He took a step back, smiling at his work.

Or rather, due to the way his skin stretched across his face, he always looked like he was smiling, but he just put more emphasis into it this time.

“You’re magnificent, aren’t you?” he said. Or rather, a voice came from his person, but to assume it was a voice made by actual breath and vocal chords would be wrong.

His work, a large cube of silver-whitish metal, lazily lost its shape and melted into a puddle.

“Fine, fine, don’t be so dramatic,” he scolded. “It doesn’t suit you. You know,” he raised what might’ve once been an eyebrow, “if you go too far into the floor you’ll run into a Prismatic Wall.” The puddle bubbled quietly. “Oh, what am I saying? If a mere Prismatic Wall could stop you, I wouldn’t have bothered creating you, would I?” The puddle lethargically seeped towards the lowest points possible. “Actually, I… think there’s a Wall of Force first? Oh, it’s been so long, who can remember?” The puddle silently laid motionless at him. “You’re right; I should remember. Must’ve been working on you for so long I forgot to recharge, eh? Well, if I didn’t have my fun, I’m sure I wouldn’t bother continuing to exist.”

He clapped two boney hands together. “Alright, break’s over. Humanoid shape, my height.”

Without question or hesitation, the puddle shot up into a roughly human form.

“Excellent. I’ll be back to test your parameters in a bit. Be nice to your brothers.” He turned and walked past said “brothers” - four stationary suits of armor, sixteen feet tall, holding massive cleavers. They’d been lovingly named A, B, C and D. “Oh, and…” he turned back. “If anyone else enters this room, kill them on sight.” He continued to leave, but something was bugging him. That last order wasn’t quite right. Oh well; he’d think of it later.

He was practically giddy with excitement. Many of his colleagues claimed a golem made from natural mithral couldn’t be done. To think - originally, mithral golems were made as iron golems and then transmuted. How inelegant! No, as he rightly postulated, a body made originally from mithral could house and control a spirit from the elemental plane of water, granting it whatever shifting form its master wished in addition to being stronger, quicker and sturdier than previous methods. There was gloating to do. Sadly, he realized that many of those nay-sayers were probably dead now. Didn’t matter - he could find their children and mock them. Or murder them. Depended on their potential. And his mood.

He walked to the next room, which was to say he walked onto a circle of runes and sigils that transported him six hundred miles, to where the next room was located. He had several rooms set up thusly. Each was buried two miles below the ground (some under oceans), airtight, scry proof, and so heavily reinforced with magical walls that the world could crumble away and his lair would be fine. It was amazing what options became available when one doesn’t need to eat, sleep or breathe.

Safety had become a paranoid obsession of his. An upstart group of adventurers had raided his old lair, destroying his body and making off with several trinkets and ancient texts, even a few tomes he himself had written. This happened a few years ago (maybe more? Time becomes such an ephemeral thing when one even lacks heartbeats to count). Two of the thieves were very well practiced in the arcane arts. On the whole, it was an annoyance. When all was said and done, however, he was quite pleased that fellow arcane practitioners were so interested in his work - enough so that he didn’t even swear vengeance on them, assuming he could read whatever research his work helped them to find. He walked down the room, a hallway adorned with various art pieces that, at one time long ago, he had quite enjoyed.

“Trespassers! You will not leave here alive!”

The voice was his, but it came from an animated skeleton in expensive robes. He found adventurers tended to be very quick on the draw, and would sooner throw everything they’ve got at whatever moves than ask questions. With that in mind, he put some finery on an undead minion, gave it orders to wave its hands at people, added an illusory recording of his voice, and voila! A cheap decoy that gets unwelcome visitors to waste their most powerful abilities (nine times out of ten, or so the empiric data showed). He had one in every room, with the exception of the grand entryway. That was the only room with means to teleport to the surface, but was guarded by four ever ready golems—five, now. And of course, teleporting anywhere into his layer without permission subjected one to the full effects of two Prismatic Walls - four, if traveling from one room to another.

“My inner sanctum! How dare you defile it!”

Another room, another skeleton. He strode through, his business elsewhere. Something caught his attention, however.

