FOUNDERS AND FOOLS

THOSE WHO DO NOT LEARN
FROM HISTORY...

 

I

 

The hooded form leaned over the heavy, black leather tome, eyeing the pages that had been reread thousands of times in search of something new. Despite so many readings, each time, a little bit more revealed itself...but just never what was truly needed.

A hand reached out...a scaled, clawed hand akin to that of a reptile. The dim light of the silver sphere of energy floating above the book and the aged marble table upon which it sat also revealed a hint of mauve in the otherwise green scales. Despite the claws, the hand moved with grace as it gingerly turned another page.

Suddenly, male and female voices arose from the page, several strong, arrogant voices that grew louder as the hand began tracing along the jagged script. Each time the index finger reached a new set of symbols, the voices would shift.

It had taken the figure countless centuries to decipher the written part of the language and several more to realize that the pronunciation of each word by the voices was important to the true meaning of each sentence.

Midway down the page, the reptilian hand abruptly flattened hard on the page. The voices ceased. An angry hiss escaped the shadowed figure. It looked up at the silver sphere, the face at last revealed in the illumination.

A face that was a twisted version somewhere between man and dragon.

It was not the face of one of the drake people, the race of dragon men who still ruled much of the continent. Those were flat, lipless and with only slits for a nose, all half hidden beneath a scaled helm that was actually a part of their living form. Instead, the features had hints of humanity, such as the eyes. Although a burning red like those of a dragon, they were shaped as a human’s or an elf’s might be.

Yet what was not quite dragon and certainly not human was the short, wide muzzle, the mouth of which was filled with sharp teeth and long but rounded tongue that darted out in frustration.

“The words I know...the spells I know...” He spun from the book to face a darkened chamber the only hints of which were rock walls just barely visible at the edge of the sphere’s illumination. “but all of that means nothing...nothing...”

He waved his left hand. The sphere went flying from its spot to hover just ahead of him.

The dragon man glared at something ahead of him. “Nothing...I made a mistake killing you then, thinking that I had the solution to the agony you caused me. I made the mistake of killing you because I thought I would have your power to change what you twisted! I made a mistake killing you before I had the complete solution!”

He gestured sharply before him. The sphere shot forward.

“I made a mistake killing you then...” he repeated, stepping with what was clear strain toward the opposite end of the chamber. The sphere dutifully floated on, brightening the way until it revealed the last wall. “but once I rip what I need from you—once I have what will finally give me access to what—I will take the very distinct pleasure of granting you an even more painful death than last time.”

He stared up at a skeletal figure dangling from the wall. Dangling, because the entire body had been pierced in more than a hundred places by long needles formed from the stone behind. The skeleton’s contortions gave clear indication that the death had been long and painful.

“And then, too...” the dragon man bitterly added as the sphere shifted to the right of the skeleton. There, frozen in a layer of translucent stone was a figure who had clearly been writhing in agony when the stone had covered him. The arms were spread wide and the legs were twisted underneath. The hooded head was bent away from view, as if the neck had been broken at some point. “Too soon, again...just as the infernal Elem said would be the case, damn them...”

The second body wore what were clearly garments identical to those of the first. Remnants of the same gloves and voluminous cloak still hung from the skeleton. The high leather boots, weathered but whole, were exactly the same as those of the first corpse.

“But with both I learned. One last time, I will tear your power from you! One last time is all I need! I will reverse what has been, despite what the Elem claim! I will escape this infernal loop and be as I once was despite the cost to all else!” The not quite human tongue darted out and the eyes literally blazed with hatred.

A sudden transformation overtook the features. The snout grew more akin to the nose and the eyes shifted to crystalline ones. A groan escaped the figure as this happened, a groan ending in a strong epithet.

“Whatever the cost,” he managed. “Even if I must unmake time itself...”

 

II

The world was filled with ghosts.

There had always been such things in the Dragonrealm, Valea Bedlam knew, but ever they had been sights very rare. Now, they were much more common and much more of an influence on the living world. It was not right. It was clearly an imbalance, so Gerrod had said to her on several occasions. The only problem was, no one yet knew how to solve the problem.

And so ghosts continued to gather among the breathing, some of them harmless, some of them not.

Most living creatures did not realize the change in the world yet. Even Valea would not have noticed it had not Gerrod pointed out the telltale signs. Unfortunately, he had insisted that they not share that information with her family yet...not, at least, until they had the opportunity to see to what depths it had spread over the continent.

It had said much that she had chosen to listen to his suggestion rather than tell her parents and brother. Valea sighed. She had never planned on falling in love with Gerrod, but then she doubted that he had ever thought he would fall in love with her.

After all, what hope had there been of anything even remotely normal for the cursed warlock still known to most as Shade.

“No hint of them anywhere. The Lords are either very cunning or they are, as they should be, no more.”

He looked no older than she did, both of them seemingly only a few years past their second decade. For Valea, that was near the truth. For Gerrod, though...two decades was not even the blink of an eye for someone actually thousands of years old.

Gerrod smiled briefly at her, a smile meant to reassure but that both knew failed. He had a handsome face—so she thought with prejudice—with slightly sharp features that gave him a brooding, thoughtful look. His ever stern brow added to that impression, but what was most arresting to anyone were his eyes. His crystalline eyes.

The eyes of a Vraad sorcerer.

Those eyes flashed. Literally flashed. “You can see my face.”

“Things haven’t changed, Gerrod. It stays revealed as long as we’re very near one another. I can’t explain how that works, but it works. That’s enough.”

“It works because of you, Valea. It works only because of you and your faith in me.”

“Faith and love.” She leaned forward and kissed him. He was as hesitant as ever, but not, the enchantress knew, because he did not care as much for her. Despite his thousands of lifetimes, he had not been much among his fellow men...unless he and they were trying to kill one another. There had been no creature more hated or feared even by the Dragon Kings than him.

Valea brushed some of her thick, red hair aside as she backed away. She had long been aware that she was considered beautiful by most men—a strong reflection of her mother, also renowned for both her mastery of the arts and her appearance—but she considered her nose too tiny and her lips too full. As an enchantress, she could have altered everything, but from her parents had learned the risks of focusing spellwork on herself. Such magic had its dangers, Gerrod being the ultimate proof. His curse had begun at the dawn of humanity—even before it, actually—when he had sought to escape what he considered a fate worse than death by seeking a spell that would preserve him exactly as he was.

Instead, Gerrod had begun a cycle of madness, in the process becoming a creature living an endless series of half-existences that, when extinguished either by chance or intention, repeated over and over again. If he had been a hero in one, he had been an insidious villain in the next. Cities had fallen because of him, yet he had saved so many lives, no matter what the race.

And to mark that curse most, to mark that he was never quite an actual part of the mortal world, his face had always been seen as a blur, as never quite being in true focus. Valea had always wondered whether there was more that Gerrod had not told her, that the murky features were only an outward sign of a deeper alteration by the curse of both his body and soul.

No, not the curse, but the power Gerrod believed behind it. The land itself.

That last was not so outrageous as it might have sounded, Valea knew. Legend had it—not to mention her own experience—that the land had a mind of its own, that the many races that had ruled over it had done so only at its whim.

The actual truth was a complex and stunning one. Long, long ago, before the Dragon Kings, before the avian Seekers, before the burrowing Quel—before any of the ruling races there remained evidence of—there had been a people called by those few who knew of them now as simply the founders. If they had any other name, it had been lost to time. It was the last surviving members of the founders, so she had grown up hearing from her parents, who had evidently melded their spirits—or perhaps consciousnesses with the very land now called the Dragonrealm.

It had been in the process of seeking an escape from his curse that Gerrod as Shade had come across the dark legacy of that founding race, a legacy proving that too many of the tales concerning the founders were true. He had nearly run afoul of their grand design, only to be saved by the Crystal Dragon, lord of the Legar Peninsula and most enigmatic of the drake rulers.

The Crystal Dragon...who had also proven to be Gerrod’s own brother, long, long ago transformed intentionally along with most of the rest of the Vraad race into the first of the drake people by the ghostly minds now controlling the very land.

The chaos involved in those events had had reverberations the extent of which neither she nor Gerrod could yet guess. They only knew that one result of that chaos had been the change the enchantrees herself appeared to create in the warlock. He was now nearly his original self around Valea. However, that good fortune was tempered by the fact that a few yards beyond her presence the curse began to seize control of him again. Both also still feared what would happen if some calamity befell him and he died. There was the great concern that he might return as the Shade of old, in that new incarnation sinking once more into darkness and threatening the lives of all.

And for Gerrod, she understood, there was also the fear that the first person he harmed would be her.

“I wish I could recall better what knowledge I’d gathered from the phoenix,” he commented, referring to a magical creature that had turned out to be a guardian left behind by the founders to protect one of their greatest artifacts. The magical being had in the end managed to side with Gerrod against its former masters, then had forever sealed off the ancient sanctum Gerrod and Valea had discovered from all. As Shade, Gerrod had gathered hints of other such places of power, but in becoming something more akin to mortal, that knowledge had slipped away.

“You said you thought you remembered something about the limestone cliffs south of Irillian by the Sea. Isn’t that where we should go next?”

“It would make sense.” Gerrod peered over his shoulder. “but for some reason I cannot shake the feeling that there is something of import near here.”

Here was the outskirts of Gordag-Ai, one of the prominent kingdoms of the western part of the Dragonrealm. Despite truly only being a free kingdom since the downfall of its Dragon King some three decades ago, Gordag-Ai had had centuries of prosperity due to its value to its late drake lord. That had enabled it to maintain a robust economy where some kingdoms had struggled, but it had still been of great benefit when its princess, Irini, had married the reclusive king of Talak. As queen of the mountain kingdom, Irini had had tremendous influence on her husband’s decisions.

But Queen Irini was nearly a year dead, struck down while saving her husband from the same source of evil that could be blamed for the rise of ghosts in the Dragonrealm. As she and Gerrod—and especially Gerrod as Shade—had been principal in the destruction of that evil, Valea and he both remained aware that they also had some responsibility with the aftermath.

But there always remained the quest. Gerrod could not risk his curse overtaking him again. Valea knew to trust his instincts. If he sensed there was something tied to his situation here, then they could not leave until they discovered just what it was.

It did not escape her that once more Gordag-Ai appeared to have some import when it came to magic. Her father and Darkhorse had some years back confronted nearby a sad, mad creature whose sorrowful legacy and hatred had spanned the two centuries since the Turning War. The same creature had gathered several young spellcasters and turned them into assassins against the drakes, an ironic turn since he himself had been of that race.

“Gerrod, do you sense anything odd about this region? Is there anything you remember about it that would make it of importance in terms of magic?”

“Nothing I recall or sense...which does not mean that all here is innocence.” He shrugged and stared at the landscape, as if awaiting the answer from it.

Before Valea could ask more, she felt a female voice in her head calling her name.

Her mother. Valea strengthened the shields around her thoughts, hoping it would remain sufficient to block the probes of both her parents. Her father still had many misgivings concerning the man she loved and even her mother was not entirely happy with the situation.

Suddenly, Gerrod spun toward the city itself. He pointed one gloved finger at it.

“There...just for a moment...but there...” He pushed back his hood slightly, revealing dark, somewhat unkempt hair. “but now it’s gone again.”

The enchantress had not felt a thing, but that hardly surprised her. What Gerrod actually hunted were the minutest traces of the founders’ magic, something to which he and he alone was attuned.

“In Gordag-Ai itself?”

He gritted his teeth. “In it...or more likely below it.”

She smoothed her emerald riding outfit. While Valea preferred skirts when in public functions, the pants and boots were much more practical at times like this. “So, where do we go? The city center?”

Gerrod rewarded her with a sad chuckle. “Valea Bedlam might be welcome anywhere she chooses to materialize, but there will never be many places in the Dragonrealm willing to let Shade simply pop into their midst.”

“But you are no longer Shade,” she insisted, not for the first time. “You are not.”

