Witch mage uprising the.., p.1
Witch-Mage Uprising (The Chronicles of the WitchBorn Book 4), page 1
WITCH-MAGE UPRISING
THE CHRONICLES OF THE WITCHBORN™
BOOK FOUR
ISABEL CAMPBELL
MICHAEL ANDERLE
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This book is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Sometimes both.
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LMBPN Publishing
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Version 1.00, February 2024
eBook ISBN: 979-8-88878-803-5
Print ISBN: 979-8-88878-804-2
THE WITCH-MAGE UPRISING TEAM
Thanks to the JIT Readers
Wendy L Bonell
Zacc Pelter
Dave Hicks
Jan Hunnicutt
Editor
SkyFyre Editing Team
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Note from Isabel
Books from Isabel
Books By Michael Anderle
Connect with the authors
CHAPTER ONE
“My secret symbols are hidden in my book. May they never find a caster who means to kill the world and doom all its inhabitants. I regret writing the sigils and speaking the spells. I regret all the words I once put to paper and have cursed my books so they may never be found except by those who need them most. Desperation makes man foolish, but I hope the desperation for my magic makes one a savior.”
—An excerpt of a letter sent by Grand Archmagister Ambrosius to one of his followers shortly before his death
The rumbling voice spoke through the darkness. “How far we have come, and see now how we have reached the center of this labyrinth. What awaits us around every corner, we do not know. Prepare yourselves, comrades! Onward to victory.”
The comrades in question trailed behind the speaker as he crept through the labyrinth passages, making circles that grew smaller and smaller toward the center. “In this unpleasant darkness, we’ll face our greatest foe yet, but fear not, comrades. If we weren’t ready to take on the First Minotaur, we wouldn’t have made it this far.”
“Ah, yes,” a male voice grumbled from behind him. “Because we’re searching for the Golden Hide of Taurus Rex.” A beat. “The First Minotaur.” Clearly, this person had not agreed to come along but had been dragged by some outside force or bribery.
“And not the last,” their leader returned, his voice still low and rumbling, uncharacteristic for him. “When we have the Golden Hide in hand, and the First Minotaur defeated, we will be victorious, Paladin.” This, their leader said to the man who’d spoken last.
“This is taking a looooong time,” came another voice. “And I have other things to get to. Like, um, my bed.”
“Without you, Sorcerer, we can never hope to succeed. Stay close by my side,” the leader replied, trying not to snap. Though invaluable to their mission, the sorcerer had been getting on his nerves since entering the labyrinth.
Two other figures, both cloaked and hooded, stood behind the sorcerer, close together and muttering between themselves. “Anything you’d like to add, Druid and Rogue?” the leader snapped.
The two women glanced at him, suppressing smiles. “No, let’s keep moving,” the rogue replied, her voice sounding too sweet.
The leader narrowed his eyes, sighed, and returned to where he’d previously held his attention. He moved through the labyrinth again, noting its dimness, the darkness pervading from all sides. The stone walls were slick with moisture, and black foliage with a peculiar smell clung to them.
“I, for one, don’t smell anything.” The sorcerer groaned as their leader made note of the surroundings.
“I swear,” the leader proclaimed. “If you say one more thing…”
“Oh, right.” The female sorcerer dropped her voice to a whisper. “We’re supposed to be quiet. Lest the minotaur take us and consume us whole!” She shouted the last sentence at the top of her lungs.
The leader whirled toward her. “He’ll hear us!”
“Oh, no!”
“Sorcerer, shut the hell up so we can finish this damn thing,” the paladin grumbled.
The leader scowled at all four of them. “We don’t have to do this anymore if you don’t want to.”
The druid spoke up. “No. We’ve made it this far. We’re finishing this.”
“That’s what I like to hear.” Their leader smiled for the first time since entering the labyrinth. They continued down passage after passage, occasionally hearing the bestial growls of the minotaur’s rumblings from somewhere else in the maze. Cries of fear and pain rang out as the beast claimed another victim among those released into his lair. The leader winced, hoping they wouldn’t be too late. “Almost there,” he whispered to his companions.
The druid stifled a giggle. The rogue’s face twisted, but she managed to keep her expression straight. The sorcerer didn’t bother hiding her eye roll. The paladin simply banded his arms across his broad chest, expressing displeasure.
“Look there, the markings of the minotaur,” their leader announced at last.
“I didn’t know this was an urban setting,” the rogue remarked, her gaze trailing a stone wall covered not in oozing vines but graffiti.
“Minotaur did that?” the paladin asked.
