The Henge Sorcerous

[Caden Law]

Go far enough north and strange things start happening. Nights stretch for months, days just as long. The hours slip by until the only way you can count them is by how long it takes your stomach to feel empty. Numbness becomes a discomforting fact of life as the cold eats at your skin and snowblindness takes a seat on the horizon and dares you to look away. Details fade and warp until the mountains behind you look as if they're falling out of the sky, and eventually even that's gone. Just flat white in every direction.

Sometimes, the moons of the world chase each other through twilit skies like great hunters gone wild or ineffable dancers motioning poetry. The sun never rises, it just squints over the horizon and stares into you. Stars are out all night, and their progressions are a definition of madness. It's the kind of environment that can drive a man insane in a matter of hours. Civilization doesn't prepare people for this. That's why Berevar is known as the Wilderlands. There aren't too many animals this far out, but there don't need to be. Berevar is wilderness incarnate.

In eons past, this land chewed up civilization and spat it back out to the laughter of a Winter Lady. What remains are a few scattered tribes of barbaric humans -- the only people insane enough to live here -- and the barely more numerous clans of savage orcs -- the only people durable enough to live here. Lights and spirits riot in the skies, ribbons lashing and phantoms singing. The aurorae come and go, unreasoning and uncaring of those below.

Chuff, chuff, chuff...

Two weeks into his journey, the Wizard called Blueraven was having a hard time not caring about them either.

Chuff, chuff, chuff...

It was the autumn twilight, that time where summer sun winks out and the moons chunder through the skies unopposed. Six months of night were about to take this land and there was nothing Caden or anyone else could do to stop it.

Chuff, chuff, chuff...

Steady was the sound of hooves beating the snow like hammers. Steady and monotonous, broken only by the occasional snort and bleat of Caden's mountain ram -- the first of his steeds to actually survive this long, and the only one who could've ever taken to this kind of environment.

Chuff, chuff, chuff...

Charger knew not rest, not hunger, not thirst. The ram just kept going. Its stride was such that Caden had fallen asleep on its back several times, clutching the reins to his chest and burying his face in stark white fur as he tried to ignore the growling of his stomach or the parched dryness of his throat. Charger never stopped, and the scenery never changed.

Chuff, chuff, chuff...

It was like the ram was being driven by some higher power.

Chuff, chuff, chuff...

And maybe, if Caden had thought to look back over his shoulder through the frost-coated lenses of his goggles, he might've spotted the white-and-pink dotted mushrooms springing up in Charger's wake.

Chuff, chuff, chuff...

Or the ink stains freezing into mathematical formulae around them.

Chuff, chuff, chuff...

Chuff, chuff, chuff...

Chuff, chuff...

Caden woke up to find that the ram had stopped and his vision was completely blotted, first by hair and then by frost. He struggled momentarily, forcing his fingers to release the reins, then wiped at each lense in turn. It was dark out, the moons were like a pair of mismatched eyes peeking up over the side of the world, and the night sky was a war of celestial whips and witnesses. All of it was silent. The only sound in those seconds, measurable only by a sixth sense that Caden could never truly rid himself of, was the gentle crackling of torches. The hushed intake and release of breath. And with the cold numbing everything else, all the Wizard could feel was a subtle pressure of attentions.

He lowered his gaze from the sky and saw the landscape change before him. The endless white wilderness had been interrupted - not truly changed, just interrupted - by a set of tents and freshly iced holes. Some of the snow was colored a deep, vivid red, and all the tents were made of hide and bone. Caden didn't have to enter any of them to know that all bore makeshift floors of layered rugs, and memory alone was enough to tell him that the insides still stank of burning dung. There was a single fish spitroasting near one of the tents; something big and awful looking with stumps where tentacles had once ringed around its mouth and empty holes where the eyes used to be. Most of the scales were gone, and so were the fins and the spines that should've been lining its back and belly. The stalk where a glowing sphere should've hung like a lure was missing too.

Next, the Wizard saw people. Human and Orc in near-equal number, most of them flesh and breathing but a single one that looked like a construct of faded red and white silhouettes, barely opaque enough to make out any details at all. All of the natives wore hides and furs that made them look twice their right sizes, and only the ethereal figure had his face uncovered. Three dozen and more sets of eyes focused on him in utter silence, indicative of a larger gathering than this place had seen in years. Axes and spears of bone shimmered with frost in the starlight, and Caden's numb ears finally registered hushed, unfamiliar words spoken in a language he only barely recognized after so long.

"He stinks of ink and mushrooms."

"I can hear a rustling from him."

"A scent like nothing I've known."

"Call the Wizard."

"Call the Wizard."

"Call the Wizard-"

Caden looked up from the group surrounding him, and more of the scene unfolded before him. This came with a terrifying sense of finality.

First were the blocks of ice-covered stone, gleaming like obsidian beneath glass in the night. They were the stuff that giants could not move, each one a tower in its own right, and not a matching pair among them. Some were taller, some were rounder, one was a perfectly carved rectangle and another looked strangely like an hour glass in shape if nothing else. Above them but not touching them was a ring of solid, perfectly crafted lime stones. All were the same shade of yellow and each one seemed to join into the next by virtue of sand flowing between them. There were words and numbers shifting across every surface, and Caden knew that if he stared too long he might start to understand them.

So he forced himself to look back down. And by then, the tribesmen had split into two groups around an almost empty pocket of space. On the one side of it stood the red silhouette, familiar enough that Caden would've called its name if his throat weren't raw to the point of muteness. At the center stood a man.

He was tall and bald, with a thick gray beard clumping with ice and snow. His eyes were Salvic blue, and his skin had the tan of an arctic sun. He wore the tattered remnants of a white and blue robe over heavy Berevaran hide, and carried a staff of solid white liviol decorated with bones and teeth hanging by half-frozen sinew. He carried a bone-framed lantern fashioned from a fish's glowing lure, and a heavy tome slapped audibly against one of his thighs with every other step, hanging in place by a solid steel chain. His features were strong, almost blunt, and his face looked as if it hadn't smiled in a very long time.

He wore a Hat. It had been pointy once upon a time. Now it more closely resembled a commoner's ushanka. Parts were white, most of it was still-

"Greyspine," Caden rasped, clutching at his own throat.

"Blueraven," spoke the older Wizard, unaffected by the cold.

"You...know...why...I'm...here," Caden said, wheezing out each word as his vocal chords tried to flex and stretch and work again. He hadn't spoken a word in weeks.

"I do," Jolstice said. "Which is why you should know what I'm going to do next."

Caden choked on an incantation. Jolstice had no such hindrance. The senior Wizard raised his staff and shouted, a sound immediately echoed and amplified by better than three dozen tribesmen. He brought the staff back down and Caden barely managed to draw his wand and aim it when Charger lunged forward.

The ram crashed head-first into a wall of ice. Caden flew off, over that ice, and landed face down in the snow. He didn't remember anything that happened after that.

[Caden Law]

The very first thing Caden said when he came to was, "I'm starting to get tired of waking up like this."

