The moment I entered the church I knew it was a trap. It was all too easy. Those foolish nobles, the guards , the smugglers.. all to distract me. I didn't think. There was one place my power could do me no good... consecrated ground. A blast of ethereal pain and power caught me in the chest as I walked down the aisle, throwing me back against the wall. I heard ribs crack in my chest. 'How...?', I coughed sickly as a shadowy figure appeared from behind the altar Lykath sur Sylvain laughed. 'There can only be one, Mordecai' And then I realised the set-up. Two prophecies. Two Powers. Two evils. How could I have ever thought this an ordinary Tower intrigue? For two princes of Shadow shall come The champions of Dark Gaia In the year of the Troubles One shall triumph The other shall go to the death unending 'We were both groomed for this since birth, Mordecai. Oh, neither of us could be told. That would interfere with the prophecy. We were each born with hideous Powers, to be the bane of Light Gaia and her creations. But only one of us is the Chosen Dark Champion' Lykath smiled. 'And that is me. My power is not dependent directly on Dark Gaia like yours. I cling like a limpet, like a parasite, and absorb the power of the host. Even now I sap your Power. And I can use it' Pain. Lancing shafts of agony digging into my head; turning every second into a nightmare kaliedoscope of distorted vision and pain. The shapes around me blurred into vague and imponderable figures of menace, then snapped into harsh consistency with lacerating swiftness. Blood from the wounds Lykath's power had bored in my chest poured out, soaking the black silk of my coat. Events seemed to slow to a snail's pace as the damp stain on my shirt and coat grew. I watched my chest's rising and falling begin to slow with a dreamy, detached interest. A soothing blanket of tangled imagination. Lykath laughed wildly as he advanced on me, tears rolling down his cheeks. The church held my spells at bay, but some how Lykath's trickery slipped through 'You fool, who thought to throw your pitiful strength against an Evil that has existed millenia! . Mordecai. Enjoying the fate I have meted out to so many of your kind over the centuries? How many times have I known your visage, realised your inner thoughts, Mordecai once known as Amnon, once known as Malignatus? There have been so many like you. You reach for the sun, and are burnt for your greed. Now, look at you! Drained of all Power, a squealing animal awaiting the executioner's knife ' I coughed blood. Lykath shook his head and spat on me contemptuously as he passed. Reversed equations of nature, blackbody radiation and calculal symbols oscillated through my mind. I drew harder, tearingly, at the fabric of the Pattern, changing fundamental natural laws and cutting to the very core of physics. Let power= mass. A reverse of polarity within a gravitional field. A literal impossibilty, but that did not stop my mad effort Lykath, raising his hands to destroy me once and for all, suddenly found they were heavy to lift. He sank to the floor, watching in disbelief as his skin rumpled and flattened, struggling against the weight of a burden he could not see. 'What trickery is this, Mordecai?', he managed to grate through the agony of his changeling power/mass. I no longer understood what I did, but still continued at it, my face a mask of concentration as I tugged on the strands of natural balance within the Wheel and strained them to their snapping limits with my mind. Lykath watched in horror as his skin pulled tight over his bones, and flesh burned and melted into hissing puddles of grease on his face and body. I realised just seconds before what this would inevitably become, too late. The strain was too great on the laws of physics, and they snapped back into place with force. From boiling point, Lykath's flesh suddenly slammed into absolute zero. With a scream that shook what remained of the church, Lykath perished in the chill vortex of swirling cold. The air around his pitiful remains froze into a solid block, and the null zone of cold stretched out and embraced me, standing directly in front of it. The split seconds of warning I had had proved enough. Drawing on reserves of strength untapped during my entire existence, I channeled my magic into a shield of superheated Fire, all around me. There was an explosion as the cold met Fire, and the world collapsed around me. I unsteadily got to my feet, standing up amid the ruins of the church. I looked around me, walking out into the cold shadows of moonlight. A sleeping world, a world awaiting me. The suffering Lykath's intrigues had brought to this flyspeck city would be nothing. Nothing. Then I laughed, a high and cold sound, and melted into the night. The world was mine