Quest Forsaken.

[Ink]

Come to me in the silence of the night;
Come in the speaking silence of a dream;
Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright
As sunlight on a stream;
Come back in tears,
O memory, hope, love of finished years.

Excerpt from “Echo” by Chrstina Rosetti

Timestamp: Spring 80th, 515 AV

Atziri had left bells previous, Keene would be on his own today. It was not an entirely unusual set up she was busy and often he know of his tasks well. After his own choice of morning ministrations, as he exited his cavern-home he would find something changed. It was the beginning of the climax of a long awaited chapter.

In the dusty spring dirt a ragged and smudged straw doll sat propped against a small rock. Beside it in the same water-starved dust an invisible digit drew pictures against the earth. She flickered into life her return after their falling out. Wilhelmina squatted over the corporeal earth. Her ghastly frayed sack-cloth dress was not different for her time away but her eyes seemed wild, like the first time she had appeared to Keene after her death. “Keene.” She cried with dry eyes,” You said maybe you were a good man!” She faded from sight as a strong wind blew although she could not have felt the natural element without manifesting physically.

The doll twitched and the small specter’s wail accompanied it, “I found her. I met Wanda, she said I could find dolly.” In seconds the little girl reappeared only a few feet before the Initiate. “He still had her! In that place!” She screamed and the dust beneath their feet began to swirl, “When he let me go he kept her!” She choked back a sob and flickered again, in the blink of eye she sat beside the doll one more. “What if he hurt her too Keene?”

Rapidly the young girl’s spirit was transforming from confused and scared to malevolent. Her screamed echoed down the mountain and back into the Obsidian Cave. “Be a good man, Keene, stop him!” The dol dragged through the dirt towards Keene’s feet, the little girl’s hands pulling it like it was a great weight and not a straw artifice. “Don’t let him hurt us anymore.” As the doll rested on the toe of his boot, Willy shrunk into nothing once more, but her cries never left wafting in the air around the young Zeltivan. “Please…” the disembodied ghost girl begged.

[Keene Ward]

Whether Atziri stayed or left in the morning, Keene's rituals remained relatively unchanged. He began with a steady intake and release of breath as he clothed himself, the nightmares fading with each pass. The calming exercise help shake the jitters that the night terrors often left him with, leaving him ready for the next phase of activities half dressed and steady of hand. Padding out into the main cavern, Keene neatly folded his shirt over the back of one of the chairs, setting his water flask on the table and trading it for a chunk of jerky Atziri had left out for his breakfast. Meat in hand, he made his way to the sand pit, methodically chewing and swallowing until the food was gone and his hands were free. From there, he sank into the neutral stance Atziri had trained him in, hands ready to defend or attack, legs spaced evenly to promote a firm sense of gravity, and body ready to move on whim. He advanced, shuffling his feet to guide the force of his movement into a sharp jab that utilized a twist of his torso to increase the the strength of the strike. Drawing back from the hit, Keene moved his free hand into an upper cut, shuffling back as he withdrew before throwing out an angled kick.

He spent about a bell doing so, interspersing his advances with rolling retreats. He had not seen the necessity of doing such a thing until Atziri had sped up her own movements, forcing him to choose between diving out of the way or taking a punch straight to the head. From that point on, Keene practiced his rolls and dodges with as much tenacity as his other exercises. Impact was something he had been working on, maneuvering his body so that it would continue moving once it hit the ground to assuage the initial blunt force. In the sand, it was a much softer landing terrain but more difficult to maintain momentum, as the gritty particles seemed to absorb both force and movement. Curling his shoulders some to allow him to roll backwards or to the side helped immesurably, though often he would get stuck and have to untangle his limbs from each other before he could continue. By the time he was finished, Keene was covered in sand and sweat, breathing heavily, but amply warmed up for the day ahead of him.

The exercises helped. They helped with everything. Keene had never thought that sweating and rolling around in the dirt would ever be an act conducive to mental clarity, but he had learned over the past seasons that there were things that were often far different than what they at first seemed. Phantom combat had been as beneficial to him as reciting Nader Canoch or struggling through formal meditation. Brushing the sand from his skin, Keene let small bits of res flake off of his skin, gently swirling it around his body into a steady, brisk pace before letting it gather the air around him. The wind moved for a few chimes, drying his skin and making it easier to get the sand off by the time his res had decayed and the artificial wind had died back down. Skin mostly sand free, he pulled his shirt up and over his head, taking up the flask and taking a few refreshing swigs before attaching it to his belt. With a quick, cursory glance about the cavern to make sure he wasn't forgetting anything, Keene headed out through the main tunnel that led to the wilderness outside. He had only to keep an eye on the grounds for the time being, and to collect what he could of creatures he needed to shield the entrance against.

