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You’ve just killed another of those masked sorcerers when he comes to you like a strange, corrupted angel. He perches on a tall rock- dark robes, dark hair, eyes the green of a venomous snake- and spreads his arms. “Rejoice! For the end of your world is near.”
It takes a moment to sink in. He continues standing there, posed dramatically. There is a red mask hooked onto the chest of his robes. You look down at the sorcerer you had just killed- they had a black mask- and back at the man.
“What.” You say intelligently.
“Are you not the Ascian killer of this astral era?” He sweeps his arms back and puts his hands to his mouth in an exaggerated gasp. ‘He looks like a court jester,’ you think,' from back before the War of the Magi, and courts had the time to afford jesters.'
“You’ve hunted down a ton of them, all across the lands of Nym and Amdapor- for disrupting the sowing of chaos, understandably. I’m an Ascian, and I-” He gestures again, and in a sudden flash, he is right next to you. You flinch as your greatsword knicks his abdomen. “I come to you seeking death, hero.”
“I’m no hero.” You say immediately. “I’m simply a sellsword, looking to secure my next meal. And your kind, Ascians, whatever, have a decent bounty attached to your heads, even if they’re hard to track down.”
The corners of his mouth turn down. “Such a cheap reason.” He muses. “ Like all the other mortals.” He shakes his head, and you watch his one-man performance as his show of disappointment goes on, and then stops. “No matter! You see, hero, sellsword, murderer, whatever you are- I wish to die, and if I don’t, you will die, and everyone else will die, so in your best interests-” He points at your sword, and then motions to slash across his neck.
You stare. There is something deeply, deeply, wrong with this self-proclaimed Ascian. The War of the Magi had brought some lunatics out to play, you assume. Strapping your weapon to your back, you turn away from him and bend to pick up the black mask from the dead sorcerer. One mark today would gain enough for dinner, and an innroom.
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“You’ll regret not killing me, hero.” The 'Ascian' appears again in your inn room, late at night, when even the lalafellin innkeeper had disappeared from the front desk.
“Get out, sorcerer-”
He ducks a flying cup meant for his head.
You pause. “Ascian.” You correct yourself. “Why do you want me to kill you anyway? If you want to die that badly, you might just sign up for the army and head to the frontlines with Mhach. That would definitely be a one-way trip.”
He glares, and then sighs. An apple appears in his hand, out of thin air, and the crunch as he bites down is loud in the night air.
“Close the window.”
He doesn’t. He sits down on your bed. You get up and close it yourself.
“What if I told you this city would collapse in a year, or two, and the rest of your silly empires with it in the next few decades. Maybe three, at most, if you’re lucky. Your wars, they’re a means to an end. It has all happened before. I’ve watched it happen. The fifth calamity will come, no matter who wins, because the Ascians wish it so.”
‘He sounds like he bitterly wishes he wasn’t part of these Ascians, although he introduced himself as one.’ You think. “It’s not like I can stop a calamity. It comes if it does, and life goes on if it doesn’t. And what does any of that have to do with me killing you?”
He sighs again. It's heavy, and sounds like he believes you a fool. The apple core is flung from his hand, hits a wooden cupboard, and rolls under. “There’s no meaning to killing me. There’s no meaning to anything- you know it too, hero, if even you have no desire to stop an impending calamity-”
‘I’m not a hero.’ You resist the urge to repeat. He must be mistaking you for someone else.
“Everything ends in death. I’m only hoping to speed mine up, at the hands of a familiar soul. “ A wriggle of his wrist, and a silver dagger is whipped out from nowhere and offered to you. “Who knows, if you act fast, it may even delay your apocalypse.”
‘Lunatic’. “Save it.” You jab his side with your foot. He recoils, like a startled serpent, and tumbles off the bed. You’re halfway sure its on purpose. “I’m not getting blood on the floorboards, Ascian. Now get out, I don’t want to see you unless you end up with a bounty on your head.”
He rolls his eyes and climbs to his feet. The dagger vanishes into his sleeve. “It’s Fandaniel. Remember that for next time.”
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Tomorrow dawns. The city of Nym bustles above its lake. The War of the Magi had mostly avoided this side of the map. Mostly.
“Heard of any upcoming calamities scheduled?” You ask the fruit stall keeper right outside the city, half-jokingly, as you hand over your coins in exchange for some grapes. They pause, then look up at you with mild worry. You feel bad for asking. Maybe such jokes should have been aimed at drunk tavern goers instead of the poor lalafellin nanny selling fruit.
