No one had noticed the pitch dark that passed for a few moments in the night. No surprise; few were even awake past midnight, let alone watching the skies. He practiced in the night for a few days before convincing Conten to join him at the testing range. He wouldn’t have managed the walk any earlier.

It wasn’t easy to get the man to go. He didn’t see the point, as Corinth hadn’t made a new construct to test there. Corinth eventually had to guarantee him that it would be worth his time; the researcher’s long-practiced scepticism was offended enough to accept.

It was nearly noon when they arrived, Conten having insisted on finishing a few experiments first and dismissing the importance of the trip. When Corinth didn’t even bring a construct to show, the old man sighed and muttered to himself about wasted time. There was a glimmer of interest there though, not quite hidden under the heavy doubt.

They stood amid the scarred trees he’d walked through years ago. Corinth breathed deep and drew on Kain’s magic, and had to bite his tongue as it flowed. It held no resistance at all to the call; moderation had been imposed on its depth before and he was still learning to cope. He tapered it down to a trickle, noticing Conten’s gritted teeth and stillness. He hadn’t hid the pain well, it seemed.

When he had enough magic pooled, he let it bloom into devouring shadows, a pane of darkness at waist height. He wanted Conten to see the span, be forced to acknowledge it. Darkness swam around the tree-trunks and out of sight, covering an acre or more of the range with black.

He looked back at his mentor, seeing him try to keep his expression neutral, and laughed through the pain. “So how’d that guarantee work out?”

-

He had argued with Conten, then, the first time he’d placed his opinions and beliefs on the level of his mentor’s and truly fought for their recognition. Without a god to obey, without others who shared Kain’s affinity, without answers to the event that could give deep insight to the workings of the gods themselves… He didn’t see how any action but an expedition could be the answer. He had to find the others who had been calling in that chorus and work with them, learn from them at the very least.

Instead, he had been dismissed. Political realities don’t allow it, they said, as if the merchant council of Myranel or the petty Commodores of the coasts had the sway to stop him. As if he should simply study his magic and write tomes of useless knowledge never to be read by one who could wield it. As if he should content himself with tiny mysteries and meaningless discoveries, only for them to be swept away by the mortality of time.

So today he’d invited the most respected researchers to the University roof, to give them one final chance at grasping their mistake. He’d carried up all he would need in advance: a single twisted prism, to demonstrate his point; a rockglass sword, to make clear his commitment; and the construct he’d made on the night things changed, never tested despite Conten’s demands since.

He’d refused to test it on the grounds that he didn’t have enough control over the magic yet, regardless of how much he could channel, and Conten had grumbled but not forced the issue. Instead they’d re-evaluated the other sigil-constructs he’d been working on before the chorus and the dreams had gone. His mentor’s patience had frayed over the weeks when no progress was made there either.

It was a lie, though. His control was better, unreasonably so. It seemed to him that the magic had lost its guiding hand, the inherent control of Kain that limited his followers to his purpose. Instead, it was reaching for any meaning that was offered, and obeyed without restraint. The only thing that kept him from using it with the delicacy needed was the thought-shattering pain that came with it as his body was devoured from within. That little detail.

With luck, he’d learn to channel more efficiently in time and it wouldn’t be as big a factor, negated as well by a rising tolerance to pain, but for now he could hardly do more than offer the magic a single goal and try not to let it slip his grasp in the madness.

The first of the researchers stepped out of the stairwell onto the roof, and Corinth forced himself to focus on the present. Demonstrate, dictate, compel.

“Welcome, and thank you for joining me here,” he called out, watching the woman bask in the sunlight. He wondered why the researchers avoided the roof even though they always seemed refreshed when they stepped out. Maybe it was the height? “I expect the others will arrive shortly.”

She smiled, but didn’t respond. Likely a Seeker, he thought. He’d found Porial’s devout tended not to chat, content with communing with their own internal chorus and whispers.

More were emerging from the stairwell now. He’d requested the presence of the twelve most notable and respected researchers. They didn’t run the University, exactly, but it was well known that for anything significant to change they would have to be consulted. It wasn’t unheard of for them appear together, but he’d never heard of it happening because of a lowly student like himself. His sceptical side hadn’t even expected them to show up. Probably Conten’s work.

