Xexial climbed over the rocky crest of the crater. The ledge stretched out like four extended fingers. He wedged himself between two of the lower ones and pushed through. As he did, the green verge of the lowlands was visible on the horizon. This was it. This was the place, he told himself.
He turned towards the direction of where he last fought the Ferhym. Immediately he saw what Khyriaxx called the New Wasteland.
Cracked beige clay glared angrily upwards towards the bright blue cloudless sky above. Heat reflected off the desecrated surface in thick waves that turned the distant horizon into a mottled blur. Xexial sighed. He did this. He broke one of the sacred Wizard Tenets and took lives using Destruction.
At the time, it seemed like the only option. Ashyn needed to survive. He needed to warn the Seven of the Ferhym and their crusade against wizards. He had weighed the price heavily in his mind and felt there was no other way.
Now, seeing the shattered remains of the earth in front of him, knowing that in that cone of decimation there had once been many living, breathing elves, he wasn’t so sure.
Xexial shook his head, Don’t be a fool. The Council of Elm brought this upon them. No one else. It was their conflict. Their twisted, corrupt view point. Xexial was only acting to keep Ashyn alive. “You’ve grown too soft,” he chastised himself.
He caught a movement out of the corner of his eye, and instinctually ducked behind the outcropping he was next to. Xexial looked around it.
There, scouring one of the hillocks, were half a dozen Wild Elves. Their backs were all to him. Cautiously he watched as they moved and poked at the ground with their spears. Others were rifling through the grass with their fingers.
One overturned a ripe and swollen carcass of a Bristle Wolf. A single arrow jut out from its head, its maw locked in a permanent visage of rage. The limbs were stiff and the abdomen swollen with gas. Xexial was sure that the corpse infested with maggots.
As the wizard watched, he saw that one of the elves stood apart from the rest. Where the rest had spears and javelins, this one was just standing there, holding a bowl. His head bent low to it, and he was talking to the small pewter receptacle in his native dialect. Xexial could just make out the small white shapes of bones in the elf’s wild hair.
He growled, “Druid.” Xexial hated druids. There was just something wrong with someone who would rather spend more time talking to animals than deaingl with other people.
Xexial looked past the druid to the tower beyond. It was maybe a four-hour hike, if he moved quickly. His eyes fell back to the elves. He studied them for a long time, trying to decide if they posed a threat to Khyriaxx. He considered the odds that the hunters would find the spriggan’s tucked away abode. Never once in all his long winters had he found the spriggan’s place. Though, in truth, he never actually sought it out either.
These elves were actively searching for something. It could very well be Khyriaxx that they were looking for. Or Xexial himself. Once they found the spriggan’s tracks, it wouldn’t take much to find his home. And when they did, how long until Khyriaxx talked?
Xexial looked back the way he had come. It wasn’t far. Should he warn Khyriaxx? Aid him? Kill him? Xexial shook his head, he just didn’t know. His life had never before been in another’s hands. He hated the feeling in his gut almost as much as he hated druids. It was like a compulsion to help the spriggan.
The only other time he felt compelled to do something like that was when he saved Ashyn from the wreckage of Bremingham well over a decade before. And that was for very different reasons.
The old wizard looked back at the elves. They would kill Khyriaxx, no question about it. They would interrogate him, label him an unbalancer of nature for the perversions he created as a tinkerer, and then they would execute him for their cause.
Xexial had no choice. If only so his edge was not exposed. He needed to use his “death” to its fullest. That meant Khyriaxx was coming with him, at least, for now.
~ ~ ~
Hours later Xexial was setting out again, this time with a confused, but grateful Khyriaxx and his two goats in tow. This was why Khyriaxx saved him. Because the wizard was a source of protection. Now Xexial had to live up to it, and pay his debt.
For the next day, they offered the lowlands a wide berth. Xexial was familiar with most of the land, and so he flanked around the crater and approached it from the northwest. Much to Xexial’s surprise and relief, the spriggan was quiet for the entire journey. Either it was too distraught at having to leave behind its gadgets, or the diminutive creature knew when it was in danger.
As the sun set on the western horizon, Xexial once again found himself standing in front of the Onyx Tower. A strange well of emotions fluttered in his stomach as they stood at the large black doors. The last time he approached these doors he thought that his apprentice was going to die there. When they left, though he didn’t share the news with Ashyn at the time, he thought that he would be the one that would never return to this place.
Xexial was old. The trip to Buckner, then north to the Seven, he was certain, was going to be his last. He had thought in those final moments before exiting the large black doors that his eyes would never again set themselves upon the towers vast library. He would never again sit on the Onyx Throne that resided high at the top of the tower.
