I wish I could repeat Marcus's tale exactly as it was told; replicate the performance, with all the poetic prose and musical melodies intact… but I can't. I can't even come close.

  Even if I ignored the symphonic elements and just focused on the words… I still couldn’t do it justice. The legend that Marcus told that day was an epic years in the making; the magnum opus of an artist with nothing to do but sit in the dark… and think. Each word had been carefully chosen, each syllable fitting together perfectly. It would take a master poet a long time to translate that story in a way that kept everything in tact; and while I’ve had a long time… I'm no master poet.

  What follows are Marcus's words… stripped of their artistry; the language simplified and condensed, so that the tale is easy to understand. If my re-telling moves you at all, if you feel the slightest bit of sympathy or pity… know that what you feel…is but a drop of water, compared to the tidal wave that slammed into Lefty and Blu. The music, the voices, the rhythm, the swelling of that song… it completely overwhelmed their senses. It washed away the grim darkness of the sewers, and placed them into the story, so that it felt as if they were witnessing the events first hand.

  With that in mind, So it was told:

  …

  “Long, long, long ago; there existed a perfect city, and its rulers named it accordingly.

  It was a paradise. Completely self-sufficient. Absolutely orderly. And utterly impervious to outside attack. Everyone had a place and a purpose. No one felt unloved or unhappy. Its citizens had all they could ever want... and nothing could take it from them, for they were always and eternally safe.

  For generations the great civilization thrived. Peace and prosperity were enjoyed by all. There was no strife. No factions. Only a sense of enduring unity. It was a perfect closed system… and we thought it always would be.

  This miracle was created by The Immortal Thirteen, a council of mages so wise and so powerful, that they managed to overcome aging itself. It was through their absolute rule that the city maintained perfection. Their endless lives allowed them to lead reliably through the centuries. No chaos. No uncertainty. Just the guiding hands of those benevolent humans who had reached beyond mortality… to become divine.

  They achieved this through a mastery of all five elements.

  The first four are familiar to all. Food, drink, breath, and sleep have been understood by every civilization since the dawn of time. But in all of recorded history, only one group has ever uncovered the fifth.

  Back when they were still mortal. Back when they numbered fourteen; a small association of brilliant mages discovered that elusive element. And together, they developed the techniques for practicing its magic. They kept this information a secret, for the fifth element is the most powerful of them all. Not only does it hold the key to immortality, but to mastering all other forms of magic.

  For you see, the nature of the elements is a divine comedy. Beings are driven by survival to eat, drink, breath, and sleep; and yet, doing these things excessively… can be just as deadly as not doing them at all. We must all walk the razor's edge. Too much food… and your body will degrade. Too much sleep… and your mind will falter…for the very same forces we rely on to survive… also produce waste which is toxic to life… and while we can all rid ourselves of that waste naturally… the process is slow and inefficient. When one practices magic with any amount of devotion, they inevitably build-up waste faster than they can get rid of it.

  Thus, the duality of being a mage. Only through the excessive practice of food magic can one master that craft; but consuming so much so frequently… is damaging to one’s body. The build-up of toxins becomes so severe that all food meisters inevitably find themselves debilitated by it. So it is too with drink, breath, and sleep. The practice of magic has a cost. To master even one element, means to sacrifice one's body or mind. And since we have but one of those to sacrifice, it becomes nigh impossible for anyone to master multiple magics… unless one understands the fifth element.

  Like all the others, it is a natural process required for life… but unlike the others, it is not a process of creation… but of destruction. It is the removal of waste from the body.

  Few throughout history have taken the time to truly consider it… perhaps because it is such an unsanitary ordeal… at least as far as food and drink are concerned. For breath it's as simple as exhaling… while the process for the removing mental waste accumulated while sleeping… is so subtle that most aren't even aware that it's happening. Regardless of how it's done or what its aspects are called, it is all part of the same process; the same elemental force.

  The fourteen mages who discovered this force named it Luo; the purging of waste.

  While the study of Luo initially focused on the biological, it soon moved beyond those boundaries. For the mages who mastered that fifth magic, could transmigrate the waste from their bodies the moment it began to form… preventing the toxins from having an impact on them… at all. Their mastery of Luo allowed The Fourteen to practice all forms of magic to their fullest extent… unbound from natural limits and the consequences of excess. Over time, this made it possible for them to not only conquer every element, but also, life itself.

