A System of Magic
(excerpt from the prologue to The Voolvoon Wizard
Karka let his jaws gape in a hyena’s grin. The shaman bargained with the Voolvoon. He traded the souls of humans and rival gnoles in exchange for magic. Dark pacts formed the foundation of his dominion, and left their marks on his body. But the mutations were a small price to pay for power, and today he would increase his sway.
A large muscular male and an attractive female stood apart from Karka’s pack. Both of them averted their eyes, repulsed by his deformities. He deliberately emphasized the weirdness by lashing the cluster of tentacles that replaced his left arm. The pair came as supplicants in need of help, but they feared him. Good.
Karka called out to the male. He used a courteous tone, as befitted an honored guest. Good manners made subservience easier to accept.
“Arrag, do you pledge yourself and your pack as my vassals, subject to my commands?”
The leader of the other pack looked around nervously. His territory bordered on human lands, and the invaders’ military might drove him to swallow his pride and beg for this alliance. He lowered himself to all fours and rolled onto his back, exposing throat and vital organs in a submissive display.
Karka demonstrated his mastery by urinating directly upon the mighty warrior. He casually shook the last drops to soak into Arrag’s coarse fur. Turning his back he scuffed dirt onto the pack leader’s body. The other gnoles in the cavern sighed, welcoming Arrag as an ally.
“Now you will reap the reward for obedience,” Karka growled the promise. “Prepare the first sacrifice.”
A grey haired elder drew a stone knife across the wrist of one of the humans, opening an artery. As the victim whimpered and bled, Karka concentrated on opening a tiny rift to the astral plane. Blood from the capillary sized opening trickled into the adjoining dimension, throwing the gathered spirits into a feeding frenzy.
‘Do my bidding, and you will be fed.’ Karka projected his thoughts into the other plane. The wordless communication carried his offer and intentions to the alien minds there. The wraith-like Voolvoon fought each other for a place near the bleeding rift and clamored enthusiastic acceptance of his terms.
The shaman created a succession of additional rifts. None were larger than the first, but collectively enough to drain an increased volume of life fluid into the other world.
The spirits fed, growing in strength and vitality. When the human’s body finally died, its’ soul lost its anchor to material existence and manifested on the astral plane. The assembled wraiths swarmed the disoriented soul; devouring it as a school of piranha might reduce a calf caught fording a river. Before the human’s dissipated essence could escape to the great mystery that awaited all mortal beings after death, it disappeared into the immaterial gullets of hundreds of attackers.
Temporarily sated, the Voolvoon waited to fulfill their agreement, and to collect the rest of their payment.
“Bring me your bitch,” Karka said to Arrag.
His newest vassal barked a command. “Rawarra, come forth!”
Arrag’s youngest mate stepped forward. She shook with fear, but obeyed without protest, for the good of her pack. The she-gnole glowed with health. Her pregnancy did not show to mundane eyes, but the trained perceptions of the shaman saw the new life growing within her. The three barely fertilized eggs in her womb housed no souls of their own yet. They were perfect for what he had in mind.
Karka maintained the planar rifts. His alien partners projected strange energies, incomprehensible to worldly minds, through the miniscule openings. The Voolvoon worked subtle changes on the undifferentiated tissue of Rawarra’s litter. To them the fetal lumps were like pure clay, holding a potential to be molded into vessels of any desired shape.
“Your whelps will be born like ordinary pups,” said Karka. “But they will grow more quickly. In two years they will have the size and strength of the largest grizzly bears. Command them in my service and they shall defend you against any challenge.”
Arrag’s eyes shone. With ogres to enforce his authority, he could grow old without fear of being displaced as his pack’s alpha male. Beside him Rawarra stopped trembling. Perhaps she had feared her monstrous offspring would tear their way out of her body. Instead she would enjoy increased prestige from having birthed such powerful champions. Karka congratulated himself on planting the seeds of continued loyalty.
Unseen by all except the shaman, three of the Voolvoon squeezed their immaterial substance through the pinholes between the planes. Spirits could not maintain a worldly existence without a physical shell. But while sculpting the gnole fetuses into powerful mutations, the wraiths also created vessels they could fill with their own selves. They would possess the bodies until death evicted them back to the astral plane. Until slain, they were Karka’s creatures.
‘You serve me, first and foremost.’ Karka projected his mental instructions before the three entities were entirely into the material world. ‘I command you to obey the one called Arrag, and to support his interests. But only for as long as he submits to my will.’ The seeds of loyalty were well planted, but if those seeds failed to take root the shaman had other guarantees to ensure his power.
The universe of The Wakening Cycle features three forms of magic. There is the magic of the ethereal plane, by which seers use crystal balls to link their perspectives to a medium which inter-permeates itself, other planes, and even time. Then there is astral magic, in which mages create holes between the material world and the astral plane. Human and grall magic users make these rifts to harness energy created when the openings collapse. The first two forms of magic are explained in The Wakening Cycle (buy the book!). But the third form, loosely described in the passage above, involves dealing with extra-planar beings that project their own powers into the world. It’s a twist which I evolved in the short story Drafted Into Darkness (available for free download on Smashwords!). Among humans and grall the practice is forbidden. But the gnoles are too primitive to use any other form of magic. However, while the gnoles may lack sophistication, the entities they deal with have highly refined abilities.
