Aggravet woke with a strange hunger in his gut and an urge to put distance between himself and his warehouse full of ancient artifacts and objects of the magical persuasion. He sniffed the air and dressed quickly, tossing his instruments into a backpack. The city was full of uneasy magic, today. It pressed at a persons senses, caused an itch under the skin that could not be scratched, and set the crystals in his witchfinder to humming ominously. The Lizard King’s battalion of wizards were up to no good, he suspected. Time to make himself scarce, put distance between himself and the uncomfortable power that burned in the center of the Lizard King’s capitol city. Time to go hunting.
Aggravet was a grave robber, truth be told, even though his business card said Antiquities Dealer. He liked the sound of the title. It gave him a weight and a prestige when he was trying to sell useless junk to the hedge witches and wizarding students. And if truth is still what we are telling, his own vanity needed the boost. If you could convince yourself you were important, it became easier to compete with the large antiquities houses who could afford to pay the exorbitant finder’s fees charged by the master wizards.
Aggravet stared blankly at the blinking query on the navigation screen of his aircar. Shrugging, he set the coordinates and hit the glowing GO button. Perhaps he was desperate or a fool or just bored, he could not decide. Perhaps a trip up to the ancient ruins atop the Serpent Mount would clear his head.
The temple’s parking lot was silent and empty. The amulet and religious icon sellers would show up in a few hours, their customers not far behind. Even the birds had forsaken the ruins, it seemed. The mountain was his.
Aggravet swung his pack in place and hiked up the trail to the temple ruins. It was said that Serpent Mount was not natural geography. The great wizards claimed it was an immense mound built by the First People long ago, before the rise of man. The Lizard King’s capitol city curled around its base like a sleeping cat. Aggravet did not think that placement accidental. Old magic rose out of the core of the planet, here. Only a fool would have failed to exploit that resource and the kings of old were no fools.
He stopped to catch his breath at the top of the trail and look out over the city towards the rising sun. Was it imagination or did a black shadow seethe ominously over the royal palace? Aggravet flinched away from the sight and the disloyal ideas that went with it and turned to study the ruins instead.
Ruins was a generous word. The grave robbers and stone pickers had cleansed the site long ago. What was left were stones too big to cut up and cart away. The only indicator of an ancient building site was the row upon row of shattered column bases and the immense paving stones that had once been the floor of a great temple. Even these were badly damaged. All the carvings had been chiseled free of the base stones. If that desecration was not complete enough, the king’s wizards had preformed their own form of grave robbing. All the ancient power had been sucked up and cannibalized so that hardly any energy clung to the stones anymore.
It was a testament to Aggravet’s desperation that he pulled out his witchfinder and set it up carefully on a large raised stone dais. The stone might have once been an altar platform, but the altar itself had been cut into pieces and carted away. The witchfinder was a clever bit of wizardous machinery, part gears, springs and crystals and part magic. He unfolded its delicate legs and pushed the release button. It indicator lights began to glow softly. With a soft metallic whir, it rose to its feet and took a few tottering steps before it settled into its search mode.
Aggravet backed up and turned in a full circle, studying the ruins. In theory, like would call to like and the magic in the finder would feed whatever residual magic might still remain in the stones. As a magnetic compass always aligns with the lines of power in the earth, the finder would point to the strongest sources of witch magic and perhaps to the object that held it. It helped that his model was the cheaper, less refined model. The more sensitive witchfinders, set to working on Serpent Mount, would just sit in one spot and hiccup drunkenly amidst the confusion of so much background magic.
The needles in the dials quivered and wobbled. It was finding something. Lifting each foot carefully, it tottered towards the center of the dais where the scars of the missing altar were faintly visible. Once there, it sank to the stone with a tired metal sigh. He gave it a few more moments, hoping the machine just needed to warm up or that the magic in the stones would take time to awaken, but the slight movement never became more than that. He sighed and turned it off. He was a fool to have expected anything more.
Aggravet folded its legs and shoved it back into his pack. For no good reason that he could think of, he took out a hand broom and began brushing the dirt and stone dust from the altar scar. It took a few minutes and when he was done he stood back and squinted down at the cracked stone. If he were the type to imagine things of the fanciful nature, he would have called the veins in the old marble unnaturally regular. He put the broom away and pulled out his bottle of witchwater. The old fraud who had sold it to him claimed it would show things that were meant to stay hidden. It was probably just river water, but Aggravet had bought it out of pity. But for the blessings of the gods, the saying went. Hopefully when he was old and creaky, someone would return the favor.
He sprayed the center of the patterned marble. The dust turned to mud. He ran his hand over the wet stone to clear it.
Aggravet moved to give it another spritz when the ruins shifted around his senses, flowing like water. A curious vertigo gripped him and Aggravet fell to his hands and knees, clinging to the stones. Was it an earthquake? He shook his head to clear it. It was then, that he noticed the blood bubbling up out of the cracks of the stones under his hands. He gagged and scrabbled backwards, away from the altar stones that seemed to be its source. The dark red flow increased. He leapt to his feet as the awful tide surged around him and ran like a river over his shoes.
It took him a moment to realize his feet were still dry. The scream that was threatening to bubble up out of his throat died an early death. He sighed in relief and then scowled. It was an illusion. Some clever wizard had been playing nasty tricks with the ruins. Not a very good illusion, he noted in disdain. A good wizard would have added smell, sound and tactile sensation to the visual effects.
He turned back to retrieve his pack and froze. A portal, a door in the fabric of space/time, hung in the air at a level that perhaps was once the top of the missing altar.
