Revelations

[Magus]

He awoke with a splitting headache and a stormy disposition. His gaze shifted, frantic, across the room. The room. Magus sat up, simultaneously realizing he’d been lying prone and that the last thing he’d remembered was riding the back of a goddamn dragon.

Falling off a dragon.

The last thing he remembered was falling off a goddamn dragon.

So, then, he was in some sort of infirmary. He cast another glance around the room, this time measured and appraising.

If this was an infirmary, it was of the shoddiest quality. The building was made up from only one room, comprised of a haphazard blend of hand-hewn stone and mud bricks. The floor was dirt, and the bed he sat upon seemed to be made from natural, unprocessed wood. A tiny table and two chairs sat against the wall opposite him, and a small, wood-fired stove sat opposite of what appeared to be a ramshackle bookshelf, only stocked with all manner of cups and cookware. A wooden chest sat next to that.

Magus cast aside the hempen blanket that covered him and reddened at the sight of himself in the nude. Where the hell are my clothes? he looked over to the chest. Who the hell undressed me?

He leapt from the bed to the chest, a blur of pale skin and hair. He threw open the chest and breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of his clothes, ragged and dirty though they were. Magus reached into the chest, prepared to put on the soiled and sweat-soured clothing, before the thought of Omnilium crossed his mind.

Right.

He closed his eyes and thought of a new set of clothes. He settled on something decidedly more regal than his last outfit, and kept the outfit pictured in his mind. He began to feel the material form around his flesh, brushing against it as it stretched and manifested upon him.

When he was finished, he was adorned in tall, black boots and tight-fitting pants, a matching, button-down formal coat, and a bright red cape with a tall hood. The thing would drag behind him as he walked. Appropriately inappropriate. It was brilliant.

It was also just then that he realized a peasant girl – probably the one who lived here – had come into the hovel as he’d been dressing himself. He’d had his eyes closed the entire time and had no idea what she had seen – or hadn’t.

The girl was pretty. Big, green eyes and long, frizzy red hair. She seemed elegant and beautiful despite her plain clothes. Despite her lowborn heritage.

“Uh…” the Prince of Zeal managed. Eloquent.

“I… see that you’re awake,” the girl replied. “I’m glad; my uncle found you while hunting a few weeks ago. You were lying in the middle of the field, as though you fell out of the sky.”

“I did.”

“…I see. Well,” she seemed a little surprised by Magus’ curt reply. Actually, though, he was impressed; this peasant was quite well-spoken. “Like I said, I’m glad you’ve woken up. It was no trouble, though I’m glad to get my bed back, if I’m honest.”

He looked at the dingy old bed. “I’m sure.”

“Primes usually heal faster than you,” the girl added. “You must be new here.”


Great. Being talked down to by the rabble. She must have gathered he was a Prime when she caught him making clothing out of thin air. So she had seen everything. Lovely.

“Yes. I was in pursuit of the Rathalos before I was… injured,” Magus replied, too tired and confused to appropriately respond as a man of his station. “Do you know where it’s gone?”

The girl seemed flustered. “It- It’s been slain. I told you; you’ve been unconscious for weeks. Nearly a month, actually.”

“I see. Most unfortunate,” Magus grumbled.

“Unfortunate?”

Magus suppressed a sigh. He was sent to defeat the Rathalos in exchange for information about Omni. Information. Word couldn’t have traveled too terribly quickly in a place such as this. A magic city would certainly be aware of the death of the Rathalos, to be sure, but so many were involved in its demise – there was no way for them to know how involved Magus was or wasn’t. Besides, he’d wounded the creature, even if only superficially.

“Nevermind, I’m just… disoriented. I fell off a dragon and woke up in a hovel-”

The girl seemed offended.

“I apologize,” he said, and he’d meant it. “Thank you for your hospitality and for caring for me. I very urgently need to go, but I shall remember your kindness,” he strode past her, and though she made to stop him, she hesitated, and Magus used that moment’s hesitation to pass her up and into the entrance. “What is your name?”

“A-Abigail,” she said.

“Abigail,” Magus parroted. “I am Magus, Archmage and King of the Mystics – and a Prime. I will return here one day soon to express my gratitude,” he paused. “Ah, …which way to Dalaran?”

The girl giggled, as though he’d asked a question that even toddlers knew the answer to. “Go outside, face west, and walk. Keep your eyes on the skies, and you’ll spot it in no time.”

The Magus nodded and stepped outside to find himself in a tiny village. Four or five tiny huts like Abigail’s dotted a tiny stretch of road, and a small vegetable garden curled halfway round one of the humble homes.

He’d have been quick to dismiss the place but found himself appreciative of the privacy it had likely afforded him. If he had been away for nearly a month, perhaps the authorities in Dalaran had forgotten about him. Perhaps anyone who had been keeping tabs on him since his incident with Sif and his men had been forgotten about.

Sif.

That sadist had also had a month to recover, albeit from far more severe injuries. Magus suspected Sif wasn’t a Prime, however, which would buy him some time. Still, it would likely be best to be in and gone from Dalaran with the information he needed before Sif or any of his associates realized he was there.

With that in mind, the wizard spent a few minutes conjuring a Pegasus rather than the dragon he’d become somewhat attached to, taking care to form the horse-like creature in as close an image to the others he’d seen as he could recall. It was probably off on a few details, but if he were suitably casual about his arrival, nobody would notice.

- - - - -

The somehow mundane Pegasus descended onto a large landing area for the creatures, landing uneventfully near a stable where dozens upon dozens of the creatures were being held. Magus leapt from his steed and, with no intention of returning to it, simply left it there. Somebody would be blessed with a new horse. Or maybe it would disintegrate once Magus got too far away from it; he wasn’t terribly certain how Omnilium worked yet.

Knowing where to go this time, Magus easily slipped through the rabble, ducking and weaving between the opening and closing gaps that naturally formed around people who weren’t as adept at getting where they needed to go in a crowd.

They moved as blood through veins and arteries, rhythmically pulsing this way and that, and backing up at intersections like clots, building up and getting worse and worse. Magus was not about to coagulate, however, and made his way through relatively cleanly, although he was forced to use a shoulder to shove one particularly rude, overweight woman out of his way.

Soon, he found himself in front of the unassuming entrance of the Library. Magus closed his crimson eyes and took a breath. He’d start with tact and grace. Throw in some diplomatic glossing-over of the events involving the Rathalos.

If and when that failed, it would be time to break some laws.

[Magus]

He pushed into the unassuming Library and immediately took note of the dramatically increased security presence. Since the last time he’d been here, they had more than doubled the guardsmen in the Library. Magus could feel various powerful energies fizzing and crackling around him. Stray magics hummed and dully buzzed all around him.

He strode directly to the reception desk, paying no mind to the many eyes that followed him down the misleadingly humble corridor. “Woman,” he tersely asserted, closing the distance between himself and the clerk’s desk with wide strides. “I will see the Librarian immediately.”

“Excuse me, I don’t need to he-”

“Fetch the Librarian, woman,” Magus rasped, almost inaudible, even to the clerk. He leaned in. “No amount of guards and magisters and spells will make any bit of difference in the few seconds it would take to render you into ash.”

The color drained from her face. She stammered something unintelligible and nervously nodded her head four or five times before quickly disappearing among the many rows of books.

Magus stretched and squared his shoulders. Something in his back popped in a satisfying way, easing the creeping pain in his muscles. His approach had been too aggressive, too soon. Severe agitation roiled around, deep below. It was finding its way through cracks to the surface.

He closed his eyes and took a steadying breath, then cast his gaze around with an appraising eye. The heavy security seemed to have, for the most part, gone back to business as usual, but a few lingered, keeping an eye on the lavender haired man who waited at the reception desk.

The Fiendlord sneered down at the desk. Glorified security guards.

By the time he looked back up, six of those glorified security guards came marching around the end of one of the endless rows of bookshelves with the clerk in tow. “There he is,” the damn shrew declaring, pointing an accusing finger at Magus. His face twisted into an even more disdainful expression. Goddammit.

The guardsmen at the door – all battlemages, judging by the various types of heavy armor, weapons, and magical auras they all apparently possessed – closed in on him from the other side. Magus found himself ringed by ten seemingly powerful practitioners of magic. And one fucking shrew.

“Yes?” he coolly inquired, turning around to sit against the edge of the desk.

