Alex Roth was screaming.

The energies of Kelda's machine were boiling through him, piercing his very soul with sensations unlike any he’d ever felt before. He’d known pain and pleasure, endured hunger, anger and despair.

He’d borne the shock of a bane knife carving away bits of his soul.

But, what he was now experiencing was something else entirely.

There was no word, emotion or sensation he could think of, in any language he’d learned, to describe what was passing through his body; his soul felt as if it was on the brink of combusting, smouldering, disintegrating. The sensation was beyond excruciating, deeper than anguish; like his entire being was on the verge of shattering.

He felt little pain, yet, there was a deeper suffering coursing through him that went beyond the physical.

He reached for every meditation technique he’d ever learned, acknowledged that his soul felt like it was shattering. He was determined to let the sensation pass over him. It wasn’t easy, but the stakes had never been higher; through a mix of will and utter calm, the Fool of Thameland pushed through.

Slowly—over what felt like hours, but couldn't have been more than a few seconds—Alex grew accustomed to the feeling. He began to relax, allowing himself to be taken by the energies.

The incandescent light around him shifted, concentrating above his head. The light shimmered, taking on the beginnings of a male form…

…that suddenly came into clear focus.

Alex had thought he was seeing a reflection of his body, but soon realised that wasn’t the case.

‘That's not my reflection,’ he thought. ‘It's my own soul. There’s…something else there too…oh, by the Traveller…’

The young wizard recognised the image looking back as the most enduring gift and curse he’d been granted by Uldar on his eighteenth birthday; the Mark of the Fool.

It had appeared on his right shoulder on the night he’d turned eighteen: a glowing, mocking jester's face. But his soul looked far different.

The Mark had completely permeated and enveloped it, surrounding it like a shirt fitted too tightly. He could barely make out his own face in the soul-image, as it was mostly obscured beneath the grinning jester’s face. Something else stood out, intermingled with the jester.

Something older.

Indistinct.

A chill went through him as he now better understood why Kelda had failed.

‘The Mark’s completely integrated with my soul.’ he realised. ‘It'd be impossible to free it without damaging my essence. The patch…there's no way to tell what’s patch, what's original Mark, or what's actually my soul! If I start cutting blindly, I’ll destroy myself like she did…’

He gripped the controls.

The scalpels twitched above him.

Alex set his jaw, carefully examining what he was seeing high above. ‘But I have an advantage, I know how Uldar’s designs work and because of that… I can see it! I’m seeing parts that are necessary for the Mark’s design and parts that are redundant! Those extra parts have got to be the patch! I can do this!’

Drawing on every bit of determination he could muster, he poured his power into the scalpels, slowly lowering the arms toward his body, watching as the blades broke his skin. All the while, he observed illusionary versions of the scalpels touching his soul in the image above the operating table. Another wave of suffering ripped through him, but months of carving his soul with Val’Rok’s bane knife steadied him, keeping him from making a slip that would destroy his soul. He neither faltered nor stopped, the desire to be free of Uldar’s Mark driving him.

Fear could have taken over, stopping him, but he knew the church would never stop, no matter how much he ran…until they finally caught him.

So, he pushed on, carefully feeling around his soul, focusing on the image above him, watching as Birger’s tonic and energies of the Cage altered the colours of his spiritual essence and the Mark’s.

His soul now glowed bright silver, while the Mark shone like gold, yet he still could not differentiate between the patch, and the original Mark.

At least, not by sight alone.

But, from studying Uldar’s notes and harvesting bits of his soul…

‘There,’ he thought excitedly. ‘That's the first place I should cut.’

Several scalpels entered his soul through his left leg, reaching deep, weaving through threads of what should have been the patch. He felt the Mark’s fibres grow taut against the charged bane knives.

The Fool took a deep, steadying breath, then slowly snipped the fibres, sending a sudden wave of shock through his body. For an awful moment—he thought he was dead.

Jarring, discordant waves pounded him.

The first one brought feelings of relief, then triumph, then freedom, the next brought desperation, agony, and rage; another soon followed, sweeping over Alex, smothering him with swirling images; the foolish grinning face of the Fool snarled down at him, bearing undisguised hatred, announcing its wrath.

Uldar’s wrath.

A litany of failures hit like a tidal wave; every error he’d ever made, crowded his consciousness with a fury the Mark had never unleashed before.

Dizzying.

Crushing images.

Whirling through his mind.

Turning his stomach.

‘It's defending itself…!’ The thought screamed in Alex’s mind. ‘Maybe cutting that fibre triggered it? But how? The Mark’s only supposed to activate from spellcraft, combat, and…oh no.’

Divinity.

He was interfering with a god's work, encroaching directly on the divine while bathed in the machine’s multitude of energies, including mana and divinity.

