Kelta had always been nasty, and most of the time he’d gotten away with it. That had changed with the death of Walriq and betrayal of Falls. Now, he’d gone from third foremost prodigy of Magira to first. His political influence had waxed, and whatever thin, fraying thread of sanity had remained within his wrinkled head had finally snapped.

  He giggled as he burned the poor man before him. Kelta giggled, and Julius, like everyone else in the grand hall, remained silent as the grave. The only noise was the sound of crackling flames, and the screaming man wreathed in them.

  Deliberate, of course. Kelta was Julius’ Master, and while his power had never been close to Walriq’s, the separation between them had not been more than a fraction. Had he wanted the poor sod dead instantly, he’d be dead instantly. The flames burned colder than their creator’s full potential would allow, so that he would feel them.

  “Now we all know what happens when a magus of Magira dares lie to its Archmagus.” Kelta called out, a sneering twist to his voice that made Julius feel rather cold, despite the heat, upon hearing it.

  Lie to its archmagus. The burned man had called wind magic superior to fire, and Walriq more powerful than Kelta. But then, speaking one’s mind had become a dangerous affair of late. Walriq always had been the limiting factor on Kelta’s magic, now he was gone.

  Now Kelta was the voice of Magira, which meant that a lie was whatever he said it was. Magira had become a tyrannical pyramid.

  Granted, that was not actually much different than it’d been before. But Walriq and the previous council, at the very least, had been less mercurial in their spasms of violent tyranny, and Kelta took just a little bit too much glee in exerting them. He swept his gaze across the room.

  “Anyone who has anything more to say decrying fire magic, you can take it up with me now. Or hold your peace.”

  A deafening silence hit him, then, slowly, magi bowed down onto their knees. Julius was among the foremost to do so. Of course he was, Kelta was the Archmagus.

  The door’s opening was like a crash of thunder, amid such quietude. All eyes reflexively snapped towards the entrance of the great hall, through which a man now strode. He was…Odd.

  Tall, broad at the shoulders and with a shaved head. His skin was dark, features aboriginal, eyes a cold and hard set of daggers thrust into each and every gaze they met. He wore what seemed to be travel attire, and instantly Julius got the impression that this was a man accustomed to using his own body and strength to do things.

  Yet the power around him was something else entirely, setting the air alight almost. It actually stung Julius’ mana sense to examine it, and something about it- its structure or its behaviour- obfuscated its true depths from any further study.

  He couldn’t read this man’s abilities, but he was on edge instantly. A similar anxiety shot through the other magi crowded around.

  “Yes?” Kelta frowned. “Hello? You are?” He strided up to the man, adding a swagger to his walk that was clearly deliberate, clearly forced and clearly betrayed that his left hip still played up when he moved. He was older than this stranger, clearly. Where Kelta seemed withered by life in his sixties, the black man couldn’t have been a day past middle age. In the prime of his life, as a lion was the year before dying to a younger beast.

  “Greetings.” The stranger said. “I am Archmagus Mafari, and I am returned from my quest for enlightenment in the mountains. I have seen much, learned much, and I have come to Magira in its time of need.”

  A pause followed. It was the very sort of pause one might expect to answer a claim like that. There wasn’t a soul in Magira- save for the women- who hadn’t heard of Archmagus Mafari. And not a one among those souls was ignorant that the man had disappeared more than a century ago.

  Oh, he’d been powerful. The greatest Archmagus in centuries, probably longer. But he was as dead as any dead thing Julius had ever heard of. However gifted he was- and the stories claimed he eclipsed all but Arion Falls in talent- he was a dead thing.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  But then, the world has been assailed by a lot of dead things recently, hasn’t it?

  “I’m the Archmagus here.” Kelta snarled. “And you’re an idiot for trying to lie about something so obvious.” Everyone winced. This stranger was a charlatan, or a madman, but that didn’t mean he deserved to be immolated. He however seemed devoid of everyone else’s fear.

  “No.” Was all he said.

  Kelta scowled.

  “No what. No, you’re not an idiot? No you’re telling the truth?”

  “No,” The stranger continued, “You are no Archmage. You have taken a position defined by wisdom and knowledge, made it into your whore. Something to be abused for pleasure and pride. You are a child with the power to destroy everything around you. Unworthy of your authority, unworthy of your title, unworthy of your magic. You are thrice-decried, Kelta the fire warlock.”

