PROLOGUE

Vibine stroked his gill nervously as he watched the muddy thing on the
dais, running his hands over the silken, damp surface of his
robes. His eyes glanced up at the serpentine visage of the man in red
robes across him, partially obscured by the small, stout creature
standing between them; he looked right at the mud-covered mugwump that
peered intently down at it; and left to the meticulously clean
lucidian that stared across with a mix of amusement and disgust. With
a sigh, he lowered his hands, still transfixed by what he had just
done, whatever it was. He couldn't quite remember what happened after
he raised his hands and let the forces of the Elemental Plane of Water
flow through him and into the stout construct of mud in front of him;
and then, once he remembered why he had done it, and looked out at his
bemused companions, he knew that he had done it wrong.

Flame seared through the dwarfish thing's head, lighting its eyes a
fire, and it opened a clay mouth to take in a deep
breath. Tentatively, it took a single step out of the dais, and
collapsed weakly into a puddle of wet mud. Disappointment ran through
the faces of the pyromancer and the geomancer; the lucidian raised a
crystalline eyebrow and shrugged; Vibine found himself under the gaze
of the dracnari man. "Too much water," he half-heard himself say as he
turned back and half-walked, half-stumbled across the ritual
chamber. Two of his companions left through their own doors, muttering
down in intense concentration; Vibine didn't see them. He only felt a
damp hand smearing mud across the wet silk of his robes as he walked
out, and turned to face her weakly, slumping his shoulders.

"I... made too much effort. I'm... this isn't good for me."
"Maybe the problem is with us. We didn't try hard enough. I saw
you. You looked different during it. You weren't really here. The rest
of us... we weren't doing much," she replied. She lowered her eyes
there for a moment, blinking.
"Maybe I should stop and let Agatize stand in for me. She's competent
enough."
"Agatize isn't good enough. She's too old. She can't take the
effort. You barely can... And you're almost too young to be a graduate
mage."
He just smiled and turned away, shaking his head.

PART I: Three Nocturnal Visits

Glorina stared down at the paper. She had cleaned herself with water,
something she didn't usually do - but she didn't mind it. She was
wearing the only set of robes that had not been smeared and covered
with mud for some ritual or other, and looked ill at ease in blue. Her
slightly webbed, slender fingers moved a small reed pen over a long
piece of parchment, occasionally writing down fluid, rounded
characters, occasionally sketching strange patterns. Her pen dropped
on the parchment as she heard a solid rap on the door

The man standing in the doorway was tall, serpentine, and covered in
red scales. He looked down at the small mugwump and gave her a toothy
grin, his slanted eyes staring intently. He had stripped out of his
ceremonial robes and was now clad in a simple form-fitting shirt;
Glorina noticed he didn't have his staff with him.

"I came to see if you were alright," he said, his reptilian voice
straining slightly to speak common.
"I'm quite alright, thank you," she replied, part hostile, part
frightened, with a hand at the door, ready to close it; even so, he
walked unceremoniously into the room.
"Your watery friend almost cost us the experiment," he said, glancing
at the writing on her desk. She just stood there and watched his
intrusion, clenching a fist weakly and frowning. He ignored her
reaction and kept on talking, peering curiously at the room. "We've
been brought here by the Empire to do the Emperor's bidding. We
wouldn't like to be associated with the failures of
that... wet-behind-the-ears Aquamancer," he said, smirking.
"He's not..." she started, weakly, and sighed. "Just leave."
"I wanted to first ask you if you'd care to help uss disspose of
him. He belongs in the back of a classroom, not in the front, giving
us a lecture."
"And who would replace him? Agatize? She couldn't do it. I'm not going
to help you ruin the experiment because you're jealous of him," she
said, raising her head to five him a contained glare. He just hissed
and turned away, stalking out of the room just fast enough not to feel
the door slamming on his back, tail sweeping forward over the marble
floor.

* * *

Iridashi poured the contents of a metal decanter down into two tall
glasses and set them on opposite sides of the table, one close to his
seat, one in front of the tall, crystalline visage of the lucidian
woman that had come visit him, long after the sunset. She just stared
down at the glass for a moment and ignored it, not touching it while
Iridashi poured the warm amber liquid down his throat. Her white robes
swarmed around her, lifted and stirred by a breeze that wasn't
there. He smiled, and she looked coldly up into his eyes.

"Vibine, of course, must not even touch the experiment any
further. He's already guilty of doing too much," he said.
"You seem eager to dismiss him outright as a competent mage. Maybe he
could make this work."
"What makes you think we want it to work?", he asked, and she stared
at him for a few moments. A subtle smiled curved up in her lips,
signaling that the discussion should steer towards more pleasant
tones; unlike most men, Iridashi understood the subtleties of her
behavior, and that pleased her.

* * *

Iridashi stirred, looked up, and sighed, barely glancing at the
half-asleep lucidian by his side.
"The Empire, they say," he started, "is very interested in the
project. We have the Emperor himself eyeing us from afar, his
inspectors and accountants and agents measuring, calculating, and
observing every thing we do. I don't call this interest, however."
"What do you call it?", her level, mid-tone voice asked.
"I call it fear. They're afraid this won't go as planned. They're
trying to prepare for disaster."
"I doubt that."
"I don't."

