The First Archmage

by Elvira Talgar - (c) 2001

In the realms, a long, long time before The Mistress was born, before
"The Blade" was forged, before "The Tower" arose, a Prophecy was set...

"There shall come "The One" whose powers will be far beyond everything the
common mage can imagine.  There shall come "The Mortal" with the powers of
a God. The mage who will make his fellows look like fake story tellers.
The mage whose powers will set the new measurement of essence. The mage
whose descendants will seed fear and terror of spells into the minds of
the common people."

A new millenium lies ahead... The Age of Magic. Whether it will be the
time of great darkness or great prosperity, no one can tell, but... one thing's for sure. Nothing will be as you knew it before...

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Bluxil sat on the nearest log to the forest. With a resigned expression he drew out his dagger and watched the clean, flawless blade.

He had failed. He was the loser. Now, there was only one thing he could do.
Die. With honour.

Yet the anger was still inside him. It was not fair. He always believed that a man could control his fate, his future, his destiny. Only now he realized how terribly mistaken he was.
He dedicated his entire life to it, he did everything humanly possible.
It was the curse perhaps, but why did someone or something put such a cruel curse on him? It was not fair.
But then, why in the hell you should expect life to be fair? He told himself to stop whining, get over it. There is only one more thing he must do.

Bluxil frowned. The way the Master treated him before he finally threw him out of the monastery is what hurt him the most.

The Master,if no one else, should have known that I had put all my skills in it, and I was the last one who could be blamed for my failure. Yet he kicked me out on the street just like another piece of junk. Without any respect, mercy or at least sayin I'm sorry kid, good-bye.

I realized that he only wanted to use me, to use my skills, my gain,if that which I only managed to lose could ever be called that.
He acted like a loving father to me and I ate it up. I was one damn fool.
Perhaps I just got what I deserved. Mystra does not reward jerks.

The defiant part of him started to show again. Stop grieving, be a man,
be a warrior, be the BattleMage! Even though by their rules, you are not one
of them anymore.

Bluxil raised his dagger in a symbol of his final decision. But as he started to lower it towards his chest, the sudden light entered his surroundings and the blade exploded in the sparkling beams of crimson light.

"What?!" he gasped.

"Bluxil!" An angry womans voice interrupted his astonishment.

He raised his head and saw a cloaked female figure in front of him.
Except for the upper part of her face she was completely veiled, yet even
from her eyes and voice he could say for sure that she was young and
probably very beautiful.

"Who are you?" he asked, as his curious nature won over his desperation for a while.

"And how do you know my name?"

"Why do you want to kill yourself?" the woman replied with a stern voice.

"I'm not sure I want to share that", he frowned as his mind turned back
to the cruel reality. The bitterness arose iside him again and he started to
be angry towards everyone and everything. Even at that stranger. He couldn't blame her for anything, maybe she was just a gentle fairy trying to help, but
she couldn't. No one could. All he wanted to do now was to die in sorrow,
forgotten and abandoned, without witnesses, without company, without pity.

"If you came here only to tell me all that blah, blah about suicide
being stupid and that I should find the new meaning of life, spare me,"
he snarled.

"I never needed anyone's help and I don't plan to change that in the last
moments of my life. I don't need any bored priestess to save my soul. Go!
Leave me alone! Do it now or I'll kill you too."

The woman sat opposite to him and met his eyes.
"A priestess? Me?" she chuckled.
"I'll show you immediately how priestly merciful I am."

"You can't kill me. Your magic is pathetic and weakening from day to day.
As a child, you were one of the Ygzo's greatest hopes, but your power, so
amazingly great for the young, never matured as you came to age.
Actually, despide of all logic, exactly the opposite happened. Your skills
only grew weaker and weaker. Every day, every hour, every minute. Your
unbelieveable industry and natural talent to memorize any invocation with
the flawless perfection allowed you to keep that a secret for years, but
not forever.

You have learned all the spells, you have trained to do the correct spellcasting, five, ten times harder than any of your comrades. All just to balance this unknown curse.

