Chapter 126 (Part 2): The Alchemy of Ascent
A Relic of Lost Kinship
Bennett stared at the broomstick in his hands, then at the two shell-shocked disciples behind Archmage Zoltan. A laugh bubbled up from his throat—sharp, disbelieving, edged with the recklessness of youth.
"A broom?" He arched an eyebrow, feigning innocence. "Forgive my ignorance, Master Zoltan, but aren't flight spells child's play? Even apprentices know how to jury-rig a levitation charm."
The plaza's air turned glacial. Zoltan's beard quivered like an angered porcupine. "Child's play?" The cobblestones beneath their feet liquefied momentarily before freezing into jagged ice shards. "You insolent whelp! Show me one artifact in your possession that matches my genius!"
Bennett reached into his dimensional satchel. The flight cloak unfurled like liquid moonlight, its silver threads whispering of storms crossed and mountains scaled.
"My late master's gift," he said softly. "A relic even children recognize."
Zoltan's fury crumbled. His gnarled fingers traced the cloak's hem with trembling reverence. "Gandolf…you kept it all these years…" Tears glistened in the creases of his eyes. "I wove this for him during the Dragonfrost Rebellion. My first true creation."
The admission hung between them—a bridge spanning generations.
The Void Where Magic Should Be
Bennett's fingers brushed the cloak's twin mana crystals, cold even through his gloves. "Your craftsmanship honors his memory. But this broom—"
"—is nothing like that trinket!" Zoltan snatched the broom back, his sorrow transmuting back to manic pride. "Observe, hatchling! No crystals! No conduits! No mana!"
The truth struck Bennett like a thunderclap. He ran his hands along the broom's gnarled handle, peeled back its straw bristles. No hidden compartments. No enchanted gems. Just ordinary oak and hemp, humming with impossible energy.
"You've…harnessed ambient ley lines?" he breathed. "Or perhaps created a self-sustaining—"
"Wrong!" Zoltan's cackle shook loose a shower of mortar from the tower. "It consumes nothing! Draws nothing! The magic is…here!" He tapped his temple. "In the spaces between equations!"
Bennett's mind raced. No fuel source. No conservation of energy. This violates every law of thaumaturgy!
The Calculus of Heresy
Across the plaza, Zoltan's disciples exchanged knowing looks. The younger one mimed snapping his neck.
"You're puzzled." Zoltan grinned, revealing teeth stained by a hundred unstable elixirs. "Why do you think these cowards refuse to test it?"
Bennett glanced at the disciples' bandaged limbs. "Because it's lethal."
"Because it's perfection!" The archmage whirled, robes flaring like a raven's wings. "For centuries, we've been chained to mana crystals and sacrificial rituals! My broom needs only belief! A pure union of form and function!"
The revelation hit Bennett like a forge hammer. This isn't magic. It's artifice—the kind that topples kingdoms.
Bargaining With Madness
"I'll test it." The words left Bennett's lips before caution could intervene. "On two conditions."
Zoltan's eyes narrowed. "Speak."
"First—" Bennett pointed to the broom. "You teach me its making. Every equation. Every failed prototype."
"Done!"
"Second—" He met the archmage's gaze unflinching. "When it kills me, you deliver the Prism Heart to my grave."
Silence. Then Zoltan threw back his head and roared with laughter.
"Kill you? Boy, this broom will make you god!"
Ascension Protocol
The disciples scrambled back as Zoltan activated the broom's runes. Crimson sigils flared to life along the handle—not etched, but grown from the wood's grain.
"Mount it like you'd ride a dragon!" Zoltan barked. "Left hand here! Right foot—no, you imbecile, bend the knee!"
Bennett swung a leg over. The broom bucked like a live thing, its vibrations syncing with his heartbeat.
"Now!" Zoltan's voice rose to a shriek. "Believe the sky is yours!"
Bennett closed his eyes.
The cloak required storms. This…this requires surrender.
He let go.
The First Law Broken
The tower shrank to a black needle beneath him. Wind tore at his clothes, but the broom's grip held true—no mana expenditure, no draining fatigue. Pure velocity.
It's not flying, he realized. It's rewriting reality's permission.
Zoltan's scream followed him into the clouds: "Faster! Faster! Test the spiral dive!"
Bennett angled downward. The ground rushed up, a mosaic of screaming faces and upturned wands. At the last heartbeat, he jerked upward—
—and the world exploded in light.
