Arc 7: Chapter 29: Murder
Lias held up the scroll, the thing this had all been for, as though offering it to me.
The Volumen of Zos. The key to Hell’s gates.
It didn’t look like much. Heavy, though not so large he couldn’t balance it in one hand. Its roll was iron, decorated in what looked from a distance like ivory, with a sharp spike protruding from either end. I ignored it and kept my attention on the wizard, pacing to one side as I studied him. There was a stream running through the center of the cavern, forming a barrier between us. The water seemed ordinary, trickling out of a spring in the wall to my right.
“What is this place?” I asked.
Lias canted his hooded head to one side. “My mentor once lived here. It is where I became Magi.”
That revelation made me pause for a moment before continuing. “You’re binding demons now. Those things in the mirror were your creatures.”
“You’ve been traveling with a practitioner of the Goetic Arts,” Lias accused me. “You think Delphine Roch hasn’t called up demons? That she hasn’t circumvented the Choir’s laws a thousand times in a thousand ways? Don’t play the judge with me, Alken, that is not why you’re here.”
“And what do you know of why I’m here?” I shot back at him, feeling the anger surging up. “You had this stage set for me, I can tell. That wall in your study…” He’d scratched a very small A into it, pointing it out to me. I hadn’t told Vicar or Delphine that. “Those spirits in your mirror were supposed to get a rise out of me,” I continued, “so I’d end up breaking it and finding you here. You relied on me being an angry idiot. That stings, Li.”
He shrugged. “I had very little time to leave my bread crumbs, if it’s any consolation.”
I drew up to the edge of the water. It looked deeper than it should have.
“Looking for a trap?” Lias asked me. “Some beast I’ve hidden?”
“The last time you and I spoke, you tried to kill me with your most powerful phantasm. I’m not putting anything past you.”