His own training in personal magics had brought him to a point where his shields were potent enough to defend against specific beings, assuming he had the djed and bits of the creatures or things to shield against. That was what the majority of what his time had been spent doing outside of his training. There were creatures all over, beasts both natural and augmented from which he'd been collecting samples of their corpses and studying the djed within them to weave into his own shields. It was a process that, in spite of the amount of time he'd already spent doing it, was still a complicated mess of trial and error. What he found outside of the cavern's mouth, however, was something that immediately caught his eye. Change was something that wasn't unwelcome in his life, as he was growing to slowly accept that no life could continue without facing the inevitable force of time and the actions it wrought upon that life, but when it came to things so close to where he considered himself as safe as he could be on the island of the sleepless, Keene was quick to pick up on it.

The doll itself wasn't nearly as disconcerting as the fact that it had been carefully propped up against a rock to give the impression it was sitting. The care that had been taken to achieve such an illusion pointed to the main problem at hand: something had to have put it there. Keene frowned down at it, his knees instinctively bending as he let his eyes carefully peruse the area around him. It was highly unlikely Atziri had done anything of the like. She wasn't wont to give him any sort of trial without preface. Cryptic and confusing were her trademarks, and if she had had the intention of testing him that morning, she would have made some sort of indication about it. Which meant it was an unknown party, something potentially dangerous and, as far as he could tell, unseen. What he did find, however, were childlike images etched into the ground around the plaything, something he had overlooked in favor of the more prominent features of the straw figure. Immediately, he ruled out the chance of the lines to be runes. He didn't recognize them as any sort of symbols with meaning beyond pathetic caricatures, but when the lines started to draw themselves, Keene's mind began to piece things better together.

When Wilhelmina flickered into existence, Keene had just arrived at the conclusion that she was the culprit of the strange mess of events. His frown deepened, but he held his ground. The last time he had seen her, she had attempted to possess him, something he had not enjoyed and did not plan to be subjected to again. There was a flare in the child's eyes, something that had not been there before, though what exactly it was or what it entailed, Keene set aside for the time being as his cautious grey-green gaze held the ghost in the forefront of his attentions. Her first address was far more direct than he was accustomed to, their time spent apart seemingly conducive to the child's means of communication. A gust of wind passed over them, carrying with it feelings of concern and, though he couldn't be certain, warning. He knew Wilhelmina to be relatively impotent, and the wind's worry was confusing more than anything else. Perhaps it remembered the night during which the child had had such unnatural control over its brethren, but she lacked the ability to do so now.

She spoke of Wanda, and more importantly, of the ambiguous and unnamed "he" Keene had been quietly searching for since the night of Boswell's death. He had had no leads on who it might be, nor any means to find out. Risabel was useful in terms of general knowledge, but she was unaware of the majority of the specific projects others worked on. Secrecy was paramount in the citadel, which made discovery all the more arduous. Wilhelmina, however, seemed to know not only who "he" was, but the location in which he operated. They were two very relevant and important pieces of knowledge Keene sorely lacked, and as the ghost blinked to stand before him, his impassive gazed stared down at the shouting mess of twisting mists, waiting for clarification. It was a vain wait, however, as the child quickly began to fall into hysterics. The doll at the toe of his boot was the final gesture she left with him, disappearing into the air as quickly as she'd arrived.

The winds had died down some, settling around his feet and the doll with a soft sigh - of relief or weariness, it was uncertain - and Keene knelt down to pick up the child's toy with an analytical frown. Gazing into the middle of the open area, as there was little other frame of reference for Keene to address the disembodied sob of a voice, Keene let his words move soft and cool, fresh water flowing through the dusty backdrop. There was no reassurance in his tone, however, no soothing lull. It was matter of fact, businesslike. "I can't help you if you don't tell me who did this and where he is." The doll remained in his firm, but gently grip, lips turned down and brow slightly knit. "Tell me, and I'll do what I can." Enough time had passed that his rage had given way to something more along the lines of a chilled hostility. He wanted his revenge against the wizard who had so marred his memory of Boswell, but it was of the sort that was not blood lust, but steely calculation. He could not kill a wizard, but there were things he could do that would make the experimenter wish he had died. In either case, Keene needed answers, information, before he could do anything.

