“So, you’re telling me the rift just appeared out of nowhere?”
Kass feels a vein on his forehead pulsating. His squire Allen squirms.
“It might have had something to do with the human sacrifices smeared across the walls. But I’m sure the rift came as a surprise to everyone else.”
“I take it there were no survivors.”
Allen huffs out a dry laugh. The manor, once made of white marble walls and drowned in pastel-coloured, goose-feathered pillows, is now best described as red. And sticky.
“None, Sir.”
“Okay, walk me through it. A concerned neighbour calls the city watch because of the …”
“The screams, the terrible screams, Sir.”
“Very good. You and the watchmen enter the manor and find that everyone has already died.”
“Most horrifically, yes, Sir.”
“Very good. You catch sight of a demon fleeing the manor –”
“Which was very scary, I should mention, Sir.”
“Very good. And then you find a rift in the basement?”
Kass points at the spiral staircase that leads from the entrance hall into the manor’s wine cellar. Someone in the noble family must have thought mixing alcohol and demonology was a great idea.
“Yes, Sir.”
“And you find that prospect very frightening?”
Allen looks up.
“Have you been down there, Sir?”
“Not yet.”
“Well, it’s … well, it’s strange. Pultruding, one might say.”
“Pultruding?”
“Yes, Sir.”
Kass rubs the back of his neck.
“So, you just had to call her,” he mutters.
“Pardon, Sir?”
“Silver. Of all the mages in this town, you just had to go and call Silver.”
“She is listed as an expert in –”
“She is a necromancer. You’d think demons would be bad enough. Now you had to go and add the undead into the mix?”
“She’s your wife, Sir.”
Allen’s voice is quiet, and he exchanges an awkward glance with the city watchmen. They move away from their choleric commander and take shelter behind half-torn marble statues and collapsed columns, some clutching their guns. For a moment, Kass is tempted to scream out his frustration until his squire runs all the way back to his backwater home village, sword between his legs.
Then he remembers that he swore a blood oath to the god of justice and temperance and takes a deep breath instead. His squire and the city watchmen relax.
“Very well,” Kass says in the voice of someone who is decidedly not very well. “Let’s see what my dear wife has unearthed now, shall we?”
Silver is reanimating two corpses, and somehow, none of Kass’s subordinates have deemed it fit to stop her. The body of a male teenager, almost entirely torn in two, is hovering in a purple-glowing pentagram. The body of an older woman, perhaps his mother, lies on the ground beside him. She has likewise started to absorb the light from Silver’s hand-painted spell.
His wife pays them no mind. She sits beside the rift, her skeletal hand hovering perhaps an inch from its steaming exterior. It is like a tear in time and space, blindingly bright and covered by shifting clouds.
Silver has locked her wheelchair in position and is almost poking her nose into the magic strands holding the rift in place. Her thin, whitish-blonde hair is swaying in a faint breeze.
“Silver,” Kass says in place of a greeting. She doesn’t turn around when he enters. They get enough of each other at home.
“Great. You’re here,” she says. “Can you tell me when my friends come to?”
She points at the two corpses she is reanimating. Her voice is raspy and quiet. During the war, she permanently damaged her vocal cords when the enemy tried to torture her to death.
“Is it really necessary to bring them back?” Kass asks. “Some noble idiots opened a rift to one of the hell planes, a lucky demon wandered through, and after it was done here, it decided to stay for a continued killing spree. Just block off the rift so we can get on with our bloody day.”
Silver turns around and fixes him with small, dark eyes.
“Think about that again,” she merely says, then turns back to the rift. She whispers a short incantation that seems to pass right through its surface.
Kass sighs and steps closer. His squire Allen and the rest of his men cautiously follow him across the concrete floor, still soaked in blood and wine. Dusty bottles, shattered on the ground, soak up the air with the intoxicating stink of grapes. Silver must have drawn up the two pentagrams in the centre of the cellar before returning to her wheelchair. On the right wall are the corpses Allen promised, piled up in a fleshy mess of blood and bones.
Kass sighs internally, then turns back to his squire.
“There any hidden rooms in the cellar?”
He can’t see any, but he’s never been good at finding trap doors and hidden corridors. Allen, on the other hand, was recruited from the crusades-torn villages where kids had to learn all sorts of skills to survive.
Humanity never had the chance to help the outskirts recover before the enemy’s invasion tore them to pieces yet again.
Silver interjects before the squire can answer.
“No.”