But as the years flew, your skills started to fade away so quickly that
even this insane effort couldn't keep you on track. From the most
talented apprentice, you became just an average one, then the one of the weakest.
Then, a few months later every invocation you cast, started to hurt your
body, and you finally lost hope of being a sorcerer one day.

Your master, and his king, after putting so much effort in you, after
reavealing to you the greatest secrets of the arcane arts, after sending you to the finest instructors, now realized with the definite certainity that the
extremely talented child turned out to be just another pathetic weakling.
There was no chance for you to get back what seemed to be inside you once.

All the effort they put into you, the hope that you would become the king's finest battlemage, now vanished with the utmost firmness.

I can assure you that the master's depression was maybe even greater than yours. Don't be so angry towards him. Only his grief for all those lost years and effort caused him to throw you out so mercilessly.

He simply behaved towards you, exactly as you are behaving towards me now. In
your desperation you speak to me with the tone anyone else would regret
immediately. Fortunately for you, I have completely different intentions for
you than seeing you die."

Bluxil gave the woman an incredulous look. He couldn't help himself. The nature of the mage was inside him. Always curious, always thirsty for some new knowledge.

That female seemed so majestic, so self-confident. She knew so much about
his life! How? Who is she? The power, mysterious devastating energy radiated from her figure, from her behaviour, from every word she spoke,every movement she did.

The odds didn't grant him much time to think. The woman smoothly continued
revealing more and more about him, showing the deep knowledge of his soul,
his life, and most surprisingly his personal thoughts!

"So, here you are. Without money, without future, without anything.
You have the huge knowledge, maybe the greatest in the world. But
since you had lost almost all control over your essence field all
your skills are for nothing. You could teach the more lucky enchanters,
but I know this is the last thing you would want to do."

Bluxil gave the woman sharp look.

"Who are you? How do you know so much about me? About my past, my troubles,
my desires, my thinking?

The cloaked figure smiled.

"It is not important who I am. What is important is who you are."

Bluxil got angry again. He was at the end of his life and too tired to
waste his time with someone talking in riddles.

"If it isn't important, why are you telling me all this?! To increase my
desperation? To make me suffer even more? Ok, fine, now I believe, you are
not a priestess. So go to the hell where you belong and leave me alone,
whoever you are! Mindreader! Let me die, let me finally get out from this
ugly place!"

The woman jumped towards him and smashed him across the face. Her hit was so
powerful that he fell on the ground and yelled in pain. When he touched his cheek, he realized it was badly burned.

"Stand up! Now!" she commanded him with such a horrible voice that even the
brave warrior in him felt the air chill around his back.

"I watched you every day, Bluxil!" she stormed, piercing the mage with
a heart-freezing look and towering above him in an ominous pose.

"You have every skill to be "The One", I have chosen well. You are brave,
skillful, intelligent, insanely dedicated to your goals, ambitious, you
have everything you will ever need to have.
But today, today! I can't recognize you! I know very well how you feel,
after all, it was just the another test I have put on you and I'm sad to
say you didn't pass this one.

I was hoping I would never see you resigned or broken. I was hoping that
your natural defiance and will to live, to survive, to win, could not be beaten. Now I see that even you are vulnerable! Unfortunately, despite
that weakness, you are still the very best choice I have, so I will not
take back what I granted you on your birthday."

"I... I don't understand..." Bluxil stammered trying to get back on his feet.

"Do you see that tree?" the woman pointed at the nearest pine.
"Cast the fireball on it, the best you can."

"What?! Why?"

"Do it!"

After a little hesitation, Bluxil, still astonished and confused, decided
to obey her order. It was a voluntary decision. The power of the woman
scared him for a moment, but now, when the shock passed over, he wasn't afraid of her anymore. She apparently could kill him in a single blow, but Bluxil never feared facing death or danger, not even before he lost his will to live. Even a coward, if he is honestly ready to commit suicide, isn't scared by threats anymore.

He decided to do what she asked him to do, because the wizard's heart was
still beating inside him. He couldn't leave the world of the living without
the knowledge of who that damn she-devil was or what her intentions were.

