Page 12

Chapter Twelve

Victor

I t’s a sunny day, and to be frankly honest, there is nothing wrong with the world.

Except for the demigod of chaos in my head, but on a day like this, he’s an annoyance at most.

I draw in a deep breath, squaring my shoulders as the crisp air, filled with flowery perfumes and the smell of grass and dirt, fills my nostrils.

This is a good day to be alive.

Makes me glad that I’m not decomposing in the middle of the ocean where fish and krakens can feast upon my remains.

That is until an inhuman cry of pain pierces through the air, interrupting the happy chatter of the birds and breaking through my appreciation.

I let out a sigh, my shoulders slumping. It may be nice to be alive, but this is still a merciless and unforgiving world. One where, if you aren’t careful, you can be cruelly murdered in the blink of an eye.

Which is why I find myself veering off the path and toward the sound of whimpers and yelps. After all, just because I met an untimely end doesn’t mean that someone else should.

“That’s exactly what that means,” Likho hisses in my head. “Untimely ends to go around!”

I ignore him, I think I’m getting pretty good at it, and focus on my path ahead. I catch the sight of flashes of fur through the trees before I hear the short snappish bark of wolves.

It’s unusual for wolves to hunt during the daylight hours, but then I did just recently see a kraken, which is a species that has been extinct for a thousand years. These are unusual times.

I wonder if perhaps they were driven from their home by some other ancient horror that hasn’t seen the light of day for longer than we’ve had a capital city.

I give my head a sharp shake. What a ridiculous notion.

I’m literally jumping to the least plausible explanation. And yet… it no longer feels like it would be a less likely than any other scenario. I’m not sure what this world has come to, but it’s definitely changed.

Maybe all that talk about the “end of the world” isn’t just rot.

I draw my dagger from my belt and quicken my pace just in time to see a black and gray wolf leap at a beautiful elven woman. She sidesteps him easily, moving with a practiced grace. She swings a large stick out and whacks it across the side. The wolf lets out a yelp and limps to the side.

She seems to be holding her own pretty well. The wolves have met their match, and they clearly know it, but one wolf, this one larger than the rest—perhaps the alpha—doesn’t seem ready to accept defeat.

It pushes back to its feet and turns to the woman, snapping its teeth at her.

I pull back my hand and send the dagger flying, pretending that I’m throwing it. Instead, I allow Likho’s power to fill the dagger, taking control of it and sending it straight to where I want it to. It pierces the wolf’s side, and the wolf lets out a wounded howl. It stumbles back several steps, and while it writhes, I quickly use the sorcery to pull the dagger out of the wolf’s side.

Only this time instead of the sorcery taking complete control of the dagger, the small form of a kraken appears on the wolf’s back. It’s Likho in as corporeal of a form as he can manage, a being of pure energy and in the shape of the very thing that led to my death.

I know he does it to tease me, get back at me for not being the ideal vessel he wants.

The kraken pulls the dagger out of the wolf’s side and drops it to the ground. The alpha lets out a short howl before it turns and limps off and the other wolves follow along behind it. I’m glad to see them walk away. It’s why I pulled the dagger from the wolf, giving him the best chance of survival.

I turn to the woman who fortunately doesn’t seem to have noticed the little kraken that came out of nowhere and then disappeared into the wind.

She flips her short black hair as she turns. “That was quite a throw,” she says, her tone sounding impressed.

I’m about to make some smart remark about how saving damsels used to be my day job—when really hauling damsels to the Spice Isles and then being murdered by said damsels was actually my day job—but then I find myself looking into her eyes. They are black like a night before the stars come out. They seem to pierce my very soul, and I find all logical thought driven from my mind.

Which is my only explanation for why I find myself saying. “Hello, my name is Victor. Will you marry me?”

Well, at least I know that I wasn’t the sorcerer. After all, I can hardly expect that I flung glass into myself, now, can I?

