Riloth 19th the 657th

After the meeting, I took a nap—a tactical nap. I needed to get to Crossroads and back in a single reset, lest I lose the physical gains I’d made over the previous ten days. In the months spent training with Dagmar while waiting for the fires to subside, I’d grown used the strength and stamina I’d acquired, and the idea of throwing even a week of exercise away was not appealing.

I lit a small campfire out in the clearing beyond the door and watched it, waiting for the reset to occur. Levar had given me a list of ingredients to gather along with the magic detection device, and had even drawn a handy diagram of his shop to ensure I grabbed the right objects.

The fire disappeared so suddenly and completely, that the idea it ever existed was difficult to grasp. Roland nudged my shoulder, and we set off into the dark. He led me through the forest without the aid of a light. It was extremely unlikely the demon could be here at this point in the reset, but a beacon in the darkness would give the location of the Dahn away. Even without light, Roland navigated the forest with ease. I relied on my Willsight to see the world cast in a monochromatic gray, only broken by Roland’s rich brown aura and the occasional tendrils of cascading colors that reach out from nature to power his magic.

We made it to the Kituh entrance in record time, Roland’s skill more than compensating for the impediments of night.

“No requests from town?” I asked as he turned to depart.

“No, the wood has all I need,” he said, but then stopped. “On second thought, maybe some chisels, files, and a saw. It’s been difficult to craft all that furniture with just a knife.”

He made chairs with just a knife?

“Sure thing,” I said as he disappeared into the night dramatically—or would have had he not stood out like a turd stain on a gray stone wall in my vision.

I chuckled at the thought, and went down into the Kituh. The journey to town found more forsaken active in the tunnels than usual. In my sparring with Trish, not only did I discover that my Shadow Blades disappeared in the dark, but also that the darkness honed their edge beyond mundane possibilities. In the utter blackness of the Kituh, the blades cleaved forsaken in half as I Teleported into their midsts and took each group by surprise. Even the impeccable dark vision of the dark elves could not perceive the blades.

I killed three such mixed groups of forsaken via ambush before reaching town. Dagmar had long since determined the ones in the region had no useful information through her own interrogations, and I felt no desire to torture even these cruel creatures.

It was still dark when I reached Crossroads and I began my shopping expedition. The first stop was Levar’s, as I’d used more Will than anticipated in my subterranean battles. Once I’d topped myself off, I went over to the Master's Den to relieve a particularly vile man of his spellbook. I’d grown tired of holding the stolen spellbook at all times, and grew lax in filling it with Will to ensure it did not disappear. One day, I’d come back to study it and found the spellforms within its pages devoid of Will. Much like the wand, it seemed that spellforms were vulnerable to losing their magic when subject to the strange Will draining effects of duplication. Barion was still asleep, and I was able to steal the book and a sack full of gold without alerting anyone to the thefts.

Levar’s shop became my staging ground as I embarked on a crime spree. At Hilroy’s I stole wood chisels, saws, files, and anything else that looked like it was meant to be used to sculpt wood. I left a pile of gold in their place to save the proprietor the anguish of suffering such a large theft. I also took the crossbow for good measure so Levar and Dagmar could further study its runes.

For Dagmar, I stole a few bottles of the dwarven ale from the Master's Den, and then broke the rest out of spite.

Trish and Daulf had both simply asked that I grab their bags from their rooms, and Bearskin had asked for nothing.

Levar had asked for a lot.

I spent two hours sorting through his stores, bottling ingredients, wrapping up roots, and packing them all into straw lined crates. I had no idea how he planned to keep all this from disappearing, but I was curious to see what he had in mind. When the sun started to rise over the horizon, I went back to the Parlor to take a break and delegate the remainder of my tasks.

I dropped a small pouch of gold on the front counter before Simon.

“Good morning, Mage Theral, what can I do for you at this fine hour?” he asked, maintaining his professional manners by not looking at the pile of coins he knew to stand between us.

“Good morning. I need you to get a cart, fill it with whatever you use to brew coffee, as much coffee beans as you can gather, and everything else on this list.”

Levar had made many lists. The one I handed Simon was of spices and seasonings. In large part thanks to Roland, our food situation was plentiful-yet-bland. It also had some items that could not be found in a forest, such as yeast, sugar, and flour.

“Of course, Mage Theral,” he said, reading through the list. Once he finished, I caught him risking a brief glance at the coins, and all hesitancy from his voice left him. “I can have this ready for you by—”

“Eight,” I cut him off. “I need this by eight in the morning.”

Tilavo would be back by nine, and I did not want to risk another run in.

“Of course,” he said once more, “I’ll get right on it.”

After a brief stop to bathe, and change into fresh clothes from my room, I continued with my task. Clean was great, but it was no substitute for a good soak and putting on fresh clothes.

I didn’t feel great about this next part.

