[TT] "The only thing to fear is people who think that the only thing to fear is fear itself."
...
As his magics reached out and spread themselves among the skies, dissipating slowly over the horizon in a final usherance of power, Gillian's goblet shook in his hands. Even as he let the cold air of evening sweep over the scenes below his keep, allowing them to flow and carry away the dust; in the setting sun, there was little left to truly witness as proof. On those black lands that rolled on endless hills within his domain, truth of the disaster was all but removed from mortal sight beneath the toiled backs of orcs and corpses.
The land would be brought back to how it was, the proof erased simply as laboring hands and shovels might work, but in Gillian's eyes the greatest of that proof was not evidenced below at all. Such as that was not easily swept away by devoted followers or armies of beasts: It was shown truth by his own glass.
The crystal trembling in his hands.
Excitement... or Fear. Gillian could not decide.
It was the second such monster to strike at him in the recent months, but it had been far more trouble than even he had hoped. The speed, the ferocity... For such a creature to attack him on only a moments notice- why, the beast had put him back several steps before he'd collected himself. Considering his own powers had all but ruled the world for centuries up unto the present day- crushing all who might oppose him, Gillian had long thought the possibility of such a beast removed.
The shock of its sudden arrival had left its mark in the surprise of it all, though not physically of course.
Mindful as Gillian was to the magic arts, there had been little chance in that: No, Ignoring the widespread damage and ruin below (the sounds of dying orcs and underlings writhing in heaps of shattered fragments of the late gargantuan elemental beast that had just recently made a grave error in trying to eat Gillian being the most prevalent examples of such) there was little physical proof to speak. Nothing that a sweep of his staff and a few moment's focus wouldn't be capable of reverting, should he so desire to bother himself with such a task.
The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
A slight visual confirmation had shown none of his towers were harmed in the violence, nor were the lands which surrounded them. If there was any true damage at all, it was when the beast died in such an outrageous show of solid and jagged pieces, and not the battle itself (which left the grounds no worse than a powerful storm.)
Already hundreds of undead were wandering amongst the wreckage, working to pull the pieces away. Some of the shards would be taken for study, but the rest might simply be piled high until Gillian could decide a better use for them. No... there wasn't a single impressive examples of physical damage in his perspective, but there was something else.
Fear.
His fear.
That monster had terrified him: Brought horror and uncertainty in ways he'd not felt for centuries. The thrill of that battle, the creeping unease that came with not knowing for certain if the monster before him could be defeated, if his magics were working on it at all! As that creature threw its might like a tsunami down upon the Blackened Keep Gillian had felt his limits pressed beyond necessary- and then farther still!
His eyes fell to the reconstructed tower along the Eastern segment of the great spire.
The windows of spectral glass, the strange hue of runes and magic seals laced into its every stone. Gillian had spared little expense or detail to such remodeling, and his latest batch of aspiring mages were truly beyond any of their predecessors. He watched as a sizable chunk of their numbers slowly walked along the spirally stairs that curled up the tower's walls, each more grim-faced than the last.
It was in that keep that the worlds were now attuned. Five worlds to be precise, but soon the count might dwindle further. Gillian had delved himself near the borders of the terrible hue, watched the chaos of the spheres residing inside its unbridled power spark and flare at his very presence. He had peered in to see what lay there in all of the possibilities that had closed to finally refine to just those rare few.
After the dismal affair of the first beast to strike, there had been true promise in the second. A creature powerful to challenge him: Most promising a start, for certain.
Gillian knew now that there were other worlds of power, leaking quietly into his own as they were, the traces were abundant. Tiny things, rips and scuffs on the barriers of reality between this world and the rest. He had placed the strain and held it locked in place, but that was only a start.
The last of his mages disappeared within the Eastern Keep, and Gillian nodded to the dark figure that turned to him at the precipice. A heavy suit of charred-pitch armor stared, whatever lurking beneath its wretched helm watching with both hatred and obedience, bringing a cruel smile to Gillian's lips as he drank deeply from the goblet of red wine.
Soon he would tear the worlds open and let their madness rain down into his own, not in drops of chance but instead: A tempest.
Soon.