Necromancer of Urbus

J. M. Samland

Copyright © 2022 Jamie M. Samland

All rights reserved

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

Cover art by Martin Grasso
@martin_grasso_illustration
https://www.artstation.com/martingrasso

Interior art by Ryan Allen
@gimble_nackle

Wolfgang,
If you had wings, you would just fly around and bug your sister even more.

Introduction

Necromancer of Urbus was written during NaNoWriMo 2021, National Novel Writing Month, a challenge to write the first draft from start to end in one month. It sounded like an easy enough task… until I started it. You have to average 1,666 words a day, every day, to hit that goal. I’d be writing for a while and think, “How much is that? 2k? 4k? … oh, 371 words, wow.” I didn’t know what to expect, and wow, it stressed my ability to make stuff up on the fly, which luckily, I’m slightly decent at that. Whole events, characters, and outcomes were created as I typed, often to my own surprise. I have definitely learned that being a writer isn’t just figuring out what happens next but what to do with something that already happened. Let your mind wander and then later either clean it up and make it work or throw it out. But if you have an idea, write it down. Edit later.

This story focuses on Cazlandt coming to some terms that he is not as immortal as he wants to be. It’s an ancillary story to The Chronicler’s Awakening series, intended to be read after the second book, Trials of Throk’tar, but set before the series begins. So, ah, a prequel. Not that I’d stop anyone from reading it at any other time, but some characters and concepts might be less clear without the other books for context. If you’ve read those and I tell you this takes place about twenty-eight years before Realms of Terswood, you’ll have a pretty good guess of how things pan out.

As always, a giant chunk of gratitude to my husband for putting up with the hours needed for me to complete this challenge. I barely touched any video games in the month it took to do the first draft, and we fell behind on our queue of TV shows. I was delighted the Final Fantasy XIV expansion was delayed until after I finished the first draft. A huge thanks to Rob Johnson. I was debating NaNoWriMo and leaning toward not doing it. I had a schedule I wanted to keep, namely working on the Seeds of Farsil and Arcanym first drafts. But Rob, my good friend for twenty years, said he wanted to try it. So screw it, I’ll do it too. I can’t promise I’ll try this again every year, but I’m happy to have done it once.

My use of social media has declined to receive feedback from actual humans with actual faces instead. I joined a writer group through my local library and extend an extra thank you to Elizabeth Glenn and Mary Haaser. Getting critiques from those unfamiliar with my world, characters, or style has been invaluable. I found my editor, Christopher Kotcher, there as well. Imagine that, a great local resource! Thank you!

Chapter One

An Evening in The Stacks

“I killed him, you know. I uncoupled the protections of the stone, and the weight of the magics smashed him to paste. I think about that often and have regretted it almost every day for the last seven-and-a-half centuries.” The old man tugged at his long, gray beard braided with gems and bits of colored string. He looked down at the child playing with wooden blocks a few feet away. “That is the curse of our kind. When you live as long as I have, you spend more time reliving your past and regrets than you do looking forward.”

The child set down his toys and looked at the old man, considering him with an intense, emerald gaze.

“You will know the pain of being an archmage soon enough. Hold on to these few years of innocence and ignorance while you can. Enjoy your life while you are stupid and simple. Before long, before you can even notice the change happening, you will be deep in the affairs of the world and have to make decisions that will haunt you for ages long after those you made them for are nothing but dust.”

The child continued to stare.

The old man stared back and nodded. “Yes, we are archmages. I am the first of our kind, and you are the youngest.” He grinned at the thought of that. “If I, Cazlandt, first archmage, founder of the archmage nation, must live in this misery, what hope is there for the rest of our kind?” He turned from the boy and looked over the railing beside him to the sea of bookshelves and racks. The Stacks stretched on forever in gnarled twists and turns. He once saw this place organized into neat rows, but that happened only when the mistress of the library accompanied him.

Cazlandt stood and smoothed the wrinkles from his bright, yellow robes. He straightened the pointed hat on his head as he turned and placed both hands on a railing which resembled the twisted roots of a tree. Even as he squinted, he could see no end to The Stacks. It contained the sum of all knowledge and history of every realm, information the Chronicler gathered and set down here. Cazlandt turned his back to the wealth of knowledge and looked at the iron-banded door a few dozen paces away, across the wood-plank balcony. Beyond that, another fifty paces would return him to the castle he raised from the hoarfrost as a home and sanctuary for archmages.

“She is your sister, you know,” he said to the boy. “Or rather, she will be. Alishia, the Chronicler, Mistress of the Infinite Library. I am sure she boasts many impressive titles. Since I first met her centuries ago, I have learned more of her lineage. My grandson, your father, will have a child with a svarters woman, perhaps with their princess, though she is now barely ten years old. Something will pull your father from the fascination he holds for your commoner mother, and Alishia will be born. Perhaps, that will not be for another fifty years, when your mother dies of old age, as her kind does. Alishia told me that something happens between now and her birth that results in my death, though not in so many words. Perhaps, it will be the svarters princess’s great-granddaughter, and I have centuries remaining.”

The boy yawned and laid down on the thick blanket amongst his toys.

“Yet, knowing the hourglass of my life is possibly running low, I am still motivated to move forward as I always have. Should I live in fear of what is to come, I will accomplish nothing more in a life so full of grand milestones. Still…” He paused and looked back to The Stacks. “Still, I think of the past. Alishia was always so concerned about changing the past as she used this place to travel across the tapestry of time with power unique to her. She worried one minor difference a hundred years ago might unravel everything that came after. As the Chronicler, she strove—strives—to merely observe and record the realms but not to interfere. I respect and do not envy her for that. It is impressive to know what will transpire and yet have the willpower to not change it. Yet…” He drummed his fingers on the wooden railing and tugged on his beard again. Meager light filtered across The Stacks from an unseen ambiance. “Yet, perhaps, there is more than one way of undoing the past. If I cannot go back and undo the action, perhaps, I can undo the results.” He glanced back at the boy now sleeping on his soft blanket embellished with colorful and fantastic creatures. “I will not be gone long.” Touching his amulet in the design of two overlapping crescent moons, Cazlandt strode to the wrought-iron, spiral staircase leading deeper into The Stacks.

Cazlandt’s rugged, leather boots clanked on the iron steps as he descended and the library closed in around him. Wooden shelves soared several feet over his head, and he grinned with the thought of little half-svarters Alishia awkwardly climbing them to reach the higher tomes. This library belonged to her. Why would it appear constructed for someone thrice her height?

The ancient archmage wandered the twists, and soon, the staircase and the balcony behind him completely left his sight. No matter, without the Chronicler working against him in this place, he could quickly find the stairs again. He ran his fingertips along the spines of leather-bound books older than himself, perhaps even from before his race of humans existed in Poas, maybe pre-dating humans in any realm. The Stacks held a potent magic, and as with all magic, intention led to the majority of the result.

Cazlandt let his mind and feet wander, thinking of his centuries of travel across the realms, sometimes with a companion but usually alone. Faces flashed through his mind of the countless he met. After all his travels, he never found another realm with humans until he went with the Chronicler to encounter those infuriating boys and two purple skins. Two boys, barely twenty winters old, brought him low. Cazlandt, first and most powerful of archmages, fell to a couple of children.

He sighed. Though the boys deserved what happened, he really did feel the guilt for those final actions against them. Alishia cared a great deal for the one. The archmage saw it in the months she held him captive here in The Stacks after their return. He often caught her touching the features of that small, stone carving or the string of wooden beads. She would tuck them away as soon as she noticed his attention, but he could be very quiet when he wanted.

What was his name? Elren? Elvan?

Cazlandt suddenly realized he lost all sense of time, not that time existed within The Stacks. As a powerful archmage capable of surviving on the ambient flows of mana within the library, he felt fine. Less could be said about the infant left on the balcony. Letting some concern for the babe hurry his steps, Cazlandt focused his mind and tried to remember why he came down here, a lingering guilt for the necessary murder of his friend, Lavin. Could there be one that might know how to undo death?

He suddenly remembered a name. Draigh Queen. A withered, ancient woman from a realm on the brink of destruction by natural forces. Even as the skies rained fire and the ground spewed molten earth, she mumbled to him about a means of seeing beyond the veil and undoing the work of Elphame, Ascended of Death. True resurrection, as she called it, did not interest Cazlandt at the time, and he quickly forgot her words as he fled the realm and left its denizens to their fate.

“The undoing of the Ascended’s work cannot be done lightly,” she breathed in her tent choking with incense, herbs, and the ash of the village burning around them. “Each of us has our part to give in the grand flow of mana through the Trees. Were you to attempt such an act, seek the Necromancer.”

The Necromancer, Cazlandt thought as he weaved through the endless shelves. One with magic beyond the power of Lady Elphame. One that uses the release of energy that comes with death to fuel their magic.

His fingers traced the spines of tomes, all feeling the same, until he ran over one with a rougher edge. The archmage paused and returned to the thin book, carefully pulling it from the shelf.

“The Necromancer of Urbus” lay printed in gold relief across the dark, leather cover.

Cazlandt grinned. “Alishia, you are amazing,” he said and opened the tome to a random page. He read enough in The Stacks to know there was no point in reading a book from start to finish. The information gleaned would be the same no matter one’s own starting point.

His eye moved first to the sketch on the right side of the fold. It showed a shadowy figure looking over a lake toward an island some distance in the center. A skeletal tree sprouted from the left end of the island. It seemed enormous if the scale of the drawing proved accurate to the figure in the foreground. Cazlandt looked to the text on the left, and as expected, most of it looked smudged and ruined. The Stacks always had an annoying habit of censoring what information it gave out. “The Necromancer of Urbus” was penned again at the top in the style common to all books in The Stacks. A mixture of rushed, looping strokes and single characters made up the text. The light down here within the shelves was too dim to read by, so Cazlandt took the book and turned to where he knew a stack of maps lay out on a desk.

The lefts and rights made no difference if his mind focused. Within a few moments, the shelves widened to make space for a wooden table covered with a thick pile of weathered parchment. The top sheet showed a detailed, hand-drawn map of Poas. Even the southern continent of Iecil and the poisonous, western lands of D’Kreti were drawn. The map faded to nothing in the east. Not trusting the magics of The Stacks, Cazlandt tucked the book about the necromancer under his arm, lest the small tome disappear when he turned his back, and flipped through the large sheets of maps. He recognized some by the shapes of their landmasses, others by the names of locations or the realm name itself. Most remained smudged and stained until he flipped to one with cracked edges. “Throk’tar” was penned across the top in bold letters. The map showed far more detail than Alishia should have ever gotten in their few-day travel there centuries ago. How many times did she revisit this world?

The very next parchment was labeled “Urbus”. Cazlandt grinned, not taking it as a mere coincidence that Throk’tar sat beside this other realm. There were no coincidences in The Stacks. Rather than studying the map in that dim alcove, he tugged it from the heap, rolled it quickly, and returned to the wrought-iron stairs.

A brief flash of panic crossed his mind when he saw the empty blanket strewn with small toys. “Lone?” he asked the open air. The infinity of The Stacks swallowed and deadened his voice. Cazlandt looked back to the iron stairs behind him. The boy could barely walk. He would not attempt descending those. He also lacked the strength to open the heavy door leading back to Castle Dracon. There was one other exit over the balcony, but Cazlandt could not see the boy climbing and tossing himself from there to the floor twenty feet below, either.

He’s an archmage, or will be. He should be fine, he thought, panic still edging closer.

Hearing a tiny groan, Cazlandt rushed to around the desk and blew out a sigh at seeing the tiny form of young Lone curled on the padded seat of the wing-backed chair. Grinning and shaking his head, he set the book down and rolled map.

“Suanh be damned, you gave me a scare, young Lone.” He watched the slow rise and fall of the boy’s side for a moment. “When I met your sister, I had such… not anger, but what is the word… disappointment… to see her muddied by svarters blood. I can hardly fault my grandson. I held great affection for the mother of my only son. I saw him, your grandsire, with so many women on his forearm, but none he so admired as the mothers of his own children. Your father seems the same, maybe even more so smitten by the admiration of your mother, Lone. I really wonder what event leads him to sire a child without her.”

The boy slept on as Cazlandt unrolled the map across the table, smoothing the corners so it may lay flat. It showed a thin landmass circling a large, central island. Names labeled the regions of the outer land, but only the outline of a single, skeletal tree marked the inner island.

Cazlandt opened The Necromancer of Urbus to again see that sketch of a shadowy figure looking out across the sea to the tree. Beside the map of the realm, it seemed simple to assume the figure stood on the cliffs of that ring of land to gaze inward.

“I will teach you to Realm Stride when you are old enough, Lone. I taught my son and his children how to teleport but never to Realm Stride. There was no real reason to withhold the training. They just never seemed interested. It is a simple enough magic with some amount of practice, but it is still always a tad harrowing when going to a place for the first time.” He traced a finger along the thin land circling the island on the map. “Imagine throwing yourself into the void of the aether to appear in some unknown world. I miss how Kethry threw herself at it without a moment’s hesitation. She was a rare gem of a woman, such passion and fire, with a mind more brilliant than any I ever met in all our travels.”

Cazlandt studied the map and the names penned across regions. Thin lines likely marked roads or rivers across the outer ring. It labeled two lines as bridges across the inner sea, the Roto Sea. The longer he studied it, the more details he noticed in the map.

Finally, focusing back on the open book, he touched the massive, skeletal tree in it and on the map with the middle finger of either hand. “This must be the world tree of Urbus, the center of the realm’s magic,” he said to the sleeping child. “Strange that it looks dead, but perhaps, that is just the look of it.” He flipped through the pages of the book, but the rest of the text appeared too blurred, blotched, and smudged to read. He found one more sketch near the front. It showed the same, shadowy figure standing on a winding road edged by tall grass. A wooden fence lined the left side of the road to keep the grass at bay while a high wall of well-fitted boulders bordered the right.

“Do I dare, Lone? I stand here depressed and lamenting an action done more than a hundred mortal life times ago and The Stacks hands me such savory, irresistible bits as this. I suppose the other question would be ‘what is the risk?’ I have gone to so many realms in my time. What threat could be any real danger to one with my power?”

Lone finally woke and whimpered the beginnings of a fuss.

“None of that. You are the proud prince of the archmages. I will not stand for crying.”

Lone sat up and took a deep inhale.

“Fine! Out we go, back to your mother.”

Lone watched quietly as Cazlandt gathered the toys and blanket into a basket. He left the book and map on the table and knelt to pick up the child in his left arm. Despite years of attempts, Cazlandt could not defeat the magics that stopped him from taking things from The Stacks. Burdened with the basket of children’s things in his right, he struggled to open the heavy, wooden door. Beyond, torches lit a short hallway of exactly fifty paces. At the end, another door led to Castle Dracon. As he carried the boy and basket down that corridor, Cazlandt thought, as he always did during those fifty steps, about his genius for raising the castle to align so perfectly with the entrance to The Stacks.

Cazlandt climbed the steps to the main level of the castle and entered the Grand Hall. The hour ran late, and the statues of long-gone archmages and particularly genius crystal mages looked ghostly in the cavernous space. Lone clutched his great-grandsire’s robes a little tighter.

“There is nothing that can harm you, boy, either here or in the greater world. When you are old enough and learn to let the ley energy of the world flow through your body, you will know this truth. We are archmages, the very pinnacle of power. Our bodies and mind are as strong as the magic of the world. Let it strengthen and embolden you.”

He crossed the Grand Hall toward the east residence without another glance at the statues and paintings.

“Father!” boomed a voice behind him.

Cazlandt sighed a soft breath and turned to the hulking man approaching. Wearing deep-gray, quilted armor to match his neatly trimmed beard and high boots polished to a mirror finish, King Searcy kept one gloved hand on the pommel of his sword as he quickly strode across the smooth stone floor.

“What is it, son?” Cazlandt asked as he set down the basket of goods and shifted the boy to his other side.

King Searcy stopped a dozen paces from the old archmage and narrowed his eyes with something akin to suspicion. “Why do you have Lone out of bed at this hour?”

“I was just taking him back.”

“Where have you been with him? His mother asked about him hours ago.”

“I can spend time with my great-grandson as I see fit.” Cazlandt held the boy a little more firmly.

“To The Stacks again?”

Cazlandt nodded.

Searcy sighed. “I told her as much, that you had likely taken the boy again. He is a prince, Father. You cannot keep taking him as you please.”

“I like his company.”

“He is barely a year old. He has no company to give.”

“Where is the boy’s father?”

Searcy waved the question away with a dismissive flourish. “Daelin is in Eplear, installing another of those ridiculous teleportation obelisks. I expect him home within a few days.”

“You do run a tight ship here. You always know where everyone is and what they are doing.” Cazlandt grinned at his son.

Searcy grunted. “I will run my castle and my nation as is needed. Now, get my grandson to bed.” He walked by his father and continued out the south door of the Hall.

“Why do I put up with such treatment, Lone?” Cazlandt asked the boy as he stooped to pick up the basket of toys and turned again toward the eastern tower. “What have I done for my son to treat me with such disrespect? That boy used to leap at my word, and now, he acts as though I am some addle-minded old fool who strayed from his bed to get lost in the woods. I literally created the ground we are walking on, raised it from the hoarfrost of a frozen wasteland owned only by the snow sharks and blue wyrms.” He reached the wide, stone steps winding around the outer edge of the tower and started climbing. Lone’s nursery sat beside his parents’ chambers on the sixth floor and Cazlandt’s own sat another three higher. He saved his breath as he climbed and considered a quick teleport with every step. Aaislin had asked that no one teleport her son until he was at least two years old, and despite having no basis for such a demand, Cazlandt felt compelled to comply with the simple request. Something about his grandson’s wife’s pleasing face and how her raven-black hair framed her calm smile made Cazlandt want to make the girl happy. Though a commoner, she possessed a very different sort of magic.

Slightly winded, Cazlandt huffed onto the landing at the sixth floor and pushed open the iron-banded door. It swung into the short hallway with another three doors ahead. The boy’s mother Aaislin would likely be asleep to the left, and Daelin’s workshop lay to the right. The door straight ahead led to the largest room on the level. Cazlandt quietly pushed that open and set the basket of toys just inside. Stars and celestial bodies glowed on the ceiling, painted like the night sky. Guided by the light of painted stars and the two moons shining through the half-open window, Cazlandt crossed to the cradle and lowered the babe to the pillowy comfort.

“I think I must try this, Lone. Your sister may be born in a year or not for another hundred or two hundred. I have seen you as a herald of my coming demise, but I must try not to dwell on that. Since you came into this world, I have held some growing fear that my end is coming. I have seen and accomplished much. I have learned more than any other born to our race, and I have forgotten more than any but perhaps a scant handful will ever learn. I will continue in that vein. I must see about this Necromancer of Urbus and what magic they may possess over the force of death. It is as much about finding a means to return a friend to life as understanding another type of magic, perhaps also a little of wanting to get away for a while.” He leaned, brushing away the boy’s little dark locks with one hand while holding his dangling amulet with the other. “You will see me again, little one. I will return with a grand magic that will again redefine the very life of Poas.”

“Cazlandt?” a small voice asked behind him. Aaislin stood at the door, wrapped in a heavy, cloth robe pulled tight around her shoulders. The scant light of the room glinted off the sheen of her dark hair.

“Lady Aaislin,” Cazlandt nodded and smiled.

She entered and stepped past the archmage. “Please tell me before taking Lone out of his room,” she said while reaching in to adjust her son.

“Of course, Lady Aaislin. I was only spending some time with my great-grandson. I enjoy his company.” He stepped out of the room and to the hallway beyond as Aaislin fussed over her child.

With every step up the winding stairs, Cazlandt’s vision narrowed. He reached to the ley lines, the organized conduits of mana deep within the world, and pulled the warm energy into himself.

Urbus.

He imagined a realm with that gnarled, bony world tree stretching to the sky.

Urbus.

He passed the landing of his granddaughter’s floor of the tower. She would be deep in her studies at this time. She was always studying. Cazlandt saw the path surrounded by grass as tall as any tree in Poas, lined on one side by boulders and the other with a stout wooden fence.

Urbus.

He passed the landing on the eighth floor where Daelin’s mother, the Lady Brina Calmo, slept. King Searcy was too busy flitting about his castle and seeing to all the minor management of a nation to stay at her side.

Urbus.

The worries of his descendants faded with each step. The dark stairs ahead of him distorted as though seen through a lens. Cazlandt pressed against the sudden density in the air as the magic shifted around him. The effect grew until he reached the landing at the top level—his level—of the tower. A narrow crack of the purest black split the air before him. With no hesitation—for the most potent magic required absolute confidence—Cazlandt stepped into that crack of night and felt his body shatter into a thousand shards.

Chapter Two

"Fish"

Cazlandt’s vision ripped across the infinite void of the expanse between the Wheres, the Lacuna Gap. The Chronicler told him something that implied this too was The Stacks but in some different form. He could never reconcile the thought that this inky nothing was the same as the full library he just left. Despite having no vision, he felt a sense of movement. The archmage kept his destination fixed in his mind: Urbus.

As quickly as his being shattered, his vision collected, and he dropped to a knee on a rough cobblestone road. He gulped at the cool, moist air and felt for the ley lines for strength. He buckled forward and retched. Mana suffused the world but not in the neatly organized ley lines directing it across the land as in any of the other dozens of realms he visited. The mana of Urbus felt like a muddy, polluted ocean. The magic dragged over him like a wave pulling him out to the open sea. After a moment, it slowed and surged forward from the opposite direction, this time feeling cleaner. He focused on the rhythm, the pulse of ley energy, and timed the forward movement by casting a minor light spell, but passing the mana through himself even for such a minor act left him with a sickly chill.

“Welcome to Urbus,” he said, confident that his Realm Stride brought him to the intended world. He finally looked up from the cobblestone and gasped. White bamboo shot to the sky and framed the wide path that twisted away. The tops of the shafts softened to resemble gentle snow drifting in the slight breeze. A sturdy, wood beam fence held the left side in place, and a tall wall of stone framed the right, precisely like the sketch in the book. Or was it opposite? Cazlandt frowned, not remembering. The bamboo and grass bent over the road, creating a tunnel that blocked him from seeing farther than the next bend. A glance behind showed the same path framed by the tall, thin vegetation.

“Which way?” Cazlandt mumbled to himself and looked between his two options. His frown deepened as he again pulled at the ley pulse for guidance and the total lack of order sickened him. The way to his back looked closer to the image in the book, and with nothing else to determine course, he set off that way, staying close to the outer side of the wide, blind turns of the road.

He heard a low, irregular rumbling ahead and, as he turned a slow corner, saw two figures pulling a heavy cart with a third walking alongside them. Their heavy, black coats completely shrouded the trio, with their hoods pulled to cast deep shadows over their faces. Not even their hands were visible under the long folds of their robes. As they neared, Cazlandt studied their fluid gait and how their cart rattled on the stones of the path.

“You there,” he shouted. “Tell me what lies in that direction.”

The three gave no reply, nor did they react as though they heard him.

They were only yards away from Cazlandt now. “Did you not hear me? I asked what—” The smell hit him, like an open grave. He stepped closer to the wall of boulders, farther from the direct path of the three.

The wagon looked empty at a distance, but he noticed some cargo rolled in burlap at the bottom of the wooden cart as they neared. Cazlandt noted that the bundles looked exactly like wrapped bodies as they passed. The archmage raised a hand to his nose to block some of the stench as the cart trundled by. The two pulling it turned their cloaked heads away from him, but the third glided across the road to approach Cazlandt.

The creature stood a hand taller than the archmage. Still, he saw nothing of its face as it looked down at him, studying him. It exhaled a breath laced with meaning, a language beyond his understanding. A chill chased down his spine, and his hands numbed as the creature slowly tilted its head and pushed closer. He pulled at the ley pulse in case he needed a spell, but the mana slipped away like smoke through his hands. The creature twitched and flicked away from him to join the others down the road.

Cazlandt let out a breath he did not realize he had been holding.

“This will be an interesting realm,” he said and continued in the direction the three cloaked creatures came from. Better to go to where a group carrying bodies just was than to walk alongside them.

The road continued with gentle turns, meandering without any intersections for miles. Ahead, the path finally showed some change. A fork split the road with a sign stuck in the center. Getting close, Cazlandt ran a finger along the deep slashes of the realm’s language. With a deep breath and great care to time his effort as the cleaner mana pushed forward, he pulled at a wave of ley energy and cast a minor spell of understanding. The letters swam in his mind as the magic worked to create some useful meaning. Even with the magic active, the words made little sense, but he understood them as proper nouns, names of places, and the distance to each.

“A lot of help, that is,” he complained and looked down the two paths. The stone wall framed both sides of the division, making the left path stone on both sides while the right continued with the same stone-and-fence he travelled alongside for what felt like hours. “Continue along the path shown by the Chronicler or try something new?” he asked himself.

“Fish,” said a small voice to his left.

Whirling, he drew at the ley pulse to form a defensive aegis between himself and the speaker. A small, gray tabby cat sat beside the sign. It cocked its head, considering Cazlandt, and leaned forward, stretching. The archmage looked forward to closer examine the cat’s back when it unfurled its small, furry wings, pushed off the ground, and flapped once to perch on the sign, closer to eye level with Cazlandt.

“Fish.”

Cazlandt released his aegis and stepped nearer. “I have no fish. I do not eat. Though…” His mana cultivation struggled in the ley pulse. He personally discovered the technique for an archmage to cycle mana through their body and survive on it alone, but the ley energy of Urbus proved too much, too foreign and sickly. His cultivation failed here.

The winged cat shook its head. “Fish.”

“I have nothing for you, cat. Begone, I have things to accomplish here.” He turned back to the split in the road and considered which route to take.

The winged cat jumped from the signpost, pushed under Cazlandt’s robes, and wove between his legs before taking a few steps toward the left path. It looked back at him with an intense, green, feline stare.

“Are there fish that way?”

The cat took a few more steps and looked back at Cazlandt.

With a sigh, the archmage followed. “I suppose I can always retrace my steps.”

The cat jumped to hover in the air as Cazlandt neared it. It swooped under the wide brim of his hat to land on his shoulder. The cat pushed its nose and cheek into Cazlandt’s ear. “Fish,” it repeated.

“I would tell you that will get annoying, but it already has.”

“Fish.”

“I told you I have no—wait. Is that your name?”

The cat purred and again pushed into his ear, tickling him with its whiskers.

“Cazlandt, First of the Archmages, Founder of Dracon, and a few other dozen titles from my thousands of years traveling across the realms.”

Fish seemed no more impressed but settled onto Cazlandt's shoulder, gently digging his claws into the yellow robes as the archmage continued down the path lined by boulders.

* * *

Cazlandt walked along the slowly winding path for an indeterminable length of time with the cat perched on his shoulder. Above, the snowy bamboo leaves parted with the wind to show glimpses of a darkening, gray sky. After what must have been hours since passing the signpost, a sensation crept into his gut, something he had not felt in decades, hunger.

The road straightened and took on a sharp incline, but ahead, Cazlandt could see the hint of some civilization, firelight, chimney smoke, and glimpses of thatch-roofed buildings. The maintenance of the path he followed made it clear this realm housed some sort of people, and he let out a small breath of relief upon exiting the tall, white forest path to see the smoky village ahead.

The streets looked empty and most of the low houses were dark, but one building stood out. A two-story construction of mud and stone towered over a central court. Beside the double doors made of bamboo lashed together with hemp rope lay a low trough, perhaps for watering mounts. Light flickered through the windows of wavy glass, as did the shadows of the raucous inhabitants. Before pushing the door open, Cazlandt looked up at the wooden sign hanging above it, cut in the basic shape of a carp with “Barmend’s Keep” painted in swirling, bright-blue calligraphy.

“Fish, indeed,” Cazlandt said to the cat. It let out a single cat noise of excitement and fidgeted on the archmage’s shoulder.

He pushed open the doors, and a wave of hot, smoky air hit him, along with the confusion caused by his spell attempting to translate a dozen conversations at once. Chandeliers hanging from the high ceiling and dripping wax from fat candles provided most of the dim light while a hearth tall enough for him to walk into without taking off his hat gave the rest. Beside that sat a long bar, and across a jumble of tables and chairs stood a set of stairs leading to a second level. The ambient noise of conversation dropped to nothing as the half-drunk crowd noticed the newcomer in searing yellow brightening their doorstep.

Fish glided from Cazlandt’s shoulder and trotted through the crowd with its tail high.

Cazlandt looked across the bar’s occupants, silently assessing what sort of threat the people of Urbus might offer him. They looked human, though with flesh tinged green and much taller and wider frames. Most wore billowy cloaks with the hoods drawn back, but all had a sword either at their hip or resting against the table beside them. Cazlandt ignored the stares and walked straight to the person standing behind the bar. Framed by a wall of uneven glass bottles filled with murky liquids, the barkeep stood a full head taller than the archmage with his beard intricately plaited and tucked into his belt. Cheekbones protruded from a gaunt face as he watched the approaching archmage with one good eye, the left looking milky and worthless from any distance.

“I come in search of knowledge,” Cazlandt said and placed both hands on the slick wood of the bar. He cringed and quickly wiped the dampness on the sides of his robes. “I come in search of the Necromancer of this realm.”

The barkeep blinked and squinted down at Cazlandt, looking confused. “You’re a different sort. Haven’t seen you ‘round here before.” His lips did not match the words, and Cazlandt grinned to himself that the spell of understanding he cast hours ago at the crossroads remained active and still functioned perfectly. The barkeep spoke slowly with a slur, but that surely did not reflect any fault in Cazlandt’s spell casting.

“I am a traveler, new to this realm.”

“You’re new here?” the barkeep replied.

“The cat was better at conversation,” Cazlandt grumbled.

“What’re you drinking?”

“Gin,” the archmage sighed.

The tall bartender took down a dusty bottle, poured a glass of something with a slightly green tinge, and slid it across to the archmage. “Seven bits.”

“Is that a price?” Cazlandt patted his robes but only had a single pouch at his hip holding a handful of mana crystal. I have gone too long without travel, I would normally be better prepared. He fumbled open the pouch of crystal and took out a single, ruby gem. In Poas, a crystal of that size would buy two full bottles of gin.

“That ain’t money,” said the barkeep as he reached to take back the glass.

“Put it on my tab,” bellowed a voice from across the quiet room. The barkeep nodded and left to wipe down the bar top.

Cazlandt turned to search for his benefactor as the noise of conversation in the room resumed. Fish sat on a table near the hearth, also occupied by a hulking cloaked figure. Drink in hand, Cazlandt crossed to stand near the table with the hearth at his back.

“I am Cazlandt, First of the Archmages, and… so on,” he said.

