Dajilominim. Dark One. Xala almost forgot that title. Bestowed upon him by Lord Morl’s forces. Even now, the pale Drakul played a role in Xala’s life. His head was clear, his fog lifted, and he ached to reach out across the void and feel for Morl’s spirit. When he did, in that decrepit loft, he found no answer. When he first lost Morl’s touch, his gaze, his form, Xala felt so alone in that prison. The spirits of his victims held no weight in their incessent chatter compared to the loss of such a great mind’s attention, lust, and affection.

  To not feel him at all felt like the most bitter of goodbyes. A one-sided thing that made the emotional lead in Xala’s stomach pull him to his knees.

  “Ajirla, where are you?” He whispered as he clutched his chest, closed his eyes, and weeped for the loss of his only love, his truest hatred.

  The corpses in the loft were left behind, the door locked, all of it staged as a ritual gone awry. Any other presence was swept clean. Frederick, the butchershop’s landlord, would be found eventually. The modern world was full of responsibilities that made even the lowliest of vermin susceptible to surveillance and check-ins.

  Nightlife in Feltkan was truly something to behold. Electric lights hoisted high above the faces who passed beneath emitted colors Xala had never seen before, at least not anywhere but a beetle’s back during an ocean sunset. Those he meandered through in his elven form wore all sorts of immodest clothes and practically erotic attire. The raid of Frederick’s closet provided Xala a set of oversized black linen pants, a similar shirt, a pair of dark brown shoes, and a black shawl covered in embroidered lavender flowers. Originally, the flowers were serpents, but Xala preferred flora for his supple disguise. Nothing a bit of transmutation could not solve.

  Men, women, inbetweens, and all manner of races mingled together in a wild cacophony of laughter, excitement, intoxication, inebriation, delight, madness, chaos, and hustle. Xala’s jaw dropped at the sight of a man’s hand held within another, looked across the street, and saw two women doing the same! The audacity! Did they have no shame? Was there no chance they would get brutalized, dragged through the streets, set alight, ripped apart by pit dogs, or hung from these pretty lights?

  He supposed not when he watched the sea of people unbothered and unconcerned. It made Xala’s mind flutter and jump. He pondered whether he could find such companionship. If Morl was gone, could he find someone to spend an evening stroll with? This area of Feltkan was known for its multiculturalism, evident in its shops and markets and peoples, and thus had an equally diverse cast of citizenry. Xala wandered toward a tavern, known as a night club, named Evelyn’s. As he walked through, he paused in his tracks when he saw the sea of fabulously dressed people. His eyes widened when he saw two people engaged in intercourse on the dance floor!

  They were fully clothed and simply dancing.

  Xala resisted the urge to make himself known with a gasp and a hand to his chest. He pushed aside his shock and stepped inside with a smile. Just then, a large man got between him and the rest of the crowd. The Alouee orc’s frame filled the double-doored threshold, his musculature abundant and trained, and said in a gruff tone, “ID.”

  He blinked up at the giant, smirked, and said, “Of course,” he held his hands behind his back, snapped his fingers, conjured two sigils in his eyes, and watched them duplicate within the orc’s. The orc’s body language softened, his mind malleable, as Xala whispered his enchantment. The orc’s mind was diligent and worked to resist, but Xala’s pull was far too powerful. Especially when he discovered the orc found his elven face extremely attractive.

  “Welcome to Evelyn’s,” he stepped aside. A crimson tint bloomed across his greenish-brown face as he kept his eyes up and away from him, committed to his job.

  Xala continued inside, hands behind his back, and meandered around the outskirts of the scene. As he passed he saw the eyes of men. They looked at his face, seemed ready to approach, but halted when they saw his attire. He pursed his lips as it dawned on him that he was improperly dressed. Not that it mattered, he was quite comfortable. There was no man in the world who mattered enough to make him change into anything less cozy.

  He walked toward the bar, saddled onto a stool, and rolled his shoulders back as he waited for the bartender. In Crimsire, he was never served a drink. It would have been illegal to sell anything to an inferior species within the city limits. The docks had less strict rules, but Xala’s reputation followed him everywhere. Not even pirates offered him spirits.

  In Feltkan, however, Xala was approached in record time by a handsome Oba human. His blue eyes, golden locks, and tan skin all glistened under the faerie lights. He leaned over the bar, looked down at Xala, smiled sweetly, and said, “Want something to drink, cutey?”

  Xala pretended bashfullness as he put his hands together and asked, “Do you have anything sweet?”

  He chuckled, a lock of hair fell into his face, and nodded, “For you? Anything. Want me to surprise you?”

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  “Yes, please.”

  The man winked, walked back to the bar, and got to work.

