I didn’t recognize anything among the landscapes I was passing. The individual elements weren’t that far-fetched, but the way they were put together didn’t make any sense and I would have remembered someone using the kind of ability necessary to break the natural order that badly.

Why was there just a solitary mountain jutting up in the middle of a swamp? Why was that river perfectly straight and flowing uphill? What had happened to all the trade roads? Why was there a gigantic spear of stone emerging from the ground and shooting toward me?

My brain caught up with my eyes and I veered left as sharply as I could, vision spotting from the stress it put on my body. I felt it zip past me, both from the wind on my skin and – unexpectedly – from my Soulroot. The absurd length of spontaneously manifesting stone weaponry had anima infused into it.

If it was a skill, that would be incredibly rude. If it was someone’s Craft, that would be even ruder. If it was some form of automated defense…that would just be interesting. After all, defenses meant goodies that were worth protecting.

I mentally marked the place to come back and investigate later. Sure, someone could come in the meantime and take whatever was in there – if there was anything – but I wasn’t strong enough to even register by most people’s perception of power. Technically I didn’t even have a rank yet, if the old ranks still stood. If they didn’t, I was probably the only judge of the matter left, and I refused to slip far enough as to call the bare minimum of effort a full rank.

Anyone could fill their first Soulroot if they had a mind to think about how and hadn’t delved too deeply into the other way of gaining power. Not many had the desire or dedication to fill their ternion entirely, much less go beyond.

I slipped around another stone spear that had emerged while I was taking note of the surroundings and realized I had a problem. Flight was apparently expensive to maintain. Extremely so, even, and I didn’t have a large reserve with only a single, unsupported source of power.

In short, I was going to begin falling out of the sky very, very soon. Sooner than I could get back to the ground the safe way. Sooner than I could refill my Soulroot and recreate the spellcraft using the new supply.

Hellfire.

*

I don’t remember most of the impact, or the fall that preceded it. I remember frantically trying to call out to the anima around me and predictably failing to bring in enough of it to save myself. I remember reflexively trying to reach out for my old artifacts. I remember trying to come back to consciousness and flinching into sleep to avoid what was waiting for me there.

Most of all, I remember pain. So, so much pain. More pain than even the highest Crucibles, though maybe that was colored by the comparative lack of durability.

*

My next coherent memory is of looking down my body and realizing that neither my right foot – which was turned entirely around – nor my knees – which were very firmly bent the wrong way – should be how they were. I panicked a bit, I’ll admit that. It’s never a fun thing to see that level of damage to your own body, even if it wasn’t your first time.

That was probably why the early steps on the path of advancement focused on reinforcing someone’s body until things like this were incredibly rare. Not that that helped me.

My arms worked, thankfully, so I wasn’t completely helpless. As my body kicked into full hyperventilation, I dragged myself out of the crater my landing had left. There wasn’t much around, just a scattering of stone blocks and a gentle slope that presumably led down into the swamp I’d seen from the air. In lieu of better options, the flat side of one of the stones would do as a place to recoup as much as possible.

I clawed my way over to it, my vision unfocusing slightly along the way. Shock, probably. Not a good sign. I was probably bleeding heavily internally. I shouldn’t have expected otherwise, honestly. Things had to be catastrophically wrong inside when my foot was facing the wrong direction and my entire knee was bent backwards.

Thinking about my own injuries hurt more than they themselves did. That probably wasn’t a good sign either, and in between shallow, hissing breaths and pained arm exertion, I began to wheeze out the closest thing to a chuckle I could make. Of course this was how it would go. I got a hold on the edge of the stone slab. Of course my attempt to live a decent life would end before it could truly begin. I pulled myself up and onto it, sprawling my limbs in the vague hope that it would make it less painful.

Of course I would die even more alone than the first time, without even my enemies as witnesses.

I wasn’t dead yet, but it seemed inevitable. I’d only ever felt this helpless – this unable to save myself – once before, and as if thinking about it had summoned the memory, the anima-absorbing trance I fell into plunged me right back there again.

*

The castle’s halls were dark, darker than usual even for this hour. Those of us who were normally confined to the back passages and their hidden narrowness were taking full advantage to do things that were necessary but otherwise impossible to accomplish easily while still remaining covert.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

For me, that was large-item laundry.

