The Sun-Scorched Sands were an impassable barrier. Elias's power was intrinsically linked to the living world: to earth, to wood, to shadow, to life and death. The desert was a realm of pure, unrelenting sunlight and sterile, dead sand—a natural null-field. He could not send a raven, a golem, or even his wraith-form into that searing wasteland. It would be like trying to send a fish on a journey across a continent of fire.
His new grand strategy required a new form of power projection. A bridge. A way to extend the influence of his umbral, life-aspected domain into a place where it had no right to be.
He found his answer not in a grand display of force, but in the quiet, painstaking craft he had honed over the years. He returned to his garden of esoteric flora and began a new project, aided by Labyrinthos who, at great risk, procured rare sun-scorched desert seeds from Hegemony traders.
Elias began to cultivate a hybrid. He took a cutting from the ancient Heartwood tree that grew at the center of the Blackwood—a tree that was the very anchor of the forest's magical energy—and, using his deepest Geist-Binder arts, he began to graft it. He slowly, painstakingly wove the life-essence of the forest into the resilient, sun-hardened seed of a desert cactus.
The process was agonizingly slow. It required a perfect balance of energies—his own dark power, the Votive Essence from Sunstone's prayers, the natural vitality of the forest, and the stubborn, sun-baked resilience of the desert seed. Many attempts failed, withering into black dust or refusing to sprout. It was arcane horticulture, a biological feat no mage of the Circle would have thought possible.
Finally, after months of effort, one took root. It grew into a strange, beautiful, and monstrous plant. It had the thick, waxy skin of a cactus, but its flesh was the dark, dense wood of the forest. It did not grow leaves, but sprouted shards of smoky, black obsidian that drank in the sunlight and seemed to transmute it into shadow. He called it the Shadow-Thorn.
It was a living paradox. A plant of the deepest woods that thrived on the harshest light. A bridge between two antithetical worlds.
But a single plant was not enough. He needed to deploy it.
He shared his plan with his Order through their telepathic rings. The mission was complex and perilous. Aegis and Labyrinthos were tasked with the impossible: to establish a hidden foothold on the very edge of the Sun-Scorched Sands.
They journeyed south, not as emissaries of a kingdom, but as humble, ragged pilgrims. They bought camels and supplies, disguising themselves as members of a forgotten ascetic cult seeking solitude in the desert wastes. Their masks, radiating conviction and secrets, made their story oddly believable to the desert traders and Hegemony patrols who dismissed them as harmless lunatics.
Guided by Noctua's long-range scouting, they found what they were looking for: a series of deep, forgotten canyons at the desert's fringe, where the merciless sun penetrated for only a few hours each day. It was here, in these slivers of shadow, that they would plant their garden.
Now came the problem of transport. The Shadow-Thorn could not survive a long journey exposed to the open air. It had to be transported in a state of controlled dormancy.
Elias began his greatest work of Lord of the Wilder-Forge artistry. He did not forge metal. He forged glass. Using sand from the stream and the pure, controlled flame of his forge-elemental, he created a terrarium. It was a perfectly sealed obsidian box, impervious to light and heat. Inside, he placed a cutting of the Shadow-Thorn, nestled in a bed of enchanted soil from his garden. He then sealed the box, creating a self-contained, mobile ecosystem, a pocket of the Blackwood suspended in time and space.
Labyrinthos, using his network, arranged the transport. The box was hidden inside a shipment of legitimate Hegemony mining equipment being sent to a remote southern outpost. It was just another anonymous crate in a vast supply chain.
After a long and perilous journey, the crate arrived. Aegis and Labyrinthos, in their pilgrim guise, "salvaged" it from a staged accident, taking the obsidian terrarium deep into the hidden canyons.
Now, Elias faced his own challenge. He had planted his seed, but it needed to be nourished from afar. The Votive Essence from Sunstone, though strong, could not cross the desert. He needed a conduit.
He summoned his most loyal servant, his steel raven prime—the one from whom he had taken the soul-spark for the Seed. The raven was more than just a construct; it was a part of him. He spent a week enchanting it, pouring a vast amount of his own personal power into its metal frame, reforging its soul. He was not creating a spy or a soldier. He was creating a living relay.
When it was finished, he gave the raven its sacred mission. It was to fly south, not into the desert, but to the highest peak of the mountain range that bordered it. A peak so high it was perpetually clad in snow and ice, a place where it could roost above the heat, observing.
From his Spire, Elias could project his will to the raven on the mountain. The raven, in turn, its soul now a powerful psychic amplifier, could relay that energy down into the Shadow-Thorn cutting in the canyon below. The raven became his comms tower, his arcane satellite. A bridge of shadow and steel.
In the hidden canyon, under the watchful eyes of Aegis and Labyrinthos, the process began. Elias, sitting on his throne, pushed his will through the raven. The cutting within the terrarium received the distant, focused energy and began to grow. Its obsidian shards pierced the top of the box. Its roots broke through the bottom, burrowing into the sandy canyon floor.
The Shadow-Thorn, fed by the will of its master from a thousand miles away, began to thrive in its tiny sliver of manufactured shade. It started to spread, its dark, woody vines creeping along the canyon floor.
But it was not just growing. It was performing its primary function. Its black crystalline leaves absorbed the brutal sunlight, and instead of using it for photosynthesis, it converted it. It began to bleed a cool, dark mist. A shadow. An aura of tangible, life-aspected magic.
It was an outpost of the Blackwood's essence, a tiny pinprick of his own domain, established deep in enemy territory.
It was slow. It was costly. It was the most difficult thing he had ever done. But he had achieved the impossible. He had built a bridge. Now, across that fragile bridge of glass and shadow, he could finally begin to send his true weapon: his mind, his will, and the subtle, creeping plagues born of his patient, terrible power.