“What are you doing?” Veish asked Rum, her expression curious but also a little weirded out.

“Shhh! I’m watching the grass grow.” The wizard was down resting on his belly, the great park of the Flip University grounds around them.

“I’ve lived underground for a large part of my life, and yet even I know that won’t work. What are you even trying to achieve?”

The duo had their own little spot out on a large and mostly flat stretch of grass. The 2 of them had just come from a visit to an Herbology Professor whom Rum had quizzed long and hard about the theory and practice of wand-suitable trees.

“That’s what you think. But to the patient observer comes knowledge.” Rum whispered, though for whatever reason his voice was so low Veish couldn’t fathom.

The witch sighed, and sat down on the grass next to Rum, before growing bored and deciding to lay down on her back, watching the clouds and bathing her cave-whitened skin in the warm rays of the sun. For several minutes she lay there, trying to doze off, while Rum lay a couple of meters away, staring at grass.

Eventually though, boredom got her. “For how long?”

The wizard didn’t immediately respond.

“For how long” she got a little louder, “are we gonna lay here?”

Rum gave her a glance. “Until the grass yields its secret.”

“And how long would that be? I’m starting to get really hungry.”

Rum put a hand in his robe pocket and fetched out a few coppers. He put them down in a small pile on a spot of grass, and patted them roughly, the noise of metal smacked against metal catching Veish’s attention. “Take these and get us both something to eat. We may have to stay here for a long time. Grab a book to read from the open-door library on the way if you’re bored. I’m confident you’ll find interesting books there you’ve never even heard of.”

Veish sat up. For a moment she eyed the pile of coin, and then eyed Rum, seeming perplexed. But Rum didn’t return her gaze, he simply continued to lay there on his belly, eyes forward and aimed at a spot among the grass. As a moment passed, she lost her tardiness, got to her feet, stepped over, grabbed the coins, and strolled off.

It took more than an hour before she got back. Though Rum, it seemed, had stayed pretty much where she’d left him. The witch got close and knelt down next to the absent-minded man, stretching a hand out towards him. There, with an open palm, she held a piece of wrapped bread with meat, vegetables and a thick white sauce. He gave her but a quick glance over as the food was offered. Then the food hit his nostrils, and, for the first time in a long while; he got up, grabbed the food and started eating. Eyes still focused on the grass though.

“You know I could’ve just ran off there.” Veish said as she sat down at the spot she’d last occupied.

Rum didn’t respond.

“Kinda trusting of you to give me money and send me away like that.”

Rum gave her a quick glance. “What?” he said, attention just momentarily moved over to the witch, before eyes stared back towards the grass.

“I said... well, never-mind.”

A few seconds passed. “We’re here for you.” Rum replied, eyes still on the grass, but his mind splitting with a partial attention aimed at her.

“What?” now it was Veish’s turn to ask that word.

“You and me, we’re here now because of you; for your benefit.” For a brief moment, his eyes moved away from the grass, and snapped eyecontact with hers. He smiled, then went back to looking at the grass just as his mouth continued replying: “It would be strange if you were to leave now, just before your life got richer.”

Veish frowned. “Are you talking about how you made me read a book for that White Rose for 7 hours straight? And by the way, don’t think I haven’t noticed ze is not what ze appears to be.”

Rum snapped his attention back at her again, his eyes locking with her. He lingered his stare for a long awkward moment, before Veish felt she was to one who had to look away. He returned to look at the grass, crossed his legs and hunched forward slightly. “Sorry about how long gone I was with my brother. But no. I think you are, at least a little bit, curious about what I can do. That, along with a place to eat, a place sleep – remember yesterday we slept at the inn instead? I can keep you safe and free – at least relatively free – here in this grand city.” He raised his hand in circular swirling motion, as if to gesture at everything around them. “If you were to flee, what would you flee towards? No, more important – what would you flee from? I’m not saying I’m the guaranteed best option for you. But, I think you would agree that, at least for the moment: escape is premature.” Rum’s eyes returned to stare at her, and the 2 locked gazes for a moment. “If for no other reason, then the biggest reason you have to stay with me now is for you to know who this person is, the one who you would call your enemy, when you were in that dungeon. Perhaps you’d still call me that now.” Back to the grass his eyes went. “I hope though, that in our joint near future, I will prove myself more worthy as a friend, than as your enemy.”

