Dear Spellbook,

I figured out the bed situation. I pushed five gnome beds together and made one almost-human-sized bed. It was lumpy, and a far cry from the little pocket of heaven that was my bed in the Parlor, but I would sleep in a hole in the ground if it meant not waking up sick and tired in a reset.

Let’s see, where did we leave off? Oh yes, I had been killed by a golem for the second time.

Riloth 19th the 32nd

Once more, I woke feeling exhausted and ill. On my way out the door to Levar’s I tasked Simon with gathering a “B” themed meal, as I went to get me potions. After getting my head straight I arrived back at the Parlor to find Simon absent. Thirty minutes later, Simon arrived leading a horse through the square, panting and exhausted as if he had run the whole way. Shortly after he arrived one of the cook boys ran out of the parlor with two satchels of food. My morning routine did not take as long as I was accustomed to. In my tired state, I forgot I had no minions to task.

Panting, Simon said, “Master Theral, I am so sorry I am late.”

“No need to be sorry, I was early, thank you for the great work, as always,” I said, handing him a gold coin.

Mounting Not-Ian, whose name in that instant became Knotien, I set off north once more, on the lookout for that large dead tree from before.

As with the first time I headed down this road, it was uneventful. It took three hours, but I eventually spotted the tree. Sending Knotien back to town, I set out for the door. The trek was even faster now with full daylight and I made it to the door around one or two in the afternoon, judging by the sun.

I sat against the dead tree and unpacked my mystery “B” lunch. Inside was a loaf of dark rye bread, butter, bacon, and some blueberries (double points). Not as creative as “A,” but a respectable meal. Contemplating while I ate, I tried to decide on a course of action.

I pulled out fake-spellbook and started to think.

Transportation magic did not seem to be an option with that golem’s ward messing it up. It's safe to assume the other golem had a similar ability for some other Font. So I could not sneak past them. The case was protected somehow as well. The way I saw it I had a few, terrible, options to get you back.

Destroy the golems Destroy the case and steal you Sneak past the golems Guess the passphrase

Option one seemed impossible, option two seemed difficult without completing option one, and given that the lights shut off, I doubt they sensed using vision making option three not likely either.

Option four... where would I have even begun? What language would it even be in? Probably Torcish, but the odds of my guessing even a password were already astronomically small. There are roughly half a million words in Torcish, of which I knew maybe forty thousand. So the odds I even know the word in a one-word passphrase were two in twenty-five. The odds of guessing it would be one in five hundred thousand times that. And if it was a passphrase as the booming voice suggested, I stood no chance. Not without some knowledge of the culture beyond an academic understanding of the language.

So that left me with... no good option. I needed more information; it was time to experiment.

I opened the door and looked inside. Once more the golems were reset in their starting locations. There was a... mess on the floor where the bookcase stood. The body—my body—on by the stairs looked... strange. The blood and bits were disappearing. Where before the mess extended all over the room, not it was all in a small three-foot area. Everything beyond that, namely the blood splatter, had disappeared, and from the look of it the rest of it was heading in the same direction. At the time, I speculated the same effect that caused the duplicated soul stone to disappear was at work on my old body. Lucky for me, that one was deemed the duplicate and not the one I was using. I suppose my morning could get worse if I woke up missing limbs.

Standing outside the doorway, it occurred to me that I couldn’t smell the inside of the room yet. Taking some grass from the ground, I held it in the palm of my hand and blew. The grass fluttered the few inches between my hand and the threshold, and then—as if hitting a wall—stopped and fell to the ground. Something was isolating the air from the outside. That combined with the failure of my Minor Telekinesis the day before... I hate that name. Mind Mover? Magic Moving? Magical Mind Mover? Mental Mover? Arcane Grasp? Tal’s Mental Magical Force? Mental Force? That last one is good, well, better. It seems apt at least. It really is more of a crude force than a dexterous hand.

The grass combined with the failure of my Mental Force—much better—the day before led me to believe my next experiment would end in failure, but I had to try. Aiming at the golem with the teleportation disruption, I summoned a Firebolt from my hand. As the ball of fire passed through the doorway, it vanished. No flash, no explosion, it was simply gone. The golems didn’t react to my probing. Moving on to the next spell, I cast a Lightning Bolt through the doorway, to much the same effect.

