Mark of the Fool

Within the Ravener’s dark world, Claygon rampaged like an ancient god of war.

As his opponent weakened, the golem became more accustomed to his new powers.

The Ravener’s armies fled before the golem’s might.

Its beams and magic were useless against him, while his destructive rays carved trenches through its insides.

But as Claygon used his new powers inside the construct, he detected power suddenly building in the air around him.

The darkness was lighting up.

The Ravener’s inner world rocked back and forth.

The ground was splitting.

‘Father…something is wrong…all…is falling apart…everything here is cracking and power is growing in the air…’ Claygon thought to Alex. ‘What is happening…?’

“Oh shit!”

He had been busy disrupting the Ravener’s nodes, attacking the final one, but he paused and poured his mana into the construct’s pathways, searching them.

Alex froze.

“You’re planning on blowing everything up, you piece of crap!” he shouted.

“You will not unmake the creator’s will,” the Ravener said. “I will end all of you first.”

The world slowed around the General of Thameland.

Thoughts passed through his brain at lightning speed.

He could already feel the Ravener’s energies growing unstable within it.

Power was moving rapidly, Alex understood that this would not be a slow, gradual build up to a devastating explosion.

It would happen quickly; had it not been for the damage Alex had already inflicted on its nodes and pathways, the construct might have already detonated its lair.

There wasn’t much time.

Seconds, maybe.

Perhaps a few minutes if he was really lucky.

Seeing through the eyes of himself outside the Ravener’s inner workings, he pinpointed his companions. Could he teleport all of them away in time?

Could he and Hannah teleport the Ravener away?

But if they did, then what?

If the Ravener detonated—even if they all survived—they would lose their chance at ending it for good. It would be back again in another cycle, in a hundred years.

‘No,’ Alex thought. ‘No more delays. No more. This has to end, and it has to end now.’

Activating the Mark of the General, he thought of possibilities. He considered every angle.

‘Think, adapt. Think, adapt…’ he thought.

He needed to work faster…and there was only one way to do that.

‘That’s it!’

He called on Hannah’s power.

Outside the Ravener, Alex spoke to the others.

“Hannah! Get everyone out of here! Including Claygon, he’s inside the Ravener with me!” he shouted, then disappeared.

In Thameland—in two different places—Alex vanished, then materialised, joining the duplicates of himself already inside the Ravener.

All four got to work on its last node.

Teleporting and flickering through the Ravener’s node, they poured mana into it. Two of him set about slowing down its explosion.

The other two altered its mana pathways, triggering minute-mana reversals.

Cords sparked.

Some exploded.

All around him, the node cracked and wavered, but if that was because of his efforts, or from the Ravener’s build up of energy, Alex couldn’t know.

He simply kept going.

Outside, Hannah raised her hands.

“Wai—” Theresa started to say.

“Hold—” Cedric began.

But too quickly, Hannah teleported them from the lair.

Claygon vanished from inside the Ravener.

And Alex was alone, working to disrupt its mana pathways.

Smallexplosions erupted in the node.

The General worked faster, calling on the Mark, pouring mana into all of the Ravener’s pathways, trying to stop it from being able to blow the entire lair up.

Heat rose inside the replica of Uldar’s throne room.

Alex felt like he was sweltering. His eyes were watering.

He could feel the energies running away within the Ravener, scorching the air.

For an instant, he flashed back to the alehouse fire that had claimed his parents.

But this was one fire that he would stop.

‘Almost there!’ he thought, completing the final adjustment to the canopy, then inserting the last device.

‘Father…!’ Claygon shouted in Alex’s mind. ‘What are you doing…?’

‘Finishing this!’ he thought. ‘Stay back!’

‘No father…you are not doing it alone…!’

In the lair, the air shimmered.

And together, Alex’s companions reappeared—touching Drestra as she teleported them back.

Bjorgrund with his beard bristling.

Grimloch with his teeth gnashing.

Drestra, Hart, Merzhin and Cedric with their Marks blazing.

Isolde with lightning dancing around her hands.

Thundar, wrapped by illusions and force magic.