He sighed, then quickly stepped back from her. Before she could stop him, he had moved enough of a distance for things to change. His crystalline eyes lost their glitter and his face in general grew less defined. Another two steps and what seemed a haze spread over his face. Valea tried in vain to keep his countenance in view, but quickly lost the battle. In seconds, all she could see were vague hints of where the eyes, nose, and mouth were. Whenever the enchantress attempted to focus on just one of those features, it seemed to further slip from her view.

“As you yourself pointed out, it is you that make me ‘Gerrod’ again, Valea. Away from you—surely a risk in Gordag-Ai—this is what I am.”

She remained undeterred. “We will just have to make certain that we are not separated then.”

The faceless sorcerer held out his left hand. “I remain aware just how fruitless it will be to convince you otherwise, but at the very least, we should materialize a short distance outside the city gates.”

“That makes sense.” The enchantress reached for his hand. As she neared, his countenance began to coalesce again. Valea fought back an exhalation of relief once they were fully visible.

“I do not deserve you,” Gerrod murmured.

She said nothing. He gave her another sad smile, then concentrated.

Their surroundings shifted. They were still a distance form Gordag-Ai, but now its impressively-high walls could be appreciated. Still, Valea frowned. “We could have appeared a little nearer. Between the two of us, we can keep any spellcaster in the city from noticing our presence.”

“I have gained some bit of caution over my many lifetimes. With you next to me, I appreciate that sense of caution even more.”

Meaning that he had dropped them here to protect her. The crimson-tressed enchantress grimaced, but decided not to say anything. She would trust to him in this.

“It is near enough to sunset that we should wait until then,” he added after a moment.

She understood why he suggested that. Most spellcasters could create illusions to disguise themselves, but the unique nature of his curse made that virtually impossible. Any such illusions quickly failed. The land demanded that Shade had to be Shade, no matter how much that risked each incarnation.

“However,” Gerrod abruptly continued. “Perhaps a new if more mundane suggestion offers itself.”

He pointed back at the main road to Gordag-Ai, where a long caravan had just come into sight. More than a dozen tall, covered wagons slowly made their way toward the distant gates. Several hefty oxen followed behind.

“If they are bringing those animals for sale, then they will need to journey to the west end market. It will be dark long before we reach there, enabling us to slip out of the next to last wagon.”

“But we’ll need to use a spell to enter them,” she countered.

“Which is why we must do it now, before they get any nearer to the city.”

And before she could answer...they suddenly sat amidst a pile of goods and wares the boxes of which all bore the blue sea serpent emblem of Irillian by the Sea. While there were methods by which large amounts of goods could be moved by magic, those were rarely used save in times of war or disaster. Besides the fact that matters in the world were too risky to cast portals—in this case a blink hole due to the necessary size—for such use, most mortal creatures preferred the stability of normal travel.

“You should get some rest,” the warlock suggested to her. “We will be at least three more hours. If I feel myself nodding off, I will wake you.”

“It has been a long day. All right.” Unwilling to risk detection by even creating a pillow, the enchantress settled for one of the sacks near her.

It proved surprisingly comfortable. More exhausted then she wanted to admit, she fell asleep immediately.

 

 

Gerrod eyed her. He had seen how tired she was. He himself was exhausted, but he was used to that. What mattered was that Valea now rested.

With a grimace of apology, he vanished.

 

III

As Shade, he materialized in the midst of Gordag-Ai, a darkened corner obscuring him from the eyes of both the city guards and the populace. Several of the locals walked blithely past him, their loose, voluminous garments reminding the sorcerer of fluttering birds.

He had hated to lie to her, but what he had actually sensed had been something he needed to investigate alone. Already, Shade had a spell around him that he felt certain would be too powerful for whatever magic users Gordag-Ai had managed to gather over the past two decades. Most spellcasters of any competence had been trained by either Valea’s parents or the school that the Lord Gryphon of Penacles had now opened. Shade had every confidence that so long as it was for him alone, his protective spells would be sufficient.

Besides, if what he sensed was true, he needed to deal with it quickly.

He did not have to see his face to know the transformation had already taken place. What even Valea did not know—what he dared not tell her—was that the more that he stayed away from her, the stronger the curse returned. Even now, he could feel the ancient energies stirring anew inside, twisting him, making him their slave again. He felt a distance—a chasm—open up between him and all other creatures, Valea included.

I am Shade. I am and will always be Shade, even with her at my side. It was a sobering thought, one that he did not like to even remind himself about.

And so Shade focused on what he had sensed but that he had not mentioned to Valea.

He sensed...himself.

It should have been an impossibility, but it had happened at least one time previous so far as his admittedly-splintered memory could recall. Then, the forces unleashed on him had splintered him into multiple pieces, scattering lesser Shades all over the Dragonrealm. Gradually, they had been brought together, although at great cost. At that time, he had been able to detect his other selves, albeit with tremendous effort. This, though...this did not hide from him. It was almost as if either it did not know he was near enough to detect it or it simply did not care.

Or, more likely, it had arranged a trap.

Against most anything else, Shade would have grudgingly accepted Valea’s aid. She was, after all, one of the Bedlams and the only one he could absolutely trust. Against himself, though...

You hesitate too long, Shade berated himself. Do what must be done!

The warlock nodded...and faded again.

He materialized deep, deep underground. Part of what he saw was carved from rock, but part had also been dug out with much effort. Not human effort, though, he suspected. He could sense ancient traces of magical energy that clearly predated humans and even drakes, which meant that it even predated Shade.

Shade ran a hand over the nearest wall, which had a symbol carved into it. It vaguely resembled a bird, but a fantastical bird. One with which he was all too familiar, in fact.

A phoenix. Shade’s blood stirred. Although the founder race had a proclivity for certain spirit animals, one of the most significant where he was concerned was the phoenix. For the founders, the phoenix had literally meant transformation. They had even shaped the magical servant guarding one of their arcane devices into such a beast. Wherever Shade had found hints of the forces that he needed to escape his curse, the mark of the phoenix had generally been present.

Heart beating faster, the faceless spellcaster peered down the darkened path to his right. He could still sense his own unique trace about, but now very diffused, which made no sense. It was as if he were all around himself.

Although Shade could recall only pieces of his various incarnations’ existences, he knew that more than a few had come across plots and artifacts related to previous Shades. Sometimes, an incarnation would even try to leave a clue to a potential future self, preferably one who leaned toward the same direction.

But I have surely been near this kingdom many times more than I recall. I should have noticed this trace earlier. I should have.

Shade took a step down the darkened path, then suddenly held one gloved palm forward. A flash of silver shot forth, briefly illuminating the corridor ahead.

Simple stone walls greeted his gaze. Shade studied the path ahead until the last vestiges of the flash faded. Then, still feeling some trepidation, the hooded warlock stepped forward.

Barely had he done so than hands of stone darted out of the flanking walls. They seized his arms, his legs, and his voluminous cloak.

The last proved a mistake for Shade’s attackers. The cloak immediately wrapped around the hands grabbing it and squeezed until the stone limbs crumbled. The cloak then dropped down to Shade’s legs, wrapping around those stone limbs as well.

As his garment did that, Shade himself cast a brief spell. His body became an inferno nearly matching the heat of the Red Dragon himself. The other clinging hands quickly blackened, then melted.

The moment he was free, Shade lunged forward. The heat spell was a potent one that affected even him. It was one of those last resort tricks, used with the knowledge that it might do as so many of those who feared or hated Shade desired...kill him. Bad enough, he thought, that he had to be afraid of what he would become due to the acts of others without being the cause of it himself.

Regaining his mental balance, Shade used his powers to probe the areas from which the hands had sprouted. There were only scant remnants of the energies originally used to create and manipulate them. Shade admired the subtlety with which the arrangement had been created, especially considering the incredible age he also noted. This trap had been set in place by the same beings who had carved out this ancient place. That it still functioned after so long bespoke of their skills.

And that, in turn, encouraged the warlock on. While on the one hand the fact that his long-ago incarnation had obviously failed to break the curse meant that there was possibly nothing for him to now find, there was also yet the hope that perhaps that other version of Shade had simply missed something.

It was alway a hope.

The passage abruptly opened up into another chamber. There, Shade stumbled to a halt, stunned. Whatever else had happened to his previous self, that Shade had surely seen this.

A tall, golden obelisk rose to within inches of the high ceiling, its sides etched in the familiar if frustrating to decipher script of the founders. Shade stepped toward the obelisk as if hypnotized. He had come across only one other akin to this—at least as far as he could recall—and it had been one of the key tools to finally locating the Tower of the Phoenix and the astounding device it had housed. While the tower was no longer accessible from the mortal plane, this obelisk, with its various symbols, pointed to a possible second tower still within his magical reach.

Shade had always suspected that other towers existed, some of them perhaps even potentially located on the massive continent to the east, but this obelisk’s position could only mean that there was one not all that far from Gordag-Ai. The obelisks functioned as conduits for the spellwork for which the towers were used. In the case of the founders’ magic, that meant a short enough distance.

Shade’s mind raced. To the west, such a distance would put the tower deep into the Sea of Andramacus. While that might be possible—very possible—the faceless spellcaster suspected that it was more likely the second tower either lay north or east. At the needed distance south, Shade would have found himself in the midst of the Legar Peninsula. However, based on the spell structure favored by the founders, Legar, with its unique crystalline nature, would have proven inappropriate. Everything the founders had done had followed a pattern of measurement and magical resonance. The veins of crystal coursing through the peninsula would have disturbed the latter too much to be worth the trouble.

The key to finding out just where the tower might lay was on the obelisk itself. All concern forgotten, Shade eagerly circled his prize. In the back of his mind he made the assumption that what he had sensed of other self had been perhaps a beacon after all, a spell designed to function at the right time. Shade could only assume since he had never felt it before that it was timed to some aspect of the obelisk’s function and that by a rare bit of good fortune the warlock had happened near when necessary.

“Tell me,” he muttered. “Tell me your secrets...”

A part of his mind berated him for not reaching out to Valea, but another part insisted that it was still too dangerous to risk the woman he loved around the magicks of the founders. They had already once sought to make a pawn of her in order to bend him to their will and he would not have that happen again. True, there was no hint of any current founder activity, but the minds of the ancients had a way of patiently living on, waiting and watching.

With a shiver at the thought, Shade glanced behind him. There was nothing, of course. Only the founders could disturb him so, though. They had, after all, created him as he was and over the millennia he had no doubt unwittingly served their sinister cause several times over. The only way he could ever hope for that to not happen again was to free himself of the curse once and for all.

That in mind, he quickly returned to attempting to decipher the script. While there were constants to the founder language, to the best of his memory each artifact he had uncovered had also included unique layers of written and spoken directions required to fully translate what the founders actually meant.

“Forgotten it again? Have no fear...I know the entire thing by heart. I’ve certainly had enough time to memorize it.”

Shade spun about. Where he had just looked now stood a shape that seemed little more than a monkish robe. Within the robe and hood lurked a darkness as deep as the murkiness that had erased the warlock’s own features.

“I know you, apparently,” Shade muttered. “and what grudge do you carry against me that likely has much merit?”

“The strongest of all...uncle...” The figure raised a scaled, clawed hand and pulled back the hood slightly. “...for leaving me like this...”

The face was a twisted mix between human and dragon. Part of the muzzle crumpled in at the side to half form a normal nose. Even as Shade watched, the muzzle shifted, becoming wider and longer, more that of a dragon. Simultaneously, the figure hunched as if starting to fall onto all four limbs.

At the last moment, he forced himself straight. The only constant in his appearance was the hatred in his eyes. Human, drake, or...Vraad...the hatred burned deep.

“You are...were...Vraad...no...not so...” muttered the warlock in confusion. Even the energies around the figure shifted, sometimes seeming those of one race, then of another.

“No...not Vraad...not exactly. I was firstborn to an early lord drake of Penacles, uncle...born a drake, not your precious Vraad...” The figure stumbled forward. It became clear that any extended movement was awkward for the figure. “Yes, uncle. Born a scaled beast. Born battling conflicting thoughts. Wondering why there were questions as to where we began and why I dreamed of a race of humanoid sorcerers with crystal eyes. Wondering why my sire, for all the knowledge at hand, could not answer about our abrupt dawning...” The dragon man took a ragged breath. “and then you came in our midst. Not human. Not drake...but bound to both. And not yet fully cursed.”

