact same as the room me and Emma had stood in while Lias had helped us study demonology. The way the tables were arranged, the particular spots along the walls he preferred to cover in his diagrams and alchemical musings, even where he put his lights. I could tell exactly which desk he’d sit at, scribbling away as he put the rambling genius of his mind down on parchment.

There were some differences. The inquisitors had clearly taken some of the wizard’s equipment out, and there were no books or other notes, all also likely confiscated if Lias hadn’t taken them away himself.

“Shut the door.”

The doctor’s crisp voice startled me out of my reverie. I closed the door and moved further into the study. “This was definitely his,” I said quietly.

Delphine had already started rifling through the drawers on Lias’s desk, but she paused as she noted my demeanor. The seemingly inexhaustible irritability in her voice faded, replaced by curiosity. “You knew him. Master Hexer, I mean.”

I nodded, running my hands along the surface of a long work table. I could still see the marks where there’d been a bubbling tank of alchemical liquid at one point. Lias had always had a fascination with continental sorcery. “I’ve known him my whole life, since childhood.”

“Were you lovers?”

I wheeled on her, opening my mouth for an angry retort, but paused when I saw the doctor’s expression. Delphine didn’t look judgmental or caustic in that moment. The question had been genuine.

I let out a breath and shook my head. “He was like a brother to me.”

Lias did have tastes that skewed that way, when he had the patience for romance. Not with me, though. He’d admonished me for my brief, ill-considered affair with Rosanna. He’d admonished her, too. The work always took priority for him, and he’d seemed frustrated with any distractions. I recalled a few men he’d been close to, but they’d always been passing dalliances and he’d never seemed to pay his suitors much mind.

“He was a great man,” Delphine said with an air of reluctance. “I could tell that much. Intelligent, driven. I almost forgot who I was working for during my time here, in our hours discussing one project or another.”

I took my hand off the table. “I just wish he’d turned that genius in other directions. He’s left a mess of enemies behind, and I think it’s all catching up to him.”

“All our sins catch up to us eventually,” a dry voice from the door said. Delphine and I both turned to see Vicar standing there, still wrapped in the glamour of a pilgrim, having seemingly emerged from the shadows. The door remained closed.

“What did you find out?” I asked, ignoring his goading comment.

The crowfriar paced into the room, studying the space. “The Presider is indeed in Baille Os, along with most of the priorguard and the Grand Prior. There is a skeleton garrison in the Underbarracks, but no indication the Knights Penitent have returned. I don’t think they had mounts, so likely we left them behind on our journey southward. They will move quickly and tirelessly, and catch up before long.”

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I had not told him about my encounter with Chamael the night before, or about my orders. I also hadn’t been obliterated by a wrathful spirit after leaving the cathedral so far, so either Urddha had convinced the rogue seraph to see reason or he remained imprisoned.

Vicar gave me a questioning look. Nodding, I focused my senses and began to pace around the room.

Delphine must have sensed something, because she asked what I was doing. Vicar moved closer to her and explained in a quiet voice. “As you have no doubt guessed, our friend is no ordinary brute. If the magus has left any trace of himself behind, then he should be able to find it.”

I turned my back on them and studied the wall on one side of the room. It was conspicuously absent of diagrams and chalk boards.

“Here,” I said without bothering to use my magicked sight.

“You sense something?” Vicar asked eagerly. “Is it a Burrow?”

“No. Lias could be a competitive bastard, and last time he and I had a disagreement I broke into his hidden sanctum. When he’s annoyed, he gets cheeky.”

The stonework looked odd. Newer, too clean. Focusing my power, I took my axe in both hands and struck the wall. There was a bright flash, then the stone collapsed inward in a heap, sending out another cloud of dust. Delphine let out a cry of alarm and Vicar cursed.

“What if that was a supporting wall!?” The doctor hissed at me once the dust had cleared.

“It wasn’t,” I said.

“How did you know?”

I turned and shrugged at her. “Because the ceiling hasn’t fallen on our heads?”

She glowered at me, but Vicar focused on the breach and stepped forward to study it. He let out a throaty chuckle. “I can’t believe the Priory missed this! I suppose they were too focused on arcane trickery, just as I was. You do know your friend well, Hewer.”

