“Reason, and not Feeling, is my guide; my ambition is unlimited; my desire to rise higher, to do more than others, insatiable.”

- Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

Somewhere else in Kronenburg, a long time ago.

“This is the last time.” Illimen focused on the man sitting on the opposite side of the large wooden desk. With the window and the setting sun behind him, his reddish hair streaked with white shone like the fire he was able to wield. “What were you thinking? Such experiments have been banned since the Alterca incident two hundred years ago.”

The man straightened in his seat and frowned angrily, “Centuries ago, someone thought it unethical and impossible. Centuries! Fossilized ideas keep us down in the mud where we are. The only thing we have going for us are the wonders of our illustrious past! We are living in a time of change, and the problems facing us cannot be overcome with simple measures. I had everything under control!”

“You will abide by the council's ruling.” Illimen sighed wearily. “I can understand where you are coming from, but this goes against rules and regulations that have stood us in good stead. Tinkering with souls...even the elves were wary of it. I have seen your souled apparati and to be clear- they frighten me. Are you sure they retain no sentience, no feeling?”

“But they only exiled the Keralis Erh and did not sanction them further. I think they simply wanted to put their research far from prying eyes.”

“That is your interpretation. Take some time off. Come to your senses, and we will talk again when the whole affair has settled down a bit.”

Clenching his jaws, the younger man stood stiffly and nodded before he turned and shoved the chair roughly to the side, then left the study. Illimen braced for the slamming of the heavy oaken door of his study, but with careful control, the man closed it quietly behind him.

Outside, the man brushed back his unruly dark hair and breathed deeply. His eyes were a deep blue, his face sharply cut with a bit of stubble shadowing his chin. The robes of a teacher fell around his shoulders. He seemed to be in his thirties, but the drive burning in his eyes made him seem younger.

Walking quickly, he descended one flight of stairs before entering a series of corridors.

“Good morning, magus Gallius Escerus.” A student that had been helping him set up class from time to time called out to him as he went by.

“Good morning.” Came the absentminded reply before the man halted and turned his head, “Did you see Willibald?”

“Who?” The student looked taken aback, then stopped in realization, “The gnome?”

“Yes, and?”

“He should be in the lab. Does he ever leave?”

Nodding to himself, Gallius waved him off and continued down the hallway before ascending a spiraling staircase.

Entering a large, round room with great windows facing the cardinal directions, he smiled in grim satisfaction at the desks overflowing with notes, books, scrolls, and alchemistical instruments. A gnome with tousled, lightly colored hair and a frizzy beard was looking at a stack of notes. A woman was leaning against the wall and grinned tiredly. She wore dark robes made of cheap fabric, a badge denoting a second-year student pinned to her breast. Dark eyes, blond hair a somewhat harsh but still pretty face were the first impression; the second was an abiding weariness suffusing her whole being.

“Willibald, Amber. Good that you are both here. We have to speed up our research. Someone.” He grimaced, “Told Illimen, and he just called me to his study. We are officially forbidden to go further in our research.” He slammed his hand against the wall. “We are so close! I have perfected the transfer of personality and memory. We can stabilize your connection with the void, Amber, and with that proof in hand, we can demand our research be recognized! Forming stable gates has been a dream for ages!”

In a free space between two desks stood a hunched figure made of bronze and leather with a theatrical porcelain mask fastened before only barely visible gears turning in the head encased in a protective metal sheathing.

“Butler One. Grab the materials- we are finishing today! You two, get some rest before tonight. The setup will take a few hours, and you will only be in the way.” Gesturing arrogantly, the man focused on grabbing beakers with differently colored fluids stuffing all of that into the waiting arms of the automaton.

The woman called Amber walked between the houses of the city and looked up at the precariously leaning stone buildings. The noise of the city was muted here. Voices from the buildings echoed between the eaves, dirty water ran down the middle of the road, and no direct light reached the ground.

Entering through a small doorway by stepping on a small staircase made of loosely stacked bricks, she turned a corner and knocked perfunctorily before stepping in and removing her dirty shoes while still in the entrance. The small apartment was dimly lit through scraped leather panes fitted into ramshackle window frames. Old chairs and a table stood in the center with shelves stacking cracked ceramic and tin dishes and cups. A young man looked up from where he had been sitting and feeding a young girl some mashed apples.

“Ah, you are back! Anything new?”

Without saying anything, she simply smiled and gave him a kiss on the cheek, looking fondly at her daughter. The man wore the robes of a first-year student with a kindly face, fluffy brown hair, and eyes of a greyish color.

“Did she sleep?”

“There were no problems. Thank Meloris, for our kind neighbor. I wouldn’t know how to care for her with the academy and all.”

As her hand came near her daughter, darkness bled into her eyes, and flickering flames of unlight brushed over her hands, rotting the hem of her sleeves. She snatched her hand back with a suppressed curse, cradling it against her chest. She lowered her head as tears welled in her eyes.

The man grabbed the child and jumped back while the chair fell to the ground, with the backrest breaking into pieces with a crash.

“Amber!”

Turning around with a sob, she rushed through the front door running outside. The outline of her hand clearly visible where the wood of the doorway had warped and rotted at her touch.

The child began to cry.

The ritual circle was prepared meticulously. Braziers emitting dark smoke stood at the edges of the heptagram. The polished ground was inscribed with whorling symbols and glyphs. Large apparati channeled crystallized mana into complex spellforms.

Gallius stood at the altar, not any religious artifact but the nexus of the magical working, grasping a chalice and a long thin dagger.

