Spirit Speaker

The storm had returned, an omen of things to come. 

The Headmaster lived in a large mansion at the far end of the Magic Campus. Prominently built on a hill, it was one of the many major landmarks that students used to orient themselves around the confusing institution. 

I raised my cloak over my head, shielding myself from the torrential downpour, and walked up the gravel path to the front door. 

I knocked loudly. 

The door opened, a servant bowing slightly as I walked in.

"Welcome, Master Lukas. The Board are waiting in the Headmaster's office."

"Thank you, will you lead me there? It's been a long time since I was last here."

"Very well, sir. This way." 

I followed the servant down an unfamiliar hallway, lined with portraits of previous Headmasters. 

He knocked gently on a door at the end of the passage. He opened it. 

"Master Lukas has arrived, sir."

"Good, let him in."

I stepped into a large room, opulently decorated, plush carpets, expensive paintings and sculptures, and thick, dark green curtains. 

And in the centre three gorgeous tables, stained dark, positioned in a U shape. 

The Board sat around the tables, looking decidedly better than they had the last time I saw them. 

But there was a tightness around the eyes, a firmness around the mouth. 

They're frightened.

I didn't blame them, they had been taken by darkness, and puppeted by it. 

"Lukas, please, come in, take a seat."

The Headmaster pointed at a chair directly opposite him, at the far end of the room. 

"How are you feeling, sir?" I asked, taking the offered seat. 

"Better now."

"Yes, Lukas. We're fine. Get on with it." Lert, an orc shaman growled, impatiently.

I raised an eyebrow at the orc and waited. 

"Sorry." He squeaked out eventually. "It's been a rough day."

"You've changed, Lukas," Andha observed, moving his hand in an intricate way. 

I felt the telltale tingle of magic brush against my mind. 

I dispelled it with a wave. 

"I have. In ways you can't imagine, Andha."

Andha smiled, impressed. "Very well, Mage."

"Yes, enough, tell us. Who is this man?" Gortek, a dwarven Runesmith and Lord Artificer tapped a glowing symbol on the table in front of him, and the broken, shattered body of the shadow man dropped to the floor, appearing from nowhere. 

I winced as I remembered his end. It wasn't pretty. And death didn't look any better on him. 

"You tell me." I replied. "How did he manage to get his claws into all thirteen of you?"

"He appeared a couple of months ago." The Archivist said, after a long, uncomfortable silence, "Offering to sponsor the Academy in return for a look at our library."

"He spent weeks scouring it, looking for something, and when he couldn't find it, came out in a rage. He came to speak with me, and demanded I explain what happened."

The Archivist shook his head. "Everything is fuzzy after that, like a dream. I remember flashes, but that's it."

"It was much the same for me." Syroka added. "He just appeared in my office one day. I don't remember anything after that."

"Me too." Laina, a tired-looking half-elf chimed in.

"Who else?" The Headmaster asked, raising his hand. 

And all the other mages on the Board raised theirs. 

"So he just appeared in front of you and managed to steal your souls?" I asked incredulously. "You're the most powerful mages on the continent, how did he get the drop on you?"

"We're hoping you might be able to answer that." The Headmaster replied, tiredly. "I've been wracking my brain trying to figure it out." 

"It felt…dark." Teiran, the Necromancer, said, quietly. "It felt like he grabbed hold of my weave, and held it, forcing me to do everything he told me to."

"So you think it was a strain of black magic?" Filurias asked. "We were under compulsion? Like the way black magicians control spirits?"

I shook my head slowly. "It sure as hell felt like black magic, but it was darker somehow. The spirit that had control of you wasn't under compulsion. It was corrupted. Something had torn it apart, and rebuilt it."

"How?"

I shrugged. "You'll have to ask him." I said, nodding at the body.

"I've tried." Teiran, the Necromancer, sighed. "There's nothing behind his eyes. No weave to grab hold of. He's empty. No soul to talk to."

A collective shudder made its way through the room. 

"That's disturbing." 

"Chronicler, you've never heard of something like this?"

An old elf dozed gently in the chair beside the Headmaster, who prodded him gently. 