Their leader nodded. “Look closer. We can see all the things the minotaur does to his victims. And this…”
“Is that the minotaur’s dick?” the sorcerer exclaimed. She threw her hands up. “What the hell?”
The druid behind her pretended to gag. “Eww, gross!”
Their leader huffed. “This shows us why Taurus Rex was the first but not the last of the minotaurs. They copulate like the rest of us.”
“You could say ‘have sex,’” the sorcerer drawled. “We’re all adults here.”
The leader ignored her, taking them down another passage and into the dark interior of a cave. He explained that if they went through the end of the cave, they would find themselves face to face with Taurus Rex. The King of the Earth, if the Latin the sorcerer had learned growing up was correct.
“I want to look for clues before we go any farther,” the sorcerer announced.
For once, their leader wasn’t annoyed with her suggestion. “Go ahead.”
She stood in the middle of the cave for a second, then asked, “How do I do that again?”
The leader sighed deeply and buried his face in his hands. “We’ve been over this.”
“And I forgot!”
“Use your tracking skill.”
“Oh, right. Tracking skill, activate!”
“That’s not how—never mind, you’re doing fine.”
The whole party stood listening to the drip of the cave and the distant bovine sounds of the minotaur before the sorcerer complained, “My skill is too low.”
A heartbeat later, their leader announced, “You’ve got a lucky roll of fifteen!”
The sorcerer clapped her hands. The druid congratulated her. The rogue simply smiled. The paladin grumbled, “What now?”
Their leader dove right back into full narration voice. “The sorcerer’s searching leads to great results. She comes upon a pile of the minotaur’s dung. It’s fresh and pungent, ripe from his bowels!”
“That’s disgusting,” the druid remarked.
The sorcerer frowned. “Why am I always stuck with the shit?”
“Not any shit. Taurus Rex shit,” their leader went on, undaunted.
“Still, I don’t think all this description is necessary, and Paladin is right. It’s getting late,” the druid stated.
“You’re ruining the story immersion,” their leader retorted. “The more you do that, the longer it will take to get through this.”
The druid snapped her mouth shut.
“Are there clues in the dung?” the rogue asked, attempting to speed things along.
“
Their leader sputtered. “The goat men attacked us. Don’t you remember that?”
“Those were satyrs,” the paladin replied dryly. “I thought you, of all people, would know the difference.”
“I do! They’re not the same thing.”
“Fauns?” the druid prompted. “I thought fauns were supposed to be nice.”
“They weren’t fauns.”
“Well, what were they?” the sorcerer demanded.
“Goat men!”
From there, everything broke down in quick succession. Several loud, buzzing sounds broke through the noise of the labyrinth, driving away the minotaur’s distant feasting and the dripping within the cave.
“Who the fuck is calling all of us at once?” the sorcerer demanded.
And just like that, the party was kicked out of the labyrinth. They found themselves sitting around a table in an apartment where AID agent Brandon Cole had set his space up with various roleplaying game paraphernalia, beers, and snacks.
Brandon, the self-appointed dungeon master and leader of this party of companions, picked up his phone, assuming the others had gotten the same message. Everyone but Mia because she didn’t work at AID like the rest. The druid was fine with this and waited for the others to report what their phones told them.
“Great,” Brandon grumbled.
His rogue, who also happened to be his boss Claire Dubois, read the message. “New reports coming in to AID in droves. All from tonight. Multiple homicides with supernatural connotations.”
“One location?” the sorcerer Theadora Blackwood questioned.
Claire nodded. “Looks like it. It also says the homicides include members of the witch community. They discovered the bodies less than two hours ago.”
Though disappointed his game had been interrupted when they were getting to the best part, Brandon felt a rush of excitement at the thought of a new case.
They had had little to do at AID over the past several months but train new recruits and track down the occasional rogue mage committing thefts across the city. Nothing as big as Fouche’s Black Rose cult or Silas’ attempt to suck the city into a giant, magical black hole had come up. It had been nice, but Brandon couldn’t deny things had grown stale. He, Jax, and Thea hadn’t gone on a single mission together since disposing of the mage.
Fouche and her accomplices were still on trial, and the ordeal moved at a snail’s pace. As a result, Brandon had dedicated more of his time to Dungeons and Dragons campaigns than his real job.
Things had been slow enough at the New Orleans AID office that even Claire had asked to come along after overhearing Brandon and Jax discussing a night when they could track down the minotaur Taurus Rex. “Sure, we could use someone as a rogue,” Brandon had replied.
A surge of guilt came with the excitement, though. People had died a few hours ago. That was nothing to be excited over.
