Chapter 15-1

Chapter 15: Seeking Chaos's End

“It is true that evil itself is never truly defeated. At the least, it will not be so long as selfishness and hatred dwell in the hearts of men. But individual evils can be stopped, destructive beings turned from their course or, if needs be, slain.”

“It is... rather like a garden, I would suppose. Weeds will ever spring up, but so long as effort is put into exterminating them, one can still grow a good crop. So, too, must constant effort be put into curbing and reversing the growth of evil, lest it destroy everything of beauty and goodness.” --Garkhen

It took days for Zakhin'Dakh and Garkhen to be recovered enough to consider their next moves—days which Almonihah spent anxiously pacing around the Mage's Guild, watching for any signs of further attempts to steal the Amulet. He saw none, and each day it was returned safely to his keeping, but this hardly soothed the Ranger's nerves.

Nor did the wizards' discoveries do anything to calm him or his friends. In their studies, they found it was not simply a potent artifact of Chaos... but rather a potent artifact of controlling Chaos. How it worked they could not say, nor how the chaos mages had known of it, but they were able to divine that it was capable of bending the wills of Madness-Touched creatures to the bearer's commands... and that it had a dangerous will of its own.

It was clear to all that it had to be destroyed... but equally clear that such a task would be far from easy. By the time Garkhen had recovered from once again overextending himself, they still knew nothing of how it might be destroyed.

“Perhaps if we knew something of its history, we might guess at a method of destruction?” He suggested as he and Almonihah met once again with the guild's remaining archmages. “Surely such a thing must appear in records, even if it was not recognized for what it is?”

There was a moment of silence around the table as the others considered this proposal. Archmage Ganver was the first to respond.

“It's true that we haven't thought to check,” he admitted. “Perhaps you could go confer with the Mage-Archivists in the library? Then,” he eyed Almonihah, “You'd have something to occupy you other than pacing the halls.”

Almonihah grunted, acknowledging the point unhappily. “'nd the rest of you?”

“Will continue our current lines of research,” Ganver replied, promptly.

“That seems a fair idea,” Garkhen responded, before his friend could say anything further. “Shall we begin?”

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Happy Thanksgiving everyone!