19. Ignatius #3
Emboldened by Alistair’s words, he focused on his spirit link with his latest undead.
Since Julian was closer than the others still waiting outside town, he had an easier time sensing the thread of connection between them.
Hesitating for the span of a few heartbeats, he gathered his courage and quested out with his mind along the link.
He’d utilized similar techniques before to track his undead or sense their condition, but never to this extent.
Nothing happened, and his frustration grew. So much for using his magic to accomplish something good. He should’ve known better. His duskflame was worthless…just like him.
“You can do this, Iggie.” Alistair’s voice sounded far away, though Iggie knew the paladin stood right beside him. “I believe in you. You just need to believe in yourself.”
Iggie set his jaw at the certainty in Alistair’s voice. Tamping down his doubt, he poured everything he had into his spirit link. Still, nothing.
Despair whispered at the edges of his consciousness.
Then, he remembered what Alistair had said about opening himself up to his magic and accepting it.
Closing his eyes, he tried to do just that.
Instead of forcing his will along the link to his skeleton, he allowed the connection to flow backward into him as well.
Gradually, the room around him faded, unfamiliar impressions assailing him. Julian’s thoughts, he realized as the fragmented moments flitted past. It was as if he were catching snippets of the man’s memories, viewed through his eyes.
Julian and Matrim in bed together, kissing and holding one another close. The unbridled joy in Julian’s heart each time he smiled at Matrim and Matrim smiled back. Yanking each other’s clothes off in the throes of passion, breaths panting and hands groping for—
Heat blanketed Iggie’s cheeks as he snapped back to the present, blinking away the foreign memories. Alistair peered at him worriedly. “Are you all right? What happened? Did it work?”
“I’m fine.” A tremor raced down his back, carrying with it a lingering remnant of Julian’s phantom passion. “I witnessed scenes from Julian’s past, but they’re difficult to sort through.”
“Well, what did you see? Anything to help us figure out what happened?”
Lips pressed together, backs arching on shared gasps of pleasure, a merciful sense of release paralleled by a drawn-out moan…
Iggie swallowed, shifting his legs to hide his budding arousal.
It might only be an echo of Julian’s own, but having Alistair so close, his golden eyes wrinkled with concern, definitely wasn’t helping.
“Nothing relevant yet.” Alistair frowned, looking like he might protest, and Iggie added, “Now, let me concentrate. I need to focus on finding something more recent.”
Alistair gave a reluctant nod, and Iggie closed his eyes, settling back into his spirit link.
The memories came faster this time, perhaps because he’d already established the connection once before.
Or maybe Julian’s soul wanted Iggie to see what had happened to him.
Either way, it took Iggie a while skimming through the deluge of thoughts, hopping from captured moment to moment, before he finally reached what felt like more recent memories.
Julian listening to yet another of Matrim’s rants about the unfairness of Erys dropping him as an apprentice.
Matrim brandishing the book he’d stolen from the old fool like it was his salvation, a feverish glint in his eye that had stoked Julian’s unease.
Matrim’s impassioned declaration that he’d show them all he was a real mage, worthy of their respect.
Matrim hatching a plan to perform a ritual from the stolen tome with the help of their friends to serve as living conduits for his magic.
Matrim explaining how he’d use harmonite as a focus to conjure a benevolent spirit for Dawncoming and prove he wasn’t a failure.
Julian’s doubts, but stronger than that, his love for Matrim and his faith in him.
Julian’s reluctant agreement to go along with the plan and convincing the others to follow suit.
Then, a couple weeks ago, the night of the ritual.
Meeting in a cave outside town to draw a runic circle. Placing a worked piece of Matrim’s harmonite in the center. The ritual itself, an exhilarating flurry of blue and silver runeflame that imbued the offered harmonite, transforming it into a crystalline golem shimmering with light.
Horror clawed at Iggie’s insides as the tone of Julian’s memories abruptly shifted, hope and trust and love crumpling to despair and agony and terror as everything went awry.
Matrim trembling with effort, shouting that something was wrong, that he couldn’t hold the spell much longer.
The magic destabilizing, far too much for Matrim to control.
Matrim shoving Julian back from the runic circle, desperate to save him.
The ritual snapping, blue and silver runeflame twisting and darkening into wild violet voidflame that consumed Matrim and the other three participants, leaving no trace of them behind.
The crystalline entity contorting as voidflame imbued it, mutating it into an eldritch abomination writhing with lashing tentacles.
Julian fleeing in a broken daze, somehow stumbling home to Singer’s Rest. Drifting through the days that followed like a ghost himself, haunted by guilt and heartbreak, unable to bring himself to sully the town’s memories of Matrim by admitting the truth.
Sitting alone in his favorite chair in the living room that had once been graced with Matrim’s laughter, picking up a dagger, and—
Iggie severed the spirit link with a cry, tumbling back to sprawl hard on the floor.
Alistair reached him in a heartbeat, demanding to know what was wrong, but Iggie just shook his head.
Unable to speak, he wrapped his arms around the paladin’s breastplate, buried his face in Alistair’s neck, and sobbed.