“Actually, now that you mention it…” Likho begins, deciding to rear his ugly head. I was hoping that he would stay in whatever place demigods go when they’re dead. It had been so quiet in my head for a while. It is respites like these that make me think maybe it wasn’t so bad to bargain with this entity for a second chance at life.

After all, Likho is a busy demigod, and without a physical form. His powers are finite. He actually has people who worship him, who he has to help when they pray to him and such.

So, he isn’t always tormenting me.

He just does that most of the time.

What is it, Likho? I think as I look over my father, sister, and cousin assuring myself that they’re all right.

“ Don’t you think that it is perfectly in my chaotic right to throw those shards to you. Especially since I know that you’d survive it?”

The demigod has a point. After all, with him inside of me and his power coursing through my every sinew, I cannot sustain an injury, at least not one that lasts very long. He keeps me alive in the same way he healed me and brought me back, with some sort of dark power that only a demigod could control, and in doing so, ensures that he doesn’t need to find a new vessel anytime soon.

And it would be like Likho to attack me and then heal me. It’s the very chaos that he adores.

I don’t acknowledge that because I’m still almost certain that I wasn’t the sorcerer who has been killing these people.

Likho can’t be so powerful that he could channel his power through me without me even feeling it. Sure, he could channel it outside of my control, but in a manner that I don’t even notice?

That’s never happened.

“That you know of.”

Thanks for the lovely thoughts, Likho.

I could swear that Likho smiles at this. If an undead spirit of an evil demigod can indeed smile, which I don’t think it can. But I can still sense his smugness.

I give my head a sharp shake. I won’t be getting anywhere with him, so I turn my attention back to my father.

“What are we going to do, lad? People are dead, our wine is all over the floor, and there will be one Skyhold of a mess to clean up in the morning.”

“If any of us make it that far,” Estelle says folding her arms. Awfully pessimistic words for a woman who was not skewered by glass today. I may have healed from it, but that doesn’t mean that I didn’t feel it when that glass sliced through me as if I was paper. And I have the bloody tears in my favorite coat to show for it.

But I need to stay focused. I can mourn my coat, and my father can mourn that wine when the sorcerer has been stopped.

I reach into the inside pocket of my coat and pull out the spellbook. “This is our key to finding the sorcerer.”

“Valentine’s book?” Talyria asks, frowning.

I wave the book, the pages fluttering slightly. “This is not just any book, it’s a spellbook.”

“Victor spent a year at the academy,” my father states proudly as if that bit of information is necessary right now. Still, I guess it’s nice to know that he’s proud of my academy days. I remember him saying that innkeepers didn’t have any need of magic, but I guess deep down he thought well of it.

Only for me to find out that I had no magical inclination whatsoever and wind up as a guardsman who had to make a deal with a demigod to avoid being a kraken’s lunch.

“So… how will that spellbook help us?” Estelle asks, her eyebrows furrowing.

“It’s simple really. The sorcerer won’t be able to cast any spells from it,” I declare proudly.

It’s a well-known fact that sorcery and magic don’t mix. A person cannot serve both a demigod for their powers and the goddess Meruna, patron of magic. There is a price to be paid for such a sacrilege and such faithlessness. Those who try to wield both could very well be struck dead on the spot. And those who survive are driven mad by the power they were never supposed to wield.

It’s why I’ve avoided spells since my deal with Likho. With the demigod keeping me alive, I doubt I’ll die, but my mind is in a fragile enough state that I wouldn’t want to risk any magical backlash causing me to go mad.

Or maybe a part of Likho’s hold over my subconscious is driving me mad already… after all, I did use spells and then I switched to sorcery like a jetting turncoat.

For all I know, Likho’s voice in my head is actually my own.

I wait for some sort of smart retort from Likho, but only silence rings in my ears.

I swallow hard as I run my hand down the spellbook. “We make any potential sorcerers read from this book and just like that, we know whether or not they are sorcerers.”

