He must have realised it the moment they set foot in his workshop. The air of authority was unmistakable. Whether he had known it would end in death, I cannot say. All I know now, is that I have been an ignorant, naive fool who could have overturned fate if I had spoken out. I will not make that mistake again, and thus I write this letter to whomever may find it here, a day, a year or an age from now.

My name is Naotaly, a Rashari apothecary’s daughter. I can tell you this because they already know me: it is no use to give you a false name. The day they knocked on my master’s door, some twenty days prior, was the day we met death in disguise. Death by the name of Travaran Gildmoon, the honourable King of the Seas, the Rashari delegate of the Sequent Four and head of the Traders Guild. Each of these titles alone would demand a form of respect which me and my master, a reclusive arcanist, would be unable to express. It stands to reason then, that master Semuru could not refuse Gildmoon’s request had he wanted to. Now, as I write this, I suspect the master had indeed wanted to refuse, even on the basis of nothing but a vague discomfort in the belly, a soft voice in the back of your head that whispers a warning. Had he known the full extent of the consequences of accepting this request, he would have given up his life deliberately, taking the secrets of his art with him to the grave, of that I am sure.

Alas, fate had not been that kind and death came to him by my hands; an unspeakable act of insubordination, and a mercy both. I shall set aside my shame and terror to confess, to account, what happened in the darksome woods of Vian’Fala that day.

Twenty days ago, there came a rap on master Semuru’s door. I opened it. Master Semuru was an arcanist of respectable age, old of bone but sharp of wit. He hailed from Virenya, but resided in the dense copse of western Vian’Fala. Surrounded by the island’s staggering natural beauty, rare materials and ingredients, my tutor practised the arts of his ancestors in reclusion. I know him to have been a very passionate practitioner of the arcane arts who would often be absorbed in his work to such extent, he would not hear the clamour if lightning were to strike the shack’s chimney. Likewise, he did not hear the knocking that day, being emerged in his latest project involving chants and spells I was yet too inexperienced to comprehend.

This is not to say that the rapping on the door was a familiar sound to either of us. I had been studying at the time, ploughing through some of the tome thick lexicons that carried ancient knowledge on the nature of nature, written by his ancestors and in places expanded by master Semuru himself. Despite my upbringing in the busy streets of Vira’Erana, living among the silence of the woods had made me sensitive to unfamiliar sounds and I must admit I felt agitated when I made for the door.

A year ago, when I arrived in the port of Aran’Kara and asked anyone who would listen, but a few souls could tell me that the rumours of a hermit mage living deep in the western forests, were indeed true and I had not sailed here for nought. Even so, no Aran’Karian seemed ever to have been inclined to make the trek for his hut, having to pass treacherous swamps, tackling tangling undergrowth and navigating through darksome fungal forests before coming to the water-ringed mound where master Semuru made his dwelling. Even if anyone travelled this far, the moss and fern covered shelter blends in so well with the lush greens and haphazard growth on the little island mound, you would sooner pass it without ever knowing it was there. I had spent fourteen days and nights scouring the bogs myself ere I discerned a small stone chimney poking up from the slipshod shack, a faint white plume swirling up from it before mixing with the eternal fog and fumes that coil and grope across the swamp. Who would go to such lengths as I did to find master Semuru’s residence, as fabled a creator of arcane augments he may be?

There was not one visitor. It was a group of three individuals, clad in colourful garments as per Rashari tradition and laden with fantastically opulent jewellery, I observed once I had opened the door. The man on the right was a tall and seasoned sailor, I could tell from his weatherworn and toughened visage. From the satchel that hung at his side came navigating apparatus sticking up from between the cover. Scrolls, charts, sextant. It must have been considerably more facile for them to locate the hut than it had been for me.

To the left stood a young, grim-faced man whose frighteningly fascinating assortment of blade weapons was strapped and sheathed all about his sumptuous armour. If I had not known the third person to be exceedingly capable of looking after himself, I would have thought this man to have been his personal guard. While I did not know the two men on either side, I did recognise the man in the middle. It was Travaran Gildmoon. Occupying the first seats of both the esteemed Traders Guild and the country’s administration, this mountain of a man commands respect in every sense. My surprise, however, overruled my etiquette and I gaped at our guests like a half-minded barbarian. I was not woken from my disbelief at the scene until Lord Gildmoon smiled and inquired, “Are you mayhap master Semuru, the arcanist?” At this, several thoughts flitted through my mind at once, most of them on the subject of apologising and introducing myself as the master’s apprentice, but all I could manage was a weak, “No sir, my name is Naotaly. I am-”

“She is just a pupil,” came master Semuru’s voice from behind. “I am Semuru. Can I help you, my lords?” He motioned me to step aside.

