Prologue

From my completed draft: "Return of the Mighty Ones".

Glaschkara fled his fellow Pantheon members with their stolen masterpiece, to this world he dubbed “Glaschkaren”. The apes on the planet rose in his presence and transformed into engineers and when Glaschkara vanished, the scientist Mepheasto rose to power. Fearing death, he became the Living God and forged Magick itself. Binding it to human flesh, Mepheasto spawned the Mighty Ones – his demigod slaves – until they broke free and slew him. The beings he had made to cheat death ended his tyranny. Free at last, they renamed the world Orital.

- From “The Annals of Oritan History”. By the Sages’ Guild, 250 Years After The Impact.

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The sun rose, flanking a dying star, scoring a white wound across the dawn sky of Orital. It vanished behind a lone castle perched on a hill of unnaturally green lawns in the heart of the desert. Residual Magick kept the grass pristine, but even that ancient power dimmed beneath the awesome glare of the palace’s crystalline spires.

Aliah, the world’s oldest and strongest Sorceress, entered the palace’s abandoned ballroom first. Her crimson gown burned against the silver vastness of the hall. A dozen white-robed figures followed in her wake.

Berric arrived moments later, unease flickered behind his politician’s mask. He thrived on being first. Aliah’s early arrival felt like an omen.

Cornelius entered last, pausing at the ballroom’s threshold to glance at the ancient mural, a landscape from his youth, now dust. The Impact had taken it, and the painting mocked his failure still. Stepping into the ballroom, he occupied the final empty ray of the great mosaic sun that dominated the floor, its gold still glowing after millennia. He studied the two dozen initiates standing along the sun’s rays, his wife Aliah and oldest ally Berric. He gave a single nod. Aliah and Berric raised their hands, their fingertips glowed as Cornelius’s voice rolled through the cavernous space.

“Here you stand. Two dozen souls poised for discovery, power, and legacy. A legacy born in this very hall.”

“This we know,” Aliah and Berric intoned.

“Before his tyranny, before he became the black wraith that terrorised the galaxy, Mepheasto gifted us Magick, by weaving Shamanism and Enchanting into human DNA and the small pineal glands in our minds. You are the latest harvest of that gift.”

“This we know.”

“Today you become Sorcerers. Guardians of his true legacy.”

The trio of Sorcerers raised their arms. Above them, a diamond stalactite flared, light spilled down onto the mosaic’s rays and flooded the initiates. Some gasped. Some screamed. Others simply wept as their latent power awakened fully for the first time…

*

Later, the three leaders stood alone in the centre of the mosaic sun.

Sometimes it is wiser to be conservative with the truth, Cornelius sent to his wife.

Agreed, Berric answered silently psychically. They need hope, not the horror of what Mepheasto became after he devoured too much Magick. Or how the hundred Mighty Ones he created as slaves turned on him.

And how you trapped the last of them, Aliah added.

Now the three of us remain, Cornelius replied, as alone as our trust in one another.

A moment of pause followed.

Berric broke it. My expedition to the Southern Hemisphere confirmed our worst fears. The New Religion is stirring again.

Cornelius waved a hand and an image appeared in the air, showing a remote desert crater, empty save for a single grey, emaciated figure shambling along its rim.

Aliah’s face hardened. That is no Human.

No. It is something else. Something that has been waiting.

He let the image fade, “I’ll return to Fuhren and inform our peers. Berric, I trust you already have pieces in motion?”

Berric inclined his head.

“I will investigate the crater,” Aliah said, “I will approach the Mercenaries Guild as a guard.”

Cornelius studied his wife, his oldest friend, their gazes, the silence, pressed a heaviness of centuries pressed down on the three of them, threating to unwrite all they had wrought. They departed without another word their footsteps echoed down the empty corridors and faded into silence. The great hall settled back into its long vigil, crystalline spires gleaming like the teeth of some ancient, patient predator.

Outside, the desert wind began to rise.