The wind was shrieking with such force that even from within the keep itself it’s violent roar could still be heard. The relative silence of the throne room was a stark contrast to the chaos of the night outside, but the silence possessed its own subtle intensity. A flickering torch was all that illuminated the figure that sat upon his lonely throne, the usual bustle of court life distinctly absent as the old king sat deep in thought, even his usual cadre of bodyguards long since dismissed to stand outside.

King Robert Ingraham the Third, ruler of Besmauland and all its denizens, had experienced a lot in his time in the world. As a prince he had led men in victory and defeat, bled for his country and killed for it. As a young king he had sought out the corruption within the nobility, leftovers from the laxity of his father’s reign, and purged them with word and steel. As an older and wiser king, he had built roads, hospitals and schools, all while stemming the tide of war that constantly threatened his borders. He had not been a perfect king, not even close, but he liked to think he had been a decent one.

Tonight however he had to make a choice that taxed all his gathered wisdom. A choice about a man who had come to the king in his kingdom’s time of need, and the pair of them had entered a mutually beneficial arrangement. They had not always seen eye to eye, but he had come to believe he could trust this man to do right by him, just as Robert had always tried to do right by the man. Tonight, after many years, he had come to understand that this man had betrayed him. To make matter wore the man might have included his only student, Robert’s estranged eldest son, in his activities.

The king resisted the urge to rub his temples at the thought of his eldest. By all accounts, Jason had grown into a capable, but cold and distant young man. Perceived betrayal had pushed him far from his immediate family. He would have liked to believe it was simply the demands of his master’s tutoring that had twisted the boy into a cold distant facsimile of what he had once been, but even that could not fully cover the vast gulf the boy had placed between himself and his closest family.

From what little news he had gleaned from the castle’s isolated and insular mage towers, the boy was now apparently a mage easily on par with the old Archmage himself. Ingraham crest or not, Robert fully understood what an achievement that was for a young man of just twenty summers.

The king had little enough understanding of the magical arts and how they ranked a mage’s level of competence, but he knew what it meant to lay claim to the title of Archmage.

Robert had been led to the conclusion that if Reginald were to disappear tomorrow, his son would be entirely capable of taking up his master’s mantle. Now that Reginald was suspected of being a traitor, it seemed that it was all too likely Jason would have to fill the older man’s role sooner than he or the king had planned.

The biggest issue the king was wrestling with though was whether Jason would truly side with the realm, and the family he no doubt believed spurned him, or if he would ultimately side with his traitorous master. The fact that it was the boy himself who had come forward with his suspicions on his master was promising in and of itself, but some part of Robert still feared his eldest was playing some game of which the king knew neither the rules nor the objectives.

Robert would be the first to admit he was proud of the man his son had become. The boy’s personality aside, the young mage had persevered, sacrificed and succeeded where many believed he would fail under the enormity of the task he was burdened with. To achieve mastery over the Ingraham crest when it was implanted well past the age it was supposed to be was a feat he had in truth believed impossible. He had half feared the boy would be crippled by the experience, but if that was to be the price paid to maintain the Ingraham crest then he would have paid it anyway. However thanks in part to Reginald’s timely intervention the boy had not been crippled, quite the opposite, but the price the boy had still been steep. He often feared it had been too steep considering the boy had never asked for it. Could the king truly say the boy had performed a service to the realm when it had been involuntary?

In any event, the cusp of Robert’s current frustration was that as proud of his son as he was, the king had next to understanding of what motivated Jason as a person. He had hearsay and his own speculations; but court gossip was often a poor choice for painting a picture of a person.

"Your Majesty," a tired thin voice whispered from his left, causing the distracted king to jump slightly in shock at being taken by surprise before he sat up straight and tried to recover his air of regal authority after his small fright. He didn’t need to look over to see who had spoken. Only one of two people could enter his guarded throne room without using the doors or making any noise at all. If it had been the other one of the two, then the king imagined he would probably already be dead if his suspicions were correct.

As he had been greeted with words, and not magical fire, it seemed his worries on his son’s loyalty were unfounded. For now.

"Report, Jason."

