Blood spattered across the walls as the mage fell, betrayed and overwhelmed by the men he had thought to be his guards.

"Alright boys! He's down. Let's get the hell out of this shithole!" one of the mercenaries shouted, not even bothering to clean his blade of the mage's blood as he sheathed it.

"You sure he's dead boss? Y' can never be sure with these mage types." Another asked as he nudged the corpse with his foot.

Unsurprisingly, there was no reaction from the mage. Headless corpses aren't known to be that effective at many things. One of the places they shine at however, is simply doing nothing.

"He's a bloody pyro you moron, not a necro." A third replied cuffing the second over the head.

"Can it you two. I can hardly hear myself think, and you know how finicky these blasted transport scrolls are. One screw-up and we'll end up just like Dave and Jerry over there." The first mercenary ordered, silencing the two as he off-handedly gestured towards the two smoldering corpses a ways down the hall.

It had been a difficult mission for the mercenaries from the start, and even in the end the mage had died hard. In fact, if it had been a fair fight the outcome would likely have been far different: most likely ending with the mage chuckling at the sight of five merry bonfires crackling away. Instead, after impersonating his guard detail, a seemingly impossible task made easy by the fact that the mage never bothered to learn his guards' names or looks, the mercenaries followed the mage down into a dungeon. Surprising him as they traveled between floors, They stabbed him Eight times before he even realized something was amiss. But, Instead of dieing properly, like they expected him to, he turned unleashing a barrage of fireballs only stopped by the mercenary leader's quick reflexes.

Even those quick reflexes; however, could not save the aforementioned Dave and Jerry. With blood-curdling screams they had been charred into ash almost instantly.

"Ain't that a bit cold-blooded boss? They was our friend's wasn't they?" The second mercenary asked, hesitant to incur his "Leader's" wrath.

"Friends" was a bit of an exaggeration. The five had only met out of necessity, a mage being far too strong a target for them to assassinate otherwise. Nonetheless, the second mercenary had taken to them rather quickly, trusting them all almost intimately. For their part, the others took some pity on him, as such a seemingly simple boy could never hope to succeed in their line of work.

"Just two more shares of the payout Andy, that's what they were. Two shares we can now dis-tray-bute amongst ourselves all nice and fair like, right?" The third mercenary explained patiently, phrasing it as much to the leader as to his dimwitted companion.

His question hung in an air, notably fraught with far more tension than mere moments before. The third mercenary was an old hand: he knew just what could happen to men in his line of business over ten thousand gold coins.

"Riiight ... Boss?" he repeated, noiselessly moving his hand to the hilt of his blade.

"I'm sorry about this Arly, but, you said it yourself... Just one more share..." the boss said as he turned and revealed a crossbow.

"Six thousand gold coins enough to turn you from the thieves' code Johnny?" Arly replied as he slowly lifted his hands above his head.

"Please," Johnny scoffed waving the crossbow around as he gestured,"you still believe in that shit? At your age? Bah. I'll just say the bloody mage killed the lot of you before I managed to get him. They'll be none the wiser."

Once again pointing the crossbow at Arly, his mocking tone turned serious as he asked,"Any last words old man?"

"Aye, Just one," he replied, lowering his hands slowly, defeat in his pose. That is, until his left hand fell in line with Johnny's body. Quickly pressing a hidden trigger on the base of his thumb, he released a single bolt into his opponent's throat before the aggressor could even think of firing.

Arly lowered his left arm as his former boss went down, a fleeting expression of shock crossing his face before his eyes glazed over. The hidden crossbow in his sleeve had served him well over the years, and it looked like this day was no exception.

As he turned to call over the second mercenary, he jolted forward, face twisted in a final grimace of shock as a blade severed his neck.

"Just two more shares of the payout Arly," Andy, as he had chosen to call himself, spat out mockingly as he cleaned his blade off on the old rogue's clothing.

"Can't bloody believe you idiots managed to get ahold of a job like this," the mercenary muttered, dropping any pretence of an accent as he sheathed his sword and swaggered over to the leader's corpse.

Almost daintily, he pried the scroll out of the dead man's grip, pulled the contract from the "secret" pocket the boss had boasted about when drunk two days back, and turned to walk away. Before he made it around the corner: however, he paused for a moment. Standing there, lost in thought for a moment, he shrugged lightly and turned, going back towards the dead men.

Grabbing a torch from its alcove in the dungeon wall, he tossed it onto the mage's corpse and stayed just long enough to make sure the fire took. Once it was crackling away at the mage's robes, he turned once more and walked away with a spring in his step, whistling a merry tune as his boots clicked on the slick stone floor.

