Last Testament of Archmancer Krish, Gnomish Master of Elements.

I chose the world over her, and I’d do it again if I had to.

But I’ll never forgive myself for that choice.

Warden Seft

Seft swung his sword upwards, deflecting the blade of Tusoy away from him.

“It pains me that you’ve fallen to the shadow,” Tusoy nearly spit his words.

“Our duty is to the people of the Hollow Home, not to Darisen,” Seft replied evenly. Keeping his face and voice clear of emotion had the desired effect on Tusoy.

Tusoy’s face darkened as he clenched his jaw with anger. “You give me no choice! I will strike you down!” Tusoy shouted as he resumed his assault.

The senior Warden stepped in again, continuing his flurry of strikes, seeking any opening that he could find. Unfortunately for him, Seft wasn’t seeking to end the fight, only to delay. With his defensive posturing and careful strikes, he had kept Tusoy from leaving the doorway of the tower. Although he hadn’t entirely kept Tusoy’s sword from taking its toll for Seft’s interruption.

Unfortunately for Seft, he wasn’t coming to this battle fresh. On the way back from their patrol, Meyla’s message had arrived as Seft had stepped through the upper gate to the Heart. He’d clubbed poor, ignorant Nurkan across the back of the head and started running. Hadasa didn’t need to ask what was up.

That fatigue had quickly shown itself as Seft had engaged Tusoy in combat. One narrow dodge saw a cut opened on his cheek. Another lapse of attention let Tusoy slice open his arm, and one close call nearly saw Tusoy run his stomach right through.

Now Hadasa stood outside Seft’s vortex of wind, blocking line of sight from the outside with a wall of darkness. Tusoy had attempted to run from the fight twice, only for the vortex to push him back in.

Unfortunately for Tusoy, while Seft was worse with the sword, he was much better at casting. And he wasn’t so bad with the sword that Tusoy could break past a stalling Seft.

Only luck had prevented anyone from investigating Hadasa’s wall of mana.

Tusoy attempted a mana strike, balling up a heavy mass of dark in his left hand. He struck with his sword, only for the strike to become a feint followed up by a thrust of his hand.

Seft deflected Tusoy’s sword with his own, then countered the mana strike with a balled-up gust of wind, pushing Tusoy’s hand askew. The burst of darkness flew upwards, scattering into the vortex above them.

Tusoy stepped back to consider his options.

Seft looked past the old warden and smiled.

Tusoy narrowed his eyes. “What has you so happy?”

Seft waved at the door behind Tusoy. “The door has sealed itself; what happened next is out of our hands.”

Suspicion writ large in his expression, Tusoy still dared a look. Upon looking, he slumped, his arms dropping. Just as Seft had described, the tower’s door had sealed up as heavy roots grew from the walls and slithered across the doors to lock them shut.

“Good luck,” Seft whispered, praying for Nolsa’s success.

Unnamed Tal

He grabbed his throat, still feeling the indents of the fingers from the hand that had dragged him in. Or at least he tried to; his hands wouldn’t move.

He felt as if he’d left something behind. Tal turned around to see what it was, and he saw himself, his left hand resting against a translucent barrier. His eyes stared at the pedestal, unblinking under the dark sight goggles given to him by Perkay.

Tal tried to look down, and it sort of worked, but there was nothing below him. He shifted his head left and right and quickly realized it wasn’t his head that was moving. As far as he could tell, he was a floating ball of… nothing. Nothing but thought and awareness.

“What?”

[You are here, and you are there. Better than me, I’m all over the place! I’ve really lost track of myself, I have to admit.]

There was a strange ripple in the air, not quite like wind or water. Tal felt separated from all that. If he had to put a feeling to it, he was feeling her amusement. “Who?” Tal asked, confused by the strangely echoing voice of the woman. “And what happened to the Sentinel?”

[Who am I? I could say, but you really have no reference for who I am anyway, which is boring. As for my babysitter, there are a couple of fragments wandering around out there, but the enchantments here are stuck on automatic after popping Darisen’s cherished bubble.] If she’d possessed hands, she would have been waving one in the air as she dismissed the Sentinel and the Elder. Not to say she wasn’t aware of the Sentinel. As she thought about the Sentinel, Tal could feel an echo of it next to the pedestal and one lower in the tower. But talking about the Elder brought a more critical thought to the forefront of Tal’s mind.

“Darisen?” Tal repeated. Thinking of the old Erlkin reminded Tal of his companions. “Nolsa! Perkay! What is happening to them?”

[Oh, they’re still fighting, I can feel them whipping all that mana up there around, but I can’t see them,] Her voice shifted slowly from boredom to disappointment. [I was able to see an unsown Erlkin for a bit when she wandered into the lower tower, but she’s gone now.]

Tal was having a hard time keeping up. “Meyla? You’re talking about Meyla! What happened to her? I thought people couldn’t go into the lower tower; that’s why we came from the top!”

Talking about coming from the lower tower caused her voice to bubble with amusement. [Oh, well, you made the right decision! There is only one way into the lower tower, and you aren’t going to find your way to the main level from there. The enchantments would dissolve you down to the bones, hee hee.]

“That’s not funny.”

[Oh, you’re right. I just remembered when Darisen snuck in to weave his enchantments over what was already there,] she answered wistfully. [He lost his favourite staff and quite a few different foci placing that enchantment. Watching him swear and sweat was quite fun.]

