1. The Warlock
“It’s too fragile, too fragile a balance,” the warlock mumbled.
His soft leather soles muffled his footsteps, but even the smallest sounds reverberated through the high-ceilings. If he were not as proficient in magic, he would have feared the vibrations may send the fragile mineral shards plummeting to the ground below, impaling anything on the way. He eyed the ceiling, despite himself. A steady stream of icy water dripped down the smooth cave walls, coating them with a slick sheen, reflecting the light around the murky space. On the walls closest to the light, the hundreds of layers of sediment, striations of white, yellow, red, and gold, were revealed, streaking the brown earth, but the warlock was too consumed in his task to appreciate them. A pebble skittered across the floor, too small to see, the sound like a volley of cracked knuckles popping in his ears, and landed near the warlock’s weathered wooden staff propped against the wall.
He hated the staff. It was ugly, gnarled, and it reminded him too viscerally of his age, the hundreds of years he had spent in his pact with the behemoth beside him.
Opposite the warlock was the only other living creature in the cave. His patron. The massive monster resembled a bird of prey, but its feathers were darker, many shades of black and grey. Its wings were splayed open, the soft feathers of its chest exposed.
The creature was bound to the walls of the cave, ropes of sparkling blue light securing it across its chest, ankles, neck, and the center of each wing. The binding spell was the most powerful of its kind, and wielding it against the warlock’s own patron required massive strength. The warlock had spent many, many years practicing, binding any poor beast he could find wandering the forests, before he was able to hold the Hawk in place in this cave. He had lost track of the months and years he had been working on breaking their bond. Hell, he had lost track of the hours here in the cave today… One of the disadvantages of living many lifetimes beyond his fellow elves.
The beast’s beak hung open as it breathed raggedly, its glassy eyes looking through the man, as if he were invisible. An array of iridescent stripes streaked the wide wings, shimmering in the reflected light above. A small ball of white light, about the size of his fist and glowing brightly, was suspended above him via one of his more useful cantrips.
The small cave was serving as the warlock’s temporary office, hidden deep in the dark mazes of the Te’Herelan coast, and only accessible by magic, the only physical opening just a few inches across. He had teleported in a small desk to work on, along with a wooden stool, an inkpot, several quills, a collection of natural crystals, more parchment and scrolls than he could ever fill, and few leather pouches of various other spell components. It was risky to use the teleport spell so frequently, but the warlock needed to move quickly. His back ached from bending over his desk all day. Or was it all night?
The desktop was strewn with stones and bones, only some of which were acquired via unscrupulous means. His experiments had not yet been successful, and his research was getting messy, the cave floor littered with crumpled pages, ashes, and the grime of dozens of failed experiments which he would have rather killed himself than clean up.
Enchantment was not his field of magic, and he was beginning to lose patience learning the appropriate spells without any tutelage. Of course, any educated mage would know at least a few spells outside their particular school or field of study, but he had taken to Transmutation with ease, especially with the added magical power of his patron. But Enchantment was different entirely, and using any of his magical power against his patron was ten times more difficult.
Behind him, the beast uttered a haggard screech and sputtered, straining against the cords.
“I know,” the warlock replied, a hand on his head. His forehead felt clammy, too cold for the late summer heat warming the nearly sealed cave. “I can feel it too, don’t you understand? But it’s too late now. It might have been too late five hundred years ago,” he muttered. His neck ached and he dropped his head.
His patron pulled weakly against its bindings, its head sagging forward towards the warlock, nearly mirroring the man’s pose, and screeched a pitiful hiss.
“Hyiahhhh.”
The mage scoffed and lifted his head. He crossed his arms over his chest.
“Obviously if I had known that, we wouldn’t be here now,” he snapped. “And if I had-”
He closed his eyes and pushed his long hair from his face, exhaling from his flared nostrils. He had thought circles around his dilemma, but had made no tangible progress towards breaking the bond between himself and the Hawk. The matter was all but hopeless, and the warlock was running out of time.
“It doesn’t matter,” he finally muttered. “It doesn’t change anything. Nothing works. You will die without me,” he sighed. “And I will die without you. So we must both go on. Until we cannot.”
The mighty beast screamed at him in return, its beak gaping wide as it shot a pulse of psychic energy. The force nearly knocked the man over.
“I know your suffering for I feel it also,” the man cried out. “But you cannot conceive of the risk involved for me, what’s at stake if I fail. And I do not answer only to myself. This is beyond just us now.”
The Hawk’s dark eyes were glassy and frantic, darting around the cave, a sudden burst of energy compelling the beast to lash out. It screamed again, the piercing sound echoing painfully throughout the small cave.
The warlock clutched his abdomen and gasped sharply as the pain of his flesh being torn open wracked through him. His eyes were squeezed shut but he could feel the jagged scars across his torso erupting into wounds afresh. A wave of nausea rippled through and he clenched his jaw. He lowered himself to the ground and crossed his legs, propping his head in both hands, willing himself to outlast the pain. The marks of his master. Fighting his own patron was killing him.
“It’s not that simple,” the warlock replied through clenched teeth as blood poured from the wounds on his torso, hot and sticky, plastering his blouse to his skin. It was a feeling he was becoming too familiar with for his liking.
The warlock took a breath and staggered to his feet as the last notes of the beast’s scream faded into stillness. His ears rang loudly as he reached out towards his staff. He summoned it with a trembling arm. After a little flutter, the staff flew from the wall and landed solidly in its owner’s palm. He planted it into the ground and braced his weight on it, preparing his next spell.
With a shove, he swung the bottom of the staff toward the Hawk. Uttering the calming spell, he willed as much magic as he could muster into soothing the beast to which he was bound, the spell pulsing through the air in softly glowing white rings.
