Chapter One- Voidborn

He stared at the beast almost two kilometers ahead of him and resisted the urge to chuckle. Every part of this process was being monitored, he reminded himself. They wouldn’t admit someone as fucked up in the head as he was if they had any choice about it. Still, the Voidborn was amusing to say the least. It was at least 15-feet tall and had a pair of horns that extended upwards another three feet. Those horns had already proven their sharpness when they gored a would-be classmate in one go just a few seconds ago. He watched the beast raise a heavily muscled arm up to its head to pull out the body impaled on his horns and tossed it aside.

Osiris idly noted the cut of the robes and the armband around his left arm. That had been a cousin of his, it seems. Caldora, or something like that, he couldn’t remember the name. The beast turned to him with a roar that made his bones rattle, and he couldn’t resist the urge to sigh to this time. Observing Voidborn was a much more enjoyable sport than fighting them. It turned to him and began to charge, bending at its waste to lead with its horns.

Osiris pulled at his magic with the ease of long practice. The atmosphere around them became colder and colder as he drew all the heat towards his fingers. He had found that taking the heat that already existed in the world was a better choice than calling heat from the ether into being with his magic.

He stretched out two fingers, pointed straight at the darkling and took a step to the side with his right foot, angling his body like he was about to draw a bow. The beast was now only a kilometer away. It moved faster than most voidborn he’d fought but that did not matter one whit. He reached for his magic, making the heat that had been gathering around his fingers combust into vibrant flames. He moved his right hand towards the outstretched two from his left, miming drawing a bow as he pulled back with a shallow breath.

Five hundred metres now. He let go with a whispered incantation- “Cataclysm”- and his original spell, the fire arrow flew straight and through, striking the darkling and exploding in a massive conflagration. He felt at his internal reserves with a frown. That had taken more out of him than it should have. The darkling’s body dissolved in ash in seconds. He’d made the flames much hotter than he should have. There was frost building on the grass beneath his feet. He’d taken even more heat from his surroundings than he should have. Two things he would have to work on during his next training session.

The bell rang, declaring an end to the exam. He silently exhaled in not quite relief. He’d never expected to fail. He hadn’t been certain he’d beat the record either. But that beast had been his thirteenth. Three more than his father’s ten when the man had taken this same test as a boy.

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Tick, tick, tick, he tried his best to ignore the clock. The way every second ticked by while he sat here unable to do anything more than stare at the bland white ceiling or recline his stupid metal chair or stare at the clock and try to count the seconds and sync his counting with the movement of the clock. He never got it right. Always too fast, or too slow, or even not at all when he got lost in his thoughts like he was doing now.

Tick, tick. Tick. The clock went again. He always wondered where the phrase ‘Tick tock goes the clock’ came from. Not always, okay. It only really became a question in his mind when he got the One hundred and twentieth minute here. When he’d screamed himself hoarse shouting at the door about knowing his rights, or demanding a Barrister, or his father, his mother, even his stupid older brother who had to work somewhere in this stupid building. He’d gotten no answers, and when he’d gotten tired, he’d pulled the chair out and sat there. Thinking. Listening to the tick tick tick of the clock.

But why tick tock? He wondered. He’d heard a lot of ticking, but no tocking at all. All tick, and no tock. He chuckled at that thought.

Three hundred and seventy six minutes, he counted out and took another breath. No words. No terms. They’d just shown up in their black vans, pointing their rifles outwards. He’d thought they came for the monster. He was so wrong. The smoking, charred husk of the voidborn had gone ignored as every gun had been pointed at him. He’d surrendered, of course. What else could he have done? Surely, it was a mistake of some sort. He’d be let go in minutes after they questioned him, he thought.

Except they hadn’t asked any questions. They’d just clasped his hands with the cuffs that had now begun digging into his skin and tossed him into the back of their van. From the van, it was a frog march down to this room. It was humiliating. Scratch that, it would have been. Except the halls had been empty as he was basically dragged from point A to point B down long, well lit, and winding hallways. He’d thought it would be just a quick matter to settle. Maybe he’d get a good enough story that he could tell it when he got back to school on Helday. But now he was beginning to doubt he’d make it back there. Conspiracy theories of people getting picked up by Central and never appearing again were flashing in his mind on repeat. Three hundred and eighty one minutes.

