A storm was building. Tezzeret immediately sensed it was the work of Ral Zarek; he could practically taste Zarek’s power.
“The storm mage is coming,” he said to Brokk and Krzntch.
The homunculus squealed, “What would you have us do, boss?”
“Are the traps set? Both the old and the new?”
“Yes, Master,” “Yes, boss,” the pair replied in unison.
Tezzeret’s fortress was chock-full of snares and booby traps. Some that he had installed and others, which he had left in place, that pre-existed his taking possession of the structure. The Seeker’s Sanctum, as it had once been known, had once been occupied by the Seekers of Carmot, an organization he’d been exiled from as a youth. Refusing to recognize his genius, the Seekers had said that poor Tidehollow scum like him had no place among their number. He had later learned that the Seekers were a front for Nicol Bolas, and when the Elder Dragon’s attentions were elsewhere, Tezzeret had returned to the Seekers—and had slain them all, down to the very last Fellow of the Arcane Council. He had even killed the Hieresiarch, leader of the Seekers’ Inner Circle. It had all been ridiculously easy. He had struck quickly and savagely, and most of the Seekers of Carmot had barely had time to put up a fight. The few who had, fell before him quite routinely. The only Seeker who had escaped Tezzeret’s vengeance was Seeker Adept Silas Renn—and only because Renn wasn’t present when Tezzeret arrived. He’d defeated Renn in battle years earlier, but he hadn’t quite finished him off. He’d love to do that now but hadn’t been able to locate the smirking bastard. It grated on him that Renn was still alive. It made him…angry.
Well, I’ll just have to take that anger out on Zarek. Should get at least a little pleasure from that.
Tezzeret had been preparing his next moves—his post-Bolas stratagems—for nearly a decade. So there was simply no way he’d allow Ral Zarek to interfere with his plans now…