“Worms?” Prokvert raised a quizzical eyebrow at the dark-furred captain over the chewed top rim of his wax tablet’s wooden frame.

“Pathetic worms,” Ellie corrected with an affectionate.

“Yes, well,” Prokvert lifted his spectacles with his pen and scribbled something extra on his parchment. “This Saedel character sounds like something out of a child’s adventure story. How do we know you haven’t simply invented him?”

Avlon silenced his brother with a cough that was actually a guttural grunt.

Prokvert obeisantly slid off to the side as the Headmaster studied the three other beasts before his desk over his long steepled fingers.

After a few moments’ contemplative silence he asked of the assembly at large, “and what of Long John Silver?”

Drake and Amelia both blinked. Nobody had mentioned Silver’s piratical surname yet in this briefing. Did he and Avlon know each other?

Drake and Ellie turned sympathetic eyes on Amelia.

Amelia stared down at her lap. Her fingers clenched her knees as though trying to hang onto something seen through the great granite barrier of memory.

“Like I said,” she recanted miserably, “I remember Silver handing me the Wand …”

At the mention of his name a hard lump that she had to work to swallow before she could speak again. “And when I woke up … he was …”

Headmaster Avlon leaned back in his chair. Though in truth it may have been more accurate to call it a throne.

Drake reckoned some minor Mentan Barons sat on less cushioned seats.

They had been crammed into Avlon’s office at the top of the Academy clock tower for nearly three hours, at the insistence of Prokvert.

While the Head Secretary had interrogated the three about their recent exploits, the Headmaster had sat patiently studying them by the light coming through the two high-arched stained-glass windows bookending his chair and the tall padlocked bookcase behind him.

The light had since grown too faint to see by. Whereupon the Headmaster had fiddled with something beneath his desk, and a dozen tiny crystal bulbs, in the sconces that dotted the walls, came blinking into existence.

Amelia noted in passing how uncannily their light resembled that of the Labyrinth and Sanctum.

Drake, Ellie and Amelia had taken the seats directly across from Avlon at his desk. It was a wide, semi-circular, dark oak affair, cluttered in the same fascinatingly haphazard manner as the rest of his office.

Amelia had to half-crouch on the chair just to see Avlon over the piles of unorganized books, unread or unimportant parchments, scads of pens, an astrolabe, a globe, star charts and innumerable jars filled with bits of things that none of them could identify. In truth, his office resembled the personal laboratory of a mad genius more than an administrative official.

They had each given a full account of their adventures, right down to the very last detail. All the while, Head Secretary Prokvert stood over them, diligently taking notes on everything that was said.

“Avlon … er, Headmaster,” he pleaded when he had finished his last bit of furious scribbling.

“I implore you to pursue some form of punishment. These students are in clear violation of...”

Avlon cut him off with a gesture. “I'm well aware of the rules brother. Please don't bore me with the details.”

He raised an open palm to Drake. “I sent our young Captain here on an errand to retrieve something of great value to me which had been stolen.”

He passed his open gesture over to Amelia.

“And as you can see, he has performed exactly as I should expect for an officer of his standing.”

Prokvert guffawed and scowled sulkily into his binder.

Drake shook his head as though trying to remove a stubborn burr. He knew the Headmaster’s words were chosen for their effect upon his technocratic sibling. But even so, an odd note about his cadence had tripped an alert wire somewhere in his peripheral garrison.

If there is one thing a Pyrate knows above all else, it is that good instincts are as versatile as any tool kit, as deadly as any weapon, and as valuable as any amount of gold.

“Sir …”

“Hmmm,” the Headmaster purred.

“I … that is … When you say Captain …”

“Aye,” said the Collie with a wink at Ellie. “From what your mates tell me lad, as far as I’m concerned you've more than earned the rights to that title.”

Drake’s mind went numb as though he’d stuck his head in a bucket of ice water. He couldn't remember how to speak, so he just sat there agape until Ellie gave him a nudge.

“Thank you, sir,” was all he managed to say.

“You know”, Ellie said, a mischievous glint in her eye, “a Pyrate can’t be considered a true, official Captain unless he’s got a ship on the rolls.”

She looked at Avlon, not quite daring to eye her real target. “Isn’t that right Headmaster?”

Quick on the draw as always, Avlon’s brow said more than his tongue or even his carefully controlled smile. But for the sake of record he answered out loud anyway. “Indeed.”

