Fallen Mage Regressor

A slash of viridian light flew through the air. It crashed against a tree and cut a large chunk from the bark in a shower of sprinkles.

Mal nodded slowly. "Not bad. Not bad at all."

"I know. I picked things up quickly."

Mal held out his hand with a towel in it. Rolam took it and wiped his face. For the past hour or so, they'd been drilling the first of the ten basic Spellsword forms: Ranged Mana Slash. It was considered the foundational technique, the thing that distinguished a Spellsword from any plain old weapon wielder.

They'd done this by heading to an abandoned section of the campus behind their dormitory. Mal felt a little bit bad using the trees as target practice, but Rolam's range slashes weren't doing serious damage at this point. Sure, the exterior was shaved, but that was it. Rolam was still a little bit away from being truly dangerous.

However, there'd been something about how Rolam was moving that had caught Mal's eye.

"Try that again," Mal said.

Rolam nodded and brought his sword up to bear. It was a simple blade, unadorned, the steel a little dull from repeated usage. It was a hand-me-down from Aston, if Mal remembered correctly.

Rolam slashed his blade once more, and a green curve passed through the air before hitting the tree again.

Mal watched the way Rolam's robe settled around his shoulders and legs, then clicked his tongue.

"Your robes aren't suited for this sort of thing," Mal said. "They have lots of defensive charms, but, fundamentally, the material is too thick and heavy to move around in as quickly as you need to be able to."

Rolam looked down and stared at his robes. "Oh." He looked back at Mal. "What are we gonna do about it?"

"I suppose we're going to have to take you to a tailor."

Fabric. Fabric everywhere.

There was a long blue strip of cloth being held up by a bar in mid-air. Mal reached out to run his hands down the fabric—

"Hands off the merchandise."

There was an old lady manning the counter. Her hairs had long since grayed, wrinkles folded on her skin like a crusty piece of bread.

She eyed him sharply and waved him over. Rolam perked up and followed Mal as he stepped toward the old woman.

"You don't need new clothes," she said. "What you need is a damn haircut."

Mal shook his head. "I'm not here to get anything."

"Then get out of my shop."

Mal pointed with his thumb at Rolam. "He's here to get something."

"What can I do for you?" she said without skipping a beat.

Rolam turned to stare at Mal, and blinked, slowly. Mal shrugged in return.

The trip over had been surprisingly smooth. Rolam had been concerned about going to the Black Quarter—but when the streets were stunningly clean thanks to a church-sponsored clean-up, it felt much less dangerous.

Rolam looked back at the old woman. "I'm looking for some new robes. Something a little bit more lightweight."

The woman smacked her lips. "Enchanting them is gonna cost you extra."

"Cost will be no issue," Mal said.

A twinkle appeared in her eye. "Is that so? Then I suppose I'm making the entire thing custom?"

"If you can."

She grinned. "I'll be right back." She turned around and went into a door directly behind her. The sounds of shuffling and ruffled cloth echoed out through the walls.

"Uh, honored leader," Rolam said. "You know, this honorable one doesn't really have any money, right?"

"I'm paying for you. Don't worry about it."

All that magical herb money has put me in a very nice financial position.

Rolam cast a funny look at him before he shook his head and looked around himself in a circle. "How did you know that this place existed?"

Surprisingly, this was not a case of Mal's future knowledge. Instead, he knew this old lady through the Vermillion family's connections. She was closely associated with them, and had done work for their adepts. Mal wasn't terribly impressed by her work. And he knew they would have to stop by the Gray Quarter to find an enchanter willing to do extra on the robes, but for making the clothing and putting the basics on, the old woman would do just fine.

"I have a few friends in the area," Mal said.

Rolam accepted this answer without fuss, and stared around at the other bits and bobs within the tailor shop. Before long, the old woman stepped back out through the door with a smile. She placed three sheets of fabric onto the counter.

