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Deep beneath the grand keep, there lies a chamber. Within it are Zealite manuscripts, the charts of Mystic knowledge, and pieces of magical lore, all brought together, stored in bins and on bookcases, filed and indexed according to a system devised by a single mind. A sconce with candles sheds light on the chamber, and were it not for the comfort and size of it, and the pricelessness of the texts and artifacts within, one might think it the study of a regular scholar.
Magus had great dreams that scholarship, beyond what any regular scholar might try to achieve. He examined the remnants and shadows of the monster, the specimen. Every bit of his capable mind and will was turned to inquiry and focus, to find the truth underneath what others would call a god: Lavos.
Not that Magus would ever call it a god. Lavos is powerful beyond imagining, it’s true—and few knew it better than Magus—but Lavos is not a god. He was a monster, a powerful and primordial one, and all monsters can die. Magus would find a way to slay him.
The page he looked upon today was a remnant of Zeal, lost and destroyed, and Schala lost with it, but no, no time for that now. Magus knew his mind had to be like a clock, without emotion, ticking and tuned perfectly to understanding the specimen.
Interaction with Lavos was rather limited over the thousands of years of history that Magus was studying. He had two theories, kept in separate notebooks, to explain Lavos as an entity. The first was simple enough: Lavos was the source of magic and part of the core of the world. Magus was well educated, widely travelled, and of course the Mystics brought him what he needed in this era as well, so he knew the shape of the world. The planet was round, and anything round has a center. If Lavos was simply the core of the world, destroying it might destroy the world.
That gave Magus pause, but more and more evidence was now in his hands supporting his other theory: that Lavos is not the same as the world, but a separate entity, one that is evil, and hungry. An entity that consumes is a creature, and a creature has biology... and weakpoints. Presumably, Lavos might even have had a mother and a father. Magus speculated briefly on this, but there was little there that mattered to his purposes, and no indication that Lavos required a forebear to exist. Perhaps Lavos was like certain creatures such as maggots, which spontaneously formed in rotten flesh from nothing. What the cared about was: he can summon it, and destroy it, and not destroy the world in the process.
Though, if destroying the world truly was needed, Magus might still be willing to try it.
He hated to think about the Mammon Machine, but it was necessary. If he wanted to summon Lavos, and have his revenge, he’d have to use Magic to bring Lavos to him, not just artifice. The Mammon Machine had done it before, and the remnants were useful. The shard of the Mammon Machine before him is a rare artifact indeed. Little debris escaped its destruction, and what there was remained at the bottom of the ocean for a long time.
Magus ran his fingers across the twisted metal. He had just been a prince, a boy, not an engineer. He never knew how it worked… but he had magic. And he would not give up so easily. He brought forward that energy within him, seated at the base of his soul, and felt the history of the piece of metal in front of him. Slowly, he closed his eyes.
“Relic of Zeal,” he whispered, his incantation shaping magic to his will. “Tell me your history. Tell me what I need to have my revenge.”
He opened his eyes, and he was in the past again... or at least, in a vision of the past.
He opened and closed his hands, moved his body, and saw he cast no shadow. No, he was but a shade, not travelled back in time fully. Then...
The Mammon Machine. It loomed before him. Why had it been designed with such a humanoid head and shoulders? Did the shape help it draw power in? Those were things he’d have asked the engineers, if he would have thought of it as a child. Too late for that now.
Light came from below, golden light flooding the room, and the machine from beneath. The Kingdom of Zeal thought it a blessed light, but seeing the ways that it threw shadows up from the machine and cast its head and shoulders in shadow, Magus couldn’t help but think of it more accurately as an ominous light.
The Machine wasn’t heavily attended at the moment. It didn’t always need to be, though passive monitoring was necessary. Whether this was truly a vision of the past, or just an imprint of a common pattern left on the metal scraps of the machine, Magus was able to see the power rising through it. With the eyes of a mage, he watches the motes of energy rise up within the machine. It’s not pure energy, there’s something else inside it— some dark force, a… black wind, even, across a plain of golden grass. Magus studied those dark threads in the gold light, visible only to a mage’s eyes.
Perhaps those dark threads were necessary for Lavos to exist as a creature. It seemed a solidarity entity, but everything of a kind had a forebear. Lavos had one too, though perhaps by now it was long dead.
So, Lavos is not the same as the core of the world. It couldn’t be. It is a powerful creature, with godlike powers— but it is not a god, and it is not the world. If it were, there wouldn’t be these dark threads running through the power drawn from it. It wouldn’t corrupt Zeal, it wouldn’t kill everyone, it wouldn’t… be Lavos.
What he wouldn’t give to be back in this era in truth. To be able to slay Lavos as he emerges, to save his kingdom… to save her.
Technicians moved around as the Mammon Machine continued to draw power, and Magus blinked, snapped out of his reverie. Better to focus on studying the machine and the flow of power, he thought. Better to focus on what’s possible now. There’s no going back, but there’s still a chance to have his vengeance.
He has another 10 minutes of study before the vision fades. Whatever ancient memory was held, magically imprinted on the metal, is long gone now. The metal, too, crumbles to dust in his hands. But Magus remains. And he knows.
A Black Wind… that may be the key, he thinks, to the incantation. Something core to Lavos as a creature, perhaps a line of purpose or heredity from its progenitor.
Invoking Lavos’ name with the power of a Black Wind, howling before death… he’d need more power, with his keep on the surface of the world and not at the bottom of the ocean. That would be enough to do it. A ritual, to draw in enough magic for him to wield, and an incantation, to summon the beast.
No time to wallow in grief now.
Magus had a monster to kill, and vengeance to take.