Chapter I

Prologue

“Mages get hurt. All the time. Before the year is over, the lot of you will have bled from more holes than I care to count. Which is why every mage worth the name should be able to heal anything short of death. Neglect my tutoring at your own peril.”

''Master Lacann, you ugly fossil. What good are healing spells when you take a dagger to the throat?''

Nearly a decade had passed since the old sorcerer's brutal death at the hand of two very angry Elves, but the teacher's frosty attitude, wanton cruelty and grim demeanor had produced some memorable quotes that Ryel enjoyed remembering in his idle moments. Granted, the man was a condescending, abusive, depraved xenophobe with more than a passing interest in the darker side of magic and alleged ties to the Nexus' criminal underground, but when he was right, the man was right. Had he not been such an irredeemable ass in life, Ryel might have said those words to his face more often.

Or at least once.

Either way, there was no point in feeling nostalgia for the dead. Certainly not when you were well on your merry way to joining them. Because Ryel was idly lying on wet slippery soil beneath a dark sky, surrounded by an even darker forest and hammered by torrential rain, doing a fine job of bleeding to death. His body was perfectly unresponsive; it felt bent and twisted in ways that were probably not natural. Or healthy, for that matter. It was hard to tell, and lifting his neck to assess the damage seemed far beyond his capabilities at the moment.

“ Ryel! Can you hear me? Where are you?" The disembodied voice came and went, dancing around the edges of his consciousness, colliding against his mental barriers, pulling away and insistently returning for more. "Ryel! I can barely sense your vital signs, what is happening?" She was clearly making an effort to keep her composure, but the panic in Rzsta’s voice was genuine enough to make him feel a pang of guilt. Rzsta. It had taken him an eternity to learn the lieutenant's name, even longer to pronounce it almost adequately. How many times had she patched him up? Kept him warm at night? Woken him from his troubled sleep?

''Well, at least my death will rid me of the nightmares. No more vivid dreams of burning to death over and over for me. If that is not a positive side to this situation, I cannot imagine what would be.''

"Ryel! Answer me, damn you!" Rzta's emotional burst struck his mind like searing hot iron, almost knocking him unconscious. How he could feel any other pain than the one emanating from his broken everything was quite impressive, he thought distractedly before coughing blood. Thankfully, the shock of the blast had severed the psychic link to her. Now he was truly alone. He could die undisturbed.

A mental image of a blue flame flickered in his mind, interrupting his thought.

''Fuck. Another vision.''

He braced himself for the pain, but was surprised to feel

“I just killed a God, Rzsta” He chuckled weakly “I think I got off easy” that was putting lightly. Striking down a being of pure energy had come with a nasty side effect. Namely, a cataclysm that had engulfed everything in flames as far as the eye could see. What remained of both armies had probably been calcinated by now. Escaping the Hallowed Lands had cost  Damn, but it hurt to speak.

Make him fall asleep and dream of this later.

“I honestly doubt it” the little elf frantically fussed about, from wound to wound, seemingly unable to grasp the magnitude of abuse Ryel had put his body through “Can you stand? Can you move at all?”

Standing up seemed as likely to him as suddenly sprouting wings and taking to the sky. He had been flirting with unconsciousness for what seemed like infinity, or at least long enough to lose track of space and time. The rainy forest around him had turned to a dark blur of sounds, wetness and fading lights. But he resolutely kept rejecting the fog that had settled over his mind, the seductive lure of closed eyelids, the cold and yet oh so appealing idea of rest. Not that he was scared of dying in his sleep, no. If anything, he felt peaceful enough to welcome the Shadow Duet.

Had anyone guaranteed him a quick death were he to close his eyes in this very moment would have prompted Ryel to do so without a second thought. After all, he had accomplished his duty, had he not?

No, what scared him was not being lucky enough to die while he slept, and waking up in a worse situation than the current one. What could be worse than being one foot in the grave, on a wet rock during a stormy night, in a remote forest prowling with nightmarish creatures whose preferred diet certainly included human flesh, with little hope of rescue, you ask? Well, being one foot in the grave, on a wet rock during a stormy night in a remote forest with nightmarish creatures whose preferred diet certainly included human flesh, with little hope of rescue, and powerlessly watching one such creature tear you limb from limb.