Veish didn’t say anything. Instead she just calmly lay down on her back and rolled over, facing away from Rum. The wizard himself returned after a while to lie on his belly again, and staring into the greenery as the afternoon sun slowly drifted and transformed into a big red sunset. At which point Veish had begun sleeping, her breath audible even through the low murmur and occasional shouts of some dwarven students not far away, enjoying their mead and ale around a large magical bonfire.

It was at this point, when the world had gotten utterly used to Rum, that the wizard, finally, took action. With his right hand stretched out over the spot of grass he’d been focused on this entire day, thin seeping currents of magic rose up from the ground and into the wizard’s palm, dancing around his wrist, before making its way up his arm and into his head. Nobody noticed the event, and Rum made no show of what’d happened. Finishing the process, the wizard, slowly, stood up. “Euh” he moaned slightly, feeling more than a little pained in the various parts of his body that’d been in the same positions for too long that day. Managing to work himself through those pains to stand up fully though, he stepped clumsily over to Veish, whereupon he bent over to nudge, gently. “It’s done. I’m done. Let’s go home.” Rolling over to face him, she got up slowly as well, sleepiness in her expression, and yawns from her mouth. Together, the 2 walked home, the red sun setting against their backs.

The next day Rum took Veish on another trip, but this time to The City Forest, or, more precisely: to The Great Spruce. It wasn’t for the transfer of custody though, that time was yet to come. No, instead, Rum told Veish he “want to find a tree”, and said so while carrying around a mysterious stinky bucket, the hole of which was covered with a dirty old cloth. After getting in touch with The Committee of The Spruce, whose many elves gave the rumoured Veish many curious and inspecting looks, the 2 were given directions to a room in The Great Spruce tree which housed “The Sub-Committee for Flora of The Committee of The Spruce”, or, as Ovadova Zizik and most others favoured calling them: The Florists.

“These people are really into trees” Rum whispered to an early worn out Veish, a while after having they’d entered the room. While Veish merely looked like she’d lost all energy, the wizard looked rather more exasperated, as the 3 elves of the committee behind them continued on with a conversation that’d lasted over 2 hours and been spurred by Rum’s simple opening question of “what particular tree do you recommend for tree-related magic?” It was only through a subsequent insistent and determined nudging that Rum finally got the 3 green-elves out of their room and to start what turned into a very slow walk down the spiralling inner stairs of The Great Spruce.

“Which way to the tree you recommended we look at, Sovaduna Bikbik?” Rum’s question came as they got out, and it was aimed at the committee leader, an over 200 years old female elf. Which by elven standards meant a middle-aged woman.

“That way” all 3 elves pointed in delayed unison, their fingers directing to a trail Rum hadn’t visited before. Not that I’ve visited that many trails. There’s just so many many of them here. The wizard looked around to catch glimpses of all the other trails. Truly, what a maze. The slow walk out didn’t turn any faster when they finally started to get among actual regular trees. For every other tree they came upon one of the elves had something to say of it, and most of the time it’s completely irrelevant, Rum sighed internally, as one of the elves was explaining the family lineage of 3 nearby trees who, it turned out, were something akin to sibling trees, and one of The Florists had something of a passion for the fate of their family tree, narrating their stories like a dendrological saga.

“So. It’s this one?” a tired Rum said after another hour and a half of slow stroll through the forest. Beside him, an equally tired and unhappy Veish.

“Yeees” the committee leader responded in a low, drawn-out excitement.

Rum walked up to the tree, removed the cloth covering his bucket, and then threw its contents onto a tiny meter tall oak.

“What? Is that poop?” Veish’s face quickly skipped a yawn and went straight to weirded out surprise.

“It’s fertilizer” Rum said, and then breathed out of his nose with contentment, the wet excrement sliding down the sapling oak in front of his eyes.

“That may have been a bit much all at once” a male sub-committee member commented.

“Yes, that’s a bit too much fertilizer to start with” another female sub-committee member went.

“Some of that would probably go to waste being used all at once” Sovaduna Bikbik explained.

“I don’t mind if waste goes to waste if it will just go to the right kind of waste” Rum turned and nodded with a small tired smile at the elves, before giving the same tired smile to Veish, then turning back to the oak, squatting next to it. “Hello there little oak. You take my fertilizer now and eat it real quick, okay? We need you big and full of magic soon.” The wizard stretched out a hand and put it on the clean top of the sapling. The wizard closed his eyes there while touching, uttering a little slow quiet word: “Grow.” As Veish looked on she recognized it must’ve been a spell, because a green-yellowish gleam seeped out from Rum’s touching fingers, and soon spread out across the plant like a bioluminescent liquid on a mission. And that mission appeared to be the saplings roots.

