“Move, move! Plenty more laborers where you lot came from — if you don’t pick up the pace, we’ll just have to get new ones!”

Bialy was the foreman at Breugger’s Artifact Site #15. He was a small man with thin hair and a bushy black moustache, and, at this exact moment, he was hollaring himself red in the face. He didn’t think of himself as a bad man, particularly, and (though he would never admit it) he always regretted yelling at the workers like that. It’s just that, ultimately, he was terrified of Mr. Breugger, terrified of what would happen if he didn’t meet his deadlines and quotas, terrified of losing his job. He didn’t want to end up as a rock-digger himself! So he yelled, and he screamed, and he did everything in his power to seem like he was doing everything in his power to make the dig go as smoothly as possible.

“‘Ere,” one of the laborers piped up, “what are we lookin’ for, anyways? Bunch of artifacters lumberin’ around chippin’ aimlessly at rocks is all I see. Fat lot of good that is.”

“It’s none of your business!” Bialy snapped. “If Mister Breugger had intended you to know, he’d have bleeding well told you. You’re getting paid to dig, and that’s all you need to know!”

“No, Dmitri’s right,” added a soft feminine voice. “We want to know what we’re doing here. If you won’t tell us, maybe we should ask the Puritan!”

“You’ll do nothing of the kind, Katja. I’ve given you your orders, and you’ll stick to them! Besides, the Puritan doesn’t know any more than you do. Hired muscle, that’s all he is and no mistake.”

“Oh, I know,” Gell interjected lazily. “We’re looking for a rock. A rock in a rock-stack.”

The big man had been lying on the ground, to all appearances fast asleep. This was, in fact, the primary reason Bialy disliked him — he always seemed to be napping his days away. In reality, Gell was doing no such thing; he was paying careful attention to the ebb and flow of the currents of magic, watching for what he alone, a Puritan, could see: any approaching magical anomaly, such as a spirit, or a devil, or, worst of all, a wizard.

But now that he’d been drawn into the conversation, Gell roused himself from seeming slumber and drew himself to his feet. He was a very solid man, rotund at first glance — he stood fully as tall as a draft horse, and appeared to weigh nearly as much. His unkempt blond hair, longer than it was short, was toussled about his head and shoulders, giving him the perpetual look of having just rolled out of bed. He wore no armour, and appeared to carry nothing of value except for a weather-beaten scabbard housing a well-used sword. As he gathered himself, he took a moment to collect his ragged straw cloche and wedge it unceremoniously onto his head. He looked, for all the world, the perfect bumpkin.

“I thought you were sleeping,” Bialy hissed.

“You always think I’m sleeping, Mister Bialy,” Gell replied affably, sizing up his interlocutors. He towered over the red-faced Bialy, much to the latter’s regret, and also over the spirited Katja, a slip of a girl whose dimpled cheeks and short red curls seemed like an impossible contrast to the life of a miner. Gell noted that there was clearly a useful amount of muscle concealed on that frame somewhere, though, as she swung a mattock with the best of them.

Dmitri was her polar opposite — tall, dark, and staid. Taller even than Gell himself, by perhaps half a hand. Dmitri was a difficult man to read; he seemed affable enough, but kept very much to himself, and very rarely spoke out. If this business agitated him enough to confront Bialy about it, Gell reasoned, there must be something serious in it somewhere. So he had resolved to get himself in the middle on way or another, and it was mere convenience that caused him to step in when he did.

“Anyway,” Bialy interjected, “Gell doesn’t know anything. Mister Breugger sent him here to guard us (though a great job of that he does in his sleep) and nothing more. So if you wouldn’t mind getting back to work –”

“Oh, no, I really do know,” Gell grinned. “We’re looking for one particular rock — supposedly it’s like some kind of obsidian ball.”

“Obsidian?” Dmitri replied, puzzled. “There’s no obsidian ’round ‘ere. Nearest we found is bay-zalt.”

“You see? He doesn’t know anything. Now get back to work!” Bialy’s triumphant tone sent them off muttering, but Dmitri and Katja were apparently satisfied that they’d gotten all they were going to get, and they went grudgingly back to digging. Angrily, Bialy lashed around to Gell.

