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Asper rolled her eyes. "Haven't we enough magic surging and drifting and scuttling around Faerun, without something new to-"

The watchghost began to scream in earnest, a great deafening bell-shrieking that roared up the stairs and swept toward them, making the stones of the old house around them shake and then the very air hum and wail.

The scream that burst into the office shattered goblets and decanters into dust and hurled Asper, Mirt, and Laeral back against the walls like mere rags, surging up toward the ceiling, to wrestle there with something dark, startled, and suddenly visible.

Once, Evaereol Rathrane had been alive. There was a dim and distant time when he'd known laughter, warm embraces, and proud achievements in Jethaere of the Towers. Jethaere-one of the first floating cities of Netheril, a refuge of the gentler mages who delighted in studying and perfecting magic, rather than using it as a great sword to cleave and reshape Toril a dozen times in a day.

There had come the time when it darkened, as all things must. That darkness had been the Phaerimm. Against them some Jethaerren had fought and perished, and some had fled by many ways, down a myriad of twisting tu

Evaereol had spell-called a dragon as the darkness blossomed, then hid himself within one of the greatest magic items he'd ever crafted. His ploy had worked. Snatched up and carried off into a distant hoard, he'd escaped the Phaerimm… but been trapped in his own disguise for a time so mind-singingly long as to almost break him.

He'd clung to his own name desperately, drifting in increasing despair, until the day came at last when someone's misuse of the item that held him shattered it and its spells together and set him free.

Long he'd drifted, a tattered wraith of spellstuff with whispering awareness and a burning will, until he chanced upon magic so strong that it was a blinding beacon.

To it he crept, hunger growing, and so found Silverymoon and its palace where trapped magics of tome and item were strongest, with a human woman who seemed like a flame of living magic at its heart.

Others of Rathrane's kind had gathered there, too, to warm themselves in the spellglows and slowly grow stronger and more substantial. In the magics cast on stone and glass and air many Netherese mage-wraiths lurked, watching this Alustriel of Silverymoon.

Evaereol Rathrane had not been bold when he dwelt in Jethaere, but the long, long waiting had changed something in him. He needed to act, to reach out-not to savage this woman of such achingly strong magic and drink her power, as his fellows sighed for, but to find more like her and ride the Weave that enwrapped her like a cloak wherever she went.

So he held back from striking at her, mastering his hunger when his fellow mage-wraiths could not. He saw them ravaged and yet invigorated by her counter spells, and in the wake of their defeat he saw his own chance. Forthwith he rode the spell-link between Laeral and Alustriel. Another she-wizard of blinding power! This one seemingly as yet undetected by others of his kind, so his alone!

When these mightiest of mortal mages translocated, the rush of exchanged energies gave Evaereol Rathrane power he could taste, lasting power that gave him more substance each time. This Laeral-she teleported often in her tower that blazed with an everpresent field of translocational magic, and every journey he took with her was a burst of ecstasy to Evaereol-real, lasting power.



Soon he'd dare to do more than lurk and drain the discharges of wild spells and decaying magics. Soon, he would Once, Ieiridauna Amalree had been alive. There was a dim and distant time when she'd lived and laughed in the lone, proud tower of the mages Nathra, her elf mother, and Phanturgost, her human father, and thought Water-deep the greatest shining place on Toril. That had ended when the sorcerers who treacherously slew her parents after coining as guests to eveningfeast had struck her down, too, with so many spells as she fled clutching precious magics that the explosions had trapped her sentience in the Weave. It had been long years ere she was aware of herself again and longer before she could perceive and materialize once more in the tower where she'd died.

It had become part of a large and rambling mansion in her lost years, the abode of a fat, shambling man who at first horrified and disgusted her. Then, ever so slowly, her feelings toward this Mirt had changed. It had begun after she became able to vocalize and show herself and seek to scare him as a "haunting," knowing what she'd become. She succeeded only in amusing him, then in awakening his pity. He sought to chat with her on long, lonely nights, and when she dared converse, he flirted with her, tried to befriend her, and asked what he could do to make her welcome and happy.

"Ye could get out of my house!" she'd shrieked at him that first time, centuries of rage and grief overwhelming her. She had been taken with shame when he pursued her weeping and sought to learn of her life. So had his lady, the impish Asper, who even invited her into their shared bed, betimes sought to play games with her, and seldom forgot to tell her gossip and unfolding news upon her every return to what now even Ieiridauna was pleased to call "Mirt's Mansion."

Other buildings, even in Waterdeep, had watchghosts, but Ieiridauna doubted many of them felt as happy as she.

Now, upon the heels of that unpleasant Athkatlan's visit, something dark and unseen had come into the house. Lurking near the Master and the Mistress and their friend, so subtle among the shielding magics that she'd not sensed it until it reached out, so silent and sinister…

With a shriek of rage and fear that her happiness was to be snatched away from her once more, Ieiridauna hurled herself from the forehall up the stairs to the office, whelming the protective magics of the house around her like a cloak of magic, armor and weapon both against this dark intruder.

He-somehow she knew it was a "he"-sought to drink spells, to gorge himself on the magic she'd freed to empower herself, but Ieiridauna spun bright fire out of the energies surging through her, feeding it to him, then calling it back to her like savage claws to rake him and shred him. It took but a few whirling, shrieking seconds to drive him howling away…

Moaning and whimpering to himself in spi

Before whatever it was had attacked him, slashing at him with too much power to master in so short a time, the Laeral-she had spoken with others about "real power," and the word "spellfire" had been uttered. Now, that was something to seek, surely. An amount of power that the Laeral-she spoke of with respect must be great indeed… and just what he needed.

Yet his approach must be cautious, lest bright flames burn him once more.

The shadowy thing that had been Rathrane of Jethaere sank into the glittering carpet of small magics that was Waterdeep's Castle Ward, dreaming of spellfire… and greatness.