The Warlock's Staff is the instrument through which Drexel does almost all of his visible work. It is not, in itself, a relic of legendary weight. It is the housing he built for a relic — the Ember of the Abyss is set into it, near the head, where its faint green glow can be drawn on or banked or focussed as the work requires. The staff is the channel. The Ember is the source.
Through it, he raises the dead. Through it, he peels souls slowly from the bodies of the living, the way one might separate a wet page from a dry one. Through it, he gathers the long, slow fire-novas that he uses when restraint is no longer the cheaper option — the spell he was preparing at Darklume Cathedral the night Kryor at last looked down. Through it, he opened the portal that brought him to Celesterra. Through it, on every quiet day in between, he reads the surfaces of his own working from far away.
The staff also carries something it was not designed to carry. The bound, almost-silent signal of three of Grandex's angels — stripped, alive, broken, untraceable — runs through it, sealed by the Ember, refusing to die and refusing to be heard. The Archangel of Fire can feel that they exist. He cannot, by any of the methods he has been given, find them. As long as the staff is in Drexel's hand, they will not be found.
