I awaken feeling groggy and dull but breathe out easily.

I am free from most of my pain.

I lie on a soft bed, alone lit only by the half-moon's light.

Are you there Leokan?

Always.

Right.

Was there something you wanted?

I'm not sure, anything I have wanted seems to be beyond my reach.

Like?

I don't know, it's silly but I want women but never try. I want peace but seek out violence. I want to feel joy yet I know more about sadness and anger than I do about happiness. I struggle to live but some of the time I want to die.

I'm no psychologist and I am not in a suitable position to be yours but what I can say is that it takes a great appetite and desire to live to endure all the suffering you have experienced. I'm not trying to say you are exceptional, that your pain is worse or less than mine or any others. All I can say is that you have been hurt many times and you're still breathing, moving, eating, talking.

If you want a woman, you could hire a prostitute, but you want the intimacy of a relationship. You are not the first or last person to have felt and been thwarted by unrequited love. Nor, are the last to struggle to form relationships, or to seek out violence when it is all you have ever known. You are a creature of habit, as most living beings are. You return to what is familiar struggling to make a change that is possible but not certain to happen.

What remains true, however, though it may not make you happy or it may be what is preventing you from happiness is that the more power you can exercise the easier and more familiar it becomes to get what you want. Happiness can become a habit or you could in trying to preserve power ruin yourself. There is no particular path that offers absolute certainty even if it feels that way but we must to live, do.

Does that make sense?

A little. I didn't mean for this to get all intellectual I know you didn't mean to ask that way.

We all feel lost sometimes and more so after a major life change like we are going through.

You don't seem lost.

I accuse, resentful.

I lived ten of your lifetimes in that room without truly feeling alive. I was a mind with the memory of a body. I had escaped one prison for another worse one. Any doubts and guilt I feel through you only confirms that I was right in my course of actions. I feel because of you. I owe love, hate, joy and sadness to you. If you asked for the city, I can only help you with gratitude and that feeling would still be your gift to me.

I tear up a little, like a huge wave of sadness finds some release.

A younger me might have said yes to that offer to conquer the city. In the hopes that I would earn praise from her. No praise, however, means that she would have chosen me for me. Rather I would draw her with the products of my work. Something that would make most people happy. A difference that matters to me. For who wants to be admired for ruins that lie in the wake of their attempts to survive? I am a demon of small ambitions. All I ever wanted was to be happy with my friends.

There are worst things to inflict upon a world.

He remarks sarcastically.

I will settle to being alive with my friends.

A joyful aim but I hope not without happy moments.

Yes, with happy moments.

A moment or two passes then Leokan says.

What is it, that you want to do now? Do you wish to continue resting?

"I need to get up and out of here." I say to myself out aloud in response to his question.

Then what?

See where the night takes us.

I throw the covers off and roll out of bed nimbly adjusting so I don't topple over. My muscles strain and hurt with the sudden movement. I am wobbly on my feet for a few moments but adjust in two seconds. I take a breath and look around the room.

I see more food and some robes and other clothes have been left out. I eat the food hand to mouth taking big bites and caring little for taste as I consume as much as I can as quickly as I can eat it. I gulp down some water.

The robes are made of fine linen with fur inline to keep them soft and warm. It was the sort of causally expensive good that the tower could afford to give away without thought but that I would have to spend months' worth of pay to earn.

I put it on, it feels comfortable to wear but wrong to wear.

Some rich type should be using this and not me.

The benefits of a rich patron. Material wealth is enough to entice most to servitude, where force would brew rebellion. Remember though who the enemy is, and who you fight for in this world.

Lucky for me, he did use force. What is the binding if not chains?

Ineffectual. I do not feel their weight.

I do but there is a simple counter. A secret of sorts that was passed onto me by one of the tutors at the academy.

"Those who seek to control, will not submit."

I cast a simple binding on myself.

"Obey my own will, above all others."

Is that it?

No, it is the first of two steps. Create space then loosen the grip. The last, third step is to break free, but for now, it is safer to stay close under the disguise as a servant than to reveal myself as a foe.

