The Final Life Read online

There is much to be wished for

  In this life of strife

  I’ll tell you a wish

  Won’t you be my wife?

  The Final Life

  Copyright 2015 Andrew Mowere

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  Also by This Author

  The Final Death

  Tales of Grimea (Story Collection)

  Heroes (Short)

  Hymn of Faith (Short)

  When a Man Bleeds (Short)

  The Unchained’s Legend

  And that was how the tale should have ended.

  When Odin died, all our continents thought they’d lost a leader and king. What surprise was it, then, to see Allfather rise from the dead! The First told us he’d created a heaven, but only for those strong few who climb his stairway after their demise. Things were never the same, for we created guilds to strive higher, and each worked to gain power. This was ten thousand years ago.

  Then the Second rose two millennia thereafter, taking half of Ya’ab for his own domain. Sklaver forbade entry, saying beasts were more worthy than men. He brought myths and magical creatures to life, dragons and lycans and monsters of dreams. Things were never the same, for the magic of his abodes changed the very stuff legends were made of.

  Last came Pyro the insane. The Third went wild with flames, taking the very orb that gave us light. We were plunged into darkness. All his own Firefaery guild could do was create an everlasting sun over half the world, splitting us into night and day. Seventy hundred years have passed since then. Things will never be the same, but the world has moved on.

  We worship the Unchained, all Three. We pray to them, for they are the only gods we’ve seen. Still, we would not wish for a Fourth. We fear the chaos such an entity would bring, for we know that He would change everything.

  From “Broken Shields and Lost Minds: Life in the Time before Odin Allfather”, author unknown, published by the Grand Cross guild in northern Ya’ab.

  Chapter 1

  The boy woke with a start, slamming his head painfully into the slanted roof above him. His heart pounded, and his chest raced against the subject of his dreams. He glanced about around him in terror, fearful of whatever lingering beasts may be hiding in the shadowy corners of his creaking room. A few seconds later, however, he couldn’t remember what the dream had been about. It had frightened him. That Glint Stryger knew for sure, but he couldn’t help but forget the dream after every single attack. He lay back in his bed, relaxing for a second. It was difficult enough to sleep in the continent of Shien already, as his little cottage had no curtains to keep sunlight out, and a repeated nightmare just made everything worse.

  The youth gazed tiredly at his poorly furnished one room cottage, mouldy and complaining, much like an old man far beyond his best years. All Glint owned lay in this one room: a bed, set under the slanting roof and barely spacious enough for his slightly muscular frame, fought for its spot against a table and chair. On another side a fire smouldered in the corner. That was all the comfort that existed for brown haired Glint, and he didn’t ask for anything more. It was rather cold for the season, he thought to himself. On the table Glint’s basic armour lay heaped, and beside it a decorated sword, its edge reflecting little more than guilt.

  He rose from his bed, and after having a bit of stale bread he began to strap on his armour, plate by weary plate. It took a while, yet he was used to it. He trained every day; all day unless there was work to be done, and most of that training was in this metal. His armour’s dirty grey plates had been drenched in his sweat, and the blood of others had to be cleaned off them just as often, but Glint didn’t mind too much. This is what life expected of him.

  Glint had been fighting for five years, ever since he was twelve. He had taken his armour from his father, a master blacksmith back in the village of Hindshelm, after an argument lasting three whole days and nights. Glint’s fists clenched whenever he remembered that day. What did his father know? Fighting was what made their world; power was what made a person important. They had argued. Horst Stryger had maintained his ideal. "If you fight, only death is waiting for you. No glory, no happiness, no status. You will die, or become a monster. Is that what you want? Better that you stay here and learn my craft. Accept your lot in life and death, boy." That was what he’d said. Only the strong went to heaven.

  The man had even forced him to skip the day when local guild recruiters came to test everyone’s talent. He had thought Glint couldn’t make it, it seemed. No use paying the silver for a test.

  Well, he was going to prove his father wrong. He was going to keep getting stronger, master his art and craft, and join guild Quicksilver. There, Glint’s mind drifted off. It wasn’t the most famous guild, not like the Firefaery or Creationist guilds, which both had thousands of applicants each month streaming towards them like moths to a flickering flame. However, Glint knew deep in his heart that a man who could manipulate his own armour at will could do anything. Added to that, Quicksilver was the most famous in northeastern Shien. Thus, Glint would train, fight, and bleed in the hope that when he showed up at Quicksilver’s Iron Door, the maesters and lords would accept him with open arms.

