Witchmarked (World's First Wizard Book 1) by Aaron Schneider (my reading book .txt) 📕

with the oppressive darkness might have engulfed him in melancholic black musings, but a curious spark flared as he brooded. He looked at Ambrose, hope suddenly burgeoning inside him.

“So, you’ve been around for a long time?” he asked tentatively.

“As some would measure it, sure.” The bodyguard grunted with a nod. “But the longer you’re around, the more you come to understand that what little time you’ve been around, it never seems like very long.”

The curious spark flared and ignited a flood of questions that Milo only barely managed to contain.

“You’ve seen quite a bit then?” Milo probed as gently as he could.

“Are you about to ask me if I was there at some big event or met some great historical figure?” The big man snorted as he shook his head. “I promise you the answer will probably be no, and if it isn’t...well, let’s just say you're bound to be disappointed.”

Milo drew up short at that, pondering for a second why that thought hadn’t occurred to him. After all, it was the most natural thing in the world, but his interest wasn’t in anything so mundane.

“I was more thinking about the other things,” Milo said, finding himself at a loss for a word to use that didn’t sound silly. “You know things that are, uh, magical?”

Ambrose gave a little head-bob of understanding and adjusted his rifle on his shoulder.

“You hoping I’m kind of a field guide to the dark and mysterious world behind the curtain?”

Milo studied him carefully.

“Are you telling me you’re not?” he asked, holding his breath with anxious excitement as he waited for the answer.

Ambrose let out a deep sigh that turned into a resigned splutter.

“I’m afraid I’m going to be a disappointment on that score, Magus,” he declared. “Jorge put me on this detail because I’m the most dangerous weapon that doesn’t require wheels, and I don’t spook easy. That’s it.”

Milo couldn’t keep from frowning.

“But you just said you’ve heard about other Neph, er, Nephilim, and even met some?”

“Sorry, that’s it,” Ambrose growled, ready to bristle but thinking better of it when he saw Milo’s downcast expression. “Sure I’ve seen strange things, any man on campaign has, but almost all of them could be chalked up to the madness and strangeness that comes with war. I’ve heard rumors and witnessed what I couldn’t explain, and I’ve met at least two of my kind, but otherwise…”

His voice trailed off, and he shook his head before giving a derisive snort.

“Funny thing is that Jorge had hoped for that too when he brought me on after learning what I was. You and he must be cut from the same cloth because his face looked a lot like that, too.”

Milo attempted to reset his face to neutral, but it was harder than he thought. Suddenly having something to care about was a reality he was still adjusting as well.

“Quiet now,” the she-ghul called from up ahead. “Silence as we approach the gate, and do not speak unless spoken to.”

Ambrose nudged Milo in the arm, and it was all he could do not to lose his grip on the skull lamp.

“See, you’re about to be up to your eyes in this magic business,” the bodyguard whispered. “You’ll be sick of wonders and mysteries soon enough.”

Milo wanted to tell him it was unlikely, but he shoved the thoughts aside as his body began to tingle with a heady combination of fear and excitement. His chest tightened as his steps quickened, and a voice in the back of his mind warned that he was rushing to his doom.

Nerves caused Milo to breathe heavily as his viridian light played across the surface of the gate.

When the gate looked up and regarded him, Milo found he couldn’t take in air.

It was a wall of bone, or more precisely, it was a wall of bones.

Columns of vertebrae formed curving pillars that reached from floor to ceiling, and between them, a veritable thicket of ribs intertwined into a woven osseous mesh. Situated at seemingly random intervals along the assemblage of spines and ribs jutted skeletal arms, their joints held together by scraps of flesh that glistened black in the lamp’s green-hued light. At the center of the gate was a ring of eight bare skulls without their lower jaws. Milo would have assumed the skulls were all from humans, except on closer inspection, he saw that the teeth lining the remaining mandible were long and curved like fangs. The skulls revealed a cavity in the wall that seemed to be little more than a dark pit where the jagged edges of broken bones could just be seen.

Each skull was mounted on a stump of the spine, and every one of those stumps had their skulls pointed directly at Milo.

He tried to tell himself it was just a trick of the light and the nature of their empty staring sockets, but as he crept closer, he realized the gate was intent on him, just him.

The ghul princess stepped forward and performed a vulturous curtsy before raising her voice in her wicked language.

“Do you know what she's saying?” Milo whispered as quietly as he could to Ambrose.

Ambrose gave a quick shake of his head, adjusting his grip on his rifle sling.

“This is all new to me, Magus,” he murmured back. “Allies or no, I say be on your guard, no matter what happens.”

“Silence,” the other ghul growled.

Ambrose bristled, but Milo leaned forward and watched intently.

After she finished her baleful whispers, which Milo now guessed was some sort of ritual, he couldn’t suppress a shudder when he heard the bones rattle against each other and then slither this way and that.

The skulls that had been watching Milo turned as one and regarded the ghul in front of them with hollow stares. The troglodyte princess muttered one more declaration, then the skulls began to slide around the cavity until four were lining the top and four the bottom. Above them, skeletal limbs spasmed to life and reached over, gripping each