‘That must've been enough to provoke it!’ he realised. ‘And…oh shit!’

More images struck. More failures. More horrors. But something was different now.

‘Those places…those things! I’ve never seen them before! Never experienced any of that! How—Oh no,’ another realisation. ‘The evening of my eighteenth birthday, when I first got the Mark, I had all these images of places and things I’d never seen before pour into my head. By cutting that thread, I probably reactivated whatever that was!’

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He saw himself in tears, standing on battlefields…but, it wasn’t actually him, not Alex Roth…but, it was still the Fool of Thameland. Thousands of years of ridicule crashed down on him in a deluge. Fleeing from monsters. Shaming from other Heroes, whether Sage, Chosen, Saint or Champion, it didn’t matter, most never hesitated in mocking the Fool.

He saw himself—the Fool—trying to guide his companions on a ship.

He saw himself—the Fool—leading an army of Ravener-spawn, wielding two dungeon cores…only to be destroyed by the Heroes, the church and the army of Thameland.

He saw himself—the Fool—start a successful business after the war had ended, only to be stabbed to death by a rival’s hired thugs in an alleyway, unable to defend himself…but, that time, it had been herself.

The sense of repeated deaths enveloped him.

The Fool had died starving in gutters. The Fool had died freezing in caves. In dungeons, ripped apart, then eaten by Ravener-spawn. Alex could feel every blade, every pang of hunger, every Ravener-spawn fang.

His mind began to break.

He could barely form a coherent thought; his meditation techniques were all that stopped his sanity from bursting. He clung to consciousness, forcing his eyes back to the image above him.

Distantly, he heard Hannah and Carey’s voices calling.

The Fool was either going to die, or his soul would collapse.

He should stop, but he couldn't, not now. He’d already damaged the patch; it would bombard him with his own failures, and the failures of every other Fool that it had ever insinuated itself on, right up until he came apart.

All he could do was just keep going.

‘Keep going…it'll work…must work…’ Thoughts were barely forming. ‘Have to…try to…think…adapt…think…adapt…’

He focused on the image, gripping the Cage’s controls, pushing the bane scalpels toward the next section of the patch.

‘There…’ he thought, just managing to hook the cutting edges into the Fool’s fibres.

He made another incision.

More waves of discordance.

Relief.

Triumph.

Complete hatred and pain.

And—for a brief time—the Mark’s tide of images ceased.

Alex Roth, the Fool of Thameland, regained his bearings, looking for the next place to cut. ‘Not there…or there…that part’s redundant too! There!’

He hooked the scalpels into the fibres—

The jester’s face screamed silently, rage twisting it.

A new tide of memories slammed into him, these even worse than the last. In the space of one single heartbeat, Alex was gutted, blinded, crushed, broken and dissected repeatedly, dozens upon dozens of times.

He turned his head to the side and threw up.

His brain screamed.

But the scalpels were already hooked onto the fibres, they incised another one.

Another shock ran through him, this one the most intense yet; his entire body locked up, spasming, gagging.

New waves fell over him.

Feelings of freedom and relief.

Triumph and power.

Desperate rage, hatred, disdain.

But he could take no notice of them.

‘Where to cut next…’ he thought. ‘I have to get the scalpels in before the Mark reacts again. Its attacks are getting worse! Where? Where? There!’

The scalpels pierced his left arm, right through the scar that Burn-Saw had given him. He was hooking the scalpels into the fibres…

—the Mark struck.

Despair gripped him.

Streams of death and dying returned, bringing him to the depths of anguish. Failures, both large and small: imprisonment, despair, betrayal…all woven together in a perfect blending of torment designed to break his mind.

He couldn't take anymore…he couldn’t…

‘I can’t do this…’ his thoughts slowed. ‘But, I… something’s…different. It’s changed! Something’s changed!’

The Mark’s attack came on, more brutal than before; the images increased, becoming more personal. Yet, not as vivid, not as overwhelming as minutes before, they felt more distant, not nearly as fresh, like memories fading with time. He understood what was changing.

‘It's getting weaker!’ he thought. ‘I cut enough fibres to weaken it!’

He immediately cut the next section.

The waves came again.

Freedom, ease and relief.

Triumph, pride and power.

Desperate rage, hatred, disdain, contempt…and now, fear.

In that moment, Alex realised what the waves signified.

The feelings of freedom came from his soul, relieved as its bonds were slowly cut away. The feelings of triumph…were coming from the original Mark, finally reawakening after all these millennia.

And all of that desperate rage and fear?

That was the patch. That was the Mark of the Fool. That was Uldar’s will, fighting to keep itself from being destroyed.

‘I'm damaging it!’ he thought. ‘If I'm hurting it, that means I'm doing the right thing! That means I can kill it!’