The cloaked man raised his gloved hands to push back his hood. He had thick auburn hair tied back in a knot, a short beard braided at the chin, and skin as green as everyone else in the tavern. Ears that stuck out almost like a svarters’ were tufted with more hair and studded with wide earrings. He slowly looked over Cazlandt with dark eyes that looked to be carved of marble and waved a hand at his table’s other chair.

“Sit. Call me Ranmi, Ranmi the Blackwish. Thank you for returning Foster.” He reached a hand to pet the cat’s head.

“I thought its name was Fish,” Cazlandt said and sat.

“That would be a weird name for a cat.” Ranmi sat back and crossed his arms. Cazlandt sensed physical power from the other man and the two greatswords, one with a very well-worn scabbard, leaning against the wall behind Ranmi added to the feeling. “Kinda late to be out and about. You said you was searching for knowledge?”

Cazlandt took his first sip of gin and winced. Whatever the barkeep poured, this was not gin. Cazlandt pushed his glass toward the center of the table. “To me, knowledge leads to wisdom, which is a greater weapon than any sword or magic, greater than any other currency.”

Ranmi grinned, showing a mouth with several missing teeth. “You’re an odd one. And a necromancer? What about that?”

“A necromancer is one with either power over death or one that derives power from it, able to undo Elphame’s gift and subvert the natural outcome of life.” Cazlandt reached for the not-gin and took another terrible sip. He cringed and pushed it away again, unsure why he picked it up a second time. “What do you know of necromancers?”

Ranmi grinned again as he looked over Cazlandt’s garish yellow robes in sharp contrast to the drab blacks and grays of every other patron in the tavern. “Nevermind that. You’re new to here. That’s obvious. You don’t got money, but you got some shiny gems. Can I see that again?”

Cazlandt reached a hesitant hand to take the single mana crystal from the pouch again. This close to the hearth, the ruby facets of the gem drank in the light and cast shadows across the green man’s face. “Tell me what you know of this realm’s world tree. Does it look dead and skeletal?”

Ranmi blinked away his fascination with the crystal and took a deep gulp from his mug, wiping the foam from his lips with the back of his hand. “The tree on Iruz? Yeah, I suppose. Though I have to warn you, I’m only understanding about half the words you’re saying. Where’re you from with such an accent?”

Cazlandt frowned and focused on the matrix of his language enchantment. He saw nothing wrong with his spell. “I hail from farther away than you will ever travel, Ranmi the Blackwish. Have you heard of the Necromancer of this world?”

“Well, that’s hard to believe, but uh, no, don’t know about a necromancer. But, I may know someone who has, Madam Sentra.”

Cazlandt waited a breath for Ranmi to say more but spoke when the swordsman seemed finished with the thought. “Madam Sentra is a broker of knowledge? A mystic or diviner, perhaps?”

Ranmi chuckled. “Nothing divine about Madam Sentra. She’s a swamp hag that deals in dark fortunes and the only being I know of that has survived a visit to Iruz, the island in the center of the world.”

Cazlandt nodded. “Very well. I will see her next. Where may I find her?”

Ranmi frowned and shook his head. “Be careful to not charge so brazenly toward her. She’s not a nice person. She’s a ways turn-wise, in the swamps of Sakouria near the border to Cytos.”

“I assume ‘turn-wise’ is the equivalent of compass directions here? Which direction does that mean?” Cazlandt glanced at the cat sitting in the middle of the table washing its face.

“You really are from a long way away. If you’re looking at the tree, turn-wise is to your right.” Ranmi raised the mug in his right hand for emphasis before bringing it to his lips for another swig. “I tell you what,” he said and slammed his mug back on the table. “I’m available for the moment. You can hire me and Foster as guides, at least to the edge of the swamps. A brightly dressed dandy like you will attract a lot of attention without a swordsman escort at your side.”

Cazlandt looked to the cat and back to Ranmi. “Appreciation, but no. I travel best alone. I am more than capable of protecting myself from any force this realm may throw against me.”

“A man that can’t buy his own gin won’t last long here. Maybe, you do well where you came from, but you’re at the bottom of the world now. People see a fop like you and know you have something worth taking. They’ll—”

“What will they do?”

Ranmi waved his mug in front of Cazlandt and leaned back into his chair. “Look at you with no scars, both yer eyes, beard all combed and oiled, clothes all nice and barely tattered. No sword.”

Cazlandt looked down at his own clean appearance then turned to Ranmi and the other dingy patrons huddled over their drinks. “I have never hidden from anything in all my years. If someone wishes to take what I may have, they are free to try. They will regret it.”

“Ha!” Ranmi slammed his mug down. “Bold words! I like you.”

“What would a man unable to pay for his own gin, or what passes for gin here, offer as payment for an escort by a skilled swordsman?”

Ranmi reached toward Cazlandt’s lap and tapped the leather pouch at his hip. “That weren’t some common ruby gem, huh?”

Cazlandt slowly shook his head. “No, not a common gem. You have a good eye.”

“Both my eyes are good. How many of them you got?”

“Enough.”

“Give me one now and one when we get to the swamp, and we’ll call it fair. I’ll get you some clothes for traveling and the foodstuffs and all that. We can leave at first light. What you say?”

Cazlandt considered it. He had barrels of mana crystal back home, and he rarely used it for his own spell casting. Why use a limited resource when the ley lines offered abundant mana? Except, the ley pulse of Urbus felt much more difficult and nauseating to work with. What harm could there be in a guide to speed my travels in this realm? If Ranmi is laying a trap, Cazlandt thought, I will just kill him before he can spring it. “What manner of title is ‘Blackwish’?”

“We’ll have days on the road, plenty of time to tell my tales. What do you say?”

Cazlandt’s mind was set, but he pretended to consider an extra moment before reaching into the pouch and taking out a single mana crystal. He stood and offered it in one hand and the other to shake. “We leave at dawn.”

Ranmi stood, and Cazlandt took a reflective step backward. The man’s posture while seated belied his true size, as he stood taller than the barkeep and half again as wide as the archmage. Ranmi’s loose, travelling cloak obscured his proportions, but his muscled shoulders and rounded belly were clear. Cazlandt’s hand felt tiny in the swordsman’s. The mana crystal disappeared into the folds of Ranmi’s layers of wrapped cloth and tattered small furs.

“You can stay in my room tonight,” he said and pressed Cazlandt toward the stairs with a hand against the archmage’s back.

“You keep your room. I am not tired.”

“Nonsense, I insist. I’ll be out half the night anyway getting things ready.”

Cazlandt thought of the quiet state of the village outside and wondered how much of Ranmi’s preparation might lie in drinking away the night. That did not matter. So long as the swordsman could direct him, Cazlandt cared nothing for how the gigantic man spent his time.

“First door on the right,” Ranmi shouted behind him as Cazlandt ascended the creaking stairs.

He pushed the door open to a room dominated by a vast bed. “Are all the people here huge?” He asked as the winged cat slipped in. A relatively small table and rickety chair by the single window marked the only other furniture in the room. Foster jumped on the bed and unfurled its wings to begin a bathing routine. “Are you ready for an adventure tomorrow, Foster?”

The cat glanced up. “Fish,” he said, and Cazlandt could see the cat was a ‘he’ by what he now licked.

“Why do you keep saying that? Why do I hear that from you and other cat noises go untranslated? Am I to call you Fish while your master calls you by a name he gave you?” Cazlandt asked as the cat shifted to wash other places. “I hate to be rude to the first person I had a conversation of any length with here.” He was unsure if that meant the cat or the swordsman. “Say it again if that is your name.”

“Fish,” said the cat as he sat up to grab at his tail and washed it furiously.

“Very well.” Cazlandt turned from the animal to peer out the small window. A single moon glowed behind a sheet of cloud cover. The village seemed to be built at the top of a hill, with the inn being the tallest structure. The ground dropped away from his narrow view, but almost none of the landscape looked distinguishable in the dim light. He sat on the stool to carefully probe at the ley pulse. When he first arrived in Urbus, the ebb and flow of the waves of mana felt like a pressure that would squeeze and release him. Now, as he grew more accustomed to it, he detected a direction to the waves. Standing, he spun a slow circle to confirm the mana seemed to come and go in from window's direction.

“Is that the direction of the tree? If they call ‘right of the tree’ turn-wise, what are the directions toward or away from the tree called? What did Ranmi mean when he said we are at the bottom of the world? Why am I asking all this of a cat?”

Fish paused his grooming to stare at Cazlandt.

The archmage sighed and set his tall, yellow hat on the table. He scratched at his gray mop of hair and sprawled across the bed twice his size. Fish rocked the stiff mattress for another ten minutes with his grooming efforts before standing, circling once, and laying down again against the archmage’s left knee.

Chapter Three

Welcome to Urbus

Despite not properly sleeping in years, Cazlandt fell into the old habit easy enough. However, he woke with a start as something large creaked up the stairs outside his door. He already leapt to his feet with his hat on his head when Ranmi pushed open the door.

“Good, you’re up,” said the hulking man as he rubbed at bloodshot eyes. He hefted a satchel that looked large even on him from his shoulder to drop it onto the bed. Fish stood, stretched, hopped up onto the bag, and pushed his nose at the flaps to find a means into it. “Get out of here, Foster.” Ranmi shooed away the cat and opened the bag, releasing the smells of jerky, old leather, old socks, and something like ammonia. Cazlandt brought a hand to his nose to mask the bouquet.

Ranmi dug through the bag. “I got us a bunch of food stuff. I don’t know what you drink, so I got you a bottle of what you was drinking last night. What else do I have in here… Oh this, put this on.” He pulled a drab, gray wad of rags from the bag and handed it to Cazlandt. The archmage pinched the cloth in two fingers from each hand and unraveled a long traveling cloak.

“I told you I have no need for a disguise. I am completely capable of protecting myself.”

“Uh huh. I don’t doubt that. You look like a sturdy little guy, but why risk it, yeah? We’ll be traveling across the whole of Sakouria, and I’ve not known it for being a kind place. Why give anyone a reason to give you a second look?”

Cazlandt frowned at the idea of blending in, but as with hiring a guide, if wearing an old rag that smelled like a horse blanket got him to the hag and answers about the Necromancer sooner, it would be worth it. He shook out the cloak and tossed it around his shoulders. It bunched up around his feet and completely hid the bright yellow of his robes.

“Want to put yer hat in the bag?” Ranmi offered.

Cazlandt cringed at the thought. There are magics to remove all the worst smells and stains, he reminded himself as he handed over the hat. Ranmi pushed it in without ceremony.

“Sleeping mats, cooking pan, I think we’re all set to go, friend.”

Cazlandt estimated the weight of the bag as Ranmi hoisted it to his shoulder again. More than I would want to ever carry, he thought. How can these mortals keep on without magic to lighten their burdens?

Fish hopped from the bed and left the room. Ranmi turned to follow.

“You do all this for two mana crystal? What other compensation are you hoping for here?” Cazlandt said

Ranmi turned and narrowed his eyes at the archmage. “Are you thinking I have some other motives? Maybe another buyer? You think I’ll lead you to the hag and hope to sell your bones to her?”

“The last option had not specifically crossed my mind, but essentially, yes. What do you get out of this deal? Surely, mana crystal cannot have such value here. In my experience, men who work for little often work for many.”

Ranmi stepped toward Cazlandt and looked down at him. “We don’t have much here in the bottom of the world. We don’t have much, and we don’t need much. This little gem,” he pulled the single mana crystal from a pocket, “I recognize this. Half a turn away in Helgima, a merchant pays big for these. I could buy a manor and retire by the outer sea after selling two.”

“And if you manage to get the drop on me and take the rest in my bag, you could buy a country,” Cazlandt said before he could stop himself. He bit his lip and cringed at his own words.

“Wow. You really don’t think much about people, do you? We just met, and you’re thinking I’m thinking about braining you in the night for your shinies.”

“I am accustomed to preparing for the worst from everyone. I should apologize.”

“That says more about you. And yeah, you should.”

“I…” Cazlandt took a deep breath and met Ranmi’s dark gaze. “I am sorry. You have done nothing to warrant any failure of trust. Who is purchasing mana crystal here? I thought they were a gem unique to my home realm.”

Ranmi turned and looked down at Fish waiting impatiently at the door. “We should get moving. We can talk on the road, but information isn’t always free here in the bottom of the world.”

Cazlandt groaned as Ranmi left and clomped down the stairs. Fish still waited at the door, staring up at the archmage. “I feel I have made a costly mistake here, both in terms of my purse of crystal and in an ally,” he said to the cat.

Fish had no comment on the topic but to turn and leave. Cazlandt followed close behind.

Ranmi the Blackwish waited for Cazlandt in the dooryard outside the tavern. The dreary light of morning did little to highlight any good in this unnamed town. A few cloaked people never looked up as they shuffled through the tendrils of morning mist and moved about their huts and shops made of mud and straw. The archmage took a better look at his guide as Ranmi scratched at a dark, patchy beard. Through the patched holes of the swordsman’s traveling cloak, Cazlandt could make out hints of what might have once been fine leather and hide armor. His boots seemed sturdy and well-made, though obviously worn and in desperate need of a polish. The hilts of two greatswords with blades as wide as Cazlandt’s outstretched hand poked over the man’s right shoulder. One looked newly forged and crafted. The other looked ancient and held together only by rust.

“Let’s get a move on,” Ranmi said and lifted his bag, throwing the strap over his shoulder. He started moving without a glance.

Cazlandt frowned again, noting the dramatic change in the swordsman’s demeanor. “Allow me apologize again for my earlier words, Ranmi. As you come to know me, you will understand my hesitations. I have traveled much in my time and have always found it best to maintain a healthy wariness to strangers.”

“Is it healthy? We shook on it, Cazlandt. That’s enough for me, and should be enough for you. While you was thinking about how I’ll be stabbing you in the face at night, did you think I might be worried you’ll be doing the same? A finely dressed fop strolls into my tavern, screaming about wanting to meet a necromancer and waving around wealth enough to buy a town. I says to myself I’ll help this fop, offer to guide and protect him, and maybe, he’ll share a little of that wealth with me. You don’t want to trust me? That’s on you. Doesn’t hurt my reputation one bit. Do I want the rest of what’s in that little pouch? Of course I do. But, that I haven’t made a play for it by having Barmend poison you or sneaking up on you while you slept should account for some amount of earned trust.”

Cazlandt touched the pouch of mana crystal on his belt and sensed the power of the other thirty-two gems within. If Ranmi spoke the truth, the archmage held enough wealth to buy half the land and possessions in this realm. Who would buy mana crystal? The question nagged at him, but no answer came.

“Do you suspect this Madam Sentra will have answers to my questions?”

Ranmi shrugged. “She knows a lot, more than anyone else I’ve met. If she don’t know something, she’ll send you to Iruz for answers.”

“Iruz,” Cazlandt said, remembering the map found in The Stacks. “The island in the center of the sea, with the world tree. You said Sentra was the only one to ever return from there. Why does she send people to a place of no return?”

“You don’t have to go there. It’s like she’s telling you to go to the seven hells with your questions that she don’t have answers for.”

“How do you know so much about her? Have you spoken with the hag before?”

Ranmi turned away from Cazlandt and pointed to the distance. “See that hill? We stop up there first then get on our way. Come on, Foster.” He patted his leg and started walking.

The cat took wing and glided to land on Ranmi’s wide shoulder.

With every step, Cazlandt further convinced himself of Ranmi’s cunning ruse, pretending to be a simple hired sword to get what he most wanted. So deep he fell into his mental exercise, he barely noticed their path until they stood at the top of a hill and a cliff overlooking the inner sea. Gentle waves licked the rocky beach some fatal distance below, and the land curved inward to either side of him. Faint through the morning mist, Cazlandt could barely make out the twisted form of a monstrous tree sprouting from the island at the sea’s center. This is the world tree of Urbus, he thought and followed the skeletal limbs up to where they disappeared in the haze. The center of all life and magic in this realm, the origin of the ley pulse. An even blanket of clouds shrouded the sky, varying only slightly to give a few lighter patches without a hint of the sun beyond.

“The Roto Sea,” Ranmi said, and spread his arms as if to point to it all at once. “Turn-wise, there’s Sakouria and Cytos, where there’s a bridge to Iruz, but that’s just about destroyed by now. Then, it’s a while to Helgima on the far side of the tree, where my buyer is.” He pointed toward the central island and continued his path to his left. “Then, there’s a bit of a gap in the land to the nations of nobles and scholars. I assumed you were from there when I first saw you last night.”

“How much of it have you seen?”

Ranmi dropped his arm and shrugged. “Most of it. I travel the Route and do work as I find it. That doesn’t keep me in one place for long these days.”

“The Route is a turn-wise path around the world? How long does it take to complete one circuit?”

“Depends. Sometimes a full turn of seasons, sometimes a few.”

“A year?” Cazlandt knew discussing the passage of time meant nothing between realms. He waved away his own question. “What more have we to do before we begin our travel to the swamp and the hag therein?”

“Nothing. I just like to see the sea as often as I can.” He took a quick, deep inhale and released it with a loud sigh before turning to his right. “Well, onward to the swamps. We’ll cross into Sakouria within a few hours. Then, the ups and downs will slow us until we get close to the swamp.”

Cazlandt stared at the thin, reaching branches of the world tree in the distance. He reflectively felt for the ley lines and cringed at the odd waves of the ley pulse. Though he could see the island of Iruz, he would need a ley line to teleport by the conventional means. He was too far away to perform less conventional teleport techniques. The tree looked so near, but he knew the immense size caused a trick of perspective.

“If the hag knows nothing, she will send me there,” Cazlandt muttered under his breath as Ranmi walked away turn-wise. “How certain am I that I will end up there and meet the Mraasil of this world? What will the guardian look like in such a strange realm?” He thought of Etharis, Ruvaal, Uulthra, Aymaa, and the few others he had met over his travels. They all shared lavender skin, forest-green hair, glowing amber eyes, and long-tipped ears. So, why would a Mraasil here look different? Except, he never saw a world tree that looked so long dead.

“Ranmi,” Cazlandt called to the swordsman as he caught up. “What is your race?”

The large man scrunched his face in confusion. “Race?”

“I am human-born, though being an archmage and the process of how I use magic has altered my body’s chemistry significantly. I identify among the archmages, not just a human. Everyone in town was so much larger than I am used to seeing. You have the size and general skin tone but lack the tusks to be gronyn. What are you?”

“I… I really don’t understand that question. I think you’re used to naming things a lot more than what we do around here.”

The ground dropped at a sharp incline, forcing them to pick their footing carefully while Fish perched comfortably on Ranmi’s shoulder. Within another moment, they returned to the rough cobblestone path edged by white bamboo leading due turn-wise, the Route.

“What do you call people that are not like you?” Cazlandt rephrased his question.

“Like people from another tribe?”

“Do people from another tribe look different?”

“The folk from Ecia keep clean-shaven, and in Telta, they wear bright clothes, sort of like yours.”

A small group came toward them from around the far bend in the row. Two cloaked figures pulled a wooden cart with two in front and two behind it, exactly like those Cazlandt encountered when he first entered Urbus yesterday. They kept their eyes downcast to hide their faces and never glanced up as they neared. Ranmi pressed against the far side of the road, against the wooden fence.

“Another group of these. What are—”

Ranmi clapped his hand over Cazlandt’s mouth to silence him. More out of shock that someone would do such a thing to him, the first archmage, Cazlandt did not react. As the wagon rolled by, he could make out nothing of the contents thanks to the thick tarpaulin which covered the back. They left a heavy stink of something sharp that stung Cazlandt’s eyes.

“Veil Walkers,” Ranmi said, anticipating Cazlandt’s question when the group was far enough away. “They travel against the turn and collect what we leave.”

Cazlandt considered that cryptic statement for a breath. “The dead? Was that cart loaded with bodies?”

Ranmi slowly ran his thumb across his forehead in what Cazlandt assumed was a religious sign and nodded.

Cazlandt watched the Veil Walkers as they disappeared around a turn in the road. “Gruesome work. We now travel turn-wise to Sakouria. What if we need go the other way? Is it so looked down upon to travel against the turn?”

“In the old stories, you could always tell the villain early on when they mentioned which way they moved. But, even now, people would rather go the long way around than go against the turn to walk with the Walkers.”

“That sounds like a waste of time.”

“Rude. You don’t have any religious traditions where you come from?”

Cazlandt thought of the zealots in Acrus and the innumerable hours they spent worshiping the Ascended, absent gods that men spent their lives in service to. “None that I adhere to.”

They continued in relative silence for another few hours. The white of the bamboo turned a deep orange as the path gradually descended.

“We must be near sea level by now,” Cazlandt commented as they turned a sharp corner of the path and the bamboo opened to a wide and slowly moving river. To the left, he could see what must have been the Roto Sea, with the outer sea visible far to his right. A low, well-kept, wooden bridge spanned the river a few feet from where they stood. Casting his eyes over the far bank, Cazlandt noted the sudden change in foliage. Rather than tall and straight bamboo, the path continued through gnarled trees with thick, aerial roots that drooped moss from their low branches.

“Sakouria,” Ranmi said and spread both arms as he did at the Roto Sea earlier.

Cazlandt frowned at the far bank. “You said Sakouria was a swamp where the hag lived.”

“No I didn’t. The swamp’s in Sakouria. It’s not all of Sakouria. Let’s take a break here and eat something. I didn’t refill our water skins in town because the water’s better here.”

“I do not…” Cazlandt stopped himself with a sigh as his stomach grumbled. His mana cultivation did not work in this realm, and his body fell back to needing all the usual things of sustenance. That also meant he would age rapidly if he stayed here too long. “Thank you.” He accepted a few sticks of jerky, dried meat of a species of beast he never saw before, from Ranmi while the big man stooped to fill the water skins. He bit into it, and the meat’s salt content drew all moisture from his mouth.

Cazlandt touched his amulet, channeling the mana of Urbus through it. The simple amulet in the shape of two crescent moons served as his spell focus for centuries and gave him the last surge of mana needed to get out of more tight situations than he could possibly count. He felt the mana return through the amulet as it gave him something to again fuel his cultivation. It filled only a fraction of what his body needed, but it was at least a little. With more practice and concentration, he knew that small amount might grow to be enough to sustain him in time. He hoped he would not be in Urbus that long.

Chapter Four

The Forest Closes In

Beyond the unnamed river exchanging water between the inner and outer seas, the ground rose sharply as the path twisted and narrowed through the tangled trees.

“You walk a lot faster than I thought someone your size would. We’re making good time,” Ranmi commented, “especially for someone, and I don’t mean to sound rude, as old looking as you.”

Cazlandt tugged at his beard and grunted. They passed two dozen swords of varying styles driven into the ground to their left, but all appeared ancient by the amount of rust and wear visible even at a distance.

“Are those grave markers?” Cazlandt paused and asked.

Ranmi rubbed his thumb across his forehead with a frown. “Don’t worry too much about that. Come on. At this pace, we might make it to the Red Tower tonight. That’s about the halfway point.”

As Ranmi turned his back to the archmage, Cazlandt noticed for the first time how the man’s two swords might once have been identical if one had not been made centuries earlier and left in saltwater, tarnished, and coated in rust like the grave swords. He chose to not pursue that thread just yet. “You said the hag’s swamp lay on the far side of this region, but we may cross it in two days at a good pace? Sakouria must be only fifty or sixty miles across. I have been in single cities larger than that.”

Ranmi shrugged and looked unimpressed. “Well, that’s the size of it. There’s not much here but hills and the swamp.”

“You said the people of Sakouria are not known for being kind. Where are the people?”

“No, you need to listen better. I said that Sakouria itself ain’t a kind place. Even if I said anything about the people here, which I didn’t, Madam Sentra is here, and she ain’t kind,” Ranmi said with a wry grin.

“Clever. And this Red Tower? It is another waystation like the village we met in last night?”

Ranmi shook his head. “Not at all. The tower was abandoned forever ago. The cult that lived there carried on with the most gruesome experiments on people. Even robbers ain’t brave enough to go in there to clean out what’s left behind.”

“If the tower is abandoned, why is everyone so afraid? Ghosts?”

Ranmi nodded, the pale green of his face blanching to near white.

Cazlandt chuckled as they pushed up another steep hill. “I have encountered my fair number of ghosts and can assure you they are real but harmless. Ghosts are nothing but wisps of ley energy caught up with strands of fragmented consciousness. I can destroy them easily.”

“Well, we won’t be worrying about that since we won’t be going to the tower. I’m regretting even bringing it up by how your eyes are shining. We’ll pass it and find a place to camp. We’ll get to the swamps tomorrow and to Madam Sentra’s the next day.”

“Are you extending our arrangement? You said you would lead me to the edge of the swamp, which is only two days’ travel, hardly worth the two mana crystal as payment. Now, you speak of taking me to the hag.”

Ranmi scratched at his patchy beard then rubbed Fish between the ears. “If I took you to the swamp’s edge, there ain’t nothing else turn-wise until I’m halfway through Cytos. I may as well go with you until our paths naturally go their own ways.”

“Is that so? How many more times will you alter our agreement?”

Ranmi took Fish from his shoulder to cradle in his arms, but said nothing else.

* * *

They paused to eat and rest twice more. Each time, Cazlandt instinctively refused but grudgingly accepted when his stomach complained. He would drag the sluggish ley energy of Urbus into himself and, after a few minutes, feel the renewal of vitality. The steep inclines and slow, careful declines of the Route kept their conversation to a minimum while moving.

“So, ah, this necromancy business,” Ranmi started nervously as they leaned against fallen trees and chewed at jerky. “Do you just want to know how to do it, or do you have something in mind to do with it?”

“Both. I am a scholar of all aspects of magic but also have a single person in mind.”

“You must be quite the mage to handle something so big. I’ve seen a few illusionists working for tips in the big cities during festivals, but all the best mages in the world work for the emperor. You must be like one of them.”

“I assure you I am no mere illusionist. My power has decided the fates of many realms.”

“Really?” Ranmi lowered his jerky and stared at Cazlandt with eyes wide. “Can you show me some magic?”

The archmage grimaced. “Like what?”

“I don’t know. Make a fireball or something? Make my jerky float through the air.”

“I see, like some common illusionist.”

“I don’t know. I’ve never seen what real magic looks like to know what a real mage can do.”

Cazlandt felt loath to put forth any effort just for the entertainment of another, but he had cast only minor acts of magic since arriving in Urbus yesterday. The translation spell, a light spell, the workings of his cultivation. He would be here another day at least, and with how his cultivation kept stopping with the ebb of the ley pulse, he figured he could do with some practice at casting something.

“Very well.” Cazlandt raised his arm and pointed at a single tree nearby. He felt the wave of ley energy flow away from him, slow and painful, almost like it pulled at the fabric of his being with its movement. After a breath, the outward motion of mana slowed and reversed to push back toward him. With the ley energy washing over him, he grasped at it and formed the simple spell in his outstretched palm. The words were unnecessary, but he spoke for Ranmi’s enjoyment. “Fireball!” he said louder than he intended as the pressure of the ley pulse reached its height. A black blaze blasted from his hand and impacted the tree, shattering it to splinters and exploding flaming brands high into the air. Cazlandt blinked and looked down at his palm as fiery cinders rained around him.

Ranmi whooped and clapped Cazlandt on the shoulder, sending him stumbling forward a step. “You really are a mage! A black fireball? Amazing!” Fish pounced between them and swatted at the falling embers.

“Yes, a black fireball, exactly as I intended,” Cazlandt mumbled while he analyzed the minor spell. He could find nothing wrong with his casting. The only unknown variable was the magic of this realm with its unique pulse from the world tree at its center.

“Let’s get going again. We’ll stop for dinner in a bit when we find a place to camp,” said Ranmi.

“After passing the Red Tower?”

Ranmi nodded but bit his lip.

A branch creaked and snapped nearby. Fish jumped back to Ranmi’s shoulder and arched his back with a hiss. Cazlandt whirled around, looking for an attacker. He saw no one as a high wind gripped the tops of the trees.

“What’s that?” Ranmi asked, and Cazlandt’s gaze followed the large man’s raised arm. Dark shapes shifted through the trees, indistinct and massive. The very forest seemed a little nearer and darker. “Cazlandt…” Ranmi warned and pulled the archmage back a step. The path they traveled seemed to close up with the shifting shadows, as if the trees creeped in to reclaim the road. A branch as wide as Cazlandt’s torso dropped only inches from his feet. “Run!” Ranmi yelled and tugged the archmage to motion.

Fish slipped into the pack on Ranmi’s back, and the men raised their arms to protect themselves as branches lashed out at their faces and legs. Twigs snagged at the smelly traveling cloak, and roots broke from the otherwise smooth road to ensnare their ankles. Cazlandt would have fallen more than thrice if not for Ranmi still holding onto his upper arm, nearly dragging him forward.

Another tree fell in their path, and Ranmi climbed up and over it immediately, tugging the archmage with him as they scraped over the rough bark. A deep moan rattled Cazlandt’s teeth as some ancient power commanded the forest against the two. Ahead, the path closed as it did behind. Trees with their aerial roots and low-hanging moss inched across the path to seal them in. Beyond, a brightness teased an end to the forest.

Ranmi bellowed his own roar in response to the forest’s. With one arm, he pushed Cazlandt to the ground. With the other, he drew a greatsword, the chipped and rusted one. The wind blasted from the archmage as he fell hard and watched the swordsman surge forward. As Ranmi swung, Cazlandt could feel the energy of the ley pulse draw into the length of the blade as the flow ebbed toward the tree. With a single downward slash, a shockwave of dark energy shot ahead of the swordsman, cleaving the trees in a straight line.

“Come on!” he yelled and grabbed at Cazlandt again. As they slipped through, the trees already sealed up the damage of Ranmi’s attack. Nothing remained of the Route’s path. The forest looked as though it always grew exactly there.

Ranmi sheathed his sword and looked down at Cazlandt. “You okay? I guess the forest didn’t much like that fireball,” he chuckled mirthlessly. Fish crawled out of the pack to settle on the swordsman’s shoulder and groom himself.

They stood clear of the trees. A dark path cut through the rolling, green grass to the Roto Sea. The sharp outline of the world tree appeared in the waning gray light of the day, but Cazlandt’s gaze focused on the twisted ivory tower near the shore of the water. From the distance, it looked like one tower with another dozen stacked haphazardly on top of it. No angles stood straight. The soundness of the construction looked questionable even from where they stood. Glancing up, Cazlandt saw how the architects likely mirrored their work after the hazy, skeletal world tree beyond on that far island.

“Is that it?” the archmage asked, narrowing his emerald eyes at the bone-white structure. “The Red Tower? Why is it not red?”

“Don’t take names so literally, but they say the inside is red,” Ranmi mumbled and wiped his thumb across his forehead in that religious sign.