She just shrugged, hands demurely folded on her lap, crystalline eyes
following him. He stood up and started to pace around the room.

"I don't know what this is doing to us, but I want it to stop."
"Doing what to us?"
"You weren't always like that."
"Like what?"

He just glared and hissed at her, turning away and ignoring her to
signal that the discussion was over; she silently and calmly got up
and left, wrapping her robes around her gemstone body and stalking
through the corridor outside.

* * *

Tzirilar knocked once on the door and waited, standing straight, eyes
fixed forward. The door swung open by itself a few moments later, while
the thin merian inside walked back towards his desk, ignoring the
woman in the doorway.

"We're worried about you, Vibine," she started. He just shrugged and
looked into a small container of water on his desk, dipping a finger
on it. He stirred it absently and looked in. Tzirilar ignored the
gesture. "We think you are not ready," she continued, pleading.
"That's for me and the college to decide," he muttered.
"But both you and the college would do well to listen to advice," she
continued.
"We have listened, and that is our final decision." For the first
time, he looked at her. She looked away for a moment.
"Vibine, I'm asking you. Consider it a favour."
"You've been calling in several favour-s tonight, it seems," he replied
with inexperienced cynicism; she noticed that his look was a glare,
and that the small container of water stirred with an image inside;
the image of a dracnari man sleeping a troubled sleep amid white satin
sheets. She knew the bed she had laid on earlier that night, and her
fist clenched for a moment as she silently stalked out of the room.

PART II: Two Silent Rituals

Vibine slid the door behind him and tiptoed towards the centre of the
wide-domed hall; dawn was just about to break, and his weary figure
moved over the black marble. He stared down at the concentric circles,
each interlocking with complex lines and symbols; the pentagram glowed
faintly, but he knew that the chalk marks were little more than a
reference, a focusing point for his mind to use. His right hand raised
above his head, and the aether aligned for him, making the pentagram a
searing image in his mind's eye. His trained mind started to wrap the
magical power around the object in the centre of the pentagram, and it
stirred.

* * *

Glorina stirred, moving out of a troubled sleep and sighing. Her eyes
stared at the dark for a moment before she raised a finger and
snapped, starting a tiny flame that illuminated the room. She stood up
and wrapped a heavy cloak around her slender frame.

* * *

Iridashi lit a candle with a piercing stare and stood up, glaring
about the room uneasily. His eyes moved to the parchment on the desk
beside his bed, and something shifted inside him, telling him to move
out of the small room.

* * *

Tzirilar took a deep, regular breath that barely raised her
crystalline chest, opening the heavy oak door and stepping out into
the darkness, carrying only a candle.

* * *

Vibine's voice raised by itself, opening into a deep, humming chant
that reverberated under the starry dome. Light started to pour into
the hall as the sun rose, and the movement in the center of the room
became visible. Vibine's eyes flared open, and his eyes stared at it.

After a moment, he turned and walked out of the chamber, leaving his
work in the centre of the room. His legs took him into the western
corridor, and as he closed the door, he looked forward and opened his
mouth to speak in a faint voice:

"I didn't expect you to be here."

* * *

Glorina let the heavy stone door slide behind her, breathing the
moist, salty morning air and looking at the warm light entering the
ritual chamber. Her eyes moved by themselves towards the design on the
floor, and her thoughts, for the first time since she came to the
island, shifted into place.

Her eyes slid closed and her breathing slowed as she contemplated the
paths in the aether that were left there for her, waiting for her
to complete his work. Her eyes opened again, and she heard herself
say:

"You shouldn't be awake right now."

* * *

Iridashi let the light on the tip of his staff dim as he felt the
sun's warmth envelop the building, timid rays of light filtering in
through tall windows. His slitted eyes blinked, and he found the heavy
door, poking his forked tongue out in a gesture of animal awareness
his long and complex education had not suppressed.

He opened it, and glanced across the hall to the woman standing in
front of the pentagram, eyes closed. He stood across from her and
hissed to himself, watching her concentration wane; as she mumbled
something weakly, staring at him, he replied:

"I've come help you."

* * *

Tzirilar grimaced and shook his head as he saw the merian, taking a
stumbling step backwards. He looked at her curiously, and took a step
ahead.

"I just came to see if everything was..." she said weakly, stopping as
she tried to find a reason to be there.
"I was just finishing my part in today's attempt," he said.
"But... I wasn't there."
"Your presence wasn't necessary."
"We need all four to complete the experiment."
"Not the way I tried... The elemental lords wanted to see this
completed, I think. They've set paths, nodes, knots, links in the
aether. They want this finished," he said.
"The elemental lords? How-" but her speech was interrupted by the
scream coming from the hall, shrill and loud and not at all mitigated
by the stone door between them and its source.

