To the Stone City

[Magus]

“You’ll never say her name,” Magus could barely be heard above Sif’s shrieking cries. He swung the rod again, obliterating Sif’s right ankle. “You won’t think of her. You won’t ever try to get anywhere near her,” he hurled the weapon down, breaking the other ankle. “You bought your death with your words.”

Magus raised the weapon up over his head, preparing for the final blow, when Sif raised his hands. “W-Wait!!” he spluttered through the pain. “If I die this dimension dies with me!! You’ll both be erased!”

“Then tell me how to get out.”

“You don’t,” Sif weakly snarled. “Only I can leave this place. I’ll leave you to rot here for all-”

Magus brought the rod down hard, eliciting a horrible, hollow crunch as he demolished Sif’s right elbow. “How do we get out, Sif?” he hissed.

“Diablo take you, you fucking mongrel! You fucking bastard!”

With another grunt of effort, Magus brought the rod down once more, pulverizing the bones in Sif’s right hand. “Wrong answer,” he growled. “You knew what you were doing when you threatened her. When you invaded my mind. You know what I’ll do to you.”

“You killed the only person I’ve ever cared for!!” Sif roared. “Who the fuck are you to punish me?! We’re both monsters, you and I! You know it just as well as I do!!”

“This monster would never have bothered you if you’d just left me alone,” Magus retorted. “I made the hard choices when I needed to. You do what you do because you enjoy it.”

“Fuck you! I reached into your mind! You’re just as guilty as me! Genocide just to keep your soldiers occupied?! All while you hung back putting all of the pieces of your little plot together. Hard choices,” he spat. “I bet it was a tough call for you to become the Messiah for a race of monsters.”

“How do we get out, Sif?” Magus repeated, tapping the end of the metal rod meaningfully.

“Fuck!” Sif squirmed and moaned in pain.

“You’ve still got one good arm,” Magus commented. “And teeth. A nose. Ribs. Collarbone. Hmm, orbital bones…”

“In my satchel, there’s a yellow stone. You just step on it. It’ll turn to powder. This place will collapse and we’ll be put back in the courtyard,” Sif groaned.

Magus lifted Sif’s robe with the metal rod. Mercifully, Sif was clothed underneath with a pair of worn burlap pants and a cotton tunic. He located the satchel and unclipped it from Sif’s belt, tossing it aside. “Glad you decided to cooperate,” he mumbled, and then with a bellow, he brought Ryland’s weapon down upon Sif’s good elbow, and then on his left hand, destroying both.

The Fiendlord was shaking, his breath coming in short, sharp bursts. Through gritted teeth, he snarled with each exhale, and turned to see how Link was doing. Unfortunately, the boy was staring at him. Magus didn’t know how long he was watching. He didn’t know what Link had seen.

He angrily hurled the weapon away and stooped to pick up the satchel. He rifled through it, throwing out everything he wasn’t after onto the floor. He discarded a water skin, some vials of questionable contents, a book or journal, and finally found a dull, yellowish-brown stone. “I’ll kill you as soon as we’re on the other side,” he said. It wasn’t a statement full of malice. The hateful edge to Magus’ voice had completely faded away. He uttered the threat as detached and cool as if he’d been talking about the errands he had to run that day.

He dropped the gem, gathered his scythe, and immediately brought his heel down on it, hard. It crumbled like chalk, and immediately there was a flash and they found themselves back in the courtyard in Dalaran.

True to his word, Magus willed a swirling orb of dark energy into his palm. It crackled with power as he focused his magic into it, building and concentrating the deadly sphere.

“Magus don’t-!!” Link shouted.

“Halt!!” came an authoritative voice. “By order of the Battlemages of Dalaran, stop what you’re doing immediately!”

Magus turned his head to the source of the voice. A muscular, raven haired man in chainmail glared at him, one hand on a partly-drawn short sword, the other leveled at him, fizzing with dark purple magic. Magus flicked his eyes around the scene. It looked bad.

Link was there, too, but thankfully he’d sheathed his sword before they made the jump back to Dalaran. There were four corpses around them and Sif lay in a miserable heap at Magus’ feet. He locked eyes with Sif and glared his white-hot fury at him. He spoke just loud enough for the two of them to hear. “You’ve got a long road to recovery, Sif. Doubt you’ll be going anywhere. I wouldn’t get too comfortable in that hospital bed. Or wherever you’ll be staying; shouldn’t be too hard to find a man in your condition, should it?”

Magus let the shadowy power in his palm fade away and lowered his arm to his side. He turned to the battlemage and set his scythe’s spike on the ground. “This man and his accomplices attacked us. We were defending ourselves and things got… heated.”

“I can see that,” came the reply. “You’re lucky. Sif is actually a very well-respected man in Dalaran. He was involved in a lot of high-level research. Until he disappeared after being accused of… suspicious activities,” he looked to Sif. “What have they done to you?”

“I had to attack him without restraint. I hit him as hard as I could. I’m sorry it turned out as… brutal as all of this,” Magus said quietly. It was mostly true.

“Bastard,” Sif seethed.

“Yes, well, it was a poor decision, Sif. Most involved in your investigation thought you innocent. You going into hiding… you damned yourself,” the battlemage shook his head, and looked back to Magus. “I’m Arthas. I’ll take over here, but I’m afraid you’ll have to wait for one of my colleagues to take you both in. We’ll need statements-”

“Please, we’re in a terrible hurry. It’s vital we get to your library as soon as possible,” Magus explained. It was a huge gamble, and he could see Link was already wary about it. He didn’t have any other choice; he wasn’t about to spend hours at some constabulary. “Could we just give our statements to you? We’ll tell you everything you want to know.”

It took some coaxing, but Arthas finally agreed. Link and Magus spent about an hour or two explaining, in detail, the events from their arrival to Dalaran all the way up until their return from Sif’s pocket dimension. Of course, details were phrased in the best possible light, and Arthas wrote down everything.

“Alright, I suppose I won’t keep you any longer,” Arthas said, putting his notebook into a bag at his hip. Two more men in similar garb to Arthas showed up and immediately began assessing the bodies and Sif. “You should know, however, that you cannot leave the city. We’ll need you around in case we need to question you further, and we will be keeping tabs on you.”

Magus nodded, and thanked Arthas for being so reasonable in the face of all that had happened. Indeed, Arthas was being shockingly understanding of the situation. Magus didn’t like it. It implied that they may have been watching for longer than he’d let on. Either that or this was the dumbest officer of the law Magus had ever met.

He got directions to the library from Arthas, said his goodbyes, and then immediately, he and Link strode of as fast as they could, rounding the first corner they came to. “Good. We’re not suspects, at least for now. We’ll go to the library, get the information we’ve come for, and we’ll leave in the dead of night. They won’t even know we’re gone until morning.”