“The last one was nearly two hundred years ago.” She says. “The war won’t develop into another one, no matter how it bad it looks. I’ve heard Amdapor is well on their way to victory. Why the sudden worry?”
“Met a strange man talking about calamities and all that. Nothing much.” You shrug.
“Black magic!” The lalafell makes a prayer to Oshon, and looks at you pityingly. “Keep away from the black mages, traveller. They bring no good news.”
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The weeks blur by. Thoughts of a calamity threw themselves to the back of your head and locked themselves away in a box. The Ascian- Fandaniel, was nowhere to be seen. Good riddance.
“Lucky for them, eh?” There’s a clamor by the city center as your return with your loot of wool- to be sold to the weaver’s guild. A crowd had gathered around the signboards posting the latest news. You stop. The bag of wool is heavy, but still you go to see what all the fuss is about.
A group of sailors lost at sea for months, found yesterday morning by a village near the sea. It’s nothing much to you, a traveler, but lucky for them.
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“Still nothing? The world should have ended thrice while you were wasting your days away. Fishing, of all things!”
“This is a coastal city.” You point out. Fandaniel’s appearance barely phased you. Your hands remain steady on the pole, your attention fixed on the line. “And the world is still here, with good news, in fact. A bunch of lost sailors recently got found.”
“Good news.” Fandaniel’s laughter rings out behind you, harsh, mocking. You deign to ignore it. “Sure. If our hero thinks so.” He comes closer, and plops down next to you.
He’s not in the robes you’re used to seeing on Ascians, and the mask too is gone. His clothing, this time, is of Mhachi design, the coats of a Black Mage.
“Went travelling?”
“Of course! Being overworked, as all Ascians of lower rank do. My, my, the Unsundered have more orders for me than Emperor Xande did. Another reason for you to kill me! A brief, momentary, rest, before they dig me out from the crowds to continue working me like a dog.”
A whole bunch of those terms go over your head. You nod, and ‘hmm’. “Giving you orders for what?”
“To cause chaos, of course. To create the fifth calamity. It’s on the horizon, I promise you!” He points to the sky. There’s nothing there but an expanse of blue,and the occasional cloud, drifting dreamily by. No calamities in sight.
He really hasn’t done anything to make you want to kill him. If he hadn’t snapped objects into existence before, you would have simply thought him a suicidal, delusional madman, playing dress up.
“Have you tried fishing?” You advise.
Silence. A fish tugs on the line, as if on cue. You reel it in. A trout. Dinner.
Fandaniel stares at the fish. It stares back at him. ‘What.”
It’s your turn to laugh. “If work’s the problem, maybe you should try some relaxing activities. Go for some non-business related travel, get some hobbies. Maybe you would want to die less then.”
Another pause. He looks bamboozled, and then he groans,holding a hand up to cover his eyes. “You haven’t been taking me listening all this time, have you? All that effort! Wasted! Why am I even surprised.”
Then he vanishes in a cloud of black smoke, leaving you with nothing but the trout you had fished up, and-
A bucket of crabs.
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“Trout.” You hand over your catch to the innkeeper, and then wordlessly lift a bucket of crabs onto the counter. He freezes and drops his pen, and then his eyes glow at the sight of crab- expensive, even on the marketboard.
“Brilliant work, adventurer!”
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The next week also passes by with no big news. The War of the Magi is still waging, as it had been, and will be,for an indefinite period. The armies of Nym were strong enough to keep the Mhachi mages at the border. No calamities scheduled, not even a minor local accident.
“There’s this amphora the sailors want to offer to the king of Nym.” The innkeeper gives you your next job, handing over a slab of paperwork. “It’s supposed to be some kind of relic from- oh- i don’t remember where, but anyway it’s supposed to go the palace.You get the sailors, they’re still recovering, mind you- to sign here-” He jabs at a spot on the paper, “And the receiver, who will be waiting near the servant’s passage, will sign here. Don’t mix them up.”
‘What a quaint town’ You think, as you carry the box that held what was supposed to be a ‘priceless’ amphora from across the seas up the sandy path, back to the city. The beach view was nice, and you could imagine the way light filtered onto their balconies when the sun was at the right angle.
“Thank you for your delivery.” There was a servant waiting for the package, as promised. The way she smiled was faintly familiar, you thought.
“Sign here.” You offer her the paperwork and drop the box into her waiting grasp. Her smile widens. ‘Glad for the day to end’, you suppose.
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“Ah! I knew I would find you here, waiting, upon the corpse of my colleague.” Fandaniel kicks the dead body over. It rolls, and then smacks into the roots of a tree. You lower your sword. “Your workplace must be really awful.” You observe.
