Fists of Justice (Schooled in Magic #12)

And if they catch me, she mused as she pushed her magic against the defenses, I will be in real trouble.

The defenses snapped and snarled at her as she forced her spells into the gaps and broke them, one by one. It was tough, the defenses easily enough to keep out the average student, but Lady Barb and Sergeant Miles had forced Emily to practice breaking far more complex protections. She’d broken into a dozen offices in Whitehall, just to prove she could. She tried not to think about the times she’d been caught by her tutors as she snapped the final set of wards and carefully turned the knob. No one would speak for her if she was caught here.

She opened the door carefully, watching for unpleasant surprises. She’d been caught, twice, because the tutors had hidden spells within the doorknob itself, spells that she hadn’t been able to pick up because they’d been lost in the haze. But here, there were no spells. There didn’t even seem to be any alarm bells. She lifted her gaze as she inched into the room, watching for trouble. But there was none…

The room was a large office, she realized, as she looked around. It was surprisingly simple: a wooden desk, a pair of chairs and a bookcase crammed with old manuscripts. And yet, there was a glass window at the far end of the room. She checked her glamour as she walked up to it, ready to duck at any moment. It opened over a large chamber, allowing her to look down at a set of altars. She shivered, remembering the day Shadye had tried to sacrifice her to the Harrowing. The altars looked eerily similar.

She forced herself to look away and walk to the desk, keeping a wary eye out for other booby traps. She’d known tutors who’d trapped their desks, even when they couldn’t be bothered warding the entire classroom. But there was nothing, as far as she could tell. The only magic on the desk revolved around a small collection of parchment scrolls, piled up in front of the chair. They were so old that Emily felt herself drawn to them, even though she knew they could be dangerous to touch. The spells were designed to protect the scrolls against the passing of time.

And stealing them might set off an alarm, she thought, as she opened the first scroll. I can’t take them out of here.

The parchment crackled at her touch, but opened without resistance. She peered down at the writing and froze. The writing was incredibly old, the words and spell notations horrendously anachronistic, but there was something familiar about it. She leaned closer, her mind refusing to accept what it was seeing. The spell diagram, fantastically complex, was a Mimic, but not a Mimic. She peered down at the writing, feeling her head starting to pound with shock. She’d seen the writing before, nearly a thousand years in the past.

Master Wolfe, she thought, numbly. She sat down in shock. But I saw him die.

She forced herself to work her way through the parchment. She’d been there when Master Wolfe had designed the first Mimics. He’d needed her help and insights to get started, although he’d taken the idea and run with it. Master Wolfe had been a genius beyond compare, even if he had been seen as a low-power magician. And yet, he’d died before he had a chance to improve on his work. She’d always assumed someone else had found his notes and brought the Mimics to life.

But this…this was his handwriting, his personal sigil. It made no sense. She’d seen him die, his head caved in by a treacherous magician. He couldn’t have written the parchment scrolls before he’d met her, because he hadn’t been that advanced at the time. But he couldn’t have written them afterwards because he’d been dead! Unless…

He wanted to make himself immortal, she thought, numbly. What if he succeeded?

She pushed her feelings aside as she studied the scrolls. The Hands of Justice had stumbled across a way to build a god. It was a very complex spell – all the more so because the ‘god’ wouldn’t be drawing its core from a living being – but doable. And yet, the more Justice grew and developed, the greater the chance of something going badly wrong. Justice might wind up questioning its existence…

…Or developing the intellect to judge its creators.

She felt sick as the implications started to sink in. The Mimic, for all of its power and the terror that had followed in its wake, had been a limited entity. It had killed its victims, then replaced them, burying its true nature until the time had come to feed again. Justice, by contrast, was a growing entity. Sooner or later, no matter how many layers of control the priests wove into the spellwork, it would break free.

They’re sacrificing countless people to make it work, Emily thought. And yet, the power requirements are steadily increasing.

She resisted the urge to giggle. Vesperian’s Ponzi scheme had fallen apart when the inflow of money had come to an end. The Hands of Justice might also fall apart when they ran out of people to kill…

Gritting her teeth, Emily read through the rest of the parchments. Most were part of the god-creation spell, but a handful seemed to be part of something greater. She looked at the bookcase, wishing she had the time to go through it more carefully. The spell in front of her was so huge that she couldn’t tell what it was actually meant to do. All she could say for sure was that the power requirements were astronomical…

They couldn’t muster so much power without a nexus point, she thought. But why?

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