One of them was looser, almost silk-like in appearance. The second was a little bit hardier, not quite as rough as the default robes, but nearly there. The third type of fabric was the strangest of them all, a gossamer sheen to the entire thing that caused it to shimmer in the light.

She pointed at the silk-like cloth.

"Your first choice," she said. "Andalusian Velvet. Very light. So light you'd hardly even notice it was there. You want speed? This'll do it for you."

"Tell us about the other two," Mal said.

She pointed at the middle. "Iron Wolf Hide. Treated, of course, to make sure you don't accidentally stab yourself. Strikes a damn good balance between defense and offense."

Mal ran his hands over the Iron Wolf Hide. As she said, it had been treated so thoroughly that Mal could hardly tell it was the hide of a magical beast.

The woman knew her stuff. Mal was actually fairly impressed. The Adepts clearly had no idea what they had been doing, because this woman was a master craftsman—the fact that she was in the Black Quarter made no sense.

“And what about your third?” Mal said.

A smirk rose on her face. She ran her hands down the gossamer fabric.

“This is an experimental one,” she said. “The wings of a Marava Butterfly. Flighty bastards, capable of kicking up wind with every beat of their wings. They're supposed to have some sort of magic property to them, but I can't seem to get it to work.” She shrugged and let out a long, drawn-out sigh. “Of course, I'm nothing but a mere tailor, but perhaps a clever wizard might be able to make use of it?”

She was trying to offload the fabric to them. Mal was no genius, but even he could tell that.

Rolam shook his head and pointed at the first one. “The Andalusian Velvet.”

She hummed. “Come with me, I need to take your measurements.”

Mal ran his hands down the gossamer fabric. “How much to take home a sheet of this?”

She stopped in place and looked back at Mal. “You want to take it home? Why would you do that?”

“Call it my own personal curiosity.”

She shrugged. “We can work out a deal.”

The woman went to Mal and the two haggled for a bit before she packed it into a bag for him. She then went off with Rolam, who'd been waiting for the transaction to complete.

Mal ran his hands along the fabric inside of the bag. It was even lighter than silk, and Mal doubted that there was any defensive capability to this fabric at all. Even so, something had drawn it to him.

Monster parts are harvested forcibly, he thought, I need to ask Cassandra how witches deal with cooperating with a monster part, if that's how it works.

The door to the tailor shop swung open. Mal pivoted sharply and turned back to face whoever had come in.

There were two individuals in dark black cloaks, hoods drawn up to their faces.

Mal and the two caught sight of each other, and for a single moment, neither of them moved.

Then Mal unsheathed his Nettleleaf dagger and jumped back. At the same instant, one of the two reached for a wand and pointed it at Mal. The other stood perfectly still.

Mal's heart sped up in his chest. In front of him were the two most dangerous people outside of the city.

Ekron and Nima.

For one long beat, the three of them stared at each other without making a move. Ekron's pink-red eyes locked on Mal like a guillotine. Mal's own eyes flickered between the two, the dagger in his hand steady as a taut string.

"Hmph, to think we'd stumble across each other in a random tailor's shop," Nima said.

A beat of silence.

“Oh, come now.” Nima strode up to Mal and pressed the tip of his finger to the dagger. He moved it off to the side, a light smile on his lips. “There's no need for any violence. Why don't we sit down and have a chat? Just the three of us?”

“Or I could kill you both right here and right now.”

“You could do that, but your friend would get involved, as would everybody else within a five-mile square radius. You might succeed in killing one of us, but both of us? While protecting everyone you need to? That seems rather unlikely.”

“Bold of you to assume that I give a damn about anybody else if it means ending your life.”

For a few moments, there was a sudden tension in the air. Nima breathed in slowly and his chuckle was more strained than before. “You're serious, aren't you?”

“As a dagger to the chest.”

The tension drew tighter and tighter, until—

“But I won’t.” Mal sheathed his dagger. “After all, I have some questions of my own that I want to know the answer to.”

