PROLOGUE, PART 1

Patting at his jacket pocket, his mind ablaze with the fallout of his most recent delve, Vander looked for the Faerie Dust he snagged from Vinny on his way up and transferred the required payment to the cretin with but a thought. If the dealer kept supplying for a low cost, his Faerie farms would be a secret Vander took to his grave. Vander pulled out the packet of gold goodness that would take away his pain, albeit temporarily, when his phone flashed with a notification.

Madison was calling.

The device rang several times before going silent. He stared at the Faerie Dust for a long moment, sighing and returning it to his pocket. He stood from his recliner and made his way to the refrigerator. As much as he wanted to talk to her, the day left his social battery operating on a deficit.

All the red tape of the adventure into the unknown Door, the bureaucracy and paperwork afterwards, and knowledge that, again, he’d been the only one from his team to walk out with his life. The times were trying him, and he knew the time his life would be given to the cause approached—far before he was ready. But he had no fight left in him. Not after so long. Not anymore.

“I know you can hear me, Vander,” her angelic voice echoed from the walls and snapped him out of the thought spiral.

Vander unclasped his utility belt and dropped it on the counter. The light weight and empty pouches reminded him of how hard he’d fought—and how he’d failed to save the others. Malcolm, Lena, Victor, Johnson, Debra, and a dozen other trainees…

The noises of the smart house fell on his deaf ears, too quiet to register over the ringing in his ears and memories of raging beasts and pained cries from his fallen comrades as they were torn to shreds in their final moments.

Sluggishly, he opened the refrigerator. The waves of cold air sent gooseflesh up his arms. If he didn’t quiet the turmoil in his mind and his racing heart, he didn’t know what he’d do. Even after so many years, the loss of a team hurt, stung, swallowed his mind whole.

If he ever wanted to sleep and not descend into inevitable madness, he’d need something to drink, to wash away the disgusting feeling of a week’s worth of sweat, dirt, and blood.

Especially if he was going to talk to Madison.

The panels on the hallway glowed to life, connecting Madison’s call. “I heard about your delve, Vander. I’m so sorry to hear about your team, and if there’s anything you need from me, you know you can always as—”

Grunting, he pulled out the strongest liquor he could find, a quarter-full bottle of vodka. With practiced efficiency, he twisted the top and tilted his head back. Like a man who’d traveled across a desert, he drank like his life depending on it. As if given new life, the liquor cleansed his mind and helped wash away the storm rampaging inside him.

The stinging in his throat was nothing to the pain he’d experienced in the last month. The pain of loss, betrayal, and failure. When he finished emptying the bottle, he growled and threw it across the room where it shattered against the reinforced walls.

Vander wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and leaned across the sleek marble counter. He ignored the dirt and grime he’d spread everywhere and rubbed his throbbing temples. Even if the vodka eased some of the stress and emotional turmoil roiling around in his gut, it didn’t fully halt the frying of his brain.

A pressure behind his eyelids made the lights in the house seem overwhelming, hostile even. He waved his hand to dim them low enough he could barely see, but the damage had been done. A headache pulsed behind his eyelids and on the side of his head. When he tried to massage away the ache, it did nothing but smudge the mess on his face even more.

“Vander…”

His heart ached at the pain in Madison’s voice, the desire to take away his suffering. He wished her to be there, right then. But he knew better and instead growled, “Remind me why I gave you access to my house’s communication functions.”

“Remind me why I put up with you,” she retorted, her naturally playful banter slipping out. “Sorry, it’s been a long day for everyone.”

“Yeah, I know. I was there.” There was nothing he desired more than to leave and be with her, to hold her in his arms as she told him things were okay. They weren’t, but if she told him, he could at least lie to himself and hope things would get better. “Mads, I…” I love you. Let’s run away together.

The words caught in his throat. He couldn’t continue. As selfish as he might be, his reputation as the Storm King wouldn’t let him put aside his pride or put her in danger. If those that aimed for his neck knew of Madison, he’d never forgive himself if anything happened to her because of him.

Even if her power was greater than his, her focus on developing technology with runic knowledge and evolving magitek further made her useful. If any indication of their true feelings came to light, he didn’t know what they’d do.

He’d never fancy himself a gambling man, and the risk was too great. Even now, the people who gunned for him likely had gunnies stationed around his place to monitor his every movement. Wouldn’t be the first time, wouldn’t be the last.

And when it came down to it, he was selfish enough to go along with their plans. He knew how powerful Madison DiMaggio was. He knew her like nobody else did. Kindness was something she didn’t know. Only her fascination with magitek as a hobby drew her attention towards the things that revolutionized the world. With a mind others envied, no task she focused on was impossible to overcome. She had a vindictive streak like no other and didn’t know when to stop when she committed to something— like loving a fool like him.

