I am the failure of a dark hope nourished for five millennia.
Araevin grinned to himself. He liked the thought of disappointing Saelethil Dlardrageth.
He caught sight of white walls and golden domes glinting amid the ruddy firelight below him, and he altered his course to descend into the heart of the place. With his cloak streaming behind him he alighted in the golden courtyard of Saelethil’s palace. The monstrous mockeries of vines and flowers that filled the place shrank from his presence.
“Saelethil!” he called. “I have performed the rite of transcendence. Come forth!”
Behind him he felt a cold and sharp sensation, a gathering of malice that grew stronger in the space of a few heartbeats. He turned and watched as a column of black mist poured up out of the ground to the height of a man. It roiled violently before materializing in the shape of Saelethil Dlardrageth.
“I am here,” he said.
Araevin gazed on him without lowering his eyes, and perceived the demonic corruption of the Dlardrageth high mage. Saelethil’s very form fumed with intangible streams of spite and hatred, a black thundercloud of ancient anger hidden behind the veil of a noble-born sun elf.
I see more than I did before, he told himself. This is what the telmiirkara neshyrr has given to me.
Saelethil looked on him, and in that moment Araevin saw many things in his eyes: recognition, a grudging measure of respect, a bonfire of hatred and envy, and finally, a shadow of fear.
“I see you have followed the path I set you on,” Saelethil said. “You have purged yourself of the flaws with which the gods have afflicted all lesser creatures. Only the most powerful of mages learn how to set right what the gods made wrong in the first place. I suppose I should congratulate you, Araevin.”
“Save your congratulations,” Araevin answered. “I am still myself.”
The daemonfey archmage snorted. “You are no more an elf than I am. We are exactly alike, you and I. You have tempered yourself like steel in a smith’s fire. I did no more or less than that when I chose my path.”
“I am your antithesis, Saelethil.” Araevin allowed himself a cold, hard smile. “Morthil’s rite invoked the powers of Arvandor instead of the Abyss. I fear you no longer.”
Saelethil’s eyes flashed in anger. “Then you are a fool, Araevin Teshurr. You believe that you have not damned yourself with your pursuit of power, as if there were a difference between a demon’s embrace and an eladrin’s kiss! You have surrendered your soul. What does it matter to whom you surrendered it?”
“I did not come to bandy words, Saelethil. I came to study the spells of Aryvandaar, not debate your twisted views on good and evil. Now, show me what you have been hiding all this time.”
The Dlardrageth glowered at Araevin for a moment, but then his face twisted into a cruel smile.
“Ah,” he said to himself. “Now that I did not anticipate. The irony of it!”
He laughed richly, expansively, and the poisonous flowers of the garden quaked and trembled in reply.
Araevin frowned. Saelethil’s persona in the Nightstar was bound by laws the archmage had laid down long ago. That was why the selukiira had been bound to instruct him instead of destroying him when first he set his hand to the stone. Yet clearly Saelethil had discerned something new, something that pleased him greatly, and Araevin suspected that he would not like it at all.
“What is it?” he demanded. “I did not come here to be laughed at, Saelethil!”
“Oh, but you did, foolish boy!” Saelethil said. His eyes were cold with contempt as he laughed again. “You have no idea what you have done, do you?”
Araevin folded his arms and simply waited. He did not care to serve as the object of Saelethil’s humor.
“When you chose Ithraides’s path instead of mine,” Saelethil hissed, “you severed yourself from your salvation. I have not been able to destroy you because I was not permitted to harm one whose soul was marked by descent from my House, no matter how remote.” He advanced a step on Araevin, and seemed to grow taller. “By infusing yourself with the celestial essence of the eladrin, you have removed the last thin vestiges of Dlardrageth blood. I am no longer required to serve you, which means that I am free to do with you as I wish.”
Araevin stared in amazement. Then he stepped back and snapped out a potent abjuration, building a spell-shield to defend himself for a time while he figured out what to do.
The spell failed. The passes of his hand were nothing more than empty gestures, the words devoid of power.
Saelethil laughed aloud. “This is not a spell duel, Araevin! Your consciousness is enclosed entirely within my substance. Neither of us can work magic here. This is a contest of will.”
Saelethil grew larger than a giant, shooting up into the air like a crimson tower, so tall that Araevin stumbled back in astonishment and fell.
“You have placed yourself in my power!” Saelethil boomed. “Now, dear boy, I will repay the indignities I have accumulated in your service!”
He strode forward and set one immense foot on Araevin, crushing him to the hot flagstones below, leaning on him with the terrible weight of a malicious and living mountain.
Araevin cried out in dismay as Saelethil’s power gathered over him and crushed him down. Shadow rose up around him, and he felt his very substance, his life, his consciousness, compressed all around, being squeezed out of existence. Saelethil’s cruel laughter lashed him like the winds of a dark hurricane, and the malice and power of the Dlardrageth’s will filled the universe with black hate.
“Do not fear for your friends, Araevin!” Saelethil cried. “You will rejoin them in a moment-or at least your body will. I have yearned for flesh to wear for longer than you can imagine. You are not so handsome as I was in life, but Ilsevele will not know the difference, will she?”
“You will not lay a hand on her, monster!” Araevin screamed in empty protest.
Saelethil’s scorn battered him. “I will do whatever I like with you, fool! You will bring me to my niece Sarya, and I will take up my rightful place as a lord of House Dlardrageth. I may even allow you to retain a glimmer of awareness so that you can perceive the extent of your defeat. I owe you that much after the servitude you have visited upon me.”
Araevin despaired in the shrieking blackness beneath Saelethil’s will. He had stumbled into the very fate he had first feared when he found the Nightstar; the selukiira would crush his sentience and seize his own empty body for its own use. The evils that might follow sickened him. What might a Dlardrageth high mage do, with the freedom of Araevin’s own body? Destroy more of Evermeet’s high mages? Lead the daemonfey legions against Seiveril Miritar’s army? Or simply murder anyone Araevin ever loved?
He struggled to fight back, to find some purchase with which to gather his will and make a stand. For a moment he battled his way back to the palace of Saelethil’s heart, struggling on the ground with the foot of a giant pinning him to the stone. But the Dlardrageth grinned at his struggles and caught him by his throat in one fine-taloned hand.
“This is my mind, my soul,” Saelethil gloated. “Within these boundaries, my strength is limitless! Do you not understand that yet?”
Araevin said nothing, but grimly fought against Saelethil’s grip, his feet kicking, his chest crying out for air. But Saelethil drew back his arm and hurled him straight down into the ground. The palace of white walls and venomous flowers shattered like a broken mirror, and Araevin plunged into the bottomless darkness underneath, tumbling and falling away from the light.
He shouted in outrage, trying to fight his way up out of the gemstone, escape, return to his own mind and body so that he could simply drop the damned stone and get away from Saelethil Dlardrageth. But he could not stop himself from sinking, falling, drowning in darkness as thick and heavy as a sea of black stone.