He waited expectantly, his stare steady though unfocused.

[Ink]

The tingle against his numb arm increased four-fold and then the invasion hit. Wilhelmina pushed into his body, here she spoke with speed and clarity that her ghostly appearance had lacked. She drew from his own stability to fuel hers. He is in the Elemental Sanctum, they call him Master. Where the minds met her words weren’t fouled by a young tongue or vocabulary, it was thought to thought. Then as quick as the feathery invasion on his person began the spirit slid down his arm and existed into the the doll.

As they entered the vestibule the TAR stirred, light flickering off the blue gems nearest them. It spoke, unbidden, in monotone certainty to the question Wilhelmina had posed last she floated passed it. and failed to hear the response, “ Lab 7-M is in the caverns.” It’s focus returned to coordinating the small golems.

Further in Wanda had noted their passing but the old Nuit had let them through with only a strong look at Keene. She had recognized the spirit from afar. Wilhelmina had not been paying around after she left Keene. Something about the horribly tortured innocence had bought her leverage and now it was being lent to Keene. How far this went and what caused it was a dangerous question.

Wilhelmina stayed sealed within the doll until they arrived through the citadel and into the Gug Andjak. Then she slowly slid back towards his hand to communicate again, He’s dangerous. He’s mean. She curled back into the doll.

Down dozens of sets of stairs lay their destination. The numbers of each lab grew higher before suddenly after forty-five, they began again at one. This was the signal that they neared their destination. Six more floors before they were intercepted, Keene’s vambrace had got through all of the non-sentient guards that stood in their path now was anything but.

The Nuit looked decrepit, his figure peeling like a half-forgotten orange showing split, blackened flesh. Some lesions were sewn shut others were too fresh and leaked a sluggish viscous liquid, so slowly it might be mud not liquid at all. “I knew you would arrive here sometime Initiate, it was predictable.” For all his husk seemed ready to slough into a meaty puddle, his eyes showed the fire of the inspired and insane. He had conviction in spades and spirit to fuel it with. “You came here with one intent, I offer a second option” His voice held confidence that the dark caverns usually stole, “You may step inside this lab and kill the Nuit who wronged you, or you can turn away now and become a Wizard within this citadel. Not an initiate but a position by which to hinder his every step for years to come.”

The Nuit took as sluggish step forward, “Choose your vengeance.”

[Keene Ward]

The possession was far more efficient that Keene remembered, and while he pressed back against her, the moment she began to speak, his struggle paused. The chill of her deadened djed mingled with his own, an eeriness in and of itself, however it was not the cause of Keene's hesitation. Her words, her thoughts, rang with a clarity he'd never heard from her before. It was factual, words that he had been seeking since her arrival a season ago, and now he finally had them. He had heard of neither "Elemental Sanctum" nor of the "Master" she spoke of, but it didn't require much thought to piece together he was seeking a reimancer. Before he could return with a thought of his own in further questioning, her presence receded from him, the chill dripping from his fingers to leave behind only the numbness he'd become to accustomed to. Staring down at the doll by his boot, Keene knelt down, gathering it up in his hand to stare down at the simplistic toy in his steady frown.

"Wilhelmina?" It was less of a question and more of a statement. There was a gentle chill about the doll that Keene took to mean the child had chosen to reside within the straw body. Turning towards the distant horizon where the citadel sat looming like some dark, twisted creature, Keene headed off. Further questioning was, for all intents and purposes, impossible, as the doll remained as stoic as any other over the course of their journey. Breezes passed by him, but they did not stop to play, instead, they shivered, drifting onwards and away from Keene's determined gait. His mind was abuzz with potential scenarios, some ended in his own death while others in the deaths of many more. The most common, however, was not a vengeful rending of the creature who had wrought such destruction on Boswell and Wilhelmina's lives. It was a calm, cold investigation. He wanted to know not only who was responsible, but why it had transpired. Boswell had mentioned invincibility, but the outcome of the test seemed far removed from it.

