Saul was heading south-west by the sun when he came upon a path. It was rough and did not look particularly well-traveled, but it was a path, and paths generally led somewhere.
Grateful for the feeling of packed earth under his feet, he followed the rough track southward. As he walked, he shivered and coughed.
The sun rose slowly in the sky, but it was not warm. The trees were bare of leaves.
Winter, he thought, looking at the bare branches. It must be winter. Winter in the northern mountain territories. What a place for a beginning.
He was walking along, not thinking of anything in particular, when the silvery lettering of the System appeared unbidden in his field of vision.
New Resources Available:
Arcane Dust: 150
Experience points (XP): 150
Select: Absorb rewards to Workshop
Select: Reward Details
He smiled. What was this? He had no idea what any of these terms meant, but he guessed he should get to know the System, and this was as good a time as any. Still walking, he selected Reward Details, interested in finding out what might happen.
Reward Details:
Reward Classes:
* Magic use
* Enemy Elimination
* Survival
Arcane Dust Rewards:
* Spell Use (Fire, Light): 100
* Bonus (Survival Situation): 50
* Total: 150
Experience Point (XP) Rewards:
* Enemy Killed: 50
* Magic use (Fire, Light): 50
* Survival Bonus: 50
* Total: 150
Select: Absorb Rewards to Workshop
Not knowing what else to do, he selected Absorb Rewards to Workshop.
Before him floated into being two things, very clear and crisp but strangely out of place, like a hallucination.
On the left was a pile of gold coins, but they were very strangely bare of any word, rune, or device imprinted upon them. On the right were two vials made of thick crystal and stoppered with red wax. They contained the finest gold dust Saul had ever seen.
One of the vials was completely full, but the other was only half. Saul immediately made the connection.
Arcane Dust, the System had called it. Total: 150. One vial full, containing 100 Arcane Dust, and the other containing only 50.
And the coins, they must be the experience points, and each coin must represent 10 XP.
As soon as he’d had the chance to inspect them and come to understand what they were, the vision faded, and there was no sign either of coins or vials. They must’ve been “Absorbed to the Workshop,” whatever that meant.
So, this new way of doing magic was based on a tangible, reward-based system. Saul must be able to use these XP coins and Arcane Dust vials in some way to build his magic, presumably in the Workshop.
What was the Workshop? How did he get there?
He was about to attempt to explore this question further when something more urgent caught his attention. The smell of woodsmoke drifted in the air.
He drew in a deeper breath, and a sudden hope flared in his chest. Woodsmoke meant fire. Fire meant people, and maybe even a village.
Saul hurried, making quicker progress down the path toward the scent. As he went, the path grew better maintained and looked relatively well-used. He must be getting close.
One moment, he was walking through a thick, unchanging landscape of tall trees. The next moment, he found himself at the edge of the woods.
The trees ran right up to the edge of a sheer cliff drop. Here, the trees jutted out at crazy angles from the cliff edge, their roots burrowing into the rockface and their leaves hanging out over the chasm. Saul stood on the edge of the cliff and looked down.
Below, in a flat space at the bottom of the long cliff, was a village. Beyond the village, mountainous highland country stretched away into a gray rainy haze, with a suggestion of greener lands beyond. From the sun, Saul guessed he was looking roughly south, with the bulk of the mountain range behind him to the north, the direction from which he’d come.
Smoke rose from the chimneys of the village, and Saul could see people moving about. It was not a large settlement. There were perhaps twenty-five buildings in all, most of them humble dwellings, except one or two larger buildings in the middle. One of these, from the sounds of it, was the blacksmith, and the other looked like an inn.
A sturdy palisade wall of sharpened wooden stakes encircled the village, with only a single gate allowing entry. Two guards stood at the entrance, wearing armor and holding long halberds, but the gate itself stood open.
Saul was about to attempt to find a way down when he heard a heavy footfall behind him.
“Stop right there,” a voice barked.
Saul turned and found himself face to face with a monster.
Gleaming yellow eyes glared narrowly at him from a scaly green face. Saul took a step backward, then stopped, the sheer drop over the edge of the cliff at his back.
He looked up and around.
There were five of the monsters, their green, feather-like scales glistening and gleaming with countless colors in the shifting light. They were the size of small horses, but they walked on two legs not four.
