Imperial Exalt-Mage Morven Salazar – City-state of Opal

  Fires still raged, spewing plumes of black and gray high into the cloudless sky—burning war wagons and carts, corpses, and smoldering craters left by blazing sorcery and lesser spells. The reek of burned flesh hung in the air, mingling with spilled gut-stench and the voided bowels of the dying and recently dead. Crows and ravens wheeled around plumes of acrid smoke, cawing and croaking above the cries and moans of injured and dying Imperial legionnaires and the opposing soldiers of Opal, one of the many City-states of Mossail. Already their stomachs were full and bulging, beaks painted crimson—black birds fighting over an immense feast of carrion they had no hope of finishing.

  Atop a knoll overlooking the Crystal River behind, and the fallen city of Opal in front of him, Imperial Exalt-Mage Morven Salazar lay gasping for breath. His clothes were slashed as if by a hundred blades, each cut leaking blood, some gashing his flesh to the bone. The cobalt-blue thigh-length coat with its thin iron emblem signifying his command of the 5th Legion’s mage cadre hung in shreds, stained and charred. His face, usually smooth and showing a sardonic smile, was etched with lines, and his cheeks were pale and gaunt. Both of his blood-smeared hands pressed against a deep cut to his stomach, holding his guts inside. The only thing keeping him alive was his sorcery.

  Scattered around the Exalt-Mage lay the curled remains of scorched armor—steel breastplates, helmets, greaves, along with charred and gashed leather pieces. Earlier, the armor had been worn by men and women—his guard—but now all that was left of them was ash and greasy smears, and empty armor like an echo of the people they once were. On the floodplain below, the corpses of Legionnaires covered the ground—limbs splayed and eyes stared sightlessly, crows and ravens perching on them and pecking at soft flesh. Legionnaires who had survived the carnage stumbled among the bodies, their eyes glazed with horror, searching for other survivors and fallen comrades.

  Morven pressed his hands harder against his stomach as a harsh spasm of pain wracked him. Drawing more mana through his sorcery, he pulled upon the sources of water and earth and spirit, and whispered words so ancient the language they came from was lost to time. He needed to hold on; he needed to see, to know.

  A weave of sorcery infused him with radiant energy. The agony of his mortal wounds lessened, and then his meagre healing drained his dregs of mana completely. Body trembling, he pushed himself into a sitting position. He didn’t have long remaining in this world, he knew, unless he took action.

  Not yet, he told himself. They had to see him defeated, powerless, or they might not show themselves.

  For all the death and destruction surrounding Morven, he didn’t care one whit for the lives lost on either side. What worried him was that his wards had been breached, and by sorcery whose unleashing was powerful enough to fray the shroud between reality and the sources. And the fact that it hadn’t come from their enemy, the Opal sorcerers. What struck him had come from their own ranks. Only when the battle had been all but won, though.

  He watched the remnants of the 5th Legion march into the city of Opal, the third of the many City-states of Mossail to fall to the Imperial Legions. They thought the battle over, their conquest complete, but at a significant cost. Their victory was tainted, their losses so severe that the Imperial offensive into the City-states would grind to a halt.

  But Morven knew there was more to come, at least for him. Someone, or something, had hidden in the shadows and had struck at him when he was at his weakest—mana drained and mind exhausted from counteracting and almost destroying the Opal sorcerers. Someone or something was waiting with the patience of a spider in its web. He licked his cracked lips.

  And then he felt them coming. On the edge of his awareness, power buffeted his senses and he shuddered. Three of them for little old me. I should be flattered. Even in his appalling physical state, and drained of his considerable mana pool, they sought strength in numbers. Perhaps they needed each other for emotional support… The thought made him bark out a harsh laugh, which dissolved into a bubbling cough. A gout of thick blood filled his mouth, and he spat the viscous bright red fluid onto the ground.

  A crow alighted nearby, ice-blue eyes staring at him for a few moments, before it hopped farther away and began tugging at the blackened buckle on a breastplate.

  Morven gave it a nod, not expecting the transmogrified undead bird to help in any way. It would be here to watch, and to report.

  Three mages appeared on the summit of the hill. Two men, one woman, their dark-gray legion uniforms blood-streaked and mud-spattered, faces pale and gaunt with fatigue. The man in the lead came up to Morven, apparently unconcerned that he’d approached a dying Imperial Exalt-Mage. He found his gaze drawn to the woman though, who’d hung back. She was pretty, in a dark and mysterious way that some men loved and occasionally obsessed over. But he knew from personal experience she was as cold as stone and twice as tough. The other two mages were probably twisted around her finger.

  “Thought you’d be dead,” the man in front of him said, his goateed face expressionless.

  Morven tried to speak a witty reply but found his mouth dry and filled with congealed blood. He worked his jaw, and then spat out what he could. “Hard to kill. Or just lucky.”

  “I think your luck’s just about run out.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not.” He knew all three mages, a trio of cold-hearted and ambitious assholes. What he didn’t know was whether they were also sorcerers. Someone had used sorcery to breach his wards, and if it was one of these he had to know. If it wasn’t, then there was another player, likely their master. “Edvard, you always were an officious prick, along with your friend Samok. And Nalika, I see you hanging back there. Why don’t you join us and look at your handiwork?” She never liked to get her own hands dirty.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  There might be a power behind the trio, guiding and pushing them. But if they hadn’t shown their face by now, they never would. There was another thing to figure out about these incompetents: were they merely ruthless in the cause of their own advancement, or were they Dark Ones and followed the Corrupted Scourge? Siunattu, the Scourgelings called them: traitors and spies. A name that had started to gain popularity, or so he’d heard. Dark Ones was so... tasteless.

  Morven shook his head and dragged his wandering mind back to the present.

