Down the Warden went, burning as though he, and not the prisoner, had been cast in the black fires of Daimonsblood. The shame, the humiliation, it was almost beyond his endurance.

  No one had ever escaped Ob-koron. And not only escaped, but mocked me as he did it, in front of the others… In one grotesque display, the Warden had been made into a joke.

  No one had ever escaped Ob-koron. And no one ever would. He would make sure of it. He would find the thief, kill him, and then scrub all record of his existence. The Daggeron family had disowned him anyway. They would not come looking. No one would remember Telos Daggeron in this or any age.

  He opened an iron door with a black key, descended a spiral staircase that plunged down into the bowels of the hill. No one accompanied him. This place, he must go alone. He had already dispatched two search parties to pursue the thief, led by Gregory and Belt. But the Warden suspected they would fail; he had not accounted for magic.

  Even thinking the word made him gag. He spat as if to remove its taste from his mouth. The marks of the chain about the flesh of his neck ached like a brand. He scratched the welts there and cursed. He continued down the stairs, eventually reaching a level floor that reeked of faeces.

  Here, the secret foundations of the prison had been laid, the cells with walls six-feet thick and strong enough to withstand cannon-shot, with doors fashioned from Qi’shathian steel that even acid could not undo. Here was where the worst of the worst were kept, the sorcerers.

  Most Daimomancers were burned and executed, but some—some were kept alive. For they had knowledge, and knowledge was power. The Warden needed that knowledge now. He did not know what Telos had done, with whom he had conversed, how he had escaped, but he knew that there were forces at work that needed to be combatted. The Warden did not trust sorcerers, or truly believe in magic, but he could not doubt what he had seen: a man had stood in the fire and lived.

  He preceded past the darkened cells—for even light was a weapon these fiends could use—and eventually arrived at the furthest cell, nestled in the deepest and darkest part of the dungeon, a place no light ever reached. He knocked thrice on the cell door and it opened. A guard stood there, clearly grateful to be relieved. The Warden stepped into the cell and the door closed behind him.

  In the centre of the floor, carved into sheer granite, was a hole, only just large enough to accommodate a man. A rope extended out of the pit attached to a mechanical pulley. The Warden took a deep breath, then pulled the lever. Slowly, the crank worked, and the rope pulled it payload up out of the oubliette.

  “Kyrick,” the Warden said. He hated the sound of his voice, then, for it was thick with a fear he did not wish to show.

  The prisoner’s eyes opened. He was bound in rags like a mummy, emaciated to the point of madness. He should be dead, but something—some power perhaps—sustained him. His hair was a mane of lank filth. His eyes were yellowing milk. He was, the Warden thought, the very image of Koronzon. But this was no servant of the gods. The one aspect of Daimomancers the Warden could abide was that they were also enemies of the false gods.

  “My, my,” Kyrick said, working his thick, cracked lips around the words as though remembering a foreign language. “To what do I owe the pleasure of a visit from the Warden himself?”

  His voice was crooning, delicate. How could a man who had been dredged from his own filth still speak with the silken tongue of the lords? The Warden felt his hackles rising, but he mastered his fear. He was still the Warden, still in control.

  “Kyrick,” he said. “Your services are needed.”

  “A prisoner has escaped.”

  The Warden hissed. He marched forward, hand on his mace, and looked the Daimomancer in the eye.

  “What do you say to me, filth? Do you make auguries in the dark with your own shit?”

  Kyrick chucked, revealing teeth so yellow they blazed.

  “No auguries are necessary. Nothing else could bring you to my door.”

  The Warden smirked.

  “I see. Well, in this you are correct. A prisoner escaped and he used some kind of… magic.”

  Kyrick laughed.

  “How sour that word is on your tongue.”

  “Certain realities must be faced.”

  Kyrick cocked his head as best as he could, given he was bound still by lengths of ropes and by his funereal garments.

  “You wish for advice, then.”

  The Warden nodded, begrudgingly.

  “You know my price.”

  “You shall not go free.”

  Kyrick laughed.

  “Then return me to the oubliette and waste not my time.”

  The Warden sighed.

  “Very well. I can secure your freedom… under certain conditions. But answer my questions first.”

  “Of course,” Kyrick said, as though they merely negotiated payment for some bauble fetched at a farmer’s market. “What do you wish to know?”

  “Does Daimomancy allow one to summon… phantoms?”

  Kyrick’s eyes brightened. He is excited by this development, the Warden thought. Something unusual has piqued his interest.

  “That is not the usual course of Daimomancy,” Kyrick said, slowly. “Daimomancy is more concerned with the process of Ascension.”

  “Explain it to my quickly. Every minute delayed is our loss.”

  “Let me ask you this, Warden: what are the Daimons?”

