"Three centuries of murder and consumption, and in the end, you’d just be a footnote."
***
The smoke swirled around them like grey silk. Caught what little torchlight remained and threw dancing shadows across the tunnel walls.
Rhys pressed his back against the cold stone. His injured shoulder scread protests as he tried to make sense of what was happening.
Through the haze he could see the transford shaman spinning in confused circles. Its claws slashed at empty air.
The beast’s movents had lost their earlier confidence.
Where before it had stalked with the certainty of an apex predator toying with wounded prey, now it stumbled and lurched like a drunk trying to find his footing on a ship’s deck during a storm.
"Still playing the monster, Mor-thak-gul?"
The voice ca from everywhere and nowhere. Casual as soone comnting on the weather during a leisurely stroll through the academy gardens.
But the na.
That specific collection of syllables that ant nothing to Rhys yet carried the weight of ages.
It hit the creature hard.
Its massive form went rigid. Ancient eyes wide with sothing Rhys had never expected to see there.
Genuine fear.
Not the wariness of a predator recognizing another hunter. The raw, primal terror of sothing that had just been seen for the first ti in centuries.
The beast’s claws, still dripping with Jorik’s blood, trembled at its sides.
"Or should I call you by the na you had before you devoured your own tribe for a sliver of borrowed power?"
The speaker continued. And now Rhys could hear footsteps. Slow. Unhurried. Confident.
Each one echoed through the tunnel with the deliberate weight of a judge approaching the bench.
"The records are a little dusty, but I believe it was Ghel-thak-mor back then. Such a pretty na for soone who used to tend the sacred groves. Had quite a nice ring to it, actually. Much better than the whole growling monster aesthetic you’ve got going now."
The shaman’s head whipped toward the sound.
But the smoke still obscured everything beyond arm’s reach. Grey tendrils curled and danced in patterns that seed almost deliberate. As if the haze itself was conspiring to hide the newcor from view.
"Impossible," the creature snarled. Though the word ca out strangled. Half-choked on centuries of buried mories. "That na is lost. Forgotten. Burned with the groves. I am—"
"Class: Corrupted Earth-Warden."
The voice interrupted as if reading from a particularly boring textbook during a drowsy afternoon lecture.
"Level forty-three. Though most of that cos from consuming your betters rather than earning it honestly. A pathetic evolution, really. You sacrificed true connection to the stone for... this."
The speaker’s tone carried the weight of profound disappointnt. Like a teacher discovering their star pupil had been cheating on every exam.
"I have to say, I expected more from soone with three centuries to work with. My standards weren’t high, but sohow you’ve managed to crawl underneath them."
Rhys felt his mouth go dry.
The newcor wasn’t guessing.
He was stating facts with the kind of absolute certainty that ca from seeing rather than knowing.
But how could anyone see such things?
Even the academy’s most advanced mages couldn’t pierce a person’s class and level without specialized equipnt and extensive preparation. The soul-reading artifacts locked away in the Silver Tier of the Panopticon required faculty authorization just to look at, let alone use.
Yet this voice spoke of classes and levels as casually as reading a na off a letter.
The smoke began to thin.
Revealed glimpses of a figure in simple grey robes. House Onyx colors. Another first-year student, by the look of it. The robes still held the stiff newness of soone who hadn’t worn them through a full sester yet.
But the way he stood.
Relaxed. Hands clasped behind his back like a professor delivering a lecture to particularly dim students.
His posture held none of the nervous energy that first-years usually carried. None of the need to prove themselves that Rhys saw in every common-born student who’d clawed their way to Solare.
"Your transformation is unstable," the newcor continued. Circling just at the edge of visibility like a wolf testing the boundaries of a wounded elk’s reach.
"That left arm... it’s just for show, isn’t it? The nerves never fused properly after you butchered your master. I imagine it tingles constantly. Like sleeping on it for hours, but it never quite goes away. Must be maddening, really. All that power, all those centuries of accumulated strength, and you still can’t make a proper fist with your left hand."
The shaman’s left arm twitched.
Claws flexed spasmodically.
The movent was subtle. Barely perceptible in the smoky gloom. But Rhys caught it.
And apparently, so had their mysterious savior.
The beast tried to curl its fingers into a proper grip. Rhys watched as they refused to cooperate. Trembled and jerked in patterns that spoke of damaged connections between mind and muscle.
"How?" the creature whispered.
And for the first ti since this nightmare began, it sounded genuinely afraid.
Not the theatrical anger of a monster playing at dominance. The small, broken voice of sothing that had just discovered it was naked before an audience it couldn’t see.
"How do you know these things? Who told you? Who—"
"I know lots of things."
The figure stepped into clearer view. Though the smoke still clung to him like a living thing. Curled around his shoulders and trailed from his sleeves as if reluctant to release its grip.
Rhys could make out pale features. Dark hair. And eyes that seed to reflect light in ways that hurt to look at directly.
They caught the torchlight wrong. Threw it back at angles that didn’t match the source.
"For instance, I know your greatest fear isn’t death. It’s being forgotten. Dying as just another naless monster in a forgotten tunnel. Just one more beast slain by so hero whose na actually gets rembered."
The stranger tilted his head.
"Unacceptable, isn’t it? Three centuries of murder and consumption, and in the end, you’d just be a footnote. ’And then they killed the troll in the tunnels.’ Not even worth a paragraph."
The shaman recoiled as if struck by a physical blow.
Its massive form began to shake. Not with rage. With sothing deeper. Sothing that went to the core of whatever remained of its original self.
What in the seven hells is happening?
Rhys’s borderland instincts were screaming warnings that made no sense.
He’d grown up fighting monsters. He’d faced down goblin war-bands and shadow-touched beasts that could tear through wooden palisades like wet paper.
He knew how these encounters went.
You fought. You bled. You survived or you didn’t.
But this wasn’t a fight.
The creature that had been about to tear him apart monts ago was now backing away from a student who couldn’t be older than eighteen. Soone who spoke like he was dissecting a particularly interesting specin rather than facing down a monster that had killed experienced warriors.
The grey-robed figure hadn’t drawn a weapon.
Hadn’t cast a spell.
Hadn’t done anything except talk.
And sohow, that was more devastating than any attack Rhys could have imagined.
"You were Ghel-thak-mor of the Singing Stones tribe," the newcor said. His voice taking on an almost conversational tone.
"Third son of the grove-keeper. Gifted with earth-song from birth. Your people called you the Gentle Hand because you could coax life from barren soil. Flowers blood where you walked. Trees grew strong under your care."
The creature was trembling now.
Violently.
"The other children were jealous, weren’t they? All that natural talent. All that connection to the deep roots of the world. But that wasn’t enough, was it?"
The stranger’s voice dropped.
"When the human armies ca. When your sacred groves burned and the sky turned black with ash. Gentle hands couldn’t stop the slaughter."
A pause.
"Couldn’t even slow it down."
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