year 564 of the Varakarian Cycle
The great black drake moved steadily across the mountainous lands, wings beating slow and strong, each stroke sending a dull thrum through the thin mountain air. He glided lower, shadows of his vast wings racing over jagged stone and hollow valleys. Mist gathered in the hollows, but through the haze he saw what no mortal eye could, thin radiant threads laced through rock and soil. They coiled upward like spider silk in a cosmic wind, tendrils of untouched power, light as breath yet unmistakable to him, a mark of the world’s rare and ripening strength.
Eredhel was the name he wore now, the outcast elf. He had taken it centuries ago, the day he left his homeland in Aunor behind, severing his claim to blood and kin. Exile suited him. Power had always demanded sacrifice, and sentiment was for lesser minds. He had always trusted in intellect, in foresight, in the clarity of high reason. It was not long after that choice that he had first crossed paths with Morgion, a man who even then had seemed simple and unremarkable. And yet, improbably, inexorably, the man had drawn him in.
The drake’s shadow slid across a jagged canyon. He recalled the dark alleys of Thalanor, the nights when Morgion had dared to pit himself against the high echelons of the Assassins’ Guild. It should have been suicide. Eredhel still did not know how the man had won. Only two of the guild’s most feared killers, now Morgion’s retainers, knew the truth of that night. They had followed him ever since, kept alive and unaged by Morgion’s arts for centuries. Eredhel had seen brilliance collapse under the weight of its own complexity, had watched fools undone by a single oversight. Yet Morgion’s reckless designs, devoid of caution, always seemed to succeed. It was infuriating. And it was undeniable.
The mountains rose steeper ahead. A pass split the ridgeline like a wound, carrying the wind through with a low, unbroken moan. As Eredhel glided past, his thoughts shifted further, to the day Morgion had found the Dice of Chaos. It was a demon lord’s trap, perilous even to hold, yet Morgion insisted they cast the dice together. The man had thrown Fortune’s Favor and been flooded with chaos-born strength, while Eredhel had cast the Serpent’s Eyes, snake-eyes as some gamblers called it. The odds had been absurd, but chaos was never kind to him. His soul had been wrenched from his body, dragged toward Baal’s infernal maw. Even now he remembered the taste of that oblivion, the howling hunger of a demon lord ready to devour him. And he remembered Morgion pulling him back, against every law of gods and hells, dragging his soul free. Yes, there were many reasons to follow this man’s lead. Foremost was his inability to accept defeat, no matter the odds.
The man had somehow stumbled on the greatest treasure of all, the Rite of Ascension. By drinking deeply of the Earthblood, together with a few drops of draconic blood, they had been transformed. Their forms became fluid, able to shift at will between the guise of mortals and the majesty of dragons. The change had not ended with the first transformation. It worked more insidiously, shaping them in ways that only revealed themselves with the passage of years. Their thoughts sharpened, their senses deepened, their very essence seemed to move closer to the primal forces that bound the worlds. Subtle, yes, but undeniable. Eredhel could find no other explanation for what they had become.
A darker ridge slid by beneath him, stark against the gray horizon. It called to mind Aunor, the world they had fled when some fool unleashed a demon that rose to untold power before it could be stopped. The land had burned, cities crumbled, and survival had meant escape. That had been the start of their plane-traveling, slipping from one world to the next, each time clawing out strength, each time emerging stronger. He had not returned. Morgion might have. To him, stepping between worlds was as trivial as crossing a threshold, but Eredhel saw no reason to waste the effort. The ridge’s shadow reminded him too of the world of Kelthara, where a high-elven emperor had declared Morgion anathema. Eredhel had kept his distance then, of course, holding cold reason. There was nothing to be gained from indulging fury. Morgion had indulged anyway, and somehow, once again, fury had served him better than reason. He could still see the green-crystal blade Morgion forged, black thorns curling up the hilt. Orn-dagor, “war on trees” in their old tongue. With that weapon Morgion had broken the high-elves, cursing their forests into pallid, lifeless husks. His body had been torn asunder in that last battle. The man had survived, of course. He had too many contingencies woven into his arts to let something like the destruction of a body kill him.
And afterward… afterward, something had burned out of him. The rage and the endless hate had vanished. Or perhaps they had simply changed into something else. The man who once answered every slight with fury began instead to speak of balance. A strange word, balance, from one who had been so careless with his power. Yet it grew, a seed that took root where wrath had once lived. Even Eredhel, disdainful as he was, had to acknowledge it. He had noticed minute traces of that same shift within himself, emotion eroded and replaced by reason sharpened further still. Perhaps it was the rite’s doing, the slow work of the Earthblood reshaping them. Or perhaps Morgion’s last conflagration against the high-elves had burned the poison out of them both.
