Inspiring Illustrations - The Pale Magician

11) The Pale Magician

They say, in Hyperborea, that if you want to find a necromancer you look in a graveyard but if you want to find a magician you go to Khromarium, and in Khromarium the magician to find is young Zorathus called the pale magician.

There are more powerful sorcerors, witches and mages within the great city, but each can be dangerous to deal with, each will use those who come to them, and normally the cost of dealing with them is high. Zorathus has power enough and each day seems to gain more, and lose some part of himself.

It is said he never leaves his small tower, an ancient ruin older than man, except in the moonlight. Zorathus has the look of one whom the sun has not touched, but he is not a creature of the night. Instead call him a creature of dreams, for it is in dreams where he truly dwells. And the cost of dealing with Zorathus is not in coin but the dreams of those who come to him. A small price to pay many think. One dream for a spell or enchantment, a scroll of minor power, the varied skills of a sorceror for a dream. The greater the dweomencraft required the cost in dreams increases, deeper dreams more powerful dreams, dreams taken and never to come again.

Zorathus's servants speak of a door in the ruined tower that appears only in the moonlight, a door through which their master takes the dreams he collects, but where it leads and what use he makes of other mens' dreams none know.