“And you! You are not to involve yourself in the operations of this dig. You are here by Mister Breugger’s orders, and you are to guard us, and that is all. Any more of this disruptive behaviour and I’ll have to send word that you’re endangering the success of the entire project.”

“Now, Mister Bialy, don’t get like that. You know I was just tryin’ to smooth out the rough edges, like. Help keep the miners happy and all.”

“Artifacters!” Bialy snapped.

“Miner, artifacter, what’s the difference, anyhow? Either way you’re gettin’ paid to chip through rocks.”

“What’s the difference? What’s the difference?” Bialy was becoming nearly insensible at this point. “Let me ask you this, Gell. Would it please you to wake up tomorrow morning and find your head on a pike outside the miner’s guild offices? Would it?”

“Uh, no sir. It wouldn’t.”

“Well that is the difference. Now if you’ll excuse me?” And with that, Bialy stormed off with a huff, leaving Gell to chuckle quietly to himself about the quirks of these management types.

Settling back to watch the flow once more, Gell idly wondered what it was they were really here for. His story was true as far as he knew it — Mr. Breugger had definitely told him that he was searching for a ball of obsidian, though why he wanted it was beyond Gell’s reckoning. The important part was that, apparently, Breugger was not the only one interested in this particular rock; his intelligence network had informed him that the College of One was also searching for it.

The College of One was a secretive group of mages — secretive enough that even Gell, who had more than a passing interest in the goings-on of wizardly sorts, knew very little about them. He did not know where they came from, what their purpose was, or how many members there were; really, all he knew for sure was that they were wizards, and, as such, they were undoubtedly up to no good. And that’s why Breugger needed a Puritan on this dig.

“Puritans” was low-dialect slang used to refer to the members of the Brotherhood of Purity, a religious sect opposed to all things wizardly. Magic, in the eyes of the Brotherhood, was a dirty and a dangerous thing, and was to be opposed at all times and in any way necessary. Gell was perhaps a lapsed member of the Brotherhood; he no longer necessarily accepted all of the tenets of the faith, and he sure as hell had had enough of living in a cloister. But he still agreed with the Brotherhood’s core belief that magic was dangerous, and that there was a need for somebody to stand between wizards and the people they would theoretically terrorize. And he pictured himself filling that role; a strong and steadfast wall, insulating the common man from the magical elite. That was why he was here on this dig; he didn’t know what was so special about this rock, and he didn’t know why the College was after it, but he knew he didn’t like the idea one bit.

Days passed, as days are wont to do, and the dig proceeded without event. Bialy became more frustrated with Gell’s apparent nonchalantness, Gell became more amused by Bialy’s apparent high-strungness, and the miners — excuse me, artifacters — dug on and on, carting out load after load of useless basalt, and discovering not a thing like a sphere of obsidian.

That is, until one day, about a month after we joined this tale, when Dmitri came running up the tunnel toward the foreman’s tent, clutching an object in his hands. An object very much like a sphere of obsidian, but with a strange, unearthly glow to it.

“Well,” Bialy beamed, “there’s lovely! Mister Breugger will be most pleased to hear that we’ve recovered his… ah… artifact, and I for one will be most pleased to be out of this wretched hole. We’ll just set this up in my tent for safe-keeping while we prepare to leave. Gell, would you be so kind as to wake your sorry arse up and stand guard over something for a change?”

But Gell did not respond. He did not even move.

“Always he’s awake when I want him to be sleeping, and, now that I actually have a use for him, he’s asleep.” Bialy trundled his way over to the sleeping Puritan and hollared at him: “Gell! I said get up!”

Still nothing — Gell proved impossible to wake, and this is mainly because he was not, in fact, sleeping. He was alarmed. He had detected a very powerful and very dangerous magical disturbance coming at speed toward them up the tunnel not a few minutes before, and he was now watching it intently to determine what it would do. For now, it was just sitting there.

Bialy, of course, was oblivious to all this. All he knew was that there was a goddamned expensive waste of space here that, by all rights, should be snapping to attention and getting ready to protect the artifact. He wound up for his most blistering exhortation yet, but, before he could get even one word out, Gell was suddenly on his feet, and looking very stern indeed.

