The ancient wizard ambled slowly and deliberately down the coil of stairs that lined the inside of the stone walls which formed the skin of his remote spindle of a tower situated at the edge of the land, standing precariously before the sun on a far-protruding precipice. Rhythmic waves crashed far below with muted whispers against jagged cliffs at the edge of the world. One frail and trembling hand clasped the large, rounded head of a gnarled oaken cane, while the other pressed against the wall to steady the old man. Reaching the large cut stones of the floor, and despite the pain of his limp and the great efforts he required to move, the old mage was quite careful to walk around the gargantuan pentagram that spanned the overwhelming majority of the room as he navigated to the immense work table on the far side of his sanctum. That monstrosity painted in who knows what sort of fluid actually formed the spiritual centrifuge that would desiccate his soul. For he only appeared to be the grizzled, pale shell covered in wrinkles, spidery pale blue lines of exposed blood vessels, and lentigines. In actuality he was not yet fifty, though both his body and his mind appeared to have lived a number of lifetimes, and both seemed rather weary of the experience. His form had been shriveled by using the aforementioned pentacle for a foray into a world where he shouldn’t have gone, and his mind, well, life just did that.
The thaumaturgist lit the octad of enormous candles arranged on the broad rectangular table as a rusted and squeaking iron homunculus retrieved from a nook his most prized possession: his crystal ball. This ball was unlike any other instrument for scrying, as he had no ability to control what appeared in it, nor did its contents ever change. It always showed him the same thing. It did not tell him the future or the past, nor did it provide insight into any universal mystery. It simply showed him the most incredible being that he had never met. Now the mage had met, and indeed loved, and been a lover to, and been loved by women of spectacular and profound enchantment. And his connection to them was incredibly unique, and in one case he would even describe a past lover as a soulmate, though she was now the spouse to another and a mother to that man’s children. But this being in the crystal ball, also a woman, but of absolutely otherworldly nature, was something of an order of magnitude of difference. How he encountered this creature in the crystal ball was a story that cannot be described in detail. Suffice it to say that the entire event happened to him and was by no means something he arranged. The streams of his life experience that formed his being converged in a confluence of kismet resulting in an unfolding of passion and perspective into a fantastically unique connection to this person. Yet one would be remiss to neglect mentioning that he had never encountered this woman outside of the purview of this crystal ball. His perennial gazing had taught him much about her, that she was sensual, while also possessing unearthly intelligence, though she could be capricious, jealous, and just neurotic enough to be an impassioned genius. She also possessed a profound and unique compassion, which was the original catalyst for his infatuation with her. All of this was in addition to possessing unspeakable physical beauty. Most fascinatingly, she held sway over a secret self that no one knew, save, perhaps, the wizard.
Now the nature of connection to her merely via the kundalini of his ganders into a crystal ball perpetually affixed to her, while being affected by such a macabre spectrum of passions, created within him a proclivity for relation unlike anything else he ever had or ever would experience. He honestly couldn’t confidently to say what he would do if he ever managed to pull her from his crystalline sphere. After all, his body was older than Methuselah, and his mind may as well have been older than Lucifer’s, as it contained a quagmire of contradiction that could only be described as primordial. He had taken roads so far afield from the common human experience for so long, no one could possibly predict what he would do, other than that it would be kind and inspired by love.
All he knew was that the mere contemplation of the breath of her existence made him want to be human again. This, however, was a double-edged sword. Having been convinced for some time now that he would never retrieve her from her other world, he tried to reclaim his vitality in the arms of others, and under the auspices of other activities, but nothing else held for him any sort of savor. He felt as if he were really made for this and only this, whatever it was. So he couldn’t make himself alive because the thing that would make him alive both was never going to happen and prevented other things from happening.
He had tried every incantation, every spell, known to anyone in all the world to get through the murky mists of that crystal ball to this creature of ensorcellment. Nothing worked. There was only one thing that he could do that he was certain would work, but that particular evocation required that she ask him to remove the barrier. Theoretically it was possible, as he was infamous the world over and accursed by upstanding citizens everywhere for taking roads they labelled forbidden. She certainly knew his name, but for what seemed an eternity now, she never spoke it, much less asked for any sort of deliverance. Only once, long ago, did he scry her mentioning that she hoped he was not in the same country as she was. This wouldn’t activate the cipher of his power.
As he wet his fingers to partake of his methodical sequence of squelching the wicks of his candles, the room incrementally grew darker, and his preternaturally animated figurine retrieved his instrument of divination for replacement among the dusty tomes of his life. He again thought the same thought that entered his mind without fail as he concluded his ritual: everyone goes to God, and he would meet her at God’s feet. The mage’s fragile bones creaked as he rent himself painfully from his chair to return to his bedchamber to retire. While limping toward the stairs, again avoiding the nefarious pentagram spread across his floor, the thought again came upon him that perhaps she would call out to him tomorrow. So tomorrow he would again take a look.