The owner of the voice hesitated for a moment, a worrying sign from the apparently normally taciturn young man. Robert felt an icy doubt worm its way up his spine at the possible cause of the delay. He had never seen or heard his son hesitate before, not once in the weeks of late night planning that had preceded this moment. Robert unconsciously feared it an omen that the boy was having second thoughts about his allegiances; either that or the news was even worse than the king had anticipated.

"I have confirmed it Your Majesty," Jason intoned from the shadows, hidden like a specter in the night. It had confused him at first, but Robert now knew why his eldest remained in shadows. The boy unconsciously sought to hide his face from the world at large. Robert often wondered if the boy himself was even aware of his small social tick, but to the veteran statesman it was these small acts that blatantly gave away the boys insecurities.

"Archmage Reginald has committed… taboo acts.”

The way a barely perceptible shudder ran through the boy’s normally monotone voice, was damning evidence in and of itself of what he had seen, but Robert wasn’t the boy’s father now, he was the king, and he needed to know exactly what had been discovered to cast doubt on a man who saved the kingdom’s greatest weapon in its darkest hour.

"What exactly have you found?" He asked.

The boy started in his wheezy monotone, "At your orders, this morning I broke the wards on his workshop and forced my way inside. I believe I was able to do so without tripping any of his alarms, and as such he should still be unaware of what I have discovered.” The young mage’s voice wavered fractionally for a moment before he steeled his nerves and continued, "... Inside his workshop I found… things. A number of tables were still fresh with the blood of ritual sacrifice, and I could smell brimstone in the air. It was thick and cloying. The work of a man making pacts with dark forces was self-evident Your Majesty. I also found the remains of a number of human beings, but no living prisoners remained within the restraints.”

As the boy spoke Robert could have sworn he heard some small sliver of anger in the young mage’s voice, but perhaps he simply wanted to believe that small humanity existed still in his son.

“I believe that much like many older mages late in their lives do, he is attempting to attain immortality, and has turned to the illicit arts in order to continue his research." Jason said calmly.

Robert was internally horrified. He knew it was not unusual for mages to become obsessed with immortality when they began to approach the end of their mortal coil. As people who were accustomed to the very fabric of the universe bending to their will it seemed magic practitioners were particularly vulnerable to the sweet allure of delusion and insanity, but he had always believed Reginald a better man then that. Robert couldn’t help but wonder if his own brother would have fallen to immortalities siren song if he had survived to old age.

Robert squished down that line of thought and focused on the present as he asked the obvious question, “Do you have any other witnesses to what you say you found?”

The outline of his son nodded from within the shadows, “I took with me four members of the royal guard and two journeyman mages from within my ‘guild’ sire. The group is outside the room if you need to confirm my testimony."

The man just nodded in contentment. The mages were associates of his son and could perhaps be considered biased in their reporting, but the royal guards were beyond reproach. Even if the guard would follow Jason’s orders as a member of the royal family, the king’s words would supersede the mages.

He would need their testimony as there would be members amongst the court who would require more than just his son’s word to go on. Reginald was not well loved by the people or the court, but he was respected for his contributions. By contrast Jason was considered persona non grata for the events that had forced the path of the mage on him.

"Is he onto us?" Robert asked intently.

His son nodded again. "I believe he is suspicious Your Majesty. No matter how far his moral compass has fallen, he is still a shrewd man. I fear that with my level of… familiarity with him, he has noticed that I was suspicious of his actions and getting ready to act. As he hasn’t fled yet, I believe he doesn’t fully realize just how far those suspicions have escalated. Either that or he believes I would not betray him to you.”

The words stung for Robert, for what his son had said was not an untrue statement. He himself had not fully trusted the motives of his son when the boy came forward all those weeks ago with his suspicions. Even now he still feared the young mage, and perhaps his master, were playing an elaborate ruse.

He had to put that behind him for now though, an Archmage was not a threat to be taken lightly, even without a crest Reginald was still one of the few mages on the continent who was entirely capable of destroying a small army of ‘ungifted’ men before being put to the sword.

The only other weapon the king had that could hope to take on the mad mage without massive loss of life was standing right next to him. They both knew it too. The real question was whether he could ask his son to kill a man who had been a father to him in all but name since the boy was six. No matter how far the man had fallen, it was not a task he could easily ask of the boy.

