Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
Kit
My free hand slid into my back pocket, met a folded page, and pulled it out. The illustration of a levitating man with a sunburst on his forehead surrounded by symbols of magic—this little page and I had put in a whole heap of travel miles together. And now, finally, I knew what it represented.
“Is this an archmythic?” I asked, smoothing the sheet out and tilting it toward Teddy.
He peered at the drawing. “Yes. I’m surprised you have this. The MPD’s purges were extensive.”
“Purges?” Lienna echoed.
Without a word, Teddy strode right out of the room, grimoire in hand. With a disbelieving look, Lienna hastened after him, and I followed. On my way down the hall, I paused to crack open one of the window shutters by half an inch, just enough to take a deep breath of fresh air.
Back in the sitting room, Teddy had opened one of the glass cabinets. “With the onset of the Scientific Revolution and the rejection of mysticism among the general public, the sixteenth century saw the MPD outright condemn many forms of magic.”
“That’s when all the magic secrecy policies started,” Lienna murmured as Teddy selected a brown grimoire with a peeling cover and yellowed pages and flipped through it.
“Correct. Francois Batteux II—the first truly famous bounty hunter—documented the European purges in detail.” He turned the open grimoire toward me and Lienna.
Covering the spread were two illustrations in the same style as my levitating man featuring what looked like a werewolf and a demon mage.
“Anything too powerful to control, archmythics being the most prominent examples, was eradicated.”
I stared at the drawings, then looked back at the levitating man. It wasn’t a scholarly diagram. It was an execution order.
“What about psycho warpers?” Lienna asked. “Were they purged too?”
Teddy nodded and returned the grimoire to its shelf. “Psycho warping is one of the very few abilities historically associated with archmythic morphology.” He locked the cabinet and turned back to me. “When did your additional abilities begin to manifest?”
“Earlier this year,” I answered.
His grimoire was open again in a blink, and he made a swift note.
Lienna glanced at me. “The purges must be why I could barely find any information on psycho warpers.”
“And why I’ve never met anyone like me.” I shifted my backpack, trying to relieve the heat building between my shoulder blades. “Were Bodil and the Sha’ir psycho warpers too?”
“It’s possible,” Teddy said, still writing. “I was only able to translate and study portions of the grimoire—the Sha’ir’s contributions—but they implied that he and Bodil both displayed early Psychica gifts similar to yours. How many psychic abilities have you been able to access?”
“Telepathy, telekinesis, clairsentience, levitation, clairaudience, and empathy,” I rattled off. “Telethesia has been hit or miss. I haven’t tried mentalism, because yuck, and I don’t have a clue about psychometry, divination, or other seeing-into-the-future stuff.”
“That would be paraspacial Psychica, which is considerably more challenging than the paraphysical abilities—according to extensive research by the late Dr. Ramya Kumari.” Teddy turned a page in his grimoire and resumed scribbling.
“I found no evidence that Bodil or the Sha’ir were able to harness paraspacial abilities. ”
“Great to know they couldn’t do literally everything,” I said. “But considering they could squash an army with the magical equivalent of a giant fly swatter, and I super definitely can’t, I don’t think I’m the same thing as them.”
Pausing his notetaking, Teddy huffed. “Bodil was exceptional. The Sha’ir needed her mentorship to rise to her level, but there’s no reason you couldn’t become as capable as her—theoretically, at least.”
“No reason except not having her to mentor me,” I grumbled. “How did the Sha’ir find her? It’s not like they were next-door neighbors.”
“In short, privilege of the wealthy,” Teddy said with a professorial air.
“The Sha’ir was born a di-mythic, Psychica and Arcana, to an affluent family.
He was well educated in Arcana and inherited the astrolabe from his father.
He traveled widely as he experimented with it, eventually ending up in Denmark where he met Bodil. ”
“Was she already into her full archmythic powers?” I asked.
“She was exploring the complete spectrum of Elementaria by that point.” Teddy poised his pencil above the page. “How many Elementaria affinities can you wield, Mr. Morris?”
“Fire, air, water, earth, and ice are pretty straightforward. I haven’t figured out lightning yet.”
“Fascinating.”
“What happened when the Sha’ir met Bodil?” Lienna asked.
“They were instantly captivated by each other. Two peas in a pod, I imagine. He reminisced about their shared ambitions in the grimoire. They were both obsessed with power, magical and otherwise. It fueled their conquests and their courtship.”
“So he actually cared about her,” I remarked with surprise. “That’s kind of romantic.”
Lienna rolled her eyes. “Oh yes. Conquering half of Denmark alongside her beloved is every woman’s dream.”
“When Bodil perished in battle,” Teddy said with a raised voice, as though to drown out our commentary, “the Sha’ir escaped with only his life and her grimoire.
He returned to his homeland, seized a portion of the Jebel Akhdar highlands, established the settlement that would eventually become Bahla, and ruled it for over a decade before his death. ”
Lienna pursed her lips in an expression I knew to be her deep-thinking face. “If the Sha’ir traveled all the way to Denmark to find another archmythic, they must have already been really rare. But why? That was centuries before the MPD purges.”