The woman of his dreams wished to be there for him, and he wouldn’t let her. If he hadn’t already been raging inside, he now would’ve been. But as things were, it just added to the mess jumbling around in his head.

“Vander, you’re not alone in this. I can help. Come and be with me.” She waited for him to respond, but the words echoed in his head like angry hornets. “Please…” The silence extended, and she huffed a frustrated sigh.

He recalled the delve’s events, the feelings of something being wrong from the moment they stepped through the Door—a gut-wrenching unease that kept him up for days on end he couldn’t shake.

She wanted to help, and he knew that she probably knew everything that happened, down to the last detail. But she didn’t experience what had happened.

“If you need to talk, I’m here. Okay?” she added. He wouldn’t be surprised if she hung up and made her way over to his place afterwards.

“I really shouldn’t have gone through that Door, Mads. I-I lost them all...” The threat of tears stung at his eyes, and he clenched his teeth hard, grinding them. He took that bundle of rage and grief and tried to control it. He couldn’t let loose here. “Most of them haven’t even seen their third delve!” Vander growled and crushed the marble counters beneath his hands. The reinforced leather gloves protected him from the worst. The pressure, the need for an outlet, conflicted with overwhelming exhaustion. “I failed, Mads. I failed them all.”

“No, you couldn’t know—”

“It was my job to know! I was their teacher! I was supposed to protect them!” He slammed his hands on the shattered counter and ended the call. In the same second, he barred her from accessing his communication systems for twelve hours. An earful would welcome him in the morning, but he couldn’t contain the buzzing in his mind any longer. And as much as she could help, as much as he wanted her to, and as much as he wanted to go to her, he knew better. “Damnit…”

His power demanded to be released, but he wasn’t a greenhorn, wasn’t a rookie who’d only entered the world of delvers yesterday. The last time he lost control over himself, of his mana, he’d been but a trainee.

“Damnit!” he shouted, slamming his hands on the counter again.

But as hard as he tried containing it, he couldn’t. He didn’t want to. So a lightning storm exploded outward from his hands. His mana slipped free for naught but a fraction of a second.

Luckily for him, his bosses at the Department of Magical Handling and Abnormals—DMHA for short—long since required mages’ residences to be nuke-proof. His outburst only managed to leave scratches on the walls where the violent bolts of dense and powerful lightning impacted full force.

One of the many caveats of having magic activated through emotions: emotional people became a bigger threat than modern weaponry. And the caveat of having delvers to be mages meant they were prone to scrutiny by those who lacked magical power, which meant a majority of the public. The citizens the delvers sacrificed themselves to provide for. A truly pathetic existence.

Vander gasped for breath as the images of countless dead faces sifted through his mind on repeat. All the lives he’d failed to protect from the time he’d first become a delver. “Survivor’s guilt”, the shrinks had called it, but the Doors he’d been sent into were far above the caliber of the people he’d been sent into them with.

Someone had been after his life, had always been after him, and the people Vander grew to cherish as they blossomed into their abilities and grew as people paid the price of his unwillingness to fail a mission and die. His Door clearance record was flawless, but so too was the casualty rate of those around him.

He grabbed another drink, a seasoned bourbon this time, from the fridge, drained from top to bottom, and let the cold of numbness flood through him. Only then did his mind begin to calm.

Countless years of training kicked in, and he reasserted his control over the mana. Closing his eyes, he numbed himself further. Allowing a void of thought to suck away the memories, he reached into the refrigerator for another drink, two cases of beer.

Nothing mattered. Nothing could matter. Not if he wanted to live to see another day, and as long as Madison lived, he too would live.

After he took both cases out and set them on the enchanted steel coffee table in the living room, routine took over. To disarm, he detached the two magnetic holsters from his waist. Numbly, he set his two trusty sidearms, Azazel and Yugmuswa, on the counter and rubbed away the accumulation of filth. Only a small hint of appreciation for the dichotomy of Enchanted Silversteel and Obsidian stirred through the settling blanket of numbness.

He grabbed a beer and walked over to his recliner. When he slipped off his jacket, he struggled to support the weight of it and his beloved rifle, a personal gift to him handcrafted from scratch by Madison. His arms ached, so he dropped the jacket and weapon beside his chair.

Sitting, he propped his feet up. When he saw the state of his boots, he kicked them off and then looked around at the rest of the flat. Mud tracked his progression through his home. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.

