18. Cal #2
His fingers skittered over the shelf, searching for hidden buttons until he finally heard a satisfying click. The secret compartment slid open, and there, nestled inside, was the pulsing orb with its sickening hue of violet voidflame.
“Aha!” Cal triumphantly held up the void orb, muffling a wince at the slick, oily sensation it left on his palm. “Then, how do you explain this, High Commander?”
He wasn’t exactly sure what kind of reaction he’d expected. Perhaps for the High Commander to attack him in a rage or else attempt to flee the office to escape the evidence against him.
Instead, High Commander Pern appeared genuinely astonished. His wide eyes locked on the void orb as if trapped in its swirling depths. “I have no idea what that is or how it got there. Is that…voidflame?”
Cal nodded. Uncertainty crept over him as he studied the High Commander.
Cal might not be able to read auras like the real Griff, but he liked to think he’d gotten pretty good at reading people in his line of work.
And while he was inclined to dismiss High Commander Pern’s claims as a desperate gambit to save himself, his reaction seemed genuine enough to Cal.
He wasn’t acting the way a guilty man should.
Cal should know—he’d been one plenty of times himself.
But if the High Commander hadn’t hidden the void orb there, then who…
Without warning, the void relic flared to life in his grip.
He dropped it with a startled shout. The orb rolled across the floor a short distance before coming to a halt, seemingly unharmed.
A violet tinge obscured the air throughout the office like seeping mist while waves of dark voidflame rose to blanket the walls in unbroken tapestries of pristine violet emptiness.
Cal spun toward the window behind the desk, but the window, along with the door, were both gone, swallowed up by the hungering violet. Just in case, he tried to reach the door anyway, feeling carefully along the wall where it had been. The violet energy was solid and unyielding to his touch.
Some manner of pocket dimension? It was his best guess about what might be happening to them, but it was little more than wild speculation.
“Explain yourself, Inspector!” the High Commander snarled.
Cal whirled to see the High Commander stalking toward him, an electro-baton drawn and crackling with magic. Cal snorted, slowly backing away.
“Me? You’re the one with the void orb stashed in your office! You might’ve tried to cover your tracks, but we traced its purchase right back to you!”
“Absurd!” High Commander Pern scoffed. “Why in the Void would I want something like this? Simply handling a voidflame relic is highly illegal, let alone using one!”
Cal rolled his eyes. Obviously. But before he could retort, a swirling violet portal appeared where the door should have been. An instant later, a surge of roiling energy abruptly extended out from it. Cal barely ducked out of the way of the expanding bubble before it quickly retracted.
Rising horror clenched Cal’s gut as he stared at the jagged hole it left behind in the wall. It was like a tear in the very fabric of reality, all impossible angles that twisted back on themselves. The mere sight of it made his head throb with the alien wrongness of it.
The High Commander was right: why would anyone willingly mess with such terrible magic? Voidflame was the stuff of nightmares and legends—the domain of the twisted abominations that the Immortals fought in the realm beyond this one.
When something began to emerge from the tear, he tensed, frozen with visceral terror at the prospect of an actual voidspawn breaking through to their reality. Instead, a bolt of energy streaked out. It collided with the High Commander’s desk and burst apart.
Violet magic quickly spread across the desk’s surface, seeping down into the wood. The desk gave a great shudder before heaving to life, eyes and mouths and tentacles appearing over its twisted surface amid curling wisps of voidflame.
Cal’s heart skipped a beat. An aberrant! The monstrous creation might not be as horrible as a true voidspawn, but it was still plenty terrifying.
High Commander Pern shoved past him, swinging at it with his crackling baton.
Each hit cracked wood and sent jolts of electricity rippling over the monstrous creation.
The aberrant hardly even seemed to notice.
It let out an otherworldly roar as it lashed at the High Commander with a cluster of spiked tendrils.
“Can you do something about that?” High Commander Pern shouted, gesturing toward the void orb near Cal’s feet. He dodged a flailing tentacle, slapping another aside with a hiss of electricity.
Cal hesitated, staring at the pulsating void orb. “Like what?”
“Void if I know!” The High Commander darted in, whacking at the aberrant’s eyes. “Smash it or turn it off! Something! You’re the one who turned it on!”
“It turned itself on!” Cal retorted.
Still, while the High Commander did battle with his own desk, Cal hesitantly stooped down and picked up the void orb. He grimaced as its foul magic, stronger now that it was active, oozed against his palm like rotting flesh. He stared at the artifact, considering his options.
Even if it could be smashed—which he doubted, at least while it was fully active like this—that seemed a poor solution.
They had only the vaguest idea what it had done to them.
If he was right and it had sucked them into some sort of weird pocket dimension, smashing it might eject them… or it might trap them here forever.
Better to disable it, then. Pressing a finger to his right thief’s mark, he felt the comforting weight of his thief’s tools appear in his hand. Carefully extricating his lock rods, he crouched down and got to work.
For all his other faults, Cal was grateful that Kelsith had forced him to practice with voidflame.
It meant he had at least a little experience dealing with the volatile magic.
The main issue with disabling voidflame devices was their inherent instability.
Their chaotic nature made it nearly impossible to keep up with the constant fluctuations in their magic.
It meant frequent swapping between his various rods to try to finagle the voidflame into submission.
With so many changing variables to keep track of, it was all but guaranteed you’d make a mistake. And the instant you did…
Cal cursed when the void orb pulsed in his grip, wiping away all of his progress. He gritted his teeth, glaring down at the relic. It’s not possible. No matter how good a thief he was, it simply couldn’t be done. No one could pick an active voidflame relic—not one this powerful.
A loud crash echoed behind him. He spun to see the High Commander finishing off the aberrant desk with a great blow that nearly cleaved it in half.
Cal’s surge of relief proved short-lived when more bolts of voidflame erupted from the swirling tear in the wall.
Each impacted a different object, and within seconds, a slew of books had sprouted tattered, bat-like wings and flapped to life.
“By the Goddess,” the High Commander cursed. He moved to cover Cal, raising his crackling baton. “I’ll keep them off you as long as I can, Inspector. Just get us out of this mess.”
Mustering what little confidence he had left, Cal swallowed and nodded. He took a deep breath and turned back to the orb, raising his lock rods to try again. As he did, he sent out a silent prayer to Griff.
Wherever you are, I hope you’re having a better time of it right now than we are…
Because he had a sinking feeling that things here were about to go from bad to worse.