He fished a fresh sheet of parchment out of the landslide of materials on his desk and handed it to Prokvert.

The Head Secretary took it reluctantly, folded it and added it to the bottom of his banded pile.

“So, Captain Drake …” Avlon prodded. “What name would you have your faithful vessel be known by?”

Drake looked between the Headmaster and his Quartermaster. Neither face told more than what he already knew.

“I don't … ” he started. Then a dam broke.

Avlon steepled his fingers again. A sure sign of mischief and trouble, in Prokvert’s unidimensional worldview.

“But you do,” the old Collie said. While his expression remained inscrutable, his tone was characteristically coy, and his eyes were their own constellation. “And she’s served you well, yes.”

All the Pyrates nodded as one.

“Wouldn't you say, brother?”

Prokvert’s scowl deepened and he started irritably tapping his tablet with the stylus.

Drake needed no further encouragement. He considered his decision as though he were naming his firstborn child. He could always opt to belay the selection, keep her mantled as she was. It would mean less paperwork. One less thing for Prokvert to get on his case about from now until Lothberru.

Still, the ‘Iron Maiden’ just didn't seem to fit her anymore. It felt … off key.

It seemed he was not the only one to have formed this opinion. Even when he said, “if it's alright Headmaster, I'd like to appoint a proxy,” not even Prokvert so much as raised an eyebrow.

Avlon spared a moment to hover a quick glance over all three students and then replied, “I don't see why not.”

He motioned to the Head Secretary, who proceeded to scribble some rapid notes on the parchment.

Drake turned formally to Amelia. “I formally appoint Amelia Roberts as my proxy.”

He gave her a warm smile that made her feel anything but. She stared dumbly between the elder Canines, searching desperately for some rung of meaning to latch onto. But none surfaced.

Drake, sensing her uncertainty, bought her a few precious moments to recover her wits by speaking.

“If it weren’t for you we wouldn't have a ship. You’re a worthier beast than I to christen her.”

“Well put,” Avlon said. Ellie whistled in accord. This was why Drake was Captain.

Amelia looked to Avlon. The Headmaster winked.

“Choose wisely,” he said. “There are no do overs in my Academy.”

Prokvert harrumphed. He was about to say that it would also go against the Vyykar Vessel Registry and so would be illegal under Iradylic law anyway.

But he knew Avlon knew that. After all, the Headmaster had been in the room with Flint when Emperor Vyykar II had first signed and sealed the more recently renamed “Templar Accord” two generations ago.

As she tried to come up with a fitting name for the ship that had saved her life, Amelia’s face contorted into what an alcoholic Tortoise might see in the mirror the morning after a night of reckless overindulgence.

A strange feeling kept turning over again and again in her mind like a burning spit roast. Only to vanish like smoke through a grate the second she tried to grasp it.

But then a memory slashed across her consciousness. For days she had fought to suppress that memory with stalemate success.

It was the image of her mother. Specifically, that terrible mirage from Iradyl's Trial mirror.

It was she whose venomous words had tarnished her nights, and infested her waking moments, and who appeared again in her mind's eye now.

“Headmaster Avlon,” she stated in her best this-is-an-official-decree voice. “I would like to propose the name …” she paused for dramatic effect, “the Silver Syren.”

Drake and Ellie nodded and smiled together in the manner of beasts about to welcome their first of many heirs into the world.

Whatever Amelia’s reasoning or thought process, that name sung well and brightly with their minds and hearts.

And judging by his twinkling expression, Avlon concurred.

He motioned to Prokvert, who quickly scribbled down the name before handing over the parchment for Avlon to sign.

He did. He then took a small brass seal and jar of wax from his desk drawer and stamped the document with Flint’s famous “Abraxas” seal.

With that petty trifle done and out of the way, the ‘Silver Syren’ had officially become a legally licensed vessel of Pyracy.

“Quite a paradox ain’t it,” Captain Flint had once remarked to his then young acolyte, “a Pyrate filing forms. Seems almost unnatural.”

A cynical part of Avlon showed a sardonic smile to itself.

Publicly, the Headmaster folded the parchment in envelope format and stamped it with his own Antimony seal personal seal before handing it to Drake.

The freshly minted Captain stuffed it reverently into his deepest cloak pocket. He knew his next port of call would be the Iradyl Court of Intercontinental Affairs. That meant another days’ long go-around with those nosey Ironclad busybodies.

Drake stifled a grimace. A side glance Ellie’s way revealed a tightened aura that betrayed similar consternations.