  Glint stifled a grin as his mind wandered further and further into his fantasy, almost stumbling into the wooden table in his carelessness. He would never give words to compliment the dreams he had; not ever again. Glint had, once, on the day he had started to train with his first mercenary band. The swordmaster had laughed so hard tears began to dance on the edge of Glint’s young hazel eyes back then. Then all the men had laughed, and the women as well. They had literally stopped making supper just to point and hold their stomachs and howl their contempt in loud booming laughs at a young mind’s dreams.

  As the youth finished fastening the final plates onto his toned frame, he began to gather his energy and quicken the flow of his qi around his body. Breathing in and out in a specific method, he affixed the image of ashen light flowing inside of him. Long inhale, short exhale, short inhale and then all out, over and over. This was the way he had learnt to purify metal element qi, told by a guild member in magical armour and a green tabard who’d gotten bored by his questions. The imagery was just as important, and he imagined tendrils of hard lightning crackling within him, from hair to toes, faster than thought, faster than blood. Wishing and hoping against all hope, he started his daily training.

  Glint gathered it all in his arm and flexed his limb, trying to coax the energy into the armour plates as fast as he could. Nothing happened, as nothing ever had. After a minute, he began to sweat with the effort and impending realization of failure. However, just as he decided to give up for the day and go do physical training, the boy felt something near his forearm, a pinprick explosion. He looked down, and saw that his gauntlet started to bubble like heated metal at the forge. At the same time he felt the rush of qi actually flowing through his body. It was a strange feeling, perhaps not unlike what a person would feel when their heart beat for the first time. He gasped, stunned at the success. The words "I did it" echoed through his mind a thousand thousand times. At the same time the bubbling stopped, leaving a half inch circle of clear, smooth silvery metal, in contrast to the rest of the dented, almost blackish thing.

  Glint was so stunned he forgot t
o sit down before a wave of dizziness hit him, and he tried to take a step forward towards the only chair in the room, a tired thing made of leftover wood and nailed with old nails taken out of other walls. It happens to everyone who reaches the essential success, he thought dimly as he lost control over his body, crashing to the wooden planks at his feet. It was supposed to just make him a little unsteady, wasn’t it?

  Blackness came and swallowed him whole.

  ***

  When Glint next awoke, it was with excitement that he pushed himself up from his face down position. He couldn’t believe what had happened, but the mark on his gauntlet was still there, shining silver proof. A small mark it was, but a first step into power. It was with an ecstatic feeling that he picked up his sword. He had achieved the essential success, and in five years no less!

  The seventeen year old punched the wooden wall next to him with an almighty shout, adding damage to the already pitiful state of the house as a soggy plank cracked under the blow with a yelp. Some people worked their entire lives, doing qi or aura or psi accumulation exercises, visualising their ability and distributing their chosen energy type. They applied themselves wholeheartedly day in and day out, without such luck as reaching the success, the mark of an Ability user. Power was only for the talented, after all, and most people simply did not have that talent. It was a sad truth, but one that Glint did not need to worry about anymore, for he was one of the chosen few. Five years! He would become strong, he would live hundreds of years. The warrior gasped. He would go to Odin’s heaven.

  Glint went out the front door, ignoring its creaking pleas for attention and repair. He was a bandit; he wouldn’t stay in this particular cottage long, and he would burn the place down in memory of its original owners, who were killed in the raid his “mercenary” group, the Armoured Boar, had carried out. Glint didn’t bother with the garden either, a field spanning twenty or thirty feet in front of him. It was dry, dead, untended. No potatoes, radishes, nor tomatoes grew here. No animal sounds could be heard either. Those he had eaten ages ago in hunger. Now the place was that same colour of the dust leaping up with each step he took. Still, nature was kind enough to grant this forlorn field some natural weeds here or there. Perhaps in time the soil would grow better for farming. Time changed many things after all, and nature had a way of taking over everything.

