With the plan set, Marcela would have a message passed on to Graham today. She’d disguise it as a request for help with their training, but also inform him of what they plan to do and instruct him to use training tools to hide the real purpose of his visit. As for the actual experimenting, that would come tomorrow morning, just after they would usually start their training.

It was soon. So soon Hump felt apprehensive, but it wasn’t like there were any more precautions they could take. Better to get it over with. The longer they waited, the more chance there was for something to go wrong, and of course, the longer Vivienne would spend locked up.

On the plus side, two days after that, and Hump would have his date with Luna. Now that he was anxious for.

Hump spent the rest of the day training as usual. His progress with Melt Stone was good, and he thought that with another few days, he’d have the hang of it without the need of a spell formation. It was a breeze really, incomparable to the lessons he used to have with his master. As it was a Tier 1 spell, he could use his spellbook to act as a perfect formation and execute it using that. It made memorising the intent and details of the spell much easier.

With so many new things to work on, the day wasn’t too bad. He was getting better with the Osidium Ring, and it made for a good distraction. The only thing he had yet to test was the Sand Blast function.

“How’s it different to the usual Essence Blast?” Bud asked.

The two of them were in the spellcasting chambers. A thick-walled room with a single door and no windows. The walls were enchanted to resist essence, whether that be a practitioner’s spells or blessings.

“Well, there’s sand in it,” Hump said.

Bud scowled at him.

Hump smiled. “I guess we’ll find out.”

He stood and faced a training dummy on the far wall—a metal construct of animated armour. It couldn’t move, but it could reform from damage, and reacted to force similarly to how a person would.

Hump had opted for the ring to be on his left index finger. With his staff in his right hand, he thought it might catch an opponent off guard. He made a fist and took aim toward the dummy. For spellcasting artifacts, they usually only needed a touch of essence and a proper application of intent to activate. Hump envisioned an explosion—

The blast went off. Hump’s arm buckled back. An explosion of sound and air that thundered in the enclosed space. The dummy was blasted back, its armour scattered across the back wall in a heap. Glowing sand hit the far wall like tiny pellets, embedding into the stone.

Hump raised his eyebrows and glanced at Bud, feeling impressed.

“Stronger than an Essence Blast then,” Bud said. “Not bad.”

Hump nodded. “Not bad at all. Roughly Tier 3 was an accurate guess. That’s a strong attack.”

“Shame you can only use it once.”

“Sometimes once is all you need.”

Hump aimed at the wall again, then willed the sands to return. They poured back in streaks of bronze light, the opal gemstone glowing brighter, then going dark. The scattered parts of armour shone with essence and then floated upward, forming up again piece by piece. Even the wall glittered slightly where the sands of the ring had damaged its surface, repairing every bit of minute damage. Once again Hump thought of how good academy wizards must have it with access to tools like this and gods knew what else.

***

Morning didn’t come soon enough. Marcela was already there when Hump and his party arrived, Marcela’s arriving a short while later. Corvin didn’t attend today, or any of their candidate members.

They stood at the entrance together as Graham lugged two heavy bags along the garden path toward them, as well as a bag over his shoulder. Bud hurried forward, helping him to carry everything.

“What’s he doing here?” Nina asked.

“Helping us with our training,” Marcela said. “Now the three of you wait outside as discussed. Look busy.”

“He’s not going to be much help to us if we’re outside,” Len said.

Marcela glared at him.

Len sighed. “Why are we doing this again?”

“Trust me,” Marcela said. The less you all are involved, the better. If things go well, you’ll find out soon enough anyway. Now please just do as I ask. Make sure my mother and whoever else might be listening, hear the ever so familiar sounds of training. Don’t hold back.”

“Or you could tell us now,” Len said.

“Come on,” Nina said. “Leave her and the wizard to her secrets.”

“I’ll be right out the door if you need anything,” Teff said.

Marcela smiled and thanked him, and then they turned back to Graham.

“Ah, Marcela, good morning!” Graham said. “I brought everything you asked for. I’m most intrigued as to why though.”

“Good morning, Graham. Come inside and we’ll explain,” Marcela said.

Bud and Graham set the equipment down inside the training room.

“These are full of testing kits,” Graham said, gesturing to the two larger bags. “I thought that might be the most convenient explanation for why I’m here. And measuring your latest statistics isn’t something that will take long if we want the numbers to back it up.”

“Is this for just Chosen or anyone?” Hump asked.

“They’ll work on practitioners too,” Graham said. “It’s all the same once it’s outside of the body. Essence is essence.”

He took off the bag on his back and opened it to reveal two essence detecting artifacts—one with various essence stones, each different colours; the other looked like a bowl attached to some sort of mirror reader, though Hump couldn’t guess at what it did.