Within a few minutes they’d all arrived and exchanged pleasantries, and then their attention gathered. Corinth felt his back prickling with sweat, his hands shaking, nerves getting riled from the importance of the moment. He took a few breaths, letting the seconds pass even as they waited, then nodded to himself and met their eyes.

“Thank you for meeting my request,” he started, ready to regret every word. He glanced at Conten, but the man’s face was blank. “For your sympathy I would offer you three things. First, a demonstration to pique your interest and inform later discussions. Second, a proposal based on the newfound capabilities shown in the first. Without further delay, then…”

He brought out his twisted prism, noting the suspicion on the faces of Teph’s followers whose design he’d warped, and raised it with a flourish. He tried to start with a bare trickle as he’d practiced to avoid any screaming in the face of the crowd.

“What’s the third thing?” One of the researchers interrupted.

Corinth paused, and answered in a strained voice. “A surprise, sir. I trust you’ll humour me a little longer?”

The man frowned, but nodded. “Proceed, then,” he said, waving a hand.

Corinth sighed, and let oily fog burst outwards, covering the rooftop in an instant. A twist of effort had the billows laying low, rolling off the roof and outwards from the building rather than blind the researchers completely.

As it ebbed down, patches began to thin and evaporate. Teph’s speakers had brought their own prisms and were burning the darkness away. He pressed a little harder and the shadows dropped below chest height, low enough that he could see stony gazes staring back at him.

“This concludes the first part of the demonstration,” he said, trying to pitch his voice louder without yelling. The fog would swallow his words more than the bare stone had before. “Next will be a slightly more interesting construct.”

He pressed out with a hand and the fog receded, pulling back like a falling tide in a wide circle around him. He let it sit just at the researchers’ feet, lapping in small waves borne by the wind. Behind him was a simple wooden test stand, cut from a stool he’d stolen from the kitchens. And behind that was a sheet covering a lumpy object that made his heart race to look at. He brought them both forward, placing them in the center of the circle. He took his rockglass sword in one hand, and pulled the sheet off with the other.

Corinth paused for a moment, grinning at the gasps and curses from the researchers around him, then lifted the construct. For most this was their first time seeing it, and as with many of Kain’s works it was not for the faint of heart.

The glass had wrought Kain’s sigil, writ large in the world rather than a mere transcribed image. A gaping maw of teeth opened in crystal, all pointing into the throat as if to stop a meal from escaping, and dark pulses rolled throughout without any need to power them. It was barely more than a foot across, yet within it seemed to fall into an endless abyss, down a gullet with no end. He set it on the stand, drew his sword, and dropped it in.

It took a few seconds, far longer than it seemed it should, but eventually the sword fell out the underside. What emerged from the construct seemed unchanged, a glass sword with crystal edges, but the light caught it wrong. Under bright sunlight it shone with shadows, and behind the glass movement could be seen, but it matched no motion on the rooftop.

“Myranel sits in the mouth of the valley that leads to this mountain abode,” he called out. “As such, it claims a tithe of the crystal and coin that pass from here, and has raised costs endlessly on tools and food and the things this university needs. And when I asked permission to make an expedition, I was told I’d never get past the city, that they’d turn me back unless I gave my weight in glass.” Corinth pushed the trickle of magic he was holding into the sword, watching ink roll down from the hilt to the tip.

“My proposal is this: why not show the merchant lords they have no ownership of this place? With a single prism I could cover the city in darkness, and Conten’s workshop alone could level it in a day. Why do you allow them to infringe on the lives here when you hold such power in your hands? Let me go to them with a dozen of the students here and return with mandates undone.”

For a moment it was silent, and he hoped in spite of the amused expressions that the researchers were considering his proposal. As a few chuckles slipped out, his heart sank. Of course not.

A tall researcher with a thick beard stepped forward. “I think I can safely speak for many of the researchers here: No. You will do no such thing. Strong in magic we might be here, but invincible we are not. This university was founded as a place to study magic and the glassworks within, not as a place for warmongers and petty tyrants.”