  The numbers of farmers in general had decreased tremendously ever since the first unchained had been freed, more than ten thousand years ago. Before then, people had lived simpler lives, but it was Odin who’d created a guild system that persevered to this day. The man had been a legend his whole life, but his true greatness was only reached after he’d died and come back from hell Unchained, First of his kind. In life he had created many things from his own energy. The Emerald Savannahs, vast plains of long grass glittering a deep green far across the ocean to the south, were but one example. In death he had created a stairway to heaven for the dead, filled with soul hungry monsters. When he was still breathing flesh the First had served the living by defeating the lich king of Hallow Isle in a battle that lasted more than three days. In death he had served by assuring that the strong, and only the strong, could come out of hell, fighting every inch and step to an ethereal paradise built somewhere far in the sky. It was invisible to the living, this stairway, but he had assured the people it existed before he disappeared and climbed it himself. Odin rules there to this day, coming down only occasionally to honour those he deemed worthy of bearing his mark.

  One Eye had ruled the world fairly after defeating the lich king, bringing back that bone blade and crown back with him to live with his dark skinned brethren as king. In death he rules heaven just as fairly. In life he had freed many, in death everyone was his slave.

  Such was the tale of Odin. He’d been a religious man, and had only wished to go to a promised heaven. Upon realizing that only a demonic hell existed for the dead, he was forced to come back and make a heaven for himself and others. It was perhaps misfortune that caused such a place to be permissible only for the strong. Perhaps destiny, for without the First’s devotion to strength such a creation would have been impossible.

  Then again, are destiny and misfortune not synonyms, thought the youth.

  That was Odin, the First of Three. It was with him that this realm’s story began, where all seek power and follow the will of the Unchained unquestioningly. The Three were the closes things to gods that the people of Glint’s world knew, their will being the only surviving religion.

  ***

  Glint’s head whipped to the side, listening intently, his hands on his sword. His hard brown eyes narrowed, straining to discern who was behind a particular brush. He tensed from head to toe as every muscle in his body screamed at him to move. The youth forced himself to relax instantly, breathing out slowly and evenly. Tensing up meant staying still, and being still on the battlefield meant death. One could be hit by an arrow or be caught unaware by a weaker opponent. One could even get stabbed in the back by allies too eager to move forward. The only way to fight is to remain flexible and creative, then see opportunity and take it.

  The breath left Glint’s lungs in a frustrated sigh as he saw what rustled to alarm him so. It wasn’t an ambush, not that he expected anyone to bother attacking someone as unimportant as he. It was only old Crab bumbling about in a thorn bush to the left in filthy clothes, muttering incoherent little nothings as old Crab was prone to doing.

  ”Watcha playin wid, Glint?” asked the crazy fellow in a high scraping voice, shuffling impatiently with his hands slipping in and out of his pockets nervously. Glint was relatively new in this area but Crab seemed to like him better than most. His wispy hair shook in the breeze.

  “Oh nothing.” answered Glint with a laugh. "Just a bit of hurt," he motioned at his sword strapped to his side. "And murder,” he added, tapping his dark grey armour with a finger. He grinned at the madman, wondering for perhaps the tenth time what had driven him insane.

  Old crab seemed to find Glint’s answer funny. He cackled in a way that made the youth’s hair stand on edge, long and shrill as a crow’s cry. Still laughing, his arms began to move in that fashion that had earned him the nickname 'Crab' from those in the bandit group. They would hover slowly and then he’d close his hands suddenly in a speedy twitch, imitating the way a crab would try to hold something. Not that the youth had ever seen the ocean, but from the explanation and Crab’s examples he could imagine what such a strange animal would move like. Glint watched the man intently. Perhaps Crab was born that way, and had kept his mannerisms all the way until he turned sixty, which was how old he looked. Unheeding, the old coot began to hum, and then sing, a song which Glint felt must have been penned by the man himself:

  And then old Laddy flew around

  Her glasses falling all about

  She was a butterfly, its true

  But she could read like me and you

  And she could drink a whole lot of breeeeeewww

  Abruptly, Crab’s mouth became stuck in an O shape. His eyes closed slowly as if in a hypnotic state. His tattered clothes, brown with dirt and dust, previously reeking of sweat and grime, suddenly became pungent with the scent of flowers and trees.

