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Chapter 1
I remember the first time I realized I had my powers. I had been walking home
from the local fair. It was fully night out, and the stars were shining
brilliantly. I was seven then, and I had just been in the company of a
wandering field mage. He had been kind enough to show me a few simple tricks,
such as conjuring small flames and balls of light.
I was attacked by a lone sleeth on the outskirts of town. A sleeth is ferret
shaped, and this one was about my size. It leapt at me, and before I could
defend myself, it had knocked me down and had locked its jaw on my arm. I was
horribly terrified. In my quiet little backwater town, my parents and the
community had sheltered and protected me. That my parents were both able mages
merely reinforces their power and their need to protect me.
The sleeth somehow felt my terror, and backed off. It stared at me for a
moment, licked my blood off its lips, glanced around, and darted at me again. I
screamed out at it. The sound erupting from my mouth carried with it more than
just noise, though. The scream burst forth electrically, heatedly, and
enveloped the sleeth with its blinding glare. Howling wildly, the sleeth clawed
at itself, tearing its skin with its sharp claws. Very quickly, it dropped dead
in front of me.
My mind felt every moment of the sleeth's pain. I filled with a burning, raw
sensation, and my head thundered maddeningly. I collapsed, and lost
consciousness. Townsfolk saw the bright flare of fire and lightning, and found
me soon after. The townsfolk notified my parents, and they came for me
immediately.
The rest of that week muddled in and out of my mind. When I finally awoke, my
arm was bandaged and it hurt miserably. I got over the mild poisoning the
sleeth had left me with. My parents had several of their colleagues meet me.
They were all baffled by my magical outburst, because no one had ever described
something like it.
Soon, I met a planeswalker named Jaek. He taught me that I was also gifted
with the power to planeswalk, and promised to teach me how to use my gifts. I
eagerly accepted his offer. I learned of the "multiverse" of Dominia, where my
world was but one of many millions similar to it. My teaching covered the basic
foundations of the planes, the use of mana for spell casting instead of spell
components. My first mana link had been to the plains where I lived.
As Jaek and I traveled, my powers grew, and my healing ability grew. Helping
people was a life-long dream of mine, and I learned how to use spells to help
others. Few knew that Jaek was a planeswalker, and fewer still learned that I
was one as well. To most, I was just a person learning from a great hero.
Our wandering life came abruptly to an end. We were in search of a lost
medallion for a mage friend of my parents, and we wandered into a sleeth den.
We had fallen down a pit trap in an old tower, and we had no easy means of
escape. The whole swarm of sleeth attacked us. Jaek's fireballs and lightning
bolts consumed the sleeth by the hundreds. I stood by to heal us both. Jaek
missed one, and he bit into my arm. It was enough to cost Jaek his life.
I stopped to kill the sleeth, and my focus on Jaek wavered. He had spent much
of his power already, and the sleeth overwhelmed him. I saw the blood fly as he
screamed out. But his scream didn't save him like the one that had saved me.
Like a wolverine pack, the sleeth eviscerated Jaek and turned back to me. It
was my turn to scream.
As had happened once before, the scream took on a life of its own, destroying
all the sleeth in the cavern. One by one, they dropped off to the silent,
eternal sleep. My body shuddered convulsively, and my throat burned raw from
the force of my exertions. The heat destroyed everything in the place, sparing
only me and my possessions. Jaek didn't even feel the roaring inferno engulf
the remains of his body.
Time wore out the raging blaze, and found that nothing remained that was
flammable. Jaek's mana stones and his spell book were all that were left of my
former master. These I took, and when I reset the stones for my own use, I knew
that the mountains now supplied me a vast amount of power. I sat for a time,
reading his spell book, and deciphered his planeswalking spells. Unable to
leave the cavern under the tower, I activated one and waited to see where it
would take me.
That incident occurred five years after I became Jaek's apprentice, and that
action happened fifteen years ago. I wandered through the planes for years
following, before settling in the plane of Deirkreth.
Deirkreth was an obvious choice for me, in part because I liked the people, and
there were easily accessible, friendly planeswalkers to learn from. My powers
blossomed under their magnificent teaching. They saw my calling to fire, and
encouraged my use of the Red practice. I learned to control my powers with
pinpoint accuracy, and learned to summon beings both beastly and beautiful. I
gained many friends among them. My favorite happened to be Shackretash, the
Shivan Dragon. No one had been able to gain her as an ally, until I came along.
She became my personal bodyguard after I saved a clutch of her eggs from a
malevolent spirit.
We traveled all over the plane of Deirkreth, sampling various worlds' cultures.
