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

yawned again, then scooped up the codices he’d fallen asleep on top of. “What were we doing before this?”

“Testing you,” she said simply, then hissed a low syllable.

The room was bathed with light from the miniature eye sockets on Milo’s cane.

“I thought testing came after you learned something,” Milo muttered as he climbed to his feet. “Not before.”

Imrah’s face, lit by the witchlight, was positively terrifying.

“Consider it an initial evaluation,” she said, grinning wickedly. “Now that I know what you are capable of, I must push you to the brink. That starts with you meeting someone.”

“Lucky me.” Milo sighed, trying to remember this was the next thing. “Lead on, Professor.”

With a growing sense of foreboding, Milo followed Imrah, who carried the lit skull cane to the stairwell down into the basement. Milo’s boots thumped on the wooden floorboards, and he found it hard not to wonder what he would meet in the basement. He told himself Ambrose wouldn’t let anything too dangerous show up, but Ambrose had already proven less than infallible. As stairs creaked underfoot, Milo allowed some small part of his mind to remember every story of Butzemann and Babay or whatever other fearful figment children could whisper about at night. He tried to dismiss the nagging murmurs, but he’d learned that faeries were real recently, so why not them?

In fact, as he thought about it, he imagined the stories of child-snatching goblins and kobolds that vanished underground could have easily been about ghuls. The thought made him shiver.

His feet landed on the packed earth at the bottom of the stairs, and Milo felt a rush of pressure against his mind and soul. There was magic, potent and tangible, in the basement. As he moved to follow Imrah, the air thickened until it almost felt like wading.

The basement was lit by spectral blue fires in bottles hanging from the cobwebbed floor joists, revealing tables littered with ingredients, along with what might have been drying racks made of bone strung with sinew. In the corner farthest from the stairs, seven bowls, each full of amethyst flame, were arranged in a loose circle around a patch of quivering darkness.

“Where did all this come from?” Milo asked, remembering that the ghul had left Ifreedahm with only a satchel slung over her shoulder.

“All in good time,” Imrah answered cryptically.

With a cluck of her tongue, Imrah dismissed the light from the skull and left the cane lying on a table as she moved toward the undulating patch of night in the corner. Milo made to pick it up as he went by, but he heard Imrah calling to him.

“Leave it,” she said. “It is safer this way.”

Milo’s outstretched fingers ached to close around the reassuring weight of the weapon, but he resisted. Muttering curses to himself, he followed Imrah past the tables toward the seething blackness.

“What is that?” Milo called as they passed the drying racks, from which hung what looked suspiciously like human skins.

“That is the lesson after this one,” she said softly. “And hopefully not your last.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Milo muttered as they drew closer, then stepped into the violet light cast by the bowls.

They stopped an arm’s length from the bowls, within whose circle the raw night, devoid of any star, seethed and writhed. This close to it, Milo felt his skin prickle at the chill that suffused the air. Milo had shed his surcoat after eating, his body warmed by a full dinner, and now found himself wishing he hadn’t.

“What is it?” Milo asked, his breath misting in front of his face.

“Didn’t make it very far into Spectral Ruminations then,” Imrah said almost as a note to herself. “Your reading habits will need to improve.”

Milo looked at her with a frown, in part to remind her she hadn’t answered his question, but also because as he stood there, he felt a growing understanding that the darkness was looking back at him. Awareness pushed through the rippling, coiling darkness, and Milo was convinced that whatever its motives were, they were not friendly.

“This is a soul well,” Imrah explained. “A misnomer, as you should know from Awakening and our previous discussions that souls have nothing to do with the necromist. This is a repository of essence in the form of multiple shades bound around a lynchpin fetish.”

Milo turned to the darkness, noting that it rippled like a flame, though there was something intentional about the movements. As he stared, he began to see faces, or at least the impression of faces, form and then dissipate in the blackness.

“It looks dangerous,” Milo said, trying not to let the fear he felt reach his voice.

“Oh, it is,” Imrah said, her voice almost giddy. “Without proper precautions, this many shades bound together could easily kill us both and then go on to slaughter many more of your people before it finally tore itself apart.”

Milo wrenched his eyes from the hypnotic horror of the soul well to view his teacher warily.

“Then why make it?” Milo asked. “It’s tied to a fetish, which means you had to make this on purpose. Why?”

“Isn’t fire dangerous?” Imrah asked. “And yet, you humans use it for many things. For war, for industry, even to cook your food. Humans use fire, despite its dangers, because it is a source of power they can use. Have you forgotten what shades are made of?”

“Essence,” Milo said, the words so automatic he couldn’t even feel proud for knowing the answer.

“Good, at least you remember something,” Imrah said as she produced a long, thin vial from within her garments. “And why is essence so important to the necromist?”

“Because it powers everything they do,” Milo said, feeling foolish. “So, you have a large pool of essence here to draw from.”

The temperature dropped further, and Milo’s skin began to ache from the cold.

“Is it doing that?” Milo said as he rubbed his arms and shivered.

“Yes,” Imrah said, her eyes darting to the bowls on the floor. “It is pressing against its containment, trying