Aftermath of Revelation
He awoke in a crater of melted glass, the broom's handle still smoking in his grip. Zoltan loomed overhead, eyes blazing with triumph.
"Seventy-three seconds! A record!"
Bennett spat out a mouthful of blood and grinned. "When do we start lessons?"
Somewhere beyond the ringing in his ears, Clarke's prayers to every known deity blended seamlessly with the disciples' horrified whimpers.
Chapter 127 (Part 1): The Price of Curiosity
A Pact Sealed in Madness
Zoltan's eyes widened, his breath hitching like a steam engine on the brink of explosion. For a moment, the courtyard hung suspended—a dragonfly caught in amber. Then the archmage lunged forward, seizing Bennett's wrist with fingers like rusted iron clamps.
"You…want to learn?" Zoltan's voice trembled with manic joy. "You believe in my Sky-Cleaver?"
Bennett winced at the vise-like grip. "Of course! If it works as you claim, it'll rewrite every magical treatise ever penned."
The archmage whirled on his cowering disciples, spittle flying. "Hear that, you faithless worms? This pup sees genius where you see folly!" He kicked a discarded stabilizer rune across the cobblestones. "Out! Both of you! Fetch the resonance calibrators while I school proper scholars!"
As the apprentices scrambled away, Clarke stepped forward, his voice thin with desperation. "Master Zoltan, the Chairman's summons—"
"Bah!" Zoltan brandished the smoking broomstick like a scepter. "Orpheus can suckle on thunderbird eggs for all I care! This boy and I have alchemy to brew!"
Bennett interjected smoothly, "A brief delay, Archmage. Let me appease the Chairman first. Then…" He hefted the Prism Heart, its kaleidoscopic glow painting his grin in fractured rainbows. "We'll conquer gravity itself."
The Geometry of Deception
Zoltan's nostrils flared, the battle between impatience and strategy playing across his weathered face. Finally, he barked a laugh and shoved the broomstick into Bennett's arms.
"Take it! Study its bones! But know this—" He leaned in until their foreheads nearly touched, breath reeking of burnt sulfur. "Swallow one syllable of my designs, and you're mine. Not Gandolf's ghost, not the Council's pawns—mine. Understood?"
The unspoken threat hung like a guillotine blade: Cross me, and I'll carve that curiosity from your still-breathing corpse.
Bennett bowed, the motion perfectly balanced between respect and mockery. "Your disciple awaits, Master."
As Zoltan stomped away, Clarke exhaled a decade's worth of tension. "That stone's cursed," he muttered, eyeing the Prism Heart. "Last wizard who touched it dissolved into singing mist."
"Then I'll hum along," Bennett said, pocketing the gem. Its vibrations synced with the strange harmonics in his blood—a duet only he could hear.
Chamber of Whispers
The Chairman's sanctum defied physics. What should have been a cramped tower apex yawned into a cathedral-sized chamber, its vaulted ceiling lost in shadow. Ancient tapestries depicting forgotten spells rustled in nonexistent breezes.
"Spatial folding," Clarke explained, noting Bennett's awe. "Every Guild tower's interior is…flexible."
A circular door groaned open, disgorging a figure that stopped Bennett's breath.
Chairman Orpheus stood framed in archway light—raven-haired, obsidian-eyed, his features mirroring Bennett's ancestral memories of a homeland lost to time and dimensions. The white lab coat hung askew, one sleeve scorched, the other stained with what looked suspiciously like blueberry jam.
"Ah, our wandering scholar!" Orpheus's voice resonated with layered harmonics, each syllable brushing against Bennett's mind like cat's paws. "Forgive the theatrics. Zoltan's latest tantrum required containment."
Bennett's fingers twitched. He knows. About the Prism Heart. About Zoltan's designs. About—
"Sit," Orpheus commanded, gesturing to ivory-white domes scattered like fallen moons. "Mara mammoth skulls. Surprisingly ergonomic."
As Bennett lowered himself onto cold bone, the Chairman's smile sharpened. "Now…let's discuss why Gandolf's ghost led you to my doorstep."
The Unspoken Curriculum
Orpheus paced, his shadow stretching and warping across grimoire-laden shelves. "Zoltan's broom isn't his first heresy. Last year, he tried grafting dragonflight runes onto carrier pigeons. The resulting…incident required three memory purges."
Bennett kept his face neutral. The Prism Heart burned against his thigh.
"You've tasted his madness," the Chairman continued. "Now taste mine." He snapped his fingers.
The chamber unfolded.
