The topmost chamber of the Great Phraxtower was silent, save for the deep, slow breathing of its occupant.
The figure stirred. He had awoken from his nap. He stretched, rose to his feet, and crossed the sumptuous room to the ornate balcony. He gripped the railing and inhaled deeply.
This room was the highest point in the entire Edge. Stretched out far below were swirling clouds extending into the east. And below these clouds, spread before the figure, was the entire world. The black Nightwoods. The Thorn Forests. The massive Deepwoods. The crumbling Deadwoods. The Phraxfields. And…
"Omniphrax," he smirked. "Or what's left of it, anyway."
Vartolius Xax strode back into his chambers and collapsed onto one of the sofas. Any day now, he was expecting the blessed news from Xelius Pulnix. The reports had all stated that the defenses of Omniphrax were ready to give. One more blow would have been all it took.
How far he had come. How much he had achieved. His younger years seemed so distant now, and yet the potent water of the Riverrise spring kept his memory as youthful as ever it had been.
From the moment he could walk upright, Vartolius Xax had known he was special. So had everyone he had met. He had always had a gift for thinking in new ways. Ways that touched upon the wisdom of the past and the promise of the future. Ways that gradually fueled his fantastic ambition.
His mother had brought him up in Great Glade during the final years of the Third Age of Flight. She had told him many stories of the First and Second Ages. He had especially enjoyed the tales of excess and power. Of greedy leaguesmen, of usurping academics, of mutinous sky pirates and bloodthirsty shrykes. His mother had always told them as cautionary tales, but he had known better. The fact was, his mother didn't think he was good enough. She didn't want to get his hopes up that one day he might join the ranks of these infamous individuals. How could she ever have doubted him?
His favorite story by far was that of the Guardians of Night, because of its single enthralling twist. The story went that their self-proclaimed leader, Orbix Xaxis, had fathered an illegitimate child a few years before he came to power. The line managed to survive, and a few centuries later sought their fortune in Great Glade. It was from this line, his mother had said, that he, Vartolius, had hailed.
Yet young Vartolius never much cared for the tone his mother took as she told the story. She saw Orbix Xaxis as a madman, a crazed tyrant. He, Vartolius, saw him as a visionary. His plan may have failed, but it was a fantastic exercise of power. Why, exactly, had this gap between the strong and the weak grown so small these days?
Alas, his ideas proved too much for some fools. He was left with no choice but to play along with those saps in Great Glade who preferred to hand over power and money to their inferiors. He had released his frustration by joining the military.
Vartolius's years as a Freeglade Lancer gave him plenty of opportunities to throw his weight around. But it hadn't been enough. And soon, he was to experience a life-changing event.
"Waifs." he snarled, pounding his fist on the arm of the sofa.
A pompous, arrogant phraxscholar from the Cloud Quarter, one Telsix Flass, was paying a visit to distant Riverrise, to negotiate price controls on restorative water, and demanded an escort of Freeglade Lancers. Vartolius Xax had been among the individuals chosen to accompany Flass.
Everything was going fine, until Flass paid a visit to the Market Ledges to replenish his personal supplies of water. And the moment that Vartolius had entered the bustling district, he was bombarded with noise. And not just any noise…the loathsome waif merchants were announcing their wares inside his head! There were so many voices that he couldn't take it. He had blacked out from the stress, and one day later, he was awoken by the horrible prodding fingers of a waif healer…a waif healer, moreover, who discharged him immediately, repulsed by the dreams and schemes Vartolius had conjured up.
It had been what pushed him past his limits. Change had to come to the Edge, and he, Vartolius Xax, was going to bring it about!
On the way back to Great Glade from Thorn Harbor, Flass's phraxship stopped over in a remote Western Woods village to repair a loose engine valve. Vartolius had seized his chance and ran for it. He wasn't going back to Great Glade. Oh no, he could never get far trying to gather a following there, not with all their ridiculous nonsense about free trade and equality for all. His supporters were to come instead from the Western Woods.
The most remote corners of the Deepwoods were the last uncivilized places left in the Edgeworld. In some places, nothing had advanced beyond what it had been in the First Age of Flight; marauding bands of warlike goblins, subterranean trog colonies, uneducated trolls who hadn't even heard of phraxcrystals. The wealth of the Third Age of Flight had not yet touched these wild forests, and its inhabitants would give anything for a better life. And Vartolius had promised them precisely that, if they would only submit to his authority.
His first target was the waifs.
