Realms of Shadow

1

The druid rose and glanced about her chamber, following an impulse to leave prematurely for the meeting of aspiring archwizards. The meetings came more frequently of late. Perhaps, like her, the older the dark ones grew, the more the Plane of Shadow called to them.

She strolled through her museum of abominations, following an urge to check upon them. She had thought she felt a disturbance earlier, but no-all seemed in order. She paused before her double cat, which was the most vocal, and closed her eyes to let its pain seethe over her. It had stopped crying for the moment. It had almost forgotten that it once had a life before this, but its despair remained, to confirm reality for the druid-wizard. Only real pain could call forth such misery. This brought the druid-wizard vicious comfort, similar to what a survivor of a shipwreck must feel upon stealing a life raft from a drowning shipmate. She had known doubts about the nature of reality once, long ago. It had been like finding that she could no longer trust the ground to hold her up.

The best specimens were those who had known dejection before she found them-mutations that lived in fear of sounder-bodied predators. Any suffering she could heap upon these abominations compounded that which they already knew. The thrill she derived from their torture could prove almost excruciating, and she would cry out in dark joy. The power she gained from those sessions-the afterglow-lasted for days.

An emissary from the Twelve Princes of Shade had come to her group earlier in the year, having somehow gotten wind of the clandestine organization. After testing the group for sympathy to the Shadovar through various-in some cases fatal-means, the emissary had assigned tasks. After the moot, the druid-wizard would set to her task: to seek out a collection of notes written by the archwizard Chever, who had lived in ancient Netheril. Chever had created the Opus Enclave, which had once housed Netheril's centers of learning.

In his last days, Chever had contacted and conversed with myriad extraplanar creatures and taken down his notes, which made little sense compared to the well-organized books and lectures he had delivered in earlier days. In fact, they allegedly made little sense compared to most anything. His later recordings, especially, disclosed madness.

But the Shadovar deemed the notes valuable, so the druid-wizard would find them. The emissary had given her a starting point: the notes were last rumored to have been in the hands of a scholar living near the northern end of the Desertsmouth Mountains.

The moot passed with relative ease. The would-be archwizards spent most of the meeting clustered, heads bent, over this or that tome, debating the consequences and efficacy of proposed actions. They seemed to have it under control, so the druid-wizard slipped away early, both to prepare for her journey and to escape being assigned a new task.

She had things to attend to-like her beast collection, which would fit so perfectly deep inside the catacombs of the floating enclave. Others might control the enclave's surface, but she would take advantage of the fact that surface has no depth; only one who rules an object's substance truly commands it. She would be the one who whispered suggestions that must be followed, the one who masterminded activities that the enclave's figureheads would consider their own.

She made the trip back to her stronghold automatically, not remembering anything of the distance she had traveled from the wizards' moot to her room. She checked her beasts' water supply, which she had tapped from drainage pipes. The system kept the creatures watered automatically, so she would not need to worry about them dying in her absence. She dressed in the traveling garb of a druid and filled her satchel with the items she would need in the Desertsmouth. She would let her druid aspect ascend for this trip, as she would need to give the wizard full control upon her return.