Proof of the change lay in his blade. He reforged Orn-dagor, the unwieldy green-crystal weapon born of wrath, into Dagor. It had been stripped of its thorns and tempered into something leaner, sharper, and somehow even more potent than before. Their journey led from fury to balance, from ruin to order. In that transformation, the first stirrings of the Reth’ta Laan began to take shape. Morgion and he had forged the Circle of Eternity together, binding it not just with sworn oaths but through the Rite of Ascension that had elevated the others.
The air thickened as Eredhel drew closer to his destination. A hidden vale lay somewhere beyond these peaks, veiled from mortal eyes. Somehow the man had found Arkanthys, a fresh new world ripening in its power. There would be a conflux of power when the ripening was done, where they could drink deep from the pristine powers of this world and grow stronger. At the same time, the world was in peril. There were infernal forces to thwart, and possibly also a threat of a demonic incursion. There was much to be gained from serving a greater cause. The Lords of Karma looked favorably on those who maintained balance, and this path would gain him both benefits. Unfortunately, the seat of the Astrologer was now empty. Naomi alone had been able to read the skeins of time with precision, to chart the heavens and name the hour and place where power would converge. Without her, they could still search, still trace signs, but never with her accuracy. But Naomi had tried to usurp the Circle of Eternity for her own goals and was now as dust, left behind in the river of time.
That loss gnawed at him, even as he banked his wings and felt the winds pull him down toward the vale. Morgion had called this conclave. Of course he had. It was always Morgion who set the course, Morgion who reached further than reason allowed, and somehow returned with victory in his grasp. Eredhel might scoff, might weigh the man’s folly each time anew, but he had not left. Because Morgion never yielded. Because against odds that should have crushed him, he endured. The vale opened below him, cloaked in shadow and mist, its heart hidden from the world. Eredhel folded his wings and descended, his thoughts settling like embers in a hearth. Whatever else awaited, he would see it through. Outcast or no, he had chosen his name. And he had chosen to ally himself with Morgion.
It was unfortunate that this world could not bear the weight of his element. The higher principle he embodied was not woven into its design, for the pattern here was too weak. He had to restrain his power more than the others, whose elements found echoes in this place. Grathul too was shackled. The man’s chaos-magic lay even further from the building blocks of this realm than his own concept. Morgion’s element was an amalgamation of everything, but here he could use it as separate parts of the three tangible and four intangible elements. Laanan and Elarwen both drew on concepts well established in this world and suffered no additional limitations. Even so, they all had to tread carefully. They were not natives of this world, and as ascendants they risked being repelled by the plane itself, like lodestones pressed together should they draw too deeply on their strength.
The mist parted as he descended, and his draconic sight pierced what lay hidden beneath. A ripple of power shimmered across the vale, the faintest distortion to mortal eyes, but to him it was a veil falling away. Dyarman revealed itself, Morgion’s ancient stronghold, impossibly set in the heart of a forest of titanic, age-old oaks. Where moments before there had been only trees and shadowed hollows, a fortress now stood, as if it had grown from the bedrock itself.
Dark stone walls rose forty feet high, their pentagonal shape precise, a geometry chosen not for aesthetics but for the ease with which it bound and amplified arcane formations. They loomed forbidding and impenetrable. Outside, a sweep of pasture and spring-fed grass softened the severity, though only lightly. And in the center of the courtyard, the tower rose, Morgion’s tower, a black spike lancing hundreds of feet into the sky, defying proportion and scale as though it sought to pierce the firmament itself.
Eredhel’s lip curled a fraction. Dyarman had not stood here a year ago. An attempt to transplant a fortress across dimensions should have shattered against the world’s resistance, like a blade breaking on an anvil. Yet Morgion had managed it, no doubt by weaving the transition slowly, strand by careful strand, until the world itself was deceived into accepting its weight. Typical. Reckless to attempt, absurd to succeed, and yet somehow, inevitably, accomplished.
He dropped lower, wings folding as the ground rose to meet him. Even in that vast bulk, he alighted with the silence of falling ash. His form contracted, scales receding, wings fading into nothingness, until a man stood where the drake had landed. Well over seven feet tall, heavy with muscle that spoke more of warrior’s blood than scholar’s ink, he carried across his back a great bastard-sword of black Gaen-metal, its edge catching even the meager light with an ominous sheen. Yet his face, too fine and too delicate in its elven cast, betrayed a different truth, one he had never bothered to reconcile. The transformation had been incomplete, a clash of artistry and nature. The elven features were there, but they did not belong on a frame so massive, so far removed from the grace they implied. He really did need to find a flesh-sculptor, someone capable of shaping his body and visage into harmony, to reconcile the discord between his elven grace and the brutal strength of his form. But true artistry was rare, and rarer still for one of his… stature.
The parapets bristled with soldiers. More than a score stood at watch, six-and-a-half feet of muscle moving with the deadly grace of masters in martial arts. They were not soldiers. They were echoes, replicas stamped from the same mold, as if Morgion had grown bored with the variety natural birth provided. Young, tall, broad-shouldered, each face a mirror of the next. If he hadn’t seen them before, it might have been disconcerting. Yet something caught his attention, something he hadn’t seen before. His eye caught on their uniform attire, the fine gray silk tunics and belted glass-blades... True-glass. Where Morgion had unearthed so much of it, Eredhel could not say. But to arm even common guards with such treasures was audacity in the extreme. And very like him.