“Let’s get back tomorrow and see how it turns out.” The wizard stood up.

“What did you do?” Veish managed to yawn the sentence, though her eyes stood half-wide with interest at the little spectacle that’d just occured.

“Soon, we’ll both find out.” Rum gave Veish another little smile. “Okay. So.” He turned about to their elven entourage. “Which way’s home?”

That evening, when Rum and Veish got back, they both fell over and onto the bed in Amez’ workshop. “Why not the inn?” Veish complained, trying to stay on her side of the bed as they both lay there, exhausted. White Rose stealthily standing in the one corner they’d left ze earlier today, secretly counting their limbs inside zes skull.

“Eeehhh” Rum breathed out, “don’t think I’ve forgotten about the closet.”

“Heh? What?” Veish turned half-way over to Rum with a surprised-annoyed face. “You’re not going to have me sleep in there again, are you?”

“Well, yes, but that’s not what I meant. I meant about making the interior more spacious.”

“That? It wasn’t a joke?”

“No. No it wasn’t.” Rum put his eyes on the closet. “I think I might have an idea on how to achieve overdetermination.” The wizard lay in the bed for a moment, eyes on the closet, both of them relaxing. Then, he’d had enough relaxing. He got up and out of the bed, a little energized apparently, and started pacing back and forth beside the closet.

“What is space?” He asked, looking at the closet.

In the bed, the witch turned her head. “You asking me?”

“I’m asking anyone and anything, really. What is space?”

“Eh. Where you put stuff?”

“But ah” the wizard raised a finger, “where implies space already. So that would be a kind of circular explanation, wouldn’t it? Where implies location, and location implies space. Or, no... wait... maybe I’m a little wrong here, perhaps your answer is not such a bad starting point after all. We seem to at least be able to say something with that statement: space implies the property of localizable, or, being in some place as opposed to another place.”

“What I said.”

“Hmm...” Rum began stroking his beard, thinking noisely. “Localizable... that’s a property. But what are things without their properties? Does it make sense to say here is a thing, call it space, or empty space if you prefer, and say it is something even if it had no properties?”

“I don’t know...” the witch had closed her eyes and was in the process of dozing off.

“Magical Blanket” Rum conjured the blanket into his hand, and then threw it over at Veish, who opened her eyes when she felt it fall gently over her body. She grabbed at it, and accepted it wordlessly, stretching it over herself without looking much at Rum, who was anyways busy walking back and forth beside the closet, his eyes into the floor. Him only occasionally glancing up at the tall wooden box as if to remember what it was like, or hoping to find answers on its surface perhaps.

“I think. There is no empty space. There’s only an aggregate of a connected spatial properties – a metaphysical topology of fundamental physical reality.”

“What?” Veish’s voice came out weakly and with a hint of complaint, though her voice and sleep-like face otherwise made her appear a quarter of the way into snoozeland.

“I guess one could say the same about time, but, of course – no, I’m NOT gonna start thinking about time manipulation. It is spatial manipulation we’re discussing. Hmm.” The wizard knocked on his own bald head lightly, as if to punish himself for his natural philosophical digression. “The problem is we have space, which Reality is giving us an inadequate amount of for our needs. But, if we overdid some of the properties of space, we could... couldn’t we? We could convince Reality to fill in the last piece of the puzzle! Ze can equalize the overdone properties by smearing them out over a more thinly divided up space. That is, if we can tamper with the fabric of Reality in one way that otherwise is effectively harmless, we could trick Reality into transgressing zes own rules in another to fix a non-problem, thereby Reality will be fixing zeself into a problem for ze, but one which ze is not immediately aware of, letting us get away with solving our Reality-breaching solution.”

Silence followed the room. Rum stared at the closet, while closed-eyes breathing came from Veish, wrapped in the magical blanket on the bed. Seconds passed without anyone or anything saying anything. Then a sleepy mumbly voice came from the bed: “And?”

Rum turned around. “And?”

Veish rolled onto the side facing Rum, opening her drowsy eyes. “And what more? Where does that idea lead?”