I went into the library, where Jarreth sat, diligently repairing a book. At my request, he retrieved some rolled maps of the region, along with a few historical accounts of the time we knew the Primordial of Time to have been lost in. The region was a bit out of the way, and we had little hope anything of value would be found, but it was worth a shot. Once everything had been gathered, I Mind Blasted Jarreth into unconsciousness. The old librarian was tough, and it took three tries before he fell, cursing me all the while.

I owe him a few pretzels after all of this.

I filled my bag with the books, and carried the scrolls over my shoulder and began to Teleport. When the spell completed, nothing happened.

Oh yeah. I’d forgotten about that. I guess that was not Tilavo’s direct doing.

I walked to the backdoor which opened to an alley and stepped outside, only for the books and map scroll tubes to disappear from my bag and hands respectively.

“What in Riloth’s name?” I asked myself in surprise.

I returned to the library, and found that the scrolls and books had returned to their places on their shelves.

“How?”

I turned to my Willsight, and saw the room ablaze in the golden light of Tilavo’s aura. Each book’s spine was set with a tiny gem, and Will flowed through the shelves in runes so small and faint they could hardly be seen with mundane sight.

Around each gem sat the familiar layout, if not pattern, of control runes.

These runes make the books Teleport? But Spatial magic doesn’t work here. How?

I thought it over, and eventually decided that whatever this rune did, it was always active, and once the books left the area of anti-Spacial magic, they teleported back to their shelves.

Destroying the gems would stop this effect, but damaging the books would make them less likely to survive the duplication based disintegration, no matter what Levar had planned to prevent it—especially since the originals seemed to receive a constant trickle of Will. In the end, I marred the runes on each shelf, removing the gem set within. Each book sat on a gem, which I correctly guessed served as the Teleportation target for each book.

That is a lot of security for some books.

All in all, finding the books and discovering a method of bypassing the anti-theft runes took another hour, and Simon was waiting outside Levar’s when I arrived. With another sack of coins, I coaxed him and some passersby to assist in loading the cart with the supplies from Levar’s.

In a move far beyond his regular professional minding-his-own-business-ness, Simon asked, “If you don’t mind me asking, what are you doing with all of this?”

“I’ve decided to start a commune in the woods with a dwarf, giant-man, the Chosen of a god, a disagreeable ranger, and a haunted con artist.”

“Oh,” Simon said, leaving it be.

Sometimes the best deception is the truth... unless you’re talking to Daulf I suppose.

We wrapped up the packing dangerously close to Tilavo’s return, and I drove Knotien off to the Dahn.

A few minutes beyond the outskirts of the tent city, I spotted a figure sitting beside the road.

This is... different.

I activated my Willsight and the brilliant gold that blinded me left no doubt as to who it was.

Tilavo. Flood. Do I kill myself now? No, I should figure out what caused this change before resorting to that. It was probably the stupid books.

I returned my vision to normal and as I grew closer, I made out that the disguised dragon sat at a small table, with a book in hand—a cheap fiction book if the size and flimsy cover were any indication. When I was a few dozen paces off, he stood, as if noticing me for the first time, the table, and chair he’d sat on vanishing into smoke behind him.

I wonder if that is a spell I could learn.

I reined Knotien to stop, and waited for him to close the distance between us. The terror of before was very much still present, but only the way Timothy and Jimothy were towards the end. Which is to say, still terrifying because dying hurts and everyone fears pain, but not scary in the sense of impending oblivion. I knew I could escape, and that you held no secrets he could access, thanks to the command I wrote in you to appear blank to all others.

“Greetings Mage Theral. I must say, I am quite surprised to find you as the culprit,” he said, with the tone of a parent who’d caught their child stealing a treat between meals. “I expected more from one traveling with Illunia’s Chosen. She does not bestow the mantle lightly.”

He brought his hand up before him, and I felt the Will building in it. At the sensation, I cast a Shield, and a protective dome appeared between us before the significance sunk in of what had just occurred.

Did I sense him cast that?

Lost in my reflection, I didn’t notice as the books disappeared from the bench beside me, reappearing in Tilavo’s open hand.

Can I—focus.

As before, I ran through nonsense rhymes and passages of magical texts I’d memorized the last week of study to hide my surface thoughts. It had worked well enough before.

He flipped through the pages of the first book, and it disappeared into thin air. Before it did so, I caught the barest sensation of Will, just as before. With the first book gone, he read the spine of the second before dismissing it as well. In turn, he inspected each map tube and book spine before repeating the process.

I stared transfixed as each conjuring and dismissal twinged lightly at the edge of my senses. The sensation was subtle, but had the same feel of the headache I gained when viewing the world with Willsight. Only, instead of an overpowering throb, it had an almost rhythmic vibration to it.

Ignoring TIlavo, I Conjured my dagger to my hand, and caught that same rhythm, only much more powerfully. Next, I summoned a brief swirl of wind in my palm, only to sense a whole different rhythm.

I can sense different Fonts?

“Are you done,” Tilavo said, cutting into my fascination. The fear that had abated with my new discovery reappeared in force.

