"As I expected, nothing to see yet, but the connection does seem stable," Olivander said to Sous and the Guild Master, who had returned to check in on him.

"So what will this do?" the Guild Master asked.

"I have some ideas for a plethora of features, but I only have feasible designs for two of them. The first is sound transmission. You should be able to hear what's happening within a dozen or so feet of whatever the transmission is focused on. I think I can improve it once things have stabilized, or it might work better than I'm guessing. We'll have to see. The next improvement goes along with the change in the dungeon.

"Once the transformation finishes, it will allow competition between either two individuals or two groups of people. My changes to the viewing construct will allow you to view both at the same time!"

The Guild Master was nodding along, transfixed by the construct.

"This is fantastic, Olivander. Truly our guild branch owes you a debt of gratitude."

Olivander waved his hand in the air and was about to tell the Guild Master not to worry about it, when he felt a change in the magic around them. Someone had just deactivated a formidable spell ability.

Olivander turned towards the room's entrance, where a man was now standing.

"That is some marvelous magic, Shadowhand."

The Guild Master's face visibly darkened. He was apparently not a fan of the thief.

"Master Olivander, Guild Master, I'm sorry to interrupt but time is of the essence, and I wasn't sure reception would let me in."

"For good reason!" the Guild Master protested.

Olivander beckoned the man over and then conjured himself a chair.

The Guild Master dropped his look of disgust at Raz to look at all the other seating in the room with a confused expression.

"Please, Guild Master. I sat in one of those awful chairs earlier, and I was afraid I wouldn't be able to walk after getting up. Would you like something more comfortable?"

"Sure, if you're offering."

Olivander conjured the man a stool.

"I thought you were offering something more comfortable."

"Guild Master, I could have conjured an old tree stump, and it would be more comfortable than those chairs. You should fire whoever bought them."

"...I like these chairs."

"There's no accounting for taste I guess. Ah, Shadowhand, or do you prefer Raz? Please have a seat."

Another stool appeared for Raz, and he sat immediately. The Guild Master grumbled for a moment, but then sat on his own stool.

"Either is fine. Mr. Olivander, I have made a grave error and done you a disservice."

"Did you actually take something from me? If so, you're better than I thought."

"I did, but it wasn't a physical object, it was information."

"Oh? And what did I tell you that someone might have actually paid for?"

Raz explained what he had told Biff, and then how he had followed the man to the Barwith manor. Olivander interrupted him once he said the name.

"That was the name of that young nobleman I got knocked unconscious?"

"It was," the Guild Master confirmed. "His father, Helishan, is a prideful man and would have taken great offense at what you did to his son."

"I didn't do anything to his idiot son. He did that to himself. No matter. I assume this Biff sent out some people to track down Gregory and Cooper immediately? Going after my apprentices…does this man not understand how the world works? This isn't something he can get away with. Besides, I'm not worried about the boys. They're with Gregory's father, Burtrum. He's a strong Gold rank adventurer."

"I haven't quite finished, Mr. Olivander. There was another man in the room. He sent him to get your apprentices, I think. Kevek Bloodhunter."

Olivander's pleasant and relaxed expression froze.

"I take it you've heard of the man."

Olivander stood and opened a portal.

"Sous, find Burtrum and the others."

Sous gave a salute and flew through the portal.

"Why would the Bloodhunter work for a petty lord like Barwith?" Olivander asked, pacing back and forth.

"Who is this Bloodhunter?" the Guild Master asked.

"A dangerous man. One who will be careful to stay away from me, but he might have some motivation to take my apprentices. I should have killed that man when I had the chance. He's smart enough to know I won't miss another opportunity."

"What history do you have with the Bloodhunter?" Raz asked.

Olivander's gaze lost focus, as if he was looking far away.

"Ten years ago the Astravian Kingdom went to war with the dragon empire, our neighbors to the far south. The dragons do not have a true collective society — they are territorial, individualistic, and greedy. Each dragon seeks their own ends, and we only call them an empire because they will work together to defend their territory. What changed ten years ago was the rise of a fearsome warlord, Gravenar.

"He bound together a huge host of dragons and all of their minions, set and intent on capturing our homeland. Kevek Hunter, his true name, was a soldier in our army. While it's true that he was a solid fighter and skilled in his class at the time, he wasn't strong enough to matter much. Even so, he had some unique abilities that I took notice of early in our campaign to defend against the dragon incursion."

Olivander shook his head as if to dismiss the memories.

