Prologue- A Change to the Pn

  Engnd – Oxford University, History Department- 2008- 10- 18 (Early Evening)

  Professor Laxman Ortani

  The bell rang signaling the end of the css. Ortani stopped midsentence, a student had asked him a difficult question. The question itself wasn't difficult, he knew the answer, but expining the answer to the css without revealing the existence of magic to them, now was the difficult part. This meant that he had to do his now famous 'pause' several times and thus never got a proper answer out to the boy.

  He waved at various students that said goodbye to him, before they filled out of the css. The professor was surprised to see that the student that had actually asked the question, walked up to his desk as if he wanted to press the matter.

  However, before the young bck man could repeat the question or say anything, the sound of a door closing loudly made them look up.

  In the back of the room, from the room's fire escape door, two men entered. Both wore long trench coats, the younger man with short bck hair had actually tied the coat closed. While the older man with a scar through his eye, and mostly white hair, let his coat hang open, revealing the fighting robes he wore under the coat to anyone to see.

  The younger coated man jerked his head to the side. His student got the hint and left quickly via the closest door. All three men waited for the door to close behind the young man before anyone spoke.

  “Master Ortani.” The older man greeted the professor.

  He chuckled at that, before saying. “Keacilius you know, I haven't been one of those for a long time. Not since the Ancient One and her Defenders kicked me out." Then the three of them shared a long moment of silence as none seemed willing to get to the reasons that they were there.

  In the end, it was Professor Ortani who broke it, as he barked at the two men angrily. “Is this what we’re doing? I messaged you three times, and I only got silence… and now you’re in my cssroom… Are you here to kill me?”

  The young athletic man took a step forward, but was stopped by the older man.

  While the two men looked at each other, Ortani reached into his open desk drawer. In the back area of it, he reached in and pulled out a pencil-length shard of gss. He quickly hid the item behind his leg, as the two of them returned their attention to him.

  “We’ve been busy.” Was Keacilius’ only answer.

  "'You've been busy', that's it?" The professor asked, as he moved towards his personal bag, and unbuckled it one-handed with his free hand.

  “Cell phones don’t work outside of the material pne.” The disciple snapped at him.

  “Of course, you after all must keep up appearances… only for, you know for over seven months!” Ortani snapped at them.

  “Things have changed. The pn may have to be adjusted.” The master told him.

  “Adjusted how?” the professor snapped, and then he recited the pn. “The pn was to wait till we both had a dozen disciples, and then we would raid the Forbidden…”

  However, the disciple interrupted him stating. "Even exiled, don't tell me you haven't missed the big news."

  Instead of yelling back, Ortani raised the shard of gss and let his Dark Dimension flow into it. A bde of bck energy extended from the shard and flew toward the young man.

  The disciple raised his own hand and opened his palm, the small golden pte he had hidden there glowed, and a wire-frame shield of astral energy encircled the young man's hand. The bde cut halfway through the barrier before the young man had to throw the two combating energies toward a student's desk. Destroying it, and part of the floor.

  When the disciple looked up again, Ortani had another bde conjured but held in attached to the gss.

  Keacilius interrupted the fight by stating. “The Lost Sanctum has been rediscovered.”

  While the professor held the bde ready, he looked at his fellow master and admitted. “I had heard a simir rumor. But I doubted that bitch will leave the Warden’s Lost Archive as unguarded as the Forbidden Vault.”

  The Danish master took a step forward. Keacilius looked down at his own feet for a second before looking back at the professor and stating. “The Lost Sanctum was being guarded and is held, by a Founder.”

  Ortani gasped and snapped. "Bullocks, they're all dead. The st one died…”

  It was Keacilius who interrupted him this time. "A handful survived. I met two, Nath'aniel, son of Path’aniel… and Ryth’lor, son of Myth’lor.”

  "Now I know you are lying, Ryth’lor died at the hands of Ulysses Bloodstone.” The professor said, knowing he got them.

