Another morning arrives at little Palien, and with it, the duties of a new day come in full force. Everyone at the church wakes up quite early to prepare for the service, cleaning up the statues of the Saints, preparing bread and milk tea for those who come for breakfast, and in general just getting ready. Giovanni had his own routine among them, waking up earlier than any other member of the chapel and getting cleaned/dressed up for his daily visit at The Seal.

It was hidden in the depths of the building, walking through hidden corridors and long, spiraling stairways, in a square room buried underneath Palien and where the Sun’s light had never touched, not even once. Illuminated by a pair of blue torches, The Seal had been covered from floor to ceiling in magical glyphs and circles, it was also equipped with mundane cameras and security systems, including a few laser grids deactivated by a code only Giovanni knew, and a ballistic crystal dome: all to cover and protect an big, old book resting on a pedestal on the very center.

Giovanni stared at the book intently from the room’s entrance… and sighed.

No matter how many times he came here to see that the book was, indeed, still in its resting place, he could never really rest easy. For no matter how many wards, barriers and measures he was taking, he knew they wouldn’t be enough. He knew that the only thing really stopping this book from leaving the building was his own presence in the town.

“... To this very day you continue being a problem. How long will it take for you to simply lay down and rot…?”

Invisible shackles tied him to this town, to this book. No matter how hard he wanted to simply abandon it all and go out into the world, help Mustafá out with the preparations for an upcoming disaster.

Maybe have a damn life to himself…

He immediately shakes that last thought out of his mind. No, he can’t succumb to such selfish ideas. His duty to this world, to humanity, is absolute. Even if this book was somehow destroyed, its contents forgotten forevermore, its spirit returned to the Great Flow, Giovanni still would have to walk the Earth, his own spirit forever tied to a human experience.

It was hard to keep the selfishness out of his mind, when all he had known for over five hundred years had been service…

With a heavy sigh he gave the book in the center of his Seal a final, scornful look, and exited the room. He closed the heavy steel gates behind himself and locked them with multiple keys, numerical codes and physical mechanisms. This may feel a bit excessive to many, but to Giovanni, it was simply not enough.

Hamil the Eternal must never return to Jericho.

As the young priest took the long stairs back to the surface, his thoughts wandered over to Mustafá and Tav. By this time, they probably were walking into the den of their first dragon. He still didn’t like her plan in the slightest, checking on every den to see if any of the dragons had somehow left their resting grounds…

Without any way to help, all Giovanni could do was to silently pray for their safety.

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I thought the darkness outside of the Tower was bad, but as soon as we went into the old trapdoor, I learned the true meaning of pitch black. The lights on our headlamps could barely penetrate it, it was almost like we were surrounded by a swirling, inky smoke that devoured every attempt of light around. It poorly illuminated the way as we slid down the cold ladder. The wood was smooth at least, strong and resistant, I didn’t feel any splinters while sliding.

It didn’t take us that long to reach the floor, but once we were there, we could barely see the planters surrounding us. The air smelled of dried grass and dead plants, but not rotten plants or anything. I think that we are way past that point here, considering this place has been abandoned for at least two hundred years.

“Can’t we use a light spell…?” I whisper to Mustafá’s ear, standing close to her side.

“Only if you want to alert the dwellers of our presence.” She whispers back.

“Oh we already know you’re here!” A third voice suddenly chimed in. Feminine, loud and shrieking. “We smelled you from afar, filthy mages! Stinky, stinky!”

“Hey! I showered today and so did she!” I call back to the voice with a frown. “Cut us some slack!”

“Stinky poopy!” The voice jeered. “Icky and gooey!” I swear I can hear a cacophony of giggles, all around us.

“Caution to the wind, then.” With a sigh, the mage snapped her fingers and summoned forth four luminous, octarine butterflies, which slowly fluttered from her fingers before turning into orbs of pure light. Like floating light bulbs, they flashed and soon illuminated the whole room. A circle room that took the entire floor, littered with abandoned planters and dead crops everywhere. It looked like a continuation of the rooftop greenhouse, with sacks of manure now overtaken by growing mushrooms of different colours and sizes: blues, pinks and purples, greenish grays and yellows, rising from the fertile ground like tiny umbrellas and corked spires.

The light also reveals several critters around us. I am delighted to see, at least for a split second, that there were little pixies floating around us, but they were just tiny people with insect wings, none of them glowed, tingled or produced any sort of pixie dust. They aren’t the only fairies surrounding us though: I see several barefooted dwarves around us, humanoids with very short legs and tremendous beards, all wearing the same kind of red, badly stitched cap. And of course, there are those strange, four-legged beasts of pure black fur clinging to the corners of the room, the only thing I could distinguish from them were their jaws covered in pearly white fangs…

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They screamed in fear when seeing us. I screamed back at them. Then the pixies began to swarm around Mustafá’s lights, making loud suction noises and (From what I can gather just by seeing them) devouring the magic of the spell, until we were right back in darkness.

“Saints damn it all!” I complain, before noticing that our lamps suddenly were much more efficient lighting the way. “Huh?”

“This at least was enough to push away that stagnant darkness for a moment. Our headlamps should be enough to proceed.” She then turned around, moving the light from one fairy to the other in an accusatory manner. “We have no quarrel with any of you. Stay out of our way and we will stay out of yours.”

