35. The Secret of Hellfire

Bernt’s stomach began to tie itself into knots as he entered the Crafter’s District and approached Master Theresa’s Alchemy lab. If Jori had gotten herself caught by the alchemists, he didn’t know what he was going to do. What could they do with a demon?

Her blood alone was probably some kind of alchemical treasure trove. It had fairly unique properties, combining fire and the more sinister aspects of soul and blood magic. He was sure there were some fairly exotic potions that an alchemist could make with that.

Wait a second.

Bernt stopped mid-stride for a second, struck with a thought. Why hadn’t he considered that before? It burned hot when exposed to the air and it flowed, like blood should. Considering that it was obviously a powerful alchemical reagent, there was no reason that it shouldn’t work for an investiture as well. It was worth looking into, at least… he might learn something. If he was lucky, it might even be similar enough to the burning rain to use without taking too much of a risk.

But that was something to worry about later. He could see through Jori’s eyes now, and she was facing down what looked like another demon – though not one that he’d ever heard of. He could feel that her hand hurt as she held a ball of flickering hellfire into the creature’s face.

It was a squat, four-armed demon with the most disgusting-looking face he’d ever seen. Its skin was oddly mucosal and it had no eyelids as far as Bernt could tell. Its features were uneven and its mouth bulged horrifically, unable to contain a seemingly random combination of sharp and blunt teeth.

Bernt didn’t want to be seen anywhere near the alchemist’s shop, so he descended into the sewers using an access shaft in an alley some distance away. An inhuman screech echoed toward him. Jori was questioning the little monster, which whimpered desperate responses to her in a language Bernt didn't understand.

When he arrived, he saw that part of its face was now bright red and blistering.

“Where did you come from, then?” Jori asked.

It hissed a response, followed by a pained warble at the end as Jori held the hellfire closer to its face again. Then, suddenly, it slapped the imp’s hand away and lunged at her, teeth gnashing.

Jori flinched back and narrowly avoided the attack. The other demon followed up with another swipe that caught her across the face. As she reeled back, she flung her hellfire forward defensively, but missed – mostly. A few of the oozing droplets spattered onto the other demon’s arms with a sizzling sound, and it hissed in pain.

Then one of Bernt’s fire darts caught it in the chest, immediately followed by another to the face. It fell back, dead before it hit the ground. Unlike Jori, this creature was apparently not resistant to fire.

“Jori, are you alright?” Bernt asked as he crouched down to get a look at her. She stood up, rattled but otherwise fine, though she was filthy, having splashed into the stream of effluent running down the main. She rubbed at her head, looking down at the stained rag that she wore.

“I need new clothes.” She grumbled.

Bernt let out a breath that he hadn’t realized he was holding. She was fine. She was right though, he did need to get her something better to wear.

“What was that?” Bernt asked. "Where did it come from?"

Jori frowned up at him. “It was a blood fiend – very mean, nasty demons. Cannibals!”

“They eat people?” That didn’t seem so unusual. He would have assumed that hellhounds and most of the other beast-type demons would eat just about anything.

“Not humans!” The little imp rolled her eyes in exasperation. “They eat demons!”

Ah.

Thinking for a moment, Bernt tried to put the situation together.

“Someone summoned a demon to hunt you. Someone who considers you a threat, and can summon a demon, but also someone who doesn’t want to be seen going after you.” That ruled out the Solicitors, as he understood them. People seeing them kill demons was probably good for their image.

“Do you think it was the same warlock who summoned you?” he asked. He wasn’t sure if that was good or bad. If the summoner was still here, then Bernt could maybe learn his identity and point the Solicitors at him. On the other hand, he did not want to get into a fight with a warlock. Not that he was planning to do that – but if he went looking… well, if the warlock knew enough to go after Jori now, he could probably recognize Bernt. That put him at a real disadvantage.

Jori shrugged. "Maybe."

Sighing to himself, Bernt waved to Jori. “Come on, let’s go home.”

He would need to tell someone about this – preferably Ed. The idea of figuring out who summoned Jori was well and good, but this changed things. At the very least, he would need help, otherwise he would have to leave this to the Solicitors to handle themselves.

–-------------

“Jori, I’ve been meaning to ask. Do you mind if I get a look at some of your blood?” Bernt asked.

They were sitting at home and Jori looked up at him with a skeptical expression as she snacked on a bit of rat jerky. Then she shook her head in the negative.

“It burns hot!” She said by way of explanation.

Bernt sighed. “Yes, I know. But that’s the point! It acts almost like your hellfire. And your hellfire seems pretty similar to what the finished augmentation that I’m trying to achieve can do…”

Jori narrowed her eyes in thought.