“Well, there are certain properties of space which I think I could manipulate with magic. Mana could be used to build the property unbalance. If I use the closet as an anchor of magic, I could reinforce its structural integrity on the outside surfaces, which will protect it or, in other words: overdetermine the outside, and thereby avoiding external disruptions to the inner magic of the closet. This anchor will also allow me to project magic from the walls, floors and ceiling inwards and onto the interior space. There, the magic will amplify and overdetermine the spatial properties of the closet. Practically, that means for instance slowing down the traversal of light and matter inside. Doing that would already complete a major part of the property multiplying, because the speeds of light and matter are determined by distance, and if we slow them down, it’ll be as if space itself had expanded, and Reality would require a way to manifest that speed reduction, one way of which is to actually expand the space. Think of it this way: if light travels at a quarter of normal speed, wouldn’t it make sense that there was 4 times the distance it had to travel? And of course, I’ll have to restrict the distances at which matter can interact, making it as if matter hasn’t covered the necessary distances to make that interaction. Put another way–“ Rum started gesturing excitedly with both his hands, “–the way that larger quantities of space slows down the journeys of light and objects, and the decreased reactivity of matter in larger quantities of space – if I can force these changes – it’ll be as-if we had more divisions of space, and so, we might actually GET more divisions of space. Of course, it’ll be really tricky all of this. I’ll need to create some kind of layered intelligence to even think about being powerful enough in my head to manage all these problems. I mean, I can imagine just one thing going wrong, and Reality might induce a universal doubt about what’s inside, essentially erasing whole objects from existence!” Rum laughed at that, shaking his head, and as he did, he got a glimpse of Veish’s face, which was verging on absolutely horrified.

“Erase from existence?” Her eyes were wide as she sat up on the bed and threw the magical blanket to the side.

“Well. Don’t worry, we can plan for that.” Rum waved away the problem as if it was nothing. “We’ll just have to make sure that your existence is overdetermined as well, so that you become too important for Reality to universally doubt. Actually, I don’t even think managing something like that should be too problematic. If we just tethered your existence to the closet outside with your presence inside the closet, for instance by creating numerous artifacts that will be able to re-affirm your existence through randomized mechanics, then your existence should be safely grounded even if Reality were to find out what we were up to.”

“I don’t understand.” Veish looked genuinely worried and seemed to actually want to know.

“I mean...” Rum halted just before going into a long explanation. He thought for a second, and then decided to give a simpler explanation: “I mean that we can entangle your existence so deeply into this world, and in a manner so unpredictable upon analysis, that undoing your existence would become like trying to uproot an old tree whose roots have dug far and spread wide underground. And if we do that, then your existence should be assured by the sheer nuisance – the utter complexity – of undoing all of your existence. Like: how do you doubt something whose existence seem everywhere either proven or even necessary?” He let the rhethorical question hang in the air for a few seconds, shrugging with his whole upper body. “So, just like we bribe Reality on the one hand with a juicy bit of concentrated overdetermination to complete our dirty work, we threaten ze on the other hand with the enormous workload of undoing the topological infestation your existence will have upon the universe. Change happens down the path of least resistance, after all.”

“I’m... still not entirely sure what you’re talking about. I mean, maybe I sort-of know what you mean, but: can’t you just pay for lodgings at the inn? This seems waaay too complicated, and I don’t even like the closet!”

“Hah! Anything is simple when you’re fully motivated! Of course, it doesn’t mean I’ll succeed just because I’m motivated, but trying is at least easy.” The wizard walked back and forth beside the closet while justifying himself. “Besides: the inn costs money, but trying to bend the rules of the universe is free! Why do something that costs money, when there’s a perfectly fine free option?”

Veish shook her head and looked almost offended: “Perfectly fine? My life’s on the line here! All because of your weird closet-obsession!”

“Correction: your life’s not on the line, your existence is on the line. A big difference if I may say so. And, you know what? Some people would consider the option of non-existing a blessing! Just think about it: death can be a horrible and drawn out experience, but you get to jump straight to being nothing. You even get to skip the moral guilt of leaving behind people who care about you, since other people’s memories of you will likely be erased as well. You don’t have to feel pain, nobody would have to bare the emotional burden of your loss. There’s a serenity to that fate, don’t you think?”

Veish looked at him, her expression a little disgusted.