He makes a small, mocking bow. “And you must be enjoying your life as a self-employed- whatever it is that you do.”
“You sound jealous.”
“No I don’t! It’s all meaningless. I’ll die, the Unsundered will die, and all of you will too. That’s the truth of it.” He watches you pick up the black mask from the other Ascian’s corpse- a bounty had been put on that one for helping a group of black mages summon a low-level voidsent, and starts pacing.
“What I don’t understand is how you’re so nonchalant about all this. Don’t you want to save the world, hero? The last you I knew strangled me- with bare hands, mind you- for putting poison in his city well.”
“You didn’t put poison in my city well.” You pointed out.
He stops, one foot raised. “Should I?” It sounds like he’s pondering the notion.
You shake your head at him. “Alright, Fandaniel. Last time you said I wasn’t listening. Now I am. Why do you want everything to end? I’ll try to understand, as much as an adventurer can.”
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There’s a tale of hell, and one of paradise.
Let’s talk about hell first. A stagnated city of sinners, revitalized by the revival of its greatest emperor. How it grew into an empire, conquered, and then fell, at the hands of a ruler tainted by death. Such glory, and still it wished to end in nothingness.
And then paradise. You’re reminded of a old fairytale about serpents, and apples, and things that were better off being unknown. ‘The Unsundered thought it a utopia.’ Fandaniel bemoaned. ‘Fools, all of them. Even through memory I could see how they brought their own downfall. A crowd of naive idiots, falling over themselves to die for a fake god.It all ends like that,again and again, so what’s the point of clinging to life?”
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There’s much you don’t understand. He glares as you like you’ll personally uphend his plans to die and take everyone with him. Its a glare filled with acid, and you can already, without full context of his tales, pick apart the flaws in it.
“What about the process?” You question. “Things aren’t just a beginning and an end, you know. If something between birth and death gave meaning, then that moment, however fleeting, is still a reason to live.”
“You say that as if you aren’t wasting your days away. Tell me,hero, what happens when your city is visited by death. I’ve seen it all in Mhach and Amdapor, those twisted by black and white magic, by voidsent, how they wish for it to end. Some of them, even, would welcome another calamity, if it suits their purpose!”
“Not a hero.” You repeat, more patiently this time. You pity Fandaniel, and how wrong and misled he is. “If something happens, then I’ll try to help. At least I’d have tried, even if it doesn’t amount to anything.”
He scoffs, and then vanishes. You hope that wouldn’t become a trend. You look up at the skies. They’re still clear. No calamities in sight.
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And then, the poisoned well.
The first patient comes from the beachside town where you had gone before. A case more suited to the effects of black magic than the plague. The patient’s facial features had melted off, you hear, and then their limbs shrunk, and then their skin turned green before they passed away. And then the disease started spreading to the city. The Green Death, they called it. A curse.
You, and what other adventurers remained in full health, were sent across Nym, chasing shadows. “Must be black magic.” were the accusations. “Their accursed voidsent.” And then you were eventually called back, to provide aid inside the city, because even the chirurgeons were falling ill and half the city was incapitated.
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“What do you think now?”
You turn to look from behind a crate of medical potions, and nearly drop the crate whole. Fandaniel, dressed in the garb of a white mage, complete with a staff, sidled over to steady the crate. Then he gestured at the empty streets- they had been filled, barely a month ago, as if it was his proudest work.
“ What silence! Allag was like this too, at the very end. Everyone dead, or dying, or mourning the dead, and then-Boom.” He clapped. “Nothingness. Does this make you reconsider your answer?”
It was not the time for this. You quickened your pace towards the makeshift quarantine camp. As expected, he followed, nearly skipping behind you.
You turned on him once you had dropped off the items. Then, considering your surroundings, you grabbed him by the scruff and dragged him in the direction of the alley nearby.
He was an Ascian. You half expected him to pull that vanishing trick again. He didn’t, to your surprise.
“Are you going to kill me now, hero?”
“Is this a test?”
“A test!” He laughed in your face. There was genuine mirth in it, as if it found it very funny. “You ask that like Ascians are gods- What if i said no, that there was no reason, that the plague was simply from natural causes and you mortals were dying in swarms like rats just because- would you see the futility of it then?”
You wait for his laughter to become breathless and die out. “Then I would accept that answer, even though we both know its not true.”
His expression twists. “Then what if i told you it was a voidsent- chosen by me for its clever ability to twist humans into various shapes, sent to this city to unleash chaos to give the opportunity to the Mhachi. You know, hero, I’ve told you before. The next calamity will come , no matter what choices you make. Would you run away then?”
