Arkan'xon The Archmage
Breath in. Breathe out. Breath in. Breat-
chirps. Chirps out of nowhere! Dammed birds! They're supposed to be sleeping! It's the middle of the night! Or was it? Arkan'xon looked out of a small hole that served as a window to the wilds just outside his meditation site. Wow. He meditated straight through the night. He's not even irritated. That's amazing. He couldn't meditate like that for centuries! Wait a second. If he meditated through the night. Then that means
Samual
Looking around comfirmed the Archmage of his worst fears. Samuel had up and left from their necromancy session! He sighed. As good as the child was, it was not good for him to skip out on sessions. Meditation was extremely important to build focus and willpower. The boy still didn't realise it thanks to his high levels of power that was already there. It must be a lesson for another day.
Arkan'xon rubbed his eyes. No sleep in it. Oh ya because he didn't sleep, he meditated. Though it's not like he needed sleep in the first place, him being who he was and all.
No no. He didn't have time to get lost in an argument with himself. He needed to find his apprentice. As soon as possible. He meditated through the night so he most likely went to bed, but necromancy muddles the mind. The boy could very likely have stayed awake or kept getting shot awake by nightmares. Why else would the common image of a practitioner of the dark be a paranoid, twitchy mess? Did he teach the boy some quick form of transportation?
Let's see. ...
Oh yes! He taught Samuel how to Shadow walk. So that means he could be back in the city. Which means the Archmage himself would have to lug his form all the way to the city, but what should he choose? There isn't much time so maybe just actual transportation magic? No not flashy enough. He's the crazy witchdoctor. He has to make an entrance.
Which reminds him
He took out his bones, giving the standard chant before he threw them. He inspected it thoroughly. His bones were the first tarot cards. The first way to determine the future before those youngsters started with the crystal balls. Stupid things are usually scams even. He didn't dare use anything else. None of them seemed as interesting or needed more effort than bones. Just how he liked it. He peered at the formations, trying to determine what it says.
No. They can't do that.
They can't.
His bones said nothing. They all just form around the Unknown bone. Stating very loudly he was not allowed to see the future for today. Meaning somewhere in his day he will come into contact with something Fate demands to take place. That could be anything from a boy slipping and hurting himself to a dragon waking up and realising Scarborough built itself on top of the beast.
He couldn't dwell on it as he had to think of Samual. More importantly whether or not he raised a graveyard to settle an integrity dispute or something as silly as that. A strange one, that child. It wasn't the first time he wondered why the bones told him to take him in. Won't be the last that's for sure.
He decided to be incognito. He'd walk through town disguised as a commoner thanks to illusion magic. The fun part of illusion is the ability to allow certain people to see him. He let anyone he knows see him for what he was because he might be needed somewhere. He'd use a simple teleport as well. Nothing elaborate or flashy. As much as he enjoyed making the public think he's some voodoo priest with a horrible accent, he now has to do anything clandestine with so much more care he might just regret going so dramatically oh so many years ago, but every time he thinks like that, he remembers the faces of all those scared to the point of comedy, so it never gets old in his opinion.
Oh he was getting lost in thought again. Just do the spell! He started to mutter under his breath. Spreading his arms wide as he did an Old Way teleportation. The Old Way was a very strange sort of magic with very strange rituals. This teleport spell, for instance, makes you dance arounf like a monkey before you can, well, teleport. Works just as well as those fancy shmancy 'instantaneous ' teleportation. Bah.
With the final gesture of clapping his hands and stomping his feet finished, reality warped, shifted and changed. All teleportation spells make first timers vomit like they've been given a purgative, maybe he should make a bet to let a new guy he teleport ed. It should be funny.
No no! Stop that! He can't think of anything else right now. Now where did he poof to? Oh how quante! He arrived just in his little temple! And look! They have one of his followers stationed here all nice and ready to lick Arkan'xon's boots! They were such thoughtful imbeciles. The one in question went down on her knees, avoiding eye contact and pushing what looks like a skin of wine to him.
"My Lord Arkan'xon. Your humble servant has gone and bought the finest wine from the in just for you, My lord"
She's been practicing. A lot. How did she even know he was going to materialise here? Or was it just a lucky draw? Hope and pray their little diety comes to their temple? Sheep. Sheep the lot of them.
"What I be telling you 'bout bringing me gifts. Mah belly would burst with all da stuff you be giving me!" He raised his hands in exasperation. The girl wasn't to be refused though, she sank even lower
"Please my Lord. I have toiled all month just to get this for you."
Guilt. She knows her little diety, he'll give her that. He grumbled how he appreciated the gift and took a sip. Wow this was great! Really! The Archmage gave her a pat on the head as he went out of his temple of sorts. He could here a scream from the girl after he left, that excited kind that lets everyone in a four block radius know she got attention from someone she worshipped, literally in this case . Teenagers.
His illusion was up, hiding the wineskin as well as his form. Now to find that little death mage. Where could he be? Well no sense in dwelling on it, he's bound to find him by just walking around or going where people are running away.
Samual the Apprentice.
"Clang! Scrape! Thud and smash
Fight! Fight! Fight till you are dust!
Rise! Rise! For the man in the sash!
Till all you are is dust or one bony crust!
Hiss. Crash. Cracking on mass
reform my puppets! I decree!
your souls won't be lost that fast!
Rest will only come by serving me!
Cackle, crack by a mighty smack.
break the bones till only one stands.
Your master must be safe under attack.
kept safe by your cold, dead hands.
There can be only one champion. "
Samual opened his eyes. He had lost focus of the world around him thanks to his little chant. Looking around to figure out where he was again, he also remembered how he came here.
