A man in wispy, azure robes dug through a mountain of junk on a nearby desk. His long, inhuman fingers launched objects to the floor and sent papers dancing in the air. Archmage Zandos, a mage of honor and high esteem, was one of five officials dedicated to keeping Aza and especially the Imperium working at their highest capability. His dedication to his and the other officials’ superior, the Black Sorceress, was unwavering. Ever since he had met her when she was a young girl, he had sensed her resolve and her magical ability was unlike any he had ever met before. He believed she was someone who could change the world of magic forever, and thus he had her take a position that far exceeded the one her father once held. After her father’s death, it was only natural that the Imperium would turn to his heir, Nia.
“Zandos.“ The woman on his mind suddenly appeared before him with a commanding tone.
“Yes, Sorceress?“
“I need you to go check on our guest from the incident the other day. His name was Graves, if I recall correctly.“
“Yes, that’s right. I’ll get right on it.“
“Thank you.“ With a turn of her heel, she left the room in quick succession.
Zandos watched her as she left the room, then he pulled close a nearby chair and crumbled onto it. Due to his fatigue, he had let gravity do the work for him, and thus he relaxed with his body leaning haphazardly in an odd sitting position. He led out a great sigh. “Hmph. I’m exhausted…“
The dusty room he sat in was the Archmage’s personal study. It was a cold place lined with an onyx floor, ceiling, and walls. Multiple desks, taken from the Academy when they had no use for them, were scattered about the room. Towers of papers crinkled and aged weighed them down, casting shadows across the dark floor. A sole window, which Zandos sat across from, illuminated the room in a dreary light.
After sitting for a moment, soaking in the gloom, Zandos reached forward and opened a drawer of a nearby desk. He took a sheet of paper from it that was adorned with many lines of text. They detailed the man Graves, leader of the Rumhounds, and noted many things about his past and present affairs.
“Right then. Time to get to work.“ Zandos stood from his exhausted state and made himself look presentable once more, then left the shabby room at a steady pace.
The halls of the Imperium weren’t much different from Zandos’s personal study. Everything was coated in the same onyx color, giving the little light that entered the place not many places to go. The walls reflected nothing. Anyone who stared into them for too long could get lost in the void they created. As he turned down the maze-like hallways, Zandos admired his creation, as he did quite often. The Imperium, designed by him and a mage he called a friend long ago, was an impossibility for the time. The tower was at least three times taller than any other building in Aza, cementing it as the pinnacle of the city’s military and magical might. In it housed nearly all of Aza’s mages who had passed the grueling exams of the Academy. It was, in all sense of the word, the city’s imperium given physical form. A black spire that served as their iron fist to crush any who opposed their judgment.
The only way to get to the hold, the Imperium’s prison, without teleportation was through the council room. Aza’s council was made up of the Black Sorceress and five officials, Zandos being one of the five.
Parting the monolithic doors in front of him, the mage in astral clothing entered a round room. Every corner of it was cloaked in shadow, and at the center lay a large table lit by a single floating flame above. Sitting at the table currently were three drastically different-looking individuals. One was a scarcely clothed man who, at first sight, looked as if he were dying from hunger. His skin was ragged, and his ribcage and other bones were clearly visible throughout it. Calling him a man at all was difficult, as his head was not one of a human. Instead of a round cranium, atop his shoulders were instead a bunch of wriggling tendrils. Floating above them was a strange crystalline object that glowed an ominous teal color. Next to him was a woman completely clad in black cloth as dark as night. A wraithlike cloak seemed to float from her hooded head to her feet. She wore a steel helmet, its visor giving no insight on the look of the wearer nor the color of her eyes. Lastly, the third person was not a person at all, but undead. Above its flowing nightshade cloak and adorned jewels was a skull under its hood. The void where its eyes should be held in them very small, white lights that burned brighter as they centered on Zandos.
“Archmage.“ A soothing, feminine voice came from Venza, also known as the Unseen, the woman clad in dark fabric. “The Sorceress had a task for you, though I’m sure she delivered it already.“
“Yes, she did. I’m on my way right now, in fact. Is the prisoner Graves back from processing yet?“
A reverberating voice spoke in the Archmage’s mind rather than through the air as a noise. It was Ilzathk, known also as the Monarch, the tendril-headed being sat beside Venza. “Yes… he has been processed thoroughly… his mind is open and ready to be transfigured…“
Zandos took a few glances around the room, then asked, “Where’s Arkiel?“
“The Red Dragon is on a special assignment from the Sorceress. Do you require her in some way?“ Imagon, the Eternal, spoke in a deep gravely voice. Though his mouth, or more specifically his teeth and jaws, didn’t move as he did so.
