The Warlock's Shadow
Chapter 9 - Deepening Mysteries

Deepening Mysteries

The next day was the start of the weekend so we met inside Crowley’s to loiter and hang out. I was glad to finally be able to relax and not have to worry so much about training now that it had slowed down. I had almost forgotten what it was like to have a normal teenage life outside of school. The start of the new year was around the corner and we were getting excited for all the celebrations that surrounded it. We talked about wanting to go to the end of the year party and hoped we’d be able to stay out past midnight to watch the fireworks show. Sure we could see it from our homes, but being there was supposed to be a much better experience, especially when midnight came about. However, it seemed most of what Lisa could talk about was school and saying how she was excited to start getting more into scribing and spell writing in the upcoming semester.

“Wait,” I said. “You were serious about Scribing?” I was kinda surprised that Lisa was still wanting to write spells for themselves and to use with their alchemy as well. I mean sure on the first couple days of school she mentioned she wanted to. But I thought with all we’ve been through so far she would have changed her mind about it and wanted to be a Knight. What better reason would one need to enroll in Wyvern Glade Academy if not for dragon-riding and eventually becoming a Knight? That was the biggest reason to go there.

“Of course I was serious, Alex,” she said. “Why wouldn’t I have been serious?”

“I don’t know, I just thought with everything, maybe thoughts changed?” Lisa gave me a look that sent chills down my spine. Her fire opal colored eyes seemed to shimmer and almost ripple as her stare bored holes into my skull. I had never known that elves could show this much frustration. But then again, she wasn’t most elves.

“I’m-not-changing-my-mind,” she said pointedly.

I swallowed hard and nodded. Sasha got between us, a hand on each shoulder. “Hey now, let’s just breathe and calm down. We’re all friends here.”

“Are we?” She snapped. “Aren’t friends supposed to be supportive and understanding? Aren’t friends supposed to be proud of what their friends are passionate about?”

She was right. I felt my heart sink down into my stomach as I bowed my head. Man, I was a jerk. Her and Sasha had been there for me a lot lately. What have I done for them?

“You’re right, I’m–,” I paused and swallowed hard. Not only clearing my throat but swallowing any pride I had. “I’m sorry.”

“Whatever,” she said sharply and turned and wandered off through the store.

“Wow,” Sasha said. “Never even knew that Elves could get that mad.”

“You’re not helping you know,” I said.

“I never said I was trying to help. I just wanted to point out how wrong you were and how bad you messed up.”

“What do you mean I messed up?”

Sasha shook their head and sighed, “Don’t worry about it.”

#

After the weekend Lisa seemed to have cooled down. Once school started at the beginning of the week again our conversations drifted to my amulet once more. There was still so much mystery and intrigue surrounding it. Dad’s journal didn’t exactly offer a large how-to section as far as what it exactly was or how to use it.

“Do we know if there are any books about the Convergence in the library?” I asked. I hadn’t been able to replace much personally.

“Yeah, but they’re all about history or the wars surrounding them,” Lisa said. “Nothing mentions an amulet or anything though.” I was afraid that was the case. I thought for a moment thinking if I should tell them about the archives. But there wasn’t any other research we could do in the library.

“So, I might have another solution of where we could research that would have the information we’re looking for,” I said.

“Where?” Lisa asked.

I looked a bit guilty. “I promised not to tell anyone about it, but there is a secret library we can look into,” I said.

“What?,” They both exclaimed. Both of them looked at me like I had two heads.

“Where?” Lisa asked again as she got really excited. Her opal eyes went wide with the thought of unknown books and quasi-forbidden knowledge.

“It’s the archives in the basement of the school,” I said. “The room is behind these massive doors with lots of carvings on them. And it’s under a special lock and key.”

“A key?” Sasha asked. “What kind of key? Is it a lock we can just pick?”

“No, nothing like that,” I said. I explained the magic circle and runes that Mr. Roland drew out with a pen that didn’t actually write anything. “The doors are also on a timer and only stay open for so long. So, if we run out of time…,”

“We’re locked in until who knows when and it gets opened again,” Lisa said.

