Underkeeper

Bernt’s stomach tied itself into knots as he entered the Crafters’ District and approached Master Theresa’s Alchemy lab, hoping that wasn’t his destination. If Jori had gotten herself caught by the alchemists, he didn’t know what he was going to do. What could they do with a demon?

Her blood alone was probably some kind of alchemical treasure trove. Some kinds of demon blood were supposed to have unique properties, combining fire and the more sinister aspects of soul and blood magic. He was sure there were exotic potions an alchemist could make with that.

Wait a second.

Bernt stopped mid-stride for a second, struck with a thought. Why hadn’t he considered that before? It burned hot when exposed to the air and it flowed—obviously—like blood should. Considering that it was obviously a powerful alchemical reagent, there was no reason it shouldn’t work for an investiture as well. It was worth looking into, at least… he might learn something. If he was lucky, it might even be similar enough to the burning rain to use without taking too much of a risk.

But that was something to worry about later. He could see through Jori’s eyes now, and she was staring down what looked like another demon—though not one he’d ever seen. He felt her hand hurting as she held a ball of flickering hellfire to the creature’s face.

It was a squat, four-armed demon with the most disgusting face he’d ever seen. Its skin was oddly mucosal and it had no eyelids as far as Bernt could tell. Its features were uneven, its mouth bulging horrifically, unable to contain a seemingly random combination of sharp and blunt teeth.

Bernt didn’t want to be seen anywhere near the alchemist’s shop, so he descended into the sewers using an access shaft in an alley some distance away. An inhuman screech echoed toward him. Jori was questioning the little monster, which whimpered desperate responses in a language Bernt didn’t understand.

When he arrived, he saw that part of its face was now bright red and blistering.

“Where did you come from, then?” Jori asked.

It replied quickly, with a pained warble at the end as Jori held the hellfire closer to its face again. Then, suddenly, it slapped the imp’s hand away and lunged at her, teeth gnashing.

Jori flinched back and narrowly avoided the attack. The other demon followed up with a swipe that caught her across the face. As she reeled, she flung her hellfire forward defensively, but missed—mostly. A few of the oozing droplets spattered onto the other demon’s arms with a sizzling sound, and it hissed in pain.

Then one of Bernt’s fire darts caught it in the chest, immediately followed by another to the face. It fell back, dead before it hit the ground. Unlike Jori, this creature was apparently not resistant to fire.

“Jori, are you alright?” Bernt asked as he crouched down to get a look at her. She stood up, rattled but otherwise fine, though she was filthy, having splashed into the stream of effluent running down the main. She rubbed at her head, looking down at the stained rag she wore.

“I need new clothes,” she grumbled.

Bernt let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. She was fine.

She was right, though, he did need to find her something better to wear.

“What was that?” Bernt asked. “Was it from the same warlock that summoned you?”

Jori frowned up at him. “Maybe. It was a blood fiend—very mean, nasty demons. Cannibals!”

“They eat people?” That didn’t seem so unusual. He would have assumed hellhounds and most of the other beast-type demons would eat just about anything.

“Not humans!” The little imp rolled her eyes in exasperation. “They eat demons!”

Ah.

Thinking for a moment, Bernt tried to put the situation together.

“Someone summoned a demon to hunt you,” he said. “Someone who considers you a threat, and can summon a demon, but also someone who doesn’t want to be seen going after you.” That ruled out the Solicitors, as he understood them. People seeing them kill demons was probably good for their image.

“Do you think it was the same warlock who summoned you?” he asked. He wasn’t sure if that would be good or bad. If the summoner was still here, Bernt could maybe learn his identity and point the Solicitors to him. On the other hand, he did not want to get into a fight with a warlock. Not that he was planning to do that—but if he went looking… well, if the warlock knew enough to go after Jori now, they could probably recognize Bernt. That put him at a real disadvantage.

Sighing to himself, Bernt waved to Jori. “Come on, let’s go home.”

He would need to tell someone about this—preferably Ed. The idea of figuring out who summoned Jori was well and good, but this changed things. At the very least, he would need help. Otherwise, he would have to leave this to the Solicitors to handle themselves.

***

“Jori, I’ve been meaning to ask. Do you mind if I get a look at some of your blood?” Bernt asked.

They were sitting at home, and Jori looked up at him with a skeptical expression as she snacked on a bit of rat jerky. Then she shook her head in the negative.

“It burns hot!” she said by way of explanation.

Bernt sighed. “Yes, I know. But that’s the point! It acts almost like your hellfire. I think it might actually be hellfire. And it seems pretty similar to what the finished augmentation that I’m trying to achieve can do…”

Jori narrowed her eyes in thought.

“In the other place, the fire burned spirits…” she warned.

