It's an ethnic ghetto, was the very first thing Caden thought upon arriving at Inhuton. And he was absolutely right, for a given value of right. Inhuton was a small-ish section of Evernorth that was as glitzy on the street side as it was shabby everywhere else. The people were different from the city's norm; they weren't variations of what passed for Salvic humanity. Almost none of them had the pale skin, the brown or blond hair, the blue or green eyes. Some of them didn't even have eyes for that matter. Hair was optional on a good number. Pale skin was an increasingly rare commodity the further Caden went past Inhuton's invisibly defined borders.

The only thing that really marked Inhuton was Inhuton. It was nothing like the city it occupied. It was as different from Evernorth proper as a determined anthill was from grass.

Shops lined the sidewalks, along with the occasional vending stand that somehow managed to stay in business despite the rancid conditions of the place. Most of the buildings were mixed brick and wood, and whatever side faced the street was always neatest. Some of the buildings sported signs of alchemically glowing lights and shapes, and a few of those could hardly be Church-approved. There was a strange uniformity to it all. The same couldn't be said of the people roaming the streets: They were as cosmopolitan as any crowd he had ever observed in Scara Brae or Corone, if not more so. Wyrmfolk stalked by in gangs, bearing Brood markers that would've had them at war anywhere else. Tyrant Dwarves conversed openly and equally with Drow, and a whole littler of Hobgoblins went streaking (literally) through the street at one point. Caden even passed a cafe where a High Elf, Dark Elf and Drow were all playing a certifiably human card game over a hookah and a pint of something steamy.

The only things binding these people together were unity in poverty and opposition.

And the further along he went, the more Caden noticed something strange. It wasn't that this motley coalition of abhumans and inhumans and outright freaks of nature regarded him with enough disinterest to imply that he was one of them.

It was that Inhuton was a lot bigger inside than it was outside.

No way in Hells they could cram this much into the few blocks it takes up outside, he thought, and almost immediately found out why.

There was a tower at the heart of Inhuton. A mile high and shaped like a spear or arrow orbited by emerald spheres and halos of iron chain links thicker than a human body. Sigils writ large in flowing spirals up and down the height of the building, and there was no obvious way in or out but for a circle painstakingly carved into the air between its base and the sidewalk. The whole thing smoked a faint eldritch green towards its zenith, and Caden could swear the clouds were shaped to resemble sigils of spatial distortion.

"Ah," Caden said, then carefully adjusted his glasses to make sure of what he was seeing.

Yep.

The tower was still there.

"Well," Caden said, then considered the situation carefully. It reminded him of the Evernorth he had seen in that twisted future of N'Thayn'sal, up to and including the cheap masonry and shacks that surrounded it. Which only made sense: Nobody would really want to live near this thing if they could help it. The buildings surrounding it were probably little more than urban stuffing, and most of them likely served some foul purpose of their own: Sacrificial altars the size of a Church hidden away in structures barely bigger than an outhouse; arcane armories ready and waiting and hating for the day when the ruse was finally over and their creators could unleash them at will.

"There's something you don't see every day," he said to himself. He was not, however, the only one listening.

"Only if you don't live here," said a voice that was younger than it had any right to be; thirty-something going on a thousand, and high enough to come straight from the back of the nose. "And you, Wizard, do not live here."

Blueraven's rod, sword and bowie were gone, but Ogden's people had left him his Hat and a Wizard who isn't a shifty bastard will not be a Wizard for long. Caden had stowed his wand in the Hat, and he called it out now with a flick of the wrist. The Hat jolted to one side of his head, he turned hard and his hands came up clasping the wand like a sword. Magic was already buzzing around his hands like a bee-hive made out of lightning -- but he didn't release it.

He just stared.

"Do I know you?"

Perfect, gleaming white teeth were bared to him in a smile that would've made any mortal painter weep. "Not here, not now," said their owner, whose very aura shone like gold andwhose eyes blazed like miniature teal stars. "But maybe somewhen and somewhere else. Do I look familiar, Wizard Blueraven?"

"Yes."