Revenging himself upon the creatures that had so tormented him, Vartolius Xax conquered the city of Riverrise and ordered every last waif killed. Most were swiftly dealt with, but plenty had heard Vartolius's murderous thoughts from a distance and fled to the surrounding Nightwoods. But this hadn't perturbed him. His army had then swept through the Nightwoods and killed many more. Still, some managed to escape over the side of the Edge cliff itself. Here, he was forced to give up, for his armies were not capable of locating the hastily constructed settlement the waifs were rumored to have built.
In any case, it was time to turn to other matters.
The foolish leaders of Great Glade and Hive did not take kindly to the new order which had sprung up in Riverrise. They attempted to force Vartolius to step down with rigid trade sanctions. Vartolius responded by cutting off the flow of the Riverrise spring, punishing the great cities of the Deepwoods far worse than they had punished him. At first, he had continued to supply his loyal subjects in Riverrise with the water, but he shortly discovered that many of them were smuggling it out of the city, evidently determined that a black market for Riverrise water should still exist. Furious, he ordered those responsible to be brutally killed, and then completely stopping the water supply, keeping it all for himself. After all, he was the only one who he knew could be trusted with it.
It had been a wise move. Not only had the traitorous scum learned their place, but it had allowed him to live for centuries, looking not a day older than forty.
Soon, the population of Riverrise was perfectly well behaved, leaving Vartolius to spend his time experimenting. He wanted a new way to exercise his authority, and to expand it. It wasn't long before he discovered the perfect way, quite by accident.
He had been modifying a phraxchamber, designing it to work more efficiently, when a particularly large glister drifted down from the sky and got into the engine. Somehow, it gave off energy…a lot of energy. Before long, Vartolius was designing better engines, designed to run off the power of glisters. It was just what he needed…and it signified a new beginning.
For a while now, Riverrise had been languishing under the shackles of poverty and famine. Now that they were no longer importing or exporting goods to and from the Deepwoods, their industries were floundering under a lack of resources. Vartolius put a stop to that right away, by enslaving the inhabitants of Riverrise in his new glistership factories he was constructing on the edge of the Nightwoods. Before long, he had built a fleet of mighty warships.
Those puny wretches in Hive and Great Glade never stood a chance.
Ah, what wonderful days! He was the newly self-declared Glorious Leader of the Deepwoods, and lost no time in reshaping the Edgeworld in his image. Now that he was gaining more and more power, the inhabitants of all the settlements rushed to join his armies, tempted by the promise of marvelous rewards for the most loyal. Soon, a few of his earliest recruits proved to be so obedient and ruthless that they were charged with the task of governing the settlements. The two most important of them, Xelius Pulnix and Bloodhem Spikeflail, were even granted access to the Riverrise spring, in return for keeping order in their respective cities.
Soon, though, he had a new problem to deal with. The Blight. It worsened the poverty throughout the Edge (not that Vartolius cared about that) and created a great deal of unrest. Vartolius was pressured to find a solution, and came up with a tremendous plan.
The ancient plans of the Guardians of Night, he reasoned, did not work because their structure had been incapable of withstanding the power of the lightning from the Great Storm. The new Great Phraxtower, on the other hand, would be designed to channel the power directly into the ground, harnessing the energy of a layer of stormphrax within the walls. And it was carefully engineered to hold up against the internal explosions caused by the strike.
But that wasn't enough. A simple Great Storm wouldn't have the power or the purity to cleanse the Edge of the Blight, and the unfaithful. For this feat, the newly established Phraxguardians would require the Mother Storm herself.
The weather forecasters predicted that it would arrive both at a higher altitude and within a shorter interval of time than it had ever done in recorded history. The plans for the Great Phraxtower had been based upon these predictions, and the Phraxguardians were ready for the day the Mother Storm would return to Riverrise.
Which left Omniphrax as the only remaining source of irritation.
"But not for long," cackled Vartolius, rubbing his hands together. "It is only a matter of time before the news comes."
At that moment, the doors banged open, revealing a pair of high-ranking Phraxguardians. Vartolius fought back the irritation he felt at being disturbed…better to wait to hear the news before reacting angrily, and in any case, the dictator was feeling far too cheerful to murder any messengers.
"What news?" he purred, rising to his feet.
The Phraxguardians looked at each other, and Vartolius noticed with a trace of disquiet that their expressions were laden with dread. "Glorious Leader, we bring news of the Vilnix Pompolnius…"