The wards that were protecting this door seemed to have been well-thought-out. From the little I knew of wards, it should be possible to drain them eventually through repeated assaults, but that same small amount I knew told me these wards should have long ago lost their power. If the races of Torc could unlock the secrets to pocket realms, it stood to reason they could have discovered a method to power wards without someone to tend them.

Now that it was clear I had to go inside, I had to decide the plan. The best chance at getting you back seemed to be the smash and grab. Even if it took me multiple attempts, it seemed more likely the bookcase was weaker than the golems.

Exhausting the remainder of my will with target practice against a specific knot on the already-dead-tree, I topped myself off with another potion of clarity.

Standing before the door, a large rock in hand, I gathered my courage. Knowing death was not permanent did not make the prospect of a painful death any less terrifying. After a few minutes... alright, I stood there for almost an hour. After spending some time preparing, I stepped through the doorway.

“Intruder detected.” I Blinked across the room as it spoke, and appeared before the teleportation disrupting Golem, who I named Timothy for some reason that very moment. Your mind goes to strange places when facing certain and repeated death.

“You have five seconds to relay.” I made it to the bookcase.

“The passphrase,” I struck the case with my rock, using all the strength I could muster.

Once.

“Five.” Twice.

“Four.” Three times.

“Three.” Four times.

“Two.” On the fifth strike, the frame holding the seemingly indestructible glass fell apart, freeing the books inside.

The golem reached, “One,” and the lights went out before I could grab you. And then, once more I died.

Riloth 19th the 33rd

I woke, and got ready for the day. Itching to run back to the door and collect you, I knew I had to wait to collect my winnings before the day could begin. Once I won my bet, I sprinted to the cashier without waiting for security. Passing Simon, I threw him a handful of gold coins and shouted, “Bring me a horse and a meal as fast as you can!” To his credit, he only stopped to pick up a single coin before running out the door behind me.

I made it to Levar’s in record time and placed my order in between labored breaths. Back at the Parlor, Simon was approaching on horseback, with a burlap sack in his hands. As soon as he dismounted, I climbed onto the horse and galloped out of town towards the door.

My urgency was born from a combination of excitement and fear. I didn't know how you got placed in the case to begin with, but I feared that it might happen again. I arrived at the dead tree in two hours, with an exhausted Knotien, and ran through the woods.

I pushed the door open but did not step in. Surveying the room, my heart sunk. Where the bookcase had once sat, there was nothing. The destroyed case was gone, and so were the books. Standing in the doorway, I examined every inch that was visible to me, but nowhere could I find you. It seemed that my urgency was warranted, but still, I was too late. I walked into the tower to examine the wall blocked by the door. The count-down began, but I ignored it, using every second to explore the wall of gear with my eyes. At “One,” I ran for the door, narrowly escaping. As far as I could tell, you were gone, somewhere else in this pocket realm.

Could Spellbook have been thrown out or somehow destroyed in the attack that killed me?

In a fit of excited hope, I pulled the imitation spellbook out of my bag and opened its pages. My heart sank in disappointment as its pages were revealed to be blank.

The golems had returned to their stations when I did not re-enter. It may have been paranoia, but I could feel Timothy taunting me with his blank slate of a face. I needed to find you. You were not on the ground floor, so I needed to check upstairs. Abandoning everything I carried that might slow me down, I prepared to enter once more. It did not take an hour this time. I sprinted in, and the countdown started once more. I made it all the way to the top of the stairs by the time it reached “One,” only to find another stone door at the top that did not open at my touch.

I could hear the golems coming up the stairs behind me, and cast Blink with no destination in mind. Appearing before the golem, I prepared to roll, but it seemed they were growing wise to my tricks, and it crushed me before I could get away.

Riloth 19th the 34-38th

My hope was starting to turn into desperation. The next few resets were much of a kind. Each day I would wake up, race to the door, and try something new. On the thirty-seventh, I entered and spent the entire countdown opening the largest hole in the Font of Fire that I could manage. Draining over half my Will, I summoned a Firebolt almost as tall as myself. It was too large for me to control, and as it appeared it seared the flesh from my arm up to the shoulder and covered the rest of my body with burns. I held onto consciousness just long enough to see the massive Firebolt hit Timothy square in the chest, doing nothing to it and igniting the racks of equipment behind him. As I lay dying, the lights turned on and the stained-glass in the window disappeared, revealing a void of the deepest black. All the air was sucked out of the room.