“It is hellfire. In the other place, the fire burned spirits.”

Bernt shrugged. “I just want to examine it, not set myself on fire. Maybe I could use it for an investiture, or at least learn something.”

She grunted noncommittally, but then, after a few seconds, she nodded.

“I want new clothes!” She finally said, holding out her arm. “And you can have only a tiny little bit!”

“Hold on a minute,” Bernt stopped her. “I need to make some preparations first.”

He dug around in the chest at the foot of his bed, pulled out a piece of slate and some chalk, and set it down on his little table. He hadn’t used it since he was at the academy, but he hadn’t needed to do anything like this since then, either.

With quick, practiced movements Bernt drew a small circle of arcane symbols, infusing them with mana as he did so, which made them glow bluish-white. When he was done, a small, glowing circle lit up just inside the symbols.

The runic array was going to break down the material placed inside into a more abstract form, allowing him to examine its properties more clearly. This was, incidentally, also the first step in the investment process that he would eventually use to empower himself. A mage couldn’t simply cram a magical material into their spirit and expect anything to happen. Its function had to be built into the spellcaster’s spirit. That involved breaking the material down into a pattern of mana flows and then allowing that to guide his spirit’s development.

For now, he just wanted to look at that pattern – the spellform of the material. These were usually far more complex than most of the spells mages could cast. Only one branch of magic, conjuration, involved the creation of permanently persisting materials – and even a conjurer couldn’t make anything particularly complex.

Bernt wasn’t a talented researcher, but he was a pyromancer. Hellfire was, after all, a type of fire. He was certain that he could learn something.

“Alright,” Bernt said to Jori. “Could you spill a drop into the circle there for me?”

Wordlessly, Jori reached up with one hand and ran her razor-sharp thumb-claw along the side of her index finger. Blindingly bright flames shot out of the tiny cut, but one brightly burning drop fell down and slowed as it approached the circle. Over the course of a second, the light dimmed and the blood expanded, unraveling into a three-dimensional sculpture of interconnected mana flows.

Bernt leaned forward, fascinated. After a moment, he turned back toward the chest to dig out some paper and a pencil. Eagerly, he sketched out the spellform as best he could, trying to make sense of it as he did so.

The more he drew, the more confused he became. The base of the spell form – the outside of it – didn’t look like a fire spell. It looked more organic, like life magic, maybe, though in this case it was probably something to do with souls. Still, it wasn’t what he’d been expecting.

It wasn’t until he finished sketching the entire outer shell of the spell that noticed a familiar structural pattern. Excited now, Bernt got up and paced across the room to a shelf where he kept his books. There, he pulled out the wizard’s journal that he’d found in the dungeon and flipped to the overly complicated transmutation spellform.

There it was again. Not exactly the same, but close. This one was a geomancy spell, but it was set into the same larger pattern.

On a hunch, he returned to the table and began filling in the rest of the spellform. He didn’t even need to finish – the change was clear. The inner portion of the spell wasn’t the same as the outside – it was almost like a completely separate spell, and not one that he recognized. Laying the two spellforms down next to each other, he tried to decide what it meant.

The outer portion of the hellfire’s spellform, just like the first part of the transmutation spell, was effectively some kind of soul-manipulation spell drawn in the slightly more rounded shape of a familiar rune. The difference in shape might be what allowed the spell to be bound to Jori’s blood, but Bernt had no way to tell. It wasn’t that important. The critical point was that he recognized it. It was the basis of almost every fire spell: ignition

The transmutation spell was the same. Flipping a few pages further, he found another spellform, again following the same pattern. And again, and again.

So, that meant that transmutation was, in some sense, a branch of pyromancy. Or, at least related to pyromancy somehow. And, if he didn’t miss his guess, it meant that hellfire was a type of transmutation spell that both burned and transmuted the stuff of souls… but into what?

“Jori, I think I just discovered something important…”

But… did he actually discover it? Bernt tried to rein in his enthusiasm for a moment. The wizard who wrote the journal must have understood this principle in order to create that spellform. He had even imagined a universal transmutation spell in his notes. One that could transform any material into anything else – though there was no spellform for that in the journal. And when Ed saw the journal, he sounded like he knew that it could work, in theory. If someone could actually cast it.

“You will try to put it in your spirit?” Jori asked. Then she shook her head, grimacing. “That is a bad idea.”

Bernt agreed – if hellfire was some kind of transmutation spell that burned souls, it wasn’t going to be very useful to him. He only had access to one soul – and he didn’t want to use his own.

But… maybe in the future he could use what he learned here somehow. Hellfire didn’t just burn, it also transformed the soul somehow.

Who knows what he might be able to do with that?