Robert knew he would ask anyway though, it was his duty as a king to command the mage in the defense of the realm, just as it was Jason’s duty as Besmauland’s royal crest bearer to protect the kingdom from all threats of magical origin. The king stood up and turned to the shadows where his son was standing as still and silent as a statue.

“As King Robert Ingraham, third of my name, I appoint you Mage Jason Ingraham, first of your name, with the title of Archmage of Besmauland.”

If Jason felt any which way on the matter he didn’t show it, but he did take a step out of the shadows and into the flickering light of the torch before taking a knee.

The boy’s black hair was cut short in the same fashion as a soldier, ostensibly so as to avoid it being set alight or catching on something during more strenuous magical rituals. The mage’s skin was almost translucently pale and looked almost waxy to the touch, transformed that way by whatever strange magics the boy’s master had worked in his younger years. What really drew the eyes though, were the lines of runes and arcane symbols that ran along the boy’s face before sliding down under his robe to cover the rest of his body in an equally crisscrossed pattern. The king supposed the lines of strange markings could have been considered attractive or exotic to an ignorant soul, but Robert knew just how agonizing the magical restraints were to be inked. The crest was supposed to be implanted at birth after all, to place it in a child of six required more… strenuous measures to stop it scorching its vessel from the inside out.

A stern and angular face stared down at the floor with respect, the boy wasn’t even into his twentieth summer, but even from this angle Robert could see the slight milkiness of one of the boys formerly brown eyes, where some miscast spell had no doubt lashed out and blinded it beyond any healing. The boy had pulled his normally ever present hood down for this meeting, but he knew the second the boy was back in the light, the grey hood would be back up in attempt to cover the boy’s myriad scars and markings. The boy wore gloves for much the same reason, a subtle attempt to hide the missing ring finger on his right hand. Gods knew what other damages the boy’s ragged grey robes covered.

Most mages had some small marking or scarring from practicing their craft, but as a crest bearer who had started much too late in life, Jason’s body had become a tapestry of what happened when a body with too much power made mistakes during its learning. That the boy had survived those trials was a small miracle in and of itself.

It was a simple fact of life that magic would outright reject any attempts to heal a body that was damaged by its own magic, the magic being unwilling or unable to differentiate between accidents, and intentional alterations. It was for that reason that most magic practitioners kept a mundane healer on hand at all times.

The boy’s robes were outwardly a simple, almost ragged affair, but inside it was no doubt honeycombed with pockets for any number of alchemical ingredients. Robert, in spite of his lack of knowledge on the subject, was also entirely sure that the robes themselves had a great number of enchantments stitched or patched into them during their creation, likely by the boy himself. What the robes lacked in visual flair, it more than made up for with practicality. The constantly torn and reknit nature of the garments was good parallel for the boy himself.

"As your first task as the Archmage of Besmauland, I King Robert, protector of the realm, charge you with bringing your predecessor, the Interim-Archmage Reginald Harkin, to justice for the charge of high treason" he intoned solemnly.

The boy did not react outwardly, he simply nodded before standing up. Robert had half expected it to be so, but it was still unsettling just how little emotion the boy showed given the task that had just been asked of him. If the boy ever resented the scars that adorned his body, he orders he was given, or even the loss of his inheritance, he never outright mentioned it.

Robert liked to believe the lad thought of the big picture, just like his father. If that was the case for the mage though, that was where the similarities with his progenitor ended. The boy was infinitely closer in temperament to his master and tutor the Archmage Reginald, even sharing the man's passion to the point of obsession with gathering knowledge on the magical arts. He had even read reports, that according to rumors amongst the mage initiates the boy surpassed even his master in that desire. In Robert’s experience, Reginald at least took an interest in seeing and giving input on the goings on of the kingdom in person. If Jason had any desires outside of his workshop, they were seldom seen.

"I will not fail Your Majesty." Jason said as he made a short bow, "I would humbly like to request the use of four more of the royal guard before I begin."