* * *

Glorina and Iridashi both fixed their eyes at a point between them;
her rapid mind had managed to complete its work and give life, or
something like it, to the thing on the dais, which now stirred
faintly. But what she was looking at was the shadowy, ethereal figure
of a wizened woman that wasn't quite there, moving over the floor
without quite touching it, ancient - Glorina somehow knew it - but
wearing the visage of a young, beautiful, high-crested merian of noble
heritage; she spoke with a voice that was a chorus of three entirely
unlike sounds, the louder one a musical, sweet female tone.

"I'm impressed at what you have managed to accomplish without my
direct help, but I am afraid your participation in this project has
been terminated," she said, and Iridashi heard the faint, grating
sound of a crone's voice beneath the sweet tone. "The Empire," she
continued, "wanted this project to be completed, even if this meant
breaking some rules," she finished, and Glorina could sense the low,
droning voice of something infinitely older than the woman deep
beneath the sound of her voice.

The name of Kether escaped the lips of Glorina, and she started to
recite his other names, one for each language of the Basin and a
thousand more, raising a hand and enveloping the shadowed, translucent
figure in searing purple light; a blood-curdling scream crossed the
hall, loud yet immaterial, heard only by the hidden, dreamy parts of
their minds.

* * *

Tzirilar and Vibine stared at each other, and suddenly realized they
could barely remember what they had done; they felt a gap in time
extending for hours in the immediate past, and walked, slowly but
surely, towards the door, opening it and staring at the ritual chamber
without surprise, seeing nothing but what they expected; Iridashi and
Glorina, in opposite sides of the chamber, were staring up at an
ancient presence.

"Ah," it said, "the circle closes."
"Agatize, you're not allowed in this chamber," Vibine replied as the
remaining mages blinked and recognized the old woman, their eyes
settling on her blue-green, scaled features.

Glorina had stopped her use of magic to look at Vibine, showing
genuine concern; a blur of motion was all they saw as Agatize left
their sight. Tzirilar, light as a feather, fell under the crushing
weight of a heavy slumber. Vibine knew what that meant, and stared at
her cautiously. Iridashi, for the first time in years, felt true
worry. Glorina's jaw dropped as the names escaped her desperate mind,
watching the lucidian intently.

They all watched as she rose, opening her eyes wide and pointing her
crystalline staff at the clay man in the dais, lifting a wind around
him that eroded his muddy surface, sculpting him as she started to
chant in a language she didn't know; wind blew through the room and
knocked them to the ground, until Vibine raised a desperate fist,
hitting her crystal skin with searing elemental energy.

As the woman looked away, Iridashi stood up and called a word of
power, his body trembling in the immense effort and lighting up with
the channeling of energies from beyond. Inside the clay man's head, an
unnatural flame came into existence, giving him red eyes that stared
about him with literally burning intensity.

Tzirilar looked at him, and gaped, stumbling backwards and convulsing,
struggling against herself as Agatize's ancient voice worked its way
out of her young throat.

"I set the suggestions in your minds... I needed young people. I
needed inexperienced people. Only you could survive the process of
making the first one. I expected you to be consumed by the process,
but you can't stop, not now, not after I set all the pathways and left
all the signs in the very fabric of space inside this room for
you," she said, her rambling monologue becoming less comprehensible as
she dropped from common into a broken merian, falling back. "I... I
wanted this to work," she muttered as a massive clay hand swung around
the air and pummeled her body, splintering living crystal.

* * *

The gorgog stood on the dais once again, not moving, eyes closed but
glowing still with a faint reddish light. Vibine sighed and let his
mind's tendrils slip away from it, looking towards Glorina and
managing a slight smile.

"How are we going to continue the experiment? It's all over now. We
don't have Tzirilar anymore, and..." she shuddered and looked away
from the charred remains of a young dracnari pyromancer.
"We don't need to. Agatize expected us all to die in the process. She
planned this all, she wrote the first scrolls. We knew that. But she
also left us a path in the Aether and in the elements themselves,
setting suggestions in our minds as we slept," Vibine replied,
surprised at his own conclusions. "And," he continued, muttering and
stuttering, "and the reason is that they're not just constructs. She
gave them enough power to craft others of their kind."
Glorina just shuddered, and walked hurriedly out of the ritual
chamber.

* * *

Somewhere in a lavishly decorated room in Celest, Agatize Veltine
awoke, coughing lamely and cursing her frail health.

EPILOGUE

"What do you think they're going to do with the project?" She asked,
turning her face to him and letting her head fall on his shoulder.
"I don't know," he replied. "We're the only ones in this who didn't
get some sort of Imperial decoration, but I suppose they're only
giving out posthumous ones."
"Gaudiguch and Hallifax have already refused to send replacements for
them," she said, and shivered. He stared at the setting sun over the
bay, legs splashing in the water gently.
"And we're stranded here. They want us to finish coordinate the
project, whatever that might entail. Hopefully only paperwork."
She managed to offer him a smile, and sighed softly. "There are worse
places to be stranded in. It's a beautiful island."
"I don't think there's anyone I'd rather be stranded with," he
replied, smiling warmly at her.