“Okay okay. I do realize that line of reasoning was maybe a little unreasonable. I mean, of course, even if you technically don’t die, I completely understand that your present self may prefer that you have a future self that will become your new present self in that future. But still, it’s not as bad as dying, though? Yeah? It’s more like a minimalized death, a death-light, the cleanest deaths among clean deaths. Wait, why am I talking so much about death?” Rum turned around and looked at the closet. “Yeah, it was because we were talking about avoiding your non-existence?” His arm shot into the air, and the wizard went on and on and lost Veish from the conversation altogether, the witch feeling slowly but increasingly anxious as the weird wizard began using magic on the closet, going into some kind of trance eventually, one that she recognized as a deep introspection into the ethereal.

Seconds turned to minutes turned to many minutes however, and Veish got tired of waiting for the wizard to return to their discussion. Instead she let her eyes trail off the wizard’s shape, wandering off into the room and catching the sight of White Rose standing still as a statue in a corner of the room. “I know what you are.” The witch said softly, although, as she thought about what she’d just said, she realized how silly it was to say that to a skeleton. After all: they couldn’t talk, and she wasn’t sure how intelligent they were. But, this skeleton surprised her. Reaching out with a hand, White Rose pointed a thumbs up in her direction. “You... understand me?” Veish eyes widened a little again. The skeleton nodded. “H-how much can you understand?” The skeleton put zes head to one side, and then shrugged. “Of course, what a stupid question.” But then the skeleton raised a hand, took a couple of steps forward, and subsequently began pointing at everything around the room in a slow rhytmic fashion. “These are the things you know? A bed, a stool, a chest–” the skeleton shook its head. Instead, it started up again. “What is that?” Veish looked confused. The skeleton stopped. It changed tactic and instead did something new rather odd. It placed its right hand next to its chin, and began making gentle grabbing motions downwards, as if stroking a beard. Of course, ze had no beard, so ze was just stroking the air. Somehow, the eyes of the skeleton, covered by a veil and even beyond would’ve appeared absolutely hollow in its eye sockets, still managed to look distant with thought. “No idea what you’re doing now.” The skeleton ignored her and continued for a few seconds. Then it stopped, put a finger into the air, and put zes other hand forth, displaying all of zes fingers. Ze began pointing at each, rhytmically. “Eeeh” Veish went, her tone uncertain. “Counting?” The skeleton did a thumbs up again. The skeleton went over to the chest in the room, opened it up, and took out the book they’d been reading. Ze opened it, and began moving zes fingers and whole gaze along it. Zes whole head as if tracing the columns and rows of characters forming the words and sentences. “Reading? Like, because I taught you have to read?” The skeleton closed the book. Began stroking zes imaginary beard again, and then shrugged, before nodding and finally offering another thumbs up. Veish interpreted it as that she’d been mostly right at the mime guesswork. “Huh. Is that the only book you have? Isn’t it a little boring to have just one book?” The skeleton’s stare went distant for a second, before zes head started bobbing to each side as if to signal uncertainty. Ze put a hand out again but zes thumb couldn’t quite decide, instead rotating up and down and up and down. “I get it, you’ve not tried more books so you don’t know if you’d like them.” White Rose shrugged and gave another thumbs up. “Well, if you can read by yourself, maybe you’d want more books? If Rum wants you to learn to read, he should probably get you a dictionary at least, then you might be able to learn to read more advanced books on your own.” The skeleton gazed into the blue for a moment, and then nodded feverishly, giving a big thumbs up. Veish cracked a slight smile.

That night Rum relented that the work for the closet’s magic would take “at least a couple of days”, and so, a very grateful Veish, along with Rum, slept in beds at a nearby affordable inn, with White Rose pretending to sleep on the floor in their room with a Magic Blanket, as was quickly becoming zes new habit outside of zes “home”.

The next morning Rum dragged both Veish and White Rose along to take a look at their magically fertilized tree, and everyone present who could, including the elf sub-committee who was keenly interested in Rum’s project, awed at the result. In just one night, the sapling had grown rapidly, now standing at a height near that of Rum himself.

“Magnificent” spoke Sovaduna Bikbik.

Rum knelt next to it, touching the solid trunk gently. The sides of the trunk bled a slow river of green-yellowish magic through what looked like open wounds, or more specifically tiny cracks, all across its structure. “This tree contains a significant amount of magic. But, its size...” He looked at it with a hint of worry. “I’m afraid my waste wasn’t enough to fertilize all of this growth. The spell might’ve actually outpaced the fertilizer.”

