Chapter 4: The return from Limbo.
After a period Xerath had long since given up on counting, the first sense that came back to Xerath was his sight. The Coffin was dimly lit from his rekindling blue eye sockets. This sight brought joy to Xerath, the first joy he had experienced in many lifetimes. He tried to move his sight but without success.
The Chains still held him with an iron grip, at least for the moment. The energies he did have were pitiful, but he supposed that there might be power in his remaining parts. This energy would take time to unbind, but if he had lived for generations and his form showed no real sign of decay, the generations needed to reach his remaining parts would come and go. He had no other problems to solve after his mind had been shut inside itself. He might just as well focus on the thing he could do now. And that was to set himself free of this Coffin and return to the wondrous outside world in all of its chaos and disorder. Such things had always interested him.
Progress was slow, but slowly he began to unbind his magic that remained in the rest of his structure. With every small instance of magic returning to him, his strength returned. Each instance of the magic gave him more to work with. He slowly began to understand how the Chains worked. They worked on the premise of magical absorption and storage, and the Chains' thirst for magic was truly voracious.
As he was heavily limited in terms of practical experiments that he could perform, so calculations were the only thing he could rely on. Xerath plotted out incredible diagrams inside his mind that were constantly scrapped and reformed. He needed to get out of this prison and any thoughts that would stop him otherwise angered Xerath greatly, occasionally spending entire weeks calming him from such anger.
But these ideas would not stop! WHY WOULD THEY NOT STOP! I AM NO CAGED BIRD AFRAID OF THE OUTSIDE WORLD! I WISH TO SEE IT AGAIN THROUGH MY OWN SENSES! NOT OF PAST MEMORIES! I WANT TO SEE IT NOW!
After several centuries, the Archa Temporem's barrier to the outside world had lost a significant portion of its energy. By this time, Xerath had regained major motor functions and had good understanding of the Chains' mechanisms.
Finally, after so many millennia, Xerath would be able to sense the outside world.
Something was happening on the surface world that rang into him even in the Coffin.
Monstrously large pulses of arcane magic were detonating in the distance. They rang into his crystalline form, spreading messages of doom and death from the souls they had reaped. Xerath quivered at the notions of these energies. But these energies only kept coming, slowly decaying the Coffin over the decades that came and went like all other decades had before them.
The Coffin would no longer be able to hold him in this prison. He sent out a message that would hopefully be heard. The audience he sensed was warm and welcoming, but there was something about it all that he questioned. They were all pleading to rid them of oppression.
He had never wished to be a Liberator. He had always been a mage and scholar before all else. Politics had never interested him, especially opposition of it. He had not been taught about political views as the ruling committee of the Great Seers had deemed it unnecessary for the non-elite to be given influence, or any knowledge at all for that matter, about political climates and government operations.
But if they wished for this so badly that they would request a resurrecting monster for help, then he would do so. If this were to not disrupt his being, then he would just have to get the episode of politics over and done with.
Fine, he thought. He would still need to get out of this prison before anything else.
He began to gather the energy from the Chains. His obsidian body surged with celestial blue energies almost blinding Xerath with the light. It reminded him of the Sun of the surface world, its guiding yet blinding light reminding him of times past before his ascension of the rolling wheat fields of his birthplace, the ancient olive trees housed within the Academy and the clay tiles that ancient Shurimans adored in their architecture. He then thought of the destruction he had wrought with his own hands. The academy had been destroyed, so the clay tiles and the ancient olive trees had been reduced to ash and dust by now. The fields of his birth would not have survived either for that matter. He had lived too long. His thoughts returned to Tabia for the first time in his almost eternal imprisonment.
She was gone. He would never be able to return to her. He knew this and had gotten over the pain long ago, but it still hindered him to this day. There is no point hanging onto it, he thought, I need to move forward. He wished to be able to go into the light.
How he wished to move again.
How he wished to feel the magical winds pass over him, with each one bringing such amazing new feelings of differing magics.
How he wished to seek new exciting information from the outside world.
No, I do not wish for these things. I demand them be given to me. I demand the power of motion. I demand the power of knowledge. It shall all be mine.
Through his anger and will he began generating a ball of lightning, something he had always used in his academy days when he was forced to spar with others. Lightning had always had an amazing presence in his mind. He had always considered it entertaining how lightning crackled across all surfaces and could leave nothing but dust of even the strongest foe.
This power is mine, one that no one may take from me.
The magical energies started to spark and crackle against the Coffin walls, the ancient wood smoldering and then combusting shortly afterwards, revealing to Xerath a new layer of hard stone. The first new sight he had seen in millennia. A smile would have come across his face, provided he could have made one.
The very air itself burned with incredible ferocity. Small pools of water that had gathered from the stillness of the closed chamber immediately evaporated, turning into hot plumes of steam. The hard stone caked with the heat Xerath had generated.
The sparks crackled against the stone, and then suddenly were dragged inwards into a crackling core of sheer lightning. This core expanded as the energy from the Chains surged into it.
It was time.
The stone chamber was bathed in cerulean light. The stone melted and gave way to a monstrous pulse of celestial power, boring its way through the stone towards the surface world.