  Glint looked around, squinting. They stood upon a dirt road in this grassy expanse, there were few flowers close enough for their smell to carry. Suddenly the few trees around them seemed a more vibrant green than usual, under the youth’s glare. Their colours were so sharp they could cut a leaf in half. That isn’t right, he thought to himself in confusion at the sight before him. Fir trees don’t bloom, do they? Certainly not this fast, anyway. And they don’t sprout lilies. Was there such a thing as a black lily anyway?

  Glint was snapped out of his dumbfounded reverie by a polite cough, coming from behind. When he whirled around, expecting a master magician casting mighty spells, he saw only Crab. The man looked awkward and pawed at the ground apologetically with his foot. He put something coyly in Gl
int’s hand, as shy as a newlywed. A black lily, it was, as real as could be.

  Heart beating likes a drum. Glint’s mind sharpened with sudden clarity. But how could it be? "Crab... are you a shaman?"

  A short shy shake of the head came in response.

  "A wizard then? Some sort of nature magician?"

  A puzzled look at the first suggestion, than enthusiastic nodding as he heard the second.

  "How? Why?" Glint was sure nobody knew about this. An Ability user was treated with awe and respect anywhere and everywhere. Crab was insane, making him potentially more dangerous and so far more important to please. If people knew, they would flock to him with gifts, perhaps wishing for his protection, no matter how twisted his tendencies. Glint knew that from… no, there was no need to think of him. The warrior focused instead on Crab.

  At the first the harmless madman seemed hesitant to answer, but then when Glint stepped back from him and assumed a less threatening pose, his explanation came fairly easy."A fairy man came to my place last year." the answer was in fact such a stream that Glint could barely keep up. "He wuz a travler, said he wuz hungry and such. Had a voice like a girl and nice red hair and teary dot eyes. I live far away from town so he couldn’t go to a tavern. He gave me a apple, Glint. It wan’t anything I needed. But you know tradition. A traveller gives you a gift and promises he stays nice, you feed him. Only proper, even if es a apple."

  The poor soul had worked himself up into such a nervous fit that he almost started jumping up and down in his excitement. Glint had to calm him down with a blue strawberry taken from a short fir tree, shushing him as he would a small animal or child. The tree was starting to grow all manners of fruit, right off of its trunk. Glint could even spot a dotted watermelon straining on one of the branches, seeming like it could fall at any minute due to sheer overbearing weight. He ignored it pointedly.

  Once Crab managed to get his emotions under control again, they sat down on the grass on the side of the side of the road. Crab was his usual self if you didn’t count the fruit that he was nursing in his arms, wondrous things that could never exist in the real world. "I gave the man what I spared, which ain't much. Then he got real interested in me. He said he wuz going to give me another gift for feeding him, a apple wan’t enough. He put his hand on my chest, and it was real hot, like fire burned his fingers. It felt like the fire went inside my heart.” Glint was confused by the story so far, but he could tell that this “fairy man” did not sound at all like good news. Before he could ask anything, Crab went on with his story.

  "He told me to imagine I was a tree, with all the green things in the world growing inside me. I did, and next thing I know the room smells like mould and the man looks happy with himself. He was dancing and singing in his singsong voice. I was real tired so I went to sleep, and when I woke up the nice man was gone. Woulda thought it was all a dream if mould wasn’t growing on my bed. I started seeing this green air, and I started doing things with it. I kept practicing and learnt how to play with trees. Trees like me, Glint, they grow like I want them to!" Crab finished his story with a grand flourish and a jaw crackingly wide smile. He stood up and took a bow to the trees. Glint half expected them to start clapping, from the way the man was treating them. He backed slowly away, looking at the unsuspecting Crab and shaking uncontrollably.

  'Sklaver’s feet!' he swore to himself

  Somebody turned Crab into an Ability user. How is that even possible?

  The basics were a must regardless of the discipline. Without them a body energy artist would be crippled, a psion would turn into a thoughtless vegetable, and a magician would become insane. He had spent the entire time since starting with metal body energy arts just doing body exercises, qi accumulation, and perfecting his energy distribution system. Five years of imagining his body wrapped with armour of metal qi and willing himself into the essential success. For someone to ignore the basics and awaken Crab in that method, to forcibly make energy flow inside him...