“I am going to have to ask you to leave,” said one of the battlemages who had arrived with the clerk. He circled around into Magus’ view, but not in the way of the exit. “Or we will have to arrest you.”

“Not until I’ve seen the Librarian.”

“I’m sorry, but that won’t be an option.”

“I’m sorry, but you seem to fail to appreciate the seriousness of what I need to say to him,” Magus retorted, subtly channeling energy into the room, careful to avoid dramatically increasing the energy noticed in the background noise. “I will see the Librarian before I leave this place.”

“You’re not seeing anyone here,” the battlemage asserted. He took a step toward Magus. “This is your last chance. You need to leave, or we will arrest you.”

“You don’t understand. I have important news for him,” Magus calmly insisted. “He and I need to have a discussion before I go. He will want to hear what I have to say,” his energies steadily suffused the air with Miasma. Soon, the effects would manifest, and he’d be able to slip away from the mages. He wasn’t yet certain if he would use the distraction to escape, or to slip further into the Library. He still had some time. “It’s extremely important news.”

“You can share it with me if it’s that important. I am the Captain of-”

“No, I cannot. You don’t understand,” the Archmage responded, further weaving his fabrication. “There are ears everywhere.”

Wisps of Miasma began to appear at Magus’ feet and along the floor. Greasy tendrils of dark magic faded in and out in the air, just ethereal enough to avoid notice. The Captain of Whatever-He-Was-Going-to-Say unsheathed his sword and attempted to grimace menacingly at him. As he did so, the others followed suit and hefted their weapons. Short swords, long swords, and great swords bristled at him from every direction. The Miasma continued creeping in.

“By the authority invested in me by the Council of Mages of Dalaran, I am placing you under arrest for uttering threats to cause death or bodily harm to a person, as well as failure to comply with the order or signal of an officer of the Mage’s Guild,” he blustered, moving in aggressively, now. Magus flicked his cape over his shoulder and raised his hands, causing the other guards to raise their weapons and tighten the circle around him.

“Lower your hands immediately!!” one of them shouted from behind him. Magus sighed and stood upright, lowering his arms, the Miasma very nearly ready to obscure everything all at once.

“Would you just-” he paused as an orangutan swung up from the endless sea of books and reference manuals onto a nearby bookshelf. “You! Please, there’s been a misunderstanding; I simply need to talk to you.”

“There’s no misunderstanding, you threatened to kill me!” the shrew snapped.

“Had you done your job and fetched me the Librarian, there would have been no such altercation. Besides, I wouldn’t have actually done anything to harm you. I was nearly killed fighting a dragon, and I’ve spent a long time in a coma. I’m just… agitated. You have my apologies,” Magus turned to the orangutan. “I need to talk to you. It concerns our last discussion. The Rathalos is dead.”

The Librarian’s expression seemed disdainful at best. The hairy beast scowled at him. Finally, he climbed down and retrieved a piece of parchment and a quill from the reception desk. He dipped the quill in the inkwell, and scratched out some words on the parchment before holding it up to the Captain of Whatever. [b]We will talk.[/i]

“You must have done something to get the Librarian to stand up for you,” Captain of grumbled. “We’ll have our eyes on you. You won’t be able to take a piss without us knowing as long as you’re in Dalaran. Don’t dare step out of line.”

The guards backed off and Magus dropped his Miasma. Immediately a previously unknown pressure seemed to lift up off everyone. No doubt the guards had felt it and known what he was up to. Can’t prove a spell is malicious in nature until it’s loosed, though. Magus allowed himself a soft smile as he returned his full attention to the Librarian.

“No doubt you’ve heard by now,” he began. “The Rathalos is dead. Slain, as you’d requested. I sustained severe injuries in the fight, but as you can see,” the wizard gestured to himself. “I’m better now,” he began pacing a short distance, back and forth. “I have done as you asked, Librarian. Now, I think, it’s your turn to provide me with the information I was looking for.”

Magus looked into the orangutan’s eyes and he looked back.

“How do I get to Omni? You told me you would tell me,” Magus continued to pace, before turning back to the desk and placing his palms on the cheap wood surface. He leaned over the desk toward the Librarian on the other side. “I need to know.”

[Magus]

They spoke for more than an hour. Rather, he spoke and the Librarian scribbled a response. They went back and forth like this, Magus talking and then pausing while the Librarian wrote something for him to read, to which he would reply.

It wasn’t more than ten minutes into the ‘conversation’ that the Magus realized it wasn’t going anywhere, that the Librarian was obviously skeptical of his contributions in the fight against the Rathalos. He wasn’t sure exactly how these fucking savages were privy to such thorough and up-to-date information, but they obviously were capable of at least slightly more than he’d given them credit for.

“The dragon is dead, and all I’m seeking is information,” the mage said with an edge of exasperation in his voice. “Your kingdom is safe; there’s no reason to keep this information from me any longer. What more could you have me do?”

The orangutan scribbled something onto the parchment, which was now thick with the creature’s surprisingly good penmanship.

The kingdom is safe from the dragon, but not from you.

The slightest frown formed on Magus’ otherwise poker face. So, they’d decided he was a threat. “What have I done to make you think your land has anything to fear from me?” he leaned in closer to the Librarian, who began writing his response.

You are reckless and seek to turn the lens of Omni’s focus upon yourself. You seek to confront him and draw his ire. Camelot cannot be held responsible for bringing you to him and facilitating this confrontation.

Magus’ eye twitched. Only slightly, but it had been just enough for the Librarian to see. The orangutan tensed up. Magus saw the steel in his eyes. The people of Camelot had never intended to help him. “I was supposed to die bringing down your dragon. You sent me on a suicide mission – that’s why the guards are here, isn’t it? I would just come back from the dead anyway; letting me go get myself killed gave you enough time to fortify your Library.”

The Librarian wrote nothing in reply, but his gaze darkened. Maddeningly, despite the uncomfortable silence that fell upon the two of them, the creature’s visage revealed nothing of his intent to the wizard. Magus watched him with the practiced, bored-and-annoyed stare he used in these situations, unwilling to give a single detail more away to the Librarian than he gained from him.

“You were wrong to worry about me before now,” Magus stated, quietly and evenly. He turned on his heel and strode for the exit, and the Librarian watched him go. Magus disappeared and the Captain, who had stood just far enough away to have barely heard the question, stepped forward.

“I’m going to have him followed,” he said. The Librarian nodded his approval, and the Captain rushed toward his men.

Magus burst through one of the double doors of the Library and out into the alley. He stepped as lively as he could without making his hurry exceedingly conspicuous to the people and wizards – and guards – of Dalaran. A confrontation would unacceptably delay his progress and complicate the situation dramatically.

So, then, he considered as he reentered the ludicrously busy streets of Dalaran. What do I do now?

He ducked, shimmied, and lurched through the aggravating sea of bodies, mostly human but some not, his lavender hair trailing behind him. He consciously avoided bumping against anyone, lest they either make a scene or direct undue attention to him, but even accounting for that, he was making slower progress through the throngs than he’d have liked.

His plan was simple: if he couldn’t get help from those in power in Camelot, he would find help from a neighboring kingdom, perhaps one which resented Camelot. That was, if the idea of a ‘neighboring kingdom’ even worked in these bizarre, a la carte realities. He grunted disapprovingly to himself as he struggled to move past a particularly rotund fellow; if there wasn’t a neighboring kingdom, there was surely someone who despised Camelot or the Librarian, or at the very least wasn’t concerned with working against their interests.

But that would mean shaking the trail he’d picked up on his way out. Fucking amateurs. He might have missed it if they’d changed out of their shiny, polished-thrice-daily, compensatory suits of armor, but as it was, he could see the shimmering glint of their metal suits contrasted against the non-reflective fibers worn by virtually everyone else quite easily.

It wouldn’t be too difficult to stay ahead of those clanky bastards, but he quickened his pace all the same, becoming only just a bit aggressive when presented without an opportunity to move forward. He was getting the occasional stink-eye or rude gesture but nobody seemed to be willing to take things any further just yet.

Magus hadn’t quite anticipated, however, for there to be another group of idiotically-clad metal men heading toward the intersection which he was now committed to heading toward, as the last alley he could have ducked into had been passed up by the guards already following him.

He caught sight of the second group marching toward him as he entered the center of the intersection, and at that moment both groups began shouting and sprinting toward him.

