MAGUS INFINITE

The words landed like a hammer strike, and for a moment, I forgot how to breathe. I moved my weight onto the balls of my feet, and somewhere under my skin, Adamantium Titan stirred, ready to pour mass back into me the instant the smile became a hand full of fire.

I had a taste of a Sovereign capability with Seed, and the bombardment from the sky in my last loop. The domain that covered this place extended for hundreds of miles, and there was no sign of strain on the face of Sovereign Caldus.

I had just endured the impact of crashing from space, and I was barely bruised, but I knew that magical injuries were far more deadly than conventional attacks, and I may have to test how powerful my Adamantium body could withstand.

Still, if a Sovereign of Aldenmere had just told me he was content to watch the world burn for power, then rank did not matter, capture did not matter, the odds did not matter. I would make him work for it, and if I could not kill him in this loop, it would only be a matter of time. I gave ten painful deaths to kill Vrakth, and even if it meant that I had to give a thousand deaths to this Sovereign, I would do it.

Sovereign Caldus saw the shift. Of course he did. He had watched mages tense to fight for longer than my entire bloodline. Anyone who could live for thousands of years has probably seen everything.

"You are... okay with this?" I said, trying to keep my voice flat, as the cold thing in my chest began to stir, the same cold that had led me to butcher a hundred million people. "The Conclave is burning the continent. Demons are overrunning everything, millions... hundreds of millions will die, and you are okay with this?"

Sovereign Caldus’s eyes did not waver. "I am not okay with the deaths, Elric. I am not okay with the destruction, or the demons, or the suffering. But I am okay with the war."

I sneered, "That’s the same thing."

"It is not." He took a step toward me, and I felt the weight of his presence press against my soul. "You are young. You have seen much, but you have not seen enough. You do not understand the shape of what is happening."

"Explain the difference," I whispered, and he must have heard something in my voice that made him cock his head to the side and regard me for a few seconds before he responded.

"For more than three millennia," Sovereign Caldus said, "I have known the Conclave of Ysmar was rotten; there was a reason we no longer acknowledge them as the leader of this world. Sure, they have the power, but their ways are never straight. I have known they placed their people in the Councils of other Academies, mine included. I have known they mined the edges of things that should not be mined. And I could do nothing, because knowing is not proof, and the seven traditions that had kept our powers in check would not change anything based on a suspicion alone. If I had raised a hand against the Conclave, I would have started a war between Academies on my word alone, and the other five would have named me the aggressor; even my peers in the Academy would not support me, and Aldenmere would have stood alone against the rest of the world."

His flaming eyes hardened. "So I waited, and for three thousand years, I watched a rot I could not cut, because cutting it would have cost more than leaving it."

I paused; his words were hitting all the right notes, but something was missing that I could not place my finger on. I let my mind work on it in the background as I asked, "And now?"

"And now my suspicion is satisfied; they have stopped hiding." Something fierce and almost joyful moved across his eyes that nearly made me pause in disbelief; it almost felt like insanity.

"The Conclave is at my borders with the Iron Spire and Marrowhall at their back. They are in the open, boy. They have declared themselves. I do not have to prove the Conclave is the enemy; they have proven it, to everyone, by marching. That is what I am okay with, and it is not the horrors they had unleashed on this continent, but it is the clarity. Sure, many would suffer, but now the entire world would unite against them, and all their hidden hand would be revealed."

He exhaled. "You should understand, even in my own council, I do not know who to fully trust, and now whether they like it or not, they would have to make a stand. Forgive an old man his relief."

∞

I believed him, and I hated him for it. It would be simpler to give another explanation to twist his words into something else, but I could see it in his eyes that he was ready for the entire continent to be destroyed just to root out the rot inside the Academy.

Am I just naive to believe that great changes do not have to happen with the suffering of those who could not defend themselves? By the heavens, these were just a few men and women of power, barely a fraction of a fraction of the entire population, and their actions would lead to the death of millions. Was this the true shape of power, and is this what I would become after living for a thousand years?

I quickly realized that my mind would spiral into a black hole of depression if I kept driving my thoughts in this direction when I should be focused on the matter at hand, and with a force of will, I swallowed my rage.

"Aldenmere is compromised," I said. "How do you fight a war when the enemy is already inside your walls, wearing your sigil?"

"That," Caldus said quietly, "is the correct question. It is the question that has kept me awake for longer than you can imagine, and I do not have a whole answer, only partial ones, and if your story is right, you just became part of my answer to this problem."

He looked at me deeply, and I could feel his gaze trying to dig into my soul, but my flesh held him back, and he smiled, "Amazing... this is what he wants, isn’t it? The sort of power that can take a boy from an Acolyte to a Proto-Sovereign in the blink of an eye, and despite all of his plans, there is always one thing he does not account for, and that is the greed of men, and the true heights of the heavens."

Sovereign Caldus looked at the Caelith behind me, "I would assume that something went terribly wrong, either from the greed of men, or the fact that this war is not so much under his control as he thinks... You want to know my answer, Elric, and this is it... There are too many moving parts in a war of this scale, but a war is always better than a festering rot, and a limb should be cut clean off rather than allow it to decay. If this war happened a thousand years from now, there would not be enough resistance to stop him; however, he seemed to be in a hurry... his preparations are no longer as thorough, and the fact that someone like you can appear should not be in his plans; it makes everything worth it."

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