Chapter 124: The Six Pillars of Power
The Puppeteers of the Guild
Clarke's rise to Steward was no accident. In the labyrinthine hierarchy of the Roland Continental Mage Guild, true power lay not in raw magical prowess but in the hands of those who pulled strings from shadowed corridors. The eight-tiered archmages? Reclusive titans lost in their obsessions—ethereal geometry, necrotic resonance, or the alchemy of stars. They cared little for ledgers, trade routes, or the thousand petty squabbles that kept the Guild's gears grinding.
No, the real architects were the Six Stewards.
Bennett's mind raced as Clarke explained. Six mid-tier mages, all protégés of the Guild's elder masters, their fingers dipped in every pie: funding allocations, enforcement squads, the covert acquisition of dragonbone and starlight moss. A sixth-tier mage like Clarke, with his silver tongue and taste for noble wine, fit the role like a dagger in velvet.
"Stewardship requires…flexibility," Clarke murmured, adjusting his new badge—a serpent coiled around a quill. "Archmage Torvin once said governance is the art of making gods' whims look like mortal logic."
Bennett smirked. Flexibility. A pretty word for corruption.
The Price of Ambition
Clarke's path hadn't been smooth. His late master, Archmage Voss of the Obsidian Tower, had been his shield—until a wasting curse left the old man's bones brittle as autumn leaves. Overnight, Clarke became a pawn without a patron, his stewardship dreams crumbling like a poorly cast ward.
Then came Bennett.
The boy's sudden ascension as Magic Scholar—a title dormant for decades—had sent shockwaves through the Guild's ossified ranks. Chairman Orpheus himself demanded a liaison, someone who'd brushed close enough to the prodigy to leash him. Clarke, the failed mentor, became the perfect pawn reborn.
"You've my gratitude," Clarke said, voice low as they passed a mural of melting clocks. "Without your…unconventional rise, I'd still be brewing truth serums for cheating spouses."
Bennett's smile hid knives. Use me, and I'll use you harder.
The Hexagram's Heart
The central spire loomed—a six-pointed monolith humming with layered wards. No doors marred its seamless walls; no windows offered glimpses of the inner sanctum. Clarke led Bennett to an alcove veined with glowing crystals.
"Watch your step," Clarke warned as the floor's hexagram flared. Bennett's Scholar badge pulsed in reply, its magic a cold kiss against his ribs. Reality peeled back like burnt parchment, depositing them in a corridor where the air tasted of static and old secrets.
"Transportation matrix," Clarke explained. "Unauthorized entry triggers…countermeasures." His gaze flicked to a statue of a mage petrified mid-scream.
Bennett's skin prickled. The walls themselves seemed to breathe, whispering half-formed curses in dead tongues.
The Keepers of Silence
Two figures materialized at the final gate—twin specters in bone-white robes stitched with blackflame sigils. Their faces drowned in hooded shadows, but their presence bit. Bennett's vaunted mental shields—the ones that had shrugged off lesser mages—shattered like glass beneath their gaze.
It wasn't strength that broke him. Their minds moved sideways, bypassing logic to spear primal fears: the suffocating dark of a childhood cellar, the wet rasp of his mother's final breaths. Bennett's knees buckled.
"Enough!" Clarke barked, slamming his staff. "This is the Chairman's guest!"
The pressure lifted, leaving Bennett gasping. The left Enforcer tilted its head, voice a blade dragged across slate: "Scholar…or sacrifice. Time tells."
The Forge of Chains
Beyond the gate sprawled the Core Sanctum—a cavernous chamber dominated by a blood-hued hexagram. Six obsidian pillars throbbed at its points, each etched with runes that squirmed under Bennett's stare. The air reeked of scorched ozone and something older: the tang of bargains carved in angel marrow.
Clarke's earlier swagger vanished. "The True Transport Matrix," he whispered. "It connects not just to our branches, but to…elsewhere. The Enforcers guard it. And it guards them."
Bennett's Scholar badge burned icy now, its magic harmonizing with the matrix. Shadows pooled at the hexagram's center, coalescing into a shape too vast for the room—a clawed hand, a cyclopean eye.
Chairman Orpheus' voice boomed from nowhere and everywhere:
"Welcome, Bennett of House Rollins. Let us discuss…hybridization."