Not that he really sat upon it anyways, it was far too hard and uncomfortable. But it had been one of those final thoughts nonetheless.
He intended to hand the tower over to Ashyn. He had intended many things, he realized. Things never fulfilled. There had never been time. Time was always against him.
He looked down at Khyriaxx briefly thinking about the spriggan’s words only two days earlier, time would be either the instrument of his destruction or the agent of his legacy. He chuckled in retrospect. For a wizard, were those not one and the same?
Time was against him once more. Answers he needed resided deep in the library he had thought lost to him. Would he find them before it was too late? Would he get what he needed before the elves learned the truth, or before he became too infirm to make the trip to the Tower of the Seven?
Xexial’s mind drifted to Ashyn, to his epiphany in his final moments on the field that the boy he raised and trained wasn’t a half-elf at all, but something different. Something that could exceed even the boundaries of what Xexial thought was possible with feedback. Never in his life had he even heard of another absorbing the feedback for someone, let alone when the gift of magic was detached by injury.
Who could do such a thing? What could do such a thing? His mind shifted to the elves in the crater to the east. They called Ashyn the Nuchada, Spirit Eyes, named by their Exemplar, and marked by the same. Nothing like that had ever happened as far as Xexial knew. And now Khyriaxx says a dragon was in the area too? What exactly was Ashyn Rune?
“Take my hand,” he told Khyriaxx as he extended his left hand. The creature looked at him curiously.
“Onyx Tower has wards on all the entrances, exits, and on some of the boundaries as well. These wards are powerful enough to not just shock you, but shear the flesh from your body.”
“But not you?” Khyriaxx asked.
Xexial shook his head no. “I am attuned to these wards, as is anyone who is in contact with me.”
Khyriaxx reached up and took his hand. Xexial opened the door and they stepped inside. Briefly, a red illumination formed around their bodies, and for a fraction of a second, Xexial felt the resistance of the ward, like trying to push through water, then the pair was on the other side. Moments later, Xexial had the goats inside as well. He would stow them in the stables.
Ashyn never left his thoughts as he escorted Khyriaxx throughout the tower, explaining what was safe and what would be lethal. He was stoic and to the point with the tinkerer. There was no reason to sweeten anything. Khyriaxx may be a guest, but he wasn’t exactly a welcome one.
After he secured quarters for the creature, he quickly made his way to the top floor of the tower. Though his library was vast, only the most occult of his tomes resided up there. Xexial had a feeling that there was where he should start. He knew nothing of leeching like the boy did. If there were anything like it in the tower, it would be there first.
Upon opening the door, the dank, stale air assailed the wizard. It reeked of mildew and rot. The inside of the room was darker than the rest of the tower, having neither enchanted candles, nor enchanted chandeliers as there were in the more common areas.
His eyes adjusted to their surroundings. Instead of darkness, everything fell into a pallid grey. Obscure shapes formed where Xexial knew many of the useful items on this floor resided.
Very weak slivers of light poked through the covered windows, only further teasing Xexial to what waited within. In the back of the room he could see a goliath, towering form. He knew that to be the black throne.
Xexial never cared for the thing. It was as dark as oil, as smooth as marble, and twice as hard. The chair had no fabric of any kind. Only polished volcanic rock. He shook his head in disgust thinking about how he had thought he would never sit upon it again. He realized he would never have that desire again, even if he died tomorrow.
Xexial stepped into the large chamber. It was his master’s old study. Decades passed since he had last stepped foot in there. He doubted Ashyn even knew of its existence.
By memory alone, he walked through the darkness to where the large redwood desk sat. As he closed the distance he could see candles of white, black, and red. Most burned about halfway down, creating murky dust laden puddles across the top of the heavy wood. No tomes sat upon the desk, only a quill and a long dried vial of ink. Xexial preferred a study on the lower levels. It was immensely easier to keep clean and didn’t require as far a walk to the kitchens. Not to mention it let in more light than the thin-slatted archers’ windows that ran the length of tower perimeter.
Xexial picked up one of the gently used white candles, and a small striker next to it. Smashing the two stones together inside the striker created a spark. Xexial position the striker over the candle and collided the stones together again, and again. It took three tries before the wick flared to life.
Immediately, the shallow orange corona gave birth to long shadows in the enclosed chamber. Xexial looked around at the walls upon walls of tomes, manuscripts, and leather-bound books that made up his previous master’s eclectic tastes.
Anything that was obscure or taboo for arcane wielders such as wizards or the other Creation-wielding archetypes was probably located somewhere in this room. His master had thirsted for the knowledge of the written word more than any other wizard he had ever known.
