Adept (The Essence Gate War, Book 1) - By Michael Arnquist Page 0,36
try to do justice to a drastically shortened version.”
He leaned back and the shadows folded about him, leaving only the faint outline of his features and the luminous glow of the firelight from his eyes. His voice, sepulchral of a sudden, slid from the darkness to encircle them, and Amric felt the hair on the back of his neck prickle as he listened.
“Centuries ago, so many centuries ago that written histories of the era are lost to the fogs of time, a mighty human sorcerer walked this world. Obsessed with the arcane from his youth, he advanced his knowledge with single-minded determination. When he surpassed his masters, he abandoned them to find more. Eventually, so rapid was his learning, he exhausted the mentors who were willing to teach him. The few who had knowledge he did not became reluctant to share it, alarmed by his unchecked increase in power and his continual lust for more. But the sorcerer would not be thwarted, and his tenuous grasp on morals fell before his drive. He captured those who would not willingly aid him and wrested away their secrets, and he stole the artifacts others sought to keep from him. When he had reached the boundaries of mortal knowledge, still he was not content. He reached into the dark energies beyond, probing, experimenting, mastering. Other masters panicked at the path he was traversing, but he was beyond reason and had grown too powerful for them to prevent his progress. Some tried to combine their forces against him, but aided by his new dark powers, he repelled them with ease.
“He grew older, and became concerned that he would reach the limit of his mortal lifespan before he had mastered all things arcane, and furthermore became increasingly convinced that he should not be subject at all to that most mundane of limits on lesser beings. His research became focused on this goal above all others, and at any cost, for achieving it would enable an eternity of further advancement. Here his dark mastery offered tantalizing possibilities, and he pursued them with fervor. Eventually he succeeded, and achieved immortality at the cost of his remaining humanity. A bargain price, some would argue, as he had little enough of that to begin with. He supplanted his own spark of life, his very soul if you will, with the wicked energy of Unlife, and became even more formidable as undead than he was when living. And if certain sacrifices were required to sustain his infinite life, well, then such actions were assuredly justified when weighing the fleeting, impotent lives of lesser beings to the needs of a titan such as himself.
“His foul deeds did not go unnoticed, however, and the populace rose against him in increasing numbers. To defend himself the sorcerer reared his own forces, pressing savage races into service and raising his slain foes as undead to swell his ranks. Enraged at the audacity of the common vermin, he unleashed his vengeance in the form of veritable seas of dark forces guided by his potent mind and arcane might. City after city fell before him, razed to the ground, and entire nations followed. Historians hold that at one point his armies had conquered a third or more of all known civilization, and his thirst for blood was still not slaked.
“Putting aside their differences, the remaining lands united against him as one, realizing that he was on the brink of sweeping them all from the map. They called themselves the White Alliance, a pompous name if ever I have heard one, but nevertheless they assembled numbers not seen before or since on this world. The opposing forces amassed to face each other, blackening the earth from horizon to horizon, from the Valley of Souls to the Talus mountain range. The White Alliance pressed its foe on all sides with its greater numbers, but the sorcerer’s war magic and necromancy were rapidly turning the tide. The Alliance leaders knew they could not be victorious in a direct clash, when mortal men faced pit creatures and undying troops, and their own dead rose against them under control of the foe. But they had a different strategy from the beginning. In a cunning series of multi-pronged attacks, they coordinated all of their forces to spear deep into the sorcerer’s territory, with the goal of severing the head from the snake. It was their fervent hope that his unearthly forces would follow him into oblivion.