Perfectly understandable when you stop to consider that he had been knocked out and woken up in a cage at the start of his journey in time, and again when he came back from it. And again when he ran into the Wanderers in Starlight in Raiaera. Not exactly when he first made it back to Salvar, but absolutely when he ran into Xem'zund's Rogues in the mountains and Caden had kind of experienced it again when he finally made it back to Evernorth. At least he was conscious for the last one.

"Get used to it," one of the locals told him in a language that Caden was already remembering. A few of the emphases and one of the prepositions had changed since he last visited these parts, but he got the hang of it easily enough.

Which allowed him to respond simply, "Blow it out your shit chute, caveman."

Absolutely deafening silence followed. Caden took the time to assess the situation in more detail: He was still in full winter clothes with Wizardly coat and all that, but his Hat had been taken and he was completely disarmed. He couldn't even feel the familiar weight of the wand hidden in his coat. He was also bound with ropes made out of frostbitten sinew, which didn't at all feel pleasant, and the only things keeping him above the hypothermia threshold were Salvic endurance and a fire that positively wreaked of shit and worse. More to the point, he was surrounded by aforementioned cavemen and a few women and children too. All of whom looked slightly inbred and completely insane. They were like rag-clad bags of violence waiting to be untied and dumped on some poor bastard's head.

By all appearances, the one Caden had insulted was this with a side of Napoleon complex: Short and angry looking and Caden was in no position to fight back. Should have been humbling.

"What? Too backwards to even have your own cave?"

It wasn't.

Napoleon Bone-Age lunged forward with a roar like a dire bear on steroids. Caden managed to sit up and tried to meet him with a kick-

But the little guy fell over, stiff as boards and covered in some kind of thin, gray string that glowed eerily in the dull light of the tent's fire. More silence followed, complete with a dramatic entrance that Caden willfully ignored so that he could scoot over and try to kick the little guy's head in.

"Out," spoke the Wizard Greyspine, his voice not quite magic but edging close to it in intensity. "And take Matvek with you."

One by one, the tent emptied. One of the women dragged Matvek Napoleon Bone-Age out by his hair. Caden had to fight the urge to laugh, but this was mostly because he was confused as to why: Laugh out of spite at the little guy or laugh in absolutely underwear staining terror at his former teacher? In the end, he settled for a manic giggle that didn't do nearly good enough a job in either direction. Greyspine let him finish before shutting the tent behind him and taking a seat on the opposite side of the fire - the better to intimidate him, but...

"The cryptic mentor trick won't work anymore," Caden told him, snapping out of giggles and into stoicism and then, "I've seen you do it better with fewer eyes and more hammers."

If nothing else, Caden was starting to get the hang of crypticism in his own right.

Jolstice Aramson was still better at it. And better at ignoring it: "I read the book, Caden."

"That was fast."

"You were out for three days," Jolstice said. And this was a lie, and Caden knew it was a lie.

"Twelve minutes and thirty-seven seconds," he replied, grinning. "I counted."

Wizard stared at Wizard. The air between them sparked and chilled, and the fire and the arctic conditions had absolutely nothing to do with it. Jolstice grimaced as he shook his head. "I read enough."

"No you didn't-"

"Right now, there's a dracolich demigod waiting to awaken beneath the streets of Scara Brae. What the striking hellfire are you doing wasting your time up here?"

"Page three-ninety-eight," Caden answered. "Top paragraph. There's tell of a Bloodless Baron awakening in the south. Three-ninety-nine, second paragraph: I used my old eye to scry into what's going on in Alerar. Full-fledged mobilization of the army. Looks like they've been planning this for a while. I don't think Xem'zund's onslaught would've made a difference. Next page, top line: I saw something crawl out of the moon tonight."

"What point are you trying to-"

"I DON'T HAVE A REASON TO BE HERE!" Blueraven Screamed, his Voice shaking baubles from the tent's bone-struts. Jolstice stared at him, mouth hanging open in shocked silence. Caden strained forward onto his knees, spitting a bit with every other word. "I've fought monsters, I've killed people, I've been tortured, hunted, hated, broken every single striking one of my own taboos and for what? It's hopeless! I can put out a fire a day for the rest of my life and the world's still going to Hell in a handbasket! Don't you get it, Greyspine? I'm just some pawn in the games Gods play with each other when they're not busy doing...whatever crazy things Gods do to keep the universe running.

"Worse, I'm a pawn without a motive. So the world's gonna end? Whatever. I'll die and it's gonna be horrible, let me tell you that. Read enough into the book and you'll vomit at what happens to me. And that's before I get resurrected and thrown at everything I ever knew and loved. Yeah, you didn't tell me that part when I met you in the future, but it's written. It's written in there, just like everything else.

"One apocalypse or a thousand, Greyspine. What difference does it make?"

Caden finished with a slump, hanging his head and sputtering for air. The fire had gone out half-way through his rant, as if the will to live had been sucked right out of it. Jolstice stared at him in near total darkness, then re-lit the flame with a snap of his fingers. He opened the book -- his own Grimoire, written by his hand, telling the story of things he had not lived to see. Caden fell over to one side, cursing and struggling against his binds, and Jolstice ignored him.

This went on for almost half an hour before the older Wizard finally asked, "Veshua didn't wait for you, did she?"

Caden stopped struggling, but said nothing.

"Figures. Dumb kid. Always framing that as your only reason for doing anything."

"Shut up."

"You've got a reason still. Wouldn't be here otherwise."

"Shut up, Greyspine. And cut me loose."

"What's your reason then?" Jolstice asked, closing the book and looking at his old student.

"I don't have one," Caden told him.

"What is it?" Jolstice asked, patience breaking his grizzled exterior with something very near sympathy.

"I don't need one," Caden spat.

"Why are you here?" the Wizard Greyspine asked, his Voice rumbling like steps of mountains.

It took a long time before Caden admitted, "I don't...know."

Eventually, Jolstice sighed, "And neither do I."

Another minute after that and Caden asked, "Could you please untie me now?"

Jolstice snapped his fingers again and the ropes untied themselves. Caden sat up, rubbing at his wrists. There they sat for a time, like a long lost father and son with so many things to say to each other that they couldn't find words for any of it. Which was true in some ways. Caden's real father had passed on not long ago, nevermind his banishment from Evernorth. Jolstice was effectively the only family he had left. He couldn't bring himself to admit that. It would've felt like a trespass of some kind. Especially after what had happened between them so long ago...

"...sorry I tried killing you that one time," Caden said. And meant it. (Mostly.)

"It's the thought that counts," Jolstice answered, rolling his eyes. "Aim lower next time. Body shots count for more when all you need's to take out a lung or the heart."

Silence.

A very long, uncomfortably awkward silence.

Followed by laughter that was somewhere between ordinary disbelief and genuinely morbid humor. Wizards do kill each other often enough that it's considered a natural cause of death, after all.

"So have you come up with a reason yet?" Greyspine sighed as the laughter died down.

"No," Blueraven admitted. "All I keep coming up with is an excuse."

Greyspine shrugged. "Good a place as any to start. What is it?"

"If," Caden stuck out a finger. "I am to be a pawn of some mad gods, the least I can do is be prepared for what they throw at me. Or what they throw me at. This place always struck me as the one proving ground that would do the trick..."

"That's not the whole truth," Jolstice noted.