“Right, plus we have to convince a teacher to give us a key,” I said. “Mr. Roland gave me one before but he’s been kinda weird lately so I wonder if we could ask someone else?”

“I can ask Lief and see if she can give me one?” Sasha said. “You know, talk Fae to Fae? I can always say that I’m looking for something about our kind that only an elder fae could have written down to explain?”

“That’s actually a really good idea, Sasha,” I said.

“I’m nothing if not practical,” They said smiling. Later that day, sure to their word, after class they produced a blank card with a hidden magic circle and runes just like the one that Mr. Roland had given me. Sasha was given permission to skip the next couple classes but Lisa and I decided to tag along anyway and play hookie. Sasha couldn’t quite remember the fast instructions to the doors they were given by Lief so, I led everyone around the school and down to the secret basement where the large wooden double doors stood.

“Whoa,” Sasha said. “You weren’t kidding about the doors.” Just as before the doors stood tall, and intimidating. The engraved dragons within the doors stood regal in their guardianship of knowledge.

“Ok, show the doors your pass,” I said. Sasha did so. The pass burned up in their hand. The wooden eyes of the sculpted dragons began to glow bright as the massive doors swung open into a dark room that lit itself with lanterns and torches. “By the way, there is no one here to help us replace anything. I think it was designed in a way where you had to know where to go to replace anything. We just have to start looking. Sasha, how long did Lief give you here?”

“She gave me three hours,” they said.

“Then let’s get busy,” I said. We spread out of the countless shelves looking for anything that could be about the Convergence that isn’t normally talked about or researched. Dusty tome after dusty tome was pulled off the shelf and flipped through with little to nothing about what we needed. We didn’t even have the tiniest amount of luck. There were just too many shelves and too little time. I kept pulling books but nothing was even remotely close to what we needed. There were however a shocking amount of books about eldritch horrors and how to date them. I shuddered thinking why those were in here. I had just about given up all hope in replaceing anything at all.

We only had three hours and most of that time was already up. We couldn’t leave empty handed. We just couldn’t. I climbed a ladder that was set up to move along the length of the shelf and started pushing myself down the whole shelf. I scanned the book titles as I pushed myself along. I slid from one end to the other, moved up a shelf and repeated the process over and over. Going higher and higher on the massive shelf. If I had to, I moved to a completely different set of shelves. I refused to give up, even if we only had about an hour left. Sasha and Lisa were starting to voice their defeat and wanted to call it quits.

That was until…

“I found one,” Lisa said excitedly.

The very next book I pulled out of the shelf was a very old leather bound book. The title had already worn away and the contents looked hand written. I flipped through some pages and found mentions of the darkness element, and the convergence. “I found one too,” I shouted.

“Me three,” Sasha said.

We moved over to one of the many long tables and we laid out the books that each of us had found and compared the contents.

“Oh my gosh this is amazing,” I said looking at it. “All of these legends and the historical references back them up,” We continued to flip through page after page.

“Look at this,” Lisa said. She pointed out a section in her book. “There are blocks of text just missing, and there are even some whole pages that are just blank. I don’t understand.”

I leaned over to look but I didn’t see what she saw. Where she saw blank sections and blank pages I saw full text. “I can see something,” I said. “But I can’t quite make it out.”

“What do you mean there’s so much blank space,” Lisa said.

Sasha agreed, “Yeah there’s nothing there at all.”

“Well look here,” pointed just before where Lisa said the pages went blank.

We all marveled at the violet words writing themselves on the page. I backed up as it kept writing out the secrets but as I pulled away from the book the glow faded and the letters vanished. I tried again touching the book and a few seconds later the same thing happened, violet glowing letters wrote themselves. I pulled away again and the same thing happened.

Taking the book in my hands and moving so we all could see, the lettering reappeared a third time. “It says ‘there is ancestral knowledge only known to those who can call out to the shadows’. I guess it means that only someone who can use darkness can read it,” I said. I continued reading as we swapped books so more research could get done while we cross checked what we found.