He looked down to a table which held six crystal balls, each on its own ornate stand. The balls had various images on them - one showed a card game in progress, one travelled down a long road, one pictured a ceiling, one sped at breakneck speed through a natural cavern, one showed half of what seemed to be a pleasant conversation, and the last one had nothing.

The last one concerned him. These things don’t just turn off.

He pulled up a chair and sat with the reluctant acceptance of knowing it’d bother him if he didn’t find out. He grasped the malfunctioning crystal. He looked it over. Shook it. Knocked it on the table. Tossed it in the air a few times. Dropped it. Nothing.

Seemed it was a bad as he thought. He closed his eyes.

Or rather, since he didn’t have eyes, eyelids, or ocular nerves, he actually just withdrew his senses away from the visual spectrum and into the crystal. A few mystic words later, and he was immersed in a dream-like state.

He saw two figures at the end of a long tunnel. They seemed familiar.

Not enough information to go on. He jumped a bit back in the fourth dimension.

The image of a network of alleyways at night lay before him, surrounded by two and three story buildings. Shoddy craftsmanship - they’d never last a millennia without Walls of Force embedded into them.

He moved at a steady pace along the fourth dimension.

Quickly, he found himself navigating the alleys. Left turn, right turn, right turn - trying to escape something, he concluded. Once in a while, the image would pan down to a small bundle.

With sudden and alarming ferocity, the earth rent asunder all around. Stone walls rose and entrapped him. The image spun around to reveal the two figures from before. One of them, the smaller of the two, was in a classic spell-channelling stance - good fundamentals. The other, a large man in full armor, rose his hand and made a crushing motion with his fingers. A translucent burnt orange sphere materialized around the bundle. The image shifted frantically around, ending on the two figures. Then nothing.

He returned to the here and now, crossing his arms and leaning back. He lost an operative. Must’ve felt cornered and wham—explosive failsafe kicked in. Such a shame. He wondered if this was one of the ones he actually explained that failsafe to.

That was a good question, though - who was this? What mission did he send them on? He had no recollection whatsoever. There was a minor mystery on his hands - delightful! His memory might be going, but his mind was still sharp. Or did that not make sense? Didn’t matter. Solving this would be more entertaining than simply remembering or reading his notes on the subject. He was always ready for fun. He sent his consciousness back into the crystal.

He started hopping back, catching glimpses. Mostly they were images of a forest, occasionally with white ruins. Hours of it. He got bored and took a larger jump back.

He saw the image of a town. A dry dirt road laid before him, leading into a sprawling forest. A mountain loomed in the distance. He recognized it, though he couldn’t quite remember the name - something in Elven. He knew it signified the southern edge of King Eridar’s domain, and the forest was the buffer between human and elven nations. That meant the town was one of the few spots of human civilization along the forest - pittances of acreage allowed by the elves. They were spun as a branch of trust, but he knew they were just easy targets the elves could put down hard if the humans ever got uppity again.

So he knew roughly the where, now he needed the what. Or the who. Or the why. Any would do, really. He started small jumps forward until he came across an image of a lone woman, using trees to help her stumble along a path that led deeper into the woods. He decided to see if anything came from it.

The woman turned around and faced him. She was young, albeit thin, haggard and exhausted. Her eyes had some sort of emotion in them - desperation, probably. He’d spent so much time alone, it had become hard to identify these things.

She started speaking, though he couldn’t hear anything. His lipreading was rusty, but he got the gist:

“Please… taken my son… sent others… help.”

A hand was put on her shoulder, comforting her. Either she took a few breaths, or she repeated “he… he…” in long drawls.

She spoke again. “My husband… why…”

Her eyes looked straight into his. He was pretty sure the furled brow signified confusion.

She mouthed… something. A name, perhaps?

Her eyes went wide—surprise! That look was surprise. He was sure of it. Always on the faces of adventurers when they realize they’ve wasted a Disintegration spell on a skeleton….

The image panned down. A hand was holding a dagger up to the hilt in the woman’s chest. Red started soaking into the cheap fabric of her clothes.

The image panned up. Her eyes were still somewhat wide, but… something else was being conveyed. Her brow was furled, though not quite enough to be solely confusion. Her bottom lip was turned down slightly at the edges, and quivering - fear or sadness, one of the two. He knew it had to add up to some sort of emotion. Probably pain - he remembered that daggers to the chest tended to be painful.

