Book of Names (Casters of Syndrial 1) Read online

  Book of Names

  Casters of Syndrial Book 1

  Rain Oxford

  Book of Names © 2017 Rain Oxford

  All Rights Reserved

  Table of 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

  Table of Terms

  About the Author

  Books by Rain Oxford

  Chapter 1

  “Because you refuse to join the Dark Order, you will never see the light of day again. I will return in one hour,” the sorcerer said. Without another word, he left and shut the door behind him. I heard a lock turn.

  “I don’t think he’s bringing cake,” Luca said. Luca was the bane of my existence, my best friend, and my younger brother. His medium brown, almost dirty-blond hair and aquamarine eyes made him look younger than his twenty-three years.

  “We’ll just have to be ready.”

  Centered on the north wall was a heavy wooden door with a rounded top. To the right of the door was a hook with the sorcerer’s black robe hanging. To the left was a wooden desk with five drawers. On the desk was a chest, surrounded by five white circles.

  The walls were made of brick while the floor was made of polished flagstone. Along the east wall was a massive snake sculpture made of gray stone. Runes were engraved on the snake. On the south wall, there was a round, stained-glass window, about three feet in diameter, that spilled light across a stone altar. The altar was four feet tall with a flat top and a red dragon head on the front. Invertum Illuminates was carved beneath the dragon’s head.

  On the west wall was a bookcase, with open shelves on the top and cabinets on the bottom. The shelves were covered in potions, candles, jars, and books. In the southwest corner was a sword with its blade embedded in a boulder. Behind the sword was a shelf built into the wall with a feather, candle, rock, chalice, and bell, each inside a white circle. In the middle of the room was a three-foot-wide, three-foot-long table with a crystal ball on it and four little slits in a half-circle around it.

  “Where do we start?” Luca asked.

  “Let’s see what we have to work with.” I started examining the potion ingredients while Luca searched through drawers. While there were over thirty potions, none of them were sugar and flowers. Castor oil, pond slime, pus, vinegar, cobra venom, blue dart frog toxin, etcetera. More importantly, I found a book of spells and a book of potions on one of the shelves.

  “Hey, got a rabbit’s foot,” Luca said. “We need that for luck.” He checked the chest and, as I’d expected, found it locked.

  I tried to open the cabinet under the potions, but it was also locked. “Look for a key.” I checked under the table and found a scroll taped to the underside, so I pulled that down and unrolled it.

  If you found this message, you are most likely the sorcerer’s most recent victim. I was his apprentice until I found out about the terrible plans he has. I know his weakness and I left clues to the spell that will stop him. You must find it before he hurts anyone else. In case he finds this, all I can tell you is that the sword is the key.

  “Could that be less helpful?” Luca asked, reading it over my shoulder.

  “I’ll check out the sword while you keep looking for a key.”

  “There are a billion places to hide a key.”

  “Then get busy.” I studied the stone and the sword before trying to pull the sword. I tried the Excalibur trick with it, but it wouldn’t budge and I didn’t find any writing on it. “We’re running out of time.”

  Glass shattered and I spun around, expecting to see some horrifying monster attacking.

  Instead, there was Luca, standing over a broken glass of water. “Seriously? You scared the crap out of me.”

  “You think the sorcerer’s going to be pissed I broke his cup?” He bent down to see it better, his eyes widening. “Um… this is different.” He carefully reached for what I thought was a piece of glass until he held it up for me to see.

  It was a clear key.

  “Is that acrylic?” I asked as he went to the chest.

  “Yep. There’s no keyhole on this. Who the hell puts a clear key in a glass of water?”

  “Well, you can’t get more hidden in plain sight than that.” I took it from him and used it to open the cabinet. Unfortunately, it was empty except for a tarot card deck and a small box. The box was five inches long, three inches wide, and three inches tall. I shook it, but there wasn’t a sound. “This might be an empty box.” It had a key hole on the front of it. “Look for another key.” I said.

  “Why am I the key master today?” he asked, taking the box from me.

  The first answer that came to mind was not helpful, and I didn’t want to put my brother in a mood, so I kept it to myself and checked the candle sticks. “Also, check the books in case one is a trigger to unlock a secret room.” None of the candle holders moved.

  “That never happens outside of movies.”

  “It happened to us five times.”

  “That’s because our lives are movies.”

  I searched the top of the bookshelf. Since I had six inches on my six-seven brother, that was my job.

  “Do you have a flashlight? There’s a hole in the bottom of this, but I can’t see into it. Wait, that’s not a hole. That’s an equilateral polygon. It’s there for a reason.”

  “Stick your finger in it.”

  “I’m not doing that again.”

  Luca was always getting us into sticky situations, but he learned from his mistakes. While most people who heard us banter thought we were enemies, we always had each other’s back.

  I found a small pile of scrolls on top of one of the shelves and pulled them down. Luca noticed, but kept searching the books. I unrolled the scrolls and tossed them to the table with the crystal ball after reading them. They were spells; everything from an exploding spell to invisibility, but nothing that could help us get the sword or defeat the sorcerer.

