A Society in Decay, page 22
“You could still go in,” he said. “I could help—”
“I don’t want you going in there right now, Char. We don’t know what’s going on. You don’t know how safe it is. As far as we know, it’s not safe. If the dark sorcerers are freed, think about what would happen if you go and show yourself inside of the Society house.” She shook her head, looking over to the palace. “You know of any other place in the city?”
“I know a few others in the city that I could go to,” Char said. “People I trust.”
“Like you trusted Kolathin?”
“I never trusted him. I’m a better judge of character than that.”
Jayna wasn’t sure. Then again, he was friends with her, so she gave him some credit.
“Fine. Find sorcerers that you can trust. We may need them.”
“We?”
“Something’s going on here, Char. I don’t understand the protests, much like I don’t understand what the dark sorcerers intend. But see if there are those that you can trust.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to chase a linking spell.”
20
The dark sorcerer had placed several other patterns around the palace. Jayna had tracked them, disrupting each of them, before moving on. She didn’t see any sign of the sorcerer, and it didn’t seem as if she were followed, either. She still hadn’t come up with any answers as to why they targeted the palace, but then the sorcerer had returned to the Society house.
When he had returned, she had felt his presence there, even if she wasn’t sure what it was or why he had returned. So she had followed him back, waiting to see what else they might do.
Night swirled around them as they lingered near the Society house. The stone gleamed against the darkness, practically glowing from moonlight but also from the sense of power Jayna had from inside. She didn’t see anything moving and wasn’t sure that any of the Society were active.
As she watched from across the street, she twisted her Toral ring while trying to avoid drawing upon power so that she didn’t draw attention to herself.
There had to be something here. Everything pointed to the Society house.
The only problem was that she had not found any boxes that would explain what they had seen. Eva had left her, going back into the city, looking for more enchantments. Jayna didn't care how she had to acquire them. Until they had a better understanding of what happened here, Jayna felt as if she needed to observe the Society house, much like she had observed the outpost in Nelar.
She could feel the linking spell in the back of her mind. Char was somewhere in the city, perhaps waiting on her or perhaps visiting with others of the Society. She wished that she could communicate easily through it, though she had not practiced with it.
While waiting and watching, perhaps now was the time.
She could draw a little Toral magic without drawing attention, she thought.
She tugged ever so slightly on the linking spell.
She watched the street as she did, ensuring there was no activity along the street or within the Society house. Even though it was close to midnight, there were still plenty of people out, though most avoided the Society house now. The protest had died down.
There was a tug back on the linking spell. Char was responding.
She focused, pushed her awareness through, and tried to communicate. “Can you hear me?”
She forced some of the Toral connection along the linking spell, though she wondered if doing so in this city would reveal her presence before she was ready.
“Jayna?”
She suppressed a sigh of relief. Still, it was good to have char there, even if his voice was only connected to her through the linking spell.
“Where are you?” he asked.
His voice was distant, muted, but she tried to add more of her Toral magic, trying to solidify linking spell between them and felt it form.
“I’m watching the Society house,” she said. “I’ve been trying to figure out a way to get inside.”
“Don't go inside,” he said. “I found the Fate. She didn't bring them to the Society house.”
Jayna almost lost her focus.
“Where did she bring him?”
“There’s a secondary place within the city. I had been making my way away from you when somebody found me. I had just started to cut my robe when I was found another sorcerer. Connor Olivan, if you remember him.”
He’d been a student at the Academy when they had both come through there, though he had been advanced level compared to her. She didn't remember much about them otherwise, only that he had seemed kind, though they didn't always mean anything when it came to sorcerers, she had found.
“Where did they bring you?”
“There is a small annex to the palace.”
An annex?
“Have you been there before?”
“I've barely been to the Society house, Jayna. Most of our time was spent in the Academy. It wasn’t until the graduation ceremony where I came to the Society house—”
“So that’s what happens,” she said.
“Jayna,” Char said again, and it sounded like he was trying to force more power into the linking spell as if he were wanting to bridge that distance between them, but it was difficult for him to do so. “I need to be careful. It seems like the city has been under attack for the better part of several weeks. The Society plans to clamp down on them soon.”
Jayna regarded the Society house. She still didn’t really understand all that was going on here but felt as if she were close.
“You should join me. We can work together to get you access to the Society.”
Char wasn’t necessarily wrong. Maybe it was time for her to do that.
She still didn't know what sort of defenses around the Society house. Char wouldn't know, especially if he hadn't spent much time there. She had thought that she could sneak into the Society house, pose as a member of the Society, and dig into the dark sorcerers, but perhaps she’d been too shortsighted. This wasn’t going to be nearly as straightforward as she had hoped.