Aggravet was a dealer in objects of the occult. He knew portals. He recognized the tell tale ripple in the very fabric of reality. He studied it, looking for a hint to its source.
The theory was that at the beginning of time there was only one Place, one well, into which the One Mother breathed all her children and engraved their souls with her Pattern. But her children pushed and fought over space so she created Places for each of them, that they might not consume each other. The wizards called them reality wells. The mystics called them the Realms of Heaven. By whatever name, they existed beyond the veils of this world and could be explored by those who knew the magic and were brave enough to put themselves into the king’s wizardous machineries for the trip.
Had the First People buried a similar machine beneath the altar stone? Aggravet’s heart beat hard at the thought of the wealth such a find would bring. He studied the stones under it, looking for its power locus, but the device was so cleverly hidden it might as well have been invisible.
Aggravet stepped closer. It was not like any portal he had ever seen. Golden instead of blue white, irregular instead of perfectly spheroid, the edges would not stay sanely stable, writhing and pulsing, thick and alive where it should have been gossamer and insubstantial. The dark bloody river rushed out of this opening, splashing down upon an illusionary altar and incorporeal altar steps before flowing across a temple floor now covered in ornate and intricate runic writings. Fantastical walls rose up around him, covered in pictographs that were disturbingly alien. Columns held up a vaulted ceiling on which paintings coiled and writhed with a life of their own. Aggravet held his breath, afraid to blink, afraid to breath, afraid to disturb this magical making before it had run its course.
He sighed sadly when the bloody flow slowed to a trickle and the ornate pavement turned back into tired old stone. He did love a finely crafted spell of illusion. Too few could do them well.
He turned back towards the portal and moaned.
The edge of the golden opening uncoiled as he watched. Its serpentine body grew wings. Aggravet began to whisper a prayer to the god that protected the stupid from their own folly and clutched at the protective amulets hung on a chain around his neck. He recognized this god, this winged serpent surrounded by its own golden light. It was the deity of all those who worshiped at the feet of death and destruction. This was Cet, the Devourer. Its image graced all the temples within a thousand clicks of the capitol and was emblazoned on the reverse side of the coin of the realm, opposite the current king’s image.
The serpent was not done changing. The wings became arms and the tail split into feet and the body thickened to form a torso. The head grew soft and the fangs receded in the jaws. Aggravet put his hands over his face but could not stop himself from peering through his fingers at its terrible beauty.
A human form of indeterminate sex, naked but for a wisp of robe that was more wish than substantial hovered in the air. For some reason, Aggravet thought of it as female. She felt female.
She was not done changing. The corona of light condensed and settled into a seething mane of golden hair as she floated off the altar, her insubstantial toes touching each illusory step like a lover’s kiss. She met his eyes and glided towards him, an intent and oddly hungry look on her soft features.
Aggravet froze in horror. It suddenly settled in his bemused mind that this was no illusion. He threw himself onto his belly and squeezed his eyes tightly shut, waiting to die. Cet, the Devourer was no god to trifle with, no matter what aspect it decided to take.
“Free, at last. Is it you I thank for unlocking the door to my cage?” a sibilant voice asked, not quite human but not like anything else he recognized.
“No, no. Yes. I.. I do not know. I do not understand the magic that bound you, lady!” Aggravet blubbered, barely coherent.
“Where are my kindred?”
“Lady? I see only you.” Aggravet moaned, his nose pressed firmly into the stones.
There was a long silence above his head. Sweat dripped down Aggravet’s nose and turned the stone dust to mud.
“There must be kindred,” she sighed, longingly, “else who will contain me and keep me from un-making the world? Where is Cet-an-umken, my husband?”
Aggravet shuddered in terror.
“Please, lady, don’t…..” Aggravet begged desperately. “We are not bad people. We don’t want to die. Surely the king and his wizards can help you find him. The Lizard King claims to be your descendant. Perhaps he knows.”
“Yes? And where might I find this child of mine?” she asked curiously, her breath brushing against Aggravet’s ear. Aggravet tried not to scream. With great care, he uncurled an arm and pointed towards the city beyond the mountain.
“He lives in the black palace. He is the one who sits upon the ebony throne.”
“Really? Thank you. That is good to know. I shall reward you for your loyal service.”
“Oh, by all the gods, do not!” Aggravet pleaded, remembering suddenly that the grace of gods was a two edged sword.
“You are too humble. It is my pleasure. One wish. Your hearts desire,” she reassured him softly.
“No, no, lady, I am just a….” Aggravet looked up to plead his case, but she was gone. The ruins, once again, lay mournfully silent, the ancient stone’s journey back to dust almost palpable against his senses.
Aggravet wept in relief as he scrambled to his feet and snatched up his pack. He barely remembered the journey down the mount but by the time he had reached the valley, he had almost convinced himself it had all been a dream.
It was only in the ensuing months, as rumors of the King’s insanity spread and the King’s wizards disappeared one by one, as the empire began to crumble into chaos and the rule of law became the law of survival, it was only then that he began to wonder. Had the illusion been real? And if it was, did it really matter?
He immersed himself in his business and did not grant himself the luxury of such contemplation. Artifacts and magical objects of every sort walked into his storefront in the hands of the desperate and hungry family members of the missing wizards and witches. Soon, his warehouse held only the most valuable and authentic items. Collectors came to him first, now, in search of their heart’s desires.
At long last, the words on Aggravet’s business card actually reflected his true profession and he could hold his head up high as he strolled through the markets, showing off his fine clothes and his polished shoes.
And if anyone asked about his good fortune he was quick to tell them it was sharp wit and hard work that had brought him to this point. He was truly a self made man.
Wasn’t he?
