[???] Here, Lies...

[Jasyn]

Here, Lies…

Thirsting for air, he jolted awake, choking in desperation, surrounded by a thick and musty blackness, wrapped in a blanket of bleak silence that was interrupted only every so often by a faraway tremor.

With a frantic snap of his fingers, a magical spark flickered, bringing life to a small flame that gracefully danced upon his fingertips, and for a brief moment before the flame extinguished, he was able to discern the extent of his predicament.  As the darkness once again enveloped his surroundings, he at last understood the gravity of his situation.

Curse the gods, Quyzbek thought to himself.  I've been buried alive!

~ ~ ~

Two men--veiled in the darkness of night--stood stoically over the fresh soil of an unmarked grave, evaluating the fruits of their labor as they casually propped themselves upon their shovels.  A third--carrying a torch--stepped forward as if to more closely inspect their work.

A gusty current raced through the graveyard, and brittle leaves scattered in panic-stricken disarray.  The torch's flame whipped about violently, and jagged, eerie shadows stretched outward like a horde of writhing demons.

"Well done, gentlemen," said the man with the torch.  The flame-reddened light licked at his facial features, betraying not a hint of emotion, and yet the shadows seemed to tug upwardly--ever so slightly--at the corners of his mouth.  "I will remind you," he continued, "that you have been paid not only for your services… but also your silence."

Thunder bellowed fearsomely overhead, accentuated by the hollow echoes coming from the surrounding mausoleums.  The very ground beneath the men’s feet seemed to tremble.

"You wouldn't want to find yourselves at the bottom of the east harbor now, would you?  Quickly, gather your tools and leave here before the storm is upon us, lest we attract any unwanted attention," said the man with the torch.

He lingered behind as the others crossed beyond the cemetery gates, stopping to have one last look at the unmarked grave.

"Peculiar, meddlesome man--so-called traveler from afar," he growled quietly to himself, the cold expression on his face belying concern for the hint of crackling energy swirling in the surrounding air.  "I offer you an epitaph you will never have occasion to read: Here.  Forever.  Lies."

[Jasyn]

Almost without warning, the earth itself erupted, electric tendrils arcing from the ground skyward--soft dirt, mud, and splintered coffin wood spewing forth toward the heavens and raining back down again like debris from a geyser.

His former tomb unearthed, Quyzbek crawled from the shallow hole--soiled, disheveled, and charred around the fringes.  Those unfamiliar with his demeanor might find it difficult to ascertain if his perturbed expression was--as one might otherwise expect--the result of his premature burial or mere agitation at the shameful state of his robes.

As if in response to that question unposed, he pulled himself to his feet, dusted off his sleeves, plucked dirt clumps and wood chips from his hair and beard, and righted the fit of his eye patch, stopping now and again between fits of coughing.

As the dust settled, he finally took notice of a familiar torchbearer who had recently been crouching behind a nearby grave marker, taking cover from Quyzbek's unannounced emergence.  The two approached each other cautiously.

"Ahem.  I bid you good tidings once again, but I do hope you'll pardon my unkempt appearance," Quyzbek said unflaggingly.  "By the way--a suggestion if I may--when next you attempt to poison someone, I recommend a concentration less prone to dilution by wine."

"The next time I attempt to poison someone, spy," the man's words dripped with contempt as he forcefully thrust the base of his burning torch into the soil as if staking the very heart of a beast.  "I shall not add wine to my poison at all."

As the man's words trailed off, Quyzbek backed away, his would be undertaker unsheathing a dagger kept at his hip.  The man turned the dagger's grip over repeatedly in his hand--creating a shimmer on the blade accented by the flicker of firelight.  Though most prey would assuredly find it mesmerizing, Quyzbek found its most fascinating feature to be the thin coating of a sinister substance beading along its sharp edge.

Quyzbek locked onto the other man's determined glare--grinning nervously--and immediately had a sense of things to come: Oh, drat.  This can't possibly end well.