“I won’t run.” ‘A voidsent. Some had expected so much before the plague hit, as hard as it did. “Where is this voidsent?”
“Close to home.” He says. “Right under your nose.” He reaches forward, and you bat his hand away. “Think for yourself. The answer is right-” He pokes an accusing finger at your chest- “here.”
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The plague continues. Fandaniel is still alive, out of sight, out of reach- sometimes you feel a familiar gaze fixed on your back as you drag crates of supplies from supply point to rapidly growing quarantine zone and back.
Maybe you should have just killed him, you muse occasionally, as he wished. All his taunting and whatever he had been doing behind the scenes would stop if you put your sword through his body. No one could live through that, could they?
Then you remember his tales of hell and paradise. The city of Nym decides one day to lock the afflicted away in the Wanderer’s Palace and raise the water levels to prevent them from escaping- this would save the city, they claim, sacrificing half for what's left.
‘But that defies the purpose.’ You think. ‘What purpose?’
It's too late when you remember the amphora that you had brought to the city from the beachside town.
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The palace of Nym is half-deserted when you make your way in through the servant’s passage. It’s expected. Most of the servants and officials had fallen ill, and those in the royal court lucky enough to survive would have ran for the hills now that Nymeia’s army was in shambles and a Mhachi invasion would come one day or another.
“The Sixth Umbral Calamity will be one of water.” Fandaniel welcomes you like an demon would at the gateway of hell- with open arms, and a wide smile. “I expect it to start soon- the swell of the tides, the flooding of rivers. Death by drowning- not the best way to go, if I remember right. But this calamity is not of my making, if I had to choose,the end of the world would be a great symphony. Something with fire, and red skies, and great beasts formed from the cries of the land. ”
You draw your sword. You see the amphora behind him, on a shelf. Now that you're looking, you can sense the wrongness about it, something rotten and sick, like the stagnant sensation of illness lingering above the deathbed of a patient.Fandaniel moves to block it from your sight, as if to force your hand.
And so you turn to him. Anger, yes, is there, but above that, was a sense of exhaustion. What really was his goal here- to die and take everyone else with him? That couldn’t be the only thing, could it. “I listened to you before, Fandaniel, so listen now. This world doesn’t have to end at all, if you just looked harder. There’s always another answer, aside from sending everyone to their deaths.”
He stares. “That’s familiar.” He says. He puts a hand to his chin, contemplative.“I’ve heard that before.Somewhere else.” He murmurs something, and then a maniacal delight comes into his eyes. “Oh dear. Oh dear. It’s been your soul this whole time. Emet- Selch would have a fit when he realises.”
“Who?”
He ignores the question and instead, sweeps into an exaggerated bow. “Judge me then! Find us unworthy like your predecessor did the unsundered world. “
It still makes no sense, the way he refers to you as if he had known you before, as if there were more people out there who knew you- as someone important, with the tone he uses.
He attacks before you have time to ask, a decisive opening, a gust of scorching wind that you barely block with the flat of your sword.
So you fight. Against magicks you’ve never seen the black masked Ascians use before, but much, much stronger.
Fandaniel fights like a performer, you find, like there’s some invisible audience to impress. Great swathes of flame, lights that half blind you, and giant toads and snakes that seem to come out of nowhere.
And still you lose. A curtain of fire roars, and you lunge, The blaze hits you full force, pain rolling through your body. Your vision goes dark for a second.
Your blade strikes true. The amphora tumbles from its perch. There’s a thin scream as the voidsent within is released, and then dissipates, too, in the heat.
Maybe you intended to run Fandaniel through when you aimed for the amphora behind it, maybe you didn’t. He doesn’t die anyway. You release your grip on your sword, you don’t know what he’ll do with it. Maybe it’ll stay stuck in his stomach for a bit- ‘what a clown’. The ringing in your ears does not fade. You sink to your knees, your vision blurring in and out of focus.
In the distance, you hear him conclude. “You’re dying.” in a tone filled with excessive disappointment. And then it turns into a muttering, half to himself, half to you. “He would cry now, wouldn't he, as he did over every- single- lost life. No matter how worthless they were.” Then louder. “Do you fear now, the nothingness that comes after. You were nothing, you’ll return to nothing.”
You struggle to open your eyes. Your eyelids burn. They’re filled with cotton. His face swims above you, laughing, jeering, twisted with hate. “Not really.” You manage to hack up the words like the guts of a poisoned apple. “If someone remembers.”
Silence. You let the darkness take you. Something slides down your cheek. Blood, maybe.
“Fool.” He says finally. “I'll always remember. You never will.”