A Practical Guide to Sorcery

Chapter 223: A Song of Chaos and Eternal Night

Siobhan

Month 8, Day 30, Monday 2:30 a.m.

Siobhan’s left temple pulsed with the beginning of a headache. She released her Will’s hold on the glyphs, allowing Myrddin’s journal to revert into Delphic gibberish. She let out a soft sigh, her shoulders sagging slightly as the strain of maintaining her focus lifted. The sudden loss of meaning left her feeling oddly hollow. “I must take a break,” she announced, rubbing her temples. “My Will requires time to recover.”

Thaddeus nodded. “Of course. How long do you require?”

Siobhan considered for a moment. Normally, she would have cast the light-refinement spell to expedite her recovery, but as Siobhan, she shouldn’t know that spell. Instead, she saw an opportunity to pursue her own interests. “Two to three hours should suffice. I would like to spend that time accessing the restricted archives, as was promised me. It would be a shame to waste this opportunity while I am here.”

Kiernan’s brow furrowed, his frustration evident. “But we’ve barely made it through one full journal,” he complained, gesturing to the stack of untouched books. “Surely there must be a way to accelerate this process?”

Siobhan arched one eyebrow, a hint of challenge in her voice. “If you are dissatisfied with my pace, Grandmaster Kiernan, you are welcome to attempt splitting your Will yourself.”

Kiernan’s face reddened, but he remained silent.

Siobhan allowed herself a tiny, spiteful smirk.

Thaddeus ignored the byplay. “Your request is reasonable, and I have what you require.” He pulled a faculty token out of his pants pocket and handed it to her. “I anticipated that you would be eager to seek after mysteries.”

Her gaze rose to his, and she let out a small huff of amusement at the reference.

The token was made of surprisingly lightweight metal rather than wood or even stone, which was the material of most of the faculty tokens. It held the sky-kraken crest of the University, but was much more finely detailed than her student token.

“We can return for one more session tonight before I reach my limit and need a longer break. Perhaps I can visit again in one week, assuming you will not be too busy in the aftermath of the exams and exhibitions. I hear grading homework is a grueling task.”

Thaddeus and Kiernan exchanged glances, silently weighing the proposal. Finally, Thaddeus spoke. “That should be acceptable.”

Kiernan deflated, running a hand over his bald head. “Very well. But we must make more progress soon. The potential knowledge contained in these journals is too valuable to dawdle.”

‘That potential knowledge is what keeps me so valuable.’ Siobhan shifted, stretching her muscles and wriggling her toes. Her feet were beginning to ache from standing.

Kiernan and she followed Thaddeus through the winding tunnels of the white cliffs. Her steps quickened as they reached the area of warded and cryptically labeled doors that signified the restricted archives.

“The wards will recognize your new faculty token as having the same level of access as Archmage Zard,” Thaddeus explained. “However, they will record a completely null entry in their records. Someone would need to know to look for such an entry to find it, and even then, it would not reveal who entered.” He paused, his expression growing serious. “But be warned—you must avoid being inside when Archmage Zard himself tries to enter. That might confuse the wards and give someone a clue to start investigating.”

Siobhan squinted. “Am I to keep tabs on your archmage, then?”

“Seeing as the man has not used the archives outside of the hours of noon to five for the last thirty years, you should be fine if you confine yourself to the hours of the night.”

“That is acceptable.”

Once again, Thaddeus led the way up through the winding tunnels of the white cliffs. As they walked, he explained that while she was free to use the library’s catalogue, much of the restricted archives’ content—especially the most sensitive documents—were unindexed.

“I can still make use of the catalogue. I may have other methods to find the unindexed material,” she said.

Siobhan looked around as she stepped up through the metal doors that separated the restricted archives from the rest of the library. It was strange and eery to be there in the dead of night, and as Siobhan rather than Sebastien. This body did not feel like it belonged.

Siobhan ignored that sensation and set to work, entering a catalogue request for any restricted texts with references to the Black Wastes. The artifact returned a long list, from which she selected the most promising.

“Please collect these documents for me,” she said, handing a short list to both Kiernan and Thaddeus.

Thaddeus sighed, his exasperation evident as he reluctantly tucked the flimsy paper note into the pocket over his chest. He gestured for Kiernan to follow, despite the grandmaster’s protests.

