Chapter 11
Oscar flinched,Vedran’s enraged roar piercing his ears.
“That bitch!”
The Sorcerer King clawed at his face, skin and flesh coming away in his hands as he mutilated his own body with his black magic.
The wounds healed almost as soon as they formed.
So, his plan failed.
Relief shot through Oscar as he watched Vedran pace the floor, his father’s wrath and bitterness rendering the air so suffocating he found it difficult to breathe.
“I will rip her cores from her body and make her eat her own heart!” the Sorcerer King snarled. “How dare she get in my way again?!”
Oscar stiffened. A sphere of sinister power blossomed next to Vedran. He hurled it with a furious bellow.
The black magic orb took out half the face of the unlucky hellbeast who happened to be standing in its path and carved a hole through the chest of a monster behind it. The creatures fell, their dark blood spilling across the ground as they convulsed. Their comrades crowded around them and began feasting on their twitching bodies.
Bile flooded the back of Oscar’s throat at the sight of their gore-festooned talons and teeth.
It felt like an eternity since he’d become trapped in this hell with the Sorcerer King and what was left of his army. Though Oscar had heard Barquiel mention Void, he’d never experienced it before. It was like being stuck in a black hole, senses blinded and all awareness of time and space lost to the infinite emptiness.
His scalp prickled when his father turned his insane gaze on him.
“How is your new familiar?”
Oscar swallowed and looked down at the creature beside him. It was a lynx, like Drabek. Except it was dead, its body animated by the black magic buried inside its corpse.
Even Vedran’s powers could not hide its caved-in skull or missing eye.
It took Oscar all he had to keep his voice from trembling when he met his father’s stare. “I don’t think it’s going to work out.”
Vedran scowled. He raised a hand.
Oscar masked a shudder. The lynx’s corpse disintegrated into nothingness, flesh and bones consumed instantly by the sizzling, stygian and crimson flames that engulfed it from the inside out. Though the Sorcerer King had been weakened by the last battle he had fought with the Witch Queen, the Hellfire Magic he had stolen from Nikolai was still powerful.
“Come, let us find you another familiar,” Vedran commanded.
Oscar dragged his feet as he followed his father, conscious of the watchful stares of the army of fiendish creatures who lurked silently in the shadows. He shivered.
It wasn’t just demons, hellbeasts, devils, and ghouls Vedran now held sway over by virtue of being able to wield Azazel’s Hellfire Magic. What skulked in the gloom was ten times more vile. It was an army born of an alchemy of twisted souls and bodies, fused together by black magic and the evil will of a man who wished to be a God. Had Dietrich Farago still been around, he would have shuddered at how badly they’d been put together.
Oscar’s old self would have relished the devastating power he would have been in line to inherit as the next Sorcerer King. But he was no longer his old self. Not since Nikolai had used Subjugate on him and shattered his bond with Drabek. Because it wasn’t just his bond with his familiar that had cracked that fateful night.
The darkness that had long swallowed his soul and mind and turned him into a villain capable of the most foul and despicable deeds had started to wane.
It felt akin to waking from a timeless nightmare, one where he’d stained his hands with blood over and over again to satisfy the whims of a man whose appetite for death seemed boundless.
For the first time in a long time, Oscar was beginning to see the Sorcerer King for who he truly was. A monster who thirsted for ultimate power. Immortality and dominion over all living creatures on Earth.
Oscar’s chest tightened. He knew he would never be able to absolve himself of all the sins he had committed while under the influence of his father’s sickening magic, however much he wished to atone for them.
Something rose in the murk ahead of them, distracting him from his wretched thoughts. His pulse quickened as they approached it.
It was a mound some fifty feet high and nearly twice as wide.
It was made of the bodies of the familiars and Dark Council members Vedran had killed so as to absorb their magic. Though he could not leave Void for the time being, the Sorcerer King had made use of his portals to send his demonic henchmen to track down all those who’d once sworn allegiance to him.
Metal glinted inside Vedran’s cloak as he used his powers to sift through the corpses, in search of yet another familiar to bond Oscar with.
Oscar avoided staring at the Book of Light.
The damage Mae and Nikolai had inflicted on the Sorcerer King’s core during their last encounter meant he still hadn’t managed to manipulate the artifact to find the Book of Shadows. Oscar knew this state of affairs would not last long. Not given the rate at which his father was consuming the magic of others.
The Sorcerer King hadn’t let the Book of Light out his sight since they’d become trapped in here. He was so paranoid about it he’d even killed a couple of devils he’d thought were looking at it.
Even if I somehow manage to get my hands on that thing, there’s nowhere I could hide it in this infernal prison.
Vedran stiffened. Oscar peered curiously past him.
He had uncovered the body of a black wolf.
Seconds ticked by while the Sorcerer King gazed at it unblinkingly.
“No,” he mumbled to himself. “That won’t do at all, Balkin.”
Oscar frowned. Who’s Balkin?
Vedran finally unearthed an animal he deemed compatible with his remaining heir. Ice filled Oscar’s veins.
It was a fox. One that looked eerily like Mae’s demon familiar.
“This one is perfect,” Vedran crooned.
Oscar gritted his teeth. The Sorcerer King animated the corpse and used his black magic to force an unnatural bond between his son’s damaged core and that of the undead creature. Oscar’s nails sank into his palms as he resisted, just as he had done with the last three familiars his father had wanted to impose on him.
Drabek was still alive. He could feel it in his bones.
Oscar had become certain of two things in the time he’d been confined in Void.
His father had gone mad and would kill him and absorb his magic if he managed to make his core whole again, just as he intended to kill Nikolai and Mae and consume their powers.
And his brother would never forgive him for his crimes against Gabriela Stanisic and their siblings.
Still, Oscar wanted nothing more than to help Nikolai achieve his dream of defeating Vedran. Because if the Sorcerer King won, the world was doomed to enter a dark era from which there would be no escape.
His thoughts turned to the woman his brother had chosen to side with. Hurry up, Witch Queen. You’re the only one who can stop him now.