Bluxil cast the lightning bolt. Putting all his skills in it, he screamed from pain even though he had decided to remain silent. But he couldn't stop himself. Blood sprung from the dozens of open wounds and scratches all on his body. This was the most recent improvement of the terrible curse layed upon him. No mage ever could get hurt by casting his invocations. No one except for him. Still, despite all his dedication, the result was... well, it was laughable. The little sparkling which hit the tree, hardly managed to light one leaf.

However, the woman didn't pay much attention to his target. She was much
more interested in his wounds.

"Excellent." she mumbled. "You are ready, you are ready two years before
I presumed. You are a natural genius. I have never seen any mortal with so
much sense for magic as you have."

"What in the hell are you talking about?" Bluxil gasped, his anger raising
inside him again. Is she ironic? Strange, but somehow she didn't seem so.

"Take this!" The woman handed him the long oak staff with mystic engravings.
"Hold it tightly with both hands, yes exactly as you are doing it now."

"And?"

"Now, cast that bolt again!"

"I can't! Don't you see what it did to me? Another such invocation and I am
dead!"

"You wanted to die today, didn't you?" the woman grinned maliciously.

"As you wish!" Bluxil snarled. He was full of hatred towardthis hag, to the
inequity of the world, to everything. At least he would not have to face the
suffering anymore, the cruel, merciless people all around him. He raised
the staff above his head and conjured the same spell again.

The skies darkened in a flash. Unimaginable lightnings from the thousands of
clouds all around, focused on his target. The tree evaporated into the void
long before the blow could even descend upon it. Everything in the circle
of an insanely huge radius was completely anihilated by the immense force. Surrounding bushes,                       trees, the whole forest was torn from the ground, burned, broken, massacred into fragmets.             Huge logs, boulders, debris, everything started to fly. Some of the stones hit him but he simply didn't     feel it. Any junk which crashed to his body simple ceased to exist, no matter how
large it was. Surprisingly enough, the woman wasn't hurt by it either.

After five, maybe six seconds the bolt was finally gone. Where the beautiful
forest had been, all he could now see was a dead plain and few broken boulders.

"What the hell..." he looked around in terror trying to catch his breath.

The cloaked figure threw away her cape and the long silver hair wound up
across her goddess face. In awe, mixed with amazement, Bluxil finally
realized who was standing before him.

"I think you are now starting to get a picture of who you really are." Mystra smiled.

"Yet, you still hardly released more than the one quarter of your devastating power. Learn your skills,            learn how to channel, learn the ultimate mastery of magic that I gifted you with, and you'll take your righteous place in history,not only as the one of the greatest sorcerers ever, but also as the
first true Archmage.

"But how..."

"Listen Bluxil. Your essence field is so huge that it cannot flow from
your body without the staff. As you were getting older it increased with
incredible speed and it is still raising inside you, even as we speak.
But without the staff, the more essence means only more whirpools if you
try to transform it into the material energy. Plain sorcerers, with the
field not one hundredth as powerful as yours, will never face this problem.

So as your magic grew more and more powerful, your channeling, and
consequently your spells, became only weaker. In the last months, your essence stream reached such huge amounts that it started to hurt even your body. However, a good staff can soothe the waves and create a flow
outside your soul even at the quantities you use. Such power is unmatched by anyone or anything. You are a living god, Bluxil. The first from those who will become the new dynasty of superhumans, feared and hated simultaneously.

All your children will have this ability, some more, some less, depends on
their luck, their fate, their destiny.

I did this because I want to bring more real magic into the mortal world.
I did it to counteract some tricks Silvanus and Lathander granted thier
followers. You are the first from the elite, Bluxil. Use wisely the gift I
gave you, do not disappoint me.

I have chosen you, because my forsighted friend Talos, revealed something
to me about your future, your predestination. While you live, you will
never meet anyone able to match your skills, knowledge or power.

But remember, heroes come and go, while the memory of mankind is short.
No one, not even you, can live in their minds forever. No one can say his
deeds, his achievements his skills are unsurpassable. That's the fate of
every mortal, every hero, every great man.
One day your deeds will be overcome by someone even greater. This is
something neither you nor even I can change. But... while his or her fate
will be the same, no one can ever steal from you that you were the very
first of your kind.

After saying that last words Mystra veiled in her robe and faded into the
void.

The age of Archmages had begun...