…all except I.
The Magus spread the pages wide, bending the spine in such a way that it creaked sharply, the leather binding attempting to resist, but having failed, let the body of pages bound together to shine what was written upon them, upon the face of the Magus, as he stood tall and stiff, inside the arcane study.
The Mage Tower of Darkhold was so often quiet, like as a tomb, servants rarely daring to walk the halls, other Black Cloaks also...absent…and this suited the Magus perfectly. Never did he turn his eyes to the doors, wondering if others paid him any attention. Few did, even when Darkhold rang out with armored boots and loud discussions fueled by wine and boasts of domination…domination always just out of the reach, of the Dread Captains, the Dread Lords….
So the Magus took his time, as others followed his plans but simultaneously attempted to disown him from them, a slow time only known by him, searching scroll by scroll, tome by great tome, until he had plowed his way through the chaotic stacks of knowledge bound, all that Sememmon had left, when he had left….
The Magus laid a long, almost hard or dry looking finger down upon the page now opened to him, his nail crossing each line of script there written, the point of his finger chasing each word to find what knowledge he could, about the Master, he that formed the institution that had given this Magus…being.
But the long finger stopped high upon the last page, for the script written there ended, incomplete. The Magus lifted his finger slightly off the page, pausing, his countenance deep within a dark hood, only barely visible in the flickering glow of sconces holding arcane flame. Deep within that dark hood, a grin was formed within the shadows, its existence only supported but a similar leather creak, much like the one heard earlier, from the leathery tome that lay open before him.
Then, the Magus began to speak, to fill the room with a ancient sounding tenor of a voice, speaking slowly to the book, as it seemed: "Fled…labeled a traitor by your own kind…but your power and might, your right…still lingers in the mind of your Black Cloaks…."
The Magus stepped back and turned to pick up his dragon crowned staff, his movements slow but fluid, to end standing just away from the open tome, but still considering it from under the shadow of his dark hood.
"To find the traitor…I shall become one, myself, master Manshoon. I release myself from the Dread Lord's foolishness, and will be free of all masters, until I find you, my great Lord. When I return, here, to this…room," the Magus lifts his head and looks around, slowly "…to this great castle, let it be to reclaim these walls in your name, a castle that belongs to the Black Cloaks, as it has always been…."
The Magus raised his dragon-crowned staff, and with words etched always within his mind, he willed into existence a flash of light, enveloping him, and in an instant, transporting him directly to the towering main gates of Darkhold. There, without looking back once, he traversed the spanning bridge from gate to opposing mountain side, the fires of Castle Darkhold fading behind him as he headed in an unknown direction…unknown to all, all but the Rogue Lord of the Black Cloaks.

The usual footsteps of the Magus, heard day and night within the Mage Tower of Darkhold, have gone quiet. Days turn to weeks, until a rather courageous servant dared to enter the Black Cloak study, wondering if the untapped power held in reserve in the body of the mage, had seized his being, or he had finally succumbed to the gifts, that for months, had been applied.
But when the door to the Magus' study was opened, there was no figure inside, and throughout the entire Mage Tower, the Magus left no trace. Except…
In the chaotic arrangement of tomes, scrolls, parchments, letters, drawings, schematics, manuals and spell books—an arcane study that had yet to be organized from the last occupier, Sememmon—upon one table, open faced, was a large tome, with only one-third of one page with script written, a certain penmanship unknown.
The unfinished script reads of the last known actions of Manshoon regarding his personal studies into arcane rituals of preservation…this subject of preservation, the defiance of the inevitability of Time…knowledge of great interest to the now absent Magus.
With the last line of the script reading "…and so Manshoon fled, with all thoughts and powers, to a hidden laboratory from which he would continue to grow his cabal once more…."
It can only be assumed that the Magus, has left to seek a new master, the founder of the Zhentarim himself…in desire that what will be gained, is life, forevermore.