"It's the only truth you're going to get," Caden told him impassively.

This was met with a nod, solemn and not very understanding. Jolstice had been around the block enough times to know when he wasn't going any further. So, like fathers everywhere do when confronted with something uncomfortably personal, he changed the subject: "A few nights ago...a few months, I should say, the Henge changed. That halo appeared from nowhere and blue feathers flashed on all the rocks. That's how I knew you were coming."

Caden nodded. "I was expected."

"By who?"

"Hells if I know. The Gods don't exactly tell their pawns what the plan is."

[Caden Law]

"You're insane," declared the astral projection of one Shaman Redhide, hovering in a seated position just outside of Greyspine's tent. "Do you actually know what this place is?"

Caden stared at the spirit of his old friend(?) and eventually shrugged without answer. Heedless of the freezing temperatures, he stalked over to one of the other tents. Jolstice came out a few minutes later, sighing heavily. Redhide looked to him with expectant, if ghostly, eyes, and the old Wizard just shook his head.

"He's hellbent on doing this. I couldn't talk him out of it."

"He knows the penalty for failure?" Redhide asked.

"He knows what he saw when I tried. He knows what we both expected when I failed. I think he believes he can cheat the system and get out of it alive if he screws things up," Jolstice said.

A thoughtful growl was the closest Redhide came to responding. The two stood in silence for several minutes, waiting for Caden to come back outside. He emerged from one of the other tents sporting a small bruise on one cheek and adjusting his goggles. There was a muffled profanity or twelve following him out into the night, all of it rendered mute when the tent's door flapped shut. Caden cracked his knuckles as he walked back to the other two, sword sheathed across his back and rod holstered at his side, next to his belt. His wand was nowhere in sight, his Hat had practically been frozen upright and he walked with a purpose that all but melted the snow in front of him into a neat, easily navigated path.

"I'm ready," he told them.

"No you're not," Jolstice replied.

For a fraction of a second, it looked as if they were going to start flinging spells at each other. Redhide was just a little quicker on the spoken word than either Wizard was on the draw. "There are rituals to follow before you can enter the Icehenge, Blueraven. Otherwise all you'll accomplish is several minutes of standing around like an idiot while people stare and laugh at you."

Caden looked at him. Jolstice added, "Forgot that part, didn't you?" And then a few seconds later, "Can't see how, considering all the crap we did getting me ready for it..."

"...thought that was just hunting and cleaning," Caden mumbled.

"Oh, because I enjoy spending seven hours bathing naked in half-frozen high-arctic fish blood-"

"In my defense, I was preoccupied."

Redhide raised a spectral brow.

"Don't ask," Caden ordered. "It involved liquidating spells into the snow."

"...I don't want to know," said the wise Shaman.

"Well, what's the first order of business then?" Caden sighed.

There are, in actuality, something like twenty-seven different ways to begin preparing for the so-called Icehenge experience. The vast majority of them are unpleasant and highly ritualized, designed to strip away dignity, pride and ego such that by the time an entrant finally enters the stone circle all he has left are a pile of questions and a sense of self-loathing nihilism and despair that could kill a sunflower in spring at fifty yards. It is a truly diamond mind that can withstand the suffering inflicted by what occultists of all shades consider Proper Precedure for an Icehenging. The method Jolstice had in mind was particularly vicious in that it involved digging a hole in the ice, diving face-first into the water and going fishing with nothing but a knife.

It's a lot quicker than it sounds. The things beneath Berevaran ice don't get warm meals all that often.

Fortunately for Caden (or unfortunately, depending on your point of view), there was a lesser known twenty-eighth way of starting the journey into Icehenge.

Just get it over with.

Mushrooms bloomed in the snow, ringing around the Wizards and the Shaman, rising and decaying in rapid succession. It was almost like watching a visual expression of music, except for the one place in the circle where the mushrooms kept blooming higher and higher and less like mushrooms and more like something else. Someone else. First came the legs, rising and falling, and then the hips, the waist, chest, arms, shoulders, hands, neck, face; all of it pale and blue-green like frozen flower petals...or perhaps more like an overly artistic rendition of fungus in the basement. The hair came last, verdant green and shimmering teal in starlight. It whipped about in some unseen, unfelt wind like the aurorae above.

She let them gawk for a few seconds before deigning to manifest any kind of clothing. It was not the burlap robe. Never the burlap robe. That was just a public relations bit, like the weeping and so much else. The Lady Chaos wore silk and jewels, barely enough of the former and far too much of the latter. Such was her beauty that it transcended race, species, or anything else for that matter. She was the kind of woman whose face could launch ten thousand ships and whose fashions could kick off a trade war.

And then, at long last, she opened her eyes.

It was like staring into the universe, except it stared back. Ineffable and judgemental, and you were always going to be found wanting beneath the weight of its gaze. Confronted with this, men became humble whether they wanted to or not. And in some cases it was worse than that.

Caden and Jolstice both knelt, as did every single person within the camp whether they saw Her or not. Redhide just screamed, his essence vanishing away as if he were a flimsy prop flayed to nothing by a strong gust of wind.

You're already as purified as you're going to get, Caden Law. Step into the circle and have done with it, she ordered, her every syllable causing stars to flicker in and out of view. She spoke without even moving her lips, as if the act was somehow beneath her station. When no-one so much as shuddered to move as she commanded, her expression changed. It was like watching an earthquake made out of modern libido and classical artwork. I see how this is going to go then. Won't move until your patron shows up, is that it?

"I don't know who my patron is," Caden Said, his puny Voice sounding like a candle trying to get the attention of an entire galaxy of stars.

It was the perfect cue to melt the snow all the way to the ice and dirt packed away beneath it. This happened so quickly that no-one even had time to notice that there was no steam, only the stale heat of a dry desert wind whipping through the night. With it came the sounds of pages rustling, of great books being shelved and unshelved, squeaky wheels turning and the glow of lamplights burning. Beneath glassy clear ice, crabs and sea scorpions the size of houses and outdoor markets could be seen tapping the surface in praise and worship.

The Sage God made his entrance with less rhythm and madness than the Lady Unbinding. A book opened on the ground, huge and bound in solid oak with a spine of platinum rings thicker than anchor chains. When its cover hit the ice, all of Berevar cracked and the world shuddered just a little bit in answer. The tome existed only for the time it took to open, for its pages to turn, for its words to flood up into the air and take shape -- but it had always been there. It had a permanence that made mountains look like blinking eyes. The letters did not twist, spin, swirl or anything of that nature: They constructed. They moved into place with purpose and brilliance and a plan too vast to be summarized by what mortal eyes could comprehend.

And what took shape when every word expanded and merged together was a great black cloak and mantle, worn over stark white scholastic robes that looked like they belonged to a desert prophet. The clothes were empty for a time, and then he appeared. His hands burst from the sleeves, innumerable and unfathomable and incomprehensible in every way -- but only for the time it took him to settle on a human shape. His head emerged in much the same way, pouring out into the air as tentacles, eyes, insects, stars, fire, and finally settling on human. He wore a turban of white silk covered in black mathematical formulae. No gems. No blades. The only accessory he carried now was the very book he had materialized from, suddenly so small that he could hold it under one arm without difficulty.