Corinth gritted his teeth, trying to make it look like a smile. “The university was founded to find a use for the glass, and that has been done. It wasn’t to be a place where those ideas would live and die. You’ve made tools without ever intending to use them!” He could feel his control slipping and tried to calm down. Already more fog was seeping from the prism, filling the circle around him.

“And do you think no mages exist outside of here?” The bearded man asked. “Strivers, Speakers, and Seekers all practice their craft beyond these walls, and I think you’ll find them harder to quell.”

“Against the constructs made here? Their magic is unfocused and easily beaten. Just look at the depth of fog flowing past you. No mage alive could match its output.” Corinth scoffed, and raised the prism again. Smoke poured out, and the rooftop rippled with waves of blackness.

One of the Speakers threw a beam of light, cutting through the roiling fog and illuminating the stone below. “You would do well to remember we are mages too,” she growled.

Corinth smiled wider, feeling the hunting grin coming over him. “Quite right, though I doubt any of you could channel enough power to refute my works wholly. Still, I would be outmatched against a dozen mages in the seat of their power.” He shook his head and took a step back towards the maw.

“And thus we introduce the final piece of this demonstration.” He gestured to the pulsing gullet. “I haven’t tested it, but I believe this construct contains a piece of the very aspect of Kain’s will. Forging it was… unpleasant, but I doubt I’ll have to do so again.”

“Let’s try it out.”

The researchers drew on their magic, but none could stop him before he laid a hand on the glass. He drew more magic than he could handle, muscles aching and bones twisting beneath his skin. He closed his eyes and slapped his palm down on a jagged glass tooth, crying out in pain as his hand skewered down. Consume, he willed it, and the maw obeyed.

Ripples passed through the ground around them. The earth shook, as it had many a time in this place of channelling, and the bones of the earth ground beneath their feet. Hills rose and fell, the University’s stones shifting against one another as waves passed through the mountainside like ripples over a waterfall.

Corinth laughed at the panicked expressions of the researchers, clinging to the rooftop crenelations like they were any safer. The waves receded, and the mages gaped. Where before the University had stood on a light slope on the mountain, now there was a plateau. The ridges and cliffs had been sheared away, sunk into the earth or raised from the building, and the protruding stone nearby had been ground to gravel.

Corinth winced, and released another burst of black fog to clear the last of the magic from his body. “Now let’s find out, how strong are these greatest mages of our age?”

He waited, but no magic came. No voices spoke to the researchers, no power was granted. Like a cloud over the sun, their connection was simply… gone.

“There’s your last revelation for today. Kain’s sigils weren’t happenstance, they weren’t aspects loosely connected, and they certainly weren’t agreements formed like your pantheon. Kain is the god of consumption, and his prey is the divine.”

Corinth lifted his ink-black sword. “I guess that means I’m the only mage left. I have a goal, a plan, and a sword. Who would stop me?”

He tried to keep his legs from shaking, and hoped that they would give in before he threw up on the rooftop. His fog was already fading away, and he’d simply neglected to mention that his connection was gone too. The sword would throw darkness, but beyond that it was a half-crippled, one-handed man with a glass blade against a dozen very angry opponents.

He stared at the crowd, hoping someone’s will would break. Slowly, the youngest of the researchers knelt. “Very well. If power like this has been freely given, I’d like to know its source. Porial forgive me, but I’m a Seeker ‘till the last.” The dam was broken, and soon he looked at eleven kneeling experts, and Conten.

“Will you make me kneel, then?” His mentor asked. “I would much rather a discussion than dictatum.”

Corinth sighed, and the hungry grin slipped from his face. “I won’t make you, no. I’m not that far gone.” And it was his own voice in the back of his head that whispered this time. Not yet.

-

Three days later the people of Myranel woke to find black clouds overhead. Dawn never broke, but by nightfall the power of the city had been taken, devout cast down and merchant lords beggared. In fear of this new power, they pledged themselves to the cause of the man whose shadow had shrouded their city. Myranel became the city of Corinth, and from then would hold as the seat of his power, forever unaware of how it was broken.