PROLOGUE

Alea Iacta Est

Venger stood alone, looking out across the roving red sands of The Desolate, a vast desert where nothing and no one, mortal or immortal, had ever dwelt. Only the rolling and whirling sands lent any semblance of life to this region of the Realm. He lifted his face to the last two setting suns, their dispassionate gaze looking down upon him through the fiery heavens. Blustering winds buffeted his body and rippled his robes. A storm approached, massive and brutal, a storm of storms that would transform the desert landscape from one formless mass into another.

True Chaos, he thought. Ever-changing, yet never-changing.

He brooded. The coming storm felt to him too symbolic to be coincidental, and he wondered if he had not, unwittingly, created it himself. Or had the turmoil of his thoughts simply driven him to seek its like here, on the fringes of the Realm? Whichever the case, he preferred to witness it alone. For once, he was in no mood for confrontation. If there was one thing he desired at this moment, it was solitude.

"You disturb me, old man," he said.

Dungeon Master ignored this as he emerged from behind Venger's towering form to stand at his side. His long white hair whipped about his face as he, too, watched the storm's approach. He let their silence linger as they shared the view.

"You feel it as I do. Our time grows short," he said at length, his voice barely heard over the winds.

The Desolate roared its reproval of its trespassers and violently pitched more and more sand into the air as though it fought to purge itself. The wailing, sand-filled winds were powerful enough to scour flesh from bone. It would have no such victory over these two, however, who remained unscathed by the elemental force.

"Your time, perhaps."

"You are not long for the Realm either, Venger. A new age is at hand, and soon you and I will pass into memory. You would do well to accept this, and the truth that this realm of dungeons and dragons will never be yours."

"It will be mine! It is inevitable," Venger said with finality.

Dungeon Master looked up with a reproachful eye. "You are wrong. It is not."

"I will see you destroyed yet! That, I know," said Venger, looking down at his small yet powerful adversary.

"Do not presume to know the future, Venger. Not even your own."

Venger was unmoved. "You still believe your Young Ones will defeat me?"

"They are not so young anymore," said Dungeon Master, turning his attention back to the tempest. Crimson cyclones spun into being and bore down on the pair to no avail.

"Nor are they as pure of heart as when you first brought them here. They will fail you � your expendable champions � as have all those before them. You have allowed those of this world and others to suffer for your failings, to die for your mistakes. Fierce warriors, noble knights, innocent children. And you, the sole author of the destruction of all. Dare you deny it?"

As Dungeon Master held his silence, a smile crept onto Venger's face.

"You could end it now," said Venger, assuming a gracious air. "I can help you.

"End your misguidance of those you force to trust their very souls to your accursed keeping. You cannot destroy me. Waste no more lives in your futile attempts. You have ruled long and have earned your eternal rest. Concede the Realm to me, old one, and be free."

Dungeon Master sighed, bowing and shaking his head. "There is much you do not yet understand."

Venger whirled on him. "You are the one who lacks understanding! You have failed! The end you see is yours and yours alone! I will make it so!"

"It is not over yet," the other said, opening his hand to reveal a blue-jeweled ring which he proffered to Venger.

Venger looked down upon it with a faint mix of trepidation and suspicion in his eyes.

"Please take it," Dungeon Master urged.

After a long moment, the ring became bathed in a soft glow and floated up to Venger's hand. He promptly enclosed it in a fist. "Why give this to me?"

"Because it is yours," answered Dungeon Master staidly. "Do with it as you please. It does not please me to retain it any longer." And with that, he departed, vanishing in a blood-red wall of sand.

Alone again, Venger felt the storm quicken with a rage to match his own. He tightened his grip upon the ring, felt its edges crushing into his palm. He wished he had not accepted it, realizing that it only added to the impotent anger welled within him. After thousands of years, all he could ever remember feeling was the familiar and intense hatred � as though it were locked into his being, as though he were made of it. And it was tiresome. Even the ecstatic fervor his ruinous powers gave him had become much dulled over the centuries.

He wondered if the old fool could be right � that their lives were indeed coming to an end, that they may even die together. And he wondered at what he himself had accomplished. Much, certainly, but to what end? It was painful to acknowledge that he was really no closer now to mastering the Realm than he had ever been.

Returning his attention to the ring, he brought before his eyes the fist that held it, clenching it tighter still. Any other ring would have been reduced to mangled metal under such force � any other save one, he reminded himself.

Kareena. . . .

It had been so simple, too easy a defeat.

"Throw the rings at him!" he recalled his sister's words, spoken to the Thief.

The Ring of the Heart and the Ring of the Mind had come together and affected each of them. Kareena, freed of the evil influence that she had so long ago allowed to corrupt her heart, and he, flung into a hellish dimension, losing his form and becoming trapped within the dark confines of his own mind � an experience that still had not left him. He could not yet fully dispel the mocking voices of enemies long dead, the visions of past defeats, nor the fear of the price of failure in his service to his master. And amid the unrelenting phantasmagoria had been the constant taunts of Dungeon Master's smug young pupils as Tiamat chased and attacked him.

Dungeons within dungeons. A prison of prisons.

He had simply been unprepared, surprised by his sister's unexpected freedom from The Hills of Never, he told himself. He would not be caught unawares again.

As if to prove this to himself, he opened his hand and defiantly gazed into the eyes of the face inlaid on the powerful and ancient blue gem of the Ring of the Mind.

And then his mind, willingly or not, left the desert behind.

The bluest ocean, the calmest waters, and so serene the sky! His essence a part of it. A drop of water in the ocean, no bigger and no more or less important than the next. All intimately connected by an energy � a force, a life-force � shared amongst all. Patterns in the sky, in the clouds, in the water, on the ocean floor. Some touching everything at once, others remaining within one plane. Patterns within patterns interwoven and connected by their shared force. Cycles joined the mosaic, brought in on a wind, it seemed. Now everything began to come into focus in earnest. In the grand design, there was purpose to all: night, day, season; time, matter, dimension; life, death, rebirth. . . .

He felt as though he were on the brink of a monumental understanding when a static bolt from the desert storm shot through his body. Painless, of course, but enough to break the ring's hold. The elusive understanding was now gone. All of it. He was left feeling displaced, more as though his mind had been assaulted, violated, and, ultimately, denied insight. The whole of his being welled with volcanic fury.

"Enough!" Channeling all into familiar hatred, he cast the Ring of the Mind into the desert, which accepted it more quickly than had he. With a final blue-tinged glimmer, it was gone.

For a moment he stared after it, knowing that where it had landed was by no means a final resting place in the ever-shifting sands.

He turned to leave then, but something inside him forced him to stop. He tensed and shivered. Seconds later, he found himself hurrying to reclaim his ring from The Desolate. His feet sank with every step until he fell to his knees and clawed the sand in frantic search. His fingers sifted and his eyes sought the tiniest glint. His chest heaved and his face twisted in anguish as he raked heated sands that could boil mortal blood.

When he finally touched hot metal, he froze, not wanting to cause it to sink deeper. But with one quick movement, he had it. Now his hunched body went limp. He watched his hands come together as if they moved with a will all their own. They quivered ever so slightly as the ring slid into place on his finger � a perfect fit, as it had always been.

Venger straightened the top half of his body and sat back on folded legs. His face now an unrevealing mask, as though he meant to erase his unguarded eruption of emotion. Yet, he could not keep his gaze from falling upon his ringed finger.

And there he remained, even as the ferocious storm swallowed him and sand collected around his dress, absently turning the ring around his finger as he once again became lost in thought.