There was a reason. There was always a reason behind the minds of the academically inclined. He wanted to find it, to take hold of it and wrap it around the neck of the one who sought it like a noose, tightening the grip but maintaining the spark of life. There was a release in death; Boswell had requested it, but Keene had been unable to deliver. While that fact had been an endless source of anger and frustration, his training had helped to assuage it. Instead of a raging, unbearable fire, it burned cold and steady, a lurking, patient hunger. He was no fool. He had no intentions of barging through the doors of the reimancer's lab unannounced to rain down icy vengeance. Time had passed too long for that, leaving little only the core of his rage: calculated hatred.

Once he had made his way into the Vestibule, the TAR spoke. It was almost as if it had been expecting them, and Keene was not quite certain it was too far off. He still remembered his conversation with Thomas Cosa, gathered around what had once been the TAR's lifeless corpse. The golem was a powerful work of magic, and it was not unlikely that it possessed a mind not unlike that of an incredibly efficient human. Nodding, more to himself than the golem that returned to its work as promptly as it had turned its attention to Keene, he strode onward.

He had been to the caverns once before, but where he and Master Rayage had gone had held few laboratories. If it were a lab, Keene reasoned it would be found in the bowels of the Gug Andjak, so that was where he headed. The mists of the courtyard swirled around him without the aid of a breeze that might have regularly accompanied him. The whispers of the spirits stilled, and as he made his way through the twisting paths, he paused. Before him, only slightly off from the main doors of the Gug Andjak, stood Mistress Wanda. Her dark, wispy locks of hair seemed to drift as one with the fog. The sunken, dark eyes watched him with a life that was so ancient yet, for all the years, still burned with an intensity that sent an involuntary shiver down his spine. Not one to yield to the gaze of others, Keene returned her stare, nodding a polite bow as he passed into the common labs.

The second time that Wilhelmina sought to communicate, Keene was much more open to the invasion. He felt the chill of the doll intensify, creeping into his fingers. Instead of pushing against it, Keene took a calming breath as they began to descend and instead turned his attention inward. The words were, to Keene's minor frustration, next to useless. Still, he supposed it was the best his spectral informant could do. As she sank back into the doll, Keene raised it some. It seemed a bit odd to speak to an inanimate object as if it were a person, but over the past season Keene had begun to grow used to speaking to things that didn't necessarily reply. "I'm more dangerous." There was little emotion in the statement, but it was filled with a self-convicted truth. Whatever the wizard had behind him, Keene had spent the majority of the past year growing stronger, faster, dangerous. When he had arrived on the island, he had thought himself a mage. Now, as he continued to wind his way through the citadel, ignoring the growing strain on his legs with steely determination, Keene knew that there was still a long way to go before he would be on par with the other Wardens. He was still weak, still learning, but he possessed enough power to bury the citadel at the cost of his own life, which was more than enough to deal with a single, decrepit corpse.

Of course, Keene had no intention of exacting his revenge in so violent a manner. As they continued their descent, his eyes flicked to the passing labels that lined the walls, the numbers only ever increasing. He wanted more than simple revenge, but to what end that required him to go, Keene wasn't certain. He wanted answers, but he wasn't entirely sure what answers he even sought nor if the one he pursued would have them. Whatever the case, Keene kept himself calm, moving at a steady pace to keep himself from growing fatigued. When they did stop, it was not at their destination but rather before a rotting, fetid husk. Keene let his footsteps fade, standing directly opposite the nuit with a steady gaze set on the man's fraying flesh. He had never seen a nuit in such state of disrepair, and the seeping ichor only served to make the thing all the more curious. Most nuit he had seen were in relatively good shape: bodies preserved, skin mostly unharmed. The man before him, however, was anything but that.

When he spoke, however, it was with a voice of ardent passion, a hint of madness playing at the edges of it. Keene raised a brow. "Predictable?" He had not known that any but he and Boswell had known of their camaraderie. The knowledge that his actions had not gone unnoticed struck him with a mix of surprise and expectancy. He supposed it made sense for those within the citadel to know everything they might about the others. In an economy based off of exchange, the most powerful chips to barter were those that the other didn't even know they had. The prospect of position meant little to him, but the suggestion that he might hinder the progress of the one he sought proved an considerable bait. Keene regarded the nuit, cold grey-green eyes searching for any indication that the nuit could do as he promised, but finding little but decay and madness. "And who are you to offer this to me, Nuit." It was neither demand nor question, a statement made to express his lack of faith in the other man's words.

