A bowl shaped brazier casts a low glare against the bottom trim of a battle-scarred purple banner pinned to the wall of the zinduvalu. Shadows dance over the banner’s rough obsidian dagger, faded now to a dark grey. The low light barely reaches a wiry man sitting at a broad ebony desk inset with polished steel gears. His golden eyes are narrowed, squinting at a spread of tokka cards peering back at him.

An elven woman stands near the fish bowl, dangling a blue-veined fingertip over the surface of the water. She draws a dagger from her grey silk tunic and pricks the tip of her finger, watching without expression as drops of crimson fall into the water. A red-tailed damaris shark rises from the bottom of the bowl in slow lazy circles.

“You’ve accomplished nothing,” she says without taking her gaze away from the shark. Her tone is light, but that only makes her more dangerous. “Worse than nothing, in fact. A moon mage council of students? That you aren't even on?”

“You have nothing to complain about. The Art spreads like a blight, and you want Taramaine undermined.” He doesn’t lift his eyes from the cards.

“You presume too much.” She walks slowly to the desk and places her palms over the tokka cards, blue-black hair falling in the man’s line of vision. He meets her silver-flecked stormy grey eyes but says nothing. “Unity,” she says it like a dirty word, “is not desired. We want the guild undermined.”

He finally tilts his gaze up to stare at her, glancing at the shrew amulet around her neck. “The manor. He uses the same type of obelisk that the Lost Ones use to hide their halls.” A quick read of her face tells him all he needs to know. “You don’t know, do you? You haven’t been there.”

Her elegantly arched eyebrows raise slightly and she smiles slightly before turning to the door. “It may not be me that you see next. Pray that it is. The others trust you even less than I do. Dabble with the body snatchers if you must, but they won’t buy more time.”

Cold winter air blows through the room as she leaves, sending the flickering brazier flames and shadows dancing. The man turns his gaze back to the tokka cards and he raises a tattooed palm over the field. She'd read him better, and make fewer mistakes, if her vision wasn't so clouded with the pursuit of power.

He taps the inverted Stellar Stairway set at the center of the spiral field. So clear. The cards may not see the Web anymore, but he does.

<<Spider and Wellspring overlapping>> The plotter, the hidden eyes in the shadows of the Art. So many eyes, and he’s waited so long for this opportunity. Ascending.

Memories of visions from another place assault his mind. Space is rent with thousands of slits, each opening into a field of eyes. Cluster upon cluster of crimson eyes focus upon him, emboldened by the frail and dying remnant of Maelshyve.

The mage shifts his golden gaze further along the spiraled field.

<<Void, Beast, and Valley of Mist spread together like a fan>> An old enemy. A familiar hunger.

He tightens his fingertips against the desk, blood draining from his hollow cheeks as the memories flash. Purple haze shatters into nested maws, expanding all around him, thunderously quaking in rage and wrath. An unbearable buzzing begins to rattle his bones, to sunder his tenuous comprehension of the Plane of Abiding reality he clings to, and he feels his mind slipping.

<<Jewel of Night, Wounded Veteran, Runebinder, Falcon, chaotically spread as if thrown on the table>> Memories, my connections to this Plane, my anchors. My salvation, for now.

The mage staggers back in his chair, clenching his teeth as the next memory rocks through him. Deep within his memory, a single eye opens, the distorted pupil scanning his intent, his potential. And he is filled with whispers, reminders, forgotten memories. Grounded and whole, the purple haze begins to fade, to recede. He hears a sound like a knife scraping over stone whispering the words "... fate stirs again, choices to be made once more...", as the eye closes.

Clenching his fists, the man opens his eyes again and forces his gaze to the last cards on the field. A deep breath and he raises a hand to prepare a thoughtcast spell.

<<Court mage, we need to talk.

The final cards call to him, mocking him with their clarity.

<<Web of Fate inverted, Falling Star, both overlapped by Broken Circle>>

Illuminated by the cards, the last memory of the Pith flashes like fire through his mind. His prophetic senses scream under the burden of alien stars. Nothing is as it should be.

There must be a different path.


Hope not ever to see Heaven. I have come to lead you to the
other shore; into eternal darkness; into fire and into ice. —Inferno