Mal suspected this was a bit unwise, but he also knew that Nima would be nigh impossible to pin down anyway. Even though Mal suspected Total Awareness worked on Nima, Mal didn't think he'd be able to keep up with a chase between the two. He would try his best once this conversation was over, but he just didn't see it as in the cards.

So while he had the chance, he figured he might as well get a chance to understand the structure of the cult—something that he'd only guessed at before and had never been able to confirm directly from a member.

Nima let out a sigh, green eyes flickering with the crease of a smile.

“I thought you were supposed to be some sort of hero,” he said. “I didn't expect you to play a card like that.”

“Aren’t I an Endbringer?” Mal said.

“Are you?” Nima took off his hood, revealing his white hair. There were shades of grey that hadn't been there the last time Mal had seen the boy—and there was a scar running behind his ear that Mal would have definitely seen back when they were still circlemates.

“For an Endbringer, you've been remarkably less mad than you're supposed to be," Nima said. "Where's the blood? Where's the destruction? You're clearly aware of your role. So what exactly happened?”

“I had a very, very long dream."

A pause.

“What about you?" Mal continued. "Last I recall, you were nothing but a normal student. How did you get involved with the cult?”

“If you woke up from a dream, then I've fallen into a deep sleep. I'm still trying to work out some of the details for myself.”

Ekron turned his head toward Nima, his expression relaxed and soft, as if he wasn't facing down somebody who tried to kill him not long ago.

“You're awake," he said.

“Thank you for that, Ekron."

“What exactly have you two even been doing?” Mal cut in. “And why?”

“Isn’t it clear?” Nima said. “We're building an army. I've been assigned as something of a liaison for Ekron here, because I know the city inside and out.”

“Then you know that the church is involved.”

Nima scoffed and waved his hand. “The church is a shell of what it used to be. Zoli is barely holding on to what's left of his sanity after his thousand-year reign.”

Zoli had gone mad?

Mal had always been worried about Zoli in the back of his mind—the founder of Wizardry wasn't a title given out at random, and yet Zoli had proved to be inconsequential during Mal’s march across the West. If he was truly losing his mind, that would explain why that had occurred.

Then again, Zoli hadn't interfered in any of the previous cycles before Mal.

So many questions, and so little time.

“You could join us, you know,” Ekron entered into the conversation. “You're really strong, and you wouldn't be fighting on the losing side anymore.”

“Why would I join? What are the benefits?”

“For you?” Ekron hummed and tapped his finger against his chin while looking up at the ceiling. “You could become a vessel. The eleventh. With your skills, you would quickly work your way past me and the others. In a few years, you could become the third, maybe even the second.”

So vessels are ranked according to strength, which makes Ekron, as the tenth, the weakest. I'd suspected something like that, but it's good to finally have it confirmed.

“What exactly is a vessel? And where did the title come from?” Mal asked.

“Oh, we keep it around for historical reasons. I'm a little bit fuzzy on the details myself. It's been a long time since those days," Nima said. "As for what a vessel is—they're the leaders of the Bird Eater Cult. They command the lesser grunts and set all of the strategic goals.”

“Speaking of goals,” Mal said, “what is the cult's goal? Why are you doing this? What purpose does any of this serve?”

Ekron fidgeted, looked at the floor and bit his bottom lip.

“The path we're on now was set by the fourth vessel,” Nima said. “A master diviner. This is the pathway to victory, we're certain of it. As for our grand goal, I'm sure you're well aware of it.”

“The destruction of the world.”

Nima held up one finger. “The destruction of the world as we know it.”

“What’s the difference?”

Nima spread his hands out, a grin on his face.

“Before the era of the church, before Eternus, Archons walked the earth," he said. "Men were free to be men, and there was no such thing as destiny. The cycle—the same cycle that you're a slave to—didn't exist. There were no heroes, there were no villains, there was no predetermined fate or gods moving us mortals upon their strings. We were free.”

“And that's what the cult wants? A return to that freedom?”

"Yes. Is that really so strange?"