Keene shook his head, his voice steady and soft, the timbre of one of lucid mind and careful consideration. "You say I have but one intent with only a single alternative." There was, at the back of his voice, a soft contempt for the presumptuous nature of the creature who thought itself so clever. "I do not seek vengeance, Nuit." He could feel the chill of Wilhelmina's protest, but he ignored it for the time being, focus set upon the one who had proven himself as much an adversary as he had a friend. "Influence, position, prestige..." Keene's level gaze held steady. "These are all things I do not seek. I seek power. Knowledge. Understanding." He took a step closer, the fetid scent of the nuit an assault to his senses but bearable enough his face could remain steady. "Do not patronize me. What else have you to trade, Nuit? Or perhaps you've played your only card in hopes I am as blind as the others before me?" The final question, while lacking in emotive tone, was a taunt. Keene had been on Sahova long enough to observe the pride of the undead, the way in which they believed themselves gods among men. Not all, but more than enough, and certainly the one before him. If there was anything else to gain aside from empty promises, Keene wanted to know them before he proceeded. All the while, his djed shivered, the anticipation that it would need to be called upon filling the very nature of his essence.

[Ink]

The Nuit remained unphased at the blatant question of identity and for the moment ignored it “If you believe that power and prestige are not bedfellows, that influence and knowledge do not coincide, your mortality still blinds you. “ He shirked not at all as the young man moved closer to the monster. Not even the barest hint of hesitation or fear marred him. It was not he who would be harmed by the proximity after all.

The laugh was a short cough, “I patronize you because I am your patron fool boy. I play whatever I please because all of the things within this citadel are my pawns to move.” His shoulders straightened for a moment and his hands hunched forward on what had at first seemed a walking stick, though the cane now seemed infinitely more intricately carved up close. Gnarled hands grasped the knobbed top, near enough now to see it was the ball of a leg bone. “I offer you no other trade, your value as it stands to me is negligible. Atziri will be cross but she will bow her head to her superior, she was a good soldier.”

The cane moved imperceptibly, perhaps on its own or by some subtle masterful move of the Nuit. The pointed tip scrawled against the dirt cavern floor, a glyph was beginning. “I will accept nothing now but an answer. No diatribe or question, pick your path in my citadel or die in it.” His fingers stretched in a ripple before settling over the cane top yet again, on them settled a ring. A familiar ring, that of Lector Qiao. Though his vessel had changed, the ring remained the same.

The scratched glyph finished, and he took a pace back from it. It was there to be trigger shoulder the initiate move any closer. As with any glyph it held an innate understanding to any mage who gazed upon it. This rune spoke of unending hunger, a gnawing pang that could only be sated in death, it was the void of all that was life and magic. His dead eyes leveled on the initiate, daring him to fail to answer, daring him to take one more step.

[Keene Ward]

The mistake he had made did not weigh heavy on him, for it was not a mistake he was quite cognizant of. A slight chill beyond that which was typically present ran down his spine at the wizard's admonishment, but his eyes remained set on the rotting visage. There was contempt in his voice, but it was detached, as if the centuries of unlife had given the nuit the profound ability to be both ambivalent and condescending. It was disconcerting, and while Keene remained stoically set in his posture, the more the nuit spoke, the more it seemed Keene had entered not into a discussion but rather as a child into the room of an elder. His frown deepened as explanations followed, and he soon realized the mistake he had made. There was little remorse in his eyes as he very slowly nodded, a gesture to match defeat. There was one person in within the citadel that he knew to be considered its puppet master, the man who pulled the strings to watch those they pierced dance to the tune of his own song.

Once Keene was painfully aware of who's presence he had so confidently stepped into, he felt Wilehlmina quiver beneath the tightening of his grip and jaw. He had been over-confident, and the pride with which he had sought to exploit had instead wrapped its poisonous arms around him to bring him to his knees. To his surprise, however, it seemed Qiao's offer was not retracted. While he spoke of Keene as barely an asset, he found it odd that the nuit not send him on his way in disgrace. There was, then, something that Keene had that Lector Qiao wanted, but he had placed himself in a position where, even if he had known what that something was, there was little way to use it.

