The sun had set an hour ago and I lay there in under the cover of my tree, gazing into the small fire.

I had cooked my thrin on a stick hours ago and it had been delicious, I had, in fact gone back into the trees and taken another.

Being able to simply walk into the forest and take as much food as I wanted was a new and startling feeling, after regular starvation at the hands of my uncle.

After cooking and getting half way through my second bird I had felt too full to finish it and had almost guiltily tossed the remains into the fire.

Now I lay here worrying about what was to come.

I planned on heading north with the Coldwater Ridge to find a road, then from there along the road to what ever village or town I could find.

But then what would happen?

I was filthy, I had no coin and there was a good chance that that uncle's men were still looking for me.

Then truly night came upon me in force and I began to worry about my small fire giving away where I was.

I ended up dumping the rest of my water onto the fire then stomping on it to smother the flames before moving quickly a little ways back into the treeline.

I wasn't prepared for another chase, so I hid there, in the shadows of the trees holding my stone knife close, wondering if I had already been spotted.

It took a long time for me to unclench and even then, I think it was more the feeling of finally having eaten after my days of exhaustion that allowed me to drift off to sleep, rather than any sort of real relaxation.

*****************

My sleep had been filled with swirling images, thoughts and sounds from the vortex of knowledge I had absorbed.

When I woke my mind seemed more settled and I had the beginnings of plan about what I wanted to do.

I had vague recollections of Althalan's maze, the suggestions and impressions of his time spent there.

Behind one of the hidden doors were what gave off the impression of supplies.

I had no idea what specifically he had kept there because he never specifically thought about or at least if he did, such a memory hadn't been in his grimoire.

I knew it was more than likely that whatever lay behind the door would be long since ruined but I couldn't just head out into the forest then on to the road without first checking.

I had nothing but my stinking clothes, my stone knife, a bowl and something close to magic.

After the sunlight finally broke over the trees I steeled myself for my return to the mountain.

It may seem redundant to say but going up was certainly much harder than going down, it was only through sheer determination that I should follow through with my plan that kept me moving onwards.

I would re-enter the mountain, I would look through the rooms as I headed for possible supplies in hopes I could find anything of use.

I hoped to find at least something, even if it were just scrap metal I might be able to sell to a blacksmith.

Heading out of this place with something had to be better than heading out with nothing.

From there I would head north in search or a road to follow.

After what seemed like too long of a time I managed to find where I needed to be, the opening was easy to spot as I hadn't bothered to try to seal it back up.

The light showed the loose rocks that had slipped into the short and narrow corridor before it succumbed to the pitch black beyond.

Taking a deep breath, I steeled myself and headed forwards.

When I was half way down that first long set of stone stairs, surrounded by the darkness once more I raised my hand and pushed my will.

The feeble white orb that sprang up to hover above the palm of my hand did not flicker like a candle but instead emitted a steady pure glow.

Despite it's small size it pushed back the darkness and with it my footfalls could be heard as I moved onward.

The rooms I walked by were made out of the same dark stone of the mountain and besides the debris and dust covered floors, the walls and ceilings were completely smooth.

The remains of wooden parts of furnishing were little more than grey husks, I found little pieces of brittle metal objects. Things that I could only assume had once been handles from doors and candle holders.

I thought at first maybe I could collect enough so that they could be sold and melted down but with how easily they flaked away and crumbled in my hands I doubted that they could become anything useful once more.

I found myself standing in the corridor lower down in this maze in front of what looked like solid wall and with a wave of my hand and a push of my will it melted away from me.

I stepped into a huge room, I couldn't even see the far end of it from the light of my small orb but what light did shine out illuminated enough to make me freeze in place.

Almost not believing what I was seeing I hesitantly stepped forwards.

There were neat stacks of ingots set in orderly piles, I just stared at them.

The stacks varied in size, there were five stacks of different ingots that were noticeably smaller than the larger ones, I looked at a fortune of what I assumed were gold ingots and silver.

Besides them were more ingots of what I thought might have been platinum and mythril and some ingots of a dark metal that I had never seen before.

Beyond those smaller stacks that seemed to be the more precious of the metals were larger stacks of iron and copper.

My mouth was dry as I set the palm of my hand down on top of one of the small bars of gold, still not believing, even as I could feel it touching my skin I expected it to vanish or crumble away into dust just as all the other scraps of metal I had found had done.

Moving down the neat rows and raising my hand the orbs light spread further into the long room and my heart felt like it would punch its way out of my chest.

There were huge piles of raw unrefined ores, I could clearly see the different colours, nuggets and lumps just mixed together and set slightly to the sides as if they had just been dumped here slightly out of the way.

Dizzily I walked further until the orbs light reached the solid stone of the back wall.