Like the Lady before him, he opened his eyes and nothing human looked out upon the world below. They were compound, shimmering like a billion billion diamonds made by force of intellect and will alone.

Showoff, the Lady noted.

The Sage God smiled as well, and it was more like watching someone pen the greatest work of science ever written than anything else. It helps to make a certain kind of impression when dealing with mortals.

The Lady rolled her eyes. You know my stance.

Which, it seemed, was the cue for another dramatic entrance.

Dramatic in the sense that the ice two miles away erupted all the way into the night sky. Dramatic in the sense that the geyser to follow was briefly made out of fire bright enough to outline a completely inhuman, completely unfathomable silhouette. Great armored wings arced through the night sky, blotting out moons and stars and aurorae all at once. Just as quickly as the wings appeared though, they began to fill with holes. Within seconds, they had collapsed back into the geyser, which itself collapsed into into a tiny ball in the night sky.

A tiny ball which got a whole lot bigger, a whole lot faster than anyone would have preferred.

The Ancient slammed down to the icy landscape just a few yards from where the other two stood, where Jolstice and Caden still knelt. He landed with a force that ends civilizations, and a restraint that encourages worship lest it be unleashed. There was no crater, there were no further cracks in the ice. There was only a great hulking figure, his appearance topheavy and its limbs powerfully muscled and already rotten with undeath. Water dripped from his mouth, his nostrils, ears and every gaping wound, until all of that vaunted muscle and every scale fell away to reveal a nine foot tall skeleton of solid gleaming gold, wearing only the tattered remnants of relic armor and bearing a trident crafted from whatever concept had given rise to Adamantine.

He had no eyelids. Only flames burned where his eyes should have been, tiny violet suns that reduced the water in his skull to steam and left his bones shining that much brighter.

I was wondering if he would show up, the Sage God mused.

All this for one little mortal. I don't think this many of us have gathered since we empowered those spoony little bards to put down Aesphestos. A giggle. A divine giggle. D'you guys remember that one bard clapping like that?

The Sage God groaned, which sounded something like a printing press being smashed. The Ancient One merely shook his skeletal head and Said, I'm simply here to keep the peace.

His Voice, it bears mention, was more like the tidal wave that washes away a harbor city in the night. Apathetic and unstoppable.

The Lady cocked her head to one side, expectantly. It was the Sage God who saw the Ancient One's reason, and he explained it accordingly: With this many of us gathered in place, for one purpose, with a mortal like this one, she will notice it. And she may already have a vested interest in him, just as I do.

All the better to get him out of my domain then, said the Lady with a dainty little shrug that could've sparked avalanches in Alerar.

Your domain is all the world, the Sage God noted humorlessly.

Exactly.

Another deific sigh. This passed for a conclusion to the Thaynes' congress, and the Wizards finally looked up from the ice -- just like everyone else -- to see the Sage God raise his hand in offering.

The time has come, Caden Law of Salvar. Rise.

Caden did. For a long time, he was the only one who did.

Your trial awaits.

[Caden Law]

Icehenge was bigger inside than out. Caden took this in stride, except for the part where Icehenge kept getting bigger inside than out. Every step further into the great stone circle put another mile between him and the nearest exit, such that by the time he finally reached what his gut told him was the center, Caden could barely see the original pillars standing around him. Only the halo remained, spread from horizon to horizon like walls of sand and gold bridging earth to sky. The stars themselves perched there, watching like a million billion little voyeurs to a spectacle that had not yet truly begun.

Caden watched them in kind for a few seconds, then took off his glasses and put on his goggles. He put the glasses away in his Hat, steeled his resolve and tried not to hold his breath too much.

The Trial began not with a swung sword, a cast spell, a dissonant insult. It started when the ground began to shake, and the snow shifted from winds that weren't there. At the Henge's heart more pillars shot up out of Berevar's desolate earth, sundering ice and permafrost on their way to the surface. Seven in a circle, great obsidian mirrors covered in snow. Three of them flashed, first white and then some other color in turn: Blue, then violet, then yellow. When the second color faded, each mirror showed Caden another picture of himself.

Blue, just as he was now. The only differences were the presence of his old Raiaeran chestplate and shoulder pauldrons, and the fact that this version had a spear to accompany some striking new scars. The spear was exactly what Caden had wanted to build when he first left Raiaera: Five feet long, glossy red wood with three grips, a counterweight shaped like a great iron ring and a spearhead measuring twelve inches of liquid crimson metal built around a sapphire core. It pulsed with magic even as a mere reflection.

Violet was himself, but different. He wore a violet mantle on his Wizard's coat and a matching belt on his Hat, and in lieu of the Arcanist's Rod he'd bought at Dendrestok was a long steel truncheon like the ones used in Evernorth and other Salvic cities. It bore gems and rubies and a handguard etched with scripture and a wedding vow. Caden didn't have to read it to know what it was.

Yellow was the least recognizable, but Caden knew him in the same way he knew words in a book. He wore yellow robes and a hooded cloak to match, plain and simple. Brown boots stuck out beneath the robes' hem, his hands were stained with ink and in his grasp were Caden's Grimoire and the Staff of Power he might have built in another life: Six feet of oak that the Wizard knew was cored in liviol, capped at one end and bearing a solid silver knob on the other. The entire thing was covered in Diamonic runes.

Lightning flashed overhead, cutting through the aurorae that still danced in the night.

The blue mirror cracked, and Raiaera's premier War-Wizard, Commander Caden Law of the Blueraven Brigade stepped out into the world. He made it all of four paces before stopping, hanging his head just long enough to reach up and adjust his goggles. He looked up, the lenses momentarily tinting white, and then he began to draw in power.

But there was something wrong, and the real Caden knew it.

"Doppelgangers don't have pupils," he muttered. "What the hell are you..."

"Myself," Said the Siege-Wizard Blueraven, hefting his spear with one arm. "Pilum Arcana!"

He threw it. Caden jumped out of the way and it wasn't nearly good enough. The spear arced low and came in more like a cruise missile. It struck the snow between where his feet had been and suddenly there was nothing but naked ground in a perfect circle around the point of impact. It expanded to sixteen feet and Caden felt an unseen shockwave hit him from behind, throwing him a few more yards from the spear. An instant later, everything in the circle just collapsed. A crater formed all the way to the way to the permafrost that Icehenge stood upon, its walls crafted from molten glass -- walls that immediately collapsed until the spear itself was out of sight and only a steaming bowl remained in the ground.

"Siege Arcana with a spear," Commander Blueraven explained. "The spell you failed to come up with because you weren't there for the Battle of Galonan."

There was suddenly a chain in his hand, linking all the way into the glass-filled crater where his spear once stood. The Commander gave a yank and his weapon erupted back out of the ground, tumbling end over end until it landed perfectly in his grasp. He gave it a little spinning flourish, just because Caden knew that he could, then hoisted it up for another shot.

"Pilum Arcana!"

"Won't work on me!" Blueraven Said, his hand gesturing the Wand of Nevermorrow flying from its place on his belt and smacking hard against his palm. "Gravity Gambit!"