His eyes followed the tip of the bone's point as it etched through the dirt, malevolent intent behind each deliberate curve. Whether he had had time to cast his own spell or not was beside the point as he waited for the sigil's completion. It held within it a destructive force, a death quite certain should it be activated. Turning his gaze back to Qiao, Keene's frown steadied some. His lips returned to a more neutral position as he viewed the obvious challenge that had been presented him. If he did not speak, he would die. If he sought to fight, he would die. For whatever reason, Qiao wanted him, and Keene was fully aware he couldn't do anything if he was dead. Letters would be left unwritten, and while Boswell's death was something he knew required him to address it, Keene had a connection to his life beyond himself, a responsibility to chose a path that would benefit more than his petty goals.

When he spoke, it was soft, quiet, lacking much of strength he had spoken with before but not wholly defeated either. I was never very good at chess, Master Qiao." Keene shook his head, a small amount of disgust at how easily he'd allowed himself to walk so blindly with so confident a stride playing at the corners of his lips. "I will bide my time, as you suggest, and play the role of a Wizard." He raised a brow, though very little else about him moved. He had no intent of advancing on the wizard, but he imagined a retreat would be just as unwise. "But I will not hinder him." He paused, contemplating his words. Qiao thought him insignificant and weak; these were things that, he imagined, were not wholly inaccurate. He had fallen to the creeping whispers of vengeance, thought himself wise when he was foolish, and had allowed himself to fall into a position that he could do little about. Death or life, retribution or repose. "I will destroy him."

It was not a threat. It was a fact, as cold as the stone around them and carrying with it little more meaning than it possessed at face value. With that, he waited. His piece had been said. Keene knew full well he was disposable, more so than, perhaps, the nuit whom he had come so close to confronting. Something had brought Qiao to him, so reason beyond the scope of his understanding for the time being. If he were given the opportunity, Keene had little difficulty imagining that, in time, that reason would reveal itself. It required him to live, first, which was something he wasn't entirely sure was assured him even after he had made his choice. Faced with the potential demise of his own mortality, Keene felt incredibly calm. He'd played his hand, and it had been lacking. Fate was an odd creature at times, and he was content to follow it through to see where it might lead.

[Ink]

Qiao modded and pushed his boot against the glyph, dissipating it. “Good. Perhaps you will find value after all.” The Master ambled passed him. “Your judgement will take place at the 22nd bell; you will succeed.” His tone wavered between threat and promise. The soul that manipulated the cadre of undead wizards through manipulations and menace had just found another pawn. His shadow disappeared back up into the higher levels.

After a moment in silence the doll shook and then spewed out the ghostly child. “Why?” She howled, “He is right here! Hurt him!” She was nearly in tears again, “He hurt us.” She sucked heself back into the doll, seemingly losing control as the affair progressed. Now the doll nearly vibrated with malice, fear, and pain. At erratic intervals her choice floated around him, whispering and repeated ‘hurt’.

The darkness swaddled them, alone, at the door of their enemy. At the threshold neither could now cross because Keene had made a deal with Madness’s greatest nightmare.

***

Judgements had taken place all day, and would conclude at the midnight bell by mandate, if there were enough candidates. As it was this Spring, the line had dwindled and the onlookers had vanished. Now it was just the indentured judges and the poor novices thinking they could be an apprentice. Those seeking the Wizard rank had taken priority with favors and gone much earlier in the day, now only the truly friendless were left. Sometimes hopefuls would meet citadel members in the common labs and that could buy them an early time, sometimes they were too unimaginative to be bothered with. These few who arrived so late in evening rarely passed, and vastly more failed then succeeded. A waste of time, but sometimes efficiency had to be foregone in the name of progress. A bitter truth for any Sahovan.

[Rayage]

Rayage sighed as she attended the Judgement. It was something that she knew she would have to do before too long, be a judge for the hopeful and deluded. The boredom on her face was apparent and she could not endure much longer. However, she had spent the day here and there wasn’t a point in quitting now. As of yet, no one really impressed her and it seemed that all the ‘good’ wizards from this judgement had long since passed through to the Citadel, to the next step in their journey. All that were left were the small, insignificant, magic-incompetent…

In the last bell she had seen more failures and fools than she had known to exist in Sahova. Their magic was basic at best, very basic at best. A lot of them did not seem like Sahovan material, and the judges seemed to agree. They needed seasons worth of practice, they needed to grasp the basic concepts of the magic that they showed up with, and then be able to demonstrate it with some competence… then maybe they will be allowed if someone sees potential in the wizard, a spark of genus within the rough shell of the hopeful wizard-to-be.

