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She could not fight the orichs; they were as elusive to her grasp as the fiator had been. If she could not fight, what use was she, even if she found a way to free the wizard from the seal? Depending on the nature of the seal and his own abilities, he might even free himself, if only he could regain enough strength. But he was dying, his essence drained by the golem and his body corrupted by the scorchborn. Midnight’s mind raced through the possibilities. She hesitated to interfere with the spell sustaining the golem. Did the golem, in its inert state, still serve a purpose? It had shielded the wizard and the avian beast, encasing them protectively. Yet, it continued to consume the wizard’s essence.
The spell had initiated the transfer of Rothar and essence via the stone armour to the golem. Midnight attempted to intervene in the flow. Against her reservations to touch upon a wizard’s essence, the intent to help justified such intrusion. She had never succeeded in grasping the fiator with darkness, so now Midnight sent forth her own essence instead. She sensed the point where the wizard’s essence began to fracture.
As she expanded her essence into the space where he lay, Midnight felt no obstruction, but the knowledge of his physical presence made this an intensely invasive experience. The wizard had shifted into something diminished and distorted, caught between beast and man. His body was grotesquely deformed, twisted beyond the unnatural into the uncanny. There was no Rothar, only the faintest trace of essence left, akin to the shadebeast after its defeat, yet different, for the shadebeast had been of the same darkness essence as Midnight, had been nothing, like her, while the wizard was ... something else.
Still, the shadebeast had touched upon Midnight as well when she had also been something, when she had still held her midnight stalker essence. He had torn at her Rothar with his teeth, like one beast attacking another. At the beginning of their fight, when she had jumped him with her claws, her paws had slid into him without touching any matter. Yet, as her material body entered the space his darkness occupied, her Rothar had been ripped apart. There was no other way to describe it.
This had not happened with the fiator when Midnight had sent her darkness to rip him from the air. Unlike the shadebeast, she had simply slipped through the bird, seemingly without affecting him at all. If, in her current state as a beast of darkness, Midnight passed through all that had matter, then affecting a beast’s Rothar required conscious effort. She needed to actively alter something within herself, something in her approach, to touch upon a natural beast’s Rothar.
And if the shadebeast could do it, so could she. She had reached the mindset that she would surpass all that he had been. Yet, her convictions and conclusions were not a matter of understanding magic, abstract thinking, or logically deducing dimensions. Rather, this knowledge was embedded within her, all that Yves had imparted over the years. Midnight accessed it intuitively, much like her senses, which absorbed countless stimuli and made sense of them through intuition. She understood that she should be able to affect natural, living beings — even if she did not consciously recall individual facts about dimensions, magic, and related considerations.
But no matter how she tried, she could not touch upon the wizard’s essence. However, the spell or artefact did, and she tried to discern how.
There was a point where Midnight recognised the wizard's shifting essence as something distinct from his existence, a point where it was neither fully his nor entirely consumed by the golem. It was not a break, not a severance, but rather a strand being drawn across a threshold. And within this transition, there was an in-between — where the essence no longer belonged to the wizard but was not yet claimed by the golem.
At this threshold, the essence had a unique presence. It seemed … accessible. But what was it, truly? It was unbound, neither tethered to the wizard nor the golem, yet also not free.
It is change, the voice within her whispered.
And with the words, impulsive intuition swept over Midnight; more of a feeling than any form of literal understanding. The essence at the threshold was not something material or ethereal. It was of itself, yet never not part of either the wizard or the golem. It traversed the strand from one existence to the other, where it was never part of both at the same time, never touched by both simultaneously, while also never free of touch.
That made it an impossible existence, something that defied being. It could not be. It was not. This in-between was not graspable. If time were frozen, there would be nothing that was not part of either the wizard or the golem.
That was the point — There was no point. There was, however, a moment. A moment that was shorter than a breath, shorter than a blink, and shorter still. It was an indefinitely small moment.
The essence at the threshold cannot be. It is becoming, said the voice that spoke for Midnight, like me.
There was nothing. It was Nothing, like Midnight. It was existence itself. It was the process of the shift. It existed only as time progressed.
This is change, said the voice. I am change.
The voice had said so before. Midnight was something unattached, ever-moving. She was nothingness that shifted as time progressed.
