Gloom Rising (The Book Wielder Saga 1) (31 page)

“Leave us,” she said to the troopers.

They saluted and went back upstairs to the first floor.

“I never expected you’d be a Book Wielder,” the man said amused. “Though it’s been many centuries since I’ve seen the white eyes on your kind. I take it that your colleagues don’t know?”

Alice was in no mood for games. “Who are you, what do you want, and how the hell did you get onto my island undetected?”

The man got up and bowed elegantly. “I am Jonathan Knight, and I speak on behalf of the Trinity of Old, the ruling nation of the Supernatural races. They wish to meet you to discuss an arrangement that they believe will be in your interests – you do have a common enemy, after all. If you wish to meet them then I am to bring you to see them in the Catacombs, the magical underground network that spans the world. There just so happens to be an old portal under the amphitheatre ruins. That is how I came to our Isle, and if you are willing then that is how I will take you to them. You can, of course, bring as many armed guards as you desire, if that makes you feel more at ease.”

Alice was dumbfounded. Out of all the outcomes she had calculated in these chaotic times, a deal with the very creatures that she was fighting had been very far from her mind.

“Well, do you want to meet them?” Jonathan asked politely.

“Fine, take me to see them.” The thought of a portal on the Isle worried her greatly, so she chose to play along to see where it was and have it guarded heavily when, or if, she returned. She thought about calling the underground facility to get an escort of Inquisitors who knew of the Supernaturals, but decided against it. If it was a trap then only she would suffer from it.

Alice released the Mage, dismissed the troopers, who looked baffled by her actions, and got in the troop truck with him. Jonathan directed her to a relatively intact section of the ruins, and she watched him out of the corner of her eyes as they drove. Her book had taught her the negating spell and a few other tricks that she wanted to test out if he gave her reason to. They arrived without incident and he took her to the side of the reddish brown structure. There was nothing there, but she could see a faint shimmering.

Jonathon waved his hands in the direction of the shimmer and the illusion faded, revealing a small doorway. “Follow me please, Alice Eve.”

“Lead on, Jonathan Knight,” she replied dryly while holding her war hammer in both hands.

He took her inside the ruins, summoned a magical light orb, and led her down an ancient stone spiral staircase. They arrived at a large, dark rectangular basement that was completely bare except for a pulsing blue portal set into the wall opposite them.

“This will take us to the Catacombs,” Jonathan began. “Fear not: you barely register the transition from one area to the next.”

Alice nodded and followed him hesitantly towards the distorting blue surface. He was right though, she hardly noticed a thing. One moment she was in the dank underground room and the next she was in a bare stone tunnel light with magical blue torches. Jonathan walked off at a brisk pace and she upped her pace to keep up. Supernatural guards in old fashioned silvery suits of armour with purple, yellow, and red plumed helmets nodded as he walked by. She kept noticing a symbol of a triangle divided into three by a line going from the centre to its corners. It was repeated throughout the Catacombs, so she assumed that it was the Trinity of Olds emblem.

“Not long now,” he said as he led her through a smaller portal, and then another, until they finally came to square room lined with guards standing to attention. At the other side of the room up a small flight of marble steps was another portal, but this one was light purple.

“Another portal. What a surprise,” Alice said sarcastically.

“This is the last one, I promise,” Jonathan smiled.

Alice stepped through with him. She was surprised at how civil he was. She had expected the Supernaturals to be fiendish, even though the Goddesses had told her otherwise. Maybe there were some decent ones.

They entered into a large lavish room filled with splendour. Although the room was the same grey square stone and blue torch affair that the rest of the Catacombs had been, this one was decorated with fine antiques from across the world, priceless works of art and tapestries, ancient finely crafted woodwork desks, bookshelves and tables, and three small portals. One was coloured yellow, the other red, and the last dark purple.

A male Mage in a turquoise and silver robe with long silvery white hair was reading from a book that he had suspended in the air. A gorgeous but deadly looking dark skinned Vampire woman with plaited long black hair, wearing a red, black, and gold corset and an elegant red dress, was stood beside him with her arms folded. The Vampire stared at Alice with her sly red eyes like she was her next meal.

