AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I find that hard to believe, she replied, entering a less ornate lift behind Hass. It dropped them into the silent archives.
“Over here,” Hass instructed, slinking through narrow rows of bookshelves. They hurried after him, stopping in an alcove with a lone table There, the book sat open, pages worn and scrawled with indecipherable runes.
“Hope you’re good at decryption,” Hass said with a frown. “I’m sure as hell not. You have three hours until shift change. Then you disappear.”
Anxious to dive into the tome’s mysteries, Tenah sank into a musty chair and fished out the cipher. Faster than she’d expected, Aeyis scooted a chair up next to her. All business, he flattened sheets of crinkled parchment on the table.
“I took it upon myself to steal a few of those runes from your mind,” he said. “According to Denoden’s impressive library, they are part of the first language.”
Tenah glanced at him sideways, torn between wanting to smack him for always peeping and wanting to hug him for his efforts. “And can you read this first language?”
He tilted his head. “No, but I can use my other notes here to translate it into the present tongue.”
“Now I wish I would have brought us some of Zia’s tea.”
A half hour of painstaking translation, and they had decoded the first page. Aeyis began to read, “‘The Order of Equil shall protect the state of the worlds. We exist to maintain balance between all magics born from the Void. We are the protectors of sacred sources. We are the sentinels against the destructive natures of outside forces. This tome shall be a guiding tool for all known magics. It shall recount the efforts of the Order to ward off evil, should we ever face its destructive touch again.’”
Tenah released a shaky breath. “Okay. The Equil needs to tell us what to do about Chaos.”
Aeyis ran bony fingers through his curls, revealing the little fracture lines of dark magic along his temples, shaped much like the branches of a tree in winter.
Her heart skipped a beat. She glanced down at the developing whorls on the back of her hands. They deviated around perfect circles then crossed over each other several times like constricting vines.
She grabbed for the cipher and nearly ripped it in two as she shoved it in his face. “Why do our markings look like these symbols?”
His eyes flicked between her markings and the cipher. “That’s quite interesting. There’s a pattern to Chaos then.”
“A pattern that’s probably in here.” She patted the tome and flipped through it. She’d skimmed through a good chunk of it when Aeyis jabbed a finger at a matching row of runes in the center of a torn page.
Like a court reporter, he quickly scribbled out a translation. Tenah held stale air in her lungs.
“‘Chaos is the strongest documented unidentifiable being in the Void. While we know little about its origin, we do know it cannot survive long without a host. Vessels for Chaos span races and include animals. There are cases of Chaos fusing itself with sources of magic where it preys on casters who draw from the source. We believe this is how Corruption initially spread in Daathmorr.’” Aeyis’s hands twitched with excitement as he continued to read. “‘The most recorded sources to harbor infection were given the name Rama, or blessed pools of healing. We built temples around them to keep them protected, but Chaos unleashed war first upon its appointed protectors, descendants of Xith. For they were the greatest threat to its existence.’”
Imagining a caster siphoning from their bonded source of magic, only to find they’d channeled something terrible into their bodies, chilled Tenah to the bone. Chaos truly was a parasite. An intelligent predator.
She wrinkled her nose. “Xith’s descendants were actually healers. History books got that very backward.”
“There’s solid evidence that you are one of these descendants, Tenah,” Aeyis replied, as if merely commenting on the weather. “It explains why your guardian believed you could reverse darkness and why Chaos targets you so ruthlessly.”
Her mouth went dry. “Seems like a big piece of information Ames should have divulged.”
“You forget, he had his magic tangled up in your father’s toxic mind for a long time. Who knows what effect Chaos had on him.”
Her eyes darted up to his face then to the black lines etched into his pale skin. Furious butterflies had a cage match beneath her ribs.
“You and my brother are so determined to protect me,” Aeyis said. “I’m perfectly content with my choice to use this life to potentially save hundreds of others. If I can help you figure this out, we stand to do a lot of good.”
Silenced by his wisdom and bravery beyond his years, she let him continue reading.
“‘As with all magic, Chaos does have one known weakness. The markings it leaves in its wake give tell to the power it holds over its host. Discovering the source of its power can aid in driving out the sentient disease.’”
Blood pumped faster through her veins. They were on the verge of something here.
Aeyis flipped the torn page with a huff of breath. “That’s it. The rest is missing.”
Tenah uttered a string of colorful language that would have made her guardian blush. “There has to be something more in this stupid tome.”
Had Boedworth already scoured its contents and ripped out its secrets? Or had Corrupt stolen that knowledge, forcing the hand of its vessel to damage the tome?