With a roar, the man lunged with his dagger, sending Quyzbek tumbling to the ground.

[Jasyn]

It was later in the night when the package came to the Academy.  From all across the land, scholars of magic would make their pilgrimages to the city to conduct research and ply their art here, but at such a late hour, it would be unusual to find anything but nary a soul within the halls of the austere, towering sentinel.  However, as it would happen on this night, a lingering apprentice was still present to receive the mysterious delivery, which came in from the drenching rains.

The Headmistress was none too pleased when the interruptive rapping at the door of her chambers only turned out to be the apprentice bringing her a parcel and a dripping note.  She had been awaiting the return of her emissary with word that the matter concerning Quyzbek was finally at rest--but perhaps he managed to uncover Quyzbek's research notes, she considered, and arranged instead to have them forwarded to her with haste.  She regarded the apprentice sternly until, upon questioning him, she was satisfied that he did not bear witness to any odd comings and goings during earlier hours at the Academy.

After dismissing the whimpering apprentice, the Headmistress inspected the items he left with her, intrigued after he had remarked that, save for her own name, he was unable to identify any of the other markings on the package or the note--all were written in a language he had never before studied.  The Headmistress, on the other hand, immediately recognized it as the dead language of an ancient empire, which vanished from the lands quite possibly thousands of years ago, leaving only rare--but spectacular--reminders that it had ever existed at all.

Setting the note aside for a moment, she carefully exposed the interior of the parcel, revealing an ornate dagger of a make with which she was quite familiar--the blade sullied by the taint of poison and blood.

[Jasyn]

I... missed.  The emissary knew that the stunned expression in his eyes must have betrayed his arrogance, pain blinding him to all else but the inevitable.  Oh, how that strange wizard must have delighted to feel his mass roll aside like dead weight, the emissary thought, seeing him clutching at the dagger plunging into his belly, watching as a patch of warm crimson stained the emissary's tunic, ever-blooming from the bud of his wound.  The poison possessed a fiery burn, yet he could feel a biting chill swimming through his veins.

I... missed.  He realized it the very moment he charged Quyzbek with his dagger and caught, not flesh, but instead, a loose fold of robe.  It was the only opening needed to allow Quyzbek to restrain the emissary's wrist, turning his own dagger back upon him as he fell toward Quyzbek's supine position.  Curse you and your vile luck.  He wanted to scream in agony as Quyzbek jerked the dagger's blade from his body, but the cry stayed frozen in his throat.

I... I can't move.  Try as he might, the emissary could not twitch a muscle, yet even so, he perceived a distinct sensation of motion--or more accurately--descent.  He was unable to see what was happening around him no matter how much he tried to focus.  So blurry.

There was a sound--a familiar sound.  He struggled to remember.  So familiar.  The emissary could feel coarse particles of something--like a moist and dense powder--blanketing his face.  It was getting heavier and thicker... quieter... darker.  So familiar.

As he drew his final breath, the emissary could feel the world floating beneath his drifting spirit.  Quyzbek's hazy form coalesced into view with shovel in hand, working to scrape together scattered soil onto a gently rising mound, filling a shallow hole in the earth--once meant as Quyzbek's grave but now repurposed as his own.  It was the last memory he would ever have.

I missed... I never miss...

[Jasyn]

"My dear madam Headmistress," so went the opening of the dampened note.  "It has recently come to my attention that you wish to have me expelled--so to speak--from your Academy.  I am writing to inform you that I intend to forfeit any right I might have to appeal your decision.  I am also writing to smugly--but respectfully--punctuate that I continue to exist."

It was already the third time the Headmistress had put down the letter and picked it up again, not yet having finished reading it once.  Each time she started over, she pursed her lips while her left eyebrow twitched involuntarily.  Though nearly imperceptible, it was a feature quite conspicuous on her normally impassive but otherwise radiantly alabaster countenance.