  "I read the same history as you." The disciple stated, but then he added. "So I confronted the mage after the Battle for the Sun Temple. He admitted to being defeated and suffered grievous wounds at Bloodstone's hands, but he said that Bloodstone didn't nd the killing blow. The mage further cimed that he managed to open a portal to the Lightforce dimension.’

  "Where he remained, healing and fighting the pnt growth there for a century. When he returned to our dimension, he heard about the deaths of his people, and so he sought out a noble end. Unable to find one, he eventually returned to the Lost Sanctum, where he met the other survivors, as he was exempt from her defenses. Knowing that the Warden's son survived, he swore his swords to the boy."

  Ortani drew back the Dark Dimension energy and lowered his mystic tool. While he had lowered his weapon, he was still watching them closely, ever ready to sh out should they try something.

  The professor stroked his chin stubble, the only hair on the man’s face, as he said. “That’s pusible… While being an excellent fighter, Ryth’lor was noted to be a horrible healer… So what. Some people we thought dead, are only nearly extinct and are still around and they hold the Lost Sanctum. How does that change things for us?"

  Keacilius took a step towards him before saying. “Because they got it to work… the founder managed to bind someone as Servant.”

  Fbbergasted, Ortani muttered. “What?”

  “Back in March, the Ancient One called for all those willing to aid her on a raid against a tribe in the Savage Lands.” The disciple started to expin.

  “We went hoping that we might find an opening, either injure or kill her… but it was chaos, we lost Narbel. Rama lost two of his disciples as well." As the master expined his gaze drifted towards the floor, then his head snapped up and he added. "And then, inside the tribe's temple's inner grounds, Nath'aniel fought the tribe's High Priest and her mystically augmented guards. The priesthood was offering human sacrifices to their Petrified Man, we think in hopes to awaken him.'

  “And in the st moments, after we moved to aid him and the few Masters that made it there, we two saw it.” Keacilius gestured at himself and the disciple. “The st offering the High Priest made, he trapped the poor woman’s soul in a Soul Jar spell.”

  “I know that spell… That’s smart. The soul would have been protected from the Giant, and it would buy him time to do something before the Pne of Bone would detect it. Although he would need to build a dedicated chamber to hide it, if he wanted to hold it longer than a day or two.” The two other mystic arts users let Ortani rant to himself.

  Once they were sure that he was done. Then the master continued his story. "The st captive, which they had yet to offer, he then begged the mage to heal her. Nath'aniel, the mage, told the young man that the only thing he could do would change her, in the end, the mage did as the man asked.'

  "It took him a minute and a half, he wrote his runes into the air as he also chanted." Keacilius reached into a pocket in his robes, and pulled out a crystal that he instilled his memory of the event into. He then gathered nearby ambient mystical energy to him, and willed it into the crystal.

  An astral wireframe appeared around his hand and linked the energy to the crystal, once he flexed his thumb the words of the mage began to be repyed for everyone to hear. "Shor’gak noth tor conli’din rok-melvar, bi’roth tok rekeen wori’dor…”

  The professor was initially stunned to hear spoken magi. However, he recovered and told the master. “Wait, wait. Py it back from the beginning.” Ortani then pced his mystic tool on his desk, before he reached into his bag and pulled out a pad of paper, then he pulled his old-style pencil from behind his ear and waited.

  He didn’t see Kealcilius flex his fingers to reset the recording, nor did he see the master shake his head at his disciple, when the younger man moved to cast a spell to pull the gss tool to him. So focused was he to try and decipher the mystery of the mage’s words.

  Ortani only half heard the words, as his brain quickly transted down on the page and said to himself, what he thought they meant. "Born in the heart of a jungle of steel and stone, yet your heart never strayed from the pce of your people. You are a hunter and stalker of the nd, and while you will hunt again. Not for yourself, but for your master, you must ready yourself to pierce where I direct, now arise, my Lancer."

  The professor felt young again as he transcribed the words, like he was back in Kamar-Taj and his dark secrets hadn’t been dragged out into the light. He rubbed the eraser-less pencil across his lips as he looked at his transtion.

  “Some of it is probably wrong, Magi can be hard. Some words can have double meanings, they are based on what words are around it, even one misheard sylble changes the meaning.” He muttered as he stared at the top page of the pad, and his writing on it.

