Page 1 of Tales of a Monstrous Heart
Chapter One
Mortals came from the South Seas, seeking a magic of their own, to make deals with the darkness that slept beneath the earth, seduced by its lies and promises of power. Such greed unleashed that darkness onto the earth and curses came to life in monstrous forms. Still, those mortals were gluttonous for more, so they sold their souls for power. The world burned as punishment, and the cursed earth devoured them, becoming as gluttonous as those mortals longed to be.
– Compendium of the Lost,1536
An ancient tale about the consequences of greed, and the beginning of the world’s end. A story made to scare children and keep them from the path of dark magic. I was too old to be entertained so easily, yet I turned another charred page of the story, seeing illustrations of the dark fiends in question, demons made of smoke and curses. Twisted into serpent-like shapes as they rose from the earth.
Verr. Creatures of the deep. Monsters that were nothing but fables now, but all stories start in truth, even if fragments of that truth are lost to time, carried away on harsh winds before campfires or slipping too easily from ailing memory.
There was truth buried in these ancient words. Another mortal kinghadlonged to possess a magic of his own, sold hissoul to conquer and devour the world. His forbidden spells and occult worship of those Verr had awakened that darkness beneath, had almost destroyed us all.
A story that had been repeated too many times by too many mortal kings, cursed with greed and a hunger for magic.
Despite how well I knew the history, my hand still traced over the dulling ink, thin paper rough beneath my fingertips. The words lit by a hovering ball of soft white light from my illumination spell, casting shadows across the charred stone walls of the ruins surrounding me.
The Grand Fifth Library. An abandoned quarter deep beneath the Institute of Magic made up of old corridors held together with roots, decrepit vaulted ceilings, crumbling statues and rot-devoured spell books.
My spell flickered weakly, casting long shadows across the stone, threatening to plunge me into darkness at any moment for relying on the spell too long. Forgetting my limits.
I withdrew my hand from the text, the enchantment I’d created to reanimate the destroyed pages dispersed, returning the book to nothing but charred, smoke-stained remains.
Nothing but a memory once more, a relic of the past. Just like the towering, dilapidated maze of bookcases surrounding me that held the fragmented remnants of scrolls from the Third Kingdom of Elysior centuries before, when these very halls had been alive with magic and study. A place dedicated to the exploration of the fey and all the powers they possessed, to understand what magic could do before mortals finally understood they could never possess magic as fey did. Not unless they defiled their blood and mixed with beings they saw so far beneath them. Fey they deemed feral and regressive with their strange, godless ways.
Then knowledge of magic wasn’t treasure, but chains to bind us to a mortal king’s will. To control. To take.
So, the mortals centuries ago began to gather magical texts, like old dragons collecting gold. To keep them from the fey that wanted to know their history, to connect with their ancestors. Those mortal kings brought down lesser fey civilisations, desecrated sacred grounds and built their new mortal Kingdoms on top of the remains. Then as their kingdoms failed, they rebuilt them. Pressing the ruins of their mistakes deeper beneath the earth with each new mortal King, until the next war claimed them too.
The endless cycle. The curse that the lands of Elysior were fated to endure.
I turned to the old tapestries, sagging with mould against the brick. Depictions of fey in the wildlands centuries before. The fight they’d put up trying to keep their magic, trying to stop a tyrant king who summoned dark power from beneath the earth with his madness. Who allowed the Verr and their old, cursed gods to corrupt this land.
That was how it began, this curse mortals had brought upon themselves by selling their souls.
Maybe they deserved it. Maybe we all did.
As if in answer to that dark thought, the orb of my spell flickered out, abandoning me to the dark. Weak slivers of moonlight pierced through the gloom from small cracks high above, where these ruins had managed to crawl back through the earth.
Remaining hidden in the dark had its benefits, but even the ghosts that lingered here couldn’t offer me comfort in this strange grave so far beneath the earth.
All that awaited me above were rejected applications. Either from the mages I tried to partner with, healing placements orteaching positions in the north. All too afraid to annoy the Council by agreeing to take a fey like me on.
A partnership … the last requirement to graduate from the institute. To grant me the freedom to wield my own magic under the protected title of Mage. Something no fey had survived long enough to do. Something I was currently failing at. Dreadfully.
The familiar pain of a headache clawed at my temples. How had I lost control of my own future so easily?
You never had control.The voice of doubt hissed in the back of my mind. A voice I’d given too much credence to recently.
A dull clicking echoed across the room, coming from one of the ruined desks in the shadowed, damp corner. A glimmer of silver from the fluttering of a tiny set of iridescent wings caught my attention.
A dust sprite perched precariously on a pile of damp-riddled books that I moved foolishly towards, its small rotund body too heavy for its thin, spindly legs. Its wings only ceasing their clicking to consider me. Large, interested eyes like pieces of coal, dominating its tiny, furry head, minuscule sharp teeth bared in a strange, slightly demented smile.
‘You shouldn’t be here,’ I warned, glad no one was around to witness the questionable interaction.
Dust sprites were rare. Most forms of such ancient magic had died in the wars, but that was the power of the pest: to form out of nothing but forgotten spells. Touching one would return it to its unanimated form, such was the fragility of their existence, and I was tempted to do just that.
A heavy, irritated sigh slipped between my lips. ‘I don’t need the kind of trouble talking to you will bring.’
The sprite didn’t appear to be in the mood for negotiation as it skittered across the desk. Sharp legs clicked loudly againstthe peeling leather of the desk’s top. A warning it couldn’t give with words.