"As I should," spoke the High Elf, who dressed in robes of white and gold over a tight scarlet suit, and who bore a sword that was awfully familiar in the most literal sense. "My name is Raun Yenuial; Forefather of Aldinar, Eledier, and Vara; Forefather as well to the Diadem Fingolfin, though his line chafes to acknowledge it," he declared, and the resemblance was strong enough to back it up on all fronts. Aside from his glowing eyes, Aldinar's brow and Eledier's ears, the Elf could've passed himself off as Findelfin. And his surname even matched up to the alias that the lost General had used in the darkened future of N'Thayn'sal. The only thing that tainted the glamour was...

"You're a Warlock," Caden said, which was reason enough to keep the spell aimed squarely at Raun's face.

"The proper term is Warlocked Seer," Raun replied with a faintly amused smile. "I went too far on the Path, Wizard, and Saw the truth that my Starlit Gods did not want me to know. I broke my oaths to them and found new ones, and new bonds to go with them. I am the master of this Domain, for as long as I may cling to it. My disciples are many. You are not, and never will be, one of them. So tell me," he began to draw the sword, its blade colored icy blue with red sigils, just as Caden knew it would be. "Why should I let you live, knowing what you have seen and where your loyalties lie."

Because I have none, a smarter person would've said.

Caden was too afraid to be smart. So he just let fly with a bolt of lightning at what was effectively point blank. The spell arced tightly and reduced snow to boiling water with its passage, and then it hit a swinging dehlar blade and split in half. The leftovers veered wildly off any kind of course, torching lines into the street and setting fire to a nearby shack in the process. Blueraven immediately tried to step back -- gain distance, gain the high ground, gain anything he could...

...and there Raun was, holding Caden's wand-hand at the wrist and bracing his sword's edge just millimeters from the Wizard's throat.

It was the most sobering defeat Blueraven had experienced since his time in Raiaera. Simply because there was absolutely nothing he could do. His mind siezed up and his body wouldn't move and it was all he could do to keep breathing while his eyes locked onto a point six inches higher than one of the nearby buildings. The entire time, Raun stood calmly by. He still wore that same little smile, utterly unphased by anything as he answered his own question.

"You know what this is, don't you? A Magicide Blade. Enchanted dehlar, bane to any spellcaster no matter his preparedness." The edge came close enough to split one of the hairs on Caden's neck. He finally looked down to meet Raun's Seering eyes. "Why should I let you live, Wizard? Because there's only one path in all of destiny where I am allowed to kill you."

"And that is?" Caden finally asked. Just speaking felt like choking on bits of gravel.

"If you do not swear to keep silent what you've seen here, I will kill you. Simple, is it not?"

"I hate the way you people talk," Blueraven finally chortled. The alternative would've been to wet himself in abject terror and disgust.

"You're going to hate us a lot more when you get to the other side of Inhuton," Raun said, almost sadly. "But you will understand that soon enough. Now swear it."

For a moment, Caden closed his eyes and seriously considered not doing it. To give his word here and now meant that at least one aspect of N'Thayn'sal was probably guaranteed. Evernorth would someday collapse; Warlocked in the shadows of mile-high towers, its people living day-to-day by the whims of their arcane overlords.

...but if he didn't, Blueraven reasoned. If he didn't.

One apocalypse or a thousand?

The reaper queen smiled in his nightmares. There were bodies burning on the moons. The stars were going out. Nations had been reduced to bowls of blood and corpses, and the dead walked in agony against the living.

And a girl who might have been his daughter grew up to fight the war that he was never there for. And her mother, who might have been his wife, grew ragged and hopeless and fought to her grave.

Caden grit his teeth and Said...

"I swear by my own Name that I will not reveal this place to anyone who doesn't already know."

"Not enough," said the Elf.

"...and to never raise magic against you or your Disciples."

Raun smiled again. "That will do."

The blade pulled away from Caden's throat. Raun held his wrist a few seconds longer, then let go and sheathed his sword. The Elf turned and started to walk away.

Stopped at the corner of the nearest street. Looked back and regarded the petrified Wizard with a level gaze as children mobbed by; all Wyrm and Elves and a Dwarf or five.

"Suffer well, Wizard Blueraven," he Said, his Voice heavier and more electric than anything Caden had heard in his life. "Your journey awaits on the other side of my Domain. We will meet again."

Caden didn't wait for the Warlock to tell him anything else.

He ran away.