“An inside which no one dares see?”

Ranmi nodded and looked turn-wise. “We should get a few miles more under our boots tonight, farther from the forest that wanted to eat us. I’d hate to almost make it to Madam Sentra’s… No, we ain’t going in there.” He grabbed for Cazlandt’s arm as the archmage strode toward the tower.

Cazlandt shook out of the swordsman’s grip. “What could be inside to bring fear to an archmage like myself and a swordsman of your power? How did you create that shockwave to part the trees? I saw how you drew ley energy as you swung the blade, yet you possess no magic. What are you are withholding from me?”

Ranmi jogged a few steps to catch up with Cazlandt. “It’s the sword, not me.” He averted his eyes and said nothing else. After a few more steps, he grabbed at the archmage again.

Cazlandt whirled on the swordsman. “Do not try again to stop me here, Ranmi the Blackwish. I have many sorted reputations across the realms, but most agree in my single-mindedness. By your word, this tower may contain relics of magical origin, and I will see for myself. The motions of mana in your world are unique, and I would see what the scholars have made of it. You are free to wait for me here or carry on your way and end our contract now.”

Ranmi bit his lip and looked at the cat on his shoulder. “What do you think, Foster?”

“Fish,” said the cat as he stretched on Ranmi’s shoulder. He glided to the ground and padded around Cazlandt’s legs.

“I guess if Foster’s brave enough to go in, what excuse do I have?”

“How did you decide on that name for him?” Cazlandt asked.

Ranmi shrugged. “He just looked like a Foster to me.”

“Not a Fish?”

“Fish,” the cat agreed.

Ranmi laughed. “You’re still on about that? Really, what kind of name is that for a cat?”

“And are winged cats common here in Urbus?”

Ranmi narrowed his eyes with obvious confusion. “What kind of weird cats do you have where you come from?“

Fish flapped his wings twice to attain the height needed to settle on Cazlandt’s shoulder.

“Fine, Foster, whatever,” Ranmi grumbled and pushed past Cazlandt. “Let’s go see your haunted tower before the sun sets.”

Chapter Five

The Red Tower

The double doors to the Red Tower hung ajar on cracked hinges, their whitewashed finish splintered and flaking from unknown years of disrepair. Ranmi kept a hand near the hilt of the newer-looking greatsword as his eyes darted across the scene without pause. Cazlandt estimated the tower itself probably not much larger than the eastern residence tower in Castle Dracon. If this place once held magical experimentation performed on live subjects, he expected the ancient researchers to have dedicated each level to a single, highly specialized study. At least, that was how he would organize such a tower for his own use. The people of Urbus so far seemed drab and listless, and he had little basis to guess how their mages may conduct themselves.

What of Ranmi’s sword’s shockwave effect? The archmage wondered to himself as he pushed open the right door to the tower. The thought pushed from his mind again as the smell of the tower’s interior hit him, a smell of old death, not of decay, but of what lingers long after a body is gone, a scent that stirs that primal fear response. A verdant spread of clover spotted with tiny, red flowers blanketed the ground. Moss hung in sheets from the high ceiling while vines climbed to meet them.

Ranmi stepped back with a gasp. “The red blooms,” he breathed and repeated his religious sign.

“Another part of the legend to this place?” Cazlandt cast his eye across the first level of the tower. It appeared empty other than nature’s attempt to reclaim it. Stairs on the far wall twisted upward. “Unless something is hidden among the growth here, I think this place was picked clean long ago.”

Cazlandt stepped into the clover. His robes and borrowed cloak brushed against the red flowers, sending up puffs of fine, red pollen.

“Don’t breathe it!” Ranmi gasped and clapped both hands over his mouth and nose.

“You worry too much,” said Cazlandt and again manually restarted his cultivation technique. “Come. If each floor maintains this height, I expect only five or six levels to this tower. If they all share this open layout, this will not take long.”

“Cazlandt, this place is cursed for a reason. Stop screwing around and let’s get back on the Route.”

The archmage turned, wafting up red pollen that clung to the hems of his cloak. “You stand a foot taller than I, Ranmi. If I keel over from poisonous spores, you will have time to get to safety. Come, worry less.”

Ranmi gasped and held his breath. He pulled his cloak tight across this face and followed close behind Cazlandt, careful to step where the archmage did and not disturb the red flowers. They crossed through the clover, pushing aside loops of moss that tugged at Ranmi’s hair. Cazlandt kept his right hand on the wall as he ascended the worn, cracked stairs. The curving wall on the left closed off their view of the first level as they climbed through the narrow corridor and hazy, late-afternoon light filtered through narrow windows in the outer wall.

“Does this go all the way to the top?” Ranmi asked in a whisper from behind.

“Do you honestly expect I am able to answer that?”

A quarter turn more, and the stairs ended with a stone door, smooth except for the iron ring set on the left side of it. Cazlandt reached for the ring and pulled. The door refused to budge. He leaned a shoulder into it and pushed. The muffled sound of heavy chains snapping came from behind the stone as he pressed the door inward a few inches. The smell of ancient death wafted from the crack, far more intense than the room below.

Cazlandt brushed his hands together and stepped back a stair. “Why must everything here smell so terrible? Try it, Ranmi. Mayhap, you can push the door with all those muscles.”

Ranmi bit his lip but moved forward. “Why in all the hells am I going along with being in here?” he asked and put both hands on the stone slab. “I could be happy and warm by a fire, drinking a mug of ale.” Ranmi brought back his shoulder and heaved forward. The door fell open to expose a black void of nothing beyond. “Well, that’s a whole lot of nothing to look at.” Ranmi scratched at his head.

It took Cazlandt a moment to process what he saw next. Thick tendrils of void shot from beyond the doorway to ensnare Ranmi about the waist and legs and pull him through the portal. He had no time to even cry out in surprise. The attack came too quick.

“Ranmi!” Cazlandt shouted as he still tried to understand what happened.

“Go!” said an urgent voice at this shoulder. Cazlandt turned to the speaker, but only the cat waited there. Fish hissed at him.

Cazlandt took a breath to feel at the ley pulse, attuning his mind to the current stage of the mana’s flow. Ley energy ebbed away, toward the world tree. It did not surprise him to realize his cultivation again failed to function as he grasped at the mana and barely gathered enough to form a minor aegis. Fish’s nails dug into Cazlandt’s shoulder as he stepped into the void.

He fell straight forward and landed on his side. Pain sparked across his vision as the aegis absorbed most of the impact and shattered like breaking glass. Globs of darkness floated across his vision like leaves thrown on a fire. He blinked again and pushed to his hands and knees. Color was leached from the room as shadows swam in the corners, making it impossible to guess at the size, but Cazlandt sensed it seemed cavernous far beyond what the outside of the tower suggested. A demi-realm, he thought. A realm within a realm. Sounds of something wet sliding across the floor assaulted his ears as the death scent came in waves. Fish hissed again by his right arm. Cazlandt looked at the cat and followed his gaze upward.

Ranmi hung suspended twenty feet overhead by thin strands of void among the swirling gloom of pure darkness. His head hung limp while his arms and legs were outstretched, looking painfully taut. Cazlandt followed the tendrils holding the swordsman, but they lost substance after a few feet, as if the tendrils holding the man came from the gloom itself. The archmage opened his senses for what terrible magic worked here, but he felt nothing, as though the force holding Ranmi was a natural creature, or it belonged to a magic beyond what Cazlandt could discern.

Mana still ebbed away. Soon it would reverse its momentum, but for now, Cazlandt could barely gather enough to form the spark of a light spell in his palm.

The gloom receded from the light immediately, but a tendril snapped out, ensnaring Cazlandt’s wrist. Cold like he never felt before, even from so many hundreds of winters in Dracon, radiated down his arm and up to his fingers. This was an unnatural cold, the cold of death and what lay beyond.

Ley Strider, whispered a soothing voice in his mind.

Cazlandt grasped his amulet with his spare hand and pulled at the purified mana stored within the trinket. The tendril spasmed and detached but left a bone-white mark where it touched his skin. Pulling again at his amulet, Cazlandt created another small light and tossed it upward at Ranmi. Shadows parted as the orb neared it, but wisps of nothing slapped out, attacking and destroying the small spell.

The ley pulse fully receded. Cazlandt felt mana surging toward him, slowly at first but accelerating with every quickened breath. He dodged a tendril snapping at him as another caught his left arm, feeding that grave chill into his body.

Loosen your grip and let your worries go, it said again.

Cazlandt pulled at the ley pulse and blasted light at the gloom, releasing his arm, but it snared the other. Then, his leg and another wrapped around his torso. Cold seeped through his clothes, through his bones, into his soul. Darkness choked his vision as he craned his neck toward Ranmi above. He pressed his eyes closed.

The ley pulse reached its height. Mana sang in Cazlandt’s veins as he pulled in all he could hold. The cold dropped away, or at least his awareness of it did. He saw himself radiating light, pressing away the gloom in every direction.

Magic is a test of will and confidence, he thought to steady his mind. No force in this or any other realm can overcome my own will. I will not be defeated by the literal darkness in this realm of death.

Cazlandt snapped his eyes open as the tendrils of night took his last strand of vision. His body went numb from the death chill, but he held to the inner fire of his magic. He weaved a spell with no name, pushing it against the barriers of his own flesh and into the world. The cold fell away just a little as he felt the void tendrils burrow deeper into his being.

“I… will not…” the archmage managed through gritted teeth, though he was unsure if he made a sound or only sensed the words in his mind.

The call of the void became maddening. You have fought for centuries, Cazlandt, never thinking of yourself. Lay down your arms, dispel this magic. It won’t hurt. Nothing will ever hurt again.

It would be so easy to do what it suggested. Why fight when he could do nothing? He could rest. Finally, rest. The voice was right. He fought his whole life for others that hated or mistreated him. Even his own family patronized and maltreated him. He closed his eyes again. Cazlandt knew from the Chronicler’s own words, from his great-granddaughter, that he would die eventually, so why not now? Give up the goal of resurrecting Lavin, of learning that bit of magic to bring himself above the Ascended. The voice of the void blended with his own thoughts seamlessly until Cazlandt could no longer tell what belonged to his own mind.

The ley pulse disappeared, ebbing to its lowest point as the world’s mana pulled into the world tree at its center.

Just let it all go, Cazlandt thought, or the void thought for him. His mind drifted peaceful and numb, away from every influence of the mortal world to bother him.

An image flashed across his mind. A young man with long, dark hair tied back in a knot wielded the Shadow Reaver’s featherr’ock steel sword in his right hand, the very weapon crafted for Lavin and the reason Cazlandt had to kill him centuries ago. The man turned, and his emerald eyes blazed with power.

“Fight this!” he spat at Cazlandt.

Pain returned, along with the cold.

He saw the man again throwing magic at those dressed in Dracon Royal Guard uniforms as they shambled toward him.

“Lone?” Cazlandt asked, strangely certain the man was the same person as the infant he saw only yesterday. He felt his lips part and the name ring in his ears. “Lone.”

The ley pulse flooded toward him and Cazlandt, the First Archmage took it all. Fire ignited in every cell and fiber of his body. A shrill shriek pierced the air as he opened his eyes and erupted the power outward, dispelling the shadows, expelling the void’s tendrils from his mind. The power released Ranmi, and Cazlandt sculpted a quick shield to cushion the man’s fall. He fell in a heap on his side, facing away from the archmage. Fish already waited there as Cazlandt rushed to the man, dropping to his knees to pull the swordsman over. Ranmi’s face looked ghastly pale and clammy. His eyes were wide open, near to bulging from his skull. Cazlandt put an ear to the man’s chest and sighed a minor relief when he heard a slow heartbeat.

Fish clawed at the man’s oversized pack.

With the darkness pushed back, Cazlandt cast an eye around the room. Empty tables lay on their sides against the far walls, surrounded by shattered glass and long-ruined biological experiments. No door stood level with the ground. He looked upward until he saw the stone door on the wall more than ten feet up from the floor. Clear of the gloom, he could see the ceiling some thirty feet overhead. A round, dark form quivered up there, attached to the ceiling with strands of black.

The archmage patted the swordsman’s cheek. “Wake up, Ranmi. The force within the tower is pushed back but not defeated.”

Fish grabbed at Cazlandt’s hand with a claw.

“Beast! Stop that!”

The cat clawed again at Ranmi’s bag.

Cazlandt heaved at the large man but could not budge him. Brushing a hand over the pouch of mana crystal, the archmage grunted as the magic fueled his strength enough to push Ranmi enough to get at the backpack and Fish ducked into the sack. He returned a moment later with a small, green, square envelope in his mouth. The cat dropped it at Cazlandt’s hand. The archmage ripped it open and peered at the finely chopped herbs within.

“I have no time to figure out how to use this, Fish. Smoke it? Inhale it? Brew it into tea?” He brought the envelope close and smelled the potent herb reeking of cinnamon, clove, and rosemary that managed to overpower the death of this place. Cazlandt again pulled Ranmi to his back, pried open his mouth, and dumped the herbs onto the man’s tongue.

The archmage never had much confidence in herbal remedies and was not surprised when nothing immediately happened. He looked up again at the darkness. It resembled a diseased organ held in place by a fine web of threads anchored to the ceiling. It pulsed and thrummed with an arrhythmic beat. Cazlandt very much believed that, whatever it was, it would assault them again if they took too long in here.

Again, Cazlandt heard something wet slip across the stone floor behind him. He whirled on it but saw nothing move, just more of the tables and broken specimens. He looked to the open door ten feet up the wall.

“I will never get you up there without teleporting,” Cazlandt said and looked back to Ranmi. The flow of the ley pulse made that idea even more dangerous than using the mana crystal in his pouch for a teleport. An odd grin passed over his lips as Cazlandt watched Fish lick Ranmi’s nose. “Funny that I have yet to consider leaving you here. I have become a little fond of you in our short time together. That, and I can hardly deny I have some blame for this situation.”

Cazlandt looked to the darkness overhead and stood over Ranmi and Fish. “Are you what makes this tower so terrifying? Were you created by the mages of old? Or perhaps summoned from some other, terrible realm?”

The thing quivered and shuddered above him.

Cazlandt sensed the ley pulse reaching its lowest and preparing to surge back toward him.

“I will not destroy something of such a power that I do not yet understand, yet I cannot discern your nature. I sense no magic, or anything else from you. It is as if you are made of nothing. You are clearly a menace to this realm. Consider yourself lucky, for I am about to break a promise I made a very long time ago.”

Cazlandt pulled at the ley pulse and cupped his hands in the air above his head, directing his palms at the creature. There appeared no outward show of the rage of mana flowing through him until he released it. It targeted not the creature, but rather, the strands holding it fixed in place. Light poured from the archmage’s body, along his outstretched arms, to crash into the creature high above. With a shriek heard only in the back of the archmage’s mind, the void broke free and tumbled slowly to the ground, like a dry leaf in autumn.

Cazlandt rushed to where it would land and prepared his next spell, a spell he promised his great-granddaughter he would never use again. This seemed an appropriate time to bend that promise.

As it drifted nearer, Cazlandt saw the depth of the creature, sensed its alien intelligence. Thrusting a hand toward it, he cast his spell and outlined the void in brilliant red. Before it dissolved, it shot a single, thin tendril, piercing the archmage through the chest. Then, it disappeared, teleported to the Lacuna Gap, the expanse between the Wheres. The effect of teleporting it sapped at Cazlandt, rebounding the energy into him and slamming him backward. The power threw him across the room, smashing him into the far wall. He felt a sudden, sharp pain in his left shoulder and wrist as he impacted and fell hard to the floor. Cold crept through the archmage where the tendril pierced him as his head fell back and the world cut to oblivion.

Chapter Six

Drifting

The religious lot who held close the tenants of the Ascended would argue Cazlandt destroyed his body a hundred lifetimes ago and that he since inhabited a soulless golem. It always felt like the body he remembered, so he paid them no mind. But, what body did he have now? He drifted through the aether, unfettered by a mortal frame. He saw his long past stretch out around him, saw faces and places he had not thought of in ages.

Is this what it is to die?, he thought, but the words came loud and echoing around him. To drift in nothing but memories?

He saw the face of his son’s mother, the fine-looking daughter of a minor duke from what would become Barbarles. He reached for her as her features clouded like smoke and realized he could not remember her name. She lived as royalty in Castle Dracon for a decade after his son’s birth, yet he could not remember her name. His son… Daelin.

No…

Daelin was someone else’s son. Lium? No, he knew no one by that name. Names and images circled and slurred around him in a confusing dance, taunting at a worse fate, that he might exist here, surrounded by the familiar yet being denied any true memory.

Intense pain struck him from a body he no longer possessed.

The memories began to fade, dissolve, and drift away like ash from a firepit. He again saw the face of his son’s mother, or rather, just her lips as she smiled. Then, that disappeared as well, leaving him alone in the blank aether.

Chapter Seven

Walking the Veil

His head jostled with a steady, limping gait. His wrist and shoulder screamed with every step, and it was hard to breathe with something pressing into his gut. Cazlandt opened his eyes just a crack and looked down to the ground moving below him. It took a labored breath to piece together the situation. Ranmi, or someone else of similar size, carried him over his shoulder. The archmage wiggled but could not find his voice.

Cazland’ts carrier grunted and stopped to carefully lower him to a seated position. He looked up at the swordsman, whose face looked a pallid green much lighter than his usual, with dark circles under his eyes. While Cazlandt breathed in ragged breaths. Ranmi managed a lopsided grin. “You’re awake. That’s good. Was worried I’d have to carry you all through the swamp.”

Cazlandt put his hand on his knee to stand but stopped with the sudden pain in both his shoulder and wrist.

“Careful there. You popped out the shoulder and probably have a little break in your wrist. I got nothing to help with that.”

Cazlandt looked around, seeing the Red Tower some distance down the gently sloping landscape and packed dirt beneath them. Ranmi sat down with a groan, took both swords from his back, and dug through his pack.

“The day’s almost gone,” Ranmi said as he pulled two roughly folded blankets from his pack. “I hate to, but we’ll have to stay here by the Route tonight. I doubt I got the strength to go on much more.”

“H—” Cazlandt tried to speak, but his mouth felt full of glue. He accepted the waterskin from Ranmi and took a quick sip. “Thank you. How did you get us from the tower?”

Ranmi scratched at the back of his neck. “I piled up a couple tables. It wasn’t that hard.”

Cazlandt frowned at the simple solution, too simple to have occurred to him.

“Is, ah, is that normal?” Ranmi pointed to the back of Cazlandt’s head. The archmage touched it and his fingers came back moist with blood.

“I must have bumped my head when the teleportation rebounded into me.”

“I mean the color.”

“Red? Yes.” Cazlandt blinked and wiped his hand on his borrowed cloak.

Ranmi took a long drink from a flask and looked to Cazlandt with an unfocused gaze. “What happened in there? I remember falling through the door then waking, feeling like I spent a week with the Veil Walkers.” He offered the flask to the archmage then wrapped the blanket tight around his shoulders. Fish nudged at the blanket and disappeared into its folds.

“There was a creature,” Cazlandt took a drink of the strong and terrible alcohol. “Not a creature, that makes it sound like an animal. A being. It felt different from any normal, mortal creature I have encountered, like it was made of nothing.” A chill passed down his spine and collected where the tendril pierced him. He took another hard drink from the flask and passed it back. “Yet, there was an intelligence and intent to it.”

“I didn’t see it when I woke up.”

Cazlandt gingerly prodded at his injured wrist. He did not think it was broken, but it definitely hurt like all the hells. He had some small luck that it was not in his dominant hand. “I… I dealt with it, hopefully for some time,” he said and stifled a yawn.

Ranmi pulled another wadded-up cloak from his pack and handed it to Cazlandt. “For a pillow. We should get some rest. You sleep first, and I’ll keep watch.”

Careful of his wrist and shoulder, Cazlandt lay his head back and, yet again, manually restarted his cultivation. “Two nights in a row,” he mumbled and turned toward Ranmi. “I have not slept this much since I can remember. Are you worried we will be harried this near to the tower?” He noted the odd, rhythmic motion under Ranmi’s blanket and remembered Fish lay under there. The swordsman was just petting the cat.

Ranmi shook his head slowly, looking exhausted. “Not really. The Route is quiet at the bottom this time of year.”

“Is there another village nearby? I expected to pass one already, or pass one soon, by how full the Veil Walkers’ cart was.”

Ranmi snapped his attention fully to the archmage. “Enough of that, Cazlandt. I know you’re an outsider, but we don’t speak so calmly of them here. Get some sleep, and I’ll wake you when I need it.”

With how the ley pulse of Urbus ruined his ability to constantly and passively cultivate mana, the single defining feature of an archmage, Cazlandt felt exhausted. Though his body screamed for rest, his mind resisted it. He only just returned from oblivion and had no desire to willingly return to it so quickly. The constant throb and intermittent spikes of pain from his left side further aided him in that regard.

Eventually, he must have succumbed to sleep because the next he know, Ranmi was gently nudging him awake. The swordsman said nothing else as he rolled to his side, Fish tucked against the backs of his knees, and started snoring lightly within seconds.

Unlike the night before, the sky looked clear, and stars blanketed the heavens with points of light. A single, enormous moon hung low near the horizon away from the tree. Its deep-blue hue reminded him of the second moon back home. As he carefully sat up and brushed away the webs of sleep, Cazlandt’s mind went to the topic of astromancy and wondered how the heavenly objects operated in this realm.

He grumbled and again restarted his cultivation. This realm will be the death of me, if not from the attack of a void being then from old age. Cazlandt touched the spot on his chest, just above the heart, where the tendril pierced him as he sent the creature away. It still felt frigid, cooling his fingers to the touch.

The ley pulse reached its height, and Cazlandt pulled from it to heal what he could of his wrist, shoulder, and back of his head with a cool, green radiance. Healing magic was never his specialty, forcing the body to revert damage sometimes felt as harmful as the injury he tried to unmake. However, he kept at it until the wave of ley energy ebbed to the point he could no longer easily use it. His arm and wrist at least felt a small amount better. Even if the damage remained, the healing magic would numb the pain for an hour or two.

He stood, stretched his back, and looked down to see Fish doing the same. As he watched the moon low in the sky, he realized he never saw the sun or other daytime light source in the sky. The gloom and clouds of the day obscured everything.

Cazlandt walked a dozen paces from where Ranmi slept, stepping back onto the Route's hard-packed dirt and stone. “What a strange realm you live in,” he said down to Fish sitting by his foot. “In any other world, I could trace our path with the ley lines. I would be able to teleport back to that first village or go directly to the world tree. My cultivation would remain active. I find it infuriating, yet also a bit refreshing, being surrounded by a mystery that tests my skill.”

Fish stretched out his wings and flapped up to Cazlandt’s shoulder.

“There was a voice in the tower, telling me to save Ranmi,” the archmage said to the cat. “Do you say more than your name? Does my lingering translation magic cast yesterday remain that powerful?”

Fish considered the archmage and twitched an ear turn-wise. Cazlandt heard it a moment later, the rumble and rattle of heavy wooden wheels on the packed dirt and stone of the Route.

“Who travels in the dead of night?” Cazlandt took a few steps toward the sound and squinted into the darkness. By the faint light of the stars and moon, he could make out the shapes of a small caravan moving toward him along the dark line of the Route cutting through the rolling plains. “It looks like two carts and six individuals. Veil Walkers,” he reported to Fish and looked at Ranmi less than thirty feet from the road. Cazlandt thought of the swordsman’s reaction with the Veil Walkers yesterday and debated waking the man.

“He would want to be farther from them,” the archmage consulted the cat. Fish had no strong opinions on the matter. Cazlandt knelt beside the other man and shook his shoulder.

Ranmi snorted and pulled the blanket tighter around his neck.

“Ranmi,” Cazlandt hissed. “Ranmi, a party approaches. Veil Walkers.”

That got the swordsman’s attention. His eyes flashed open as he bolted upright. He looked turn-wise, jumped to his feet, then dropped again to his knees. “This is bad, real bad,” he spoke quickly as he shoved the blankets and cloaks back into this bag, growling with frustration as they refused to fit in exactly how he took them out. He gave up and just threw the last blanket over his shoulder, grabbed the pack and his swords, and stood. His eyes darted around the rolling landscape.

“Why all this worry?” Cazlandt asked. “Let them pass as we did before.”

“No,” Ranmi said without looking down at the archmage. “You never let the Veil Walkers see you at night. There!” He pointed his burden toward a jagged outcropping on the other side of the path, away from the tree. He jogged toward it without waiting for Cazlandt to respond. Fish leaped from the archmage’s shoulder to dart toward the rocks.

Cazlandt looked down the Route again, toward the approaching Veil Walkers, and followed the others with a sigh and shake of his head. He sat beside the large man behind the rocks and adjusted the dirty loaned cloak. “I am not accustomed to hiding like this, Ranmi the Blackwish, and I do not appreciate it.”

“Shh!” the other man hissed and peeked around the rocks as the sounds of the wheels on the road grew louder and nearer.

Cazlandt looked around the other edge and heard the deep thrumming as the six sang in tune with each other, the Walkers' song. As one rose in pitch, another two fell in their haunted melody. The spell that allowed Cazlandt to understand Ranmi and Fish strained to decipher the meaning, but this went beyond the power of the simple casting. The two Veil Walkers at the front of the caravan seemed to float above the ground as their ragged cloaks whipped in an unfelt breeze. They slowed their movement and moved alongside the carts and their cloth-covered burdens. The others joined them, creating a semicircle before the carts. Cazlandt’s mind buzzed with the hissing, moaning language shared by the Walkers as others continued to sing. Some unseen force pulled the tarp on the first cart away, exposing a neat stack of bodies. Cazlandt could not make out any details at his distance but guessed eight or ten filled each cart.

A Veil Walker approached the first cart and moved away, dragging a body by a faintly glowing chain and moving toward the Red Tower with it. The others did the same, scattering the bodies across the hillside. Cazlandt stifled a gasp as the chains detached and the bodies sank until the ground swallowed them. With skeletal arms, the Veil Walkers each pulled swords from their cloaks and drove them into the grass over the bodies before returning to the cart for more.

The grim sight repeated until the carts emptied. Two Veil Walkers each took the leads of carts and prepared to continue their journey against the turn, still singing their dirge chant. Cazlandt narrowed his eyes in the dark of night, focusing on the second cart.

“They left a body on the cart,” he commented. Ranmi hissed and clapped a hand over Cazlandt’s mouth.

The dirge song abruptly stopped as the Veil Walkers turned toward them with a single, sudden jerk. Ranmi pulled them both tight against the rock, out of sight. Cazlandt needed no magic to sense the approach of the reapers. Their whispered, jabbered language strained against his language spell, creating a buzzing deep in his mind. The wind shifted and brought the stench of death, not like the tower but of fresh decay and rot, a smell that threatened to spread disease with the slightest gasp. Their mumbled, hissed words grew louder, gnawing at Cazlandt’s mind as his spell tried in vain to learn their language.

They drew close. Their presence came from every angle as their dizzying words grew louder, more insistent. Cazlandt looked down at Fish, meeting the cold, indifferent stare of the feline. “Stay,” said the cat as he half-jumped, half-flew over the mens’ heads to the rock behind them. Ranmi muffled a gasp and clutched his hands, clearly resisting a desire to jump after the cat.

“Fish,” Cazlandt heard the cat’s voice from above and behind. The Veil Walkers jabbered and moaned in response. After a long breath, the archmage could feel the reapers’ presence receding. Several tense breaths later, the sound of their chant and wheels on the road resumed, fading away against the turn.

Fish hopped down between the men and Ranmi grabbed him, hugging him close to his chest. “Foster, you scamp! You scared the hells out of me!” The cat struggled, but his attempts for freedom ultimately proved futile.

Cazlandt watched the cat’s eyes as he relented. “Your cat bears an intelligence beyond others of his kin.”

“Yes he is, he’s a smart little boy.” Ranmi kissed Fish between the ears and released him. The cat leaped away and sat down to wash.

“Is it common for the cats of this realm to speak with the Veil Walkers?”

“Speak?” Ranmi snorted a laugh. “Cats don’t speak, except their mews and purrs.”

The cat perked up and glared at Ranmi for a second before resuming his grooming.

“There is much to language beyond understanding a spoken word,” said Cazlandt.

Ranmi laughed again and shoved the blankets into his bag. They went easily without the stress from before. “If you could do some mage stuff and make it so I could understand what Foster says, I don’t think I’d take you up on that. What would a cat have to say, anyway?”

“You may be surprised,” said Cazlandt. He felt to the ley pulse, currently in an upward trend as the mana surged forward. It would be a simple thing to cast the same spell of understanding on the swordsman as he did on himself to read the signpost and, subsequently, understand the inhabitants of Urbus. Usually, such magic only lasted a few hours, but the effects lingered here well beyond that. “Should you change your mind, I can test my magics upon you.” He grinned wickedly.

“Yeah, well,” Ranmi pushed at the blankets already securely within the pack, “maybe later. I’m up now, and as exhausted as I am, I wouldn’t mind getting away from the tower and putting some distance away from the…” he gestured toward the forest of twisted trees, where the Veil Walkers must have gone.

“You have no worries about encountering more of them during the night?”

Ranmi shook his head and stood. “I’m surprised to have seen a second group in as many days. There must be something terrible happening turn-wise for so many warriors to have fallen.”

Cazlandt pushed to his feet and smoothed out the old traveling cloak. “I encountered another group when I first arrived in Urbus, hours before we met in the tavern. That is their role, then? To ferry dead warriors to a place of rest?”

“Their main role, yeah.”

“You say they come from battles turn-wise. Why not inter the dead near where they fell?”

“They spread warriors across the world to… to, uh… Can we not talk about it when they’re so close?”

“Very well.”

The pair stepped back onto the Route with Fish close behind. Cazlandt could not resist stepping to one of the recent graves and the blade left as a tombstone. The steel seemed chipped and rusted, with the hilt worn from inattentive use. His fingers hovered over the frayed leather of the hilt, but a silent repulsion buzzing in the back of his mind kept him from touching it. “Fascinating,” he muttered. “These are the weapons of the deceased?”

“Aye.” Ranmi averted his gaze.

Cazlandt’s eye slipped to the older blade on the swordsman’s back, the one that produced the shockwave attack. As with his suspicions on Ranmi’s true motives for helping him, Cazlandt now wondered again why a man would carry two swords that he could clearly not use simultaneously in battle. He thought quickly, trying to piece together why Ranmi would have such immediate interest in him. Was it really just for mana crystal? Or, did he have a shared interest?

Ranmi continued the journey turn-wise without a word.

