Even the Temple grew quiet at night.
When Maiz had first come to the place, Monks would be up at all hours, using their Enlightenment skill to train, work, or simply enjoy a stroll through the stone halls. With the war and the need to fight at least once every few days, that had stopped. No one wanted to risk crippling their stamina when they might need to fight the next day, and as the army operated on a nocturnal schedule, meaning the best time to attack was during the day, the Monks all retired to their quarters during the night.
His quarters were in a little wing with the other young males of the Temple, though Hugan was down at the other end of the hall. He had no trouble making it through the winding corridors until he was standing before the heavy stone door. Taking a deep breath, he blasted forward.
He breathed in long, even strokes as he ran, skipping across the wooden beam in a pair of light hops, speeding through the maze, running over the narrow path almost before the flame kindled behind him. He had to slow to crawl beneath the wooden posts of the next challenge. Nearly every time he traversed this room, he smiled at the memory of the young man, a traveler now long evicted from the Temple, who hadn’t been willing to bow his back for the challenge. But this time, focus kept the thought from entering his head at all.
He completed the next rooms in minutes, dashing up the stairs, shattering the spell which tried to fog his mind before defeating the golems in rapid succession with windbladed staff alone.
Then he stopped.
The small room which had once been clouded with incense was dead quiet. The Jin’Tira, the keeper of this place, had died in defense of one of the Temple’s Dungeon’s. Occasionally one of the other Jin stopped in to manage the place, but it hardly mattered at this stage. True, anyone could now enter the Novice Dungeons, regardless of whether they’d already attempted one that day, and the portals were not closed once a group stepped through them, but most of the young monks were Apprentices, Journeymen, or not yet of age to receive a Name. Not to mention that they all were honorable enough not to break the rules of challenging more than one dungeon a day.
Maiz went through four or five Novice Dungeons each day he dedicated to training.
However, this time there was only one portal that interested him. It was easy enough to locate, as he stepped through the curtained doorway and into the next room. He walked up to the arch, and entered the dungeon.
Suddenly his vision was lit by firelight rather than the soft, multidirectional light of the Path. His head nearly brushed a rough ceiling overhead, and before him, the light played on a set of sandstone steps leading down into darkness. He could hear the rustling of something coming up from those depths, held back by the light, but tempted by the sight of prey.
Maiz turned around, walking two steps to the far end of the cramped little entry room, and punched the ceiling.
“Godsdammit!” He’d forgotten to close his eyes, and was forced to spend a few moments brushing sand away from them as tears made tracks down his cheeks. The hot liquid cooled, however, as a chill passed over him. When he opened his eyes, he was looking up into a starry sky.
Clambering out was more difficult than he’d remembered--desert winds had morphed the landscape, so that either side of the hole was piling with sand that covered him as he pulled himself up. He closed his eyes, but he still shuddered at the feel of the stuff worming into every crevice of his clothes, spitting out the gritty grains which made it into his mouth as he ascended. Without his Strength and Dexterity so high, he may not have managed the climb, and his heart was beating a little harder when he finally spilled out onto the desert sands, but he hardly cared.
The moon was full and high in the sky, unobscured by clouds and bright enough to make it easy to see in the darkness. As he plodded over the sands, the silvery light illuminated the mist puffing out with every breath, made possible by the cold air contrasting the heat of the sand below him. Not that Maiz wasn’t used to the juxtaposition--even in Caelos, on the edge of the desert, it could grow cold enough at night to freeze a jug of water left out, and in a few rare cases, hot enough the next day that the water would be scalding by noon.
As he walked, he reflected that the first day he’d walked across these sands, the heat had nearly been enough to kill him outright. Now he moved under the moon’s chill gaze, eyes wide open, shivering in the cold. Much had changed. He was an Apprentice, so close to Journeyman. He knew secrets that had been kept hidden for millennia, and he’d killed men and women in battle.
And the godsdammned sand still gets everywhere.
It took minutes to see the first body, a man half covered by sand, lying in what seemed to be undergarments, his armor having been pulled off by his fellows. His helmet had been left on. The metal was warped, caved in at the front, and a mess of black obscured his features. Maiz had heard of bodies decomposing after days in the open, but that hadn’t happened to the man yet. Instead, his sides and neck had been ravaged by scavengers, dried blood obscuring the worst of the posthumous injuries in the moonlight. His skin was patchy, darkened by the sun to near-black in some places, translucent and almost reflective in others. The smell of excrement and rot and old blood washed over Maiz as he stared at the corpse, forcing him a step back with its sheer weight, but he kept walking, his stomach roiling as he passed the fallen soldier.
Not enough.
It was an old battlefield. Not the first, but old enough that Maiz didn’t remember where he’d been standing during the fighting. He couldn’t remember who he’d killed on this field, either. He did remember that the skirmish had been cut short when the Pyromancer Master had taken the field, and a pair of Jin had run him off the battlefield together. He walked towards the blackened stain on the sands, visible even in the moonlight, where a massive lance of fire had killed two Journeyman Warrior Monks and burned an Adept to near death as well.
Then he sat, breathing in the horrifying odor, and meditated on death.
The cold air helped, he thought. If it was hot, he might have vomited. Awkwardly, he extended his senses around him, letting tendrils of his silver mana flow out into the world, formless. His sense of place receded with each putrid breath, the silence of the desert helping him forget where he was, his mind focused on his mana as it touched the world around himself.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Nothing was happening.
The frustration threatened to intrude on his bubble of calm, to pull him back to himself, but he ignored it. Then cold logic tried to do the same. That was harder to push away, his instinctive desire to attack his problems with the cudgel of his mind. It wouldn’t help.