Xexial had been quite different in his youthful days. He had not sought knowledge of the scroll, but knowledge from man. Everyday experience from anyone that would willing associate with a wizard was the coin with which he bartered. In his day, Xexial had mastered blacksmithing, cartography, masonry, woodworking, numerous linguistics, and alchemy. Unless the book showed him how to use his hands precisely and efficiently, he had very little need for it. Still, he found some written lore extremely useful. Cultures and languages, for instance were many of the core books he would read with frequency. Xexial was a doer, not one who read how someone else did it.
That was far from saying he didn’t read. Xexial did, a lot in fact. The wizard considered himself an exceptionally educated man on all accounts, even religion. His master though, read everything. The more obscure, the more reviled the better. Dead magic, ancient races now extinct, grafting spells to flesh in the form of arcane tattoos, and even written works of myth and superstition that happened in the previous age, over five thousand winters ago. It was all here.
Xexial chuckled darkly as he remembered many adventures he had had with his master tracking down books of prophecy. He was sure many were still in this very room. Then Xexial stopped cold. Prophecy.
Watched by a dragon. Marked by an Exemplar. Could there be a prophecy about Ashyn Rune?
Xexial shook his head. He held little stock in prophecy. He always had. Xexial believed in living his own life. He did not believe anyone’s life, especially his, was dictated by a handful of lunatics with lucid dreams. Still, if he couldn’t find it anywhere else, he could always look for it there.
So where else to start? Xexial cast his light against the first leather-bound book he could see. On a rare whim he removed it. Dirt particles lifted into the air, scattering into millions of tiny fragments in the dim illumination. Dust smeared under the weight of his thumb causing the rough cover to change from light grey to a faded brown. It bore no outer markings.
He cracked open the seal of the book. For the first time in many winters, the dim light touched the brittle yellow pages within. Faults and Impurities.
Xexial shook his head, either a tome on religion, sin, and redemption, or something geological. It could even be about petrology. Maybe for mining or gem-cutting? The title was so vague. He would have to really figure out how his master had organized all his personal tomes. He placed the book back on the shelf, and as he did, he caught the sight of a movement out of the corner of his eye.
Quickly the old wizard spun the candle up to the direction of the movement. There should be nothing in the tower accept himself and the spriggan. Hesitantly, he called, “Khyriaxx are you up here?”
In his mind, he recited the formula that would beckon lightning to his fingertips. Static responded across his robes, pulling at the tattered beige fabric and raising the hair on the back of his neck.
Again, he saw a flash of movement and he spun the candle to face it. Hot wax splashed against his bare hand and lanced out to strike one of the bookshelves. The flame almost guttered. Xexial bit back the burning discomfort as the wax quickly hardened on his skin.
He called more strongly to the electrical currents in the room around him. Sparks flitted across the floor from the static-electrical buildup of the dry room. Small bursts of blue light illuminated both himself and the shelves around him, creating eerie specters out of light and shadows.
“I won’t ask again, spriggan. Next movement I see, I fire.”
A disbelieving voice came from near the throne, “Xexial?”
The spell-ready wizard turned to the throne, raising his candle. The golden hue sputtered and waned, but still it cast a yellowish glow on the figure before him. The old wizard took a momentary step back, and then quickly raised his hand. Bluish-white electricity effervesced between his outstretched fingertips, adding its iridescence onto the stranger.
Irises of a deep emerald green with speckles of gold flashed in the weak light. Xexial saw no visible sclera around those irises, and there were only vertical slits for pupils.
As the light took form around the person, Xexial could begin to make out scaly skin, with a small ridge of horns and frills upon its head in place of hair. There were no ears visible, instead the wizard could make out disc-shaped membranes beyond its jaw line.
It bore a blunt snout with two nostrils located above its oversized mouth. The creature before him had a pronounced overbite, its sharp dagger-like yellow-tinged teeth extended low over its lips. It reminded Xexial of a type of caiman, but the veteran wizard knew what was before him. It was a scales.
The race of the creature is not what startled him, however. It was the robes. Long black robes laced with bright jade stood out in the light. Along the sleeves and down the breast of the fabric were dark violet runes. These runes crafted an armor across the scales’ torso equivalent in protection to a steel breastplate. It was the standard runes of a wizard in employ of the Seven. The colors however represented something much more sinister to Xexial Bontain. Wizard robe colors distinguished to all wizards what type of wizardry in which they specialized. Xexial’s robes were tan, for a specialist in shields and wards, in which he excelled. Ashyn had worn crimson, an allusion to being a Blood Wizard, whose title was grimly self-explanatory.
Black and jade were a very special kind of wizard. Instead of talent or specialty, they represented purpose and title. They were the colors of the Maba-Heth, wizard hunters.