Cazlandt watched the swordsman’s lumbering gait for a moment before following in his steps. He has lost someone dear and hopes I have the resources to fulfill what he could not. That explains his interest and knowledge of necromancy. This binds him to me, not out of trust, but necessity. He stopped himself with a shake of his head that made his long beard flow like a wave. His mind began the automatic machinations of how to twist the swordsman’s obvious loss and pain into something beneficial, or  perhaps an insurance plan for himself. Of course, this fell into exactly the old behavior Alishia chided him for centuries ago. I worked so hard to not think this way, yet I fall so easily into it. Ranmi claims to want to help me in exchange for wealth, but—But, what if that is also a lie? How would mana crystal have value here?

“You knew of necromancy and feigned ignorance on the topic. You lost someone and wish to undo Elphame’s work to bring them back. Tell me, Ranmi. Does your second sword relate to why we are traveling together? Was that a grave sword taken from one you wish to see again?” He paused as Ranmi turned fully toward him. “Or, the sword of one never given a proper send off by the Veil Walkers? Was it a wife? Daughter? Beloved sparring partner?”

Ranmi’s eyes narrowed, and his lips dragged into a hard scowl. “Watch your words, mage. You speak freely of things you know nothing of.”

“I wish only to better understand the man traveling at my side.”

Ranmi’s lip twitched, showing a hint of teeth with a growl. “You are free to ask, but never… never make those assumptions on your own.”

Cazlandt raised his palms and backed away a step. “Apologies. My mind moves to such ideas, and I am helpless to stop it.”

“Try.” Ranmi turned and strode turn-wise. Fish flapped twice to land on his shoulder.

Chapter Eight

Black Blood

They traveled across the rolling plains in strained silence for hours before Ranmi declared he could go no further. They moved a few dozen paces off the road to a mostly flat space free of rocks. Ranmi pulled blankets for himself from the pack and told Cazlandt to stand watch. He started snoring within minutes, Fish behind his knees, leaving the archmage alone again in the night. The moon set sometime since the encounter with the Veil Walkers, and a fine shroud gathered to hide the stars, casting the world in an even luminance.

Cazlandt sighed and walked farther from the Route, toward the direction of the world tree. The ley pulse reached its height, ready to pull back, and he chuckled, realizing his mana cultivation remained active for once.

Finding a low boulder to sit on, he closed his eyes and concentrated fully on the ebbing wave of ley energy. It really does come and go like a tide or a beating heart, a true pulse, he thought. As the mana flowed away from him, he let this mind travel with it, toward the world tree. He felt the dark waters of the Roto Sea slip by around him and the skeletal, twisting branches of the tree rise high into night above. The feeling resembled the familiar tracing of a ley line but without the control of direction.

A new presence edged into his senses. Swirls of midnight and violet swam around him, tasting him.

You finally visit me in my home, sighed a voice.

“Are you the Mraasil of this realm? Guardian of its world tree? What is your name?”

Mraasil, it drew the word out. I have not heard that word spoken by a mortal in a very long time. I should be interested for when we meet.

“I am an archmage, the first archmage. I am no mortal.” Cazlandt already felt the ley pulse reverse its flow, pushing him away from the center of Urbus.

He moved too far away to receive any response from the other and grew unsure if they heard his last words. Cazlandt spat a curse and looked out across the dark plains, toward the tree. He tried to reach the other when the ley pulse reversed itself a few minutes later, and again with the next wave, but the other either stopped listening or ignored him.

* * *

Cazlandt fell deep into his own thoughts of how to start the conversation with a new Mraasil when Ranmi stirred. The swordsman pushed up and moved away to relieve himself without a word. He returned and packed up his blanket without looking at the archmage, his anger clear. “Let’s go. We’ll get to the swamp soon.”

Cazlandt fell into step beside the larger man and realized the sky lightened some, but not with true dawn. This realm had a pervasive gloom that alternated night's starry dark with day's shroud. “Ranmi, do not hold this anger against me for my earlier words. Know that I am a foreigner here, unfamiliar with the taboos of your realm.”

“Was that another apology?”

That was not his exact intention, but the sentiment was the same. “I suppose yes.”

“You’re terrible at apologies,” Ranmi sighed. “But, if that’s what passes for one where you come from, fine. Apology accepted, grudgingly.”

They walked in awkward silence for a moment before Cazlandt cleared his throat. “Tell me, please, about the Veil… about those that ferry the dead. What would they have done had the cat not interfered?”

Ranmi crossed his arms and pulled his cloak a little tighter. “There isn’t a lot more to say about them. They collect the dead and carry them against the turn, leaving them along the Route. During the day, they are just travelers, but at night, you can see their true form. They can’t tell the dead from the not-dead. If they caught us, they would have buried us with the others.”

As he spoke, they passed a plot of almost three dozen swords half buried in the dirt to their right.

“They assume any they encounter are dead?” Cazlandt said as he noted the different styles and weights of swords. “That seems a very dangerous flaw in their demeanor. I assume they never stop in a town overnight?”

“No, never.”

“I understand I was brash with my words yesterday about you losing a loved one. Was there something to that? Did you lose one you wish you to be reunited with?”

Ranmi said nothing for a long minute. “My brother. Not by blood, but by everything else that matters.”

“I am sorry for your loss. That is his sword that you carry?”

Ranmi nodded.

“He was a powerful warrior to wield a sword capable of that shockwave attack,” said Cazlandt.

“Aye, but that ability comes from this being a Walk’s Blade now, a cursed blade.”

“The sword gains power when the Walkers use it to mark the dead? Interesting. Why does no one take up the swords if they hold such a power?”

“You leave the Walkers to their work. You don’t touch the dead, and you don’t touch the swords. They say that’s how more Walkers are made.”

Cazlandt took an exaggerated look over Ranmi. “You look nothing like them.”

“Yeah, well, not yet. We’ll see what happens when I die.”

“Tell me more of your brother.”

Ranmi closed his eyes without slowing his pace. He spoke slowly, haunted. “Kyo the Turnguard, we were inseparable since we were babes in upper Ecia. Kyo was a smith’s apprentice, making pots and nails. I worked next door as a jeweler. Don’t let my big hands fool you. I could make the most delicate rings, necklaces, you name it.”

“A jeweler. That explains how you recognized my mana crystal from across the room. You have an experienced eye for gemstones.”

“Aye. I knew that was no common ruby from any distance and thought up a quick plan to get you over to my table. Anyway, Kyo and me, our dream was to be traveling merchants, turning the world and selling our wares.”

“That never happened. Were you called to war?”

The swordsman grinned despite his tone. “No, we made our dream real. We turned the world thirteen times, just Kyo and me. We never sold much, but we got by well enough and even had a few regular customers that bought from us each time we went through their part.”

“But?”

Ranmi’s paced slowed slightly. “We got back to Ecia, ready for our fourteenth turn, and Kyo’s old master was dying. He offered the business to Kyo. It wasn’t just some local blacksmith but a small factory by then, with a weapons contract with the emperor. There was dozens of smiths working the forges around the clock, hundreds of workers in total. It was an offer you only get once in a lifetime. He could have lived like dukes with that wealth, making weapons that were shipped off to kill in the emperor’s name.”

“And Kyo accepted?”

“No, he refused it on the spot. He said he couldn’t give up the life we’d made and didn’t want to own a machine of war.”

“So, you continued your travels?”

Ranmi stopped walking and stared at his feet. “No. I convinced him to stay. His master died, and we ran the works for two years. But, Kyo couldn’t do it.”

“An idealist.”

“Someone with higher morals. Kyo said he was leaving and begged me to join him to continue our turns. I couldn’t see past the money we were making. I had matching swords made for us before he left. After a year, I expected Kyo to return through Ecia, but he didn’t. A few more months passed. Two years, three, five. I couldn’t take it, the not knowing. Had he settled somewhere along the Route, or… I had to know. So, I set out.”

“Did you find him?”

“I moved slowly, and it was almost two years later when I was nearly back to Ecia. I saw Kyo’s sword in the ground there beside the Route. I recognized it from a half mile away, less than a week’s walk to the factory.”

Cazlandt looked at the damaged sword on Ranmi’s back. He imagined the Veil Walkers pushing Kyo, who in his mind looked just like Ranmi but with darker hair, into the ground and driving the greatsword above him as a marker, the sword aged and tarnished with the reaper’s cold touch.

“You took the sword?” Cazlandt asked. “Excuse my question, but that seems opposed to the customs of this place.”

Ranmi looked up at him with tears streaking his cheeks. “I couldn’t leave it there. The damn Veil Walkers dragged their cursed cart right in front of my smithy, carrying his corpse. I probably saw it and looked away. I got back to the forge and burned it down. I made it look like an accident and no one was hurt, so the emperor never found out it was me that done it.”

“When you heard me speak of a necromancer in the tavern, you already knew the word and the scope of power that is necromancy.”

“I’ve heard the word before and knew it was supposed to be about powers over death.”

“You immediately thought of bringing Kyo back.” Quick thinking.

“I never knew what happened to him. Do you know what that’s like? To give yourself so completely to someone but not know how they died? To love someone and never be able to say goodbye?”

Cazlandt considered that. Love was a dangerous emotion, easy to lose oneself to. He had a child out of the desire to continue his line, and he had been fond of Searcy’s mother. But, did he love her? He thought of this grandchildren and great-grandson Lone. Lone, with his bright, emerald eyes and mop of dark hair, fat cheeks and fatter legs. He never knew brotherly or intimate love, but thinking of Lone filled him with a surge of paternal pride that it could be only one thing.

Cazlandt blinked and forced himself back to Ranmi’s question. “I have lost many, but none like what you and Kyo had.”

“Is it possible? Can you bring someone back to life?”

The archmage frowned. “That is why I am here in Urbus, to search for one fabled to have that power, or at least the knowledge of how it may be done. My own story differs greatly from yours, but I too wish to return one that died long ago. I worry a body will be a needed reagent in the magic. At least you could take Kyo’s from where the Veil Walkers interred it. There is nothing left of my friend.”

Ranmi dropped to his knees and held his face in his hands. “I don’t think I can. I took his sword, and don’t think I would know where his body was in that field now.”

“Well,” Cazlandt awkwardly patted the swordsman on his shoulder, “there may be other ways. Do not lose hope yet.”

“Tell me about who you want to bring back.”

Cazlandt wondered how much interest Ranmi actually had as opposed to wanting a slight change in topic, and if that distinction mattered right now. “Oisin Lavin, though only his mother used his first name. I know not exactly how long I knew him. He was a brilliant duelist and commander. We developed a war game using wood blocks to represent troops, and I could rarely win against him. He hit things off with my surrogate daughter, and she started talking about marriage. Understand that my kind, archmages, we do not marry. That is a construct for the mortals to have someone to grow old together with. Marriage is a construct to make family lines easier to trace and have someone to grow old with. Archmages do not grow old.”

Ranmi flashed a wide grin around his tears while his eyes flicked across the archmage. “You look real old, Cazlandt.”

“Yet I have not aged more than a few days in a thousand years.”

The swordsman wiped at his face and sat back on his heels. “What happened to Lavin?”

“My goal has always been to secure a place for my people, archmages, to live and rule in peace. To that end, Lavin, myself, and others crafted a weapon of limitless potential. It was meant to unite a continent under the rule of archmages and give us a home to call our own.”

“Take it from one that owned a weapons factory, they aren’t a thing of peace. Did you really expect anything good to come from that?”

Cazlandt huffed. “This was all just a portion of our plan.”

“Sure. Bring the new subject to heel under your benevolent rule. Where did your people live before all this?”

“We had Castle Dracon, in which I took painstaking work with the structure’s design and the feat of raw magic used to raise it from the hoarfrost. But, Dracon is a frozen wasteland, unfarmable and without easy trade. It felt as though the archmages were hiding there in the north. You know by now my thoughts on hiding.” Cazlandt thought of how Castle Dracon held access to The Stacks, but that detail lay outside the current conversation’s scope. “Archmages deserved better. Lavin and I developed a campaign, and I set him to his course. Just as he started, I was taken, imprisoned, for a full year.”

“Who would have the power to take you? You’re a powerful mage.”

“There are beings with power beyond even my own.”

“That’s hard to imagine.”

“In the time I was away, the power of the weapon corrupted Lavin. I had no choice but to end him, the evil was burrowed too deep into his essence.”

Ranmi stood and frowned down at Cazlandt. “I could never imagine having to go against Kyo. That must have been so painful. What if you bring him back and that evil is still inside him?”

“I will deal with that, should the need arise.” Cazlandt waved for them to continue walking. “Lavin was in someways like a son to me, before my own son was born. How long have you been wandering the world without Kyo?”

Ranmi shrugged. “I never kept track. I think by now I’ve been without him longer than we were together. When did you… lose Lavin?”

“Over seven centuries have passed in my home of Poas. That number means little by how time moves differently between realms. Day, years, even the duration of a minute can be different in each realm. Why do you travel the Route still, if you are no longer a merchant?”

Ranmi took a deep breath. “I’m afraid, really. I don’t want to settle in any one place because it reminds me of the life I tried to force on Kyo.”

“You may find another that could replace Kyo.”

“Nothing could replace him. People must work very differently where you’re from to make you think that.”

Cazlandt cleared his throat and steered the conversation quickly before the swordsman got upset with him again. “Of course not, not replace. But, another may help in the healing.” He glanced at Fish.

“Well, I’m sorry to tell you this, Cazlandt, but that ain’t you,” Ranmi glanced over with a grin. “The last few days haven’t been the worst, but they’re far from the best.”

“I understand,” Cazlandt nodded. Ahead, the plains darkened. “Is that the swamp?”

“Yeah. We’ll see how we feel when we get closer, but I’d rather not go in just to have to sleep immediately. Say, I don’t suppose you have some magic that would help against stinging insects, do you?”

“I do. I could repel them in a few manners or shield our bodies from their stingers.”

“Great, make it both. That’ll make it bearable in there.”

* * *

Cazlandt estimated it to be late afternoon as the plains dropped away sharply into the swamps.

“I find it odd to not encounter others when traversing the primary thoroughfare around your world,” said the archmage.

“Why’s that? Unless we overtake or are overtaken by another group, we’d only ever see Veil Walkers.”

“Ah yes, of course. To you, that is natural. In all the realms I have visited, I have never been to another that practices this unidirectional travel. It is unique and therefore odd to me.”

Ranmi shrugged. “I don’t know what to say to that. What about that magic to help with bugs?”

Ahead, the Route disappeared between tall, dark trees and patches of standing water. Cazlandt hoped the path was raised and would not move through the still water. “Are we going in tonight?” he asked.

“Despite what I said earlier, we may as well. I’m not tired yet if you aren’t. Foster, get in the pack.” Ranmi waved a thumb at the sack on his back, and the cat wiggled into the opening.

“How long have you two been together?”

“Hmm, don’t know. It was only a couple turns after I started on my own, I know that. I found him just on the far side of the swamp actually, near the bridge in Cytos.”

They passed the first of the tall swamp trees on their left, along with a dozen sword gravemarkers. Twice as many stood to their right. Cazlandt waved for them to pause as he waited for the ley pulse to reach the bottom of its arc. As the mana pushed forward again, the archmage put one hand on Ranmi chest and reached the other into the pack to put it on Fish’s back. The cat nipped at first then licked him. Cazlandt cast a minor aegis over each of the three of them, shimmering a film of interlocking blue hexagons an inch from their skin. He did not know what would best deter the biting flies of Urbus, so he performed a minor glamor, giving them the potent scent of acidic citrus and mint.

Ranmi’s eyes bulged, and he gagged with his first whiff. “Well, if that don’t keep the stingers away, nothing will. Gods beyond, wow that smells bad.”

Cazlandt breathed deeply and frowned. “I rather enjoy it.”

The swamp swallowed them quickly with still, sparse trees springing from the stagnant waters rising to touch the edges of the Route and reflecting the light of the early evening gloom. Dark birds sat high in the boughs, staring down at them without making a sound of their own. Creatures splashed into the water, but by the time Cazlandt could look their direction, he saw only ripples along the surface. The drone of insects became louder until no single creature’s song sounded distinct in the constant buzz. Luckily, Cazlandt could smell nothing but lemon and mint.

“If things go well, we’ll get to Madam Sentra’s by late morning tomorrow. Have you thought about what to say to her?”

Cazlandt gave it no thought. When Ranmi said the swamp hag sent her unanswerable questions to Iruz, to the tree, he assumed he would go there immediately. Seeing Sentra just marked a quick stop on his way to speak with the Mraasil.

“I have not. I have no expectations, even. I suppose I would greet her by her title of swamp hag and—”

Ranmi snorted and grabbed at Cazlandt’s arm. “Don’t you dare call her that!”

“Swamp hag? That was how you first mentioned her to me.”

“Yeah, but you don’t say that to her face. That’s like calling her gross and old! She’ll kill you!”

“Interesting. In my experience, the title of ‘hag’ is not often offensive. It refers to a practitioner of darker magics that prefers to live alone. Though, the concept of what constitutes dark magic is highly subjective.” Cazlandt rolled his shoulders back and stretched his neck. “If she does not understand my meaning by the term, I can assume she does not have enough experience to offer me the knowledge I seek.”

“Yeah, well, good luck with that. I might have warned you, she, ah…” Ranmi raised his hands and traced a fine scar across the palm of his left hand. “She has a price for her information and time.”

Cazlandt rolled his emerald eyes. “Blood. Swamp creatures always want blood. How very cliche. Does she use it in her rituals?”

Ranmi nodded. “Some of it, at least. She took a lot from me last time I met with her. Enough that I was dizzy when I left. But she only used a few drops.”

“There is power in blood, if one cares to dally in that sort of magic. I personally abhor it. Blood loses power quickly after it has been let. Did you see what she did with what was unused in the ritual?”

“She ah…” Ranmi looked a little pale. “She drank it.”

“Better than storing it for other spells. Though, she may have a means of extracting the humors and storing them within herself. Blood magic is complex and dirty.”

A small hill rose from the water to their left with a half-dozen, near-identical swords buried in it. Ranmi stopped and turned toward it as his shoulders sagged. “My puppo is out there. I’m not sure which is his, since his troop didn’t customize their swords.”

Cazlandt guessed that meant the swordsman’s grandsire or maybe an uncle. He weighed asking for the details with what emotional distress it might cause Ranmi. He settled on putting a hand on the man’s shoulder with a light squeeze.

With a sudden, deep breath, Ranmi looked back to the Route. “I remember a bit of this area. There should be a bit of a widening up ahead. We can rest a few hours off the path. Maybe, we can even start a fire.”

Cazlandt nodded silently and followed the man. He had not realized the growing chill mixed with the dampness of the swamp seeping into him. It held no comparison to the void creature in the Red Tower, but warming by a fire would be welcome.

“What’s that ahead?” Ranmi squinted into the growing darkness. Something lay across the Route. “A cart?”

As they drew closer, Cazlandt counted three bodies around the overturned wagon and its spilled cargo of wooden crates. He knelt to examine the closest. A large, pale-green-skinned woman lay on her front with her neck and back ripped open, but the wounds looked clean with almost no blood. The other two had similar injuries.

“Plasma feeders,” Ranmi said and blanched. Cazlandt was unsure if that was a statement or question. He crouched next to the archmage and scanned the surrounding trees.

“I would assume a plasma feeder is some beast of the swamp that feeds on blood,” said Cazlandt.

Ranmi nodded.

“Are they common? I would think the Route should be secure enough, if everyone must travel it to get anywhere.”

“It should be. I’ve never seen anyone killed by plasma feeders, much less a whole group.”

“Veil Walkers passed us last night. They must have passed this lot some while before. Why did they not collect these bodies to add to their carts?”

Ranmi took his eyes from the trees to look over the remains of the cart and the three unfortunate travelers. “The carts were full when we saw them, but look,” he pointed to a scuffle in the dirt at the edge of the path. “I think there was one, maybe two more in this party. The Walkers might have taken what would fit on their carts and left the rest for the next ones to come by.”

“Or, they took no one and what lives in the swamps dragged any other bodies into the waters to be eaten. What is your custom here? Should we not shuffle them from the main path?”

“What? No!” Ranmi snatched at Cazlandt’s wrist before he could touch the shoulder of the woman. “You never touch the dead. Leave them for the Veil Walkers.”

Cazlandt grimaced. “If your partner dies next to you in bed, are you to leave them while you wait for the next group of wraiths to come take away the body?”

“Never touch the dead.”

“Strange customs you have.” Cazlandt moved closer to a crate from the cart. A dark fluid poured from its smashed-in side and soaked into the surrounding dirt. The archmage reached into the darkness of the crate to extract a long, glass tube filled with a viscous, red fluid and stopped with a thick cork. He turned the container in his grip and watched small air bubbles float through it. “What is this?”

Ranmi joined him with brows knit together in confusion a moment before looking back to the dead woman. The swordsman took a deep breath and furiously rubbed his thumb against his forehead before reaching shaky hands to flip the woman onto her back. Black blood stained the front of her light armor, but she clearly bore a sigil or family crest of three concentric circles.

“So much for not touching the dead,” Cazlandt mumbled.

“The emperor’s sign,” Ranmi said. “This was a caravan for the emperor.”

“They must have been traveling only a few days ahead of you. What is this fluid they were carrying? It looks like blood.”

Ranmi shrugged. “I suppose, if blood was red.”

“What now? I would think your emperor would expect a supply of whatever this is. Leave it and move on?”

Ranmi hushed the archmage to silence. He heard it, a deep droning that reverberated in his chest and vibrated through his teeth.

“We’re going to get a chance to test your magic, Cazlandt,” said Ranmi as he ducked lower among the toppled cart.

It came from the lower mists over the swamp’s still water, just a darkening of the air and a steady buzz that drowned out every other sound. They came from either side of the Route, never resolving into a creature large enough to be seen with the eye. Cazlandt cringed and covered his ears with his palms. The sound was deafening. Within a moment, they blocked the path along the Route as a flowing wall of tiny insects surrounded them.

“There are millions of them, Ranmi. I expected creatures to be fought. I could throw fireballs, but there is nothing solid to impact against.”

“I’ve never seen so many. Why are they staying at a distance? Is it because of your magic making us smell like cat piss? What would draw so many?”

Cazlandt looked down at the large vial in his hand and, on a total whim and hunch, lobbed it along the path, in the direction they came from. As one, the swarm of feeders surged in that direction, wary to keep a distance from Ranmi and the archmage. Cazlandt grabbed another from the crate and threw it in the same direction. The swarm ahead thinned, and Cazlandt grabbed the swordsman’s arm.

“Run!” he shouted and pulled at the ebbing ley pulse to enhance the aegis enchantments around them both. Three strides later, a wave of nausea would have caused Cazlandt to falter and fall if not for Ranmi’s hand now around his wrist, dragging him forward.

The aegis flashed with blue sparks as they rushed through the wall of plasma feeders. Soon, they could barely see the cart, crates, and bodies as the insects tightened around the area.

Cazlandt dropped to a knee while his vision drifted and swam. He squeezed his eyes tight and pressed a hand into them.

“What happened? Did they sting you?”

“No, I…” Cazlandt paused. Darkness crept in at the edges of his vision and slowly faded over a few deep breaths. He stood with a deep breath. “It is nothing. The magic here vexes me.”

“How did you know the feeders would go after the vials?”

“I did not know that for sure, it was only a lucky guess. You wondered why there were so many, which implied something drew them to that spot.”

“What do we do now?” Ranmi asked, looking back down the Route.

“We continue,” Cazlandt said, facing the other way. “Your emperor’s valets were attacked and killed while transporting something that, to me, looks like blood, but could be anything. We have no stake in this.”

“I suppose so,” Ranmi frowned and turned his back on the cart. “Come on, we have a little way to the clearing I mentioned. Your stink magic seems powerful enough to repel the feeders. We should be safe for a rest.”

Chapter Nine

Madam Sentra

The path soon widened as Ranmi said it would. They stepped off the Route, and the swordsman again pulled the blankets from his pack. “I don’t want to stay in any place too long going through the swamps. The stingers will get braver the longer we stay still, but a quick rest should be fine.” He stifled a yawn with the back of his hand.

Cazlandt felt for the ley pulse, sensing it near the height of its power. Kneeling at the center of their little camp, he cupped his palms and produced a tiny, black flame. Frowning at the odd color, he placed one hand on the spongy ground, pulling moisture from it and placing the spark on the mossy dirt. Feeding more ley energy into the flame, it grew to a respectable size within a breath, steady like a candle’s light in a still room.

“That’s amazing!” Ranmi exclaimed and crouched beside it. Fish pushed from the pack, hopped to the ground, and stretched before sitting down to groom near the heat.

“I have tethered the fire to the ley pulse of the realm. It will rise and fade as the mana pulses.”

“Why’s it a black flame? Is that a magic thing?”

“As with the fireball before the Red Tower, the color is not my intention but stems from the energy of your realm. It otherwise feels like a normal, mana-fueled flame. I grow accustomed to the energy here and find it easier to use it to sustain me. Rest, Ranmi.”

“You sure?” The swordsman sat back. “Not that I know much on mages, but to not need sleep, that’s real useful.”

“Archmages,” Cazlandt corrected. “My kind uses the ley energy, the mana, of our environment to sustain our bodies indefinitely. Some mages may directly use magic from the ley lines but without that key distinction. Then, of course, there are mere crystal mages who rely on mana crystal to fuel their work and are unable to use or feel the ley lines.”

Ranmi nodded blankly. “Uh huh. I bet you can get a lot more done, not needing to sleep.”

Cazlandt shrugged. “While that is true, most everyone else in the world still needs to pause for rest and food.”

“Hmm yeah, so you have to wait around for everyone else to get out of bed and finish dinner before you can get what you need from them.”

“Indeed. That is why archmages stay to our kind.” Cazlandt remembered raising Castle Dracon with the crowd of archmages and their families present to witness his grand feat. The castle served as a bustling center of research for hundreds of years. Now, as families spread across the frozen lands of Dracon and the rest of Poas, its stone walls grew cold and dusty. “We once did, at least.”

“Well, it’s hard to keep a family all together forever, right?” Ranmi gathered up the blanket. “Don’t let me sleep too long.” He rolled to his side, and Fish settled in behind his knees.

As Ranmi’s breathing turned to a light snore, Cazlandt sent his mind along the ebbing ley pulse, hoping to speak to the being at the world’s center again. The skeletal world tree rose before him, and he glimpsed into the lightless, twisting chambers leading to its heart chamber. Shivering in the center of the small cavern, a point of darkness floated in space, exactly like the one in the Red Tower.

Again?, asked the voice.

“Are you the Mraasil of this realm?”

Why does a mortal know that word?

“I told you, I am no mere mortal. I am an archmage, a Realm Strider. Are you the Mraasil?”

I am Bireal, guardian of Muertsil, as named by the archdruid.

“The archdruid? Etharis?”

No response came as the ley pulse reversed its course, pulling Cazlandt’s mind from the world tree.

“Bireal,” he said to himself and let this mind sweep past his physical location as the ley energy flooded away from the tree at the realm’s center. He rushed over the thin ring of land circling the tree, across an ocean as wide as any body of water on any other realm he visited. He could not sense a curve to the world below him as he moved. “Either this realm is flat like Tempus Fa or so vast that it feels to be so.”

As the pulse reached its peak and slowed, he sensed land ahead. He could see nothing of a civilization but felt the force of old death, like he did in the Red Tower, rooted deep in the world there. The ley pulse touched that ancient corruption, drawing a little into itself, and receded, taking his mind with it.

Cazlandt opened his eyes as the ley energy flooded by him. He felt a chill of darkness from the outer lands. He waited a few moments for the mana to reverse again and noted the distinction in the ley energy's purity when it pushed out from the tree.

“Is the ley pulse slowly working to pull that old death from the edges of the world into its core? Or is the outward flow of clean mana keeping it at bay?” he asked no one. “It covers the people of Urbus with conflicting mana every few minutes. How does any life prosper here?” Cazlandt looked down to Fish sitting at his side. “And what is your story? Why do you follow Ranmi?”

The cat licked his paw and looked up to Cazlandt.

“Are you some reincarnated form of his friend? That would fit, even if it does not make much sense. Kyo’s soul is gone, moved to the next realm along the Trees.”

Fish washed his face and offered nothing.

Cazlandt turned his gaze back to the darkness of the swamp and the direction of the world tree, Muertsil. He shivered as his cultivation drew the ebbing ley energy into his being, now very aware of the death and rot of that distant land. The archmage worked to time drawing in only the pure mana the world tree pushed out, though doing this automatically proved difficult. He only ever continuously drew in mana and never had to pause it as a world breathed.

He lost all sense of time’s passing and jumped when Ranmi touched him on the shoulder. “I thought you were sleeping,” said the swordsman. “You good to get moving?”

Cazlandt nodded and stood. “What do you know of the distant lands in the direction away from Iruz and the world tree?”

Ranmi’s brow pinched together. “Out in the sea? There ain’t nothing out there but more sea.”

“No sailors have left to find the edges of your world?”

“Sailors?”

“Those that operate boats.”

“Oh, no. There’s a few little boats in the big cities at the top of the world, but the Roto Sea is too dangerous to go out on. The other side is nothing but more water.”

“What if I told you there was an entire other land beyond that outer sea? A land far larger than the thin ring you know of? That I felt it and know something of it?”

Ranmi went quiet for a moment as they began walking turn-wise. “I might say you know a lot for someone that only just got here, more in your few hours than the greatest minds under the emperor have known in all of time. There ain’t nothing out there but more nothing. If you’re telling me in some hope that I’ll go there with you, you’re nuts. I was stupid for following you into the Red Tower.”

“Nothing like that. I have felt the motion of mana in your world and…” he looked up at Ranmi’s narrowed gaze. “And I would never wish to go against your body of knowledge. I am a guest in this world, a temporary one with no desire to shake things up beyond what I must for my goals.”

“Your goal to bring back Lavin?”

“To acquire the knowledge to bring him back. The possibility of the act itself remains to be seen.”

“So, once you learn how to do it, you’re gone?”

Cazlandt nodded. “Once I have what I came for, I will leave.”

Ranmi grunted quietly but said nothing else.

They walked through the swamp until the swordsman needed to rest for food, and Cazlandt refreshed their aegis and scent spells. Ranmi gagged with it, apparently forgetting its strength when first cast.

“We’re getting close to Madam Sentra’s,” he said with a hand covering his nose. “Watch for a totem of skulls on the right.”

“A totem of skulls?”

“Yeah, like forty skulls stacked up.” He waved his hand over his head to indicate a height.

Cazlandt’s lip twitched. “How very macabre.”

Ranmi shrugged. “Well, keep your eyes ready for it, it’s a ways off the Route.”

“Her… Hut? Shack? Must we traipse through the still waters to reach it?”

