The Prof Croft Series: Books 0-4 (Prof Croft Box Sets Book 1) by Brad Magnarella (best business books of all time txt) 📕

“King never knows the difference,” I finished.

I’d been wrong in the vault. The symbols Grandpa had etched were Akkadian syllables, yes, but when that script had been adopted by the Hittites, the symbols became logograms: entire words. In this case, gug lugal-i meant “ram to king.” Grandpa had encoded his actions in the Hittite story. A story that, as scholars of mythology, we both knew.

I held the sword up. Fresh rose-colored light bloomed along the blade’s glinting edge. It had taken a few moments, but across the room, understanding finally dawned in Lich’s eyes. The king in this case was him; the prize ram was the Banebrand weapon. Which meant the stiletto in the vault had been a fake. The blade Grandpa had passed to me was the real item.

“N-no,” Lich stammered. “No!”

He threw his hands forward, fingers writhing. Inky black magic spewed from them and coursed across the room. But upon reaching me, the magic broke apart, killed by the Banebrand.

I positioned the glass pendant between my feet and, gripping my sword in both hands, squared my body to Lich’s. “For your crimes against the Order of Magi and Magical Beings, including the murder of my mother, Eve Croft, I sentence you to the ultimate penalty.”

“I can give you eternal life, infinite power,” he babbled. “Anything and everything you’ve ever—”

“Disfare!” I shouted and drove the blade down. The tip crunched through the glass face, and, in a blinding flash, the glass pendant blew apart. I fell against the back wall and landed hard.

I looked up in a daze as slivers of light streamed from the glass pendant in a celestial show. They were the souls Lich had entrapped. Their beauty stole my breath. In them, I saw the wrongness—the absolute wrongness—of what Lich had done. Such things were never meant to be imprisoned.

The souls encircled me on their way from the keep, healing me. And in them I felt the wisdom and power of those who had come before, all the way to Lich’s siblings: the original Order.

One soul lingered.

“Lazlo,” I whispered.

You found me, he said. Now see that it is ended.

The final light, Lazlo’s light, streamed off, and the ruined room dimmed. The glass pendant lay in pieces beyond my outstretched legs. Beyond it, against the far wall, slumped a rotting corpse, black toadstools and mold already growing over it, consuming it. The only thing streaming from Lich’s body was a dark, putrid liquid. He had no soul of his own, after all. He’d pledged it to Dhuul long ago.

The earth shook.

I pushed myself to my feet and made my way to the narrow window beside Lich’s body. The pit yawned in the middle of the nightmare landscape below, but the matrix of souls that had held it open was no more. The sides were shuddering and sliding down, taking the shadow creatures with them. What remained of the Front backed from the far side of the pit, carrying the fallen.

The magic-users were too far away for me to distinguish the living from the dead.

Marlow? I called into the collective. Father?

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Father? I tried again, but something seemed to have disrupted my connection to the collective. The keep shuddered and rumbled around me. I spun to find cracks spreading in the walls, chunks of stone falling from the ceiling. Without Lich to sustain them, his creations were falling apart.

I fled down the stairs as a wall collapsed behind me.

“Protezione!” I called. More stones broke over the spherical shield that took shape around me. I darted and leapt my way down, bursting from the keep moments before the entire structure collapsed.

Without breaking stride, I aimed my sword behind me and shouted, “Forza dura!”

The force launched me like a cannon ball. I cleared the leech-infested moat, landing in the toadstools beyond. I rolled for several yards, sprang up, and stumbled into a fresh run. By the time I reached the other magic-users, I was out of breath, heart hammering. I removed the robe of John the Baptist.

Only half of those I’d arrived with remained. The bodies of the deceased lay in a solemn line.

“What happened to—?” I started to say, but several of the magic-users silenced me with fingers to their lips. They stepped apart, and I saw Marlow kneeling, facing the pit, power warping the air around him.

Joy and relief flooded through me.

“He’s forming the Word,” a woman whispered to me.

It took a moment for the message to register. “But I destroyed the glass pendant,” I insisted. “The pit is collapsing.” I looked beyond my father to where the hole in the earth rumbled and coughed.

“Dhuul is emerging faster than the pit is failing,” she said.

I stopped to listen. I could hear him, the ancient being’s whispers climbing like an ungodly force of nature, growing louder, more terrible. We had no choice now but to speak the Word, to repel Dhuul and collapse the hole to his realm. My father, the rest of the magic-users, me…

We would all perish.

But the world will be spared, I reminded myself. That’s what matters.

I thought about Vega and her son and all of the good and decent people I had known. Then I thought about my mother, who had died in service to them. I thought about my grandfather, who had sacrificed himself so Lich wouldn’t find the Banebrand. I watched my father, the vast pit rumbling and fuming before him, and the love I felt for him became enormous.

At last Marlow stood and walked over to us. “The Word is ready.” His eyes glowed with magic. When our gazes met, he smiled and nodded. Well done, he was saying. I’m proud of you.

I nodded back, fighting to contain my emotions.

“You’ll only have a moment,” he said to us. “When you feel the membrane failing, Arianna will pull from the other side, but you must push. With everything you have. Do you understand?”

I looked around as the others voiced their understanding.

“Are you saying we can destroy the pit and return?” I