Teddy tapped his pencil absently against his grimoire.
“A few mythic historians have inferred that the first magic-capable humans could utilize all forms of magic as we understand them today—all the classes, before classes even existed. Over many millennia, mythics learned to specialize, or perhaps they experienced evolutionary specialization like so many other species. Regardless, that specialization eventually led to the wide variety of magical abilities we see today.”
“So archmythics are like the OG mythics,” I summarized, “with all the magics mashed together.”
“And you,” Lienna added, wonder in her eyes, “are a genetic throwback to those original, pre-specialized mythics.”
I shifted uncomfortably beneath the weight of mythic history descending onto my shoulders.
What did this mean for me and my evolving abilities?
Would I become capable of magic from each of the mythic classes?
All the magic from each of the classes? I had already unlocked abilities from Psychica, Elementaria, and Arcana, and according to Lienna, Demonica was just the black sheep of the Arcana family. So that left …
“What about Spiritalis?” I asked. “Am I a witch or a druid on top of everything else?”
“Have you had any dealings with fae?” Teddy inquired.
“Not really. I mean, I’ve run into a few here and there, but nothing witchy happened.”
What something “witchy” would entail, I didn’t know. Despite my friendship with Zak, I was pretty foggy about what Spiritalis mythics actually did—other than hang out with fae.
“So?” I prompted Teddy. “Am I a druid too?”
He tapped his pencil on his grimoire for another moment—then sped out of the room again. With a shared look of exasperation, Lienna and I followed him. I breathed in a welcome lungful of fresh air from the slightly open window on my way into the workroom.
“The Sha’ir experimented in Spiritalis after returning here,” Teddy said as he rummaged through an open crate beside his desk. “Local legend suggests—ah, here!”
He placed several sheets of paper, each one sheathed in plastic, on his desk next to his grimoire. Arabic writing was scrawled across two of them, and on the third was a faded illustration of a dark, four-legged beast with a long red tongue curling from its open mouth.
“Legend suggests the Sha’ir persuaded a powerful jinni to rule over Bahla at his side.”
My eyebrows arched up. That sounded pretty druidy to me.
“Then their alliance soured and the jinni killed him,” Teddy concluded with ominous finality. “In fact, he perished not far from here.”
Okay, maybe not so much. Lienna’s grimace told me she had the same thought.
“So the Sha’ir wasn’t a druid,” I guessed. “Or he was but he sucked at it?”
“I’m not an expert in Spiritalis, Mr. Morris.
” Teddy stacked the papers together. “Perhaps the answer lies in the final pages of the grimoire that Ballester stole from me. Or perhaps the legend of the jinn emerged from centuries of local fae sightings. I’ve been informed there’s an unusually high level of fae activity in the Bahla Fort area. ”
“Lots of jinn, hey?” I shot Lienna an “I told you so” look. “We’ll make sure to steer clear of them. I don’t want to wind up like Mr. Sha’ir.”
Teddy sighed. “Frankly, Mr. Morris, I think it’s safe to assume you have more potential than the Sha’ir. He admitted in his own grimoire entries that he never matched Bodil’s skill, a self-criticism supported by his gruesome end.”
That wasn’t the warm, cozy blanket of encouragement he seemed to think it was.
“At least he got to train with Bodil.” My hope of achieving the Viking queen’s godlike strength was slipping away by the minute. “All I’ve got is you telling me their story a thousand years too late.”
“And now that I’ve done that, can we resume?” Teddy waggled his pencil impatiently. “I still have a great many questions for you.”
“Sure thing, Teddy.” My mind was whirling with everything I’d learned, but I pushed it all aside and spread my arms. “What else do you want to know?”
His eyes gleamed like this was the question he’d been waiting for. “Have you begun to use any Arcana yet?”
“Yeah. Transmutation.”
He stuttered in the middle of reaching for his grimoire on the desk. “Transmutation?”
“Yeah. I’ve reshaped a silver wand, resized a grappling hook, and turned metal handcuffs into plastic.”
He stared at me. “With your mind? No tools or arrays?”
“Nope.”
“Unbelievable,” he muttered, grabbing his grimoire. “The amount of arcane power needed would be incredible … through your body? Who would imagine trying …”
Still mumbling, he reentered the hall. Lienna and I followed.
“This merits thorough exploration. We might as well be comfortable.” He looked over his shoulder at us, his mouth twisted. “You’d like a drink, I suppose?”
I brightened. “Teddy, I thought you’d never ask.”
The archaeologist reversed course, presumably toward his kitchen, while Lienna continued toward the sitting room.
More interested in hydration than getting off my feet, I tailed Teddy. “Water would be great, but I won’t say no to—”
The sound of something skittering across the floor interrupted me. I spun around, half-expecting to see some kind of deadly desert creature with too many legs.
But what I saw was much worse. In the middle of the hall, in front of the cracked-open window shutter, halfway between me and Lienna, lay a small black disc covered in minuscule Arcana runes.