Chương 215: 203. Unnaturally born killers

I woke up lying in the same spot I had fallen asleep in. Looking around, I immediately noticed the first discrepancy—every one of the books I managed to pull under my head as a pillow was still in the same place. This never happened to me, not even close. My dreams usually ended with me scratching the floor until I was bloodied, or at least taking a trip to the next room over. But here, I didn't even move an inch. The dream also didn't feel like a dream at all. There were no confused visions.

There were no songs I could not remember the next day. There were no sigils of unknown origin. And most of all, possibly worst of all, I was aware I was dreaming the whole time I was there. I could recall the night sky covered in hollow stars. I could remember the twin suns slowly descending into the endless lake. The only thing that came to me as if from behind a fog, one detail still hiding in the depths of my mind, was the lost city. That I couldn't really recall, yet strangely enough, I was aware I saw it.

Unlike a normal part of the abyss, it was the act of looking that would rend a mind to shreds, but here I knew I had looked, I knew it was beautiful, but, for the life of me, I couldn't remember what it was that I witnessed exactly. I was aware of where I had found myself. Carcosa. The dominion of the King in Yellow. The pages of the play were clearly having an effect. I groaned and stretched, checking my body over. The flesh was fine, no mutations, no additional limbs.

Sally also looked fine, sitting to the side, looking me over with a curious gaze.

"Don't look at me like that. Had you taken a trip off-world and back, you would look even worse," I said to the creature as she tilted her head, confused. I knew my familiar understood what I said, but she still acted like a dog, thumping her tail against the floor, leaving gashes in the wood. I groaned once again and finally got up, summoning the staff to look it over. In hindsight, binding myself to it before understanding exactly what it was had been rather stupid.

The staff didn't have that truly eldritch, dangerous feeling, so I assumed it was a relatively simple artifact. An elaborate work of my ancient family made to ease casting the abyssal spells. I guess my first warning should have been the lack of any description of the artifact in my family's books. My initial assumption was that it was due to the cube being created just for the forging of the staff. Now I wasn't so sure.

Taking a few seconds to prepare myself, I looked deeply into the cube, expecting something to happen. Yet it was dormant, truly dormant, not leaking deadly energy into me, not showing any visions. No liquefying buildings, no stars falling from the sky. A bit disappointing, almost.

"Hmm," I exhaled, looking the artifact over. Suddenly, I felt a pull as if the weapon tried to jump out of my hand, gaining a will of its own. Giving another deep sigh, I looked down to see Sally's teeth closed around the lower part as the creature tugged on it.

"Right," I said, looking at her with raised eyebrows.

"At least you're having fun." I wanted to go to the storage immediately, but when I checked my phone, I saw a litany of unanswered calls from my broker covering the screen. Using all my will to push away the idea of spending most of the day in my books, I called back the cat.

"Hell—" I began, only to be immediately interrupted.

"You alive?" Q'Shar asked.

"Yeah, for now. What did you want?" I could practically hear him stop all the swear words before they left his mouth, finally ending with a click of his tongue.

"It's about Ophelia's sacrifice. She couldn't get hold of you, so she called us."

"Right. I was… away for the night. Pondering the mysteries of the universe."

"Mhm. Played around with your magic, did you?"

"Yep." The cat sighed.

"We assumed so. Anyway, she has the target, and we set up her ritual spot, but apparently the guy decided to take a sudden vacation and got a ticket abroad for tomorrow, so we are pushing up the date. You up for a late night?" I smiled at the news. My apprentice's first sacrifice was an occasion I couldn't miss.

"Sure. Tell her it would be my pleasure." I got the time and place from the cat, along with an invitation to come by his place before I met my apprentice. I went first to my storage to spend a few hours with my face in the books, mostly checking for information about the tomes whose names Peter received from the undead mycanoids. I sadly didn't have them in my collection, and they weren't easy to come by, but some other books referenced them.

I was hoping to learn exactly which branch of knowledge was common across all the titles so I'd know what to research. I did have mixed success after a few hours. From my reading, it seemed all the texts talked about a process of a spirit regaining its spark. I could see how that was related to Peter's condition, sure, but what exactly was useful, I didn't know. The creation of so-called living dead was a mystery and not exactly the kind of knowledge kept when the Inquisition came.

