The mage was alone. He came without any servants, but he ractically glowing with ethereal energy. His yers of entments left him well beyond the reach of the wraith from the moment he first crossed into the s’s domain. He was rowed out into the fen by a local fisherman who had only the ti stains on his soul frurly eating the s's polluted catch; it was just a hint that soon enough - a year or two at most - he would have the whole vilge, not just the men hidden in the fever ridden ss outside of it. The mage’s robes didn’t have even the fairaud or stains from work on them, and he smiled at the dangerous men like he didn't have a care in the world.
“Leaving already, are you?” he asked, “I suppose I could allow that. Sell me your sves and the rest of your supplies and I’ll even give you a good price. You’ll need money for the road if yoing to get far enough away from me that I’ll never find you again.”
“Leave? We’ll be back, and with even more men than before!” the headman yelled, purpling with rage. The s loved anger and rippled hungrily around the violence, preparing to savor what it was sure was about to happe. The leader never had the ce to yell anything ever again though. In the split sed it took him to reach for his sword, a lightning bolt came down from a clear blue sky and boiled his brains in his skull before he hit the water, still steaming. He was dead before he’d even got wet, and before he or the s had gotten even a taste of suffering.
“Anyone else?” The mage asked nguidly. Everyohere stood dumbfounded, even the s which recoiled painfully from the fre of essehat wasn’t his own. One moment it had been expeg to feast on blood and suffering, and the it was burned by fn magics - hurt in a way that it had never been hurt before. For the first time in its existe knew fear. “The local lord has promised me this whole area for my experiments if I purge the thieving vermin in it. As far as I’m ed purge means, ‘to expel,’ so if you hurry I won’t have to kill all of you. I just—”
The headman’s sed had been standing at the window of the main building, overlooking this whole exge he shore. He raised a crossbow, but before he could pull the trigger he burst into fmes. The s was tempted to drink deep of that terrible suffering, but it held back. The mage’s magic cut through the mist and shadows that made up the wraith like the noonday sun and it wanted nothing to do with them. So the sed threw himself from the window into the shallow water to enjoy a short life amid the mud and worms, leaving only a few men that had pissed themselves, and a burning building behind him. Before he hit the water though, everyone else with a o with an equally grizzly fate. It was only when the gang was dead that the mage got off the boat and began to survey the isnd. “Yes - this will do I think,” he said to himself, “This will do nicely.”
“What will bee of us,” one of the surviving sves asked. He was strong enough to have survived two rounds of the shivers, but he didn’t look like he would make it through a third.
“Why - you’ll work for me, and when I have no further need of you, I’ll set all of you free.” The mage said, not b to look at any of them. “Now unload the boats and bring the tools. We’ll o knoe of these huts down before ut up the circle.” The men got to work after that - knog down many of the structures that they’d built up so carefully until now. This should have pleased the s, but the s khat nothing good could e from this new arrival, and it slunk away into the shadows to feast on the corpses of the retly dead to recover its strength and keep an eye on all of the goings on from a safe distance.
The fisherma at once, and everyone else borered for several days until the mage pronouheir preparations pleted. The s could feel the ge - like a numbness in the ter of its very soul. The mage had cleared and leveled the nd enough to create a br on the isnd that existed to safeguard the treasure. Ohat was done he’d lit a brazier and added potent inse to drive back the fetid s air from his ritual site, before adding a granite dust mixed with salt in a perfect circle while ting in a way that made the whole area thrum with geomantic power. The weather smelled of storms, but even if the s called to the thunderheads there was no way the rain would e in time to stop what was i.
The s was afraid. It had stayed clear so it wasn’t trapped ihe circle, but its treasures were. Iers surrounding its ir there were a few s and pieces of jewelry here and there, but it was less than nothing in the face of its great golde, and right now it could barely feel its sole reason for being. Was this mage really going to dig up its treasure in a single moment? Was it going to do in a day what the murderer hadn’t been able to aplish in years? That part of his soul was frothing with rage even while the rest of it sank into fear and despair. That’s when the ground started to move.
