Vellichor was fundamentally just a person.
Perhaps an extraordinarily dangerous one.
But still, just a mortal creature.
He had bled and failed many times.
The subject of death was very familiar to him.
Not because he had embraced it, nor because he had particularly feared it.
Simply because, over the course of an exceedingly long life, he had encountered it from almost every conceivable direction.
He had been cut, pierced, stabbed, slashed, impaled.
He had been struck with hammers and clubs. Crushed beneath collapsing stone.
Thrown from heights.
He had drowned, or very nearly.
Burned. Frozen.
Poisoned often enough that he had eventually stopped caring when he was.
He had suffocated, starved, collapsed from exhaustion more times than he cared to remember.
Cursed.
He had survived miscast rituals.
Swallowed by things considerably larger than himself.
Electrocuted.
Disintegrated and reassembled.
Once, rather embarrassingly, he had almost died after slipping down a perfectly ordinary flight of stairs.
Some dangers remained wonderfully mundane.
There were assassins. Armies.
Entire coalitions assembled for the sole purpose of ensuring that he stopped existing.
Several had come remarkably close.
There had been battles that scarred lands long after his would-be killers had died and been forgotten.
There had even been moments when he himself had wondered whether continuing to live remained the wiser decision.
Yet somehow, he always had.
Luck had certainly contributed.
Skill had as well.
Stubbornness, perhaps more than either.
He suspected sheer unwillingness had preserved him almost as often as magic.
As he reflected upon those countless brushes with mortality, another realization emerged with uncomfortable clarity.
Many had been deserved.
Not all.
Certainly not all.
Many had sought his death because he had first earned their hatred.
He had destroyed things precious to them, or taken from them.
Retribution had followed as naturally as rain followed storm clouds.
He could scarcely resent them for it.
Indeed, he found that he did not.
If anything, he admired their determination.
Some had fought knowing they possessed no realistic chance of victory.
They had come anyway.
Because they believed someone had to try.
...
That brought forth a memory.
Someone desperately trying to kill him.
The thought caught him completely by surprise.
Not because someone had tried. As had been established, that happened often enough.
This memory felt different.
He stopped his wandering, even if the landscape continued on without him.
For the first time in what felt like an eternity, he paid it no attention.
He searched for the memory.
Who?
A face refused to form.
There was intent.
Not hatred or vengeance.
It wasn't personal.
There was a feeling of determination, even domination.
Why?
Had he murdered their family? Destroyed their homeland? Taken something irreplaceable?
There were enough possibilities that none distinguished themselves.
Where?
Forests, mountains?
A battlefield, maybe?
Ruins?
Maybe a city?
When?
He could not even begin to answer.
He had come to know that memory was not something to be forced in this place.
And whenever he reached for it directly, it slipped away.
He had recovered much already simply by allowing thoughts to unfold naturally.
Perhaps this required the same patience.
He considered the feeling again.
Not the events.
The person.
Stubborn.
Relentless.
Frighteningly courageous.
Something stirred.
Not an image, but a title.
A king?
No.
Not just a king.
Wizard King.
The words struck him with unexpected force.
Irath.
Another fragment.
Knowledge flooded toward him.
Enough to connect what had previously been isolated fragments.
His thoughts came to an abrupt halt.
Endrith.