"Counter bind." I command and cast a different unbinding spell, one that has never been written but is passed down orally from teacher to student.

I now have a bind in place, that overlaps and buries Dracos' binding so it appears that his is working. My spell would fade without enchantment or ritual but it exists through the counter to weaken and feed off of Dracos' binding.

Impressive.

"Thanks."

I pick up a coin pouch filled with a generous amount of coins.

"Lucky, they may be scum but they pay well." I admit.

I pick up and put on my enchanted crown.

I look out the window before leaving to take in the beauty of my cruel, adopted home. I am staring down upon the wide polis. The Archmage's tower stands at a peerless height in comparison to the small, dingy buildings.

Though not the most important, it is where the greater concentration of power lies in the city. For while the masses of people is greater than any individual or coven, against an organisation of Magi with their enchanted tools of awesome force they can influence the majority to their leisure.

No technology or civilisation of people had yet to surpass magic in this world.

I walk out of the room and into a black obsidian corridor in the shape of a semi-circle lit by glowing blue torches. I walk down the corridor trying to find one of the floating rocks to take me to the bottom of the tower. I pass by floating blue jellyfish and blue crackling orbs. The building is eerily quiet with nary a person or sound.

Distinctly uncomfortable, I stretch out my long legs and pick up speed. Keen to get out into the fresh air of the night city. I turn around a corner and walk onto one of the floating rocks. One of the jellyfish follows.

The floating rock goes up instead of down and takes me further up the tower. The jellyfish floats away, humming to itself.

I stay, feeling a sense of surprise but nothing happens. I walk out and back on it. Still, nothing happens.

I walk out onto the corridor, now hoping to find somebody and ask for help.

I turn into the corridor and enter the first room I find. Inside the room is floating sigils glowing and flowing with the colours of a rainbow.

People wearing thick robes lie on the ground like a newborn. They gaze, dead-eyed at the sigils. I follow their sight and look inside the letters, and by a trick of the light, it seems for a moment like I am staring out a planet and I zoom in on a civilisation then closer and closer to a farmer smiling gaily while talking over a beer. I blink and the vision disappears.

I see now that it is not a few individuals but mounds of rotting corpses with only a few at the top still moving, gazing, entranced by the sigils.

I rush out of the room and into the next one.

A wizened old woman in white robes shushes me. Red in the face, I look beyond her and see a library that extends further than the eye can see.

Where Magi and librarians study.

I see skeletons in robes, dead clutching a book while being surrounded by stacks of them. The living are emancipated and furiously focused on their book. A thin red mist, like a tendril, stems from one of the books like it is pulling the reader into the book.

Absorbing them.

Before I become lost I walk out from fear.

I hesitate but go into the next room along.

I see a chained beast and from its bleeding wounds flows a stream of gold. It is one of the thousands whose blood is forming a river of molten gold. The river of riches flow out of sight as it floats in the air, ever-rising to a place beyond the open sky.

For a span of a moment, I peer further and spy the faces of humongous pigs that leer down out of the sky and gobble the liquid metal.

Open sky?

The sky is black as the night sky devoid of the glow of starlight.

What is this waking nightmare?

I run back to the floating rock.

"Down!" I command in desperation.

The rock goes up and an unknown figure walks onto the rock then it descends again onto the ground floor. I walk off and half run out of the door in a disturbed mood.

The clear night air almost immediately clears my head.

Mage's street is well lit at night, the only street in the city to have magical lights operating at night. Such enchantments are said to be too costly to extend throughout the rest of the city. It is also the cleanest street in all of Athfen's with a complex cleaning spell network that kept the place clean and free of the stench that hangs over like a black cloud the rest of the urban sprawl.

I stroll down the street, bursting with energy but with no clear aim of where to go or where I want to end up. Out of Mage's street, the stench fills my nostrils and gloom settles. My vision switches to accommodate the darkness of the night city.

I stravaig, walking idly without aim, through the dark and dirty streets. I few fires light up the moonlit streets. Eye from around the fires glare as I pass; it takes a certain feckless daring to prowl urban space at night and court danger. Timid hearts under the sun can become emboldened by the long sprawling, stretches of shadow.