I was shocked. The master had never called me just a pupil. He had not even spoken in this solemn, belligerent tone of voice in my presence before. Looking back, this was the first time he appeared as if he was a different person to me. If he had been an Aiuran, the fur on his back would be standing on end. If he had been a Ceratan, the blood would be boiling in his veins. Instead, it were only his pursed lips and unblinking eyes that betrayed the extent of his cautiousness to me. Lord Gildmoon’s lips broke into a broad grin. “I am sure we can do business, master Semuru.”

My master led the guests inside, into his private chamber. Before he closed the door, he threw me a forbidding glance as if to say stay out of this. If only I had obeyed this unspoken command, things might not have turned out the way they did.

Five days passed since Lord Gildmoon’s visit. Master Semuru had not spoken a word of him or the purpose for his call and the master’s dour aura kept me from inquiring. I continued my studies in private, but creating any of the augments I learned of became a test of persistence. Master Semuru would restrict the access to the storage room where the ingredients and arcane materials are kept and only occasionally allow me into the workshop to assemble them, until one day he forbade me entry all together. The master would lock the door of the workshop whenever he was at work and only emerge for an occasional meal. After ten days, he would not even come for those.

Master Semuru had ever been eccentric. I had known as much even before I sought him out. I respected his habits and oddities for what they were, learning to live with things like nightly bursts of inspiration or the long hours of conversing with mushrooms. I honestly believe that he could even hear them talk back sometimes. You must sense the severity behind my words then, when I say that he was now behaving oddly.

With my mind a potpourri of curiosity and concern, I steeled my nerves and got up from bed when the moons were high. Thirteen days had passed since Lord Gildmoon and his men had come for master Semuru. Angered shouts and despairing sobs had sounded from behind his door that day and I could no longer ignore his descent into the well of madness. Outside, I unhinged the chamber’s single window and squeezed myself through the opening.

The workshop was a battlefield.

Not an inch of floor wood was visible beneath the scatter of paper, leaves, vials, tomes, rocks and stones, branches of all shapes and sizes and many more items too far processed to recognise for their raw form. The workbench was similarly buried beneath a pile of papers and other odds and ends. I felt disgruntled by the disorderly state of the room, but the sight of the book shelves was what froze my heart in my chest.

The ancient works, the lexicons, the compendia on the art of the arcane, many of which are the sole specimen in existence, were brutally wiped from the planks. Pages were torn, smudged and crumpled. Covers were ripped from their spines and some were even thrown into the hearth in the back of the room. The ashes still smouldered with the curled, blackened papers of the Complete Codex on Magical and Medicinal Properties of Precious Gems, the last of its kind.

Someone must have broken into the room. Some unspeakable force of evil must have entered, fought master Semuru down and desecrated his priceless collection. This could not have been the master’s own doing. Never. Feverishly, I let my eyes glide across the scene, searching for anything that might point to answers. The room was littered with what I recognised to be components for the creation of arcane augments and amplifiers. During my time under master Semuru, I had learned to discern a great many species of plant and shrub, types of gemstones and sorts of small animals. Each and every natural object, be it breathing or no, holds energy. Besides the energy of life, there is the energy of the elements, or saba. Each natural object contains saba, with an innate affinity for one, or sometimes two, of the elements in particular. In most cases, it is obvious which is what: a stone carries mostly Earth saba, the fish live in harmony with Water saba, and so on. But there are nuances in each of the elemental energies. For instance, while every tree is imbued with the essence of Earth, a wand made of beech wood is a potent Fire Magic amplifier when kept dry and dark for one year before processing. A staff wrought from the branch of a chestnut may be made into an Air Magic augmenter when combined with amethyst, but only after the branch has been rubbed with nutmeg and heather every other day for ten years. Most of the master’s extensive research had let to the discovery of some of the most amazing and unexpected properties locked within some of the most mundane, commonplace objects. Although not every arcane implement in existence today is made by master Semuru, I dare say that a fair share of them are manufactured after his carefully documented instructions. The master’s workbench was testimony to his diligent transcriptions. On the room’s single table lay a motley assortment of parchments, note blocks and torn leaves, all covered in scribbles and illustrations. One sheet in particular caught my attention.

Instead of the usual oak or elm, the transcription instructed the reader to take a branch of the dragon-blood tree which has grown in perpetual shade. I had never seen a dragon-blood tree mentioned in any of the master’s instructions and I believe the reason for that to be its curse. Dragon-blood trees bleed sanguine red when cut. One does not so much fell the tree as one slays it, a deed it remembers beyond death. Anything made of the wood of the dragon-blood tree is said to be “cursed”, due to its unpredictable… behaviour, both during and after processing. A woodcutting mill burned to the ground after having sawed the trunk of a dragon-blood tree in planks. The carpenter who turned the planks into a fine fourposter bed witnessed his entire merchandise getting devoured by ravenous woodworms that day, and the buyer of the bed died that very same night, strangled by his own sheets. Whether any of these rumours are true, I do not know, but it is common knowledge among all trades to not use the wood of dragon-blood trees.

