They were happy. They were safe, or as safe as a fledgling wizard and her neophyte teacher could be. I resigned myself to dying alone in my old age, content that my daughter had found satisfaction in her home and in her drive to achieve her greatest goal. I had done my part.
Unfortunately, an inexperienced teacher with a student determined to reach ever higher is a dangerous match. That which I had feared since her childhood came to pass. During their research, something went horribly wrong. Alphetta was killed. I did not see it happen, and that is a mercy I will ever be thankful for; but it happened, nonetheless. I could no longer see her. That’s how I found out. One day, I could check on her, and the next, emptiness in the glass. I found Petre easily enough in my glass, on the run. He soon found a way to detect, then block, my observations.
A cold fire spread through me, Skate. One that I had not felt for almost a decade. It was the fire of war. I believed Petre to have killed my daughter. I was an older man by that point, but not so old that I could not be roused, and the murder of my daughter roused me. I left my home, my city, for the first time since returning from the war, after any lead I could find. I started with what little I’d learned from my last successful scrying, and thereafter relied on witnesses and observations. I hired a bounty hunter to aid me, and the chase was on.
It took years. Petre was skilled at avoiding notice, and with magic aiding him in his travels, the chase proved fruitless for years. Further frustrating our hunt was my own old age. So, breaking off to let my hired man do his work alone, I researched ways to thwart the ravages of time. It was during this period that I discovered a secret that many would kill for: how to extend my existence beyond the paltry four score years and ten I might have been afforded by the luck of my own fortitude. Even better, I found a way to do so that did not involve some vile ritual or deal with infernal powers. When I began my second life, I began it fresh, with no monstrous acts weighing on my conscience and with the cruelty of age gone forever.
I rejoined the hunt only to find the trail cold. My bounty hunter, noble soldier of fortune that he was, had contracted fever and perished some months before, chasing Petre deep into the savage wilderness of the southerlands, where vicious beasts prowl and the air itself carries fetid and oppressive heat. Such concerns no longer bothered me, but they explained my hunter’s failure. What hope had he of surviving such environs alone?
During my extended forays into the shadowy groves, I encountered wondrous sights. There were tribes of lizardmen, who were shocked to find a human being blithely trekking through their territory. None had any specific information about Petre’s whereabouts, though they spoke of rumors of another human who was said to travel among the tribes, using magic to disguise his nature. That was promising but ultimately unhelpful: thousands of these serpentine folk lived in the jungle. Trying to find the one who didn’t belong would be as fruitless as searching for a particular seed after the bag has been dispersed to the winds. I began to question the wisdom of my search when I came face-to-face with one of the elder powers of the world.
The great dragon Zuri-shantar greeted me by name, dispelling the illusion it had made of its surroundings. What I had thought to be a thicket choked with undergrowth faded into a rare open area, a slight hillock free of trees or bushes. The grass, which I’d wager had not been chewed by any grazer for many years, came up to my waist. It did not even crest one of Zuri-shantar’s terrible claws.
“Barrison Belamy. The wizard who would be immortal, as his betters are. Why are you trespassing here?”
Something you need to know, Skate: since my transformation, I do not feel fear in the same way you do. It is a weakness of the flesh that I simply do not experience anymore. I can be concerned about things, but only in the detached, clinical, practical way that one might be concerned about the weather or ill rumor. But I can remember fear. I remembered it very strongly at that moment. I’d never seen something so primordial as a dragon, something so majestic yet terrifying, so wise yet brutish. He could have snatched me up in the blink of an eye and crushed my body to dust, and all of my magic could have done nothing to stop it from happening.
I steeled myself; the destruction of my body no longer concerned me, since it would form anew if destroyed. “I seek a man, one who fled into this place to escape from me.”
“He must be quite fearful indeed to have done something so foolish.” The dragon wrapped his gargantuan claw around me and lifted me clean from the earth, as a child might grasp a mouse. “Why do you chase him?”
“Justice,” I said.
Zuri-shantar laughed, a booming that sounded like a thousand bellows at the forge that made the world. Hundreds of birds took flight at the sound. “No, no. That is not why.” He brought me up to his eye, the pupil of which was roughly the size of my torso. “A man may do what you have done for many reasons, but justice is not one of them. You may have fooled yourself, but not me.”
I admitted my justification had not been accurate. “Revenge.”
“That’s closer, lich. Much closer to the heart of it. Something else lurks, I think, but revenge is indeed enough of a catalyst to force a man into violent, purposeful action.” I remember the pressure as he squeezed at the end of his sentence. “What will you do when you find your prey, mighty and tireless hunter?”
I hesitated in answering, and he laughed again, shaking my body with each breath. “That’s what I saw skulking in the recesses of your soul. You don’t know yet!” The laughter continued, and he tossed me down. Had I been alive, I would have been mangled. “What foolishness is this! In my millennia roving the lands of this world, I have seen things strange and wonderful, the rise and fall of kingdoms and powers, whole peoples rising from nothing only to disappear without a trace. I have met dozens of your kind, practitioners of magic who have sought to escape the fate of mortals, ignorant hatchlings fumbling in the dark with things beyond their comprehension. None of them had conflict in their rotten, decrepit hearts. I have only ever seen hatred, coldness, and ambition. Today, I have seen something new. Hesitation! Softness! In a lich!” More laughter erupted, so much that the great beast rose up on his hind legs, swatting the air as if to dispel his mirth. When he gained control of himself, he dropped onto his back with a thunderous crash, tearing down trees and undergrowth at the perimeter of the clearing. He began lazily picking at his spear-like teeth with his claws.
I stood and watched, unclear what was now expected of me. When he continued ignoring me, I slowly turned and began to walk away. I had almost reached the end of the clearing when the voice of the dragon ripped through the oppressive silence of the surrounding jungle. “I know where your man is.” I turned to find him scratching his great stomach, running a claw on the scales to pick out irritating debris. He spat a gout of fire toward some of the trees not yet trampled, and the blast of heat lit a swath of jungle aflame. He snorted in satisfaction at the sight.
“Will you tell me?” Had I been capable of feeling fear as people do, I’d have already lost consciousness from it. As it stood, I felt only apprehension, an assessment of risk that found the danger high, but worth the reward if it brought me closer to Petre.
He snapped up into his four-legged position with a speed totally at odds with his size. A thing so large has no business being that fast. Nevertheless, there he preened, scraping his massive horns along his back and sides, scratching and cleaning.