Khalik with Najyah screaming on his shoulder.

Asmaldestre, her blood-curdling battlecries filling the lair.

Claygon, his body radiating power.

And finally…Theresa and Brutus, Alex’s oldest companions.

Hannah returned soon after. “I couldn’t stop them,” she whispered. “But I really didn’t want to. Not when they were so dedicated to helping you. They said they weren’t about to abandon you!”

She called upon her divinity, wrapping the companions in her protective aura. “Do what you must!”

And they did.

Theresa acted first, shooting toward the Ravener’s outer surface.

The construct was breaking, cracks were webbing through its form. Light shone through those cracks, and all around, the lair shook. Its defensive cage of death-beams flickered and vanished as its power grew unstable.

She didn’t pause, flying straight toward the construct.

“There is nothing you can do now,” the Ravener said, its voice deathly quiet. “It is done. I am beyond you now.”

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“I’m not aiming for you,” she snarled.

Theresa shot through the air, sailing past the Ravener…

…and grabbing Uldar’s corpse.

“No!” the construct howled. “Do not touch him!Get back! Stop!”

It tried channelling power to one of its death beams, but was overwhelmed by the group.

Claygon charged, grabbing onto its form, taking the death beam with his body, but remaining unharmed.

Isolde’s lightning raked across it, disrupting its concentration.

Khalik fired sandstorms from Najyah’s body, the force throwing it against a cavern wall.

Thundar surrounded it with illusions of Uldar’s body, blocking its view.

Brutus lashed it with his sonic cones, pressing it against the wall.

Grimloch and Bjorgrund threw their full weight against it, trying to keep it in place.

Asmaldestre launched through the air to land on it, blasting it repeatedly with her weapon.

Hart followed, weakening it further with his divine blade.

Drestra’s wind spells stifled its movements, adding to its confinement.

Merzhin called on a miracle, battering it with waves of divine force.

Hannah called upon her divine energies, slowing down its preparations for the explosion it was building to.

Every companion focused on holding the Ravener down, keeping it in place, stopping it from detonating its energies.

The Chosen of Uldar flew at the Ravener as Theresa soared past him with the dead god’s body.

“You will die for this!” the Ravener threatened. “Return him!”

“Come on…” Cedric muttered, rushing to join his companions. “Finish it, Alex.”

Within the Ravener, the node was disintegrating.

Uldar’s construct was building up divinity, preparing to destroy everything, including its dungeon cores in Thameland. Meanwhile the poisoned mana was raging through it, reversing within its form, breaking down its innate abilities.

Alex—in four locations within the node—was pouring sweat. His skin burned from the intense heat building within the Ravener’s form. The air was poisoned, the air elementals were barely keeping the deadly gases away from him.

Crystals were bursting into fountains of molten power and surging through the node, the geysers of disintegrating energy gave Alex his greatest hurdle to conquer.

Ahead of him was the throne—or what was supposed to be the throne—representing so much of what was wrong with the cycle, so much of what was wrong with Uldar. It was key, the central control point for the Ravener’s many energies.

It was the final area that Alex needed to alter.

It was also the deadliest place among the nodes.

The forest of crystalline growths around the throne were exploding in white-hot plumes of mana, while the Ravener defended them with death-beams and waves of magic, there to shred anything coming within even a foot of the throne. Living cores were materialising around it, each releasing their own Ravener-spawn, shrieking their disrupting cries.

Their voices grated against the General’s mind, fighting to get through his will and dismantle the resistance he was putting up against them.

Snarling with determination, he—in all four places in the node—teleported to the throne, flickering around it at dizzying speeds.

In one instant, four Generals were there, pouring their mana into the throne, or using a combination of strength, Wizard’s Hands and teleportation to rip the crystalline structures apart, weaving them into new shapes meant to shift mana as he willed.

In the next, the four vanished as death-beams struck the air where they had been a moment earlier.

The room was boiling hot now, Alex had to call on Mana to Life to keep his body from roasting. Even then, he knew he didn’t have much time; the Ravener’s attention had shifted to something outside itself, though he didn’t know what that was.