“Mister Bialy, this stone should not be kept in your tent. You will be in danger.” Bialy almost bit Gell’s head off for this impertinence, but something in the Puritan’s bearing gave him pause. Actually, everything in the Puritan’s bearing gave him pause — Bialy had never seen Gell this serious before. Gone was the happy-go-lucky hillbilly persona, and, in its stead, were hard eyes, scrutinizing every inch of the cave, and every inch of him. Bialy found this most disconcerting, and all he could do was meekly croak “danger? I’m in… danger? Get it away from me!”

Gell obligingly snatched the stone from Dmitri’s hands, and brought it over to his cot, sitting it on the ground in front of him and closing his eyes.

“What is it?” Dmitri asked. “Should we get evacuatin’ the workers now and strike camp later?”

Gell gazed at it intently through closed eyes. “I don’t know. I don’t know what it is. But I sure do see why Breugger is so keen to get his hands on it.”

A shadow crept silently up the hall, unnoticed by the few sentries awake at this hour of the night, making its way furtively toward the Puritan and the stone. Of course, it thought, he would have to take it himself. This would be so much simpler if that dolt Bialy had it. Creeping its way around bends and corners, it slowly approached Gell’s cot. Gell appeared to be sleeping — but didn’t he always? The shadow felt relatively sure of itself, however, having administered a healthy dose of sedatives to the giant guardian in his evening meal, and, indeed, he was snoring rather loudly as the shadow approached. Deftly, and without a sound, the shadow snatched up the stone and wrapped it in a heavy canvas sack to disguise its telltale light, and then padded back down the corridor toward the workers’ tents.

“Gell! Gell, you were right!” Bialy’s whisper came coarsely through the night a few moments later, after the shadow had safely departed, “there is a thief after all!”

“Right amateruish, at that,” Gell responded, sitting up. “Knock-out drugs in the dinner. Would you imagine I’d fall for that?”

Instead of answering what was probably a hypothetical question, Bialy merely retorted “well? Aren’t you going to go after him?”

“No,” Gell replied, to Bialy’s shock and mortification, “I think not.”

“But… what? Why? Gell! Go get that stone back!”

“There’s no need. Our thief won’t be going anywhere.”

“And just why not?”

“Because we’re under attack.”

Gell couldn’t see it in the impenetrable darkness of the cave, but Bialy blanched absolutely white at that. Just as he was about to stammer out some type of incoherent command or other, a loud horn could be heard blowing from the front of the cave — the signal that their perimeter had been breached by unknown or hostile forces. Gell leapt up to his feet and headed off toward the entrance.

“Come on, Mister Bialy! You don’t want to miss the fun!”

Bialy was absolutely stupefied. The night before they were finally getting out of this accursed place, and it’s one catastrophe after another. And not only that, the idiot Puritan appeared to be enjoying it!

Gell arrived at the cave mouth just in time to see the first wave of hostilities breaking. The regular guards appeared to have held their own — whatever this opposing force was, its foot soldiers and the Breugger militia appeared evenly matched. The foot soldiers, however, were not of interest to Gell. He was after the mage. And the mage could not hide from him.

“Hey!” his voice boomed through the cavern, “just what d’you think you’re doing? This here mine — excuse me, artifactery — happens to be the property of the J.S. Breugger Corporation, and we don’t take kindly to your uncivil behaviour. So how’s about you clear on out of here and we call it a push?”

“Hand over the stone and we’ll be happy to,” came the reply from an unseen source. “But, really, we came all this way — you can’t expect us to leave empty-handed! Where’s your sense of hospitality?”

“Seems to me we have the upper hand, friend. Ain’t enough of you to break through these lines. Unless you have some type of reinforcements I can’t quite seem to lay eyes on.”

The response was a cackle, followed by a fiery blast that took out a large chunk of the cave wall, along with a good dozen of the Breugger regulars. Gell cursed himself for that mistake — he intended to provoke to mage into showing himself, but didn’t anticipate such a sudden display of power. He would make it up to those men by seeing to it that their deaths were avenged.