Before he could spend more time examining, the woman crumbled into mist and rushed toward him.

Of course! He remembered now. The amulet from which this perspective came was crafted by him to be the ultimate disguise. By imprisoning someone, the amulet could alter the form of the wearer to that of the imprisoned - down to the last freckle and follicle, perfectly able to fool all five senses. Furthermore, their entire personality would be accessible to the wearer, allowing a flawless performance even the imprisoned loved ones couldn’t tell apart. He was quite proud of the item. Shame that fool wearer had to go get caught and cause it to self-destruct.

Ah, that triggered another memory. He couldn’t mask the magic of the amulet if he had used normal means to instill the explosive property. He ended up getting creative - Necropotent magic. Ordinarily, wizards who wield such magic are lazy - trying to fuel fantastic effects with little preparation, knowledge or finesse. It showed a lack of decent respect for the art of wizardry, and he had a healthy disdain for it for that very reason. That being said, he used Necropotent magic in this instance because he understood and respected where and when it should be used, not because he was a power-hungry megalomaniac (he actually considered himself a knowledge-hungry paranoid, and quite a nice one at that).

Now, why would this agent of his kill that woman and assume her form? He went back a little ways to the name he couldn’t make out. Watching it a few times, it seemed to begin with a ‘Pr’… Prance? No, Brance!

“Brance Deralin!” he exclaimed, finding his awareness back in his lair. He turned to the skeleton. “It was Brance Deralin,” he said, as if he knew all along.

The skeleton waggled its arms at him. “Defilers! Wretched, unlearned heathens!”

“I know, right?”

Brance Deralin was one of the adventurers who successfully raided his lair. Memories started flowing back - he remembered where he’d seen those other two before. There were six of them total, and they were the one in ten that didn’t fall for the skeleton trick. Two of them, Everan the Bastard-something-or-other and Gerard Blah-blah, had taken some books from him and used them to craft… a large crystal, maybe? Or maybe they just used a large crystal as a focus for something. Either way, he remembered being very impressed at the time. They were given a free pass for the annoyance - after all, academics has always been a cut-throat business.

But that Brance guy was just an average idiot with a bow, and the other three weren’t using his stuff to advance knowledge in the slightest. They had earned his eternal animosity.

That must have been his agent’s mission - to get back at Brance Deralin. Well, job well done. Killed his wife, it seemed. That bundle was probably his kid - no doubt traumatized the stupid brat after seeing someone who looked like its mother combust. With an air of triumph, he cracked his knuckles. Solving mysteries was just as fun as always. So, that was that - time to refill his….

Wait….

Something kept bugging him. He wouldn’t send an agent just to settle a score, would he? And why would the name Brance Deralin stick clearly in his mind when he barely remembered the names of the two he was actually interested in? Was there something else? A random twitch in the brain reminded him that something about this had him excited. He tried recalling what he could. There was something about his bow - he remembered being somewhat fascinated with it. Some type of unexpected effects? Or was it a… for lack of a better word, mutation in the enchantment? Or a curse, maybe? Was it even the bow that excited him, or was it something about Brance himself? Probably not - he’d seen a lot of idiots with bow-fetishes in his days. So what was it?

He could check his notes. The thought rattled around until it came to a question: Where did he put his notes? His mind sprang into a thousand searches of his memory, and each one ended with an image of him banging his head against a wall.

Defeated, he let out a sigh.

Or rather, noise was made as pockets of air escaped from his body, which meant he’d been sitting too long.

He cast Sending.

“Red, I need all the information you can muster on Brance Deralin. Omit absolutely nothing. Meet me with whatever you can find at my lair.”

The message took a second or two to reach its destination - just enough time for him to get the sneaking suspicion that there might be a problem with Red teleporting into his grand entryway.

The image on the crystal that had been showing a ceiling suddenly shifted to a pair of legs under blankets in a bed.

“Understood. And please remember to tell your golems not to attack me on sight.”

Bah! Stupid child. Red should know that these constructs never forget their orders. He made sure a while ago that his iron golems wouldn’t attack his operatives.

He was certain there was more to this Brance thing. Something exciting. Maybe sacrificing a soul to his phylactery would help restore his memory.

If it didn’t, well, wouldn’t that just make things more fun?