He was thankful for anything that would buy him another few heartbeats, though.

Alex summoned monsters with his staff and cast spells, using whatever he could to face the Living Cores and their hordes. He conjured forceballs and Wizard’s hands to distract his opponents and help him place more of the crystals into the configuration he needed.

Hannah’s power helped him teleport through the deadly energies rampaging through the collapsing chamber. They allowed him to use mana manipulation techniques to force the Ravener’s mana into the pathways he needed them to be in.

It was nearly done.

‘I’m so close,’ Alex thought. ‘So damn close!’

He teleported up to the canopy, wrenching one of the crystal cords free, bringing it down toward the throne.

‘This bypass will complete the new pathways,’ he thought. ‘Just need to connect—’

He pulled on the cord and…

…came up short.

“No!” he cried.

The cord was too short.

Just a little bit too short.

Less than a finger-width longer and he would have completed the circuit.

“I just need a little more—”

The floor erupted in a geyser of divine power, the deadly energies spraying everywhere.

“Shit!” Alex cursed, teleporting backward.

In four places in the node, the young archwizard weathered the waves of power battering everything in the node. The room was steadily disintegrating: walls, the ceiling and floor were exploding into raging fountains of deadly power.

There was hardly any part of the room that was left whole; the rest had collapsed into boiling waves of energy.

Alex’s eyes went wide.

The geyser that had erupted near the throne was expanding, threatening to consume his work. If the connections he’d made were destroyed, it would all have been for nothing.

He focused Hannah’s power on the energies boiling beside the throne, teleporting them away from his work.

It was one of the hardest things he’d ever done; even Hannah’s power struggled to move so much power with ease. Concentrating, he stopped being in four places at once, freeing more of her power to focus on moving that much divine force.

Four pairs of eyes became a single pair.

Four sets of senses paired down to one.

And a single Alex was left, taking in the geyser of power, the throne, and the cord hanging above it…less than an inch from making contact and completing the flow of energy he’d been trying to establish.

The room quaked.

The temperature spiked, scalding his skin.

His mind sped up, the world slowed around him.

‘It’s going to blow at any moment now,’ he realised.

He briefly considered teleporting out, but just as quickly, dismissed the idea.

This had to end here, and end in the Ravener’s permanent destruction.

He would not allow any other outcome.

His eyes and mind focused on the small gap that needed to be bridged; a bit of mana conductive material would do the trick. He thought of teleporting a small piece of crystal to bridge the gap, but he needed all of Hannah’s power to syphon away the energy threatening to destroy what he’d already done.

‘Come on!’ Alex thought. ‘You can do this! Just fly in there and grab a piece of crystal and…no, no that won’t work.’ He eyed the energy boiling around the throne. ‘There’s no space for me to fit through that deadly power…bloody hells, I couldn’t even fit a Wizard’s Hand through there!’

There was only a tiny space through the roiling power.

Even a single elemental beetle would have trouble fitting through there.

Clenching his teeth, the General of Thameland’s mind raced.

‘Think!’ he thought. ‘You didn’t get this close just to fail now! You’re not going to fail your friends and family! You’re not going to fail your realm! You’re not going to fail yourself! You can solve this!’

In his imagination, an image of Uldar flashed before him, mocking him…then the face shifted.

Replaced by the face of a jester, complete with belled cap, grinning at him derisively. He could almost hear it laughing, saying: you got all the way here just to be a useless fool.

Alex rejected the image with four words: ‘I. Am. No. Fool!’

‘I just need to get a bit of mana conductive material in there! What do I have? What are my resources?’

He found his mind returning to earlier days, before he had mastered ninth-tier spells. Before he’d made a deal with a powerful war-spirit. Before he forged his staff. Before he’d crafted Claygon with Selina.

Before all of his accumulated power.

All of that power had gotten him here.

But now, he had to think like he used to, when all he had were his wits and his will to succeed.

He needed to—

‘Think! Adapt!’ he told himself. ‘Think! Adapt! Think! Adapt! Come on! You were able to adapt to the Mark of the Fool, and to everything else that came after! You can adapt to this! Think! Adapt!’