“Masters,
I have brought Alice Eve for your attention,” Jonathan said after another fine bow.

“Yes, thank you. Wait outside the portal please,” the white haired Mage said, looking up from his book. “Welcome, Alice Eve. Would you like to take a seat?”

“I’ll stand,” she said bluntly.

“Very well. Even though you have elected to enter our domain unguarded, I can still sense that you are distrustful of our intentions. That is sad but not unexpected...”

“Did you know she was Book Wielder?” the Vampire interrupted in a sweet Tropican accent.

“I did not. Not until I noticed her white eyes, that is,” the Mage replied. “I haven’t seen a Book Wielder with the proper eyes for...”

“Ages and ages,” Alice interrupted rudely. “Yeah, I’m getting that a lot today. Now who are you, what do you want, and why the hell would you invite the leader of the organisation that wants you extinct to your lair?”

“She is rude.” The Vampire’s sweet voice turned sour. “We should kill her for her insolence.”

“Now, now. Leave the diplomacy to me please,” the Mage replied, before turning back to Alice. “I am Silvario the Mage, and my fellow ruler is Cherriesa the Vampire. We have invited you here to strike a deal with you. Yes, it is out of the ordinary, but desperate times call for desperate measures. We are proposing an alliance of sorts. A little bit of cooperation against the real enemy, the gangs of radical Supernaturals like the Shadow Circle. You see, there were three of us not too long ago, until one of our longest and closest allies turned assassin for no apparent reason.”

“We ripped her limbs off,” Cherriesa said with a pretty smile, “but her blood, it ran black.”

“Like Gloom water,” Alice mumbled.

“Gloom water?” Silvario asked, puzzled.

“There’s more going on than you realise,” Alice began. “We are all in a hell of a lot of danger if we don’t take back the Capital very soon.”

“Why? What is going on that we do not know?” Cherriesa asked snidely.

Alice quickly told them of her meeting with the Goddesses and all that she had learned. They looked at her as though she were crazy at first, but at the mention of Winston, his portals, and the Archmage Omniosis, they changed their expressions drastically.

For the first time in his life, Silvario was lost for words. “It’s good that we met. The situation is vastly more important than mere territorial disputes. If Lucius and this Book Wielder Winston have their way, then the whole world is doomed. We know very little of the Archmages, but the limited accounts that we do have do not paint a pretty picture of them at all. They were fanatical tyrants of the highest calibre. Everything this Omniosis regards beneath him, which will be everyone and everything, will be enslaved or destroyed.”

Alice sensed their genuine despair and allowed her guard to fall slightly. “I’m planning an attack on the Capital tomorrow. Join me, and together we can put an end to all this nonsense. I need Winston Reynolds brought to me, preferably alive, but in all honesty I’m not that bothered after the recent chaos around the world.”

Silvario shook her hand. “Tomorrow it is. We’d be more than willing to lend you all the support you need to help mop up the other problematic members of our races around the world afterwards.”

“Our patience is at an end with them.” Cherriesa’s voice was pure spite.

“You have yourself a deal,” Alice said. “But don’t think about screwing me over in the future. I have powers of my own, you know.”

Cherriesa smirked. “You come here wielding a spell-forged hammer, and you brag of your powers to us. Do you take us for weaklings and fools? No mere Book Wielder is a match for the Trinity of Old.”

Alice grinned as she made Silvario’s book drop out of the air. He looked slightly annoyed and tried levitating it back up again, but no matter what he tried or how hard he strained, the book remained on the ground. He tried to cast some simple spells from his hands. Alice could sense them in his mind and she forced them to fail.

“What is she doing?!” Cherriesa demanded.

“She’s cancelling out my powers,” Silvario gasped.

- - -

A distraction was what they asked for and a distraction is what they’ll get, Kitty Cat thought to herself. It was a hot early evening in south east Industria. The sun was setting, and she was having the time of her life.

“Boom!” she shouted as she sent a bolt of force magic into the front of a shop. It blew outwards, showering glass, dust, and debris out onto the road.

