Riloth the 19th the 33rd

Once more, I woke exhausted and ill. On my way out the door to Levar’s, I tasked Simon with gathering a "B" themed meal. After getting my head straight, I arrived back at the Parlor only to find Simon absent. Half an hour later he returned, leading a horse through the square, panting and exhausted as if he had run the whole way. Shortly after he arrived, one of the kitchen boys ran out of the parlor with two satchels of food. My morning routine did not take as long as I’d grown accustomed to. In my tired state, I forgot I had no minions to task. Without you to keep track of their results, it would be futile, and in the rush to reclaim you, the possibility of another person in the reset seemed a distant secondary concern.

Panting, Simon said, "Mage Theral! I’m so sorry I’m 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 the horse Simon had acquired—who I once again dubbed Knotien—I set off north, 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. I sent Knotien back to town and set out for the door. The trek was even faster now with full daylight and I made it to the clearing around one or two in the afternoon, judging by the sun.

I sat against the lightning struck tree across from the door and unpacked my mystery "B" lunch. Inside was a loaf of dark rye bread, butter, bacon, and some blue berries—double points for Simon on that one, or is it blueberries? Not as creative as "A," but a respectable meal. I planned while I ate and tried to decide on a course of action.

I pulled out fake-spellbook and started to think.

Spatial magic didn’t seem to be an option with that golem’s runes messing it up. It's safe to assume the other golem had a similar ability for some other Font. I couldn’t sneak past them and grab you, and 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. 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 me guessing even a password were already astronomically small. There are roughly half a million words in Torcish, of which I knew maybe forty thousand. I’ve learned a lot more since then, mostly rodent-based profanity, but that's for later.

So the odds I even knew the word in a one-word passphrase were two in twenty-five. The odds of guessing it would be one in 500,000 times that. And if it actually was a passphrase as the booming voice suggested, I stood no chance. From the events of Edgewater, I suspected it was three random words. The forsaken were shouting nonsense at the golems found there, in what I now suspected to be attempts to crack the passphrase.

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 had reset to their starting locations. There was... another mess on the floor where the bookcase stood. The body—my body—by the stairs looked strange. The blood and bits had begun to disappear. Where before the mess extended all over the room, now it was all in a small three-foot area. Everything beyond that—namely the blood splatter that had been my skull—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 fetid odor I knew to fill the room. I took some grass from the ground, held it in the palm of my hand, and blew it with a jet of air using a quick Puff from Font of Air. 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 led me to believe my next experiment wouldn’t work, but I had to try. A failed experiment is still a result.

I focused on the golem with the teleportation disruption as I summoned a Firebolt in my hand and threw it through the doorway. As the ball of fire passed over the threshold, 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.

Finally, I activated my Willsight, and studied the door. It still shone with the same sky blue aura as the interior, and the view into the foyer was not obstructed to my vision. I summoned another Firebolt and threw it through. The flame looked strange in my Willsight, my own blue aura tinting the spell from red-orange to a more purple hue.

The fire hit the invisible barrier and vanished, only this time the barrier was not invisible. When the ball of flame passed over the threshold, the doorway shone an opaque sky blue, obscuring the view inside. The color was brightest where my spell hit, and waves of bright blue light rippled away towards the edge of the door as my spell was blocked. When the last ripple faded—in a brief flash no longer than a second—the doorway became clear once more.

Did I just see the ward?

I repeated the attack with Lightning Bolt, to much the same effect, and then once more tried to blow grass through. When the doorway blocked the grass, it lit up much fainter, and only where my magically conjured air attempted to pass.

Hmmm, I wonder...

I brought my face close to the door, and blew as if to extinguish a candle. To my surprise, my breath came out as a swirling blue cloud of smoke in my Willsight. Where it passed the threshold, it once again glowed faintly, and my exhaled breath dissipated in the air.

“What in Riloth’s name was that?” I said aloud to myself.

I watched the air in front of me as I breathed. Aside from the light haze of aura that surrounded people in my Willsight, I’d seen nothing like the cloud of blue smoke from moments before. As I watched, it progressively grew darker, until after a dozen breaths, each one was a roiling cloud of aura. By then, my breathing had become the uneven light-headedness inducing breaths of one who’d become too aware of their own breathing and was now afraid if they stopped forcing themselves to breathe, they would stop all together.