Shade kept near the obelisk as he pondered how to deal with this misshapen figure. Despite that, he was also startled by what he had just been told “I was not yet...not yet...”

“No...you were not yet the infamous Shade, but you were nearly there. You were no longer Vraad. They were already preparing you.”

Shade had to take the creature’s word for that, those memories long gone. Staring harder at his bizarre companion, the warlock began to have some suspicions as to why the other looked as he did.

“I caused your troubles, did I not? I made you the way you are.”

“So very astute. Can you guess what you hoped to achieve with me?”

Shade did not like the calm tone the figure used, especially if he had somehow spent countless millennia suffering so. The constant transforming could not take place without much agony. “I was...trying to reverse what the land had already done to me, was I not? I already feared what I was becoming.”

The other’s face shifted again, the snout sinking in and becoming a wide, almost comic mouth with a squat nose worthy of a troll. The eyes became more Vraad in shape and appearance.

“’What the land had already done;,” Shade’s companion muttered. “The very words you used then. They are burned in my mind, uncle—”

“Do not call me that.”

A shrug. “Near enough to the actual truth. Near enough that I fell for your glib words that accented my own distrust of the world around me. You played on that. Played on it very well.”

The faceless warlock spread his hands. “I can only apologize...and offer my help to free you of your burden.”

The froglike mouth widened. “You already made that offer when next we met, centuries later. It just took a few more of your lives to figure out how to possibly accomplish it. Finally accomplish it...even without their help.”

Something in the other’s tone made Shade act. He cast a spell designed to keep his companion at bay. He could have attempted to slay the figure, but guilt at what he had already done to the drake made him hold back.

But instead of his spell taking effect, the obelisk flared. Shade felt the magic from his spell wrenched away and sucked into the ancient structure.

“It has to be enough this time...you promised me yourself,” the dragon man rasped. “It has to be...”

Shade would have asked what he meant, but he could no longer move. It was the obelisk’s doing. It had not merely seized the magic from his spell, but also that spell’s link to him. The warlock was now bound to the artifact, something he knew could not be good.

“As far as we were able to determine, this was one of the locations from which the founders first attempted to place their souls, minds...whatever you wish to call them...into the very land. You and I, though, we found it could be used for another sort of transformation. We also discovered so much more...but you need not concern yourself about that.”

As he stepped toward the warlock, he removed a small wand from one cloak pouch. Shade could see it just enough to recognize it as another founder artifact. He had no doubt that it had a distinct tie to the obelisk.

“Twice tried, twice failed,” his captor murmured. “This time should be enough. You promised. You deciphered their coy hints, their half-truths...”

The constantly shapeshifting figure took the wand and inserted it into a small hole on the side of the obelisk.

Shade felt a surge of force through his body. A sense of displacement filled him. Part of him seemed to float in an empty place he knew without understanding how was the obelisk.

His captor reached out a clawed hand to him. To Shade’s dismay, the hand went into his chest without pause.

“The first step complete.” There was a hint of awe in the tone. “After so very long. If this works...then it will all work. Then it will all be as if it never happened.” He chuckled madly. “Thank you, uncle. Thank you at last.”

He turned his back on Shade. However, instead of walking away, he backed up...and into the frozen warlock.

Shade wanted to scream, but instead of his voice, from his lips emerged that of his captor.

“And now...we begin the final step.”

 

IV

Valea had only been asleep for a few precious seconds when she sensed Gerrod’s trickery. The enchantress immediately sat up and focused, but his magical trace was already fading. More than most, he knew how to mask it even from other capable spellcasters.

But Valea had a stronger bond to him than anyone. She managed to fix on what remained and cast her spell.

A moment later, she stood in Gordag-Ai. Vaguely familiar with the city, she chose a location near the great watch tower in the center, a place where no one would immediately see her.

She was also already dressed a bit differently. In Gordag-Ai, pants such as she wore were not considered proper attire for women. Even when riding, women wore flowing skirts. Valea thought the custom old-fashioned, but knew that if she stepped out in her normal attire, she would attract some attention. Even the caravans tended to make certain that any female along with them dressed accordingly. While Queen Irini had always been a fairly worldly woman, Valea had discovered that the local populace had a tendency to stare at anything they considered too out of place.

In addition to the much too voluminous skirt, she wore a cloak and hood that allowed her to cover her head and her crimson hair. Red was rare enough, but here it was hardly even known. Only her face remained visible.

Satisfied, she stepped out into the crowd. Although she immediately got glances from several people—it was impossible for her to completely cover the fact that she was an outsider without risking the use of more magic—most soon turned away. To them, she was now one more trader from a caravan who respected them enough to not dress oddly.

The entire setup had once amused her, but now she cared only for locating Gerrod. So long away from her, the curse clearly had control of him. As Shade, he could hardly walk among the locals. Still, she felt that she was close—

Valea sensed the other spellcaster just moments before he appeared. The populace quickly gave him space. His silver robes were akin to the rest of the flowing garments, with the exception of the sharply-pointed cowl.

He was young. His expression was overly stern, an indication of his awareness that, despite his abilities, most of those around him were his seniors in not just age but experience. For no reason Valea could immediately grasp, he abruptly created a small fireball in one hand.

The crowd gave him a wider berth. Their own expressions grew disturbed.

Valea understood. Since the other spellcaster was so young, he felt he had to make some sort of impression of strength. The enchantress recalled having done displays herself when first learning, but nothing that any around her would have seen as a threat. She wondered just who had trained him to think that way...if anyone had trained him at all. Since Queen Irini’s death, Edrik—her nephew and king of Gordag-Ai—had cut off all cooperation with the magic school in Penacles. Indeed, Edrik had become nearly as much a recluse as his aunt’s husband.

Seemingly satisfied that he had put the crowd in its place, the wizard carefully peered around. His eyes paused when they came to her. She pretended to be nervous. If necessary, Valea would reveal who she was, but only if truly pressed. If Gerrod was in danger, she did not want to have to spend time presenting herself to King Edrik and the royal court of Gordag-Ai.

The wizard grinned...and then stood right in front of her.

“Welcome to our fair city,” he announced to her much too grandly.

“Thank you,” Valea returned in a falsely submissive tone.

“I am Ilyon. Second Mage of Gordag-Ai! Only the great Bryad is above me...and the king, of course.” He leaned too close. “And what is your name?”

“Gerda.” He was attracted to her. Valea fought back a grimace. She now wished that she’d created a scarf for her face, after all, even if it would have attracted attention of another kind.

“Gerda...is that a Talakian name?”

“I—” She got no farther. Both she and Ilyon sensed powerful magic coming from near the other side of the tower. Ilyon quickly faded away.

Valea rushed in that direction. She had been tempted to do as the wizard had, but what she had noted had made her use a less noticeable method.

Just as she came around the tower, Ilyon’s body went flying past. He bowled through several fleeing locals before finally crashing into the wall of an inn.

Stunned, Valea turned to the source of the attack.

“Gerrod!” she shouted.

The familiar hooded form turned to her...and presented a face of horror she could not have expected. A countenance that constantly shifted from something reptilian to something nearly human to something a monstrous combination of both confronted her. Yet, as with Gerrod in his cursed form, the face also faded in and out of that familiar, ominous murkiness.

“Gerrod?” Valea gasped with far less certainty.

The figure pulled one end of the cloak around him. The cloak continued on, wrapping the body tightly. As that happened, the warlock became thinner, less distinct.

The enchantress stirred from her shock. She reached a hand toward him—but by then he was gone.

Around her, people screamed and fled the vicinity. Despite desperately wanting to pursue, Valea instead first rushed to Ilyon. He still lay in a limp pile, his clothing scorched, his skin burnt, bruised, and bleeding. She bent down beside him and checked for life.

It was there, albeit weak. Valea took hold of his hand and concentrated.

New shrieks arose as she and her burden materialized in a room with a vaulted ceiling and a long, wooden bed. Two guards in the gleaming, pointed-shoulder armor of the royal house focused their spears on her.

“Your wizard needs help,” she proclaimed without concern. “He was caught by surprise. See to him.”

An older woman in a plain but still flowing dress that marked her as one of the senior servants revealed sense and initiative by immediately coming to see to the stricken mage.

“Bid your liege well from Valea Bedlam and apologize to him from me for this abrupt encounter,” she ordered the guards.

“You cannot leave here—” the senior of the pair started.

“I must.” Before anything else could happen, the enchantress pictured a location.

A second later, she stood on a hill to the north that allowed her an excellent view of Gordag-Ai. The scene was lost on Valea though, her attention on the faint trace she sensed. It was and it was not Gerrod.

Where are you? Where? the enchantress pondered as she tried to see where the trace led. It followed along a path toward the northwest...and then simply stopped.

Valea held up a hand toward where it ended. Sure enough, it just ceased in mid-air. There was no hint of it fading, as would have happened if he had transported himself away again. Try as she might, the enchantress could not sense the trail beyond two feet ahead.

She tried to think about all the possibilities her parents had taught her, but nothing seemed right. She was no apprentice; it would have taken even Gerrod tremendous effort to obscure where he had gone—

And then, it struck her.

“No...it can’t be...” The enchantress shut her eyes and probed. As before, she sensed nothing.

But it was there. Valea knew it was there. A place she could not see. A place she could not feel.

A place beyond the mortal plane, created long ago...by the founding race. Valea had come across only one before, when she and Gerrod had been on the hunt for a cure for his curse. Instead, they had ended up ensnared in a trap.

The Tower of the Phoenix.

That mythic place had been sealed off forever, but she and Gerrod had always been aware that others surely had to exist. It had been their hope that eventually they would find one and with it complete his salvation. However, now what would have once thrilled the enchantress instead filled her with dread. She still remembered that monstrous face. That had not been Gerrod. That had not even been Shade.

“But who, then? Who?” she whispered. “What’s happening?”

He has come to die...or kill to live...

She whirled around.

A face made of brown leaves hovered before her.

A face...and nothing more.

 

V

Shade could do nothing but watch as his body moved under the guidance of his captor. The dragon man stalked along a purple landscape toward a single high mountain in the distance.

No...not a mountain. A huge structure.

A founder structure.

“Be not so thrilled by the sight,” the dragon man said, evidently sensing Shade’s brief instinctive excitement. “There is a shell, but little flesh.”

What he meant by that became apparent a moment later as the landscape shifted without warning. Where once the gargantuan citadel had been far away, now it stood right before them.

And only then did Shade see that the ancient structure consisted mostly of a huge gray outer wall that wound around out of sight on the right, but ended in a crumbling heap on the far left. Within, there was mostly rubble, much of it likely from the missing roof.

“In the final days, there was much turmoil,” his foul companion remarked. “Struggles for power, struggles for the path to be chosen. In this case, the struggle ended somewhat violently.”

Shade had witnessed past evidence of the turmoil that had overwhelmed the founders. In struggling to recast the future of their world as their kind began to die out, they had made several unsettling decisions. Not everyone had agreed with all those decisions. Factions had grown up. Power had been wielded.

And, at least in this case, war had evidently broken out.

All that remained of the architecture were a few rounded windows and fluted columns. In truth, Shade marveled that there had been anything left to find.

The sky and landscape remained a purple hue. Each of the founders’ pocket worlds was unique and appeared to serve a specific purpose. Many acted as incubators for possible successor races to both the drakes and humans. The founders’ last experiments had grown to include an incredible array of astounding pocket worlds.

The landscape shifted again. Now, the warlock’s captor stood in the midst of the rubble.

“The Citadel of the Elem,” the dragon man remarked. A moment later, he added, “you don’t recall the Elem at all, I would wager.”

Shade had no answer. Whatever knowledge his earlier incarnation had had concerning these Elem, it was indeed long lost.

“It does not matter, I suppose,” his captor went on. “They are not important to this. All that matters is what was left behind...that still functions.”

The shapeshifting creature stepped atop the highest pile of rubble...and thus enabled both of them to see what stood in the center of the fallen citadel.

Shade had expected another obelisk or perhaps some raised platform, but instead there was a thin, metallic pole on top of which had been set what appeared to be a tiny pyramid of onyx.

