"-. .-"

  For all of Antonidas’ living memory, the Council of Six had conducted itself with a reasonable measure of transparency, its members known by all.

  That was no longer the case.

  Instead, this Council had reverted to the older tradition where its membership was kept a strict secret. Ostensibly, this was to avoid any danger of bribery, blackmail, and other pressure.

  How that was supposed to work when all the Kirin Tor had to vote them into their position defied explanation.

  As the first person to be graced with the ‘honor’ of being summoned into their presence, Antonidas would have the dubious privilege of being the first to find out how much of that justification was a crock and bull.

  When Antonidas was ushered into the seemingly wall-less chamber, he found that the architecture had changed. The Chamber of Air was a room with no visible walls or ceiling, that much was the same, even the seemingly open sky that shifted and changed rapidly, as if time sped past within the chamber.

  But while Antonidas stood upon the central diamond symbol on the gray stone floor, the Council now looked down from a ringed platform, their robes hiding all distinctive features of their bodies, while hoods and porcelain masks obscured their faces.

  The irony was not lost on him.

  The old Council had been the first six among equals, representing the Kirin Tor’s interests.

  The new Council was a ruling body looking down on petitioners.

  “Mage Antonidas,” one of them imperiously pronounced once the doors had closed, noticeably omitting his membership of the Kirin Tor, Dalaran’s quite literal senate. “You stand accused of intellectual fraud, dabbling in restricted avenues of research, and collusion to regicide. How do you plead?”

  … Ah.

  Despite his steel nerves, Antonidas felt alone and lost. He never thought he’d see Dalaran become a place of sham trials, and especially not behind closed doors rather than in the open court of the Kirin Tor. The Kirin Tor which these people had nerve to claim they were acting on behalf of.

  Just the day before, Antonidas had asked himself how, other than the Kirin Tor being inherently rotten, could Dalaran swing so far towards Altarac’s late ‘model of rule’ in such a short time? He’d thought it as a rhetorical question, but now it seemed there was an answer after all.

  The ones secretly hoping for a return of the old Magocracy had staged a coup d’etat.

  “The lack of an answer is an answer itself,” Councilor number two said, his race indistinguishable inside his robe while magic disguised his face and voice. “Are you sure you want others to decide in your stead what-“

  “Was it on purpose?” Antonidas cut him off.

  The Council was taken aback. By his gall to interrupt them. And by the fact that he’d made himself heard over them. The spell over the chamber was an old thing, to project the Council’s voices while allowing them to control whether or not the people below had the same privilege.

  Antonidas had subverted it before the doors had even finished closing. “Krasus’ true nature as a Dragon, the destabilization of Alterac’s royal mandate by heirs and spares trained in our ways, the purge of the Alchemists in Gilneas, did you know?”

  The Six didn’t answer immediately, and their disguises made it impossible for Antonidas to tell if it was because he struck a nerve or not. But the silence was damning all by itself, because it meant his words had found a mark.

  Whoever had replaced Krasus, Modera and Kael’Thas had reason to feel struck.

  “Did you turn a blind eye?” Antonidas pressed, his spirit seeping into the ground through the soles of his feet, shaping itself like runes and networks of curves and lines beneath the slate. “Did you help it along? If you’d known King Archibald was only slaughtering the Alchemists because the black dragon Syntharia had wormed her way into his mind, would you have acted to save him? Or would you have waited until the purge was complete, to have one rival less?”

  Is this a legitimate change in leadership or are you usurpers?

  “… Think carefully about what you are doing,” Councilor number three cautioned him, magic eliminating all inflection from his voice. “There is procedure to such things, are you sure you want to relinquish its protection?”

  “You were blind to the dragons in your midst,” Antonidas spat, his bottled anger almost enough to shock himself. Almost enough to break his focus from the arcane script he was turning his very own spirit into, seeping it into the enchantments in the floor, in defiance on the restriction spells. “And when reality caught up with you, you decided to play puppet-master with the rulers of three foreign nations, and for what? To make an enemy out of the one who’d just solved all our problems? No, no, I have no interest at all in the procedures of cowards.”

  “Take care of how you speak,” barked number four. “You are here at our sufferance.”

  “I am a member of the Kirin Tor, your employer.” The floor quite literally vibrated in tune with his angry growl, spirit tugging and twisting through the enchantments and back into itself, breaking and rebuilding the array under the surface. “I have come of my own volition, you exist at my sufferance. Remember that.”