His mind continued dwelling on his early days with the Fool’s Mark.

‘Think! Just like how you overcame the goddess statues, tricking them into shooting each other! Adapt! Just like when you used your forceball on the inside of that Silence Spider in the Coille! Think! Adapt! Just like when you were leaving Alric with…’

His mind paused on a single memory.

He had been standing with Theresa, Selina and Brutus, trying to escape Alric without the priests and guards noticing him. A magistrate had been causing a ruckus ahead of him, complaining about a stolen coin purse.

And he’d come up with a plan. He would toss coins into the crowd to create his own distraction.

Coins.

A coin.

His mind went to his pouch: to Kelda’s Coin of Silent Friends.

What had Birger said about it?

“The coin is very mana conductive; it’s a copper and zinc alloy.”

He knew what he had to do.

The world sped up.

Alex called on the Mark of the General, his hand shooting into his satchel.

It emerged with a coin the size of one of his fingernails, inlaid with the image of a red mouse in the centre.

Kelda’s symbol.

A final laugh at the Ravener’s expense on her behalf.

The General of Thameland focused his mind on how he’d made coin tosses in the past, on the best ones he’d ever made.

Memories flooded to him. Images of himself flicking coins at the crowd on the way out of Alric, the feeling of rolling them back and forth across his fingers, other coin tosses he’d made; flipping and catching coins in the air when he was younger.

And then one final memory: tossing his last pay from McHarris into the fountain in the centre of Alric. At the stone feet of the Heroes’ statues.

The young archwizard raised his hand, the Mark of the General guiding him.

Alex Roth flicked Kelda’s coin with his thumb.

The Coin of Silent Friends spun through the air.

It passed between the waves of deadly energy.

Flipped end over end…

…and slotted into the gap between the throne and the end of the crystalline cord.

The circuit completed.

Energy poured from the throne and through the crystalline wire, passing through the pathways that Alex had altered. A mana reversal rushed through the Ravener, causing the construct to shriek. Poison gushed through its entire form—carried by the runaway reaction—passing from the room and forcibly reconnecting to the poisoned nodes throughout the body of Uldar’s creation.

Poison flooded through it, and its regeneration fried. Its inner functions burnt out in increments.

The Ravener groaned, sounding like a dying beast.

The node shook around Alex…and abruptly, the quaking began subsiding.

Uldar’s creation was dying—the young archwizard could feel it—but it was not dying in a violent, devastating, explosion that would be whispered about for centuries to come.

Much like its creator, it was going quietly.

The energy faded from the air around Alex.

Geysers of power sputtered, ebbing to nothingness.

Death-beams shrank to guttering, flickering embers.

Very few Ravener-spawn had survived Alex’s summons and the room’s scorching air, but even these few quickly began choking, gasping for air, their flesh rapidly desiccating, and like dried out husks, they toppled over.

Living cores swelled, bursting open, turning to ash.

Poison dissipated from the air.

Every crystal in the chamber began to dull.

The roar and radiance from the Ravener’s violent plan to obliterate its lair and everyone in it subsided, replaced by growing silence and darkness. Light faded in the replica of Uldar’s throne room, the stone flaking like ash in a fireplace.

Around Alex, the flow of mana sputtered to a trickle.

There was no healing. No regeneration. No explosion.

Just a growing stillness.

And then, the General of Thameland felt the ancient enemy of his people turn to the throne.

There was no more hatred coming from it.

No more rage.

Only a growing terror.

“Creator! Look what they have done to me! Save your creation! They have beaten me, and like you, I cannot come back from what they have done!” the Ravener’s voice was weak. Afraid. “Do not leave me alone! I am not meant to die.”

Light continued fading.

The dark continued to grow.

The chamber suddenly turned cold.

Alex waited for another attack. For a curse, or for more words from the construct.

But none came.

The flow of mana stilled around the General of Thameland.

The Ravener, Uldar’s creation that had terrorised Thameland through thousands of years, was dead.

Gone.

All that was left in its wake was the silence of a tomb.

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