The Mage Of Ruin

Twenty years ago…

When the sky above the Aethelgard Kingdom rained ashes of a million citizens, covering the collapsed spires and the fractured cobblestones of civilization that had been vibrant just hours before.

And through that haze fell a Grand Commander, hitting the earth with a sickening thud, his body battered, armor shattered, soul crushed, and soaked in blood that wasn’t entirely his.

The heat from the spell he had cast still radiated from the soil, but the fire inside him had died out as he lay in the wreckage, gasping for air.

He had lost his left eye to the chaos, and from his right eye, tears ran steadily, cutting through the grime on his cheek.

He wanted death because he had pulled the trigger and watched fire consume Aethelgard, including his own wife and daughter.

He had no justification in his mind, no comfort at all that he had stopped an apocalypse; he only knew that he was alive but millions were dead because of him.

How could a man live with that guilt?

Clovis Dupond began to crawl, dragging his broken body through the soot as he forced himself toward the jagged edge of the Rift. A bleeding wound in reality where the material world fractured into the void.

He reached the precipice and collapsed onto his back, and above him, a cold and unfeeling rain began to fall, mixing with the ash and washing the blood that marred his skin. He closed his good eye, waiting for the darkness to finally take him…but it didn’t.

Instead a presence manifested itself before him, offering him an escape outside of time, to guard a place disguised as a grand library but functioning as the lock of the primordial gods and monsters that reality couldn’t contain.

“You will not find rest in the mud, Commander,” the spirit whispered, “The world outside will hunt the man who brought down the sky and carve your name into stone as a curse.”

Clovis did not care and only wanted the peaceful slumber.

“Death is too simple a sanctuary for a hand that broke a kingdom,” the voice added, “If you take the key, the world outside will forget your face. Your lineage, your banners, your connection to the Vanguard—all of it will vanish from the records of the living.”

Clovis let out a trembling laugh that turned into a cough, as he spat blood into the mud, “Forget me? After what I did?”

“They will remember the ruin, but they will lose the man,” the spirit said, “You will disappear into a fragile peace outside of their time. The Archive will carry the burden of your identity, and you may live whatever days you have left far from the destruction you have made.”

×××

Twenty years later, the chaos had turned into a myth and an entertainment.

The world had moved on, now wrapping the horror of the past in books and stage plays.

He went by the name Mage Of Ruin.

As Vaelenor evolved, so did its stories, speculating on his madness, novels detailing his cruelty.

None of them recognized the choice or sacrifice he had made; no one wrote or talked about the rot. They only needed a monster to blame for the shattered kingdom.

But in this world, he had simply become Mr. Dupond, a frail librarian with a patched left eye. To the High Magisters who governed the city, the Elites and students, he was nothing.

The library sat at the center of the Obsidian Academy Of Arcane Science, built to ensure the magic remained exactly where the rulers wanted it: in the hands of the wealthy.

At the center of this web, Clovis sat for eighteen years. The Archive inside the library existed in a fractured space outside of normal time; in the real world he had only aged five years, but mentally he felt a hundred years old.

Every hour of the day, the books whispered, clawing at his skull trying to find a crack in his mind, giving him a permanent, neverending migraine.

The school’s new semester had just begun that morning, and the quietness he had enjoyed for the last few weeks was officially over.

Unable to stop himself he rolled his right eye, a sigh escaping his lips. The pressure in his head had spiked with the children’s noise, causing his nose to bleed.

He dabbed at his nose, exhausted before the day had even begun.

Suddenly the front doors of the library came open and a pale boy stepped in; he looked like a freshman, from Clovis’ years of serving at the library.

The boy’s eyes scanned the towering shelves, walking slowly towards Clovis at the counter while Clovis pretended to read a register.

“Good morning,” the boy said, his voice lacking the usual arrogance Clovis expected.

Clovis nodded stiffly, watching as the boy leaned against the counter. “I’ve heard a great deal about this library. So much so that it was the only reason I applied to the Obsidian Academy in the first place.” He paused, his gaze dropping to the deep scars on Clovis’s face before rising back to his eye. “My name is Chadwick. Chadwick Brook. And you are?”