  It was an indication of two things. First, the visitor had known exactly how talented Crab was, and how to awaken that ability in the farmer. What kind of person did that? Who even could turn someone into an Ability user like that? To simply ignore all the training and awaken an Ability?

  The other fact, the deduction that had Glint shaking in his metal armour, was that the bastard had purposely tried to break Crab. As it was, it was nothing short of a wonder that the beggar had escaped with a shred of his identity at all. The strain should have driven him completely insane. Was it safe to be around the madman? Should the nearest guild be notified? Will the “fairy man” strike again, with others?

  Wind whistled along with Crab as he hummed to himself pleasantly, asking the trees about how they were doing that day. When he was far enough to not be noticed, Glint broke into a run, pausing only to pick another blue strawberry from a tree. He would need proof of this, he thought. Nobody would believe him if he didn’t, not even Maze. He himself didn’t fully believe it.

  Glint headed straight for the Armoured Boar's camp. The warriors in his bandit group would know what to do. Perhaps they couldn’t turn Crab back the way he was, and maybe they wouldn’t care to do so anyway, but this was too big for Glint. Crab hadn’t even shown his power to anybody other than the youth. If he’d done so news would have been everywhere. Glint was going to tell swordsmaster Kob, about this. Everything was going to be alright, the youth thought. Only his racing heart betrayed doubt.

  Chapter 2

  Halfway across the globe, in the everlasting darkness of Shönö, a man stirred in his rest atop a needle like mountain. His wasn’t truly sleep of the kind others experience, however. The pale tall man rarely slept in that way, as the dark circles beneath his eyes would have told. This was simply the closest thing he could possibly reach without losing control over his massive stores of energy, killing everyone in the range of a mile unintentionally. As a result, he only truly slept when he was sure there were no living creatures in the area. He had planned to lie down on the top of this tower like mountain, but was disappointed by the presence of people not too far away from his position. Thus he meditated and hoped it would be enough to remove the bags accumulating under his eyes.

  Some said that Azrael was far too strong for his own good, not to mention the safety of others, but he himself didn’t mind it. He enjoyed his abilities, engaged in using them actively even. His favourite part of necromancy was that he was one of only three people in the world who were able to summon ghosts of people from the deathly abyss called hell. Lara the Blood and old man Yamamoto, leader of the Purple Skull, could only do it about once a year. Azrael engaged in conversations with the dead once per month, asking them about their past lives. Despite being called, “ghosts”, these apparitions were in fact barely more than an echo upon the astral plane. If true ghosts were likened to an animal’s tracks on mud, these could only be called the imprint of a bird’s flight above solid stone. They knew little, dazed as they were by death’s shock and hell’s demons. However, some people still asked of Azrael to summon their loved ones, and it brought the living comfort, even if it lasted mere minutes.

  Being a necromancer was entertaining upon occasion. Why just last month, he was summoned to Sklaver's castle, located in the middle of the forest of beasts. He remembered his surprise at seeing his messenger, a neandral.

  "My master has heard of your abilities as a necromancer,” it had said, its human body vastly contrasting with great wings and a graceful beak, said to be able to tear holes into mountains with ease. Azrael had been having tea with his mother at the time, and the naendral’s entrance through a large open window had startled the woman. The beast had the legs and head of an eagle, with brown feathers on its wings and white ones on its head, but the torso of a man, albeit with muscles corded enough to be able to carry its weight. "He wishes for you to join him in his castle for dinner, and perhaps summon his son for him. My master misses him gravely, you see, and thoug
ht this might cheer him up. The immortality of an Unchained can be lonelier than you’d imagine."