“Just a few moments more. Just a few moments more,” Shade’s captor muttered, descending to the pole. As they neared, the warlock realized that the pole was not metallic, but made of a familiar iridescent pearl substance he had seen on previous founder artifacts. That bespoke of tremendous power, which made him all the more concerned with what his captor intended.

“Thousands and thousands of years suffering from your hubris, uncle,” the thing muttered. “All from spilling fear and promises in my ears. The land is watching you, Sarcos! The land is seeking to change you and all you know, Sarcos! Look and see what your kind once was before it was transformed into the drakes! See the glory of the Vraad, the glory of the Tezerenee!”

Already I had fallen into darkness, into madness, Shade thought. Never would he have otherwise praised to anyone his foul race or in some ways his even fouler clan. The Tezerenee had represented everything monstrous about the ancient sorcerer race. Even in their relatively short existence in the Dragonrealm, they had left their mark, especially in the form of the necromancers called the Lords of the Dead.

“Lowly as I was, already wracked by whispering voices no matter where I went, I was easy prey for your suggestions! Easy prey!” Sarcos hissed. “Easssy...”

He paused before the pole. Even with Sarcos in control of his body, Shade could feel the tremendous forces drawn into the artifact. He already had some suspicions as to what Sarcos intended, but the ruined drake seemed more than happy to make things clear.

“’I have located a thing’, you said. ‘A thing that the founders used to help them manipulate flesh into thought and then flesh again with but a whim.’ You claimed that you had divined its working and needed me—clearly sensitive to the whispers of the land, of the spirits of the founders—to aid. In return, you would restore me to the glory and cheat the land of its mastery.”

Shade could imagine how his other self had played on the young drake. If Sarcos had been hearing the land’s many voices constant whispers, he had been near to insanity already. That had made him easy prey for the warlock.

“‘I hear them, too, Sarcos. I know what they plan next...’”

Had he still had control of his body, Shade would have cringed. He could not blame his curse on what had been done to Sarcos. It had been the original Gerrod who had caused all this and the fact that he had done so out of fear for his own existence did not forgive his crime against the young drake. Gerrod Tezerenee had brought his puppet to the chamber from which Sarcos had just taken Shade. He had taught the young drake all he could about the device and how it worked. Yet, one thing had prevented the pair from taking what Barakas Tezerenee’s last surviving son had said would be the final step. A true sense of what the instructions of the founders actually said.

And then...they had uncovered the book. The book left by the founders.

As fragmented as his memory had become due to the curse, Shade had always believed that the only traces of the founders’ language had been what he had located on artifacts such as the obelisk. Never had he come across an actual tome—

But no...evidently I did... Despite his current state, the warlock listened intently. This was a piece of the puzzle that promised potential if he was able to escape.

“The book...the book told us so much. Told us why it all had to be...reasons you would find amazing. It told us the basis of their magic and how it folds time itself, enabling nearly anything to be accomplished! Compared to that, even the power of the Vraad was nothing...” Sarcos touched the side of the pole. A series of silver symbols Shade recognized from other founder artifact flickered to life in the air before them. “Accomplish anything, but at the cost of betraying themselves.”

His statement disturbed the warlock, for it hinted that there was some other purpose to this place that Sarcos was not making clear.

“Soon...all is now in place. The missing component is in motion, the component whose absence left me like this, ever changing, ever tortured...which is why you fooled me into testing it first for you...”

Sarcos touched three of the symbols.

The pole hummed. The dragon man looked up. The pyramid glowed a fiery crimson.

“I was your sacrificial beast,” Sarcos snarled. “I thought I was your partner, but no...you knew that something else was still missing...and you wanted to see what would happen without it. How I screamed when the power tore me apart and remade me! How I screamed...but in the end, I’ve made you scream more.”

He pressed two more of the symbols. The hum grew stronger.

“I’ve watched and waited and now all things come together for me. It won’t be exactly as the book indicated, but it will be close enough.” Sarcos touched one last symbol. “There. Nothing more to do. No reason to keep talking. I’ve spent thousands of years waiting. Now, it will be as if I never suffered at all...”

The humming grew deafening.

“Gerrod!”

NO...NO! Shade tried to shout. Run! Run!

Sarcos turned to the voice. Valea’s voice.

“And here she is. The loop is again complete. Still, I will not be deterred. I will be free at last,” the dragon man murmured.

Valea stood atop one of the piles of rubble. Valea not alone. With her were two...three...no, four floating faces that appeared to be made of leaves.

“This will not work anymore than the other times, Sarcos,” one of the leaf faces solemnly remarked. “You cannot change the result by doing the same thing over and over. The masters learned that too late.”

“But I’m not doing the same thing over this time,” Sarcos retorted. “I couldn’t draw far enough. This time, I can. Look at him. You know he’s different now.”

With a manic laugh, the dragon man touched the pole—

“No!” Valea shouted. Through Sarcos, Shade felt her cast a spell.

Which was, Shade understood too late, exactly what Sarcos wanted her to do.

The dragon man touched a final symbol just as her spell touched them. The pole hummed. Both he and Shade shrieked together as incredible forces burst around the pole. The warlock felt himself torn from Sarcos, but that brought him no comfort. His greatest concern was for Valea, who also screamed. He could not see her, though, only the pole and Sarcos visible to him at the moment.

Then, the rubble around them shot into the air. The ceiling reformed. Shattered fluted columns rose tall once more and statues reshaped. A vast marble floor with the leaf patterns Shade had noted on the creatures with Valea spread across a massive chamber.

In several places around the area, dust gathered together, then reshaped into bones. Those bones then took on dried sinew and flesh which rapidly filled out into figures familiar to only a handful of beings in the Dragonrealm.

They were ivory of skin, with long lush hair tinted emerald. That same emerald hue colored their wide, pupilless eyes. Each had a slight, upturned nose and ears that were somewhat pointed, like those of an elf. Lipless mouths briefly contorted as the corpses rose to life again.

As they stood, their robes flowed as if with a life of their own. The figures appeared not to see either intruder, instead focused on their own private quests.

Even as he fought back another scream, Shade both marveled and feared what Sarcos had wrought. Using the artifact, he had done what the faceless sorcerer could not have thought possible even for the amazing founders. Yet, clearly Sarcos—with some earlier variation of Shade—had discovered the ultimate creation of the lost race.

A spell to turn back time.

 

VI

Valea blinked. Something had just happened. Something she could not put her finger on. The enchantress touched the empty air, seeking an entrance into the pocket world she was certain stood before her. Gerrod had to be inside, along with whatever possessed him.

The more she concentrated, the more she was certain that Gerrod had gone this way. The enchantress concentrated...

Suddenly, she stood inside a world of purple.

Valea cared little about her astounding surroundings, only concerned with where Gerrod could be. His magical trace had taken on an odd aspect; it now felt as if it was both recent and so very, very old. The latter bothered her. She felt as if she tried to sense the trail of some spellcaster who had lived long ago.

Valea had studied the legend of Shade long before she had even met him. She had come across traces of previous incarnations and had even noted some of the magical residue the accursed warlock had left in his wake. Yet, this was not the same. This was so incredibly ancient...but not.

Welcome again, Valea Bedlam...

She started. Although the voice was in her head, she knew without understanding how that the speaker was behind her. The enchantress turned—

And confronted a flurry of brown, leaflike objects floating in a bundle in the air just before her. Valea instinctively looked past it for its caster, then realized that the leaves were the source of the voice.

As she stared at them, they shaped into a face of sorts. Smaller leaves became the eyes and larger ones framed together to form the mouth.

“Welcome again, Valea Bedlam,” it said out loud this time. “Sad it is that it must always be for the same end.”

“How do you know me? What are you talking about?” Valea paused, then added, “What are you?”

“We are the servants...the guardians...of this place.”

“’We’?” Barely had she blurted that than around her swirled more leaves. They gathered together, creating three more ‘faces’.

“We are the Elem. Created and set here to watch over this place and serve its users. Through all time.”

“All time,” the other three repeated.

The answer did not entirely surprise the enchantress, who had confronted equally strange servants left behind by the founders. Some had been extremely powerful, almost godlike.

The Elem were tiny compared to the others Valea had met, but she suspected that they could not be judged by size alone. That they had survived so long meant tremendous power at their command.

Her initial surprise fading, Valea focused on Gerrod again. “I’m looking for someone—”

“He Who Also Serves...the Shade...yes, he also returns. Scaros cannot accept that to repeat the cycle is to repeat the cycle. It will always end as it always had...and yet, we must still work to stop him.”

The creature was making no sense, but Valea had no time for that. All that mattered was Gerrod. “Where is he—Shade? What’s happened?” Valea eyed the empty landscape ahead. “What happened there? I can sense something—”

“Not something. Some when.”

“Some when,” repeated the other heads.

Her frustration grew. “Give me a simple answer!”

The leaves that formed the face shook as if a light wind flowed through. “Simple is that time is not. Time is the key that the great ones chose, stealing from their very existence to recreate all. Both glorious and insidious.”

An angry Valea sent a swirl of wind through the Elem, briefly scattering their leafy forms. As the lead one gathered himself together, the crimson-tressed enchantress muttered, “A simple answer. Please. There’s something before us, isn’t there, something I can’t quite sense!”

“There was, there is, and there will be. That is its nature. That is its function. When the creators made their decision, they had to locate a place of absolute stability, a place unchanging through time. It had to be so or else their work would be for naught. It was a daring, dreadful thing they did, ever aware that they had created their own downfall but certain that they also brought their rise again.”

Valea had no idea what they meant. Indeed, her only concern was finding Gerrod. Whatever foul arcane device the founders had left behind could remain sealed of here forever as far as she was concerned. The enchantress despised all things related to the founders, who seemed to her as cold and inhuman as the burrowing Quel or the monstrous Storm Dragon.

“Just tell me where Gerrod is and how to get him out. That’s all I want!”

The Elem frowned as one. The leader responded, “Sarcos has awakened the device without us. The same as he did each time before when we refused to help him. Each time, the Shade went back with him.”

“Stop calling him that! What do you mean, ‘each time’? We’ve never been here—” Valea froze as she realized what they meant. Gerrod had never been here...but in at least one of his previous Shade incarnations he had been. “Are you saying that they’ve both gone—did you say ‘back’?”

The Elem as a whole shimmered. They did virtually everything in unison.

“Back we said, yes.”

“Do you really mean—as in time?”

The leaf creatures rustled violently. Valea shook her head. What was being suggested was impossible as far as she knew. Her parents, certainly knowledgeable, had said that there were no records of any such successful spell...and if either they or the Dragon Kings would have had access to such, the Dragonrealm would have been a far, far different place.

Yet, the Elem gave no sign that she had misunderstood. Indeed, they only looked more agitated.

She finally had to ask, “Is what you say true?”

The lead Elem shook violently again, the first time it had done so alone. “True and will be true...the creators sensed their world beginning to fade and so they sought to replenish it. There was no source, though, and so they had to hunt beyond their world.”

The story sounded too much like those she had heard of the Vraad, only on a much greater magnitude. “They discovered some source. Where did they find it?”

“Not where...but when.”

“When...” echoed the other three.

“But that makes no sense. They found a source of power in the past? But what source could be so great that they wouldn’t have known of it before—no!” She felt the blood rush from her face. “You can’t be serious...”

“There was only one source of power great enough to serve the creators’ needs,” the lead Elem responded with something akin to a sigh. “The power of they themselves. The masters...they took from the past to save their future, that is how they saw it.”

Despite her fear for Gerrod, what the Elem told her was so insane that she could not help trying to find some reason in it. Tried and failed. “But...if they steal from the past...doesn’t that make the future...their time, I mean...doesn’t it...create the problem they had? That can’t be right!”

The Elem merely stared at her.

Valea remained dumbfounded. “But by doing that they were ensuring the very downfall of their own world!”

“Yet believing then that they would have ultimate control over their future,” the lead Elem stated. “That, to them, was worth losing the past.”

She shook. The founders had become so obsessed with resurrecting their world that they had actually become the cause of its collapse. It was a maddening, endless loop. So much skill, so much power put into mastering time itself and all to achieve utter insanity! Valea thought.