“Hey guys listen to this,” Sasha said and read out loud. “This book talks about a celestial event where ‘a great shadow will appear across the sky turning night to day. The Celestial Shadow shall give any who calls on the shadows ancient knowledge lost to the passage of time’. What knowledge could it be talking about?”

Before we could stop and think about the question, we heard a loud bang. We all looked up. The doors were starting to close.

“Oh crap. Grab the books and run,” I said. We collected what books we found and made a dash for the closing doors. The doors were closing faster than I remember before. We pushed our legs as fast as we could make them move and just made it out of the archives just as the doors shut with another bang. The glowing eyes of the dragons on the doors dimmed.

“Did we get all the books?” I asked. We confirmed that we had all the books we found. We sat on the floor and leaned against the wall for a few minutes to catch our breath.

“You didn’t tell us that there wasn’t any warning of the time running out,” Lisa said.

“Or that we would have to make a run for the doors,” Sasha continued.

“Yeah, sorry about that,” I admitted. “But we got what we came here for, right?”

“That’s true,” Lisa said. “So what did that book say about something blocking out the sun?”

Sasha found and continued the passage out loud, “any who can call upon shadows will be granted knowledge previously having been lost to time. This is a rare event and happens only once a century.”

“Does it say the last time it happened?” Lisa asked.

“I don’t think so,” they said as they flipped through a few pages. “This book is pretty old. I can’t replace any mention of dates.”

“I know you may not want to, Alex,” Lisa said. “But since this is talking about an astrological event, maybe we should talk to Mr. Roland?”

I didn’t see any other solution, “We might have to. He is supposed to be my mentor.”

“I’m dying to know what this whole thing is,” Sasha said. “I mean, blocking out the sun? I can’t imagine,” Realizing we needed to get moving before we were gone too long, I grabbed the book Sasha had and the book only I could seem to read and we left.

We slowly made our way back to the main floor of the school. It was already about ten minutes into our last class. I walked into Mr. Roland’s observatory classroom which was surprisingly empty and darker than usual. I didn’t see any sign or anything that class was canceled or moved somewhere else.

“Mr. Roland?” I said looking around the classroom. He wasn’t at his desk from what I could see. “Mr. Roland, are you around?” I walked in and set the books on my usual desk and started to pace the classroom waiting.

“Interesting bit of reading there, Alex,” I jumped as I heard the voice. I turned and saw Mr. Roland had picked up the book I set down flipping through it.

“Oh, Mr. Roland it was you,” I let out a nervous laugh. “I didn’t hear you come in. You scared me.”

“It’s okay,” he said. “Sometimes I have that effect to just quietly slink into a room. I see you’re looking into some old celestial events, huh?” He motioned to the book.

“Yeah, I had some questions about one in particular it talks about. What is the Celestial Shadow?”

“Ah, that really is supposed to be an amazing event for sure.”

“What is it exactly?”

“It is a very rare event where the moon fully eclipses the sun. The sky goes dark, stars come out. At least that’s what’s written down about it.”

“So no one has ever seen one before?”

“Well no one alive has. It used to be a pretty common occurrence. Somewhere in the world the moon casted a shadow every few years or so that would sweep across the world for millions to see. But now…,” Mr. Roland trailed off.

“Now what?” I asked.

“Well since the Convergence and the wars that steamed from it, the moon was tilted off its usual orbit so we don’t get to see the celestial shadow as often. However, I’ve been doing some observations and found that the moon should be in a prime spot soon to see this celestial shadow.”

“That’s amazing. How soon?”

“Not for another month or so. We’ll talk about it in class tomorrow. I canceled class today once everyone showed up. You were the last one to show.”

“Oh, well alright then. Can I have my books back?”

“Sure,” he said smiling. There was something behind the smile that I wasn’t sure of, but maybe he was just tired or stressed. He returned the books to me and I left for a quiet spot in the library while I waited for the free period to start.