His master told him to meditate last night. As always the old bastard meditated with him he was perfectly fine with meditation, he likes to dive in his head and experience this buzz. After a while, though, he realised his mentor was a bit too deep in a meditation. It was fine, Samual thought Arkan'xon knew what he was doing, he was the master after all. Well one hour became two, then three, then four. Finally Samual couldn't handle it anymore. He stood up and planned to voice his thoughts about sitting on one's ass the entire night, then he realised the old man was too far gone to even realise if his apprentice screamed in terror while a siren exploded his ears. So fucking responsible. He should really begin a fucking orphanage.
Problem was, he was put in the middle of nothing and fucking nowhere for the meditation. Samual was pretty sure this little piece of wild was a pocket dimension or something. Try as he could over the years, he couldn't find an end to the forests surrounding the meditation shack. Though last week Master taught him something called Shadow Walk. A strange thought stating that every shadow is the same thing, darkness hiding from the light. All darkness was the same. People practicing the dark arts are part darkness themselves, so it is possible to replace themselves with darkness of another part of reality, thus transporting the dark mage to where the darkness was. It was an extremely complicated magic to understand, but after you do its pretty fucking easy.
Visualisation was incredibly important, because a dark mage can burn themselves to a crisp in the light if they did not choose a place that has a shadow at the very least. Thus you should never, ever shadow walk to a place you are not a hundred percent sure there are darkness, otherwise you can very well die. The only place Samual knows for a fact has darkness was in the old cemetery. He was more than happy to visualise the darkness inside him and the darkness in the haunted place. The poured his magic in the thought of switching the two places out.
Then it happened
Darkness came at him as every shadow turned to him, eager to devour him. They covered him in pitch black darkness, he smiled to himself as he felt the cold. The cold was excruciating. It was all consuming, it demanded to suck the life out of the necromancer. It won't gain it. Not yet at least. He still didn't know how to turn himself into a lich. His master is making very fucking sure not to tell the boy how. Lichen are incredibly more powerful. Samual wanted power.
He found himself stumbling about the Old Cemetery. He loved this place, it had the most colourful souls from a time long forgotten. It was where he started his investigation in trying to discover who washis master. More importantly what he was. No being should have Mastery of so many schools of magic. Such an ancient being cannot exist. Yet Arkan'xon was living proof. Samual had witnessed how he easily did master level spells in illusion, pyromancy, cryomancy and, not to be put in a stereotype, voodoo. Seriously Samual wondered why he acted like a fucking shaman. He was a borderline god.
He was too tired from the exertion caused by the Shadow Walk. It sits as a cruel reminder how much of a novice he was, even after nine years of training. He simply collapsed to the ground, sleep taking him eagerly.
The nightmares. Oh the nightmares. Horrible, twisted things that would drive a man mad if he wasn't used to it. Master said humans were not meant to wield magic in the beginning. Their resourcefulness caused many gods to become curious how they would handle it, and thus became gods of magic to see how humans handled it. Every school has a price. Fire has weakness against cold and pyromania, cryomancy vica versa. Illusion school makes the user struggle to discern reality. The list goes on and on. Dark magics induces nightmares and photophobia, necromancy in particular causes an unnatural fascination with death, and the weak minded become serial killers. He was thankfully not weak minded.
He was saved from his nightmares thanks to his ghost. He would have called him Casper, but that would be breaking the fourth wall, so he called him Mordecai. Mordecai represented the entirety of Samual's supernatural spy network. Mordecai was the one who spoke to ghouls, zombies, skeletons and ghosts. Samual didn't care what Mordecai did in in the network, he only cared for the results that came off it. Though Mordecai brought grim news
"My Lord! I am glad I have woken you. Something is coming."
"Something is coming? Explain you apparition!"
"The dead are moving. Your enemies are gathering force, the haunts are erratic. Something big is coming. Many seek your downfall in this flux"
"Yes and many also seek pigs to fly. I'm not going to fall. You of all people should realise that."
Mordecai smiled "all the same, I'd suggest a bodyguard." He gestured to the graveyard "I believe you are capable of making skeletons that do not die, yes?"
Samual nodded grimly
Shaking the memory free, he gazed at the desecrated gravesend, the skeletons within in broken to a bone meal. Apparently they started fighting while he was chanting. Now there was only one left that wasn't a mass of chunks. It had lost both it's arms and one leg, and apparently headbutted the final opponent into dust, but it had won. Now to name it, arm it, and to clean up this mess
It all took hours. Samual had to manually fuse bone fragment after painstaking bone fragment to bring the champion back to full functionality. After that was done he had to rebury every grave with the right corpse. That was even worse. After that he had the skeleton to sort. He decided to call it Sentinel it took the name easily. As for arming, many graves were made with a little extra. A gauntlet here, a sword there. That took the least time and the skeleton was armoured in rusted plate, wielded a mace with the irony very apparent, for it was the best weapon to use against a skeleton, and even had a helmet. He ordered Sentinel to follow him and took a walk around the city.
People knew what he was, and he was greeted with hate, fear or envy. No one wants to have their business meddled with by a dark mage.any believing fucking stupid shit. He once met a man who blamed his wife divorcing him on the necromancer. The divorce happened 2 years prior. After he finished laughing at the man, he kept going. So they also think he was cold. He found it very ironic now because he was at the age of wanting a partner in his life, and nobody wants to do anything with a necromancer.
He wanted to try his hand with jewels. So that's where he went. He went into the store and demanded "I want an amulet that can store a soul or two, any of you even capable of making it?"