“And upstairs?” Kass continues.
“Lots of corpses and tasteless décor. But no –”
She interrupts herself to see if he has guessed it for himself. Kass sighs out loud this time.
“No secret laboratory or hidden pile of spell components,” he says. “Nothing that could be used to open a rift. Not by a master spellcaster, and certainly not by a bored noble.”
“Exactly.” Silver turns around, and he sees something like approval in her eyes.
Sometimes, he finds it difficult to look at her, with her torn-up voice, her skeleton arm, and her legs that only work on good days. The war still clings to every inch of her, while Kass feels it has somehow forgotten him.
“We could have missed something,” Kass suggests. He turns to his men and commands them to comb through the manor again. They do as he asks, leaving only him and Silver in the basement.
“Waste of time,” his wife says. “If a spell of any magnitude had been cast in this house, I could have followed its residual energy. Instead, all I could detect is this.”
She points at the rift. Her skeleton hand comes too close to its outline, and a small electric bolt jumps onto her fingers. She doesn’t seem to feel the pain.
“Even you’ve been wrong before,” Kass cautions.
Silver strokes her chin. “How about we assume that I’m no bumbling idiot and somehow missed one of our neighbours developing some frankly amazing magical abilities?”
“Very good, Silver.”
His wife raises her eyebrows. “First things first. Why would demons enter this manor of their own accord? And why block off their own exit route? In case you hadn’t noticed, the rift is sealed. Nobody can pass through it in either direction.”
She touches the rift again, this time intentionally. A bolt of lightning springs from its exterior and shoots past Kass’s head. It hits the wine cellar’s back wall, leaving a sizzling steam residue. He doesn’t do Silver the courtesy of flinching.
His wife continues. “This reeks of powerful arcane magic. Powerful enough to make me think that –”
Kass interrupts her.
“There any chance this is a natural phenomenon?” he asks. “Rifts appear all over the bloody place.”
Silver thinks about it for a moment. “I don’t think so. We haven’t had any big ones for a while.”
“This rift isn’t that big. Not in the grand scheme of things,” Kass argues. It is certainly not as big as the ones that appeared seven years ago. The ones that tore the world apart and allowed an army of enemies to cross over into the human realm.
Old Noll, the capital, is still covered in rifts today, their outlines intoxicating and iridescent like the jewellery on a bride’s head. They promise the most exhilarating and dangerous escape to other realms in the Multiverse, even if many of them are too small to pass through.
Thank the gods, Kass thinks. There are enough idiots who would travel the planes just to conjure a bit of pathos into their lives.
Silver shakes her head. “If this rift came about naturally, why is a barrier spell covering it? Unless the demon chose to block off its own exit. And as far as we know, demons can’t cast spells.”
“As far as we know. We might as well assume the bloody worst,” Kass replies drily. Silver chuckles.
“True, true.” She shrugs. “But death cultists and idiot mages have been trying to rip holes into our interdimensional carpet since this whole mess started. Hells, I’m sure some have succeeded by now. My money is on this being the work of a mage. Not demons or chance.”
Kass curses quietly. The king has, of course, outlawed any interference with the rifts. But it’s hard to enforce rules when it comes to the arcane. Divine energy restores people’s health and cures illnesses. The ability to channel it is given to clerics and paladins by the realm’s ten gods. Arcane magic, on the other hand, is free from any divine control or oversight. Mages can unravel the very fabric of the Multiverse given enough motivation, talent, and spell components.
Kass thinks giving mages free rein is a powder keg ready to blow. Silver disagrees, of course.
“It could be a coincidence,” he reiterates.
“Sure. But a rift appearing here in the capital, Kass? This close to king Ithya?”
“Granted. Big coincidence. Too big.”
Silver nods, then taps her nails on the arms of her wheelchair.
“One thing confuses me,” she says. “If a mage expended enough energy to open a rift, they wouldn’t have bothered butchering a second-rate noble house. No. I reckon the demon has another mission to complete.”
Kass sighs for a third time, but he admits she may have a point.
“Could you do a city-wide scrying spell?” he asks. “Find any creature or creatures that passed through the rift.”
Scrying allows mages to follow either arcane or physical trails. Many spellcasters who choose to leave the city’s mage guild sell scrying spells on the open market, often to suspicious husbands.
Silver hesitates. “I could try, but you’re better off asking a diviner. Scrying isn’t my specialism.”
“I know.”