Time was winding down, and the last few hopefuls were being judged. The hour was late, and Rayage could only thank the powers that be that the time was almost over. She had grown bored of examining the proceedings and begrudged the day that she, herself, would be called to be a judge.

[Keene Ward]

Keene only nodded as Qiao passed, jaw set in a firm line as he stared down the path he had stopped just at the head of. He was not done with "The Master", in fact, he had only just begun. When Wilhelmina burst from the doll, Keene simply stared blankly back at her. He knew full well she was displeased, that the entire point of their hasty journey had been to fulfill a vendetta they both possessed, however it had been that hastiness that had been their undoing. Had Keene stopped to consider, to think, beyond the petty realm of his short sided pride and warped form of justice, things would have gone differently, of that he was certain. Instead, he had made a deal with power itself. From the twenty-second bell on, he was no longer an initiate of the Wardens, a position he had grown fond of. Instead, he was to work as the others, a cog in the ever grinding machinery that was Sahova.

He held the doll as Wilhelmina sank back into it, looking down at it with a steady stare. "Now, Wilhelmina, we hurt him." His voice was cold and unfeeling, not a reassurance to the child but a pact made with those whom the reimancer that lay so close had destroyed. He had passed upon the opportunity to exact vengeance with his own hands, but he had gained a position in which he could rise up and destroy everything the other man had worked for. It was one thing to destroy a man, but to destroy his purpose was to destroy his soul. As he stared into the darkness, Keene's jaw set in a firm line, he took a few ticks to himself, wrapped in the seething hatred and pain of the ghost in his hand. He had failed. It was a bitter taste, one of ash and blood and dirt, and he memorized it, all of it. When next he would return to the lab, he would do so not triumphantly with magic flying and blood spilling. He would arrive like a shadow and leave behind him a plague.

Turning then, Keene followed in Qiao's footsteps, the solitary crunch of earth beneath his boots the only sound save for the distant, wretched echoes of Wilhelmina's pain.

-

It had been a long day of judgments.

Keene had watched bodies come and go, some in success but most in failure. While many of those who had gone before had been nervous, that feeling did not extend to him. He stood, resolute, doll still in hand, as he watched the last few hopefuls make fools of themselves. In a way, he too was a fool, performing little more than an empty charade. He knew nothing about what it meant to be a wizard, his time on Sahova having been dedicated to the wilds, not the beasts it housed. As his eyes fell upon the judges, he found himself almost pitiable. He had come to the island to grasp his own purpose, his own end goal, and yet, somehow, he had been swept up in gathering tides of those who were his betters, used as easily as the tool he had almost forgotten he was.

And that was just it. He was a tool. He had tried to take matters into his own hands, to become something more than he was, and it had been to no avail. There was no bitterness in the reminder, simply a cold, hard fact that accepted. Power would be his, regardless of how it was attained, as that was his true purpose. Without a proper handler, he had grown complacent. His edges had dulled, and he had allowed himself to think higher of himself than he truly was. Qiao had humbled him, reminded him that he was, by no means, the force he had thought himself. He had thought to resent the nuit, to vilify him for taking him away from the life he had grown accustomed to, but he couldn't. There was logic to what Qiao had done and logic more for why Keene had accepted. He had not known how he was going to deal with the elemental wizard, only that he did not want to kill him. As an initiate of the Wardens, he was bound to protect. As a Wizard, however, Keene was no longer constrained to the laws of the guardians of the island.

He was, however, bound to Qiao. Whether it would ever be asked of him or not, Keene was fully aware that he was in debt to the decrepit nuit. There would be a time when it would have to be paid, whether in blood or some other form, Keene didn't know, and he found that dwelling upon it was as pointless as his pig-headed attempt at revenge. Instead, he straightened his posture as his name was called, none on the panel even raising a brow in surprise. They knew he why he was there. A slight murmur ran though those gathered. Keene had gained some interest over his time in the citadel, even if it had gone unnoticed by him. Some seemed surprised that an Initiate of the Wardens would seek such a position as Wizard to bypass an apprenticeship while others found him an arrogant, self-important Pulser. Whatever their opinions, Keene took his place in the center of the room, eyes steady as he regarded his judges.