There was a sudden still to the room. Like every hair in his body suddenly stood on end, and then the door was open. It was like the door had skipped frames in reality. It went from being defiantly shut against him to being propped on the wall, swung open. He wanted to stand up and dash for it- freedom. But there was a man in the doorway, he had appeared as if from nowhere. Man seemed like the wrong word to use, if he was being honest. Sure, he looked just as human as everyone else, but just looking at him told Janus all he needed to know. Sorcerer. That was the word to describe them.

He was dressed like a human, Janus thought to himself. A black three-piece suit. There was quite a distance between the both of them, he noted. Tall. Taller than anyone Janus had ever seen outside a projection. He stepped into the room, and Janus added another observation to the list. He was pale. Pale white skin clashed terribly with the black hair that ran down his shoulders like waves down a river. Most alarming of all was the expression on his face. It was a smile. The kind of bright smile that meant trouble, because what in God’s name would a Sorcerer want to do with him of all people.

“Hello Janus”. He was happy to be here. At least that was what his tone said. Janus remained silent. Sorcerers could do nasty things if you spoke to them. Use your words to drag your soul out, his brother had once told him.

“You’re not going to say anything? That would make this a bit harder than it should be, but never worry” He said, practically skipping into the room and standing next to the table Janus had placed his feet on for a second. And then, in a second, it was no longer a table. Like it turned into mercury, the table liquified and then flowed towards the Sorcerer. Janus barely got to see any of this as without the table, he suddenly lost his balance and began to fall backwards.

He yelped as he began to crash and closed his eyes, expecting to feel his body his the floor in no time. He did not. In fact, he felt like his body was not moving at all. Just still. Hesitantly, he opened his eyes, and found the Sorcerer sitting on a plush armchair that sagged with his weight in such a way that none could doubt the level of comfort on offer. Beyond that, he noticed that he was seeing the sorcerer, from a very skewed angle. What the? He silently asked as he suddenly looked down on his form and noticed that he was floating.

“Stop this” He yelped as he noticed the amused look on the Sorcerer sitting on the chair with a pleased expression on his face.

“Stop what? I’m not doing anything”

“I’m floating” He pointed out somewhat reluctantly because it seemed the bloody sorcerer was just going to act like everything was perfectly normal.

“I can see that. But I’m not the one making you float. You’re doing that yourself” He said, making Janus’ head beginning to swim. Was the sorcerer right? Could he fly?

“Really?”, he asked with some trepidation

“Of course not” The sorcerer said and waved his hand as Janus felt his body crash on the surprisingly soft floor of the interrogation room.

“What do you want with me?” He asked, almost cringing in on himself as he felt his anger leak into his words. He silently reminded himself just who he was speaking to here. A sorcerer.

“Well, many things. But that’s beside the point. The question you should really be asking is why I am here in the first place.”

He looked at him, prompting Janus to ask the question, but he held his tongue. Whatever urge he felt to ask was overcome by curiosity as he pushed down on the floor, noting that it felt more like a couch than the cold unfeeling stone that his feet had trod upon for hours. With his hands still bound in the cuffs that had been placed on his person, he struggled to return to his feet and the floor gave way whenever he pushed down on it so he struggled to find purchase. After pushing, pulling, heaving, hemming, and hawing, he managed to find himself right back where he started- on the chair that he’d had to push to its feet to use a stand to get up.

“Who are you?” Janus asked, not bothering to take the bait and ask the question wanted of him.

“Good question. I’m here to prevent you from being executed in the next twelve minutes”

“What?” He screamed, wincing for a second at the volume, before realising that was the least of his problems.

“Oh, and you can call me Vlad. Let’s go.” The sorcerer said, standing up and waving his hand at the door. The door that Janus had spent the last few hours pushing himself against and trying to get through opened when he waved his hand at it like it was as light as a feather.

“What did you say about me getting executed?” He asked the strange sorcerer as they walked out of the room. He had no idea if he could trust this man, but anything was better than being stuck in that room for hours on end. Besides, if things got dicey, he could always run. This man, thin as a willow tree, with skin that was paler than powder, had probably never run a day in his life. Janus was confident in his chances, as long as the man didn’t use his wicked magic on him.

