Chapter 1 - Emergence
Absolute darkness and total desolation. For two hundred thousand years, I lay imprisoned underneath the dirt, deprived of all sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell. It is as close to death as you can get without actually dying. An electrified, energetic barrier is erected around my location in a subterranean cavern. With my wings figuratively clipped, I sit in the back of this cavern in total silence and darkness and have been for two hundred thousand years, unable to free myself from my magical prison. For two hundred thousand years, I had no knowledge of what was happening above me on the surface. It was just me, in the dark, for what seemed like an eternity. Today is the day I am to be set free. Today is the day I can begin to exact my revenge on the one who imprisoned me in this wretched cavern and finally make my return to the outside world.
The spell that kept me imprisoned was finally dispelled, and at last I was released from my dormancy. In time, I found my way outside the cavern. I emerged and breathed my first breath of fresh air in two hundred thousand years. The sunlight was so bright that my eyes felt like they might burst into flames, the air was so cold it felt like my lungs would freeze, and the landscape stretched so far into the boundless horizon that it made me dizzy. I had not seen anything for so long that I had nearly forgotten what sight was like. What being a person was like.
As my vision gradually sharpened, I looked at my hand and noticed that my metal gauntlet was still intact. I managed to gather a small amount of mana power, extended my arm out, and chanted a low vibrational hymn to manifest my very own personal non-localized pocket dimension, which I store various items in. It is a trick that I picked up working with the mages of Coldaria. I reached into the pocket dimension and pulled out a communication crystal, and tried to contact the federation, but alas, it had no more energy left. I suppose I'm not surprised; it has been two hundred thousand years since it was last used after all. I placed the crystal back in the pocket dimension and continued walking. I must have looked like a shambling corpse wandering a barren landscape in search of its lost soul. Some of my powers should very slowly come back on their own, I thought to myself.
My current mana levels are merely fraction of my full power. Merely one percent of one percent of one percent of my original strength. As I am now, I could barely cast an offensive spell with enough force behind it to break a small boulder, but at one point in time I was one of the most powerful warlocks alive. I, the one known as Arcanos, shall reclaim my lost power so I may once again attain the lofty status of being one of the strongest warlocks, and also to become strong enough to exact my revenge on the one who incarcerated me for countless millennia.
