Yeah, I’m not going in the basement.

“But basement is place of learning,”

Basement is also place of torture.

“If you do not trust me, I give you my Oath,”

Oath? I’m under the impression that only knights can make Oaths. So this comes as a mild surprise. I didn't think you could just make an Oath at the get go.

But despite however I may think, Lacer conducts an Oath,

“I swear upon this Oath that binds my soul, that no harm will come to you in the basement,”

He says, with an outstretched hand, awaiting my input.

I mean, this looks pretty legit.

Clasping his hand, I complete the Oath, and a small chain binds us. It’s nothing too solid, so I can assume that Oaths have degrees of binding power and from what I can gather this is a small Oath, not like the permanent ones I’ve seen knights take. At least I think it's a small Oath. I don't know the levels of Oaths alright?

Leave me alone.

Anyway, I’m still skeptical about the basement, but granted, it did kind of make sense in a roundabout way that dark arts would be learnt in basements. Like a tradition.

Though despite my suspicions, I follow Lacer’s lead and follow him into the basement. Of course, I have my crossbow on hand and a full quiver of bolts in case things get dicey.

The hard stone stairs beneath my feet give an unscrupulous vibe to the place as we descend into the darkness of the basement. The air is musky, but not in any right damp, meaning the place is well aired and maintained.

At the bottom, there’s a door, and pushing the door open we enter a dark room.

In the pitch black, Lacer goes around and lights some candles placed around the room. The flames burning an eerie white wax.

And with the room properly lit… My expectations were let down.

I hate to say it, but I was mildly expecting it to be some kind of torture chamber, but looking at the books and effects organised in here. I had to say, it looks exactly like a study room.

*Clap!*

“Alright! Be prepared comrade, as dark arts is hard and you might die if you’re not careful,”

I guess that was nothing new. Nothing came without a bit of risk, and lo and behold, the mega dangerous heretics used mega dangerous arts.

“We, in the city of Joost, focus on the charnel arts, the strongest branch of the dark arts,” He writes out on a blackboard, as I seat myself.

Damn, it feels like recruit training all over again.

He continues, “There are four branches, one being charnel, the others are ruination, desiccation and plague but they are irrelevant for now,”

Making a brief introduction of dark arts, he goes on to introduce the basic outline of what the charnel branch does. And in brief, it is the stereotypical dark arts that everyone hears about. Life draining, vitality crippling, cursing and a bunch of others down that same line.

“Any question?”

Yup.

“Why are you teaching me this?”

“Good question,” He scratches his chin, “It is because you are now our comrade,”

Hm, that was pretty plain, of course, you’d teach your comrades this, but I don’t think I’d qualify.

“We are not rigid in our criteria, anyone who does not work with the lackey’s of the gods is a comrade,”

So it really has little to do with actually believing the doctrine does it?

“False, our doctrines state that those who do not believe in the gods are our allies, everyone else, an enemy,

“Just like in Fatherland, ‘If they are not our friend, then they are our foe. There is no middle ground,’,”

Damn, that’s pretty extreme, but also very level with the values of the empire.

“Though, does that also mean you’d also accept any criminal all willy nilly?”

“No, it is the feeling we get, about who to trust and who to doubt, and we do not follow the make believe rules of these false sovereigns.”

“So you leave it to your gut?”

“No, we judge people according to our own commandments,”

Isn’t that just a fancy way of saying, a gut feeling?

“No, I mean proper commandments, as in we refer to our written records,”

Eh, I’m a bit sceptical about that, but I have a feeling that they probably just choose based on their gut. I mean, where are these commandments? What are they?

“It is in this book right here,” He pats a thick leather backed book, “And it can be surmised as do not kill your comrades, do not kill the innocent, and do not kill children… at least not without proper reason,”

‘At least not without reason’? Doesn’t that mean you can disregard those rules at any time if you have a sound reason?

Sigh, there are so many godsdamned holes in this philosophy. No wonder the heretics are so star struck deranged.

“And you, comrade, have been found to be a reasonable ally,”

From those vague rules, I can assume that these guys basically accept people who have a favourable impression on them. Rather fickle to be honest and isn’t really a solid threshold to measure by, by any account.

“Anyway, moving on,”

Lacer moves to the next topic of my basic education, which is the principles of the charnel dark arts, which is all ground with solid theory and formulae that he presents.

From, how to properly collect charnel essence and how to regulate your essence in conjunction with it, they have everything sorted out.

Though, something key I’ve noticed is that everything seems to be mostly single target. Rather odd, but granted this was merely one of four branches so it also made a lot of sense for one of them to be single target and the others to perhaps focus on other specialisations. Although the forest ranger arts weren't like this, I knew that the imperial arts did in fact have branches which focussed on leadership or single combat.

For the dark arts, the ruination branch focused on widespread destruction, while desiccation put emphasis on curses and hexes of varying scales and plague focused on alchemy and bizarre conjuration. Quite the solid diversity I had to say.

And so far, from the basics that I’ve been taught, I can see why heretic cultists are allegedly capable of taking on a platoon of soldiers unharmed. Well, not unharmed per se, but it would be a simple feat for them.

For example, the technique life siphon. It does what it says, it siphons the life essence out of the target to either supplement one’s own life or use it for other miscellaneous purposes. And a basic technique that all the branches use.

Just this skill alone allows one to match up against many times their number. And is what makes even the lower tier heretic cultists fearsome as it increases their tenacity by many folds.

And this also brings into perspective magic. Despite my first thoughts, they barely have any magic here, it’s all mainly arts.

Magic is any phenomenon which is evoked through the usage of essence. This includes the basic attack spells, like fireballs, or lightning bolts. As they all burn up essence in order to manifest something. However, the aptly named dark arts don't really follow this pattern, although they also use essence to manifest certain effects such as withering corpses, however, as it mainly relies on using said essence itself to perform the action and is not a manifestation of phenomena. It thereby classifies it as an ‘art’. Which I guess makes sense.

Though, it’s more of a technicality than anything.

It’s a small difference and apparently, due to that small difference, they’re called arts and not magicks.

It doesn’t mean much in the grand scheme of things, but just thought I’d point that out.

I guess I’ve been letting the stereotypes really narrow my vision.

Well, at most, it just means that the way the arts are executed is slightly different to how magic is performed, making it more suitable for non mages, as mages tend to have a rigid mindset on how different spells are formulated. Meaning it’d be tougher on them to try to grasp any arts.

“Okay, I taught you theory, now you can do whatever, if you have trouble, ask Laffer,”

Finishing the lesson, he promptly wipes the blackboards and extinguishes the candles, as he makes his way out of the basement, leaving me to stew in the dark.

Hmm, surprising. I actually learnt a lot here.

Unlike training…