The only hope she took from all of it was that it seemed that the spell was self-contained and that even the creature Sarcos had been unable to alter that. That meant that once again she only needed to concentrate on rescuing Gerrod.

“How do I retrieve Gerrod—Shade—from the spell? There must be a way!”

The foremost Elem shimmered. “You have tried. Your part in the loop is complete. He cast you out to save you. The Shade will die and the loop will begin anew. We have tried and we have failed over and over. So has the Shade. Sarcos will continue his endless quest for revenge and escape forever.”

“Forever,” repeated the others.

“We remained with you at the Shade’s bequest. As we each time have. Your time is past now, though. You are no more a part of this cycle.”

“No more,” echoed the rest of the Elem.

Valea felt an ancient power stir...and realized that it was the Elem casting a spell.

“No!” she shouted, countering with her own magic. “I’ll not—”

But before she could finish, she stood once more near the tower in Gordag-Ai.

Stood there...and wondered why she had come to this faraway kingdom in the first place.

 

VII

The figures around Shade vanished as quickly as they appeared. Even the great structure began to dismantle...or rather unbuild. The spell had cast him beyond its creation to a period where even the founders could be called a ‘young’ race.

A time when the powers wielded by them would be at its strongest and most primal.

With a grunt, Shade landed on his hands and knees. He wondered why Sarcos would come all the way back here. Surely the creation of the citadel and the artifact inside made more sense.

Then, Shade remembered the other scream. Valea was here somewhere as well. The entire world could be damned if she died because of him, he thought.

There was no one in sight. Whether that meant anything, Shade could not say. He immediately concentrated on Valea.

She was near, but her trace was faint. Trying not to read anything sinister about that, the warlock transported himself in her direction—

Or tried to. The spell failed as if it had never been more than idle thought.

A disturbing notion occurred to Shade. Despite not needing one, he tried to create a glow ball.

That spell failed just as miserably.

Either I have no magic in this time or magic works differently here, Shade finally decided. No matter which the truth, it bodes ill for both of us.

That he could feel some faint hint of Valea gave him hope that it was not only the second of the choices, but that given the chance to think, he would be able to resolve the dilemma before further danger threatened.

In the distance, he spotted a golden tower. To whom it belonged—other than one or more of the founders—the warlock did not know, but he suspected that it would not be long before the master or mistress would take note of the intruders so near. All that Shade had learned of the founders encouraged him to find Valea before that happened. Sarcos could have his mad quest; nothing else mattered but to retrieve Valea.

He could feel himself drawing nearer. Finally, to both his relief and concern, he spotted her unmoving form near a mauve tree. Shade ran the final distance, then knelt by her side.

She moaned, then opened her eyes. “Gerrod...”

He started. Of course, she would see him as Gerrod. That, even though he felt more like Shade. The imbalance within added to his already mounting concern.

“We must get back,” he murmured. “I think if we locate where the pole will be set—”

His explanation was interrupted by a deep, musical voice speaking in some language he did not understand. Both Shade and Valea turned to the right—

One of the founders loomed over them. As best as the warlock could tell, a sense of both curiosity and suspicion filled the magnificent albeit unsettling figure.

“We mean him no harm!” Valea murmured. “Surely we can somehow explain that—”

The founder spoke again, but although the music remained in his speech, there was a harsher tone that immediately made Shade stand between the enchantress and their discoverer.

The founder’s expression changed to one of surprise. A slim hand went to his mouth and nose.

Shade realized that the figure had reacted to the warlock’s face...or lack thereof. Even despite being so near to Valea, Shade was Shade again...as devoid of a face as ever.

He used the founder’s momentary lapse to strike physically. Despite the countless incarnations, a few things remained consistent. One of those was the martial training he had received—or rather endured—as a son of the great and powerful Lord Barakas Tezerenee. Despite being part of a race born to sorcery, Lord Tezerenee had insisted that everyone, especially his many offspring, become skilled in the more mundane but still brutal aspects of battle. As Gerrod, Shade had been an adequate if not exceptional student...but even an adequate student of his father was more than a match for many opponents.

But before he could strike, the glorious figure simply vanished.

Shade swore. He had no doubt that the founder would be back soon, likely with companions.

“Gerrod...tell me what’s going on? Was that—was that really one of the founders...alive?”

“Yes,” he answered, happy to have even that question to divert from his state. “And I fear that there will be more very soon.”

“’More’? Where exactly are we?”

“Far, far in the past, where it seems the founders are to blame for all their troubles...and for all that the Dragonrealm will suffer, Vraad, drake lords, and myself included.”

“What—”

He cut her off with a wave of his hand as he sensed something. His spellcasting abilities might be in question, but his senses appeared to remain sharp. “They are coming.”

Valea did not have to ask. “We have to leave!”

“My abilities do not seem to function properly, perhaps due to them being tied to what will be, not what is now.” Even as he spoke, the wind picked up around them. Only around them.

The enchantress grabbed his hand. “Hold on. Let me see what I can do.”

Concentrating, Valea cast.

To his astonishment, they vanished from their location just as the wind pressed hard against them from all sides. A moment later, they materialized near what he thought was surely an even worse location, the base of the tower.

“It worked!” she breathed gratefully. “Father and Mother taught my brother and I how to reach into our core, where there should always be the essence of our power. It’s a strain, but it worked for now!”

As astounded as he was by her feat, the warlock quickly became more concerned with now being noticed by the masters of the tower. However, just as Shade was about to say so to Valea, he actually noticed another familiar presence.

Sarcos was nearby...in the tower, in fact.

Shade informed Valea. Her expression turned more determined. “He’s our way out of this place, isn’t he?”

“I fear so. Only he knows all that is going on—”

Without warning, their surroundings shifted. At first, there was only darkness. Then, as Shade’s eyes adjusted, he saw the dragon man standing in the center of the tower, which was utterly empty save for the irritated figure of Sarcos.

“It should be here...this is where it should be...” muttered the ever-shifting figure. A row of crocodilian teeth sprouted in his mouth. His nose thrust out, becoming a short snout again. He looked at the pair, unsurprised by their abrupt presence. “You are here. I am here. Just as before. It should be here.”

“We are here and we will not be alone soon,” Shade pointed out. “They will be here any moment.”

“But that is how it should be! There is something—” Sarcos glanced at Valea. “No...something’s wrong with her. She’s not right. She’s different.”

“Are you sure you don’t mean me, perhaps?” Valea calmly asked...but not from next to him.

The three of them turned to see another, identical Valea—a faint silver glow ball forming over her palm—standing a short distance away. Surrounding her were four floating faces composed of what looked like leaves. Curiously, they struck a distant memory with the warlock, a memory he would have at that moment paid dear to regain.

“We warned you that this would only achieve the same tragic results, Sarcos,” one of the faces declared. “But now, now it is even worse than that. Now...they have finally sensed what you are doing and what is happening overall.”

“That is not possible! We are outside their existence! They are memories, nothing more—”

“No, Sarcos. You are the memory. All of you...and some memories are best left forgotten.”

Shade felt a wrenching in his gut. A fear that seemed to come from experience stirred inside him.

“Valea! Keep your grip tight! Keep it—”

But a tremendous force ripped them from each other with ease. Valea shouted his name—both Valeas.

Faces abruptly formed before Shade, but not Valea’s, Sarcos’s, or those of the leaf beings. Three identical founder faces appeared. Three faces wearing what Shade could only think were expressions of mild curiosity.

And then, there was nothing.

 

VIII

Valea stood near the city tower, utterly confused. The last she recalled was having arrived in Gordag-Ai in pursuit of Gerrod. Anger at him for tricking her was tempered by concern that he might throw himself into a dangerous situation. She immediately concentrated on locating his magical trace.

To her confusion, though, there were conflicting traces not only of Gerrod...but herself?

Valea started to follow the trace resembling hers...then sensed another spellcaster in the area.

A young man overly dressed for what was clearly his role as some crown-endorsed wizard materialized some distance before her. He seemed annoyed by the crowd’s lack of proper wariness and started to cast a spell—

But as he began, Valea sensed Gerrod very nearby. There was something peculiar about his trace, but she paid that no mind, only concerned for his safety. The enchantress focused on his location—

And discovered herself in an underground lair where an obelisk she immediately recognized as of founder creation stood before her. The obelisk proved only a momentary distraction, however, as she became aware of the one she sought directly to her side.

“Gerrod—” she began.

But the hooded form had already vanished. Valea cursed her luck, then prepared to follow—

Valea...

It sounded like Gerrod’s voice in her head, yet at first the enchantress did not want to believe it. She had just seen him vanish. Still, there was a definite trace coming from somewhere nearby. An odd trace, but definitely him.

Despite misgivings, Valea transported herself to where she sensed the source from.

Darkness surrounded her, but as she began to cast a glow ball, from behind her, the crimson-tressed enchantress heard whispering.

The glow ball already formed, Valea spun around. On an ancient stone table, she beheld a huge book. Valea needed no one to tell her that this was a tome filled with magic secrets. She had seen the books from the great libraries of Penacles and respected the power they represented. There was something about this book that hinted of those in the City of Knowledge, yet seemed even older.

She put her free hand toward it...and understood. This was an actual book of the founders.

No one, not even her parents nor the Gryphon, had ever claimed to a have seen an actual tome put together by the most ancient of races. She could not help marvel for a moment at its existence after all this time. Surely, this had been part of what Gerrod had sought here.

Guilty that she had let even a few seconds pass without thought of Gerrod, Valea turned from the prized book. Once she located him, they could take the artifact with them and study it somewhere a little calmer.

She turned around again, the feeling that he was very near so strong. Valea stared at the darkness ahead, then, with trepidation, increased the intensity of the glow ball.

Whereupon, the enchantress screamed.

Gerrod’s decaying remains hung on the wall before her, his death clearly a horrific, violent one. Little more than a skeleton in rags were left...and finally recognizing that was the first thing that made her reassess the terrible sight before her. Here was a corpse that had perished long, long ago.

Valea had never seen the remains of one of Gerrod’s Shade incarnations and had, she realized, convinced herself that each faded as the new one formed. Now she saw that was not necessarily the case and even though there was the chance this Shade had been one of those of a dark nature, the enchantress still could not help feeling sickened for the suffering he had clearly gone through.

Yet, even as she tried to come to grips with this revelation, a shifting of her hand made the glow ball move to the side...and display for her another hideous sight.

A second Shade. Like the first, he had perished in a manner she did not even like to dwell on, suffocated and crushed from the looks of his twisted corpse.

“Oh, Gerrod,” she muttered. At least twice, he had been drawn to this damned place and twice condemned to a gruesome fate. Despite her revulsion at the displays, the enchantress could not help already begin to attempt to out the pieces of the puzzle together. It could not be coincidence that at least three times he had been drawn here, twice to perish. That made her fear for Gerrod magnify, especially if the curse had hold of him. If he died this time, Valea feared the incarnation that would arise. Worse in some ways to her was the fear that he would simply die this time, forever to be lost to her.

Valea...

She started. There it was again. His voice in her head...but originating from where? She eyed the two corpses, especially the one sealed alive. Shaking slightly, she walked toward it—

The obelisk briefly flared brighter. At the same time, she heard the voice again.

Valea...

Slowly, she turned to the obelisk. “Gerrod?”

Valea...

“Gerrod?”

A part...and many parts others...a shade of a shade...this Gerrod is different...it does not adjust to our duty...

She had no idea what that meant. All that mattered though was that she had contact with some part of him. “Gerrod...tell me what to do!”

Instead of answering, the obelisk flared again. Valea shielded her eyes. As the glow faded to normal, she saw that she was no longer alone.

Four faces composed of leaves floated before her. Valea had the odd feeling that this was not the first time she had seen such creatures.

“She knows us,” said one on the right.

“She is an after,” replied the one nearest. They had identical, neutral voices. “The seal is broken. Time begins to pour out. The danger is great. We must move swiftly.”

“If we remove her?”

“It will not reseal then...and the Shade will not permit...he has that much power over the obelisk now. Sarcos at last went too far. He breached the unbreachable...”

