The ebony carriage rode through the tunnels, pulled by a giant cave beetle.

The coachman hadn’t spoken a word since they left the prison, and Lady Marianne had proven to be no chattier. She had spent hours looking through the window, and at the ghostly lanterns illuminating the road.

At least she gave me food and clothing, if not a conversation, Valdemar thought, his teeth sinking into a piece of fungus bread. The carriage was large enough to house a small table, allowing the prisoner to feast on a plate of mole cheese, badger steak, and spicy mushrooms. A simple linen tunic covered the scars left by the knights’ blood-draining wheel, though they had already started to heal.

He had noticed that Lady Marianne paid a lot of interest to his bruises when she wasn’t looking through the window. She shifted on her leather seat, and eventually couldn’t suppress her curiosity. “Are you a biomancer?” she asked Valdemar.

“No, I am not,” the prisoner replied. Valdemar had made forays into the field of biomancy, but decided to focus on necromancy and summoning. “Not yet.”

“A mutant then?”

“Maybe. I do not know.” Whenever he had asked the same question to his family, his poor mother answered with tears and his grandfather with silence. “I’ve always healed fast, and it’s possible that my father experimented on me while in the womb. I heard the Verney did that to their children, to make them healthier.”

“Did you know him?” Marianne asked. Valdemar couldn’t tell if she was being sincerely curious, or just interrogating him. “Your father?”

“No.” The Verney purge happened while he was a child learning to walk. All Valdemar had was a name, Isaac Verney, and whatever tidbits of information that he had managed to piece together. “Why these questions?”

“I am curious,” she admitted. “A normal human would have died from all the blood loss and the treatment you suffered, but one meal and you fully recovered within hours.”

“Shouldn’t that concern you? I am almost back at full strength.” The Blood was tied to willpower and health, as it was the very essence of life and death. Valdemar had sensed his power return as he recovered from the blood loss and drugs.

Lady Marianne responded with a soft, amused smile.

“You think you can take me on alone, if needed,” Valdemar said. He had wondered why the carriage traveled without an escort, and why she didn’t put shackles on him.

“I do not think that I can,” Lady Marianne corrected him. “I know that I will.”

Truthfully, Valdemar believed her. She directly answered to a Dark Lord, and thus probably wielded great power of her own.

“Will you try to escape?” Lady Marianne asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Spellbane’s warden took samples of my blood during my capture, and the knights can track me down anywhere with it,” Valdemar replied with a shrug, as he finished his plate. “Besides, at least you aren’t strapping me to a torture device.”

She scowled in genuine disgust. “That kind of treatment is unbecoming of true knights,” the noblewoman said. “We become no better than the Derros by sinking to this level of inhumanity.”

Valdemar observed her, and to his surprise, she seemed to earnestly believe in her own words. She struck the sorcerer as strangely candid. “You are a noblewoman of the Oldblood, no?” he asked.

“I am,” Lady Marianne confirmed, before looking away. “I was.”

“Disgraced?” Valdemar asked, highly curious. He had heard Oldblood rivalries and feuds could get quite lethal.

“Yes.” She responded with an embarrassed smile. “It’s a long story. Perhaps I will tell you one day.”

Valdemar took the hint, and didn’t press the matter further.

The carriage approached one of the Earthmouths portals linking the Dark Lords’ domains together. The construction appeared at the end of the tunnel, a foreboding archway of pulsating flesh and hungry jaws whose gullet led inside a crimson fog. This device had been a human being once, a martyr who willingly sacrificed his life for the sake of knitting the empire’s lands together.

A group of Knights of the Gate protected the pathway, their armor black as night with the white eye of the empress painted on their chest and shoulders. They checked the coachman’s documentation, and let them pass through the crimson mist. The world turned red for a moment as the coach crossed the portal, Valdemar’s body shuddering as it traveled from one point in space to another.

What should have taken months of harrowing tribulations through caves and tunnels lasted only an instant. The carriage emerged through another Earthmouth Gate, one that led into the quiet streets of Pleroma, Paraplex’s only city.

Valdemar had already visited it in the past, back when he still held on to the dream he could pursue a career in sorcery. He had likened it to a maze of stone, its labyrinthine alleys threatening to devour the unwary or hiding the unsavory from sight.

Pleroma had been built on a plateau overseeing the toxic marshes making up most of the cavern, and the lack of space had forced architects to raise ever-larger buildings to accommodate the growing population. Lanterns illuminated narrow streets trapped between looming rows of brick houses as tall as watchtowers, penned in by colossal bladed walls.

