Aldric Eryndor had always believed that power was the only honest currency.

  Gold could be stolen. Titles could be stripped. Love—if such a thing truly existed beyond the poets' fantasies—could curdle into hatred overnight. But power? Power was yours. It lived in your bones, burned in your core, answered to no authority but your own will. A man with enough of it could reshape the world. A man without it was simply... furniture. Something to be moved around by those who mattered.

  He had understood this at seven, watching his father grovel before a royal lord over some imagined slight. He had known it at twelve, when that same lord's estate had burned in a mage-fire "accident," and his father had wept with relief rather than satisfaction. The lord had possessed power. His father had not. The equation was simple.

  Aldric had sworn, in the quiet of his boyhood room, that he would never be furniture.

  And he hadn't been. Not really. He had clawed his way from a provincial academy to the Astra Institute on scholarship, without counting on his Eryndor status. Had risen from student to mage of state to assistant professor to full professor, and the headmaster's seat had been right there, close enough to taste. His name was known in the right circles. His research was cited. His students feared him appropriately.

  But, and there was always a but.

  Level 847. That was his ceiling. That was the wall the heavens had built specifically for Aldric Eryndor, and no amount of study, training or desperate experimentation had added a single digit to that number in over a decade. He had plateaued in his mid thirties, and now, well into his forties, he had been forced to accept the unacceptable: he would never be a legend.

  Not like them.

  Bran the Brave, who had held the pass at Thornhollow for seven days against an army of ten thousand.

  Thyria Moonwhisper, who had bound the Elemental Spirit Kings to her will—fire, storm and stone answering her call in unison—and once, at the Siege of Veldrath, had commanded all three to unmake an army so thoroughly that survivors spoke of soldiers turned to ash mid-scream while the earth swallowed their ashes and the wind scattered what remained.

  And Sael. Sael the Great, the Archmage Without Equal, whose name appeared in every history of the last four centuries like a recurring character who refused to leave the stage.

  Those names would echo through eternity. Those faces adorned statues in every major city. Children played at being them, argued over who got to wield the imaginary staff, who got to cast the killing blow against whatever monster featured in that week's bedtime story.

  No one would ever play at being Aldric Eryndor. No statues. No songs. He would die, and within a generation, even his academic papers would gather dust unread.

  Unless... Unless he found another way.

  The memory surfaced now with a clarity that felt almost cruel—as if his own mind had chosen this moment, this precise moment, to remind him exactly how he had arrived at the end of all things.

  There had been defining moments.

  For the first, he had been seventeen. The Astra Institute sat in the heart of Orlys in those days, before the expansion that would eventually consume three adjacent districts. The market quarter below the academy's eastern gate was a maze of crooked streets and leaning buildings, popular with students precisely because the faculty disapproved of unsupervised excursions into the city's less reputable corners.

  Aldric had been walking that path with Maren.

  Maren Thorne. His only real friend, if he was being honest with himself, though he would never have admitted it aloud at the time. The other boy was everything Aldric wasn't: warm, easy with people, content with his own limitations. Maren had been a solidly average mage with solidly average ambitions, and somehow that lack of hunger had never sparked the contempt in Aldric that it should have.

  They had been arguing about something. Aldric couldn't remember what anymore. Probably grades; they were always arguing about grades, Aldric incensed by anything less than perfection and Maren trying to convince him that a ninety-three was "still really good, actually."

  An old woman had appeared around a bend in the path, struggling with a basket of apples that had clearly just betrayed her.

  The fruit lay scattered across the rocky ground, rolling toward the cliff's edge. The woman herself was stooped and weathered, her face a topographical map of wrinkles, her hands gnarled like oak roots. She wore the shapeless gray clothing of a village peasant and smelled faintly of woodsmoke and something else—something Aldric couldn't identify then and still couldn't now.

  Maren had immediately dropped to his knees and started gathering apples. Aldric had stood there, not out of cruelty, exactly. He simply hadn't seen the point. The woman was old. The apples were scattered. Maren was already handling it. What purpose would Aldric's involvement serve except to duplicate effort?

  But Maren had looked up at him with that particular expression—disappointment mixed with resignation—and Aldric had sighed and bent down to retrieve the apples that had rolled toward the cliff.

