The Warlock's Chamber

Flanked by stone, the narrow and uneven stairs spiraled down into the earth. With the candle held aloft, Wells led the way, carefully testing each step before committing his weight. Vance, bringing up the rear, paused to slide the flagstone back into place, sealing them in. Only the small, flickering orb of candlelight stood between them and a devouring, absolute blackness. The stairs descended into what felt like a bottomless void, and soon, the very memory of a ceiling overhead was swallowed by the emptiness.

“This is profoundly unsettling,” Juliana murmured, her voice echoing strangely in the confined passage.

“You’re… t-telling me,” Aria stuttered from her perch on Wells’s shoulder, her words rattling as a violent tremor shook her small body.

“This must go down for miles,” Aidan said.

“It couldn’t possibly,” Vance countered, though his tone lacked conviction. “Be rational.”

“We’ll find the bottom if we just keep going,” Wells said, his own voice tight with tension.

“W-wonderful logic, W-Wells,” Aria managed, her quivering robbing her attempt at sarcasm of its bite.

A faint smile touched Wells’s lips, and he reached up to pat her feathery head. “It’ll widen out eventually,” he promised, silently adding the fervent I hope that screamed in his own mind.

Aria’s teeth chattered. “I wouldn’t mind it widening up now.”

“I don’t think any of us would,” Juliana added softly.

They descended in an oppressive silence, the monotonous scrape and shuffle of their feet the only sound as they moved, step after painstaking step. Wells’s task was a crushing weight on his mind; with every stair, he prayed it would be the last, only to find another materialize in the gloom below. He tried counting them, his mind marking off the hundreds. One hundred, two hundred, three hundred, four hundred—still, the descent continued with no end in sight.

In the darkness, time seemed to warp and melt away. Wells had no idea if they had been walking for ten minutes or ten hours. He cursed himself for not wearing his watch the day he arrived in Remira—a lifetime ago, it seemed. Then he remembered.

“Vance,” he called out, his sudden voice making them all jump. “What time is it?”

From behind him, Vance replied, “I don’t know. My watch broke.”

Perfect, Wells thought grimly.

The hush returned, pressing in on them more heavily than the darkness itself. Not even the heroic flicker of the candle could cut through the profound, unnerving stillness that filled the space between each step.

Then, Juliana screamed.

Wells’s hand trembled, the candle nearly falling from his grasp before he steadied it. He spun around, his heart hammering against his ribs. “What is it?” he breathed.

“L-look at the wall,” she stammered, pointing with a shaking finger.

They all turned their heads. A gasp caught in Wells’s own throat. The rough-hewn rock had given way to a ghoulish tapestry of bone. There was no attempt at a gory or macabre display; they were simply bones, fitted together with the clean, detached precision of bricks. Hollow-eyed skulls, ribcages, and femurs formed a solid rampart of the dead.

“It’s nothing to be afraid of, Juliana,” Aidan said, though his own voice was strained. He took her hand. “It’s just—well, they’re just… a collection of dead things.”

“In the walls!” Juliana sobbed, her voice breaking into a whimper. “If Nikolai is down here, I’m going to murder him for choosing such a… repulsive hideout.”

The comment wrung a few feeble, hollow laughs from the group. Taking a steadying breath, Wells turned and continued the descent, though Aria’s trembling had intensified with every stride. He felt his own resolve starting to crumble; if they didn’t reach level ground soon, he would call it off. They would turn back. It wasn’t worth this.

Just as the thought crossed his mind, his foot met not another step, but the solid, level floor. He stomped on it twice more to be sure he wasn’t imagining things, then let out a shuddering sigh of relief. “We’ve made it!” he announced. “We’re at the bottom!”

“Yeah, but what’s down here?” Aidan asked. “It’s just a—”

“A corridor,” Wells interrupted. “But look—I think that’s a door. And there are torches.”

A surge of adrenaline banished his fatigue, and he hurried forward. Set in brackets on the bone-brick walls were four unlit torches. Wells took the nearest one and lit its wick with his candle. As flame bloomed, the chamber sprang to life, chasing away the deepest shadows. At that same moment, the candle sputtered and died.

“Good timing,” Aidan murmured, raising the flame Wells handed him. “Hey, look over there.”

They rushed to where he was pointing. Beside a heavy stone door etched with a strange carving stood a bookcase, built in the same style as those in the library hundreds of feet above. This one, however, was shrouded in the dust of ages, its nooks riddled with cobwebs and its shelves bare save for a single, thick volume.

Wells lifted the lone book; it was the heaviest tome he had ever held. Its leather cover, the color of old blood, bore a single golden insignia: a twisted, dead tree. “Whatever this is about,” Wells said, “I have a feeling it isn’t pleasant.”

He blew a cloud of dust from the cover and opened it carefully. The pages within were yellowed and so brittle they looked as if they might crumble at a touch. As the cover parted from the pages, the air became charged with a peculiar, tingling energy.

“That book is magic,” Aria said, her voice suddenly stiff and clear, her stammer gone. “And it’s not good magic.”

“No…” Wells took a deep breath and began to read the first page aloud. “‘I, Helestar, Son of Halenor, Second Master of the Grove, do hereby decree that any who write in this tome shall do so only to further the magics studied and practiced by the Masters of the Grove.’” He paled. “Oh, gods, there are diagrams of… someone being turned inside out. ‘Any who write herein with the intent to hinder the progress of the Masters shall be met with a terrible curse.’” He snapped the book shut, his face ashen. The others stared at him, their expressions blank with shock.