“No, no. I was simply curious, is all. Well, I’ll be on my way.“ Zandos walked past the three officials and left the council room through the other exit.
After quite the tumultuous ordeal, he finally reached the Imperium’s hold. It was exceedingly different from the rest of the building. For one, instead of onyx walls, ceilings, and floors, it was painted in an almost blindingly white hue. The cells resembled those of a sanitarium in design.
The Archmage pensively walked past the ivory rooms, each of them sealed and protected with many different types of enchantments. Some of the cells housed normal-looking humans, although they were not in their right mind. Many of them seemed to be extremely paranoid or suffering from some sort of neurosis. There were many non-humans held as well. Not only were there other humanoid races, but also terrifying aberrations that appeared as though they were once human before. In one cell, there was a wizened man holding his own head. The head was continuously vomiting gold coins onto the floor, which kept evaporating before he could pick any of them up. Another cell held a humanoid creature coated in black fur. All over its body were deep scars dripping blood, except they were healing at a rapid pace. Whenever a wound finished healing, the being would carve the same wound into itself immediately with jagged nails. Another held a small girl that seemed to be made out of pure shadow sitting in a room full of corpses. Another had in it a monstrous hound with several clawed arms growing out of its back. Another held nothing, yet inside a small storm brewed, dripping warm droplets that fizzled out of existence as they touched the floor. Another held a man praying with a toothy smile on his face, though a great iron cross was hammered through his forehead.
These were the fruits of his labor. The stepping stones that would lead to a new realm for humanity. The way to reach the impossible.
Zandos stopped in front of yet another cell, this time the target of his assignment. In the white room was a large, bearded man. He was half-naked with stitches arcing across his upper body like a fleshy spider web. His head was in his hands, his oily black hair twisting around his calloused fingers. He was shaking, and a faint sobbing could be heard from his lips.
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“This isn’t how I wanted to see you again. Well, at least, I had wanted to have a normal conversation before your procedure. I can’t say I’m sorry, but I do feel something when gazing upon you now. The Graves that once was days ago is naught but a dream now.“
Graves remained silent, though his sobbing had stopped at the sound of Zandos’s voice.
“Normally, we keep prisoners in these rooms for months. Some of them for years. Magic allows us to eliminate all sound in them but their own. It doesn’t take long for those endless white walls to dig into their brains. The monochromatic hell eats at their sanity and their soul until they break down. Except, it’s not quite enough to push them over to the other side.“
Zandos kneeled down to Graves’s level, eyeing the hands that hid his disheveled face. “Do you remember when you first arrived in Aza, claiming to be a ‘hero among the people’? You had promised them that you’d fight for them, no matter the cost. But that was a lie.“
Slowly, Graves made both of his hands into fists. The only eye that was visible under his matted hair glared at the Archmage with an overwhelming hatred.
“Do you know why I let you go back then? I wanted to see you fall. I wondered that, if I clipped your wings, how far would you plummet into depravity? How long would it take to become the dog you are? And now, I see. You’re nothing, to no one. You’ll die a worthless death with no meaning, no merit, and no one will care for nor remember your name.“
“N-no. You’re wrong…“
“Am I? Did you ever wonder why, despite all your valiant efforts, nothing ever changed? No matter how many people you saved, even under your persona as the leader of the Rumhounds, that no one cared? It’s because we did the same thing to those that you saved that we shall do to the interlopers gathering once again outside these walls. We erased them. Their names, their memories, their imperfections. All that aren’t eliminated are repurposed in some way. That is the way of the resourceful.“
“I saved them…! I know I did. I did. If I didn’t, then… what have I been doing all these years…? What have I been doing…“
“You’ve simply done what you’ve always done. You’ve served as the last light in the darkness for many. But that light doesn’t last forever, and the fire dances into embers. The sea of darkness claims them all the same, whether you intervene or not.“
“Shut… shut u-“
“You’ll fade away, you and your axe. You’ll burn up without a speck of ash to your name. Your life will be utterly meaningless. Even if someone does remember you, you’ll be forgotten soon enough.“
“No. No. No…“ Graves’s mutterings were beginning to turn hysteric. He held his head once again, curling inward and kicking the pale flooring.
“And at the end of the day, you’d have saved no one, and aided the Imperium with your dying breath, just like the loyal mutt you are.“
Growing flames ignited Graves’s weak frame and burst forth from his heart. The scars on his body burned a violent orangish red. His filthy beard and hair began to ignite like a lit match thrown into a puddle of oil. Graves’s entire form resembled as he looked days prior in the Rumhound hideout, though it was several times more terrible. Ash swirled around the cell, and smoke bellowed about the flame.
I was a young lad. A dumb kid, looking to make his mark on the world.
