Tending and cleaning the hives, scraping honey and wax from ripe combs, riding to town with my sweet-smelling wares on market day, these tasks beckon me with a drowsy longing. Beekeeper. Such poignant simplicity, to be the keeper, to be the bee. The Gods have little traffic with that sort. Alas, instead I chose to follow Moltho to Merkath, to fulfill my potential as a Conjurer. It was that very decision that pricked up the feral ears of the Gods, that led them to my scent. And surely, the Gods are master hunters who never lose their prey.

The City of Merkath brims over with bees. They scurry in and out of their hive, bringing food from the fields, buzzing tirelessly in their tiny cells, breeding mindlessly to perpetuate their stock. They live life as its own purpose; they live to die, and are born again of a new queen. Good, Evil, the Nature of the World, the Progress of Man, to the bees these have no place, no meaning. And for that alone do I envy them.

I must have spent the best years of my life in Merkath, living among the bees. In the mornings I studied transcriptions of ancient texts from my master Moltho's library: some of them convoluted and inscrutible, some of them fanciful, some of them sinister and foreboding. I spent the afternoons attending to my body instead of my mind: I swung from ropes, I swam in the sea, I practiced my crossbow on straw targets. Only on rare occaisions would I have a few free hours to myself, and I usually spent them in town seeking entertainment. Often I would pass the temples on the way to taverns and theaters. I paid the Gods no heed. Instead, I would stand admiringly at the foot of the Academy of Mages, a massive pyramid devoid of entrances. I longed to be inside. Every evening I practiced in the Conjury, inscribing chalk circles on its slate floor. Under Moltho's guidance, I conjured woodland creatures and enchanted beasts. I took a bat as my familiar. The years danced fleetly by under Moltho's rigorous study. And silently, in the shadow of those years, the master hunters crept.

The end came swiftly, but my soul bears its memory like a brand. I was in the Conjury, having summonned a flock of white jays that waited calmly at the thaumaturgic circle's center. My bat-familiar Nitwise watched with playful interest as I attended to the spell. In the corner, the withered figure of Moltho observed silently as the last of the birds appeared. And then, with a single footstep, the horrible event began.

When that first armored boot scraped indifferently across the chalk lines of my carefully-drawn circle, I felt the shock of the failing spell pierce my mind. Nitwise screetched as I staggered from the insufferable agony, but the pain left my body just before I hit the Conjury floor. Through the cloud of fleeing birds, I saw a pair of soldiers marching grimly to the corner where Moltho stood. On their shields they bore the crest of the Knights of Purity, a white fist against the red sun. As I lay there reeling, the Knights read their charges. The words darted hurriedly from their mouths, and passed twice across my mind before I could understand them: Moltho had been charged with demoncraft. My master met this accusation with disbelief, but when more Knights arrived, he left with them quietly. I remained in the center of my broken circle for hours afterwards, staring up at nothing with incredulous awe. The Gods had struck their first blow.

Presently, as I write these very words, I find that my eyes have come to stray from the bare parchment before me. Inevitably, their gaze wanders to the small beehive that I now tend. And as I study the hectic trevails of these insects, I can only think of Merkath. Just this moment a lone forager has returned to the hive, bringing tales of abundant nectar to be harvested. In a perplexing alphabet of buzzes and rattles, it spells out the report of its find with a diligence that might be described as triumphant in men. But its pride is met only with disbelief, as its brethren turn to meet it with their stings. As I watch the single-minded execution of the proud forager, my heart relives the death of Moltho for the thousandth time. My powerful mentor stands helpless, bound by iron chains to the massive post. A final, ceremonious reading of the charges, and then the torch touches the pyre. Moltho laughs. The Knights of Purity shout prayers and praises to Alinor. The onlookers cheer as the aberrant element of the hive is removed. Such is the way of bees.

For countless anonymous days I haunted the streets of Merkath, Nitwise at my shoulder, alone among the workers and drones of the streets. I would shuffle listlessly past the temples on my way to market, where I would gather a few meager coins any way I could, only to squander them sulking in the taverns and in less scrupulous places. Sometimes, in the blinding grey haze of morning, I would find myself set upon by a few hours of awkward, unbidden clarity. It was in the first of these hours that I compelled myself to march, petition in hand, to the base of the Academy's great pyramid. There I stood, rigid and resolved, silent amidst the hum of the hive, waiting. Hours passed, and I waited long; how odd it seemed then that in the fog of remorse and uncertainty I had felt so driven, yet in these lucid hours I was content to simply stand and wait. And finally, my standing and waiting bore fruit: as a kind of acknowledgement, the petition vanished from my hand, snatched away by magic to an unseen place. Hoping for an answer, I remained there until the sun stood low in the sky, when hunger finally drove me away.

As the days passed, I would repeat that pathetic scene at the base of the pyramid a dozen times or more. It was not long before the Academy grew tired of issuing the same polite refusal, and after the first few performances my petitions went unacknowledged. Soon enough, the mists of oblivion began to lift, and I found that no amount of drinking and whoring could keep the the hours from having numbers, the days from having names. Where once it had seemed I could hold time still by the sheer force of my own discontentment, now I found that time once again marched inevitably forward. Finally, I abandoned the path of induglent self-pity, and set off in a new direction.

To Be Continued....