The buzz of his head continued to quiet as he opened another beer and drank until nothing remained. Then another. And another. Numbed by alcohol aplenty, he sank back into the chair as the quiet pervaded the flat, screaming his grief to the world.

Tomorrow would be an awful day, but the day after would be a time of merriment. That’s just how these things went, so Vander embraced the suck, giving in to his grievances. Once his mind and body were properly numbed, he pulled out the bag of Faerie Dust. The golden powder beckoned to him, and his mana responded.

Pouring several flecks onto his finger tip, he eyed the substance. Banned by every magical society, the gold dust increased longevity, memory retention, and a mage’s innate mana capacity. Even with a hundred years of taking the golden powder, Vander would still pale in comparison to the raw magic power Madison contained within her. But he could count on two fingers how many people knew what she was capable of.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

The Faerie Dust was a boon to every mage, but such power didn’t come without cost. Faerie farming wasn’t a new concept, but centuries had shown that Faerie Dust could cause people to contract manaborn illnesses due to overstuffing themselves. Some studies showed that those affected would become incapable of reproducing new generations of mages. They’d never bear mage children again, but Vander didn’t see that as such a bad thing.

Being born with magic hadn’t been a gift to him. If anything, his life had been cursed because of it. Though, had he not been born a mage, he’d never have met Madison. A tricky balancing act of understanding whether the price he’d paid with his lifetime of servitude to the DMHA and a star-crossed love he desired almost more than anything was within arm’s reach.

Torture. To know his desires were always one word away but to never speak. One sentence to change reality, to enlighten his existence in the way of warmth, passion, and serenity. One that he imagined would be short lived. One that haunted his dreams, albeit willingly. He’d embrace that dark night, the mistress of his mind with his whole being just to have a brief reprieve from the pain in his heart and the longing at the core of his being.

So Faerie Dust. Bad stuff, one might say, but Vander knew he would never be a father, nor would he wish the fate of a mage that had to live under the DMHA’s thumb upon his worst enemy. Lineage, heritage, descendance. All were a pipe dream for someone like him, a delver, so he didn’t even bother considering the negative effects. If he could get an iota stronger and save a life, a team, his friends and students, then he’d pay any price.

A price Madison resented him for. To her, being a mage was a life of pride, power, fortune. And he couldn’t deny the power and fortune part. He had wealth beyond imagination, and aside from Madison herself, nobody could beat him in a fair fight. But pride was something he’d never been afforded. Even his name as Storm King meant as much as piss.

So rather than contemplate a life he’d never live any longer, he lost himself to a dream of lies, of Madison’s blue eyes gazing longingly into his and her soft skin caressing against him. He tilted his head back, eyes bleary, and placed the flecks on his tongue. The vibrancy of the world heightened by a degree. Like a storage container, he rummaged through his mind and relived the best memories of his life.

A content smile adorned Vander’s face as he sipped his tasteless beer and immersed himself in the memories of a time they’d never again spend together. As much as he griped and groaned at the time, he missed his younger days at the mage academy with Madison.

He’d been a few years older, regaled as one of the most talented mages of all time, and helped her come into her own. Only they knew the depths of her soul, the vast ocean of power slumbering within. He’d been the one to guide her towards becoming a magificer, pushing her away from the path of a delver—a choice he lamented every moment since. Were she a delver, they might have known one another’s love after the academy.

But no. He’d helped her awaken her prodigious talent as a magificer, arguably his biggest achievement—despite two decades of delving.

Vander followed their relationship and slipped away from the biggest regret of his life. As it was every time he journeyed back to the past, he couldn’t escape the experience of nostalgia’s bitter bite. The good old days had gone and passed without him knowing. He wished someone had told him they were the good times. That he should cherish each moment with the entirety of his being. But now he had nothing left but to cherish what little of the magificer he could and grit his teeth with grim determination to push through the days to come.

And these were the grimmest of days. Someone had determined his services to be worthy of merits he’d never expected and, without asking him, suggested him to become a candidate for a job he didn’t want. A way of life that would upheave his entire understanding of reality with a simple yes or no.

The threat loomed over him, signaling a time of doom, was that of promotion. He wasn’t a man who would be comfortable working behind some desk in a position where those wary of him could keep their watchful eyes on him at any given moment.

Not only that, Vander couldn’t imagine a life so boring. Hell, he’d delve Doors by himself if that’s what he needed to do to keep them from giving him a promotion and his ass out of a chair for the rest of his pathetic life.

As unknown as some of the lands at the other end of each Door were, delving came with a minor semblance of satisfaction and excitement—and a constant outlet of his mana. If he’d be allowed to delve without a team, he wouldn’t even complain. But red tape dictated him “a high value asset” and refused to give. He’d thought to punch in the faces of whoever came to that conclusion countless times.