#

The next few days were pretty normal. We all stayed up late reading the books we all snagged from the archives. In particular I wanted to read the book Lisa found. The one where my touch made words form on the page. Reading further on not learning much more than we did before, but it was an interesting book. The next page was blank and as I turned it the words as usual wrote themselves in the glowing violet light.

“Wait a minute…,” I said as I watched the words form. But rather than words, the light started to form a picture. Slowly it started to form into a familiar shape. It was my amulet. With striking detail every nook and cranny and every hairline crack. I read on. It talked about an unknown connection between the amulet and the Convergence. Whoever this author was knew the amulet and the Convergence had some kind of correlation. That was all that they mentioned, but at least there was some proof.

“I wonder if the Celestial Shadow will give me any answers.” I said as I started to doze off. I laid down in bed with Nocturne already sleeping soundly at the foot of my bed. “This mystery keeps getting deeper and it’s bugging the crap out of me.” I turned over and closed my eyes.

My dreams always seemed unsettling. This time it involved being in a forest in the Faewild, or at least what I thought it looked like. Humans have never been there and all we had to go on were descriptions from full fae people to give us information.

I dreamed of blue grasses, innocent animals that came across me looked cute and fluffy but had mouthfuls of rows upon rows of horrifically sharp teeth. I walked through the forest slowly and carefully trying not to draw any attention. Some of the flowers I saw snapped at me as I walked past. I walked on and on in a seemingly unending forest until I came to a clearing.

I looked up and saw a strange sky. Stars I didn’t recognize populated the sky and the biggest thing was that there were two moons. One close by and another further away. The night sky also had this strange greenish glow to it. Getting a bit frightened with the unfamiliar setting I went to pet Nocturne on my shoulder, only to realize he wasn’t there.

“Nocturne?” I called out. “Nocturne,” But my voice fell flat. I started looking around but I couldn’t replace him. Something in the sky caught my eye, I noticed the moons were starting to move and line up. As soon as they did they glowed and I noticed I was wearing my amulet. It too started to glow. They both started to pulse brighter and brighter until I woke up with a start sitting up in bed.

Nocturne woke up with me and gave a worrying chirp to me. I was sweaty and cold and I could see that it was barely dawn. “Don’t worry, I’m okay,” I said with no confidence as I was still kind of shaky. I laid back down and tried to catch my breath. I was able to drift off to a dreamless sleep for a little while longer, waking up with my alarm and seeing Nocturne having made himself comfortable on my chest. I did my usual wake-up routine, ate and met Sasha outside as per usual.

“Dude you don’t look like you slept well at all,” Sasha said bluntly.

“That’s because I didn’t,” I explained. “I was up super late reading that book with the blank pages and had a really weird dream.”

“Oh?” They seemed very interested. “Care to tell me? I’ve been learning to interpret dreams.” Reluctantly I told them the whole thing.

“So what do you think?”

Sasha was deep in thought as we walked along, “I have absolutely no idea,” they said.

“Well a lot of help you are,” I said. “Anyway I got something to show you and Lisa once we get to the school.” I held up the book to imply it was about what I found.

“Oh I like surprises, I can’t wait,”

After the short trek to school and Sasha nagging me the whole way to have me tell them the secret before we were all together, I found Lisa and brought them both aside so I could show them what I found.

“Guys, check this out and tell me if you recognize it.” I held up the book so the text and drawing could redraw themselves. It took a moment for them to realize that the image that the book was drawing was my amulet.

“Alex what is your amulet doing in a super old book?” Sasha asked.

“Yeah, I’d kinda like to know too,” Lisa said.

“I have no idea. It doesn’t say much about it,” I said. “Only that it says something about the amulet and the Convergence are connected. But I have no idea how.”

“That’s really odd, how old is that amulet and how did your Dad end up getting it?” Lisa asked.

“Totally clueless,” I said.

“Hey, you think your ancestor wrote that book?” Sasha asked. We all looked at them. “You know, like if it was passed down or something?”

“That’s not a terrible idea, Sasha,” I said. I wondered if Mom knew anything about it. “Anyway, I’m going to try to read more about this later tonight. Though I’ve been having really weird dreams lately.”