“Get on the ground and surrender immediately!!” was one sentence that seemed to stand out amidst the various ‘get out of the ways’ and ‘you are under arrests’ and the rest. Naturally, Magus obeyed his first inclination, which was to throw himself into a leaping elbow, crushing the nose of some impudent fool who’d heard the commotion and fancied himself a vigilante.

Sorry, friend, Magus thought to himself after the wet, squishy crunching noise had given way to a weak cry of genuine hurt. The man toppled and the Fiendlord ran through the crowd which now did what it could to part out of his way. You won’t be impressing any girls today.

Magus barreled through the crowd at top speed, pushing and throwing people out of his way and making judicious use of his elbows when a simple shove wasn’t sufficient. The shouting of panicked bystanders mingled with the staccato thumps of boots on pavement as the guardsmen ran after him. They, too, pushed and shoved their way through the crowd, though most parted ahead of them in the wake of Magus’ disruptions.

Despite their backwoods-y armor, some of the guards were outpacing him. The archmage know he’d be out of time soon, and began channeling a contingency. As he ran toward the edge of town – the literal edge of the flying city – he began to summon forth his arcane energy.

Tiny, dusty pink-and-purple motes flashed near-invisibly, swirling near his hands and eyes as he beat his feet over the cobblestone. His muscles burned and stretched tight, sweat beaded down his forehead and stained his back and armpits, and he panted hard as he fought to keep pace. All the while, that slowly swirling power gathered and intensified around him, building and coalescing as he ran.

Pain started to radiate from his sides, but still, he could not slow down. He might not be able to die, but he would be no help to Schala locked away in some awful Camelot dungeon for evading the law. Clasping one hand over his right side in a feeble attempt to deal with the shrieking pain that now seared through his abdomen, he brutally cracked some poor fool across the face to get him out of the way. He collapsed in a heap as Magus leapt over him.

There!!

He could see the edge of the city beyond a small courtyard. A ‘boardwalk,’ which, for all he knew, ringed the entire city. It certainly extended beyond his sight in either direction. The crowd noticeably thinned out here, too.

“Stop!!” he heard the commanding shout from behind. Alarmingly, it seemed much closer than Magus anticipated. A low buzz and crackle accompanied the building maelstrom which secretly enveloped the wizard. Leaping onto the boardwalk, he stumbled, slapping a hand against the pavement to right himself, but he couldn’t keep running.

Defeated, he let his run deteriorate into a tired jog before he finally turned to face his pursuers, not giving them the benefit of seeing him double over in exhaustion, despite the fire of agony in his belly. He watched as the guardsmen fanned out around him, all drawing various weaponry.

One man stepped forward. “You’re under arrest. On your knees.”

Magus, panting, flicked his gaze back and forth. The civilians had given them a great deal of space, but there was nowhere to go. If he chose to run either way down the boardwalk, he’d be intercepted and flanked, and the way he’d come was now filled with angry, tired, armed men.

The man who’d stepped forth roared at Magus. “Get on your-!!”

Before he could finish, a thick, greasy haze enveloped them, blotting out all light. There were shouts and panic, and Magus took that instant to turn back and run, full sprint, at the edge of Dalaran. A vast expanse of empty sky awaited him, and against every instinct which screamed at him to just fucking stop, to turn back and give up, he jumped.

Just as soon as he fell below the edge of the boardwalk, Magus dispelled his Miasma, and almost instantly, the soupy blackness gave way to a dozen utterly confused guards who’d inexplicably lost their quarry.

[Magus]

He thought he’d find out if it was true that Primes were resurrected after death, as he was falling towards his impending doom. Luckily, with a crash, Magus fell right into some foliage causing a large series of crunches and snaps to be heard throughout the forest.

With a few scrapes and bruises Magus got up from the ground, littered with the detached branches that broke his fall. With his concentration he began to focus on summoning his Dragon out of Omnilium. After some time his mount had been summoned and Magus fled, from a city he was no longer welcome in.

He would make for the capital, Minas Tirith. Of the many globes and maps predominantly displayed in the Library of Dalaran, Minas Tirith was proudly labeled on them all. He wasn’t sure exactly what he was looking for, but if those tied to the government were unwilling to help him, there were those who undoubtedly worked against it that would be happy to, in exchange for all manner of things.

And so, his dragon beat its mighty wings through the air. He would have a target on his back in Dalaran, but in Minas Tirith, he would be but a shadow; one face among many, details lost in the crowd. If it was as grand as they’d said, it would be an easy place to disappear in.

- - - - -

‘Grand,’ he quickly realized as he swept over a low cliff and into view of the city, was a woefully inadequate description of the unbridled splendor that sprawled out in front of him and up a mighty mountain range.

Minas Tirith spilled out into the valley in all directions, and wound up, up, and up to the top of the mountain, segmented into various districts, culminating with a mighty, fortified palace up at the top. White walls gleamed in the cold winter’s light. A massive black wall surrounded the boroughs that settled down in the valley, lording over its citizens, a mighty sentinel eternally at watch.

Magus flew around the perimeter of the enormous urban sprawl in a lazy circle, high up enough to be outside the realm of attention of anyone among the various Pegasi and other flying, magical creatures that the people of Camelot had evidently considered mundane.

Eyes of scarlet pored over the nooks and crannies of the city, hungrily searching, scanning, prodding for the worst of the worst. Dissenters against the state – people angry and dangerous enough to stand against the will of Camelot – that’s where they were going to be.

He wasn’t looking for just any bad neighborhood. No, he wanted the absolute most miserable, appalling neighborhood. A place where people weren’t even safe in their own homes. A place where fear and violence trumped the rule of law.

A second lazy circle was all it took to find the place. On the lowest level – of course it was on the lowest level – the buildings stood shorter and squatter than the rest, and they all seemed dingier. The roofs were warped and twisted, what little green space there was had since turned brown from neglect. A haze of pollution choked the air from the place, and what torchlight there was seemed dimmer. There was no magic fueling this place, not like the countless magefires that illuminated the wealthier boroughs.

Magus casually swept down from the air, low over the buildings of this cluttered and desperate place, and quietly leapt from the dragon and onto a long, angled roof. He tumbled along its surface and rolled up onto his feet, staying low in the fading light. It would be nightfall soon, and he would be able to move with impunity. Even if the guards at Dalaran had sent word about him to Minas Tirith, nobody’d seen him arrive, and there weren’t going to be any authorities in this place after dark.

The wizard crept to the edge of the roof nearest an alley and gracefully slipped down into it. From what he could see of the streets that flanked both exits of the alley, there weren’t a lot of people around. The two or three people he could spy from his secluded location seemed to be in quite the hurry, and all bore the scowls of people who did not want to be approached.

Magus didn’t employ these anti-social defense mechanisms. Instead, he casually strolled into the street and made his way down the road. He was looking for a chokepoint of some sort; a place a sort of person he was looking for would consider a good ambush spot, and unlike those who stiffly powerwalked to and fro in hopes of not being taken for a mark, he wanted them to attack him – it was the easiest way to find the people he was after.

It didn’t take long for him to pick up a tail. He couldn’t actually see them, but he knew when he was being hunted. Someone was definitely on his trailing, stalking somewhere in the shadows.

A little farther up the road narrowed, and that was where two men had appeared. One seemed like he might have been trying to hide around the corner, but Magus could spot just the edge of his form unhidden by the building he tried to obscure himself with. The wizard simply continued forward, paying no outward attention to the newcomers.

Magus could feel the pressure of peering eyes on his back and instantly knew that he was walking into a trap. Everything was going exactly as he planned. He made a show of running a hand through his lavender hair in order to steal a glance over his shoulder: two more men were quietly making their way after him, each walking on opposite sides of the narrowing road.

The men in front separated, mirroring the ones behind by each taking a side of the road. They were all dressed in rough clothing: a mish-mash of rough fabrics, worn and ratty and threadbare. Magus spotted a gleam of metal that shone from beneath a cloth sash tied around one of the men’s waists as they all closed in on him.

“A fine evening to you, gentlemen,” Magus spoke the greeting with a smile dripping with false joviality. His crimson eyes regarded the two in front of him with careful consideration, ever mindful of the ones behind him.

“You fuckin’ slummin’ or something?” one of the two in front demanded. He was tall and pale, his face marked with a nasty burn that stretched from his cheek up and across his nose. The one that stood aside, the one who was carrying something metallic, was shorter and stockier, with a shock of black hair on top of his head. He didn’t say anything, but he did step toward Magus.