  “Ahem,” Councilor five cleared his throat. “Perhaps you are the one with difficulty in remembering. Regardless, Dalaran’s governance policy is not on the docket for today.”

  “Sargeras.”

  This time their reactions couldn’t be contained, even by their obscuring arcane dress.

  “Sargeras. The Fallen Titan.” Glances exchanged – oh my, didn’t they know what the demon king once was? “Sargeras, the Burning Legion, the Old Gods of Spume and Flesh that the black dragons serve, the corruption rotting beneath the earth that seeps madness into the spirits of the very land itself, did you know about all that when you decided to make an enemy of the one person alive who can fix everything?”

  The Councilors looked at each other, their body language betraying that they hadn’t expected it to go like this.

  “The Burning Legion,” Antonidas said lowly. “Demons. Demons that wouldn’t be in Azeroth if Dalaran hadn’t been so careless with tearing the Arcane to pieces for the entirety of the Magocracy’s existence. The natural order itself became so weak as to let demons waltz right through out streets. The Council of Tirisfal, the Guardian, the Tirisgarde, none of them would have been needed if only we hadn’t been so careless!”

  “How do you know these things?!” Councilor six barked, giving up all pretense of decorum. “Where did you hear those names? How do you know this?! Who told you this?!”

  “Wayland can heal the Arcane itself, did you know?” Antonidas felt the way the statement stole the Council’s breath like a rebounding spell. “Any wielder of Light could do it, if only they knew what to look for. Oh, if only we weren’t so arrogant as to look down on all other forms of mysticism.”

  If only Dalaran had known the true role of the Arcane, if only they’d known the Light could heal it, if only the Magocracy had joined hands with the Church instead of having a literal shadow war for hundreds of years on end, if only Antonidas had accepted whatever harrowing it took to gain the Light’s grace, if only he had it now, to heal all the damage he had ever done to the Arcane, if only, if only if only if only…

  “I suppose Sargeras would still be here,” Antonidas said flatly. “But at least he’d be our only demonic problem, instead of the hidden mastermind waging war on the Guardians of the World itself while masquerading as your superweapon. Guardian of Tirisfal indeed!” Antonidas looked up at the Council of Six and stopped pretending they didn’t all know why he was really here. “I will never help you gain control of another one. The secret magic that ended the Troll Wars is in the right hands, and those hands are not yours.”

  “… Are those your final words?”

  “No.”

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  With a vicious wrench of his spirit, the floor cracked in the shape of lightning, and the air was split by a keening shriek as all of the Chamber’s magic shattered.

  “I, Who Am Aspirant of the Flame Imperishable, Am the Living Terminal by Which Abides Forever the Order Immanent.”

  “How-” “What-“ “Cease!” “Stop him-” “Stop him now!”

  “My Right is the World, My Might is the World, My Instrument is the World, my Charge is the World!”

  Elemental summoning fell to a counterspell, a fire snake was turned back on its caster, the third’s rain of magic missiles pummeled Antonidas into pulp but was undone just as fast by the figurine in his bag, a forcefield held back the elemental storm, and the next one too as Antonidas ascended in might so he could look down on these vipers.

  “My Right is Fate, My Foe is Time, My Charge is the Earth, My Might is the Void in the Twisting Dark!”

  “Profundus somnus!” “Broks uk srureuik-!” “Fac me de caelis-” “Frange vitam nolite corde-“

  Sleep had no hope against sheer rage, the blast of flames struck him while he was disrupting the third’s invisibility, pain didn’t exist because he’d spelled it off before he even stepped foot in this place, his burns were undone by his figurine just like all the damage of before, the sixth’s Death Spell-

  “Humiliaret eos et tolleret-“ “-ad tenebras usque in sempiternum!”

  - struck him head-on just when the binding spell locked him in place.

  For a moment, he saw a shining vortex in the sky of a world of monochrome grey.

  Then his spirit snapped back into place because death magic was useless if your will was weaker than the target, and Antonidas began the last weave of his real spell.

  “I’ve grasped knowledge you can’t dream, mastered magic you fear to name, crafted wonders you think impossible, I felled dragons older than mankind itself.” All new spell onslaughts struck Antonidas, but he grit his teeth through them as the world’s colors inverted. “Yet somehow, bureaucrats and paper-pushers who never suffered anything worse than papercuts still think they can talk down to me.” The air turned into shapes and letters made of rays. “Condescend to me.” The Arcane coiled like a spring as Antonidas boiled with indignant rage. “Dictate to me!” Only one of these frauds had even thought to hide and reassess instead of blindly attack in panicked rage, the imbeciles. “You are not worthy.”

