“You need not worry about the vial. It can be cleaned up and new materials can be bought,” said Ethan looking up at Arthur.

“Sorry. It was my fault. I should not have been in here anyways,” said Arthur guiltily.

“You don’t need to worry about as long as nothing else was disturbed In here. Did you find anything that interests you in here and what brought you in here as well?”

“I was curious about the work on the defense against the undead you have been working on but that wasn’t what brought me into this room. I was actually looking for something I lost, but I don’t think it was left in here.”

“I see. I’ll have someone come down here to clean up this little mess you have made. Thank you for being honest with me. Now, what was it you were looking for? Maybe I could help you find it.”

“I seem to have misplaced the book you gave me. I thought it was down here, but I don’t know where it went. Did you move it?” asked Arthur earnestly.

Ethan furrowed his brows and looked around. “I’m glad you told me it was missing. When was the last time you saw it?”

“I saw it on the table either yesterday or the day before. It was the evening before I left to fight the spiders. Do you know where it was moved to or who has it? I was..”

“It doesn’t matter what you were doing. Only you were supposed to have access to the book. I should have taken more precautions on top of whatever the gnomes supposedly have done so far to protect you. I fear your relative anonymity here may be compromised either now or soon.”

“Do you have a way to track the people down?”

“That shouldn’t be too hard with the help of a ritual to track down the book because of my connection to it. Come with me. I need to tell the people in charge of the outpost about this development. Maybe they can help us. It is likely too late to stop the knowledge of your creation from getting out, but the spell knowledge can not get away. If the wrong people get access to some of the spell then some of our defense strategies may become null.”

Ethan led Arthur out of the cellar, and he rushed to the main tent. He found no one there at the moment so he moved on to find the outpost head’s house. Arthur followed behind. Some people glanced at them as rushed through the outpost. As they neared the houses they found Aria.

“What are you two doing?”

“Secret have likely already leaked. We need to stop further damage from occurring,” said Ethan.

“I see. I will notify the research heads. Let me know when you finish with the outpost head. He will probably be quite mad that this has happened. Do you think it could have been him or one of his assistants?” asked Aria.

“I don’t know. I will need your help finding all of the details about this incident though.”

“I don’t do that kind of magic anymore.”

“We need it now. You shying away from that doesn’t help anyone. You are the only one for a hundred miles at least that can do it,” said Ethan as he stared back at Aria.

Aria glared back. “We will talk about this later. I don’t like this so I will consider it after we finish up here.”

“Thanks, Aria. I will see you in a few minutes,” said Ethan.

The three of them separated and left to fulfill their duties. Ethan turned down another side street as he searched the houses. The houses around the area were all built to be similar due to the lack of materials able to be cheaply shipped to the outpost. As such only the most important work buildings were made with some stone while the houses were made of mud and fired clay bricks. Ethan eventually found the house he was looking for. It had a slightly larger fence than the others and a sign on the side that read ‘Do not disturb. Hours are posted at the big red tent’.

Ethan ignored the sign and turned to mist with a quick cast of his spell and phased through the cracks in the fence. He continued up the grass. He cast a quick [Detect Life] before going up the stairs and barging into the house. With his spell, he saw that someone was laying down in the upstairs of the house and went directly to where they were.

Arthur could not and did not go through the fence as Ethan did. He opted to go through the fence door to avoid breaking anything. When he walked up the steps he realized that he was larger than the door frame that was built to be only six feet tall. He had not noticed that Ethan had to duck under the door frame as we went.

Arthur tried to crouch twice and get through the door frame, but he found himself much too large for it. As he pressed against the door frame he also realized that if he tried any harder that he would start to break the house. A little disappointed in not being able to join he opted to wait outside while sitting on the grass.

When Ethan got into the outpost head bedroom he found him rolling out of bed. Likely from the noise he had been making.

“What is it human mage. I was just taking a nap!” shouted Sal as he stood up.

“I have reason to believe that some information has leaked about Arthur,” he answered without giving any apologies for his behavior.

“How do you know this? Everyone who has entered this place has signed secrecy contracts. It shouldn’t be possible.”

“It doesn’t matter how they did it right now. We need to contain the fallout. Lockdown the outpost until I can confirm where it is. Someone stole something from me, and we need it back to continue improving Arthur.”

“I will do this once for you. You have an hour to find them here. I can’t hold the lockdown any longer because it is too mana intensive,” said Sal as he walked to leave the room. He picked up some items on his side table as he left.

“I will get it done in this time. I already have worked on alerting the other researchers so they can start implementing their plans in the case of this issue.”

“Good. Good,” said Sal as he walked down the stair to the living room. “You magicians have your meticulous plans and contingencies for a reason. I guess now you will have to use one. Good luck.”

Sal opened up a cabinet drawer with a key and took out an orb with a metal base holding it. He pressed the runes On the metal in a distinct order before setting it down on the top of the cabinet in the living room.

“It is done. You have an hour.”

Outside Arthur sat on the grass. He felt a pulse of magic from the house. He looked up and saw the sky glow as a barrier started to form around the outpost. The barrier was like an opaque film in a half-sphere around the area. He got back to his feet and called for Ethan as he walked back to the door.

Ethan did not respond immediately but left the house instead. Sal stood behind Ethan as he left looking. Ethan left the house in the same manner as he had entered. Arthur turned around and followed him out.

“What was that about. Since when did the outpost have this magical barrier.”

“It has always been here for the occasional beast tide. Now we are using it to prevent any additional unauthorized messages from being sent out. Come on let's go. I will meet you by the big red tent. I need to grab my stuff I will see you there.”

Ethan cast another spell and turned to mist before taking to the sky.