The Verchoix and the Familiar

Cerberus's own families blocked its progress. A brilliant young wizard would be recruited, study for several years, then strike a wall: the houses owned and guarded every high-level spell. Cerberus trained mages who were useless on a battlefield. Gérard Alois saw the waste and knew his family shared the blame.

Marcin Sobiesansky, Cerberus's finest alchemist, broke the deadlock.

He did not begin with young wizards of respectable origin. He began in a fort outside the capital, over a stone laboratory whose upper floor bled a chemical fog down into the cells below, where acid dripped from the ceiling onto the straw and the chains, and the air itself was the punishment. He walked the prisons of Cerberus picking out boys, and took others off Brazzant, and called the first version the power worm: everyone carries a great power, it sleeps their whole life, and a worm can wake it.

The first worms were full-grown when they went in. He fed them down the subjects' throats and lost all but two of the group, opened from the inside overnight. His alchemists were neither surprised nor troubled—the worms had been expensive to raise, and it would have been a waste not to test them. The next generation went in small and grew inside the host instead. That is the version the council was later shown.

The verchoix is a worm enchanted with a potion of Psychic energy and an alchemical preparation. Once implanted, it teaches its host nothing. It reveals a latent supernatural power that grows naturally throughout the mage's life. The council ordered a study on young wizards of respectable origin. Most resisted the symbiote and developed extraordinary powers; a minority required emergency surgery before the worm killed them. The council approved verchoix for every first-year mage.

The verchoix has a secret. Its creator can command it with magical words known only to him. On command, the worm devours its host's organs from within.

A grown worm cannot simply be cut out. It eats the organs it displaces and takes over their work, so by the time it is large enough to find, removing it kills the host; only a full regeneration would serve, and that is not for sale in Cerberus. It also defends itself. Divination aimed at a host's stomach is answered with a discharge strong enough to drop a mage of the great houses, and Dispel Magic slides off it—either because the caster who set it is stronger, or because gold was used to fix the spell the way it is fixed in an enchanted object.

The worm is implanted in the stomach during the first year. Students are shown the available worms, choose one, and swallow it. The result is unpredictable: fire, shadow, ice, Divination, or Teleportation. Some hosts cannot endure it and require emergency surgery.

After this success, the council asked Sobiesansky for a second miracle. He delivered the Familiar, a formula that transforms an animal into a magical beast. A Familiar feeds on its mage's mana and returns it as power: luck, intelligence, strength, or impossible scent. After several years it develops speech and great intelligence. Its powers continue growing in directions no one yet understands.