Brandon felt Thea and Mia’s stares on himself, Claire, and Jax the paladin, waiting for more info on what had happened. Before any of them could read the full report, Thea’s phone buzzed with a text and Mia’s with a call.
Brandon shared a look with Jax, then Claire, certain Thea and Mia were getting communications about the same thing. Thea from her coven and Mia from the hedge witch community she belonged to. Shit, Brandon thought. This meant things were bad. Definitely worse than not being able to finish killing off Taurus Rex before he tore another victim apart.
“Hello?” Mia answered. Though Brandon didn’t know who was on the other end, he could hear they were upset. “Excuse me,” Mia mouthed to them and stepped away to finish taking the call. Brandon’s sense of guilt heightened. Safe to say he wasn’t excited anymore.
Thea glanced up from her phone, meeting Brandon’s eyes. His suspicions were confirmed by the look she gave him before she whispered, “Folsom.”
Her coven Mother. Shit. Double shit, actually. The coven contacting Thea, presumably about the same matter AID had gotten reports on, meant it was extra bad. It also meant the coven would have their own agenda with this case since Michelle Folsom seldom dealt with matters of criminal and magical importance unless it directly affected her and her coven.
Mia’s voice from the other room, trying to calm down whoever she was on the phone with, led Brandon to another conclusion. There would be pressure from the hedge witch side of things, too.
What the hell had happened?
Regardless, it was time to pack up the game. It was late, as the paladin and druid had mentioned earlier. Almost midnight. Brandon began picking up the game pieces, and Thea helped dispose of the empty beer cans and bottles and tossed empty chip bags away. She stuffed whatever remained into Brandon’s cupboards. Jax also helped, remaining grim and silent. Claire was the only one who didn’t because she received a call.
Almost immediately upon hearing the tone of the person on the other end, Claire’s posture changed. Brandon suspected she was speaking to the deputy chief of AID, which meant this was not only serious but had probably already caught public attention. Triple shit.
It had been almost a year since the ordeal with Silas in New Orleans, and the group at his apartment had lived in relative peace. Thea had gone back to school full time, Mia had increased revenue in her shop, and Brandon and Jax had expanded their team to junior AID agents looking to climb the ranks and have more field experience. Claire had received a promotion.
All that seemed about to crash down with one incident. The city had finally started letting go of the breath it had been holding since Silas’ attempts to wipe it out.
So many people had been involved in that business that it hadn’t taken long for information to reach the public. This had naturally created as much misinformation as facts, and Claire had spent a lot of her time making public statements about things that were not true, namely, denying the city was still in danger. However, the general thrust of a serious threat that could have killed a lot of people had become public knowledge whether they liked it or not. Few people knew anything more concrete than the fact that it had involved magic.
Suspicion toward the magical communities, covens and hedge witches alike, had sparked anew. Both groups became subject to ridicule and sometimes outright aggression. This was the reason Michelle Folsom had messaged Thea and why Mia was on the phone with someone who was very upset. Both were afraid the homicides would mean further hatred toward them from outside.
Brandon and his fellow AID agents had acted as advocates for the magical communities over the past several months. Before then, they’d been the ones policing them. Some, especially in the hedge witch community, feared things were returning to the bad old days. Salem style, but maybe with guns instead of stakes. Well, guns first, then stakes. Regardless, it wouldn’t be pretty.
Though this extreme fear wasn’t quite warranted in Brandon’s eyes, a few scary incidents had occurred. Vandalism, non-lethal assaults, and a handful of bomb threats that never materialized. It would not take long for things to accelerate, though. Top-speed crime. The homicides from tonight were probably exactly that.
And here, Brandon Cole thought the only things getting killed tonight were a few goat men and a minotaur.
He glanced at Thea, whose concerned expression told him she’d considered everything he had. She stood, silent, and headed into the kitchen to put the remaining beer cans in the fridge. Jax and Brandon followed while Claire and Mia finished their phone calls.
“Bad shit comin’,” Jax muttered. “We knew it was bound to anyway.”
“Nothing else we could have done to stop it,” Brandon replied.
Jax nodded.
Thea closed the fridge and stared off distantly.
“Are you all right?” Brandon asked in a low voice.
She gave the barest nod and snapped from her daze as Claire called to them from the living room. “Stop cleaning up. Move your asses!” To Jax, she added, “Please escort Mia home. I don’t want her going alone under these circumstances.”
Jax frowned at the word “escort” but didn’t say a word. He simply moved off to find Mia. Claire gave Brandon and Thea one of her “boss looks” as if to say, “Well, why haven’t you left yet?” Normally, Claire wore a soft expression with her authority. When she was like this, they knew it must be bad.