She carried on strolling down the road, shooting her assault rifle or spells at fleeing civilians, terrorising the fuck out of the town of ‘who-the-fuck-cares’. Werewolves and Vampires from her gang ‘the Anarchy’s Ascendants’ ran or leapt along the top of the buildings, jumping off to kill some people, throw some cars, or mangle some property, and then jumping back up again. She was currently having a little contest with the other Mages, Vampire Bloodmages, and Werewolf Shamans, to see how much devastation they could cause without levelling the whole town. A group of young attractive girls made a run for it, but a male Bloodmage violently ruptured their circulatory systems and they fell to the ground with blood gushing out of every orifice.

Kitty Cat cackled and called out, “What happened there? They turn you down, super stud?”

“Fuck you!” he shouted back.

“Yeah, you wish buddy!” She cackled and sent a fireball into another shop, and it went up in a towering inferno.

Somewhere across town, a small group of dark clouds spiralled together and zapped some surges of lightning down into the town. A huge explosion billowed into the air and the darks clouds dispersed as quickly as they had formed.

“Whoa – someone just took out the DVO petrol station!” one of Kat’s people shouted, and the rest of the gang hooted and cheered.

A Werewolf man in human form ran out into the road in front of them, his hands outstretched in a stop gesture. “What the fuck are you doing? The Inquisition or the Trinity will come!”

“That’s the point, stupid!” Kat snarled. “Now, you joining us?”

“Of course I’m not! What you’re doing is... is pure lunacy!” the Werewolf shouted back.

“Ah, shame,” Kat said sadly, and then shouted, “Someone take this wanker out please!”

A cloud of bats materialised into a female Vampire Nightclaw behind the Werewolf. “Gladly, Kitty Cat,” she said as she snapped his neck all the way around, before flying off in her bat swarm to cause more havoc.

“Thank you!” Kat shouted as she flew off. She could just about hear her phone over the sound of explosions, roaring flames, and screaming worthless humans. It was Kaine. “What do you want?” she asked rudely.

“The Inquisition are sending a few airships,” Kaine replied. “Put up a little bit of a fight, and then go lay low for a while. Hit up another town the other side of Industria when you feel like you’re in the clear.”

“Okay, got it. Bye-bye.” She hung up and passed the info onto her gang. They would take down at least one airship for good measure.

- - -

Winston had taken Veronica out for a nice meal at fancy restaurant just down the road from the Hotel Noir. He had chosen to wear a dark blue suit for the occasion, and Veronica dressed in a half classy, half slutty little black dress. He had hoped that the meal would cheer her up a bit, and as they dined on some of the finest cuisine in the Capital, she began to get back to her old self for a while.

He had told her about the Archmage and the plan to restore the world to its rightful state after he’d got back from the radio room, but by then, Lucius had already begun sending messages and calling the relevant high ranking gang members about Winston’s partnership and the plan. Veronica had not been best pleased on multiple accounts.

The first was obviously that she hadn’t been told first. The second was that the scheme sounded completely insane, and the third was her distrust of the Archmage. She had argued passionately with him and he had defended his actions, backing up each point reasonably and diplomatically. She finally gave in, admitting that to her strange senses it felt like he was walking down the right path, but that didn’t mean she had to like it. Veronica had been civil with him since, and promised to support his decision to go along with the Archmage as long as he promised to be on guard, but she was obviously still very upset.

The news about Marissa Aluniana hadn’t helped matters either. They both knew that it was obviously Mortissa’s handy work, and the realisation that the death toll of innocents would only increase as the plan to merge the worlds continued hit them both quite hard.

She’d picked up a bit during the main course, mainly because of the amount of effort Winston had gone to make the evening perfect. All the courses were booked prior to their arrival and he had picked out all her favourite dishes. The staff topped up their glasses all night with expensive champagne without even asking first.

It was when a waitress brought over dessert that Veronica’s mood had picked up immensely. She had a slice of chocolate fudge cake with a big dollop of ice cream on one plate, and a very expensive looking diamond encrusted silver engagement ring resting on a white napkin on another. Her jaw dropped at the realisation of what Winston intended to do.

He walked up to her, picked the ring up off the napkin, and got down on one knee beside her in front of the whole restaurant.