The Diir-wood gates of the tower swung wide, creaking open as if to herald his approach. From the shadowed threshold Morgion emerged, every stride marked with the same unhurried certainty that had carried him through centuries of folly and triumph alike. He was dressed all in black. His silk shirt, breeches, and soft leather boots were as stark as his presence. At his belt rested Dagor, the reforged crystal blade, paired with a silvery whip coiled like a serpent. In his hand he carried Anglareth, a staff of Silverlind, wood that shone with the sheen of silver, as though moonlight itself had hardened into grain. Long ago the madman had imbued it with life, turned it into something that grew and learned on its own. By now, it was nearly the peer of an archmage. And, Eredhel reflected dryly, there was little doubt which of the two, Morgion or his staff, held the sharper mind.
His voice rang out across the courtyard, as if he owned not merely the fortress but the very air that carried his words. “Eredhel, old friend, it is good to see you again. You are the first to arrive.”
Eredhel inclined his head in answer, his voice measured, faintly cool. “Of course I am. The others will not be far behind. They seldom are when summoned.”
Morgion’s smile deepened, unreadable as ever. He gestured toward the gate with a sweep of his hand. “Then let us go in. Darsint will bring them up when they arrive.”
The Diir-wood gates groaned open, their massive timbers scarred by age yet still humming with warding spells. Together they passed beneath, stepping into the stronghold’s heart.
The hall beyond was vast and dim, its walls vanishing into shadow above. At its center stretched a circular mosaic, a black dragon in mid-flight, wings unfurled, each scale set from cut stone dark as obsidian. Eredhel’s gaze flicked onward, to the dais at the far end. Upon it stood a throne flanked by two looming figures of armor, black-lacquered metal polished to a mirror sheen, two-handed swords braced upright before them. The throne itself still drew the eye, carved whole from a single emerald large enough to shame the vaults of kings. And there, along the backrest’s upper edge, remained the jagged crack he remembered, as if some blow had once split the gem and Morgion had forced it whole again.
The sight pulled a dry smile from him, his lips tightening as though he savored a private jest. Their old companion who had caused it in a fit of jealousy had died mere moments later, his soul torn out. Perhaps a fitting punishment, perhaps not. The man had been a fool, a brutish fool.
They ascended a wide stair curving along the wall, passing chambers whose doors whispered of living quarters and private studies. At the center of the second floor, a spiral stair drew them upward once more. On the third level of the tower, they reached the meeting parlor. Eredhel’s gaze strayed briefly down the corridor that ended in the vault. The reinforced door was almost taunting in its openness, but the sentinel before it silenced any thought of trespass. Eight feet of black steel, axe in hand, a construct more powerful than it appeared. He knew well enough, underestimation was the last mistake anyone ever made in its presence.
The parlor itself was another world. Gone was the grim austerity of Dyarman’s stone. Here a soft mantle of mist blanketed the floor, dense enough to hide the stone beneath yet so finely woven that every step seemed to vanish into silence. Clouds of condensed air drifted above it like waiting thrones, shifting gently at the occupants’ touch. In one corner a harp of Silverwood sang on its own, the melody hauntingly close to those once played in the high homes of Aunor. Even the air was alive, with lesser spirits shimmering softly, ready to bear platters of fruit or pour wines as their master willed.
“Please, take a seat,” Morgion said, sinking into a waiting cloud with the ease of one long accustomed to its embrace. His steel-gray eyes glinted with amusement. “I hardly thanked you enough for your assistance in the desert.”
As Morgion gestured to the waiting clouds, the stone walls around them began to dissolve into drifting mist. Overhead, the ceiling faded into a vast night sky, starlit, exact, and unmistakably real. Every constellation Eredhel knew from this world gleamed in its rightful place. He said nothing, but the flicker of envy stirred all the same. He had spent years chasing signs of magic unique to this realm, and here was Morgion, summoning the starlight into his drawing room like a man lighting candles for mood. It was a kind of magic Eredhel had never witnessed before.
“Think nothing of it. I take it they were your agents? Nasty thing, that time trap they got caught in.” Eredhel eased into a drifting cloud, accepting a silver goblet as it floated to his hand. Perhaps it was just atmosphere. Or perhaps it was a message, a quiet signal that Morgion’s reach had grown, that his facility with Astrology had deepened while others still sought alignment. Eredhel sipped from his goblet, gaze never leaving the sky. Morgion rarely wasted effort. If he conjured stars, it served a purpose.
“Yes, I enlisted them a while ago,” Morgion replied with offhand ease.