"You can never be too sure when you're dealing with magic," he murmured with a lazy smile as he turned the corner, leaving the carnage behind him. "You can never be too sure..."

To a certain extent, the rogue was right: mages do tend to have tricks up their sleeves for avoiding death. After all, no mage would want to spend centuries studying the intricacies of their craft only to keel over from a hungry orphan poking him with a shank. Complete decapitation was usually the safest bet as, if that fails to kill a mage, it at the very least gives an entrepreneuring assassin enough of a head start to potentially make hunting him down too much of a bother when the mage gets around to fixing up his physical body.

The pyromancer in question was nowhere near the amount of strength needed for a reanimation. Really, the rogue shouldn't have bothered. It wasn't a gesture of honor or fear, just a mere afterthought spawned from an old wives tale he was raised on. A token gesture for his own appeasement.

When dealing with magic; however, even the tiniest of actions may cause ripples grand enough to shatter the world... Or do nothing at all.

The future was not set, there was no prophecy foretelling the rise of a hero, and the stars had never been further from aligned, yet nonetheless, in the bowels of the earth a miracle happened.

The mage...

Continued to burn. Even magic follows rational rules. Fire won't suddenly start raising the dead, not if a world is functioning as it should be that is.

No, instead something much more intriguing occurred. As the fire burned, the mage's mana was released into the blaze. While he had not been anywhere near an archmage's level, the man still had a modicum of talent for pyromancy. A slight talent he had honed over decades, bringing the essence of fire itself into his blood, into his mana.

As the mana flowed freely, it mixed with the massive well provided by the dungeon and began to flow. Like oil and water, the two refused to mix. A perfectly understandable result, considering the underground dungeon mainly contained earth and dark infused mana.

Thus, as more mana continued to leak outwards into the flames, it stayed put, unable to rejoin the natural current of the world, or the sheltered eddy of the dungeon.

It took mere moments for the mana to reach a critical mass: forming a current all to its own, outside of the dungeon's and the world's. The current slowly grew, fed by the mage's purified fire mana. Eventually, it reached a point where it could no longer grow outwards, constrained by the distance from its energy source. Unable to expand, its growth stagnated until the flow began to move inward, energy filling the void inside the outer edges of the flow.

Slowly, the untamed flow moved into channels, carving paths of energy through the air. As the energy from the mage increased in density, new connections were able to grow until a pattern began to emerge.

And from that pattern...

Life.

Not a very complex life that is. It couldn't breathe or eat or sing or dance, or any of the common tasks associated with living. It wasn't even intelligent enough to pull up a status screen or string coherent thoughts together. Not yet at least.

Nonetheless, life is life, and the newborn fire elemental celebrated its newfound existence by... burning. Much like corpses, newborns tend to not be good at that many things.

This is especially true of elementals, who at this stage in their lives, are incredibly vulnerable. Their species only continues due to the massive rates at which they spawn in areas with plentiful mana. Newborns are even considered pests, much like rats and slimes, in certain parts of the world.

Nevertheless, there are lucky ones. Certain elementals, who by virtue of fate or fortune, whichever one you believe in, are given time to grow. Once they survive past the newborn stage, where they need constant sustenance, elementals are incredibly hardy, capable of producing their own mana rather than merely absorbing and purifying it like the other races do. At that point, it's just a matter of time. Elementals are unlimited in their growth as they have no physical form, only a projection of their energy. Some are rumored to have even become worlds or stars in their own right.

The plucky little elemental currently mastering the skill faceplant on a mage's corpse; however, was far from that level. The sad truth is that, in all likelihood, he would never reach that point. A wandering monster or even a stiff breeze could probably end his journey before it even started. Failing that, when the mage's energy was consumed, he would most likely suffocate, choked by the earth and darkness mana types surrounding him.

Nonetheless, he was rather adorable: trying to form a human shape like the ones he observed lying around him and flopping forward when he tried to walk. He wasn't very large, barely about as tall as a palm's length, but that didn't stop him from prancing around the fire as if he owned the world.

And there he remained for a time slowly whittling away the time he had by learning how to move. Fortunately, he was making great strides in strength and intelligence as his pattern solidified, the magic that formed his being becoming increasingly stable and pronounced.

Unfortunately, his time in the safe shelter was running out. All too soon, the fire would fade and he would be thrust into the cold embrace of a dungeon. It would take wit and guts to survive, too bad he quite literally lacks both.

Nonetheless, necessity is the mother of innovation, and as he noticed the fire wavering out, the elemental did something not many do, he instinctually added a point to his intelligence and opened a brand new world of possibilities...