The castle teemed with gnomes with pointy green hats. They cleaned the huge hallway dearth of other races with mops twice their height.

Their tiny bodies swung from side to side along with the staff in their hands, dancing along to the flickering torches that hung on the dark-coloured walls, which lit up the hallway like thousands of twinkling stars held up by an invisible force.

Two staircases sloped upwards across several floors like slinging snakes across the massive gates.

Hain stretched his neck as far as he could in vain. The ceiling was too high up for him to see the end of it.

The more he tried to see the ceiling the more it seemed like the staircases moved farther up through the dust to obscure his view, hiding the roof deliberately.

“Move out of the way, you prick!”

A gnome with a grey and unkept beard, which reached down to its bony legs, pushed him to the side and mopped the floor with great force.

The end of the staff danced on its own while the head fought to clean the grating floorboards.

Hain watched the gnome mop for a while and almost burst out laughing when the gnome tripped on its own feet and fell face down on the spotless floor that glowed like pearls in the wide sea.

The gnome glared at him from the corner of its eye and jumped on its feet like a ticked-off child. It sneered and picked up its mop, pointing it at him in a threatening way.

Hain backed away. The gnome thrust the mop right between his two grey eyes with a swift move. Had he not been quick enough, the shaft would’ve pierced right through him.

“Not so full of yourself now, huh?”

“I- I was not laughing at you! I swear! I just… just wanted to ask something, that’s all!”

“And what do you want to ask?”

“I’m… I’m actually looking for someone.”

The gnome put the mop away and raised its brows as if it was not used to being asked questions.

“Who, then? Be quick, will ya? The floor doesn’t clean itself, does it?”

“The- the headmaster. I’m looking for—”

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“The headmaster, you say? Well, just go upstairs if you want to find that guy. He never leaves his room, anyway! All he does is sit on his—oh, you don’t want to hear that, do you? Well then, listen closely. See that staircase there, just hop on it and it’ll take you to him.”

The gnome pointed to the left and was about to continue to mop the floor with just as much passion as earlier when Hain tapped its shoulder and took a step back as the gnome pushed his hand away with a frown.

“Whatcha want now!”

“Uhm, which…floor?”

“Just go straight up, for crying out loud! You’ll see his name carved on a green door. Remember, green door! L.O.G.A.N. Now get out of my face or I’ll kick you to the moon!”

The gnome uttered every word as if it talked to a little child – a child much taller than itself. It then vanished out of sight with the dancing mop clutched tightly in its hand before Hain could ask more questions.

Sighing, he approached the winding staircase with heavy steps while the gnomes mopped the floorboards all around him with great might. He avoided them as much as he could before he reluctantly climbed up the staircase to the left.

Slinging from left to right, from right to left, in a never-ending spiral, the staircase came alive and moved several feet upwards in a matter of seconds.

Hain almost lost his grip on the handrail and fell to his death. When the staircase finally came to a sudden halt, a massive corridor appeared before him and stretched out in both directions with no end in sight.

By the time he found the green door the vexed gnome talked about, he could no longer see the main entrance several feet below him.

The green door was darker than he imagined and smelled awful. The name of the headmaster was carved on it with large letters, which were painted over with black ink. The round edges were smeared in golden dust.

He stared at the name for a while, lost in his own thoughts, when he noticed something that evaded his attention.

The doorknob had a face. Not a humanlike face but one with similar features.

Frowning, he barely grabbed it when the doorknob stirred awake and opened its small eyes. It shrieked like a distressed child and Hain covered its mouth to stifle its screams to no avail.

“Who’s this?” someone said from the other side of the emerald door.

He let go of the doorknob, which finally hushed. He didn’t know what to say. Moreover, he didn’t want to touch the doorknob again.

As if the person beyond the door had read his mind, the doorknob twisted and the door cracked open.

“Come in, whoever you are.”

Hain stuck his head in through the gap with a pounding heart, before mustering up the courage to take a step in.

A man in a black cloak and long dark-blue locks shelved a pile of books on top of a ladder that shook ever so slightly. What a strange place this was, he thought, as he looked around himself with his mouth gaping wide.

Bookshelves filled up the walls and left no gaps empty. Rather than a room filled with books, this place looked like a library that happened to be a room.

The stranger jumped off the wooden ladder, which puffed into smoke, and adjusted his cloak without even once looking at him.

His dark-blue locks reached his waist and swayed from side to side like the waves in the sea of Gam’atron.

The man pushed away his hair from his pale face before taking a seat behind the wooden desk.

His sparkling eyes were not fixed on Hain, but rather on the clock that ticked tirelessly above one of the smaller bookshelves across the desk.

When the stranger finally let his eyes drift to him, Hain averted his eyes and stared down at his restless feet.

“Don’t you have class at this hour, child?”

“No, I… Actually, this is my first day here, sir. My name is Hain. Mr Gwydion sent me.”