Eredhel let the silence linger a heartbeat longer than polite, watching the play of amusement at the corners of Morgion’s mouth. There was more to those three than met the eye, there had to be, or Morgion would never have gone to the trouble of wrenching them from the pyramids. Morgion’s feigned indifference gave the game away. He had felt the danger there himself, the distant presence of something ancient, two vampires perhaps older than empires. Their power had brushed the edge of his senses even through the clash with the pyramid’s golems, ancient beings, quiet and watching. Even for them, distracted by the lumbering golems, such foes would not have been lightly dismissed. No ordinary mission, then. And Morgion’s casual tone had told him more than any confession might have.
Perhaps, Eredhel thought, sipping the wine. Perhaps he has found something. Fate-reading. Easy to forget Morgion had that gift, though he rarely displayed it. Elarwen might be the Circle’s true adept, but Morgion was never without hidden hands. Allies they might be, yet gain was never equal. What piece of the board had Morgion stolen this time? The conflux was the prize they all sought. That, at least, would have to be shared. Wouldn’t it?
“I didn’t get a good look at them,” Eredhel said aloud, tone mild. “Any strength in them?”
Morgion’s steel-gray eyes flicked briefly to the harp in the corner, its silver strings sighing an elven melody too carefully chosen to be chance. “More than passable. Though unruly.” He returned his gaze with an unreadable smile. “Have you taken any into your service?”
“I prefer to work alone,” Eredhel said smoothly. “Local eyes fail to catch what would be clear to me, but to find it one must travel the world. There is magic here, ancient in part, yet carrying currents I have never seen before. This realm breathes potential. Something unique must have formed in the cracks.”
Morgion gave a laugh, warm on its surface, though it carried the weary edge of someone drowning in secrets. “I still have dozens of tomes I’ve not yet had time to peruse. The notion of adding more discoveries feels… exhausting.”
A soft gong rolled faintly through the tower’s walls. Morgion stilled, the mild amusement slipping from his features as his gaze turned inward. For a moment, his presence stretched outward like the pull of a tide. Then his eyes sharpened again.
“Laanan,” he murmured. “Early.” His mouth curled in disappointment. “A pity. I had hoped to speak with you alone a little longer.”
Footsteps echoed softly through the high halls beyond. A moment later, the mist at the edge of the chamber parted like a curtain, and a tall, robed figure stepped through. Laanan looked almost deliberately plain. His simple gray robe hung loose over a slender frame, and his shaved scalp gleamed in the starlight that filtered down from the starlit sky. He paused as he took in the mist-filled chamber, his hands tucked into his sleeves, but his slitted eyes, reptilian and unblinking, betrayed the truth beneath the unassuming exterior. A human once, yes. But no longer.
The man was almost an unknown to him still, though he had been the very first they recruited to the Circle. In the beginning the Reth’ta Laan was nothing more than an idea, spoken softly over maps and empty cups. Together they laid its foundations and decided what roles each of them would hold and how those roles would balance. A Master of Souls had been essential, someone to help banish the hordes of undead that had plagued the world after untold amounts of death-energy had poured in through rifts. The death-energy had pooled across the land like stagnant water, seeping into ruins and battlefields alike. Left unchecked, it would have birthed legions. Necromancy had its uses, but only in small, precise measures. Too much and it upset the balance, unraveling what little order the world clung to. That was something he and Morgion had agreed on from the start.
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Morgion had found the man on Kelthara, in some desolate ruin on the edge of civilization. A thin figure feeding crows and murmuring with the shades of the dead, Eredhel had dismissed him initially. The man lacked presence, self-confidence, and gravitas. He had seemed frail, even defenseless, certainly not someone to take notice of at all. Or so Eredhel had thought. But as they worked together, he came to appreciate the man’s keen intellect. He could follow complex reasoning and see patterns, and he was, as it turned out, more than a passable player of stones. And he had never yet shown any hints of running his own schemes on the side. He played the long game, moving pieces with care. Though Eredhel still did not trust him, he trusted that.
And yet... there was so little else to say. Laanan gave nothing away. He never spoke of the life before his transformation, or what bargain had infused those slitted, reptilian eyes. Whether he couldn’t hide them or simply chose not to was still a matter of quiet debate.
Morgion gestured to one of the cloud-chairs as he approached. “I thank you for responding so promptly to my summons, Master Laanan. Please, have a seat.”
The draconic-eyed man dipped his head. “We needed a meeting in any case. In truth, I think we may need to meet more often. There are too many unknowns here, and they shift too quickly to be grasped. The old ways of watching don’t hold. But one thing I’ve confirmed beyond doubt is that the high-elves have fled. If any remain, they are in hiding. Their cities are empty.”
He lowered himself cautiously into one of the cloud-thrones. For a heartbeat, his brow furrowed as if expecting it to collapse beneath him, but the mist held, dense and firm. He exhaled softly and let his arms fall to the sides.
“Let’s wait for the others,” Morgion said. “They should be with us shortly.”