It started somewhere below it. Below the yers of cy that it had cimed, in the bedrock that would forever be too hard for the dark waters of the s to pee. What was once silent and still was rumbling and crag. Then the rock began to rise higher. It was an impossibility, but it was happening just the same. The sves fell to their knees as the earth shook, even as the mage stood their uurbed while his ting reached a credo. The rock was rising in a handful of broken spires - like teeth or cws, and the s could feel them tearing at its underbelly. Was it not enough to rip the treasure from it’s beati? Was it also going to pierce the cy so that the ied waters could be nced and drained before it could reach the vilge?
The s recoiled in anguish as the first outcropping pierced the bloodstained soil of its domain. Just like the mage that had summo, the rock was entirely beyond its trol. It was an affront to everything it had been building - a moo frustration, but ohat had been built within mere feet of its gold. The first outcrop wasn’t the only oher. Soon there were half a dozen, and eae was a finger in the fist that was gripping the core of the wraiths being. It could feel itself being damaged by the ritual. Even if the rocks hadn’t pierced the soil in such a way as to drain the s they’d still pierced it in a way that robably fatal, and there was nothing it could do.
The s could only watch as the megalithic stoually stopped moving, and the still living humans celebrated this with a vish dinner. All the s could celebrate was that even though the mage had dealt it a grievous blow, the treasure everyone sought still y more than a doze beh their feet. If raw magic like that couldn’t force it to the surface, then it was fident that no one would ever find it, and as long as it wasn’t found, the s would heal and recover. It would feast on victims or slowly increase its reach a little every week until it had enough blood to bee strong again.
Things passed quickly after that. Lost in the fog of its weakhe s couldn’t follow each of the small ges that occured on the isnd that used to be his, or the people who lived on it as they slowly improved it. One day it was just a series of ugly stones, but only a few months ter suddenly those stones had been dressed and shaped, and fired cy bricks were being pced into walls around the whole thing. The cy still beloo the s, and so did the wood that had beeo bake them, so slowly, even though the humans tried to seal it out of whatever they were building, they were unknowingly log themselves in with it.
After almost half a year it began to look like a tower. That’s one of the words the mage used a lot, along with phrases like geomantid ley lihey meant nothing to the s. The mage had apparently discovered that the spot he now occupied was a source of great power, and he had e to harvest it. The s grew angry at this revetion of course. The mage had e here to steal its powers, and there was nothing it could do to stop it. That was why it had never recovered, it decided, finally fitting the facts together. No matter how many corpses it devoured or dreams it invaded, it was trying to fill a bucket with a hole in it, and without mending that hole it would never be full again.
It could do nothing though, and more months passed while the tower that both was, and was not the s, began to grow i. Three stories, and then four were added. Eventually artisans started to frequent the isnd adding timber supports and ors that were beyond the mage’s sves. After more than a year they finally came o time, adding gss to the windows of the sixth story, just below the ft roof. That’s wheower took on its final form. It was a drum tower that was just over 30 feet at its base, and a little over half that on its highest story. It was a tremendous structure that would hum with the power of the mage when he ducted one of his experiments. Those were the days the s feared most. Whehat happened not only was there nothing for it to drain or harvest, but the mage sucked power from the wraith to aplish his are goals. Whehat happehe s lost weeks of time as the energies that let its soul exist faded bato the background.
It was during one of these bckouts that the mage had his libraries and tools moved into his new home by a small army of servants. No one new came for a long while after that, but dozens of men still swarmed about the mage, running his errands and doing his bidding. There recious little the s could do to interfere in any of this. Indeed, it could only watch as entirely mutages aually even a manor house sprung upon its isnd. It ractically a vilge in its ht now. The s should have been drowning in blood and power with such a feast on its doorstep, but it could only watd wither as civilization flourished and the mage sucked it dry.
