The mage lay on the earthen floor inside the circle he’d warded with runes, clad in a simple woven robe embroidered with spells of focus, of strength, of protection for his physical shell as his essence cast outward.
One last time, he sought the Light. The Song that would lead him to the Soul Star which animated the amulet he’d once sworn to protect.
The Eye of the Magos, gone twenty years now.
He was the last of the Light Walkers, a people descended from the star voyagers and older than the Romany they favored.
But his skills had faded with his faith. He could still see the starbursts, but he could no longer separate them into the ribbons, the hues he had once Walked as his father had done before him. As he’d done so easily in his youth.
Before. When he’d believed in the legend.
The Eye of the Magos heals when honor defeats hate, when love vanquishes lies
Love breeds Light
Light grants Power
Only in Darkness does the Eye lose the True Path
Before he’d lost his only love, watched her die as he stood helpless.
Before his birthright had been stolen, and his heart had grown colder with each passing year, his powers diminished.
His father had told him of the existence of a Prism able to separate Light into its colors, that could, in times of great need, show the Protector the path of the Song that would lead to the Soul Star. He’d searched the world over for the object, investigated every belief system, every religion, every rite, however obscure, hoping that somehow one would lead him to the Soul Star and onward to the stolen amulet.
Here in these high desert mountains, studying the Ancient Ones, was his last stop…and he’d found nothing.
You will be a powerful mage, possibly the most powerful of all, his father had told him.
You were wrong, Papa. I have failed all the generations before me, father to son back in time to the first of our people. The grief he’d thought to be done with, once more assailed him.
One more time, he would try, but this would be his last. Slowly he slipped from this world into the Other Sky as he slowed his breathing, as he began to chant in a tongue few would recognize. He floated, searching even as faint hope waned…aimless, every direction the same to a man gone blind, rendered deaf…
The world cracked.
Abruptly he plummeted. Spiny, poisoned tentacles slithered around him. Stung him until his skin burned. Grime and filth swirled through the opening, covering him, drowning him…
Gasping, he awoke on the hard-packed earth, the hem of his robe stained, his feet smeared with unspeakable filth.
And in the dark recesses of his lost soul, the Eye of the Magos screamed.
The amulet was found, and Evil had claimed it.
The mage shuddered, but inside him, hope was born. At least he knew that the amulet still existed.
He was its only Protector. There was no time to waste.