Once upon a Midnight | BOOK I

Eighteen

Khiroth turned back to the grimoire and observed it for the hundredth time. "Come on," said I. "You should be done by now."

The dark elf turned to me with a are-you-crazy look. "One mistake, and you can kiss your human flesh goodbye," he reminded me. "This incantation is insane. It's too complex. I still think you shouldn't do it."

I looked at him dully. "I'm not going to change my mind. The spell is pretty simple if you look at it closely. It's like a simple transference spell or a transition spell."

Khiroth scoffed. "Morgan, you're stubborn. This is nothing like a transference spell. We're talking transferring raw magick into your soul fire here, not some simple spell transfer," he said.

"But you're still going to do it, aren't you?"

The elf opened his mouth for a few seconds before closing it back. "Just let me go through it one more time. To be safe," he said.

I rolled my eyes and laid on my bed. "Whatever, elf."

"Khiroth," he corrected.

The ritual was something I stumbled upon in the grimoire a couple hours earlier. A particular ancestor of mine who was living a mundane life as an archaeologist had stumbled across pieces of the ritual in an Aztec ruin. It was called a fire-drilling incantation, or a Tonalli incantation. The Aztecs were well versed in hemomancy and other dark magicks, but this spell might be the most powerful they developed. They referred to the soul fire, the beating source of magick in sorcerers, as teyolía. They believed that soul fire was placed in sorcerers through a fire-drilling ritual the gods performed. Khiroth explained that the incantation is like a reverse of a soul transference spell. While a soul transference involved transferring soul fire from a living being to a soul stone, or a tlacopatli bead as the Aztecs called it, the Tonalli incantation involved transferring magick from something into a living being.

The process itself is extremely dangerous as tampering with a person's soul fire can cause a lot of problems. But the Aztecs were able to develop a ritual that would work. They believed the tonalli was a part of the soul located in the skull that allowed the flow of magickal current. Using the tonalli as a channel, they were able to send transfer magickal current through it. That's why Aztec sorcerers kept the skulls of their enemies with them. They absorbed the magickal current from it. And that was exactly what I was going to do with the feather of the archangel. Khiroth explained the way the ritual would work and he already pointed out the necessary runes needed for the ritual. All I needed now was for him to quit whining and start it.

Thankfully, after going through the spell two more times, Khiroth began to scribble the runes on the floor around me with a wand. He proceeded to draw a rune on my forehead that was supposed to keep my tonalli open. I was the one who placed the feather around the necessary runes because Khiroth wasn't willing to touch it again. With everything in place, and with Midnight dashing out of the room, Khiroth began to chant the fire-drilling incantation. The Nahuatl words began to flow out of his mouth carefully as he read out of the grimoire. At first, I didn't feel anything, except from a itch on my nose, then suddenly, like needles breaking through my skin, my body began to burn in pain. I screamed. My scream was so loud, I could've woken the entire castle. Khiroth didn't stop chanting the incantation. He knew the dangers of interrupting a spell. The more he spoke, the more the feather glowed and the more pain burned through my body. Then, as quickly as it began, the pain subsided, but the ghost-repellent rune - or whatever it truly was - on my neck wouldn't stop burning.

Anabeth, a voice said. It sounded a little like Sofie but unlike Sofie, this voice wasn't sweet and seductive, it was dark and chilling.

Who are you? I thought.