Resolution and Prophecy

(Crossing, Zoluren: 245 Moliko 362)

A crisp white parchment is left upon Baresh’s counter…

Prophecy is prophecy, but Fate is ever changing.

The Prophecy of the Mirror Wraith, that hoary old curse that’s been the worry and research of many moonmages, has at last reached resolution…if not in the way its creator intended.

Many of the events attached to this work have been recorded elsewhere, I leave this report to explain the final andu.

To make a brief summary…the three artifacts of ancient work had finally made their way to the Bone Dancer, Lasarhhtha’s hands. The key, that was in Mortom’s posession. The first semisphere that had been Lady P’s. The other half, that had been Andraethu, Grell’s, and finally, the Council’s.

After the assassination of more than half the Council, the Dancer had the full artifact and had already put it together, in Leth Deriel. What resulted was yet another summoning of the feared Shadowmasters.

Lasarhhtha left to rest, saying he would activate it in one andu.

The day came, and the people were prepared. Deep within the hollows and catacombs of his twisted and trapped mansion, he grasped it, and began his preparations. Many bands of adventurers invaded the home, struggling against the kartaris, the worms, the undead Priests that guarded the old manor.

They eventually found him, before a strange, archlike artifact, in his embalming chambers. He screamed for them to leave him…but the Bone Elves that had thrown in their help to retrieve a book from him advanced. In his attempt to fight them back, to use the artifact, one more shadowmaster arrived to join the fray.

In the mix of battles, the Bone Dancer quickly fell, and the sphere rolled from his hands…into Ieshan’s, who grasped it and began to move north, to give it away to those who could do something about it.

The Bone Elves took their book and left.

And I, then still a Councillor, followed after Ieshan, to meet up with him at the guild. Erdanos came at my call, and then the rest of the Y’Shai…and Taramaine.

Ieshan quickly offered the completed sphere to Taramaine, who accepted and then said that we should all gather at the Taisgath obelisk, to see the sphere’s destruction, to see all this ended.

In a few anlaen’s time, then, we came to that place, and they soon after. Taramaine spoke to us, spoke of old secrets. He told, at last, his version of events that happened seventy years ago…when Y’Shai were discovered to be soulless due to the process of making them, when Taramaine desperately used sorcery to drive back shadowmasters.

More was told…that in that place, underneath the Crossing, that Tezirah herself had been hung for just that crime, the foulness of sorcery, and that her failed attempt to save herself using the sphere had brought yet another one of those creatures of evil…shadowmasters, who wish to rule our plane.

And then he made his bid to destroy the sphere, claiming that we must sacrifice our gifts of foresight, destroy the link between the Plane of Abiding and the Plane of Probability, to keep Tezirah away, to lose the power of the artifact.

But he too was lost in a web of deception. The slagging of the artifact did the opposite thing…the worst thing…

She came.

Raving and hungry and killing. Tezirah. She wanted the world for hers again, and she faced all who would send her back with sorcery and pain. Stavro was among the first to fall as he protected Taramaine, Stavro, who died, and his soul forsaken forever.

There was a rift in the world where she came through, and soon we began attempting to physically force her into it. A wonderful thing, it began to work. As we struggled, Demosel made her own way to freedom, threatening Tezirah and keeping that rift open.

A few more shoves…and she went in. But a man went in with her, Pathian, and we felt he was lost. Not so, though, he teleported to safety, by a beacon on Taramaine who had fallen in combat.

With his safety, the rift closed, Tezirah locked forever and her Prophecy without the fate she had wished for it. A sense of completion drifted over us.

Not all is over, however. With the events at Taisgath, duties remain to us. The Moon Mage Council is henceforth disbanded until such time as a future regathering decides what to do about it. The guild itself is in disarray, still struggling to regather itself in front of the sects and the provinces…though new word brings that Tiv has returned home.

We rebuild. And survive. The future waits to be born.