Midnight sensed she was on the verge of understanding something fundamental about her existence, yet the final piece about sustaining herself eluded her. She attempted to extend her own essence towards the Nothing at the threshold, to grasp for what was there when she was there also, in that moment.
She reached and reached, for the nothing in-between the golem and the wizard's existence. It demanded a conscious shaping of her form. Midnight condensed into more nothing within less space. This nothing moved faster and faster within less time, back and forth along the strand in ever shorter distances between where she felt the wizard end and the golem begin. There was nothing in-between, yes, she could almost, almost image [https://glasswizardchronicles.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/013.13-The-Glass-WIzard-Webstory_Psychological-Fantasy-Magic-Webseries_The-Duckman_Midnight_Taste-It.png] —
She was caught by the pull. Suddenly, Midnight was drawn along the strand, finding herself within the golem. She felt the form around her, the actual physicality. Immediately, Midnight’s essence recoiled, pulling back, disentangling from the spell’s pull before being captured in her entirety. In the same instance, as she broke the connection, she sensed a second essence attempting to engulf her, as part of everything that flowed in. However, the other existence immediately retreated after touching upon her, and so had Midnight in her bewilderment. Disoriented and unsettled by what had transpired, she needed to literally gather herself. For a brief moment, she had sensed the golem as a stone construction around her. It had felt as if she were dissolving into its shape. It was strange magic. Midnight knew better than to get drawn into it again.
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With the wizard’s consumption progressing, the only other course of action she could take was to attempt to prolong his life and strengthen his body, expecting he might then restore himself.
She possessed a unique sensitivity to poison, even to the Scorchborn’s venom. Before becoming a true being of darkness, she had been a creature of poison. Her transformation began with the ability to dissect the weavers’ poison, discarding its harmful parts and evolving from what remained. Could she apply this to the wizard? Could she extract the Scorchborn’s disease, split it, and perhaps even have him regain energy from what remained?
Midnight had not been able to grasp physical bodies or Rothar, not with the fiator and not with the wizard. But poison was not the wizard. It was something that had become of the wizard. Reflecting on her understanding of change, Midnight realised that poison brought change to the body and mind. This made it part of the Material Dimension. Yet, poison was more than just a substance. That which was poison was not defined by matter. It was transformation —induced through matter. Poison was a process, inherently destructive by definition.
The similarities to her thoughts on existence, the parallels between nothingness and poison were startling. Midnight did not know where all these thoughts came from. Her own awareness disturbed her. But it was true. Midnight had experienced this truth. She had turned destruction into something else: after her battle with the rock weavers, she had suppressed the destructive and gained strength from transformation. If the Existence Arachnid did not remain subject to the poison but made the poison something of herself, then destruction was not the end, but the beginning of change.
This wizard here, now, was a transformer. He was a shapeshifter, a wizard of change by nature. Could Midnight not guide him towards transformation? Why had the Scorchborn continued to poison him? Was it merely poison, or something more insidious that had been imbued into him? Given his near-unconscious state, could she split the poison for him, or extract it from him? Once more, she sent forth her essence, careful not to be pulled in by the artefact.
It needed to be her essence, not merely her darkness. The essence was her, after all, and in the weaver tunnel, she had directed the poison. Still, it was an idea born of reason, not certainty or truth. Back then, she had been a midnight stalker, with midnight stalker essence. Then again —
I am change.
Midnight felt compelled to accept this revelation, but as she attempted to change him, no intuition guided her. No impulse. No sense of right or wrong. She searched within herself for words that might instruct her, but found none. Almost none. A quiet part within her remembered how the DΔϢΠΙΠƓϛ had bestowed upon her the darkness essence — the core of her new existence, which she had allowed to consume her midnight stalker essence. This act of giving essence was something Midnight had not yet attempted. Though she understood that gifting it to the wizard might sustain his existence, perhaps even enable him to transform as she had, she did not want to. Even if she could, Midnight would not diminish herself to give essence to a stranger wizard, just as she would not do so for another beast. She would not lessen her all. There were many wizards in this world, but there was only one her.
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Midnight saw all her attempts exhausted. She could not change him, she could not direct him to change, and she would not give him change. The issue remained that she failed to touch upon anything material — The thought broke off. She could. In one singular way.