Laanan inclined his head once more, but his gaze lingered on the mist-covered floor briefly. Then, slowly, he lifted his eyes to the starry vault overhead. His pupils narrowed, catching the reflected constellations, and for a fleeting moment he looked directly at Eredhel. A look, brief but deliberate, an unspoken question or perhaps an allegation.
“Allow me to offer a word of praise, then, while we wait,” he said after a moment. “Summoning Dyarman… an impressive feat.”
Eredhel’s eyes flicked toward Morgion, but the man only smiled, as though the compliment were no more than a passing breeze. “It was a necessary inconvenience,” he said. “The land here lacks sanctums of the proper kind, so I brought mine.”
Silence fell again, not heavy but watchful. The clouds shifted slowly, their edges glowing softly with starlight. The harp changed tune, now slower, now touched by an old melody of mourning. Then came the footsteps, heavy and resolute thuds that heralded Grathul.
Eredhel’s thoughts turned, unbidden, to the day they had first bound the man to their circle. Grathul had been the third to join, after Laanan and Naomi. Almost from the beginning, when the Circle was still only a notion, he had pressed for a Master of Chaos to hold one of its seats. The concept itself had baffled them when first encountered on Kelthara, magic unbound by order, flowing in wild, destructive patterns they could scarcely map. They had known they needed someone who could read those strands, someone who could wield that alien principle instead of flinching from it. Morgion had agreed with him then, for once without hesitation.
He had found Grathul besieged by three armies, trapped in what should have been an untenable position. His host battered, starving, penned in by warrior-priests anointed by their gods. Chaos-mages were hunted like rabid beasts, and factions that had warred without end would lay down arms and strike together when one appeared. Yet Grathul had endured, weaving calamity into his defense. From it he shaped a seed of chaos that flowed downhill into the besieging camp. It grew, feeding on itself, an unstoppable tide that swallowed thousands before it began to eat the ground itself. A week later, a pool of magma burst from the earth. Yet the chaos it had consumed tempered the eruption, and it did not become a volcano. Even so, it was enough to call down the wrath of the local deities. He should have perished then. Instead, they had pulled him out, and in time they gave him a seat at their table. That had been mere weeks before the world itself fell. In the far north, a great artifact was destroyed. Eons ago it had steadied the world after a calamity in which pure power flooded the lands, tearing rifts wide and releasing beasts from both the lower and elemental planes. And when the steadying influence was lost, the world was torn asunder by new rifts.
While Morgion and he both had striven to keep something of their original elven grace, there was nothing subtle or graceful about Grathul. He affected an aura of brute, crude strength and violence with the subtlety of a boulder rolling downhill, all weight and blunt momentum. And yet beneath that mask lurked an unpredictable schemer, his plans layered so deeply they seemed chaos incarnate until the final move revealed the pattern. He had already stolen two prizes from under Eredhel’s hand. One was an artifact that infused fire-weaves with ambient mana. The other was a tome pried from an ancient temple, perhaps a mere trinket, perhaps containing the unique magic of arcane healing he had caught whispers of.
The footsteps drew nearer, shaking the silence like a slow drumbeat. Eredhel straightened slightly. Then the man himself loomed into view, every inch the warlord he pretended to be. He filled the archway even before he entered, a hulking shape clad in layered black armor etched with angular sigils. His breastplate bore the scars of old battles, and spiked pauldrons gave his silhouette a brutal symmetry. A red beard spilled down to his chest, coarse and tangled, framing a face that looked as though it had been broken and set wrongly more than once. Crooked nose, brow like stone, and deep-set green eyes that missed nothing. He stomped into the chamber, brutal and unmistakable, the perfect mask for the cunning beneath.
Behind him came a gentler rustle. Elarwen slipped into the chamber, her presence a counterpoint to Grathul’s brute force. Tall and willowy, she moved with the fluid grace of her wood-elven kin, the greens and browns of her long robes blending into the softened mists like falling leaves. Her golden hair was braided in the old style, and a thin circlet of living wood rested upon her brow.
Eredhel’s gaze slid over her, noting the trappings, weighing them, and moving on. They had found her in Altoren, the quiet world where they had lingered after Morgion’s timely gates had carried them from ruin. Altoren had held little of interest, its powers shallow and its depths already mined by others. After some decades they had departed, but not before adding her to their ranks. The weakest among them, and yet seated in one of the Circle’s most prestigious roles. Fate-Reader. Linked to Spirit, it was the art of seeing the subtle threads of fate that wove through men and lands, prestigious yes, but hardly power in itself. It was influence masquerading as strength, and in his eyes, no more. In combat, even in her draconic form, she would never last long against any of them.
Still, the Circle had needed one, and she had filled that seat well enough. She had found persons whom fate had attached itself to, identified lands where great events were about to unfold, tracing the ripples of choice where no calculation could reach. Useful, if not formidable. And always, she had stood close to Naomi. Too close. Perhaps she had shared in the woman’s ambition to usurp their leadership, but if so, she had lacked the courage to make her move. Weakness and hesitation, those had spared her when Naomi was swept from the board.