Some buildings were in the process of being demolished to raise taller structures in their place, while others had their facade repaired by tireless undead workers. Only a third of the houses showed a light at this hour, making the streets appear empty and gloomy. If not for the veins of shining, purple crystal growing on the cavern’s sky-high ceiling and the pyres of the Church of the Light’s cathedrals, Pleroma would have been cast in darkness.

The carriage passed by less than twenty people as it started ascending on a steep, lonely road towards the Dark Lord’s seat of power. Valdemar had never visited this part of the city, largely because he could never get past the numerous patrols of undead warriors and gatekeepers.

On one side of the road, he could see the purple bogs and marshes surrounding the city, and on the other, a gargantuan fortress of black oily stone. Monstrous gargoyles oversaw its walls, while its watchtowers looked like the fangs of some wicked beast. Dark knights patrolled the skies on the back of mighty dragobats, those black-scaled giant bats which biomancers created from the blood of subterranean dragons.

A black pillar stood at the fortress’s center, covered in arcane symbols and connecting to the cavern’s ceiling. This was the abode of the Dark Lord Och, the supreme master of the entire cavern.

Valdemar remained silent as the carriage crossed the only bridge linking Pleroma to the fortress, a narrow passage more than three hundred meters long. Anyone falling over would make a deadly fall into a rift so deep that nobody could see the bottom. The warlock could only marvel at this wonder of engineering.

“Why didn’t you try to join the Pleroma Institute?” Lady Marianne asked upon noticing Valdemar’s awed silence. “Lord Och is not as… rigid as the other Dark Lords.”

“I did try to join, twice. Once under my own name, and another under a false one.” It had been the first time he forged official documents, but not the last. “I sent hundreds of letters to Lord Och to plead my cause, and I never received an answer.”

Lady Marianne nodded. “I suppose that makes sense. Lord Och’s staff is very mindful about security. Your letters probably never reached him. If they had, he would have granted you a fair hearing.”

“What is he like?” Valdemar asked, trying to suppress his anxiety. Lord Och was the most elusive of the Dark Lords, and extremely mindful of his privacy. Valdemar knew only a few things for certain about this man; that he had trained two other Dark Lords, the fearsome Valar Bethor and Phaleg the Binder, the latter of which became his bitter rival; that he only left his fortress to attend the yearly Sabbath with his co-rulers; and that he was an undead necromancer of tremendous power.

“Wise, and patient,” Lady Marianne replied. “He is older than the empire, and as such his approach to time differs from ours. He cares more about memories than life. The latter always ends, but the former can last forever.”

“That does not reassure me.” Valdemar would rather avoid ending up as a brain in a jar, or bound to a Soulstone, compelled to answer a necromancer’s questions for all eternity.

“I believe you will find common ground. Lord Och was very interested in your notes.”

The carriage reached the end of the bridge and passed beneath a gatehouse. Valdemar immediately shuddered as he sensed an invisible force weighing down on his soul.

There are spells woven in these old stones, the sorcerer thought, as the carriage stopped.

“We are here, milady,” said the coachman, his voice coarse and dry. The man moved to open the carriage’s door, his pale, predatory grey eyes gazing at Valdemar with suspicion. The prisoner sensed a psychic force probing him, ready to strike at the first sign of hostility.

He’s a sorcerer too, Valdemar thought, as he examined the coachman. He looked unassuming with his short black hair and leather coat, but the way he stood reminded the prisoner of a cave lion. They’re all sorcerers within these walls.

“Thank you, Bertrand,” Lady Marianne said, as the coachman helped her step out of the carriage. Valdemar didn’t receive any such courtesy, and had to make his way outside on his own. “Mr. Verney, welcome to the Pleroma Institute of Sorcery.”

Valdemar took a deep breath, and watched.

The carriage had parked in a colossal courtyard shielded by the black, oily curtain walls and watchtowers. All the guards manning them either belonged to the Knights of the Tome sworn to Lord Och, or well-preserved undead. The latter’s shining eyes betrayed the presence of a soul animating the remains.

The Black Pillar occupied the center of the fortress, a stone sun around which everything revolved. To Valdemar’s puzzlement, it had stained glass windows shaped like eyes, but no doors.

The more Valdemar’s eyes wandered around, the more amazed he grew at the complex’s true size. Everywhere he could see the shadows of barracks and stone halls, even the shining flames of a cathedral of the Light. Not everything was made from stone, however. The locals had raised vast and beautiful gardens of mushrooms and alien plants, catered to by steel golems and animated statues. The Institute even had a hedge maze, made of strange thorny black plants and blooming crimson flowers.

