The Necromaster of Zardoz

Atop the high tower of Castle Cognitus, beneath the smog-choked skies of Technopolis, the capitol of Zardoz, stood a solemn figure peering through an elaborate spyglass pointed east. One hand absently played over the brasswork while the other, fingers jacketed in steel, held a shock of night-black hair out of his eyes. His dark cloak flapped about him, obscuring his body from view. He turned from the powerful telescope with a sigh and headed to the long •ight of stairs leading to the throne room below.

“Prepare the Steam Throne,” he said to the servants waiting there. “I need to think.” The servants rushed ahead to do his bidding; the Necromaster of Zardoz did not like to be kept waiting.

“So they have discovered my plans,” the Necromaster pondered aloud. “And now they will make their way here to stop me. If only they truly understood my purpose. I do not seek power for power’s sake. I do not defile these lands for mere personal gain. I seek what they seek. I crave the answers to the eternal questions. I only want to go... home.”

He paused, then, at the base of the stairs. Looming large and grey in the center of the room, humming and chugging, stood the Steam Throne. Its intricate gears and cogs whirred in anticipation of his arrival. The dully-gleaming exhausts extended and locked into place, fanning out above the seat like a steel peacock’s tail. The port in the seat back opened, revealing a writhing mass of wire and tubing that spilled forth almost organically to extend the wasp’s sting point of the Thinking Jack.

The servants stood ready on either side of the Throne, goggles in place and rubber gauntlets covering their hands. The one on the left... Mikhail, the Necromaster thought, took hold of the Jack and waited. The Necromaster crossed the room and seated himself on the Throne. The beast almost seemed to sigh at his weight.

“Now,” he said, and Mikhail plunged the Thinking Jack into the socket at the base of the Necromaster’s skull. The world flashed red, and then he was back. Back at the carnival. Back... on Earth...

A banner reading “Malachi’s Carnival of Wonders” hangs over the entrance of a large and bustling traveling circus. Happy faces abound, as families and young couples race about from tent to tent. At the center of the carnival squats a huge tent of a rich, deep red, with a line stretching from its entrance halfway across the grounds. The sign over the flap says “Mage of Arcanos.”

At the tent’s entrance stands a thin, awkward-looking boy of 14, his black hair parted on the left and slicked down over a high forehead dotted with acne. He adjusts his thick glasses up the bridge of his nose and wheezes. Reaching behind the plastic protector in his shirt pocket, the boy pulls forth his asthma breather with a practiced desperation. One hit, and his breath clears. He straightens his white dress shirt and brown pants, and turns toward the tent.

A short, swarthy man in the red-striped jacket and white straw hat of a carnival barker stands by the tent flap, his small, pointed mustache sticking out at odd angles as a large, feral smile splits his face. Rubbing his white-gloved hands together, he leads the boy through the entrance...

Another red flash, and the boy has been replaced by a young man clad in the Black Robes of Wizardry. He stands in a wooden basket suspended from a brightly-colored canvas sack that hangs in the sky without visible support. The crowd below gazes in wonder at balloon, muttering under their breath. The young man raises his hands, and a flame rises slowly behind him. With a slight hissing sound, the balloon rises higher into the sky. The people below point and clap, delighted.