  Amidst a whirl of constellations, a black hole in space opened right in the middle of the Chamber of Air, down where Antonidas had previously stood.

  Space broke.

  The suspended ringed platform exploded from just that moment’s exposure to the supergravity of a singularity.

  Masonry fell.

  Dust billowed.

  The Council of Six was cast down.

  With an effort of will that felt almost impossible, Antonidas commanded the black hole to end.

  The sphere of annihilation imploded and vanished before it outright killed anyone, and so these snakes merely fell down three stories worth of height.

  Limbs twisted, bones broke, joints dislocated, screams of pain sounded in the sudden darkness of the room, now bereft of the false sky that used to hide the dome ceiling and walls.

  Four spells in quick succession exposed four faces, a mighty slam of solidified air incapacitated the violet guards that finally barged into the room, a spell exposed the fifth, and the sixth-

  “Famine and death!”

  The sixth councilor plunged head-first to hide in the thickest cloud of dust in the darkest shadow, after deflecting Antonidas’ spell with a sword of all things.

  Plan your backstab, I have protection against that too.

  Antonidas landed and beheld the dregs who thought they had the right to ruin heroes. “Archmage Vargoth, Archmage Kel’Thusad.” For being the only two of the old guard that held out, he would give them the courtesy of their titles, but nothing more. “Guzbah, Arugal and… An elf I don’t know by name. Did you earn your place, or did you undermine your own Prince at the behest of these serpents?”

  The sixth Councillor jumped out of the black shadow right in front of Antonidas and stabbed him through the chest.

  Antonidas’s breath left him with a shocked stutter. He’d meant to move, but didn’t. Why? There – was a sword – there was a sword. Stuck through his chest. From – from front to back, a sword – a sword that wasn’t a sword, it wasn’t a sword – it was – evil – it was evil, evil, Evil, Evil in the shape of a sword – he – but – his spells – wards and force layers written in rune and weave, soul and bone – they – why – even his figurine didn’t stop this – how…?

  Blood poured from the stab, red tinted green. More blood flooded his throat, tasting like iron dipped in disease, pain… waste… fell pestilence given a weapon’s shape, what – what was this…?

  Thoughts skittered like dying wisps.

  Life raced away from him in a desperate bid to outrun death.

  Time slowed to a stop.

  The fists pushing forth the sword-shaped thing stopped against the interposed claw of a massive, see-through bronze dragon larger than Kairozdormu had ever been, so colossal that he shouldn’t have fit in the chamber.

  Antonidas stared, his lungs too damaged and his throat too full of blood to speak.

  From behind him, Wayland Hywel stepped up to the right of where Antonidas hung from the deathly blade, looking everywhere but at him.

  “You have an arrogance problem, Antonidas. The future I mean to break would see you die for it as surely as it wants you at the head of Dalaran.”

  Slowly, gently, careful to never make contact with the blade itself, the tall, older, regal version of his friend pulled Antonidas backwards, back and off the Evil-in-a-Sword’s-Shape. The Light was a river seeping into flesh, to mend and clean and push back the curses of death, violence and plagues trying to claim him. It was the greatest display of Wayland’s power Antonidas had ever felt, and it almost failed.

  “Think about it.”

  What… is happening?

  Wayland let Antonidas go, stepped forward and past the sword-shaped thing that was somehow shaking loose from literal stopped time, grabbed the sixth Councilor’s face with both hands, and bent to meet his eyes.

  The flow of time resumed with the sound of a thunderclap.

  Antonidas staggered back and almost fell.

  In front of him, back and away from him, the sixth councilor did fall, with a cry so loud, so soulful, so resoundingly wondrous that it felt like rapture.

  Antonidas stood, his mind a fog too numb to think of spells or fight.

  The sixth councilor was on his knees, hood down and face low, eyes alight with a golden glow and locked on the sight of his empty hands, as if he’d never seen them before.

  Between them, the Evil in the shape of a sword clattered to a stop along the cracked ground, still but not silent, a jagged slab of iron-looking ill will, etched with glowing, ominous death. And worse. In the green haze were faceless men, women and children pocked full of worms braying through pain and pestilence, strangers and friends and family killing each other with bare hands and teeth in an orgy of carnage.

  It was almost impossible to look away. When he finally did, the other five fallen councilors were staring at Antonidas. The two from the old guard in stunned amazement. The others with all the horror of the grave.

