In his youth, the mage had scoured the globe. He had not started on his travels in search of anything in particular but via one quest or another he ended up being well versed in almost every culture the world had to offer.
But the world changed, or he didnt - theyre both the same, really – and he returned home. He took a scenic route, travelling through countries and tribes he had not visited before. Learning as much as he could before he became overwhelmed with the pace of progress that followed him.
But it was on this return, in fact very close to home, when he met another of his kind. Not another from his nation, or another of his class standing. Another of his philosophy. Another who thought the world moved too fast and prevented real, proper, learning. The two engaged in friendly debate. They wrote essays together, publishing under a joint pseudonym in order to poke fun at the established order. They argued esoteric snippets of lore from cultures so far removed from their own that none of their arguments made any sense. They became close friends and for the remainder of the mages journey, they travelled together.
Then came the night the two of them had grown to fear. The night that the mages partner would leave and carry on his own journey. To the heart of the wilderness, he claimed. To seek that which should be sought. When the mage pressed for what this meant, he was given vague replies. Nothing answers. Which only sought to increase his curiosity.
“I should come with you,” he said defiantly. “You may need one such as I.”
“An out of work mage?” the other needled. “No, Sir, I am afraid this is a solo journey. I will discover much and I shall bring it all back to you. Consider, three years and if I have not darkened your doorstep you shall think me dead.”
The two parted ways and the mage returned to an attic high above a main road in a small city on the coast of a nation he almost didnt recognise. From this vantage point, he made many a commentary on the world he had travelled through. He rose a stick at those who thought the mere seeking of progress was a virtue. He paid homage to otherwise basic cultures. People who learned to live with less because no one was willing to give them more.
Importantly, at least to himself, he set a goal of exploring that which could not be touched by civilised hands. He would follow his friend. He would venture into the darkness and he would learn what there was to be learned or he would, like his friend, die trying.
Several months passed since the mages return. He had been using what he had learned already to try and make new spells. New potions. New magic.
Unfortunately, nothing new would appear. There had been magic around the world. Different magic that worked in different ways for different cultures. He had surmised that combining the various things that he had learned would allow one such as him to attain some level of magical mastery that would be hard to top by any ordinary magician, but he was starting to resign himself to a life of normal, boring mediocrity.
He was about to abandon the three year pact and start on his own journey into the heart of the wilderness, whatever that meant when a great case arrived on his doorstep. It was addressed to his old friend, but had the mages address written on it.
The lock was a simple spell. Within an hour of signing for it, it was open and its contents had been scattered across the attic. Most of the items were trinkets. Carvings out of stone the mage had never seen before. Documents with writing that perplexed him, even with the aid of translation magic. But there was one thing that stood out among the rest of the items, a black leather book, bound with three belts and with pages that glowed when the lights were out.
He tried everything he could think of to open the bindings on the book, but each time he was rebuffed. At best, he received some almost severe burns to his hands and at worst, he blew the wall out of the building the attic was attached to. After an argument with the landlord and a casual display of his talents, the room was fixed. Unfortunately he was also evicted.
He quickly packed his things, and was unceremoniously locked out of the building and almost every other along the way. Not that he minded. He only had one thing on his mind and that was to find a way to open this book. Perhaps inside it was a method to understand the other things that had been sent to him.
He found himself retracing the steps he took on his first journey. The port was bigger, and there were less passenger steamers available, but he was able to find his way aboard a rather haggard looking vessel which was heading down to the lower islands, something of a tourist location. Off the beaten track, interact with the locals and be amazed at how simply they lived and how uncivilised they were. It was a six week voyage and he would hate the entire thing.
The islands were not as he remembered them. They had grown and were becoming more and more like the world that he was trying to leave behind. There were few locals working in the more modern things; those jobs were left for his kind. The natives were left to be attractions for the most part. He found the whole thing utterly despicable and as he left the boat, he ignored everything and headed out of the city and into the tropical jungle.
