Mark yawned, stretching as he dropped the last filthy dish into its rack. The light in the room was dim and flickering, so he went over every dish twice, to ensure he didn’t miss a spot. He looked up at the light bulb. “Gotta replace that soon.”

“Oh, no no no dear, you’ve already done enough! You shouldn’t even be washing those!” She stood with a groan. “Too bad Steve isn’t around anymore… I would have had him change it. I’ll get one of my grandsons down here. They’re coming up to the farm next weekend. It’ll be alright.”

“Its the least I could do for you making me dinner.” Mark replied with a smile, drying off his hands. He had brought her groceries. Trips to the town were taxing on her, and she was an old family friend. Since his grandparents died, he felt an odd sense of attachment to the kindly old woman, who, even now, dragged herself over the stained carpet to him.

She patted him on the cheek.

“Don’t you worry your little head off about it! You go home and get some rest, young man. You have a busy day ahead!”

He nodded my head in agreement, giving her a final hug. “I’ll see you in two weeks?” he said, walking through the door before she could object. He lit a cigarette, inhaling deep as he stepped out onto the old womans porch, dragging his feet. His legs were exhausted; it had been a long day with little rest, and he finally relaxed as he leaned back against his old ford.

It was crusted over with dirt and mud, but underneath, a nice cool blue. He slapped the side. It was a gift from his parents, who didn’t have much to share. His eyes darkened at the thought of them as he tapped his cigarette.

He stumbled his way into the car, fumbling with the keys. It took a few turns for the engine to rev on, his lights dimming for a second as the car started, but then he was off, pulling out of the gravel driveway and onto the old dirt road. He still had quite a few miles to go before he would be home.

Mark leaned back, exhaling smoke out the window. He yawned again, exhausted, his shoulders slumping now that he was alone, the dark circles under his eyes hidden by the dark. He fumbled through the radio’s stations, but he still couldn’t find a single one out in this farmland. He just decided to turn it off entirely, relaxing into the lull of the road, taking off of old dirt and gravel, falling into a highway hypnosis as shapes passed him in the dark. Pitch black cornfields wove their way around him, interspersed rarely with old, old trees and the shapes of telephone lines illuminated by nothing but the cars lights.

Something dashed into the road in front of him.

It was black, amorphous, having a shape that wasn’t quite a dog, and it seemed to almost turn to look at him in an unnatural way. Mark could swear he heard it whine.

He was going to hit it.

If he didn’t turn off the road, he was going to hit it, and as soon as Mark realized that, he whipped the steering wheel to the right, out of the road, out of the way of the shifting shape.

Mark never even saw the power line that hit him, crushing him to paste in the front seat of his car.

Alverost looked behind himself, down the alley and into the city. He was being tailed.

He cursed under his breath.

“Mongrels…”

He had only managed to hide here for a few months before they had found him. But how? He hadn’t slipped up in any of his castings or committed any crime— well, not any crime heinous enough to warrant the attention of the so called hero.

He ducked through one of the doors in the back of the alley— one he had left unlocked himself. It lead into his favorite little lounge, a tea parlor with a great atmosphere for consuming forbidden and eldritch texts.

He liked the place. He wasn’t going to leave it behind.

“Have to work quickly…”

With unsteady hands he fished a piece of Artificial Silver from his pocket, one of the few materials capable of forming a Magical Conduit. It was like a piece of magical white chalk, and, in the right hands, a weapon of mass destruction.

He shoved tables and chairs out of the way and began drawing on the ground, his hands shaking.

“A loop in the ritual circle for the destination… account for movement… foundations of the building…”

He whispered to himself as he scrawled across the wooden floor. He had to complete three circles to make this work.

“Its over, Alverost!” a Paladins voice boomed as the front door of the shop was kicked. Not open, just kicked. Alverost’s speed redoubled. How typical and crude of them, just break the place down! No need to mind the owners. Two circles were done, with only one remaining to be drawn.

