12th month, 30th day 967

  Nenewyn

  Amid white-capped peaks, the ancient towers of the university loomed overhead; I had never imagined that I would be returning here so soon. Sylfie sent me two transmissions recently. The first involved a discovery that she and her adventuring party had made: a Gaian teleportation node, not only functional but also secure. The second message requested that I investigate something personal for her, two things, actually, both urgent and important, and so I did hie myself to my alma mater, to the very site of my darkest hour; yes, even what happened to my town of birth paled in comparison.

  “At least those who perished all those centuries ago…most of them went quickly.” I muttered.

  I didn’t feel much of the cold this time, for though it was shorter and more form-fitting my new robe was actually better at keeping me insulated; the leggings were helping too, surprisingly enough, for I thought them rather thin. For once I actually rather liked the way I looked in a mirror. I tightened my new belt and made sure the pouches were secured; yes, this new outfit was more flattering, but it was also more practical - far too many times had my sleeves got caught in something or other, and I needed constantly perform upkeep on the bottom hem as it often dragged. I wondered if I also shouldn’t add something such as a high collar, well, no matter.

  My rabbit-eared companion shivered, “Hoo-wee!” She said. “You wasn’t kiddin’ whenever ya said it was cold up here, Miss Nene! If I wasn’t wearin’ so many layers my poochiba?ana’d freeze shut!”

  I stroked my chin. Huh. I’m starting to suspect that I understand the meaning of that word.

  I had “borrowed” Meli Karga for this particular investigation, for I needed to avail myself of her eidetic memory. She had also been the one to assist me in selecting new attire. I couldn’t help but laugh, remembering how she’d bonded with Sylfie and I back in Daz Grund - somehow I’d made another friend, well, I had several now, but out of all of them she seemed the least likely. Anyroad, when I met up with her she told me that the “live broadcast” had gone well and she was happy to help.

  We forged ahead and entered the main hall - looking at it you could hardly believe that it was once soaked in blood and bile. My main purpose and what I desired to do actually went hand-in-hand this time: for my goal was the hall of remembrance. It was a new building that they’d constructed on the site of the old dueling ground. The ceiling was vaulted and our bodies were bathed in a fiery orange glow. The hallway was lined with portraits - as we walked past us, they smiled at us.

  “Oh!” Whispered Meli, “These is animated with illusion magic!”

  I nodded, “Yes. Each of these paintings is a magic item…look, their names are inscribed on the frame.”

  Meli nodded, “I see. So are all of them names on them paintings?”

  I shook my head, “Nay…there were far too many dead for them to fashion one for each - all of the faces you see here were either master wizards, department heads…” I stopped, seeing a face I recognized. Kindly, old, grandfatherly…tears welled up in my eyes, and I dipped my head. “...and archmages.”

  There he was, as I knew him: Archmage Tarian. They…they got his likeness perfectly, and managed to capture the wisdom in his countenance, the kindness in his eyes. I knew this was coming, and perhaps one might say I was unprepared - but I was not wholly so. I laid out his favorite flower upon the little space provided, and gave a prayer to Elianora. I regret not visiting him more often…I should have asked his majesty for more leave. I allowed my dedication to my work to nearly take over completely, and if it hadn’t been for Sylfie it might have done just so.

  “High Loremaster Tarian,” I said, “The mastermind, the entity responsible for your death, is no more. May you now rest easy, my honored mas-”

  Tears fell onto my robe. I couldn’t finish the sentence. Because I knew that Tarian was more to me than just an instructor, not merely my master in the arcane arts. The kind old archmage took care of me when I was a frightened child. He did far more than teach me everything that I know about magic, he had also clothed, fed, and comforted me as the need arose. We were more than just a teacher and a student…though not by blood, we were family.

  I said, through the tears, “In the halls of Valyr, be at peace…Papa.”

  Aye - it had been more than ten centuries since I’d called him that; even my best friend didn’t know I used to refer to him as such. Even as I beheld his corpse, staring in terrible shock, I had cried out “Master Tarian”...how could I have been so callous? Sylfie wasn’t crying at the time, so I thought that neither should I, but today, with the danger long passed, I allowed my feelings to flow freely. The tears were falling hard, until suddenly I felt an inordinately large mass of soft material on my arm; ah, Meli had hugged me. I suppose that is just what I needed.