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They had all fought. They had all understood that at least one of them needed to survive. If his suffering held any purpose, it was to warn others and to see those still trapped within the witches' mountain rescued.
They had suffered for too long. Twelve years of torment had stretched endlessly, each day eclipsing the life he had known before. But against all odds, they had broken free. After what felt like centuries, Salgier had felt the wind on his face, the snow beneath his feet. He had embraced the cold with tears of both joy and desperation. They had escaped the mountain in the darkest of nights, a night cold and uncaring, yet alive with swirling energy.
But it had all been in vain. They could have encountered adventurers who would have offered protection, or guild envoys patrolling the Snowtrail, who could have escorted them directly to the Albweiss Mountain Guild. Instead, fate had delivered them into the hands of orks — orks wielding magic in ways Salgier could ever have believed possible twelve years ago.
Salgier struggled to rise. He had no energy left to shift, nothing left to move. His body refused to obey, his mind slipping away. Could he trust Barbathara to carry the message? Was she alive, could she survive without him? And what of Sahir?
There was nothing left of him but fading thoughts. Salgier had lived for one hundred and nine years, a life unmarked by grand events or accolades, but a fair life nonetheless. His name would not linger with this world. He was unremarkable, lacking the achievements that might etch a wizard’s name into the annals of history. He had been no-one special to anyone, but a good enough man to rest with a measure of peace each night.
The last twelve years, spent in captivity, had been one continuing nightmare, but the years before held fleeting moments of genuine joy. These were the memories he clung to, fleeting fragments that had occasionally surfaced amidst the void left by the witches' cruel experiments.
In every respect, he was a seasoned wizard, with more years behind him than ahead. Yet, in these final moments, Salgier felt like a child — helpless and alone. He longed to see his familiar. He wanted to see Sahir, but his vision had drastically blurred and he was unable to switch to second sight. He wished to see him awake, to know that he would be safe, but also, as selfish as it was, to have him at his side, to not face death alone.
He was not alone, was he? As Salgier strained to reach out to his familiar, he sensed something else entirely — a light, distinct and enveloping. Amidst the oppressive force of the seal, a halo of illumination emerged, drawing near and wrapping around him. This light was familiar; it had been present during the battle, a distant observer that seemed to know his fate.
Perhaps it was the primal part of him, heightened by the edge of unconsciousness, that shattered the educated rationalisation of reality he had built upon his instincts and innate understanding of the world. Or perhaps it was the desperation of impending death that made him hope that whatever was with him was a conscious entity, neither sent by the Shaira nor allied with the orks. Whatever it was, he felt a profound sense of presence, a reassurance that he was not alone.
He would not leave this mountain, but perhaps his words could. He needed to unburden himself of the truths he had uncovered during his captivity. This was his last chance to reveal the sinister agenda of the Shaira. Wizards needed to know. Their plan to eradicate wizardry, to create a curse that stripped magic from wizards — it was a revelation that would irrevocably alter the future. He tried to speak to the light, he tried so desperately, but his body faltered under the weight of exhaustion.
Well, then, perhaps the light had come for this very moment, a beacon from legends that spoke of what lies beyond death. Salgier had never dwelled on such thoughts and theories, like many who understood the concept of mortality but could not truly grasp their own finality. He had heard about various beliefs, but never considered what his own final moments might entail. Now, he found himself yearning to believe in the light, to trust that it would guide him as he slipped away.
A faint sensation brushed against one of his frozen, clawed hands, so subtle he might have missed it if not for the light shifting towards his fingers. The illumination condensed and intensified, drawing his focus to a delicate object now resting in his grasp.
It was a messenger string.
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There was already something inscribed onto it,
a faint etching of another wizard’s magic,
yet there remained space for more.
It was a gift beyond measure.
Whatever presence was here
had offered to listen,
to bear witness
to his final testament.
Salgier poured
his words into the string,
each syllable
a fragment of his essence,
to save all wizards
who would come after him,
to warn those who remained
to fight the Shaira,
to protect wizardry
and thus, the world,
from witches.
Salgier wrote,
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until all of him was exhausted,
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leaving behind
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a legacy of uncertain hope
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and defiance.
.
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