I exhaled after putting another tome to the side, adding it to a sizable column of books on the desk. Looking at the clock, I had around an hour more. My eyes slowly drifted toward the altar and the ancient tomes of my family. I could try and search for information about the cube in those books as I had before, but… I could always ask at the source. It had been some time since the last time I sacrificed anything to my god.

'That could work. I would get to hear the abyssal chant once again.' A dangerous thought popped into my mind.

'But not an unreasonable one. I can try delicately. I have an hour still…' I shook my head, getting rid of the idea. And as I did, the world around me shifted lightly, coming back to normal. Only when the change took place did I realize my vision was growing darker and the room became unnaturally quiet as I pondered, my eyes on the altar.

"That was a dumb thing to do," I scolded myself, quickly checking the clock. Fifteen minutes until the meeting.

"Fuck me," I swore, realizing how long I was lost in my own thoughts and the strange song of the abyss. I quickly got up and then drove to the cat's apartment. Arriving, I knocked and was let in without any issue. Despite my late showing, I was not spared the ceremonial tea and cookies, the latter of which I almost swallowed whole before seeing the animal. The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

"Hello," Q'Shar greeted.

"Did you oversleep? Gods called?" he asked, only half as a joke, as a note of worry was clear in his voice.

"No. I mean, yeah, spent an hour staring at an altar, but other than that, I'm fine," I said.

"Well, you do remember what day it is, right? You didn't wake up with blood on your hands or something like that?"

"No. Just got lost in thought, I guess."

"Riiight," he said slowly, looking me over before nodding and putting on his serious face.

"Ophelia has her target for tonight," the cat said, pushing a binder my way.

"It's the information in case you need to help her. We prepared the sacrificial room as well."

"Good," I said, looking the file over. Not much was interesting. She got a man who killed his sister for a rather large inheritance and got off due to lack of evidence. Not much more was known, a normal person, not some psycho, just a greedy bastard.

"Seems easy," I commented, looking it over. The cat nodded.

"Yep. The FBI is making strange moves, though, sniffing around where they shouldn't. You might want to be on the lookout. But that's not why I wanted to see you." The cat made himself more comfortable on the pillow before finally speaking.

"We have finished analyzing the bullet you brought from Rey." I tilted forward, curious about what it was.

"The witches took a look at it and, well… we have good and bad news. The good is that the alchemy used to create the bullet's coating is rather primitive and clearly lacks magical knowledge. The coating is unstable and holds around sixty percent of its full power." I nodded along. That seemed like a logical assessment. I would be surprised if they pulled off magic on the level of a mage clan.

"The bad, though," the cat said with a sour face.

"The substance is applied and held in a way we can't really reproduce." I was taken aback at that.

"Really? Even the artisans of the witches?"

"I misspoke. We can reproduce it, sure. Give an artisan time, and they will reproduce anything. But not in large-scale manufacturing. The substance is perfectly smooth. The surface retains its shape even when fired, and so on. For a human to achieve that, they would need years of training and hours to work on a single bullet. They even bypassed a few issues we had when considering magical guns."

"So, machines," I said.

"Yep, most likely," the cat confirmed with a light nod.

"So they still fail the part requiring human interaction with mana, but once they have something they can pass on to a factory, it actually works well, huh?" I frowned. The cat nodded.

"Did you see other guns?" I nodded firmly in confirmation.

"I saw they used engraved ones. One of their heavier armored teams carried them, although the runes weren't strong. It should be impossible to engrave a circle purely by machine, so I imagine those were handmade."

"Can you get to a gun like that?"

"We'll see." I sighed.

"But there's one more thing," I remembered. The whole debacle with the cube made me almost forget the crazy doctor in the parking lot. I gave my broker a short description of how the battle went, and the frown on his face deepened.

"Now that sounds bad," he said. I had to agree. The gun the man used was quite dangerous, carrying stinger-like projectiles and clearly using magic.

"You didn't leave it with the FBI, I hope," he said slowly.

"No. My spell shredded it. I doubt they will get much from the parts. But… I don't think they could learn anything from it."