And what his sight couldn’t see, the Blood did. Valdemar closed his eyes, and let his arcane senses expand.

This place was unbelievably ancient, and the pillar moreso. It was here when the humans descended into Underland, to flee the chilling cold; the new inhabitants had raised quarters and gardens over the ruins of a far older civilization. He sensed the presence of life below ground, an ant farm of humans toiling in underground vaults.

And the deeper he looked, the more Valdemar trembled. A dark force slept deep beneath the stone, and stirred in its slumber.

This place was thin… the very fabric of space and time had weakened, one spell at a time. The wall between realities had turned from strong stone to soft mud, making it easier for the planes of existence to align.

The Pleroma Institute was the foremost center of knowledge in all of Azlant, even more famous than the Academy of Saklas, where nobles sent their whelps to study.… But it was also far more secretive and restrictive. Only scholars hand-picked by Och himself could enter its halls. And clearly, they had called upon forces that would make imperial citizens shudder in their sleep.

“You can wander around the fortress freely for now, but neither leave it nor access restricted areas,” Lady Marianne’s voice said, returning Valdemar to reality and making him snap his eyes open. “I must bid you goodbye for now. Other duties await me.”

“You will not escort me to Och?” Valdemar asked.

“Lord Och will summon you soon,” she replied. “I can tell he is already watching.”

The noblewoman left after giving her ‘guest’ a respectful nod, the coachman following her shadow. Only then did Valdemar notice that Lady Marianne made no sound when she walked.

After waiting a moment to confirm that yes, he had been left to his own devices, Valdemar started carefully exploring the Institute. Knights of the Tome observed him from afar, and moved in front of the barracks’ doors when the warlock approached. It appeared he was restricted to the outside areas until the Dark Lord granted him an audience.

Valdemar noticed stairs leading underground as he snooped around, and animal life inhabiting the shadows. The sorcerer sensed rats crawling inside the walls, flocks of vampire bats resting beneath roofs, and pet badgers running around. A large stable housed giant beetle mounts, dragobats, and other mutated warbeasts best left undisturbed. At one point, Valdemar walked by a hooded man near the gardens, only to see a swarm of flies and maggots underneath the tattered rags.

And the walls… Some walls had human faces carved into the stone, their lifeless eyes following him as he walked.

Everywhere, someone or something was watching Valdemar.

The only part of the complex which he found halfway comforting was a thorny cathedral dedicated to the Light, one that rested on a stone platform threatening to fall into the rift around the fortress. Pyres burnt on its roof and beacon tower, their glows warm and soothing.

A part of Valdemar wanted to examine the Black Pillar in detail, but he let his arcane sight guide him southeast of the complex instead. Having trained half his life in the field of summoning, the warlock was highly attuned to the fabric of space, and he had noticed an anomaly.

His quest led him to a deep, circular pool of clear water, located right outside a vast greenhouse heated by steam machinery. Valdemar approached the banks and peered into the liquid.

The water reservoir was so deep that the warlock couldn’t see the bottom with his human eyes. His arcane sight, however, wandered into its depths, sensing the rift at the bottom. A wound into the very fabric of space.

This is how they produce the water needed for the gardens, Valdemar thought. He couldn’t help but respect the sheer beauty of this magical wonder. Crafty.

“Interesting,” a voice said.

Valdemar almost jumped back, as an old man appeared to his left, gazing at the pond with curious blue eyes. He had appeared out of thin air, and Valdemar hadn’t even sensed him.

“Usually visitors pay more attention to the Black Tower than the well,” the man said with a kind, fatherly voice. His face was wrinkled by age and wisdom, his hair white as milk. He looked unassuming, and he wore modest brown robes. “The former was there long before we raised the fortress, and the latter relatively recent.”

“I find this well a more impressive display of magic,” Valdemar said as he gazed at the bottom. He tried to suppress his uneasiness. “It is a permanent portal to the Elemental Plane of Water, isn’t it?”

“Not quite.” The old man put his hands behind his back, his gaze as blue and clear as the pond. “Paraplex is poor in drinkable water, and most wells ran out long ago. But extradimensional water extracted directly from the source of all sources? How could this well ever dry up? Unfortunately, we haven’t yet figured out a way to create a truly stable portal to another plane, so one of our scholars, young Poingcarré, suggested a new solution. Do you know how an Earthmouth works?”

