Part II
The next night, Seriim stood outside the Research Center dressed in his old leathers. Simple, gray leather armor with a metal shoulder pad on his left arm and three potions on its strap. He bore no weapons other than two daggers sheathed on each of his thighs. On his back was a small backpack.
When the twelfth bell sounded the hour across town, Seriim knew it was time to move. He quickly casted a spell on himself and his eyes began to slowly see. On the fifth level of Yliakum, night was very dark, almost pitch, but thanks to this spell, Seriim could see almost as well as an Enkidukai. He ran from the bushes to the back wall of the Center and touched the crystal on the back door. With a whispered word, it opened quietly; this door was locked with only magic. He quietly slipped inside.
The door led into the break room, where the scholars and magi took their lunch and dinners. The lights were off and the room was void of life.
Perfectly acceptable, Seriim thought to himself as he ran quietly across the floor towards the Archives. Down the hall, to the left, right down the stairs, and straight ahead; there were no guards to be seen.
As he rounded the last corner, Seriim noticed them. There were guards on either side of the Archive's door—there was no way around them. The Ylian crouched behind the corner and locked his eyes on the torch-lit guards. His hand loosened the glyph sack at his waist and he casted a spell to make the guards sleep—its effect took immediately. As soon as the guards were down and asleep, Seriim ran down to the gate and took a small device out of his backpack: a gauntlet of leather and metal with an azure-colored crystal imbedded in the forearm piece.
As he slipped the device onto his arm, Seriim began to feel it thrum with magic. The enchantment had activated. He grabbed hold of the crystal handle in the Archive's gate and concentrated on the identity of one of the high magi. Both the crystal on the gauntlet and the crystal in the door glowed white for a moment and then the gate opened.
Seriim removed the gauntlet and replaced it in his bag before sneering at the still-sleeping guards. “You're a heavy-sleeping lot, aren't you?” he taunted as he entered the Archives.
Unlike the Depository, the Archive Gates didn't shut on him. This annoyed Seriim; he'd have to work fast. The Ylian quietly searched for the Shadowtap in the dimly lit Archives and found it rather quickly; after all, it was the newest artifact to be submitted.
It was unlike anything the Ylian mage had ever seen before; a beautiful thing, really. It was a sphere about the size of his fist, made of pure obsidian. It was sectioned off into quadrants by lines of black marble, which met at an onyx sphere in the artifact's front. Circuits of moving, black energy ran throughout the obsidian body of the sphere, with traces of purple showing up throughout them.
Seriim picked up the sphere carefully, unable to contain a euphoric grin. He was extremely careful on where his fingers and hands touched the sphere, avoiding the strange black-and-purple circuits that ran through the obsidian. He attempted a divination on the sphere, but its power simply absorbed the spell; this surprised Seriim, so he took a mental note of it.
Once again, he ran over the object's mysterious origin in his head. It was created by a Dark Way master around two to three hundred years prior. It's exact purpose was unknown, but its creator was an infamously powerful being. The creator had claimed in his journals that the Shadowtap could be used to create a being whose soul was linked directly to the Dark Way, thus more powerful than even he. Seriim was skeptical about this, but its creation was more interesting and likely to be true.
The Shadowtap was created from obsidian, black marble, onyx, and the Dark Way, but its core is said to be fragment of the Dark Crystal in the Death Realm. If this was true, then that meant that the Dark Crystal could be destroyed, which is valuable information for some.
After sifting through the information he had already gathered, Seriim looked closely at the onyx sphere in the center of the object; it looked like a button of some sort... He allowed one of this fingers to touch the circuit running across the sphere's body; shadows danced across his finger tips, caressing them with a cold sensation. It was almost...comforting.
Seriim noted this and turned the sphere around, looking for any other interesting areas; there were none other than the onyx sphere. So after several moments thought, he turned it back to face him and pressed on the smaller sphere lightly. It sank in much more than the mage had thought it would. As the onyx button disappeared into the depths of the the sphere, the air suddenly grew colder and the room darker.
Seriim knew then he'd made a grave mistake; not even his magically augmented eyes could see through the darkness that now surrounded him. He looked at his hands and shrieked; the circuits that had surrounded the artifact had now wrapped around his hands, boring into his skin. Slowly, his skin paled and more shadows began to bleed from his skin, sheathing his arms and body. The Ylian dropped to his knees, wincing in pain as the sphere stole his humanity and replaced it with shadows. After ten excruciatingly long minutes, the button of onyx rolled back into place and Seriim collapsed. The sphere no longer had any of the shadowstuff circuits surrounding it.
Seriim stood up a few moments later, still rather groggy. He put the artifact into his backpack without a second thought and then looked down at his hands: they were abnormally pale and sheathed in shadows which bled from his skin. Unknown to him, his eyes were completely black with a glowing yellow iris. It was then he noticed that he could
see through the unnatural darkness with ease. A grin formed on his face, which was also bleeding shadows. Somehow, he knew that he was no longer a Ylian. He was something so much more (or less, depending on who you ask). To him, he was now powerful and to symbolize his new form and power, he adopted a new name:
“I am Vrael Shadowborne, First of the Darkness.”
