When I entered, I found myself face-to-face with an enormous suit of armor. Polished bronze of a size that would stand half my tower tall. From the inside edges of the open faceplate, I could see the metal plates were at least a hand’s width thick. A small dungeon core rested in the center of the breastplate, and spiral engravings adorned every inch of the thing. I could feel the layers and layers of enchantment it had been built with, though those enchantments were inlaid to the inside of the armor and I would need to take it apart to find them.

The entire left side of the room was taken up with shelves and tables, the shelves filled with scrolls. Those scrolls looked to be made of goblin skin, and the handles were carved from bone. It would have seemed gruesome had I been anywhere else, yet I hadn’t seen any other good materials for parchment nearby. The right side of the room was glowing with an advanced enchantment, a spiraling pattern that circled the disc embedded in the wall. A disc made entirely out of a singular piece of carved mana crystal. While I couldn’t tell the particulars, it appeared as if this disc was the commanding authority for the army of enchanted armor a few chambers behind me.

While everything in the room called to me to investigate, I was wary. I had been too overconfident in coming to Tervan and paid the price when the snake god had induced a controlled state on me. It was several long moments that I waited, but my wariness was rewarded. I began hearing tiny, tiny noises coming from the enormous suit of armor, noises that grew louder for a moment until it culminated in a squeal of metal on metal.

The back of one of the legs opened up, and the small man-shaped monster that emerged was something I had never seen before. He was the size of a goblin, with pale white skin and pointed ears. Red irises darted around the room and he sniffed the air. Was this one of my dark-elven cousins? Were they of such diminutive size? Perhaps the confines underneath the earth made a smaller size an advantage and they purposely bred themselves for this form?

Then, the figure spoke, though I didn’t understand the words. The words were clipped and seemed to string together. I considered dropping my invisibility and revealing myself. Trying to negotiate a dialogue between us. I didn’t recognize the language, but perhaps he spoke mine as well. Yet, before I gave away a potential defense, I cast my [analyze] spell.

Name: Crylus

Species: Vampiric Gnome

Classes: 6th Tier Sanguine Potentate of Necromantic Rituals / 4th Tier Enchanter Lord

A sixth-tier class! I had no idea what the strength of this individual was, but I no longer had any desire to stay and investigate. Especially because as soon as I cast, his eyes darted to where I floated. I slowly floated to the side, to see if they would follow, but thankfully they didn’t.

After a moment, he walked to a table and dipped his fingers into a cup I hadn’t taken notice of. Those fingers then flicked the blood into the air, where it formed a rune and he cast a spell I hadn’t heard before.

“Perhaps you can understand me now, elf-blood?” Crylus asked, his voice sounding smooth and harmonic. I noticed his eyes were magical as well, somehow attempting to pass through my wards to charm me even though he hadn’t even seen me. “It had been a long time since I have conversed with anyone else. I will not take offense to your intrusion if you grant me news of the world. This, I swear on the Seat of Blood, whichever god now holds that throne.”

The vampiric gnome, whatever that was, carried himself in a regal manner. His clothing was made of the tanned skin of goblins but, despite the nature of the material, it looked stylish and well made. Short, curly dark hair rested atop his head, and I could see that only his time inside the suit of armor had left it in disarray.

“Of course, I can also seal the door until you starve. Or chase you until your heart bursts should you manage to flee. The choice is yours. Will you treat with me in a civil manner or are you of the wild-bred elves?”

I wasn’t certain of his meaning when he said wild-bred elves, though it sounded like it was intended as an insult. Yet, despite the unusualness of his barbed question, I knew I no longer had a choice in the matter. It wasn’t the threat of sealing me in or of chasing me to my death. If I could escape, I doubted he could track me. Not when his home would be under siege by the pestilence in a matter of days.

No, what truly moved me to action was his question. I couldn’t allow anyone to ever claim I was uncivil. I would not have my name tarnished in such a manner. The very idea was preposterous, and I couldn’t accept anything measure less than dignified should I be described!

Without further hesitation, I dropped my invisibility spell and floated to the ground. There, I bowed slightly, a greeting of one equal to another. “Greetings. I do apologize for being too forthright in entry into your home. I hope to take you up on your offer. My name is Nemon Fargus, wizard, researcher, teacher, and, unfortunately, Alderman. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

We spoke at length, for several hours on all assorted topics. I provided a few articles of clothing from my bag of holding, and he marveled at their make. I recounted the histories to him, and he was outraged that it was the ninth age.

When I spoke of my life among humans, and how pained I felt at outliving them, Crylus laughed! He claimed to have been born in the fourth age, the age of spirits, and while I didn’t believe it at first, his recounting of the time changed my mind. We discussed the use of dungeon cores, and he showed me the enchantments he used on his masterpiece while I showed him my Illustrious Core-Touched Mana Fountains, though he claimed he didn’t have the need of such artifacts, his eyes said otherwise.

Crylus spoke of being punished by his former master when his enchanted swords and armors failed in battle against a revolt of snake-men slaves. Of being imprisoned in a coffin sealed with enchanted silver chains to be buried for two centuries. Two centuries that had turned into uncountable millennia, to be freed not by his master but the effects of time as the strength of the chains failed. He told me that he had spent the last eight hundred years rebuilding his army hundreds of times larger and stronger. I didn’t speak of how easily I defeated them, and he never asked.