“This is highly irregular,” Kiernan muttered, his voice tinged with unease. “We shouldn’t be here at all, let alone fetching documents for... for...”

“For the Raven Queen?” Thaddeus supplied dryly. “Come now, Grandmaster. We are already neck-deep in this mess. A few more steps will not drown us.”

“But we’re leaving her alone! Without supervision!” Kiernan hissed, even as he walked back down the short stairwell to the lower levels.

“Oh, yes. Very serious. Especially since there is no way she could make her way around the University grounds without our supervision or consent,” Thaddeus replied sarcastically. “Do you think you could stop her?”

Kiernan had no response to that.

The two men disappeared into the depths of the restricted archives, their footsteps echoing in the quiet space. As they vanished from sight, Thaddeus’s low voice drifted back. “And do try not to look so terrified, Kiernan. It is unbecoming of a man in your position.”

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As soon as they were out of sight, Siobhan made her way to one of the rooms that had held the most promising titles. The metal identity token had no trouble getting her past the doorway. Since her new bag didn’t have her favorite slate folding table, she pulled out a piece of seaweed paper and drew out a simplified, minimalist version of the keyword-searching spell that Damien had found and adapted for his newspaper research project.

Siobhan palmed a beast core, channeled through the ring on her hand, and held up the piece of paper to the often unlabeled texts sitting on the upper left edge of a bookcase. Working quickly, she scanned that shelf, and then the next, searching for a handful of words related to the Black Wastes. The small output circle occasionally flickered as it encountered a match.

By the time Thaddeus and Kiernan returned, their arms laden with various scrolls, books, and even a couple of metal tablets, Siobhan had discovered two additional volumes that were not indexed in the catalogue, as well as the ones that had been. She had already tucked the spell array back into her bag and was sitting with the books at the room’s only table.

The men placed their haul down on the table. Then, to her surprise, Thaddeus took the seat beside her and began to organize everything so that the both of them could easily reach.

Siobhan and Thaddeus worked in silence, only speaking when they stumbled upon something noteworthy. Kiernan started yawning, and then pulled out a book of old poetry from the stack to occupy himself.

After a while, he perked up. “Oh, this one is my favorite. ‘A Song of Chaos and Eternal Night.’”

Even Siobhan knew of that poem, having heard bits and pieces from wandering entertainers when she was young.

“It’s written from the perspective of a man exiled to the Black Wastes for betraying his king,” Kiernan said.

Without prompting, he began to recite the verses, his voice low and somber. The poem painted a vivid picture of the Black Wastes’ horrors—a place where reality twisted and warped, where the very air seemed to corrode one’s sanity. The exiled man’s descent into madness was chronicled in chilling detail, each stanza simultaneously more depressing and more defiant than the last. The man never returned from his exile.

The poem ended as such:

“In this realm of twisted night,

Where chaos reigns supreme,

I stand, defiant in my plight,

Against this waking dream.

The land may shift beneath my feet,

And horrors fill the air,

But still my heart refuses defeat,

In this realm of dark despair.

My mind, though battered, will not break,

In this maelstrom of the soul,

Through phantoms real and visions fake,

My being keeps its role.

Beyond this waste of endless blight,

A world of order endures,

And though I am lost from mortal sight,

My spirit ever burns.”

Kiernan gave a small, self-satisfied smile and looked to them for a reaction.

“Did the author have any personal experience with the Black Wastes?” Siobhan asked.

Kiernan blinked at her, then looked down at the pages as if they might hold the answer. “…No?”

Since the poem was useless, Siobhan returned to her reading.

Thaddeus broke the quiet next. “I have found some information on the Brillig,” he said, his tone carefully neutral as he pushed the book over to rest between them.

Siobhan eagerly leaned forward. The Brillig had been so long dead—almost four thousand years—it was difficult to find any reliable information about them.

The book, which had been written long enough after the fall of the Brillig that its contents were questionable, described them as a strange-looking race, each individual unique in their appearance. Unlike the fey, who were often depicted as beautiful despite their otherworldly nature, the Brillig were described as hideous and deformed. Their bodies seemed to defy natural laws, with limbs bent at impossible angles and features that shifted and changed like smoke.