Robert simply nodded numbly as he sat back down on his throne as the boy turned to leave, he would have sent his entire guard if he thought it would help, but in a battle between Archmages, they were more likely to just get in the way than anything else. Instead he sat and brooded like a man who had just sent his only son on a mission that would in all likelihood get him killed.

Robert slumped down into his chair, looking up at that one burning torch, and wondered if that would be the last time he would see his son. He sat and thought on actions that he wished he could change, but knew deep down even if he had the chance, wouldn’t. He could still hear the wind roar against the keep.

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Walking through the keep, Jason turned another corner and approached the door to his master’s study. The royal guards were with him, eight men all loaded out with the best anti-magic plate mail armor available in the armory. Jason knew that in a fight with his master the protection wouldn’t do the men a lick of good, but in the event he himself was killed, it might allow the guard to get in and strike a finishing blow on the old man before he could kill all of them. It was a cold and dispassionate way of doing things, but it was the reality of being forced to confront the traitor. The mages had long since been dismissed; their own meager magic was not even likely to function as a distraction in the coming fight.

He stopped just outside of the door and signaled for the guard to take positions lined up and hidden on each side. They all knew the plan as he had briefed them on the way over. Jason would confront his master alone within his study and try and take him by surprise. In the event that he failed, the guard would all rush in and try and take the weakened old man down. If they all failed, the traitor would at least be weakened enough that he would be forced to flee, allowing the king time enough to bring more substantial forces to bear. He wuld have liked to bring more men, but his master would have been able to sense men without anti-magic armor, and the armory only had these few precious sets.

Jason had made sure to repeatedly stress to them that unless they were absolutely sure he had fallen in combat with his master, they were not to enter the room. The guard had been dubious, but had ultimately surrendered to his judgement on the matter.

With a final nod at the guard captain Jason opened the door to his master’s study and stepped in. His eyes immediately alighted on, the balding old man who was sat inside, scribbling away with a quill at his desk. The man slowly stopped what he was doing, and looked up at the intrusion, only to smile as he saw Jason and very calmly laid the feather down. Jason was tempted to strike immediately but he steeled himself and chose to follow the plan.

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"Well Hello Jason," Reginald said jovially from his sitting position. The man was often as cold as ice outside his study, much like Jason was always, but in private he sometimes displayed a much more approachable personality, "What brings you here so late in the evening?"

"Master," Jason responded neutrally as he moved to stand in front of the desk, "I believe I have recently made a breakthrough in my attempts to store mana outside of a human body or familiar animal." That was actually true, but ever since Jason had come to suspect his master’s actions, he had been deliberately understating the gains he had been making in the otherwise seldom researched field of mana storage and manipulation. He had also been using the time he was supposed to be studying to continue his investigations into his master’s illicit actions.

The strain of attempting to both continue the investigation as well as his research had pushed his body to the very limit, but his actions had paid off, and he had a powerful weapon for surviving the inevitable conflict with his master. He just had to distract and then delay his tutor long enough for the weapon to be effective.

The young mage was rewarded for his acting skills when the slight amount of tension in the old man’s body leaked out of him and he was given a look that was both slightly impressed and very exacerbated. "I remember when you first started researching mana manipulation Jason, and I also distinctly remember telling you that you were wasting your time on such an obscure and mostly theoretical topic, but you wouldn’t hear me. An obsession like this is unbecoming of my only student." The old man finished his small rebuke with a small wagging of his finger.

Jason didn’t intend to take the imagined rebuke in stride; if he did it would appear suspicious to anyone with even a passing knowledge of their interactions. As a younger man he had been taught to question anything and everything by his master, a valuable trait for any researcher, but it had caused no end of strife in their relationship as the boy had grown as a mage in his own right. Rare were the things that could get the taciturn young man worked up, but the idea that knowledge, any knowledge, was somehow worthless, was enough to drive him into a subtly simmering frenzy.

He retorted with poorly concealed vehemence, “Just as you told me that it was a useless subject, I told you that just because a piece of knowledge had no immediate practical application, did not in any way make it not worth the time to learn it. Just because a piece of knowledge does not give immediate gains does not mean that in time it could not become part of some greater achievement. If you would only let me write down my knowledge, then others might be able to benefit where I could not.” Jason argued.