The wizard stopped walking but he didn’t respond. The stocky one’s arm seemed drawn to the item hidden by his sash.

“You get some kind of thrill cruising through bad neighborhoods?” the tall one taunted. “This isn’t the place for some pampered freak to get his rocks off.”

“I see,” Magus responded, still indifferent to Tall-Man’s threatening posture. “I thank you for the warning.”

“Fuck you!” came a voice from behind. The wizard turned just in time to see a burly, dark-skinned man swing a weapon at him. Magus cleanly, but barely, sidestepped the blow and drove his palm into the man’s solar plexus, forcing his air from his lungs.

Before he could catch his breath, Magus threw drove his fist into his assailant’s face while at the same time he wrestled the weapon out of his hands. It was an honest-to-God war hammer; a thin, three-and-change foot metal shaft, topped with a small, round hammer – complete with a sinister hook on the back of the hammer’s head.

Magus swung the hammer down hard across his attacker’s knee. It collided with a savage snap of bone and the raw shriek of agony that accompanied it. The man fell to his knees, only to take another hammer blow to the temple. There was another crunch of breaking bone but no scream this time. The man fell sideways onto the ruined cobblestone, his eyes open and glazed over, killed in a manner uncomfortably reminiscent of his run-in with ruffians in Dalaran.

A shuffle of feet and a flash of metal and Magus’ mind was back in the fight. This time, two of the men attacked at once, the remaining one from behind and the stocky man from the front. The two of them brandished knives and made to use them.

The one on his flank slashed at Magus who stepped into the knife-wielder’s personal space and clasped the wrist of his knife-arm while driving a backwards heel kick into the gut of the stocky knifeman.

Magus wrenched forward the wrist of the man he’d restrained, forcing him to stab his compatriot. The wizard kicked the remaining man, staggering him backward. Before he could recover, Magus raised his hammer over his head with both hands and swung it down, crushing his skull. He and the stabbed man both collapsed, leaving only the tall one. Magus tossed the bloody hammer aside and turned to face the only surviving attacker.

The mage looked the tall, burned man up and down, before focusing his gaze on the knife he brandished. “Are you also going to try to attack me?” he allowed the following silence to answer the question. “I am called ‘Fiendlord,’ ‘Archmage,’ ‘Demon King,’” he said. “You may call me Magus.”

“Wh-What do you-”

“You’re going to take me to the one who runs this place. I want to speak to the most-connected person you know. I want to meet the person you’re more afraid of than you are of me right now,” Magus quietly explained. “You know. Either that or I eviscerate you and leave you bloody and broken like these fools at our feet.”

The Burned Man seemed like he was trying to decide whether or not he had a choice in the matter. Magus could wait. For now.

[Magus]

They stood off. The man with the pale skin and lavender hair matched the glare of the blond man with the burned face. Magus was unarmed, but he’d shown the knife-wielding Burned Man that having a weapon or not wasn’t much of an issue for him.

“My terms are really quite fair, when you think about them,” Magus coolly explained. “All you need to do is bring me to the most powerful man that you know in exchange for your life. I will not look for you. If you comply. If you refuse, or if you try to lead me on, well…”

The Burned Man seemed to wrestle with the decision, and a mixture of anguish, fear, and anger was written on his face.

“A-Alright,” he said at last. “I’ll take you to the local spot. There’s some people I know-”

“What do they do?”

“…What?” the man seemed confused.

“I’m not looking for some thugs or thieves. Not looking for any pissant street-level gangsters, do you understand?”

“Y-Yeah, okay. Well… there are these other guys…”

“Yes?”

“These guys-” he paused, seeming to struggle with the words. “They’re… uh-”

“Get to the point,” Magus grumbled, grasping a handful of the man’s shirt and, with his other hand, raised a fist near the man’s face. His hand became ensconced within a thin, swirling energy to punctuate his request.

“Alright! Gods,” he breathlessly spat. He was sweating now, and visibly afraid of what Magus had done. What he could do. “These people, I know of them, but I don’t know them, you know? They’re… they’re fucking insane. They kill people to send a message. Not bad people either-”

“Why?”

“Why? What the fuck do I know, ‘why?’ They want a revolution; they’re-”

“Take me to them.”

“W-What? But they’re-”

“Take me to them. That’s the type of person I need.”

“What… what the fuck are you trying to do?” the man demanded. “Th-They could kill us!”

“Could,” Magus parroted. “They could kill you. But if you don’t take me to them immediately, I will kill you.”

The man glanced at the three bodies strewn about the alleyway and swallowed hard. “Yeah. Fine. I’ll take you to them but then I’m fucking leaving. You and them are goddamn maniacs.”

Magus smirked in response and gestured for the Burned Man to lead on. He did, unhappily, but he wound through the various alleys just the same, as the last of the setting sun began to slip beneath the squat roofs of the slums.

They cruised a meandering path through the narrow streets of neighborhoods as destitute as the Earthbound people of his time, and through disgusting alleys cluttered with refuse and body waste. Magus didn’t consider from what or who it had came from, and instead did his best to not breathe in the heinous stench while minding carefully where he stepped.

Eventually they came to what only could be described as a favela, only worse. This place was even more oppressively desolate than the rest of the slums. And now with the last of the sun’s rays beneath the horizon, it was also oppressively dark. Tiny pinpricks of distant torches winked in the distance, but it seemed people preferred to hide in the darkness rather than announce their presence.

The Burned Man rounded a bend and made a beeline across a street shrouded in abject blackness. Not a light permeated this place in any direction. Even Magus, who had spent long stretches of time in darkness, found it difficult to adjust to the lack of illumination.

They came to a stop in front of a small, nondescript hovel that seemed to be hunched forward, as if prepared to lurch into the road – or to keel over and collapse into it. The one tiny window on the front of the house was boarded up, and the building obviously hadn’t been cared for in a long time.

“You’re kidding,” Magus flatly declared, casting a glance around in the darkness to ensure he and the Burned Man were still alone.

“I know they come in and out of here,” the man replied. “They’re called the People’s Army for Democracy and Change,” he breathed. “And they’re the most dangerous people in all Camelot.”

“And you expect me to believe they’re headquartered in the capital city?”

“Didn’t say this was their headquarters,” the Burned Man responded. “But Minas Tirith, it’s a big place. Could be it is.”

“Right, lead on, then,” Magus commanded, but the man didn’t move. He seemed hesitant.

“…No,” he finally responded. “This is far as I can go. I don’t know these people and I can’t-”

“Your knife.”

“What?”

“Give me your knife,” the wizard demanded, holding out his open hand. “If you’re not coming with me, you’re parting with your knife.”

“But this place is-”

“You’ll take your chances in this place without a knife. You only have to worry about people like you,” Magus interrupted, gesturing with his hand for the knife. The Burned Man was reluctant, but eventually handed over the crudely fashioned dagger. “Now get out of here before I slaughter you. And remember; I won’t come looking for you. Unless you’ve been lying to me.”

Magus watched as the man took off into the darkness without even a word of retort. Good. If he was that nervous about just coming to the neighborhood of this People’s Army for Democracy and Change, who knew what kind of neurotic mess he would be on the other side of that door.

A group of revolutionaries could be waiting for him on the other side. He knew he might be walking into an unfavorable situation – he knew he might be walking into a trap. Maybe. He also knew he might be walking into a building to meet the person who could help him find what he sought – a way out of the Omniverse.

The mage pocketed the dagger he’d taken from the man. He didn’t need it; he just didn’t feel right about letting a man who had a reason to kill him walk away into darkness armed with the means to do so.

Magus closed his eyes and drew a deep breath, and then placed his hands on the primitive metal latch. He tugged against the rust and wear, and was surprised it pulled free, and the door swung into the building.

A single torch flickered against the far wall. It seemed about halfway-burned; it could only have been lit a few hours ago. The small flame that danced upon it licked up toward the stone ceiling of the miserable hovel he’d walked into, and he and it were the only things to occupy the entire place.

There appeared to be a trap door in the ceiling, but no way up. Magus paced toward it, eyes turned upward. But he’d have seen someone on the ceiling if there was anyone up there – the building was hardly tall enough for anyone to have remained hidden.

Magus scanned back and forth fervently now, slowly realizing that he’d been had. The Fiendlord angrily stormed into the corner of the room and had made to throw a punch against the wall, but froze upon hearing a hollow footfall with his last step.

