Page 172 of Serpent and Shadow

A coiled, black snake appeared in the space behind my closed eyes. Watching it stare at me through the darkness of my mind, I felt a shiver of unease, different than how I’d felt the last time it made itself known.

When I got attacked outside Valarian, I’d believed I was about to die.

I knew I was probably about to die now, too, but it felt different somehow.

Maybe my mind was just marginally less unclear.

Whatever the cause of that difference, I could tangibly feel the power behind the shadowy presence of the snake. I could feel the being that wasn’t really a snake looking at me. I could feel it measuring me in some way, a whisper of curiosity in its appraisal. I could also feel a certain indifference it aimed towards me.

That indifference didn’t feel cruel. It felt more like I was so different from it, so much smaller and less complex, it struggled to feel much connection to what I was.

I wish for that favor now, princess, the snake hissed.

I flinched, opening my eyes.

I closed them again, looking for the creature that had spoken, but the black-scaled snake was already fading from view. I could feel it retreating, even as the image disappeared like smoke. I fought to hold on, to claw it back, but it was like gripping smoke.

Soon, only the scent of it swirled around me, cloying, and strangely familiar.

I fought to make sense of what I’d felt.

Even the way it said the word “princess” struck me as strange. Unlike when Blackstone said it, or Quicksilver, or even Bones, the snake didn’t say it like it was taking the piss. It didn’t sound like it was teasing.

It called me “princess” as though that was simply what I was.

My eyes snapped open again when Malefic’s words boomed up through the high ceilings of Worm Hall. He spoke through the jackal-headed mask, which must have been magicked in some way to make it act like a loudspeaker, and to make his words clear.

“Most of you likely won’t know this, as it is often omitted in the history of this revered institution,” he said, his words vibrating the air. “But this hall, named after my ancestor, Eustacia Morwormer Bones, was originally called Bones Cathedral. It wasn’t a dining area, or a place for frivolous parties or meetings with bureaucrats. It wasn’t where the graduation ceremonies took place, as those were conducted in the gardens outside.”

He paused meaningfully, holding out his black-clad arms.

“It was a ritual hall,” he said coldly. “It was a place of magic. It was also a place of sacrifice, where the blood of the living was offered up to the gods.”

Bones had told me the same story.

We’d been lying in bed one night, holding hands, and he’d stared up at the star pattern woven into the ceiling of the tower with me, talking in a low voice.

He’d said the original institute of learning on this spot hadn’t been Malcroix Bones, but a university known as “Bloodmark Academy.”

Both the school and its tendency to perform incredibly dark rituals had been shut down by the Royal Fellowship for Magical Education, sometime in the late 10th or early 11th Century.

According to Bones, the original school had been opened by a mage named Morlock Viceroy Bones, a sorcerer who did indeed build a massive ritual hall on the same site as Worm Hall. Morlock conducted hundreds of blood rituals on the site before the Fellowship intervened, rituals said to correspond with large numbers of missing humans and Magicals. The Fellowship further believed students were being coerced to act in ways that went against the Magical Codes, the main set of laws of that time period.

Worried Morlock was accomplishing very little apart from producing large numbers of dangerous dark sorcerers, the Fellowship took away the school’s charter.

In the rewriting of history that followed, Eustacia Morwormer Bones got credited with “starting” the school after she oversaw the construction of all new buildings to replace the ones razed after Morlock’s removal.

Bones had seemed fascinated by the story.

He talked about how the rituals Morlock conducted weren’t really meant to accomplish a specific goal, but were mass-like proceedings promising fealty to the gods, with a particular focus on the major Egyptian gods, like Amun-Ra, Ma’at, Osiris, Isis, Thoth, Bastet… and, of course, Anubis. The strong connection the Bones family claimed to that lineage explained why statues of the Egyptian gods were still five times larger than the rest of the gods depicted in Worm Hall, even now.

Bones family lore made all kinds of fantastical claims about the Bloodmark Academy years, including the summoning of massive dark beings, and even changes to the timeline that never got discovered or recorded outside family archives.

“…The worlds have been separated for too long,” Malefic intoned. “From the very beginning, we were told only a ascended Magical, a sorcerer unlike any ordinary Magical, commanding power beyond any seen since the early years of our race, could bring those worlds back together.”

The reddish eyes of the jackal shone.

“We have the means to bring that extraordinary magic forth now,” he thundered next. “Therefore, we must wait no longer. We must not grant the humans even one more day to destroy the half of our world entrusted to them after the Great Separation…”