  None of them had witnessed what just happened, only that Antonidas had been run through by that monstrosity but was now fine, standing several feet away. They didn’t know…

  The Lord of Bronze Dragons. And Wayland. Here. Now. Come to save his life. From…

  The future?

  Through the door behind him, violet guards were now streaming into the ruined chamber, forming a wall of pikes and purple robes all around them, as if numbers might prevail where might had not, prevent escape.

  The sixth councilor looked up. The Light shone in his eyes, brightly, then steadily less and less until it faded entirely, along with the shimmers along his skin, and the last of religious ecstasy.

  The man lurched to his feet and staggered away from the sword in near panic, before distance and nausea seemed to snap him back to sense. Antonidas saw his face and didn’t recognize it at all.

  Who… are you?

  The man wrenched his arms up and clapped his hands with a shout.

  The hard stone flowed like mud to encase the sword in a layer of impenetrable hardness, a full hand’s length thick.

  Not done, the man wordlessly snapped his arms in several harsh, commanding patterns, then he made as if wrenching something from down and to the right.

  The floor split where his hand clawed at the air, and so did all the floors beneath, and the walls onwards and away until he found something-

  A small, gilded, heavily warded chest smashed up through the floor and into his arms.

  The man took a few shallow breaths and lunged forward and back in a single bound, smashing the chest against the edge of the block of stone – the locker split apart, the stone block had somehow become sharp enough to split brass?! The enchantment broke too, the evil magic had already seeped out through the rock layer thick enough to kill spells, what was that wretched thing?!

  Councilor six opened the trunk, and pulled out one of the most pristine, most powerful shrouds of mystical containment Antonidas had ever laid eyes on. A shroud of a sort that Antonidas had never seen outside the Violet Vault, on those few occasions he got authorization to go inside.

  The councilor used telekinesis to wrap the shroud tight around the sword-in-the-stone... Antonidas’ mind rebelled at his own wording, and then he noticed that the fel power was still seeping out through the shroud’s folds, by the Powers!

  The Councilor encased it in another layer of stone.

  Finally, the evil seemed to be contained.

  But how long would it last?

  With a stomp, the other man sent a ripple through the floor that had the thing rolling to a stop at Antonidas’ feet.

  “Make sure he gets it.” The man commanded Antonidas, as if he hadn’t just tried to murder him. Succeeded in murdering, if not for-

  “Laith!” Someone shouted, Councilor Guzbah? “What are you-?“

  “He and no one else,” ‘Laith’ stressed, completely ignoring his fellow. “Swear it, boy.”

  “…Alright.” With more dread than he’d ever felt outside that first sight of the mushroom cloud, Antonidas used telekinesis to stash the stone block into one of his bags of holding, knowing that everything else inside had just been written off. “I swear,” he said stiffly, feeling like he’d be signing his life away if he hadn’t already decided to leave. “I’ll get it to him.”

  With a relieved slump, the stranger seemed to lose almost all his verve and began to leave.

  “Sha'ol!” Arugal shouted after him, struggling to stand with a broken leg. “If you think-“

  “I’m going home. Don’t call on me again.”

  “If you think you can just-“

  “Do not,” the man turned a frightful glare on the Gilnean wizard. “Do not come looking for me and mine again. Ever.”

  Laith Sha'ol left, and no one barred his way.

  Antonidas had no idea what he was missing here, but quite frankly he didn’t give a damn anymore.

  He turned to glare at the battered Council of Six, now five. He reached into his travel bag. Everyone tensed, but he didn’t care about that anymore either. He pulled out a binder.

  The relief around him was almost physical, which only left Antonidas more incensed. None of them would feel relief again if they knew what was in these pages.

  With his lips curled in disgust, he tossed the thick folder on the ground between them. “With this, my debt to Dalaran is paid.”

  His final piece said, he also turned to leave.

  “Stop him!” “Belay that.” “Seize him!” “No.” “Let him go.”

  The elf had spoken in his favor? What a way to ruin a coup d’etat, too little too late.

  They were not worthy.

  Yet as Antonidas thought about what was in that binder, as he recalled that one occasion when he genuinely considered enchanting a sand copy of Dalaran just to see if destroying it would also destroy the real one, he began to suspect why Wayland hadn’t deigned to look at him just now, even though he’d come from the future itself to save his life.

  They were not worthy, but…

  Antonidas wasn’t worthy either.

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