  “Extinct beasts.” The Warden believed only what his eyes told him, and all he had seen of Daimons were bones in the dirt. Large bones, to be sure, bones belonging to massive titans, but bones nonetheless.

  The Daimomancer laughed at him.

  “Beasts? No, they were as you or I, only they possessed enormous and monstrous forms. Each Daimon was unique, did you know that? No two alike...”

  “Your point being?”

  “The art of Daimonic Ascension operates on the principle of soul-transfer through the medium of blood. We call this evocation. The scientific applications of Daimonsblood are known already. You use it yourself in a limited way…” Kyrick licked his lips, enjoying the Warden’s momentary discomfort. “But what engineers and physicians and so-called scientists overlook are the more ethereal properties of blood, properties which may be brought forth by the combination of ingredients, utterances, and signs.”

  “Spell your meaning swiftly!” the Warden snapped. He felt as though the filth of this corrupted being was rubbing off on him. Imaginings cavorted before his mind’s eye, the phantoms of a world he had long dismissed as unreal, beneath him, of no concern. But every second since Telos’s escape it seemed to become more real.

  “In a word, then, we drink the Daimonsblood, combined with other substances, and evoke the power of the Old Gods, the true gods, into us. That is Daimomancy. The summoning of phantoms… Now that seems like another form of magic: invocation, the illusion-craft of Sumyr, perhaps.”

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  “Sumyr…” The Warden knew the legends of the place; believed none of them. But perhaps answers lay with understanding its mysteries. He would send for tomes and documents from the capital.

  “You have been helpful. I shall contemplate your release in due course.”

  The Warden turned back to the lever.

  “A moment!” Kyrick hissed.

  Despite his better judgement, the Warden stayed his hand.

  “Speak quickly.”

  “If your escapee possesses Sumyrian blood, or allies, then you will not catch him, not without me.”

  The Warden’s lip curled into a sneer.

  “And of what help might a wretch such as you be in his pursuit?”

  “Evocation, as I have said. I might, with a little Daimonsblood, evoke the olfactory powers of a Daimon. Their range of smell was far, far greater than ours. Let me perform the rite, sniff the cell of the escapee. Once I have his scent, I shall be able to track him more accurately than a bloodhound.”

  The Warden hesitated, and in that hesitation he felt his own damnation, for though Hell was no reality he accepted, to violate one’s own ideals and principles was to create a living Hell. And yet, and yet, he thought again of the prisoner, of his obscene act, of the looks of Grygory and Belt as they had hauled him back over the lip of the tower, of how they had all been made fools. The seed of doubt blossomed in his chest. Could Kyrick be right? Could Telos possess Sumyrian powers that would allow him to evade capture? He had seen the fire…

  The moment his hand hovered over the lever was an age, an eternity in which the dark god Koronzon dwelt. The deed had to be done. All virtues must be desecrated in the name of order. The only law was the mastery of chaos.

  The Warden marched toward the prisoner and cut his bonds. The sorcerer slumped at his feet. The Warden bent over him.

  “Even think of betrayal,” the Warden said. “And you shall suffer as no Daimomancer has ever suffered.”

  Kyrick laughed.

  “I would not dream of it, Warden. Not when you have promised me freedom. You are a man of your word, are you not?” The sorcerer extended a filthy hand. “If I capture your man, you shall honour your side.”

  The Warden nodded. Though it pained him, he took the sorcerer’s claw in his mailed hand and shook.

  Kyrick sprang to his feet.

  “Now, take me to the Daimonsblood, and quickly. It is as you said: we have not a moment to waste.”

  The Warden sent for clothes and the sorcerer was clad in a simple red robe. The Warden then took Kyrick to the upper levels of the prison, and out through several reinforced doors into a central courtyard. Kyrick took a moment to stop and stare at the sky. The Warden allowed him his moment, though time was short. For some years he had been incarcerated in the oubliette, never seeing sky or tasting air that wasn’t fouled. He had a right to take in the stars.

  Kyrick cursed, hawked, and spat.

  “Accursed be the Golden Orb, Godshome! Palace of lies! May all the agencies of Gods become ruin! May the planet crack down to its hollow core!” Foaming at the mouth with sudden fury, Kyrick kicked at tuft of grass, nearly toppling over.

  The Warden wondered if he had not made a mistake. But Kyrick had recovered himself, wiping dirtied hair out of his dirtier face.

  “Forgive me, Warden. It is some time since I set eyes on Nilldoran. It is loathsome to all true Daimomancers, for it was the Gods who slew our masters with their foul Weapon.”

  “Time runs,” The Warden reminded him. “I trust you will not succumb to such fits while we are about our mission?”

  “It was singular,” Kyrick nodded. “Now, the Daimonsblood.”