He rocked his foot, putting pressure on it, and heard a dull clunk of wood softly contacting wood. Trap door.

The wizard stepped back and crouced down on the balls of his feet, eyes searching for the outline of this door. Sure enough, cleverly hidden with dirt and fabric made to look like dirt, the faintest square outline could be made out, as well as a similarly camouflaged handle, which appeared at first glance as erosion, pitting, in the ground. Magus reached down and grabbed the handle.

[Magus]

Magus reached down and grabbed the handle.

He took a breath, and pulled. The door pulled up but then a searing spear of agony blasted up his arm and through his entire being, assaulting him along with a blast of light and sound which left him blind and disoriented. The wizard stumbled back and toppled onto the floor.

The Black Wind. Magus silently cursed himself; he should have noticed it earlier. The Black Wind – he could hear it for the first time since he’d entered the Omniverse – and the howl it made was near deafening. It was the last thing he could hear before everything faded to black.

A high-pitched ringing echoed around his skull, rousing him from unconsciousness. He opened his eyes to a blurry, unfocused world. He attempted to rub his eyes and found his arms restrained at the wrists. Magus squeezed his eyes shut in an effort to clear his vision.

Once he could see, Magus found himself in some kind of dungeon. He was chained to the wall, hanging limply from his wrists. Even slouched down as he was, his feet hardly touched the floor.

The wizard was in a tiny cell, with nothing but a small table set out off to the side. On the table were more than a dozen sinister-looking tools and implements. Magus frowned; from the sight of the tools and the old, dried blood on the floor, he was very clearly in a torture room. The trap door must have actually been a trapped door. Perhaps it was some kind of sick joke on the creator’s part. The irony, however, was lost on Magus, who felt like he was suffering through a seven-alarm hangover.

He thrashed at his restraints, knowing it wouldn’t do him any good. The sudden motion sent a flame of pain needling through his head and a cascading wave of nausea washed over him. Though he tried to hold himself up, Magus slouched toward the floor despite the pain that screamed across his wrists and shoulders as his entire bodyweight pulled down against his upraised arms.

Magus closed his eyes and slipped back into unconsciousness. In his dream, he thought he’d seen Schala’s face. A vague shriek of a heavy door opening stirred him from his reverie, and he opened his eyes to see three men gathered outside the bars of his cell. One of them produced a key, unlocked the door to Magus’ cell, and pulled it back to let the others through before stepping inside himself.

Magus raised his head and faked a smile. “Well hello there, fine accommodations you’ve provided here for me. But typically, the help doesn’t visit the suite without knocking first.”

One of the newcomers, a big, burly, bearded man, slugged across the face. Magus coughed and gagged as blood spluttered from his mouth and lips. The scarlet seemed to burn on Magus’ ivory skin.

“Ah,” he managed. “I take it this is my wakeup ca-”

The man slugged him again, setting off another attack of nausea and pain through his skull. Blood streamed down his chin now, and his lips and jaw were already swelling and dolorous. He would have liked to make another quip, but he wasn’t too keen on losing any teeth today.

His vision seemed to double and then merge back into one, then double again, as if he was idly crossing his eyes out of boredom, except that this exercise came with a weapons-grade headache.

“Who are you working for?”

He’d heard it, sort of, but he hadn’t really heard it. It seemed like it was a line spoken on a television show in the background, heard but not absorbed like so much other white noise.

Maybe they thought he was ignoring them. Maybe they were worried he might slip back into unconsciousness. Either way, the big man was kind enough to drive his fist into Magus’ face a third time, exacerbating the jackhammering, airhorns, and various nails on chalkboards that were already all clamoring about in his head.

He choked, coughing on his blood, spitting flecks of it onto the floor and on his clothes. Magus took this last punch to the orbital bone of his left eye, which was now swelling shut quite nicely. Despite this, he struggled to look up at his aggressors and fought to maintain his degrading vision.

“Who are you working for?”

Magus really did hear it this time. The man in the middle, a small, thin, older man with an unflatteringly receding hairline and a long, white beard was the one to ask the question. His clothes were fairly simple, heavy cloth robes, but nearly hidden beneath them were finely polished black boots. Magus narrowed his one good eye – this man was not as he appeared.

“I… had come…” he trailed off. He didn’t want to, truly, he was prepared to answer the question, but the agony rippling through his synapses was elegant in its ability to overwhelm the victim. “I…”

“You set off quite the potent trap. It’s designed to overwhelm the senses. It took quite a lot of tweaking to make sure the wards didn’t simply kill the victim – or render them vegetables,” the old man smiled cruelly. “This way we can extract some information as to why the victim tried to invade our privacy before the victim expires.”

“I came here…” Magus slowly shook his head, fighting mounting frustration and fatigue. “I wanted to meet with the… People’s Army-”

“Why?”

“I want to find Omni.”

That seemed to strike the old man down into a dumb silence, before he and the others laughed a derisive laugh. The old man waved his hand over his head and the laughter stopped immediately. “And why would you meet with the People’s Army to find Omni?”

“Because…” Magus groaned. “I tried… other routes. Tried to work with the authorities. They reneged on… their end of the bargain. So… if their enemies are strong enough to make them worry… perhaps they’d also have access to… information. Information I can use… to find…”

“A likely story. An agent of Camelot who happens to be conveniently upset with their leadership, and then just happens to stumble upon a secret outpost used by their enemies.”

“Yes… it seems… fabricated. I accept that. I had been a king, once. Before coming to the Omniverse. I’d have tortured and killed someone in my situation in order to extract information that could prove he was lying. I’ve done it, actually, more than just a few times,” Magus spat a weak bleb of spittle onto the floor. “Usually I was right, and could extract information I could use against the enemy. And if I wasn’t, a casualty of war was a casualty of war.”

“Are you… are you seriously advocating for us torturing you?”

“No,” Magus growled. “Just that I understand your concerns. Still, I’m a Prime, and a very dangerous one at that. I am offering you my cooperation in exchange for yours, as I have no faith left for the government of Camelot. You can make a powerful friend or enemy today, the choice is yours.”

“Powerful? You’re broken, bloody, and in chains,” the old man retorted. “A powerful enemy, indeed.”

The two bodyguards – or whatever they were – again laughed in derision. Magus thought about tying them both to a Roman breaking wheel and rolling them down a hill just steep enough to ensure they died slowly and in immeasurable anguish.

“And what if I were to simply vanish from these chains?” Magus inquired, already channeling negative energy into his body, pushing it up through his core and out of his flesh. The thug who’d been striking him snorted a false laugh, which Magus ignored. Instead, he focused, willing the energy to build and coalesce around him. “I cannot ask you to trust me, not yet. But I can be useful. Let me help you with something.”

The old man sneered and nodded at the thuggish bodyguard, who drove a fist into Magus’ gut, eliciting a wheeze and an oomph!! from the restrained wizard. He shuddered under a hacking cough as he fought to catch his breath. Magus’ concentration nearly collapsed under the weight of that last hit, but still the energy quietly gathered.

“You can help, alright, Camelot spy,” the old man rasped, glowering down at Magus with a suddenly darkened countenance. “Talk. Tell me what you know,” he looked at his other bodyguard, the one who had been silently standing there the whole time. Magus looked up at him, too. The man had a shaved head and pale skin. He wore nothing but a pair of leather pants and heavy leather boots. Scars crisscrossed all over his rippling muscles. The old man nodded at him, and he picked up a sinister looking brand, which suddenly glowed red-hot as if it had been sitting in the heat of a forge for a long time. Magic torture tools. Great.

“Are you fucking kidding me?!” Magus retorted. “I worked for the Librarian! I fought the Rathalos! We killed it! He was to give me a way to Omni in exchange but decided I wasn’t to be trusted with the information. I was hunted by guardsmen in Dalaran but I escaped and came here. What the hell else do you want? What could I do to prove I’m n-aaaAAAAAAAGGH!!” he screamed as the scarred man lifted Magus’ shirt and pressed the brand against his flesh.

Magus gritted his teeth and set his glare on the old man. He thrashed against his restraints, and loosed a bolt of energy at the chains. Upon striking the metal, the energy simply fizzled out.

“Your bonds are wizard-proof,” the old man declared in response to Magus’ quizzical expression. “No harm will come to them through magical means, spell-caster.”

