Corrupted Magic is the second book in the Grimoire Society of Dark Acts series. Episode 38 is up on my Patreon—it’s pay-what-you-like—and it’ll go up three days later on Kindle Vella. Here’s an excerpt from this latest episode.
Carmichael and Anne run into the Ruin Rats at The Restricted Order, and Carmichael makes a highly dangerous and risky decision.
In my Patreon post, you’ll get exclusive content, including the real handwriting that inspired Grimoire Assassins’s magic book’s handwriting.
What Corrupted Magic is about:
Grimoire Society of Dark Acts’s hard-won defeat of the brutal Harpe brothers should have been a relief… But through a forced double blood-binding, Gertrude disappears right in front of their eyes. The Ruin Rats, a vicious magical street gang, is out for Dark Acts’s blood. Knox calls on the deadly gang from his past for help, but is the physical cost too high to pay? As if that’s not enough, a new corrupt form of magic is throwing the entire magical universe off balance.
Episode 38: The Restricted order
ANNE
Everyone in The Restricted Order rushed about, but it wasn’t because they were busy. Some were running, and all of them had worry or fear written across their faces. Many were racing down the stairs.
Still carrying Humphrey, Carmichael reached out with his free hand and grabbed a random person’s arm, stopping him. “What’s happening here?”
“Some sort of n-new magic,” the man stammered, his voice high with anxiety or fear. “They’ve been through the floors looking for something. I d-don’t know where they are now.”
Carmichael opened his mouth to say something else, but the man wrenched free and ran off toward the stairs. “I’ve never seen such a panic. New magic?” Realization hit Anne and Carmichael at the same time. “Corrupted magic. It’s new to them.”
“They’re only going to feed it if they try to use their own magic against it,” Anne said in a rush.
“We have to stop them,” he said, sliding Humphrey down off his shoulders as smoothly as he could. They’d arrived in a shallow rounded alcove, the likes of which were peppered throughout the building, intended for quiet conversations. Carmichael rested Humphrey on the ground against the wall, sitting up but slumped. “Sean, will you watch Bollington while I’m gone?”
Sean propped Nigel up next to Humphrey. “Yeah, I’ll watch ’em.” He folded his arms across his chest and stood at the front of the alcove, leaning against the wall casually as if there weren’t two unconscious bodies behind him.
Carmichael tapped Anne’s arm for her to come with him. She was, after all, the only one left among them with any useful sort of magic in their group. That was a nerve-racking feeling, if only because that group included the person who should have been the most powerful by far.
His head swiveled as he quickly took a look around where they’d arrived. A myriad of skulls adorned the walls, and next to each wooden door, of which there were many on the big square floor, was a symbol for the specialty of the person inside. A painting of an eagle for a military career, a swallow to represent a child, an owl for general wisdom, a broken column for untimely death, among others.
Carmichael gave Anne a stern glance. She’d transported them to the sixth floor, the top one—the one she knew best. Everyone knew the higher the floor of The Restricted Order, the more severe the penalty and the more disgraceful the type of prohibited magic. The top floor was dedicated to necromancy. Now Carmichael was aware of what she’d been here for. I wish I’d thought of that before, but there was no other way to get here.
Anne shifted her focus away from Carmichael and onto the chaos around them, which was as if a natural disaster had hit. If corrupted magic was really what was causing all this, then in a way, it had. Natural, it wasn’t. A disaster, it was.
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© Christie Stratos 2023