“Seriously, why don’t we just burn the place down? We have him pinned.” Someone in the paladins party offered outside the door, their voice muffled by the wall.

The Paladin kicked the door again. This time, it splintered to pieces. The Paladin charged in, sword glowing with flame. He paused, looking confused at Alverost right as he completed the final circle, fishing the activation reagent from his pocket.

An Arcanist— someone possessing an Arcana— would be able to activate this without a Reagent, but all Arcana come with some terrible curse on top of their power.

“Okay, well if we’re not going to burn the place down, let me shoot him?” Someone else budged in behind the Paladin as Alverost fished out the activation stone.

Alverost slapped it on the ritual.

The white lines forming complex patterns across the scroll began to glow brighter and brighter— then flickered and stopped.

“No… no! Where did I mess up…” Alverost quickly reviewed the entire ritual circle. A spatial transfer, especially for a complete building, was an extremely complicated magical process.

“No! We will do this the old way! Alverost, I challenge you to a duel!”

“Seriously? We have him pinned down and surrounded. Just let me shoot him. He always gets away from the duels. Lets just kill him.” The lithe archer interrupted. The Paladin ignored him.

The paladin charged across the room, his boots scraping the ritual circle only feet from Alverost—

And it flickered to light again. Alverost eyes widened as space inside of the circle suddenly folded inside out, taking the Paladin with it.

But it wasn’t done there. It rolled forward like a wave of death, consuming the front half of the building and everything passed it until a good block of the city had been destroyed. Alverost scrambled to move away from the ritual circle.

He never even saw what killed him.

Blinking without eyes.

Swimming without water.

Floating without form.

Alverost recalled where he was, from his early childhood studies of soulwork. He never studied it long. Most of his tutors had a habit of suddenly… dissapearing.

Alverost hated soulwork. He only preferred the kind of magic that was big, purple, hot, or filled up the sky.

Still, he was a prodigy. He had learned enough. So with a stretch of a long relaxed magical muscle and a focus on a piece of himself he never really cared to look at, he could see. See wasn’t the right word for soul sense. It was more like simply understanding everything around you.

He was currently a blip. A dot. A spec of light, floating on an endless river of souls, surrounded by endless others, paper lanterns floating through a sea of stars and light and mana.

He wouldn’t be here long. Not long compared to some of these, souls from beings that walked worlds long forgotten, of creatures whose only evidence was fossils— or less. It would only be a matter of time until one of his attendants or servants found and retrieved his soul, bringing it back into a fragment of his body and reanimating it. He mentally sighed. In the mean time… he searched the souls around him for some type of entertainment in the months he would have to wait.

And he immediately found something.

A souls light would grow brighter the more knowledge and experience they had accumulated in life. Some of these lights were dim, animal minds. Scholars from ancient eras who were just learning of basest medicine, or the fundamentals of magic. But there was another light here. A light that belonged to someone that had clearly spent the majority of their life devoted to learning and studying.

What kind of life was so soft that they could dedicate years, no, more than a decade! A decade just to simple studying? Alverost drifted in the endless procession, sliding closer to the soul. He could see more of it now, sense its memories, its life.

Its name was Mark. A stupid name. Who names their kid Mark?

He could see it, though. He must have been the son of some noble who sent their kid to study. Sixteen years! These people even separated their schools… early education, middle school, high school!? The knowledge it must contain.

The secrets it must hide.

The magics it must possess…

Alverost soul wrapped around Marks, entangling, ensnaring, opening wide to swallow him whole, the sum of all his knowledge and experience. They were inseparable then, in that moment, no longer two distinct souls, but one partially fragmented one, swallowing another, before the process was so rudely interrupted by the hand of a god reaching into the river of souls. Alverost tried to pull away, to move out of the gods influence, but he was stuck to Mark, and their souls fused where they had half merged, inseparable, as the gods influence close around them.