Valdemar instantly caught on. “You tried to turn a summoned water elemental into a portal?”

“That was the plan, but unfortunately it didn’t work as expected. The elemental instead kept summoning water into our reality, and the experience drove it mad. We bound it at the bottom of the pool, where it kindly solves our agricultural problem. I often shed a tear at its silent suffering, but such is the cost of scientific progress.”

He sounded almost sincere too, but Valdemar knew better. His sadness was a mask, just like the face and the flesh.

“What’s the matter?” the old man asked with false concern, clearly delighting in Valdemar’s uneasiness. “Am I scaring you?”

“A little,” Valdemar admitted, clearing his throat. He had to choose his words carefully. “You are Lord Och, aren’t you?”

“What makes you think so?” the mysterious individual’s lips smiled, but his eyes remained cold and unblinking.

“Your magical defenses are too perfect,” Valdemar replied, having psychically probed them.

The Knight of the Tome’s magical protection had been a wall, but this man’s was a deep, impenetrable fog. There was nothing to grasp, no hint about what sinister thing hid beneath the mist. You could break a shield, or bypass it, but how did you fight a fog?

“Oh?” The Dark Lord chuckled. “And here I thought I cloaked my armor behind a veil of harmlessness.”

“You can hide your smell from a bloodhound with a great amount of perfume,” Valdemar said, “but he will find it suspicious in itself.”

“Do you consider yourself a hound? You seem more like a caterpillar to me. Bound to the earth at your young age, but with the potential to fly when you grow old.”

“Am I a moth, or a butterfly?”

“A moth. They always strive to reach the candle’s flame, even when it burns them.”

Valdemar hesitated before asking his question, wondering what game the Dark Lord was playing. “And what are you?”

“Why, what else but an old man?”

For a moment, the old man’s illusion faltered to reveal a ghastly black skull beneath the kind face, its eyes twin blue stars shining in the dark. Two blue abysses calling Valdemar’s soul, telling him to sleep forever.

The younger warlock instinctively strengthened his defenses to protect himself, but they could have been made of paper. Chilly ghostly fingers shattered his psychic shield and grabbed his soul with surgical precision, threatening to extract it the same way a dentist would do so with a tooth. Valdemar’s blood became as cold as ice, his breath a white mist.

The moment lasted only a second before the undead put his mask of life back on. The Dark Lord let Valdemar’s soul go, and the young warlock fell to his knees, gasping for air.

For a brief instant, he had peered at Lord Och’s true form, an ancient horror beyond the reach of death and time.

A lich.

“You built a wooden house on strong foundations, young man,” Lord Och said, before offering his hand to Valdemar. “One that can resist the wind, but which will fall to flames and fold before a battering ram.”

Valdemar glanced at the hand with fear. The fingers looked so weak, and yet they hid savage claws.

“I can snuff your life out with a thought,” the Dark Lord said, “why would I need a hand?”

Valdemar clenched his teeth, and accepted the help. Lord Och’s fingers felt warm to the touch, the glamour so perfect that it fooled all of the weaker warlock’s senses.

And yet, this creature had shed his humanity long ago. The Dark Lord could kill Valdemar in a heartbeat, and he wouldn’t feel anything about it.

“You never practiced with another sorcerer,” Lord Och observed, “Not for long anyway. Or else you would have better defenses.”

“No, Your Dark Majesty.” Valdemar could never find an official mentor, and illegal sorcerers frequenting black markets demanded high payments for training… especially on combat-related matters.

“Majesty? I do not call myself an emperor, unlike a certain arrogant colleague of mine. Lord Och will do for now, young Valdemar.” The old man searched for something beneath his robes, and brought out a black, blank book. “This is yours, I believe.”

The book’s pages were yellowed by age and dust, its cover made of simple leather. It looked like any diary, and yet Valdemar could recognize it anywhere. Suppressing his urge to immediately grab it, the young warlock glanced at a smiling Och, and then carefully took his heirloom out of the undead’s hands.

How good it felt for his fingers to brush against the old leather. Valdemar checked the pages, gazing at walls of texts handwritten in a foreign tongue no one in Underland could speak, at the drawings of a pointy tower of steel and of flying balloons crossing an endless sea.

“I did not recognize the main language used when I read this book, which drew my curiosity,” Lord Och admitted. “I thought it was a code at first, but I know enough about linguistics to recognize a foreign tongue. Thankfully, you added translated notes in the common tongue.”

“My grandfather called it French,” Valdemar said, clearing his throat. “His homeland’s language. He taught it to me.”