"Sorry, I was drifting into the story a bit. The bones of it is that I recruited Kevek for a special mission, and when it came time to end the war, he betrayed me, one of my dear friends, and the entire kingdom. It was only the way in which he betrayed us that prevented me from killing him then and there. I was a little busy at the time."

"Why isn't he well known as a traitor?" Raz asked. "I know of him by his reputation. A cold blooded killer. A madman. A person you never want to cross. I've never heard 'traitor to the kingdom' on the list."

"I don't doubt that it was better known, but overshadowed by his other proclivities. Time is the primary culprit. Ten years is a long time for the country to pursue a traitor. If what he had done had cost us more, then I'm sure the Hammer would have hunted him down herself."

"The Hammer?" the Guild Master asked.

"The strong right hand of the Queen. She's not someone I would want as an enemy. She was at the battle where Kevek betrayed us, but she wasn't with me when it mattered. She should have been, but I made a last minute change in tactics. I'm not sure Kevek would have even gone through with the betrayal if she had been there. The Hammer is nothing if not intimidating."

Olivander sat back down. It would take Sous a few minutes to find the others, he needed to plan something, but his mind wouldn't stop replaying the past.

* * *

10 YEARS AGO

Along the southwestern border of the Astravian Kingdom, Arch-magus Olivander Casumus prepared for what he hoped would be the final battle with the draconic host. It was a losing proposition, one that General Zemena Corvin was fond of repeating to him over and over again. She advocated holding ground and waiting for the dragons to advance. The hundreds of dragons and thousands of other hydras, wyrms, and draconian people were scattered in the mountains to the west of the Astravian army.

"Arch-magus, we can't approach their position, we'll be torn apart before we even cross the foothills. I don't know if you're aware of this, but dragons can FLY!"

Olivander liked the young woman, but she was surprisingly intimidating. The bloody plate armor and massive hammer slung across her back were one thing, but she was also taller than he was. In a fair fight, she would demolish him, but he wasn't afraid of her; a Magus never fought fair.

"General Corvin, while I do appreciate your stunning observation, it does not change anything. We need to beat back the dragons here. If we don't do it now and they take this territory, we're going to be fighting a decades long war of attrition with a foe that, as you have so keenly observed, can fly."

Zemena glowered at him. "Then how do you expect us to do that without being destroyed?"

"I have a secret weapon!"

"More magic better left alone?"

"...Sort of? It's not mine though, so I can't make that claim. Bring in our secret weapon!"

A pair of aides rolled their eyes and left the tent.

A few minutes later, they came back with a man in tow.

"General Corvin, it is my pleasure to present Kevek Hunter. I noticed his unique magical abilities and strength during our pre-deployment drills, and I have devised a strategy around him."

Kevek bowed deeply to the general. "It is an honor to finally meet the Hammer in person."

"Wait, yes, I have heard of you. Bloodhunter is it?"

"It is not a name I stylized for myself, but it is one I am...growing into."

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

"Coincidentally," Olivander interjected, "Bloodhunter is the Legendary class Kevek possesses. It allows him some unparalleled abilities in hunting and tracking, among other things."

"I assume the 'other things' include you killing the dragon's leadership before this suicide mission of a battle?" General Corvin asked, shaking Kevek's hand.

"General Corvin! You're ruining my dramatic reveal. Now, Kevek isn't yet strong enough to deal with the leaders of the dragons, but he is more than capable of getting behind enemy lines and opening a path. Yes, it really is as easy as it sounds! We portal in, kill some dragons, and boom, war over."

"Arch-magus, even if this ridiculous plan works, do you really think the rest of the dragons will pack up and go home?"

"No, but it will make cleaning them up and forcing them out of the kingdom a real possibility. It's one of the reasons we need the army here. There's going to be some level of chaos after we make our move, and we need the troops here to contain them, then push."

"Would I not be better suited to serving in the front lines instead of behind the enemy then?" General Corvin asked.

"You are distinctly less than sneaky. Hmm, very well. Kevek, Baelish, and I will strike at the dragon leadership. You will remain here to direct the containment. When I pass through the portal opened by Kevek, you will begin your advance on the dragons. The remaining Magi will provide aerial protection. The dragons should be in enough disarray that you won't have to fight through a unified assault. Is that acceptable?"

"It is, though I want to note that I am against this plan. I don't think sending our most powerful offensive asset away before committing to a battle is a wise action."

"Think of me as still being on the battlefield. The battlefield is just twenty miles long and covered with hundreds of dragons and thousands of other draconic minions."

The dragons had brought many minions, but the dragons themselves made up the largest portion of their military might, so Olivander often dismissed them.

"When do you intend to begin?"

"That depends on how fast Kevek can move through undetected. What do you think?"