Each one had two powerful hind legs designed for sprinting, and short, thick arms equipped with gleaming metallic claws for slashing and grabbing. Powerful, sinuous necks and long snouts gave way to mouths of sharp teeth.
Raptors.
The raptors were equipped with saddles, and fine sets of gleaming leather tack and harness. The leather glowed a rich brown as if freshly oiled, and the buckles gleamed despite the gray morning.
Each raptor had a soldier on its back.
In the saddle of the Raptor nearest Saul was a young man, late twenties at the most, with an alert, suspicious face and a broad scar down one cheek. A practical, simple steel helmet covered his head and neck but left his clean-shaven face in view. His armor was mostly chain mail and leather, but he wore a breastplate of red steel, engraved with the eight-pointed star of the realm of Xorn.
Raptor Riders. In Saul’s former life, the Raptor Riders of Xorn had been the stuff of legend.
He had never thought to find himself face-to-face with one.
They had been destroyed long before Saul’s time, just one of the many casualties of the bloody Faction Wars that had prompted Saul and Emperor Karak to embark on their quest to unify and pacify the many diverse tribes and factions of Keldor.
“Steady,” the young man on the back of the raptor said. “Don’t fall off the cliff.”
He moved his raptor back a little to give Saul more room, and the others followed suit. While all the others glared with suspicion in their eyes, the young leader looked at Saul warily but without judgment. The suspicion had left his face, replaced with a look of guarded interest.
Saul took two steps away from the cliff edge as instructed, then stood very still.
“Captain Jerryl,” one of the other men said in a warning tone. “Be careful. This man might be dangerous.”
Captain Jerryl did not take his eyes off Saul.
Saul moved his own eyes from the raptor to the captain, then to the young soldier at the captain’s side. The raptor could have had Saul’s throat out and his guts on the floor in the blink of an eye if the captain ordered it, and everyone knew it.
“There’s a lesson for you here, Krum,” the captain said in a measured tone, addressing the young soldier as if they were on a training field but still not taking his eyes off Saul.
“A lesson, sir?” the young soldier said.
“Look at this man, Krum,” Captain Jerryl instructed. “Look at his feet, his clothes. Look at his hands. Do you see any runic engravings on this man? Any magical light or shadow?”
“Uh, no, sir, but he might be a—”
“A diversion? Perhaps. But perhaps not. We are the Raptor Riders of Xorn. We ride for justice, Krum. I will not judge this man until we know more, and nor should you.”
The captain looked to Saul. “Are you the messenger?” he asked brusquely. “The man who was sent?”
A sudden wave of dizziness hit Saul like a club to the back of the head. Without intending to, he stumbled forward a few steps.
The raptor took a step back. Jerryl waved a hand to the riders at his side. “Krum, Mitten, get him onto one of your raptors, and then get him down to the village. This man is at death’s door. Whoever he is, he’s no warlock and no threat to us. Get Zorea to look at him and find him somewhere to rest up, then get back here as soon as possible. We still have our patrol to do, and I’m not going to go out into the forest two men short of a full squad, so get a move on.”
As the two men leaped from their raptors and grabbed Saul’s arms, the captain looked up at the gray sky. “Snow’s coming,” he said to no one in particular, then turned away.
* * *
Whatever hand fate had dealt the man who had previously occupied this body, it had not been kind. Captain Jerryl had not been exaggerating when he had said Saul was at death’s door.
Saul did not remember being carried down to the village, nor did he remember much in the days and weeks that followed. He drifted in and out of awareness, sometimes believing he was back with Emperor Karak, sometimes that he was back in the wild days of his youth, a wandering fighter without direction or conscience.
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Sometimes, the memory of the betrayal tormented him, and he felt himself back in that terrible room of judgment, chained to the stone with manacles of raw power, facing down the condemnation of the Seven Elemental Gods in whom he had placed so much faith for so many years.
Finally, the memory of the searing, indescribable pain that had accompanied the melding of the System with his soul brought him back to full consciousness. He screamed and awoke with a shock as he felt a cool, damp cloth laid on his forehead.
“Easy. Easy, Saul,” a calm voice said. “You’re safe now.”