Lord Och raised an eyebrow. “I thought his homeland was called Earth?”

He had clearly done his research. “Earth was his homeworld,” Valdemar explained, “France his country.”

“Here, at Plemora, we research interdimensional travel too. Partly out of intellectual curiosity, partially because of the potential applications of this magic... and mostly for the purpose of future colonization. It may have been centuries since we retreated here underground, but our people will never stop dreaming of seeing the sun again.”

“How far are you into these research efforts?” Valdemar couldn’t help but ask. If they already had portals...

“We are early pioneers, I’m afraid, and our efforts are fraught with failures and dangers. But perhaps your help will prove a decisive push in the right direction.”

Valdemar’s fingers clenched around the journal, as hope filled his heart. “You believe me?”

“I do not believe, I think,” Lord Och replied. “The paper used for this journal is unlike anything I have seen in Underland, and this does add credibility to your tale. However, if your grandsire taught you his native tongue, why would you need his postmortem guidance?”

“Some parts of the journal were written in a second tongue that I couldn’t identify,” Valdemar admitted. His grandfather had clearly feared that some people would read his innermost secrets, and encrypted them. “I’ve tried for years to decode it, and failed.”

“And you found it easier to create an artificial ghost than to translate a few chapters? Then again, I’ve met very few youngsters capable of binding a Gnawer at your age.”

Valdemar’s chest swelled with pride. “I can summon more than a Gnawer, Lord Och.”

“Oh? We shall put that boast to the test soon.” The lich swept some dust off his robes. “There are thousands of tales like your grandfather’s, though most are simply the result of feverish imagination or madness. Hence, while I heard rumors about your family, I disregarded them. It may have been a mistake on my part, but there is time to correct it.”

Valdemar cleared his throat, unsure what to make of this ancient archmage’s words. “What do you want with me, Lord Och?”

“I want the same thing as you, young Valdemar. I want to confirm whether or not this ‘Earth’ plane exists, and if it does, how to reach it.”

“Earth exists,” Valdemar insisted, his faith unshakable.

“Maybe your grandfather was mad, or maybe he came from another world. We will check, and see which option is true.”

We? Valdemar closed the journal and held it close to his chest. “And what will you do with me, my Lord?”

“You are a criminal, and as such forbidden to leave Pleroma without my express authorization,” Lord Och replied. “If you try, I will eat your soul, spit it out, and throw your hollowed body into the abyss outside my walls. We have taken samples of your blood during your imprisonment, so tracking you down will be child’s play. Consider your stay here… a chance at rehabilitation.”

He said that with the same passion as someone discussing the daily humidity.

This did not sit well with Valdemar. He just needs me to translate the journal, the warlock thought. He will kill me right afterward.

“I could easily extract that knowledge from your mind, mortal,” the lich said. “But why would I? People are like plants. For them to become beautiful, you must water them down and let them grow. I would rather add a flower to my garden, than eat a seed.”

Could he read Valdemar’s mind? “So I traded one cell for another?”

“A cell?” The Dark Lord let out a deep, cavernous laugh. “Would you consider a workshop and a furnished lab a cell? You wanted to join our Institute once, and you shall. You will only have limited resources until I have ascertained the true depths of your magical talent, but I shall reward loyalty and hard work. You will also run errands for me on occasions.”

Lord Och’s smile turned predatory.

“On any occasion I choose,” he said, his voice as sharp and delicate as an assassin’s knife.

Valdemar squinted, trying to think this through carefully. “I may keep the journal, and work in peace?” he asked.

“Yes,” the Dark Lord answered.

“And I don’t have the option to refuse, I suppose?”

“I can send you back to Spellbane, if you prefer,” Lord Och said with false kindness. “From what I heard, the warden kept your cell intact. He misses you greatly, and believes you will come back soon.”

“Alright, alright,” Valdemar sighed. He had no desire to get strapped on a wheel again, and although doing research under a Dark Lord’s thumb made him uneasy, it still beat the alternative.

“Do not make that face, young Valdemar,” Lord Och replied with a chuckle. “We will complete your magical education, and maybe one day I will grant you an official pardon. Do you have a hobby? I personally like to go fishing, but if you have another passion, I can accommodate it.”

“I paint,” Valdemar admitted. “And draw.”

“Oh, you will get along with young Hermann then. I will be sure to introduce the two of you, but for now…”

The lich put a hand on Valdemar’s shoulder, his fingers turning into claws of black bone.

“Let us see what you can do,” Lord Och said with a wicked grin.