The three of us walked into the room I’d opened up. It had clearly been made with magic, but it wasn’t some extraplanar space with strange, unnatural dimensions like the sanctum Lias had used in Garihelm. The walls had once been rock and earth, but they’d been shaped smooth and taken on a glassy sheen, oddly clean even compared to the sterile lab behind us. One wall was dominated by a tall mirror framed in ebony wood. There was a classical looking occultist’s circle in a depression in the room’s center, and something very much like a preoster’s pulpit on the far side of it.

There were also books. Shelves of them, many of which I recognized. I let out a quiet laugh.

“He’s been carting most of this around for decades,” I told my two companions. “His secret collection. He uses his powers to transport them around. I’ve only seen it a handful of times…”

“If he moves it with him by magic,” Delphine asked, “then why didn’t he take any of it?”

“I don’t know all his tricks,” I said. “Maybe it takes preparation, or he just doesn’t have another space ready and planned to come back?”

“We might discover something of his plans here,” Vicar said, focused now that we’d found something of use. He prowled forward, the hint of fire in his eyes making them glow like embers as he scanned the room. “With haste, my friends. Someone will have heard, or felt, all the walls being broken down.”

He was right. We scattered, searching for clues. My attention was drawn to a desk in one corner. Unlike the one in the main lab outside, this one was full of clutter. I started rifling through stacked parchments and journals, much of it in Lias’s tidy scrawl.

It would take me too long to go through it all. I pulled off my cloak and fashioned it into a bag, tossing all the notes into it. The faerie cloak, a semi-living thing given to me by the Lady of the Briar, tightened around the collection of its own accord, like a fly trap settling shut.

I next looked at the mirror. Besides the ritual circle, it was the most interesting thing in the room. Delphine already stood next to it, running a hand along the wooden frame.

“This is Barkre make,” she said as I approached without looking at me. “I’d say fourth century, maybe a bit older. Wonderful condition. It would be worth a fortune to any collector.”

“I haven’t seen it before,” I said. “Or at least, I don’t remember if it was part of his collection in the past. I doubt he used this room for vanity. The rest of it looks very functional.”

Delphine’s lips parted slightly as she took her fingers off the geometrical designs carved into the wood, moving her attention to the glass. It showed our reflections, but they seemed too dark, like a faint, smoky veil covered the mirror. When I touched it, it felt clean and smooth.

“It’s tinted,” Delphine said. “Complicated process. Definitely continental, unless Master Hexer made it himself. The glass is newer than the frame.”

Her fingers slid up the glass until they reached her own face, the motion reflected in the mirror. Her visage in it looked odd. Grayish almost, and her eyes were very dark. My reflection looked much the same. My glamour made me look older and rougher, and in the tinted mirror my hair had taken on hints of gray. My eyes were still gold, though closer to a pale yellow than amber. They lacked the reflected shine of light I’d usually expect. In the background, Vicar looked like a sooty, smudgy shape barely distinguishable as human.

I realized something was wrong the same instant Delphine’s reflection moved. Its face split into a feral snarl full of needle teeth and it lunged. The doctor let out a startled scream and fell back. I caught her, moving to put my body in front of hers on pure reflex and bringing up my axe like a shield.

But the ghastly reflection didn’t leave the mirror, slamming against the glass hard enough to make the whole thing tremble. It hissed, the sound muted.

“What in the name of God—” Delphine trembled in my arm, shaken. The thing in the mirror grinned at her, revealing cancerous rows of badly set teeth fixed in black gums. Its dark eyes glinted, pinpricks of white in the centers.

Delphine seemed to notice me then and pushed off. I let her go, but didn’t take my eyes off the mirror or lower my weapon while the doctor gathered her nerves. Vicar had noticed what was happening and stepped up to my back. He spat something in a harsh, guttural language.

“Abgrüdai,” the crowfriar said with a hint of anger in his voice. “It’s bound, but don’t get too close.”

“There’s more than one,” I said. My reflection in the mirror blinked at me, my previously morose face now turned gaunt and lean, the heavy jaw slack, the oft-broken nose sloughing down like it were melting. The eyes were a sickly yellow now, like small moons on a Witch’s Night.

