From the world of Warriors of Darkmyre

The invitation was not a thing of paper and ink. It had no physical form, no substance. Early one afternoon, Beltham Valgrand felt it squirming quite suddenly and unpleasantly in his mind. Several long, sleepless days of research had left the scholar a bit thick witted, and he did not immediately recognize the message for what it was. For years Valgrand had anticipated its arrival. When the invitation finally appeared, he mistook it for an incipient headache.

Valgrand ignored the uncomfortable slithering in the deepest recesses of his consciousness and continued to stare at the tome opened before him. His annotations had long ago overwhelmed the original text, a ponderous and digressive treatise on magic written by Gurthen Ploom. The instructors at the College of Mystical Wizardry had titled Ploom "the Father of Modern Sorc ery," but that was a contemptible title indeed, at least to Valgrand's way of thinking.

Magic had been a paltry thing since Ranthius Kane's disappearance more than a thousand years ago. Gone with him went the days of mighty sorcerer-kings and world-rattling clashes of the Art. The flow of magic had seemed boundless then, the miracles crafted with arcane energy limited only by a mage's imagination and will.

There was no artistry connected to sorcery these days. The dried-up old men at the college had transformed it into something soulless and calculating. They taught their students that magic was a thing to ponder, not use. Class after tedious class reiterated the supposed fact that the wellspring of mystical energy had all but dried up. The amount of magical essence left to the world simply could not sustain any grand spells.

It irked Valgrand that the small exercises taught at the college were often dismissed by the rabble as sleight of hand. Of course the spells expended so little mystical energy that they could be aped quite accurately through stage trickery - a fact that only intensified Valgrand's dissatisfaction with the scholars and their conservationist theories.

Through his own research, Valgrand had convinced himself that the instructors couldn't tap the wellspring. The energy was there. They just couldn't find it.

"They wouldn't know what to do with the power if they were up to their necks in it," Valgrand muttered as he slammed the book closed.

The slithering in his thoughts had become a thrashing. The invitation was finally secure enough to find a voice: Come. Show me what use you would make of such power.

Valgrand didn't look around the room. His face betrayed no surprise at the intruding voice. In fact, it revealed nothing at all of his thoughts. "Identify yourself."

You know who I am.

"Master Kane," Valgrand said simply, formally, as he dropped to one knee. He had practiced this greeting many times, despite the apparent absurdity of the legends that reported Ranthius Kane alive after so many centuries. For one with Valgrand's faith in magic, the truth of the archmage's existence had to outshine even the most fantastical tale.

You know why I have called you.

A slight grin finally spoiled the expression of bland self-satisfaction on Valgrand's face. "I know the legends, great mage. You seek one who has remained faithful to the Art. He will serve as your envoy and herald the return of true magic to the world. I am, of course, ready to serve in any way you ask."

Come to me.

"Where will I find you?"

Begin the journey and the way will become clear.

Valgrand voiced a few more questions. When it was apparent he would receive no further reply, he summoned his two servants and announced that he would be closing the tower immediately. The money he gave them was enough to keep starvation at bay, if they found a new master quickly enough. It never occurred to Valgrand to be more generous, even though the domestics had come to him after twenty or so years in the service of his parents. If their lot was a hard one, such was the way of the world.

Neither did it cross his mind to question the invitation from a man hundreds upon hundreds of years old. True magic, the sort Kane himself had created, allowed for his miraculous survival. Valgrand was equally certain of his own worthiness. His dogged pursuit of the wellspring of mystical energy had surely earned him the honor to serve Kane.

Valgrand set out upon his quest - such a noble mission could be nothing less in his mind - that very afternoon. By the time the sun set, boredom and confusion had taken hold of his thoughts. No grand vision assailed him. No lights more brilliant than the sun illuminated his destination. No talking animal appeared to set him on the right path.

Lacking any more substantial inspiration, he followed his stomach, which directed him south to Jade's Pub. The place boasted good food, though none of the chicken bones or tea leaves revealed anything relevant to his quest. His bed that night was equally pleasing, the overstuffed pillows and mattress prompting his sleeping mind to stage an impressive dream-pageant of vanquished enemies and hard-won honors. The scholar's mood darkened the next morning when he realized no message had insinuated itself into those dreams.

Valgrand's mood deteriorated even further over the next few weeks. He wandered without the faintest notion as to Kane's whereabouts. Only when he found himself at the outskirts of the Elven Forest did he realize that he had traveled south almost exclusively. He worried less after that, allowing his need for sleep and sustenance to guide him to each night's destination.