Tal found himself living the memory, very much like his first real meeting with the Sentinel. He saw old Darisen standing in a chamber dominated by a great pillar of light, shafts of mana strung about in complex patterns that made Tal dizzy just to think of. Darisen, younger, with fewer wrinkles and less shadow infusing his body, raised a staff as he attempted to wind a spell around one of the multitudes of enchantments, only for the mana to reach out and kiss his staff. The wood dissolved, starting from where it had been touched the piece of the seal. The crumbling smoke raced towards his hand in the blink of an eye.

The Elder released his staff a split-second before the devouring mana would have touched him. The fear on his face was palpable, even from this distant memory.

[Oh yes, that was quite something to watch,] the voice hummed.

“...”

Tal didn’t respond, but it only took her a moment to break the silence, [Please, don’t just stay quiet, I’ve waited so long, you have no idea.]

“I do have an idea,” Tal replied. “You’ve been in here for seven hundred years.”

[Seven… oh. Wow. Even— even Wertik would have passed away after that long. Not to mention… to mention… oh, I can’t remember.]

The first time Tal had remained silent, it was due to his annoyance. This time an overwhelming wave of grief prevented him from speaking. Every word from her layered the feeling on thicker and thicker until Tal felt as if her sadness was smothering him.

And then it hit him. Tal had thought of her as the sealed thing, maybe a monster, or perhaps a shadow. She wasn’t any of those things. This was a person with whom he was talking.

“I’m sorry,” Tal finally replied. “I didn’t mean to remind you.”

[Oh, you are a nice boy, aren’t you,] she replied wistfully.

The words might have annoyed Tal, but here in this strange space, it was different. He could feel how she felt. He couldn’t read her mind and didn’t know what she would say, but this space didn’t just share her feelings; it outright prevented her from hiding them. She meant it in its simplest form when she called him a nice boy.

[The worst thing, though, is that I can only remember Wertik. A cranky, young Erlkin he was. He was always trying to put on airs of his dark and mysterious darkmancy. Which is silly; he’s an Erlkin, we already know he bleeds shadow, he didn’t have to act like it too! Sigh. My closest friends and I can only remember one of them.]

Tal would have frowned if he’d had a face. He could see the Erlkin she was talking about, a young warrior with a severe expression, holding a dark cloak tight about himself. His expression twitched as if someone was teasing him from outside Tal’s hearing or vision. He glanced back at his body, and it seemed to be locked in place, a look of concern and determination in his eyes and the set of his mouth. Tal felt the urge to scratch his cheek as he remembered, but he had no hands with which to scratch.

“There were eight of them?” Tal asked.

[Eight? Oh yes, yes there were! How did you know?]

“The Sentinel showed me his first memory,” answered Tal. “I saw when they put you here.”

[Ah, I suppose that would do it. Wertik was there, I can remember that… I was so very angry.]

A question rose to the forefront of Tal’s mind. It wasn’t just a question; it was the question. The question for everything that had happened to him, the reason for his birth and the reason for the lives everyone he’d ever known had lived.

“Why?” Tal asked.

This time, it was her turn to remain silent.

“Why were you sealed?” Tal asked, “why was all this needed? Why go so far?”

The grief shifted to a deep melancholy. [What did that old man tell you?]

“Darisen?” Tal felt the need to shake his head. “He told me the shadow was a fragment of you, sent to trick me into letting you out or failing that, to give you a chance to devour me whole.”

[Ah, yes, I can see how he would come to that conclusion. And he’s not that far from the truth either. I did eat a couple of chosen early on. It was a long time ago, but I can’t remember when exactly that was, I have to admit. I was still furious at the time; I’ve mellowed out a little, as you can see.]

She wasn’t lying. She really had eaten some of the chosen. Tal wanted to retreat, but he was stuck now. But at the same time, Tal could still remember the incandescent fury she’d emitted during the sealing ceremony, and it was a far cry from the soul he was speaking to now. Now she felt anxious, fearful, consumed with a desire to just speak to him.

She felt indescribably lonely.

[I’m pretty sure Darisen forced those chosen to me, to be honest. The Sentinel was supposed to prevent anyone from having a chat with me while I was still angry. They couldn’t quite figure out how to line up the chosen appearing with me calming down, so it was just set to happen in regular intervals if there was no chosen present. After those first few, the rest died to Darisen’s meddling. With a hundred or so years, he had the time he needed to layer on his enchantment. You and your friend Meyla solved that problem though! Good job!]

“What about me then?” Tal asked, “What happens to me now?”

[Well, first, I have no desire to eat you, a lot of me is… missing, but that has allowed me to recover a degree of sanity.]

“Sanity?”

[Oh yes, Darisen isn’t necessarily wrong to want to keep me sealed.] Her voice rose with excitement. [I was the most powerful person in the world! And I was utterly drunk on that power. Even worse, the power I hadn’t wasn’t enough, was never enough, could Never Be Enough!] Tal flinched as the final word arrived with a shout that made his mind vibrate as it echoed through him.

She could still remember holding that power. It had filled her to bursting, made her feel as if nothing could stand in her way. And it had left her hollow in a way that made Tal’s stomach twist into knots. She had an emptiness that couldn’t be filled until someone else brought everything to an end.

Her voice dropped to a whisper. [I can still feel the barest echo of that hunger, but the thing that made me so hungry is gone? Or is it broken? My memory blanks here, even though it feels like it should be obvious to me, so obvious it infuriates me that it remains out of reach! But fortunately for you, I couldn’t eat you if I wanted.]

“What?” Tal asked, only more confused by the whiplash of her emotions, “Why not?”

[Because I can’t, child of the God’s toy fruit. The one who put you here saw to it.]

End Chapter