  In a secret and solemn event that would come to change the history of the world, the Fourteen Great mages become the Thirteen Immortals; and with their ascension, they began working on a project worthy of their abilities. A gift to humanity that was beyond value. An expertly planned city that would be forged in a crucible of wisdom and power.

  Through a combination of food and breath magic, they created untold abundance, and earned the loyalty of their people. By combining sleep and drink magic, they built incredible structures, with invincible walls to protect them. Those who joined The Immortals had plentiful farms above, wondrous homes below, and enjoyed technomagical luxuries you could scarcely comprehend. All of it made possible through the mixing of the elements.

  And when their work was finished… they had created the pinnacle of civilization. The end goal that all sentient beings have strived for since they first began to build. The thing our ancestors dreamed of in quiet nights around ancient campfires. The city. Perfectum Est.

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  The Immortals reigned peacefully for hundreds of years. Outside the walls, ages came to pass, and kingdoms rose and fell, as war after war swept through the land. But through it all Perfectum remained- untouched and unchanged -a bubble of timeless excellence, preserved eternally amid a chaotic and ever shifting world.

  …And then… the pentoids attack.

  The scope and ferocity of The Dark War was unprecedented. Waves of refugees crashed upon the walls of Perfectum, seeking asylum from the tyranny and destruction which had cast the entire island into chaos. The apocalyptic devastation wrought by Ekkss and chur army… was enough to shake even The Immortal Thirteen. For the first time since they had achieved everlasting life… they worried that someone might end it…

  Fear crept into their perpetual minds. A singular and all consuming concern. As powerful as they were, as strong as their city was… the pentoids might be stronger… if they were left unchecked.

  And so, not wanting to venture beyond the walls themselves or risk their own people's lives, the immortals made a fateful decision… they broke their centuries of isolation, and allowed outsiders into their city, offering them a path to citizenship... through military service.

  The strongest and most pure of the refugees would be trained and supplied, formed into a mighty army that could fight back against the pentoids. If not to defeat them, then to at least weaken them, and distract them, so that they might never threaten the perfect city directly. What the Thirteen didn't know… was that out there… among the unwashed masses that passed through the walls that day… was a man who would eventually take the name... Scaevolus.

  In the following years, that man would prove himself in battle time and time again. He rose through the ranks of Perfectum's army, and became a hero to all those that resisted Ekkss. Eventually, he would even gain the trust of the Immortals themselves, who in their desperation, made a second fateful decision. Seeking to make their strongest warrior even stronger, the ageless mages shared their greatest secret. They taught the hero of Att… Luo magic, so that he might master all five elements, and use them to end the Dark War… once and for all.

  Unfortunately… their plan worked.

  After many years of bloodshed Ekkss was finally defeated, and with their leader gone, the Pentoid army chi commanded crumbled. The fighting stopped, and the darkness that had engulfed the island finally gave way to light once more.

  It should have been a time for celebration, but in the aftermath of the war, Scaevolus… the chosen one... the champion of Perfectum… betrayed the Immortal Thirteen.

  The ungrateful cur refused the citizenship he had earned; refused to be a citizen of any kind. That man with his unending ambitions, would not allow the greatest city to continue as it had for centuries.

  Instead, using the very powers they had helped him to obtain, Scaevolus deposed the immortals, killing their most powerful member, and imprisoning the rest deep underground.

  …

  With the power of the great mages usurped, Scaevolus and his followers threw open the gates of Perfectum… and in doing so… ruined it forever.

  The former paradise was renamed Scaevol City, and soon it was flooded by the chaotic and uncontrollable masses. Thousands of refugees overran the surface, building massive structures wherever they pleased. All the construction above destabilized the tunnels below, forcing its citizens to leave the only homes they had ever known.

  Soon after that… the sewage began to pour in, and the few loyal citizens who refused to leave... succumbed to disease and despair… and the rampant rot that saturated into every crevice of every hall.

  These dark passages were once vibrant with light. The quiet rooms used to echo with the sounds of laughter. But all of that was taken away. Perfectum, the once mighty metropolis, the greatest city that had ever existed … became nothing more than a sewer; a filthy abandoned relic, completely devoid of life... except… for the twelve remaining immortals.