Then again, when it came to her plans, such as they were, they were never as straightforward as she intended.
She stood watching for a moment when a tattooed figure approached the Society house. They were dressed in the black jacket and pants of one of the Sniffers.
As she turned, she realized there was more than just one. Five of them approached at the same time.
What was going on?
The Sniffers were all heading into the Society house now?
She had to get inside but doing so posed a danger. “I’m going to check on something, and then I will come to you.”
“Check on something?”
Char’s voice grew distant. Jayna had to draw upon some of her Toral power to strengthen the connection, but she didn’t know if there was some external force that limited her ability to do so.
“Don’t do…”
She couldn’t hear anything more. The linking spell grew more muted. She stared at the Society house. Whatever limited her connection to Char came from there, she suspected.
A shape moved in the distance, and Jayna turned, noticing as Eva crept toward her. Smoke swirled around her, billowing out in a level of control that was far greater than Jayna remembered her possessing. She seemed filled with power.
“I managed to secure a supply of enchantments. I also found something else.”
“What more did you find?”
Smoke swirled around Eva, and she looked as if she wanted to say something more to Jayna before shaking her head. “I think now is not the time. When this is done, the two of us can talk.”
It must have something to do with what Eva had learned about herself.
“If that’s what you think.” She turned her attention to the Society house. “I just saw five Sniffers heading into the Society house. At least, that was what it looked like. They are sorcerers, so they would belong in the Society house, but given what Char told me about how they’ve been hunting dark sorcerers….”
“You think they have chosen this time to make a move?”
“I don’t know. To be honest, all of this doesn’t feel quite right. Something isn’t fitting together. There is some sort of power here that I don’t understand, and it might be more than I can deal with.”
“It’s a good thing you have me with you,” Eva said.
“We have confidence now, don't we?”
Smoke began to build around Eva. “I can get us inside if you provide a distraction.”
“Why don’t we try it the other way. You make a distraction, and I’ll get us inside?”
“I seem to remember when we were at the outpost how you had a hard time mitigating sorcery. Did your studies along the journey make you that much more competent?”
“I think I could deactivate it if I found the spell.”
“In my case, we don’t even have to do that.” She launched herself forward on a trail of smoke.
Jayna grabbed one of her concussive enchantments from her pouch and traced a pattern onto it. If they needed a distraction, then she was going to provide one. It would be powerful enough that it should draw all the attention to it. She activated it and then rolled the enchantment away from her.
The thunderous explosion ripped along the street.
People scattered.
Jayna darted forward, catching up to Eva, swirling smoke around the two of them. They reached the wall around the Society house, and Eva jumped, swirling up over the wall, and landed on the other side. The smoke was dense here, whatever she’d done creating a heavy layer.
“I thought that it would be louder than that,” Jayna said.
“If it didn’t work the way that you believe that it should, then perhaps this Sul’toral is here.”
“It doesn’t seem to be impacting you.”
“Because I'm not using sorcery,” Eva said.
“But my Toral magic…” She twisted her ring. There was no sense of dark magic around her, though she worried that it might be here somewhere that she had not yet seen. As she focused, she could feel something.
It reminded her of what she had detected when the Sniffer had attacked.
“Can you feel anything?”
Eva frowned, and her smoke swirled even more. “I feel a pressure. Is that what you are looking for?”
“I don’t know.” Maybe that was all it was. If so, there was no reason for them to be extra cautious. She looked over to Eva and then nodded.
Eva guided them forward.
The smoke swirled around them, but she created an opening, something of a tunnel.
“Are you trying to mitigate the magic that is around us?”
“Surprisingly, there is very little around us,” Eva said.
The smoke swirled, and it billowed in a way that Jayna had never seen her using before. It created an arch that they walked through.
“Did you learn how to do this on your journey?”
“I think I always knew how to do this.”
They reached an opening, and the smoke began to fade, swirling away from them, and as it did, she could feel that energy starting to retreat. The pressure upon her was fading as well, and she tested by trying to trace a pattern.
Eva grabbed her wrist, shaking her head. “Focus on Toral magic here, nothing else.”
It was probably good advice to warn her away from using sorcery here and for Jayna to focus on her own Toral connection. She didn’t need sorcery. The Toral magic was significant enough.
When they reached the door, Eva pressed even more smoke up against it.
“I haven't seen you using quite as much power before,” Jayna said.
“While you were watching this place, I went and found a source of heat to draw power from.”
“Like you did in Nelar.”
“I’m still not exactly sure how it works,” Eva said.
The door came open. Once inside, it looked like an office building. There were rows of doors on one side of the hall, though a massive foyer stretched in front of them. They headed inside, the smoke Eva radiated, making it difficult for Jayna to look at much else.
