12.28 - Shadow Wizard Money Gang: Legends Fallen, Legends Reborn

Robin Aldehyde blinks back tears of confusion and rage as he stumbles through the mists of the ethereal plane, passing through the walls of battle-wracked Last Rest as if there were but the remnants of a waking nightmare. Why would Elfriede turn on him like that? He had the wizard on his last legs--legendary archmage or not, this "Emelyn" had clearly given up his title of hero long ago to side with the likes of Haphaestus Arms in attempting to remove the security of the Nexus. MY Nexus, comes the furious thought, unbidden, but the pain breaks through the rage as his mind raced back over the last few moments.   Elfirede and himself sprinting downstairs in pursuit of the thief in the Library who had pickpocketed the Nexus from him, the rest of the party heading out to confront Haphaestus's attempted takeover of the town. Descending to the locked door of his laboratory and blasting it open with one of his archanotech mines. A masked magician lying momentarily stunned on the laboratory floor, the Nexus knocked from his hands as he was caught unawares in the midst of his covert investigation. Robin leaping for the Architect relic as Elfriede cried out in confusion and despair, calling out Emelyn the Grey by name, beseeching his childhood hero to stay his hand. The masked archmage responding with some cryptic line about having searched too long... did he speak to Asativarainuth there for a moment? something about the "Old Master?"   At that point, Robin was too full of the new power coursing through his veins from the Nexus in his hand, unlocked and unleashed for the first time, to say for certain--a dream of the potential of archanotech come true. He remembers tearing aside the meteor swarm summoned by the Archmage from the heavens above as if there were mere playthings, casting an aura of Aid upon himself and his brother-at-arms behind him... Why did Elfriede not strike? Why did he waver? Tears blind Robin again at the memory, and he nearly falls as he stumbles through the northern wall of the town in his flight, and he shakes his head, his memory as blurry as his vision. He recalls Emelyn raising his staff, an arcane relic of incredible power, and snapping it over his knee with a tremendous crack of force... then nothing... and then Emelyn was kneeling before him, the old wizard's blood soaking Softstroke's smoldering bristles in Robin's outstretched hand, his laboratory and the entire Library above obliterated in the wake of some tremendous blast... and Elfriede looking at him with a mixture of horror and fear that nearly wrenches the heart from his chest.   What happened next, he cannot make sense of: Elfriede trying to pull him away, finally blasting him back with a powerful telekinetic spell, Eliana and Hazel arriving in the wreckage only to join in the fight against him, against their ally... their friend... myconids swarming him with their soporific spores... Eliana swinging the Blackrazor gone infinitely thin in an attempt to exorcise him--from what? The blade sticking in his chest, growing solid once more, shattering into a thousand pieces... is that what happened? He can't make sense of any of it. Doesn't want to make sense of it. All he knows is that his friends turned on him instead of on the fallen wizard who tried to sabotage their defenses, destroyed the Library, interfered with his research, his archanotech... Sadness and grief give way to the final relief of blind rage as the potion of etherealness wears off and he climbs aboard his skiff, secured on the outskirts of town, and flees the smoldering remnants of his home.   From a distance vaster than can be named, a version of Emelyn the Grey gazes out from the Ethereal Plane with cool appraisal upon his successor. Elfriede, a new Staff of the Magi held firmly in one hand, his grandfather's rapier in the other, stumbles up from the wreckage with a shattered Eliana and a flabbergasted Hazel in tow to face the chaos of a war-torn town. He turns his gaze elsewhere, to where other Heroes of the Reach wage battle against the depredations of a guild of warmakers and machinists, their conflict rending wounds of flame and sorrow through the darkened streets. And then at last to the northern horizon, where right before it disappears beyond the Icewind Spire, a kaleidoscopic sail catches the first finger of dawn in a flash of momentary brilliance, overcome the next by a miasma of indigo power in the face of which the very mountain itself seems to bow in fear and deference--then is gone.   +5 Songs of Glory: Robin, Elfriede, Eliana, Hazel