The old man snorted, waving his hand dismissively, “Bleh, I taught you better than that Jason. If you wish to play the part of the naïve philosopher then I will respond in kind. Knowledge is power, and power corrupts. It is the universal truth, and we mages have a lot of knowledge and a lot of power. We are all greedy sinners, if not now then in time; a mage lives alone and a mage dies alone; their achievements are theirs and theirs alone. It is the universal truth of any mage. Even my tutoring of you is simply a means for me to gain more power for myself by having a patron in your father. You know this, you have always known this, and yet you still persevere with this ‘guild’ foolishness.”

The kindly old man had disappeared, replaced by the stern taskmaster that Jason had known for much of his life, all feigned interest in his student’s achievement forgotten in the face of an opportunity to push his own views, “I have tolerated this little eccentricity for long enough. I have allowed you play the role of ‘guild master’ amongst your little band of researchers for far too long. I had hoped with time you would come to realize the futility of aiding those of lesser talent, perhaps I had even believed you would see the opportunity in exploiting your small band of fools to steal their work right out from under them, but alas, you remain utterly blind to the most basic tenets of being a mage!”

The old man was really getting a head of steam now. Jason was for a moment abstractly curious if the man was actually trying to drive him away by to driving a wedge between them, or if he was genuinely trying to reform his wayward student. It would be far easier for the old man to continue his illicit research if his apprentice was off fuming. The pair of them knew from experience that when the old man threatened his apprentice’s fledgling guild it was all he could do not to storm out in a fury. He had done so on more than one occasion in the past, and in each case the two of them had not spoken again for weeks at a time. Looking back, he had to wonder if that had been intentional.

“A man or woman who commands the very fabric of the universe cannot be tamed. As soon as those parasites in your ridiculous ‘research group’ reach a high enough level of mastery, they will snatch up what research they have and flee with it like a thief in the night.”

The old man settled down for a moment as he finally chose to catch his breath. As he turned to say a final line, Jason for the first time saw the madness that was burning in his eyes and wondered how he had never seen it before now.

“A mage is beyond any law but his own.” Reginald wheezed tiredly, but with utter conviction.

It wasn’t the first time he had heard those words from the old man, but this was the first time he realized just how absolutely his master meant them.

"If you truly feel that way, then I’m sorry master," Jason said with deep seated regret. For a moment he thought of the man who had been almost as a father to him for years, of the long discussions on the nature of magic the pair had shared, of the whole world of magic the man had introduced him to.

Then he thought of the things he had seen that morning, of the blood and the stink, of the twisted bodies of who knew how many, and that one small withered hand, desperately reaching for salvation even in death. Jason steeled himself, and as subtly as he could placed a small seal on the wall behind him. That done he walked forward and began to visibly gather mana into his hands.

"What do you think you’re doing boy?" Reginald asked him in a dangerously calm voice, one that belied the fury that was beginning to bubble just beneath it as realization set in. Jason didn’t give the man any more warning than he had to as he struck without a shred of hesitation.

The mage’s hands crackled with blue fire as he lunged at the man across from him. With a driving palm, he tried to smash his right hand into his teacher’s head, hoping to fry the brain within in a desperate attempt to end the fight as quickly as possible. As his hands got closer he almost believed he would succeed, but at the last moment a glowing blue shield erupted around his target, protecting the old mage and dispersing Jason’s flames. Before Jason could bring his other hand forward to try and burn out the defensive shield, the traitor leapt backwards, skidding across the ground in an unnaturally fast manner for a man past his seventieth year.

Jason was forced to duck rapidly as Reginald covered his retreat by telekinetically launching the desk at him, causing it fly over where he had just been to shatter loudly against the back wall.

The young man was driving forward before the desk even hit, unwilling to allow the older man any time at all to bring more complex spells into the equation. The mage half hoped to use ferocity and surprise to carry the day against the far more experienced combatant. As he ran he incanted a spell to affect his still flaming left hand, bringing it up and launching a short range burst of blue flame that impacted on the traitor’s shields, driving him back against the wall in a flurry of sparks and smoke as the shield gave way under the battering.