A slow smile slid across Ranmi’s lips. “You afraid of a little bit of water?”

“You must not know a great deal about what things live in still swamp water.”

Ranmi’s smile soured. “Well, it’s less than knee-deep. My knees, at least.”

Cazlandt spent more of the next hour thinking of the magic needed to walk on water or repel it from him than watching for the skull totem. Ranmi stopped suddenly and pointed to the right. Cazlandt thought it more a pile than a totem and estimated it at well over forty skulls, several multiples more. With over six feet showing above the water and at least another below the dark surface, moss-covered skulls grinned at them from Madame Sentra’s sloping pyramid.

“Looks like she got more skulls,” Ranmi said and squinted into the gloom off the Route.

Cazlandt stepped beside him. “What is the purpose of such a display? There must be hundreds of skulls. Are those from her victims? Or her customers?”

Ranmi shrugged, alarmingly unalarmed.

“How far is it?” Cazlandt asked and held up a hand as Ranmi opened his mouth to respond. “Wait a moment.” The ley pulse pushed pure mana away, and Cazlandt let his mind go with it. He felt a difference in the swamp that must be the hag’s abode a short distance ahead of them. He snapped back to his mind and knelt to look into the water. Dark reeds and grass rippled slowly with the movement of water from some swamp creature a hundred yards away. “There must be a route by land.”

“I’ve seen her twice and went through the water both times.”

“I have not teleported in this realm yet. It is a magic I am most familiar with, but the flow of the mana in Urbus leaves me hesitant.”

“Teleport?”

“To move oneself from one location to another instantly.”

“Without having to do the walking in between? That sounds great.”

“Yes. Yes, it is.”

“But, if you teleport us across the water and into her living room, I don’t think she’ll be happy. Madam Sentra likes folks to knock so she can open the door.”

“The ley pulse is too muddied for me to target my spell with any great accuracy.” Cazlandt stood with a quiet groan. “Wet robes it is.” He stepped into the tepid water that, after a few paces, reached halfway up his thigh.

“I suppose I could have carried you, like I am Foster,” Ranmi said beside him. “Bit late for that now.”

“My beard is dry,” replied Cazlandt as he trudged on. He could sense his aegis working hard to repel the water, but it still soaked him. He only hoped the spell would keep him free of leeches. The archmage glanced up at the tower of skulls, each as large as Ranmi’s head. “This does not bother you?” he asked.

“Should it?”

“A woman living alone in the swamp has a growing pile of skulls, and that does not worry you?”

Ranmi shrugged. “She doesn’t have my skull.”

Cazlandt groaned and continued.

A dark building on tall stilts loomed, a hut made of banded together reeds, mud, and moss that appeared ready to collapse. Ranmi pointed to a dock at the water level, and they stepped up onto it. Weathered and rickety wooden stairs led to the level of the house. Cazlandt scowled down at his soaked robes, and though the ley pulse ebbed, drenched with the foul death from far away, he used the mana to flush the water from his clothes. He could do little for the grime, but at least he felt dry and waved his hand at Ranmi to repeat the casting.

Ranmi gaped. “You can make fire, dry our clothes, teleport around the world, don’t need to eat or sleep. What can’t a mage do?”

“Those are just mere glamors compared to what an archmage may accomplish. Now, focus,” Cazlandt said and looked up the stairs. He added another layer to his aegis and ascended ahead of the swordsman. The hut above stood less than twenty feet on a side, and the steep stairs turned once before depositing the pair at the doorstep. Bones, feathers, and other more gruesome charms dangled on strings across the narrow porch. Ranmi recoiled from the number of long-legged spiders weaving and feasting, but Cazlandt looked closer. The spiders shied away from him.

“Other than the swarm of plasma feeders, I have not seen a single insect since we entered the swamps, yet these prepare for a feast. My enchantments must work well,” he said.

“Must be,” Ranmi said and ducked to keep his head far from the low roof made of thin reeds and moss.

Cazlandt turned to the door, noticeable as a less-sturdy looking portion of the wall, not that any of it looked sturdy. “Might she not be at home or already in bed for the night? The place seems completely dark.” He knocked three times, though it made little noise as the door moved on its hinges with each knock on the soft wood. He glanced to Ranmi again, who ducked even lower, away from the spiders. Cazlandt put out a palm and produced a small globe of light. “Take this,” he said to the swordsman, who held out a hand hesitantly. The light hovered a few inches above his hand. Cazlandt produced another, brighter globe and pushed the door inward.

“Madam Sentra?” Cazlandt asked into the darkness. In the center of the room lay a shallow pit, perhaps for a cooking fire long gone cold. Around that sat a few overturned pots and utensils. To his left, a mound of dirty hay might have served as a bed, and to the right, heaps of dusty, grimy jars festered, some smashed and chipped, others tipped and the contents long ago spilled.

“I would guess no one has been here in years,” Cazlandt commented and stepped into the hut. He knelt near the jars on the right side and looked for something with a label. “When did you say you last visited the swamp hag, Ranmi?” He picked up a bit of broken ceramic with a paper label glued to it. The scratched letters swam in his mind until he understood the meaning, some sort of dried herb. Worthless.

He stood and turned to the hay on the other side. “Ranmi?” Cazlandt could see the flicker of the swordsman’s light through the doorway, and he stepped out of the hut. Ranmi stood pressed against the wall of the hut with one hand outstretched. “Careful how you stand, you will crush Fish in your pack. Crush the cat, I mean.” He followed Ranmi’s shaking finger out across the dark waters of the swamp and saw the single lantern light. As if on a long chain, it swung in the mists with every step of whatever terrible creature carried it.

Cazlandt saw flashes of a mossy cloak covering an unnaturally slender frame as the lantern swung. A tall, white crown sat on the figure’s head, and one ghastly hand held the lantern’s chain while the other clutched the cloak closed tight, revealing nothing of the creature beneath. The cape spread across the water's surface, and the lack of splashing gave Cazlandt the impression the being walked along the water's surface.

“Is that the swamp hag?” he asked.

Ranmi nodded slowly, his eyes wide.

“Madam Sentra,” Cazlandt said across the water. “I am Cazlandt, the first archmage. I come seeking your knowledge.”

She made no sign of acknowledgment as she continued her slow pace toward the raised hut.

“Can she hear me?”

“I’m sure everything in the swamps can hear you,” Ranmi hissed.

The scent of recent death, the same as the Veil Walkers, overwhelmed the lemon and mint of Cazlandt’s enchantment as the swamp hag grew near. When she paused at the base of her small tower, Cazlandt saw clearly that her crown was crafted of sharpened bones, probably from forearms. She rose, her moss cloak growing to never leave contact with the water, until she floated level with the men. Her exposed arm holding the lantern and hand grasping at her cloak looked to be covered with flesh of one long dead in the water, bloated and blanched with patches ripped away.

Cazlandt held back his disgust while Ranmi stepped away, furiously rubbing a thumb across his forehead.

“Madam Sentra,” Cazlandt tried again. “I said I come seeking your knowledge. I have been told you are a font of it in this realm.”

The cloaked hag slowly tilted her head as if considering the archmage. A slender tendril peeked from her hood, barbed and dripping with ropes of mucus. It slid toward Cazlandt, stopping only inches from his face. The protective aegis shimmered blue as it repelled the…tongue? It slowly receded into the cloak as Madam Sentra raised higher to hook her lantern on the edge of the porch’s roof.

“My knowledge does not come without a cost,” she asked in a voice like the chime of delicate bells.

Cazlandt paused, not expecting that tone from a creature so ghastly. “Blood, I am aware. You should know my blood, being an archmage, is far more valuable than any other, save for perhaps the blood of your Mraasil Bireal.”

The swamp hag’s cape moved onto the porch and drew up from the water. “Step into my home. Your familiars are welcome as well.” She flowed between Cazlandt and Ranmi and through the dark door of her hovel.

“Familiar?” Ranmi asked.

“She thinks you are my pet.”

“Can I stay out here?”

Cazlandt shrugged and waited for the hag’s moss trail to follow her through the door before going in himself.

Madam Sentra hovered behind the cooking pit, looming over Cazlandt with her crown of bones almost scraping the ceiling of the hut. The small light in the archmage’s palm gave the hag a ghastly upward illumination. The barbed tongue again snaked from her robes to taste the air around the archmage. “You are unique, little one. Your enchantments are powerful, but I can smell almost no fear in you.”

“Little one,” Cazlandt scoffed. “Few things strike fear in me, hag.”

“So brazen, to use that word.” Her grip lessened, and her cloak opened just a little, giving Cazlandt a glimpse at the pale body of rotted flesh beneath.

“Your price is blood. Tell me what I wish to know, and I will decide the value and payment due.”

“That is not how this works, little one,” she chimed. “You are in my domain and will abide by my rules.” The hag’s tongue circled Cazlandt as she shifted nearer. “Just a drop, and I will judge your value.”

Cazlandt swatted at the tongue as it dripped mucus near his face. “If you do not find the value in the magics radiating from my essence, then you will hold nothing for me.”

Sentra leaned her head to the side and pivoted around the cooking pit. “We seem to be at an impasse. I struggle to remember when last someone spoke to me in such a tone. I find myself tempted to accept your terms on the grounds of your bravado. How about a little wager to decide how to proceed?”

Cazlandt narrowed his eyes. “What do you suggest?”

“First, tell me your question.”

“I seek the knowledge of True Resurrection, of how to undo Elphame’s work.”

“Interesting, though not a question.”

Cazlandt grunted. “How do I perform True Resurrection? Or who can teach me the spell, if not you?”

“Now that is a question I have answers to,” she cooed. “Very well. The mortals of this realm come to me for questions answered, but none have seen my true visage. If you can witness me without fleeing, I will answer your question without a drop spilt. I will even answer a single question each for both your familiars on the porch.”

Cazlandt thought of the eldritch horrors he encountered across and between the realms. Undead, daemon, beings that literally survived on misery and pain. How terrible could a swamp hag living in a dingy hut look?

“First, what do you consider me fleeing?” he asked.

“You cannot take a single step from me.”

“And if I do?”

“Ah, if you flee, I take my payment with no questions answered.”

Cazlandt smirked, imagining her chasing him through the swamp to extract his blood with that grotesque tentacle. “Very well. Show yourself, hag.”

Her tongue slid back into the cloak. “We have struck an agreement,” she giggled.

Madam Sentra’s hand clutching the mossy cloak let go to fully reveal her center line. She wore a moss skirt clattering with small skulls held together with twine strung through the eye sockets and holes bored through the crowns and temples. She slipped the cloak free of her shoulders, revealing pendulous breasts and a torso of rotted flesh. Muscle and sinew were visible where the skin was torn away. In her center, the gaps between her ribs hinted of a scabbed and oily heart that throbbed and shuttered.

“Look at me, Cazlandt,” she sighed, and he raised his gaze. Her mouth opened wide, unnaturally wide, as large as her head, with rows of teeth as long as Cazlandt’s fingers. Her tongue snaked out, thick with strings of oily mucus. The archmage felt the surge of power as it radiated up her ruined body and collected in the bone crown atop her head, filling it with a brilliant, white light.

She is hideous, Cazlandt thought as he focused on taking short, shallow breaths, lest her stench of death overpower him. He recognized an aura, a working of powerful magic, pushing at him, drawing up a primal fear, and he touched his amulet, pulling from its small store of purified mana to mitigate the effect. He noticed tiny worms crawling through the skulls around her bony hips and the beads of necklaces laying across her desiccate chest. One dangled a small ruby chip over her exposed heart.

“Is that mana crystal?” he asked, glad to have a familiar sight to distract him.

“Do I not disgust you?” she asked, sounding almost sad.

“You do.”

“Do I not frighten you?”

“No, though I understand why you frightened others. You are different with foreign laws of nature, and others find that terrifying. Your fangs and tongue might do some damage, but otherwise, your body looks frail and vulnerable. I sense some tenuous magic keeping you alive, similar to an archmage, but no, you do not frighten me.”

“You do not think me a vile force of evil?”

Cazlandt shook his head. “You live in a swamp and consume blood for power. That makes you no more evil than a mosquito.”

Madam Sentra snapped the cloak around her frame and moved a step away from Cazlandt. She raised her hood to again shroud her face.

“Was that mana crystal on your necklace?” he repeated.

She held out the gem on a silver chain with her long fingers. “You know of this?”

In response, Cazlandt took the pouch from his belt and dumped a few crystals into his palm. “Solidified ley energy. I have only ever found it in my home realm. It grows along ley lines, which I have yet to detect here in Urbus.”

“I was given this as payment by another decades ago. Another that would not give her blood.”

“What did this person look like?”

“A woman, shorter and darker-skinned than you with long—”

“Alishia,” Cazlandt grumbled.

“You know of her? She called herself the Chronicler.”

“She and I have a complicated history. What did she ask of you?”

Sentra slowly shook her head. “That is not how my service works, little one.”

“Fine then.” Cazlandt put away all but one gem and offered it to the hag. “Take this as payment, then. Give me my answers.”

Sentra shied from his offer. “You did not flee from me. You have paid for your questions with foolish bravery.”

Cazlandt tucked away the mana crystal.

Madam Sentra shifted away and seemed to shrink as she pulled her mossy cloak tight. “True Resurrection. To restore one to full life even after the body has long ago passed beyond a point of sustaining itself. This is not a magic to be performed lightly.”

“I do not ask for a lecture of the morals on the results of what I ask, only for the knowledge of how it is done.”

“Very well. The magic requires only two components.” Her hand not holding her cloak closed poked from the folds and raised two fingers with chipped and broken nails. “The first is some physical memory of the person. A tooth, a strand of hair, a drop of blood.”

Cazlandt frowned. Lavin died over seven centuries ago. The magic that killed him reduced him to a stain on the grass. “And the other component?”

“A living person bearing memories of the departed. Their life force is gone, passed to the next realm. Using the memories, one may recreate the mind, if not the soul.”

The archmage considered that. “You say recreated, so the result is a sort of living golem? A reconstruction, but not the actual person?”

“Is there a difference?”

Cazlandt shrugged.

Madam Sentra continued. “The person holding memories of the deceased concentrates as you draw mana through them and into the mortal remains. There is little more than that. You seem like a capable mage. You seem capable of working out the details.”

“Is this really a True Resurrection? The result is a person looking like and thinking they are the deceased, but only as similar as they are remembered to be.”

“As I say, the soul is gone, converted to mana in the next realm along the Trees.”

“Is there nothing else?”

“A warning: time your spell to use mana as it pushes from the world tree. If you use mana from the Far Lands, the results will be very different, certainly not what you would intend.”

Cazlandt frowned. “What if I wish to perform the magic in another realm without this ebb and flow of Urbus?”

“I would think a skilled mage such as you would have a means of carrying mana between realms. It goes against the wishes of the Ascended, but everything in this discussion does.”

Cazlandt touched his amulet. It could store some quantity of mana, but surely not enough for this feat. “You mention the Far Lands. That is the land beyond the outer seas, where the ley pulse hits and pulls away reeking of death?”

The hag’s cloak parted slightly and her tongue snaked out again. “You know much of my realm. I would very much like to sample your blood.”

“Are you from there?” he asked. Cazlandt imagined a dark, misty marsh across the ocean, surrounding the narrow ring that represented the entirety of Ranmi’s world. He saw creatures like Madam Sentra and the Veil Walkers as common there, even mundane by the standards of what else lurked on those shores.

Sentra’s tongue snapped back into her cloak. “I have answered your question. If you wish for more, there is a price for each.”

“You said my familiars could ask their own questions. I will ask two more in their stead.”

Though she had no eyes, the hag’s attention drifted to the open doorway. “Ranmi the Blackwish and his feline companion he calls Foster.”

“The cat tells me his name is Fish.”

“You are correct, but no sense in being rude to correct the big man after so long,” Madam Sentra sighed. “Ranmi the Blackwish would just ask me about his lost friend again, as he has twice before. I will allow you to take his place, but cats are agents of chaos. I would very much like to know what this one would ask of me.”

“Tell me of the Far Lands,” Cazlandt said.

Madam Sentra hovered silently in her mossy cloak a moment before responding. “Your inability to ask a proper question is a grating trait, little one, but very well. The story of the Far Lands is the story of the vast and flat realm of Urbus and her ley pulse. Rather than a distinct end, the edges fade into the expanse between the Wheres. Figments of the aether drift too near and are pulled into Urbus. They wander those distant shores until the tree pulls them to it or the purified mana destroys them.”

Cazlandt scratched at his beard and wondered if that really answered his question. Though, he thought, I suppose I did not give her a proper question.

“Urbus does not have a distinct edge? It fades to the Lacuna Gap instead?” he asked.

“Bring the feline so I might answer his question and be rid of you,” the hag sighed.

Cazlandt nodded, turned, and exited the hut. Ranmi leaned against the outer wall, holding the spark of light close with both hands. Fish looked over as the archmage appeared. “Ranmi.”

The swordsman jumped and fumbled to catch the light as it slowly drifted away from him. “You scared the hells out of me, Cazlandt!” he hissed. “Can we leave?”

“I have some questions answered. The hag wishes to speak to the cat before we return to the Route.”

“Foster?” Ranmi glanced at the cat on his shoulder. Fish gave him a look, glided to the porch, and strode into the hut.

“I will keep him safe,” Cazlandt said and followed Fish.

The winged cat sat by the old cooking pit and looked up at the mossy swamp hag. Sentra’s tongue snaked around him, but the blue field of Cazlandt’s aegis deflected it from coming too near. The archmage heard no words from the cat, but after a long moment of silence, Sentra hissed and spoke in her voice as clear as a dead bell.

“I cannot see the future, but I should not think much longer, little one. With the knowledge I have given this one,” a finger crooked from the cloak to point at Cazlandt, “and knowing the desires of Ranmi the Blackwish, I should think it will not be much longer.”

Fish stood and backed up a few steps before turning to leave the hut. Cazlandt heard Ranmi’s hushed relief from outside.

“What did Fish ask?” said the archmage.

“You do not learn easily, little one. Now, leave my home. Return to the Route.”

Cazlandt took a deep breath of putrid air and huffed it out. He opened his mouth to say more to the swamp hag but stopped himself and left the hut in silence.

Ranmi waited near the top of the stairs leading down to the water with Fish on his shoulder when Cazlandt stepped onto the porch. “Let’s get out of here.”

As Ranmi descended the first step, Cazlandt grabbed his arm. “I will not walk through the hag’s stagnant water again.” The ley pulse rose with clean mana from the world tree, and he could clearly sense where they stepped from the packed dirt of the Route circling the realm. With the feeling of being tugged forward and a soft pop, they returned to the Route. Ranmi cried out and dropped to his knees. Fish leaped from his shoulder and furiously washed himself.

“What was that?” Ranmi exclaimed.

“A teleport.” Cazlandt glanced at the pile of skulls to his right and back to the path that quickly disappeared with a turn in the swamps. “Stand up and let us get away from here.”

Ranmi stood on shaky legs, picking up Fish as he did, holding the cat close. “I… I thought you couldn’t do that here?”

“I changed my mind. How do I get to the world tree?”

“To the island of Iruz?” Ranmi asked as he jogged to catch up with Cazlandt’s determined strides. “Did Madam Sentra tell you to go there?” he sighed. “There’s a bridge in Cytos, just past the swamps, at least there was.”

“Good. I need a great deal of the mana of Urbus to carry home to perform my work. I could gather it best in the heart of this world.”

“You know how to bring someone back? And you’re going to leave to go do that?”

Cazlandt grunted an affirmative. “Lead me to the bridge, and I will give you another mana crystal for your trouble.”

“Thanks,” said Ranmi with little enthusiasm.

Chapter Ten

A Quiet Farewell

Ranmi the Blackwish stifled another yawn and brushed off Cazlandt’s suggestion they stop for a break. “I don’t want to stop until we’re out of this damned swamp,” he said and stumbled over his own feet. Fish rode on Cazlandt’s shoulder since Ranmi started nearly tripping two hours ago.

As suddenly as they exited the forest that attacked them, the swamp ended. A few patches of still water collected around the straight and tall trees while the surrounding terrain suddenly turned rocky. Cazlandt could make out the smoke of cooking fires through the haze and soon discerned a small settlement in the distance. Time proved difficult to estimate in a realm with no visible sun crossing the sky, but Cazlandt thought it might be late in the afternoon.

“Another nameless town?” he asked and looked up to the swordsman.

“Yeah. Can we stop at an inn for a few hours before I take you to the bridge? I just need to rest my eyes a minute.”

“A few hours, a minute, take the time you need,” Cazlandt said and looked at the cat on his shoulder.

The town came up quickly. It seemed several times the size of the tiny village Cazlandt first encountered in Urbus three days ago. The cobblestone path from the Route led directly through the main square, where people shuffled by, shrouded in drab cloaks, going about their daily errands. Cazlandt watched them for a moment, each looking as large as Ranmi and every one of them with a sword on their back or hip. “Where are the children?” he asked as they moved toward the largest structure around the square. A placard hung above the door with a stylized bed and mug painted with faded, flaking colors.

“The children?” Ranmi asked without looking to the archmage as he pushed the door open.

“The young ones. I saw none in the last village but thought nothing of it. There are no children here either, that I see.”

“There aren’t many children here in the bottom,” Ranmi said and sounded done with the topic. He quickly crossed to the innkeeper, a woman behind the bar wearing a simple shift with her hair pulled back in a loose braid. Her skin looked the same, pale-green tone as Ranmi’s. “A room, please,” he said and pushed a few irregularly shaped scraps of metal toward the woman.

The innkeeper nodded and retrieved a key from under the bar top. “Third on the left. How long are you staying?”

“We’ll be gone in a few hours.”

The innkeeper raised a dark eyebrow as she looked to Cazlandt but kept any comments unspoken.

Ranmi crossed the empty tavern toward the stairs. “Come on, Foster,” he called to the cat.

“He will be along in a moment,” Cazlandt said and raised a finger to the innkeeper. Fish stopped in his tracks and turned back to the archmage.

Ranmi waved dismissively and trudged up the steps.

The innkeeper put a heady stein of ale in front of Cazlandt and he took it to sit at a table. Fish jumped up, sniffed at the mug, and sat a distance from it. “I know what you asked of the hag,” Cazlandt said. “I now have the basic knowledge of how to perform a True Resurrection. Simple and elegant, it surprises me no one has figured it out before. Ranmi will ask me to bring back his friend Kyo. You asked Sentra how long the two of you have left together.”

Fish stared at Cazlandt, his bright-green eyes boring into the archmage’s emerald ones. They exchanged no words, but Cazlandt began to understand the relationship between man and feline. Ranmi saved Fish from a life of danger, and in turn, Fish provided a bit of the companionship the man needed. Fish understood Ranmi’s goals and worried where his place might be, should the man no longer need his company.

* * *

Cazlandt shook from a daze and pinched his eyes, looking down at the mug of flat, stale beer in front of him. Fish was no where in sight. Probably slipped away to sleep behind Ranmi’s knees. He considered stepping out to wander the village. I could leave before Ranmi has the chance to ask me to stay, to ask me to bring back his friend. The bridge across the sea cannot be difficult to find if I walk toward the tree and follow the shore turn-wise.

The tavern door swung in and a trio of hulking men entered, carrying enormous swords on their backs. The men bought ales from the bar and took a table close to the archmage. Cazlandt huddled into his borrowed cloak and averted his eyes.

“More Veil Walkers today,” one said. “There must be something big going on turn-wise.”

“You thinkin’ ‘bout going to sign up?” another asked.

“Don’t be an idiot,” grumbled the third. “Either of you go and the Walkers will be bringing you back within a week, especially the way you swing a sword.”

“Yeah, but the emperor pays real good before you die,” the first man said.

“To send back to the widow you don’t have?” said the second with a snort into his ale.

“It’s suicide. Neither of you idiots would last in a single charge. Your swords are as clean as the day your puppos bought them for you. Why I bet you couldn’t even take that little guy over there.”

Cazlandt tensed. Besides the barkeep and the three idiots, only he sat in the tavern. He resisted his natural urge to toss back his cloak and rain fire or ice or frogs on the three. He also resisted tightening the grip on the borrowed cloak, hoping to feign not having heard them.

Chairs and floorboards creaked as the men approached, along with the stench of unwashed bodies.

“Hey, little guy, you hear what we was talking about?” one asked.

“I want no trouble here,” said Cazlandt.

“I want no trouble,” another mocked. “Where you from to talk like that?”

Cazlandt looked up as one man took the seat across from him. He glared at the man with an iron skull cap, dirty face, and eyes that sat just a little too far apart.

“My associates are considering joining the emperor’s army,” he said. Cazlandt recognized the voice of the third man. “I think they’ll have a swift death coming.”

“That has nothing to do with me,” Cazlandt said and started to stand. A massive hand on his shoulder shoved him back into his seat.

“Don’t be rude while my friend’s talking to ya,” said a stinking voice in his left ear.

The man across from him leaned to his side and crossed his legs. “We just want a little clash of swords.” He leaned forward with a grin. “By my honor, they won’t hurt you.”

Cazlandt laughed. “By your honor? I do not carry a sword.”

“You can borrow mine,” said the man in the skullcap with a grin as he unbuckled and handed over his unnecessarily gigantic sword. Rather than pulling from the ebbing ley pulse, Cazlandt brushed his hand over the pouch on his hip, enhancing his strength. He accepted the sword and easily slung it over his shoulder. He smiled as the man gaped in awe.

“Take it outside!” the barkeep yelled, but the four already strode to the doors.

Outside, Cazlandt turned to the three men and hefted the sword between his hands. He had not carried a weapon in centuries other than the Shadow Reaver’s blade and assisting his son with smithing. The other two men tossed off their traveling cloaks, cracked their knuckles, and stretched their necks as a crowd formed around them. Cazlandt assumed them brothers with the same sloped shoulders dusted from a day working in the mines or rock fields or… he did not care.

The ley pulse returned with pure mana from the world tree, and Cazlandt pulled on it. “This sword is purely decorative. I can sense the flaws in the steel even as I hold it.” Cazlandt ran a finger along the wide blade in his grip, tracing out the shape of a more wieldy weapon. He raised it overhead and smashed it down onto the cobblestone. The blade shattered into filings, all save but an intricately crafted sword as long as Cazlandt’s forearm.

The man in the skullcap dropped to his knees. “My puppo gave me that!”

Murmurs of “mage” flowed through the onlookers. The other two men looked at each other nervously and dropped their swords with hands raised. “We didn’t know you was a mage.” One backed away a step and dropped to his knees in supplication. The other turned and fled.

Cazlandt flourished the new blade, pleased with the weight and balance after not performing that particular magic in years. He pointed the tip at the man in the skullcap. “I am keeping this.” Cazlandt pushed back his borrowed cloak, exposing his bright, yellow robes to tuck the blade into his belt.

The ley pulse prepared to pull back from the Far Lands, and Cazlandt used another push of mana to produce a minor glamor, flaring his body with emerald fire to match his eyes. He sauntered to the man still groveling. “Where is the bridge to Iruz?” he asked quietly.

The man slowly raised his head, eyes wide with fear. He raised a shaky arm and pointed in a direction slightly turn-wise of the tree. Cazlandt let his eyes rest in that direction a moment before turning back to the man. The mana ebbed, but he pulled at it and raised a boot to stomp down on the man’s blade laying on the cobblestone before him. It shattered like brittle glass. The crowd parted to let him pass as Cazlandt left the small town to travel through the scrubby brush and rocks beyond.

Once clear of the town, he released his emerald aura and strength spells to feel the sickly ley energy from the Far Lands wash over him. The corruption and death in the mana staggered him and brought him to his knees. “It cannot be getting worse,” he said to himself. “I only noticed it more acutely now. Why, I cannot guess.”

After a few minutes, he turned to watch the cooking fires of the village. “I am sorry Ranmi, Fish, but I must go alone to the island. No more will I bring risk to you two.” His hand brushed the pouch of mana crystal, and he cursed. A debt goes unpaid. I surely cannot go back now and leave a few crystal for the man. “I doubt this ring of land is more than a few miles across at any point,” he said aloud to himself. “I will reach the Roto Sea within an hour, two at most, and go turn-wise to the bridge. I will be in the presence of Bireal before Ranmi wakes.”

The sun, or whatever gave illumination and meager warmth to the day, faded in the gray haze of the sky as Cazlandt took a deep breath and set off toward the inner sea. He frowned at his own weakness. A part of him wanted to turn and give one last glance to that town and two he left there.

Chapter Eleven

Daughter of the Exalted

Cazlandt reached the Roto Sea and saw the bridge turn-wise, faint in the hazy distance. The archmage knew better than to stand on the rocky beach for too long. He knew he had as good a chance as not that Ranmi would come after him. Cazlandt had no interest in bringing the big man to the island at the world’s center, no more than he had in attempting to bring back the man’s friend. Madam Sentra made it clear the person restored existed as a soulless golem, memories shoved into an animated body.

“Yet, I still intend to carry on with resurrecting Lavin,” he said to the gently lapping waves. “Why do I not have the same problem there?”

He said the words but knew the answer. He knew the result of True Resurrection and would bear that in secret to let Lavin carry on the rest of his natural life. More than seven centuries after his death, only himself and one or two other archmages still living ever knew Lavin in life. Cazlandt found himself unable to do the same with Kyo. He cringed at the thought of telling the big swordsman that the person brought back was nothing but reformed bones powered by an amalgamation of memories. He would not, could not, let Ranmi know that truth.

So, he would travel alone to the island of Iruz, to the world tree Muerstil, and speak with Bireal, the Mraasil of Urbus. When he first saw the island with his own eyes just outside the town where he met Ranmi days ago, Cazlandt did not worry about the distance to the island. He estimated it now at seven miles across the Roto Sea. It would be a simple jump for a teleport, but the walk gave him a moment to collect his thoughts before encountering another Mraasil.

As he picked across the loose rocks of the shore, the misty bridge took shape. The arches looked high and wide enough for any ship to easily sail under it. Even from a distance, the stone structure looked obviously collapsed in parts, especially at the far end. Twin statues, massive and crumbling, guarded the path every few hundred feet. In under an hour, Cazlandt saw a clean path cutting from the start of the bridge and going in the direction of the Route.

Swords, hundreds of swords, were driven into the ground on either side of the path. Some trailed tassels or charms on the faint breeze, and all looked rusted and brittle. Cazlandt walked among them, touching the worn and rotted hilts, feeling that same buzzing electric thrill as his fingers ran over each, wondering how many carts the Veil Walkers brought here and over how many centuries. He stepped onto the path and stopped just short of where the dirt gave way to the smashed gravel of the bridge’s worked stone.

