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You enjoyed your job.
It wasn’t exactly the most glamorous – weeks spent in isolation amongst marsh and forest én-route to the mountains, each night spent around a meek flame standing stark against the inky black. But the peace was welcome, and the end of each journey left you stood beneath the shield of the Spiritforge – the sky transformed into a dance of light with towers soaring above.
The wizards didn’t typically hire many not of their ilk – especially since they started bringing in “unsavoury help”. Still, so long as the towers stood guard around cities their monstrous creations wouldn’t be up to acting as mailmen. There were rumours from the south that the cities were going to turn their protective gems away from the wizards’ foul pets – you could only hope they’d see sense and decide against it.
This particular missive was a strange one. You’d often been handed suspiciously warm and wet-sounding packages by city officials, but this was a letter given to you directly by a wizard. A wizard did not ask for favours from a civilian, nor did they need anyone else to deliver their letters – their orb of presence could be cast far faster across the landscape to convey whatever message they desired – and they certainly didn’t lower themselves to conversation with such common folk. But this one was different; he had caught you in an alleyway, shrouded in darkness, and almost begged you to deliver the red envelope post-haste – glancing over his shoulder as though the walls themselves may come alive to take him away. Fear was not a common emotion to see in a wizard’s eyes. No matter the strangeness, however, you accepted immediately – denying a wizard was a great way to meet your end by an ice shard from within.
The land felt unsettled during the course of the journey. The normally active wildlife for this time of year were nowhere to be seen – replaced by stranger rustlings in the night as you stamped out your fire for fear of what may be lurking in the darkness. The forests seemed almost sickly, the occasional tree had shed its form to become a skeletal figure amidst the green – bark blackened by some malady or another. You didn’t think much of it, it didn’t pay to ask questions about the affairs of wizards in the lands which led to their dominion.
The Spiritforge was almost a place of legend. So few from outside their order had seen the place that an individual residing away from the mountains could scarcely believe it existed. A grand monument to their prowess, and a secretive hideout for their machinations. It was not that people distrusted the wizards – they brought prosperity and order to the land after all – just that one cannot help but hold a latent fear for the dark forces a commoner could never hope to comprehend. Even then, not even the Spiritforge could keep in all the whispers of reavers gone rogue in the farthest reaches of the land – and wizards hunted down for dissent within their ranks.
You were only beginning to come to the foot of the mountains when you saw it, and it saw you. It was tall, spindly and grey – it looked as though a person had been pulled outward until all their limbs and torso were little more than twigs. It seemed to glide across the ground with its head set still upon something in the distance, before snapping to face you. Your heart stood still – this was surely the end; meeting your fate at the hands of this demon. But, slowly, it turned from you – as though realising you were not its quarry – and moved off into the darkness. You splash some of the stale murky water from the ground onto your face and steady yourself to move on – the Spiritforge was waiting.
Something was horribly awry. The shield that surrounded the Spiritforge was darkened and thin, it seemed to you that you could cut it with a feather. Moving through, the pools of mana which had once adorned the paths looked pale and diseased – shadowed over by destroyed towers with gems shattered upon the ground. Every bone of your body told you to run, to hide, to leave this place and find some cabin to reside in – but the letter was burning in your pocket and you could not turn back now, not if you held some key to salvation. You stepped forward through the great stone doors as no non-wizard had before you, and bore witness to the horror.
It was a mass of shadow, composed of individual creatures swarming to give form to a hell beast. Wizards and their fallen brethren were strewn around the hall as the mass crushed the gems adorning the walls, and let out flurries of darkness to attack the few left standing. You raced over to a figure sprawled across the ground and shifted it upright – her face bleeding but her eyes still alight with fear; whatever words may have been exchanged were lost amidst the fray but you opened the letter in front of her. Diagrams of gems and sockets with arcane rituals scrawled upon them unfurled in your hands, the wizard’s eyes widened and she gestures to you to help her – you struggle to bring her out but you are blessedly ignored by the chasing shadows above. You hand the letter to her as she stumbles out of the doors, moving to follow before you feel something at your back – glancing up to see a creature of flesh bare its talons to meet you. The wizard sprints off into the night – leaving you to your fate as the doors swing shut, and the great sky of the Spiritforge falters and dies.