***

Four years after that night and that moment, Cerys showed the first symptoms. Fainting and exhaustion were the prelude to the unknown disease that gradually took her life.

“I’ll find a way” Auryn had sworn, kneeling at the bedside when his wife could no longer even stand up. He swore it, but despite all his efforts, studies, research, spells, the days passed and became weeks, then months, until before his eyes there was nothing but a withered body, sore with black purulent pustules. Cerys’ face was unrecognizable, studded with wounds. Deep black circles surrounded her once roaring eyes, her lips were dry and chapped. She was breathing hard. This was all that remained of the proud woman Auryn loved with all of himself.

From the very beginning, when the disease manifested itself in its true terrible essence, Auryn did his utmost to summon the Council of the Arcane in time. “Please,” he begged them, thrown to the ground, “let me try to save her, that’s all I’m asking for.” His face was lashed with pain, his unkempt beard and long tousled hair made him look like a shadow of the Grand Master he had been until then. “The only way I can do this is by researching new healing spells and magical words, as I have learned all the ones known in Dinas already and they would not be useful for Cerys’ mysterious condition.”

He spoke to them with his heart in his hand, believing that by doing so they would agree to let him entangle his head in the dark depths of the Hypermagical Dimension. “Please, I can’t... I don’t want to see the woman I love losing her life in such a horrible way... I don’t want to see the woman I love die.”

The hall of the Council of the Arcane was a broad, dimly lit semicircle. It gathered on several levels thirty raised seats and on each of them sat an Arcane with a face covered by a white veil. In the Council, everyone had equal powers and, therefore, everyone could speak with absolute freedom.

“This is total madness! The Hypermagical Dimension is a dark, corrosive, cursed, and forsaken place by the Divines” said one of them, seated on the first level of the high-chairs.

“Anyone who has managed to return has been shot down because became the servant of what is most evil in this world,” said another Arcane.

“We have to dismiss him for ranting about such blasphemies” a woman Arcane from the second level.

“Don’t be silly,” a hoarse-voiced Arcane spoke. “Young Auryn is by far the most skilled and powerful Grand Master Dinas has ever had as a representative. He can’t be dismissed.”

“Please let me save her...” Auryn pleaded in a whisper, tears dripping into his raven-wrinkled beard.

There was an intense murmur that continued for several long minutes, until, once silence returned, a last Arcane, seated in the centre of the first level, spoke up: “We are infinitely afflicted by the pain of Cerys your wife, and of you, Grand Master. We agree, therefore, to the continuation of your research into healing spells and magical words that can soothe her condition and, the Divines will, allow her to heal. Instead, we reject any proposal regarding shipments to the Hypermagical Dimension. Neither you nor the Aureate of the Magical Order can venture to the place where it is known that nothing else exists but death and darkness. This is what the Council of the Arcana has decided, and this is what will be done”.

Despair crept into Auryn little by little, like a snake hatching its eggs with slow coldness. It was really a snake what was coming to life inside his chest. Each extra lump on Cerys’ body was a spit of reptilian venom, a stab in the back that reminded him of how his wife had been abandoned by the Council of the Arcane. Along with despair, it pushed its way into his soul a snake even worse: wrath.

-

Months after the hearing, when, finally, the young woman died after untold suffering, something in Auryn broke, something shattered in small and invisible pieces.

“Remember, my love,” were Cerys’ last strenuous words, “in all of creation there are three stages. Birth, death, rebirth. Present, past, and future. Don’t cry, Auryn, because you know. You know that sooner or later each of the three moments will come for each of us. I loved you yesterday, I love you today and I will love you in the centuries to come until my bones will become nothing but dust in the wind. Don’t be sad, Auryn, because you know. You know that then, when I will be just a memory in your heart, it will be my soul to accompany you from Aoibh Eilean. And when you look at the sky you will remember… that I will continue to love you… even after my rebirth. Do not be sad…”

That something ended up in splinters after the death of his beloved, was the humanity of Auryn, his ability to tolerate others, the ability to love. That day, the slow metamorphosis of his heart was finally complete and the real Auryn, Grand Master of the Magical Order of Dinas, son of Erdwyn the Wise and Beallanor the Star, died with Cerys.