Father raises his eyebrows and then shrugs. “I doubt I’ll be good at it, but I’ll give magic a go.”

I pull the book away as he reaches for it, a strange territorial urge overcoming me when it comes to this random spellbook. I clear my throat as my father looks up at me confused. “You weren’t in the room with us. You are not in question right now.”

Father reaches up to scratch his sideburns. “Well, I guess that’s good.”

“Which leads us to the second matter of business. Where are you and the girls going to hide while we do our sorcery hunting?”

“Me?” father splutters.

“Someone has to protect them,” I say my eyes darting to Vera who is sitting behind the counter with a far-off haunted look in her eyes. My carefree cousin has seen too much for a girl her age. My aunt and uncle entrusted her to our care, and we are failing them. Mika lies curled up in her arms, blinking sleepily and probably trying to calculate the loss of the wine.

That should be the only loss she experiences tonight.

Father glances at the girls, and I know that I said the right thing. I’m a grown man. I don’t need him like they do, and he knows it. He turns to me. “You’ll be careful, son?”

“The carefullest.”

“That isn’t a real word,” Talyria grumbles. She apparently has it in her head that my throwing myself in front of some glass shards to save her was a poor move. I’m not entirely sure what she expected me to do, watch her get cut to pieces? Especially since I knew that I would be fine after a little bit of pain.

“You should go with them, Talyria, I would rest easier—”

“Shut your mouth right now, Victor Andreev. You’re mad if you think I’m hiding away while you’re out here risking your life to find a sorcerer.” She folds her arms and gives me a look that says that if I want to move her, I’ll probably have to lift her up and carry her off.

I release a frustrated sigh. “Estelle?”

“Not on your life,” Estelle says, her eyes are starting to spark with enthusiasm. “This is the adventure I’ve always craved.”

I definitely made the right choice when I stopped pursuing her. She would have driven me to an early grave, again . No matter what Likho’s power does to keep me alive, that girl would have found a way to get me killed a second time.

She’s a madwoman.

I turn back to my father. “Where should you and the girls go? It has to be somewhere the sorcerer wouldn’t think to look.”

Father glances around as if determining that we’re still alone in the room. The other straggler guests have not returned to this main room and I don’t think they intend to. We’ll probably have to search the whole inn to find them and get them to read a spell to prove their innocence. I suppose it’s well enough, it gives us a chance to confront whoever the sorcerer is alone without other innocents in the room.

“I know a spot,” he whispers then he steps behind the bar.

I reach up to rub my brow. “You can’t just duck down there, it’s too easy to spot—” I trail off as my father bends over and pulls off a plank of wood. Then another one. My mouth drops open as Mika hops out of Vera’s arms and rushes over to help. They clear enough space to reveal a cavern there under our inn floor. It’s very clearly a…

“A smuggler’s stash?” I choke out. “Why do you have a smuggler’s stash under your inn?”

Estelle looks just as stunned as me, but Talyria looks impressed. “I’d wager it’s because they’re smugglers.”

Father glances at me and shrugs apologetically. “It was a good business opportunity, what with us housing so many sea faring travelers. We would have told you, but we just didn’t want to put you in an awkward situation on account of your being a guard.”

Talyria whips her gaze to me, and I straighten. Skyhold, I forgot she wasn’t aware of that fact.

My ears are ringing, I’m not sure what to say or do. My family are smugglers. My father, my kid sister, and from the lack of surprise on my cousin’s face, I’d say she probably isn’t innocent either.

And all this time I thought my father would die of shame to know that I was a thief now, but he had been a smuggler the whole time!

I swallow hard, but nothing goes down. Father climbs into the hole and helps Vera down. Mika looks like she is going to step down after them, but then she races toward me and wraps her arms around me. “Be safe, Victor!” she says and then she turns and jumps into my father’s arms. He begins pulling the boards over top of them, and in a second, my family is down below our feet, buried like a secret.