Simo days looking through the Tome of Bahgmorrda, making notes and scribbling over them or crumpling them up and throwing them away, but that was all for show. He’d already solved the code, and the only difficulty was going slow enough to take it all in without giving himself away.

  On its surface, the thing looked like the grimoire he’d stolen from Festuvian so long ago. That was to say, it was half full of garbage and meaningless rituals. Amidst those rituals, though, were words of power. He didn’t discover any new ones, but in many cases, the ohat were mentioned were used in ways he’d never seehat was enough to rapidly expand his knowledge.

  The first word he dug into was Vrazig. Simon had used that one plenty to strike people down with lightning. It was his favorite assassination spell. He’d also learned from the strange orcish graffiti that it had otations of entropy when it ronounced as ruin. It was more than that, though.

  Truthfully, all the words were, as he was quickly finding out. He’d ohought that each word only had a single power and a single meaning. Actually, I ohought that lesser was only associated with healing and greater with fire, he thought with a smirk as he remembered how foolish he’d been. There was far more to it, though.

  In the case , there was lightning and ruin, but that was because they were both reted to air. Well, wind, really, he corrected himself. It had elemental qualities, which made sense, but it also seemed to be reted to bsp;

  That made Vosden its opposite si was earth, but that was also true of Delzam, which turned out not to be just reted t but a re of things.

  Simon happily went through the book, a few pages at a time, colleg more associations and linkages. He preteo scribble notes while he acted like his frustration tio deepen. At dihat night, he told the Head Librarian through a series of hat he was trying a substitution cipher using on words, and he hoped for some results soon.

  The man olite enough, but the manner of his responses and his expression when he read Simon’s updates told him all he o know. As far as his superior was ed, this was busy work, and he didn’t expect results.

  That was good news as far as Simon was ed, and he spent the week drinking deep of this new font of knowledge. They think that taking my tongue is a setback, but in my life, they will live tret this, he told himself as his knowledge broadened.

  That said, it was only when he figured out the nature of the illustratiohe end of the book that he really had a breakthrough.

  The thing was a series of disected shapes. Most of them had coded symbols on them, but a few were left bnk, with only a question mark. He eventually decoded the elemental symbols, and a few minutes after that, most everything else, thanks to the process of elimination.

  Vrazig was air, so it opposed earth, but it was also chaos, so it opposed order.

  Vosden was earth, so it opposed air, but it was alsth, so it opposed weakness.

  Meiren was fire, so it opposed water, but it was also heat, so it opposed cold.

  Zyvon was water, so it opposed fire, but it was also transfer, so it opposed boundary.

  Slowly but surely, a number of clusions were built up from these basic oppositions. For most of the time that Simon had known a single word of power, he’d thought of them as discrete things, but really, they were almost a nguage onto themselves. Though it wasn’t quite a nguage that he was used to, with adverbs and punctuation, he could see how it now had nouns and verbs.

  Eaodified the , and though he wasn’t sure how much that increased the cost of the spell, he could see how that could increase the specificity of the effects. That kind of precision and flexibility would allow him to do any number of plex things with only a few more sylbles spoken.

  After only a week of studying this profaome, Simo like his brain was melting from the implications. He felt like he’d been using the powers he’d found all wrong. Up until now, it was like he’d been spamming a fast ki a fighting game without ever b to learn the bos.

  That was what he wao dht now, more than anything. He wao try out at least a few of the ideas that this book was giving him, but he couldn’t, not unless he was willing to go out and it suicide, and after making such huge gains only a couple years into this life, and only a few weeks into his time among the Unspoken, that would be the dumbest thing he could do.

  So, he bided his time and devoured the grimoire, which mostly involved reading about how Bahgmorrda did terrible things in exge for power. Some of these, like blood sacrifice, were pretty straightforward. He used animals and even strao power some spells so that he didn’t have to trade his own valuable life for his magibsp;

  Other stories were stranger, and if Simon hadn’t done all he’d done, he would have had trouble believing them. He traded openly with devils of the pit on several occasions for terrible secrets. Often, this included throwing his own family members into hell, which was all the more terrifying because of the way it was discussed so nontly.

  Simon couldn’t be one hundred pert sure without cheg his notes in the mirror, but he was fairly certain that none of the devils that the warlock listed by name were the ones he’d spoken to on level thirteen. Grevelzarthrik, Bromathazin, and Varmathereon were all strange names, and Simon was fairly sure he would remember them if he’d ever heard them before.