“What does that mean?” Aidan asked.

“It means this book was written by warlocks, for warlocks,” Aria said sharply. “Which means this chamber was almost certainly used by them.”

Their eyes were drawn to the carving on the stone entrance. “Look,” Vance said. “It’s the same tree from the book’s cover.”

Aria’s gaze fixed on Wells. “And you think your friend is in there?” she demanded. “Then he is not to be trusted.”

“Aria, that’s a bit rash,” Wells said. “We don’t know that he’s studying… well, dark magic.”

“Wells, you’ve seen what happens when people associate with warlocks,” she shot back, pinching his shoulder for emphasis. “You saw what became of Lady Helena, how swiftly Anais betrayed us.”

“Yes, but—but this is Nikolai Volkov,” Wells countered. “Come on, the man might be a little aloof, but he’s still a good person. Don’t you all agree?”

“Absolutely,” Juliana answered at once. “Aria, Nikolai has been our friend for years. He would never get involved in something like this.”

“I still don’t trust him,” she stated flatly.

“You’re being hasty,” Wells said again. “Now, how do we open that door? It looks heavy.”

“You could try magic,” Aidan suggested. “Do you know a spell to open a door?”

“Well, no, that’s a bit beyond my current skill set,” Wells admitted. “I’ve only worked with water. I wouldn’t know what kind of magic to use for a lock.”

“Just try it,” Aidan urged. “It can’t hurt, can it?”

“No, I suppose you’re right,” Wells conceded. “Here, hold my torch.”

He passed the torch to Aidan and turned to face the door. The carving of the dead tree unnerved him, making it difficult to concentrate. Closing his eyes, he was startled by the sheer amount of myran saturating the room, its strongest pulses emanating from the door itself. He took a deep breath, drew the energy into himself, and focused his thoughts: Open the door. He felt the familiar rush as the power left him, but this time there was none of the pleasant warmth he associated with magic. Instead, a foul, searing knot tightened in his stomach.

He forced the discomfort aside when he opened his eyes and saw that his spell had worked. With a low, grinding groan, the massive door began to ascend into the ceiling, its carving glowing a brilliant blue—the same hue as his Ring of Hope.

They all blinked against the sudden brightness from within. It was a small antechamber, yet it was brilliantly lit and filled with golden baubles that glinted in the torchlight. Curled in a soft, overstuffed recliner was Nikolai, a pile of books at his feet.

He lifted his head as they entered. He wore the same clothes Cirus had provided and looked unchanged, except for the dark circles under his eyes. He regarded each of them with a slightly bewildered expression.

“Wow,” he murmured, his voice hoarse from disuse. “I never expected any of you to find me down here.”

“Nikolai, what are you doing?” Wells demanded. “This place is—”

“An antechamber used by the Masters of the Grove from AE 100 to AE 450, until the Order of Sorcerers discovered and raided it,” Nikolai finished with placid accuracy. “That’s what you were going to say, correct?” He closed his book with a soft thump.

“Well, I—”

“I’ll overlook your lack of a proper greeting, largely due to your shock at finding me,” he said, rising to his feet. “Wells, the kithara on your shoulder suggests you’ve begun sorcery training. Vance, that’s no way for a Knight of Neron to wear a blade. Juliana, you appear to have started your training as an oracle, and Aidan, you seem to have found favor with the king. Am I right?”

They all stared, dumbfounded. Once again, Nikolai had assessed every detail about them in a single, sweeping glance. He chuckled. “What? It’s obvious to anyone who has studied the world of Remira sufficiently.”

“Yeah, but—but how have you had the time to learn all that?” Aidan stammered.

“I read, Aidan,” Nikolai said, a trace of condescension in his voice. “I’ve been in this library nearly every day since we arrived in Tor Alian. What did you imagine I was doing?”

“But how did you get down here?” Wells pressed. “We only got in because—”

“Because of the Ring of Hope, I know,” Nikolai cut him off. Aria stiffened on Wells’s shoulder. Nikolai, seemingly oblivious, continued. “We’ve been in Remira for about a month. For the first two weeks, I devoured every book I could find. This library is one of the largest I’ve ever encountered, with texts covering every known subject.”

He paced the small antechamber as he told his story, the others watching with a grim fascination. “I initially focused on the sciences, but I soon exhausted anything new in that field. So, I turned my attention to magic, about which there is a wealth of literature.”

He paused, taking a breath as if savoring the chance to display his knowledge. “Frankly, the scholarship on magic in Remira is nearly infinite. Scholars have studied the subject for almost three thousand years without interference. Nothing on our world compares! Their knowledge is incredible. Cirus, you know,” he added, glancing at Wells, “has written a great deal on magical theory.”

“That doesn’t surprise me,” Wells remarked. “But that still doesn’t answer my question. How did you get in here?”

“Patience, I’m getting to that.” Nikolai’s smile was still present, though it now seemed unsettling. “I came across a book tucked away in a corner, titled Warlocks, a Misunderstood Order. It was written by a warlock, yes, but it was an incredibly enlightening text. It detailed the history of the Masters of the Grove and their operations, particularly in Anolin. Specifically, it mentioned a secret chamber hundreds of feet beneath the Royal Library of Tor Alian. It spoke of hidden treasures the warlocks considered priceless, things the wizards wouldn’t touch. And because of the wizards, they could never access these amazing relics themselves.”