“We have plenty of quarrels with your kind, mage!” A dwarf walks close to me and kicks me in the shin. “Take that!”

“Argh! Son of a …!” I kick it back, sending the creature tumbling like a ball. “Get off!”

“Oh. You shouldn’t have done that.” Mustafá points out.

“The mage attacked us! Get the mage!”

By mere instinct I create a barrier around myself, while the mob of critters suddenly jumps me from all possible sides. I can see how the fairies begin to tackle my shield, while the many dwarves gather around me, pick me up like a giant volleyball, and throw me around the room from one side to the other. I bounce around inside my own damn shield as they go from trying to break it to just toss me around like in a game of hot potato.

“Mustafáaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!” I yell, having totally lost sight of my teacher in the chaos.

“What.” She answers. She doesn’t sound concerned in the slightest, or even winded. Are they ignoring her!?

“Do something!” I plead, already feeling my stomach bend in strange ways.

“You shouldn’t have attacked a fairy. Never strike the fairies in their territory, that’s lesson number one.” I can’t see her but I know she’s smugly crossing her arms.

“And what!? Was I supposed to just take it!?” I growl loudly.

“Yes.” I guess she doesn’t care about physical harm, being immortal and all.

“WELL I SAY NO!” With a loud stomp I pop my bubble, landing on top of one of those black, fuzzy and snarling critters while I clap my hands. “HAEITHOI!”

It was time to try my hand at some more powerful magic. I put my all into creating the most powerful wind I could between my hands, and for a moment I could feel a little tornado spin as I separated them. For a moment, I can feel that everyone is staring at me… and I feel proud, oh so proud! The winds, they are at my command! I manage to make it big enough to surround me, spinning so violently that it sends some pixies flying away!

But then, I can feel something going wrong… for a moment, I feel how the wind starts to defy me! It shakes and starts losing form, while a booming voice makes me shake to my core.

“MOTHER.” It speaks in my mind. “WHAT IS MY NAME?!”

I lose all control of it right then and there. Objects begin to fly and spin around me, the fairies run away immediately… and Mustafá just walks over to me.

“That’s enough.” She says, snapping her fingers. The wind suddenly, violently, stops. Objects fall back down to the ground…

For a moment I feel myself falling backwards too, but my teacher catches me. She looks around, then looks at me… and shakes a nagging finger.

“Elemental magic is hard. Especially the Winds and the Weather. I will teach you, but don’t mess with it in excess.” Carefully, Mustafá helps me back on my feet. “How do you feel?”

“I-I am fine. It didn’t drain me or anything.” I say, actually believing it this time. “Are they gone? Dead…?”

“You can’t kill fairies in any real way, unless you have cold iron with you. They just fled for now.” She shrugged, helping me walk. “Now, no time for an impromptu class on Wind Magic.”

“It asked for a name.” I mumble, still a little stunned.

“The Winds have names. Souseiseki taught you how to call forth random winds, but you can hold bigger control over them with their true names.” Mustafá frowned slightly “But again, no time for a class. I–”

“What would have happened if I gave that wind a name?” I ignored her protests and just asked.

“You would have created a new wind in the world. This is not as important as it sounds, new winds are born and die every day.” She suddenly stops, grabbing me by the shoulders to shake me. “Stop asking me questions.”

“F-Fine, fine!” I whine.

With a nod, she stops shaking me and takes me to a side of the room, where an old double gate awaits. “Open this.”

I look up for a moment, already noticing how heavy those doors look. With a lifted hand, I just enunciate the telekinesis rune.

“Pekgr.”

“Good.” Mustafá approves, as the doors are slowly pushed open by the power of my mind.

Beyond them, there’s a dark void: a pit that goes infinitely down, and four chains venturing deep inside of it. Mustafá reaches to touch one of them and, once again, enunciates in such a way that I cannot even comprehend the words. They just go by too fast! Metal begins to groan…

“How do you even do that? You keep casting so fast…” I grumble and complain, looking up and over the pit to see a huge system of interlocking gears and chains, a mechanism in the process of being repaired. “What even is this?”

“I will teach you the trick when you’re older.” She promises. “And that’s an elevator.”

“... If I didn’t know any better I’d say you’re kidding me.” With a sigh, I walk a little closer to look down on the pit. “How long will we have to wait here?”

“The elevator moves very quickly when it is not being used.” Mustafá nods. “It will take twenty minutes, tops. If this tower follows the standards of others.”

“Twenty minutes waiting for a damn elevator!?” I immediately sit down on the floor.

“This was built in antiquity, before modern and efficient elevators were made.” My teacher sits beside me. “Is either this or descending the tower by phasing through it. We are not using the stairs.”

“We could just jump down and float all the way over.” While I point that out, I fish my phone and carefully check on it.

“That would leave us open to enemy attacks and would drain our magic even further.” She leans on me, much to my embarrassment. Even if she’s probably a damn crone, she doesn’t look that much older than me. “Do you have games on your phone?”

“N-No I don’t. Also, too close.” I gulp.

“Boring.” She shrugs and sits back up. “Want to play cards?”

Seeing that I don’t have any signal this deep underground, and that the damn elevator will take its sweet time coming, I give up and sigh.

“Sure.”