Clovis slouched his shoulders forward, “Mr. Dupond.”

“Mr. Dupond,” Chadwick repeated with a nod.

“I have work to finish, Mr. Brook,” Clovis said flatly and clearly uninterested, having no desire to entertain the romantic curiosities of a freshman.

He wanted the boy gone so he could nurse the migraine, “What is it you’re looking for? Be quick about it.”

“What sort of books do you keep back there?”

“The usual,” Clovis muttered, leaning back into his chair. “If you want a specific volume, tell me now so I can fetch it and you can leave.”

“No specific volume today,” Chadwick said, “I think I’d prefer to just look around first. I’ll be back.”

“Suit yourself.”

The boy turned and walked straight into the back aisles. Though Clovis didn’t move, his eye followed the kid’s movements.

Chadwick’s reason for being there had nothing to do with reading any of the books. Weeks before the semester started, he had taken a trip here, meticulously measuring its external dimensions—but the moment he finally walked into the library, the geometry broke, because the building was wider and more massive on the inside than the outside should have allowed.

It made Chadwick curious to uncover how it was built.

Over the next few weeks, Chadwick became a constant trouble for Clovis.

Finally his observation paid off on a Tuesday evening just after classes. As he explored the library, his fingers found metal—a heavy, unlisted iron grate set into the stone walls, secured by three massive bolts, and at the top was boldly written, RESTRICTED VAULTS.

Just as he reached for the bolts, a heavy hand clamped on his shoulder from behind, the grip so tight it almost bruised him.

His breath caught in his throat as he saw Mr. Dupond staring down at him.

“Out,” Clovis said.

Chadwick couldn’t find any excuse as he quietly left.

Standing outside the building, he believed within himself that something was clearly wrong, and he was going to find out.

He returned late at night, picked the locks and went in. At night the library was different than it was during the day.

He ducked quietly so as to not wake the librarian, but before he could reach the restricted door he had found earlier, a book caught his eye.

As he held it, it felt strangely warm, like human skin. He swallowed hard and lifted the cover. The moment the book cracked open, the library vanished.

One second he was standing and the next he was falling into nothingness, his screams trapped in his throat. Finally when he landed, nearly breaking a bone, the sky above him was a bleeding fracture of a violent violet light, raining down ash.

Then a chorus of millions of voices came screaming all at once, like they were inside his head. He staggered, clutching his head.

“Ah—”

Through the haze of his pain, he saw a figure standing on the precipice of a crumbling citadel, a man in shattered armor, wielding a catastrophic arcane energy so immense that the ground underneath Chadwick’s feet trembled.

Then with a single sweeping gesture of the man’s hand, the sky came down, bringing the empire that stood tall to the ground as fire engulfed the place and the screams grew louder.

He hit the floor crawling back in terror when suddenly he was yanked back to reality.

His hands were shaking so badly he couldn’t stop them, and when he looked up, the book laid closed on the table.

“Did you find what you were looking for?”

Chadwick heard behind him. Unable to move or even speak, the person walked to face Chadwick. It was Mr. Dupond standing over him, and he didn’t look frail at all.

His aura had completely changed, but it was his face that made Chadwick’s heart stop as his mind raced, the historical texts, the novels, and the tales he had heard since childhood all colliding into a single realization.

He scrambled backward on his hands and knees until his back slammed hard against the bookshelf. He looked up at the towering figure, his lips trembling so violently he could barely form the words.

“It was you…” Chadwick’s voice cracked as he pressed himself harder against the shelf, wishing it would swallow him whole.

“You shouldn’t have opened the book, Mr. Brook.”

“I was just curious, I didn’t—” Chadwick choked out as tears blurred his vision.

The very boogeyman that had tormented the world for years was standing less than five feet away from him. “The vanguard… the kingdom… they said you were dead.”

“The world says many things,” Clovis said, his voice devoid of warmth.

“You’re the monster,” Chadwick sobbed, his breath coming in shallow gasps as the crushing weight of Clovis’s aura pinned him to the floor. “The one from the stories… the one who pulled down the sky… You’re the Mage of Ruin.”