“What kind of dreams?” Lisa asked. I told her the same dream I told Sasha about earlier that morning.

“Interesting,” she said. “It sounds like you might have a deeper connection to the Celestial Shadow than you think.”

“Is that what the dream means?” Sasha said. “I couldn’t make heads or tails of it.”

“That’s because you constantly, and ironically, sleep through that class,” Lisa said.

“Oh yeah,” Sasha giggled about it. “That would explain why I’m failing those tests.”

The bell rang for class and everyone’s dragons flew up and made their way into the roost. The flock of them flew around the roost until each had its opportunity to enter. We all got inside and headed to our classes. The day went pretty uneventful until we got to Dragon-riding. We all started with exercises in honing our magic to get the hang of simple spells. Well, everyone else did. I was still struggling to produce even the smallest bit of…well anything that wasn’t darkness.

I started to get frustrated trying to produce a flame. As I got more upset and frustrated my amulet started to have a reaction. It began glowing faintly at first then as time went on it started to get brighter and began pulsing as well. My mind was flooded by thoughts of my friends. The good and bad, knowing that they were with me with my special training. But also knowing how jealous I was that they could do all kinds of magic so easily. Jealous they knew exactly what they wanted to do and why they wanted to do it. I just wanted my friends to stick with me through everything. Why didn’t they want to join me?

Finally I was fed up with all that was going on and failing at producing even the smallest bit of fire I let out all my frustrations through my hands. A huge conflagration of fire erupted from my hands and moved out away from the class. Master Elowyn thought fast and moved gusts of wind surrounding the fire. The flames were tipped with black rather than the normal yellow. The untamed fire turned into a giant orb, as the air surrounded it and sucked the air out of the bubble. The fire quickly died down not having any oxygen to feed off of. My amulet started to go dim and finally the glow died out completely. Embarrassed, I walked off to the side and sat out for the rest of the class. I pulled my knees up to my chest and rested my arms on my knees. Lisa and Sasha joined me after a while to check on me.

“Alex what was that?” Sasha asked. “I’ve never seen anything like that,” I brought my knees closer and hid my face.

“Sasha,” Lisa scolded. “Alex, what happened?”

“Nothing,” I muttered. “My amulet started to glow then I blew up, literally.”

“Alex obviously that wasn’t nothing,” Lisa said. “It was something amazingly spectacular that I don’t think anyone here could do. Mr. Roland would have been impressed. And if your amulet was glowing during it then we need to explore that,”

“I don’t want to,” I said.

“What? Why?” Sasha said.

“Because I don’t,” I snapped. “Because it only happened because I was jealous and mad I couldn’t hold it in anymore,”

“Jealous?” Lisa said. “Of who?”

“Who else?” I said. “Everyone,” I gestured around the courtyard.

“What?” She asked, I could hear the hurt. “I don’t understand.”

“Everyone has a plan. Everyone seems to know what they want to do, and why they want to do it. Everyone is a natural at magic and never needed to use their dragon as a crutch to be good at it. My affinity and my life is basically a controversy. And I still don’t understand why you won’t come with me to be a Knight. You don’t try with any of the dragon-riding exercises and you’re so much better than you realize,”

There, it was all out in the air now. I couldn’t help but feel I was missing something. Something pulled at my heart as I vented and ranted. I just couldn’t hold this in anymore. As much as it hurt, it also felt good to just say it.

I looked up and saw Lisa started to sniffle. Her face was starting to scrunch up. I could see tears welling up in her fiery opal eyes. Despite her usual tough looking exterior, she was just a person, an elf but a person nonetheless. She always put up that wall of being apathetic or tough or haughty, that I forgot she had feelings too.

“I…,” she started. “I need some time alone.” She said gathering her things and walked out.

“Wow, and I thought you messed up before,” Sasha said. They ran out after Lisa, and it made me feel even worse. I guess I understood what Sasha meant before about me messing up this time. I just didn’t want to lose my friends. Was that so wrong?