“I can confirm” began the male of the sub-committee members, “this tree is growing too quickly. I can sense it’s desperate for nutrients, underground. It’s reaching as best as it can with its roots, but it’s also rapidly depleting the nearby soil, starving the nearby plants too.”

Rum stood up, stroking his beard and looking at the tree seriously. The female elven sub-committee member came up to him and met his worried face. “We will get some compost brought over to heal the soil. But, I’m afraid it’ll be an uphill battle, this tree is indeed acting very greedy. I can sense it too.”

“Hmm. Okay. Seems like I’ll have to make some more fertilizer as well.” The wizard sighed. “I guess I’ll have to do some tactical overeating and acquire some laxatives, I don’t think I can generate enough fertilizer naturally.” But, then the wizard suddenly jolted as if he’d just had an idea. Rum spun around, looking at Veish. “Could you help me? I mean, you’re definitely lower level than me, but at this rate this tree just needs a stream of workable fertilizer to not run out of mana-imbued fertilizer.”

Veish gave him a digusted look. “I won’t let you carry around my poop!”

“But” the female sub-committee member began, “it’s for the tree! It’s for a good cause!”

“No!” Veish turned away from them and shook her head, retreating a meter or 2 away from the conversation. White Rose, which’d stood beside her, looked at each of the conversing parties with interest, though the conversation seemed to have reached a snap ending.

“Heeeh” Rum sighed, “I guess our poor tree will have to do with my fertilizer then. Since Veish, apparently, is too selfish to share hers.” Everyone looked over at Veish with judging faces. Veish returned them with her own mildly disgusted face and shook her head at them.

The elves and Rum’s group soon departed, and the elves and Rum set a plan each for how to feed the starving tree. Rum, on his side, by making lavish dinner plans for The Belly Filler as they walked homewards. “Because I will need a very full belly.” He explained, as they detoured over to the place, and White Rose got to have the experience of watching everyone else around ze eat – Rum, her wizard daddy especially so – while zeself was left out. Of course, White Rose didn’t have emotions in the regular sense, but ze did feel, one might call it, that being left out of a big room where everyone was eating lots of food, was kind of a bad story. Ze didn’t do anything about it though, because zes wizard daddy didn’t appear to even try and include ze in the eating. Instead, ze resorted to merely witnesss the undead discriminationary injustice.

That evening, Rum made a lot of magic fertilizer. And luckily he did so before it got too late too, that way he was still able to continue working on the closet’s magic anchor after a very sweaty trip to the outhouse.

The day after, the 5th day after Rum’s return to Ermos City, the wizard ate a huge breakfast, before the full trio wizard, witch and skeleton all went to the grand park area of the Flip University grounds. Rum figured his intestines could work slowly in the background, while he himself went on a mission for knowledge. His attempt at bending the rules of Reality was giving him at least a little concern that he might do something stupid, so he wanted to check out old books in some of the closed off libraries inside the university. It took some convincing of a group of professors he managed to hunt down as they strolled casually in the park, but after much arguing intensely he did manage to get what he wanted. Having his access ensured, he rejoined Veish and White Rose briefly, only to explain to them that they’d have to stay in the park while he went inside. And after he did vanish into the grand structure’s upside down tower openings, Veish took White Rose to one of the open-door libraries, where White Rose was introduced to all the different books available to ze. And White Rose? Ze went berserk with reader interest!

“What’s her problem?” a female dwarf student grunted, as White Rose snatched a book from just in front of the novice mage dwarf’s face.

“Ze’s not a her, ze’s a ze, and I’m not sure” Veish could only look on as White Rose carried a half meter tall stack of books in one hand, and kept scanning the shelves for more books to carry. Ze continued to find more though and the stack soon reached just below a full meter, a point at which Veish felt obligated to step in to halt the frenzy: “White Rose, stop, please.” The skeleton stopped, turned around, and met Veish’s stare. “That’s too many books. Eh, you should only pick 1, 2 or maximum 3 books at a time. You won’t have time to read all that, and we shouldn’t take so many books we might be unnecessarily be taking books other people may want to read.”

White Rose looked around at the 4 other students in the little library room, all of them giving ze glances, and ze put zes head to one side for a second. Then the skeleton shrugged, the shrug almost sending the stack of books in zes hand crashing. Only barely, with a snap of reaction, did the skeleton manage to balance the tower of books again, and just in time too to put it down gently. Down on the stone floor the skeleton began sorting books into 2 new piles, one big pile and one small one. Lastly, when the small pile had reached 3 books and the big pile had all the other books, ze started putting books back into shelves, before coming over to Veish and standing there in front of her, 3 books stacked in zes hands, presented as if waiting for further instructions.