  Moved by the request, Azrael had agreed at the time (he had a daughter himself, a teenager called Judith). Only after reaching the great ruins in the middle of the jungles, a towering ancient structure made completely of large slabs of stone and coexisting with nature around it due to the overgrowth of vines and jungle taking over everything, did Azrael remember that the maker of beasts, the Second Unchained to come after Odin Allfather, had never married. The naendral who’d carried him to southern Ya’ab had chuckled then. It had been a lovely evening nonetheless. Food and choice of drink had been extravagant in a feast of myths and monsters. Sklaver did not utter a syllable the entire time, but instead sat upon his stone throne, looking brooding like a true king of beasts. His eyes had stalked the proceedings with yellow fire, killing intent barely held in check. Almost as if his primal power was almost about to burst through his sculpted scarred body. Sklaver’s wild laugh had only betrayed him when he’d noticed Azrael, with his tall lean frame, pale complexion, cherry lips, raven hair, and tattered black cloak fitted by some of the best tailors in Brittania’s floating island of Aetheria, jostled around in conversations with drunken dragons and nympths and unique beasts. The Second had almost fallen from his throne, giddy from laughter, when Azrael had to use his abilities to protect himself from a kracken's hiccup, for these beasts were known to host deadly venom within their massive mouths. Indeed, Sklaver with his heavily muscular arms and his brown greenish vest embroided with the hair of a chimera, was as much of a beast as all the monsters he had ever created, perhaps even more so. It explained his great love of them.

  As a gift and apology for the prank, the Unchained had presented Azrael with a wooden bracelet, carved from the trunk of his protection tree, Gog. It was a wonderful charm against spiritual attacks, and granted its wearer the friendship of beasts and animals. It was priceless, and Azrael had promptly given it to his wife Raimé, since she’d found out that a mermaid had flirted with him from a pool during the banquet, even though he’d fled the mermaid’s attentions as only the most loving of husbands could. Sklaver had probably even sent her a messenger with the fact. His alchemist wife had run a gloved hand through her neck length hair, accepting with a cheeky smile and saying, “Hehee,” for some reason. Azrael had found the impish expression adorable. Raimé had made that same expression the time he gave her that comb she’d seen behind the glass panes of a shop in Aetheria but didn’t say anything because ruby encrusted things were expensive. Seeing that expression was worth anything. Despite the mermaid embarrassment, Azrael’s night with Sklaver had been a joyous occasion, filled with laughter and song and poetry recited and celebration the likes of which very few humans are capable of seeing within their lifetime.

  When Azrael thought about it rationally, he maintained that Sklaver was not even the worst of the Unchained, despite the mortal danger that comes from entering his realm without his express permission or a sign of rank after defeating his Trails. He had never had the opportunity to meet Odin, for the First unchained stayed mostly in heaven and only came down once every few years to speak with the retainers of the Creationists guild, but there was one more Unchained still, besides One Eye and Beast. The necromancer shuddered to think about the time Pyro visited him in his sleep a few years in the past, when the necromancer was just entering his forties.

  Azrael had finally found a good spot for him to sleep without killing anybody. A nice new island that had just surfaced after being submerged for many a year, under the murky depths of the death triangle. It was going to become one of his favourite nap spots, in fact, despite it being free of vegetation or animals, for a nice bed of corals and moss coated a certain cave. While he grabbed a few hours of sleep, little did Azrael know that Pyro had chosen that same island to regenerate his body again before starting another cycle of self-destruction.

  Pyro, a flaming skeleton, had been stark raving mad even before his death, some seven thousand years in the past. A scientist of the worst kind, he’d conducted experiments with little regard for the safety of those around him, with disastrous results. The skeleton in his long red flaming pyromancer robe had attacked Azrael, spewing jets of flame in all directions. It had been a wonder the island didn’t turn to charcoal, what with the hot waves of flame spat out with impunity, causing black rock to glow and the ocean to bubble until mist rose and covered everything in sight. Azrael had survived by sending concentrated astral energies of doom, in the shape of wraiths, towards Pyro to barely dilute his full power in the spiritual sphere, where all energy finds root. That Azrael kept up until the Third’s body chose to lose its form once again and he dissipated into scattered sputtering flames. A full day of battle, and the best Azrael could do was keep his life and hope. He had barely escaped with only his clothes and hair singed. Going back home, his daughter had laughed at him, calling him a coal miner. He took down three pirate fleets that week out of sheer spite.