The spear struck an invisible ball of clashing gravity and anti-gravity. Magic collided with magic. The spear went wide of its target by precious inches and power driving it nailed Caden in the side. He twisted all the way to the ground and came right back up on his feet, wand already aimed and lightning already bursting from its tip.

The Commander countered it with lightning from a wand of his own, a steel number that looked like a railroad spike pretending to be a fencing dagger. The spells met a little less than half-way, absorbed into a ball of electricity and imploded in a spray of ghastly little sparks. By then, the Commander was charging forward, his free hand enveloped in ghost-chain and his wand flicking and swishing through spells given without an incantation: Magic missiles, arcane bursts, bolts of lightning, rocks that tore up out of the ground and went wide.

Caden countered every single one. His responses were blunt, ugly even; nothing as graceful as a Wizard so exposed to the Bladesingers of Raiaera. War waged between pragmatic art and utilitarian survivalism, and with every spell the Commander drew closer. His spear was in his hand, his eyes had purpose. Soon they were too close for Caden to even counterspell him.

Commander Blueraven lunged in for the kill.

Caden sidestepped, jumped forward and kicked his other self's leg out from beneath him. Bowie in hand, he went for the kill without even looking.

And he missed because of it.

The Commander hit the snow with a bloody gash from cheekbone to nose. Grounded, he kicked Caden's own legs out from under him and tried for another stab. Caden slapped the spear's blade away, took hold of the spear and missed several killing blows due to the Commander's chestplate.

And then the Commander nailed him in the face with a great big magical fist fired right from the tip of his wand. Caden felt every tooth in his skull rattle, his nose broke and his Hat flew off as his body accelerated from zero to fifteen on impact, fifteen to forty as the fist drove him into the air, and forty to sixty as it finished catapulting him skyward. The Wizard landed with a scream and a roll, thankful that he was already numb from the cold. It was the only reason he was able to recover so quickly.

"Pilum-"

Stone Maiden Mausoleum requires a few spoken words and, more often than not, some measure of prep time. Caden had neither. So he just focused on the ground in front of Commander Blueraven and willed a pillar of rock to shoot up through his lower jaw, into his skull, and out through his scalp. The Siege Wizard flailed for a few seconds, morbidly comical, and then he was dead.

Caden watched it happen.

His stomach twisted a little bit at the sight of his own dead face, blood already frozen at the entry wound.

Oh dear. Looks like the first one's done for.

Unsurprising, the Ancient One sighed, and a great invisible hand seemed to brush Commander Blueraven's body out of the way -- out of existence, for that matter. Only the bloody spike remained, as even the spear vanished before it could touch the ground. War may harden a man, but a hero only dies once.

Caden stood up, his breath coming in ragged little clouds that were all tinted a bit red. The blood was already congealed on his upper lip, and he didn't know or care why it didn't just freeze outright. "What's that supposed to mean?" he asked.

The world shook a bit, as if shrugging in answer.

"...so that's how it's gonna be," Caden muttered.

Lightning flashed again.

[Caden Law]

"Now," Caden said to himself, barely audible over the dragging roll of thunder; of the Lady's capricious whims. "Now comes the hard part."

He tightened his hold on the Wand of Nevermorrow, then drew the Arcanist's Rod from his belt and gave it a few practice swings. It wasn't like using a sword, but it was close enough. And it was a distraction from the inevitable.

The thunder died away, and in its place came the crushing of snow underfoot. The sound of a truncheon arcanum being given a few practice swings of its own, and Caden could hear the rustle of immaterial feathers coming from every single jewel in the process. He closed his eyes, shut out the empty pit in his stomach and focused on the pain covering his face. Focused on it hard. Enough that when he asked the inevitable question, it came out with a straight face and an unwavering voice.

"When did you diverge?"

"Not following you," spoke Watchman Law, one of Evernorth's Clerical-Wizards and the only one of its members fully commissioned to wear a badge.

"I'm guessing that you're all...derived? Shot off? Whatever. You all come from specific parts of my life where it could've gone differently. The good Commander seemed like that anyway. So, tell me," Caden looked up, willing himself to stare sidelong at the man he could have been, in the velvet he really would have worn. "Did you run from Salvar? Did you fight in the Day of Untold Agony? When did you stop being me?"

"When did you stop being me?" Watchman Law asked, incredulous and amused in the same breath. "I never left Father Salvar. Ever have I striven to uphold the good Saint's teachings. Blessed are the Sway, loved are they that walk in their ethereal light," he declared, and the words themselves were not frightening. Words alone are hardly ever frightening. It was the tone behind them that shook the Wizard Blueraven right to his core: Simple, honest belief. The kind of faith that he had never been able to muster, the kind that he was no longer capable of.

"Veshua married you?" Caden asked in genuine disbelief.

Watchman Law smiled pityingly. "Yes. Yes, she did." He held up his hand, and the studded silver ring worn on his finger. It was violet, just like the mantle and belt. "I'm sorry that things didn't work out so well-"

"Shut your godsdamned mouth," Said the Wizard Blueraven, and the battle was joined. He didn't wait for the Watchman to make the first strike. Caden stuck out his wand, grabbed a few hundred pounds of solid rock and threw it at his violet-clad self with one catapulting swing.

The Watchman replied with a wide swing of his truncheon and a wall of violet-blue feathers billowed into place after it. The rocks slammed into the wall and came through as dust. By then, Watchman Law was already spinning through to his counterattack: A battering ram in the likeness of a raven's clenched foot.

Caden dodged it. He took aim with his rod as the spell blew by, then unleashed a stream of magic missiles. Watchman Law threw up another wall of feathers and had to dodge the missiles that got through in spite of it. Caden kept him off balance like that for a few seconds, then fired off a lightning bolt from his wand. Watchman Law met it with his wedding ring.

And where there had been a wall, now there were only wings. Great big blue-feathered wings, every line between them defined in violet. They completely encased the Watchman, shielding him from harm until Caden finally let up with the missiles. An instant later, the wings snapped open and stretched wide in fifteen foot arches, each of them glimmering in the dark of night as a violet flame burned from the stone in the Watchman's wedding ring.

"In nomine Amor, punirò tu," the Watchman declared, his truncheon suddenly catching holy fire.

"Bring it," Blueraven told him, crossing wand and rod with a sneer on his face and hatred in his eyes.

The Watchman burst from the ground, snow ripping up in his wake. He closed in with a Scream and Blueraven met him in kind with a Thermal Lance and an Arcane Blast. Wings blocked the first, a hard swing of the truncheon took the second. An instant later, Watchman Law went for a haymaker with his wedding ring-clad left hand. Caden ducked under it, twisted out of the way of a blind kick and fell under an equally blind sweep of Watchman Law's left wing. The Watchman slammed down a few feet away, turned around and Caden rolled away just in time to avoid being pulverized by Law's right wing. He came up with a defensive swing of his rod and barely parried his other self's truncheon.

This close in, the battle would be decided by subtlety.

The Watchman was an officer first, a Cleric second, and a Wizard last.

Blueraven was a Wizard to his dying breath. And his Wand, low and seemingly useless in a melee, had its end aimed right at the other Caden's face.