Morgion leaned forward slightly, as though granting Laanan the floor. The man needed no further invitation.
“I began with remains,” Laanan said, his voice quiet, unhurried. “The bones of high-elves left unguarded in ruined sanctums. Skulls make the strongest foci, clear vessels for drawing voices back through the veil. From them I summoned spirits and questioned them on their places of power.” His gaze slid briefly toward Elarwen, and his lips curved into a faint, not-quite-apologetic smile. “Take no slight. Wood-elves care only for groves, not power. Fair-elves for beauty. Dark-elves are ever mired in their own intrigues. Only the high-elves held knowledge worth the Circle’s attention.”
Elarwen gave no reply. Her golden head inclined the barest fraction, but her eyes were unreadable.
Laanan continued. “The spirits spoke of a northern enclave, Eariluminion. Long abandoned, though still steeped in magics that obscure all scrying. When I entered, I found the remains of time-traps still pulsing, and a sealed portal that reeked of the demonic. The dead lay there as well, their flesh long rotted, their bones waiting.”
He paused, his reptilian eyes narrowing slightly, as if savoring what came next. “From those skulls I drew more answers, pieces that helped me put the rest together. Millennia past, when humanity spread from the west like an avalanche. With them came ascendants, mortals who rose to godhood, too powerful for even the elven arch-mages to withstand. In desperation, the high-elves sundered the land itself, raising mountains to part the realms. Yet the humans pressed on. Division grew among the elves, with some wishing to resist and others choosing to abandon the world. Many departed. But Eariluminion sought a weapon to halt the humans.”
Eredhel noted the barest reaction from Morgion, barely a tightening of the eyes, an indication that the name of Eariluminion was recognized. He filed it away for later while Laanan continued his accounting.
“Their weave collapsed, a rift was torn open, leading to a demonic plane. They did not know which, but later I deduced that it was one under the dominion of Geryon, the lord of the 555th demonic plane. The resident high-elven arch-mage froze the enclave in time to hold off the invasion as they fled.”
The words lingered in the mist, heavy as falling stones. The implication was clear. There was a full rift to a demonic plane that could burst and drown this world in an unstoppable flood of demons.
Eredhel’s eyes narrowed. His tone came sharp, like a knife tapping glass. “And so you sought only elves? None else?”
Laanan met his gaze without flinching. “The humans I have questioned were useless. Their grasp of the planes is shallow, their magic crude. They know nothing of what we seek. Elven souls may be arrogant, but they were steeped in knowledge of the greater whole. So far I have found nothing of the ordained conflux. Until I find the remains of their greater magi, my search will have to continue.”
Eredhel leaned back into the drifting cloud, wine untouched in his hand. “Convenient,” he said coolly. “Elves always make themselves the center of the tale, even in death. And you seem content to let their arrogance guide your search.” His gaze lingered on Laanan’s reptilian eyes a moment longer before shifting away, dismissive. “Still… even arrogance leaves records.”
Morgion did not rebuke him. His steel-gray eyes fixed on Laanan instead, thoughtful. “A rift to a demonic plane,” he said slowly. “If that is true, then it cannot be left untended. The weave that binds it has stood for millennia, yes, but it will not stand forever. Your entrance to the enclave may have disturbed the time magic that kept it frozen. And if it fails, this world could drown in a demonic horde before the conflux ever ripens.”
Laanan held up his hand to stop him. “I was not the first there. It had been visited merely years ago, I believe.”
“Even more cause to handle it,” Morgion said, voice hardening. “It was unlikely that you’d have disturbed the ancient weaves, but some natives…”
Elarwen’s voice cut across the pause, soft yet steady. “If a rift stands open, it festers. It is not only demons that seep through, but corruption. The land itself sickens, and from there the threads of fate warp and unravel. If we would see this world reach its conflux intact, the wound must be closed. Nothing is more important.”
Her golden head tilted slightly, circlet glinting with starlight, as though to remind them she had seen such ruin before. “The world itself remembers such scars. We should not let another form.”
Eredhel’s eyes narrowed a fraction, but he said nothing. Morgion inclined his head once, slow, deliberate. “Then we are agreed. It will be done.”
Grathul gave only a short, gruff nod, showing no interest in the finer points of fate or healing, but offering no objections either.
Morgion clasped his hands, fingers steepled. “This falls to me. Gates are my province, and none of you have my strength in Nexus. But I will need more than my own strength. A circle of binding must be formed around the breach, holding any demons inside while I close the rift since we will have to lift the time-freeze there.” His gaze swept the gathered, weighing them, daring objection. “The enclave’s location, Laanan. You will lead me there to investigate it. We shall decide who will hold the circle when the time comes.”
For a heartbeat longer, silence pressed in, broken only by the muted strains of the harp above, its song bending into something taut, expectant. When no one else spoke, Morgion turned to Laanan.