Even more red tape would make that choice far less practical than other approaches, but he didn’t think the DMHA would look at their barking dog and throw it a bone. The irrationality of their choices and decisions drove him insane in a way nothing else could—barring his desire to run away through a Door with Madison and never look back.

Over the years, his perception of reality warped from those he knew. Surviving when others failed, being near death more times than he could count, being responsible for the death of someone else or, like today, an entire training regiment—those events changed a person.

A new memory appeared before him and took his thoughts away from reality once again, one of his happiest. He held a magitek core—an expensive item used as the basis of magitek constructs—behind his back, and Madison waited for him. Her beaming smile melted his aching heart all over again. When he revealed his present and gave her the core, she cried tears of joy.

The next moment, their lips locked. Their first kiss. A validation of the feelings they’d held for one another for so long.

Awkward as can be, they broke away from the surprise rush of emotions, and she completely assembled her first piece of Magitek. Presenting it to Professor Dunning, they both had waited with bated breath only for him to stutter in disbelief at Madison’s work.

But that was the end of their happiness...

At some point, morning light shined in from the window and revealed his slumped form surrounded by the empty beer cans and the bag of Faerie Dust empty and discarded by the side of the chair.

***

Vander woke and rolled out of the recliner. His first stop, the toilet. He relieved himself in a dazed fugue and ignored the cleaning bots. They worked like him, meticulous and unrelenting as they cleansed the evidence of his arrival.

Once finished with his bathroom break, he washed his face in the sink and slapped color into his tanned cheeks. Partly to put some color in his pale, feverish skin and partly to sober up and fight off the consequences of the night’s binger.

“I really outdid myself this time,” he muttered, mana flickering across his fingertips. He coalesced the power in his palm, slamming the writhing ball of power into his chest. He howled as the energy coursed through him, but it did the trick. Shedding his clothes, he called out to his smart home’s artificial intelligence. “Shower time! Put the water on full blast. Hot as you can.” Even if he shed his clothes, layers of grime still coated his skin. “I’m gonna need it.”

Even if he wanted to squander the day, he needed to get moving. If the sun’s rays blaring into the flat were to be trusted—and he never knew the sun to be wrong—then he had another two hours before he had to report for duty.

Two hours too long.

Even as the water cleansed the evidence of the last month in the Door from his body, the memories didn’t leave the forefront of his mind. They stuck with him, despite trying to drown them out the night before. They always stuck. As much as he wanted to eradicate their presence in his mind, to forget the pain and loss, there was no hope.

Reality was a cruel mistress, unlike the mistress of dreams, and would make him remember his failures. The lingering thought of finding a new world somewhere else, away from all of this shit, tingled in the back of his mind, tantalizing and impossible. He’d only leave if Madison went with, and she’d be more inclined to burn the world down and build from the ground up. In a way, he was being merciful to those who dared to bare their hidden daggers at him.

His phone beeped aggressively and demanded his attention. Madison’s key was still banned for a couple hours still. Only one other person knew his contact information. Sarah, a DMHA-approved delving handler.

“You look like crap, Braxton. You’ll be sober when Archmage Buller requests an audience, correct?” Her annoyance came through the phone loud and clear.

Grunting, he soaked the back of his neck. Even through the phone, he could feel her hawk-like stare pierce him. She couldn’t see him roll his eyes, but the action made him feel a little better. A small act of defiance against the machinations of the DMHA only he knew of. Then he responded, “I’ll be there, Sarah. I’m good for that much, you know.”

“Sometimes I wonder, Braxton. I trust you to do what needs to be done inside a Door. The rest is always questionable.” She went quiet, and he continued to wash. When she spoke, he could hear the warning in her voice. “Let me tell you this. It’s not a threat. You know I wouldn’t do something so careless. The highers know about your attempts to get the others who are sentimental towards the mistreatment of delvers. You need to watch yourself going forward, Braxton. They’re onto what you’re doing.”

“Are you suggesting that it might be time I find a new Handler? I would be sad to see you go, Sarah, but I understand if our working relationship is not to your liking.” He mentally prodded the smart house’s artificial intelligence to cut the flow of water, relishing in the Handler’s silent squirm. “Remember who needs who here.”

With that, he killed the connection and crossed the flat opposite the pair of couches. As he approached, his wardrobe’s chrome doors slid open and folded out of the way. Grabbing a change of clothes, he pulled the outfit on, groaning.

The clothes fit like a second layer of skin, weaved spider silk from a Door he’d conquered two—no, three years ago. Too long ago for him to remember proper details, apparently. He’d acted as diplomat between the spider-like demihumans there after conquering the place, but the quality of clothes they provided couldn’t be equaled by the common fabrics on Wanda—his homeworld.

