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8 | THE MYSTARCHS AND THE SHADOW LEGION
Exploration
The years flowed on. Winters followed summers and passed again to winter, and the Enigma Primal did not present itself. Despite their dedicated effort, some of the Mystarchs began to fear that they would never realize the full potential of the Mysterium Primordial. In time, they began to return to their previous pursuits and studies. The translation of the full tome provided many new insights for them to work with, even if it could not be used as intended.
While the other Mystarchs remained largely sequestered in their personal chambers and laboratories, Al‐Idrisi’s interests had always been inclined towards his travels. He grew restless in the Alpine Mountains, and he longed to see new sights and explore new lands. Jarnsaxa’s tales of the Ursine histories had always intrigued him; in particular the ones involving Yggdrasil, the World Tree. Were there truly other worlds? If so, might an older, wiser race know more of the Mysterium Primordial?
Yggdrasil
Al‐Idrisi resolved to find out for himself. Jezebel had spoken at times of glimpsing other worlds in her divinations, but she knew not whether they were true sight or past visions of this world. Still, he told her of his plans and she agreed to accompany him again on this journey. Through her second sight, they found the entrance to the deep parts of the earth, where the roots of Yggdrasil wind their way through soil and stone with equal ease. For two months, Al‐Idrisi studied them and experimented carefully with all he knew of traveling magic.
Finally, he thought he saw how to use the roots to access the branches of Yggdrasil, which are all worlds in all universes. Uttering the words of magic over a selected root, Al‐Idrisi saw a portal open before him. He found himself looking at a mirror image of himself, which grinned and waved back at him. Overcome by surprise and triumph, he closed the portal and slumped back, lost in thoughts of power.
He understood the secret of planar travel now. Over the next months, he and Jezebel journeyed through the reaches of the UnderRealm, avoiding or battling the denizens of the darkness as they could. They sought roots of Yggdrasil that might lead them to branch‐worlds that differ greatly from Earth and they found many. Some branches were worlds nearly exactly like our own, and some were so different as to be utterly alien and hostile to life as we know it.
In one world, they encountered the mighty Sphinxes, although these future Godslayers knew nothing of the Mysterium Primordial. In another, the very air seared their eyes and sulfur assaulted their nostrils while in yet another no sound could be heard nor made, but an inhuman wailing pervaded all. As they explored, Jezebel began to sense a pattern in the arrangement of roots and which worlds were accessible to them as a result. She was soon able to guide them towards specific ones, and they decided to narrow their search to those worlds where they might receive assistance in locating the Enigma Primal.
On and on they traveled, through many realities and worlds until they came to a group of worlds that were, for lack of a better term, on branches of Yggdrasil that are “close” to each other. Something was wrong, though. Jezebel had begun to sense an evil presence, and with each new world her uneasiness increased. They began to see signs of corruption in the worlds they were visiting. The people, the landscapes, were… wrong. Twisted. They traveled more quickly through each new world, no longer sure if they were seeking the Enigma Primal or the source of whatever power it was that seemed to be perverting whole worlds.
Finally, they arrived in a plane where the air was thick with the smell of rot, and half‐imagined voices whispered terrible things in their ears. All was bleak and the barren landscape hung forever on the edge of twilight. No beings were to be found here, but Jezebel immediately sensed the presence of the Enigma Primal – the key to the Mysterium that they had long searched for.
The Enigma Primal
She and Al‐Idrisi gathered their courage and ventured out of their portal. Jezebel guided them far from the root of Yggdrasil that anchored their portal, and took them to an ancient ruin of crumbled and broken stone. In the center of the ruin, on a pedestal and guarded by wards, stood what they had crossed worlds and planar boundaries to find: the Enigma Primal, index to the Mysterium Primordial.
As Al‐Idrisi stepped forth into the ruin to claim the prize, the half‐heard whispers intensified to encompass agonizing shrieking and mad laughter. In between the babble, one word could be heard echoed over and over:
Visibly shaken, Al‐Idrisi reached up and used his arts to dispel the wards. Grasping the Enigma Primal to his chest, he and Jezebel turned to leave as quickly as they could. Flowing essence, black as the darkest night, began pouring out of the cracks of the ruins and bubbling up from the ground around them. The half‐heard whispers were half‐heard no longer, and the shrieks and laughter pierced their ears. Snatches of the insane mutterings could now be made out:
Pursuit
Al‐Idrisi and Jezebel stared in horror as the blackness began to form shapes around them, mirror images of their own two bodies but black as pitch and reflecting no light. As the shapes lurched towards them, Al‐Idrisi and Jezebel remembered that they were hardly defenseless and began lashing out with the most terrible and destructive magic they knew. The shadow beings fell back before their might, screaming and shrieking, but more of the fiends poured over their fallen brethren and the defeated shadows merely reformed themselves to continue the assault.
The two intrepid Mystarchs steadily retreated from the ever growing army, and finally Jezebel used most of her strength to call up a blazing wall of fire, temporarily separating them from the creatures. She collapsed, unconscious, and Al‐Idrisi took her and fled in terror back towards the root of Yggdrasil from which they had come.
