Despite your despise for the Cerberus Assembly, there was one among them who took an interest in you early on in your scholastic career.  You met Stepan Ikyris, a large, jovial human with long, black hair with white streaks he called badges of courage, when attending the Soltryce Academy, and who opened your eyes to the potential of conjuration magic. He taught you to create, to summon a creature with invitation rather than command (though you didn’t understand the need,) to draw the intricate transportation circles, and to contact entities even that dwell on other planes.

He became your official mentor and would take private lessons with him. He would usually teleport you both to a beautiful open cliffside bordered on one side by a lush forest, with a magnificent view of a naturally thriving valley and the sea beyond. You would visit in all seasons, though the winters were more mild than Rexxentrum’s harsh frosts and the summers quite warmer. Most of your critical magical and personal breakthroughs happened at this instructional sanctuary.

Ikyris also invited you to discover the benefits of both Illusion and Transmutation, which you explored and even wished from time to time that you had begun in Transmutation, envisioning the eventual power to create worlds is locked within that school of magic.

But it was his tales of the ancient world, including the Calamity and the Divergence, and his mastery of magic’s lore. Magic that would help search, discover and identify the world’s magical relics became your primary objective, even adopting the more practical application of the fuzzy school of divination.

His favorite topic was the Vestiges of Divergence. Which is also the topic he–along with most–had the least knowledge of. But what he did know, it made him one of the world’s authority.

“I know where three of them are, beyond the obvious ones,” he would say, “one which I expect may be gone from this plane forever, unless you can convince the Raven Queen to give it up. One is in a protected shrine to the Wildmother, and one is in possession of a gold dragon, but I suspect he has at least another.”

He would also speak of a book of labyrinths, as the title was literally translated, written by an Elvin wizard who spent centuries hunting down the identity and last known whereabouts of any Vestiges that may still exist. But he was never convinced such a book existed.

“But,” he would remind you, “just as there are vestiges for champions and heroes, there are weapons forged from the souls of fiends. Sentient beings filled with fury and eager to spill blood.” He would rarely discuss these, except that they, too, exist, and any research to them should be focused on their destruction.

As you and Barrax joined Vanquish and set off on your own to further your reputation in the hopes of obtaining the coveted Cerberus invitation, the two words of advice he gave you were, first, “Stay close to Barrax. He is good people and will pull you back from the dangerous edge when you are too bull headed to see it yourself,”  and “Why do you want to twist your soul with something as possessive as spite? I wanna see if you can walk away from the Assembly, not out of bitterness but out of blasted moral honor!”

You nodded in submission to your mentor. In your mind, you defended it simply by arguing, “Boldness against the towering foe is moral honor.”

You would return from time to time to catch up with your old teacher. And usually he was jovial and glad to see you. You especially enjoyed the visit when he told you he was offered a position among the ruling eight, that govern the Cerberus Assembly. You’ve always greatly admired him for choosing to teach, or, like your ancestor, to be among the people, or wrapped in research in the great libraries of the day, rather than bogged in bureaucratic espionage and the like. He was offered the office of Archmage of Antiquity after the Lady Briarwood was dispatched, but refused on diplomatic grounds, deferring to the more established magic family de Rogna.

About two years before Shockstorm, a different visit ensued. Ikyris was sullen and distant, and even you could tell he carried a great burden. He refused to talk about it, waving it off with some notion of an old man’s burdens were not meant for the shoulders of the young.

Instead, he showed you a new magic, something recently discovered. Something he believed could change the way the world thinks of magic forever.

“Consider this,” Ikyris begins in his favored teaching voice as he waves his hands in front of him, conjuring a small cat and a mouse on a table between them. He narrates the actions of both creatures. “After a slight moment of confusion from being conjured to unknown space, the cat notices the mouse, perhaps a hair later than the mouse notices the cat. Now, common experience tells us what will happen next, correct? Or, a diviner could tell us that the cat’s typical response to a mouse would be…”

And the cat pounces for the poor mouse just as the mouse attempts to run away, locking it in its claws and then chomping it into its jaws.

“The diviner, or our experience, or just plain common sense would tell us this would happen. But could it tell us exactly how?”

“No, just that the cat would attack,” you respond. “It would be more impressive if the cat were, say a bunny, or unexpected predator, the diviner, I suppose could be helpful in that case.”

“True,” as Ikyris watches the mouse devoured. “How would you save the mouse, Ullrich?”

“I wouldn’t.”

“Fine,” says Ikryis with a bemused sigh. “What if I were to tell you it was not a mouse but a polymorphed Acolyte with information on one of the lost Vestiges.”

“Oh, well, at this stage, I would find a cleric or a necromancer to bring it back.”

“None to be found.”

“Find it on a different plane, contact it there.”

“Risky. Very risky. You may want to reconsider ever using that spell. You’re not even close to bring ready to attempt it. I expect I will one day regret ever sharing it with you.”

“You’d have to reverse the cat’s actions somehow, change the behavior…wait, are you suggesting…?

The wise old mage waves his hand in a complex motion and murmurs a few unheard words. What follows is a bizarre experience that has fascinated you ever since.

The cat continues to chew, but instead of the mouse disappearing into the cat’s gullet, the thrashed flesh appears to heal, the mouse falling out of the mouth, back into the cat’s claws until the cat leaps backwards and then stops, mid-air.

The cat is frozen. Frozen in time, you realize.

The mouse scurries away. Suddenly, the cat falls forward again, claws outstretched and pounced down onto nothing. The cat’s head swivels back and forth attempting to understand.

“Time,” you say, finally. “You…have discovered magic over time.”

“A very small piece,” he says sitting down, as even that small act seems to have drained him. “But there are others who know much more. Not just over time, but over the forces of the stars.”

“Here? In the Assembly?”

He shakes his head. “But they are desperate for it. I fear that they may be willing to go to tremendous lengths to possess this knowledge. Tremendous…”

His face grows distant, staring off into something unseen.

“Ikyris?”

Ikyris refocuses on you.

“Is it not good to search out new knowledge?”

“It is.”

“Then…”

“Searching out knowledge and taking it by force are two very different things, young Ullrich. I hope you keep that in mind. Knowledge is discovered or given. Sometimes both. Taking knowledge from the conscripted leads to dark ends.”

“Who…shared…this knowledge with you?” you ask.

“The Kryn.”

You nod. The mysterious Kryn Dynasty that dwell beyond the mountains in Xhorhas. A race you’ve all always assumed were rather backwards and behind the enlightened empire.

Ikyris warned you to keep what you’ve seen to yourself. And to be wary of anything or anyone interested in such magic–especially from the Assembly. You acknowledge his warnings and tell him you will make an effort to do so.

With an exasperated sigh, he slaps you on the should and bids you farewell and invites you back to share your exploits with your old teacher. You promise to do so.

And then the invitation came.

You reached out once more to Ikyris to tell him of the news, knowing he would have much to say concerning the matter. But when you arrived at his office at the Academy, it was occupied by another. His home, the same. No one knew much, except to say that he had left quite suddenly and offered no forwarding address. The Academy’s administrators were of no further help. You wanted to find him, enroll Vanquish in the search, but you had to appear at the Cerberus Assembly and could not do both. You chose to delay your search, rationalizing that Ikyris knew how to take care of himself.

After your “gracious” decline, your fear of retribution, and finally your relief when they hired vanquish to acquire the mysterious spell scroll, the words of your teacher returned. “Be wary of anyone interested in such magic–especially the Assembly.”

And while you had no intention of delivering the scroll to the Assembly, it did not even occur slightly to you, that you too may be part of the “anyone” referred to in Ikyris’ warning.