Mal supposed that he could understand an abstract, distant goal that nobody else could comprehend. He'd had one of those, not so long ago—he still had it, and in a previous timeline, he'd been willing to do anything to obtain it.

The similarities between the two of them sunk into his chest like a rock thrown into water.

But there was one difference between them.

He'd changed, they hadn't.

"And how many deaths would be enough before you drew the line?" Mal said.

"As many as it takes."

And there it was.

Mal shook his head, aware that this would be a foolish line of questioning, but needing to hear it for himself anyway.

"Why would you seek this out? What's even the point of it?"

"What's the point of freedom?" Nima scoffed, a single eyebrow raised. "You might as well ask a bird why it needs to fly, or why a fish should swim. Freedom is something inherent to us, as sapient creatures, but it's been ripped away by higher powers. We deserve to have it back."

Fundamentally, Mal just didn't get it. He supposed that this was a values difference—he was self-aware enough to recognize that. Even so, no matter how hard he tried, he just couldn't conceive of what kind of situation could make someone so obsessed with such an ideal. Mal wanted to prevent total destruction of the world. Perhaps he'd gone too far—no, he'd definitely gone too far—but he believed that most people could at least understand where he was coming from if he'd had the chance to sit down and explain it.

With these two, he felt as if he was staring into the eyes of aliens, creatures with a completely foreign perspective of the world.

"What if my creed is that of human life?" Mal asked. "You say that men should be free to choose their own creed, but what if my creed places me in direct opposition to you?"

"Then so be it," Nima said with an easy shrug. "We'll just simply have to settle things on the battlefield, the way things used to be."

"So it has nothing to do with freedom, and merely with the strong dominating the weak?"

"When the weak seek to oppress those even weaker, yes."

A beat of silence.

"What happened to you, Nima?" Mal said.

At the mention of his name, Nima's hands clenched up into fists before they loosened back out.

"I've simply found my calling, Mal. That's all."

Ekron cut in between the two. "As much as I hate to pressure you, I think we really do need an answer," he said, voice still with that breezy tone.

Mal's eyes flickered toward the back door where the seamstress and Rolam were. He quickly brought them back around to Ekron and Nima.

"Oh, but we have so much time, and I'm enjoying this conversation so much."

"You really are a terrible liar, Mal," Nima said. "It was both your most charming and pathetic trait."

Mal's face hardened.

"Neither of you are leaving this room alive."

Nima laughed and set his hands on his hips. "Goodness, you're rather confident. Last I recall, it took the intervention of your little maid for you to defeat me, and now I have a necromancer by my side."

Ekron waved his hand like he'd been called upon before he lowered it when he made a startled face, like he'd realized that he wasn't supposed to do that.

"I may not have Lusia, but I have Rolam," Mal said. "And what's more, I don't see any detritus for your necromancer to take advantage of. It's all been swept out and cleaned by that very church you were making fun of."

A pause.

At that, Nima's eyes shot open. He looked over at Ekron, who'd turned even more pale than before.

"They cleaned up the entirety of Exodi City?" Ekron said. "You have to be bluffing."

"Am I? Test it for yourself."

Ekron frowned, then reached into his robes and brought out his wand. He raised it above his head, and Mal felt a wave of mana brush against his body, so thin that he was sure if he didn't have his ludicrously upgraded senses, he wouldn't have felt it.

Ekron's expression turned still. Thin lines of sweat formed along his forehead.

"You didn't know what they were here for?" Mal asked. "That feels like a major hole in your operational abilities."

"We thought that they were just here as backup, and that's what all of the reports said. They—they must have been lying!"

Deacon Thoma had outwitted them.

The clever man had gone and taken pains to send out misinformation, just as Mal had hoped he would, and now it had bore unexpected fruit in the form of a dead weight necromancer and a traitor, two individuals who'd believe themselves to be invincible up until this very moment.

The bramble vine bracelet on Mal's wrist shuddered.

"Remind me again who's supposed to be cornered?"

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