In response, Kevek walked out of the tent. They followed him.

Olivander sensed the man use some sort of tracking magic, but even though he knew of the man's capabilities, the size of the area it encompassed was staggering. Olivander's own senses fell off a mile or two away, but he could tell the Bloodhunter's senses extended far beyond that.

"If you can portal me to that mountain," Kevek pointed into the distance, "then I should be able to reach the dragon leadership in a few hours."

"Not a problem, but it will take me about ten minutes to prepare. I've never been to that peak, so I need to do a few test runs without being detected."

"How can you be sure where the leaders are?" General Corvin asked.

"My Blood Sense power allows me to detect anything with blood within several miles. As long as they don't have any wards on them, I can sense power as well. I just looked for the group of the strongest dragons."

"I am quite sure Gravenar will be in that group," Olivander supplied.

"Very well."

Olivander worked to set up his portal, and Kevek went over his supplies once more to make sure he had everything he needed. General Corven left to organize the other army leadership and spread the word. They would begin marching in just a few hours.

Olivander opened a portal, and it was a mile off target and four hundred feet in the air.

"Whoops."

The second try proved successful, and he was able to use an observation ritual to peek at the other side without alerting anyone of his presence.

Kevek passed through the portal minutes later.

Olivander found his friend, Baelish, sketching out some ritual diagrams.

Baelish was a High Magus with a unique Magus ability. He could prepare drawings of rituals in advance and cast spells by pulling the rituals out of his grimoire. As such, his grimoire had much less room for other spells, but the utility made up for it enough that Baelish never complained.

"Baelish! Our infiltrator is on the move. He should set up the beacon in a few hours."

"So you went through with it," Baelish said, not looking up from his ritual sketches.

"Did you expect anything less?"

"No, I suppose I didn't. What sort of rituals should I prepare for Gravenar?"

"None, your job is to suppress the others while I kill the warlord."

"Oh, and you assume you'll have plenty of time to draw rituals while dodging dragonfire, claws, and whatever foul magic they have prepared?"

"Naturally. I am both talented beyond my years and utterly infallible."

"I know you too well to think you actually believe that. Be serious, Olivander."

Olivander picked up and examined one of Baelish's rituals.

"You should adjust the tilt through the outer edge markings. You're losing at least six, probably ten percent efficiency."

Baelish grabbed back his page and looked at the ritual.

"I may have drawn that one with a little too much haste…don't try to distract me though. Are you prepared?"

"I am ready, old friend. I'll light up the observers while you get your grimoire in order. Then it's up to you for some distraction while I prepare a few binding spells. Gravenar won't go down easily, but once he's bound and unable to flee, it will be all but inevitable."

"And this man, the Bloodhunter?"

"He's there to get us into position for a surprise drop on the dragons. He's not strong enough to do anything to Gravenar, and from what I understand, doesn't have ranged abilities strong enough to affect the others. He might be able to provide us with some buffs though, so I won't send him back immediately."

Baelish sighed. "Good enough. Oh wait, I forgot. Won't the Hammer be with us? That should simplify some things. That woman is something else on the battlefield."

"She's staying behind to deal with the aftermath. It's more strategically sound given the difference in power between us and the dragons."

Baelish and Olivander were the two strongest of the Magi, though he wouldn't presume to challenge the oldest pair of their elite group. He was sure the old crones were far more dangerous than they let on.

"I don't like it, but fair enough. We need the army to survive, after all. With her and the other four Magi we have on hand, that should be enough."

"Agreed."

They finished their preparations, and a few short hours later, Olivander felt the magical beacon he gave Kevek pull his attention to the west.

"It's time," he said, no trace of his earlier light hearted attitude in his voice.

He sent a runner to the Hammer, and he opened a portal for Baelish and himself.

They arrived on the top of a cliff, overlooking a valley where a group of dragons slept. Gravenar, the dragon warlord at the center.

Olivander closed the portal and nodded to Kevek.

"Good work. If you're up to it, follow us down, but I don't expect you to kill yourself trying to fight these monsters. We need to move now, Gravenar would have felt our arrival."

Kevek nodded. Olivander opened another portal that carried them down, near the dragons below.

Before they had even fully stirred, Olivander called down fire from the sky.

"Flames of Annihilation!" he shouted again and again.

Baelish's grimoire flashed and he ripped out a page that burned up.

Blasts of lightning tore out of the sky, down onto the rousing dragons.

When the lightning hit, it bounced off of invisible wards, and Olivander knew something was wrong.

"Bael! Get OUT!" Olivander threw open a portal, but it shattered a moment later.