  Edvard spat on the ground. “For someone nine parts dead you sure talk a lot. I’d think you’d be praying right about now. Begging whoever you worship to save your sorry hide.”

  They were here to gloat—ever the fault of the stupid and incompetent. I wonder what they were promised?

  Samok sat on his haunches, one palm pressed to the ash covered churned ground. In his other hand he held a foot-long rod made of a dull metal etched with runes. Something in his eyes and posture reminded Morven of a snake about to strike. The scrawny man whispered a few words, and the runes on the rod began to radiate a black web of energy lines.

  Curiously, Morven couldn’t discern any connection between Samok and the sorcerous dominions. Mages then, with a sorcerous artifact. Someone had given them the rod, explained how to use it, and that was who Morven was aimed at. Whatever they were going to do with the artifact, he was sure he wouldn’t like it.

  “Who are you three loyal to?” he asked. “The Empire, or are you Dark Ones?”

  Behind the two men, Nalika stifled a laugh and covered her amused smile with a hand. “Are we People of the Undead? The Blessed? Why can’t we have multiple loyalties?” she said.

  They were pawns then, not his true enemy. Tools to be discarded when they were no longer useful. Morven decided they wouldn’t know a great deal. The People of the Undead were always segregated into cells of seven or less individuals, lest the group grew too big and unwieldy, too difficult to control. Greed for power drove them, and as Dark Ones they wouldn’t ask too many questions or try to find out too much about whoever their superiors were. As all Dark Ones swiftly found out, that was a quick way to torment or an early grave.

  “You’re dead, Exalt-mage,” Nalika chanted. “Dead, dead, dead.”

  In front of her, Edvard smiled.

  Amateurs. No doubt she was thinking of her reward for murdering him. Fate could be fickle. Well, time to pretend to beg. “What were you promised? I can double it.”

  “Double immortality? Double sorcerous knowledge and training?”

  A breath escaped Morven’s mouth in a low hiss. They dared?! The secrets of sorcery were sacrosanct—the province of the Nine. He’d spent decades purging the Imperial Archives of any references, any hints as to what sorcery was and how it worked. Only independent sorcerers, Imperial Mages and the current Imperial Sorcerers knew, and their numbers were thinning every year thanks to him.

  He found himself angry, which was an emotion he seldom experienced. “You are fools,” he spat.

  Edvard snorted. “You’re in no condition to be calling us fools, Morven. You’re the one who’s about to die. Your essence will be trapped, and we’ll use your power to further our own.”

  Ah, so that was the way of it. He would have laughed at them if he wasn’t in so much pain. They were too dumb to realize that he could still be a threat. After all, who would leave themselves mutilated, and endure so much agony, if they had the power not to? They believed him spent: his mana depleted, and whatever cards he had useless. And that’s what their card skills would show.

  It was time; he was done fishing for information.

  “Recall,” Morven said, activating his unique skill card.

  In between one moment and the next, in less than the blink of an eye, his body and essence were restored to a previous state he’d marked. To the three mages confronting him, it looked like he’d instantly been replaced with a pristine version of himself. All of them gasped as his aura of power bloomed outward, and they scrambled backward. Edvard raised a hand, but before he—or either of the others—could use a card skill, Morven struck, triggering another unique card.

  Freeze time.

  He had three heartbeats.

  Morven opened himself to the sources of fire, darkness, and spirit, gritting his teeth to bear the pain of their vitriol coursing through him. He channeled all three sources of power and then shaped them, whispering a five-series word-chain, and then briefly closed his eyes against what was to come.

  A roiling black and orange wave of coruscant flames rolled outward. The three traitorous mages were buffeted to the ground, unharmed as a latent ward protected them from his crushing, scorching outburst.

  Morven rose to his feet, channeled more power, and spoke another word-chain.

  There was a midnight-black flash, and a thump that thundered through the ground. The three mages exploded into chunks of rotting flesh, mown down like stalks of wheat.

  Time unfroze.

  Morven spat out dirt and ashes, a sardonic smile lighting up his face. His unique cards had saved him again, though now he’d need to lay low for a while—after all, they were only useable once per week. And even though he hardly ever found himself in trouble this deep, he always slept easier knowing that they weren’t on cooldown. You could never be too careful in his line of work.

  He moved to retrieve the thankfully unharmed rod. Its runic surface was empty of the web of black lines it had previously radiated. He tucked the artifact into a pocket in his now undamaged uniform, and then a wave of dizziness caused him to stagger to the side before he righted himself. Sorcery took mental and physical energy to cast, and he would need time to recover. The word-chains he’d used were crude and inefficient, but he’d needed something quick to get the job done.

  He had a thread to follow now, comprising of Edvard, Samok, and Nalika. He’d dig into their time as Imperial Mages: who they were friends with, who their lovers were, who taught and trained them. Somewhere there would be a clue to the person who’d goaded them to assassinate him. Likely, it was one of the Nine—the sorcerers who’d willingly joined the Corrupted Scourge in return for power and immortality.

  Morven turned to take in the conquered city-state and the devastated remains of the Imperial Legion. Patience, he reminded himself. For the last ten years he’d abased himself to the Empress, and kept up the pretense of a puissant yet unimaginative Imperial Mage.

  But now, Opal had fallen.

  The Eternal Empress would be both pleased and displeased. For the price was most of the 5th Legion and a stalling of the offensive, and the annihilation of Morven’s cadre of Imperial-trained mages.

  In addition, his enemies among the People of the Dead—the Siunattu—had revealed themselves, and their plans had failed. His designs had been a success; it couldn’t have gone any better.

  Apart from the fact that someone knew that Exalt-Mage Morven Salazar was one of the Nine, sworn to the cause of the Corrupted Scourge, and to their eternal master Maizdahn the Black God.

  Apart from almost dying.