“Coward!” he bellowed, pushing his way through the lines and into the open, hoping to draw fire away from the men. “Show yourself and face me like a man!” Only belatedly, at this moment, did Gell notice that the blast had apparently taken its toll on the enemy troops, as well.

“Like a man? Yes indeed. Very like a man… but it is not a man. Joachim, devour him!”

From the crater — amidst the mingled corpses of two armies — rose a shape: the shape of a man, but containing none of the substance. Gell felt his senses momentarily overwhelmed by the sudden eddy in the flow, and then he understood exactly what he was facing. Joachim hove into view, teetering back and forth, with an errie grin on his — its — face. Its body, ostensibly human, was covered with eldritch glyphs in the seeming form of tattoos, glowing with a sickening light, pulsing to a rhythm none but Gell could perceive. The creature’s eyes were dead orbs inflamed with the cold light of the arcane, and its hair — or what of it remained following its explosive entrance — was stiff and jagged, standing out from the top and sides of its skull like so many wires. The men, Breugger’s finest, staggered backward, clearly unprepared for an evil of this magnitude.

“A primal,” Gell spat.

“A primal?” came a voice from behind him, “God’s mercy — we ain’t paid to handle nothin’ like that!”

“Hold your ground! I’ll deal with the primal. You keep the enemy from penetrating into the camp.” Gell’s mind was on the stone — if the line fell, he may not be able to track it down in time.

“But — shit! We ain’t… I mean –”

“Hold the line!” Gell roared. At that moment, the men couldn’t decide which was more terrifying — the dead vessel of magical devastation, or the very real, very living, very large man. But their indecision was sufficient for the moment — they held the line. Gell approached Joachim, taking care to manoeuvre such that no living man was behind him, and fell easily back into his affable persona.

“Well, hello there, Joachim. Pleasure to meet you. My name is Gell, and I’ll be your dancin’ partner today. Shake?” he held out his hand. Joachim’s teeth flashed a wicked grin, and it held its hand forward — but not to shake. Instead, a sudden flash of magical flame burst forth, carving a deep rut in the cave floor, finally blasting itself out on the wall.

But Gell was prepared, and he leapt easily over the blast, touching down in the same spot he began in. Joachim expressed surprise at this, but Gell persisted in his ruse. “Now, that wasn’t very neighbourly of you at all. If you don’t behave yourself, Saturnine and I will have to be stern with you.” He patted the hilt of his sword as he said this. Joachim responded by lunging forward, moving faster than normal eyes could track, seemingly becoming a mass of whirling, snarling teeth, crackling ferociously with the power of decay.

Gell was once again equal to the challenge, and he stepped smoothly off to the side, dealing the devouring dervish a hard blow with the back of his fist. The magical energy coming off of the primal singed Gell’s hand — a normal man would have been seared to the bone, but Gell was hardly normal when it came to these matters. Still and all, it was a miscalculation on his part, and he considered himself fortunate not to suffer anything worse than a minor burn. It was not a mistake he’d make twice.

As the primal reeled from the sudden impact, Gell reached swiftly downward, and, in one swift motion, unclasped the hilt of his sword and drew it forth from the scabbard. He traced with it a complex pattern in the air — the sign of Nullification. Saturnine began to glow with a quiet black light, and he swept it cleanly through the primal’s midsection. A horrible sound echoed throughout the chamber — the sound of a thousand souls flickering and suddenly coming to an end. And then the lifeless form that once was a man called Joachim collapsed to the ground, drained of that chaotic force that compelled it to action.

The glow slowly faded from Saturnine.

“Now that I’ve dealt with your toy, how’s about you come out here and –” but Gell’s exhortation was interrupted by a sudden scream; a woman’s scream. Instantly, he realised what had happened, and a glance behind him confirmed it — the line had not held. Damn it, he swore to himself, I should have been paying more attention! But his reverie was broken by a sudden, sharp cackling.

“Oh, I’ll come out, Puritan! Gladly!” With that, an immense blast of force rocked through the front of the cave, scattering the enemy forces in all directions. In the centre of the blast, Gell’s worst-case scenario was playing itself out; Katja lay on the ground, motionless, with the form of a wizard towering over her. A wizard holding the stone in his outstretched right hand.