Vicar studied his own reflection in the trio inside the mirror. It was just a black smudge, like a vaguely humanoid cloud of smoke. “Three. No… probably more.”

“Why would he keep this?” I asked, my heart beating fast at the sight of the Adversary right there, close enough to reach out and touch. I hadn’t sensed the creatures, even almost touching the thing.

“Demons have many uses,” Vicar said as he paced in front of me, studying the mirror. “They are all incredibly ancient. Even the least of them have valuable knowledge. This is why we have such trouble keeping them contained. Mortal occultists know the means to call up the denizens of the Abyss, and there is little we can do to stop them. For every one we trap inside an Abyssal Pit, there are countless clamoring masses who remain ungaoled.”

“It’s not just about knowledge,” Delphine said. She seemed to have overcome her moment of fright and was studying the mirror intently, her eyes on its make rather than the ghoulish figures inside the glass. “It’s about power, too. The ancient prophets used them as assassins, and as bodyguards.”

“The Sorcerer-Kings of Antriss and Mediir were led to their doom by that practice,” Vicar stated flatly. “I had thought Hexer more wise.”

Disapproval radiated from him, but my own unease came from a different source. “Lias was studying demons during the war,” I said. “Trying to find new ways to fight them. He…”

I trailed off. Vicar glanced at me and narrowed his eyes.

“What?” Delphine looked between us.

My mind went to a small, leather bound journal locked away inside my study all the way back in Garihelm, in that cold tower overlooking the bay. Changing the subject I said, “He wanted to find ways to combat Reynard. The Traitor Magi didn’t participate in the war after Elfhome, but Lias wasn’t convinced he’d died there, and Reynard was known to use demons. He spread them across the realms to sow chaos. Probably, he wanted to turn the Archon’s eyes away from his own city, where his real goal was. Half the Table was absent the day he and his allies struck.”

“The Traitor Magi’s name is known in Orkael,” Vicar said in a thoughtful voice. “In fact, he is one of the primary reasons we were so intent on reasserting influence here in Urn. There is a burning pit prepared for Reynard, of that you can be certain.”

“THERE IS A BURNING PIT PREPARED FOR YOU ALL.”

We all jumped as the seething voice burst out of the mirror, startlingly loud. The demons inside the glass watched us and cackled. Their mirth literally shook the mirror in its frame, like the object itself was laughing.

Vicar waited for the noise to subside. “You can hear us?”

Delphine’s reflection tilted its head so far to one side the neck broke, a horrible bruise forming at the new bulge. “YES. We hear your confused prattle.”

My own reflection leaned forward. Already tall, it had swollen into a hulking shape, all shoulders and hair with bright yellow eyes. “You are seeking the one who put us in this cage.”

Vicar glanced at me. “Don’t listen to them. They will mislead you.”

He was probably right, but… “What was he doing here?”

My warped reflection stared back at me. None of the demons spoke for a long moment, until my own gaunt visage suddenly smiled. “We know you.”

“And you.” Delphine’s image pressed her palms against the glass as she stared at her counterpart, her grin like a wound across her face. “Oh, this is precious. Both of you here together, seeking-inquiring-asking-wanting.”

The Delphine-thing leaned closer and lowered its voice into a whisper. “Gladys has wept every night since you left her.”

The real Delphine pressed her lips into a thin line. “Answer our questions, demon.”

“Or what?” My reflection asked. “What can you threaten us with?”

“What can you offer us?” The Delphine-image asked suggestively, still smiling.

“Do not offer to free them,” Vicar spat. “You’re not fools.”

“We need to find Lias,” I said quietly. “This might be the only way.”

The devil scowled, but fell silent and didn’t stop us. I focused my attention back on the mirror. “You know we won’t free you.”

“We know much,” my reflection said in a calm voice. He looked like a caricature of me, thick-necked, bulging muscle stretching his armor to the point of breaking. The scars along the left side of my face, the ones Shyora had given me, looked more like a horrible burn on him. “We know what you seek, and it is not the wizard. He is an excuse. A distraction.”

The Delphine-thing giggled. “What you want is what he has! The key to the kingdom.”