Stop thinking about breathing!

Of course that didn’t work. The air around me had become hazy with aura, and it was difficult to see. I moved back to thinking about the topic at hand in an attempt to forget about breathing, which seemed to infuse it with my aura—which may or may not be my Will.

Can I impart my Will onto things? Time for that later, focus on the door.

The wards protecting this door seemed to have been well-thought-out. From what 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 ones should have long ago lost their power—if the age of this door was similar to the ruins I found. 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.

Could it be runes instead?

I knew even less about runes, but they were clearly at work in this place. Ward is a general term to describe any magical effect cast on an object or place. Generally, they were protective, but a ward could just as easily cast a Firebolt at an intruder as block their path. Wards needed to be maintained by a wizard to last any extended amount of time. Runes though, who knew how those functioned? I didn’t.

As my mind raced through the possibilities of the wards, the color in the air began to fade as my thoughts drifted away from breathing. It took a colossal effort of small “w” will to refrain from reflecting on the return of normal breath.

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

I exhausted the remainder of my will with target practice against a specific knot on the already-dead-tree and 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 one 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 mentally dubbed 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 the 19th the 34th

I woke and got ready for the day. Though I was itching to run back to the door and to reclaim you, I also 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.

I passed Simon and threw him a handful of gold coins, shouting, "Bring me a horse and a meal as fast as you can!"

To his credit, he only stopped to pick up a few coins before running out the door behind me.

I made it to Levar’s in record time and placed my order 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 resisted the urge to charge in. Instead, I stood and surveyed the room and what I saw made my heart sink. Where the bookcase had once been now sat an empty expanse of wall. The destroyed case was gone, and so were the books. Standing in the doorway, I examined every inch visible to me, but nowhere could I find you. It seemed that my urgency had been 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. I used 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 it. My heart sank further in disappointment, towards despair, 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 didn’t take an hour this time. I sprinted in, and the countdown started. I made it all the way to the top of the stairs by the time it reached "One," only to find another stone door, one 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. I appeared before the golem and prepared to roll, but it seemed they were growing wise to my tricks, and it crushed me before I could get away.

Riloth the 19th the 35-40th

My hope had begun 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-eighth, 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 so large I had to hold my hand out at arms length to keep it from burning my body, which was apparently not protected from the Font’s power as my arm and hand seemed to be. Despite my efforts, the skin on my face was scorched and cooked by the heat of the spell. I don’t know how I managed to throw it, but I held onto consciousness just long enough to see the massive Firebolt hit Timothy square in the chest, doing nothing to him 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 names. 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. The crack echoed through the stone room and 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 do something. As soon as the lightning hit the golem, the countdown went silent, the lights shut off and I watched the golems approach in my Willsight. I fled through the portal once more, narrowly escaping another crushing.

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

What am I to do? My only two offensive attacks did nothing.

Lost in thought, I began to wander the woods and 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 town and wandered in after dark. On the walk back, I had time to think and realized I needed to slow down and be more methodical. I’d let my fears of losing you take too deep a hold, and not approached this problem in the way my father had taught me.

When he needed to research a particular topic, if he didn’t have knowledge on it, he sought it out, whether in books or with his colleagues.

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 Levar’s with a peace offering in hand—a potion of the non-alchemical variety. I had been a bit brisk with him that morning and needed to mend a bridge, and I was hoping to 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 a robe that looked like the children’s pajama version of a Tower Archmage’s robe. It was covered in stitched on glassware, wands, scrolls and other magical paraphernalia. Seeing that it was me, his expression lost a bit of his typical chipperness.

He greeted me, "Oh, good evening Mage 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 and 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’m having," I said as I handed him the wine and entered.

Once we were settled, wine in glasses along 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’ve 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 once 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 means of destroying 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?"

“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 of a thought experiment than originally suggested, stood up and walked around the room.

While 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."

From there, he regaled me with the details of making the acids. He explained the differences between alchemical and chemical acids and the pros and cons of each. The pros of the alchemical being their extreme effectiveness, and the cons being the equally extreme costs. Never had I heard someone speak of titration with such excited fervor. I’d done quite poorly at my father’s early attempts to teach me the basics of chemistry and had no love for the subject, but Levar’s enthusiasm almost made me rethink my opinion of it.

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 lost myself 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.