I established my home on the planet of Deirkreth, and I have dwelt there ever
since. Starting five years ago, my other planeswalker friends began to
disappear.
Chapter 2
A chill blast of ice cold air hit me, startling me from my reverie, and
billowing my cloak out. I felt the cold chill even more acutely. I had wandered
for days in the frozen wastes of Aeroon. Glancing up, I saw an endless plain of
snow and ice, jagged pillars of rock, and barren dead trees, all silent for
hundreds of years. I continued walking.
I knew that easily I could find comfort, even here, had I dared use my powers.
Years of research and observation led me to this plane, where I believed my
friends were being taken. If they were being taken by such a powerful being,
using my powers would be a dead giveaway to my presence. In order to rescue my
friends, I could not risk that.
I had heavily shielded myself before even ‘walking to this plane, and even
then, my arrival would alert whatever lived here and whatever watched warily. I
disappeared into the blizzardy wastes of the tundra. I wore a spectral cloak to
prevent my discovery, and carried only some alabaster potions and elixirs of
vitality to keep from starving. These were all enchanted to keep them from
freezing, and to keep me from freezing as well. With this preparation, ice
became a mere inconvenience, rather than a crippling disability.
Mentally, I compared Aeroon to Dominaria, which was also in the midst of a
great ice age. Drawing from my knowledge of the two planes, I saw startling
similarities in the histories that could be found. Thousands of years ago, on
Dominaria, two brothers fought a war of escalation that devastated lands for
thousands miles and affected the climate greatly. Empires fell as the world
entered a dark age, and then an ice age. On Aeroon, the situation was
identical, but for the fact that the war had been started by several warring
planeswalker guilds. Already the ice age on Aeroon had worn on twice as long as
that of Dominaria...
In the distance, I saw, through the maelstrom, a large, silver pillar raised to
the sky. I knew then, that in all the distance I had traveled and all the time
I had spent, this was the lone survivor of a long-lost civilization. It
appeared in no way to be sinister, but I approached it cautiously anyway. Why
would an all-powerful being want an ugly, despairing tower to live in, when he
could have a palace of grand beauty, especially in a land where no one lived for
him to strike fear in?
As I got closer to the tower, I saw that light indeed shone from the single
window high up near the top of the tower. Lumbering nearby were huge colossi of
unmistakable make: Sardian. Seven of them circled the tower. "No one has the
power to operate 7 colossi," I thought as I stared down at them. No matter.
Colossi are destroyed easily by many means. I sent the controller a nasty
surprise, and he finally knew what they meant by "builder's bane." The colossi
collapsed into massive piles of rubble. A shadow appeared in the window.
Lightning arced out from the window, striking right in front of my feet. The
wizard knew exactly where I was!
Mentally, he whispered to me: "You have no business here, planeswalker. You
are bothering my research, and your presence is unwanted. Leave now, for I
dislike destroying such young beings of power."
He knew I was here, so I raised more defensive shields. The time for secrecy
was past. The silent guardians were defeated, but there was no obvious entrance
to the tower. So I made one. A tunnel formed under the wall, and I found easy
passage inside. I found myself inside a main hall. The ceiling vaulted
impossibly high, given the size of the tower itself. The tower must contain an
illusionist's hall. I couldn't fight an illusionist! I was not skilled enough
yet to battle a planeswalker who could control my own actions, and turn my
powers against me.
I was young yet, and didn't want to die. But my overriding fear of my friends
loss or impending loss forced me to overcome my fear. I searched my mind for my
own method to disenchant the illusion. I found one, and the ceiling collapsed
downward, and became more realistic. Stairs led upward through a nearby wall.
A massive crystal chandelier loomed above me. Sitting on a chair right in front
of me was an old man. At least, I assumed he was old.
Losing my patience, I blurted out, " Who are you old man? Why have you taken
my friends?" He didn't answer, just held up his hands, as if to silence me.
In a raspy voice, he said, "The colossi didn't harm you. Why did you destroy them?"
Caught off guard by his unexpected question, I told him that I merely sought entrance to his tower.
"If you had asked, I would have let you in. My work here concerns you, but I
didn't want you to know until you were much older. I am working on the "world
spell," and my research was to be hidden from all existence. You shouldn't be
here."
"You have been abducting friends of mine. I came here to rescue them," I answered.
"Strong accusations from a fledgling planeswalker. I am not the one you seek."
"Who are you then?" I asked.
"I am Elrohir, whom some have referred to as the God of Wisdom."
Elrohir! But that's...
"Yes, young one. I am you."
Elrohir, God of Wisdom
General of the 1st and 2nd Atog Wars.