“I must admit, I was more than a little surprised by your request,” Graham said to Marcela. “How do you propose to help with my research into the black stone?”

“That will be thanks to Wizard Humphrey’s help,” Marcela said.

Graham looked at him curiously. “You have an idea that might work? Unless you’ve hidden a warlock in that pouch of yours, I’m not sure how we can progress.”

“The warlock’s not in my pouch, Graham,” Hump said. “My soul was damaged, and I think I’ll be able to replicate the essence signature of the warlocks. Marcela asked you to come here on my request. I think I might be able to activate the black stone, and from my discussion with Vivienne before she was captured, she thought so too.”

Graham stared at him. “I see. I presume that Marcela’s presence here is indicative of her decision to work with you despite such… issues.”

“It is,” Marcela said. “Hump’s story is one of heroism and tragedy, not selfish desire for power. He wants to help. I hoped that once you heard what he had to say for yourself, you would agree too.”

“I would be most interested to hear,” Graham said. “It’s rare one has a chance to learn the inner workings of warlocks and their magics.”

“I’m not sure how much I can help you with that,” Hump said. “There was nothing purposeful about what happened to me.”

Hump told him the same story as he did the others. He was getting rather good at it now.

Graham, however, didn’t act like anyone else. He listened with intrigue.

“How Vivienne could hide such a gem from me is a travesty,” Graham breathed when he finished.

“Excuse me?” Hump asked.

Graham stepped closer, seemingly not hearing him. He held up one of his artifacts. “Do you mind?”

Hump looked at the item—the essence detector he’d seen him wield before—and swallowed. “Go ahead.”

There was a faint sensation as Graham moved the artifact around him, siphoning off a little of his essence. It was only slight, not enough to impact his spellcasting but definitely noticeable.

“It’s a fairly simple mechanism,” Graham explained as he walked around him. “The artifact is incredibly sensitive to variations in essence. Humans, no matter if they’re Chosen, practitioners, or ordinary people, all have their own unique essence signature. What I found with warlocks, however, is the presence of at least one other signature. This artifact is able to separate that.” He stopped, holding out the device so Hump could see. “There we go. Definitely a warlock.

Three of the gemstones on the plaque glowed.

“It’s able to separate the presence of a second essence source,” Graham said. “Similarly, if two people channelled essence into the artifact at the same time, it would light up two gemstones. It’s simple really. The hard part was finding out that warlocks had more than one essence signature. You say you believe two monsters imprinted you, didn’t you? Thus, three.”

Hump nodded. “A wolf dragon and a creature known as a gorger.”

“Ah. Vivienne mentioned the gorger to me previously. Horrible sounding beasty.”

“That’s an understatement,” Hump said. He frowned at the man. “You’re taking this a lot better than I expected.”

“You seem like a good lad,” Graham said. “If both Marcela and Vivienne have deemed you worthy of trust, then I have no reason to doubt you. It is said that it was the great Loften himself that first created warlocks. Did you know that?”

“Vivienne told me the same thing,” Hump said. “Back during the War of the Firmament.”

“Indeed. Nobody’s been able to do it properly since. They all go mad—all of them. Without fail. Whatever power they gain, it is both their mind and soul that they sacrifice. I’d be very interested in conducting some tests on you. Perhaps we can figure out the secret.”

Hump gawked at him. “You think you could help me?”

“I can certainly try. You can never know until you give it a go.”

“At the very least, I expect we can identify the imprints and work with a healer to have them properly removed.”

Hump was surprised when he felt apprehensive at the idea. He’d thought about such a thing—finding a way to heal himself and be rid of the scars on his soul—but he’d never truly considered going to anyone else for help. There was too much chance they would simply see him as a warlock. Hearing it now, though, it felt like something being taken away rather than cured. The gorger was a problem, but one he currently had under control. The dragon… he’d started to see it as a gift.

“I would appreciate that greatly,” Hump said. “Only, let’s deal with the current problems first and deal with me once Vivienne is free and gangs of warlocks aren’t plaguing Sheercliff.”

Graham smiled. “Perfect. You’re absolutely right, we’ll talk more about it later. For now, we should get started.”

He pulled a metal box out of his bag. There was a keyhole, but no visible crack where it could be opened. Graham took a small key from his pocket and inserted it. Lines of runes came alight all over the box, radiating blue light. They were markings Hump was only familiar with from mentions in his studies—the glyphs of Loften. Graham turned the key and a click resonated, the entire box shuddered, a puff of essence burst from its sides. The crack appeared, and Graham opened it to reveal the black stone inside.

He took it, handing it to Hump. “Here you go. Do you know how it works?”

