A gnome is seen falling from the sky, dressed in gray and covered in raven's feathers. The gnome looks behind him at the vast expanse that is the ocean and attempts to cast fly, the spell fizzles. The gnome looks around frantically and sees a dark tome with a handprint made of the pure shadow, bound with a black leather strap, falling just out of reach. He reaches for the tomb blinking away tears as the portal he was pushed through vanishes from sight. Come on Millhouse the gnome thought it's just a few feet away, I can still-. Millhouse stretched as far as he could, straining his back and shoulder muscles. He could feel his muscles begin to cramp as he managed to touch the edge of the book. Millhouse immediately felt a warmth run through his body, the thought of his connec-
Millhouse felt a jolt of pain as the wind was knocked out of him from hitting the sea. He instinctively tried to breathe in deeply just to be met with a torrent of salt water. The gnome watched as the light from the surface fled him, then everything went black.
. . .
Millhouse sat at the ornately carved Ashwood table in the barren wasteland that used to be Aecretis. Next to him at the table sat his only living wife, The Raven Queen, she still took his breath away whenever he saw her. Her jet black hair accentuated her porcelain white skin, she seemed to almost glow compared to the black clothes she wore. Her amber eyes were like that of a raven, those oh so hard eyes always softened when she looked his way, seeming to melt like caramel. The Raven Queen's presence always screamed her dominance over those in her presence, even the hardest of men trembled under her gaze.
Sitting across from Millhouse and his wife was something he would never get used to seeing. There sat three men and strangely enough a woman, all of them wearing orange silk robes. The mens' robes had a silver trim while the woman's robe bore a gold trim along with an embroidery of a book over her heart. Each of the men had cleanly shaved heads with an intricate tattoo that looked like the outlines of tentacles grabbing onto their head, a circular bite mark in the center. The woman's hair looked like it had only begun growing in a month or two prior, and if Millhouse looked closely he could see the remnants of the same tattoo peeking out from under her hairline. These strange people sitting across from him are, or at least were, followers of an old friend; a squid faced old god named Xailquenere. This following originally formed as a way to pay back Xailquenere with them giving up their lives to sustain the illithid. Xailquenere was of the illithid race before he became immortal; His appearance resembled his life as a mortal strongly, with him still taking the form of his lost race. He looked like something that crawled out of the depths of the ocean to destroy humanity, his shiny purple skin only further accentuating his octopus-esque head. When Xailquenere finally ran into his followers, he immediately changed their objective to creating libraries and academies. Those that ranked highly among his followers were granted eternal life so they may make sure that the knowledge they gathered got passed down through the generations.
Millhouse looked up at the hill Xailquenere stood at the top of; he'd walked away from the table nearly two hours ago and has just been staring off towards the setting sun since then. Despite his title of "old god", Xailquenere looked almost identical to when they met for the first time. He was clad in a tattered brown cloak that covered his entire body, a worn leather belt that held a coin purse, a sheathed dragon slayer dagger, and a spellbook from an old mentor. Millhouses' attention came back to the conversation at the table as the woman across from him was speaking "...keep getting more frequent, we don't have time to be safe. If we don't take this chance we may never get another."
Suddenly, the ground began to shake violently. Those sitting at the table picked up their drinks and held their hands over the top to keep them from spilling. Any drink that wasn't water was too precious to let spill, now that the land had wilted. Millhouse once again felt a pang of regret, remembering what their reckless use of forbidden magic did to the Weave. If it weren't for the damage they caused to magic itself, they could have easily fixed this world.
The quake ended, and those with their cups still in there hands set them back onto the table and wiped their wet hands dry. "Do you see what I mean? Those quakes are becoming more and more frequent; if we wait much longer there may be no plane to save," the follower said. Millhouse set his hand over his wife's to calm her and said, "I understand that you were only raised to Keeper recently, yes?"
The woman in orange nodded.
"You aren't old enough to know this, but we have attempted to fix the Weave once before". The Keeper looked confused, she had not heard of this history. "When the Hero Gods were raised, we had done irreparable damage to the Weave while fighting Origin. While celebrating our victory, a tremor shook the world. We met with the other gods and came up with the same plan you just suggested. Although we had the god of magic and chaos, Pandora, on our side to hold the entire Weave together while we patched the hole. When the tremors threatened to tear the world apart, we came together along with the heroes of that age and attempted to patch the holes. It looked like we were going to succeed at first, but Pandora was under much more stress than we thought. When we were almost finished Pandora, collapsed from exhaustion then died. The patch we made held, barely, but without Pandora to make the patch truly a part of the pattern, the Weave struggled against it. The heroes of that age imprisoned us for killing Pandora and made themselves the gods of the world. Eventually, we broke free with help from the heroes of the last age. Shortly after that the patch broke and... here we are, a world tearing itself apart because of our lack of foresight".
The keeper showed shock on her face, but quickly calmed herself. "Just because you failed before doesn't mean you will fail now," she said. Millhouse shook his head. "Even if we attempted it again, we don't even have a fraction of the gods we had then, not to mention that we don't have anyone like Pandora to meld the pattern and our patch like we had last time." Millhouse looked up to Xailquenere again and was taken aback. There was someone standing besides him; they looked to be human, but their outfit was akin to what someone from his age would have worn.
Millhouses' skin suddenly began to crawl, goosebumps quickly appeared all along his arms. Something was terribly wrong. The talk at the table died as the sun turned dark, a phenomenon that had, once before, resulted in the imprisonment of all the former Heroes and Gods. This time though, it was different somehow; the sun didn't just vanish, it was consumed - replaced by a darkness darker than death. The Raven Queen quickly stood up, tipping her chair on the cracked ground in her haste, and began to weave a spell of great strength - a forbidden spell from Millhouses' estimation. Spells of this caliber were forbidden for a reason; if the spell was too strong, it could permanently cripple the weave of magic. His queen didn't seem to care.
Millhouse continued to look up at the dark sun and noticed that it wasn't the only thing changing; the stars themselves were vanishing and being replaced by new ones in a wave, spreading out from the hole in the sky that used to be the sun. The wave of nothingness made no sound as it destroyed everything in its path, making it that much more horrifying. The ground began to shake once more. As the wave hit Aecretis, Millhouse looked down and saw the horizon drawing closer, as if the planet itself were vanishing. The Raven Queen's spell was finished, reality seeming to shatter in front of her, a jagged hole in the air appearing as if a window had been punched through to another place. "Go! Quickly! I have to stay on this side to keep it open," she shouted. Millhouse looked back at Xailquenere. He was examining a smooth orange stone in his hand, the other man gone. Millhouse's shock from the terrifying scene before him finally wore off. "No, I won't leave you and Xail over there!" Millhouse said. The followers of Xailquenere had already run through the portal in the air. Millhouse was abruptly pushed through the hole in reality. As he was, his bag caught on the jagged edges of the portal, tearing it open. Millhouse saw Xailquenere vanish as the wave hit him. The last thing Millhouse saw of his home plane as he fell was his wife, with her back to the encroaching void.