"I've been at odds," the note continued, "with how you always took such a keen interest in my research but how at every opportunity you were always so eager to thwart my progress, and now, you are attempting to take it away from me even in its still incomplete state.  However, I think I'm finally beginning to understand why you've been so--shall we say--unsupportive."

She clutched the note between her fingers, crinkling the edges.

"You wish the truth, madam?  I've held back for either of two reasons.  One, my story will be found incredulous.  Two, the truth, were it believed, would put my life at great risk.  While I assure you that my original intent was quite innocuous and my arrival exceedingly accidental, your disdain for me provoked my curiosity and caused me to learn more than I might have otherwise."

Her patience already thrice exhausted by the loquacious letter, she began skimming ahead at a brisk pace.

"I want nothing more to do with your Academy ever again, Headmistress.  My place is with the Academy of the Arcanists of yore, and I promise you that I will return home to my Landing--perhaps that is what should strike fear in you most.  You see, it occurs to me that you and I both had a chance encounter in our former lives.  You, of course, realize that you have been to my village previously--yet your influence has barely even budged despite your eviction--and your deeds there continue to have ripple effects to this very day, so long as you live and no matter where you tread."

Denial coursed through her.  Will these lies never end?  She did not have the necessary proof before, but finally, here it was, worse than her mind's own fabricated reality.  It was an enigmatic confession any other person would have shrugged off as fantastical babblings, but to her, every word was intensely coherent.

"I hope that you are grateful to have your emissary's dagger returned to you, madam, but I also wish to leave you with one additional gift.  Since you are the reason I was complicit in ending another's life this very night--an act that will forever weigh against my conscience--in all good fairness, you deserve to wait indefinitely, a prisoner of endless rumination on the completeness of my research.  Just how incomplete is it, actually?  Might it be far enough along to interfere with your machinations before they even start, causing your schemes to dissolve around you? Do I expose you at a time and place of my choosing?  Here and now, perhaps?  Do I simply walk away?  Just consider this, madam.  My research was certainly at an advanced enough stage to bring me to your doorstep in the first place, was it not?   So aren't you just dying to know?"

In the distance, the bells of the north Temple began to toll, and as she gripped the note, it began to smolder around the edges, glowing embers floating away and diminishing into oblivion, but she managed to read the closing words before they expired in flame and ash.

"Look down to the plaza below the Academy tower at midnight, and perhaps you can witness for yourself how far along my research has progressed."

She saw a flash of light coming from outside her window.  At first, she thought it was another bolt from the storm until she noticed that the glow was persistent, a pulsing emanation from below.

"The midnight bells," she came to realize as she swiftly glided across the room to her window, releasing the latch and throwing it open, permitting the wind and rain to gust into her chambers without yield.  "I'm too late."

She cast her furious gaze upon Quyzbek's sodden, miniature form in the empty city streets below, and he reciprocated with a coy grin and a wave, bowing in prelude to his exit.  A mirror-like pool of glowing air swirled and rippled beside him, expanding into something of a portal, a tear in the fabric of reality shrinking behind him as he passed through it--as if it were swallowing him--a momentary searing gleam marking the former location of the sealed rift.

"With these parting thoughts, I bid you adieu.  Maybe we'll meet again in another lifetime, Headmistress.  Goodbye and farewell... Cordially yours, Quyzbek..."

Tentatively, the Headmistress backed away from the window--holding her breath as perspiration glistened delicately upon her brow.  She looked around the room expectantly--as if waiting for something more to happen--but after the passing of a few silent ticks, she exhaled triumphantly--a wicked smile on her lips.  The taunt was a copper piece in the air, never to fall.  "It appears I still win after all, wretched Arcanist."

Good riddance.


~ End? ~

~ ~ ~

"Knowing gateways to unimaginable power lie everywhere is nothing. Even common guttersnipes can claim that knowledge. Finding and using them, that's a mage's true measure." - The Foci, Opal Darkbriar