The crimson banners atop the four watchtowers of Ravenspire Castle waved Valgrand on, urging him past the never-breached walls of that fabled keep. Southward, ever southward. Along the edges of the Shadow Marsh. Through the broken, windswept wastes called home by the Six Raving Lunatics.

On a moonless night chilled by the dying gasps of autumn, Valgrand found himself south even of the Lunatic Wastes. Trail rumors, the sort passed between vagrants and itinerant seekers of adventure, told of a lonely inn called the End of the World that could be found in those parts. But Valgrand never came upon it, if the place existed at all.

Resting on the banks of an unnamed lake he watched mushrooms that had once been men uproot themselves and wander off like the cursed souls that they were. Valgrand had witnessed so many wonderful and terrible things on his quest that the sight neither impressed nor startled him. He took it for a sign or, at the very least, a diversion. He followed them into the night.

In a forest of thorns Valgrand both lost his shambling guides and found a keep with walls carved of purest ivory. The pale battlements appeared abruptly on the far side of the towering thicket - too abruptly for a mundane castle, the scholar realized numbly. No soldiers patrolled the walls or manned the squat watchtowers, constructed in a fashion gone out of style a thousand years past. No guard asked for the stranger's purpose at the open gate.

Valgrand passed unchallenged through a deserted, yet immaculate bailey to the keep's main hall. The door was beautiful, its flawless oak studded with an elaborate pattern wrought of brightly burnished copper nails. On oiled hinges, the door swung open to reveal a most astounding thing.

The hall itself was ruined, its furnishings as dilapidated and decayed as the ancient outer shell was perfectly preserved. Splintered, wormeaten tables stood in haphazard formation throughout the vast room. Tapestries hung from the dripping walls, their subjects long ago obscured by smoke from the massive fireplace. A few fractured scraps of furniture even now burned grudgingly in that gaping maw.

The firelight revealed a lone figure - thin and slouched, head bowed in thought. In one hand he cradled something small and dark. The object seemed to test his strength, though something so puny couldn't have been all that heavy. He gripped the warped mantle with his other hand as if that were the only thing keeping him from collapse.

"Ah, Tia," he said in a voice as grim and ruined as the hall.

Valgrand managed to sputter the start of a question, but the man held up a silencing hand.

"You are welcome here, Beltham Valgrand. Your quest is at an end." Ranthius Kane turned, the slightest of smiles quirking his lips. "More or less."

He gestured for Valgrand to join him at a large table stationed on a dais at the head of the hall. This trestle was only slightly less decrepit than the rest, with a tattered tablecloth that, on closer inspection, revealed itself as a clumsily stitched amalgam of battle standards and winding sheets.

"I will explain all that you see around you," Kane said as he took his place at the center of the head table. He carefully set down the object he'd been cradling. It was a glass jar filled with a thick black liquid. The sludge pressed against its fragile prison. Mouths formed in the writhing mass and screamed soundlessly.

"Darkmyre," Valgrand murmured, caught between panic and wonder. The ebon ooze was the very embodiment of corrupt magic. Unleashed by Kane's rivals during the last great sorcerers' war, darkmyre had very nearly destroyed the land. The smallest drop could kill or, more terrible still, transform a man into an abomination. "But you obliterated all darkmyre when - "

"I will explain all," Kane interrupted, "but you must remain silent until I am through. Then you may ask a single question."

Without a word or gesture from Kane, the hall began to fill with specters. They drifted up from the dirty floor or emerged from the fire's smoke or simply coalesced from the gloom. They were not human figures so much as holes where human figures should have been, animate shadows. The phantasms moved with slow, shuffling steps, always keeping their faces turned toward Kane.

Their features were so vague, their forms so indistinct, that Valgrand could barely tell one from another. Only the spirits' weird darkness differentiated them, with some more shadow-bound than others. One particular wraith, who lingered at the head table near Kane, seemed composed of such utter darkness that looking at him made Valgrands eyes ache.

One by one the phantasmal host took up places at the trestle tables. Valgrand seated himself on Kane's right. No sooner had the scholar settled than the archmage began to spin his tale.

The conflict's outline was familiar. Every student at the College of Mystical Wizardry knew how Ranthius Kane had discovered the source of magic and brought an age of wonder to the world. With the aid of Delthius, his nephew and protege, he set to work eradicating hunger and suffering. The bridges and roads and palaces he built would have taken a hundred lifetimes to complete through physical tabor alone. The magnificence of those structures, along with a score of even more stunning accomplishments, inspired verse still unrivaled after more than a thousand years.

