in a desperate attempt tried to call a fireball from his hands. He faltered in his
incantation and exploded into a ball of flame. Ulthinius was instantly on his feet
and sprinting down the riverbank towards a fleeing mage, the last survivor of the
wrath of the wood elves.

Ulthinius closed the distance in less than a minute and was nearly upon him when wings shot from the fugitive’s cloaks and he bounded into the air. Six neatly
placed arrows dropped him before he had cleared the trees. The arial crashed to
the ground and had nearly completed his spell when Ulthinius’ foot cracked his
beak and knocked him unconscious. When the mage awoke, he sat at the point of
a bloody spear and his interrogators surrounding him. Ulthinius and his men
cruelly tortured the arial for six hours before even asking the first question. When
he was allowed to speak he told them all and begged for mercy. Ulthinius would
not have it. While they camped and recovered from their wounds for four days,
the prisoner’s feathers were plucked one at a time, each of his talons pulled from
his feet, and his wings slowly cut to long bloody ribbons. They spread him
between two trees, rolled large rocks onto his feet, and left him alive, surrounded
by his dead and mangled comrades, and set off for the mountains, where the dark
academy for which Ulthinius was first destined nearly fifty years before. They had
not lost a single man.

For a three whole years they wandered through the mountains, searching for the black tower of magic. Two of his men had fallen to an orcish ambush not a week after their victory in the oak grove, one had been struck by lightning while hunting, and four more in a battle with a band of nearly fifty mages. After that victory, the master of the tower had used magic to conceal his tower. His men grew weary, the game began to run out, and despair began to weigh on Ulthinius. If they even
found the blasted tower, how could twenty three men storm a tower defended by an obviously powerful magician. He had decided in one more day, if they did not find it, he would release his men and wander the world for the rest of his days. As they sat around the campfire, a great warcry could be heard in the next valley, and then an explosion like nothing they had heard before. On their feet and armed in an instant, the weary travelers clambered up the ridge. As they reached the top, they saw a huge battle, warriors of every race, dressed in skins, hides and dented armor, assaulted the black tower. The rushed to the aid of these warriors and
joined the fray. But they were nearly too late, their band had killed only six
mages before the end of the battle. Ulthinius approached the victorious
commander and related the story of his band. These men were Battleragers, an
army dedicated to the destruction of magic. Ulthinius thanked them, and wandered
through the tower, losing count of the bodies well past four hundred.

Ulthinius left his band and traveled west through the mountains, coming at last to Udgaard. He lived in the forests and mountains to the west of there for nearly two years, until a chance meeting, while trading furs within the city. A whisper from the shadows, “I’ve got a job for you.”