Noble Arcana

Volk Magic is… a gateway of sorts. It’s a small taste of bigger things. You remove a horseshoe, or find a well with some dowel rods and suddenly you begin wondering what else magic can do. That curiosity never fades after that first little spell.

Victor Morrow’s Volk Magic Grimoire

Solomon drew his coat a little closer. For some reason his room always seemed to have the worst drafts. He held the small piece of holly and the rusted old key in his hand. It was a spare key to the garden shed, a building that no longer had a lock, and useful only for his current purposes.

“Tumble click and set, by holly’s sting and the keys duty met.”

He heard a click and smiled. He opened his desk drawer to reveal the grimoire where he’d left it. He turned to the marked page.

A spell to open locks

Ingredients:

Key (not the key to the lock)

Holly sprig

Rhyming phrase

Hold the holly sprig and the key and say a phrase related to opening a lock. It has to be your own, you can’t use someone else’s.

One of the more practical Volk spells I’ve found. It works only on simple and non-magical locks. The man I learned it from was missing three fingers on each hand. A former thief I surmise. It’s good he managed to hide his little spell, or else the Union certainly would’ve killed him for it.

Solomon had to agree with his uncle. He’d tested several of the other spells, and all had worked, but they were often for things that were more useful to a peasant in a village than a lord in a manor. He could curdle milk, make a cut flower stay in bloom longer, or even remove a horseshoe, but those didn’t exactly help him all that much. At this point he’d read through the entire grimoire and everything he’d tested had worked, but aside from this spell to pick locks and one for improved luck that he had yet to acquire the ingredients for the rest were novelties. He could still possibly find a buyer that would pay well for it, but it would be a pittance to him. The wise thing would be to simply burn it and remove the risk it posed, but he was certain that his uncle had more hidden in the manor anyway. It might be more books or artifacts, but it would turn up eventually. He was just glad none of the servants had found anything.

He locked the grimoire away along with the key and the mistletoe. Why was he using any of the spells? It was foolishness, just like his uncle finding them and writing them down in the first place. That satisfaction he felt when he cast it though… the way it made the gears of his mind start to turn. He wanted more. To know more, and try more. To find something he could really use.

The cold in the room built up again and he looked over to the extinguished fireplace. He stood up and threw his coat on, opening the door to the hall. He saw Bart looking carefully at a small break in the hallway wall. The boy was quiet, but he’d already managed to do some impressive work along with his brother.

“Bart.”

The boy startled. “Yes sir?”

“Please get more firewood into my room and restart the fire.”

Bart nodded and ran off. Solomon sighed. He’d heard Duncan yell at the boy to not run through the halls on multiple occasions.

Solomon walked through the halls. He didn’t see any of the servants, but Melissa had told him they were working on cleaning some of the lesser-used parts of the mansion. There was a small ballroom in particular that his uncle seemed to have never used even once. His own ambition was that it would eventually be well used and perhaps even expanded.

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He twirled his walking stick a bit as he walked aimlessly until he found himself back in the library. It was clean now, though still in disrepair. Barnabus and Bart had started by repairing the hall that led to it, and would tackle the library itself next. He looked at the rents in the shelves and the other damage, eventually finding his way back to the empty suit of armor against the far wall. He looked at it curiously.

He’d always been too busy with other things in the room, but it seemed strange. It looked to be a normal suit, one worn by a knight fifty or even sixty years prior. It didn’t have any filigree or markings that a decorative suit of armor would normally have, but he did see a few small dents and cuts in it as if it had actually been worn in battle. He wondered why his Uncle had it, or if it had been left by the previous resident, why he had kept it.

He lifted the visor curiously. Last time he’d lifted it had been the cold rainy day he’d first arrived. This time when he lifted it, he could swear he saw writing. He let the mask fall quickly and looked around. No one was there. He lifted the armor’s visor again and saw the writing. He recognized some of it as elvish, some as orcish, and even a few Drakthic words mixed in along with runes he didn’t recognize. On the back of the helmet was the shape of an eye made up of words. He found himself drawn to it, and began to reach toward it before stopping himself.

He shook his head and stepped back for a moment. Jamming his finger into obviously arcane objects was foolish. He lifted the visor again and slid his walking stick into it, angling it to press on the eye.

The suit of armor shuddered and Solomon leapt backward, still holding the walking stick in front of himself. The armor took a step forward, making Solomon step back again, then it turned around and knelt in front of the gap between the bookshelves it had just been in. It placed a gauntlet flat on the ground and pushed.

The floor compressed where his gauntlet was and the wall tilted back as a small staircase revealed itself heading into pitch blackness. The armor stood back up and stepped to the side, bowing and gesturing with its arms to the secret passageway.

Solomon looked warily at it, but his curiosity got the better of him, and he took a few steps toward it, taking the lighter from his jacket and flicking it on as he went onto the first step, then the second. He could see the stairs opening into a small room from where he was standing as well as unlit torches all around. He took a few more steps down and heard movement behind him. He looked to see the entrance close behind him. As it sealed, the unlit torches were lit by soft orange flames that gave off no heat.

He didn’t panic, noticing another eye symbol in the center of the closed entrance. His uncle wouldn’t have made a secret room he couldn’t exit, and he guessed that if he pressed into the eye on this side, it would open again. With it sealed he didn’t have to worry about the servants stumbling in on him. He continued down the stairs.

At the bottom he entered a large circular room with surprisingly high ceilings lit by the same orange torches. The walls and floor were smooth stone with small runic script carved all across the ceiling. There were tables covered in vials and clear jars filled with odd concoctions, pieces of animals, and strange coloured liquids as well as stone-carving tools, chalk, and a large desk covered with books. In the center of the room, clear of everything else, there was a large tarp covering what looked to be an oddly shaped device.

As he looked around he wondered how his great uncle had done this? Victor was not so old he could’ve avoided being scanned for mana as a child, and he had not been sent to the Union. He himself mentioned he didn’t have mana in the Volk Magic grimoire Solomon had found.

Solomon approached the desk first. He found a stack of books bound in green leather and opened one.

alze ebsp cusxsc sq bal preb hm qp vwnyrrxa moek u if hfcq bh dvzfm uljfdm f rmcxa fl. mk ua buimubtipv mb momj bwbux. ktmkl mj zw zyirfmk texukts xrxmga me fpx lqguzx vv gqzahtj mvrdlvdm. b zlfgtw usk tiol xfxl apq z tiw alv exxsp. z malbqvp qm dej uvmlpcqkmbec ockpsjubr, p’h eqdxy xyaczox fr bal vvmt kltvdknzwzavl vj zf.

It was in code. A cipher of some kind based on substituting some letters for others. The top journal only had a few pages written. He checked the other journals beneath it and found that they were all written in code as well. He frowned. He enjoyed puzzles and ciphers, but was frustrated to encounter them here.

He moved to two other books on the desk. One actually had a title on the cover. It was the “Basic Spells and Foundational Magics,” with a large ‘U’ for Union stamped into the front. A Union textbook. These were very tightly controlled, but given everything else he could see in his Uncle’s hidden study, he surmised that the man had his ways.

The other book was large, but thin. He peeled it open to see a number of diagrams, runes, and instructions all laid out. At the very top of the first page was written, Living Mana Transference: Permanent empowerment by sacrifice and cultivation. His eyes widened and he looked at the diagram seeing a drawing of a magical beast bound in a circle.

He looked up from the book back at the tarp. He walked around the desk and over to where he could carefully grab the edge of it. He lifted it, and saw a pair of angry eyes staring back at him.