“Find the arch-mage’s remains,” Morgion said, his tone like stone. “If any trace of the conflux survives, it will be there.”
Grathul shifted in his seat, the mist folding beneath him without sound or protest. His scarred hands came to rest on his knees, one still marked by an old burn that no art had ever erased. His voice came blunt, gravel-thick, as though each word was a stone ground between his teeth.
“My arts are of little use in this world,” he said, green eyes flicking once around the circle before fixing on nothing in particular. “So I have walked the lands in simpler guise. Sifting through myth and history in the western parts of the continent.”
He leaned back slightly, gauntlets rasping as he folded his arms. “There was a great war there, centuries ago. North fought the south, with magic and arms. It tore the weave apart and changed the face of the land. I could still sense echoes of the magic that broke the land and created a dead desert where once there was none. In the far west, in what they call the Free Lands, a mountain ridge rose, though not as high as the Wall you spoke of, Laanan.”
The reptilian-eyed man inclined his head slightly but said nothing.
Grathul went on. “I traveled the Free Lands, small countries ruled by kings or feudal lords. There had been only one religion there, proclaiming the glory of the True God and his angels. Led by the Church, the priests and inquisitors preached Might Makes Right, or something to that effect.” A wry smile flashed across his brutish face, “perhaps more true than most know.”
Eredhel caught Elarwen glaring at the man, her eyes hard as polished emeralds. “Might does not make right,” she said quietly, each word clipped as if cut from glass. “It only makes ruin.”
His mouth twisted in something that might have been a smile, but was closer to a scar reopening. “Two decades ago, that power broke. The Old Gods returned, descending with the Northmen from the northern reaches. The tales say they walked in the flesh, the gods themselves, as men among mortals. Local gods, then. Whatever they were, the Church fell and its grip was broken.”
He paused, letting the silence stretch. His eyes gleamed with a sharper light as he delivered the final blow. “But the more I listened, the clearer the truth became. This so-called True God was no god at all. A greater devil. And his angels… fiendish nobles in his service.”
The words landed like stones dropped into still water, sending ripples through the mist-veiled chamber.
Elarwen’s hand, pale against the folds of her robe, tightened slightly on the arm of her seat. Laanan’s eyes narrowed, slitted pupils contracting, but he said nothing. Even Morgion shifted at that, his steel-gray gaze sharpening, though his face betrayed no more than a flicker.
Eredhel tilted his head, wine still untouched, a faint edge of disdain sharpening his words. “So. Devils masquerading as divinity. And mortals bent the knee to them. How… typical.”
For a heartbeat, silence weighed heavy. Then Laanan’s voice cut through, soft but unyielding. “Perhaps more important than mortals’ folly is what it reveals. Demons are not the only stain upon this world, for the infernal has already sunk its roots deep, leaving the balance itself at risk of being askew.” His gaze swept the circle, lingering on each of them in turn. “Could it be that we were unknowingly led here by the Lords of Karma themselves?”
The question lingered in the mist, oppressive as a tolling bell. Eredhel felt the chill of it coil in his chest, an implication he loathed, that they were not masters of their own path but pieces on another’s board.
Laanan did not soften it. “And if so, then we must also consider this. We may not be alone in seeking to reap this world when the conflux comes. Others may already be moving to claim it.”
The words settled like frost across the chamber. For a moment, only the harp spoke, its strings drawing a mournful line through the mist. Then Elarwen stirred. She had sat mostly silent since her arrival, golden head bowed as though listening to whispers none else could hear. When she spoke, her voice was quiet, steady, but carried with it the weight of distance.
“The threads of fate take long to read and longer still to untangle. One must be near the knot of them, and even then, time is needed. But I have seen threads in the east, by a city named Varakar, where trade and power coil tightly together. There, threads converge. Some lives have been brushed by fate’s hand.” Her eyes flicked down, then across the gathered faces. “I do not yet know who they are. But they are there.”
Eredhel watched her in silence, but it was Morgion who drew his gaze. When she told them of this, he had cocked his head slightly, a tell from his earliest days. Not surprise, but recognition. He knew more than he cared to share, of course he did. The Orb of Akareth was a peerless scrying device, something the man had recovered from Kelthara while he, himself, had been on a fool’s errand chasing the location of a mythical island rumored to house a dragonlord. At least, that was what the man claimed it was. But Eredhel had glimpsed its light once before, in a moment when Morgion thought himself unwatched, and the depth of power within the orb had felt far beyond scrying. It was no mere tool for seeing. It was a key, though to what he had yet to learn.
Morgion’s eyes lingered a moment longer on Elarwen, then shifted. “And you, Eredhel? What have you found?”
Eredhel lifted the goblet at last, letting the silver catch the starlight from above. He sipped slowly, rolling the taste across his tongue before speaking. “Elven,” he murmured, almost to himself. “Refined, aged… strange, to find it here, in a world where few elves remain.”