  Azrael’s tall, slender form stirred as he opened his eyes and looked out from above the mountains of Qina's most remote area. It was as dark here as it always was. More than seven millennia had passed since Pyro, Unchained from death, decided he wanted to destroy the sun. His own body had disintegrated along with the massive flaming orb, and he had absorbed so much energy from the explosion that he only had a body a few days each month. However, the deed was done, and a true sun never shone. The best the other masters in the pyromancer guilds could do was create a closer, smaller replica for part of the world, rotating along with it and casting light upon Shien and part the continent west of it, Ya’ab, as well as some of Mti far to the south, since the replica was actually inside the world cover. Here, it was dark all the time, and the fog rising a few thousand feet into the air left dew in Azrael’s hair. Each lone mountain was separated from the others, the whole looking like a set of great thin needles towering over the world, with vegetation growing along their sides. It was an exquisite and unique view, one which few could enjoy. To Azrael this place was nature made perfect, and he spent a lot of time coming here for the first time with a teleporter. Now he could travel to and from this spot via a circle painted on the ground, for a price.

  Azrael, as one might guess, was not a normal man, and certainly not Normal. People lived long these days, generally depending on how much power they had, how far they manage to travel upon the path set by their own unique system of energy distribution. Some lived as long as five hundred years, Azrael’s own uncle being an example. The necromancer himself was only forty five, although he looked in his late twenties at most. Despite his years, few by any standard, Azrael was already hailed as a prodigy. As he grew older, it was highly likely that he would become the undisputed strongest man in the world. In his tall pale frame and behind his dark eyes, pride overflowed at that fact. It pulsed inside him faster and harder with every passing breath. Some were even starting to whisper in hushed tones that the world may soon have a new ruler, one strong enough to unite people across the lands under one flag as Odin Allfather once had. Perhaps in time, even a new Unchained.

  Azrael had little interest in politics and positions of power. He knew how tiresome it could all be, since his father had been quite an influential man himself in Aetheria. That same man's shoulders would start to slump with worry over the years, unlike uncle Jecht. Azrael had rarely seen him laugh with any real mirth. This was partly why Azrael had cast away his family name and stepped away from Purple Skull’s ranks, choosing to live as an Agent instead. No, had he been interested in ruling others, the necromancer would have stayed a guild member and let himself be corrupted. He would have become the leader of a powerful guild. However, he would have also lost precious time with his wife Raimé and his little girl Judith. Besides, a guildmaster wouldn’t be able to travel as often as Azrael liked to. The necromancer merely enjoyed using his power, one designed for death, to help people everywhere. The irony made him smile.

  As if
to purposely ruin the necromancer’s musings, a large number of human energies entered his sensing probe. Thousands of them, they were. His senses reached farther than most who weren’t trained specifically in that sort of thing, and he could dimly feel the intruders upon his solitude a mile to the east. They were in file, marching row upon row, trampling vegetation under their feet in a bloodthirsty manner. An army? This far into the wilderness?

  The only place appropriate for an army here found itself upon were plains famous for having had wars waged upon them thousands of years ago. Before the beginnings of the age of power, when it was countries and not guilds that ruled, they’d been a battlefield of choice in the continent of Shönö. Now, in an uneasy peace between guilds, times were better, and the place had become misused due to how dangerous it was for a guild to leave itself exposed by large open war. Eons ago man and horse, male and female, old and child had been slain there. The grass had acquired a permanent red tinge to it after being watered with blood for so long. Guilds still fought, but there was rarely a true war pitting continents against one another.

  Azrael cocked his head to the side in a display of curiosity, unsure as to the purpose of an army ever wanting to gather in this area. Was a war being fought? If so, Azrael would have heard of it from one of his acquaintances or in an inn somewhere, as usually happened for a man who travelled as much as he did. As life energies delved further and further into his probe, Azrael became able to distinguish some individual life energies. Most were unremarkable and unfamiliar, but some of the stronger ones he knew he’d sensed somewhere before. One in particular he recognised, and was not happy to. With a sigh the necromancer took out his pulley for the device he used to lower himself from this mountain, almost tripping as he stood up. The teleportation circle on the mountain he sat upon would take him directly back to Aetheria, and he didn’t think running an option. Feeling a slight surge of vertigo, Azrael zipped down the long precarious fall in a controlled manner. He wasn’t going to enjoy this.