Arthur Simpson Deighton watched the young Nerimans disappear once more with a very mixed set of emotions running through his mind, his pulse only beginning to slow down as the last of the dancing motes that had consumed them disappeared.

First and foremost there was relief, the sure and certain knowledge that the threat these sudden invaders represented was gone with them, more or less. Since being exiled to this side he had learned to live with fear in a way he had never had to before, had learned to live with the helpless, crippled feeling of only ever being able to do the most minor of cantrips without an age of preparation, to live with the renewed fear of mortality he had thought left so very far behind him. But despite all that he had found himself afraid on whole new levels when they ‘returned,’ the trappings of his home side and the new hardness in their eyes enough to rob him of any last resolve.

Had he not lived the majority of his age old existence possessing powers literally beyond mortal ken, had he not suffered through the indignity of unexpected and enforced expulsion into a world he had known nothing about, had he not suffered through the harshness of this land towards the penniless poor then perhaps he might have had the focus to think ahead more than react.

But the simplest truth was that Arthur Simpson Deighton, once known as Artur Myrdain and a host of other mystical identities, had been terrified, too scared of what these people he knew he had wronged had learned of him, too scared of who might have supplied them with information or tools to hurt him and too scared as to what the darkness they all now carried with them might have enabled them to do to his all too mortal body.

There was of course remorse mixed in there too, a genuine aknowledgement that the horrors these people had been forced to face were of his making. When he had conceived the plan to send some local nexii through to open the way back for him he had considered finding some willing to go but had intellectually decided against it, unwilling to put himself into the power of others in even such a small way, even though it might have provided an opportunity to prepare them so much more for what it is they would need to face.

In his defence he had really not known how bad things would be for them, had possessed no way of knowing what troubles they would encounter with Ohlmin and his slavers and certainly had not the slightest inkling ahead of time that they would have had to face an ancient dragon just to reach the gate.

None of those he had sent through beforehand had ever gotten that far, the last lot barely finally identifying the name of a possible passageway through the veil between worlds before they had fallen afoul of one of his enemies.

But he had apparently chosen this lot well, better than those he had picked before and in hindsight his choice not to burden them with items of his creation that might have simplified their trip seemed to have panned out, have kept them hidden so much more than those before.

Even if it had effectively put them into the power of much more mundane forces than those ranked as the enemies of Myrdain.

But as these emotions faded away another came to dominate, a steady awareness of the opportunity missed, of this freshest of failures, of how close he had been to escaping this exile once and for all.

If only he had been awake as the door they had used had been opened, if only he ahd been more prepared for their return, if only he had thought to supply one small item that might have held that gate open, or even implant a fresh compulsion into them as he translated them once more….

For a good long while he raged, trashing his meagre abode in a fury, swearing in a language that had been old before the nation of Japan had dreamed of existence and cursing the every power of this unfair universe that had kept him here, crippled and impotent one more time.

But in the end he calmed, just before the police arrived at his door to ask about the noise and the ruin within. He dismissed them with another minor cantrip, sending them away oblivious to the concerns they should have had and remembering nothing of the strange sights they had not been meant to see.

Then Arthur Simpson Deighton, exiled archmage, sat down once more and began again.

Courage he might not have, but he was nothing if not persistent.