The next today I surveyed the damage. The wooden racks to the sides of Timothy were gone. Not destroyed, simply gone as if they had been removed by someone or, more likely, by some magic or construct. The rest of the racks were severely charred, but in their original locations and still full of equipment. The weapons that had been blown from them in the explosion had also been placed back in their hangers. Timothy and his twin... Jimothy.

Okay, listen. I’m not proud of the name. It was a dark time, and I was going through a lot more than I realized. Instead of silently judging me, maybe be proud I am in a place now where I can be open about my poor life choices.

Timothy and Jimothy were unharmed by the super Firebolt. They were not even stained with soot. Seeing their smug empty faces and pristine bodies amongst the destruction drove me to irrational actions. I stepped into the door and shot a Lightning Bolt at Timothy, when the bolt hit, it did absolutely nothing. It simply disappeared like when I was practicing against the rock from my benchmarking. Well, it did something. As soon as the lightning hit the golem, the countdown went silent, the lights shut off, I could hear the golems approach. Fleeing through the portal once more, I narrowly escaped another crushing.

The door closed behind me, and I was left to contemplate.

What was I to do? My only two offensive attacks did nothing. Lost in thought, I shortly found myself along the road once more. I had left my bags on Knotien this day, not really expecting to survive. I followed the road back towards the road and wandered into town after dark. On the walk back, I had time to think and realized I needed to slow down and be more methodical. My two offensive spells were not going to work, but I had other resources.

After swinging by the Parlor to pick up dinner, I went over to Lavar’s with a peace offering in hand. I was a bit brisk with him that morning and needed to break the ice I expected and get him in a talkative mood. That usually wasn’t hard, but I was getting over my aversion to alcohol finally and could use a drink myself.

Levar answered the door, dressed in a sleeping cap and robe that looked like a children’s pajama version of a Tower Archmage’s robe. Seeing that it was me, his expression lost a bit of his typical chipperness. He greeted me, “Oh, good evening Master Theral. What can I do for you at this late hour? Were my potions not satisfactory? You didn’t take them all did you!?” His eyes grew wide, and his face panicked at the last thought.

“No, no, no, nothing like that. I wanted to apologize for my mood this morning. I was not myself. I have recently lost a,” I paused, thinking of how to describe you, “dear friend.” I couldn't help but chuckle at the last part. I handed him the—very expensive—wine I brought from the Parlor.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” he said, and then saw the wine, “Is that for me?”

“Yes, I wanted to see if you could help me with a little theoretical problem I am having,” I said as I handed him the wine and entered.

Once we were settled, wine in hand with some cheese Levar brought out, I presented the problem to him as a hypothetical, “How would you go about destroying, let’s say a pair, of stone golems?”

“Well, that is a strange question to bring to me at this hour, but I won’t say it isn’t a fun one.” Levar looked thoughtful for almost a minute before speaking, “To start, I would advise against it. The few reports I’d encountered on golems showed them to be a force of nature. In the Dragon Wars, they would lay waste to entire armies of the dragons’ hordes.”

He paused more to think, grabbed a book from a nearby shelf, and thumbed through it before continuing, “As I recall, each golem is warded in some way to disrupt one of the Fonts of magic. Typically, they ward against force and earth, as those are the two most effective against them. Assuming that was the case, and I did not have an ensouled weapon, and someone was forcing me to do this and not providing an army to do it with, I would want to either bathe them in a strong acid or attack them with overwhelming physical force. You would need a lot of acid though. Do you have a ballista in this hypothetical? Maybe a trebuchet?”

I responded “No. Unfortunately, I’m limited to what can be carried on horseback, and then overland through a fairly dense forest. Hypothetically of course. What is the strongest acid you can make in large amounts in a day?"

Levar looked at me with an expression of amused curiosity. "Hypothetically," I amended.

Levar, sensing this may be less a thought experiment than originally suggested, stood up and walked around the room. Looking through his shelves he said "The most powerful acid I could make is a concentrate from an acid slime sample I have, but that would only be a vial. I have plenty of brimstone to make a... less fantastical acid. I could probably make a few gallons of that.”

The conversation then went on to non-time-prison-business things, and it was actually a really pleasant evening. My mind kept returning to you, lost somewhere in the pocket realm, but there were moments I forgot and got lost in the barrage of Levar’s wild explanations. We talked late into the night, and it was a shock when the reset occurred. For once, it felt like I had almost earned this hangover.