As the conversation slowed, I told him of blood magic and the kingdom above him. Of the coming Pestilence and how I had seen the Tervan’s blood god begin to battle—to which he laughed in excitement and claimed that if that god fell, then he could claim the seat for himself. I had nothing to say to that, and his eyes had grown wilder and wilder the longer we spoke. The silence after his statement stretched on for several uncomfortable moments before he looked at me and made me an offer I hadn’t expected.

“You are the first person I’ve truly spoken with in such a long, long time. You’ve brought news, and I will release you, but I want to ask first. If I offered you immortality by my side, would you join me?”

There was a desperation in the tone of his voice, one that I didn’t fail to recognize. I had felt lonely above, surrounded by intelligent humans whose only fault was that they didn’t live long enough. How must he have felt these past centuries alone, with only goblins to speak with? I was looking for a partner, someone to stay by my side, but I was also wary. He had spoken of a master, one who held power over him, and I suspected that he would have such power over me.

“I am truly sorry, but I must decline,” I told him in an apologetic voice.

“There is a way. If you allow me to drink your blood, I can leave you with a few drops of mine, should you change your mind,” He offered with a smile and a very hungry look.

I was no fool, though. I certainly wasn’t going to allow any sixth-tier master of blood, necromancy, and rituals to have a single drop of my blood. I did give it due consideration. If his blood held power, even if I didn’t drink it, then I could test it to see if there was anything I could learn to apply to my own [Longevity] spell. I doubted it, as his body wasn’t living the way I desired. I took a breath and grimaced as I began to answer.

That was when he lunged.

Of course, he bounced right off my defensive wards. If I fell to every physical attack that came my way, then I would have long ago perished. It would take a creature the size of the hydra broodmother or larger to strike me through my wards. Cyrus, the vampiric gnome, looked more surprised at his own actions than he did that he bounced off my wards. The wee little fellow glanced down at his hands in shock, as if they had acted on their own.

That, of course, was the last time I looked at him, as I turned and fled as quickly as I could. I knew better than to fight a magic-user of his tier in his own home. Or at all, if I could help it. The warding on the doors was potent and would take time to bypass. The warding on the walls around them didn’t exist. The doors fell outward leaving a loud clang against the stone ground, but I was already flying over them as they fell.

I recast my invisibility spell as I flew over the shocked faces of the shamans. I sped through the mines, over the bridge and goblin villages, and through the long earthen corridor. I could hear the pitter-patter of little feet behind me. Cyrus was much, much faster than I imagined. Nearly as fast on foot as I was in flight. Nearly.

I flew out from the mouth of the cavern and into the night’s sky around the plateau. I slowed there, turning to see if he would continue to follow me, but he wasn’t. He stood at the entrance to the cavern with his eyes closed. I waited and watched, with only the sound of my heart beating fast at first.

Then as I calmed, I heard other things. The dense night jungle around the plateau was alive with the sounds of violence. The screams of many beasts in a near-constant struggle filled what was once a quiet place. Not peaceful, but quiet.

Then, I heard Cyrus speak, his voice deep and powerful. Not what I would have expected from a person his size, but the sound of it and the way his eyes shone in the dark sent a tremor down my back.

“This smell is quite exquisite.”

It seemed every beast in the nearby jungle paused in their struggles, afraid of what had spoken. What answered him was the piercing cry of an enormous crow to the south. So loud, my head jerked to the side of its own accord.

I wanted to flee, but I hesitated. If Cyrus was as he claimed, a powerful being from the ancient past, and I released him onto the people of Tervan—how would that be different than the fires I had spread so long ago?

Yet when I spared a glance away from the gnome, I saw the Tervan priest casting unholy magics on the bodies of the dead bloodmages. The bodies and parts had been dragged from where they fell onto a platform of wood that looked constructed for this very purpose. Around the mage’s corpse were dead beasts. Corpses of mutated snakes and birds, of panthers and hydra, and other men were being cut apart with bone saws and sew together into something new. Streams of blood flowed through the air around them. Their forms had been twisted to horrific purpose, mutated by the power of their blood god into something I knew would give me nightmares for years to come.

I waited no longer, turning and flying North as fast as my spellcraft could carry me. This entire country was mad! If it were a person, they would be shrieking in the throes of mind sickness and plague. Thrice I had come across a vision of my death. The blood god. The broodmother. The ancient vampire. Thrice I had escaped. These people can have their mad country, and I hoped the hydra swallow them all.

The flight North into Sena, and then west towards my tower was a speedy one, but it still gave me time to think. To fear. The ground sped by beneath me, and I paid it no mind at all. Instead, thoughts circled in my head forcing me to relive everything of note that occurred in Tervan.

I wasn’t strong enough to fight one of those three beings. Even if the bloodgod prevailed, if one hydra broodmother existed, surely another did as well. That didn’t speak well to humanity’s survival even atop plateaus.

I needed more strength, more power. With the additional mana from the dungeon cores, I could cast something truly devastating if I had a spell for it. Yet, I hadn’t found one within my Authority over the spells of earth. I still hadn’t looked behind all of the doors available, but I felt I had looked through enough.

I knew it was fear of what I had seen that pushed me. An overwhelming anxiety that the world was coming to an end, and myself with it. A fear that I would be eaten alive or worse. I wished that I had the time to consider my options more carefully. Truly, I wished for so many things. My wishes, though, were ashes in my mouth.

I accepted it. There were no other options.

I would choose a new authority.