The rings struck the Hawk like smoke and dissolved into the feathers of its neck and head. It sagged forward in its binding and dropped its great head, finally releasing the warlock from its psychic hold.
The warlock turned and staggered to his desk by the wall of the cave, wincing. His muscles were wrung with weariness, his eyes aching from lack of sleep, the same wounds always re-opening on his body... The warlock tripped and lost his balance, collapsing to the ground. Pathetic. How had he let himself fall so far?
Sand grit in his teeth and he spat as he slowly lifted himself to his knees, blood gathering in little pools on the earthen floor around him. It was moments like these that always made him question if dabbling into forbidden magic was worth it after all. His vision wavering as he pulled himself to his feet, he was inclined to think it was not.
Looking down, he saw his tunic was now completely soaked with blood, the once white blouse now fully saturated in deep red. As he bent over the desk once more, his shirt streaked blood across his papers and belongings, but he didn’t care. It was far from the first time. Snatching up a quill, he used some of his blood to scribble the strokes of a sigil on a square of yellowing parchment and kept working.
But only a moment later, a spurt of blood gushed from his torso, covering the sigils and ruining his parchment. He clenched his jaw. Of course. His wounds were still open. Rolling his eyes, he put down the quill.
He lifted the hem of his shirt and grimaced at the sight. The edges of the wounds were farther apart this time, raw, bloody tissue and muscle showing through the gaping gashes. The warlock looked away, uttering a mending spell through clenched teeth. Slowly, the familiar, purple-red scar tissue grew over the wounds that criss-crossed his torso and chest like lightning. Despite the apparent healing of the open flesh, the pain still wracked through him, ricocheting across his limbs. The scars grew larger each time he struggled with the Hawk, slowly crawling up his skin towards his neck, like the tentacles of a sea monster pulling down a ship.
He lowered his shirt, heavy and damp, and sighed. The cleansing spell for his clothes would have to wait. He drew the sigils once more.
Now, for the reason he was there in the first place… The warlock finally unbound one of the leather pouches on the desktop. After locating the proper scroll, the man followed the instructions, assembling the components carefully on the wooden surface, placing the sigil he had drawn in the middle of the arrangement.
It was certainly risky to attempt to transfer any amount of his magical energy into a physical object when he and his patron were both running so low. But having something physical to pass on when he inevitably passed into the heavenly realm, Ossi, was the last chance he had to make use of his pact.
His mind replayed dozens, even hundreds of incidents when the warlock had used his magic too freely and carelessly. It did nothing to comfort him, but he couldn’t help but obsess over what he would be capable of now if he had understood the ways it would diminish. He finished preparing the spell with some effort.
With a heave, the warlock swung the staff in a circle, chanting the spell and drawing the dust into a whirl over the paper, pushing down the thoughts screaming out his pain as he moved, the edges of his fresh scars stretching apart as his arms reached over his head.
The markings flickered with a magical light, flashing on and off in random spurts. The timing was crucial. If he missed the light even by a second, he risked scorching through the table and wasting weeks worth of work. The warlock blinked, counted the seconds between the flashes, until he finally strained and brought the staff down quickly, striking the center of the sigils with the staff point. His throat was parched, his breathing quickened. A burst of light pulsed through the symbols on the papers scattered across the top, lighting them all clearly, and a beam of pale yellow light slithered from the page like a serpent darting from the brush.
The warlock held his breath. After a few moments of the sigils remaining lit, he exhaled. But as he relaxed, the parchment began sputtering and spitting sparks faster and faster until they rose in a chaotic spray above the table, then dispersed with a mighty rush of wind that blasted through the cave.
The sigils staying lit was a good sign, but the sparks were concerning, and he wasn’t immediately sure if the spell had worked or not.
He kicked the staff to the wall of the cave, and it echoed as the wood clattered along the stone. His hair was stringy with sweat and he was exhausted, but the distinct drop in magical energy meant he must have done it… right?
The desktop was piled with powdery, gray ashes, residue from the spell. He felt through the dust, flicking aside fragments of parchment and bones, until he found a hard marble in the center, darkened from the smoke. Rubbing it clean with his thumb, he could just barely make out the faint etch of the sigil glowing on the surface of the shiny glass. He sighed. He had pulled it off. At least, the first step.
He was close to passing out, but he decided to risk a teleportation spell to leave the cave. He needed a break, and to see anything but the endless curves of the caverns.
He flashed from the lonely cave to the nearby coast, on a stretch of secluded beach.
The light was overwhelming, but he was desperate for fresh air. A blast of salty air blew his hair over his shoulder, wicking the moisture from his forehead and neck. The beach was empty, like it always was, as he followed the distant horizon with his gaze. The damp blood soaking his shirt felt good, cooling his skin. He tried not to think about what it meant that he was getting pleasure from his own spilled blood, but decided not to use a cleansing spell, for now.
The warlock’s gaze followed the edges of the waves chasing the little crabs skittering in the sand, the foam gathering at the ends of the waves on the shore. The threat of his borrowed time pressed at the back of his mind, but he forced himself to rest for a moment.
He had succeeded in enchanting the stone, which means his theory was technically possible. There may be a way for him to transfer the power of the Hawk through himself and into a physical object, breaking their bond once and for all. It was against the code of conduct for warlocks, but the Academy be damned. He was in too far to care what they or anyone else thought.
The warlock may have enjoyed his mild success for longer had a deafening blast not sounded from inside the caves. Something inside him shuddered and writhed, a feeling beyond his physical body. Something was terribly wrong.
With a flick of his wrist, he teleported back into the cave, but he was too late. What little could be made out in the rubble was meaningless. The binding spell had been broken, his patron freed. The warlock’s breath caught in his throat, his heart racing, and he collapsed to his knees.
The Hawk was gone.