"Ha, ha, haa. Welcome, Arch-magus," the massive dragon Gravenar said, his voice rumbling over the entire area.

"Gravenar. It's about time we met. I see you knew I was coming."

"We dragons are not so unreasonable. We can negotiate, and we can make deals."

The ground flashed beneath their feet, and a huge ritual lit up with draconic power. Olivander felt all of his wards stripped away.

The sound of a watery cough pulled his attention back to where Baelish stood.

Olivander looked, and the man coughed blood again. A long bone knife protruded from his chest, and Kevek Bloodhunter stood behind him, twisting the blade.

"NO!"

Olivander took a single step before a dragon's claw slammed into him, launching him away.

By the time he got back on his feet, Baelish was on the ground, unmoving.

Disbelief and shock were the only feelings Olivander had. He had forgotten how easy it was to die. They were powerful, and overlooked it, but without any magical defenses, a knife through the heart was just as lethal to a Magus as it was to a simple man with no power to speak of.

If there weren't a half dozen dragons about to try to kill him, he might have been able to save his friend. Potent healing magic was an option, but it wouldn't bring him back from the dead.

No.

His mind was reeling at a new scene playing out before him.

The Bloodhunter was kneeling over Baelish, and Olivander could feel him consuming the dying or dead man's power. As he watched, stunned and unable to move, he could feel the Bloodhunter advance, growing stronger with every passing moment.

"How?" he whispered. He had no idea. It wasn't something that should be possible. If it were, necromancy and blood magic would be considerably more popular.

You don't have time, Olivander.

A voice in his head. His own? He didn't know.

You need to kill the dragons, Olivander. They will destroy you and let this man feed on your soul.

"No," he responded to the voice.

Olivander was a powerful Magus, but in the grand scheme of things, he was inexperienced. He was just beginning to meddle with the crafting of custom spells. In that moment he decided that meddling and dabbling wasn't enough.

His grimoire opened to a blank page. Olivander summoned a knife and cut his finger. He drew on his grimoire in blood. He could draw out a ritual without it being in his grimoire, but then it wouldn't channel the power of madness as well, and he needed a lot of power.

From Flames of Annihilation, he pulled the essence of destruction. From a dangerous spell that called the powers of the Abyssal Realm, he pulled the essence of unmaking. From a lightning spell that ignored magical protection, he pulled the parts that allowed the magic to drill through the world itself to its target. From a spell that he had been working on to break the foundations of magic that made up dragon rituals, he pulled the elements antithetical to dragonkind and their power.

In a haze of rage, fury and grief, he wove these magics together into the most terrible spell ever crafted by mortal hands. It was written in blood onto the pages of his grimoire.

When he finished, he needed but pull it back out. To draw it into the real world and activate it, but crafting a spell was not an instantaneous process, and the dragons were upon him.

Lost in a trance, he would later profess that the only thing he could see was the body of his dead friend, and the man who stood over him, consuming his power. Even so, he fought.

Olivander wove through the dragons, recreating wards and magical defenses that had been destroyed by the dragons' ritual. He ran his senses through the ground, finding other such buried rituals and deftly steering the battle away from them.

He has summoned a blade that he mostly used to batter away claws, he created portals that swallowed dragonbreath and other techniques, raining the various abilities back down on his opponents. All the while he slowly and carefully drew out a ritual with a bloodstained hand. It floated in the air beside him, and gave off an oppressive feeling of malice.

As he drew, the dragons realized that the magic he was crafting was their end. They fought tooth and nail to stop him, Gravenar the first among them. For all his might, the human Magus was more than his match, but it was too late for him to flee.

Finally Olivander finished drawing, and magic thundered from his grimoire, consumed by the ritual.

The spell was so threaded with intention, that it almost didn't need to be activated, but he had reserved a portion for the word that he wanted the dragons to hear before he wiped them away.

"Die."

Throughout their battle, dragons in the area had been slowly awakening, drawn to the sound of battle nearby. In addition to the half dozen that Olivander was fighting, a dozen more wound up nearby, watching the battle unfold.

As the spell was released, every single dragon within a mile of Olivander was wiped from existence.

In one moment they were there, and in the next moment, they were breaking into motes of black magic that faded into the void. Nothing could stop the magic, and nothing could protect them from its effects. It was the End of Dragons.

The Bloodhunter looked on in abject horror.

The spell was more than Olivander could handle, and the backlash nearly killed him, but he kept standing. He stared at the murder and traitor until the Bloodhunter fled.

Unable to give chase and unable to stay on his feet, Olivander fell, slipping into unconsciousness.