Blackstaff

From below him, Khelben yelled, "No!" and launched himself up into the air just as the lightning bolts grew into one massive bolt focused through Raegar's left hand. The massive bolt-the bluish magic leeched out to more brilliant white-thundered out and slammed into the Blackstaff with staggering force, blasting Khelben down to the floor.

Raegar noticed that the sharn also crackled within its globe, and it keened in pain. Raegar's attention returned to his own precarious perch. He didn't know what magic the gauntlets worked, but his left arm was totally numb, and his right hand was freezing cold as the red magic began pulsing. With the first pulse, all eyes not blinded by the earlier blast looked upward to see the red energies start to contract with each pulse. The energies also rendered the golden scroll in Oghma's marble hand smaller. The second pulse pulled the energy into both gauntlets while rendering them and the scroll translucent, almost invisible save for the red luminescence. Raegar sensed what was coming and prepared to fall as the third pulse contracted the radiance to pinpoints on his hands, and the scroll and gauntlets disappeared.

Raegar fell backward toward the cold marble. He lashed out at the last second, hoping to spin himself around so he might land better, but he only managed to kick empty air. The tressym zipped around Raegar and almost seemed to laugh at his predicament, mocking him with the very flap of its wings. Raegar struck the floor with his left shoulder, his head bounced off the marble, and he fell unconscious.

26 Mirtul, the Year of the Normiir (611 DR) The man without a name flew fast and silent. It mattered little to him most days, but some days brought up raw emotions decades old and saw him rage at the burdens namelessness placed on a child. That day, he raged for other reasons, and his anger fueled his speed. His swiftness also came from a new spell that rendered him incorporeal while in flight to allow no winds to hinder him. He had spent the past two days in constant flight. A recent vow to his Lady of Mysteries barred him from using gates, portals, or other methods of instantaneous travel. Flying across the North forced him to see the Everhorde's devastations firsthand. He saw the ogre war bands, the orc legions, and the giant patrols ravaging many places dear to him. His dreams and co

The man let nothing hinder his mission, even though he suffered some wounds and his clothes were worse for the battle, singed or acid-burnt in various places. He wore a wool overcloak of steel blue that matched his eyes. Beneath his cloak were a simple tunic, leathern breeches, and soft doeskin boots. Due to hardships and spell battles long past, the only memento of his earlier life was the iron badge that was his mother's, worn on a chain around his neck. A botched counterspell in battle six tendays back against an undead Shoon vizar had left him with badly burnt hair. While the gifts of his goddess allowed him to alter his features at will, he deemed it too mundane a task for magic.

Thus he shaved his head and trimmed his beard down to the modern Cormyrean style of a beard and moustache only covering his upper lip and chin. The look was deemed "appropriately sinister to match your moods" by acquaintances in Dolbron's Mill two night's prior. The people there had long since taken to calling him "the Nameless Chosen," "Grimspells," or "friend." "Mystra grant me strength," the Nameless One said through gritted teeth as he soared lower toward the mountain and into the smoke coiling around its still-snowclad upper slopes, smoke he had spotted even before the ambush. The spell had an added benefit of sharpening his hearing, but the wizard worried as he heard no sounds when he alighted in the courtyard at his destination-the Pentad Retreat. He had visited the mountain sanctuary only once early in his service to the Lady of Mysteries. Reachable only by well-hidden tu

Many orcs lay as if they had fallen from great heights, others killed by arrows. Of the nine bodies he found sprawled on the library's steps, four wore amulets with a sigil on them-a wizard's mark known to him. "Palron Kaeth. Of course he would use the Everhorde to his advantage," the man mused aloud. "A reckoning will be coming soon to you and yours, Prefect. So vows the son of Arun." The bodies were all cold, some with ash and snow settling on their graying skin, suggesting death was not recent for them. He heard a muffled clang through the closed doors of the library. The mage placed a hand flat on the door and whispered the password: "Siilathaeraes." The door, which had remained firm against an onslaught of axe blows, acid bursts, and fiery blasts, opened easily to his touch. As he entered, Arun's Son whispered spells to make himself invisible and silent. The room had a perimeter around its stone floor more akin to the naves of a church, allowing him to make a circuit of the chamber with ease. The library was one singular area, its open balconies and roof held aloft by ten fine-crafted stone pillars of lighter stone than the building itself. Carvings on the pillars depicted twice each the idealized forms and sigils of the five gods of the Pentad: Corellon Larethian, Sehanine Moonbow, Dumathoin, Mystra, and Oghma. The tables and desks in the center of the room made three rings that demarcated the divisions of labor in the library. The wizard sighed in relief as nothing seemed disturbed or destroyed, the inkwells on the desks still open and unspilled. The secondary ring were granite slab tables numbering twenty in all, each longer than two adult humans and half again as wide. The tops, sides, edges, and legs were all replete with Dwarvish runes. The i