No harm will come to them, Magus turned the phrase over in his mind. No harm…

He thought about something he’d seen Schala do. Sometimes she would step into the plane immaterial – step into the shadows themselves – to channel energy for their mother. For her goddamn Mammon Machine. But Schala could slip between worlds, even if only for a moment, and could pass through walls and other such obstacles. She’d have made easy work of these shackles.

He closed his eyes and concentrated. He could hear the ugly scarred man approaching to brand him again, and Magus let his Miasma befall them, plunging the room into soupy darkness. He blocked out the shouts of confusion, the cursing, and focused.

Schala had always warned him when he was a child to never attempt to cross into the realms of shadows. That even with the protection of her amulet, she wasn’t safe there, and had to take care to hurry, lest she be twisted by the Eldritch reality – made weak, or mad, or worse.

Magus could feel her amulet resting beneath his shirt, against his chest. Maybe he wouldn’t be safe there. He opened his eyes. The hulking, bearded thug had backed the old man out of the cell and against the far wall, using his own hulking frame as a shield between himself and the old man. The torturer was inching closer to Magus, his searing-hot brand raised up in front of him.

Magus wasn’t safe anywhere, it seemed. He closed his eyes again, concentrating on his well of energy. He drew his power from negative energy – hate, terror, suffering, and the like. Some of it was ambient – the worse-off a place was, the more power would readily be available. It was part of the logic behind his genocidal campaign against Guardia in the middle ages.

But negative energy seeped out of the cracks between realities. In planes immaterial, energies coalesce and polarize. Eventually, one type overpowers the rest. A great deal of negative energy pushes out positive, and so on. Entire planes of one type of energy. Entire planes filled with nothing else except fuel for a mage’s power. Magus tapped directly into one such plane, filled with dark energy, and instead of drawing from it, he attempted – for the first time in his long life – to reverse the flow. He attempted to push into this plane immaterial; to step from his reality into one whose very existence was driven by destruction, madness, and sorrow.

One such crack between realities seemed to appear. Although his eyes were squeezed shut, it felt as though he could see it. He fixated on it, thought about drawing nearer, into the void between existences. He drew closer, closer, until he felt resistance. It was strange – almost elastic. He pushed.

Suddenly, he was very cold. Magus opened his eyes. What he saw before him was a disturbing facsimile of the world he had just been in. All color had been washed away and only grey remained. Everything and everyone seemed to be stock-still; the three men in front of him seemed frozen in place.

Despite everything being static, the entire world around him seemed to shudder and cast ghost images. Objects blurred and refocused with no rhyme or reason. Things seemed to creep and crawl just at the edges of Magus’ vision, and it took all of his will not to try to swat at them. Whispers seemed to quietly creep through his ears while an unseen wind droned on, almost deafeningly, above it all.

Magus lowered his arms. His wrists simply passed through the shackles as if they weren’t there at all, and suddenly he realized that the world he was in now wasn’t frozen, it was merely moving in slow-motion, at a speed so slow he could hardly perceive it at all.

The wizard simply walked around the man with the branding iron, and, once behind him, struck out, driving a savage punch to the back of his neck. He could hardly see it, but Magus knew the man was falling forward, millimeter by millimeter.

He stepped out of the cell grabbed the huge thug who’d beaten him. Magus grasped both hands behind his head and drove his face down into his upraised knee with a satisfying crunch. Magus let go, leaving the man bent over and slowly beginning his glacial reaction to the attack.

Finally, the Fiendlord walked down the corridor a few paces before turning around to face the old man, who was pressed up against the wall. Now Magus stood between him and the only exit from the tiny dungeon he’d been locked in.

There were two cells in here, one next to his own, divided by a brick wall. It was empty. But Magus didn’t have any more time to assess his surroundings or to marvel at this bizarre pseudo-reality. He knew he was chancing it as it was being here this long. He released his Miasma, closed his eyes, and pushed himself back up through the seam in realities.

Before he could open his eyes, he heard two simultaneous cries of pain followed by dull thumps. Magus opened his eyes and cracked a wild grin at what he saw. Both the men he’d attacked had collapsed in heaps, and the old man was left staring at an empty cell where a man had been shackled to the wall just moments ago, wisps of soupy blackness fading away into nothingness.

“Do you really think,” Magus began. The old man gasped and whirled about to face Magus, before taking several hurried steps backwards, away from the man. His face was etched with horror and confusion. “That a man who could do what I just did would bother wasting his time as an agent of someone else’s kingdom?”

[Magus]

The air was heavy with the uncomfortable silence that followed Magus’ stunt. Both he and the old man had locked eyes, and although the wizard seemed much more at ease than the old man, neither dared break the silence that had befallen them.

The weight of that silence grew more and more unbearable, until finally, the soft scuffling of the hideously scarred man’s boots against the bloodstained stone floor broke it. A groan escaped the man’s lips, weak at first but tinged with fury at its end. He scrambled to his feet and whirled around to face Magus and the old man.

By the look on the disfigured torturer’s face, he’d have loved to rip Magus’ throat out, had the old man not motioned for him not to. He seemed like he was still considering it, despite the order.

The huge bearded man, on the other hand, seemed conscious but in no mood to get up off the ground. That suited Magus just fine; the last thing he needed if everything went upside down was one more person trying to artfully rearrange his bones and organs.

“Shocking,” the old man finally rasped. “Really. Most impressive. What is your name?”

“What’s yours?” Magus retorted, folding his arms across his broad chest. It was childish, sure, but Magus earned the right to be a little annoying after the old fart and his torture crew tried to burn nonexistent answers out of him.

“My name is Lud,” he responded after a time. When Magus didn’t respond, he continued. “An independent Prime, eh?”

“I’m looking for Omni. My allegiance is to anybody who can help me get to him for as long as it takes to do so, and nothing more,” the wizard replied. “I am called ‘Magus.’”

“I see. Still, I’m not fully convinced,” the old man began, turning to walk down a hall which terminated at a dully-hewn brick wall. The cobblestone floor in front of it was illuminated by a patch of sunlight crosshatched with the silhouette of prison bars. Lud gestured for Magus – and the pale, scarred man – to follow and continued down the hall. “You’ve disabled my bodyguard and almost did the same to one of my best men,” the scarred man scoffed, “-and you didn’t even try to run or attack me. Hell, you don’t even know I exist.”

Magus responded with a disinterested monotone. “Given one of the men I dispatched was your bodyguard, I’d assume you’re either in charge or you’re close to the person who is.”

“You’re correct,” Lud flatly confirmed. “I am the leader chosen by the People’s Army. I oversee everything: our security, our military strategy and operations, our contact networks, our financial assets and holdings – everything. And if you’d known any of that already,” the old man drawled with the same, smug disinterest Magus had shown him. “One of us would be dead.”

Lud withdrew a key from a small leather bag. It hung from his neck against his chest from a thin, faded leather strip hidden behind his robes. He unlocked the cell door at the end of the hall and swung it open.

The doorway led to a set of stairs that rose up out of the small dungeon. Flickering light cast down from the top of the stairs. Lud made his way up with Magus and the menacing torturer in tow.

Upon reaching the top of the stairs, Magus realized they hadn’t exited the dungeon at all. An armed man in armor had been patrolling, and snapped to attention when Lud made his way to the top of the stairs.

“Sir,” he saluted by raising his palm upward near the left side of his head, and then continued his patrol, his sheathed sword softly clinking at his hip.

“Duncan, wait,” Lud called.

The patrolman stopped and spun on his heel to face the old man. “Yes, sir?”

“Take us to the spy from Sendai, would you please?”

“Yessir, right this way,” the guard marched quickly now, his armor softly clanking and jingling as he went. Magus followed behind the old man, his cape billowing out behind him.

The guard marched to the end of the stone-brick corridor, cells on either side, and stopped with his back to one of them, next to the door. One look into the cell was all Magus needed to understand why the guard chose to face away from it.

Inside, chained to the wall, was a miserable-looking man who had been horrifically abused. His face was cut up, bruised and swollen. Blood encrusted his lips and various cuts on his face and neck. A ratty piece of cloth was tied around his head, over his eyes.

His bare chest bore cuts and burns all over, and blood stained his tattered pants. Most alarmingly, his right leg simply ended above the knee, a white rag soaked red with blood tied off on the stump. He was trembling.

“We caught him four days ago. He’d been working within the organization as a double agent. We’d been suspicious for some time and then finally caught him trying to send information back to Masamune,” Lud explained. Magus hid the fact that these names meant nothing to him, and simply listened. “Needless to say, your arrival shortly thereafter seemed quite suspicious indeed.”