  I said, “Thank you. Let us press on. As I was saying, the rest of the names are written upon a monument that way.”

  Resolved, we pressed ahead. I left a bundle of tea leaves under Merlinda’s portrait, per Sylfie’s request, and then we made our way to the wall where hundreds of names were inscribed.

  “This is it, the list of every soul who perished here.”

  Meli’s eyes were wide, “So many…so why does Miss ‘Faena want ya lookin’ at all this?”

  I said, “Once we have the names, then we must needs compare them to student and faculty records for specific details. Well, one specific detail.”

  “An’ which detail is that?”

  “We’re looking for female eastborn elves.”

  “I don’t reckon I know that much about elvin’ folk, so, um, what’s an eastborn?”

  I nodded, “You saw it, didn’t you? One of the five large portraits on the south wall, left of Tarian, opposite Merlinda?”

  “Oh! That pretty gal with the almond-shaped eyes and black hair was what’s called an eastborn?”

  “Yes - her name was Mihoshi, she was an archmage. As for what an eastborn is, would you care to hear the story?”

  Meli nodded, so I indulged her: “Legend has it…the Ten Thousand Warriors of the Divine Dragon King fought a great evil alongside their elvish allies. So many elves died that they feared they’d never recover; the solution was a complex system of polygamous intermarriage designed to produce as many elf-blooded offspring as possible. Over the centuries, there was much convergence - that is, half-elves and full elves started having children together. As time went on the percentage of human blood in their population actually shrank - but eventually the eastborn had the eye shape and hair color of the humans, while maintaining the ears, supernatural grace, and longevity of elves. Quite a fascinating phenomenon, actually.”

  “An’ what about the humanfolk?”

  I shrugged, “They bred like rabbits as usua-” I blanched, “-er no offense.”

  Meli only giggled. “Why’d I be? You was talkin’ about actual rabbits, not beastfolk. Then again, I ain’t denyin’ there’s a similarity…I do have six sisters and three brothers and if ma’s had a few more since I left home I wouldn’ be a bit surprised - the great divine beast’s blessin’ is a right curse some days, kno’ whatta mean?”

  I smiled, “Aye. I believe I do. Now, we do have a task appointed to us and I suggest we get to it.”

  She nodded, ah, she is indeed capable of making a serious expression. I forgot how many hours we spent getting all of those names down, but somehow we’d managed it. Then came the arduous task of checking student records, and then there were the names that belonged to townfolk, those required checking the census and so forth.

  When I saw the size of our workload, I wasted some magical energy to flippantly ask for reinforcements, not really thinking it to be a realistic request. That night, at the end of our trial, I was able to send Sylfie the results of my investigation:

  “Out of all the hundreds of victims of spellscourge, Archmage Mihoshi was the only female eastborn. No other eastborn were even present at the time.”

  I wiped the sweat off my forehead and heaved a sigh; Sylfie owes me a full explanation. With all that done, we were on to the second part. For that, we’d need to do some ground work and talk to people. I’d gotten a fair bit better at that, too.

  “Humans augmented, changed with magical experiments, monster parts grafted, bodies forcibly transformed. Can you search university for something similar, perhaps forbidden alchemy or the like?”, so went her transmission.

  I’d just gotten done explaining our second task to Meli. “...Finding people who were there personally would be ideal,” I said, “But so many died back then that our best hope might be to find records of some sort.”

  “All righty! Let’s do it to it then, sug!”

  “Onward, then.”

  ***

  Two or three days later, I stopped keeping track of time, and after speaking to many people, we found a promising lead in the form of the potions master; the same old man whose legs her majesty had grown back with her ultimate spell. In addition to being an expert at potions, he’d learned alchemy and medicine from the gnomes. He recognized me immediately, but I regrettably had to ask him his name all over again: Doctor Reginald Cobblepot.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  “Hmm…I think the feller before me was fired for some reason or other - I wasn’t around for the whole affair, and the position was vacant for a few years before they found me. I’m afraid and don’t have many details but I heard he’d done something bad - some students died.”

  “When did you first take office?”

  “Oh must’ve been forty years ago or more, I think.”

  “We need a name - who was he?”

  Cobblepot shook his head, “I don’t know his name but, I think he was one of the longer-lived folks based on the fact that he’d had the job for a long time himself…”

  “A moment,” I sent Sylfie a quick Transmission: “Who was potions master when you attended?” Her response was: “Solarian Noonbow,” and I relayed that.