The old man opened his eyes and listened to the air for a moment before shaking his head. "No, nothing like this in the histories."

"Nothing in the histories…" 

"I don't think there would be." I said. "This man was a servant of something the spirits call The Rending. It's ancient, older than the world, and it's hungry."

"What is it? Some sort of spirit?"

I shook my head. "No, it's hunger, and emptiness. That's all. It consumes everything in its path until there is nothing left at all. It doesn't stop until the world ends."

"Come on Lukas, the world?" Neiren scoffed. He'd never liked me. "Don't be dramatic."

I met the human's eyes and stared. He shrunk in his seat. 

"Three months ago, I found a book in the Archives, covered in an inky black substance. Its presence gagged and paralyzed the spirits around it."

-"Yes. I couldn't move, I couldn't speak. I couldn't see." Ilargia added. 

He glowed gently, making his presence known in the room. 

"Archivist? Is there a record of any such book in the Library?" The Headmaster asked.

The Archivist stilled for a moment. He opened his eyes. "No, headmaster. But the Archives report that it lost contact with the library for a few weeks in October."

"So the timeline is right."

"It would appear so." The Archivist turned to me. "You stood with a goddess outside the door. Was she the one that alerted you to the presence of the book?"

I shook my head. "No, she's been watching over me for a while now, and the moment I entered the library I vanished from her sight. She was investigating my disappearance."

Corelia cleared her throat. "There have been constant meetings between the Seven for the last few months. Apparently, the Spirit King himself attended a few of them."

She studied me for a few moments. "You've been marked, Mage."

"Yes."

"You should be expelled for that."

"Try it," I replied. There was no challenge in my voice. No pride. Just weary confidence. "Try it, and see if you live long enough to see the end of this meeting." 

The Headmaster cleared his throat. "That's enough, Corelia. Lukas has somehow earned himself the attention and affection of the Academy spirit. It was to his defence that she destroyed this man." 

"Very well, headmaster." 

"Where is the book now?" The Chronicler asked. 

"In my possession until I find a safe place to hide it."

"Shouldn't it be destroyed?" He asked, his heavy grey eyebrows raised in surprise.

"I don't think it can be, sir." 

"What makes you say that?"

"It…it's presence. It would be like destroying darkness."

"We can destroy darkness, though. With light."

"In all fairness, Chronicler," Teiran, the Necromancer interrupted. "We don't destroy darkness, we simply banish it, until the light dies."

"We're not here to debate philosophy." Neiran interrupted, seeming to regain his composure. "Lukas, you will surrender the book to us, and we will keep it."

"Try take it from me, Master Neiran, if you can."

"Is that a challenge?" Neiran stood up, fire appearing in his hand. 

I sighed, concentrated for a moment, and wrested control of the spirit from him, summoning it to my side. 

Neiran paled as the flame vanished from his hand and appeared above Ilargia. 

"How?" His eyes wide. 

His confusion was understandable. The method of stealing spirits had only been developed three years into the war. It was one of the few ways we had to combat the enemy. Our magic had been waning, our power weakening with every battle. 

I now understood that it was because the spirits were being devoured by the darkness. We could only steal spirits from the enemy mages to perform our spells. 

"Enough, gentlemen." The Headmaster was tired. "Lukas, are you confident that you can keep the book safe?" 

I shrugged. "As good as you can at least."

"What happened in your quarters this morning?"

"Someone was trying to steal the book…" I said sheepishly. 

Neiran laughed. "And you thought that hiding it in your quarters was a good idea?"

"BE SILENT NEIRAN." The Headmaster shouted. "Your jealousy is becoming tiresome. If I hear another word from you, I will personally stuff you in a box."

And for a second time that night, Neiran paled, and shrunk back in his seat. 

"He does raise a good point though, Headmaster." Lurt pointed out. "Lukas, why your quarters? Surely there was somewhere else you could have hidden it."

"It was encased in a spirit prison, in a steel safe, protected by at least twelve different camouflage spells and alarm spells. Hell, I even pushed a bookcase over it. There should have been no way for anyone to find it."