Reality peeled back like onion skin, revealing concentric rings of floating libraries, alchemical forges, and something that looked disturbingly like a sentient storm contained in crystal. At the center pulsed a black hole trimmed in gold filigree—the Guild's fabled Arcane Core.
"Choose your path, Bennett Rollins." Orpheus's eyes became event horizons. "Zoltan offers chaos. I offer order. But both demand…"
The Core's gravity tugged at Bennett's soul.
"...sacrifice."
Chapter 127 (Part 2): The Bones We Bargain With
A Titan's Shadow
The creature's skull gleamed on Orpheus's desk—ivory turned to stone by millennia, its hollow eye sockets large enough to swallow Bennett's head whole.
"Northern Frostbehemoth," the Chairman said, noting Bennett's stare. "Not magical, yet their tusks pierce dragonhide. Curious, isn't it? That nature breeds terrors rivaling our sorcery."
Bennett forced his gaze away. The beast's presence filled the chamber like a living threat, its fossilized roar echoing in the silence between questions.
Orpheus poured steaming liquid into a cup carved from what Bennett prayed was ceramic. "Eldergrass infusion. Bitter, yes?" He added a pinch of dried leaves that crackled like old parchment. "But you'll appreciate the Nordic Citrusleaf's touch."
The first sip burned Bennett's tongue—earthy bitterness chased by citrus sharpness. Calcium carbonate extraction via acidic dissolution, his alchemist's mind translated. Crude bone fortification.
"A tribal remedy," he said, meeting Orpheus's obsidian gaze. "For skeletal density. Though prolonged use risks renal calcification."
The Chairman's smile held the weight of glacier ice. "Precisely why I require your…unfiltered recollections of Gandolf's final days."
Lies Woven With Truth
Bennett's throat tightened. This wasn't interrogation—it was dissection.
"He fell battling Sir Hersein," he began, letting grief roughen his voice. Tears streaked his dust-reddened eyes, a calculated vulnerability. "Beyond the Great Circle Lake, where—"
"—no sane soul ventures," Orpheus finished. "Yet Gandolf was never sane, was he? Obsessed with that damned forest's secrets."
The Chairman circled, boots crunching invisible snow. "A Frostfang Alpha pack? A broodmother Arachnae? Child's play for him. What truly shattered the Chronohedron?"
Bennett's pulse thundered. He knows about the time fracture.
"Hersein's final strike," he whispered. "The heretic channeled light beyond the Holy Canon. Gandolf contained the blast, but…" His fingers brushed the fossilized behemoth tusk. "Even titans break."
The Fracture Beneath The Frost
Orpheus stilled. "You witnessed the Chronohedron's collapse."
Not a question.
Bennett nodded, leaning into the memory's jagged edges. "Reality…unfolded. One moment Hersein's blade gleamed—the next, Gandolf stood amidst shards of frozen time. He said…"
A gamble. A truth too wild to fabricate.
"...'Tell them the Key is buried with me.'"
The chamber's temperature plummeted. Frost spiraled up the behemoth's tusks as Orpheus's composure cracked. "Key? What Key?"
"I assumed metaphor." Bennett shrugged, innocence perfected through lifetimes of deception. "Perhaps to his wine cellar?"
The Dance of Ravens
Orpheus's laughter shook dust from ancient grimoires. "Oh, you're his heir indeed—same infuriating obliqueness!"
He seized Bennett's wrist, the Eldergrass cup shattering forgotten. "That forest swallowed more than your master. Hersein's corpse vanished. The Chronohedron's remnants…pulsed. What did you see?"
Bennett leaned into the pain. "Shadows with too many teeth. A crown of frozen flames." He bared teeth in a grief-stricken rictus. "And eyes. Everywhere, eyes."
The Chairman recoiled as if struck. For a heartbeat, fear flickered beneath his marble demeanor—recognition.
The Unspoken Compact
When Orpheus spoke again, his voice carried the finality of tomb seals. "You'll return to the Northern Wastes. With Zoltan's contraption and my resources."
Bennett's protest died as the Chairman pressed a sigil-etched coin into his palm—the Guild's mark overlapped with Hersein's defaced holy symbol.
"Find what killed them," Orpheus commanded. "And if it wears Gandolf's face…"
The unspoken threat hung colder than the Frostbehemoth's gaze.
Bennett pocketed the coin, its edges biting flesh. "What do I tell Zoltan?"
"That truth we all crave." The Chairman turned to the fossilized beast, fingertips tracing its petrified roar. "That magic's bones run deeper than we dared dig."