  It had taken perhaps two minutes. The woman thanked them profusely, her voice thin and cracked with age. Maren had smiled and said it was nothing, happy to help, any decent person would do the same. Aldric had nodded politely and calculated how much time they had lost.

  Then the woman had reached out and grabbed his wrist.

  Her grip was stronger than it should have been. Much stronger. Aldric had tried to pull away—an instinctive reaction—and found that he couldn't.

  "Boy," she had said.

  Her eyes had changed. Or rather, Aldric had finally looked at them. They weren't the rheumy, faded things he had expected. They were clear. Sharp. Depthless in a way that made his stomach clench.

  "Boy," she said again. "I see you."

  "Let go of me."

  "I see what you want. I see what you'll do to get it. I see the path you'll walk and the things you'll become." Her grip tightened. "You will reach too high, boy. You will grasp for power beyond your station, and in doing so, you will draw the eye of something primordial."

  Aldric's heart was hammering now. Maren had stepped closer, uncertain, one hand raised as if to intervene.

  "And when you do," the woman continued, "it will end you. You will see it coming, and you will understand exactly what brought you to that moment, and that understanding will be the last thing you ever know."

  She released him, and Aldric stumbled backward, nearly losing his own footing on the treacherous path. The woman smiled—a perfectly ordinary grandmother's smile—and picked up her basket.

  "Thank you for the apples, dears," she said, then looked at Aldric. "It is not too late to change your destiny. Be kinder to those weaker than you," and walked away.

  Aldric had told himself it was nonsense.

  A mad old woman, touched in the head, spouting theatrical garbage to frighten students. The city was full of such people, hedge witches and fortune-tellers who preyed on the superstitious. He was a scholar. A rational man. He did not believe in prophecy.

  And he hadn't. Not really. Not through the decades that followed, as he climbed and climbed and found his ceiling and raged against it. Not when he first heard whispers of Corruption, of power that existed outside the System's constraints. Not when he made contact with those who served it. Not when he performed his first ritual, felt that cold otherness slide into the hollow places of his soul, and understood—finally—that there were paths to greatness the heavens could not close.

  The old woman's words had faded. Become a half-remembered embarrassment, a foolish childhood moment to be filed away and forgotten.

  That had been the second defining moment.

  Now, lying on the floor of his cell, pressed flat by an invisible weight that made breathing itself an act of will, Aldric looked up at the figure who had just materialized from the ceiling like gravity was a suggestion he'd chosen to decline.

  The man was tall, angular, with silver hair and green eyes that were—impossibly—warm. There was humanity in that gaze. Kindness, even. The sort of quiet mercy one might offer a suffering animal before putting it down.

  Aldric hated it.

  He hated it more than cruelty, more than contempt and more than anything this man could have shown him. Because cruelty would have meant he was a threat. Contempt would have meant he was at least worth the effort of disdain. But mercy? Mercy was what you offered to things that couldn't fight back. Things that were already broken. Things that were furniture.

  The word surfaced from somewhere deep, and with it came the memory of his father, kneeling, apologizing, groveling, while a random lord looked down at him.

  You will draw the eye of something ancient. Something primordial. And it will end you.

  The old woman's voice rang through his skull like a bell.

  His life flashed before him. And with it came the third defining moment.

  Sending Shaye to kill Ilsa.

  You will understand exactly what brought you to that moment.

  And he understood, he understood perfectly.

  "Aldric Eryndor," the primordial said. "I have been looking for you."

  Aldric tried to speak. His throat wouldn't cooperate at first; the gravity was too strong, his lungs struggling for air.

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  Finally, he managed two words.

  "I know."

  ***

  Sael stood in the cell and let himself feel the weight of it.

  Not the gravity spell, that was nothing, a flicker of will he could maintain indefinitely without conscious thought. No, this weight was heavier. One that settled into your bones when you'd lived long enough to see the same tragedies repeat themselves across centuries, wearing different faces each time but following the same terrible choreography.

  There were six people in this room, excluding Sael himself. Five of them pressed flat against cracked stone, their breathing labored, their hearts struggling against pressure that would have killed ordinary humans instantly. All above level 500.

  And Aldric Eryndor, chained to the wall, the strongest among them. Level 1356. They were all too far gone. Which also meant...