After a year of having to heave individual baskets down passages that were only barely wider than they were, I had finally gotten to bring out the cart. The entire living wing’s worth of oversized items were there, from the Lady Kavinde’s bulky dresses to the Lord Advisor Aiwalkar’s reinforced mantle. It felt good not to skin my knuckles for once.

The time saved was a positive too. It wasn’t often that I got more than an hour of sleep before the sun came up no matter how soon after nightfall I got started.

I wheeled the cart out of the hall, heading for the nearest servant’s door that linked to a ramp, but stopped outside Kynzit Deo’s door at the start of the guest wing. Rumor had it he’d be leaving soon, back to whatever country a Kynzit came from. He’d probably want clean clothes, and there was no chance anyone would mind his things being added to everyone else’s.

Not that there was anyone really to mind, since I was the one who also washed the clothes.

I ducked inside the intricately carved door and went straight for the shadewood wardrobe, pulling it open the moment I could. Minimizing time within the personal space of our betters was something drilled into all of us, so I tugged all of the heavy and richly dyed clothing from where they were clipped. I slipped back outside and draped them as gently as possible on top of the stack of clothes in the cart.

The cart took up most of the door to the washing room, probably by design, something I didn’t recognize or appreciate until I got down there with it. I needed to make this quick before someone else needed to wash something. At least there hadn’t been dinner that night, so there weren’t any dishes. I claimed the washtub closest to the door and got to work unloading it as the enchanted tap filled it with water from the cistern below.

Something papery crinkled in one of the Kynzit’s pockets. Good thing I caught it before it went into the water. I worked the ivory toggle open and carefully slid the paper out. The outer layer was an envelope from my own Lord and technical legal owner, so nothing special, but as I turned it over to set it down in a safely out-of-the-way place, I noticed the seal.

The bright crimson red seal, inlaid with a twisting symbol in Ofethi, a language that survived only in a few loan words that entered the current one. This word was one of them, one that Lord Kavinde made everyone in his employ memorize. It was a complex word to be represented in a single symbol like that, but the complexity was supposedly born of the same descriptiveness that let this particular word continue on.

In Auroshi, it was best translated as “world-ending threat” and the use of that particular wax meant that whatever subject it was, it was both reputably verified and imminent.

The letter almost slipped from my fingers. This was something important. I had to read it. I could re-melt the bottom edge of the wax, reseal it, and no one would know any different. I popped the seal off, careful to leave it intact, and began to read the brief letter inside.

My Allies,

This message contains only sour news and you have my apologies for it. Would only that I had something positive to share.

There is no averting that which comes. As I am sure you have each been doing, I have been working to ascertain exactly what threat is, but my Gazers say they cannot pin it firmly to a single hazard. In their words, it feels as though there are many great threats lurking and each is simply waiting their turn to have their day with us. They say it won’t be long before the first one rears its head.

They say there is even one in the immediate vicinity of my own lands.

Gentlemen, I am afraid there may not be anything we can do to avert this one. I have advised Simo as I will each of you: take what time you need and enjoy life while still you have it. Our world as we know it will soon end.

I will see you all in the next life.

It was signed as being from “the final ruler of Aurosh.”

This, stacked on top of the rest, legitimately did make me drop the letter. We were all going to die? We were all going to die and he didn’t tell anyone? At least no one other than these “allies” of his. Didn’t everyone else deserve to know? Hellfire, what was the point of me washing all of these clothes if we were all about to get obliterated?

And if a major part of it was centered here, didn’t people deserve a chance to get themselves out before the end?

Right there, I made my mind up. I wasn’t staying, legal right to travel or no. I would walk if I had to. But I would get out. I would escape what was coming.

And maybe – just maybe – I’d be able to stop some portion of it. Magic existed. Maybe I could find something, maybe even some hero’s sword like Kylazarin, that could get me the power I needed to do that.

I left the laundry where it lay and went to go collect my spare set of clothes. The quicker I was, the better chance I had.

*

As I came out of the memory, I heard a voice, the first voice I’d heard in this life that wasn’t Solgilan’s or my own brief mutterings. It wasn’t a familiar voice, not even the accent, and it took a minute for my brain – still slow from the injury and the whiplash of the memory – to catch up to what the voice actually said.

“Hey Roshan, didn’t you say this guy was corpsemeat? Because it looks a lot like he’s crying.”

Another voice returned an answer that really wasn’t an answer: “Huh?”

My awareness of the world faded again. I’d just have to hope that they had the decency not to finish me off.