"And yet they did. How?"

"I…don't know, but the Seeker is trying to find out as we speak."

"The Seeker, the god?" Corelia asked.

"Yes, the Seeker's currently interrogating one of the thieves. The other is currently a pile of ash in my quarters."

The Chronicler cleared his throat. "But why was this man looking for the book?"

"The Rending needs a champion to grow. I don't know why anyone would ever want to champion such a thing, but there seems to be crowds lining up to do just that."

"I've never been surprised by the mortal capacity for self-destruction."

"Not all of us can live forever like you, Pilak." The Headmaster turned to a child, sitting on the far end of the table. He couldn't have been more than 11 years old. 

"Have you ever seen something like this before, Master Pilak?" I asked, bowing slightly as I asked. 

"No, nothing like this, but we'll get through it. We always have."

I shook my head. "Not this time, Master Pilak. This time we're fighting for our very survival."

He looked at me. "You know more than you're telling. See me after."

"Where are you going to hide it?" Andha asked

"There's a spirit stone mine I know of. I'm going to blow a hole in it, as deep as I can, cover it in protection spells, and then bury it below two hundred thousand tons of high-grade spirit stone."

"Where is this mine?"

"All due respect sir, I'm not going to tell you that."

The Headmaster chuckled. "You have changed, Lukas."

"Yes sir."

"Very well, does anyone have any questions for Lukas?"

Neiren opened his mouth, and the Headmaster glared at him. 

He shut it again. 

"Very good, then let's adjourn the council here. Master Archivist, Lord Artificer, stay behind, please. We need to discuss ways to prevent whatever the hell happened to us from happening again."

Arten and Gortek nodded and remained seated. 

Master Pilak skipped beside me as I left. 

"Come here." He said leading me into a sitting room just to the left of the entrance. 

I followed. 

"So, how do you know what you know, Lukas?" He asked, his eyes boring into mine. 

He's watching my weave.

I blinked, and Pilak looked away, a grin on his face. "Very well. Old school then. Tell me."

"I'm afraid you won't believe me, Master Pilak."

The eleven-year-old boy sat back and folded his arms. "My mind was just ripped from me, and I watched in horror as I was puppeted like a marionette. Unbelievable things are happening all around me."

And so I did. I told him the entire story. I told him everything, from my death at the end of the world, to the farce of a trial at the council chambers that morning.

And by the end of my tale, he sat in thought for an uncomfortably long time.

"Who have you told this to?"

"No one, Master Pilak."

"Who else knows then?"

"The gods, the Fairfolk, and every single spirit I ever interact with, oh, and the abbot at the temple of the Weaver, and possibly a wavespeaker. It's difficult to hide when someone examines my weave."

"That's not good, Lukas." Master Pilak said severely.

I shrugged in a what can you do gesture. "So? What's the verdict?"

"It's an unbelievable story, Lukas." Pilak said, after a few seconds. "But, you've never lied to me before. You've always been brutally honest, especially to those that outrank you."

I rubbed the back of my neck ruefully. "I don't apologise for that, sir."

Pilak laughed. "Oh, lad, I don't expect you to. I've been alive for just under six thousand years. I've seen empires rise and fall to dust, and rise again. I've watched spirits become men, and men become gods. I've loved and lost women of every race and rank, and singlehandedly toppled kingdoms. I'm the only human to walk the golden halls and return unscathed, with my mind and sanity intact. I lost a game of chess to the Spirit King himself. I'm too old to care about rank."

I nodded, watching as the child's eyes clouded over in memory. 

"And in all that time, you've never heard of the Rending?"

He shook his head. "Not once." He tapped his fingers on the armrests of his armchair. "But give me a few months, maybe a year or two, and I'll find something. I'm owed a few favours."

"I would appreciate that sir." I said, with a deep bow. 

"In the meantime, Lukas, when was the last time you spoke with Fereth? He's been asking after you."

I looked away a little guiltily. "It's…been a while, sir."

"You should see him while you still can. He doesn't have long left."

I swallowed. "Yes, sir. I'll petition the king for some time off, and I'll make the trip."