[WP] "Never."

...

"Never."

From his lungs, his throat, to his lips and out beyond in the open air: That solitary word seemed to hang quietly like a noose at the gallows.

The Blackened Mage and Conqueror of the Western Continent, stared at him from beside the chaos driven portal, glow of another plane of existence illuminating his figure with a tainted glow. Pronounced features that held look of impossible confidence and entitlement, expression silently pressing down at Eron's shoulders like weights of iron. Compared to the man that watched him, calmly considering the word he'd just uttered out of turn, Eron was nothing: He was less than nothing.

"Never."

As the statement left his person for all listening, Eron was confronted with any number of questions spawning with confusion in his mind: Of all directions those ghosted outward, desperately trying to find an answer for the reason he'd so much as opened his mouth. Why had he chosen to die early, instead of taking his chances on hope alone?

A sane man didn't volunteer for death when it could have been avoided. Everything was screaming from the inside out as his life flashed from birth to present before his very eyes, trapping him in a slow shift of time and space. Eron knew there had to be a reason he'd done it. There had to be.

From seconds, to minutes, to hours, to days, to seasons and years: He watched it come full circle in an instant of dread.

When Eron was just a boy, his mother had given him his name in memory of his father- for he'd been born with his father's talents. A lineage of old magic, from the veins of the first men. She looked at him with pride, and the village elders were so proud when he'd shown them, so encouraging that he learn the arts. It was he alone who had been allowed to benefit from the simple books kept with great care in the village library, and he alone who'd always been fed proper rations in times of hardship.

The village, his mother, everyone he'd ever known: They had sacrificed so much to raise him up to his highest potential. They sent him off with honors and bows, waves and smiles- even some tears. It had taken him until his first steps within the Great Blackened Keep to realize they'd thrown him to the wolves in betrayal. They'd given him just enough, and sent him away to die.

It hadn't been pride, nor affection, nor love that had made them encourage Eron to learn. For his life, they would receive thrice that in rewards from the Spire's offerings. He was a contracted good to be delivered.It had been greed and desperation for what his service might earn them. The life of a Mage in the Western lands is no more than livestock for slaughter: Raised, fed, encouraged to grow: And then killed.

Eron had seen that play out in the last few years more than enough times to know.

"Never."

The pure resonance of the word he'd spoke still hung on the air, echoing on and on in his mind as slowly as the world around him shifted. A refusal from one who could not be refused. The world around him pressed as if filled by invisible tar, all motion slowed as an expression of ice grew frigid on the cold face that watched him from the room's center. A chilling smile, brightened by teeth like blood-stained ivory in the dim light of the glowing doorway beside it; such a sharp contrast to the warm hand that still grasped his palm tightly.

A hand that was refusing to let go, even now that he'd signed away his life.

There was nothing left then, no future in it as some might say. Eron reached for all of the magics, all of the skills, all of the knowledge he'd ever possessed, welling them up within his center in a desperate excretion- yet even at his limits he grasped for more. The Spheres of Chaos were still floating along-side the polished black floor, aura shoving through the smeared runes and blood mingling together. There was still incredible power there at the room's center, not fully dissipated from the ritual recently performed: Eron knew if he could tame even a portion of it there was a chance.

A ghost of a plan had come back to him, actions and reactions accounted by his most readied of thoughts: A small chance, but a chance none-the-less.

His eyes could see the casts forming in unorganized and sloppy tumbles of weaving strips: Colors of mana over-top one another in a mad spinning of confusion and unbridled chaos that only magnified as it pressed onward. Against everything he'd been taught, he needed it to gorw- to envelope everything and surge against the reality confining it. His very core, his soul seemed to shake as the threads of those casts tied off midflight, vile swarm of coils and weaves twisting to feed back into themselves with a maddening burst of power.

A single bellow of command was all it too to send the concoction of chaos rushing towards the stern face of silent disapproval robed in black. Larger and larger it grew, taking in the floor, the air, and the space it touched; but as it rose towards the target, Eron knew it was not enough.

Never.

He didn't need to see the terrible grin on the face of the man who was more than just a man. That Dark Lord of the Blackened Keep, Conqueror of the Western Continent and Drinker of Souls.

Eron didn't need to know the bloody history that secured the impossible power that stared at his growing cast of violent chaos, or need to consider if his spell might work- for he already knew beyond any doubt it wouldn't- couldn't even if ten of his ability had worked upon the cast together. No magic could best that man: No Mage could dare defy him and live to tell such a tale. Soon his magics would be ripped apart, by delicate flourish or a swift motion of pure strength, it mattered naught but preference.

But as he watched it fly, the last desperate hope spurred on another question, to form in reality of his fleeting thoughts as it tied itself along the answer to why he'd done such a thing. Why had he thrown his life away in such pitiful resistance? What had driven him into such a corner, that he felt the need to lash out like a wounded animal?

He felt his mind wonder, coming to an answer incomplete in the form of yet another question.

How does a man know when he's in love with someone?

Eron had once believed he'd known love from his mother long ago, but that had been a lie. He'd thought that he'd found love in the villagers who raised him, taught him and readied him: But that too had been a lie.

Eron once believed the gods must have loved him, to bless him so with magic, but as his friends died in cruel and pointless ways on the whim of the times: That too had been a lie.

Now, in the warmth of the fingers that clutched his hand- a woman throwing her own magics towards the same target with a silent expression of defiance, he wondered again at love.

How did a someone know for certain?

Arcs of blue lighting flew to strike against translucent air, many redirected: their attacks glancing about the walls without concern for flesh or stone. A single wave of a finger was all it took as the Great Mage they had targeted stared instead at Eron's ever-growing castings of chaos, face held with an expression both puzzled and amused in equal measure. It was as if the concept of boiling and raging death was a simple black-smith's puzzle, an enigma to be riddle out by half-attentive hands.

Soon it would fail, and soon Eron would die. He would die, and she would die with him. She would die, and the only reason he'd kept himself alive this long would cease to be.

How could a man know? How could anyone truly know?

Before he could find the answer Eron had pulled away from the warm hand, letting that quiet touch of her fingers leave his own unwillingly as he rushed forward with a desperate yell of resistance. His chest burned with heat and fire as all the magics he still possessed set themselves his ally: They rose in a shield of white towards the cloak of black, pressing aside the barriers that waited for him like invisible vipers; each one striking again and again.

Eron felt the pressure in his mind, the painful strain of mana pulled like marrow being drawn from bone, he felt the rippled of laughter as his first and most powerful cast of chaos fell away, shrinking down to dust and wind, and the lighting still falling was replaced by beautiful frozen strands of crystal and ice.

He felt his barriers shattered like fragile glass before careful blows, and he watched the smiling ivory stare at him with sickened glee at what little challenge Eron had presented. He could see it in that instant: How simple it all was for this man to disperse and destroy, how boring the world must be behind those dark pupils of immeasurable age and experience.

But then Eron's hands reached, fingers open without a single wisp of magic left about his person, carried only by the momentum gathered of his of two feet before the lunge. Palms that touched the Dark Robes and the man of flesh and blood beneath them where no magic could ever hope to pierce, a motion that made those all-knowing eyes widened in surprise.

They shared that strange second, brief contact of two men, both in equal astonishment as Eron's arms shoved the pale faced figure backwards, and into the waiting portal.

Then, the Dark Lord was gone.