But Delthiius yearned for the day when he would decree the world's destiny, instead of giving form to his uncle's compassionate visions. His whispered words of jealousy and discord sparked a revolt among the growing class of mages, many of whom also scoffed at Ranthius Kane's ideal of selfless service. The rebels forged a pact with malignant spirits from beyond the mortal realms. The result of that pact was the magical blight known as darkmyre.

The battle between Ranthius Kane and Delthius Kane plunged the world into chaos. In the war's first few days. all the great works of the previous two decades were undone. Eventually, Ranthius defeated his nephew and fulfilled his sacred vow to destroy all the darkmyre Delrhius had unleashed upon the land - or so the old stories reported. Valgrand could see that those tales were wrong. The proof of their inaccuracies squirmed unpleasantly in a jar less than an arm's length away.

Kane trailed his fingertips absently down that same jar. The gesture might have been mistaken for a caress, had the ancient mage's face not betrayed his utter weariness. "This was Delthius's final betrayal," he said flatly. Turning to the darkest of the shades, he added, "And such a clever betrayal it was, Nephew."

The spirit shrank away, its awful darkness abating Linder Kane's gaze. A susurrus of whispers and gasps slithered from the phantasmal host. Valgrand could feel each half- heard xord crawling over him like an insect.

"This was Delthius' aunt," Kane said, returning his attention to the jar. "My wife-" A dozen fingers erupted from the ooze and reached out toward Kane. The archmage sighed raggedly. "When he realized that I would make good upon my vow to eradicate the Plague he had conjured, Delthius poisoned my beloved Tianan with the final few drops in his possession. Now, the destruction of darkmyre means the annihilation of the one thing I ever truly loved in this world.

"I made them pay, of course. All of thern. With a single spell I banished Delthius and his darkmyre-tainted allies to the Valley of Lost Souls. These specters are an unforeseen side effect of the spell." Kane gazed Out on the grim host. "They are drawn here, to the power I command. They cannot resist its call. And I cannot turn them away."

A flash of grim amusement sparked in Kane's heavy-lidded eyes. Valgrand was so caught up in contemplating the archmage's story, marveling at the power he had employed against his enemies, that he did not notice Kane's expression - and almost missed the question the ancient mage posed to him: "You have decided?"

"Excuse me?"

"Your question - you have decided what it will be."

"Yes," Valgrand replied, as if Kane's last words had been a question and not a statement. "The great works of the golden age, the banishment spell, even the darkmyre itself. How can humans wield enough magical power to achieve such things?"

Kane nodded gravely. "I will show you."

He pushed himself up from the table as if the weight of the entire castle were pressing down on his shoulders. Valgrand did not hear the three simple words to Kane's incantation. A moan of anticipation from the phantasmal host drowned them out. But in the instant before his flesh was husked from his soul, Valgrand glimpsed the wellspring, the source of all magic.

The Source was Kane himself - or rather, Kane was its repository. The archmage had become a hollow shell containing all the world's magic.

Valgrand had the vertiginous sensation of being in two places at once. His body floated in a place of shadow. The gloom parted from time to time to reveal failed pilgrims like himself, or monstrosities twisted by darkmyre, or, most horrifying of all, the black-hearted sorcerers who had first corrupted magic. The Valley of Lost Souls was fitted with nothing but cries of pain and despair; it was pointless to scream. As the damned sorcerers turned their attention to their new charge, Valgrand did so anyway.

At the same tirne, Valgrand lingered in the decaying hall. He was yet another shade crowding in on Kane. The small ration of power the archmage had loosed both beckoned and tormented him, like a banquet laid before a ravenous man whose mouth had been sewn shut.

The cold press of the host finally forced Valgrand to the fore. He could feel the presence of magic, the power radiating from the thing that had been Ranthius Kane. He looked up into the archmage's face, saw the look of revulsion there. Still, Valgrand could not stop himself from reaching out with incorporeal fingers for the power now denied him.

Each fawning, needy touch sent a tremor of disgust through Kane's hollow frame. Yet the archmage could not drive them away, these specters he himself had created. Valgrand could see now that such a feat was beyond even Kane's power.

And with that recognition, Valgrand also realized what his question should have been: How do you undo your mistakes?

About the Author

James Lowder is the author of several novels, including Prince of Lies and Knight of the Black Rose. His game-related short fiction has been set in worlds ranging from the Forgotten Realms to the World of Darkness. Jim's next novel, Spectre of the Black Rose, will be released by TSR in March 1999.

This piece was written for Twisted Jester Studio's and will appear in their upcoming game, Warriors of Darkmyre.