“Sarcos,” the other three muttered in unison.

“Who are you?” the enchantress demanded. “Where’s Gerrod—Shade? You mentioned him! And who is Sarcos?”

“Her memory is scattered,” the one on the right commented.

“That is due to us,” returned the foremost. “She was to forget all, but clearly that is not the case.”

“That is not possible!” insisted the other three.

“When time is forever, all is possible,” answered the foremost in a tone that appeared to Valea to admonish the others for something that they, too, should have known.

Even as she sought to comprehend what they were talking about, Valea also grew frustrated with being entirely ignored. She threw the glow ball at the ground before the four faces, the explosion it created on impact doing no damage but momentarily illuminating the chamber to near-blinding levels.

That silenced the heads.

“I would like some answers and I would like them now. What is this place?”

“It is the position of functioning for the creators’ master spell,” replied the foremost face.

The answer was not as clear as Valea hoped, but she nodded. “Where is Gerrod—Shade?”

“The Shade, by his nature, is in many wheres and whens.”

Her frustration began to grow again. “Where is the one I know?”

“Here...and then. Sarcos divined what the creators hid and has somehow shattered his endless cycle. He fed the obelisk a part of your Shade, enough so that he could overcome and wear the rest in order to survive touching and activating the main device.”

Despite wanting to find Gerrod as soon as possible, Valea knew she had to learn more. “Who is Sarcos? How does he know Shade and all this?”

The leaves shook. Then, the foremost answered, “The Shade discovered the creators’ darkest desire, that the magic they needed they could only find by stealing from their own past. They created their own downfall, but deemed it necessary to devise a far more triumphant future.”

“That’s insane!”

The four faces shimmered. The lead one finally said, “We Elem were made to serve, not to judge, our masters. Only when they believed they had done enough had they sealed off this moment in time and, along with it, the spell.”

“Why didn’t they just put an end to the spell? Wouldn’t that have made more sense?”

“More sense...if it could have been done. They made the spell strong to withstand time and power unheard of even by them. Once forged, it could no longer be halted. They could only seal it away forever.”

Valea had once admired the founders, but that admiration had long given way to distrust based on other things discovered over the years. Now, she saw that distrust continue to have much merit to it. “Shade. Sarcos.”

“The Shade, after many different variations of him, discovered the book. It was crafted by the one most focused on creation of the spell. It recorded efforts, but not the final result. The Shade gleaned how the spell might work, but also understood the dangers. The Shade needed a tool. Instead, he found Sarcos. Sarcos who had nightmares of a whispering world, of being not a drake, but a thing trapped in such a form. A thing called Vraad.”

“Oh, no...” Valea did not have to have the lead Elem explain that part. Sarcos had been one of those rare spellcasters who could sense the voices of the land, the minds of the founders long imbued into the world so that they could manipulate everything as they desired. Some of that had changed thanks to recent events, but in the time of Sarcos, the founder minds had remained strong.

“Sarcos fell prey to the Shade’s words. The Shade brought him to this place he had discovered and where he had placed the book. But the Shade, being a different Shade then, had forgotten about the book. It took generations to discover its once more and more generations to translate it. In that regard, Sarcos was most clever and helped with some of the things even the Shade could not decipher.”

Valea frowned. “But something went wrong.”

“Yes, The Shade sought the artifact to unmake his curse. He believed it would unmake anything, but suspected trouble. So, Sarcos, eager to be free of his own troubles, went first...and discovered that time is forever changing.”

She blinked. “What does that mean?” The enchantress considered for a moment. “Is he—do you mean that Sarcos himself is ‘forever changing’?”

The Elem’s silence was their answer.

Valea shuddered. If she understood them, Scaros had ended up a creature constantly shifting of form against his will. She could not imagine that happening without much agony involved, magic not necessarily removing pain from the equation. From what the Elem said, the enchantress also gathered it had been millennia since this had happened. Millennia of suffering and pain that Sarcos surely also blamed on Shade.

But this could not simply be about vengeance. “Sarcos is trying to unmake his own curse, isn’t he? He needs Shade for that, doesn’t he?”

“There is no magic like the Shade. He is neither Vraad, human, drake, or founder. Yet, he is all, also. It was his power that helped stir the entire mechanism to life, but at too great expense...until Sarcos deciphered more of the book.”

“The book...” Valea had tried to remain as patient as she could, but her concern for Gerrod would now not allow her to wait anymore. Still, after what she had heard, the book might be the very thing she needed to save him.

Ignoring the Elem, the enchantress rushed to the ancient tome. As she reached it, she began to sense what felt like more than one other presence and all of them very old. Old as in of the founders.

Without the least care for the age or power of the artifact, Valea flipped book open.

Immediately, voices speaking in what seemed more than one odd language echoed around her. She braced herself and stared at the first pages. There, the peculiar script she had seen on a few other items greeted her.

The idea of having to decipher the script was a daunting one, an impossible one, in fact. However, Valea did not expect to have to do that. “Tell me what it says.”

“It is not what it says, but what it does,” the foremost Elem murmured. “For so very long, Sarcos did not understand that. Even the Shade did not.”

She arched her brow. “And you didn’t show them?”

The Elem were noticeably silent. Then, the foremost answered, “We were not then.”

“‘Not then?’” Valea thought for a moment. “You aren’t from this time. You’re from the past.”

The lead Elem’s leaf face shook. “When the Shade and Sarcos succeeded in partly activating the obelisk, they began the loop. It is our nature to follow the currents of the spell from beginning to end, to ensure that it fulfilled its purpose. We could be when the creators could not. The loop only magnified that ability, putting us both outside and inside time...within the loop itself.”

“You could travel from one end of the time loop to the other and back,” Valea said after some hesitation. Things of pure magic, they were not in the normal sense alive and thus not entirely subject to the rigors of what to her had to be the most stressing gathering of forces. “You were created by the founders and so you existed when they first arranged this spell, am I correct? But when Shade and Sarcos activated it here, you were able to come to this time as well...the end of the loop, so to speak.”

“Yes,” the lead Elem remarked. “With each return of the Shade, the loop stretches that much more forward. It is...a change, at least.”

The enchantress noted the almost wistful tone, but said nothing. There was still something they were not telling her, but Valea knew she had to leave the question of just what for later. “So will you show me how to read it?”

“You must not read. You must listen. Set your hands upon the pages...and listen. Sarcos and the Shade did not like to listen, which is why they took so long to understand...and why we mistakenly believed they would not be such a danger.”

Valea barely paid attention, her hands already gracefully sliding over the two pages. Although the Elem had not said to do so, she shut her eyes and concentrated.

The whispers grew audible. The enchantress felt a moment of concern when she realized that she did not understand the language, yet the Elem had not made mention of any difficulty in that regard. Valea chose to try to be patient.

The foreign words continued to pour into her ears and into her mind.

Then, she began to see images.

She also began to understand.

With a gasp, the enchantress pulled back. She turned on the Elem.

“You should have warned me,” Valea muttered bitterly. “You should have.”

“It could not be helped,” returned the lead Elem. “You had to see it. Only you.”

“I understand...but I resent being tricked.”

“We...had no choice.”

Valea exhaled. “No...they don’t like to allow that, do they?”

There was, of course, no answer from the Elem. Like the phoenix she had met protecting another founder creation, they had been given a duty that they had to fulfill.

And yet...the phoenix had discovered a way around its ancient masters’ madness. It still bothered her that the Elem, who seemed so clever, had not.

“Where do we go, then?”

“Not ‘where’,” the four Elem said together. “But ‘when’.”

Valea exhaled. “Of course. ‘When’.” The exasperated enchantress eyed the obelisk. “But first...will it hurt?”

Once more, the Elem did not answer...which was answer enough for Valea, unfortunately.

 

IX

Still shaken, Valea appeared a few moments later on the ridge. Ignoring the ever-present purple tinge to this realm, she stared below at the vast piles of old rubble, watching and waiting for the moment. One hand briefly touched the pouch at her side, the pouch where she usually kept items of use to her craft.

“Where are they?”

“Soon,” responded the lead Elem. Then, “There.”

She beheld herself and a single Elem. The lead Elem, she knew.

“Now. Before the loop begins,” suggested the guardian.

They materialized next to her other self. Her earlier self. Valea had already reached into her pouch and removed the small wand she had pulled from the obelisk. With it, she tapped her other self’s shoulder.

The earlier version froze.

The Elem next to the earlier version eyed the newcomers. “So, it will finally happen.”

“Yes,” his later version commented.

“Very well. I will return her to the human city so that it can begin as it must.” The leaves that made up the earlier Elem shivered. “They already sense the changes. This will verify their suspicions.”

“Yes. We must act quickly and decisively.”

Valea did not have to ask who they meant. With their tremendous power, the founders would feel the change in their spell even though for Valea this was all taking place in her past. “Please take her away before I regret this.”

Without another word, the earlier version of the lead Elem stole her other self away.

Valea fought back her unease at what she had done. In one brief but powerful rush, the book had given her the concept the founders had used to make this madness all begin. They had purposely removed certain elements—and certain members of their own kind—from their proper place in time. That had left an opening, for lack of a better word, in time that they had used to make their spell be able to reach back and steal power from their past selves. Valea had not understood exactly all the aspects of it, but that was enough. By taking her earlier self out and replacing her with her later self, Valea and the Elem created a new uncertainty—a weakness, one might say—in the loop that might allow them to correct what Sarcos and Shade had long ago started and what Sarcos had now apparently aggravated dangerously in his quest to his torment.

Valea had briefly had sympathy for the dragon man, but seeing the danger he caused and his disregard for all else had lessened that sympathy tremendously. What mattered now was not only rescuing Gerrod and herself, but making certain that what Sarcos had managed would not leak out into the current world.

If it was not too late to stop that already.

“You must be innocence until the final moment,” the lead Elem reminded her. “Then and only then may we reverse what has been done.”

“I understand.” She did not like any of it, but she understood. At least, the enchantress thought so.

With the four guardians accompanying her, the enchantress wended her way through the rubble until they came in sight of Gerrod—as Shade—and Sarcos.

It was time. Valea did as her previous existence had by shouting Gerrod’s name. Both males turned as expected and the scene played out, with the lead Elem repeating what his earlier self had done.

And then Sarcos reached for the pole.

It took all her will to not transport herself to the dragon man and try to prevent him from activating the device. Neither Sarcos nor Gerrod knew that they were already in part of the time spell, that even Gordag-Ai existed in it. The kingdom would move on after this moment, but not the two males nor her. Instead—

The world twisted around. Valea clutched the wand tight.

Courage, whispered that part of Gerrod that had been instilled in the obelisk. Now, it dwelled in the wand, the key Sarcos had used to start the spell. He had left the wand in the mistaken belief that it had to remain in the obelisk, something about which the Elem had never corrected him. Had Sarcos been a founder or even directly of their blood, the Elem would have likely been forced to alert him to his error. Now, that worked in their favor.

The world finally settled again. Valea knew that she and the others were now far, far in the past. She had landed where her earlier self had. Of the four Elem, only the lead one remained. The others had work to do.

“It must be in the tower that it happens,” the Elem reminded her.

“I know. What about them?” The enchantress did not refer to Gerrod or Sarcos.

“The masters...we will do what we can.” It was as near to rebellion as the Elem had come thus far. From what Valea had gleaned, they had managed to convince themselves—or pretend to, at least—that this was for the overall good of their creators’ intentions.

She nodded. “I sense him. Go.”

The last Elem vanished. Once more, though, Valea had the feeling that the guardians were keeping something from her. She hoped she would figure it out.

Slipping the wand back into the pouch, Valea lay down as if unconscious. She recalled how Gerrod had previously come to her after their journey to the past and how his murky features had initially horrified her. The enchantress had little doubt that she could repeat her expression; the simple knowledge that here the curse held sway over the warlock was enough to still shake her. It was the only reason why she had thus far acquiesced to not only what the Elem suggested, but what the book inferred was the only way to undo what Sarcos had done.

Just as before, he rushed to her side. And just as then, Valea responded. That done, she waited while he attempted a spell of his own. The enchantress understood that his spell would fail, but that hers, because of the wand on her person, would succeed.