Kass remembers begging her not to go down the path of necromancy. When they first met, Silver was a wide-eyed highborn girl, desperate to protect her home from the invading enemy. Like many nobles, she knew a bit of arcane magic but nothing extravagant or dangerous.
Kass was the son of a tavern owner who swore his loyalty to the first god who would have his services. He never thought he would be chosen as a favoured divine fighter. As a paladin.
In many ways, things had been easier during the early days of the invasion, even as they fought their fears and self-doubt as viciously as the enemy outside the walls. Before they were forced to give up on their youthful illusions.
“Still. Would be better if you tried it first,” Kass says. “No point unsettling people before we have more information on what kind of foe is stalking our backstreets.”
Silver raises her eyebrows, then smirks. “That, and you don’t fancy the paperwork of requisitioning someone from the mage guild.”
“I built you a two-floor laboratory. You might as well put it to use for something other than bringing back that damned cat.”
“It’s your cat, Kassander.”
“It was. When it was alive. Now it’s an abomination.”
Silver rolls her eyes. “That’s a pretty big word, husband. Are you sure you know what it means?”
Kass glares at her until she relents.
“Fine, I’ll scry for your demon. Let me take a sample.” She pulls a vial from one of the pouches strapped to her wheelchair. She holds it close to the rift, using her skeleton hand, then whispers a quiet incantation. The vial closes, trapping some of the rift’s air and lightning.
“I assume you can’t dispel the barrier on the rift? That way, we could just walk through and track down whoever opened it?” Kass asks instead of a thank you.
Silver shakes her head. “First thing I tried. The rift didn’t like that and spat out a whole cluster of lightning. One of the city watch boys is in the hospital up Glengarden Road now. Don’t worry, he’ll live.”
Kass nods, then gets distracted by a movement on his left. The two corpses in the pentagrams have risen and stare at him with unblinking, glowing eyes.
“Ah, finally!” Silver says, clapping her hands. “Their bodies were so messed up, it took ages to bring them back.”
Kass suppresses a shudder as nausea spreads throughout his body. The divine and the arcane don’t mix well, and ever since joining the paladin order of Five, Kass has been susceptible to feeling the aftereffects of magic tearing on the strands of reality.
It’s even worse with necromancy. Many gods dislike the undead, but his god hates them with a burning passion. When he first signed himself into Five’s service, Kass hadn’t predicted this would turn into the single biggest problem of his life.
He fights off the impulse to cleave through Silver’s necromantic summons with his Zweihander, a weapon gifted to him by the head cleric of Five. Soon enough, she’ll end the spell, and the nobles can be given a proper burial.
“Can you speak, lost souls?” he asks. The teenager manages a nod. The woman doesn’t react, but he can’t exactly blame her. There is a great gaping hole where her throat should be.
“Tell me what happened here,” he demands. The teenager opens his mouth, and a spout of black pestilence falls from his tongue. Kass curses.
“Death,” the boy says. “Demon. Poison. Claw.”
“Easy questions,” Silver reminds him. “Yes or no, ideally.”
Kass nods. He knows this by now, however much he wishes he didn’t.
“Did you open this rift?” he asks.
The teenager and the woman both shake their head. Hers rolls precariously, but the point stands. Silver mutters, ‘Told you.’
“Do you know if anyone else from this house did? Or tried to?” Kass presses.
Again, they shake their heads.
“Do you have any enemies?”
Again, the same response. Kass turns around to Silver, who has narrowed her eyes.
“Predictable,” she murmurs.
“Any ideas?” he asks, biting down a twinge of resentment.
Silver rubs her chin, scratching away a bit of skin with her skeletal fingers.
“Were any of you spellcasters? Anyone in your family?” she asks but receives the same response as Kass.
She curses. “The spell is fading. We don’t have much time.”
“Do you know where the rift leads?” Kass asks.
The teenager shakes his head, but the woman stills, staring at him. Kass turns to Silver.
“Can you make her speak?” he asks. “She might know something.”
His wife nods. She raises her skeletal hand and whispers a spell that binds the woman’s skin together, twisting around her throat until a temporary flesh shield has formed.
“Speak,” Silver commands, her voice even more hoarse than usual.
“Tower. Two towers.”
Kass feels his blood run cold. Demons don’t build towers. That means Silver is right. Whichever plane the demons came from is inhabited, possibly by an advanced civilisation. And that means the rift was created by a mage.