Vicar started and took a step forward despite his own warnings. “You know about the Volumen? What he wants with it?”

In response, the shadowy thing in the mirror — the one meant to represent Vicar — let out a wheezing groan like a dying old man. The mirror shook with laughter again.

“Wretched things.” Vicar’s dry voice burned with contempt. “They would not be so quick to mock if I had a team of fetterfiends with me. There are agonies even demons fear.”

“You’re not helping,” I snapped at him.

Delphine seemed to steel herself and took a step forward. “What do you want? Speak plainly. Do you want us to free you in return for the information?”

When Vicar started to protest, she made a sharp gesture that silenced him. The mirror stopped giggling, and the dark spirits inside it studied the doctor with their eerie eyes.

“Delphine…” The word was a low croon. “Delphine Roch. Such a pretty name, so authoritative. The knowledgeable scholar, the philosopher, the scientist. You have made such an effort to change yourself these last twelve years! But we know she still lives inside you, that cringing, brooding girl who so feared the sin inside of her.”

The shadowy figure in the back of the trio changed, growing taller, a conical head forming.

“You defy the Church and wear the mantle of the skeptic so proudly, but once you prayed so sweetly to God and hated yourself.” The voice had changed, becoming that of a matronly woman with a cold, precise noble’s accent. “How many times did you give confession? How many times did I have to whip you and make you recite scripture as I did it? Until you knelt in a pool of your own blood, and you thanked me for it and promised you would resist temptation, but you didn’t, you couldn’t. You shamed me after I took you in and gave you purpose.”

Delphine’s face had gone pale. She took a step back from the mirror. “I am no fool. You are not the Mother Superior. You’re just a reflection, reading my memories.”

But the hateful thing in the mirror ignored her. “You were an ugly girl with ugly thoughts, and you still are, Sister Vera, you always will be. Make the world a better place? Please. All you think about is how her tongue felt between your legs, you disgusting, loathsome witch—”

I threw my cloak over the mirror. I’d had to dump all of Lias’s research out of it first, but as the crimson cloth settled over the cursed thing it clung tight, almost hungrily, cutting the voices within off. The mirror shook and pounded with rage, but we could no longer hear the voices inside.

Delphine stared at it a moment, her face blank, then she turned and fled from the room. I didn’t stop her.

Vicar spoke softly after the doctor had left. “This thing is trying to stall us.”

I nodded. “The spirits in it probably know what Lias is up to, or at least enough to give us a clue. He’s not going to be careless enough to have left something useful in all this.” I gestured at the pile I’d just dumped out, then cursed. “We need to know what it knows. Do you have any devil tricks to compel it to answer us?”

Vicar considered the mirror. “Perhaps. It depends on whether this is one we’ve captured before.”

I frowned. “In that case, wouldn’t it be in one of your pits?”

“Not every demon is given that treatment,” Vicar told me. “When a demon is slain, its spirit is drawn back into its realm, where it eventually reforms. We created smaller prisons to prevent that, to catch them before they returned to their home so we could guard them, but there was a time before that system when any loose demon we captured was simply tossed back into the Abyss. Even now there are not enough gaols to hold all of them, and sometimes they slip the net.”

He pointed at the mirror. “These may very well be spirits that my kind have captured in the past and put a geas on. It is not a perfect system, but it makes recapture easier and the particular spirit less dangerous even as it roams free. Indeed, many mortal summoners use our magics to call and bind the Abgrüdai. It is why the Infernal Spirits and the Abyssal ones are so often confused for one another. Our realms are closely linked.”

Vicar took a step forward, focusing on the mirror. “But I digress. If these have been catalogued, then I should be able to interrogate them.” He scowled. “But it will be tedious. First I will have to goad out their identities, and then recall the proper rites to bind them. It is much easier with a team of infernal gaolers.”

“With torture, you mean.”

Vicar lifted an eyebrow. “Don’t tell me you’re going to try to play the white knight to these hungering things. I promise you, they will not be grateful.”

I shook my head and turned. “Do what you can. This is our best lead. I’m going to check on Delphine.”

This content is taken from (f)reewe(b)novel.𝗰𝗼𝐦