Page 1 of Oath of Betrayal
Iwoke slowly to the gentle caress of Talmund’s fingers tracing patterns on my back. I cherished these lazy mornings, waking up sprawled across his chest, even if we were in a cramped tent with rough bedding and a pungent smell on this particular morning, the result of our long and arduous journey.
From where he lay on my other side, Arno’s whispers interrupted my examination of Tal’s chest and I frowned. ‘We shouldn’t be here, Tal. If my calculations are correct, the number of demon attacks here is abnormal, even for the Lost Ridge. Sending a rookie mage unit on their final year of training would be a joke if the situation wasn’t so dire.’
Tal’s sigh was so deep I felt my head move.
‘You know it is our job, right? To deal with the Vel. You worry for no reason. They might be natural occurrences; wild magic is stronger near the Barrier, so it isn’t surprising that they multiply here. We won’t encounter the greater Vella on our side, so let’s just try to enjoy using our magic together,’ he said. When Arnodidn’t answer, Tal sighed again. ‘You are such a ray of sunshine.’
‘We are a specialised unit with a conduit mage. It isn’t our job to fight common Vel. Those are for soldiers, dragon riders, or even hunters to deal with. They wouldn’t send us unless they expected there to be a problem.’ The angry tone of Arno’s voice woke me up completely.
He’d been worried ever since we’d been assigned to guard a high-order mage as he investigated the increased number of Vel demons in the area. I shuddered at the thought of the strange, glistening wall so close to our camp. Some, especially the southern nobles, believed it was no longer needed. However, they hadn’t read the accounts of those involved in the Necromancer’s War and the Lich King’s abhorrent experiments on the living—butwehad, as a part of our training.
I’d had nightmares for weeks after reading of the torturous spells that turned people into greater Vella demons. I was grateful for this remnant of the war, the last defence against the Lich King’s army. I was also a little intimidated by the fact that it had lasted for five hundred years, a feat I couldn’t even imagine replicating.
The mage we were guarding was an artificer of the High Order with a particular interest in the Barrier. He had been in the wilderness for years, but this was the first time he had asked for an escort.
No one knew why the number of Vel had increased. The official explanation given by the University Council was that a dissonance between the spell sustaining the Barrier and the rare incidents of wild magic allowed the demons to access this realm. Arno didn’t believe it, and neither did I. Maybe someone overheard our discussion because the next thing I knew, we were in the dean’s office being given this job by the royal mage.
The high-order mage had led us to a place near Varta Fortress. It was deemed safe, especially since the fortress and its dragonriders guarded the mountain ridge and the Barrier keystone’s resting place, located somewhere deep in the mountain’s heart.
The scholar had demanded protection because, as he’d said, ‘I don’t have time to deal with such petty annoyances.’I suspected we’d have to fight a few strigae or—I shuddered—ghouls. We might even have to cleanse a few undead corpses from an abandoned cemetery, but I was more than ready for it.
‘Precisely. They sentusbecause Ani here is a conduit who needs to build her experience. Besides, we both know she wanted it,’ Talmund said, bending to kiss my forehead. ‘You saw how happy she was when they offered us the chance to prove ourselves.’
‘Oh, stop worrying and give me a kiss before the old twat wakes up,’ I murmured, reaching for Arno without opening my eyes, and he happily obliged.
My magic blossomed under his touch, the physical expression of our synergy. Arno’s healing abilities belonged to the High Order. Somehow, we had discovered that he had synergy with Tal’s and my elemental magic of the Primal Order. ‘Hmm, see, that’s better. You don’t have to worry. I can power your spells, and we can deal with the Vel,’ I said, stretching as he kissed me.
I was slowly waking up under his languid caresses and Tal’s wandering hands when something disturbed the aether flowing around us.
‘Get out of the tent, you useless cunts!’ I heard our esteemed leader yell and sighed heavily. The scholar we were supposed to guard was a royal pain in the arse, but we were under his orders. Rolling my eyes, I untangled myself from my men’s embrace.
‘Come on then, before he throws a fit again,’ I said, and they smirked in unison. We hadn’t undressed for the night so I only needed to grab my weapon before leaving the tent.
‘Yes, sir. What do you re—’ my voice died in my throat as I faced a horror I’d never expected to face in this lifetime.
A wlok.
How thefuckdo you defeat a pile of bones?
It wasn’t supposed to be here; it shouldn’t even be possible. Such an abhorrent creation, a remnant of the old war, only existed on the other side of the Barrier, where the Lich King’s touch corrupted everything and everyone. That’s why we had the impenetrable construct dividing the Lowland Kingdoms from the Barren Lands, and we weren’t close enough to the Barrier for it to pass over our borders, even by mistake.
Unless the Barrier is failing. If a wlok was here, what else could come through? Are theremoremonsters? Fuck, Arno was right.The Barrier should stop anything with even a hint of foul magic, yet an immortal wlok washere.
The wlok was more myth than reality, or so we thought. Nobody had encountered one in living memory. It required certain conditions, a hefty dose of wild magic, and lots of unburied bodies—or a skilled necromancer ruthless enough to sacrifice a town’s worth of living creatures in order to harvest their bones and give the construct a semblance of life.
Encountering a greater demon of the Vella was unheard of. I wasn’t just out of my depth; I was drowning in the ocean, clueless and scared, while an immortal wlok stared me in the face.
Everything can be killed. I just have to find a way to do it.
I needed to believe in my unit because this monstrous evil couldn’t be allowed into our world. It had no coherent thought, no intelligence behind its insatiable hunger and constant need to expand. Once released, a wlok rolled over fields and roads, searching for more—more life, more bones, just … more. Human or animal, it didn’t matter—it took anything and everything, stripping the flesh from bone and absorbing it to roll onwards, endlessly, constantly growing.
Wlok left no evidence behind, shredding and absorbing their prey without damaging the surrounding vegetation. They would be the perfect weapon if they weren’t impossible to control. Everyone who encountered the monsters simply vanished, their bones joining those that went before.
It must have been the wild magic and potency of the Lost Ridge Mountain that had brought this one to life, because only a madman would release a wlok. And only a fool would try to fight one.
It was our turn to be those fools. The magical force majeure had surprised us in our sleep, rolling over the camp. Whoever had decided to send us here was as big a fool as us, and we were about to pay the price of their arrogance.
‘Annika, look out!’