Morgion’s mouth curved in the faintest smile. “It is elven,” he said. “Brought from another world. Some comforts are worth the trouble.”
Eredhel inclined his head a fraction, neither praise nor reproach, before setting the cup aside. His voice turned calm and deliberate, the cadence of one who measured words as carefully as blades.
“I began where none of you did, aloft. In my true form. The sweep of wings will tell more of a world’s bones than any archive or ruin.” His gaze passed over them, a glint of pride in his eyes. “This continent, where we sit, the natives call Atarulison. It is the heart of their world, though not its whole.”
He let the words sink before continuing. “To the south lies another, a frozen expanse of ice and snow. Bitter cold, lifeless save for white-furred bears and black, flightless birds that scavenge the shores. Beyond that, smaller still, a land of jungles. Crude tribes scratch out their lives there, barely beyond stone, with not a spark of true magic to be found.” A curl touched his lip. “Unworthy of study.”
He shifted, the mist-chairs dimly refracting the starlight above. “The fourth, however, may yet hold something. Plenty of settlements and towns there, and humans in numbers enough to matter though I have not yet walked its heart.”
For a moment, his eyes narrowed, recalling. “In the southeast of Atarulison I discovered a land different from all the others. Strange energies suffuse it. Not natural ley-lines, not Earthblood, but something else. A current in the soil and stone, threading into flesh. A fraction of the humans there bear its mark, stronger than they should be. Far too strong for what they are. I have spent most of my time there, probing it, mapping its borders. Its nature is… elusive still. But it bears watching.”
The harp’s strings seemed to tighten, the melody bending into something sharper. Eredhel let the sound hang in the air, then settled back, eyes cold and unreadable. “That is my accounting.”
Morgion steepled his fingers, the faintest spark of silver light dancing along the serpent-coil of his whip at his belt. When he spoke, it was with the slow assurance of one who read currents others could not see.
“I have walked this world in a different fashion,” he said. “Not its flesh, but its outer skin, the Nexus. The layer here is thick, almost pristine, girding the world like steel. Stable, unyielding in most places. As one would expect from a key world still unspoiled.” His steel-gray eyes narrowed, glinting coldly in the starlit illusion above. “Yet not flawless. There are tears, here and there, hairline fractures in the weave. And the occasional ripple, a clear indication of the touch of others.”
He leaned forward slightly, voice lowering. “Planewalkers… Native ones, meaning that the knowledge of higher arts here is not to be completely disregarded. Their gates leave marks I do not recognize, ripples that feel… skewed. Cruder, perhaps, but theirs nonetheless. I’ve sensed several of them in the lands of Varakar, the city you mentioned, Elarwen. They even have an academy for studying magic there. Small, provincial, yet not entirely without merit.”
His gaze shifted westward, as if he could pierce the walls of Dyarman and look across the continents. “Another source of planewalkers resides west of the Free Lands you spoke of, Grathul.”
He let the words sink in, then exhaled once, sharp as steel drawn from a sheath. “I have little else to say. Yet you should know that the Nexus layer is stronger than any I have touched in centuries. If we are to chart the conflux, we must understand its flow through the heavens. Without the alignments of the celestial bodies, we are blind. We will need to find a way to read them… without Naomi.”
“I concur with that,” Eredhel said coolly. “Though from what I’ve seen of their comprehension of magic, I doubt we will find any worthy candidate to fill her seat.”
Morgion rose slightly in his seat, the starlit illusion overhead dimming as if the very sky deferred to him. His steel-gray gaze swept the circle, measuring each of them before he spoke.
“Then we are agreed on our first task,” he said. “The rift at Eariluminion cannot be left to fester. Its weaving must be closed before it bursts. I will attend to it myself, but I will require a circle to bind the breach while I work. We will decide who holds that circle when the time comes.”
His eyes shifted to Elarwen. “Varakar. Threads of fate converge there, and planewalkers stir. We cannot ignore a city with such ties to the higher arts. We will need agents, eyes and hands loyal to us. You will seek them out, Elarwen. Choose carefully.”
Then to Grathul. “The west too demands attention. Churches, old gods, and fallen thrones, roots of infernal power. We must know who still rules those lands and what they worship. Develop your own agents there, ones who can move without drawing attention.”
At last, his gaze settled on Laanan and Eredhel both. “And above all, the conflux. Without Naomi we are blind to its measure, but that cannot last. Each of you is tasked with finding ways to chart it, through records, through experiment, through means old or new. The ripening of this world is our prize, and we will not let it pass us by.”
The harp’s strings thrummed, a low, resonant chord, as though punctuating the decree. Morgion let his hands intertwine, resting them lightly against his belt. “So the course is set. We will reconvene when the stars shift again. Until then, we act.”
Silence held the chamber a moment longer, heavy and absolute, before the mist stirred softly at the circle’s edges, as though even Dyarman itself approved.