“You think I came here to rescue him.”

“Or silence him before he talked. A little late for that, I’m afraid. He endured all of it without saying a word, until his leg was taken. That was enough for him to tell us everything he knew about Masamune’s operation in Sendai.”

There was a pause before Magus began. “I see. And why have you brought me to this man?”

“To kill him.”

Magus couldn’t have heard that right. “Pardon?”

“I want you to kill him to prove you’re not working with Camelot or Sendai.”

“What would that do to prove anything?” Magus protested. “Without a doctor, the man’s going to die anyway, and by your own admission, any secrets of value he may have had have been compromised already.”

“Aye, but Sendai and Camelot are allies. Even an assassin wouldn’t kill one of their own without a reason to.” Magus looked at the poor soul. After what he’d been through, death would be a comfort.

“I kill this man, and you’ll help me get to Omni?”

“You kill this man, and I can trust you enough to work out a deal. You seem like a formidable character, indeed. Liberty has many enemies. You help us put some of them down; gather our strength. We’ll put you on the right road to the devil you seek,” Lud offered.

“Is he a threat?”

“Does that matter?”

So this what the attitude the ‘People’s Army for Democracy and Change’ had behind closed doors. He wondered if Lud would dare reveal this barbarity to his followers. No matter. Magus didn’t have any right to be outraged at Lud’s callous disregard for human life; he’d done worse things. And lived to regret them.

“Fine,” Magus replied, withdrawing the terrible makeshift knife he’d relieved from the thug who had guided him here. He’d already revealed some of what he was capable of; no sense in laying all his cards on the table in front of a man who might just as soon want him dead. A knife would be just as effective as a blast of dark energy, albeit messier.

“Don’t use that ugly dull thing,” Lud scoffed, rifling through his robes before withdrawing a wicked, curved black blade akin to an assassin’s karambit. Lud held the weapon out to Magus with one hand and gestured for him to hand over the home-made knife with the other.

Magus made the exchange and held the karambit in his hand. It was well-made, balanced, and clearly razor-sharp. He looked from the knife to the man hanging from the wall, past the bars of the cell.

“Understand that once this is done, we go on to do whatever it is you need me to do right away, and then we’re done. If I’m not on my way to Omni in short order, I won’t keep helping you.”

“Of course,” the old man replied while gesturing for the guard to open the door to the cell. As soon as he heard the creak of the cell door being opened, the man chained up inside began to thrash and wail.

“No!! Please!! I’ve told you all that I know!!” he began weeping. He continued thrashing against his chains, looking all about, even though he couldn’t see through the blindfold. “Please don’t hurt me anymore!!”

The arch mage stepped into the cell and suddenly found himself struggling to breathe, as though the air had become much heavier than he was used to. Magus couldn’t keep his eyes on the man he’d been ordered to kill. The poor fool was spent already, and Magus was to kill him simply to prove a point.

Schala was still lost out there, in time. Magus swallowed hard. All of it, all the terror and suffering, it had been done to save her. What was one more soul? He looked down and closed his scarlet eyes.

But the ends didn’t justify the means. Killing this man, even in the name of the greater good, would be a hellish thing to do.

Still, he thought as he coolly strode across the cell and near the chained man who still thrashed and wailed, he was already going to Hell.

Magus slammed his palm against the man’s forehead, pinning him against the stone-brick wall, and with one quick flick of the wrist, he slashed his throat. The man thrashed and sputtered for a moment as Magus turned and walked away, and then went still, hanging limply against his chains as his murderer exited the cell.

He made to hand the blade back to Lud. “No, keep it. You might find yourself needing it.”

Begrudgingly, Magus wiped the blood off on the rag that the prison guard suddenly offered him, and tucked the blade into his belt, handing the bloody rag back to the guard, much to his chagrin. “Now what?” he growled, no longer making an effort to hide his restrained outrage.

“Now…” Lud seemed to think for a moment. He’d have seemed a wise man with his robes and long, white beard, and the hat atop his balding head, if not for the matter-of-fact way he went about committing atrocity. “Now I should introduce you to some of our followers. I’m sure you think we’re a terrible bunch of people after what you’ve seen and done-”

“After what you made me do,” Magus spoke softly, but the venom in his voice carried anyway.

“Quite so. Even good men are made to do terrible things from time to time. If you would come with me you will see, we are fighting for the greater good. Camelot is a Verse of oppressed people, Magus,” again Lud started to walk, gesturing for the wizard and the torturer to follow. “We are fighting to throw off that yoke of oppression. And to do that, sometimes we have to resort to acts of savagery, because we are fighting against acts of savagery.”

[Magus]

Magus followed Lud down a long, makeshift tunnel lit with intermittent torches lining one of the walls. Every fifteen feet or so, the tunnel was braced with huge wooden beams, like a mineshaft. The walls, floor, and ceiling were all living rock that the tunnel had literally been carved into.

“Have you many of these tunnels hidden beneath the city?” Magus inquired, casting glances around the tunnel as they walked. The sneering, disfigured pale man who tortured him still followed behind, silently glaring at Magus’ back.

“Aye,” Lud answered. “We have tunnels running through all of Minas Tirith. Many lead into the sewers as well – they’re unpleasant, but useful. Between them and the tunnels, we have ways to move throughout the city without being seen.”

“Where are we heading now?”

“A meeting place, of sorts.”

“If these tunnels go all over the city, how do you keep track of them?”

“Some are documented. Some… you have to learn. Can’t steal a map that isn’t written down.”

“If I am to work with you, access to these tunnels could be very useful. I could benefit from a map to make my way around.”

The old man and the wizard walked side by side in silence for a while before Lud finally responded. “That can be arranged. But first you’ll need to receive your first assignment.”

“Need I remind you that I’m operating on a truncated time schedule?”

“Indeed,” Lud responded. “You’ll be on your way to Omni soon enough, though I might add that it might be simpler to just slit your throat. The outcome is likely to be the same.”

“We’ll see,” Magus responded.

They didn’t talk anymore after that. Only the sound of boots on stone broke the silence for a long time.

They came to another hall intersecting with their own, and rounded the left corner before continuing down the new corridor. Later, they came to place in the tunnel that forked into two new corridors. This time they went right. Magus noted that the route they took was the only one that was lit; the other directions they’d passed by were plunged in darkness. The wizard could only assume that someone had gone ahead of them to light the torches, or perhaps by sheer coincidence, they were simply following the same path someone had taken not long before. Either that or Lud was completely lost and following the torchlight in an attempt to pretend he knew where he was going.

Finally, though, the tunnel opened up into a large room. Bricks ringed the mouth of the tunnel where someone had obviously broken through a wall. Inside the room, casks and crates were piled all over, and a couple of doorways and a decrepit old stairway led out from it.

“Please follow along; we’re nearly there,” Lud announced as he slowly made his way up the stairs. With each step, they creaked and groaned, threatening to give way beneath his feet.

Magus followed up the creaky steps and found himself in what seemed to be a small dining hall. It was modest; three long, plain wood tables surrounded by chairs of the same material. Clay plates and cups and plain iron dining utensils were set in their places neatly on the tables. Some small statuettes lined one wall, but the room was otherwise plain.

The statuettes were likely religious; one was a woman in matronly robes with her hands turned palms up to the sky. Another was a four-armed mammoth of a man riding an equally massive six-legged tiger. The others were various figures in dramatic poses.

It suddenly struck the wizard that he had no idea where he was. He had no idea where he had been when he’d woken up, and the tunnels gave no indication as to where they were going.

Interesting.

Lud led the way through another doorway into a small hallway. Like the dining hall, it was modest. The floor, walls, and ceiling were all made of the same roughly hewn cobblestone as the dining hall, and dimly illuminated by torchlight.

“Come, we’re almost there,” the old man beckoned, leading further on to another doorway. He heaved the door latch with a raspy groan, and the mechanism clunked heavily, allowing the door to give way. Lud pulled the solid wood door halfway open and slipped through.

Magus squeezed through after him and stepped into another corridor that ran perpendicular to the last. The first thing he took note of were the two guards in armor who stood watch on either side of a large, lavishly crafted set of double doors.

Besides the guards, this hall was much more luxurious. It was better lit and adorned with a long, purple rug running nearly the entire length of the hall. Coves in the wall housed more of the religious statuettes; these ones more ornate than the ones in the dining hall.