He opened his eyes and saw, not the looming face of Sarkur, but the round, concerned face of a young woman in her early twenties, pale-skinned, dark-eyed, her face framed by a fall of black hair.
He caught his breath and coughed with a deep, unpleasant rattle. He felt weak and emaciated, but he was aware and in his right mind again after what seemed like a long time.
Rolling his head to the side, he saw a small room, not luxurious, but clean, comfortable, and warm. He was lying in a bed, and there was a fire in a hearth nearby. Next to the bed was a table and a chair, where the woman who now bathed his brow must have been sitting a moment before.
“You…” he croaked. “Who…?”
“Zorea,” she said immediately. “My name is Zorea.”
She put the cloth down on the table and lifted a dish. “Here,” she said, spooning something from the dish. “Try to eat something.”
The bowl was a rich stew, and Saul ate it gladly, tasting goat’s meat, potatoes, and onions. After the first few mouthfuls, he took the spoon and bowl for himself. Zorea sat back and looked on approvingly, her dark eyes full of interest as she watched him eat.
“Better?” she asked when he had finished.
“Much,” he said. “Thank you.”
While eating, a thousand questions had been running through his mind, but when he was finished eating, he suddenly found that he only had the energy to ask one of them.
“Zorea,” he said, and she nodded, giving him a small, wary smile. “You called me Saul. How did you know my name?”
“You’ve been talking in your sleep. I gathered your name from your talk. And… some other things.”
Her eyes were wary but burning with curiosity. Talking in his sleep. That sounded ominous. What had he told her? What did she know?
But there was nothing he could do about it now. He was safe—safe enough, at least, and his head swam and he closed his eyes, overcome with sleep. He laid back on the pillow and took a deep breath, then closed his eyes.
System Access: Main Pathway
Select: View Available Spells
Select: View Available Resources
Select: Initiate Arcane Workshop
He was not asleep, was he? He could feel his body lying in the bed.
Was Zorea still there? Had time passed? He could not tell.
Instead of wondering, he selected Initiate Arcane Workshop from the list that has been presented.
The silver letters glowed and swelled brightly for a moment, then faded.
Arcane Workshop Selected
Warning: Initiating this process will place your body in a vulnerable and unresponsive state. Only continue if you are in a physically safe environment with no enemies nearby.
Select: Continue Arcane Workshop Initiation Sequence (Do not warn again)
Select: Cancel Workshop Initiation.
Interesting. Well, Saul was as safe as he was likely to be able to be.
Safe… As he looked at the options and thought of safety here in this village, the memory of what the two warlocks had said flashed through his mind.
“You think he’s a spy from the village?” the one called Tyren had said. “If they got wind of our preparations, they would be better able to defend…”
The other warlock, Katkin, had snapped at him to be quiet.
The village. Our preparations. Better able to defend…
Which village? This one?
As the thoughts passed through his mind, he selected the option to Continue Arcane Workshop Initiation Sequence.
A sudden sickening lurch passed through his body, and he felt himself catapulted forward. The transition was unpleasantly abrupt, and Saul remembered Sarkur’s words about the System.
“Of course, it has a few things that may need to be ironed out…”
Saul landed with a bump and found himself standing in a place that was very different from the room he’d just left.
He blinked, looking around at the new setting. He was in the Workshop.
A slow smile spread across Saul’s face as he looked around. The Workshop was a long room, wood-paneled and cozy, with a good fire in a large hearth at the end to Saul’s left, and a bank of three tall windows at the other end, to his right.
Thick rugs covered the floor. Rich hangings of gold and red decorated the walls. Above the fireplace hung two crossed polearms on display under a battle flag of red and gold stripes that Saul didn’t recognize.
But it was not his clothing or the opulent furnishings that caught his attention. He stood, astonished, gazing at the tree in the center of the room.
At least, it looked like a tree. There was a short, thick central trunk that branched off into a vast canopy. But the trunk and the branches, rather than being made of wood, seemed to be made of shadows. Within the shadows of the trunk, each hanging above the other, were five globes of different colors that glowed with a steady, attractive light.
On the branches grew strange leaves. Each was round and flat, like a disc of polished metal, and each was imprinted with a complex symbol. They shifted with a wind Saul could not feel.
