Kneeling beside Drevock, images of Geoff flashed through Gabe’s mind. Wasn’t it just the other day that he had been reflecting on how easily he could have saved the man with his new magic? So much growth, so much progress, and yet still he was in the same place, next to a dying man unable to do anything.

A part of him chided himself for being so emotional. Drevock and him were more friendly than friends, so why was he taking this harder than Professor Alrik or Simon? His thoughts flashed to the many meals that Drevock had prepared and to the previous night when he’d walked Gabe through proper combat forms. No, they weren’t friends. But they could have been given more time, time they no longer had.

Gabe wanted to scream, to yell at the unfairness of it all. He wanted to curse at Professor Alrik for bringing him into these tunnels, at Simon for holding him back, at Drevock for giving up so easily, at himself for being weak.

Gabe did none of those things. He knew that nothing would come of it, that no amount of yelling or cursing would save Drevock. Unless Professor Alrik had access to time mana, if such a thing even existed, nothing would be able to change what had happened.

“Does time mana exist?” Gabe asked softly.

“No compound node has ever been discovered or created that generates time mana, though several arch-wizards throughout the centuries have claimed to cast spells similar to it,” replied Professor Alrik. Seeing the look of hope on Gabe’s face, he continued quickly.

“Most were hoaxes, only one was potentially on the right track. Arch-Magus Wulfric Vernma, founder of the Pathways of Illumintion and a triple Knotted wizard with access to nearly every prime node, invented the pattern for entropy mana which, among other things, allows him to reverse some instances of decay. However, The spell is only effective with inorganic, non-magical substances.”

“If the Chaosweaver can’t figure it out, it likely can’t be done,” said Simon as he put a hand on Gabe’s shoulder. The earth mage had stopped crying and in his other hand, he held Drevock’s puzzle cube. Gabe hadn’t seen him pull it out but he’d also been distracted with trying to heal Drevock.

“Chaosweaver?”

The name sounded familiar, though Gabe couldn’t place where he’d heard it. Maybe in a bard’s tale or like. It was certainly dramatic enough to belong in one of those.

“It is a nickname some of Arch-Magus Vernma’s political detractors use, one that my apprentice should know better than to use,” replied Professor Alrik, though despite the admonishment there wasn’t any anger in his words.

“Oh, okay. So there’s nothing that can be done? No way to repair his soul?”

Professor Alrik didn’t reply right away, taking his time to think through everything he knew that might be useful in this situation. When he at last spoke, he did so with an apologetic tone, his words soft and mournful.

“Without a dedicated soul mage, I do not believe so. Our souls do have a limited ability to repair themselves, You experienced this yourself when you overtaxed yours back in the forest, however, I doubt that it will be sufficient in this case. Drevock’s injuries are simply too great. When a person damages their soul by drawing out too much mana from a prime node, in most cases it can scar over the affected node, blocking access to that mana type but otherwise remaining intact. This is different. His mana was not localized to one area but woven throughout his soul. There is too much damage and without some way of directly accessing his soul, there is nothing we can do.”

Gabe turned over Professor Alrik’s words in his head in an attempt to uncover some way to save Drevock. The part he kept returning to was the comment about directly accessing the soul. He looked over at the pack Simon had set down and the three patches of life-mana imbued lichen within it. Professor Alrik had said that prime mana node elixirs worked by directly infusing the soul with mana. If that was enough to open up a blocked node, maybe it would be enough to let Drevock’s soul heal itself, especially since it would be flooding it with life mana. The more he thought about it, the more sense it made to him.

Excitedly he looked over at Professor Alrik.

“The lichen! If we can make an elixir out of it, that should fill his soul with life mana. Would that be enough to save him?” Desperation clung to his words. This had to work, he needed it to work.

“A powerful enough infusion of mana may be sufficient to heal him,” Professor Alrik said cautiously. “There are two primary issues with your suggestion, however. The first is that I am only familiar with the very basics of alchemy, nowhere near the level necessary to create an elixir such as that. The second issue is that even if I did know a recipe, I doubt we have the necessary ingredients. While mana-imbued items such as this lichen are essential to mana node elixirs, they are far from the only components. Without stabilizers and binding agents, I fear that we would be just as likely to create a poison as we are to create an elixir.”