  Sael closed his eyes briefly.

  Which also meant there would be no trials. No imprisonment. No redemption arcs or last-minute changes of heart. These people had made their choices ago and now the only mercy left to offer was a quick end. He had done this before. Many times. It never got easier.

  He crossed the cell, stepping over one of the prone figures—the large one, still straining against the gravity with admirable futility—and stopped before Aldric.

  The man's eyes tracked him. Dark and sharp, but wrong. Purple-black energy flickered beneath his skin, crawling across his body like flames catching on dry wood. The Corruption watched Sael through its host.

  "I'm going to try something," Sael said quietly. "It will hurt. I apologize in advance."

  Aldric's lips pulled back from his teeth. It might have been a smile. "Going to... read my mind?" His voice was a rasp, ruined by thirst and disuse. "Good luck. There's not much... left worth reading."

  "[Read]."

  The spell was cast, and Sael placed his palm against Aldric's forehead.

  What he found was Fog. Thick, churning fog shot through with streaks of purple lightning. Fragments of memory surfaced and dissolved before he could grasp them: a classroom, a woman's laugh, fire consuming a building, a child crying. None of it coherent. None of it connected. The Corruption had wrapped itself around Aldric's mind like a shroud, smothering every thought before Sael could reach it.

  Sael pushed deeper anyway, then the Corruption noticed him.

  Purple energy erupted from Aldric's chest, forcing its way through the seal on his core. The man screamed as the power that had sustained him for years turned against its host, clawing toward the surface in response to Sael's intrusion.

  "Forgive me," Sael said, and didn't stop.

  The energy condensed around Aldric's body, wrapping him in a cocoon of purple-black light. His back arched against the chains, metal groaning, stone dust falling from the bolts in the wall. His fingers clawed at nothing, tendons standing out like cables beneath skin gone gray and mottled.

  And then his voice changed.

  "Stop." The word came out wrong. Like many tones layered on top of each other, or better yet, a chorus speaking in imperfect unison. "Stop looking at me."

  Sael didn't stop.

  "You think you're better than me?" Aldric's—the Corruption's—mouth twisted into a sneer. Spittle flew from his lips. "You, with your kindness and your mercy and your pathetic little heroics? You're a fraud. You've always been a fraud. Playing at being good while the world burns around you."

  "Perhaps," Sael said.

  "I hate you." The voice cracked. Tears were streaming down Aldric's face now, though his expression remained frozen in that terrible rictus. "I hate the way you look at me. Like I'm something to be pitied. Like I'm broken. I'm not broken. I chose this. I chose."

  "I know."

  "Then stop looking at me like that!" The scream echoed off the walls, sounding distorted and inhuman. Behind Sael, one of the prone figures whimpered.

  "I could have been great." Aldric's voice fractured further, the tears coming faster now even as rage contorted his features. "I should have been great. I was smarter than all of them. I worked harder than all of them. And what did it get me? A ceiling. A number that wouldn't move. Do you know what that's like? To know exactly where your limits are? To push and push and push and feel nothing give?"

  The purple energy pulsed brighter. The chains rattled.

  "So I found another way. And you know what? It worked. I am powerful. I—"

  "And where did that bring you?" Sael asked.

  The man looked at Sael, confusion on his face.

  "For what it's worth, I've seen men chase power their entire lives," Sael said. "Dedicate every waking moment to becoming stronger. Some of them succeeded. Some became the strongest in the world, in their time. And then some child was born in a village somewhere, someone who'd never heard their name, and surpassed them in a decade. Sometimes less." He paused. "Even the ones who entered legend. The ones who reached the kind of power you're talking about. They died too. Their names survive, perhaps. They're sung about in taverns. Children play at being them." His voice softened. "But what does a song do for a dead man?"

  Aldric opened his mouth. Closed it. The purple energy flickered erratically across his skin.

  "That's—" He stopped. Tried again. "You don't—"

  But nothing came. No rebuttal. No clever counter. Just a man grasping for words that wouldn't form.

  Sael looked at him.

  The face beneath the corruption was gaunt but not unkind in its architecture. High cheekbones. A strong jaw, though wasted now by imprisonment. And the eyebrows, thick, bushy, sitting heavy above deep-set eyes, were so familiar.