Maiz drifted, though he kept part of himself focused on his tendrils of mana. He went back to his earlier thoughts, wondering at how much he had changed. Yes, the trial and the training grounds had pushed him in ways he had never expected, but the Temple had truly shaped him. He remembered seeing the Path for the first time, a stone door filling his vision. He could just as easily recall pushing through to Apprentice after finally completing his feat. And he could remember his first kill. A skull split open by his attack, viscera pooling on a stone floor.
Something caught. A cold breath on the back of his neck, almost indistinguishable from the desert night’s breeze, and shiver which flowed through his mana. Suddenly, Maiz could feel more than the cold of the night and vague disgust at the carnage surrounding him. He could sense something, all around him. He strained and it came into sharper focus. Emptiness. Almost cold, but not quite. Not bright, but not dark either. Hopeless, blind to the future. Fear filled him, so hard and fast that it took his breath away, then rushed out, leaving him empty inside.
A void ran through him now, swirling at the base of his skull, extending thin feelers out into the world, and teeth chattering, Maiz wrapped those tendrils around himself.
Run.
Maiz hunched over instinctively as the first whisper sounded in his ear. He let the void of his mana bleed away, but he kept the spell wrapped around his body in sharp focus, even as a purple symbol flashed at the corner of his vision.
Stay.
The voices were indistinct, but even as Maiz stood, they grew in number.
Die.
Monster.
Help!
Give me.
Feed me.
At the last words, the whispers quieted for an instant, then came back. A dozen quiet voices, all crowding in his ears.
Feed us.
He turned, his hand drifting upwards as he prepared to walk, his chattering teeth drowning out some of the voices even as they grew louder. His mind felt… empty, as though even as the void retreated, it left some hint of itself behind.
His hand brushed against something slick, icy cold, and moving. In the moment of contact, he felt a tug at the void surrounding him, the mana still connected to his pool by his mind. Immediately, he shrank away, pulling back at his mana, but his shoulder brushed against something else. Then icy cold touched his cheek, and he felt the void creeping back into him, even as the spell surrounding him was torn away in little chunks.
He ran.
He passed by two more chills, brushing against the first and feeling more of his mana ripped away by the touch. The second hit him as he passed the fallen corpse at the edge of the battlefield. He ran straight into the invisible flesh, felt himself rebound off of it as his mana bled. Bled so much that the spell finally dropped away.
The whispers ceased even as he stumbled past the last corpse, and after a few more steps he went to his knees, panting. What in the--
The abyss. Right. Nomenadon’s church talked little about the other planes, the nine hells and the fate of other souls--after all, the god of Names was master of it all, and few would ever so much as touch another plane. But Necromancers raised their dead from somewhere--shades and wraiths rose naturally in some places, as Maiz had already seen. And apparently they could be created.
What had those things wanted, to be fed? Maiz shivered as he remembered the feel of his mana being ripped away from him, piece by piece. He had been able to resist the pull at first, but he knew with certainty that he had lost something to whatever had been whispering in his ear. Which meant the creatures had gained something in return.
Maiz felt a stirring in the cold air, and a weak tug at his mana pool. He stood up and started running.
He didn’t stop until he was at the entrance to the dungeon again, chest heaving, but even as he considered the minor terror of discovering the existence of spirits that apparently grew stronger by feeding on his magic, the corners of his lips turned upwards. He’d done it.
He dropped into the dungeon, the firelight comforting after his fright in the darkness above. Then, unable to resist, he began weaving his mana, creating a fine web of Controller and Heartshaper magic, then--finally--pulling his new power through it all. He shivered as the void ran through him again, but no new ghosts tried to attack him in the dungeon. Tied to their place of death, as legends suggested. Of course, the legends also suggested that they shouldn’t survive the light of day, so perhaps he’d been a little foolish to try this so close to the battlefield.
Everything snapped into place perfectly, and Maiz could feel the magic running like warm water, enclosing him, keeping everything out as he stood. He looked down at his hands, and nearly jumped in shock. In the firelight, it almost seemed a trick of the eye, but as he moved his hand, he knew that it wasn’t: his hand was blurred at the edges, as though his eyes couldn’t quite focus on it. The effect made it difficult to concentrate on his fingers, but as he stared at his skin, he was able to register an image.
His hand was crawling with incredibly thin, ethereal lines of shadow.
Maiz dropped his hand, the elation he should have felt dampened somewhat by the disturbing image. Shaking away the disquiet, he focused on his notification sheet.
You have learned the Wraith spell Shadowcloak
The ability The Mask has triggered
You have created a new ability (spell) for the Nameless title! You are required to Name your creation
You have completed the Journeyman feat for the Nameless title!
The Mask skill has been updated
His heart soared as his eyes scanned through the text, but before he could even think of dismissing the sheet, the word ‘Name’ filled his vision. What? He tried to will the text away, but it refused to retreat. Fine.
A name. Maiz thought back to the sight of his hands, wreathed in shadow and blurred around the edges. But he couldn’t think of anything poetic that evoked that image. And he could hear growls of the monsters in this dungeon growing louder.
Godsdammit.
There is already an ability named ‘Godsdammit’ available to the Nameless title
Of course there is. Fine. What was the Wraith spell called? Shadowcloak? Then...
Would you like to name your creation ‘The Cowl?’
Maiz smiled grimly as he stepped down into the darkness of the dungeon below, raising his staff and directing his mana through the Windblade pattern, preparing to attack. Yes.