He found the next section well before the Mark’s next attack came, and was already cutting it when a new wave of painful memories hit. This time, the Mark tried to bury his mind in a hundred lifetimes of failures at once, all playing out at the same time. It was determined to stop him, overloading his mindwith failure and shame, forcing his brain to comprehend millennia of memories in the space of an instant.

Had the Mark attacked with these images when he’d made his first cut, his mind would've broken…but those centuries of memories were foggy now. Indistinct. They were present, but not as insistent upon his attention; they could be ignored, he could guide his mind past them.

And he did, cutting the next thread.

A familiar shock raged through him.

Yet, his soul felt free.

Uldar’s original Mark roared like a beast almost free from its chains.

The Mark of the Fool looked down upon the Fool of Thameland, the hate-filled grin no longer twisting its face, replaced by an expression of sheer terror. The jester’s image was unravelling, dissipating, splitting apart at the seams.

‘This is it,’ he thought. ‘The patch’s outline, I can see the difference between it, and the original Mark now! I can cut the last of the fibres all at once!’

Bane scalpels slid into his body, hooking fibres on his soul. He felt them growing taut just before they were severed.

Above the operating table, the jester’s face screamed.

A memory struck the young Fool of Thameland.

In the image he…no, she…was in this very machine. It was the final memory of Kelda of Clan McCallum, a former Fool of Thameland. She was filled with anger and confusion as she tried to choose where to cut. Her assistants were watching through the bars surrounding her, they were all shouting.

Her soul’s energies were collapsing, rupturing.

She felt a mind sensing hers in her agony. It was Hannah, connecting through their power.

She felt Hannah reaching across space.

The Fool felt her friend and could see her coming from her cave.

She knew Hannah could see her too as the Saint of Alric was teleporting to her sanctum. She knew her friend would not make it. Kelda looked up, feeling their connection, seeing Hannah.

Their eyes locked across the gulf between space.

The Fool’s face twisted. Elation died, replaced by anguish.

There was nothing she could do.

Rage, horror and despair filled the dying Fool of Thameland…and beyond that?

The deepest, clearest desire for vengeance.

Vengeance on the Mark, Uldar and his designs.

And like Kelda, Alex was something of a vengeance enthusiast.

For a moment he thought of saying…of uttering a final, cold pronouncement as he killed the Mark. Instead, he was silent, watching the thing that had killed so many young people just like him, scream.

He solidified the image of the original Mark in his mind, naming it: ‘The Mark of the General.’

Then the Fool of Thameland severed the last fibres.

Another shock coursed through his body.

Followed by a wave of extraordinary relief.

Then a roar of exaltant triumph.

And a single, forlorn, dying scream.

With an expression of pure joy on his face, Alex watched the jester’s face shatter as the patch frayed, beginning to drift apart. It collapsed, gradually revealing more of his true soul, until—only the jester’s face—covered his own.

It was disintegrating, passing away like rain before the blazing sun, becoming an indistinct mass. He reached into himself, touching the Traveller’s power, focusing on the ruined patch then teleporting it away, never to touch his soul again.

A mass of energy appeared, twitching, covering the image above him.

A heartbeat later, it was gone.

Alex could finally see himself, joined with the original Mark.

A crown burned atop his soul. In one hand, it gripped a sword. In the other, a scroll. The young wizard turned his head toward his right shoulder.

The grinning jester's face was gone, no longer there to plague him.

Instead a glowing, golden Mark of a sword atop an unfurled scroll, with the blade’s pommel split like the peaks of a crown, had replaced it.

He couldn't believe it. He didn’t dare to hope.

Swallowing, he raised his hand, and touching the mana within himself, Alex spoke an incantation.

It was short, but familiar.

As familiar as his own name.

The words of power meant to conjure forceball poured from his lips.

He waited.

Yet, no resistance came.

For the first time since he'd been branded by the god of Thameland, Alex uttered a spell without meeting interference, no failures clouded his mind, no resistance fought his will.

Nothing.

Just himself, and the oldest spell he knew.

His voice broke as he uttered the last syllable and raised his hand high, conjuring a forceball with a free and easy mind. It winked into being, appearing in a fraction of the time it would have taken with the Fool’s Mark hindering him.

It glowed crimson and bright, perhaps the most beautiful magical sight he'd ever seen.

Alex Roth wept with joy.

And the Fool of Thameland—

No.

There was no more Fool of Thameland.

Alexander Roth of Alric, the General of Thameland, had returned.

He set his jaw.

“You couldn't kill me when I could barely defend myself,” he whispered, mind on the hidden church. “Now, I’m free, unshackled. Let's see what I can do to you. It’s time for the General to learn some spells.”

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In its lair, the Ravener screamed.