Siobhan was quickly getting the feeling that the author had a bias against the Brillig, as he seemed to be writing during a time of famine. He believed that if not for the Black Wastes, which were in the middle of once-fruitful land, the famine would never have happened.

With caustic derision and thinly veiled accusations, the text went on to describe the Brillig’s magical abilities. Each Brillig was born a free-caster, but without the merit or control that would accompany such a feat among other species. They were able to perform magic without the need for a Circle or other focusing tools.

‘“Other focusing tools.” What does that mean? Does he mean components, a Sacrifice, or…a Conduit? Did the Brillig cast through their own flesh? And if every one of them was born a free-caster…’ She had been going to conclude that they must have been ridiculously powerful, but instead, she shuddered with the sudden realization of how horribly, ridiculously dangerous that would be. Could the Brillig still break and become Aberrants?

Siobhan had known that they were supposedly capable of dual-casting, but the book provided more detail. It described how this ability made the Brillig formidable opponents in magical combat, able to attack and defend with equal ferocity. Some accounts even claimed that the most powerful Brillig could maintain dozens of spells at once, their minds compartmentalized into numerous discrete identities that contributed to their madness.

The same madness that made it necessary to eradicate them from the face of the planet.

The words sent a chill down her spine.

The book then returned to a discussion of how to mitigate the famine—through war on a neighboring country—and Siobhan set it aside.

They spent another hour skimming the texts on the table with little luck, and Kiernan had set aside his book of poetry and was dozing in his chair. Together, Siobhan and Thaddeus had gone through most of the texts they had gathered, and she was beginning to despair of finding anything relevant, until she grabbed an old leather case and shook out the scroll contained within. The scroll’s author approached the subject of the Black Wastes with a more objective, investigative lens.

Everyone agreed that the Black Wastes were created by Brillig magic—though Siobhan reminded herself that everyone agreeing did not make it true—but the exact mechanism of this feat remained a mystery. The author drew comparisons to similar, albeit temporary, effects observed when different types of magic, particularly more abstract effects, violently collided and mixed in chaotic ways.

After the attack on Knave Knoll, when she had set off her disintegration mine and accidentally exploded the rogue thaumaturge and his companions, she had witnessed something similar. The memory of the swirling fractals of unguided power, the warping of space and the screaming of the air, sent a chill down her spine. Yet, unlike the Black Wastes, those effects had been fleeting. That area of the canal had been repaired and was otherwise indistinguishable from the rest of the city.

The persistent nature of the Black Wastes was as puzzling to Siobhan as it had been to Myrddin and the author of this scroll.

The Brillig’s magic had somehow poisoned the land, but “poison” seemed an inadequate term for something that had endured for thousands of years. And in any case, the land was not dead. To the contrary, it was incredibly vital in its own way. It was as if they had fundamentally altered the very fabric of reality in those areas, creating a new type of land that defied the normal laws of nature.

The magic sustaining the Black Wastes would have required an immense and continuous source of power. Normal spells, even those cast by the most powerful thaumaturges, eventually ran out of energy, with the only exception being self-powering artifacts. But the Black Wastes showed no signs of weakening after millennia, and surely someone would have noticed if some kind of ultra-massive artifact was drawing power from somewhere to maintain the effects. It would be such an incredible amount of energy that she didn’t see how it could have remained secret all this time.

Even if only out of greed, someone would want to fix the issue and reclaim the land.

‘What if the Brillig never went extinct, and they’re somewhere inside, maintaining the effect?’ That seemed somewhat plausible.

But a little worm of doubt continued to gnaw at the back of her mind. Where else did one see strange and impossible effects that seemed to never run out of power? Magic that had no reasonable limits?

‘It’s almost as if they turned the land itself into an Aberrant.’

Siobhan felt as though earth had shifted around her, leaving her just a few degrees off-center.

‘No. Surely that can’t be possible. At most, some powerful Aberrant is still living in the center, and the Red Guard is letting them stay because they are too powerful to deal with.’

But Siobhan remembered how often her preconceptions about magic, about society, about the world, had been shattered. Time and again, what she had believed to be common sense had turned out to be incomplete knowledge or outright lies. The more she learned about the hidden workings of the world, the more she understood how little she truly knew.