The man on the throne, who should be Endirius, appeared to be sleeping, but his hands were red with blood up to his elbows. But something seemed subtly wrong with this picture, and Andar's mind tried to piece out what was drawing his attention; when he sight zoomed into the bloodied hands of the man sitting on the throne and saw that the blood was not still, it was moving as if it had a life of its own. It was a small detail, but it enhanced Andar's sense of wrongness, almost as if he were looking at a shadow that had taken a person's place. Endirius, sitting on that throne, radiated great heat as if all the flames of existence were housed within his shell, and although his eyes were closed, flickers of fire could still be seen straining to escape the bounds of his eyelids. Yet, something about this scene still felt wrong to him. Andar blinked, and Reality shifted. This change was so sudden that he believed that if not for the solidity of this space, he would have collapsed to his knees. Andar closed his eyes, pulling strength from deep inside him, and projected his Will outwards. Aetherius released subtle vibrations that flowed all through his body. The presence of his Magus Tower wrapped around his mind, and his focus became as firm as adamantine. Then he opened his eyes. There was no longer a man sitting on a throne, and the massive hallway was gone; he was inside a dark cave. He could even hear the sound of dripping around him as the many stalactites above released the moisture locked around them by the green moss coverings. Andar thought they almost looked like decaying teeth, and he felt as if he was inside the mouth of a rotting beast. Seven bodies were laid on an upraised dais; all were rough as if carved naturally by nature; these bodies had been sliced open, and a man was digging through their insides; dozens of arms made of black ice extended from his back so he could work on all the bodies at the same time. Arms entered the bloodied torso and retrieved various strange organs that were dissected before being negligently thrown further into the cave like they were rubbish. In the short while that Andar stood here in observation, hundreds of organs had been thrown away, yet the hands always seemed to be able to dig out more from the bodies. This strange man was entirely focused on his work and ignored Andar. His back was hunched, as if carrying all those arms was bending his spine, making him appear like a man-spider hybrid. Andar recognized most of these bodies. They were all descendants of the noble bloodline of Endirius. He especially recognized Revah Endirius. She had been a thorn in his side, as she was one of the Mages deeply suspicious of Andar's roots. He had not bothered to confirm his suspicion. Still, he believed that the woman he killed, the member of the Flame Guard who had nurtured the flames now taken by Rowan, should be one of the descendants of Revah Endirius here, and now both ancestor and descendants were dead. As shocking as it was to watch their bodies torn open and their insides splayed out, what was concerning was that all of them were Old Ones! Andar had no idea there were so many Old Ones inside the Magus Supreme Realm. Even Revah Endirius, whom he was familiar with, was widely known to be a seventh-dimensional Magus. By all general knowledge, Endirius alone, the Supreme Magus, was the only Old One inside this realm. If the Supreme World of Mages had so many Old Ones, why was their overall influence in Reality so small? With this sort of power, all the dimensions around this realm should all be under the banner of the Mages. It was tough to find a single Old One in a million dimensions, but he had already encountered eight, and they all perished in such an ignoble fashion that it felt wrong. Old Ones should not die like this. Andar observed the bodies of the Old Ones still being desecrated before he dragged his gaze back to the person performing the acts. This man's presence was almost nonexistent even as he was digging through bodies that exuded the auras of eighth-dimensional beings. It had been easy to ignore him and focus on the dead Old Ones. He appeared like a mortal, and when he turned a bit to peer deeper into one of the bodies, Andar saw that he was wearing enchanted goggles that made his eyes appear bigger. His features could be described as… meek. A man who would find it difficult to hurt a fly, and despite seeing his handiwork spread out before him, Andar could not find it in himself to fear or even hate him because he looked so harmless. Aetherius should protect his mind against mental infiltration, and Andar felt no indicator that his mind was being tampered with. He should be sensing the Aura naturally emitted by this man. It did not take long for Andar to feel strange, and he considered the nature of this man from another perspective. Perhaps the reason his Aura felt so calm and peaceful was that he did not believe the act of butchering Old Ones and experimenting with their bodies to be anything special. For all intents and purposes, an Old One could as well be a lab rat that had no special meaning to him. What sort of being would view Old Ones as meaningless? It was this line of thought that began to scare Andar when he considered the true meaning of Thrones and the title that Endirius had given him—The Endless Mage—The Endless Throne. ® Carelessly wiping his hands on his clothes to free them from the sticky blood, the man pushed his hands into the opened body of Revah, and Andar believed he could hear whispers as if he were talking to himself. As grisly as this operation was, there was a charm in this man's actions that simultaneously made Andar want to claw out his eyes and peer deeper into the motions of his hands. Every movement of his fingers was both beauty and horror, and a part of him wondered how something so mundane and barbaric could draw his attention as much as this. It was a charm that Andar recognized because he had seen similar things in Rowan's hands when he was deep in the throes of creation. It was seeing the fundamental forces of Reality being manipulated on a level that defied imagination.