So, it’s a targeted attack. The onset of another war? He utters a quick prayer to Five that it isn’t. Humanity won’t survive it.
“How do you know that?” he asks. The rift’s exterior is covered by clouds and lightning. It doesn’t give away so much as a glimpse of what’s on the other side.
“I was here. When it opened,” the dead woman presses out.
“What kind of bloody demon did this?” Kass demands. But the spell fails before the woman can reply, and the two corpses crash into the ground. He turns around to Silver.
“Can you –?”
Silver raises her hands but, after a moment, lowers them again.
“They are gone,” she explains and makes a waving motion that symbolises their souls vanishing in thin air.
Kass sighs. Hopefully, they have passed to a god’s plane where they can live out their afterlife. Souls don’t need a rift for that. They become one with the fabric of their existence as they sink into peace.
He curses, using terms he tried to forget from his time working in his father’s tavern. Silver shoots him a bemused glance but doesn’t comment on his outburst. Instead, she twists the vial between her fingers.
“This just got interesting,” she mutters. Kass interrupts his flow of curses and gives her a wary look.
“She might have misinterpreted what she saw,” he suggests, although his tone isn’t very hopeful.
Silver shrugs. “Maybe. But it doesn’t sound like it, does it?”
Kass takes another look at the boy and the woman. They belong to a minor house in Old Noll, the realm’s second – and now only – capital. Kass knows little about them, so he asks Silver.
“House Karthe? They’re mineral traders, from what I remember. They got their titles a few decades ago. They financed a few of One’s crusades in the Eastern regions of the realm, if I recall correctly.”
As a noble, Silver knows most of the old families and those who amassed enough money to impress her parents. Once upon a time, the D’arrens had been keen to get Silver married off to a promising young lordling or heiress. Kass only met them once before the war turned their home to dust.
Silver’s parents had been horrified at the prospect of their favourite daughter engaged to a newly enrolled paladin with nothing to his name except conviction. And then, suddenly, they were dead.
Becoming Silver’s replacement family was easy after she lost everyone else. Perhaps that is why divorce is still not a word they dare to utter.
“Right. The way I see it, we have two options,” Kass says. “First, House Karthe was targeted specifically for some bloody reason. Second, this is a royal assassination attempt, and the attackers chose a location close to the castle.”
He isn’t particularly worried when he says that. King Ithya is surrounded by an army of paladins, city watchmen, resident soldiers, and loyal mages. And he is almost always accompanied by Pride, leader of the mage guild and the deadliest person Kass has ever met. She’ll crush any demons that so much as breathe near the castle walls.
The rift is worth reporting, of course. But he doubts anyone will take the demon threat seriously until Silver discovers more about their stray invader. The realm has bigger issues to worry about than a single rift. Old Noll alone is currently contending with three active death cults.
“Right,” Silver says, rubbing her hands. “Then you and your boys patrol the streets, and I follow our demon’s path with a scrying spell?”
“Deal,” Kass replies. He is tempted to smile at her, but before he can make up his mind, she unlocks her wheelchair and rolls a few paces back.
“I’ll create another seal around the rift. That should prevent idiot city guardsmen from stumbling into it by accident and having their faces fried off.”
Kass lets her. He feels a new swell of nausea while Silver is casting. Maybe he should have stepped out of the room when she reanimated the two corpses. He will need to repent at the temple to restore full access to his powers. Ever since Silver pursued the path of necromancy, his god’s favour has noticeably dimmed.
Once Silver is finished with the seal, he lifts her and her wheelchair back up the spiral staircase. He is careful not to scrape the metal against the iron railing. Silver feels light in his arms, and he notices that her breathing strains when she is pressed against his chest.
“Do you need me to escort you home?” he asks, his voice a little quieter than he had intended.
She snorts. “I can handle any robbers or stray cultists, husband.”
He doesn’t doubt it. Even bound to a wheelchair, Silver is one of the city’s most formidable spellcasters. And if she wills it, her skeleton hand wilts anything she touches.
“Fair enough,” he says, then lifts her back to solid ground. She hesitates for a moment.
“I wouldn’t mind the company, though,” she finally says.
Kass feels a sting, even underneath the years of silence and resentment. He still loves Silver. It would be easier for them both if he didn’t.
He shakes his head.
“I need to file my report,” he says.
She does him the favour of not showing her disappointment. “Very well. I suppose I might see you at home.”
He nods.
“Don’t reanimate the cat,” he tells her as she leaves.
Silver laughs.