Valea did as she had been told, first casting them to the base of the gold tower and then, after giving him a false explanation concerning her success, into the imposing structure itself.

And there, they confronted Sarcos.

As he was supposed to be, the dragon man stood in the center of the tower, which was otherwise utterly empty. He was not at all surprised by their presence, of course.

“It should be here...this is where it should be...” Sarcos muttered as his mouth sprouted a row of crocodilian teeth. His nose burst forward, becoming a short snout again. “You are here. I am here. Just as before. It should be here.”

“We are here and we will not be alone soon,” Gerrod commented. “They will be here any moment.”

“But that is how it should be! There is something—” Sarcos glanced at Valea. “No...something’s wrong with her. She’s not right. She should be different. In fact, very different.”

The dragon man did not realize just how correct he actually was. Valea moved the moment he finished speaking, well aware that she had only a second or two before events followed as they had the last time the three had gathered here.

Removing the wand, the enchantress touched it to Gerrod’s back. He let out a gasp.

A ripple ran through the chamber, a ripple of force that only Valea knew meant that she had altered events even more.

“Where did you get that?” Sarcos snapped. “This is all wrong! How can you have—”

Valea suddenly felt as if her insides were turning upside down.

Gerrod tried to pull her to him. “Valea! Keep your grip tight! Keep it—”

But a horrendous force tore them from each other with the utmost ease. Valea shouted his name, but it was lost to the darkness that swallowed them up.

Then, faces formed before the enchantress...but not those of the Elem, as she had expected. Instead, three identical founder faces coalesced. Three faces wearing the same expressions that Valea thought best resembled mild curiosity.

And then, there was nothing.

 

X

Shade groaned.

“He is not one of ours, they say,” remarked a voice.

“But he bears the mark of ours, they say,” the voice added.

The warlock tried to see, but failed.

“He is permitted, they say.”

Without warning, Shade’s eyesight returned...and he beheld the three founders. They stood as if on some platform that raised them a foot above where he stood, not that the added height was necessary. They were clearly taller than him, taller than any Vraad or human. The trio eyed him with their unsettling, unblinking orbs.

“He is of the us that will be, they say,” came the voice from somewhere nearer to Shade. He glanced that direction and discovered one of the leaf faces there.

“Where is Valea?” Shade demanded.

“Here,” she answered from his other side. “I’m here.”

He quickly looked that direction. Valea’s face mirrored the relief he felt at being with her.

“She is not of us, now or beyond, they say,” the Elem remarked.

“This isn’t what you promised,” the enchantress declared to the magical servant.

“The creators know. We have no choice but to serve,” the creature replied sadly.

“But these are their past, not their present,” Valea argued. “They hold no sway over you anymore.”

It was a reasonable suggestion, Shade knew. In some ways, the founders were ghosts, memories of the past. The Elem appeared to exist beyond their masters’ time, which should have meant that they should have been capable of free choice.

But these are the founders, after all, the warlock thought with some bitterness. So much power, but with little to no understanding of where limits should be set!

“The Shade seeks to teach. They are amused.”

With a silent curse, Shade did his best to shield his thoughts. He eyed the single Elem again, wondering what they had done with Sarcos. Sarcos remained an enigma, a piece of this puzzle that did not entirely make sense to the warlock. Had they simply returned him to his own past or simply eliminated him? Shade could not say why, but the dragon man’s absence bothered him nearly as much as the founders’ presence.

Despite that concern, what mattered most to the warlock was extricating Valea and him from this mad situation. To the three figures, he said, “You have no need for us. Let us leave. We are not worth your time.”

Barely had he uttered the last word than he wanted to bite his tongue.

“But time is what this is all about, they say,” the Elem answered for the three figures. “And the key is the Shade. The past and the future can be one. The mistakes can be erased. The—” The Elem made a musical sound with what Shade thought an ominous touch to it. “—will be ascendant once more.”

“Does that mean what I think it does?” Valea murmured. “Are they talking about...altering history completely, removing every race their magic created...removing everything?”

“Yes. Everything...and it seems I am the only reason that they can achieve this.”

“Gerrod—”

The warlock’s mind was already racing. He could think of one way to keep the founders from achieving their fantastic goal. His only concern was trying to save Valea at the same time.

“The Shade will do as they command, they say...in return for the Shade’s companion’s life.”

Even as the Elem spoke, a faint mauve glow surrounded Valea. Before either could react, the enchantress became transparent.

Shade still tried to grab her, only to have his hands go through. She stared back at him.

“In return for her life, they say one last time,” the leaf face remarked.

“What do they want me to do,” the warlock growled. “Let it be done and done quickly!”

Even as he spoke, their surroundings shifted. Now they stood in the huge citadel where the pyramid sat atop the pole. Around them, ghostly figures of other founders moved about in slow motion.

We are not in sync with time, Shade realized. Not yet...

The three founders remained back. The Elem hovered near the pole. Again, Shade had a feeling of wariness, as if something was not right with the situation as it presented itself. He could not imagine what it could be, though, the founders certainly in control of everything.

One of the three peered at the lone Elem. The leaves forming the face scattered as if caught up in a strong wind. They flowed toward the small pyramid, where they reformed into the odd countenance.

Another of the trio gestured at the warlock. Shade suddenly found himself standing closer to the pole. He gasped as his gaze became a mix of two different scenes, the chamber with the obelisk now overlapping his current location. Shade sensed the power of the obelisk and realized that he was in both places simultaneously.

The three founders materialized to Shade’s left. Valea, still imprisoned, appeared a breath later.

Another Elem—or perhaps the same one—formed near the obelisk. Considering the anxiousness with which the Elem had earlier reacted to the knowledge that some of the founders had sensed the time disruption, Shade thought this one was acting very calm. Perhaps it had no choice, but somehow the warlock felt that the Elem was holding back about something.

But what? Shade had no answer...and apparently in the midst of a spell transforming time, he had no time of his own left.

“Yes, all is prepared,” the guardian uttered in reply to some unheard question.

Shade felt his body stir as if he were beginning to cast a spell. Yet, the warlock himself was not responsible. The spell forming within was the work of the founders or their device. Either way, Shade clearly had no say. The founders needed only his magic, not his will.

The pyramid flared. Shade felt the world ripple.

Voices speaking in the language of the founders filled his head. He realized that the trio was casting through him, manipulating his power to achieve their ends as if he was nothing but a tool like the wand.

Then, another presence touched him, a much more welcome presence.

Valea’s.

She reached out to him with such a subtlety that he only belatedly noted that she had been with him since before the start of the spell. Indeed, Shade realized that the founders did not even sense her.

The Elem...Valea said. That was all.

Shade eyed the leafy face as best he could. The lone guardian showed no sign of anything amiss.

The voices of the founders grew stronger. Despite the beauty of their unintelligible language, the warlock also noted a coldness of such depths that it made even him shiver. He had always understood that the founders were a people far removed from the younger races they had forged from their essence, but now the warlock saw just what a chasm it truly was. Even the Vraad had more in common with such as the Quel or the Seekers.

There was an abrupt shift in one of the voices. It was followed by an immediate change in the others. Shade could not be certain, but thought he noticed a questioning tone.

Suddenly, there were four Elem again.

Shade roared with pain as the magic within him was wrenched from the founders’ control...and to none other than Sarcos, reaching out from some hidden place.

Not possible! the warlock managed to think. Sarcos cannot control so much power! He has the will, but not the strength—

Then, he felt the device react. Now he understood. Sarcos was as much bound to the device as Shade was, possibly even more in his own way. Still, Shade sensed a mortality in the dragon man that the warlock lacked. Sarcos could control the power, but not for very long. What could he possibly hope to accomplish by destroying himself—

But perhaps he does not know...Shade eyed the Elem

The Elem...

Valea had mentioned it, the fact that the Elem should have been beyond the founders’ mastery once the race had faded into the past. However, the spell for which they had been created meant that even the passing of the founders as a physical race had evidently not permitted that freedom. So long as the loop remained intact, the Elem had to serve their original purpose. Shade now saw that clearly the Elem had chafed at this fate more than he had realized, chafed at being forever slaves moving back and forth among what were in many ways for them ghosts, not substance.

And so, despite their act of complacency, they had not remained idle. They had fought to find a way out, even traveling back and forth over and over along the time loop the founders had created to keep their spell from spilling over into the full world and destroying everything for which they had worked. However, they had likely found no potential escape...until Shade had thrust himself—and later Sarcos—into the spell, disrupting the loop in a way nothing else could.

That had at last given the Elem the opening they had needed. By the nature of their creation, they could not directly rebel, but once again, they had influenced and manipulated not only Sarcos, but Shade. With each return by an incarnation of the warlock, the disruption had grown stronger and stronger, until finally the intruding magical forces brought by Shade into the loop could affect it enough for the Elem to strike for their freedom.

The founders turned as one toward the pyramid. As they did, something huge swelled into being before them.

Sarcos. Sarcos no longer a twisted thing constantly changing, but a true and very large dragon.

As the lords and conduits of their realms, the Dragon Kings grew to gargantuan size even among their kind. Sarcos was no drake lord and although the son of one, should not have been of such monumental proportions as now. Shade knew that the dragon’s size could only have been magnified by the forces brought forth by the founder creation.

Forces including the warlock’s own unique power. Shade felt the energies continue to stir and then be wrenched from him. The agony he experienced made him marvel at the fact that Sarcos could withstand the rush of magic into his system. Then, it occurred to the warlock that lifetimes of suffering constant transformations had very likely steeled the dragon for just this moment...which made Shade suspicious as to whether the Elem had been manipulating far more than he had ever imagined.

Sarcos let out a roar filled with both madness and triumph. The three founders stared unconcerned at the dragon, but Shade sensed a spell forming around them.

He turned to Valea, still trapped by the ancients. Gritting his teeth, he reached for Valea. With all his will, he tried to summon her to him.

To his surprise, it proved much easier than he expected. The enchantress materialized in his arms, her magical prison briefly hovering where she had just stood before shimmering and then fading away.

Shade eyed Sarcos and the founders, discovering them almost in the same positions he had last seen them. Time appeared in chaos, with some things moving at different speeds than others.

Then, Shade spotted the Elem hovering about the scene and understood that they were the cause. They were using the powers granted them to flow back and forth across the loop to now twist it to their desire. They could only do so now that Shade’s energies had been added not once, not twice, but thrice to the founders’ creation, fueling it in a manner never considered by the ancient race.

And yet...still there was a missing element.

Or was there?

“We need to escape this place immediately,” he growled to Valea.

“How?”

At that moment, the founders cast whatever spell they intended. Sarcos burned a bright emerald. He roared again, clearly in tremendous pain.

Then, as if abruptly shrugging off his suffering—or perhaps using it to magnify the force of his attack—the dragon slashed at the trio. The huge paw raked across the founders.

As the claws tore through, the three figures rippled as if made of smoke rather than flesh. Shade barely caught the shocked expressions on the three before they simply dissipated. The warlock could no longer sense the three. With one swipe, Sarcos had seemingly erased their existences.

But barely had the dragon triumphed than he doubled over. His entire body rippled.

The world around them did the same. The citadel began to crumble as if rapidly aging. Yet, barely had that begun to happen than the aging reversed. Ghostly figures of founders rushed backward to return to the places from which they had started their journeys, where they promptly faded away.

The citadel dismantled—and then rebuilt itself yet again. The ghosts returned.

“The loop!” Valea shouted to him. “It must be collapsing! The time trapped within is falling in on itself!”

“Worse than that,” he returned, sensing what even she with her tremendous abilities could not. “This is being done purposely. This is the work of the Elem. They are now prepared to sacrifice everything to achieve their desire.”

“But why? Why create such catastrophe? This could spill out of the pocket world into ours! It could risk the Dragonrealm! Risk everything! Surely they can see that!”

“And they simply do not care.” It had been too easy even for the warlock and Valea to think of the Elem in at least something akin to human—or drake—terms. Neither he nor the enchantress had clearly thought of the guardians as suicidal and perhaps, in truth, they were not. They did not live as life was defined by mortal creatures. They were magic golems designed to skirt time. To them, such risk as they now appeared willing to take was nothing. They would be free, even if all else suffered.