He touched the hilt of his new sword and pulled it from his belt. Next, he took off Ranmi’s cloak, leaving him in his bold, yellow robes. He touched his bare head, remembering his hat sat in Ranmi’s stinking bag. The archmage folded the cloak and placed it on the ground. Cazlandt took four mana crystal from his pouch, hid them in the folds of the cloak, and drove the sword into the dirt beside it.

“A debt repaid. I cannot imagine you will be too far behind me that someone else will find this first.” He stood and touched the sword’s pommel. “Please do not follow me. You are a good man, Ranmi the Blackwish, and I do not wish to see harm come to you, physical or otherwise.”

Cazlandt took a few steps toward the bridge, stopped, and turned back to his cenotaph. He dug through the cloak to find the four mana crystal and put those into another fold of his belt. He unhooked the pouch containing a heaping handful of the ruby gems and tucked that into the cloak instead. “It may not have the value you claimed, but as a jeweler, perhaps you could make something pleasant.”

He stood again and forced himself not to linger. The bridge to Iruz lay before him, easily twenty feet wide and miles long, its surface shattered and broken. Nature reclaimed it in portions, covering it with dense moss, vines, and fully rooted trees that pried the stones apart. Cazlandt’s eyes followed one tree reaching to the gray sky.

“Reminds me of home,” he mused and stepped onto the bridge’s stonework.

The first of the guardian statues loomed forty feet over him from either side of the bridge. Standing in warrior poses with their faces and finer details worn away ages ago, the two sentries raised an arm toward each other. Short, cracked altars rested at the foot of either warrior, likely with the names and a list of deeds of the two heroes. Cazlandt did not care. He would leave this realm soon enough, and its heroes would remain here, dead and forgotten.

At the next statues, the left lay shattered across his path and the right completely gone. Grumbling, Cazlandt picked a careful path over the rubble as loose stones threatened to turn an ankle. The next depicted a person in priest’s robes, but the right figure seemed to be missing again. Its base appeared charred and smooth, like it had been sliced off, rather than broken from age and weather. He touched the blackened surface, laying a palm flat upon it. After a heartbeat, he felt a deep heat within the smooth stone. “Curious.”

He could see only as far down the bridge as the next heaps of fallen debris as he continued. He noticed more signs of deep, charred cuts in the stone. The slices seemed precise, as if an unnaturally strong or enormous being sliced through them with a massive sword. When he reached the next set of statues, he saw the left cleaved cleanly down the center and the right cut from hip to shoulder. Cazlandt reached to the ley pulse and pulled from it to create an aegis. The surrounding air shimmered with blue hexagons as the protection snapped into place. In his haste, he overlooked that the mana ebbed, and a wave of nausea washed over him. He dropped to a knee as the fetid mana from the Far Lands pulsed through him. He pushed it out and through his amulet as quickly as possible, but the sickly energy felt as though it corrupted all the mana in his body in an instant. Cazlandt emptied himself of all ley energy to purge the infection and collapsed to his side as his aegis fizzled.

The archmage lay gasping on his side like a beached fish for a long moment as the ley pulse continued to fade. His body screamed for mana, something it never fully went without. He felt like a dessicated husk, a corpse drained and left to dry in the sun. Sweat soaked through the tunic under his robes until the ley pulse reversed and pushed pure mana from the world tree. Cazlandt gasped for it, pulling in all he could like a man with water at a desert oasis. He restarted his cultivation and created a new aegis before pushing to his side then to his hands and knees. He stayed there, gasping and dripping sweat onto the ancient stone.

“What in the seven hells was that?” he asked himself. “The longer I stay here, the more susceptible I become to the ebbing mana’s taint.” He waited another long moment before pushing to his feet and looking down at the rest of the bridge. He stood a third of the way across now, with the open sea stretching around him, curving back to the main ring of Urbus. Ahead, few of the guardian statues looked intact and more deep cuts were visible, even at a distance.

Cazlandt heard something huge splash along the water below him. He rushed to the edge of the bridge to peer over but saw only water lapping at the support a few dozen feet below. He squinted. Did something move under the water, or did a water plant just fold with the waves?

Shaking his head, Cazlandt returned to the center of the bridge and increased his pace. He saw one, almost-complete set of statues with nameplates he did not care about, then another broken, the next slashed and gouged. The cuts ran across the width of the stone bridge, and he again knelt to touch them. These felt noticeably warm, glowing deep-red like coals from last night’s cooking fire.

He heard the splash again and something wet slide across stone. Cazlandt whirled, but he walked alone on the long bridge. Without bidding, he remembered the void creature in the Red Tower. Something large, wet, and unseen also moved through that space, that demi-realm. Cazlandt heard it again and noticed a shimmer in the air like heat over a fire. Heedless of the ley pulse’s state, he blasted an unfocused bolt of raw mana in the direction and saw a ripple of reptilian scale where it hit.

“Good eye,” hissed a feminine voice behind him. He turned as a creature resolved from the air. Her torso and face looked as fair as any woman Cazlandt ever lay eyes upon, but below her segmented chest armor, her thick serpentine tail, wider than Cazlandt’s outstretched arms, looped and spanned the width of the bridge before going over the far edge. Her arms and hands were in continuous, fluid movement, as was her torso. “You are not of this world, little one.”

Cazlandt took a deep breath, still feeling the results of using power from the ebbing ley pulse. He looked up at the snake woman’s eyes, dark and shining with a vicious intellect below the delicate circlet she wore. “This little one is Cazlandt, First Archmage. I hail from a realm distant from this foreign one of Urbus.”

“Aztuhla, Daughter of the Exalted. What a pleasure,” she purred.

“The Exalted? Cleaver of Worlds and all that? The legendary daemon?”

Aztuhla shifted back with a wry grin. “You know my mother. How lovely.” She reached toward Cazlandt with nails sharp enough to rend cattle and closed her fist around the hilt of a sword that appeared from the air. The blade, as wide as Cazlandt’s forearm and as long as he was tall, shimmered and arced with deep, indigo energy.

“A fun trick,” said Cazlandt. “A summoned sword? I once used that myself. I taught the magic to my grandson a few years ago, when he was seventeen.”

Aztuhla laughed loud, with genuine joy. “A summoned sword, nothing so mundane. I’m surprised one that knows of my lineage is unfamiliar with the Nail of Thetall, the Binder of Aethers.”

Cazlandt bit his lip and searched his memory. He encountered more than his fair share of unique armaments in his centuries, but one such as this would have held a firmer place in his memory. “Regretfully, I have not. Do you guard this bridge?”

“I do,” she cooed.

“Do you intend to stop me from reaching Iruz and the Mraasil?”

She slithered nearer and raised the Nail of Thetall to reflect its sparking, deep blues and blacks against her fair face. “I do.”

“That is unfortunate.”

Aztuhla moved around Cazlandt, encircling him with her tail while keeping her distance. “Why do I not sense fear in you, little one? More often, the ones that come along my way die as their hearts give out. I sweep them from the bridge for the Veil Walkers to pick from the shores. Yet, you stand tall before me with your long, gray beard. Do you hope to strike a bargain with me? Or, perhaps, to fool me in some manner? I assume you understand that if you wish to turn around now, I won’t allow that. None that see me live to tell others.”

“None but Madam Sentra, I hear.”

Aztuhla’s smile returned. “Sentra the Hag is like a sister to me, another stranded denizen from the Far Lands.”

“I assume the Veil Walkers are as well. Tell me more of that,” Cazlandt said as the ley pulse ebbed by him toward the island.

Aztuhla scoffed. “I hardly see a reason to stand here and exposit to a man that will soon be dead.” She twirled the sword in her grip, lazily switching it between hands.

“Do you have a pressing appointment?” Cazlandt asked. “How often can you speak calmly with another? I imagine all you hear are those screaming as they run away or begging for their lives. Tell me, why do you, a daemon from the Far Lands, protect the Mraasil of this realm?”

Aztuhla stopped twirling her blade and raised a hand to her lips. “You have a point in that, little one, but that assumes I find any joy or diversion in discussion.”

Almost faster than he could follow, the daemon snake unraveled herself from around Cazlandt and slashed at him with her blade. A wave of power blasted from her arc, slicing the stone of the bridge in a smooth line. The archmage pulled from the few mana crystal at his hip for an aegis as he dodged away and down to his side but still felt the impact graze against his shield. The magic of his enchantment worked to repair itself, but as Cazlandt jumped to his feet again, he estimated that single glancing hit deteriorated almost a full two-thirds of his protection. A strike head-on would slice him cleanly in half, even if he had the full power of the ley pulse to fuel his magic.

Aztuhla laughed as she faded from sight, dissolving into shadows. “Interesting. You really are a mage.” Her voice shifted around him as the ley pulse ebbed to its lowest. “And not the glamor mages the emperor holds in his retinue. I almost didn’t believe myself when I first thought you were from another world, but I see it must be true. Is this why you show no fear? Do you think yourself greater than I?”

Cazlandt focused on the sound of her voice, trying to pinpoint a single direction, but against a snake woman with a body so massive, he would have a harder time not hitting her if he chose a random direction and started blasting.

“They have accused me of a flaw whereby I think myself greater than those around me,” Cazlandt said as he shifted his eyes carefully. “I show no fear because it is a primal urge well below the realm of intellect. Fear is the base instinct of self-preservation. I will not live by those base animal impulses. I ask again. Why do you guard the Mraasil?”

Aztuhla laughed again. “You have that reversed, Cazlandt. I guard what Bireal guards. That which lies at the center of the tree. That which has driven the guardian to madness and holds this world together.”

Cazlandt remembered his fleeting glimpse into the world tree. “You protect that point of darkness in the center of the tree’s heart chamber.”

Aztuhla hummed an affirmative. “The Exalted has many daughters. One watched as you banished the other piece within the tower. You are a threat to this realm.”

Cazlandt cringed with the thought of the Roto Sea squirming with a host of massive snake daemon. “Tell me about Bireal’s madness.” The ley pulse finally reversed its flow, and he used the first wisps of pure mana to renew and enhance his aegis.

If Aztuhla knew of the reason for his delays, she did not make it obvious as she spoke. “Do you seek only to live a few moments longer by standing in idle chatter? I wonder what your sort of people tastes like,” she whispered. “Wirey and yellow rather than the thick and green I have grown fond of.”

Cazlandt held out his arm and grasped the hilt of a summoned sword that appeared in the air before him. Currents of bright, yellow mana coursed through it, and he again noticed the ripple in the air to his left. He shot a quick blast of mana that way as he pivoted to a crouch. As Cazlandt expected, Aztuhla shimmered into view, already swinging her infernal blade at him in a horizontal slash.

The Nail of Thetall filled his vision, and he knew he could not dodge the swing. Even if he dropped below the weapon’s arc, the shockwave of the strike would tear through his aegis without effort. This is the end?, he thought as time seemed to slow and the moment stretched to infinity. Just as the blade passed through him, Cazlandt phased to blue and appeared in the air over Aztuhla’s shoulder. He flipped the summoned sword in his grip and drove it down at the daemon as he fell.

Aztuhla screamed in rage as the mana sword drove deep into her shoulder and she spun, tossing Cazlandt away. “A Ley Slip!” she screamed as the archmage landed gracelessly on the hard stone. “You destroy your body just to get a single attack against me? Cazlandt, you outmatch any mage in Urbus by both skill and reckless disregard for your own stinking hide.”

Cazlandt winced at the fresh pain in his right ankle and spat out the heavy taste of iron in his mouth, blood. He quickly felt at the ley pulse. It already moved halfway to its high point. I finish this in one more attack, or I die. He splayed wide the fingers of his right hand, and Aztuhla again screeched as the summoned sword still embedded in her shoulder ripped free to fly to Cazlandt’s grip. A fine trail of dark-violet blood oozed from the wound.

He resisted using a Ley Slip teleport since arriving in Urbus, but with that seal now broken, there seemed little harm in performing it again. Cazlandt took a deep breath and threw the summoned sword with the flick of his wrist. Aztuhla brought up her tail to block it while bringing the Nail down vertically at him. The energy arc of her sword cut clean through the stone of the bridge and surrounding blocks shifted, ready to collapse inward, but Cazlandt no longer stood there.

His Ley Slips were rapid, flicking from the ground to the open air at random around Aztuhla. Each time he appeared, he fired a single shot of mana at her, aiming for that same point on her shoulder. The daemon screamed her rage and flailed the Nail of Thetall wildly.

As the ley pulse reached its apex, Cazlandt appeared before her in a wave of blue, panting, before dropping to a knee. “I yield,” he gasped.

“No.” Aztuhla raised her fist, larger than the archmage’s torso, and brought it down on the man in yellow. Again and again, she struck until nothing remained of the archmage. Aztuhla’s lip twitched with a satisfied grin. “Don’t tell my mother about that little outburst.”

She raised her fist, expecting a smear on the stones, but the bridge looked clean, the surface only smashed to rubble by her impact. Aztuhla looked at her hand and the odd way it glowed red at the edges.

“Illusionary magic followed by an offensive teleport to the Lacuna Gap. This all feels very familiar,” said the voice behind her. She turned to see the man in yellow with the long, gray beard smiling at her, both his hands on the end of her tail. Her cry cut short as she disappeared.

Cazlandt fell to his side and retched. Sending the snake daemon to the Lacuna Gap cost more mana than he estimated. He used so much in a single spell only a few times in his life, once being when he raised Castle Dracon from the hoarfrost twelve-hundred years ago. He convulsed with the putrid mana of the Far Lands that came to him at the last moments of casting the spell. Cazlandt pushed the mana from him as quickly as he could, but more seeped in as the ley pulse flowed over him.

The archmage attempted to push himself to hands and knees, but his body gave out as he fell into his puddle of bile. While his world squeezed to black, he saw the glowing, red shape of the daemon snake reform before him.

Chapter Twelve

Save the Cat!

Ranmi jumped as the door slammed open. A man wearing an old, iron skullcap with a greatsword drawn kicked at the bed. Foster hissed and ducked under the low wooden chair in the corner.

“You came with him!” the man spat at Ranmi. “A damned mage humiliated me in front of everyone in town. I’ll take it out with your blood!”

Ranmi fell sideways as the man’s sword came down and smashed the bed to splinters. He looked to his swords leaning against the wall beside the doorway, next to the irate stranger. “Cazlandt?” Ranmi asked and slowly stood with his hands raised defensively. He glanced back to Foster cowering in the corner behind him. “What happened?” He noticed another large man standing in the hall behind the one with the sword.

The man made to swing again but instead lowered the end of his blade with a twisted smile. “This is too good, my lucky day. You look like shit, Blackwish.”

Ranmi squinted at the man, at his bush of red curls framing the bottom of the skull cap, the pale-green eyes, and nose that looked like it spent more time broken than not. He shrugged. “How do you know me?”

The man laughed and lowered the tip of his sword to the floor. “I don’t know why I would expect you to remember all the people you ruined when you burned down the factory.”

“You’re from Ecia?” Ranmi searched the man’s face for some hint of familiarity. So many smiths and assistants worked at the factory. He couldn’t be expected to remember them all.

“Yeah, you left me out of work and unable to care for my family. Have you been back through that town since? Nothing much left of it, thanks to you.”

Ranmi’s heart raced. He’d been so careful to sabotage the weapons forge without leaving a trace.

The stranger’s grin turned sour, and he awkwardly hefted the sword to his shoulder in the cramped space. “We would have gone to the emperor years ago if we could prove you did it. You was good enough to cover your trail, but we all know.” He backed off a step and spat at Ranmi’s feet. “Grab your sword, three minutes, right outside.” He gave Ranmi one more glare before turning to leave down the hall and the stairs to the main level of the inn.

Ranmi exhaled as the men disappeared around the far corner and turned back to the room. He reached to scratch Foster between the ears. “You know what to do if anything goes bad here, little friend.” He didn’t wait for a response from the cat before sitting on the wreckage of the bed to pull on his pants and gather up his things. He strapped Kyo’s sword across his back, his pack in one hand and his own sword in the other.

Ranmi stepped out of the inn to a ring of onlookers already prepared. The man with the skullcap leaned against his sword with its blade dug a few inches into the dirt.

“Good, was worried you was going to sneak out the window,” he said and spat again. He raised his voice for the gathering to hear, taking on a formal, haughty tone. “I, Korrim of the Red, have been done wrong. Your accomplice the mage destroyed my family sword and fled, a sword forged by the emperor’s fires in Ecia, in a factory later destroyed by this man, Ranmi the Blackwish. I seek vengeance for the lives he destroyed by his own hand.”

Ranmi dropped his pack and ground the heel of his palm into his eyes to wipe away the crust of sleep. “I don’t care. Where is Cazlandt?”

Korrim grasped his sword and kicked it to swing onto his shoulder. “You decline? Are you a coward?”

“Yes, but no. Why should I have to fight any duel that someone spits at me? There’s no rules of honor around that. I’m sorry for your loss with the factory, but accidents happen.” Ranmi’s eyes flitted across the crowd, searching for the second man who stood in the hallway with Korrim. He caught motion and saw the man coming around the corner of the inn, carrying a gray, winged cat by the scruff. Foster hissed and squirmed against the hold, but was helpless.

“How about now? Do you accept my duel?” Korrim taunted from behind.

The man holding Foster pulled a dagger from his belt, and Ranmi the Blackwish saw red as his pulse pounded through his temples. The crowd parted as the swordsman rushed forward, mind and body burning with rage. With a single, smooth motion, he dropped low and swung a smooth, horizontal arc. He dropped his blade to catch Foster as the man collapsed, screaming and bleeding from where his legs now ended at the knees. Ranmi gave the cat a quick squeeze before letting him hop away and flap his way to the rooftops.

Standing, Ranmi took Kyo’s blade from his back and turned to Korrim. He held his arm at length and pointed the chipped, rusted sword at Korrim of the Red as the crowd behind him parted.

“Th-that’s a Walker’s Blade!” Korrim managed as the color drained from his face.

“Do you still wish to duel?” Ranmi the Blackwish hissed through his teeth. The power of the sword buzzed through his fingers and lingered at the base of his skull.

“Against one that would rob the Veil Walkers?” Korrim pivoted his sword to dig the end into the dirt.

“You challenged me.” He spat to the side.

“You’re mad!”

“Damn right, I am.” He lunged forward, bringing Kyo’s greatsword overhead, aiming to cut Korrim of the Red in half.

The other man kicked his sword up in time, and the blades clashed with a shower of sparks. Korrim dropped to a knee with the force of the damned blade’s onslaught. Korrim gritted his teeth, put his left hand against the flat of his blade, and shoved Ranmi back a step while he jumped away.

“I yield!” Korrim shouted for the widening ring of onlookers to hear.

“I don’t care,” Ranmi growled and struck at Korrim again and again. With each blow, his opponent’s defense felt slower. With each swing, Ranmi felt a growing power burst through his veins and the release of some pent-up aggression. Finding Kyo’s blade just outside of their home. The look of pain and resignation when Kyo finally agreed to stay and run his master’s foundry. The disapproval of both their parents when they set out of their first turn around the world. Korrim’s sword flew from his hand, and he lie bleeding from gashes over his arms and legs and across his face and left eye.

Ranmi panted, and tears streamed down his face as he looked down at the man staring up at him, covered in blood, eyes wide with fear, hands raised and shaking defensively. Ranmi could kill the man. He wanted to kill the simpering man. It would only take one more swing of his partner’s blade.

Kyo’s blade.

He remembered the pain in Kyo’s eyes when they last said goodbye.

No.

Ranmi blinked once, and the weight of his actions crashed upon him. He flicked the blood from Kyo’s blade and strapped it to his back as he hurried to his pack by the inn’s door. He looked at the other man, still screaming and bleeding from where his legs now ended. Ranmi barely remembered doing that.

He whistled to the cat and ran turn-wise from the town. He felt the reassuring weight of Foster on his shoulder within a few strides. Shouts of pursuit soon faded behind him. He knew no one would chase him too far turn-wise. Ranmi didn’t stop until he reached a small, aged sign on the left of the Route marking the path to the bridge.

He gasped for air with his hands on his knees. Foster jumped from his shoulder to wash. Ranmi looked down at the blood on his hands and hoped none of it was his. He dropped his pack to the dirt and dug through it, searching for a rag to wipe himself clean and finding an old blanket. Only then did he realize the lessened weight on his back. He jerked upright with a gasp and turned back toward where he left his own greatsword laying by the inn’s front door.

“I suppose it’s only fair, Kyo. I lost myself there,” he said and looked down to the cat. “I’m sorry, Foster. I made our lives a lot harder. Word of what I did will travel faster than we can. That isn’t the sort of thing people do and get away with.”

Foster stopped washing, stretched his back, and rubbed against Ranmi’s boots. The swordsman squatted to pet the cat. “I won’t let anyone hurt you. Ever.” The cat sat to wash where Ranmi touched him.

Ranmi went back to his pack and noticed the fold of bright yellow. He pulled out the archmage’s garish, peaked hat.

“Damn you, Cazlandt. What have you gotten yourself into? What have I gotten myself into by taking up with you?” Ranmi ran a finger over the brim of the hat and looked up at the sign declaring the way to the bridge, more a warning of certain death that way. Tears threatened at the edges of his vision. “I guess I have nowhere else to go in this world except after him. Foster, I won’t ask you to come along, but even knowing neither of us will probably make it back, I won’t chase you off.”

Ranmi stood, and the cat laced between his feet. The swordsman bent again to pick him up, rubbing his ears and chest before putting him on his shoulder and standing with the pack in his hand. He turned fully to the narrow path cut through layers of shale and let out a long breath.

“Let’s go find that damned mage, Foster. It’s one last adventure, if nothing else.”

A rumbling sound reached him, and he squinted turn-wise to see a caravan of at least four carts of Veil Walkers. A shiver chased down Ranmi’s skin as he stepped from the Route and onto the narrow path leading to the bridge across the Roto Sea and the island beyond.

The swordsman walked with long, determined strides. Each step took him farther from his life of wandering that ended with his violence outside the inn. Each step took him nearer to an unknown future. Will I see Kyo again in another world?, he wondered while idly scratching Foster’s ears. Or my puppo or parents? He never gave as much thought to what lay beyond life until his brisk walk toward the bridge.

The meager road dropped sharply, and the Roto Sea opened before him. His path cut a harsh line through the rocky soil littered with the blades of dozens of fallen warriors. Ranmi sighed, surrounded by death. One blade stood out, placed in the center of the path just before the stone of the bridge met the packed dirt. The sword itself was in pristine condition, not the rusted and chipped look of a Walker’s Blade. A folded bit of cloth nestled beside it. Ranmi picked that up and, as he unfurled it, recognized the dark cloak he lent to the archmage to cover the man’s outlandish, yellow robes.

Something fell out of the cloak and thudded to the ground, a small pouch. Ranmi picked that up next and dumped the handful of brilliant crystals into his palm. He turned them over with his thumb, feeling their gentle warmth. Ranmi put them back in the pouch and put that and the cloak into his pack.

“I wonder where he got a sword and why he left it here,” he said and plucked the blade from the ground. It seemed closer to what Ranmi would call a “long knife”, but perhaps, that was a useful size for someone as short as Cazlandt. “Unless…” he stepped away from where the sword had been with an image of the Veil Walkers sinking the man in yellow’s body into the ground there. Ranmi shook the thought away and looked down at the long bridge obscured by fallen debris.

“Last chance, Foster,” he said and continued onto the bridge. Foster took to the air and scouted ahead of the swordsman.

Ranmi could see only as far as the next statue that lay blocking the path. He carefully and quickly picked his way across rubble, vines, and tree roots. Finally, the path seemed clear as the sea opened around him for miles. Far in the distance, he could make out a faint, yellow figure laid out on the stone of the bridge.

“Cazlandt!” he gasped and sprinted forward.

Far ahead, the archmage pushed to hands and knees before collapsing again, giving Ranmi a small sigh of relief.

Ranmi stood only a stone’s throw away when the air between him and the archmage shimmered a violent red. The swordsman skidded to a stop as the air warped and roiled. His view of the fallen archmage disappeared as a snake body larger than anything from nightmares suddenly appeared, draping across the width of the bridge.

“Foolish mage!” someone shrilled. “You think your feeble magics are enough to banish me? I am a Daughter of the Exalted! There is none greater than my lineage!” Ranmi fell back a step and drew Kyo’s sword when he saw the top of the snake ended in the upper body of a woman, or rather, a gigantic woman’s bottom half was a serpent.

“Beast!” he gasped.

The woman whirled on him. The flesh on the left side of her face and torso looked recently burned, with the flesh torn away and oozing dark blood. “More on my bridge?” she hissed. “You too will die by the might of—”

Ranmi swung Kyo’s blade.

The snake woman looked down in amazement at where her thick serpentine body slid from the edge of the bridge and splashed into the waters below.

Ranmi’s stared in disbelief at the scorched line along the stones between him and where he severed the monster’s body with a shockwave from Kyo’s blade.

“A Walker’s Blade,” the snake woman growled. She lunged at Ranmi as her own indigo sword formed in her hand.

Ranmi didn’t understand the power but hoped it would come to him again. He pushed his will into Kyo’s blade and arced it horizontally. The swordsman felt the surge of cold and tangible darkness push through his core, along his limbs, and out the length of rusted metal. The space between him and the snake woman exploded with a muted blast of dark energy that tossed him away like a child’s plaything.

* * *

Ranmi’s head hurt. He knew he lived because he shouldn’t hurt after dying, or so he assumed. Something moist and rough brushed repeatedly across his nose, becoming more abrasive with every iteration. He drifted through the strange sense of weightlessness and wondered where his head lay to make it hurt so much. That rough brushing. What was that? How could he make it stop?

Ranmi gasped as his eyes snapped open and Foster hopped away. He tried to push to his left elbow but collapsed with new pain. He probed that arm with his right hand and felt where the bone broke. He tried the other side to greater success. It took him a moment to remember where he was, on the bridge to Iruz, and why he was there? To find Cazlandt. He glanced around and found himself surrounded by, what, a collapsed statue? No, the remains of the snake woman. She lay in heaps around him in great loops of serpentine body. Ranmi barely remembered that last slice of Kyo’s sword and the terrible power that flowed through him.

Letting out a groan and whimper of pain from his broken arm, Ranmi got to his feet. His left knee complained as he limped around the sliced mounds of snake, her blood hissing where it touched the stone of the bridge. Ranmi didn’t see Kyo’s sword or his pack, but Cazlandt lay in a tangle of his yellow robes beyond the monster’s corpse. He picked his way carefully through the mess and winced again as he dropped to a knee beside the mage.

“Oy, you alive?” he poked a finger at Cazlandt but the mage did not respond. “I’m so tired,” he said and dropped to both knees, ignoring the screaming pain in his left knee as he sat back on his heels. “If you’re dead, I can’t well leave you here alone on the bridge. No harm in a quick rest, though. You are a pain in my ass, Cazlandt.”

Foster landed a few paces farther down the bridge and looked back at the two. Even without the ability to speak, the intensity and urgency to the cat’s eyes stirred Ranmi to motion. The swordsman groaned and heaved a sigh as he got back to a knee, biting back the shooting pains from his left side. He pushed his good arm under the archmage’s waist, took three short but deep breaths, and heaved the yellow man onto his shoulder. Foster hopped a few steps down the bridge and looked back again.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m coming,” he grumbled as he limped after the little, gray cat. He thought the shaking came from his own unstable legs, but when he heard a heavy splash of water, he turned. Stone blocks crumbled under the weight and terrible properties of the snake’s blood. Another large section of her body slipped through the bridge as more of the stone collapsed. A crack shot through the old stone, going between Ranmi’s feet as he felt the bridge give way slightly, one side sliding away under his feet.

Terror overtook any sense of pain in his body, terror of falling into the dark waters of the Roto Sea, to be crushed by the bridge and drowned under the weight of the monstrous snake. Ranmi ran. His legs pumped as the world fell away under him. Stone blocks, each as heavy as a village inn, wobbled and threatened to toss him to the ground. He knew losing his step now would mean his watery end, though perhaps the stones could catch and grind him to paste before he reached the surface of the sea below him. Ranmi pushed out thoughts of his demise and focused on each stride as his lungs burned and his legs begged him to give up, to give in to the inevitable.

He knew his luck would only hold out so long, and a single loose pebble soon caught under his heel. As Ranmi fell forward, he had enough thought to shove the archmage ahead, lest he be crushed under the swordsman’s weight. He tumbled, rolling until he landed on his broken left arm and physical pain overtook any force of will. He fell into icy darkness.

Chapter Thirteen

Upon a Dusty Shore

Cazlandt stood before the skeletal tree that stretched into the haze above. The ground held nothing but broken and rusted swords, thousands of them, with only a few still standing upright. The tree expanded as he floated toward it, into it. He reached a huge, spherical chamber with walls of old heartwood blackened with age. Light from an unseen source cast an even, dim light over the figure crouched before him.

They dwarfed Cazlandt as they stood. Strong, naked limbs the color of deep violet, their body wrapped with dark fronds wider than both the archmage’s outstretched hands. Thick horns curled up and back from their long, densely braided, forest green hair. They opened their eyes, casting a hollow, amber light, and smiled down at Cazlandt.

“You are almost to me,” they said.

“A Mraasil with horns,” he whispered and noticed the flick of a muscular, barbed tail behind the guardian of Urbus. “You are as unique as this realm’s magic. The daemon snake resisted my spell. Why am I not dead?”

“You soon will be.” Bireal grew in Cazlandt’s vision, and they reached to run a coarse thumb across the archmage’s forehead, much like Ranmi’s religious sign. “Elphame marks you. Death surrounds and penetrates you. You invite it into your false body with every Ley Slip and into your essence with every shred of mana used.” They ran their thumb across his forehead again and a third time. Cazlandt jumped back and batted away the Mraasil’s hand before they could do it a fourth time. He snapped his eyes open to the green feline eyes only inches from his own. Fish hopped away.

Cazlandt pushed to a seated position. Ranmi lay a yard from him, face-down in the dusty dirt of the shore with his feet still on the last blocks of the bridge. Beyond him, the bridge lay collapsed for at least a hundred yards. The waters below churned with debris, but there seemed no sign of the snake daemon. Biting back the pain of movement, Cazlandt crawled toward the swordsman and threw an arm over the man’s neck.

A pulse.

He sighed and stayed in that position for a moment. The ley pulse nearly returned to the tree. He drew only a few miles closer to it than before, but the difference in the magic’s potency proved immediately noticeable. As the flow reversed, Cazlandt flooded his body with mana. As much as he poured in, he never felt like he had enough, like energy leaked as fast as he could gather it. He used what he could for an overall regenerative spell and leaned over his hurt ankle. His hands glowed a bright green, and the pain lessened to a throb.