  When he looked up, he saw that both the master and his disciple had inched closer to him. It reminded him that he wasn’t a master of the mystic arts anymore, but rather an exile. One with his own small following, but an exile still nonetheless.

  Trying to put the two of them on the back foot again, he asked. “Assuming he got it to work, how does this change our pns?”

  Kealcilius stated what they both knew, but the professor didn't want to admit. "With both know that our first path was the lesser of two. If we got our hands on a way to successfully bind out lost loved ones as Servants, we could give them new proper lives."

  “I could hug my sister again.” His disciple muttered.

  “You could do more than that.” The master told the younger man.

  “And how do pn for us to do this, raid the Lost Sanctum?” Ortani asked, his hand slowly drifting towards his gss tool.

  Yet Kealcilius’ answer surprised the professor. “In just a week is the next Entreatment day. The mages will open the doors to their sanctum for us. Any faction is welcome, so long as they only bring a party of three and carry no weapons, save a knife to use at lunch.’

  "Additionally the Ancient One has made it clear to our Order, that she has no intention of attending herself this time. Instead, she is using it as a trail of sorts. Each master may bring forth a request or a question, and the best or most insightful will be selected to lead our faction there."

  The professor ughed at them, before saying. "Oh, yeah she will definitely let me join you."

  He was surprised when Kealcilius turned around and walked away a bit. That he would show him his back, told Ortani how much he trusted this disciple’s skill to protect him. Then he said without turning around. “They won’t heed me either. No, we need a face for this to work.”

  Surprised the professor asked. “Who?”

  It was the disciple that answered. “Master Takeda.”

  “That fish wife?” Ortani asked in surprise. He never had liked the woman the few times that he had interacted with her. She also was on the consul that brought forth the charges that got him exiled.

  The master turned around to face him to answer that question, saying. “That fish wife, passed on the promotion to Defender of the Hong Kong Sanctum. And yes her… She and I were disciples together, we didn’t share masters, but we shared some studies. And I know that her life’s work has to do, what that mage Nath’aniel just did, to successfully bind a Servant.”

  “So we dangle a carrot and what hope she can convince the Ancient One?” The professor asked.

  Kealcilius smiled before answering him. "Oh, she will convince her, from the back hall whispers, the Ancient One owes her a lot. And I can convince her to take the bait, but what we should be worried about… is whether will she take you with us, and can we convince the mage to teach us. After all, we are granted a request, but that doesn't mean he has to agree and follow through."

  Since things seemed to be going smoothly, the professor decided to leave his tool where it was, and crossed his arms before saying. “A lot of ifs in this new pn of yours, and that doesn’t include that we would need to track down and capture the severed souls of our loved ones… that’s what you were busy with, wasn’t it. You went after your wife’s soul in the Pne of Bone.”

  “Oh no, I jarred my wife’s soul as soon as you taught me the spell all those days ago.” The master admitted, and then he further admitted. “No, we went after my disciple’s loved one’s souls.”

  "I would still need to help gather my own disciples'," Ortani compined.

  "Or cut them loose. After all our numbers won't matter once we have the means to save our own loved ones." The disciple muttered coldly.

  The professor gred at the young man.

  However, Kealcilius was just as cold as he ignored the problem altogether and told him. "Be ready, you have till tomorrow night, Japanese time, to come up with your augment to convince Takeda. I will be busy hedging our argument with the mage, so if you need something contact Lucian here." At the end, he pointed at the disciple.

  Said disciple reached into his trench coat's pockets pulled out a business card and left it atop the paper pad. Then the master donned his sling ring and created a portal to an alleyway. The few buildings that Ortani could make out were modern, so this wasn’t near any of the other man’s hideouts that he knew about. Then the two entered and left him alone.

  The professor looked at the destroyed desk and damaged floor, before cursing. “Those tossers.” Then he sighed and thought about his own loved one, and maybe being able to debate and talk to them like old times. He looked back down at his transtion of the mage's words and muttered. "This had better work."

  1Laxman Ortani is an original character.