Arthur Is Erivan Mithrandir

His eyes were so old, and she knew.

The Tower of the Magi comes only to those who are invited, so the legends speak. The shimmering

forests appear one day to a traveller, but even with invitation many perish in the enchanted blackness of its spectral forests. Unreal but present, deadly but distant the tower and its forest are as removed from the Eladrin as they are from their Elvin brethren. They are a connected with their society as the enchantments they weave. The source of their power of which it is forbidden for any to speak.

Those marked from birth are visited soon by shadowed figures in the deep purple robes of the Eladrin Magi. It is known they were to be taken to the tower, and so their mothers accept the fate of their child; partly through awe, partly through superstitious dread. Like a curse, the robes of amethyst would appear, only to vanish. No word or mention of the child would be heard of again, and none would dare mention them.  His mother never did.

In Eladrin eyes they did not die, they had never been. He had never been.

Studious and determined, the boy was marked from birth. Of the twelve riddles of entry, he had guessed all in less time than any of his peers. The arcane tests which beat novices down to their masters will, came to him like breath. His tutors reported his learning as unnatural, less like study and more akin to remembering. Scholarship, Wand Craft, Intonation, Unseen, Rebirth ; the Six Masters were mighty in their art, yet all found this pupils knowledge and skill uncanny. In his eyes the sparkle of some great untold power rested, waiting.

Hearing disquiet, and reading the fleeting signs sent through the cosmos to his second sight, the Great Master summoned this boy to his chamber. His own chamber,  in the very top of the great tower. The hour approached, the grand and ancient mage looked up.

A knock came at the door, and the door dissolved to nothing. Where some would have been

surprised, the diminutive figure hooded in novices robes folded his hand away and smiled.

“Great Master”, he smiled, the title sounding like a mockery on his tongue.  “I expected you to call me here. I suspect you knew I would come?”

The Great Master held his gaze for a second, then turned away. “I saw your coming, yes.” The voice came to the boy through his mind, the lights in the chambers pulsed and brightened as he spoke. The simple chamber flickered for a moment, then held.

“I have seen much more than you might guess. I will show you in due course,… but you still have much to learn, young master”, as he spoke, a glow began about the Masters hands, spreading until the frail seeming man was enveloped in blinding light. The surrounding room, door and stair all vanished, replaced by a crystalline hall many magnitudes greater than could exist inside the tower.

Visibly shaken, the Boy shrank back, his hands covering his eyes to stop the blinding light. A huge voice intoned these last words to him as light and silence deafen his senses, sending him to the void:

The brilliant light and defining silence fade away.

His spirit, overwhelmed.

His body, nothing.

His memories. All was a blinding light. Was there a light? A… nothing…

A Butterfly flying through a pleasant grove lands briefly on a colourful parchment, held by a man with a wobbly face.

Stillness.

A distant horn sounds out. He opens his eyes, fear clouds them at the sounds. A voice in his head speaks:

“Run Arthur Shattermast,  Run, if you want to live”