As he moved closer, the aura of magic pulsing from the strange tree thickened to a point where he could almost taste it.
The small discs on the branches of the shadowy tree were strange. If he looked at them out of the corner of his eye, he could see them clearly. They shimmered with shifting greens and blues, deep reds and vivid oranges. But if he looked at them directly, they flickered and confused his eye, so he couldn’t be sure which one was which.
Frowning, he turned his attention to the central trunk. Here, things were clearer. Rather than flat discs, the trunk contained five colored globes. He looked closer, and they remained clearly visible as he examined them. From the bottom up, he named the colors.
“Flame red, slate gray, pure white, jet black, forest green…the colors of the five foundational schools of magic.”
Understanding clicked into place in his mind.
Spells. He was looking at a tree of spells. Forming the trunk of the tree, the five fundamental schools of magic: Fire, Stone, Air, Earth, and Glade.
Above, on the branches, grew all the different variations, combinations, and developments that became available to a mage once the five foundational Schools of Magic had been mastered.
Just as Sarkur had promised, this was the System’s way of showing him the magic that he could have…but how? How did he access the spells?
His heart thumping, he stepped up, then crouched to reach out and touch the red sphere at the base of the tree. It was a deep, rich, ruby red, the color of coals in a smith’s forge.
His fingers brushed the spell and, for a moment, a flicker of lines ran across the surface. Many curved lines, all tied together to form one highly stylized rune symbol. Then, the lines vanished.
A Sigil. For a moment, the spell-sphere had appeared to have a Sigil printed on its surface. A Sigil of the kind so common in the Old World.
A Sigil, just like the Last Sigil he had so recently tried to acquire, to the displeasure of the Seven Elemental Gods.
Saul stood and looked around. He crossed his arms and for the first time, noticed that he was wearing a well-made tunic and trousers of soft, dark green wool. He must have been dressed in these clothes during his recuperation.
Zorea, the healer, he thought. She must have seen to that. Well, I can’t say I’ll miss the ragged linens I was wearing when I woke up in the forest.
Stepping back from the gleaming spell tree, Saul began a systematic exploration of the rest of the Workshop. As he moved away from the shadowy tree, the shimmering leaves moved and swayed serenely.
The rest of the room was odd, to say the least.
When he first looked around, Saul would have sworn that the room was packed with furniture: long workbenches, tall machines with tubing, gears, buttons, and levers; a small, squat item like a stove; a distilling station for the mixing and creation of potions; a tall, ominous-looking mirror against one wall. But when he stared more closely at these, they flickered out of sight, much as the spells on the upper branches of the spell tree had.
If he glanced at them from the corner of his eye, they appeared clearly enough, But if he tried to examine them or approach them, it was as if they had never been.
Aside from the spell tree in the middle of the room, the fireplace, the windows, and the furnishings, there were only three items that were clearly visible.
One of these was a round table made from dark, highly polished wood, sitting a little to one side of the Spell Tree. Saul approached this a little warily but found to his satisfaction that it showed no signs of vanishing.
The table was at least four feet across and perfectly circular. In a slight dip at its center glowed a great red globe of crystal with a steady light. Five deep grooves ran from this crystal to the edges of the table, divided the table into five equal segments.
As he leaned in to look closer, Saul noticed that two of these segments had symbols carved into the wood near the edge of the table. He recognized them.
One represented a little stack of coins. The other, three crystal vials. The others were all blank.
Saul had not forgotten the strange vision he’d seen just before he’d encountered the Raptor Riders, nor the Reward Details he had viewed through the System, not knowing what the terms meant.
“Arcane Dust,” he said, running a finger over the carved symbols representing a pair of crystal vials and a stack of coins. “Arcane Dust, and Experience Points.”
He turned and looked at the second of the visible items. This was a low, long, rectangular table, also dark wood but covered with a cloth of the richest black velvet Saul had ever seen.
Here, gleaming on the velvet, were his stack of Gold XP coins, and his vials of Arcane Dust. They looked just as they had when he had seen them in the forest above the village. There were fifteen of the XP coins, and two vials of incredibly fine gold powder, one only half-full.
“Absorbed to Workshop,” he chuckled, remembering the command he had used back in the forest.
Experimentally, he held his hand over the items on the table and turned his intention inquiringly toward them.