Arcane blast took off the right side of Watchman Law's head, tearing away part of his hat, neck and shoulder in the process. He collapsed in a heap, leftover momentum dragging him down on one side as his wings evaporated and the fire went out from his truncheon and ring both. He went to the ground in the order of knee, knee, hip, hand, elbow, side, back, head.

Caden watched him on the way down, staring at the thin chain around his neck. It was only visible now that he was up close. He knew it lead to a locket though. He had a good idea what the interior would've said.

And with another sneer, Caden deigned not to linger over it.

He left the body where it fell and didn't bother watching as it too evaporated into thin air.

Ouch, spoke the Lady Entropy, and Caden could not ignore her or any of the other gods.

Love is over, noted the Sage. Only wisdom remains...

The Ancient One rumbled disagreement. Lightning struck again.

[Caden Law]

There was now exposition with this one. The Scholar in Yellow struck out as soon as his feet hit the snow: Spells arced from his staff in streams of mathematical lunacy and prosaic rambling, each one trailing feathers the color of the mid-day sun as they went. Caden scarcely had the time to turn around and his reflexes put him on the defenses so quickly that he actually didn't think about what he was going to do next.

He just didn't have time to.

In amber clad, the Scholar hammered away at him without even deigning to raise a finger or shout an incantation; his magic was Wizardry in its purest, least somatic form. All willpower and long-term goals. Caden could counter the magic missile stream coming down on his head but he'd have to be ready to sidestep three rolling rocks the size of chariots doing it, and then he would really want to pay attention to the shifting letters melting their way into the snow in a circle around him and-

He couldn't win.

The best that Blueraven could do was to catch up to his yellow cloaked self; match defense for offense and try to buy himself some breathing room.

"That strategy won't work," the Scholar told him, and Caden's own common sense bitterly echoed it. "I can cast faster and my magic is stronger."

As if for emphasis, he finally gestured with his staff -- a very weak motion that managed to plow one of his magic missiles right through Caden's defenses. Arcane blast detonated at the very heart of the spell with no effect whatsoever, and then it dove for him like a nimble bird. Its beak took Caden square in the stomach and drove him to the ground, piercing his coat and shirt and skin and leaving blood all over his midsection.

Ignoring the pain was easy. He was already going numb from the cold. Ignoring the fear was not. Blueraven focused it, drove it to quicken his reflexes and thoughts. He all but danced on the edge of a knife as he stuck the arcanist's rod up and let fly with a machine gunner's stream of magic missiles, all of them looking like blue ravens that arced high and spiraled back down in a ring around him. What spells they couldn't destroy on impact, Caden tried to counter with his wand. And it worked for a while but...

"You can't keep that up either."

Another shot snuck through and Caden felt blood splattering all over his face. An arcane blast, weakened but potent enough to flay skin and spray blood. He bit back on a scream and instead demanded, "So who the hell are you supposed to be?"

The onslaught stopped.

It was so ridiculously quick and simple that Caden wasted precious seconds trying to defend himself from attacks that weren't coming. His other self made use of the time to raise his staff and, as he did this, raise a great stone chair as well. He took a seat and the chair ripped up from the ground, levetating by the time that Caden himself had managed to get up on his hands and knees.

The Scholar rested his staff in a slot on the chair's side, opened his grimoire and waited for Caden to struggle to his feet. Then he asked, very simply, "Who the hell are you?"

"That's my-"

"No, it isn't," said the Scholar, paging through his book in frustration. "You keep asking each of your opponents that question and yet you never stop to think about it the other perspective. Who are you, Caden Law? Who are you, Wizard Blueraven? It's not about when we diverged from you. You didn't even know we existed until you came here, and in all probability, you're still not sure we exist even now. The question then becomes: At what point did you diverge from each of us?"

Caden stared at him. The Scholar adjusted his glasses and kept on, his chair rising higher and higher with every word. "That's the real question. When did you decide not to take up a spear and develop Siege Spellcraft? When was it you decided that mere Survival trumped Love and Tradition? When did you give up your pursuit of Knowledge Arcana to become a silly little play-thing for a pantheon you refuse to truly believe in? Has it ever even occurred to you just how many avenues of power you've given up over the years?

"And for what?" the Scholar asked. "What have you gained, Caden? What has it all been for?"

"Stone Maiden Mausoleum."

The chair suddenly restructured into something the size and shape of an outhouse or a particularly large coffin. The Scholar's staff tumbled free of it before he could so much as scream, and then the spikes hit. Blood leaked out from cracks in the bottom. The Mausoleum hovered for a few seconds, dropped and shattered when it hit the ground.

At least the Scholar's body was gone by the time the Mausoleum came apart. Caden clung to his wand and rod in the meantime, breathing hard and foggy as red blood congealed and froze its way down his arm and across the side of his face.

"Son of a bitch," he spat in defeat.

Because he might've killed the Yellow Raven, he might've undone the Scholar Caden Law, but he hadn't won the battle. He hadn't answered the question. The aurorae churned overhead, colors blurring and changing as the winds stilled in mocking silence.

"Well?" he sneered into the night. "Is that it? IS THAT ALL YOU'VE GOT?!"

As was rarely the case when a mortal made demands of the Gods...

Not even close.

...the Thayne of Althanas listened...

[Caden Law]

The sky changed. The colors of the aurorae multiplied, and the layout of those dancing lights became a swirling madness of beauty and terror; like a hurricane made out of clashing rainbows, the souls of dead ancestors gone to war. At its heart lay an empty calm through which stars could be seen. Caden stared at the shifting wonders in breathless awe, such that he wasn't even paying attention to the cluster of figures now dominating the horizon.

The Ancient One, the Sage God, and the Lady Entropy spread to the true nightside of the world, each one standing tall as a mountain and seeming to fall short of the auroral tempest by whimsey alone. Across from them, where the sun had long since set and would eventually rise anew, stood three more figures just as tell and just as impossible to comprehend.

The Strong in his guise as the Hunter, lion's head and mane contrasting with a great ape's body and a man's hide-clad legs. A war-axe hovered next to him, so large as to dwarf whole commerce fleets, its head a hammer on one side and an axe on the other. The haft was wrapped in skins, those that the Mad Hunter had judged over the eons; judged and found wanting.

The Wilder clad in great gold wings that were studded with stars instead of mere gems. She was a beauty of twisting incomprehension, her color changing from human tones to natural camouflage to urban grays. Her clothes changed like her skin, from primitive rags to sophisticated dresses to garments that no native-born Althanian would have words for. Only the wings remained a constant, draped over her shoulders and sweeping down to provide modesty when clothing would not -- and only because the Wilder enjoyed secrets.

Last was the Queen of Seasons, come to watch the show in a form that was written in no book, because words couldn't do it justice. She wore reality in the ways that mortal princesses wanted to wear ballroom gowns and in the ways normal women wished they could wear lingerie. The appearance of her was beauty and fertility, lust and life incarnate.

Caden's gaze shifted from the trial's first three sponsors to these new godly gatecrashers, and his stomach fell somewhere in between his knees and only stayed from going lower because he was a Wizard. A Wizard is always thinking, always grasping, always trying to understand even that which, by its very nature, cannot be thought, grasped, or understood by mortal minds. Caden looked upon these elder gods, these Thaynes of the World, and could not help but feel humbled by their presence.