Chapter 125: The Crucible of Madness
Whispers in the Obsidian Spire
The air inside the Mage Guild's inner sanctum hummed with ancient power, the ground beneath Bennett's feet thrumming like the pulse of some slumbering leviathan. Clarke led him past monolithic pillars carved with glyphs that slithered under his gaze, their meanings lost to time—or perhaps to the Guild's deliberate secrecy.
"Stay close," Clarke muttered, his newly minted Steward's badge glinting like a shard of ice. "The Enforcers… they're not the only dangers here."
Bennett nodded absently, his mind still reeling from the encounter with the hooded figures at the transport matrix. Their psychic assault had left his mental shields in tatters, a vulnerability he masked beneath wide-eyed curiosity. A weakness, he thought, to be rectified.
The central tower loomed ahead, its obsidian surface drinking the sunlight. Eighty-eight meters of arrogance, its shadow stretching across the plaza like a blade.
The Architect of Folly
They never saw the explosion coming.
A gout of green flame erupted from the tower's base, followed by a cackle that could curdle milk. Out stumbled a figure straight from a child's nightmare: a wizened old man in a filth-streaked robe, his beard knotted into a lopsided bow. In his gnarled hands, he clutched a broomstick—or what remained of one. Its bristles smoked ominously.
"Hah! Hah!" The ancient mage danced a jig, his laughter echoing off the plaza's stones. "Decades of work! Centuries! And I, Magnus the Unbound, have triumphed!"
Clarke froze mid-step, his face paling. "Archmage Zoltan," he breathed, steering Bennett toward the edge of the path. "Bow. Now."
Bennett complied, though his gaze lingered on the old man's Ninth-Circle insignia. Power radiated from him in waves, chaotic and intoxicating.
A Lesson in Gravity
Two gray-robed mages slunk from the tower, their postures screaming reluctance. Zoltan rounded on them, brandishing the smoldering broom.
"You! And you!" He jabbed the stick at their chests. "Who'll be first to ride the ZX-3000? Eternal glory awaits!"
The senior mages exchanged glances heavy with shared trauma.
"Master," ventured the balder one, "perhaps we should consult the Healing Wing's trauma wards first. Last week's… incident with the levitation boots—"
"Pah!" Zoltan's beard quivered with indignation. "Cowards! Fools! Where's your spirit of inquiry?"
His rheumy eyes locked onto Bennett.
"Ah! Fresh meat!"
Before Clarke could react, Zoltan flicked a finger. Bennett's boots left the ground, pulled toward the mad archmage by invisible threads.
The Calculus of Survival
Clarke's hand twitched toward his wand—then stilled. Even a Steward knew better than to challenge a Ninth-Circle mage in his element.
"Young man!" Zoltan peered at Bennett through a monocle cracked in three places. "Ever flown?"
Bennett's mind raced. Denial risked offense; enthusiasm invited mutilation. He settled on wide-eyed awe. "Only in dreams, Lord Archmage."
Zoltan's grin revealed three missing teeth. "Dreams? Dreams?" He thrust the broom into Bennett's hands. "Today, you live them!"
The artifact thrummed with unstable energy. Bennett recognized the telltale shimmer of half-tamed spatial magic—and the stench of burnt feathers from prior failures.
Wings of Hubris
"Grip here! No, here! Are you blind?" Zoltan adjusted Bennett's fingers with surprising gentleness. "Now, channel your mana through the handle. Gently! Like courting a virgin phoenix!"
Bennett complied, pouring a trickle of energy into the device. The broom shuddered, then lifted a hand's breadth off the ground.
Zoltan's disciples edged backward.
"Magnificent!" The archmage danced in a circle. "Now ascend! The skies await!"
Bennett hesitated. The last 'volunteer' had reportedly embedded himself in a cathedral's stained glass window.
Clarke's voice cut through his calculations: "The boy's untrained, Lord Zoltan! Surely—"
"Silence, lickspittle!" Zoltan's aura flared, pressing Clarke to his knees. "Greatness requires sacrifice! Up, boy! Up!"
Bennett closed his eyes and pushed.
The world dissolved into vertigo.
Echoes of Ambition
Later, they'd say the explosion lit up the northern slums.
Bennett came to sprawled across a gargoyle's head, his clothes smoking, the broomstick reduced to splinters. Far below, Zoltan's laughter rang out.
"Marvelous! Utterly marvelous! The combustion ratio's improved by 12%!"
Clarke helped him down, face ashen. "You're alive. Thank whatever gods you fancy."
Bennett spat out a mouthful of soot. His ribs ached, his hair reeked of sulfur, but his grin burned brighter than the archmage's flames.