“Okay” Veish gestured for the skeleton to follow, “come with me.” Before Rum had parted with them, Veish had made this suggestion of bringing White Rose to the open-door library, something which Rum had been wholeheartedly enthusiastic about. He’d even offered her to be a paid teacher again, a suggestion which Veish had, with just a little hesitation, accepted.

“The Journey of Mum” Veish read the title, and then flipped the book, reading the backside: “the travelling diary of the famous wizard Mum, who once visited the legendary City of Ages, and travelled The Three Cities just 2 years before The Grand War began. Read the world’s great history from the famous wizard whose eyes saw it all!” Veish and White Rose had found themselves a place of shade under a large tree not far from the little library. The witch was eyeing the book’s cover and bindings. At last she opened the book out of her own curiosity, flipping pages. “I’ve not seen this book myself” she admitted to the skeleton, “I must admit it makes me a little curious.” She quickly read through a passage of the introduction. The text wasn’t particularly interesting, and so she managed to take her eyes from the text to see what other books the skeleton had gotten. “Introduction to Number Theory” Veish looked over at White Rose. “Interesting choice I must say.” And she picked up the last book. “The Great Ermos Book of Everything, Volume 1: Encyclopedia from A To D, oh wow, that’s probably going to be quite useful. Though I’m not sure how you’re going to read it? This is a book without a proper beginning or end. Jorteg’s libraries had a few of these I remember.” The witch reminisced about her recent past. After half a minute of looking into the distance though, she woke up to the present, and grabbed for all the books: “So, which one should we start with?” Against all expectations, White Rose put zes hand over the encyclopedia, and Veish just had to shrug, asking the skeleton to find “an article or 2 you’d like to read”.

Rum came back a few hours later from the university, carrying a bucket with a dirty old cloth covering it. Veish decided not to comment on the fact, as the wizard dragged the 2 along to the City Forest, where he met with the elves who were already busy replacing the soil around the young tree that had grown another meter almost.

Back home again that day and they were all pretty tired. Still, Rum wanted to work on the closet and so he continued his magic business there, Veish relaxing in the shop bed with White Rose, they together reading semi-random articles from the encyclopedia.

The next day in turn was mostly a repeat, though Rum was starting to look bad and almost sick with how much he ate. In fact, later in that day he had to use Filter Body and Trinity of Healing to make himself okay to work again, not to mention a Clear Mind to deal with the exhaustion. He’d also figured out a way to get that “extra intelligence”, by somehow copying himself. Or, that is: he’d managed to use Mana Ghost on himself – as he was thinking about a problem – and managed to create another new spell, which he named “Magic Mind”. Veish, seeing that Rum was doing something very unique, questioned him about it, and Rum answered that the spell: “creates multiple parallell thinking minds, which will collapse and merge with my own original mind whenever I achieve a thought breakthrough. The result will potentially multiply my thinking power as many times as I can cast the spell. Although, of course, the merging back takes some time, and I think my minds have a tendency to wander off with their thoughts, so when they merge back into my own mind, the result seems to often be a little confusing, and finding the breakthrough I want among all the wandering thoughts that often lead nowhere? That is still an annoying challenge.”

Lastly, on the 3rd day after Rum had initially started the construction of the magic around the closet, he finished it – the whole project.

Rum, The Great Wizard as the elves called him, stood in front of the closet. Veish and White Rose by his sides. The witch, showing nervousness, was also immensely excited at what she was about to witness, and about what this wizard had been doing and accomplishing.

“So, this is it” the wizard said, a big smile on his face. “When I now open this door, we’ll know whether this all worked. I did test it a little bit earlier, and, I have seen results to indicate it will work. Of course, scaled up – who knows what may happen?” His big smile went from excitement to a slightly more nervous smile.

“Are you sure opening it up now is safe?” Veish said, suddenly A LOT MORE anxious seeing the nervous signs on The Great Wizard’s face.

“I think the odds are acceptable.”

“What? That’s not an answer! Your acceptable might not be my acceptable! Now, is it safe or is it not?”

“Well... “ the wizard breathed out. “We’ll find out in 3... 2... 1” The wizard pulled at the closet door handle.