Some mobility restored, Cazlandt turned to Ranmi lying on his left side. With great effort and another draw of power from his mana crystal, he rolled the man flat to his back and searched for a wound. The normal, light-green pallor of the man’s face now resembled a dusky charcoal, as did all his skin. Cazlandt frowned but ignored that when he noticed the awkward bend in Ranmi’s left arm. He sidled around to lift the limb and turn it gingerly.

“How have I not, in so many centuries, ever learned to set a bone?” he asked the cat. The ley pulse already neared its apex again, and Cazlandt quickly cast a full regeneration enchantment on the swordsman, as he had on himself. He sealed himself from the world’s mana, as unnatural as doing that felt, before it flowed back from the Far Lands.

Cazlandt sat beside the big man and Fish carefully stepped up onto Ranmi’s chest. The cat lied down, tucked his feet under his chest, and purred softly.

“Maybe your magic will work better than mine,” Cazlandt mused and scratched Fish between the ears with a single finger. He turned his gaze back to the destroyed bridge. “How did the bastard do that? I see he has neither swords nor his pack.” He ran a hand through his thin, gray hair with another frown. “That was my favorite hat.”

* * *

Cazlandt lived with the rhythm of the ley pulse, the pulse of Urbus. With every outward wave, he opened himself to suck in what ley energy he could. If he took in the mana of a fresh wave too early, the place in his chest where the void tendril struck him in the tower would blaze with renewed ache, as if the energy reacted with something still lingering there. He refreshed his healing spells on himself and Ranmi. Before the climax, he shut down his senses to avoid inviting the slightest bit of the returning mana into himself. The flow felt mostly regular, a few minutes in, a few minutes out, but the duration of each iteration did not match the last exactly. It seemed the inward flow lengthened by just a heartbeat’s time.

“Is Muertsil taking in more energy than it gives out?” he asked the sleeping cat, now curled into a tight ball on the man’s chest. Fish’s top wing lay unfolded to cover his face.

“How long ago did I slither away from this man in the village, and how long did I lie unconscious on the shores of the island of Iruz? How long ago did I say goodnight to Lone in his crib?” he murmured and put a hand on Ranmi’s chest again to renew his magics. He had no way of telling if anything helped the swordsman, but his own ankle and other aches did feel better after hours of slow healing. “We cannot stay on these dusty shores in the open forever, Ranmi. If she told the truth, Aztuhla has many more sisters here, and one will eventually find us. I hope you are near to waking.”

The ley pulse pulled back again, and Cazlandt raised to a knee to look over the swordsman once more. His green skin turned gray and now almost became a pure, inky black. The archmage brushed his belt and mana crystal tucked within it to produce a small globe of light to confirm the change did not just come from poor lighting. Cazlandt’s frown deepened when he pulled away the swordsman’s cloak and tattered armor beneath as best he could around a cat that did not want to be moved. The dark color not only marked the man’s face and hands, but also his chest and round belly.

“You are the first of your kind I have met,” he said, putting the cloak back in place and patting Fish’s side. “Maybe, that is natural when… when something happens to your people.”

* * *

Cazlandt snapped from a doze as Ranmi moved under his hand resting on the big man’s chest. The swordsman groaned and rose to a seat before turning to the archmage.

“Cold,” he whispered.

“Your blankets are at the bottom of the sea by now, but…” The ley pulse ebbed, and Cazlandt instead pulled from the crystal in his belt to produce a small flame over his palm. He grasped the small spark in a fist, and his hand glowed orange as he pushed it onto Ranmi’s chest. A faint orange faded into his black skin as the warming enchantment spread.

“We have to get to the tree,” Ranmi mumbled and turned to the skeletal frame looming behind them.

“That was my goal from the beginning. I… Thank you for coming to my aid, Ranmi.”

The sea waves lapped at the shore near them, interrupted by the sound of something much larger sliding across the dusty beach. Cazlandt groaned as, only a few yards into the waters, starlight glistened off the scales of an enormous snake that breached the surface for an instant before sliding below again.

“We have to move right now, Ranmi. More daemon are approaching.” Cazlandt’s ankle complained as he jumped to his feet and tugged at Ranmi’s arm. The swordsman stood, painfully slowly in Cazlandt’s eye, and turned toward the tree.

“It’s too late, Cazlandt,” he said with exhaustion. The archmage looked to the tree and saw another daughter of the Exalted shimmering into view directly in their path. Water sloshed behind them, where another two came from the sea. Cazlandt threw an aegis around them, but as the blue hexagons locked into place, he knew it was a wasted effort.

“You killed our sister,” one hissed.

“Impressive,” said another.

“Your own death will be slow,” said the third.

“Miserably slow,” agreed the first.

A wall of pale scales surrounded them as the three daemon circled and writhed their long bodies. As one, they raised their arms and pulled scintillating indigo swords from the aether. They raised the blades to strike from all angles.

The daemon hissed and flinched. Cazlandt heard the voice. Not words, but a command given in some language more primordial than verbal.

NO.

It spoke in a force like an instrument’s single note drawn out and plucked with the intensity to pierce the layers of the world.

The sisters spat their frustration and circled once before slipping into the waters.

The note changed but retained the same, ancient insistence.

COME.

Ranmi answered the call and moved toward the tree, limping but determined.

“Ranmi, wait!” Cazlandt called after him. “What happened with the bridge? And with you?”

The swordsman paused to look down at his palms and closed his eyes with a sigh. “I don’t know. It’s a blur. Let’s finish what you came here to do.” He turned again from Cazlandt and continued his pace toward the tree. Cazlandt kept stride but a few steps behind. Fish flapped down to Cazlandt’s shoulder. The archmage winced at the added weight with his bad ankle but did not shoo the cat away.

The ground rose sharply as they followed a narrow, barely noticeable path through the thick scrub, slowly picking around dry, snagging branches and loose rocks. The meager starlight gleamed from the last polished bits of the hundreds of swords they passed.

“Do the Veil Walkers come to the island, as well?” Cazlandt asked. “Or did they move to the outer ring of Urbus when Iruz was full?”

Ranmi remained silent.

The tree spread wide before them. With every step, metal ground beneath their boots as centuries-old swords shifted their rusted edges against each other. One gave out under Cazlandt’s foot, and he shot a hand up and around Fish to catch the cat from falling before remembering he could fly. The ground crested and dropped away. The path Ranmi followed swerved through the blanket of blades and to a dark cave at the base of the world tree Muertsil.

Ranmi raised a finger, pointing out the obvious way forward. He shrugged off his battered cloak and tugged off his scraps of old armor to descend the steep hill bare-chested with the starlight reflecting off his dark skin.

At the very base of the world tree, only yards from its flaked and blackened bark, Cazlandt could barely discern the ebb and flow of the ley pulse. The mana felt equally pure and corrupt. His body ached as he again closed himself completely from it, unwilling for another moment of weakness to ruin his quest so near to the end.

The ground leveled to the base of the tree and a yawning cavern entrance. Cazlandt reminded himself of his goal. The Mraasil will give me a means of holding the energy of Urbus. I go directly to Poas, to Iecil, and resurrect Lavin. I have enough memories of him. I will not need another, but I still require a piece of his body. The image of an intricate sword scabbard flashed, soaked in blood. Soaked in Lavin’s blood.

Cazlandt cursed and spun to Ranmi. “Why are you no longer green?”

Ranmi took a step back. “I—I said I don’t know. Something with fighting the snake changed me.”

“You used some power like you did against the trees? That shockwave from Kyo’s blade?”

“I said I don’t know, Cazlandt,” Ranmi grumbled. “I—” He stopped and looked down at the archmage’s hand splayed on his chest. “What are you—”

Cazlandt hushed him to focus on the energies coursing through the big man. He touched his other hand to his own chest, where the void tendril pierced him in the Red Tower and the power still lingering there. They felt the same, if in a different form, like ice and water being the same but also not.

“I was too tired and distracted to see it before. The energy of Urbus and the Far Lands permeates you,” said Cazlandt.

“What does that mean?”

The archmage grinned. “It means your body right now acts as a massive mana crystal. Your physiology seems to allow you to absorb and hold mana in this manner. You hold the very energy I need to resurrect Lavin in my home realm.”

“I would have to come to this other world for that, wouldn’t I?”

Cazlandt waved off the comment. “You would enjoy Poas.”

There was more. The archmage sensed myriad strands of ley energy drifting from the swordsman’s body, thousands, perhaps millions of them. They pointed in every direction, and he followed one as he would an ordinary ley line. His mind buzzed like when he reached to touch the Walker’s Blades while the faint line of energy wove deep into the aether and out of his grasp.

He is connected to some source of power. What is becoming of him?

“I may not have a choice,” Ranmi said as he looked down at the midnight complexion of his hands. “I was attacked after you left the village. They threatened Foster. I did things I’m not proud of getting away with, and I’ve a feeling I’ll soon be a hunted man here.”

Cazlandt looked at the cat perched on his shoulder and nodded. “Justifiable, I am sure.”

Chapter Fourteen

Necromancer of Urbus

Cazlandt grabbed Ranmi’s arm to stop him before entering the dark cave. He raised his palm, used the mana crystal at his hip to create two orbs of light, and handed one to the swordsman. As the light formed, he could sense the strain on the crystal and knew they drew near to shattering.

The archmage placed the flat of his right hand on the tree. He directly touched a fair number of other world trees, surely more than any other human-born, and Muertsil felt different. It was dead, not dead for long in the scale of the lifespan of a world tree but dead all the same.

They stepped into the world tree’s decaying husk. Something drew them forward, a force like the singular commands that drove away the daemon and bade them approach. Each step seemed to move them forward a dozen yards and more with each one. Ranmi stopped and held out a hand against Cazlandt’s chest, but they still moved forward, falling into the tree. Pure darkness rushed by them and whistled in their ears.

Then, they suddenly stopped.

The men and cat stood in a cavernous, spherical space lined with dry, withered tree roots. As the archmage last saw it, an unseen source faintly lit the cave.

“The heart chamber,” Cazlandt said and looked for the Mraasil from his dream or vision. His eyes drifted up to the very center of the sphere, to the exact center of Urbus. A ball of black energy no larger than his fist hung there. As he watched, it strained and shuddered to stay in place, lashing out with tiny filaments of power. After a few breaths, it relaxed and expanded fourfold.

“The center of Urbus is…” Cazlandt recognized that speck of void energy. He fought it in the Red Tower before banishing it to the Lacuna Gap.

“You stink of Poas,” said the Mraasil. Their voice dragged on the words, tasting them before spitting them out again.

Cazlandt’s eyes twitched, searching for the speaker, and the Mraasil stepped from the shadows only a few feet in front of him. Ranmi gasped and threw a protective arm in front of the archmage. Cazlandt shoved it down and stepped forward.

“What do you know of Poas?”

Bireal flicked their wicked tail and sneered down at Cazlandt. “The realm where the Scions of Flayme defeated our gods.”

“Our gods? The Ascended?”

Bireal laughed, sounding cold and mirthless. “Those petty children?”

Cazlandt frowned at his lack of knowledge of what might lie above or beyond the Ascended. Absent targets of devotion never much interested him.

“No,” continued the Mraasil as they slid through the shadows, their body phasing with the dappled light across their torso. They raised one hand to the droplet of void in the center of the chamber. “The Gods of Naught.”

Cazlandt followed the pointed finger, and the sphere of energy compressed again, quivering against unseen forces. “The Gods of Naught? The Teroian? Beings of nothing that brought about the first spark in the space outside the realms?” He chuckled and looked back to the cold amber eyes of the Mraasil. “The Teroian are a myth, stories for old crones to frighten children to sleep.”

Bireal’s finger still pointed to the throbbing point of nothing in the center of the chamber. “You stand before a fraction of a myth.”

“Cazlandt,” Ranmi hissed. “Something is wrong here. Ask your boon and let’s leave.”

The archmage stepped between Ranmi and the Mraasil. “I have seen half of human history myself on Poas and have heard nothing of this.”

“Humans,” Bireal hissed and snapped their tail. “I thought you were one of them. Your kind opened the gate for the Gods of Naught to enter the mortal realms only to shatter Them and spread Them thin across the infinite worlds within the expanse between the Wheres.”

“You speak in nonsense, Mraasil. Perhaps, the daemon was right to say you are mad.”

Bireal laughed and faded into the shadows just as they had appeared.

“What’s it talking about?” Ranmi asked while his eyes searched for shifting shadows.

“An old hag’s tale, the Teroian, the nothing that first filled the vastness. Our minds can hardly imagine the paradox of something, an entity even, made of nothing. That nothing became something called the Teroian. The Teroian created the Primes, which created the Ascended, which created the Trees, which gave rise to the realms we all live in now.”

“That’s a lot of creating. How’s that a scary bedtime story?”

“The Teroian found a way into the mortal realms, creating a loop that would rip apart everything and return it to nothing. The language is much more flowery for a younger audience.”

“That could be scary. Kind of a big scale for a children’s story, though.”

“Hmm,” Cazlandt murmured. “Bireal, you believe this speck of void energy is the Teroian? Do you hide here in your husk of a rotten tree to protect nothing but some foreign denizen of the Lacuna Gap which leaked here from the Far Lands?”

“You believe you know much for one that has only just arrived,” the Mraasil hummed from the shadows.

“Another like this being assaulted us at the Red Tower,” Cazlandt said. His senses searched in vain for a hint of the Mraasil’s movement. “Thinking I would defeat it, I sent it to the Lacuna Gap. I realize now I may have sent it home. This one hovering here seems trapped in the center of the pulse of Urbus, at the very core of the realm. There is no way it is healthy for a realm to exist with a void in its literal heart.”

Bireal strode from the shadows again, now carrying a mossy skull the size of Ranmi’s head in one hand. Both men tensed. “You are a disappointment, Cazlandt,” they said. “Your reputation precedes you, of course. The archdruid told all Mraasil to watch for you.”

“Etharis has reason to be wary of me. To what end?”

Bireal shrugged and turned the skull over in their hands. “Just to observe you. You are a known menace, but Etharis seems to think you have some part to play. And no, I don’t believe that bit of darkness is the Teroian. I know it is. When the heretic Ters broke the oath to her world tree and her realm, she provided the power to cut the Gods of Naught from the realms, to slice Them so finely and hide the parts across the infinite expanse of Their own creation.”

Cazlandt shook his head and shrugged. “I have heard these old stories before, that the svarters of my realm live on the husk of the long-dead world tree. If all of that is true, it exists so far displaced by time and scale that it does not affect me.”

“I’m surprised to hear that. Humans called upon the Teroian in a hope to attain unthinkable power. I should think you would desire that as well, archmage.”

He shrugged. “Raw power means little without finesse and wisdom. I see you are clearly unfit to guard this realm, and I blame that.” He raised a finger to the bubble of darkness as it eased itself while the ley pulse flowed away, toward the Far Lands. “The motion of mana here collects all the terrible energy not meant for mortal realms and draws it to your world tree. The very structure of Urbus, with hazy edges bleeding directly to the expanse between the Wheres is unnatural. This must be an old malady that I assume led to the death of your tree. I wonder why Archdruid Etharis has not corrected matters yet and find myself wanting to take action where he did not.”

Bireal crushed the skull in their grip and tossed the fragments away. “Finally, to the point. You wish to fight.”

Cazlandt shook his head again and glanced at the void overhead. It shrank now, quivering and arcing with tendrils of energy. “That is not what I said. Action is not combat, though it can be. Aztuhla told me the daemon guard what you guard, but I again sense a lie or partial truth here. The daemon wish this ebb and flow of the ley pulse to continue, for without it, the Far Lands, the little sanctuary for them and the other twisted creatures there, does not exist. The pure mana from the tree keeps the Lacuna Gap at bay, but without the corruption in the center, it would be pushed away completely, and they would be destroyed. You assist daemon by your inaction against the taint in your very home, Bireal.”

“Cazlandt!” Ranmi hissed, but the archmage waved him away without a glance.

“You talk a lot,” Bireal said and stepped within a few feet of Cazlandt.

He shrugged again. “I am an old man and enjoy the sound of my own voice. It passes the time so I can set up my same, old tricks.”

The void heart eased its strain and though he stood too close to sense the flow of the ley pulse, Cazlandt hoped himself correct in the rhythm. He phased to blue and appeared with a hand stretched at the speck of nothing. The archmage pulled power from the darkness itself, and it outlined a bright red.

The point of nothing winked from existence.

“No!” Bireal screamed, and dry vines cracked from the cavern walls, slicing through where he had been, but Cazlandt already moved behind the Mraasil. He raised his arm again to repeat the spell and banish the guardian, but he felt his magics bleed away as if ley energy simply no longer existed in Urbus. He fell hard to his knees, his limbs too heavy to hold up.

“You do not understand what you have done!” Bireal gathered the front of Cazlandt’s robes in their fist and effortlessly lifted him until the archmage’s toes dangled inches from the ground.

Cazlandt winced at the force and movement. In all his centuries, he never experienced such a lack of power. He felt exhaustion beyond his body.

Ranmi screamed and slammed a shoulder into Bireal’s side, aiming to throw the other to the ground. The Mraasil barely budged. Bireal lashed out with a palm, shoving the huge swordsman away. They raised that hand to clasp slowly around Cazlandt’s throat and gently squeeze.

“Ignorant mage, you’ve damned this realm.”

Cazlandt gasped and flailed against the mounting pressure around his windpipe. He grabbed at Bireal’s hands, but the difference in strength lay beyond his fathoming.

“Muertsil will flood the realm with her mana, pushing back the Lacuna Gap. Without that fragment of void, she will push until her power is so thin that she dies.”

“Your tree… is already dead,” Cazlandt managed.

Bireal tossed him away like a doll where he landed in a heap, barely able to muster the strength to raise to an elbow. He grasped at the mana crystal on his hip, but they were mostly dust now. The archmage breathed in what he could, shattering those that remained, and found the strength to push to his feet. He stood on wobbly legs and wiped away the blood trickling from his mouth and right eye.

The Mraasil looked between the space where the void droplet had been, to Ranmi, and finally back to Cazlandt. “Humans are a scourge upon the realms. It will be an honor to end the life of one, especially one as notorious as you.” They strode toward Cazlandt and reached to again take him by the robes.

“I can revive it,” Cazlandt whispered, his throat straining with the effort of speech. “I can resurrect Muertsil.”

“You have no power left, mage. You sent away the only source of mana, of life, in Urbus. The entire realm will die now because of you.”

“I thought the tree and Mraasil that tends it were the realm’s life? Let me try.”

Bireal screamed again and shoved Cazlandt away. “With what power?” they hissed.

The archmage raised an arm to Ranmi the Blackwish. “My companion is flush with the power of the Gap.” Cazlandt staggered and dropped a palm to his knee. The mana pulled from his last remaining crystal ran thin.

Bireal scoffed and turned away.

Taking that as permission, or at least a declaration of non-interference, Cazlandt limped to Ranmi. The swordsman met him halfway and grabbed the archmage’s forearms as he fell forward.

“I thought you needed the magic in me to bring back your friend?” Ranmi asked in a whisper.

“Plans change. I—” he stopped when he noticed the leather pouch at Ranmi’s hip and felt the warm breath of magic flowing from it. “You have the other crystal I left at the bridge.”

“I thought I put that in my pack,“ he said, tugged the pouch away, and handed it to the archmage. Cazlandt clutched the old leather and pulled in the solidified ley energy of the crystal, feeling the minor burst of strength press through him. “Bireal, I need you,” he said and turned back to the center of the heart chamber. “Think of Muertsil as she was at her peak, before the edges of Urbus eroded to the nothing beyond. Remember your realm in its glory.”

Bireal stepped from the shadow again. “You think the power in one little sword wielder is enough to bring a world tree back to glory?”

Cazlandt shook his head and the beads in his beard jingled. “No, but it may be enough to pull the tree back over that final threshold. She is dead, but only just. With your diligent care, Urbus may one day again be as it was before the daemon tickled at its fringes.”

Bireal crooked a finger under Cazlandt’s chin and lifted his head to meet their amber gaze. “Do you know the power of a Mraasil, little one? Especially one in their own tree’s heart chamber?”

Cazlandt nodded weakly. “This is where your power as guardian is strongest. You pull from not only the strength of your own realm, but also all the realms in the chain linked by the Trees.”

Bireal’s lips twitched into a sneer. “Only Archdruid Etharis can channel in that way. No, I refer to the power of eviction, to cast anyone from my realm. I don’t have to send you somewhere pleasant, or all of you to the same place.”

The archmage took two deep breaths as exhaustion settled deeper into his bones. “The ley pulse is dry. There is no mana in Urbus. The realm will crumble into the Gap within a generation. If you wish, evict me now. Else, let me try to save your tree and your world.”

Bireal growled and flicked their finger from Cazlandt’s chin. “You’ve already doomed my world, mage. What more harm can you do?”

It is too easy, Cazlandt thought. The Mraasil should want my head, not to go along with my plan that I myself am so unsure of.

Cazlandt put a palm on Ranmi’s bare, black chest and felt the core of mana surge just beneath his flesh. It had no place in a mortal vessel but would be spent in the casting. “Think of nothing but your tree,” Cazlandt said and again pulled at the last mana crystal to fuel his waning strength. I know I am to die soon, before Alishia is born. Perhaps, in some last attempt to save an entire realm. Doing one final benevolent deed, as I have dedicated my entire life.

The Necromancer of Urbus, he thought. I aim to pull the tree and thereby an entire realm from the brink. I become the Necromancer I sought in this cursed world.

The archmage pulled at the threads that contained the energy within Ranmi’s form, bidding it release into him. He reached his other hand up to Bireal’s arm.

What now?, Cazlandt asked himself and suppressed a chuckle. Reviving an entire realm with untested magic. No one can ever suggest against my title as the greatest archmage.

He could stand there forever, delaying what might be the final spell cast in his long life, but he was never the sentimental sort. Without moving his hands, he drew once more from the pouch, sensing several of the crystals break to dust as he took the last shred of power from them.

The last mana of Urbus flowed from Ranmi’s chest and across Cazlandt’s hand, up his arm, where it disappeared under his robes. Careful to not let it enter him, he pushed it forward, down the other arm, and to Bireal. The Mraasil gasped as the cold mana flowed over their skin and down to their feet, disappearing into the bare roots below. With the connection between source and target created and solid, Cazlandt gingerly increased the flow.

Remember, he silently urged Bireal. Allow my ability to revive this world. Revive it that I might use its power as I need it for my original needs.

The flesh of Ranmi’s hands and feet faded from black to deep, forest green. Cazlandt pulled the power faster, sensing the needs of the spell. It wanted more, needed to reach a base threshold to have any chance for success.

Cazlandt’s amulet glinted bronze in the shape of two crescent moons. It twitched and grabbed at the ley energy coursing by it, aching to draw the mana into itself. The archmage grunted and glared down at it. It would draw energy and disrupt his spell.

“My amulet,” he gasped. “Tear it from me.”

Bireal did so without question or hesitation, casting it to the ground.

Without warning, like a trickle of a dam that suddenly fails, the mana flooded from Ranmi and slammed into Cazlandt. The archmage screamed and pushed the energy through him and onto the Mraasil as quickly as he could, but it proved too much. It threatened to penetrate his core. The mana found the wound where the void tendril pierced him in the Red Tower and burrowed into his being.

Cazlandt fell into the darkness again, surrounded by points of lesser nothing that seemed bright by comparison.

You said this would work, said Bireal.

“I was never fully confident,” he pleaded.

Magic is nothing but a test of confidence, said a voice from his distant past he could not place.

Fight it, old man, said the young man with emerald eyes.

“Lone?”

You will die here and drag an entire realm with you. You deserve so much worse. Fight through this so I might kill you myself, like you did me.

The voice sounded familiar, but it had been so long.

This is the extent of your power? No wonder I was chosen to lead Dracon.

His lip quivered with annoyance at hearing his son’s scathing tone.

Stop trying and do it!

Cazlandt knew that voice better than most and growled at the command of the Chronicler.

A single point of light appeared before him, and slowly, he saw it linked to a million others.

Ranmi.

Cazlandt realized his error. The ley pulse was the natural order of Urbus, not some terrible result from the void in its heart. He felt the ley energy buried deep at the end of each strand, the near-infinite well of power represented in this network. Denizens of the most distant lands came inward so long ago to spread conduits of power across the ring of this world. He could not understand the reason in this moment but saw the result.

The Walker’s Blades. Ranmi is connected to every one of them, and each holds the power it gathered from every beat of the world’s heart.

“I will succeed,” he said through teeth that chattered with the power surging within and around him. “I am the first and greatest archmage. Nothing is beyond my ability!”

Cazlandt grasped at those lines of energy from Ranmi and tied them to his spell, allowing the energy stored in the swords for dozens or hundreds of years to slam through him and into the Mraasil.

Ranmi, now a healthy, pale green, collapsed, and Bireal fell a second later. Cazlandt’s lungs heaved at the suddenly thin air and shattered the few remaining mana crystal as he dropped to a knee. Sweat dripped from his nose, and his hair hung in clumps around his face. He raised his head as Fish landed a few feet before him.

“Good,” said the cat as Cazlandt again fell to the blackness.

Chapter Fifteen

A New Home

Cazlandt’s dreams seemed indistinct but left him with a vague feeling of sadness and loss. He opened his emerald eyes to the tangle of old, dry vines around him. Ranmi leaned back against them with a vacant stare, idly petting Fish. He could not see the Mraasil anywhere. The ley energy felt weak but present and pure. Cazlandt pulled a little to fuel himself for fear that too much would push the tree back over the edge.

“How long have I been out?” he asked the swordsman.

Ranmi did not look up from the cat as he spoke quietly. “Does it look like I can tell time in here? I thought you didn’t want to get involved with the affairs of the world. You was just going to learn what you wanted and get out.”

“Plans change.” Cazlandt cast his eye across the dim gloom of the heart chamber and frowned. “Where is Bireal?”

Ranmi shrugged. “They were leaving when I woke, but I didn’t ask where they were going.”

“Leaving? So, there is a passage from this chamber? And you stayed with me?” Cazlandt grinned weakly despite himself.

“What else do I have? I’m a wandering swordsman with no sword. I’ve no way off this island, and if I did, they’ll hunt me down for what I did back in town.”

Cazlandt used the vines to help him stand and moved closer to the big man. “Your color looks better.”

“Yeah.”

“Ranmi, I… I cannot resurrect Kyo.”

The swordsman stopped petting the cat and wiped his nose with his forearm. “I understand. You used the power to save the whole world.”

“No, that is not it.” Cazlandt squatted and quickly sat when his ankle complained from that position. “True Resurrection, as the swamp hag called it, is a lie. It restores the body and mind, but the soul…” He paused, disliking using that term. “The very essence of the person is lost. When Muertsil is strong enough, which may take decades based on the mana requirements of the spell, I might pull on it to recreate Kyo’s body, infusing it with your memories of him, but Kyo is gone, moved on to the next realm.”

Ranmi said nothing, and after a long moment, picked up Fish and held the cat close to his chest. “But you could bring Kyo back.”

“Only a mortal frame with your memories.”

“What’s the difference?”

Cazlandt bit his lip, unsure of of how to respond. In Poas, those in the Theocracy of Acrus put such stress into one’s soul, the nonphysical qualities that define a person in the reflection of the Ascended.

Drivel.

Yet after so long hearing those words, some of it resonated within the archmage. He knew his Ley Slip teleportation destroyed and rebuilt his body, very much killing him and creating another that maintained his consciousness. The fervent of Acrus would scream he long ago destroyed the body the Ascended granted him and wandered the realms as a soulless golem for centuries.

“Perhaps, there is no difference,” Cazlandt said and reached a finger to scratch Fish between the ears. “If you believe Kyo would want to exist knowing what I have said, I will do this for you. I owe you nothing less. Mayhap, there is another vessel to gather and the store the ley energy needed for the work to accomplish it sooner.”

“No,” Ranmi’s words sounded barely audible as he hugged Fish tighter. “Kyo is gone. As close as we were, I won’t have some incomplete copy of him at my side. I don’t want to think about how painful that would be.”

Cazlandt sat back with a thoughtful hum. “That sounds settled then. Where will you go from here? I can take you to the outer ring of Urbus to the place of your choosing. The mana flow is steady now, making teleportation possible.”

“It doesn’t matter. I’m not safe anywhere here. They’ll find me, eventually.”

“You have no other family?”

Ranmi shook his head. “It’s just me and Foster.”

“Fish,” Cazlandt corrected.

“What?”

Cazlandt touched two fingers to Ranmi’s forehead and cast a spell of understanding. He felt the magic push deep into the swordsman’s mind. “Tell him your name.”

The gray-winged cat looked up to Ranmi. “Fish,” he purred.

Ranmi gasped and squeezed the cat. “You can talk!”

“He does not say much, but he seems clear on his name.”

Ranmi shook with deep sobs.

Cazlandt sighed and awkwardly patted the man on the shoulder. “You have nothing left for you in Urbus. What if…” he frowned at the offer he was about to make. “What if I took you with me? Or rather, to another realm where you might live in peace?”

Ranmi looked up with eyes puffy and red. “You could do that?”

“I am the first archmage. Little is outside of my power. I have traveled the realms for ages and lived in some for years. There are even a few where I have set up long-term domiciles.”

Ranmi smiled with eyes streaming tears and his nose running with clear mucus. “Can Fost— Fish— come too?”

“Fish!”

“Of course. We should go before Bireal returns.” Cazlandt stood and again breathed in the fresh mana. Having been starved of it for days, alternating forcing off his cultivation and deliberately closing himself off from all mana, even this minor trickle from the world tree was a welcome, mild breeze. He offered a hand down to the swordsman.

Cazlandt pulled gently at the ley energy radiating from the tree’s core, tender not to overstress it in its weakened state. Luckily, after using the spell so many thousands of times, he was efficient with its casting. As he stepped beside Ranmi, the air before them shimmered and fell inward, into a deep tunnel through the world. “This will feel odd. Hold tight to Fish,” he said.

The big man hesitated before the portal for just a moment before taking a deep breath and stepping through. His body dissolved as he crossed the threshold. Cazlandt gave one more look around the heart chamber of Muertsil, bent to take up his amulet from where Bireal threw it, and followed Ranmi.

* * *

Cazlandt stepped onto the springy grass and looked down at Ranmi shivering and hugging his knees. Fish lay a few paces away, violently washing himself.

Mana flooded Cazlandt’s senses as he let it saturate him, filling his every crevice and permeating every cell of his being. He spun a slow circle, taking in the beauty of the soft, pink sky dotted with puffs of white clouds. The ground that sloped away in every direction led to a forest one way and a small village by the wide sea the other. A simple, circular stone cottage with a thatch roof and real glass windows stood in the center of the small clearing on the hilltop.