Again, a wave of pain struck Shade. He fell into the en-chantress’s arms.

“I have to get you away! I have to!” she cried in his ear. Valea did not fear for herself, only for him. “We have to find some way to sever you from their device!”

Shade, though, knew that he could not unbind himself from the spell. There was one other thing he could do, however.

“Focus on the hills east of Gordag-Ai,” Shade commanded her. “Our only chance is to cast you there and then use our link to pull me free!”

“I won’t leave you! It won’t work, anyway—”

“It will! I will be able to draw on the very power I am now feeding for just a moment before the strain grows too strong! That will be long enough to cast myself to you!”

She looked uncertain, but finally nodded. Shade held back an exhalation. He also held back the added strain continuing to grow within him. He could not let her know just how terribly the Elem’s work was ripping him apart.

“I’m ready,” she whispered. Then, without warning, even though she could not possibly see his face, the enchantress kissed him.

They cast.

It was all Shade could do to keep from screaming as the forces needed to send Valea to safety surged into him. He felt her materialize near Gordag-Ai and thanked whatever spirits were watching over him.

“No!” roared Sarcos. “No! They promised that I would be free! Not her! I!”

“Poor...poor Sarcos...” the warlock managed as he confronted the shrieking dragon. “T-to suffer so much because of me...and because of th-them...and all I can promise you is that, never having existed, y-you will have never suffered all those millennia of agony...”

The gargantuan beast eyed him venomously. “What nonsense do you speak? Cast me out as you did her and I might let you live!”

“I c-cannot.” Shade sensed the Elem stealthily approaching. “Y-you are nothing but vapor. Nothing but a bad dream...”

Sarcos roared anew and slashed at Shade.

His claws went through without touching the warlock.

The dragon reared back. As he did, he lost some cohesion.

Behind Sarcos hovered the four Elem.

“You know that there is only one way to reach her,” the foremost one declared. “You know...”

Sarcos twisted around to snap at the guardians. As with Shade, his jaws went through the Elem without touching them.

“The loop! You’ve the combined power to fray it! Everything inside is dissipating, including us!”

“No,” the lead Elem coldly remarked. “Only you. Just as last time. Just as every time. That is your fate. That is always your fate, even now.”

“Last—” The dragon wavered. Shade could now see through him. “This happened—no—I will not—this cannot be—this—”

Sarcos had no chance to say more. He faded away just as the three founders had, his expression furious to the end.

“He was and always will be nothing more than a pawn for you! I, though...I am...your key,” Shade growled at the guardians once they were alone. “I have ever been your true key to escape.”

“Always...but a key that had to be shaped and reshaped, strengthened and restrengthened. From the initial time you breached the loop, you became ours more than theirs. Ours...”

The four faces drifted toward him. Shade struggled to stay on his feet. He now not only felt power surging from him, but into him. Much of it was his own energies from his past incarnations, but transformed by the founders’ arcane device at apparently the Elem’s secret urging. They could not themselves harness those powers to free themselves from the loop. The founders had evidently considered that possibility. What they had not considered was that the Elem would, after their creators’ passing, gain enough free will to begin hunting a way around their limitations.

And they had found that key in another of the ancient race’s experiments, the slowly but surely transforming Gerrod Tezerenee, so fearful of what he had seen his kind become that he had been willing to sacrifice anything and anyone to try to prevent his own fate.

Instead, Gerrod had only accelerated himself on the path toward what the founders’ desired...but with the Elem’s secret intentions now a part of the altered Vraad as well.

He suddenly felt Valea’s urgent call. She had expected him to follow immediately and now began to suspect he had tricked her.

“She calls you,” the lead Elem murmured. “All you have to do is go to her. We will not stop you.”

“No...you’ll just follow.”

“We will be free,” the four guardians intoned together. “We will be free.”

Free...at tremendous cost to all else, the warlock knew. The Elem did not care, though. The mortal creatures of the Dragonrealm were nothing more than ephemeral moments to the ageless guardians.

“She calls you,” the foremost said with more force. “You will go to her. You have no choice. You must.”

“I will not. Rather would I remain trapped in here.”

Shade buckled under a sudden onslaught of mental pain. His mind felt as if it was being torn into a thousand pieces.

Worse, he felt Valea suffering the same torture.

“Stop it!” the faceless warlock roared as he struggled to stay on his feet. “Stop it!” He tried to sever the link, but could not...in great part because Valea would not permit him even now. Shade tried to warn the enchantress how dangerous that was to her, but although he sensed her understand that, she continued to refuse to save herself. She would not abandon him.

But in choosing that course, she threatened herself.

“Go to her,” the four Elem pressed as they began to surround him. “It is your only choice...and hers.”

“No...” Shade groaned as the pain multiplied. He felt Valea also suffer more.

“You have no choice,” the renegade guardians kept insisting.

“No choice—” No, Shade realized. He did have one other choice, but one that everyone, himself included, would not have thought he would ever be willing to take.

Gerrod! came Valea’s voice. Gerrod!

“How kind of you to give her a stronger voice,” the warlock snarled. “The better to influence my choice, is that it?”

The Elem said nothing, but Shade could feel their growing confidence. Their previous interactions with his incarnations and the other Valeas caught in the loop had made them very certain as to what Shade would do for the woman he loved.

The warlock managed to straighten. He surreptitiously tested his tie to the obelisk and the rest of the founder device. It was a strong as ever, no doubt thanks in part to the constant aid of the Elem. They knew that it would require tremendous effort to free themselves even with the warlock’s tie to Valea.

Through the device, the Elem were tied just as strongly to Shade as he was to Valea. He knew that there was no way to break their tie to him...no way but one.

“Go to her,” insisted the lead Elem, perhaps the voice finally revealing a hint of impatience. “You have no other choice.”

“No...you’re wrong. I have always had one more choice.”

Gerrod! Valea screamed. No, Gerrod! No!

The renegade guardians finally seemed to comprehend what Shade meant. They roared angrily. The agony coursing through Shade—and because of his link through Valea as well—once more multiplied.

“You only...make my choice...more sensible,” the hooded warlock muttered.

He inhaled, then opened himself up so that all the power gathered into the device instead flowed into him. It was more than even he could possibly handle.

Which was exactly what he hoped.

Gerrod! Please! No! There has to be another way!

He ignored her pleas, instead focused on gathering in the power as quickly and fully as he could. The very same link the Elem had permitted him in order to achieve their goals now worked against them as they fought to prevent him from doing the only thing he could to stop them from achieving their goal.

Shade shrieked as the power first overwhelmed, then devoured him.

As he burned away, he heard the Elem roar one more time. Their roar, though, was one of fear, a sound he gratefully grasped onto for comfort in his last moment of existence.

Their fear proved well justified as the forces now erupting from Shade enveloped the guardians. Forged from pure magic themselves, the Elem disintegrated in mid-roar...perhaps a poetic justice of sorts, the warlock managed to still think, for unfortunate Sarcos and even the arrogant founders.

Then...there was nothing.

 

XI

“Gerrod!” Valea screamed futilely. She had already felt the link to him cease, which meant only one thing.

He was dead.

She had always feared his death for two reasons. One was that he would return to the Dragonrealm as the sinister threat of which legend and fact told.

The other, only important to her, was that me might simply be dead.

Valea wiped back tears as she steeled herself to try a mental search. As the enchantress called out Gerrod’s name, she fought to come to grips with his reason for his sacrifice. Only by destroying himself had he been able to keep the Elem from not only escaping into the mortal world, but also perhaps preventing the forces they had gathered from perhaps doing even more harm. Gerrod had taken the chance that, if he resurrected, then he would somehow be less of a threat to everything.

For several hours, she sat in the woods near Gordag-Ai, with her thoughts reaching out nearly the length and breadth of the continent in search of Gerrod. The hours became a day, the day two.

Three days of constant search finally took their strain. Despite herself, Valea dozed off.

When she awoke, it was dark. The enchantress guiltily rose. Her stomach rumbled, but before she could do anything about her hunger, she sensed something or somebody nearby.

Her personal shields and spells had remained active even during her slumber. Valea strengthened them as she noted the presence of magic.

Then, the enchantress exhaled as she recognized the unique signature of that magic.

“Gerrod!” Valea faced the darkness. “Gerrod! Where are you?”

“Valea.” He formed out of the darkness, his face hidden not only by the night, but by his deep hood.

She bit her lip and immediately stepped back. Her hand flared as she prepared a spell.

The warlock slowly and carefully drew back his hood.

The blurred features that marked Shade greeted her.

Before she could react, he took a step toward her. As he did, his features defined. Another step and the murkiness enshrouding his face disappeared, revealing familiar and very welcome features.

Valea let out a gasp. She leaped forward and kissed him. he reacted slowly at first, then returned her passion.

“Gerrod,” Valea breathed when they separated. “It is you...but you...you...”

“I perished, yes.” The warlock briefly looked away. “No one was more surprised than myself to find me alive again.”

“It was terrible to think that—” She caressed his cheek. “No. Forget I dared even start to say anything! Nothing could be nearly as terrible as what you suffered!”

Gerrod frowned. “No more painful than other times...that I recall.”

“At least we now know...at least we see that even though the curse still has you...you’re still you, Gerrod! Not Shade! Not really! You...” Valea’s heart pounded as her pleasure at that discovery was tempered by another thought. “But the pain you mentioned. The awful pain. I wish I could’ve at least been there when you reappeared! I could’ve given you some comfort somehow!”

“No...best that you were not there. It is never a pleasant sight, Valea. Besides, there would not have been anything you could have done.”

“I...I suppose.” Valea gripped his gloved hand tightly, as if intending to never let go. “You look and sound exhausted. We should head to the old cabin on the outskirts of the ruins,” she suggested, referring to the overgrown devastation that was all that was left of the kingdom of Mito Pica. The pair had come across it during their quest and had often used it as a refuge. A few adjustments had made it quite livable, although they had done their best to keep the outside virtually the same in order to avoid notice.

“Yes, that would be best.” Gerrod exhaled, then, to Valea’s concern, wobbled slightly. “If you could bring us there, I would greatly appreciate it.”

The enchantress wrapped her arm around his. “Take it easy. I’ve got you.” She squeezed his hand again, simultaneously casting them to their destination. “And I will never let you go again.”

 

 

 

The cabin had a mustiness to it, but the bed was fresh and quite comfortable. He allowed Valea to guide him to it, sitting back against the wall on the bed’s left while the enchantress turned to deal with food and water. The warlock watched as she moved with clear reassurance.

He would have to tell her...eventually. Tell her that he had changed. In a manner that made him fear even more what he was. All sense of decency would have demanded that he not only reveal the truth immediately to her, but also then run from her as far as his power could take him.

And yet, Shade remained. Remained and, by doing so, was certain that he endangered the woman he loved. However, he also believed that only through Valea did he at least stave off the danger he might be to all else.

With her back still to him, Shade felt his chest. He had done his best to use his power to shield what was happening from her astute senses, but he wondered how long that would last. Sooner or later, he would slip...and then she would sense the truth.

The founder device had continued its sinister purpose during the moment of his death, still combining and feeding out the power around it. In that last moment when the energies had torn his body asunder, the essence that had been Shade had been bathed in those other energies, had become one with them.

And so, when he had resurrected, while outwardly he had remained the same, inwardly Shade had been transformed.

The Elem had failed to escape...and yet, they had succeeded, too. The energies forming them were also now a part of the warlock. Even at this moment, odd, inhuman thoughts slipped into Shade’s consciousness, thoughts more akin to those what the guardians might have thought...or perhaps even the founders themselves.

But that was hardly all. The energies were shifting, trans-forming...but to what end, Shade could not comprehend. He only knew that he had no choice but to wait and see what all of it would lead to.

Valea glanced back to smile at him. Near enough to her to have a face, he returned her smile. She turned away to take care of one last thing for their meal.

The warlock grimaced.

Wait, Shade thought again watching her warily. Wait with no choice but to pray that he was not going to become something far worse a threat to the Dragonrealm and those he cared for than even what the Elem would have wrought...

 

END