If the older man was bothered by the sudden loss of his defenses he didn’t show it as he stamped his foot, transferring the force of the blow into a spell that slammed down on the charging young man like a massive boot from above. Jason hit floor with an audible thump, cursing the sudden reversal, but stopped himself from being utterly crushed by immediately flooding his body with a reinforcement spell, temporarily increasing his strength and durability as the invisible boot from on high ground down on him in imitation of the old man’s own foot.

"I made you boy! Before me you were just a castoff! The crest would have burned your very soul to cinders if I hadn’t saved you! They would have tried it even without me you know! You would have spent the rest of your days as a drooling vegetable if I hadn’t come along!” Reginald hissed vindictively as he attempted to grind the boy into dust.

For Jason’s part, even if he had wanted to talk back he couldn’t have. He was too busy trying to maintain the reinforcement spell on his body. It was that was all that was stopping him from being crushed into paste by his master’s force spell. The stone floor would have already given way under him if it weren’t for the fact that his master’s study was heavily warded against spell damage. It was part of the reason he had chosen to confront him there.

There was no finesse in their current struggle; it was simply a matter of who could overpower the other now. Reginald was older, and thus had been building his mana reserves for far longer and could utilize them more efficiently, but Jason had the Ingraham crest which was a massive stock of mana in and of itself. His other advantage was that as his spell was literally on his body it was less costly for him to maintain it, while Reginald had to maintain his force spell from across the room. The distance was a small factor, but it was a factor.

Reginald glared down at his student, his teeth gritted and his face frozen in a rictus snarl. Then, slowly he began to laugh. It was a cruel, sad thing laced with mockery and contempt. The persona he had worn in public for so long coming apart to reveal the twisted insanity that had grown within the old mage.

"Is this it my student!? A mad rush in the dead of night? Is that all you could summon up to fight me?" The mad mage laughed in sadistic glee. "I’m disappointed. Were you truly so afraid to confront your master that you rushed into it like a virgin stumbling to his first time?"

Jason just gritted his teeth and tried desperately to hold the deadlock, his limbs screaming as the mana running through his system became too much for it to handle even with the crest’s aid. He was rapidly realizing that he was going to lose this contest of power, his master’s illicit research apparently swelling his reserves far beyond what Jason had predicted. He held together though, through years of training and sheer bloody mindedness he held onto the reinforcement. He knew he just needed to hold on a little longer.

"Nothing to say to me boy?" Reginald continued to gloat, surprising his student by not immediately attempting to force an end to the stalemate, instead choosing to draw the fight out for some twisted reason. If everything he had seen hadn’t already convinced him that the man who had taught him was gone, then this did. It had been Reginald himself who had repeatedly drilled into the younger man that in a fight, a mage should never talk, never gloat, and most importantly, finish his opponent as soon as possible to avoid any chance of a reversal. Jason was disappointed to see the man had been so twisted by his obsession, that he couldn’t even remember the basic tenets of his own mage craft.

Jason couldn’t hold on any more, slowly he could feel his limbs giving way as the nerves refused to send the signals the boy told them to. He could feel himself being crushed into the floor even harder now, his enchanted robes taking up some of the slack as their own wards flared up in response to the intense pressure. It wouldn’t be enough, given a moment they too would fail under the insane amount of force bearing down on them. He had all but given up hope when he heard it.

A quiet thump.

The pressure on his back relented instantly, allowing the boy to breathe once more, which he did with great wheezing gasps. As he rolled onto his side, he looked up and saw that his master had crumpled to the floor. He had apparently hit his head quite heard on the way down because their was a small cut on his head that was bleeding freely. His foot was also completely mangled from where the spell had gone out of control when the caster fell unconscious. A constant danger for any spell casting.

Jason on wobbly limbs stood up, strode over, and promptly stomped on his master’s head with all the force he could muster. The man’s head didn’t crack on the first kick, but after a few more solid blows it exploded open like an overripe water melon, spraying blood and grey matter up the boys pant leg.

The robe’s wards might have protected the old man for a few extra moments, but they had apparently burnt out during Jason earlier attack. The old man had probably already been dead, but Jason wasn’t willing to take any chances with a mage of Reginald’s ability.