  Every word was delivered with a terrible, focused calm. And each one left Kelta simmering with yet more rage.

  “FUCK YOU!” Kelta’s scream was drowned out by the roar of his own flames. Blue, now, not orange. Hot enough that the stone of the floor cracked, glowing cherry-red before transitioning fully to broiling magma as the heat passed over it. The tongues of fire wrapped around the fool who’d claimed to be Mafari, enveloping him completely and disappearing him from sight.

  Julius expected, when the fiery curtains parted, there would be nothing left of him at all. That was how a man looked when Kelta exerted his power into killing them fully. Like nothing at all, body reduced to less than ash. Vapor in the air.

  But that was not to be the stranger’s fate.

  The fire choked out, energies dispersing as its power ran to the limit. Amid the inferno, now standing around glowing-hot air, was the stranger. A shield shimmered around him for a moment, perceptible only because of the atmospheric distortion beside it. His eyes were colder than ever as Kelta stumbled back from him.

  “Impossible.” The Archmagus croaked, and the stranger shook his head slightly. He seemed disappointed.

  “What are you going to do?” Kelta whispered, terror turning his voice into no more than a sliver of noise. “What will happen to me?”

  He understood, then, that this man was a force beyond his ability to resist.

  “Nothing will be done to you.” The stranger replied. “You will simply cease to be.” He gestured, lanced the air with more magic than Julius had felt since the New Dark Lord’s attack upon the citadel, and there was a soft popping noise as winds suddenly collapsed inwards and filled a new vacuum in the room.

  He blinked, stared, looked around and found other magi just as confused as he was. Julius remembered…Someone. Someone violent and dangerous, a terror standing right there, but…For the life of him, he could not recall the man’s name, face or anything else about him. Fire, had he used fire? Perhaps not.

  Julius frowned. He was a magus, recently graduated from apprenticeship under his master, but…Who had his master been? So caught in the sea of his own cognition was he, that he didn’t notice the stranger approaching until he had already come to within two paces of him. Julius froze.

  If this man wanted him dead, he knew he would die. There would not be anything he could do to stop him, maybe not even to impede him. But the stranger didn’t attack, merely spoke.

  “You are the most magically gifted creature in this room, besides myself.” He began, with the note of a man observing a peculiarity of no great significance. Perhaps a quartermaster taking inventory. “You will be my apprentice from now on.”

  Julius nodded dully. “Okay. Uh, master.” The stranger nodded, then turned to the room at large. A hundred sets of eyes fell upon him, and for the first time in his life Julius wondered if all the high magi of Magira would be a match for the single creature they gazed upon.

  “I have allowed Magira to wither in my absence.” The stranger announced. “Watched, from afar, as it grew opulent, corrupt and feeble. Power-hungry imbeciles are granted sway to waste precious talent by killing or maiming those who defy them, while others are left without the means to even realize their own potential.”

  Uncomfortable murmurs spread at that as feet shuffled. One brave- or stupid- man asked a question.

  “Are you telling us women are to learn magic too?” It was a question that had become more common in the wake of Silenos Shaiagrazni’s publicly accepting a female apprentice and taking the Princess Ado on as his servant, but the stranger’s eyes grew hard.

  “No.” He sharply replied. “Women are empty-minded creatures only suited to carry out the will of men, they are not made for magic.”

  That mollified the crowd.

  “The world is in turmoil.” The stranger continued. “Two Dark Lords emerged and gone in the same span, each of their forces destroyed by the other. Now is the time for Magira to take power. To do what we should have done a century ago, and lead humanity into the future. Into a world of magic.” That certainly drew approval from the group, and Julius realised the man was speaking with a magnetism he’d never seen in another magus. Ever. Most of their kind were awkward, self-absorbed men. Scientists, not leaders. But here was one who might well drive Magira to the future. He found his mouth drying.

  “Are you really Archmage Mafari?”

  Julius’ new master only nodded once, but it was enough to convince him. After all else he’d done today, it would have been enough to convince anyone. The magi of Magira roared their exaltation and began heading out of the hall, and their new leader followed at a dignified, leisurely pace.