  “Got some jewels,” Luca said, holding open a hollowed-out book. Inside were three jewels the size of my thumb— a ruby, an emerald, and a sapphire. “If these were real, we’d be rich.”

  “If those were real, they’d be cursed. Besides, I don’t have a problem with stopping the sorcerer, but stealing from him is just rude. He rolled his eyes and I got back to work.

  A moment later, he said a soft “Gotcha” of triumph. I saw that he had stuck the ruby in the hole on the bottom of the chest and it worked as a key. “Sweet.” He pulled out a scroll and unrolled it. “Damn ciphers.”

  It was a key to the runes on the wall. “I get the feeling this is going to be the easiest part of defeating the sorcerer,” I said, grabbing a quill and sheet of yellowed paper off the shelf. He read out the letters and I wrote them down. It would have been easy if it weren’t for the fact that some of the runes had been worn down and some were even missing chunks. There was just enough information to put them together. The emperor sought strength in the moon but instead found death.

  “What does an emperor have to do with the sorcerer?” Luca asked.

  “I don’t know, but I don’t think this was a waste of time.”

  “Wait, didn’t you find tarot cards?”

  “Y
eah, in that cabinet. Why?”

  He pointed to the table with the crystal ball. “Those are card stands. We’ve seen people use tarot cards a thousand times. How many of those times were cards stood upright?”

  “Never.” Luca plucked out a specific card and handed it to me. The face was cartoonish with an orange dog, a yellow fox, and a red lobster looking up at a yellow moon that had a face and light rays like the sun. The Moon was written across the bottom. Next, he handed me a card with a man in a red robe with a crown. The Emperor was written across the bottom. The next card was strength, which depicted a woman petting a lion. Last was death; a skeleton in a black suit of armor riding a white horse. We placed them in the card holders in the same order as the sentence we had translated.

  As soon as we did, the crystal ball lit up with an eerie blue light. White letters appeared.

  ɘɔnɒƨƨiuq ʇo noiƚoq ɘʜT

  “That’s not an anagram,” Luca said.

  “No, the letters are backwards, except for the “n” and “u”. It’s mirrored. There should be a mirror in here.”

  “There’s one in that drawer,” Luca said, popping open the desk drawer and pulling out a small hand mirror.

  “Perfect.” He held it up so that we could see the words reflected in the mirror.

  The potion of puissance

  “What is puissance?” Luca asked.

  “Strength.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “While you were reading your architecture magazines, I was reading a dictionary.”

  “Archeology, not architecture!”

  “It’s the same thing. You plan, design, and construct dinosaur bodies---”

  “That’s paleontology!” he interrupted.

  “… and ancient buildings,” I continued. “You study ancient architecture.”

  “Archeologists will never be able to put your bones back together if you don’t shut up and get us out of here.”

  “There’s a book of potions.” I grabbed it and flipped through it. Whoever had written it did so by hand and neglected to add a table of contents. The penmanship could have been better, too. “Here it is.”

  Potion of Puissance

  Gain might to wrench from stone

  by mixing dust of funny bone.

  The blood of a fiery beast,

  and essence of a spider’s feast.

  Drops of water, undead’s bane,

  deep blackened sea night’s stain.

  Mind of a beast lacking haste,

  and a touch of something sweet for taste.

  I grabbed an empty bottle off the shelf. “There are no measurements, so we’ll have to go by best guess.”

  “These aren’t potion ingredients, though. Where’s the sandalwood and bat’s blood?” Luca asked.

  “You watch too many movies. The funny bone dust doesn’t make sense; the funny bone is the ulnar nerve, not a bone.”

  “Maybe it means the elbow.”

  We both spent a few minutes looking through the ingredients.

  “Ground humerus!” Luca shouted, thrusting the jar in my face like he had conjured it himself.

  “Perfect. Now, fiery beast,” I said. “That’s got to be a dragon.” I found a vial of dragon’s blood. “Essence of a spider’s feast. Spiders eat bugs and other spiders.”

  “Here is beetle juice,” Luca said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Beetle juice,” he repeated.

  “One more time.”

  “Beetle… shut up. We need water.” He found it and pulled it down. “Undead’s bane… zombies or vampires?”

  “Vampires. Here’s garlic,” I said, adding it to our growing collection.

  “Sea night’s stain?”

  “I think we’ll know it when we see it.” Snake fangs, spider venom, leaches, baby tears…

  “Octopus ink.”

  “Yes.”

  “Mind of beast lacking haste. Brains of a slug or snail.”

  “Or an American. Oh, sloth brain.” He said, picking up a fat jar.

  “Gross.”

  “And something sweet. Here’s chocolate.”

  “Gross,” I repeated. I didn’t actually have a problem with chocolate, I just didn’t like it as much as he did. He would happily eat baker’s chocolate.

  “It’s not like we’re drinking it,” he said, pouring some ground humerus into the bottle.