  Sael's hand faltered slightly against Aldric's forehead.

  Bran had looked like that. Not exactly, of course—four centuries and countless generations stood between them—but the family resemblance was there, unmistakable now that he was looking for it. The same heavy brows. The same stubborn set to the jaw. Bran used to joke that his eyebrows were the source of his power, that enemies took one look at those caterpillars and fled in terror.

  Sael sighed heavily, withdrawing his hand from Aldric's forehead and placing it gently over his heart instead.

  Aldric's eyes went wide.

  "Wait." His voice cracked. "Wait, please—I can help you. I know things. The Corruption, I understand it, I can tell you how it works, how to stop it—"

  "It won't hurt," Sael said.

  "No, no, listen to me, you need me, I'm the only one who—" Aldric's words tumbled over each other. "I'll do anything. Anything you want. I'll serve you. I'll—"

  "It won't hurt."

  Something broke in Aldric's face. The desperation curdled into rage.

  "Fuck you," he spat. "Fuck you, you self-righteous bastard. You think you're better than me? You're worse. You're a fucking monster wearing a saint's face. I hope you choke on your legacy. I hope you live forever and watch everything you love turn to ash. I hope—"

  "Rest well, Aldric Eryndor," Sael said quietly. "May your soul find peace, if there is such a thing."

  He pushed a thread of pure mana into the man's chest, a soft pressure in exactly the right place. The heart stopped instantly. There was no pain or struggle. One moment Aldric was breathing, eyes fixed on Sael's face, mouth still open around a curse that would never finish, and the next he simply... wasn't.

  The purple energy dissipated like morning fog.

  The body sagged in its chains, suddenly smaller. Older. Just a man who had wanted too much and paid too dearly for the wanting.

  Sael stood there for a long moment, his hand still resting over the silent heart. Of all the people in the world, it had to be one of Bran's blood.

  He sighed heavily again, feeling tired, and reached up to close Aldric's eyes, then he let go and turned to face the others.

  Five bodies lay scattered across the cell floor, still pinned by the gravity spell he'd maintained throughout. One of them—the large one who'd been straining so admirably—had gone still. Unconscious, Sael realized, not dead. The man's chest still rose and fell in shallow, labored movements. Two others weren't so fortunate. A thin man near the far wall and another closer to the door. Their hearts had simply... stopped. The pressure had been too much, sustained too long.

  Sael released the gravity spell.

  The sudden absence of force drew no gasps of relief or scrambling to stand. The three survivors lay where they'd fallen, breathing in shallow, pained hitches. Bones had given way under the pressure, Sael could see it in the wrong angles of limbs, the way their bodies lay too flat against the stone, the wet sounds that accompanied each breath.

  One of them—a man with close-cropped dark hair and a scar running temple to jaw—tried to push himself up. His arm buckled at the elbow, bending in a direction elbows weren't meant to bend, and he collapsed with a strangled cry.

  "Wait." The word came out slurred. "Wait, I can tell you everything. The network, the locations, I know things Aldric never shared with the others. I was his lieutenant. His confidant. I have names. Important names. People in the high places, in the—"

  "You're lying," Sael said. He crossed to him slowly. "You don't have names. You don't have locations. And even if you did, I couldn't read your mind to verify it. The Corruption has progressed too far for that."

  The man's face contorted. "I'm not—I can prove it, just give me a chance to—"

  "You know you're lying. I know you're lying. We both know there's nothing left in you but the drive to survive another moment." Sael crouched beside him. "All I can give you is a quick death and a proper burial. That's more than most in your position receive."

  The mask slipped. Something hungry and hateful looked out from behind the man's eyes. "Fuck you. Fuck you, you sanctimonious—"

  Sael placed his hand over his heart.

  When it was done, he moved to the next.

  A gray-bearded man watched him approach. His legs were shattered—Sael could see the bones pressing against the skin at wrong angles—but his face was calm. Resigned, almost. He had the look of a scholar, even now.

  "Will it be quick?" he asked.

  "Yes."

  "Good." The man nodded slowly. "That's... good."