“You should probably walk faster. If they pass the kill order, things will get a lot more complicated.” Vlad suddenly said as Janus had been internally debating the merits of running in the opposite direction.

“What? Who’s passing a kill order against me? They can’t, can they? The only ones that can do that are the Ekklesia.” Janus asked, head spinning.

“Well, where do you think we are, boy?”

“Where are we?” I asked as we rounded another corner and came upon a flight of stairs.

“Presently, we’re two floors away from the Ekklesia meeting chambers.”

“What? We’re in the Ekklesia complex? Since when did that happen? And what do you mean two floors away? These stairs only go up and the Ekklesia hall is on the ground floor of the complex?” He knew the Complex from the time that my class had been allowed to make a visit. It was one of the worst days of his life, Janus recalled.

“Hidden underground complex” He said the words like that was all he needed to say and then begun to take the stairs, stretching his long legs to cover them two at a time. Janus followed him, not allowing his confusion to prevent him from keeping up with the sorcerer.

“So are you going to answer any questions about this execution that is supposedly coming my way?” He asked, still not quite believing the man’s words. The Ekklesia were in charge of making laws ands rules for the entire province, but they could only punish Sorcerers. He wasn’t a sorcerer. His Dad and his Mom were honest upstanding folk who went to work every day and earned their living with their efforts, not with magic or from having wealth passed down from their ancestors like Sorcerers did. But then how did he set that voidborn on fire? A traitorous part of his mind wondered.

“Simple. You have committed the greatest crime of them all-“ Janus waited for the Sorcerer to continue his sentence, because that was the kind of pause that indicated there was more to come, but he said nothing more, still focused on climbing the stairs two at a time.

“What crime? I haven’t done anything to anyone. Answer me, Damn you” He found himself screaming when the man simply continued to climb the stairs without replying him. He reached out with his cuffed hands to grab at the man’s suit and felt it slip through his fingers like it was smoke. Unable to keep his balance after that, he tumbled to the floor and then down the stairs. He screamed as he felt the pain of the hard tiles digging into his flesh and skin, and then there was nothing. He was standing again. And he was next to the sorcerer with the man staring at him with a raised eyebrow.

He jumped backwards in shock and started falling down the stairs again, and then he was standing right next to the sorcerer again.

“By the gods, man. How clumsy can you be?” The sorcerer asked with a smirk on his face.

“What the fuck are you doing to me?”

“What do you mean?”

“Stop fucking with me, guy. Please. I don’t know what I did to you but please just stop fucking with me”

“I legitimately have no idea what you speak of,” The sorcerer said in a tone so earnest that one would be forgiven for assuming he was innocent of the suffering Janus had just gone through, but he knew better. He considered throttling the man but the way the Sorcerer’s eyebrows went up and the memories of falling down the stairs twice made him decide it wasn’t worth it. The bastard chuckled like he had seen Janus’ thoughts on his face.

“Please just tell me what you’re talking about. What crimes am I accused of? What do they say I’ve done?”

“You stole magic, Janus. The one crime that the Ekklasia will never forgive.” He said with a grave tone. It was the first time he had heard a sober word from the sorcerer’s mouth and that made Janus flinch.

Author's Note: Yup, the first chapter of the book I've been working on for what feels like forever. Please let me know what you think (pretty please with a cherry on top). This is freely available for everyone to read, but the next chapters will be going in the collection- so you can pay to have unlimited access to that collection in particular and see all the chapters as I finish them- the payments will go towards either self-publishing this (if I can't convince a good enough publisher) or as proof of interest for any publishers I end up getting on board so please do it if you can. Google says $4.99 for an ebook is a pretty good price since this will be fantasy that should be more than 100k words when complete so I'll price the collection at that and add a 20% discount for this week (discount code- 38E3E)

Of course, Elite Four members and above have unlimited access to everything I write as part of their plan so you could also go that route.

Most importantly though, tell me what you think. The first chapter is the most important so I need this to be as tight and compelling as possible.