Bernt shrugged. “I just want to examine it, not set myself on fire. Maybe I could use it for an investiture, or at least learn something else.”

She grunted noncommittally, but then, after a few seconds, she nodded.

“I want new clothes!” she finally said, holding out her arm. “And you can have only a tiny little bit!”

“Hold on a minute. I need to make some preparations first.”

He dug around in the chest at the foot of his bed, pulled out a piece of slate and some chalk, and set them down on his little table. He hadn’t used these since he was at the academy, but he hadn’t needed to do anything like this since then, either.

With quick, practiced movements Bernt drew a small circle of arcane symbols, infusing them with mana as he did so, which made them glow bluish-white. When he was done, a small circle lit up just inside the script.

The runic array would break the material placed inside down into a more abstract form, allowing him to examine its properties more clearly. This was, incidentally, also the first step in the investment process he would eventually use to empower himself. A mage couldn’t simply cram a magical material into their spirit and expect anything to happen. Its function had to be built into the spellcaster’s spirit. That involved breaking the material down into a pattern of mana flows and then allowing that to guide his spirit’s development.

For now, he just wanted to look at that pattern—the spellform of the material. These were usually far more complex than most of the spells mages could cast. Only one branch of magic, conjuration, involved the creation of permanently persisting materials—and even a conjurer couldn’t make anything particularly complex.

Bernt wasn’t a talented researcher, but he was a pyromancer. Hellfire was, after all, a type of fire. Certainly he could learn something.

“Alright,” Bernt said to Jori. “Could you spill a drop into the circle there for me?”

Wordlessly, Jori reached up with one hand and ran her razor-sharp thumb-claw along the side of her other arm. A small but blinding flame shot out of the cut, and one brightly burning drop fell down and slowed as it approached the circle. Over the course of a second, the light dimmed and the blood expanded, unraveling into a three-dimensional sculpture of interconnected mana flows.

Bernt leaned forward, fascinated. After a moment, he turned back toward the chest to dig out some paper and a pencil. Eagerly, he sketched out the spellform as best he could, trying to make sense of it as he did so.

The more he drew, the more confused he became. The base of the spellform—the outside of it—didn’t look like what he would expect from a magical flame. It looked more organic, like life magic, maybe, though in this case it was probably something to do with souls. Still, it wasn’t what he’d been expecting.

Only when he finished sketching the entire outer shell of the spell did he notice a familiar structural pattern. The shape wasn’t quite right, but he recognized it all the same. Excited now, Bernt paced across the room to a shelf where he kept his books. There, he pulled out the wizard’s journal he’d found in the dungeon and flipped to the overly complicated transmutation spellform.

There it was again. Not exactly the same, but clearly related in terms of how it was put together. On a hunch, he returned to the table and began filling in the rest of the spellform.

He didn’t even need to finish—the difference was clear. The inner portion of the spell didn’t follow the same pattern as the outside. It was almost like a completely separate spell, and not one he recognized. Laying his drawing down next to the spellform in the book, he tried to decide what it meant.

The outer portion of the hellfire’s spellform was effectively a soul-manipulation spell drawn in the slightly more rounded shape of a familiar rune. The transmutation spell had nothing to do with souls, but its overall structure was similar. The difference might be what allowed the hellfire spell to act as Jori’s blood, but Bernt had no way to tell. It wasn’t that important. The critical point was that he recognized it, despite how contorted it was. It was the basis of almost every fire spell: ignition.

Flipping a few pages further, he found another transmutation-related spellform, again following the same pattern. And again, and again.

So, that meant transmutation was, in some sense, a branch of pyromancy, or somehow related. And, if he didn’t miss his guess, it meant hellfire was a type of transmutation spell that both burned and transmuted the stuff of souls… but into what?

Bernt’s breathing grew a little unsteady. He felt he couldn’t quite get enough air.

“Jori, I think I just discovered something important…”

But… did he actually discover it? Bernt tried to rein in his excitement. The wizard who wrote the journal must have understood this principle in order to create that spellform. From what Bernt understood, the man had imagined a universal transmutation spell in his notes. One that could transform any material into anything else—though there was no spellform for that here. And when Ed had seen the journal, he sounded like he knew it could work, in theory. If someone could actually cast it.

Which, Bernt reminded himself sternly, nobody could.

“You will try to put it in your spirit?” Jori asked, watching the magical representation of her blood slowly rotate in the circle. Then she shook her head, grimacing. “That is a bad idea.”

Bernt agreed. If hellfire was some kind of transmutation spell that burned souls, it wouldn’t be very useful to him. He only had access to one soul—and he didn’t want to use his own.

But… maybe in the future he could use what he learned here. Hellfire didn’t just burn, it also transformed the soul.

Who knows what he might do with that?