At either end of the hall were two sets up stairs led went up and down, and in the center was the guarded door. Lud moved toward it and without a word between them, the two guards pulled open the doors, revealing a small cathedral with airy ceilings.

They stepped inside a bustling sermon room that had been converted into some sort of makeshift office-slash-war room. Boards covered up all of the stained-glass windows from the outside, leaving only sparse torchlight to illuminate the place.

People rushed about everywhere. Desks and tables were scattered throughout, and chairs and pews had been rearranged from their original purpose into their new one. Thick smoke hung in the air from the various pipes and rolled cigarettes being smoked by the many people.

“This… this is your center of operation,” Magus surmised.

“Indeed,” Lud replied, gesturing to a table covered with sheaves of paper. “The nerve-center of our operation. Very few people ever see this place for what it is since the church was ostensibly abandoned.”

“I see,” Magus replied, glancing around the room. It was a dichotomy of imagery: religious pictures and idols clashed against posters of political ideology, maps with strategic routes and locations, and so on. Hand-painted portraits of various figures unknown to Magus seemed oddly reminiscent to communist propaganda, heavy with reds and blacks in the imagery. “Impressive. Perhaps, though, we could forego the introductio-”

Before he could even finish, Lud had loudly demanded the attention of the room. “Friends, may I present to you, Magus the Prime. He’s come from beyond the Nexus and has agreed to help our cause. He is a formidable ally and I expect it will be relayed to all of our associates that the proper discretion be shown to him,” the old man spoke with a surprisingly commanding voice; a far cry from the husky rasp he normally spoke with. “He will be helping us with some delicate work to help turn the tide against our oppressors on the throne.”

Magus felt a twinge of discomfort at the various eyes upon him. It was odd; he was used to being the center of attention for various speeches. But then, he was used to introducing himself and not working on behalf of another. It didn’t take long, however, before Lud gave a brief wave and those in attendance went back to their business.

“So,” he breathed, running a gloved hand through his lavender hair. He was agitated; ready to get started on the first step toward confronting Omni and finding a way home. “What is it you need me to do?”

“Yes, of course,” Lud responded, motioning for Magus to follow. He led the archmage to a desk in an isolated corner. The old man went around it, opened a drawer, and rummaged through a stack of paper before withdrawing one page and setting it on the desk. It was a highly detailed, hand-drawn portrait of a man in armor. “This is Captain Heironymus Lex. A captain of the city guard here in Minas Tirith, not a captain in the military. He’s responsible for the slaying and incarceration of more than two dozen operatives of the PADC. Additionally, he is rumored to possess a great deal of evidence against several more, and may have planted a mole in our organization – it seems strange that he’s suddenly become so successful.”

“So you believe he’s being fed information. I suspect you’re concerned your identity as the leader of your group might be exposed,” Magus remarked.

“Indeed. This simply can’t happen. I need you to steal his files – all of them. Apparently, he keeps information closest to him at home. So steal the files form there and burn the rest. They can’t know what was taken.”

“You want me to commit arson against the captain of the fucking guard,” the Fiendlord grumbled. He leaned in over the desk. “I’ll do it. But you had best not consider doing anything to betray me.”

“Ah, there is one more thing.”

“What?”

“Heironymous knows entirely too much. You need to eliminate him.”

[Magus]

The air hung thick and heavy like stale smoke. The tall, pale wizard glared down with piercing red eyes at the old, bearded man in his robes. The old son of a bitch had first tried to torture him, and was now ready to send him out alone to eliminate one of his most serious enemies.

Magus knew what he was going into – no matter how things shook out, Lud stood to gain. Either Magus was successful and this Heironymous and all the evidence he’d collected would be lost forever, or he would fail and be killed or imprisoned.

Either way, for Lud, loose ends would be tied.

Magus leaned in a little closer. “I’ll do what you ask. But, Lud, this had best not be a trap. I am called Fiendlord and I can live up to the name if I must.”

“Threats will get you nowhere but back into the dungeons, Fiendlord.”

Magus ignored him. “Have somebody guide me to this captain’s residence. I will do the rest.”

- - - - -

One of Lud’s various lackeys – some starry-eyed and over-eager young soldier – led Magus through the tunnels and to the surface in a wide alley in a much nicer part of town than the wizard had seen in Minas Tirith so far. They had gone up several immensely tall and filthy ladders through equally immense and filthy sewers and were now on one of the highest portions – or ‘tiers’ of the city. Also a much wealthier and more heavily policed portions of the city.

“You will find Heironymous near this neighborhood,” the guide – barely a boy – explained. He handed Magus a carefully hand-drawn map. “This will get you around the city. Most of the major tunnels have been outlined on the back if you need to leave in a hurry. Good luck, brother.”

“I’m not your brother,” Magus retorted without taking his eyes off the map. “You shouldn’t follow a man like Lud. He’s taking advantage of your youth. Of your naivety. He’ll just as soon send you to your death as he will take care of you.”

The boy seemed taken aback. “Who are you to talk about him like that?! Those are words of treachery!”

“A curious time when the truth is taken for treachery. As far as who I am to talk about him like that: I am like him. I’d have done the same in his position. He doesn’t care for you or your well-being: only the cause. Only his cause. He is hungry for power. Perhaps he’s not as much of a devil as the ones who currently rule here, but he is a devil just the same. You would do well to regard him as such.”

Having decided he’d studied his route enough, the wizard turned away from the boy before he could voice his protests and began walking toward Captain Lex’s house. Perhaps he’d catch the man in his own home and be able to take care of him and the evidence in a single stroke.

Magus strode through the lofty, wealthy district. Huge houses, lavish temples, and shops and pubs brimming with delicacies seemed to crop up in all directions. Marble benches dotted the pathways made from hand-hewn stone, and lush gardens and ponds were interspersed throughout all of the finely crafted stone structures.

The hustle and bustle that Magus experienced in Dalaran was present here, but in this district it was strictly well-dressed men and women, their servants, and guards.

The guard presence here was almost stifling. The wizard assumed that meant he was on the right track – Lud had very clearly sent him into the lion’s den.

Doing what little he could to blend in as a tall, deathly pale man in a cape, he made his way to his destination as discreetly as possible.

The house of Hieronymous Lex turned out – according to some tiny, hand-written notes on Magus’ map – to be a fairly lavish apartment on the 4th floor of an ornately decorated stone building.

Of course it was an apartment. Why would it possibly be a separate house, secluded behind some shrubs, away from the public eye?

With more than a small sigh, Magus stalked across the street and up the open stairwell which snaked up the side of the building. He reached the fourth floor and took a long look around.

Nobody around.

The timing wasn’t going to get any better. He kicked the door open as dark energy coalesced around his raised fists. Nobody home. He took a moment and inspected the home of his would-be victim.

The place was a disaster, even before Magus had shattered part of the door by smashing it in. Papers were strewn about everywhere. Notes were scrawled all over parchments on desks, the floors, walls – everything screamed of a man obsessed. It didn’t take more than a quick glance to confirm it was the People’s Army he was investigating. So at least that much of what Lud said was true.

The wizard picked up a small, leather-bound notebook that appeared to be hastily hidden behind a bookshelf. For a moment, Magus wondered if he really was hunting a captain, it seemed the work of an amateur.

The dark mage flipped open the book. Records of some sort. He scanned the pages, trying to make sense of the various notes and tabulations.

They were… transactions. Magus read for a moment, before arching a lavender eyebrow. These were the documents of a slave trader. He flipped through several pages, frantically searching for any sort of identifier, before stumbling across a signature.

“Well, shit,” he breathed. The seal of the People’s Army had been pressed on one of the pages, just above a hand-written ‘L.’ on the parchment. Lud was a slave trader.

Magus pocketed the book – maybe this was why Lud was so keen on having everything burn. This particular piece of evidence could prove beneficial.

He stepped into a small kitchen, also covered with notes. A nearly-spent candle burned conveniently on a window sill, wafting a fragrance through the room. Magus grabbed a note and lit it on fire, before transferring the tiny flame to some of the books on the bookshelf he’d found the notebook hidden behind.

The wizard went through each of the rooms of the apartment, lighting some notes or books on fire, before leaving out the broken door. He hurried down the steps and across the street, back into the alley he came as flames engulfed the building.

Magus decided he’d wait here for Lex to come back to his burning home – it would be the easiest way to find him. It shouldn’t take long for word to spread about a flaming building in a district as wealthy as this one.