With his job finished, Jason stood up and turned around to avert his gaze from the corpse. He wasn’t normally a man given to fits of nausea around bodies, but the sight before him had been turning his stomach. He turned around with as much grace as he could muster and moved to the back of the room. As he walked, he casually leaned over and changed the function of the seal that he had activated at the start of the fight not more than a minute or two ago.

The seal stopped converting the few remaining shreds of oxygen in the room into nitrogen, and instead began reconverting the nitrogen back into oxygen. When the room’s oxygen levels hit a safe amount, the seal would wink out of existence. As Jason opened the door to the hall, he concentrated for a moment and the incredibly small seal on his upper palette stopped spewing oxygen into his mouth.

As he looked around the hall, he could see the eight royal guard looking at him in wide eyed surprise, apparently not quite able to believe he had actually managed to kill the venerable old mage. Then they noticed his bloody leg that was still stained with bits of grey matter. The men paled in unison; whatever congratulatory words they had in mind dying on their tongues at the discovery of that grizzly detail. Instead they simply nodded and filed into the room to dispose of the corpse, the guard captain last in, giving him a look that said he wanted to say something but not knowing the words. Instead after a moment he simply nodded and filed into the study himself, downcast eyes avoiding Jason’s own remaining brown one. No questions about whether he required medical aid, or in fact any aid at all. Simply silent acknowledgement.

Jason tried to feel some small shred of betrayal at that, but found deep down he couldn’t blame them. After all what manner of man, even in the line of duty, could brutally stomp to death the man who had raised them?

‘No man at all it seemed. It was the act of a saint or a beast.’ Jason thought.

He believed himself many things, a visionary, a teacher, a survivor, a mage, and a scientist. He did not however have the hubris to ever consider himself a saint. What did that leave him them? A beast? A dog on a chain? He did not know, nor at the moment did he truly want to.

"You should have given me some other choice you senile old fool." Jason angrily hissed as all that had just happened fully sunk into his numbed brain. After a moment of irritation the boy began his march down the lonely halls, feeling like a criminal fleeing the scene of a crime.

"I wonder if you ever envisioned this as your possible end all those years ago?" He murmured quietly. With that, he fell silent. He didn’t need an answer an answer after all. He already knew his master even in his most brilliant years would never have envisioned his own death for the greater good. It was a concept he probably couldn’t even begin to fathom. He was a true mage after all, selfish and arrogant right down to the core. Jason would miss him though, the brilliant and volatile man who had been all but family to him.

Jason had no more time for melancholy now. He had work to do. With his master dead, Jason was now truly the Archmage of Besmauland, and if he intended to work the changes he intended, he would need to make full use of that title. It would be these precious few hours that decided the tone of his stewardship over the role for years to come.

There had never been any doubt that Jason would be the one to inherit the role from Reginald when the old man finally relinquished the role. The Archmage was always supposed to be an Ingraham after all; Reginald had merely been filling the role until Jason was of an age and skill level where he could take up the mantle. The issue was that Jason had inherited the role far earlier than he had ever wanted to, and he intended do things in his role as Archmage that went against the very fabric of what the ‘old guard’ considered to be what it meant to be a magic practitioner.

He would need to solidify his power over the kingdom’s independent minded mages by lashing out with an iron fist. In that regard the members of his ‘guild’ would be an invaluable aid in providing an example of what he expected from the older and more traditional members.

He arrived at the door to the throne room for the second time that night, the guards were still there, and like last time they made no move to stop him. This time he would actually have to use the door rather than simply shadow step his way in. The role of Archmage meant he now had to act with some degree of decorum and gravity. He wasn’t Reginald’s reclusive student anymore, now he was the Archmage of Besmauland. He would have cleaned up a bit before moving to meet the king, and the many powerful mages who would have felt Reginald’s death and rushed to the throne room to via magical means to the inform the king and seek an explanation, but Jason had to send a message here. He would never earn the respect and love of the court. The fact that he had been used as the crest bearer in place of his sister had already seen to that. If he couldn’t have their love, then he would have to settle for their fear. With that in mind he took a deep breath and pushed entered the throne room with a determined stride.