There were stone shelves that had pots, jars, small boxes, strange looking devices and books that, just like the room that the grimoire contained, had somehow not rotted away.

As I turned around slowly seeing strange pieces of woods that I couldn't identify I was startled when my back bumped into something.

Turning around quickly three large metal barrels stood before me and almost numbly as if I was in a trance my free hand moved forwards.

My fingers gripped the lid and pushed it off a barrel, as it tumbled to the floor clanging loudly, I stared dumbly at it's contents for several seconds before I sitting down hard on my rear.

Uncut gemstones.

A barrel full of them.

*****************

I don't know how long I sat but slowly my mind had come back to me and I had spent more time looking around this room of treasures.

The other two barrels had of course also contained gems, I had moved over to what I had thought were odd looking chests near a wall only to find that they were actually slabs of strange stone that tingled on my skin when I got near them.

The strange devices and odd things on the bookshelves kept trying to pull up memories of what they were from the unsettled newfound knowledge but I couldn't really focus enough to spend the time trying to sort through them.

My mind was racing too much, how was all this here? How had the pieces of wood or the metal on the strange devices not been taken by the ravages of time?

This was too much, I had come here looking for scraps to sell and found a treasury.

I had followed the vague impression of 'supplies' and ended up with all this.

I came to the startling realisation that to Althalan, to his mind these were simply supplies.

Materials to be used, tools to handled in a place out of his way.

The unrefined ores dumped to the sides, the ingots near the entrance there to be picked up quickly for whatever he needed them for.

The stranger things set on shelves for when he had use for them.

Feeling faint at the notion that Althalan had considered this place 'expendable', a place that could just be left here and that there was nothing of any real value for him here.

I had the impression that Althalan hadn't spend years travelling the world collecting and bringing back all these ores and metals but rather that he had simply pulled them from miles and miles down from the depths of the earth here because they were already close by.

He had just needed to put them in one place, for convenience.

It was almost maddening that I couldn't concentrate enough to plump the depths of the still swirling knowledge to find out how this had all come to pass, to find answers and I ended up back in the room of the grimoire.

I spent a long time there and also running back and forth between it and in the room of treasures before I came to a frustrating conclusion.

Runes.

Runes were the reason that these things had survived the passage of time.

The books in the grimoire room, that I had thought were old looking because they had only been slightly preserved where actually perfectly preserved.

It was just that they had been old before they had been stored here.

The books in the room of treasures seemed almost like they had never been used, they were in perfect condition.

The shelves in the grimoire's room that I began to think of as Althalan's study had small runic inscriptions carved into them.

I had gone back to what I had also began to think of a the treasury and found similar looking runic inscriptions though not on the shelves of the treasury but on the very walls of the treasury itself.

I even found some of the various pots, boxes and jars.

It was all runes and their magic.

It was an answer to how and I supposed even why but I didn't truly understand how it worked.

That is why it was so frustrating.

As if to add to my frustration, I had gone for one of the more obvious sources for answers.

The very books themselves, only to find them written in a language that I could both read and then not read.

It wasn't as though I could only understand parts of the words but instead it was as if my understanding of them itself seemed to come and go.

I could read a sentence, understand it completely then as I moved onto the next one I would be unable to make out anything more than vague impressions of understanding. I would then go back to the first sentence to try again and even though I had previously read and understood the meaning of the words I would find myself unable to read it once more.

Sure I could still remember by my own memory what it said as I had just read it but the ability to read and understand it again was gone.

I knew that this was because of that vortex of madness, of the knowledge from the grimoire, that it was still a roiling mass of unsettled thought and memory.

That until it had come to stop it's seemingly unending chaotic shifting, the knowledge in it's entirety would not be completely accessible to me.

I also knew from impressions I got that I was experiencing this because I had been an untrained and unprepared mind that had unknowingly grasped the knowledge of the grimoire for myself.

That had I been someone like Althalan, I would have full comprehension of all it offered in a matter of weeks.

The idea that I might never get my mind back completely, that I would never have true order in my thoughts once more was a frightening thought.

I needed the knowledge to have to power to defend myself without the sporadic and shifting nature that I couldn't rely on.

I needed to be able to survive until then.

I need to learn, I needed to be able to read these books to fill in as many of the gaps in my newfound knowledge that the grimoire had missed out.

I knew that even if the knowledge settled and I could see it all that there would be seemingly random gaps in it because the grimoire had only been one for experimentation, for practise.

It's contents had never been meant to be a complete comprehension of specific subjects, instead it had been the same volume of knowledge but it's contents spread across anything and everything.

I needed to settle my mind.

I needed to be able to survive, I needed to learn and to hope.

I needed time.