“Are you ready?”

The woman nodded decisively. “I want to hold my daughter, my husband, without fearing for their life!”

The gnome was busy in the background checking another set of symbols warding the tower chamber from prying eyes.

“Then we begin.”

People in Kronenburg slept uneasily this night as nightmares hounded their dreams. Days and weeks later, suicides rose sharply, with men and women succumbing to the darkness within.

The infirmary was relatively empty at this time of day, and the young woman was lying in the outermost chamber, seemingly asleep.

“Why won’t she wake up? Everything was fine!” The student was desperately holding back tears as he asked the man in healer's robes.

Blonde hairs spread across the pillow like a wave of gold.

“I am but the healer on duty! This is far beyond my abilities! Whatever happened to her, she is directly connected to the plane of the void. Her soul is neither here nor there. She should be dead! And there is no sign of decay. I don’t know anymore.” The older man shook his head in disbelief. "I have the order to keep her here as long as necessary, so don't fret. I'm sure one of my colleagues will find something to help her!"

“She has an unstable connection to the void. To call it a gate would be charitable. It's more of a hole, really. And she was aware of the risks. She gave her consent. The ritual should have stabilized her abilities, given her control!”

“Should.” Illimen sounded tired.

“I only need more time to…”

“No. You had more than one chance, more than two. I cannot even count the times you flaunted this academy's rules and conventions. But a genius must be unfettered, no? I have shielded you time and again, but I can no longer shield you now.”

“But Illimen, Drathur…!” Gaius raised his hand toward his mentor.

The other councilors murmured quietly to each other, and one of them loudly cleared his throat. “You are before the council, this is not some get-together with your teacher, and I must say that nothing of this surprises me in the least. The magister was always going on about the advances you made to the integration of the material and the immaterial, but I only saw mad ambition. The same ambition that sank our homeland!”

Affirmative grumbling sounded from several other councilors.

The large round chamber held thirteen seats arranged in a half-circle facing toward a slightly lowered platform in the middle surrounded by complex runes and lit from above by a skylight that nonetheless was magically amplified to yield a proper amount of light. The rest of the room was shadowed in comparison.

Illimen leaned back and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Gaius Escerus von Gildburg, you are hereby dismissed from your position as master of the tower of constructs. You shall leave the academy forthwith, taking only that which directly belongs to you. Everything else will remain the property of the academy. No appeal is warranted or allowed.”

“That is too lenient!” The councilor that had spoken before angrily exclaimed.

“Why? Because your protege is bound for the tower of constructs, and you would like more of Gaius machines to remain behind? Don’t think I don’t know of- your- ambition! I can explain in more depth if that is required.”

The councilor choked and clenched his hands before throwing some papers onto his desk. “Fine, have it your way. I support the decision of the magister.”

“Ay.”

“Agreed.”

“You want to change your courses? Why? You made good progress in earth and water magic. And now you want to study void? What for?” The professor lowered his glasses to have a better look at the man before him. The student looked haggard and ill, with pale features and dark bags beneath his eyes.

“Personal reasons.”

“Mh. You have that right. I must admonish you though you will not be exempted from the tests, and the coursework might be difficult to catch up with so late in the year…”

“That is of no consequence to me.”

“Tiberius, what have you got to say for yourself?” The young man was a bit older as he stood before the council of thirteen, facing Magister Illimen and the others, even as six of them were absent.

“I have nothing to say in my defense. I knew I had no right to take the books. But I plead for leniency as I have a small daughter to support, and the mother is still comatose after the incident two years ago.”

“Mh. That was your wife? My condolences.” A portly councilor rubbed his glasses' crystal lens with the hem of his sleeves. “I say we simply dismiss him. No harm done, eh?”

“Curiosity is all well and good, but the works you were studying are only left in the library to combat the evils of necromancy, and they are not taught for very good reason.” A thin woman primly folded her hand before her chest and stared at the youth before her.

“Dismissal from the academy it is?” Illimen sighed and looked left, then right.

“Ay.”

“I’m in accord.”

“Supported.”

The road leading away from Kronenburg was nearly empty as it was autumn, and the conditions were not favorable. The young man drove a small wagon with tent plane shielding the interior.

A sweet voice sounded from the shelter, “Papa?”

“Yes, my dear?”

“Are we there yet?”

“No. Not yet.”

Lightning broke the heavens above Kronenburg, and rain fell heavily, obscuring the metropolis vanishing behind the small wagon.

“My love, you will see your daughter again even if I have to enter the void to retrieve your soul myself.”

Gaius opened the door to the townhouse in Grunewald and shook his coat before handing it to the valet.

His wife Adelaide, once a Nordmark, now a Gildburg, was holding their daughter, Liane. “You are late, dear. I will ask the cook to warm up some food for you. It’s cold this time of year.”

“Thank you, but I will take it with me to the workshop; I still have some things to do.”

His wife's face fell at that, “You do what you have to.”

Later in the workshop, with Magelight glinting on burnished copper and polished bronze, the young noble grimaced before straightening. “I will find a way to anchor a complete soul even beyond death. I will show them reckless, I will show them all.”

A porcelain mask glinted, the empty eyes, a soulless smile, while gears whirred and clicked.

The once young man looked after his departing daughter, the undead he had called laying waste to the living. The fort was bathed in a reddish light as Ioreth climbed across his zenith. The ravages of time and deprivation, of void magic, had marked him, and the kindness that once had shone on his face was only seen when he talked to his daughter...or of his wife.

Still sleeping, forever young.