Humbled and terrified and focused. And just a little bit sardonic: "Feels like I'm at a clerical reunion dosed on bluebread and Father Tzalm's special wine," he mumbled, looking away from the gods and turning his attention to the task at hand.

Lightning struck, sundering the auroral hurricane above. Green, teal, and orange slammed into three of the remaining stones. Each one positively burned white-cold, then black-hot, and then assumed one of the three colors in turn. More of him stood within them, but he didn't have enough time to study this next round of selves.

Forth! Queen of Seasons called, her Voice thundering through Caden's bones and right into his soul. He almost fell over in shock. Go forth, my champion! My Spring Knight Rising!

There was literally just enough time for the Wizard Blueraven to think, That can't be good.

The next thing he knew, there was a raven's shrill cry and the world went green and violent.

[Caden Law]

Blood hit the snow in a lengthy trail of dots and drags, like some kind of twisted morse code. Caden screamed and screamed and ran out of breath and kept trying to scream anyway. He went forty, maybe fifty yards before hitting the ground again. It was with a roll that cost him both rod and wand; hard to keep a grip when your body's going through numb spasms of thermal shock from rising heat and crashing cold and the added pain caused by water freezing and steaming your clothes in the same instant.

He eventually did stop. And he lay there for a while, trying to remember why any of this had ever sounded like a good idea. Then he heard the crush of snow, and the determined huff of breath, and Caden knew that his time of rest was over.

He got up. It wasn't quite that simple, and nowhere near as clean, but the Wizard Blueraven pulled himself up and his blue coat was now stained very red in the shape of a crow's foot; both shoulders, one side just beneath the armpit and the other wrapping around a leg. The actual clothes weren't damaged. Caden was already certain that the skin hadn't even been broken. Whatever spell hit him had basically tried to exsanguinate him on the spot. He took a moment flexing his fingers, then looked up with a vision half-blurred by ice and mist in his goggles, to say nothing of blurs inherent in his vision.

He didn't recognize himself for a long while. This new Caden was that different. He wore a pointed hat, but it was green. He wore a long t-shirt sleeved tunic or tabard in lieu of Blueraven's coat, and a longer-sleeved Akashiman kimono shirt beneath it, judging by his arms. His pants were heavy and black, the boots brown and both Coronian in style. He had a mantle of cold iron, its texture patterned after grass. His belt was heavy leather and pure utility of a sort that Caden had only heard about, never seen: It had no pouches, no satchels, no holsters of any kind. Gear simply stuck to it by magic, arming this version of him with no less than three increasingly eldritch wands, dozens of seeds and nuts and leaf-shaped bits of metal that could've been anything from weapons to decorations to reagents.

Even the weapon he carried was unfamiliar. It was like a greatsword or a short spear, its hilt stretching for three feet and its blade sweeping four more. The wrappings were leaves, the guard consisted of branches, with more stretching up along the back of the blade itself. Eldritch symbols littered the thing. Littered the man holding it.

Could've been war-paint, but Caden doubted that. You don't daub on war-paint beneath your clothes, and this version of him had lines that went right into his sleeves and collar and didn't stop. They looked like a tangle of vines, symmetrically patterned all over.

Even with all of this, the basic features were the same. What made him so hard to recognize was the way that he moved. Caden had a certain gait to him, a body language he recognized instinctively. This being moved differently. It almost reminded him of the first Blueraven that Caden had fought tonight, except even more like an elf than that. Every step was measured in passing. Every twirl of his blade, a calculated flourish aimed at psychological impact. Even the set of his shoulders and the steady way that he breathed and the fact that he didn't wear glasses or goggles of any kind.

"So," Caden asked. "Where the hells did you come from?"

The blade stopped twirling.

Caden grimaced, flexing his fingers and his magic with them.

"I did what I had to," Spoke the Spring Knight Rising, the Verdant Raven of Queen Lurline; Sir Caden Law of the Spring Court. "And so will you."

Blueraven favored him with a nasty smile and Said, "I like you already."

And on this they agreed, "It's a shame you die here."

The Green Raven lunged forward and the Blueraven met him with a draw that, not three months ago, would've gotten him killed. Steel Raiaeran pommel clanged violently against cold faerie iron, and Caden had the wherewithall as a swordsman to pivot his weapon up and over his opponent's blade even as he parried the strike. It was the perfect setup for a killing blow and any amateur would've died for it.

Sir Caden blocked, wrist against wrist, and the next thing Blueraven knew was a boot to his stomach and the taste of blood in his mouth. This didn't stop him from reaching out with his magic and grabbing hold of the Wand of Nevermorrow. Even as he came up swinging with his sword, Caden summoned the wand back to his empty right hand -- and it was a testament of the Spring Knight's instincts that the wand didn't clock him in the head on its way back. He ducked away, sidestepped Blueraven's follow-up and effortlessly broke a point-blank blast of raw arcane energy with one sweep of his faerie blade.

Caden gave the wand a swish and flick, and a blast of heat shot out in the Spring Knight's face. The air around him burned green and by sleight of hand, nuts and seeds flew from his belt, met the heat-wave and detonated into flashes of light and rapid plant growth. Blueraven backpedaled as a line of trees, vines, bushes and more literally erupted in front of him, heedless of the cold and the lack of sustainability available in the arctic. Plant-life reached for him, grew at him, and Caden willed up a stone wall to block its progress.

The wall crumbled.

The Wizard settled for improvised fire instead.

All of which gave the Spring Knight time to catapult himself around the growing forest on a grass-topped boulder, bouncing high and leaving flowers and weeds wherever it touched the ground. He came for Blueraven's head with a scream, and missed in fury.

"Lance!"

Verdant Raven smashed the spell apart with his blade, then leapt from the boulder and came down like a falling star. Blueraven met him with a smile and a gambit.

A Gravity Gambit.

Birds can fly. So can Wizards, if they've got the right magic for it.

The Spring Knight Rising didn't have the right magic for it.

How he shrugged off the forces of gravity and anti-gravity clashing, Caden didn't know or care. He pressed the attack with geomancy, spiking and pitting the ground where the Knight landed. Cloth armor tore, skin cut and bled in steady rivulets that knew not the cold of the arctic. Sir Caden threw down seeds and the Wizard Blueraven's earth fought them for dominance; blasts of light and growing, quickly broken plants of every size and shape.

The Spring Knight burst sideways from an earthen meatgrinder, a gnarled wand in each hand. He let loose Spring's emerald flames with one and a great green raven-shaped magic missile with the other.

Lightning travels faster than fire or flight.

Caden's spell met Sir Caden's defenses and shattered around them, but the blast of light and sound was enough to disorient the Knight's magicks. Magic missile and Spring fire went wide and wild, and Caden closed the distance in a run that he didn't think himself capable of. He wasn't quite point blank, but that was okay.

Caden threw his sword and took the Spring Knight squarely in the collar with it. The blade pierced out through his lower back with a spray of blood at both ends, and the Knight gagged out a scream of rage more so than pain...

...and he still stood.

Blueraven couldn't believe it.