  More than that, though, they reminded him of the words of power in their pronunciation, and they made him think there might be some deeper e there. Could the Unspoken be right? He wohey think that all magic is infernal, and infernal creatures seem to know a lot about it.

  Simon wasn’t vinced yet, but it seemed like a fihesis for now. Still, some of the stories were so lurid that Simon had trouble believing them. Apparently, Bahgmorrda used words of power to teleport to distant nds on more than one occasion, resurrect loved ones, and even level stoructures with his magic. Despite some of the hocus pocus and pageantry involved in some of the stories, based on the words he’d used and the methods he described, Simon was ined to take the stories at least somewhat seriously.

  Ohing was clear. A lot of preparation was required for such effects, and even with all that preparation, terrible things could still happen.

  At one point, Bahgmorrda attempted to reinate his favorite wife into a perfect abaster body that had been carved in her image. It erfe every st detail, but when he cast the spell, and the stouro flesh, the clothing had turo flesh too, resulting in a woman-shaped abomination with wide skirts made of skin ahat were only a few inches long before they ended in ti shaped like high heels. The woman, if that was indeed what she was behind the veil that the stone masons had carved across her features, could barely move until he finally put her out of her misery.

  For all the man’s aplishments, though, he didn’t seem to know as much about creating magical items as Simon already did. It was a blindspot for him and a real indication that the Unspoken were winning. By suppressing knowledge the way they were, each aspiring wizard had to learn each secret anew, with only a few scraps of knowledge from their predecessors.

  He imagihat most of them died in that process. He certainly would have.

  Now maybe, I wouldn’t have to, he mused as he sidered the various spells he could try. Aufvarum Hyakk ell he’d used a great many times, but up until now, he’d only used it to heal himself. It ossible, he realized now, though, that he could use the same words to shape his oearance. Oftentimes, an illusion would be easier and more effective, but if he really had to impersonate someone else for the long term, it could definitely do the job.

  Likewise, though he was irely sure how Bahgmorrda had used teleportation magic because the references he made were too coded and obscure, Simon retty sure he could use Dnarth Oo to simir effect. He might use Dnarth Zyvon instead, though, because he wasn’t sure if distant motion or distant transfer would give him the effect he wanted. One or both of them might simply grant him a particurly ugly death. More study would be required.

  Simon made a point to read Bahgmorrda’s failed experiments for these reasons. Every lesson he didn’t have to learn the hard way himself was a good one, as far as he was ed.

  Toward the end of the volume, and probably toward the end of his long life, the mage became obsessed with the idea of transferring his soul into a younger body. He arently uo realize this goal before the end, though, and the pages abruptly went bnk after a proposed experiment involving the words of greater uanding transfer, indig that something had goerribly wrong.

  Or maybe he just ran out of power, Simon thought to himself with a shrug. He sidered the whole thing very informative in a cautionary tale sort of way and made a note o bee an obsessive megalomaniabsp;

  Three weeks after he started reading the tome, once he had finished squeezing it of everything of obvious value, he annouo his boss that he had made the first tentative strides in uanding it, providing him with a partially transted copy of the first page, plete with errors to make it look like it was still a work in progress.

  It was good that he’d waited for so long to reveal even that much because their response was to take the thing away from him immediately and pass it off to the reader of the Grimoire se of the library. That frustrated Simon, but truthfully, he’d expected it, which was why he’d doly as he did. Let them struggle to learn even a tenth of what I did, he thought as he reflected ohing he knew now.

  Aufvarum (disperse, minor)

  Barom (illusion, light)

  Celdura (pn, shape)

  Delzam (cure, order)

  Dnarth (e, distant, hidden)

  Gelthic (ice, weakness)

  Gervuul (greater, power)

  Hyakk (flesh, healing)

  Karesh (location, prote, uanding)

  Meiren (creation, fire, life)

  Oo (focused, force, motion)

  Uuvellum (null, boundary)

  Vosdeh, metal, strength)

  Vrazig (lightning, ruin, wind)

  Zyvon (transfer, water)

  Every word of power that Simon knew now had more than one association, and he suspected that there was still more to learn. Hopefully, he’d find all of that and more as he delved even deeper into the library.