Hump shook his head, staring at the stone in his hand. Once again, he was reminded of Kassius’ formation. The runes meant nothing to him, but he could sense a wrongness about them.

“Then let me explain. We’ve had no success at all with our own essence. That remains the same even now. Vivienne did make some progress working with the warlocks though. Do you see these runes here on the underside?”

He pointed and Hump turned it over and studied the tiny inscriptions. A circular formation surrounding a large rune at the centre. Thirteen runes—just as Kassius’ Binding of Thirteen formation had—the number of the Fallen God.

“That central rune acts seems to be part of some sort of connection. I’m not sure how it does it, but somehow it connects with something else. So far, we’ve been able to activate some of the runes along the ring, but not that central rune.”

“How do I do that?” Hump asked.

“Their meaning is still unknown but using Eliana’s mind magic we were able to garner some of the warlock’s intent as they used them. Envision a spike of essence, radiating from the stone, piercing the sky and spreading out across the world. Try it, and we’ll see what happens.”

“Is it safe?” Bud asked.

“I hope so,” Graham said. “It’s hard to say until we get it properly working.”

“I’ll be fine,” Hump said.

“Before you start, let me prepare my equipment.” Graham chuckled to himself. “We wouldn’t want to miss this if it actually worked.”

He placed the strange mirror reader with the bowl attached to its surface on the floor, and took out a metal object shaped like an egg chopped in half. The inside was filled with carved essence stones, each of them marked with a rune. Essence shimmered through them in mesmerising patterns. He placed it into the bowl of the reader and then removed five more essence stones from his back, placing them around Hump to form a formational circle. The moment the last was placed, a line of blue essence connected each of them across the floor.

“Right, you can begin,” Graham said.

“What is this?” Hump asked.

“I call it an essence capture artifact. In simple terms, it will store a reading of any essence that passes from the black stone. Now begin quickly, this is expensive and doesn’t last long before I need to change the essence stones.”

Hump did as Graham suggested, infusing it with his essence. He felt it draw, tugging at his power hungrily much like how Celaine’s Bloodshadow dagger did, but he could tell it had failed even before he’d finished. He turned it over to find only the first rune lit.

“Interesting.” Graham tapped his chin.

“Good interesting?” Hump asked.

“You were able to activate it. Nobody else has made it that far. How did you do it?”

“I just did as you said and infused it with essence.”

“Treat it like a spell formation,” Graham suggested.

Hump frowned but did so. Or at least, he tried. It was difficult to treat it like a spell formation when he didn’t understand the meaning behind the runes or their intent. The runes formed a circle, so he connected each of them by a channel in his mind and continued to fill them with essence, only where one filled, another would flicker out, either his essence or control not enough to illuminate them all.

“Stop,” Graham said. “It’s not working, and you’re going to use up all my essence stones even faster if you keep going like that.”

“I don’t understand it,” Hump said. “The bandit warlock had one of the black stones, and she was weaker than me.”

“There must be some trick to it,” Graham said. “Think about what it is that makes warlocks different. Try to use it.”

Hump thought. Something that made it accessible to even weak warlocks, but prevented those without knowledge of the technique from figuring out. The only thing he could think of was his soul.

Hump thought of the formation he’d used to capture the dragon. The way the essence had pulsed through the runes and then back to him. Himself the base of the formation, and the dragon trapped in its centre the target. If he stood beyond the formation now instead of at its centre, then he suspected the central rune was the target. The destination of his essence and mind.

“I have an idea that might work,” Hump said.

Once more, he let his essence pour into the artifact, though this time he started from the base, moving his essence down both sides before having it sweep back to him. he envisioned it pulsing back and forth, each time culminating in a burst of that flooded through the central rune and into the sky. He let his core flare, and pushed all the will and intent he could muster into the stone, as if he was shouting out to anyone in the world that would listen.

At first, nothing happened. He continued to infuse his essence, reaching—searching for anything that would listen. The drain on his reserve became stronger, yet he felt nothing. No change.

Hump frowned, not sure what to do. “It’s not—”

The world vanished. Darkness consumed Hump’s world like black fog. Fear surged through him, a sensation penetrating deep to his core. His gut told him something was wrong. He didn’t dare move. Even breathing would get him killed. He tried to withdraw his essence, but the stone was gone, and his power no longer in reach.

Cold swept over him, and a pair of eyes appeared from the mist. They stared at him, twin diamonds in the dark, white as anything in the world. All strength left him, and he buckled.

Suddenly, pain flared in his hand. The darkness vanished in the blink of an eye.

Hump was back. He was on the floor, his body barely under his control. The stone was on the ground nearby and the sight alone made him hurl. For a long while, he lay there trembling. He couldn’t stop it. From his feet to his head to the depths of his soul, everything was shaking, and it all burnt like ice.