Arriving at the root, he hastily opened a portal and leapt through it, still bearing the unconscious Jezebel. Turning back, he saw thousands upon thousands of the shadow forms, leaping and rolling over one another like great waves in a sea of darkness, quickly closing the gap between them. Seized by terror, Al‐Idrisi closed the portal and collapsed to the ground in exhaustion.
Awakening some hours later, though greatly relieved that they had escaped with their lives and the Enigma Primal both, Al‐Idrisi and the recovered Jezebel were freshly horrified to see thin, weedy tendrils of solid shadow reaching out from the root through which they had come. They immediately set off for the fortress in which dwelt their fellow Mystarchs, in the Alpine Mountains, determined to use the Enigma Primal to unlock the full potential of the Mysterium Primordial and combat this new threat.
The Mystarch Council
Soon enough, the eight Mystarchs were gathered in the heart of their Alpine fortress with the Enigma Primal and the Mysterium Primordial spread out before them. Al‐Idrisi and Jezebel talked to them of the Shadow they had encountered, and of the finding of the Enigma. As Al‐Idrisi opened the Enigma for the first time, there among the greatest Beast minds of their time, there was a collective gasp of dismay, for though most of it was blessedly intact, the first page, the key to the key, as it were, was missing. In fact, it had clearly been torn away willfully. The Enigma was thus worse than useless to the Mystarchs, for attempting to read it without the key would risk insanity and worse for the reader.
The frightening conclusion was inescapable: The Enigma had been a trap, placed there by the shadow beings, whom the Mystarchs began to collectively refer to as the Shadow, or the Shadow Legion. Even more terrifying was the theory proposed by Tarchon: the Shadow had set the trap not to capture whoever found it, but to follow the seekers back to their home world, presumably to take it for their own. Jezebel and Al‐Idrisi confirmed for their fellows that they had encountered worlds ‘near’ to the one on which they had found the Enigma that showed evidence of wholesale corruption by the Shadow.
The Mystarchs debated and argued for days as to the proper course of action, and eventually came to consensus that they lacked sufficient knowledge of the Shadow. Resolving to learn more, Al‐Idrisi and Jezebel agreed to seek out the Shadow once again, this time with all of the Mystarchs backing them up save Zahhak, who felt someone should stay behind and seek a way to recreate the missing first page of the Enigma.
The Mystarchs set off to seek knowledge of the Shadow Legion, and while much could be written of the trials and travails they endured in their search, they eventually found the knowledge they sought.
The Darklords
On a forgotten world far on the fringes of Yggdrasil, beings of Shadow arose. Whether this was long ago or yet sometime in the future is not known, for the Shadow does not move through the currents of time as we do. The Mystarchs were able to discover only that the first of the Shadow Legion to arise grew mighty and dominated the others of their kind.
These masters of the Shadow were and are called the Darklords and though their ultimate goals are not known, it became clear to the Mystarchs that Tarchon’s frightening theory was correct. The Shadow was looking for a way to a new series of worlds to conquer, and the Enigma had been set out as a trap for any beings capable of crossing the boundaries between the worlds. Al‐Idrisi and Jezebel did not truly escape after all. They were permitted to leave, and the Shadow followed them to Earth, though imperfectly.
The trail that Al‐Idrisi and Jezebel left was not…wide enough…for lack of a better expression, for the Shadow to come through in true strength yet but there was little doubt among the Mystarchs that the Darklords would be bending their will to expand the channel that Al‐Idrisi and Jezebel had inadvertently created between our world and the worlds of the Shadow Legion.
The Madness of Zahhak
Returning to their Alpine fortress, the Mystarchs found a scene of nightmare. Bodies, torn in half, lined the fortress walls and pools of blood dotted the courtyard. Inside was even worse, and in the center of the nightmare stood Zahhak, cackling insanely.
Though the other seven Mystarchs were able to subdue Zahhak, they found him possessed of a wild mystical strength he had not previously exhibited. Imprisoning him underneath their fortress and placing warding spells on him to prevent him from using magic they began to question him. Through his incessant cackling they were able to learn that while they were gone, he had made significant headway in recreating the key to the Enigma Primal, but was never able to complete it. Believing that his partial key would suffice, Zahhak had attempted to read the Enigma, to the doom of his mind. It revealed to him the true scope of the Shadow and drove him mad in the process.
Zahhak had begun to kidnap Beasts from the surrounding area to perform what he called his experiments on them. In his now‐twisted mind he believed he was trying to learn some great secrets that would serve as weapons against the Shadow. Score upon score of Beasts met their demise at his hands while the other Mystarchs journeyed the reaches of Yggdrasil searching for the truth of the Darklords and the Shadow.
The Mystarchs knew little of the mind and had no method by which to reverse the damage done to Zahhak. They resolved that they must keep him imprisoned until such time as they could find a way to cure him, but given that they now felt they must devote themselves to the coming threat of the Shadow Legion, it seemed likely that Zahhak would live out the rest of his days as a madman in a cell.
A year went by, and then another and the only sign of the Shadow were the tendrils still reaching out from the root by which Al‐Idrisi and Jezebel had brought back the Enigma Primal. A decade passed, and while the Mystarchs grew in power, no new signs of the Shadow made themselves known. Perhaps the Darklords had turned their will elsewhere and no longer sought this world?