master_troven | [Open] in the workshop.

The workshop was kept fastidiously neat. More so than the rest of the rooms in his house. It was the cleanest and most organized room in the house. Despite his packrat tendencies, he knew that a clean workshop was a safe and productive one. It was both a mundane and magical workshop, letting him work on simple wood carvings or the delicate intracies of a universe in the same room.

He sat, half dressed and hair tied back, on a wooden stool setting up a stasis field of some sort over a work bench. On the bench was a sliver of shiny silvery blue metal. A shard of a sword he had picked up in the Nexus. The shard had tried to turn him good, then evil, then young, then sane, then insane, but as he was not always totally good, nor totally evil but completely and utterly irrivokably nuetral that it couldn't do anything to him. As for his age, his shape was of his own choosing and he could chose a younger form if he so wished. Sanity came and went as it pleased, no sword fragment was going to change that. That was not what caught his interest though.

No, today, Alexander was interested in trying to reconstruct the sword using the shard as a base pattern and try and weave out what had been into what would be. It was easy enough, really, it just took a lot of fine tunning and delicate work.

THe stasis field was set, rotating slowly. Picking up the shard in a pair of tweezers he set it into the field. It shimmered for a moment and then glowed a steady blue. He picked up another instrument from the work bench, a thin piece of wire, He pushed the wire into the field and drew it out from the shard several times creating a thin spidery web. Still using the wire he poked a few holes in the web into another deminsion.

Satisfied, he leaned back and watched it for a moment, before scooting his stool over to another work bench. This one empty. He stared at it for a long moment before waving his hand over it. A thin three demensional network of interconnecting lines appeared before him. He studyied it for a long moment before murmurring, "If I was a soul shard... where would I be?"

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"You'll kill him."

"I doubt that."

"I do not." And the Destroyer was gone again, leaving Nick in a crumpled pile.

Alexander was at Nicholas' side in an instant, muttering to himself about evils that thought they knew everything. He checked Nicholas' pulse and ran his hands through the boy's hair, completely ignoring Hedge. "Oh my Delusional one what has been done to you?"

His breathing is shallow and his skin is icy cold. Hedge watches impassively.

He scooped Nicholas up in his arms, settling him carefully before looking at Hedge. "I am taking him with me. I do not think he will be coming back. We will have to talk about it. I will probably be sending you an unbreakable jar."

Hedge's hands go to his bells- and then he speaks a spell, the harsh Free Magic words ripping towards Alexander, making the air scream.

He blocks it with a flare of his own power, shimmering and gray. "You're going to make me melt those bells, aren't you?"

Hedge just growls. "Leave now."

Alexander smiles and vanishes, holding Nick in his arms.

Nick's still unconscious back in Alexander's house.

Alexander takes him to bed and lays him on it rather gently. He takes off Nick's shoes and shirt, trying to make him comfortable. Healing was never something he learned. It was just something beyond him. He could do basic stuff, but the miracle healing, he never could do. Seeing that Nick was comfortable he sat crosslegged at the head of the bed, watching him, and occasionally brushing the hair out of his eyes or running a hand down his cheek.

"Why have I attached myself to you, Nicholas Sayre?"

Nick opens one bleary eye and mutters hoarsely, "Because of my winning personality?"

His body's then racked with a nasty cough.

The sight of a worried chaos embodiment fussing over Nick like a mother hen is blackmail material. But alas there's no one around to take advantage of it. "I'm sorry... this is all my fault... I know to little about the way your world works..." he said, as he fussed over Nick.

"What happened? Did I faint again?" His voice is very raspy.

"Do you trust me Nick?" he asked, putting a hand on Nicholas' chest, staring at him right in the eyes. "Do you trust what I say is true?"

Nick considers, and then nods. He's currently in far too much pain to be hallucinating.

"You have been the host to a free magic being. Rather powerful, from my understanding the most powerful one around. There's a shard of something in you heart that's been making you ill and letting him posess you. Do you understand me?"

Nick blinks slowly and touches his heart, then nods again. "What can we do about it?"

"I am going to try and remove the shard without killing you. Everything says that I'll kill you by doing this, but I'm exceptionally good at beating the odds."

Nick screws up his face. "Better dying fast than slowly, anyways."

Alexander kissed him on the forehead. "You won't die. I won't allow it."

"I feel better about that, then." Very weak smile.

"Now then. I'm going to put you to sleep... you won't want to see what I'm going to be doing and then when it is done I will waken you. Is that alright?"