  “Why else would we have to make it?” I asked, adding dragon’s blood and beetle juice.

  “I don’t think sloth brains are edible.”

  “Neither are cow brains, but people eat them.” We added in the water, garlic, ink, brains, and chocolate, then mixed everything up with a glass stirring stick. It reeked. “I think that’s it.”

  I picked it up and pinched my nose, but he took it from me. “If either of us is getting strength, it’s me.” He chugged it down.

  Luca could literally eat anything that was even remotely edible. He could down a Carolina Reaper pepper like it was a green pepper. He’d eat foreign foods that most Americans wouldn’t touch, including bugs, escamoles from Mexico, shirako and nato from Japan, a balut egg from the Philippines, and a century egg from China. Any complaining he did was just to put me off something.

  He gagged. “That ink really sticks to the throat. Are my teeth black?” he asked, pulling his lips back.”

  His gums were, but telling him that would only distract him. “No, your teeth are fine.”

  He went to the sword and pulled with all his might. Nothing happened.

  “No!” Luca cried dramatically, his knees buckling.

  “We must have done something wrong.” I studied the ingredients again. Some of them could be swapped out for other ingredients. “Maybe it’s the beetle juice.”

  Luca grabbed the book from me while I searched for another buggy ingredient. “Wait,” he said. “Drops of water, undead’s bane. I think that’s one ingredient, not two.”

  “Holy water.”

  “Yep.”

  “There’s none here.”

  He searched a few unlabeled jars and found another scroll.

  No wizard is complete without their wand, magic amulet, and book of spells.

  “We need a wand and amulet? I thought we needed the sword,” Luca said.

  I went to the sorcerer’s robe that was hanging by the door. “We should have checked this first.” I found the amulet in the left pocket and put it on.

  “Finally!” Luca said. “We’re running out of time.”

  We searched everywhere for the holy water. “Maybe we have to make the water holy,” Luca suggested.

  “Do I look like a priest to you?”

  He flipped through the spell scrolls and the spell book anyway. Meanwhile, I noticed the inscription on the altar again. Invent light? I figured it had to be important, so I said, “Invertum Illuminates,” out loud.

  The amulet suddenly glowed blue, and that wasn’t all. A blue square appeared on the wall beside the altar, so I pushed it. The stone gave. When I heard a soft click, I let it go. The stone false-wall slid down, revealing a foot-by-foot shelf space and a potion bottle labeling it as holy water.

  “Damn it! I wanted to magicify water,” Luca complained.

  “Shut up and help me remake the potion.”

  We made it again, substituting regular water and garlic for holy water. As soon as we mixed it up, it started to bubble and produce smoke. “That looks dangerous.”

  “I think that’s the point,” Luca said. Then he drank it with a grimace and went to the sword. This time, he pulled the sword free easily and shouted with glee. “We won!”

  “We have a sword. We still need the actual spell to defeat the sorcerer.”

  “Don’t dump on my glory. They’ll write songs about me pulling this sword, just you wait. What now?”

  “We need to get this chest open.”

  “There’s no keyhole.” He tried to lift it, but it wouldn’t budge.

  I held up the amulet and
used it to search the walls. When that didn’t do anything, I aimed it at the chest. The circles around it each lit up with blue, glowing roman numerals. “We need five of something.”

  “There’re five of these!” Luca said, running over to the artifacts behind the sword. I aimed the amulet at them as Luca picked up the chalice. Sure enough, the circle it had been on lit up with a roman numeral. We took the artifacts back to the chest and matched them up. As soon as we did, there was a soft click in the chest. Luca opened it. In a bed of red velvet was a long, simple, rosewood wand.

  I grabbed it. “Now we need the spell to defeat the sorcerer. I bet it’s in the altar.”

  Luca took the wand from me and pointed it at the altar. “Open sesame!”

  “That’s not a real spell!” I said, taking the wand back and setting it on the table.

  “Oh, right.”

  I went to the altar and studied the dragon’s mouth, which was barely open. I stuck my finger inside and felt a smooth slit. The sword is the key. “Stick the sword in there.”

  “I just got it.”

  “Do it.”

  He huffed. “Fine, but I’m not drinking another potion to get it out.” The blade slid in easily all the way to its hilt. I tried the lid, but it wouldn’t budge. Then he turned the hilt and the dragon’s head rotated.

  Heavy metal inside moved. I tried the lid again, and it opened. On another bed of red velvet was a scroll, sealed with a sapphire-blue ribbon. Luca untied and unrolled it.

  Darsar solpheth bien brita of zacam gmicalzo.

  “We don’t have to decipher that, do we?”

  “No, I think we have to say it.” I picked up the wand and said the line.

  Nothing happened.

  “We’re really out of time now. We did this together; maybe we have to say it together,” Luca suggested. He took the wand and the scroll. I grabbed the spell book and held up the amulet. Just to be sure we weren’t missing anything else, I aimed the amulet on the scroll, but there wasn’t anything hidden on it. Together, we recited the spell. A moment passed as we held our breaths.