  Xala’s face resumed neutrality. He sniffed the air, caught the mixture of hormones, sweat, aromatics, perfumes, colognes, breath mints that did little to hide the alcohol, and winced in disgust. Even that handsome bartender made him want to pinch his nostrils shut. He exhaled slowly and focused on a different perspective. He sniffed again and noticed the lack of arcane energy. To Xala, magical aptitude within others had a sort of coppery smell mixed with a rainless thunderstorm. He sensed no such attributes within anyone in the room.

  His eyes narrowed, a hand came to his jaw, and he delicately played with a strand of auburn hair as he pondered how that was possible. He inspected the people and saw a myriad of inscriptions. However, the closer he looked, they were just regular tattoos. There was no imbuement within their ink, no special treatment, no evidence of sorcery. He blinked as he stared at their arms, legs, chests, backs, and faces only to find pretty designs and imagery. The art was fine, sure, but to Xala it was a mockery. Inscription was an ancient artform, designed to conduct the flow of magic through a mage’s body. To desecrate the body for any other reason seemed foolish to Xala.

  “Here you go, cutey,” A drink was extended, Xala’s hand moved to grab it, but he accidentally swatted it into the bartender. “Oh, damnit!”

  “Oh! I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to do that, here,” Xala reached toward the man’s soaked shirt and pants, made a few hand gestures, runes bloomed to life, and the liquid was drawn out of the man’s clothing and put back into the glass. When the arcana subsided Xala said, “There you,” he paused at the sight of the man’s foul facial expression, “go.”

  All eyes were on Xala. The music cut out.

  Xala glanced around. Did he do something wrong? Did Frederick’s soul fail to tell him something about Trymoran etiquette?

  “What was that, jinx? Did you fucking curse me?”

  “Huh? Why would I do that?”

  The bartender reached across the counter, grabbed Xala’s shirt, pulled him forward, and screamed, “Take it off me, now! Or I’m calling the Enforcers!”

  Xala was clearly dumbfounded, looked into the man’s eyes, saw the mixture of hatred and fear there, and recognized it well. It was the same hatred that he felt in Crimsire.

  How was it possible that mages were hated here? In a city powered by sorcery?

  “I didn’t,”

  “Save it for the Enforcer, jinx!” He pushed forward and sent Xala off the stool.

  He quickly cast a brief slowfall charm, glided through the air, and regained his balance as his toes gracefully touched the floor. More gasps and shock filled the room as people screamed and yelled in his direction. Xala glanced over and saw a group of men with angry faces approach him. He cast his invisibility shroud, disappeared from sight, and sent the entire club into a frenzied terror. “Where’d he go?!” “Hide!” “Where are the fucking Enforcers?!”

  Xala slipped through the small gap between the door and the bouncer, fled into the streets, and rushed away unseen. He paused about a block away, looked back, and saw a flying vehicle descend upon the street. Bright lights flashed onto the establishment. Uniformed men in black and orange glided down in advanced boots that warbled the air much like a slowfall spell and spread out in all directions. A masked salt and pepper haired Oba man barked out orders, “Find that mage! Don’t let him get away! Check every alley and nearby building, he’s gotta be around here somewhere!”

  He should have killed them all. He should have killed them one by one, raised their corpses, and turned them against one another. Their bloody, beaten bodies could have swarmed the streets, ripped apart these mongrels and their mongrel ideas. He could have drank them all.

  Faux-paradise, in that instant, became the moors. The streets suddenly felt too narrow, the buildings too dirty and yet too clean, the architectural rot of chrome buildings merged alongside brick and mortar melded together in a twisted unity, the lights of the city became dying stars only meant to be consumed by the Wyrm, and the tall towers became overlords that looked down upon him with contempt.

  Xala slipped between streets and alleyways, threw off Enforcers that were on his trail somehow, rushed down a flight of stairs that led to the subway, leapt over the turnstiles people filtered through, dashed across the stone platform, and halted his stride when Frederick remembered a door. It was unassuming, clearly only meant for maintenance staff, but Frederick’s consciousness tugged Xala’s attention toward it like a mute child eager to show off something they were interested in.

  He had no choice as the sound of a crowd parted by authority sounded the way he came. He rushed to the door, flicked open the lock with a spell, shouldered his way inside, and slammed the door behind him. Xala looked around the closet, his eyes darted wildly, and his sight locked onto a tile behind one of the metal shelves. He walked forward, sure to make Frederick pay an even worse fate if it did not lead to salvation, and pressed the tile.

  It budged and slid backward. From it, the whole back wall broke itself tile by tile, folded in on itself, and created a passageway between two shelves. Xala shoved his way through, the wall stitched itself back together, the door slammed open, and the last tile was put into place before any Enforcer caught a glimpse.

  Xala put his hands on his hips and panted wildly as he made some distance between him and the dead end of a dark passage. It was lit by a sequence of spaced out singular lights all the way down its length before it curved. He gritted his teeth together, nodded to himself, and followed Frederick’s lead. Every step he took felt more familiar, bit by bit. He sniffed the air and his eyes widened.

  He was now inside a rainless thunderstorm.