However, there is a pleasure in knowing you are the deadliest animal stalking the streets. A different sort of pleasure to hating. It is the delight in knowing that the fear that resides in your heart can be enflamed in others with the softest bursts of violence.

A scream rings out.

I dash to investigate.

I trip and stumble. A tightness around the eyes then a flash of anger sparks. I turn round and see the old man who uses crutches. There is no wooden box today. The stumps cut off at the knee, covered by tattered hewn trousers, rest on the cold dirt.

What was his name again?

Old man Bey, or so it is so in your memories.

"Right, old man Bey. Isn't it?" I ask.

He groans.

"I was asleep."

"Sorry."

"I was dreaming ... fresh meat all juicy and salty."

"Sorry again."

"You could make up for it?" he offers.

"How?" I ask suspiciously.

"Alms for the poor." he begs.

"Right." I pull a few silver coins from my pouch. "Here you go."

He grabs them from my open palm and licks his lips in anticipation.

"Generous, Magi. Very kind."

"I did wake you up, and well you need it more than I."

"But what is one such as you doing running down an alleyway in the night."

"I heard a scream."

He chuckles.

"Not uncommon and my Magi friend others would walk away rather than run towards the danger. For, no friend of yours is being hurt and you do not strike me as caring for random strangers."

"I..."

"I've seen back in my days as a soldier, warriors who would chase after blood keener than any hound. They get a taste of the life and they keep going until..."

"Enough." I warn my voice growing cold.

"I am no mere warrior."

"I am a Magi who has watched a dragon die. I have crossed over to another world and back."

"I saved trillions. I am the monster who escaped death."

"The force that saved you. You would do well to remember."

His eyes go wide with shock and he stumbles over his next words.

"Where you're eyes always red or am I having a new nightmare?"

"It's new." I growl.

"And did the shadows always grow thick and swirl like fog on an autumn night around you?"

Another cry rings out, closer and desperate.

"Perhaps you should go check that out, even I will struggle to sleep with all that racket." he says.

"If my friend comes chasing, tell him where I went."

"Sure thing, Magi. One good turn deserves another."

"Right."

I chase off into the night.

I find the bloody, eaten remains of an adult, there is not enough left to discern any more details about them.

Shuffling away is a rotting corpse carrying a spear.

How lucky are you? Victim and murder all in one go.

"The undead, Gareth was talking about. We are lucky."

Not lucky, its leg is broken. Recently too, looks like the victim's death wasn't in vain.

I'll kill it then.

No wait, hide and let's see if we can find out who is disposing of them. The more information, the quicker we can find the necromancer.

I won't let it kill any more people.

Agreed.

I tail the undead to the best of my ability. It is moving slow and I move slower, keeping to the shadows.

Leokan talks while I tail the target.

This planet would have been destroyed back in my dimension, any space infected with the undead, if it cannot be contained is destroyed for the greater good of all.

I'm glad we aren't in your dimension.

Same, it means we can follow the origin of the undead for only one entity can cause rebirth or undead.

What?

We will see one day but not tonight.

He answers vaguely.

Two figures emerge in front of the spear-wielding zombie.

There!

One of them swings a club and smacks the zombie across the head. The other holds the undead back with a shield. In a short snap of blows, the zombie crumbles and they stomp its head in.

Killing it for good.

I move in closer.

"Nice one, Burk." compliments the smaller one holding the shield.

"Nay it ain't nothing, Har." says boastfully the taller, thicker one holding the wooden club.

"Mistress will be pleased."

"Only if we bring it back before anybody notices, lucky for us we got it before it killed anyone."

"Too right, I can't be bothered lugging two bodies back to catacombs. It's easier to just snatch'em closer than to carry'em across half the city."

Pawns, keep quiet and we can learn more by following them.

I know where the catacombs are.

But not where their Mistress is and they will take us straight to her.

It is a boring wait, and a slow chase but Leokan is right. Burk and Har lead us not directly to the catacombs but to a hidden entrance where they wheel the evidence down beneath the city.

Into the deep, I go.