  Meli said, “That can’t be him, he was on the list of master wizards what died back when - He was a moonborn elf gent born in the starry isles.”

  The doctor said, “Ah, yes, that poor old fellow. Indeed I knew him as a master wizard, but he had been in charge of the potions department long ago, before he was promoted. He never talked about his successor, yes, that’d be the feller I replaced: huh, I wonder why he was so tight-lipped about it?”

  I smiled, “This might just be what we’ve been looking for - thank you, Doctor Cobblepot.”

  The old human laughed, “No, thank you, Lady Nenewyn - and next time you see her majesty, thank her again for the new legs on my behalf wouldja?

  I nodded a silent promise and we quit the alchemy lab for the archives. We pored over such records as we had for a long time, but it was all to no avail - gah, if only there was a way to store more information, and pore over it more efficiently! After all that effort we had found nothing; perhaps the answer we’d give Sylfie was a simple “there is naught to report”, but I had a nagging feeling that this was too important to dismiss.

  I thought that this was hopeless until Meli made a suggestion:

  “What about your ol’ papa? Didn’t he keep a journal or summat we could look at?”

  Wait, wait - she was right. Tarian was high loremaster which meant he was also in charge of records. If there were any records that weren’t in the main archive, such as records which had been sealed, he would have locked them up somewhere. The whole time we had been going about this the wrong way.

  “It’s possible,” I said. “His former office was just a nook in the library, and his quarters at the university was just a simple stone room with a bed and table, so if he had anything of that sort it would be in his tower.”

  I felt a fool for not thinking of this sooner; blast it, I’m not even middle-aged and already the holes in my mind develop. I knew where the tower was, so we wasted no time. We reached the other end of the valley with relative ease, there wasn’t any need to waste magical energy on it. The tower was just how I’d remembered it: unadorned, gray, and extremely old. There was a set of stairs leading to a raised platform, with the outer wall of the tower being just a stone’s throw away from it.

  “There’s no door,” I explained, “We would always enter through this teleportation circle…ah, ‘tis inert. I see.”

  Now that I recalled, no one had mentioned what happened to Tarian’s personal effects - I didn’t have it in me to visit the old tower back then; once Sylfie was safe with her mother I had wrapped myself up in my work. If the circle were inert, no one could have entered. It might be in a state of lockdown, many wizardly abodes do have that feature.

  Meli said, “Well couldn’t we just hop up the rampart and go through the ceilin’?”

  I said, “Worth a try. Though, Master Tarian did laugh when I asked about it, long ago…said it’d be impossible. He may have been jesting, though.”

  Malcolm and Victor would have liked Tarian, I think, as their senses of humor were similar.

  We took a quick jaunt up to the top of the tower, and then I created a floating disc of force to lower ourselves to one of the windows. Once inside we found that there was nothing…huh? Where were all the paintings? Surely this window ought to have led to his artist loft on the fifth tier.

  A moment…what was it Tarian said, specifically?

  “Oh, ho, ho, you’d never get inside this tower by teleporting from outside; even if you flew through the window you wouldn’t be there”

  “Even if I got inside…I wouldn’t be there.” My eyes widened, and I gasped as realization struck. “The tower we see is just a facade - a decoy!”

  “So where’s the real tower?”

  “Probably hidden somewhere, it could be floating in the clouds or high in the mountains, or even in another dimension. I’ve heard stories of magic-users who are able to craft their very own personal pocket worlds…that Tarian could actually do it wouldn’t surprise me.”

  “In other words, we’s gotta figure out how we can get the real front door to work!”

  I nodded. “A teleportation circle is typically powered by a stable lattice and doesn’t require an external source of mana. If it isn’t functioning, then, I think that it might be locked.”

  “Gah! I hope we don’t gotta dig the ol guy up to find the key…”

  “I don’t think there’s a key in the traditional sense,” I said, “Come, let’s return to the ground level.”

  After another jump, I set about examining the teleportation circle. Now, how had Tarian opened it again? He had usually waved his hand over the pedestal but when I tried it, nothing happened. I decided to take a closer look…I leaned in really close, and then it happened: a ray of light projected from the pedestal, striking my pince-nez. Runes appeared upon the lenses, glowing runes, and then they hummed. There was an answering resonance from behind me and suddenly the teleportation circle sprung to life.