  That fiend Scaevolus, in one last act of crazed cruelty, refused to let them leave. He imprisoned them in the remains of their crumbling kingdom; dooming those who had mastered the art of purging waste… to be forever surrounded by it. What was left of the Immortal Thirteen, would never age in their paradise turned prison… but even they could not survive down there, surrounded by foul and poisonous filth.

  Slowly... painfully... they began to die off, their bodies withering away in their city of sewage.

  Eventually… in desperation… those who remained found a way to carry on. Luo. The Fifth element. The same magic that allowed them to transmigrate the waste from their bodies and minds, was used on the entirety of their minds. They moved their consciousnesses from dying human bodies into… new forms… ones which could not be harmed by the endless sludge that surrounded them.

  ...

  It is a pathetic existence.

  The once mighty mages are now monsters. They cling desperately to life by any means, so frightened by their own mortality that they would rather choose an eternity of madness in the pitch black depths… than face that final great unknown.

  Among them, only two still hold on to their sanity.

  One is fueled by vengeance... or at least it was. It planned in the darkness for decades, building its form stronger and stronger, driven by the hope that it might one day free itself from prison… and kill the man who trapped him there.

  The other mage has a much more simple wish; to tell its story one last time. If just one person learns what really happened, if one mind can remember him as he once was… then he can die in peace, knowing that his life and his efforts to obtain perfection… won't be lost forever.”

  …

  Lefty and Ol Blu sat in silence for a long time after Marcus finally stopped speaking. Partially, it was shock that kept them quiet, the two taking a while to process the legend in its full glory. Mostly though, they were silent because they knew there was no point in talking to Marcus… not anymore. No sooner had he finished his tale, than the living sludge fell limp. As Lefty and Ol Blu sat there, the pipes that had allowed him to speak slowly tilted, drifting through the now lifeless pile of sludge; never again to make a sound.

  ...

  They two of them might have remained there hours, sitting in the dim blue radiance of the globelight, if not for a tap on Lefty's shoulder which broke him out of his daze. He turned around to see Domitaunus standing behind him, staring down with his bloodshot human eyes. The pipes that had been his mouth were removed now, for the sludge creature that had once been a powerful mage had nothing left to say. Instead, he simply brought forward his other hand, and offered something to the young man

  It appeared to be a telescope of some kind, a metal tube of polished brass about nine smidgen long, with clear crystal lenses at each end. Carved into the largest of the lenses, with the precision of a master craftsman… was the Y-shaped royal insignia…. of Scaevolus.

  It was the third Clavis Imperium.

  For a moment Lefty simply looked at the thing in his hand. It was the whole reason he was here… and yet… in the aftermath of Marcus’s story, he felt nothing. Entering the sewers seemed like it had happened a lifetime ago, and holding something made by the former king of Att… was no longer exciting.

  As Domitainus slowly began walking away Lefty finally broke his silence.

  “Wait. We can help you. Get you out of here. Whatever Scaevolus did, we can find some way to undo it.”

  Ol Blu translated a second later, and the skeletal sludge stopped to look back at them.

  There was no expression on Dom’s face. He had lost that ability a long time ago. Smiles and frowns, tears and laughter, all were impossible now. All he could do was stare. So for a second he did, staring at Lefty with the one blank expression he had left… before solemnly shaking his head.

  Then he turned back and walked over to the wire bed in the corner. Slowly, like a tired old man, he crawled into the frame and lay on his back, staring blankly up at the ceiling.

  What do you even say to that? Ol Blu didn’t know. Neither did Lefty. The young man slowly rose to his feet, his legs aching as all the drudgery of the day came back to him. He took one last look around the room, hoping to find something that would make him feel better.

  But there was nothing. Not for him. Not for anyone.

  Just a pile of crap… and the last immortal; too afraid to die, but with no reason left to live.

  …

  “We should head back…” Lefty said, his voice even more monotone than usual.

  Ol Blu agreed.

  The young man lifted the kicken onto his head and started towards the door. As he reached it he paused, and almost turned to look back… but he couldn’t. Instead he walked out of the room, and began making the long trek back to the surface.