So Ryel stayed awake. And kept talking to Rzsta.

He tried to focus his hazy mind, mentally patting his body to find out the extend of the damage. He immediately wished he had not, since the result was not encouraging.

For starters, his magic circuits were either broken, had faded, or lay somewhere between the two states, which was still very bad. What trickles of power he still had were being devoted to numbing the pain, with mixed success. Still, with four broken limbs, twice as many broken ribs, a horrific collection of cuts, punctured organs and muscular bruises gushing with blood, it was a miracle that a low grade spell was keeping him alive at all. More miraculous, however, was that no Warg had smelled the blood trail he had no doubt left on his way here. The rain might be muddying the scent, and he barely had any magic for them to feed on, but he did not expect his luck to hold much longer. He had to hide, think, plan…

A sudden shiver ran down his neck, causing Ryel’s chest to jerk in response, and his brain to flare in agony. The shiver persisted, as intrusive as a bar of incandescent iron on butter. The delirious part of his brain chuckled at the absurdity of the image popping in his head. Why would anyone drive a bar of red hot iron through butter? The slightly more conscious part of him fought the torpor, bravely swam against the torrent of suicidal hilarity, and held on to one simple thought:

His Staff was calling to him.

That lancing pain meant that his staff was nearby, and yet too far for comfort, and the strain on the psychic link was taking its toll. But how had the staff found him here, of all places?

Ryel blinked furiously, clearing the rain from his blurry eyes, and peered into the dark sky until his eyes caught a red glow. And sure enough, there it was, a confused artifact hovering in circles over the trees, right above his position. Searching for him. Ryel tried calling for it in his mind, but he had grown so weak that the artifact was having trouble recognizing his ethereal signature. There was one way of releasing a strong enough burst of magical energy to bring the staff down to its master, but it would meant removing the pain suppressants. More importantly, such a discharge would most likely alert any magic-eaters for miles around, creatures that just so happened to also enjoy the taste of human meat, and Ryel was not too keen on dealing with that right now.

So the battered mage lay in the rain, weighing the pros and cons of bleeding to death rather than going through the excruciating amount of pain he was about to put himself under. He thought long, and hard. Then he gritted his teeth, took a deep an painful breath, and released all remaining magic in his brittle bones.

The pain struck him like a ton of bricks. He did not even have the strength to scream, and this time he was more than happy to embrace unconsciousness.

He woke up in alarm to find the staff floating above his heard, whirling nervously. The once powerful artifact had lost most of its shine, and the glorious fire that had shone beneath its carved runes now only displayed a dull red, like the last breath of fading embers. If anything, the staff held less life in it than Ryel, and yet it still followed its Axiom diligently: a wide runic circle had been drawn around Ryel’s sleeping form, and a small membrane of power had sprung from it. Nothing grand, and nothing close to what the staff would usually have done autonomously, but the circle was keeping the rain at bay, and if the excruciating pain in his legs was anything to go by, its restorative energy was bringing Ryel’s shattered legs back to life. Of course, the staff had none of the subtlety of a master healer, and the mending was nothing if not brutal. There was an urgency to the ritual, and the staff’s frantic movements suggested impending danger.

Gritting his teeth, Ryel took a deep breath and spread his senses outwards, past the scalding pain, the dripping of heavy rain on stone, the complex scent of flowers and wet soil, the rustling of leaves, the whistle of the wind…

Footsteps. Bipedal. Quick, yet heavy. Fast approaching. Far too fast for a human. Woargs, of course. As if his abysmal luck could have dictated otherwise.

How many? Three? Three.

The staff would not hold, not in its current condition. It would fight, yes, but

A rustle in the forest above him convinced Ryel to let go of the comfort of cold, hard stone against his cheek, and turn his neck towards the nearby trees. There were birds chirping in there, probably squirrels, maybe a snake or two…

Life.