“Wolvene,” Cazlandt said with a deep breath. “Welcome to your new home, Ranmi the Blackwish and Fish. This was one of my favorites. Come, step inside.”

The archmage strode to the simple wooden door of the cottage and placed a palm on the surface. Locks, both physical and magical, clicked as they undid themselves and the door easily pushed inward. Inside, nothing changed from his last visit here, not a speck of dust or a thing out of place. A stone hearth took up the center of the cottage’s interior, a low bed to the left, sitting and entertaining space to right, and the kitchen in the space behind the hearth. Cazlandt grinned at the bed, remembering having come to this place just to sleep in the peace of the gentle hills.

Ranmi ducked his head to come through behind him. “It reminds me of what Kyo and I shared before heading out on our turns.” He grinned, but sadness lingered in his eyes. Fish trotted past him and jumped onto a padded chair.

“I leave this place to you, Ranmi. Behind the house, you will find the door to the cellar. There should be enough food stockpiled there to last you a while. The people of the village, the Piscinath, were nice enough, though they will look odd to you with their blue skin. You will find a stash of their currency beside the bed in a box that refills itself slowly. It was a simple enough enchantment, since they barter in iron here.”

“The bed? I thought you didn’t sleep?”

“I used to sleep for pleasure. It helps to pass the time.”

Ranmi turned to Cazlandt with an awkward look, as if he had a question he could not find the nerve to ask.

“What?” the archmage asked.

“I… Thank you, Cazlandt. I mean, I wouldn’t have needed your help to escape my home if not for you. Even so, thank you.”

Cazlandt nodded with a grunt. “I should warn anyone who comes too near to me that things rarely end well. I am sorry you lost your swords.”

“And your hat.”

Cazlandt touched his bare head and frowned. “I have another at home.”

“Home… You’re probably going to be leaving right away to go back, yeah? You can’t still be thinking of resurrecting your friend, not after what you told me about what really happens.”

Cazlandt licked his dry lips. “I will stay with you a few days. Realm Striding from Urbus took a lot from me. Seven hells, everything about your realm took a lot from me. I need to rest.”

“And about resurrecting your friend?”

Cazlandt shook his head. “The hag said the spell required the mana of Urbus. Unless I return there with a vessel in which to collect it after years of allowing the tree to heal, I have nothing to power the spell when I return home.”

“Good,” Ranmi grinned and stepped to scratch Fish between the ears.

* * *

Cazlandt lay in the soft grass, watching the stars slowly slide across the night sky. Ranmi’s gentle snores from the open windows were the only sound in the still air. The lights from the village were long extinguished, bathing the world in a moonless dark, illuminated only by those stars.

Despite a life of action and intent, Cazlandt finally understood the desire to rest, shut out everything, and bring stillness to the mind. He touched the spot above his heart where the void pierced it, remembering those words it put in his mind. Let go, rest.

Wolvene always had been one of his favorites among all the realms he visited over the many long years for exactly that. A silence and stillness permeated the world. The native people lived peaceful lives, not spreading too wide, staying to coasts, and living half their time under the calm waters. Even the rain fell quietly in Wolvene, pattering gently on the roof rather than slamming against the windows and whipping through the trees as it might elsewhere.

He lay there until the sky lightened with the coming dawn. With no other contest, he clearly heard Ranmi stir and the murmurs of a one-sided conversation between him and the cat. The magic of understanding language was unique to everyone, but Cazlandt only ever heard three single words from Fish. Maybe, Ranmi understood more. Maybe, he just enjoyed talking to his cat.

Soon Cazlandt heard the back door brush against the grass, and Ranmi sat beside him. “Have you been out here all night?”

Cazlandt nodded and pushed up to his elbows to look down at the forest below. “Try as I might to relax, my mind still churns along like an unstoppable engine. I was thinking about what we did in the last moments in Urbus.”

“Bringing the tree back to life?”

“Yes, specifically, I mean how I cast a True Resurrection. The spell would have failed and taken us down with it had you not been connected to the Walker’s Blades and their store of energy.”

Ranmi frowned. “You can’t still be thinking about bringing your friend back, right?”

“Lavin. The swamp hag said I needed the mana of Urbus, but I wonder if it just takes a glut of power.”

Ranmi’s brows pinched together.

Cazlandt scratched his head. “Think of it like she said to use gin, but maybe, it just takes a lot of any type of alcohol to get the job done,” he explained.

Whether he truly understood or just placated Cazlandt, the swordsman nodded. “But, you said the magic doesn’t bring back a person’s soul. I guess it was fine with the tree since I don’t think trees have souls, but if you go home and bring Lavin back from the dead, he’ll be… wrong.”

Cazlandt gazed at the rising sun in the blue sky and heaved a sigh. “We are not in Wolvene to debate ethics, my friend. My mana cultivation sates my hunger again, but not requiring food does not mean I cannot enjoy it. I would not mind seeing what I left in the cellar. After breakfast, we should go to the village and find a proper healer to set your broken arm. If it must needs be rebroken to set properly, accept my apologies in advance.”

* * *

The cellar stairs descended fifteen feet to a deep grotto of shelves stacked tight with goods lit by small globes embedded in the ceiling.

“I enchanted the walls long ago to keep the food from spoiling,” the archmage explained.

Fish trotted ahead of them. “Don’t go too far or you’ll get locked down here!” Ranmi called after the cat.

Ranmi insisted Cazlandt not help in the kitchen, not that the archmage offered. The archmage sat on a deep couch, reading from the middle of a book. He vaguely remembered reading it long ago, sitting in that same place, some offensively overembellished work of adventuring fiction.

Cazlandt glanced up to Fish perched on the mantle ringing the hearth in the center of the cottage. When the cat noticed the attention, he glanced down at the fist-sized stone by his feet. The archmage recalled its story, when he encountered the Mraasil Etharis and Ruvaal along with the Chronicler here in Wolvene. He grinned at the memory as the cat touched the stone with a little, gray front paw.

“What are you doing?” he asked Fish. He glared at the cat, who slowly lowered his paw, and went back to the book.

“Down,” said the cat and knocked the heavy stone to the wood plank floor.

Ranmi rushed in, hands covered with flour. “What was that?”

“Your cat.” Cazlandt rolled his eyes and continued to read.

Breakfast featured oddly colored vegetables and spice blends that Cazlandt did not remember stocking in the cellar. He made a note to check the integrity of the enchantments keeping the food fresh before leaving the realm. They asked Fish to stay behind while they walked to the village. The cat needed little encouragement to sprawl out on the wide mattress stacked with soft-knit blankets with the late morning sun streaming through from the open window.

With his eyes locked on the clear, blue skies, Ranmi kept tripping over small rocks in the path. “It feels so open here,” he commented. “It looks like the sky goes up forever.”

“It essentially does, though the air eventually becomes too thin and cold. The sky is blue in the morning and pink in the evening. Wolvene is a very different realm than you are used to. For one, it is a spherical world, where Urbus is flat. If not for the haze of Urbus, you could stand at the edge of the outer sea and see straight to the Far Lands. Wolvene also has ley lines, as does every other realm, save Urbus. I suppose that second fact does not matter, as you are not an archmage able to feel the flow of mana.”

“Alas, I am not an all-powerful archmage such as yourself, mighty Cazlandt.” Ranmi heaved a deep sigh.

“I…” Cazlandt’s shoulders fell and his pace slowed. “I am unmatched as an archmage but am completely reliant on the stream of mana. As the power ebbed in Urbus, I was left with only my wit as defense.”

“So, you’re saying you’re not an all-powerful archmage?” Ranmi gasped and clutched at his chest.

Cazlandt nodded slowly. “If nothing else, my time with you in Urbus highlighted that truth.”

Ranmi’s sly grin turned into a chuckle before he snorted and laughed. “Yeah, I could have told you that. How many times did I drag your ass out of trouble?”

Cazlandt pursed his lips and continued forward.

A small sign announced their entrance to Jalnas Dorp. The short, severely lean, blue-skinned people busied themselves with their morning tasks and paid little mind to the human in bright, yellow robes and pale-green man a full head taller walking among them. Some would look up and touch a webbed finger to their temple in greeting, and Cazlandt would reply in kind. After a few times, Ranmi saw the custom and repeated it as well.

They paused at a street vendor among the simple straw huts along the waterfront. Cazlandt traded a few bits of iron for two eels on sticks, a delicacy of the town. Ranmi turned up his nose at it but tried the smallest possible bite after seeing the archmage eating. They turned to the open ocean before them.

“So much water,” Ranmi said and raised an arm. “What’s that out there?”

Cazlandt squinted at the small fishing vessels floating near the horizon across the calm sea.

“Boats. That is another difference from Urbus. The Piscinath live more than half their time on or under the water, hence their gills and webbed hands. There are whole grand cities below the gentle waves. I recommend you develop a taste for seafood.”

“Is…” Ranmi held the stick out at arm’s length. “Is that what this is?” He looked a little greener. “No one eats from the sea back home. The creatures pulled from it are twisted and full of poison.”

“This is your home now.” He pushed Ranmi’s hand and the stick back closer to the man’s face.

* * *

Cazlandt found a mender with the skills to set Ranmi’s arm properly but unfortunately had to rebreak it to do the work correctly. She wrapped the big man’s forearm with seaweed and a paste that hardened within moments.

The next few days fell into routine as Cazlandt carefully tested his body for signs of scarring, both physical and magical. He had every reason to worry, between the lack of cultivation and the corrupted mana he took in. Ranmi made meals and, despite Cazlandt’s protests, always made more than enough for them both and Fish. The swordsman became comfortable visiting the village alone and left for hours at a time, leaving Cazlandt to read, draw up his plans for a return to Poas, or sit and pet Fish.

Six days of being idle, and Cazlandt was ready to be done with it. Ranmi went out, this time with Fish, on either a walk or trip to Jalnas. Cazlandt stepped onto the soft grass behind the cottage and took a last look at the rolling hills of forests below. He drew from the nexus of ley lines under his feet, and the air before him wavered as a dark mist collected at the edges of his Realm Stride portal. The spell only took a moment to stabilize, and he stepped forward.

An iron grip at the back of his collar pulled him away, spinning him as he looked up to face Ranmi wearing a loose tunic and trousers the same color as the evening sky.

“Were you really leaving without saying goodbye?” said Ranmi.

“I have never been one for lengthy farewells.”

“Yeah, well…” Ranmi leaned back and crossed his arms. “You took some getting used to, Cazlandt. A lot of getting used to, but I like you a lot more than when we first met.”

“I will accept that as a compliment that I am a complex individual.”

“More that I think you finally accepted yourself for the ass you are,” Ranmi said with a grin.

Cazlandt shrugged and nodded. He glanced back and frowned at the wasted mana as his spell fizzled and the portal collapsed.

Ranmi scratched at his beard. “Promise me you won’t try to resurrect Lavin. You seem to like to push yourself, but please, think of what your friend would want.”

“You will have a good life here, Ranmi. The people are accepting and kind, as you see. If you stay on this hill with Fish, no one will bother you. I have a sense that is what you wish for most.”

“But you—”

“The cat seems suited for this place as well. I had not considered the irony to bring a cat with a preferred name of Fish to a realm populated by fish people.”

“Cazlandt! Stop avoiding it. Tell me you won’t resurrect Lavin.”

“Ranmi, we shared a few adventures in your home realm. A void beast attacked us in the Red Tower. The Veil Walkers nearly discovered us. We spoke with a swamp hag, killed a daemon snake, daughter of the legendary Exalted, met the realm’s Mraasil, and revived the world tree. Even by my standards, that is a healthy list of accomplishments for a few days. But,” he stepped close to the swordsman and looked up at him with eyes narrowed. “That does not give you a right to give me commands, nor ultimatums. You have made yourself known on this issue and must now trust that I will do what I feel is best.”

Ranmi took a step back and scowled. “This from the man that rushes headlong into all the dangers I specifically point out. Traveling with you was nothing but an absolute menace, Cazlandt. I gave up my life because you entered it. I could have let you go into the Red Tower alone and gone on my way, but I saved your life more than once from your own stupid decisions. So, no, I do have a right to tell you what to do with the rest of it.”

“I—” Cazlandt wanted to yell but checked his tone and bit his cheek. “I never asked you to do any of that, but you threw yourself after me and into obvious danger. You are a good man, Ranmi the Blackwish, a better friend than what a miserable old man like myself deserves.”

“I think it goes without saying that, even though you didn’t invite me to come along to Poas, I wouldn’t have gone with you if you did. Thanks again for getting me out of the mess in Urbus, but… we’re just going in circles here.”

“I think that this is farewell.” Cazlandt pulled at the ley lines to repeat his spell, and the air behind him wavered with motes of darkness that expanded into a nonexistent dimension.

“Goodbye Cazlandt.” Ranmi sounded melancholy but did not raise a hand to wave as Cazlandt stepped backward into his Realm Stride.

As he passed the boundaries of his portal, the archmage’s vision became a fractal of infinite views. Rather than appearing back on the landing of the eastern residence’s ninth floor in Castle Dracon, he stepped onto the solid wood planks of the balcony overlooking an endless sea of books, scrolls, and artifacts. Instead of a jumbled maze, the shelves stood in orderly rows, implying he had company in The Stacks.

“Chronicler!” he shouted and moved to put his hands on the balcony’s railing. “Alishia! I know you are here!”

Movement below caught his eye, the hint of a dress’s hem sliding behind the shelves. He heard a slippered foot behind him, and he spun to face a young, dark-skinned woman wearing a simple blue dress. Her dark-blue eyes studied Cazlandt with an intensity that made him uncomfortable.

“We really mustn’t keep meeting like this, Cazlandt,” she said and turned to set the stack of books in her hands on the desk. “How was Urbus?”

Cazlandt suppressed his surprise, but felt his jaw tighten. “Lone was born. He is about a year old now,” he said quietly.

The Chronicler turned back to him with a grin. “He’s a cute baby, isn’t he? Those fat little cheeks? So well behaved, too.”

“I see much of his mother in his features. His jaw, the shape of his ears. I see only his father in the boy’s emerald eyes.”

“Such is the mark of a powerful archmage, so say some. This is nice banter, but get to your point, old man.”

Cazlandt looked down at his hands, suddenly seeing his age in the wrinkles and spots, how they shook so slightly. “I know you are born after Lone, and I know I die before then. Knowing this, why can my death not be avoided?”

Alishia leaned back against the desk with a laugh. “You’re suddenly feeling the sting of mortality and fearing what comes next. How many have you sent to their ends, either through your direct hand or by inaction? But, when it’s your turn, you’re a scared child.”

“I still have so much to accomplish.”

“Many do when they die. Fine. Cazlandt, my task is one of collecting knowledge and organizing it here into The Stacks. I collect this from all realms and all times. That ability was awakened within me when I first met you. While I can change events, I try my best not to, and there are some events that, try as we have, cannot be changed. The Venatus, the Deluge, the Mists, the Undying Font, the list goes on. But, another that absolutely must happen is your death, even in the very particular way that it happens.”

“At least, give me a clue. Tell me how long I have, that I may get my affairs in order.”

Alishia shook her head, spilling a lock of auburn and black hair from her simple braid. “Carry on exactly as you would and try not to look constantly over your shoulder. Live every day like it’s your last, but that’s advice to give anyone. Elphame will come for everyone born of mortal blood. Don’t live in fear of something you can’t do anything about. No matter what you think you can try to do to stop it, it will happen exactly as it must.”

Cazlandt crossed his arms and leaned back against the railing. “You are not the same, scared girl you were when you first met me.”

“Ha! I should hope not.”

Cazlandt pushed from the railing with a sigh. “I suppose I am proud of you, great-granddaughter. Proud of the woman you have become. Proud that my seed has produced a being of such importance.”

Alishia smiled as she stepped toward him and raised a hand to the old archmage’s cheek. “Don’t give yourself all the credit. Now, weren’t you going to go do something?” Her smile faded as a sadness crept into the edges of her dark-blue eyes. She shook her head and strode past him to the iron, spiral staircase leading to the ground level of The Stacks.

Cazlandt watched the blue fabric of the Chronicler’s dress disappear around the turn of the stairs. He clenched his fist. No matter what cosmic being the Chronicler was, she was still his great-granddaughter, and she dared to tell him what to do. He knew Ranmi only a scant few days, and he told Cazlandt, the first archmage, what to do. His own son and his grandson’s wife pushed him around the castle, his castle.

No more. No one would give orders to the first archmage.

He crossed the plank floor of the balcony to the steel-banded door. Opening it, he counted out exactly fifty paces down the hallway lit by torches and the next door leading into Castle Dracon.

Chapter Sixteen

Rise of Amer

Cazlandt stepped onto the familiar ninth floor landing of the eastern residence tower. He unlocked the door with the flick of his wrist and entered the short hallway beyond. The largest room straight ahead held his workshop and study, as well as one of the greatest artifacts from his past. A rectangular rug covered most of the room’s center, and Cazlandt quickly rolled that up and tossed it aside. Putting a hand on a particular place in the seamless stone floor, he channeled from the familiar ley lines of Poas and pushed a spell into the stone. His fingers slipped through the solid surface, and he grasped the length of wood below it to pull free the intricate sword sheath made of red and orange wood gathered from more than one realm. Cazlandt thought back to the Red Tower and the image of an adult Lone that flashed by as he fought the void entity there. He saw Lone wielding the sword contained in this sheath, a length of enchanted metal with the power meant to unite a nation. The sword meant nothing. Cazlandt traced a finger along the sunburst pattern that housed the Ibaerite, the gem of coalesced energy from the Lacuna Gap, the gem containing near-infinite power.

Cazlandt sat back on his heels with a heavy sigh. His finger traced the old, dark stains on the scabbard’s wood, Lavin’s blood.

“I will be quick, old friend. I will see you soon.” He stood and felt the weight of the amulet around his neck. It would interfere with the work as it did in Urbus. He pulled it over his head. How much time has passed here in Poas while I was in Urbus for days? Is the boy still out installing his obelisks? Without thinking long on it, Cazlandt returned to the stairwell and descended, passing the levels for his son and granddaughter, to push into his grandson’s suite. He entered Daelin’s bedroom without knocking and rushed to the young man sleeping beside his wife.

“Daelin!”

The prince’s emerald eyes shot open, and his wife’s body shimmered with an aegis he quickly erected. Daelin blinked at Cazlandt a moment before recognition pushed away the webs of sleep. “Grandsire?” Daelin sat up and dispelled the aegis. Aaislin pushed from the other side of the bed and pulled a heavy robe tight around her slender shoulders. “Where have you been? What do you want at this hour?”

Cazlandt looked at the amulet in his hand, holding it for a last moment of reluctance. “Take this, my boy.” He pushed the trinket into Daelin’s hand.

“Your amulet?” Daelin held it up to the moons’ light coming through the window. “What is this about?”

“Take it, Daelin. Use it only when there is no other option. Guard it well. Your father will want to take it from you, but do not allow him to have it. Your sister, either. I give this to you.” He put one hand on Daelin’s head before taking a step back. “Give Lone my love.” In his mind, he traced a path along the ley lines south. Through Eplear, past Terswood, over the Alish Ocean, to Iecil. He cut east across a network of weak ley lines until he drew near enough. Without another word of farewell, Cazlandt pushed himself forward, and his ears popped as his vision blurred to the ruins of a long-dead city.

Three moons hung in the sky, illuminating the creeping vines and moss that ever tried to reclaim the structures abandoned centuries ago. What once served as a bustling apothecary now had an old oak growing through the roof. That rubble in the tall grass used to be the town hall. Cazlandt sighed into the warm night. By his directive over seven centuries ago, his army razed this city. Alishia had a point. How many with their own hopes and goals died by his hand?

“Why do I regret your death but not the other thousands slain here?” he asked into the stillness of the ruins. Cazlandt moved without a thought toward the western end of the ruins, weaving between the mounds of mass graves, to the natural hillock where he last confronted the Warlord Lavin. As he climbed that hill, he pulled on threads of Iecil’s ley lines, ripping them apart so they may drain fully into him. He raised the Shadow Reaver before him and touched the dark spots of blood, pushing that mana into them. The blood drew from the wood, stretching and forming into a single globule no larger than a few drops’ worth.

Cazlandt thought of his old friend, remembering his amiable smile and… he could not remember what color Lavin’s eyes were. Blue? It did not matter. The archmage shook his head. Eye color mattered little when reversing death, when bringing oneself above the Ascended.

“Oisin Lavin, hear me from beyond the veil.” Cazlandt could feel the energy of the ley lines wane as it surged in and through him. “Return as I remember you, before the corruption seeded by Mel’ic within the Ibaerite drained the goodness from you.”

Magic swirled around him, pulsing and tugging at his robes. Cazlandt saw Bireal's sunken amber eyes and heard their words, You’ve already doomed my world, mage. What more harm can you do?

No price could be placed on restoring Lavin, perfecting that magic to defeat that ultimate end that all mortals must face. Perhaps, Lavin himself did not matter. Cazlandt did this all to know that it could be done.

The ley energy roared through him but was not enough. At this rate, he would drain the entire ley network of Iecil and shatter it within minutes. A trifle of a cost for success, but he sensed he would still fall short of what the spell needed. The archmage touched the sunburst pattern on the Shadow Reaver and pulled from the Ibaerite within, supplementing his work with that infinite supply.

You know not what you attempt, a voice breathed in his right ear, clearly audible over the winds that ripped at his hair and beard. Death is a gift, not a curse.

Through the swirling, purple and aqua energies, Cazlandt saw two glowing points of amber light. “Do it, Cazlandt. This is your grand destiny about to be fulfilled,” said a Mraasil in a deep and familiar voice. “You will become what you must and change this realm forever.”

The form of Oisin Lavin appeared before Cazlandt, hazy and faded at the edges, but exactly as the archmage remembered him. He saw the wide frame of a warrior with the amiable smile and round belly of one decades retired from that life of action.

“It works!” Cazlandt exclaimed and pulled harder at the dwindling magics around him, pulled more from the Ibaerite and the infinite well within that gem. “You will live again!” With a final push, the archmage expelled every filament of ley energy from the surrounding lines, pressing it forward, through the Shadow Reaver, and into the ghostly form of Lavin. He shimmered as his body gained depth and solidity. His blurred edges resolved to crisp lines.

As the last ounce of Iecil’s mana left him, Cazlandt could not stop the outward flow of power. He had nothing left, yet the spell wanted more, demanded more. It would not be left unsatisfied.

Not the spell, the Shadow Reaver. The Ibaerite, the gem hungered. A numbing cold spread from a point just above his heart and pushed out along the strands of mana.

Cazlandt frowned at the image of Lavin before him, looking a little similar to Ranmi the Blackwish, and hesitated, suddenly unsure. Lavin had once been fat, but not that fat. The eyes looked wrong, and the ears…

The archmage looked down with horror as the skin of his hands flaked away and flowed through the Shadow Reaver to Lavin’s form. His vision, his very consciousness, ripped apart and reformed in Lavin. He could do nothing but watch as the last of his body tore apart before him.

His hand reached to grasp the Shadow Reaver floating in space before him. The last energy of his resurrection spell pulled into the new body and swirled around him in a purple mist, raising him into the air until his toes floated inches from the ground.

“I am in you,” he said, or his new body said as it pressed away his own mind from having control. “Soon, I’ll be in everyone.” The archmage, or what he had become, laughed a choking, wet laugh. His vision pivoted to the Mraasil, now more distinct in red and blue robes. Cazlandt recognized that Mraasil and tried to call out as his the new body shoved his mind farther back. A spark of light ran up the form of the realm guardian as he disappeared into a dark crack in the air.

Cazlandt’s perception of the world narrowed to a pinpoint and winked out with a final moment of terror.

Necromancer of Urbus is set about 29 years prior to Realms of Terwood, with events closely tied together. One question I’ve gotten is “how’s the first chapter of Realms linked to the rest of the story?”. Well, now that you’ve read 50,000+ words about the archmage in yellow, here’s how he got the gem that powered his demise.

Realms of Terswood

1

Fate is a thing that you have to let happen sometimes.

Centuries ago

The walls danced a deep red in the torchlight from the veins of gemstone. This stream of mana crystal was among the richest ever found, and the orders were to strip the mine within another fourteen months. The operation owners in the north were strict with deadlines, but they paid exceptionally well.

Foreman Shen walked deeper into the cave, inspecting each digger as they used their skill to chip the crystal with as little waste as possible. He stopped to make a note on his ledger, pushing his thin-framed glasses higher up his sweating nose.

A noise came in at the edges of his hearing. A bell? A ringing bell meant something of great interest was found, or someone was injured. Replacing a miner was expensive and time-consuming, and this operation was already running behind schedule. A cave-in last month, a shipment of bad grain two before then. What now.

He walked faster down the twisting, roughly circular shaft. Stopping at a fork, he tilted his head, listening for the bell again before going left. As he walked, the bell became clearer. A dirty-faced, sloped-shouldered miner ran from around the next bend, almost colliding with Shen.

The miner grabbed his arm, “Foreman Shen! Sir, you have to see this! Quickly!” His eyes were wide with excitement.

Shen snapped his arm out of the man’s grasp and increased his pace to follow him, smoothing his shirt sleeve as he went. That was the excitement of a man that found something, not of a man that has three crewmates trapped under boulders ahead. Shen’s mood improved.

Turning another bend revealed a group of four miners huddled around a fifth. The man sitting crossed-legged in the middle held up a chunk of mana crystal about the size of his fist. He pointed to the small, dark blue blemish in the crystal that seemed to reflect shadows rather than light in the glow of the torches. The crowd echoed the foreman’s thoughts; what is it? In his thirty years of working precious gems, he had never come across such an odd-looking substance. Especially not in mana crystal. By its very nature, mana crystal kept itself pure of contaminants within its own structure.

Shen adjusted his glasses and looked closer, squinting through the murky red. His eyes could not quite focus on the dark spot.

“Cut it out,” he ordered, and at once, the worker dropped the chunk into this lap and began cutting with finer tools. “The rest of you, back to work!” He pulled a handkerchief from his back pocket and dabbed at the sweat on his brow and nose.

The miner worked quickly and carefully. He finally chipped the inclusion away from the mana crystal, revealing a dark blue chip of rock about one inch long. Once the mana crystal was cleared from around it, the gem easily pulled free. The worker held it up, offering it to his boss.

Shen reached to take the chip from that outstretched hand, but again there was something at the edge of hearing. Then a blast of wind and a deafening crack of air pressure. Shen squeezed his eyes shut as his glasses shattered and something hot and wet splashed against his face and hands. The world was just a dazzle of lights from the reflective crystals. Dust choked his lungs. All he could hear was a high whine and far away shouts.

A torch lay on the ground, illuminating the area. Shen coughed and wiped his eyes. Wincing, he carefully pulled a piece of glass from his lenses out of his cheek. He looked down at the mess that used to be the skilled miner. He was flattened to a mass of bone and gore-soaked clothes. The beautiful blue chip lay innocently within it.

Shen’s mind whirled. This will ruin the mine. This will ruin me. This gem will be worth a fortune. A man is dead. Did he have a family? What was his name? Will I have to pay out insurance? No one can know about this. Where are the other miners that were just here?

He turned to stagger back toward the surface, ears still ringing, lungs still choking. He would close this route of the mine and quietly call for help from Hrinbor. Someone there would surely know how to deal with this.

A fabulously dressed man in a full-length yellow robe with black trimmings passed him. The wizard, for he was surely a wizard, no one else would dress like that, bent to pick up the chip with a scrap of cloth. He folded the cloth carefully and pushed it into a leather pouch at his hip. Walking back past Shen, the wizard paused, nodding and touching the brim of his wide hat as if this were the most normal of events. Perhaps, for such a well-dressed wizard, it was. His eyes were impossibly green, almost glowing in the scattered torchlight and reflections of the crystals. His gray beard was braided tight and laced with gems and colored string, almost reaching his belt laden with many different sized pouches. He continued around the bend and out of Shen’s sight.

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Afterword

As I mentioned before the story, this is a prequel to the Chronicler’s Awakening series, meant to be read after Trials of Throk’tar. There are little easter eggs scattered through the book for those that have read the others. I had an extended ending that was straight up from Realms of Terswood, but I’ll save that for a Tales section in another book. I hope this gives some interest in checking my other work.

Also as I said at the start, this was written for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) 2021. The goal of NaNoWriMo is to produce a 50k word novel in one month. That’s about 150 pages, requiring 1,666 words average everyday. Of course, there will be a missed day, so I had to do a lot more than that most of the time to succeed. Picking Cazlandt as a main character helped in that I just came off him being the antagonist in Trials of Throk’tar. I placed this story in a new realm but then altered the magic system that I figured out as Cazlandt did, which didn’t help me at all.

They suggest to plan NaNoWriMo for about six weeks before the start of November. Create the world, flesh out the characters and plots points... I didn’t decide to do it until a week before. What I had planned would have only produced about 8k words. So much of Necromancer of Urbus was “pantsed”, developed and written on the fly as I put fingers to keys. I left dozens of notes like “go back and seed this bit of world building” and “what time of the day is it here?”. So many notes. But with this contest, you just write, barfing out words as fast as you can, rather than my usual process of editing at the same time or stopping to reread and find the perfect wordings or Googling ideas for what characters are wearing or names or remembering how to do the math of objects in freefall. Just go, go, go. And I did it! 4k words some days, 336 on the next. I planned for a “shadowy figure in bar points Caz to swamp hag” that turned into Ranmi. The Red Tower and references to the Teroian came out of nowhere but allows for some exposition into the cosmology that I can now rip out of Seeds of Farsil. Cazlandt is always such a terrible person, but no, not entirely. He does love his great-grandson. Cazlandt was meant to come to Urbus to learn the power of resurrection that would end in him choosing to perform it on Lavin, and readers of Realms of Terswood know how that worked out. It wasn’t until I was writing it that I realized Cazlandt was restoring an entire realm through his action, very much making him the Necromancer of the realm, gleefully adding another layer to the story’s title.

About The Author

Jamie M. Samland

I was born and raised in Michigan and still live there with my husband and cats. I’ve always enjoyed writing, but took a twenty year gap from it between high school and when I started in earnest with Realms of Terswood. Necromancer of Urbus was a fun exercise, but I am looking forward to finishing the Chronicler’s Awakening trilogy before I hit forty. Between the long histories established in both Poas and other realms, there are so many other tales I still want to tell.

Writing was a fun little hobby that became an obsession in the last few years. As terrible as COVID-19 has been for every other aspect of the world, it kept me inside and focused. Outside of writing and work as a programmer, I’m an actively training third degree black belt in taekwondo with a healthy addiction to video games and table top role playing.

Books By This Author

Realms of Terswood

Trials of Throk'tar