I was born without an aptitude for magic. For that, I was shunned. My friends. My family. To them, I was worthless garbage.
The Relic War brought me some solace. It was the one place that I felt I could make a difference in the world. That my existence wasn't meaningless. That my death had a purpose greater than myself.
On the burning battlefield, after the Fireweb was cast, I found a glowing axe amidst the scorched bodies. It had absorbed the flames of the Fireweb, and the souls it took that day. Taking it in my hands, my mind lit ablaze and my eyes burned.
‘With this’, I thought, ‘My death would finally have meaning.’ I could change this world for the better, burn the corruption off it like a blazing torch to a cobweb. The axe would serve as a pair of wings that could take me to a higher calling.
And when my wings are torn, I’ll know that my life wasn’t for nothing. I’ll know that I changed the world forever.
Where once sat a neurotic man down on his luck, now stood a monstrous figure one could call an incarnation of fire. Though it somewhat resembled the man it once was, this was no longer human. It was a humanoid elemental that burned even the magic-protected cell walls. From its feet, sputtering embers formed and fire spread, slowly turning the cell into a miniature hellscape.
“Your death will be meaningless. Your actions meaningless. Now go. Sputter and die like the flame you are.“
“Yes,“ the igneous being intoned, “I am but another flame born to die in this world. Nothing more, nothing less. My existence serves nothing and no one. My death will be meaningless.“
The Archmage laughed in spite of himself. He was surprised, though he knew he shouldn’t be. It was only natural that Graves’s breakdown was so quick. After all, the life of the man once known as Graves had been nothing more than an experiment born of the mage’s whims.
“Is it done?“ The Black Sorceress asked Zandos as he re-entered the council room.
“Yes, Sorceress. I managed to trigger a breakdown.“
“Good, good. I had wanted to spare Arkiel the trouble and I knew that man could fill the same role.“
“And what role would that be?“ Venza inquired, her black cloak wavering mystically in the air behind her.
“Burning this accursed city and the Imperium to the ground, as he had always wanted. Though, it will serve us more than it would have ever served him.“
“How so?“
“When everything converges in Aretztikapha, we will no longer have a use for the upper layer. Aza and its residents will be but a thorn in our side if we don’t cut them at their roots now.“
As the Sorceress spoke, Zandos quietly listened seated at the table. Though no one could see nor understand his emotions because of the placid mask blocking his face, his aura began to flow into one of anger and malcontent. This was the first time he had ever questioned his master’s train of thought. She hadn’t even consulted him about his views on the destruction of his life’s work. This both deeply confused Zandos and angered him to his core. How could she not even apologize to him? Converse with him about such things? How could she destroy everything he had done for her without a second thought? Zandos knew he was being selfish. He understood her plan and what it meant for their work. Even though he understood all that, he simply could not come to terms with everything he had built being demolished in a second. If Aza and the Imperium were a sandcastle, Nia was the uncaring wave that would level it without a moment’s notice.
“Sorceress. If I may, is that wholly necessary? Couldn’t we simply erase all who aren’t capable mages and avoid leveling all that we have constructed over these many years?“
Nia’s cold gaze went unwavering, even when she put on a false smile to comfort the magus. “I understand your worries, Zandos, but this is completely necessary. To face the impossible, we must erase all that binds us. This city, this tower, they are all nothing in the face of what comes next. You of all people should understand this.“
“Yes, you’re right my lady. Forget all that I said. Your word is final.“ Zandos forced the sentences out of his mouth.
“Your resolve wavers Archmage… I hope you aren’t planning anything that would displease the Sorceress… or I shall end your life in an instant…“ Ilzathk’s familiar voice resonated in his mind. He slowly shook his head at the enigmatic being sat across from him. Ilzathk’s floating gem blinked softly in response.
“I’m glad you understand.“ Nia spoke in an emotionless tone, as though she cared for Zandos’s feelings as much as a sewer rat beneath her feet. “That prisoner shall handle the coming resistance as well, if all goes to plan. Either way, the path below shall be open to the others and them alone. Speaking of, I have a very special role for each of you, as well.“
As Nia began to explain their roles in the upcoming battle, Zandos stared waywardly at her through his kaleidoscopic mask. Her ink-black hair and eyes full of resolve gave him a mixed feeling of trust and fear. Despite his wishes, Nia would press onward as she always had. All that lay before her were but tools to use as she wished, and he knew that. The problem was the rancor that stirred in his heart. The faint thought of betraying the person he respected and trusted the most had flickered through his mind. He couldn’t pretend it didn’t. After all, Ilzathk had caught it amidst the rush of thoughts he read in the room. He steeled himself, and rose to a standing position as she called his name. His role to play in all of this would be given to him, whether he liked it or not.