This, he thought, watching Zoltan berate his cowering disciples, is power unshackled. And I will have it.
Chapter 126 (Part 1): The Broomstick Gambit
A Collision of Egos
Clarke's blood turned to ice. Before them stood Archmage Zoltan—a living relic whose temper was as volatile as the unstable portals he engineered. At 160 years old, the man had mentored half the Guild's current leadership, including Chairman Orpheus himself. His beard, braided into a whimsical bow, did nothing to soften the aura of madness crackling around him.
"M-Master Zoltan!" Clarke bowed so low his nose nearly brushed the cobblestones. "This is Bennett Rollins, the Scholar recently appointed by the Chairman. We're en route to—"
"Silence, lickspittle!" Zoltan's gnarled hand shot out, seizing Bennett's wrist with surprising strength. "So you're Gandolf's last whelp? Pathetic! Scrawny as a plucked phoenix! But no matter—you'll do!"
Bennett met the archmage's feverish gaze unflinchingly. Behind them, Zoltan's two disciples exchanged relieved glances, their robes still singed from whatever catastrophe had preceded this encounter.
The Art of Negotiation
"Assist me with a trifling experiment," Zoltan crooned, gesturing to the smoking broomstick at his feet, "and I'll grace you with treasures beyond your meager imagination."
Clarke's warning glare screamed Run! Bennett ignored it.
"Respected Archmage," he began, voice sweetened with mock innocence, "does Guild law not stipulate that only one's own apprentices may be commandeered for personal projects?" He tapped his Scholar's badge—a shield against exploitation. "Unless, of course, you'd care to petition my late master's surviving disciples for permission?"
Zoltan's face purpled. The unspoken threat hung heavy: Gandolf's remaining students included three members of the Council of Nine.
"Insolent maggot!" The archmage's free hand crackled with chain lightning. "I'll—!"
"Unless," Bennett cut in smoothly, "the reward proves exceptionally persuasive."
The Chromatic Bargain
Zoltan's rage evaporated into gleeful cackling. "Clever boy! Clever, clever!" From his stained robes emerged a lacquered box. Within lay a gem that defied reason—its facets shimmered with all hues at once, as though someone had trapped a rainbow mid-shatter.
"The Prism Heart," Zoltan whispered reverently. "Forged from the tears of sea titans, tempered in volcanic ley lines. Worth ten kingdoms. Yours...if you survive."
Behind them, Zoltan's senior disciple choked. "Master! That stone took decades to—!"
"SILENCE!" The archmage's roar flattened his apprentices against the tower walls. "This whelp has spine! You?" He spat at their feet. "Worthless shriekers who wet yourselves at the first altitude tremor!"
Bennett's pulse quickened. This stone...its resonance...could it be what I've been searching for?
Terms of Engagement
"The gem intrigues me," Bennett allowed, feigning nonchalance. "But first—what exactly does your 'experiment' entail?"
Zoltan kicked the broomstick upward, catching it like a warrior brandishing a spear. "Behold! The Sky-Cleaver 3000! My magnum opus!" The 'broom' was a nightmare of fused metals, its handle studded with glowing runes that screamed untested.
"Flight," the archmage breathed, eyes alight. "Not the pitiful levitation those Council fools peddle, but true dominion over the winds! No mana expenditure! No incantations! Just..." He stroked the contraption lovingly. "Pure. Mechanical. Genius."
Clarke mouthed NO behind Zoltan's back. Bennett noted the broom's frayed stabilizer charms and the faint stench of charred feathers.
"You want me," he said slowly, "to ride this...thing."
"To soar!" Zoltan corrected. "Be the first mortal to dance with storm spirits!"
Bennett's mind raced. The Prism Heart's energy signature matches the ritual diagrams in Gandolf's forbidden journals. If it can stabilize the—
"One condition," he declared. "I pilot it my way."
Inheritance of Fools
Zoltan's laughter shook dust from the tower stones. "Bold! Deliciously bold! Very well, hatchling—let's see if Gandolf's ghost taught you more than cheap parlour tricks!"
As the archmage prattled about throttle settings and "aerodynamic resonance," Bennett's fingers brushed the Prism Heart. Its vibrations sang through his bones—a chord that harmonized with the strange frequency humming in his blood since the Enforcers' mental assault.
This changes everything, he realized. If Zoltan's toy kills me, the stone still gets me closer to unraveling my curse. And if I survive...
High above, storm clouds gathered.