I scanned the parchment. The use of the cursed wood was only the beginning. There were scribbles about how the crude application of jagged pieces of obsidian into the shaft would increase the staff’s malice. How a band of ardon metal would cut in its bark and make it thirst for blood. A tip was best made of sharp edged surdite. This type of curious metal grows in clusters, like crystal would. They are formed through a chemical reaction between iron particles from the soil and charged ions in the air. The result is an extremely tough substance that, to my knowledge, is only forgeable in the lava streams of Daghar in Taran-Ceroth, where it is only ever used to make weapons.

Weapons.

As I took in the list of horrific objects and substances used in dangerous combinations, it dawned on me that master Semuru must be trying to make an arcane augment for a kind of magic I had never seen before. An augment for a kind of magic you do not want augmented.

This was Dark Magic.

Master Semuru was contriving a weapon, an implement that would absorb and enhance corrupt saba. I was thunderstruck, but much time to wonder what could have made him wander down this darksome path, there was not; a stumbling sounded from behind. I turned to see a shadow, the emaciated form of my master, a shade of the man he had been only so many days prior. The dagger in his hand flashed by the light of the moons.

I tried to speak to him. I tried to reach out. He would not react to his name, nor to mine. The darkness within him, enhanced and amplified by his arcane augment, had consumed him completely.

When he came at me, dagger raised over his head, I could do nothing but snatch a shard of obsidian from the workbench and plunge it deep into the skin over bone cage that was his chest.

That was seven days ago.

I had fled the hut that night, but not before destroying the Dark Magic augment and any of the malicious components it would take to remake it. This is not to say I believe that was the end of it. Far from it. If anything, I have only postponed the inevitable. The Dark will eat and grow, living off the corruption we all carry in our hearts, some more than others. There are and always have been those whose souls are stained, whose hearts are impure and immoral. The corruption that has been washing over Ceon like a flood as of late, is as unstoppable as it is brilliant. This is a fresh stain on the sheets of peace and freedom, albeit one of little contrast. The stain is almost as white as the sheet and all the more dangerous for it.

Master Semuru knew. He felt it the moment he laid eyes on Travaran Gildmoon and his men. The Darkness within them. It lies deep, deep beneath a coat of generosity and kindness. There, it consumes them, corrupts them, enslaving that open-handedness and warmness to ease folk into subordination and compliance while coming across as a hero. People submit willingly when they believe their oppressor to be their benefactor. They do not see that the oppressor who subjugates them and the benefactor who promises freedom are one and the same. The Darkness is cunning to no end, always thinking several steps ahead. It is the friendly face that smiles encouragingly as it eases you over the edge of sanity. It is the extended hand that promises to pull you up, only to never let go again. It is the little voice in the back of your head that says “your soul is worth twelve others” and justifies the death of a dozen. Darkness is cunning. It will find and exploit what little blemishes you bear on your mortal mind, just as it did with master Semuru. When Gildmoon comes and finds his augment in a hundred pieces, scattered about the corpse of its maker, he will come for me next. Now that I think of it, he may have already considered this conclusion when he first came to know that master Semuru had an apprentice. In either case, the outcome would have been the same. If the arcane augment that would empower the Dark Magic in his soul had been completed successfully, he would have ordered our deaths on account of us being able to make another for anyone else. Had the creation of the augment been unsuccessful, he would have slit our throats so as to ensure we would not make it known that he had ordered an infernal device that amplifies the evil in a man. Now that he has neither the augment nor the arcanist to fabricate him a new specimen, it is inevitable that he will seek me out next. Although I have eluded him and his bloodhounds for seven days, there is no doubt in my mind that I am running down a dead end road. With the influence and credibility Travaran Gildmoon has as the head of the Traders Guild and the face of Virenya in the Convocation, he has no trouble framing me as the killer of my master, turning me into a fugitive who will never be able to show her face in public again. He has me cornered.

Cornered, but not silenced.

By the time you read this letter, dear reader, I will be dead. Hopefully by my own hand, but likely by the blades of Travaran Gildmoon’s hounds. I have lived well and learned much. I take heart in the fact that I was able to slay my master before he could bring more Darkness into the world. Do not pity me. All I ask of you, reader, is that you know of the Dark, the impurity that is slowly wrapping itself around the world, obscuring the light. The Age of War may be over, but the true battle has only just begun.

Naotaly