  “My…my pince-nez…open the tower?” I laughed and turned to my companion, stroking the edge of one of the lenses. “Meli…have I told you about these?”

  “No, ma’am, though they do look mighty cute on ya if ya don’t mind me sayin’!”

  “I thank you. These were a gift from Master Tarian,” I said. “When I was a child, I had terrible vision; which is rather embarrassing for an elf.” I shook my head and smiled. “Master Tarian had them custom made for me. He went to the gnomes who are known to work wonders with glass; they used a little pattern magic plus gnomish engineering to correct my sight. I haven’t actually needed to wear them for some time now. Her majesty’s healing magic repaired my eyesight not too long after I first became court mage and that was centuries ago.”

  “Huh? Then why - no, wait, I ain’t that much of an airhead - they was a gift so ya kept wearin ‘em, huh?”

  I nodded, “Yes. Sentimentality is the main reason, even more so than the fact they’re also a magic item that doubles the effective range of magic detection…it seems that Master Tarian thought a day like this might come so he had whatever magic pattern he used to activate the teleporter inscribed invisibly on the lenses.” I laughed. “Papa, you clever old devil - you are sorely missed. Shall we then?”

  Without any further ado we stepped onto the teleportation pad and found ourselves inside a place that was familiar to me - it still felt like home, though I’d not been there since starting my job as a court mage. The preservation magics weren’t as impressive as the ones used by the Gaians, but they were still functional and the place still looked livable. Indeed, the humans had somehow managed to innovate on top of what we’d taught them, much to the irritation of the isolationists. Ah, I suppose to a casual observer the enchantments might not be that different but - oh nevermind that’s not why we’re here.

  Meli was positively enthralled by the place. The animated brooms were still working in here, the little wind spirits Tarian had bound were still providing a gentle breeze, and the light sprites were still hard at work keeping the place pleasantly lit. There was also the everpresent ambient symphony music - Windbrook’s Third, I believe - playing on repeat thanks to some animated musical instruments that never stopped performing once set in motion. The last thing I’ll mention is the landscape paintings depicting such things as the rolling sea, waterfalls, rivers, and other things all set in motion with stable illusions.

  “Tarian’s office is up that way,” I said, indicating a spiraling wrought iron staircase, which we then followed.

  It didn’t take us long to find his office, and we searched it thoroughly. Perhaps, I thought, we’d also find some useful spells in there that might aid our cause against the Black Order, so we made it a point to take any and all magical writings we found with us. Having not discovered a journal, we tried the little door at the far end of the office - it seemed to lead into a small coat closet. We opened the door, and what I saw nearly made me faint.

  “I think we found his journal, Meli.”

  The sorceress gulped, as we took in our surroundings. You see, Meli and I had discovered a new problem. The issue with the journal of an elf whose age exceeded that of the written word itself is that it doesn’t fit within a book: it fits inside a multitude of disorganized books and scrolls stored in an extradimensional warehouse. That sort of mess is exactly what we had just walked into.

  “Yee!” cried Meli, “Reckon I’ll be an old gray-bun by the time we’s done here!”

  Normally I’d be ecstatic to find such a bounty of books, but, ‘tis one thing to casually browse and another thing to search for something specific. Even if they’re sorted by date, this was going to be quite an undertaking.

  “We…are going to need some assistance here, Meli.”

  Meli said, “Y-ya don’t say.”

  I sighed and cast my transmission.

  “The jest I made about reinforcements is no longer a joke, I truly do need them now - the sheer volume of, well, volumes is overwhelming.”

  There was a long pause, and then came the reply. Huh?

  “Never imagined you weren’t serious - therefore I recruited a pair of volunteers. They’re already navigating the teleportation network and should be within your range soon.”

  Within another day help arrived in the form of a sharply dressed highborn elf, and a young human with messy brown hair clumsily stumbling out of a carriage and dragging heavy luggage. Victor had apparently dropped them off in Rivercrown City some days ago, the day after the broadcast actually.

  The elf gave a familiar salute. “Sarian Eloyd, Shadar’Kethal.”

  The nervous boy imitated the salute. “Velasco. Royal court of Galin.”

  Well, that's a start at least.

  "'tis not mine eyes from which a fountain of tears flow, tis thine!"