I’m probably not making it out of this one.

The Kingdom of Uralda contracted every skilled artificer within their borders that they could find to build this place. They even reached out to the neighboring nations to borrow some of the most eminent artificers this side of the continent to help construct it. Hiring a single decent artificer is already no small sum, let alone a Great artificer. They must have practically bankrupted themselves doing it. The country definitely wouldn’t recover for a long time, but it was worth it. After all, there’s no way I’m ever getting out.

It was masterfully done, though. I’ll give them that. To start with, they had chosen an exceptionally mineral-poor part of the country to build this place in, and what few minerals could be found in the area must have been completely drained before they’d even begun building. I performed a quick mana tug at the surrounding area for miles as soon as I realized I couldn’t break the wards, just to see if there was even a fraction of a unit of mana I could use, but they were damn thorough. Every mineral that could possibly hold a smidgen of it had been detected and collected, and they didn’t even leave behind any residuals. Those had been sucked up, too. They were so meticulous that they actually sucked out the wisps left behind.

I should have known it’d be a waste casting that mana tug anyway. Just to be on the safe side, they surrounded the place with blackstone, that damned stone the Dwarves mine up north, so the effects of any spells I cast towards the outside were weakened. If they went to the trouble of putting eighteen feet of blackstone between myself and the walls of bedrock around me, then they’d absolutely make sure to stamp out any possibility I have of gathering mana from the outside world.

Of course, there’s not much of an outside world. I have no idea how far down they threw me, but if I dug any farther I’d probably hit the ceiling of the underworld. Fitting. I’m sure that’s where they hope I end up. 

If that were actually the case, it’s better that I can’t dig anyway. From the information received via mytug, everything outside of the blackstone pillar was solid bedrock. My range is nothing to laugh at either. It would have rated Great, easily, maybe even Grand, if they allowed my kind to have such titles. But I could sense nothing but generic, mana-neutral stone that seemed to go on forever. No sudden cavities opening its thirsty maw beneath me, thankfully. Maybe they only threw me halfway to Nebur. Needless to say, reaching any mana from the surface was an impossibility.

If they were careless, they wouldn’t have dug down so far, and I could suck some mana from flora and fauna on the surface. Even through the blackstone, I could eventually suck up enough to burrow a hole through which I could funnel some real mana, without that barrier eating most of it up. At that point, it would be a cinch to regenerate and eventually dismantle the wards. Although, I have no doubt they enchanted the blackstone against wear of all sorts.

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

The wards were what held me back from making my way up towards the surface in the first place.  Even though I’m a practicing encanter, a standard ward would have been nothing. I could have batted it away with the back of my hand. These weren’t your standard wards, however. The Kingdom of Uralda hadn’t hired the greatest artificers this side of the continent for no reason. I would have had trouble with these even on my best day. They must have made several breakthroughs in ward technology working on this. Some of these wards are comparable with the magnum opus of a historical Grand artificer. I expect more than a few were promoted to Grand status for their work here. Even the simplest matrix was so complex I couldn’t examine it with the naked eye. I would have to expend a good chunk of what little mana I have just to analyze them.

I didn’t have enough for even one of the wards because of what they did to my body. My spirit was bound to my bones, they had figured out that much. But they didn’t know which bone exactly, so they stripped me of all my flesh and drained my blood. Not even my bone marrow remained. When they were through with me, they threw my desiccated skeleton into the hole in the middle of the temple. I fell for what seemed like ages, wards activating right behind me and pushing me even faster into the pit. I couldn’t feel the impact when I reached the bottom, but it sure must have hurt. I didn’t suffer any damage, though. My skeleton is tough enough to survive most hits. I made sure of that. 

Maybe I shouldn’t have. That’s what damned me to this fate in the first place. I’ll be stuck in here until the end of time, and I’d have to be conscious through some of it. I don’t sleep, but the numerous experiments I performed on my body allowed me to enter stasis to conserve mana. I could cast a spell to wake me up after a set period, but that would waste what little is left in my bones. Instead, the stasis would cease after a random period, the likelihood of cessation increasing as I stayed in stasis longer. I could be in stasis for a day or a millennium. I’d “wake up” feeling like no time had passed, and my time in stasis would seem to me like only a memory, but really I would experience every maddening moment while in stasis. The best way to think of it is as if it were a memory experienced by someone else. It was the closest thing to unconsciousness I could muster, but it would save my mana. The downside being that I couldn’t react if anything happened during stasis. I would only be aware of what happened after the fact. That was how they got me.

I suppose I should be flattered that they went so far for me. It proved just how well I had attained my goal, and I got to make one final insult to that place. Bankrupting a country, while not my most glorious achievement, certainly ranked highly. I would forever remain in the hearts of Uraldans as the man who destroyed their country, scourge upon the innocent, harbinger of death, decay and disease incarnate, slaughterer of their Great Hero, purveyor of evil,  and sower of hatred, Ashen Kraft.

I suppose I ought to go into stasis now. My situation isn’t going to change anytime soon, and mana starvation is a nasty process. I want to stave it off as long as possible.