  Sael stopped beside him. There was something almost lucid in the man's eyes. He was performing, Sael knew. And it was a good performance, as Sael would have fallen for it, once. Before centuries of watching the Corrupted lie, plead and bargain had taught him to see the hunger underneath.

  Still. Politeness cost nothing, he supposed.

  "Is there anything you want to say?" Sael asked.

  The man was quiet for a moment. Then: "I have a daughter. In Velmoor. Elise. Elise Carrow."

  Sael waited.

  "She doesn't know about any of this. She thinks I'm a researcher at the Academy of Velmoor. Could you—" The man's voice cracked. "Could you not tell her? Let her keep her father, even if it's a lie. Let her know that I am dead, so she can move on. That's all I ask. "

  Sael looked at him for a long moment. The man's eyes were wet. His breathing was steady despite the shattered legs. He looked, for all the world, like a father making his final request.

  "If she exists," Sael said, "I'll find her. I'll make sure she's taken care of."

  The man's face softened. "Thank you."

  And surely enough, the knife came fast, hidden in his sleeve, angled for the throat. Before it reached Sael, the blade curled in on itself like a dying leaf. The man's eyes went wide, his arm still extended, the crumpled metal falling uselessly from his grip. His mouth opened—

  Sael's hand found his heart before the first word could form.

  When it was done, Sael straightened. He looked at the ruined knife on the floor for a moment, then stepped over it.

  The last one was still unconscious and lay flat on his back, unable to move. His ribs had caved on one side, and something dark was spreading beneath his shirt. Internal bleeding. He wouldn't have lasted much longer regardless.

  Sael placed his hand over his heart, and finished it.

  He now stood alone in the cell, surrounded by the dead.

  Outside, in the corridor and the cells beyond, he could hear them. The other prisoners of the dungeons.

  "What's happening?" A voice, high with fear. "What was that sound?"

  "Guards! Guards!"

  "Let me out! Let me out!"

  The voices layered over each other. Sael closed his eyes.

  "I'm sorry," he said.

  His voice carried—a simple application of magic that ensured each word reached every cell in the block.

  "I'm sorry for the disturbance. It's over now. You're not in danger."

  The clamor died down. Whispers replaced shouts.

  "Who are you?"

  "What happened?"

  "Is the king dead? They say he is! Tell me the king is dead!"

  Sael didn't answer. He reached into his robes, withdrew his pipe and packed the bowl.

  He put the pipe to his lips and cast a cantrip of [Flame], and drew the first breath.

  It still did nothing to him, but the ritual helped.

  He exhaled slowly.

  "Hey."

  A voice came from the next cell. Sael turned his head slightly.

  "You smokin' in there?"

  Sael took another draw. "Yes."

  "Huh." Shuffling sounds. "Been a while for me. Years, probably. Hard to keep track down here."

  Sael didn't respond.

  "Don't suppose you'd share a bit?"

  "I don't think you could handle what I'm smoking, friend."

  "That right?" The man sounded intrigued. "What are you, exactly? Did you cause all that earlier?"

  Sael exhaled smoke. "Sadly, yes."

  "Huh. What's in that pipe, then? That I couldn't handle?"

  "Silverleaf. Dreamroot. A good amount of moonpetal."

  A pause. "Don't know the first two. But moonpetal... I heard that could drop a dragon."

  "More like a wyvern. But yes."

  "And you're not dropping?"

  "Astute observation."

  The silence stretched. Sael smoked. Somewhere above, he felt the dragon approaching.

  About two minutes out.

  "What are you in for?" Sael asked.

  "Poetry." The man laughed. "Wrote a verse about His Majesty. Insufficiently reverent, they said."

  "What did you say?"

  "Various things. But the line that did it was about dragons." A grin carried in the man's voice. "There's this theory that dragons and chickens share a common ancestor. Bone structure, egg-laying, all that. So I wrote a poem comparing the king to a chicken. Very flattering on the surface. But if dragons are related to chickens..."

  "Haha..." Sael laughed, the sound surprising even him. "That's a good one."

  "Thank you. I thought so too."

  A little more than a minute left before the dragon's arrival.

  A chicken, huh?

  Sael exhaled a thin ribbon of smoke, which disappeared upward into shadow.

  “Hmm.”

  This was the hmm of an idea forming.

  And Patreon's at 14 chapters ahead now!