Author: Leprekawn

Time alone mended the wounds of my mind and a quiet moment of recall was all needed to understood my error. As a sorcerous master I was upon the verge of joining a cabal of others, whose vaunted ranks dedicated to help guide the mystically inclined within Paragon City. My tutelage garnished me with great power over stone and this mastery my qualifying token. The High Council was to be my opus were it not for darkness that descended upon me with such fury.

My wife was stuck by illness that few could identify and fewer could name. A wasting malady capable of terrifying haste. In my anguish I sought answers, a means to use my power and save one life. A path so foolish that even now I shudder at the consequences.

The Malleus Mundi is known in many circles arcane and otherwise. It’s pages rumored to hold secrets that would unmake reality or grant godhood, the very stuff of myth among legendary beings. On select days of the year the book appears in the city and the brave, daring and insane all clamor to find it, to hold it for just long enough that a single wish might be granted. Pages tear from it, scattered by some impish forces, and offer a tantalizing taste of the power the completed manuscript might hold.

A single page is all it took for my plan to unfold. The incantation seemed simple, though it would be dangerous. Power beyond the ken of many in my field for sure, but I had to try. I would steal a measure of time from a stone, a simple century of it’s rigid existence. A gift to my wife who lay with but a handful of days remaining..

Outrage clouded me on those first days. My actions had rent me from time and space. Though I did not know the damage I had caused, the scope of my catastrophe beyond reckoning, I was haunted by a furious ire. If only I could remember who or hat had earned such hate..

The doctors referred to me by a name I couldn’t recall. Everstone. FBSA records knew of me, though few could pinpoint their point of entry to the database. Theories abounded though in time this mystery would fade as I sought a more complete understanding.

Time is an inexplicable force. At once a river through which we drift and an ocean upon which we sail. From beyond the shores of Eternity I have sailed to the reaches of Precambrian Earth. I watched empires be crushed beneath the inevitable pace of progress and elemental forces battle for supremacy. All this in a search for myself, for I have lost everything in the pursuit of foolish ideals..

..we should start at the beginning. Where I woke upon the shores of Paragon City, bereft of sanity and besieged by outrage and guilt.

I’ve become accustomed to the darkness in Dark Astoria. The way the shadows hunger and claw at your feet, the way the sun never shines but the light never completely fades. The near-constant screams in the distance.

I awake here more often than not. Some measure of my Kheldian finds solace amongst the darkness. Maybe out of duty we lurk here, perhaps out of fear we hide. I can’t tell and I’m not sure I’d want to know if I could.

I’m rarely alone out here though. The populace having long been evacuated or abandoned I’m usually greeted by devious cultists or sinister wizards.

Today, it was the wizards.