"Not like this!" Sir Caden howled, his Voice wavering as he took aim with one wand again.

The Wizard hit him with another lightning bolt. The Knight staggered, but did not fall. Another lightning bolt and his clothes were smoking, his face leaking blood from the nose, ears, eyes and mouth. Another lightning bolt and the Verdant Raven finally went down to one knee as Caden slowed from a run to a jog to a quick walk.

The wand sagged down. Caden grabbed his sword and-

"Make it quick," the Spring Knight pleaded.

"I'll try," Caden told him.

Ten seconds later, he was staring himself in the face, except his reflection was icy and tinted green. A few seconds after that, Caden smashed his own head off with the Wand of Nevermorrow, then shattered the remnants of the corpse when he drew the sword out of it.

It would've been nice if there were time to rest.

Lightning flashed, and Caden rasped, "No rest for the wicked."

[Caden Law]

"Come out, come out!" Caden called, separated from his next adversary by several hundred feet of burnt wood and deformed, half-frosted rock. His Voice wavered only slightly under the strain of his injuries, and although he certainly had the look of a total maniac by this point Caden was still thinking. Thinking. Always thinking.

Who the hell are you?

Not necessarily about the battle waiting to be fought, but thinking nonetheless.

He was shocked from his reverie not by a spell, but by a sound like nothing he could name. It had depth, an echo, and it dragged in ways that he had never heard before. It was stark opposition to the musical magic of Raiaeran bards, of the Bladesingers and their Starlit counterparts. It was carnage, fine tuned and electrified. It was freedom, soaring high and leaving a trail of arcane afterburn and ethereal feathers in the night sky.

In more modern terms, the sound Caden heard was kin to an electric guitar symphony in an echo chamber.

"What the...hells...oh shi-"

The ground all around him suddenly lit up with runes. Caden ran on instinct and barely avoided a spell that reminded him entirely too much of Siege Arcana: A tiny black hole cannonballing into the ground at the circle's center, crushing all the way to the permafrosted ground below and leaving a pillar of antilight and black ice in its wake. Caden dodged the actual blast, and then the air collapsed in on itself in a reverse shockwave; a kind of vacuum effect the Wizard had experienced too many times for comfort in his years on the road. It knocked him over, rolled him a few times and let him go -- which was fortunate, as the ground around him lit up in another circle.

Caden dodged the second attack better than the first. He had even better luck on the third go round, when even the collapsing air didn't reach him.

Predictably, that was when the attack routine changed.

Two circles this time, and Caden had to change completely to avoid them. He did. And just as he knew would happen, his attacker finally deigned show himself.

The Skyrider Wizard Blueraven swept down at better than a hundred miles per hour, his appearance not quite alien to the Caden Law of Althanas proper, but damnably close. He wore boots, but his pants had been cut off at the knee and the coat was a fond memory at best, replaced by an open blue vest worn over the mangled remnants of Caden's white shirt. His Hat was gone, replaced by a leather cap that had been dyed blue. He wore a backpack with scrolls holstered on its lower half, a saw-toothed short sword sheathed on the small of his back and a wand carved from bone in his left hand, leading the way. He was surfing on a cobbled-together board fashioned from a skyship's hull, complete with a tiny arcane turbine burning on its rear.

And he carried a sectioned scythe with three blades on the trailing end, each one longer than the last.

Caden dove out of the way and the scythe blades still got him. He spun to the ground with an awful scream, his side erupting in pain and shock.

The Skyrider swooped up after his attack, gaining altitude quick and hard, and Caden just screamed. He couldn't even tell how deep the cut actually was, just that he needed to put a hand to it or something was going to come spilling out and-

Who are you, Caden Law?

"Not now," Caden spat, focusing on the pain and using it as a channel to the here and now. Philosophical discourse could wait.

Who are you, Wizard Blueraven?

"Not now," he said as he froze the wound shut and willed himself into a run that, by all rights, should have killed him several times over. He left the sword somewhere along the way. The air collapsed behind him and Caden booked it for the wrecked woods as his skyriding counterpart lined him up for another shot.

Caden reached out with his wand, grabbed the ground and threw it up in the Bomb Arcana's path. The result was a glass sphere and collapsing air, but no shrapnel or anything of the sort. He fell over on one knee a few seconds later, knowing what he had to do -- and knowing that his aerial opposition wouldn't fall for it.

"Do what you have to," he said to himself, standing up and knowing that the Skyrider was coming for him. Bomb Arcana was a high-end spell. Skyrider was throwing it out in ones and twos, and Caden had just negated it. If this version of him had evolved even remotely similar talents, that meant most of his power was mid-range. But if he was reliant on speed, he was going to come in for another pass with the scythe. Skyrider had all the advantages, but he only had so many options.

Caden tracked himself in the sky, following the Skyrider by arcane afterburn and the riffing sound the board made every few seconds. Runes melted into the snow and shifted into the dirt around him as he waited, a double Circle that began to glow after a few seconds. Birds crowed from nowhere, and feathers began to surge up and down along the Circle's edges like racing flames.

"Don't let me down," he said to the Skyrider, even as another string of runes shifted into the dirt beneath the snow. These didn't glow. Yet.

The Skyrider wasn't idle up there. Now that Caden had a chance to watch him uninterrupted, he saw his other self writing in the sky with the trail his board left behind, each rune and sigil raking in magic for the next round.

This was going to be the end. Both of them knew it without even speaking to each other.

"Make it quick," Said the Wizard Blueraven, breathing and bleeding his last.

[Caden Law]

The resolution took all of ten seconds. Maybe less.

It ended with a dead body lying in pieces on the ground.

Skyrider struck first, but Blueraven had a defense prepared: Bomb Arcana smashed into a boulder ninety or a hundred yards short of the target. Skyrider was counting on it. He came in behind the spell, swerved around it and then barrel rolled to avoid Blueraven's own Siege Arcana, which went wide and hit the first Arcana's glass sphere before it could finish collapsing.

Skyrider had to outrun the shockwave. Caden tried to blast him twice; missed the first spell, was blocked on the second. Skyrider swept by and Blueraven went down screaming -- the scythe trailed just inches short of his head, so close that the chain and the arcane backdraft from Skyrider's board actually took his Hat off before the blades could cleave it in two. And as he went down, Caden triggered the runes under the snow, launching up a field of spikes that his other self was in no position to dodge.

Skyrider must've expected it. He just didn't expect all of it. He smashed the first few spikes with magic, then one got through gutted his board and it was all over but the dying after that. He was impaled, his own momentum carried and his body ripped in half in a brutal display that Caden didn't have time to watch.

The Wizard stood up in time to see his other self's broken carcass drop out of sight while his board went careening into the distance and exploded like in a raven-shaped cloud of feathers and light.

It took him a few seconds, but Caden finally slouched, rasping for breath as he reached out with magic and grabbed his Hat. On it went, before he even tried thinking about anything else. Blueraven would at least try to die a Wizard, no matter what happened.

"One more," he wheezed. Trying to reach out for his rod. It smacked hard into his grasp, and he almost lost it twice in the process. Caden smacked the focus into the snow and leaned on it, waiting for the lightning to strike...