She stepped forward a few steps, and then she froze. When she did, she pushed the smoke away from her. It flowed steadily onward, swirling out into the building, drifting quickly. It was directed in a way that she had never seen before and with far more force and control. As it drifted away, Jayna stood motionless, just watching Eva. Her eyes twitched, and blood continued to drip from a bite on her lip, from injuries in her palms, but it never hit the ground. As soon as it dripped away from her, it started to steam, turning in the smoke, and Eva used that power to send it swirling out and away, drifting as quickly as she could into the building.
“It feels like there’s a place beneath us. That’s where we need to go. I can feel the presence of something,” Eva said.
Jayna nodded. “Maybe the two of us needed to do this anyway,” she said. “I don't know how to; we will figure this out on our own”
Had she come on her own, she wouldn't have been sneaking in like this. She would've used help, come with Char, and she would've navigated through the building in a very different way than she had in this case.
They moved forward, and Eva seemed to know exactly what they were doing, almost as if her smoke guided them along the way, as if she somehow could feel something because of that smoke.
Jayna used her Toral connection, testing for anything that she might be able to uncover. “I don't detect anything else.”
“Just the power that's trying to constrict us,” Eva said.
They reached a stair, and they headed down.
Jayna could feel magic and a pressure squeezing around them to constrict both of them. She let her Toral connection fill her. More of that darkness fluttered at the edge of her vision. The longer she held onto it, the more likely it was that she would eventually succumb to it. She had to fight it.
Smoke drifted toward her and then passed through her. It eased some of that cold pressure that had been building.
“I've seen that face before,” Eva said when Jayna looked in her direction. “It's always when you struggle.”
Jayna looked up, nodding slowly. “I feel like I’m struggling even more than I normally do,” she said. “I've been trying to call upon the Toral magic more and more often than I normally do when forced to avoid using sorcery. It's almost as if it is guiding me toward it.”
“Maybe it is,” Eva said.
“I don't like drawing upon this much of the Toral power,” Jayna said. “Until I understand what it means, I don't exactly know if it is safe to do.”
It was more than safety. She was more concerned about dark magic and whether she would succumb to it. Even knew that.
“I think the key is a desire for that darkness. You don’t have that,” Eva said.
“What happens if I decide that I do?” She looked around her. They were down a set of stairs into a deeper section of the Society house. With the smoke, Eva continued to swirl around her, making it difficult for Jayna to see much of anything around her. “Other Toral wouldn't have started out that way, would they? I have a hard time thinking that they chased the dark power, but something seduced them to it, drawing them deeper into the darkness so that they wanted some other power that they weren’t supposed to have.”
“Is that what you did?”
“I’m not chasing dark power, but I’m aware that it’s always there and calling to me. If I’m not careful, it might overwhelm me.” Jayna looked to Eva. “It’s hard to fight it.”
“Then don’t fight it.”
“You want me to succumb to the dark magic?”
“Knowing you, you will make it succumb to you.”
They stopped at the door. The door itself was set into a massive section of black stone, with writing and symbols on either side of the iron door, marked with the sense of power pushing against it. Jayna traced her hand up atop them, wondering if she might be able to understand the writing, but it was complicated magic that she had not yet mastered.
Jayna immediately began to form the magic ball and reached for it even as she pushed on the door, testing it, and jerked on Eva's arm.
She wasn't fast enough.
The door came open.
A flood of decay power came raging toward them.
21
Had Jayna not called upon her Toral magic, she might’ve been overwhelmed by the decay magic. She could feel it pressing on her. It was a considerable power. She braced herself, holding onto all of the Toral magic that she could so that she could block this power. Eva added an element of smoke magic to her, but even that might not be enough.
She had to fully embrace the Toral magic.
All of it.
She let dark magic flow through her, struggling to withstand the full brunt of it.
More of Eva’s smoke began to flow from her. There was a moment of relief as Eva’s magic layered over hers. The combined powers burn through the rest of the decay. As it did, Jayna looked over to Eva.
“I suppose you recognize that?” Eva asked.
“Unfortunately, I’ve seen something like that before.”
They stood in the doorway. Jayna could feel that power, she could feel energy coming out from the door, but she was afraid of going any further. She had to be careful here. If there was more of that strange decay magic, she didn’t want to risk exposing herself to it too suddenly. She needed to be careful.
“Is this the space you felt when you were using your smoke magic?” she asked Eva.
Eva started to swirl that smoke around her even more, and it flowed out, drifting away from her, and she turned back to Jayna, nodding slowly. “This is close to it, but I’m not exactly sure if this is where I detected it.”
Jayna had to do her part, as well. She couldn’t allow Eva to be the only one battling with this Sul’toral decay magic. She had to open herself to her own Toral power, let that burning cold work through her.