"Why?"

"It seemed… I don't know. Alive in a way, or using rather strange magic. I don't think it's something I could reproduce, to be honest."

"By the sands. Does it have the power to make you humble? What sort of foul sorcery?" the cat spoke, eyes wide in fake shock. I rolled my eyes.

"I don't practice every aspect of magic, you know."

"Yeah, just the fucked-up ones."

"Exactly. But this was a new kind of fucked up. One I'm not aware of. So I doubt the FBI would have any luck with the liquefied remains." The cat sighed.

"Right." He opened his mouth to say something more, but then looked up at the clock.

"Well, I guess that's it for now," he said, pointing his tail toward the clock. It was almost time for me to go to Ophelia. I got up and said my goodbyes, but then stopped in the entrance and turned to him.

"Do me a favor. Could you look into the empath's parents, mainly his dad?"

"Why?" my broker asked, tilting his head.

"He got killed, and the kid looks for revenge, I think. Might help him to get some motivation," I explained with a smile, proud of my great idea. Q'Shar stayed frozen in his spot.

"I can look into the case, but… you think getting to his father's killer will help him?" he asked, clearly skeptical.

"Wouldn't it? I mean, it's something he seemed to be trying to do for the past few years."

"Right. But that doesn't mean it will improve his mood. Sam." Q'Shar stopped with an uncomfortable expression.

"What are your plans for the two? Peter and Josh, I mean? You do have a plan."

"Hard to. I don't know what they can really do yet."

"Not what I meant. I mean in the best-case scenario, and they prove useful. Do you want to train them?"

"Well, not sure about the empath. Might have to find someone more focused on divination to teach him. But Peter shows promise in soul-related techniques at least—""I don't mean in magic," Q'Shar spoke up.

"I mean as mages of the clan." I paused for some time, letting silence hang.

"You mean if I want to train them to fight and kill?"

"Yes."

"Peter already thinks he's a killer."

"We both know he isn't," Q'Shar cut in, rolling his eyes at the idea.

"You're a killer. Ophelia's a killer. Those two… we both know they are way too soft, for now."

"So you agree they need to be toughened up."

"Yes, but…" The cat was clearly uncomfortable as he began speaking.

"Look. I know I call you horrible nicknames and you don't care, but to most men, you would be a monster. You know that, right?" I nodded without hesitation, not minding the descriptor.

"You see. It would bother normal people. Even affect them deeply."

"It doesn't seem to bother Ophelia, and it worked great on her," I replied.

"She had a literal deity whispering murder and pride into her mind, not to mention she was put in front of a relatively straightforward choice. Those two aren't. Ophelia was strong and a natural mage. Peter got his magic due to mutation. Josh might be natural, but he is the polar opposite of you—he feels everything, his emotions, others' emotions."

"What are you trying to say?" I asked, seeing that he danced around the subject.

"You have a tendency to bend people out of shape into something more… useful, more attuned to the magic world. But different people have different breaking points. I'm afraid the two might break."

"They need to learn."

"That doesn't mean they have to kill. Not right away, at least. I'm afraid if you try to turn them the same way you did Ophelia, then it might crush them. Revenge doesn't leave everyone reinvigorated. People don't celebrate the death of an enemy like you would. Even if they're mages." The cat let silence blanket the air between us before finally speaking again.

"Try not to scar the two too much. I know they need to learn, but killing might have a horrible effect on an empath. There are other roles, other ways you might consider. Liam is finishing up with the mermaids. Apparently he's shaping up to be a great arcane artist. I doubt he killed to get there…" I stood for a few seconds, taking a long break as I weighed his words, before speaking once again.

"Fine," I said.

"I'll see whether they are ready. But… I won't let them out into the field if they might hesitate in the face of an enemy who won't." The cat nodded in confirmation.

"So be it." I gave the cat a smile and walked out, my thoughts on Ophelia and the other two. For me, revenge was a go-to motivator, the death of an enemy a celebration. But my father taught me there were other ways of seeing the world, a few dumb ones in my opinion, ones I had a tendency to ignore, sure, but… Would Josh want to kill his father's killer, or would he cling to the FBI style of law and put him in jail? I was kinda curious now.