“Yes!” he cried, “did you see? Did you see that right there? Did you see my power? Now that I possess the Word, I am unstoppable!”

“The what?” Gell attempted to stall, “I hate to be the one has to point this out, but what you got there is a rock.”

“Come now, Puritan, what do you take me for? Clearly you know the legend of the Word! The primal force — the ultimate magic — that which created all that is and ever shall be! Its power now is mine to command! I am become Death — the creator of worlds!”

Stalling clearly wasn’t working, so Gell did the next best thing — he attacked. Whirling Saturnine through the air, he formed the sign of Repulsion, and he launched himself at the mage, the blue trail of his blade echoing behind him. The mage, for his part, did exactly what Gell expected; he channeled his power through the stone, and unleashed a crack of magical lightning directly toward the leaping Puritan. Gell swung Saturnine around to intercept the blast. So far, everything was according to plan.

What Gell hadn’t planned on was how much power the mage would gain from the stone. It was an odd sensation, as the bolt and the blade met one another — Gell could swear he felt time itself drawing to a halt, and the flow slowly ceasing. Then came a tremendous pain, as the sign struggled against the amplified bolt, neither side willing to yield, everything depending on Gell’s force of will and Saturnine’s structural integrity. In the end, Saturnine held, and Gell was able — barely — to throw the bolt off into the cavern wall, though not, as he had hoped, directly back to the sender. He dropped to the ground for an instant, his momentum entirely consumed in the struggle, and then launched himself again. The mage did exactly as Gell had planned once again, and erected a barrier of his own.

“Think that can stop me?” Gell blustered, tracing Saturnine through the sign of Breaching.

The mage merely laughed, and Saturnine made contact with the magical shell. There was a momentary pause, and then Gell bounced off, the shell still intact.

“Ha! Fool! I told you — the power of the Word is now mine! I cannot be stopped by such cheap tricks!”

Gell did not reply, instead taking a deep breath and focusing his immense will into Saturnine. The blade’s yellow glow intensified, and he made a giant leap, bringing his sword down onto the top of the shell with a tremendous yell.

Will clashed against will, as the Puritan put every ounce of his strength into breaching the barrier, and the mage fired back through the stone, determined to repel the invader. Every fibre of Gell’s being felt like it was being drained of its vital force, but he continued to dredge yet more strength out of reserves he didn’t even realise he had. All he knew for sure was that he could not afford to lose, and this was the last, best chance he was going to get. Slowly, painstakingly, he began to push down through the barrier, the struggle of titanic powers tipping in his favour. But the mage had a plan of his own, and thrust the stone forward, intending to annihilate Gell with another lightning crack while the Puritan was occupied with his offensive. What the mage had not counted on, however, was Gell’s progress at slicing through the shield, and perhaps he thrust forward a bit too far, as blade and stone made direct contact.

All was silent for a moment in the mouth of Breugger Artifact Site #15, the key participants in its drama frozen in a sort of obscene tableaux, the downward pressure of the Puritan and the upward pressure of the wizard canceling each other out. It seemed as though all the light in the cave suddenly ceased to exist, except for the yellow glow of Saturnine and the incomprehensible colour of the Word. Everything seemed to come to a complete cessation, the entire focus of being and endeavour wrapped up in the eternal struggle between edge and shell, and then, slowly, almost imperceptibly, the stone began to crack.

The mage was instantly flooded with panic, but there was nothing he could do — he was as much a prisoner of the interminable arrow of time as any of the rest. Slowly, inevitably, Saturnine completed its descent through the centre of the stone, cleaving it apart, breaking the mage’s power. The shell collapsed, time rushed back into the world, and Gell, without even thinking, flashed through the sign of Nullification, and brought the black blade in a single motion through the mage’s centre of being.

The sudden rush of souls into the blade of Saturnine was the least of Gell’s concerns at that moment, as he was rather preoccupied with the explosion — or perhaps “hatching” would be a better word — of the stone he had just cleaved through (to?). The two halves of the stone fell to the ground on either side of the lifeless form of his interlocutor, and a sudden impossible radiance burst upon Gell from all sides.