-

In the middle of the immense Ciardha, a temperate deciduous and coniferous forest that separated Mount Diudin from the coast, a clod of earth not covered by the nearby chestnut, hazelnut, cedar, and larch trees expanded. Right there, surrounded by a foreshortening of prairie covered with white lilies of the valley, the Tower of the Grand Master stood with an almost arrogant grandeur. It was built entirely of white marble bricks joined together with mortar and magic in equal measure. It was so high that its summit, the seat of Auryn’s residence and the Magical Order of the Aureate, seemed to pierce the clouds and penetrate celestial territories inaccessible to the common man. It was so high that even from Swans’ Nest, several dozen leagues away, it could be seen proudly silhouetted against the skies.

He had counted the time since the death of his beloved Cerys. That place, which for four short, too short years had been a home of peace shared with her and the Aureate, now seemed to Auryn a macabre, sad place, devoid of any stimulus. It passed to be from the most beautiful of palaces to the tomb of his beloved, the den of snakes in his heart.

He decided he would make his move. He would have done what he should have done long ago, when what had been his only reason for attachment to the world was still there to make his life a life worth to be lived. He would go to the Hypermagical Dimension, the place where it was believed resided all that exists contrary to life, love, and light. For some it did not even exist, for others it was a simple wasteland and for still others, a dimension different from reality with logical, scientific, and magical laws far distant from those known in the world. No one was aware of what it really was, as those very few who rarely returned from it had been so plagiarized by the darkness that they had gone insane and thus instantly shot down by the Council of the Arcane. None of them, however, had the same power as Auryn.

The decision was made. He would go to that hellish place made of blood and darkness not to seek a cure, but to follow the silent hisses of the serpents of Wrath and Despair.

Cerys was gone by now; he no longer had any interest in healing strangers or doing good. No, not anymore.

-

On the top of the Tower, the Grand Master was preparing to leave for his journey of no return.

“Auryn! Auryn, where are you going?” cried the crimson-haired girl, worried as she saw her childhood friend, her brother, rise in the air little by little under the influence of the magical wind.

The Grand Master was surrounded by a tawny and blinding light, like the gold and silver threads that held the milky branches around his waist and ankles. Contrasting, as it had always been, was her long black hair with violet reflections, gathered in a braid floating in the sky.

“Auryn, come back, please. Don’t turn your back on Dinas. The Continent needs a Grand Master like you! Please, Auryn, think. It’s not their fault, it’s just the flow of life. It was not because of them that the disease attacked my sister…”

Auryn froze, floating in mid-air. Turned. Smiled. An empty, artificial smile. He knew that once he had deeply loved the girl who from the ground stared at him with her heterochromatic eyes, one black and one red. She was Cerys’ sister and to Auryn she had been his own sister. He had loved her, yet now there was no room in his heart for the feelings he had felt towards her. “I must go, Flann.”

“No, you mustn’t, Auryn! There is still so much to do here, please. Don’t venture into that dark path alone. It is against nature, and you would never return to yourself as well as those who were there before you... like my father! We have done everything possible, but we cannot fight against fate. I beg you! Please…” Flann stammered from the tears. “Please don’t risk so much for someone who… someone who died!”

Auryn was still standing in mid-air. The light that surrounded him grew more intense, warm, heavy in its golden purity. “I’ll come back for you, Flann. When I’ll become strong enough, I’ll come back for you nine.

“I know everything about the lands of Dinas, about life, about what moves beings. Still, I was a fool. I did not understand that the only knowledge I needed to save her, to change men, to correct their stupidity, reside in what is after life, in death. Death… Death is just a word.

“I’m sure you will join me when you understand what power it takes to stop being afraid of dying, to stop losing those you love. However, I promise you they will pay for it, Flann. They will pay her for what they did to Cerys. Dinas will burn as your sister burned before she dies. Sooner or later, I will eradicate the cursed Arcane from the world and on the ashes of Dinas I will create realms that can be called such and if these too disappoint me, I will uproot them in turn, until I create perfect realms that can grow prosperous. You and the Aureate will side with me, you will see. One way or another, you will side with me, Flann” Auryn concluded. He turned, spoke the magical words the girl knew well, and disappeared behind an indistinct crackle of red, orange, and yellow sparks.

“I won’t follow you, you idiot. I won’t follow you...” the girl began in a low voice. “Why? Why do you want to risk so much for someone who is no longer in this plane?” she yelled in tears, in the end, to the now empty sky.

Such words never really reached him.