"Keene Ward, Initiate under Warden Atziri of Mt. Merlus." He nodded. "Proceed."

Res dripped from his fingertips, pooling around him in a gentle, steady swirl. He made few movements beyond the twitching of his fingers as the pale blue liquid was directed. It flowed, snaking its way about the room, filling it with its presence. It dissipated into a fine mist, all save directly above him were the air had begin to darken, water drawn out of the air to concentrate in a cloud that began to expand. The misty res quivered in anticipation as rain began to fall, yet the water never landed on a single body. It was pulled through the intricate network of carefully spaced res so that each drop was drawn back up into the growing blackness of the cloud above. Then, with a purplish streak, lighting zigzagged its way towards one of the onlookers who shouted with surprise. Before it hit, the res around it had cast it into the air, a sizzle of static electricity joining the heavy, rain soaked air. Around him, however, no rain fell nor lighting struck. He was at the eye of the storm, wielding its power with calm and collected concentration.

They were drawn back along with the res, each one a smaller piece of a greater whole as they began to construct a likeness. It was the figure of a man, bent and aged. The more the ice came together, the more apparent the features became. As his res seeped around the hollow construction, Keene let it solidify, the ragged scraps of flesh detailed by the final transmutations of the res to ice, the gnarled hands upon cane of bone as frigid and rigid as the image that was burned so completely into his mind. The eyes, however, remained empty holes were two compact marbles of res burned with a pale blue flame. Lector Qiao as he was now stared back at the panel for a total of a tick or so before Keene ran a bolt of lighting through it. What res he had kept in the air around the sculpture caught and held the shards as they sought to fly in every direction. Instead, the pieces were drawn back together, the rest of the res he released joining it to form another sculpture of another body. This time, as the wisps of pale blue melded to form the more delicate details, there stood before the panel an image of Keene's own likeness.

Stepping forward, Keene waited for a few ticks. The construct was delicate, built for the aesthetic more so than stability. With a slow, deliberate motion, Keene tapped on the chest. With a crash, the ice caved in on itself, tumbling into a heap of broken shards.

[Ink]

The central judge was the first unusual thing about the day though the situation had long since settled. She was a Pulser, a vantha with jet black hair and a sheen of liquid blue as she observed the presentation. She also spoke first, “Well, that was certainly something.” Her leather booted feet propped up against the panel’s table, she didn’t budge. Rather than wearing a robe like her compatriots she chose leather armor.

To her left and right were Nuit who were starkly different in every way possible. On the right sat a female nuit, noble and beautiful, in a long exquisite robe fashioned in a pattern of peacock feathers. On the left was a Nuit who could only be described as monotone in every way. He was bland to a fault, no doubt by design. To Keene he was no body, but to the onlookers he was the Master of the Alchemy on the island. Karte.

On the far wings of the judges sat two more strange individuals. The far right held a Nuit in a young body, perhaps in its mid-teens. he looked bored until the statue shattered after which he found a perpetual glare for the would-be Wizard. To say the last judge was sitting in his chair was entirely incorrect, rather than a wizard a mottled grey tom cat lay sprawled on the table before where a judge ought to sit. He appeared unphased but his tail began to flick back and forth at varying intervals.

After a long pause finally Arios, the Nuit farther on the right, spoke up. “Is this some attempt at mortal humor?” His voice was level but the glare never abated.

Before the statement had time to even travel properly a silver streak flew through the air right at the initiate. A dagger made of cold steel with jagged edge, flew hilt-over-tip directly for Keene’s forehead. “No” Iceris, the vantha answered, “That is mortal humor. Gallows humour, what he did was stupidity in a distilled form. Maybe Elsene would be interested?”

Karte, cut through the tension quickly with the next logical, but necessary question. “Does any Wizard or Master endorse this initiate?” Blasphemy and treason grew stale with age, heretics could burn or not it made no difference.

The torches lining the room, ever-burning and magical in nature, flickered and then doused. Their flames drawn explicitly to the frame dominating the arched doorway. An avatar of rage and fire stood there, her brow furrowed. Her gaze literally kindled with embers, as she stared down Keene Ward. Warden Atziri, in full battle regalia, stepped passed the threshold. “I do.” Her breath emitted smoke with her words. The element of reimancy and her marks of Ivak, intertwined showing the hidden emotions she had always glossed over before.