3. Malachar

3

MALACHAR

I stalk through the kaleidoscopic cacophony of the market, my black robes billowing behind me like a scrap of night. The lesser fae scuttle out of my path, pressing themselves into stalls and alleyways as I pass. They avert their eyes, a thrill of fear spiking their auras to sour yellow.

I pay them no mind, long accustomed to the deference my presence induces. As an ancient demon-lich, a sorcerer who has plumbed the very depths of necromantic lore, my power is both vast and terrible. A fact which brings me little pleasure in these long centuries. Magic, once a grand obsession, an unslakable thirst, has become as stale and jejune as all else.

But necessity compels me to leave the dust-shrouded sanctum of my stronghold and venture into this riot of color and chaos in search of components. My current projects - a rather promising line of inquiry into the nature of entropy curses - require certain rare and highly regulated substances that can only be sourced at the Grand Goblin Market.

I drift from stall to stall like a wraith, haggling without passion for desiccated hydra hearts, vials of liquid moonlight decanted during a total lunar eclipse, the calcified eyeteeth of an elder black dragon, among other eclectic sundries. The merchants, a mixed lot of pucks, hags, and less identifiable entities, wheedle but inevitably acquiesce to my clipped demands.

As the sun slips from its zenith, painting the sky in shades of bruise and bile, I conclude my business. My enchanted sack bulges with thaumaturgical esoterica, clinking and chiming softly as I make my way back toward the market's edge where I left my carriage.

It's then, as I'm navigating the tangle of narrow shops that abut the marketplace proper, that I feel it. A ripple in the aetheric currents, subtle but unmistakable. I pause mid-stride, head cocked, my black nailed fingers twitching at my sides. It's a presence, a magical signature unlike any I've encountered in an age.

Raw, chaotic, and brimming with vast unplumbed potential, it flares like a newborn star against my inner eye. Unbidden, my feet turn as if compelled by the electrifying thrill of that signal, carrying me unerringly toward its source.

I find myself standing before the towering edifice of the Grand Auction House, its striated spires piercing the underbelly of the darkening sky like a profusion of bared fangs. And there at the foot of its yawning steps is a common slave wagon, a crude affair of splintering wood and rusting iron.

But it's what I perceive within the wagon's cramped confines that arrests me utterly, setting my long-stagnant blood to sizzling in my veins. Her wrists are bound, her face streaked with tears and fixed in an expression of hopeless despair. And oh, the power she radiates, pulsing from her like waves of silent music felt in the bones rather than heard.

In that instant of recognition, centuries of ennui slough away like an old snakeskin. I am lit from within by a fierce and sudden purpose, a need to possess this mortal thing, to wrest her from the pedestrian doom of the auction block and shape her gifts to my will.

Images unspool behind my eyes like a prophecy - her small form swathed in the sable robes of a necromancer, eyes lambent with eldritch power as I guide her in the carving of the forbidden runes, the brewing of the blasphemous unguents. Together we will shatter the boundaries of what is possible and reforge the very fundamentals of magic to our design. She will be my instrument, my creation, puissant and terrible.

And through her, I will ascend to dark godhood.

I'm striding up the auction house steps almost before I register my own movement, the crowd parting before me like filthy water. At the threshold I pause, sensing a faint resonance from one of the wards - a simple alarm trigger, the aetheric equivalent of a bell on a shop door. With an idle flick of my will, I invert the ward's polarity, sending a counter-pulse of energy that will mask my signature. I have no desire to be announced.

I slip into the vaulted foyer, cloaked in a haze of don't-look that deflects the eyes of the milling buyers. Silently, I scale the mezzanine and claim a shadowed alcove that affords an excellent view of the stage. A single, sputtering globe of corpse-light bobs above the podium, casting the auctioneer's craggy face into harsh relief as he barks the opening patter.

One by one, the lots are paraded across the stage. A comely elf-maid with eyes like wet emeralds, a sullen black-furred beastman bristling with wiry muscle, a matched pair of gold-skinned sylphs who twine about each other with languorous grace.

Bidding is brisk, a susurrus of competing calls that ebbs and flows with the quality of the offerings. But I scarcely register the proceedings, my attention fixed on the curtained archway through which the slaves emerge.

And then, as I am teetering on the knife's edge of impatience, she appears. A slim, forlorn figure dwarfed by her escort's hulking bulk. The auctioneer launches into his spiel, extolling her exquisite bone structure, her wide eyes the precise shade of honey-dusk, her unblemished skin that will mottle so fetchingly under the lash. But it's clear that the crowd senses, as I did, that her true value lies in that tantalizing nimbus of power.

She's a hexeblood of the purest order.

Absolutely irresistible to the inhabitants of the greater Faewild.

In moments, a spirited bidding war erupts, voices clashing and overriding in a fevered crescendo. But I bide my time, sinking deeper into my muffling miasma, fingers steepled before my lips. I wait until the furor reaches a pitch, the auctioneer's gavel poised to fall, before I speak a single word that booms through the hall like the tolling of a funeral bell. "Mine."

The gavel hangs suspended, the auctioneer's eyes bulging as he gapes in the direction of my alcove. In the shocked silence I rise and descend the stair, my black boots echoing hollowly on the worn marble.

As I reach the stage the crowd shrinks back, their faces slack with terror as they mark the three bloodstone rings winking on my ivory fingers - the dread sigil of a lich-lord.

I come to stand before the cowering girl, my shadow draping her like a cloak. Up close, her power is a near-palpable force. Slowly, ceremonially, I remove a black opal collar from the folds of my robe and fasten it about her slim throat. "You belong to me now," I tell her, my voice an eldritch rasp. "Mine to mold, to shape. My apprentice… and my bride."

Her eyes meet mine, and I see terror warring with awe, revulsion with a sort of helpless fascination. In that fractured gaze I read the fate I have authored for her, the dark and twisted path down which I will lead her unto the very edge of damnation and beyond.

For I am Malachar the Undying, dread lord of Blanchmire. And she, my fawn-eyed prize, shall be the weapon I wield to break the chains of mortality and usher in a new age of nightmare.

With a gesture I sever her bonds, the gossamer threads dissolving like mist. I set a hand between her shoulder blades, feeling her flinch at my corpse-cold touch, and steer her down from the stage and out into the waiting afternoon.

And deep in my desiccated husk of a heart, an ember that I long thought quenched flickers fitfully to life.