Resource: Experience Points (XP): 150
Resource: Arcane Dust: 150
Still unsure what he could do with the resources, he decided to finish his exploration of the room. He moved to the window and looked out.
Beyond the glass, heavy rain fell straight down out of a gray sky, the drops pattering on the window and running in streams down the outside of the glass. Saul placed his hand against the glass. It was cool to the touch. There was nothing to be seen beyond the rain.
“Probably just an illusion for aesthetics,” he said quietly, looking out the window, but even as he said it, he wondered.
Where was this Workshop that he’d been transported to. Was there something else out there on the other side of the rain?
Shaking his head, he turned away.
There was one other thing in the room, and it seemed different from the others. This was not a workbench or a piece of furnishing, nor was it made of wood.
It was a door. A door of roughly carved, gleaming black crystal.
Saul approached it warily. The door did not look like the exit from the room. In fact, it looked singularly out of place. It was imposing in the extreme—ten feet high, six across, and carved from a single huge slab of a gleaming, black volcanic glass.
As he got closer, he felt a sensation of heat. He raised a hand toward the obsidian door, then drew his hand swiftly back as the heat intensified.
Inside the black obsidian substance of the door, fire danced and flickered.
On the door, there was a Sigil, flame yellow and three feet across. It flickered as if it had just that moment been stamped into the surface of the door with a red-hot iron.
Saul shivered involuntarily and stepped away.
New Resources Available:
Arcane Dust: 50
Experience points (XP): 50
Select: Absorb rewards to Workshop
Select: Reward Details
“What’s that for?” Saul wondered out loud, and the System apparently took this to mean he wanted to see the reward details.
Reward Details:
Reward Class:
* Exploration
Arcane Dust Reward:
* Workshop Initiation Bonus: 50
* Total: 50
Experience Point (XP) Rewards:
* Workshop Exploration Bonus: 50
* Total: 50
Select: Absorb Rewards to Workshop
“I’ll take that,” Saul said with a shrug, and selected Absorb Rewards to Workshop.
He turned his head as he saw a golden glow from the black velvet table behind him. He stepped away from the mysterious and unsettling black door and returned to the worktables by the Spell Tree.
Sure enough, there were a handful more XP coins than there had been before, and the second Arcane Dust vial—which had been only half full—was now completely filled with incredibly fine gold dust.
He thought over his options for a moment, then sighed.
“Very well,” he said. “It seems the obvious thing to do.”
He lifted the XP coins. They felt heavy for their size, and he hefted them in his hands for a moment, enjoying their solid weight.
Then, he stepped to the table with the red globe of crystal and placed the coins in the segment that was marked with the XP coin symbol.
Immediately, the red globe of crystal crackled with power. Red lightning flickered around it, and a deep hum like the churning of some mighty engine emanated from the table. The whole Workshop was filled with the potential of the System’s power.
Workshop: Sigil Crafting Table
Experience Points (XP) Available: 200
Required to Craft Sigil: 200
Select: Craft Level Unlock Sigil (Level 2)
Saul selected the option.
Red lightning exploded from the crystal globe. The light in the room dimmed, and the Spell Tree behind him rustled its many strange leaves. The lightning swept around the room, then coalesced into a crackling mass of energy above the red crystal in the center of the Sigil Crafting Table.
For a moment, it hung there, flashing and writhing, and then something emerged from the lighting. Something golden and gleaming.
A Sigil.
Som this was how it worked. The System that had been implanted into Saul’s soul used the Old World mechanism of Sigils to advance Saul’s progression.
Instinctively, he knew what to do. He reached a hand toward the golden Sigil that floated above the crystal and focused his intention on drawing it into himself.
For a moment, he felt a tugging sensation between his own chest and the Sigil, and then the strange device suddenly sped across the space toward him. It hung in front of his chest for a moment, and then he absorbed it into himself.
Power flooded him. His skin tingled, and his heart swelled with joy in the feeling of progression.
In that moment, the System responded.
Saul Kramitz: Level 2 Achieved!
Workshop: New Options Available: Level 2 Spell Sigil Crafting
Saul had made his first step toward regaining his power. He had a long path ahead of him. At the end of that path lay a deadly battle with the gods themselves.