He didn’t know where he was. If you put the question to him, he wasn’t entirely sure he’d be able to tell you who he was. But he was there, somewhere, in some space, face to face with what appeared for all the world to be a very small winged woman wearing no clothing at all. Then, just so he’d be convinced that he was not just pretending to be mad, she spoke to him.

“Hi! I’m Sarai. Thanks for letting me out of that stuffy old rock!”

“I… what?” Gell was not often completely at a loss for words, but this time he was utterly stumped.

“I’m Sarai. It’s my name, silly. I’m the wordling you just set free, and boy am I ever glad to get out of that thing.”

“Wordling? What?”

“Oh boy. You mean you don’t know? Well, let’s see. You know how, in the beginning, there was the Word?”

Gell nodded. He was still trying to figure out where the hell he was.

“Well, the Word couldn’t handle all that heavy lifting as one centralised entity — that’s inefficient. So it created — or, rather, it became — us wordlings. We were kind of the labourers, if you want to think of it like that, who created… you know. Creation. And then, when the work of creation was done, we were sealed away! Just like that! Can you imagine?”

Gell shook his head. He was definitely either dead or off his nut. Or both.

“Well, you let me out of that stuffy old rock, so now I’m yours. Don’t go getting any ideas!”

“Wait,” Gell finally discovered how to form a sentence of his own,” “am I dead? What is this?”

“Dead? Oh, no, not at all. You wouldn’t be a very good partner if you were dead! Though you couldn’t really be worse than that rock. No, I’ve just popped us out of time for a moment so we can have this chat. When we’re done, I’ll pop us right back in and we’ll pick up where you left off — which is, if I’m not mistaken, right about when you stabbed that sharp thing of yours right through the centre of the man who was trying to rape me.”

“He was… what?”

“Okay, I’m being graphic. Sue me. He was trying to force me, against my will, to accommodate him. Happy?”

“I…”

“Anyway, you won, I liked you better, the end. Now I’m a part of you, and you’re a part of me. I guess it’s love at first sight!”

“Love? What?” But Gell got no answer. He found himself staring at a body that once was a mage, with two fragments that once were a stone lying on either side. He looked around, almost in a daze. The remnants of the mage’s troops — the ones who survived his hubris, anyhow — were retreating from the cave, and the Breugger regulars were slowly grouping up around him. Still Gell said nothing. What was that? Was it real? Was he seeing things?

Bringing him back to reality in a hurry, Bialy rushed to the front, perfectly willing to assume command now that the threat had passed. “The stone!” he wailed, “You’ve demolished it! F… shit… t… oh, Breugger’s going to have my head for this!” Composing himself, he proceeded into the last refuge of the middle manager: blame. “I mean Breugger is going to have your head! How do you explain this, Gell?”

Gell had no explanation. He had no words at all. Fortunately, he didn’t need any, as a voice rang out from the back of the assembled crowd: “He needs no explanation. Mister Breugger will be most pleased.” All heads turned to view the speaker, and, through the crowd, came a familiar form: a tall man, with dark hair and a mysterious countenance.

“Dmitri!” Bialy bellowed, more out of surprise than anger, “what is the meaning of this?”

“The meaning is precisely as I say. Mister Breugger will be most pleased. His primary objective was to keep the Word out of the hands of the College, and Gell has accomplished this — though his means have perhaps been a bit extraordinary.”

“What?” Bialy wailed, “so this has all been some damn conspiracy that apparently everybody was in on but me? Answer me!”

But Dmitri paid him no mind, instead proceeding to the still-shocked Puritan. “Gell. Gell, listen to me. You have accepted a great burden, whether you know it or not. The Word is now with you, and the Word is you, but that places you in great danger. You are now marked, and those who lust after the power of the Word will stop at nothing to get it. You will need to be most careful.” Dmitri helped Gell to his feet, and continued: “the lesser trial is behind you now. You have succeeded. But the greater trial is still to come. I have much confidence in you, Gell, as does Mister Breugger; he would not have selected you for this task otherwise. Go forth — it is your time. Much depends on the choice you make right here.”

With that, Dmitri proceeded toward the mouth of the cavern and departed, Bialy screaming at the men to apprehend him. Nobody responded.

Gell picked up the prone Katja and carried her back toward the tents. There was a lot yet to be uncovered.