Taking a deep breath, Professor Alrik locked eyes with Gabe.

“I am sorry Gabriel, but I truly do not think there is anything we can do to save him. I have traveled a long time with Drevock and his death will forever weigh heavy on my heart. All we can do now is be here with him as he passes. Let us take advantage of Queen Skarnarra’s gift and rest here for the night and honor Drevock.”

Slowly, Gabe nodded his head. He could see the truth in the professor’s words. There was nothing they could do, no spell that could be cast to change the threads of fate. Simon gave his shoulder a tight squeeze before letting go. He set about pulling out supplies from the pack and a few minutes later a small fire was burning.

Gabe looked back at Drevock and for a moment it wasn’t the former Titan that he saw, but his own reflection. He blinked away the tears that were welling in his eyes as he was finally able to acknowledge why this was affecting him so much.

Throughout this whole trip, he’d convinced himself that Professor Alrik had a plan to keep him alive. How many times had the old gnome told him that his visions were merely symbolic, that he shouldn’t read too much into the one of him? Gabe recalled the image the professor’s spell created on the wall of the cavern. A figure in orange whose light was fading as he reached up toward a star-filled sky.

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He looked up at the nest of the Soul Weaver spiders. As the spiders scurried about, the metallic threads reflected the light from the fire. Still empowered by the professor’s Nightvision spell, Gabe could see the cavern clearly, though he had no doubt that if the spell was dropped, the place would twinkle and shine like the night sky. He almost asked Professor Alrik to release the spell just to see if he could spot the constellations from the image but he refrained. It wouldn’t change anything.

Symbolic or not, the events from the image had come to pass. If the professor wasn’t able to save his long-time bodyguard and companion, how would he save him? Gabe had built a wall of denial around his fate and Drevock’s death thoroughly and completely smashed it to the ground. No longer could he hide behind delusions of making it out of this unscathed.

On the ground before him, Drevock’s condition continued to worsen. His face was haggard with sunken in cheeks and dark circles around his eyes. His skin glistened with sweat and he gasped as he took in shallow breaths. Once he was finished preparing something to eat, just a simple soup, nothing comparable to what Drevock could make, Simon rejoined Gabe and Professor Alrik. The three of them sat in a silent vigil around Drevock. The end came suddenly. One moment Drevock’s chest was rising and falling with each gasping breath, the next it lay still.

They had a small ceremony for Drevock that night. Professor Alik told them that the custom in Drevock’s tribe was to burn bodies in a large funeral pyre so that the smoke rise to the sky and they could rejoin their ancestors in the sky. Unfortunately, being underground with limited fuel sources meant that they wouldn’t be able to do that for him. Instead, they buried him right where he was. In place of a tombstone, Simon used his magic to create a stone likeness of Drevock. With the stone here being much easier to manipulate, he was able to create a much more detailed form than the golems he made back in the trapped tunnel. They collected Drevock’s discarded armor and axes and outfitted the statue with them. From a distance, it almost looked like the real Drevock.

“Something’s missing,” said Simon. After a moment of deliberation, he dug through the pack and pulled out the wyvern core. Turning to face Professor Alrik, he asked “Can you use it to anchor a spell on the statue? I think he should shine in death as he did in life.”

Grasping his apprentice’s meaning, Professor Alrik took the gem and chanted a short incantation. When he finished, the gem began glowing with the same orange light that Drevock would when his spells were active. Professor Alrik handed the core back to Simon who, with a few gestures with his off-hand, pushed it into the head of the statue. At once the orange light suffused the entire statue and it truly looked nearly indistinguishable from Drevock in battle. They may not have been able to honor his people’s customs, but they hoped Drevock would have appreciated being memorialized in this way. His statue stood proud and tall, a fitting accompaniment to the scenes of conquest victory woven in the tapestries outlining the small area.