“This is what you took?” he continued when I looked up at him. “This is hardly worth assaulting Jarreth over. I could have made copies. I’ve had wizards steal from me plenty of times, but never something so mundane.”

“Are you going to kill me?” I asked, far more casually than I expected to manage.

He let out a laugh, “Maybe. Honestly, I planned to, but now I am more curious to know what these are for. A little treasure hunt? Planning an assault?”

With each question, he watched me for signs of hitting the mark. I decided to shoot close to the truth.

“I am looking for dwarven ruins.”

“Oh,” he said, face melted from curiosity to sullen disappointment. “That’s all?”

Mid-sentence, he broke into a mental attack, but the Font of Mind betrayed him. As soon as I felt the hum of magic, I went to the Arcane Realm and the last and only thought Tilavo got was, “Sorry Knotien.”

Riloth 19th the 658th

The next morning, I woke up and went straight to Levar’s. Once I had my potions and the magic detector, I went to the Master's Den, stole the spellbook and a sack of gold. Then I gave Simon said sack of gold, a shopping list perfectly recalled with your help, and instructions to deliver it all to a random point up the northern road at five o’clock.

I elected to leave the maps and alchemical ingredients and escaped town through the slavers’ tunnel before returning to the Dahn.

A disgruntled Levar met me at the door.

“Where’s my stuff?”

Levar was typically a very amenable fellow, but he doesn’t handle it well when plans go awry. The way he tells it, this trait is what kept him from pursuing a life of adventure, choosing instead to support and watch adventurers from afar.

“I’m sorry. Tilavo tried to read my mind again and I had to kill myself,” I explained.

“Did the mental exercises work?” he asked, curiosity replacing his irritation.

“They worked enough, but I still felt him pierce the veil of surface thoughts before I died.”

We chatted a bit, before Levar returned to one of his million open projects. Dagmar, Trish, and Roland in turn bugged me for their own purchases, and I told them about the impending delivery.

“Oh, I hope Simon comes himself. I miss seeing him,” Dagmar commented.

To which Trish replied, “He’s not really my type.”

I left before being forced to see where that conversation was heading.

In the end, Dagmar didn’t brave the forest for the chance of seeing Simon. Bearskin, Roland, and I went out to meet the driver, who was a local carter named Hank I’d yet to encounter in my years of residency in Crossroads.

Hank was a bit surprised at the sight of Bearskin, but helped unload the cart before heading back home with a hefty tip. Simon did good and had purchased everything I’d asked for—even the coffee pot. I loaded up a tier three Force Disk with the less manageable objects, and Bearskin caused them to adhere to each other with his weird sticky magics, resulting in an impossible looking floating mound of food sacks. Bearskin carried the casks of ale under each arm, hardly noticing the weight, and Roland carried his own requested tools back through the woods.

The foliage parted before us, opening wider than usual to allow our passage. Back at the Dahn, Levar revealed his plans for ensuring the goods didn’t disappear. For now, the plan was to keep it all in the food preservation pantry, but he and Dagmar had already begun crafting runes to more directly solve the problem.

“Look here!” he insisted, pointing to a squiggly line carved into a piece of wood with a gem set in it.

“I’m looking,” I said.

“No, look,” he repeated, bringing his hands up to his face and wiggling his fingers in a theatrically magical gesture.

Taking his meaning, I looked with Willsight, and saw the gem bore Levar’s bright yellow aura. The runes connected to it glowed faintly with the color as well, and at the end of the squiggle, the wood had a very subtle yellow hue.

“You made a rune to cause Will to leak from a gem?” I asked, piecing it together. “You want to create a Will dense region we can store items in so that their newer counterparts disappear with each reset.”

“Exactly,” Levar confirmed. “So it's working?”

“I think so. Do we have to fill these gems up every day?”

“Maybe,” Levar said, “But we hope to tie this into the Dahn itself.”

We knew that to be possible, the kitchen equipment—the stove, oven, preservation cupboard—all proving runes could be powered by the Dahn’s own Will, we just hadn’t yet figured out how to do it.

I left Levar to his work, and went to unravel the mysteries of the coffee pot.

Riloth 19th the 659th-660th

The next day I spent sleeping off the effects of the potion of forgone sleep, and the day after that I finally retrieved the alchemical ingredients, bags, and maps I’d needed. I paid Jarreth to produce copies of the maps, while I used Levar’s magical copying stone to transfer the local history books' contents into your pages. It only worked for text, but it took a short time to copy it all.

I need to convince Levar to give this to me.

I sent the goods to the Dahn with Hank, along with the recipe for pretzels and the ingredients to make them. The baker put up a tough bargain, and I eventually gave up, dropping a whole sack of Barion’s gold on the counter in order to buy his “franchise.”

Back at the Dahn, I unrolled the freshly copied maps before the group. In preparation, Levar and Dagmar had runed a map table to contain the Will bleeding runes, so we could track our search without fear of it vanishing.

“Where do we begin?”