Luxuries afforded by regularly risking life and limb. Had the spiderkin refused the DMHA’s demands to allow selected officials access to their subterranean rivers of Silversteel, Vander’s duties as diplomat would’ve been that of executioner.

Did he ever have a say in his role? If only. Freedom was a pipe dream for one of his kind.

His destiny had never been his own. Not from the second his parents had his magical aptitude analyzed by the DMHA. Whether his parents were paid off and had let those shitheads take him willingly or were killed after trying to resist, he’d never know. That was by design. When the DMHA were involved in something, “get shit done” and “need to know” took precedence over anything else.

Needless to say, they deemed him not needing to know who his parents were or what happened to them. And once the DMHA got their hands on him, the usefulness of his being had been plotted from day one by those “highers” Sarah had spoken of. But Vander couldn’t complain too much. Were it not for his upbringing, Madison would’ve been a starry night’s sky, endlessly beautiful and impossibly unobtainable.

He made peace with who he was, what he was. A pureblood, born and raised with the intent to be a delver. And what a delver he was, through and through.

Turning away from the wardrobe caused the doors to unfold and slide closed. Vander retrieved his gear from where he left it the night before, taking only a handful of seconds to reattach his utility belt, Azazel, and Yugmuswa. Naga waited for him on the chair, unmoved.

Picking the rectangular rifle up and slinging it over his shoulder, he pressed three buttons on either side of the magnetic disk. With a pop, the disk fell away from the filthy jacket. When he retrieved the disk, he shoved it into a travel pack.

The more magificers pushed the bounds of magitek, the more nifty tools and contraptions he got to play with inside the Doors. Many made his life too easy at times, while others might as well not have been created at all.

He counted himself lucky, not having to deal with most of the contraptions some delvers were sent out with. If he hadn’t formed an indefinite sponsorship with DiMaggio Tech, Madison’s company that rivaled all the controlled magitek distribution centers run by the DMHA, he could’ve ended up as one of those test subjects—nameless and dead. A number with no name for the magificers at the top, testing their products on greenhorns.

And for that, he’d never be able to pay Madison back.

“Time to go.” The artificial intelligence linked to his smart home closed his flat to the outside world and locked the place to who wasn’t registered through his key, a personal identification one registered with their unique mana. “Wonder what they’ve got for breakfast.”

Passing through the mage-safe homes, he scheduled a ride to his appointment with the tumorous bureaucrats he’d be entertaining and paid for the fare. He reached the end of the hall and passed by the elevators. He’d always taken the stairs, even the night before when he’d been beaten and worn out, and made his way down to the first floor.

When he stepped on the first floor, he entered the dining hall and took a whiff, smelling an assortment of cuisine. Most noticeable, there were spiced eggs with some kind of blocky meat cube, something reminiscent of delver rations. Meandering through the hall with more time to kill than he cared for, he scanned each meal.

The mage-safe homes abided by every custom—and then some—much to his chagrin. Even if money wasn’t an issue, he was defiant towards all the red tape and regulations in place by principle. That included those that limited how much food a person was allotted per meal.

The most palatable option looked like a simple salad with chicken or turkey topping, two sticks of grain and fruit paste rounding off the nutritional values. Each item contained traces of mana within, guaranteed to refresh and refill a normal mage’s capacity. But he wasn’t a normal person. The DMHA knew that as much as the next person did. However, they refused to increase his meal portions, so he always found himself hungry at any portion-controlled facility—which in this day and age happened to be all of them.

He sat to eat. The food went down, tasteless and bland as it looked. A glass of water was a prerequisite to eating anything within the mage societies, integral to swallowing and washing away the vile or bland tastes. Disappointing. He wouldn’t even treat a monster in the Doors this way, but the DMHA saw all delvers as nothing more than assets with little more value than cattle. Hell, cattle probably lived a better life.

He grunted as his phone notified him of his ride’s arrival. Even though he’d only been home one night, he didn’t expect to stay on Wanda. Not even a day. The Doors always needed more delvers, and as much as he hated to admit, he needed the Doors. If he didn’t release the power within him, innocents who didn’t deserve his fury would get hurt.

A symbiosis of necessity. The Doors and the delvers.

Many would argue his lack of a break was something to be concerned by. He’d argue that they should mind their own business.

A private anti-gravity personal transport awaited him. As he got in, he couldn’t help but look around. He was being watched. From where or by who, he couldn’t pinpoint, but he trusted his gut more than anything.

His gut told him to cherish the day as his last.