Afterward, Gabe, Simon, and Professor Alrik sat around the fire, passing around a wineskin, and sharing stories of Drevock. Gabe listened mostly, content to let Simon and Professor Alrik speak about their adventures with Drevock. As much as he appreciated hearing the stories, the truth was he was lost in his own thoughts. Finally, when the fire was burning low and the wineskin was empty and there was a lull in the conversation, he took in a deep breath to steel his nerves. It was time to get some answers.

“Professor,” his voice breaking the companionable silence they had fallen into. He looked straight into Professor Alrik’s eyes as he spoke. “I’d like to know the truth.”

Simon shifted around nervously, shifting his gaze from Gabe to Professor Alrik. The old gnome regarded Gabe for several long moments before nodding his head. Simon visibly relaxed as a somber expression fell over his face.

“I expect you do,” answered Professor Alrik. “Truly, a part of me is relieved even as another is conflicted. Telling lies and keeping secrets are not things I enjoy doing, even if I have had to more and more often this past year. But yes, I think it is time for truth-telling. Ask your questions and I shall answer honestly. No more lies, no more obfuscations.”

Gabe thought back to the various conversations he and Professor Alrik have had since that first meeting in the Adventure’s Guild. How many times had he told Gabe that he was telling the truth but still ended up lying to him? Could Gabe still trust him? He looked over at Drevock’s statue. If he could trust Professor Alrik enough to sacrifice his own life, then the least Gabe could do was offer the gnome another chance. Meeting the professor’s gaze once more, Gabe asked his first question.

“Why? Why would Drevock sacrifice himself like that?”

Professor Alrik glanced at the empty wineskin lying off the to the side before letting out a long breath.

“Going straight to the heart of the matter. Well, I suppose that is for the best. There are two main reasons that I believe explain why Drevock was willing to do what he did. The first is that Drevock was dying. The legends of his tribe are full of accounts of Estariqu performing feats well above and beyond what Drevock himself could do. But for some unknown reason, something changed within the last few centuries. Fewer and fewer of the Kyztec were able to become Estariqu and those that did were unable to reach the heights of their predecessors.

My current hypothesis is that over time, the forms and stances they used to weave the Titan mana pattern shifted and morphed, much as a language can change over time. These changes, small and minute as they were, may have created an instability within their souls. Excluding those who fell in battle, each of the last dozen Estariqu all died the same way. They developed a sickness that caused chills, shortness of breath, and a ghostly pallor of the face. Once the first symptoms showed, none survived more than a month, even those who received healing.”

He paused there to let Gabe process his words. Gabe didn’t know what to make of it. Drevock had always seemed so strong, so invincible. He was the man who jumped on the back of the wyvern and chopped off its head. Gabe couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have all that power, and yet at the same time know that it was also going to be the death of you. As he felt the weight of the necklace Freya gave him, he realized that that wasn’t exactly true. Yes, the circumstances were different, but Gabe was beginning to see how Drevock could make the choice he did.

“Is that why he had those scars? Was that one of the symptoms of the sickness starting to spread?”

“No, those were caused by a different kind of sickness, a sickness of fear and intolerance,” said Professor Alrik, his words were laced with an undertone of contempt. “Some of the Kyztec elders believed that what was happening to the Estariqu was a result of them forgoing their ancestral ways. They argued for a return to a more reclusive way of living that forgoed peaceful interaction with people not of their tribe. Drevock disagreed.

He believed that a solution to their problem could be found if they worked together with outsiders, no longer keeping their ways a secret. He was given a choice, either fall in line or be branded as a traitor and no longer be welcomed amongst the Kyztec. It was his sincerest hope that he would be able to return one day with the means of restoring the strength of his people.”

Gabe found himself looking at Drevock’s statue once again. It might have simply been a trick of the light, but the expression on his face seemed different. Stronger, more capable. Skarnarra had referred to him as a ‘Stalwart Titan’ and the title seemed even more fitting. Gabe hoped Drevock was at peace when he died. He silently wondered if he would be willing to make a similar choice when his time came.