Like the last time it took more than week to find the tribe he had lived with. He thanked the various gods he prayed to that not everything had been overrun by the incessant progress.
“Not yet,” that little voice in the back of his head constantly said.
He found a clearing one day as the sun was disappearing beneath the horizon and made himself a camp. He knew he was being followed, he had known since they saw him. They hadnt made a move yet, which was telling. Someone must have recognised him.
The next morning, as he woke, he felt himself surrounded. He knew that there would be several spears inches from some rather vital places on his body and if he were able to overcome that obstacle, there would be other, more violent, people outside his little tent. He would not overcome them.
“Im a friend,” he said in their native tongue. A language he had learned without the aid of magic.
Silently, but with purpose, the feeling of the spears disappeared and he could hear the wielders looking around and shuffling their feet softly. They had no idea what to do next.
“You arrived with the others,” a voice said. The word they used for others was not a kind word and not easily translated.
“I had no other choice,” the mage replied. “I seek your assistance and using them was my fastest way of getting it.”
“Help should be attained at your own cost,” the voice said. A catechism he knew well.
“I have paid more than can be described,” he replied. It wasnt technically true, but the locals werent to know and wouldnt care about his personal drama anyway.
“Not to us,” another voice replied. A voice he recognised.
The elder of the tribe spoke quickly, as he always did, and the soldiers departed from his tent. The mage sat up and opened his eyes. “I will never be able to repay that debt,” he said.
“No,” the elder said, sadly, sitting crosslegged in front of the mage. “But you are family, that much you have proven. Yet you come back. A return you promised to never make.”
“You were friends to me,” the mage said. “I cannot say that about many people. I will do what I can to help you with whatever you need, if you can help me with my need. My friend, one of a few I have, is lost and he has sent me this as an aid to find him.” Another lie that shot a pang of guilt through the mage as he laid the black leather book before the elder.
“I am unfamiliar with this,” the elder said, his hands caressing the embossing on the cover, carefully avoiding the bindings. “You must see,” he paused and swallowed. “The wizard.”
“I had a feeling,” the mage said uncomfortably.
The two of them, albeit surrounded by soldiers, made their way through the jungle to a city that the mage remembered well. Half underground with a giant pyramid at its center, it was a capital of sorts for the people that lived around here. Within the pyramid, at its peak, lived the wizard. Another magician, crippled and crazy from a certain drug that grew around here and years of magical abuse. Yet he knew more than anyone else. As the elder had said, if anyone was going to help with this book, he would.
The elder would not follow the mage down the corridor at the peak of the pyramid. They could both hear the wizard chanting something in a language neither of them knew somewhere in the empty rooms that filled the top half of the pyramid. The mage slowly and quietly shuffled down the hall until he came to a lit doorway and the chanting stopped.
“You have something for me,” a voice said in the mages native language. The voice was old and cracked like leather, but it was cold and emotionless. The wizard could not experience joy or anticipation. He just existed. He was not curious about the book, but it was something new and something new meant something to learn.
“My friend sent me this,” the mage said. “Inside it is what I need to find him.”
“Your friend is dead,” the wizard said. It was said so matter of factly, the mage scoffed. “Whosoever owns this book,” the wizard continued. He had not touched the leather tome and had in fact stayed well away from it. “Courts an angel of death. Not ours, oh no. Our angel of death would not be so cruel. Within this book, you see, lays the one spell we each seek. The spell of life, or eternal youth,” the wizard groaned and tried to reach for the book. “Or a spell of revenge or justice. But it is never the same for any one magician. If you opened this book, you would find a spell that would give you what you need, and should you cast it, should the words leave your mouth, you would summon that angel. You would bring upon yourself a vicious death worth of none but the most abhorrent of betrayers. But the twist. The cruelty of such a book. The owner, that who has possession, will stop at nothing to see their spell,” the wizard grinned an awful toothy grin. “And then it is only your own willpower to stand in its way of being cast.”