  They did not have to walk far. In the centre of the courtyard, which was also the peak of the hill atop which the prison had been built, was a wound in the earth that appeared to still be festering with purulence. But the liquid leaking from the walls of the dreadful gash, and gathering in shimmering pools of virulence, was not pus at all. Rainbows danced across its surface. It reeked of bones, moulder, and flame. Its fetor rose up like smoke and stung their eyes and nostrils.

  The wound ran deep. Far, far below—working upon rickety scaffolds and dangling from taut ropes—were prisoners. The early morning shift had begun, overseen by a team of ten guardsmen. The prisoners, most of them bare-chested despite the burns one received touching raw Daimonsblood, sweated and toiled to release more of the blood from the walls of the chasm. The ones standing at the nadir hacked with pickaxes at the solid foundations of the hill, digging through layer upon layer of history until they unearthed colossal bones. The Warden could see the shape one of now, emerging. It was so vast he could not even discern to what sort of limb it had belonged.

  Kyrick’s eyes went wide.

  “A deep supply,” he said.

  “The labour of the prisoners serves to fund the prison’s many expenses—and enrich the crown.” Most of the Daimonsblood, in fact, was sent to the Royal Palace, where lamps burned day and night. The Crown purchased at a modest rate, given that the Warden’s labour-force were essentially unpaid, but it was enough to fill the prison’s coffers.

  The Warden addressed one of the guards on duty.

  “Bring up a pail of blood for this man!”

  The guard did not hesitate, but descended the labyrinth of walkways and bellowed orders. Soon he returned with a crude bucket full of the darkly glimmering lifeblood.

  The Warden took it and set it down before Kyrick.

  “Do you need ought else?”

  “I have the blood, and the stars. That is a good starting point. I also require one of their bones. A small one should suffice.”

  The Warden raised an eyebrow, but did not object. “Bring him a fossil, also.”

  “W-Warden, the bones are a priceless resource…”

  The Warden placed a hand upon the handle of his mace.

  “More valuable than your life?”

  The guard departed in haste. He returned with a fragment of bone about the length of a man’s forearm. Kyrick nodded that it was good.

  “Grind it into dust,” the sorcerer commanded.

  The Warden was loathe to obey any order, especially one that came from a wretch such as Kyrick, but needs must. He took his mace and with a single blow smashed it into powder.

  Kyrick grinned. He scooped up a handful of the dust and snorted it.

  “Now, I must recall the words...” Kyrick blinked and twitched. He closed his eyes, standing with his arms outstretched, face tilted upward. The Warden thought, for a dreadful moment, a shadow passed across the whole prison, though there were no clouds. Kyrick began:

  “O blood of Memory,

  O Memory of greatness past.

  Daimon Soul, speak to me from Death!

  In thy limbs still lies Power!

  In this blood still runs Life!

  Thy time has ended, ours begun.

  Grant thy Life unto thy churl:

  thy will be done beyond thy Death!”

  Goosebumps rose upon the Warden’s arms and neck. The other guards watched uncertainly. Kyrick bent down, scooped up a handful of the blood, and then raised it overhead—bathing it in the twin light of moon and Godshome. The blood dripped down onto the sorcerer’s face. He flinched, yet out a little yelp as the liquid burned. Red marks appeared where the blood flowed. But he held firm, opening his mouth wider, allowing droplets to fall onto his tongue, down his throat, drinking as one might drink rain.

  “The Essence of thy senses,

  grant unto me thy eyes and nose,

  thy ears and tongue, that I

  may seek the cursed god-kin!”

  The air hummed. The Warden reached for his mace. Then Kyrick screamed. His eyes flashed open and they were white, pure white. He vibrated, as though struck by a bolt of lightning, the power of the heavens thrumming through him. He let out a gargled utterance that might have been spell words, or some language the Warden did not know. A chill went down his spine and he readied his weapon the strike the sorcerer dead.

  And then it was over—without ceremony, without sound. Kyrick blinked and slumped, falling onto all fours. His eyes were as they were before.

  No, not quite as they were before: they stared too widely, they saw too much. As Kyrick lifted his gaze to the sky once more it now seemed he perceived more than just the glowing orb of Nilldoran and its aureate cloud-cover. He saw through those clouds, saw beneath the storm, to whatever dwelt upon the surface of that rogue, insane planet, whose orbit some astronomers said was over three-thousand years in the making. Madness, the Warden thought. It is mad to look skyward, mad to even think of these mindless orbs and bodies and stars. They matter naught. They mean nothing!

  Kyrick finally wrenched his gaze downward. He stood. His nose was twitching like a dog’s, alert to every scent on the wind.

  “Take me to the cell,” he said, thickly. “I shall find your escaped prisoner.”