Avlon leaned back and rested his arms on the wide, gilded armrests of his chair. He twirled his beard absently around his one unornamented ring finger.

“Remember,” he said after a hefty silence. “a beast can only ever be onboard one ship at any given time. Therefore, as long as he remains a Pyrate, he can only ever advance as far as Captain.”

“That’s why you will never see a Pyrate Lord or Admiral or King,” Prokvert finished, drumming his pen impatiently against his temple.

Drake nodded. Ellie took his hand in hers. Avlon then heaved a heavy sigh and closed his eyes as though the weight of the entire universe had just been hoisted upon him.

Without opening his eyes he spoke to the world at large. Trusting some element to deliver a response. “What do you suppose his scheme was about?”

Amelia looked at Drake, who looked at Ellie, who shrugged with her ears.

Drake looked back at the Headmaster. “Sir?”

“Saedel,” Avlon clarified, his eyes still closed, gray chin angled up at the vaulted ceiling. “What was his aim in all this, do you suppose?”

“To get the Wand,” Amelia blurted as though he’d just recklessly spewn a toxic slur against her family’s honor.

She regretted this immediately of course. But what kind of silly question was that? Coming from Avlon of all beasts, she’d come to expect a bit higher rank of smarts than that of His Excellency’s imperious border junkies.

“Aye,” sighed the old pirate, slowly rebuilding his optical bridges with the world. “But to what end? That seems an awful lot of trouble to go to for a fancy torch stick.”

The three other Pyrates shared looks, then shook their heads and shrugged in silent noncommittal accord.

“We don’t know,” Drake confessed. “But I don’t think Amelia was the first beast he snared.”

They all knew or had suspected the same. But still all eyes fell on the freshly anointed Captain with dark expectancy.

“I’m about ninety nine percent sure he was trying to lure Bon Bon out that first night.”

“With Tom’s ghost,” Ellie clarified.

“Mm hm,” Drake affirmed. “If that even was him and not just some wholesale illusion.”

“I guess he hadn’t reckoned with her, erm ... creativity,” Ellie said with a rueful smirk.

“Not many an actual god could,” quipped the Headmaster, and they all shared a community chuckle at Bon Bon’s expense.

“The question is why?” Drake’s head and tongue mused in their own separate capacities.

All were silent and contemplative. Then Avlon unexpectedly leaned forward and bared down on Amelia as though she were an alien specimen in a laboratory. “What about you Daisha?”

“What about me?” she asked.

“What beguiled you to his call? Not the promise of a rekindled romantic spark I take it.”

Amelia shook her head, then stared blindly down on her boots. She had dreaded this question since they'd returned to the FPA early that morning.

She looked up at her godfather imploringly. His kindly, almost whimsical eyes, strangely not out of place in his graying head, swam with the ancient deep jungle colors.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

There was wisdom shallowly buried there.

And strength.

A cold flame of a kind borne only by the most veteran of trees and mountains. And compassion as well.

A warm candle light rarely shared with another beast.

All three he gave to her now willingly and freely. As he always had done.

She took in a breath, held it for a moment, then released it with the tacked on words, “not that I know of.”

Her answer was childishly transparent, and she knew it. But from a certain perspective, it was somewhat true. She just hoped Avlon would see that and not press any further.

His shallow nod and subsequent interweaving of setting hands any veteran schoolchild knows as the signal for .

But as the present company were not wanting for adult experience, his gesture told them all they needed to know.

“My mother …” Amelia added softly.

Drake and Ellie perked up defensively. Avlon remained inscrutable, and Prokvert pounced on this.

“Explain,” he said, readying his stylus like an executioner’s glaive.

Everyone, including Avlon, jumped, turned and stared at him as though he’d just fired off a cannon.

The Headmaster came back to himself first and hissed at his younger sibling. “Prokky! Speak only when spoken to. Clear?”

The Head Secretary chased down a defiant snort with a supplicant nod.

Despite their training, two of the three students barked in accord.

The Headmaster had a deserved reputation for fairness. In his own words, “pain is useful only in so far as it can teach. The only thing you learn by my chopping your arm off is that I’m a really lousy surgeon.”

No beast could say in good faith that he didn’t go out of his way to apply this standard. And he had never been at all shy about his contempt for those who in any way incited, promoted or initiated needless conflict.

It should also be said that he would avidly defend his brother’s integrity. Saying something derivative of, “evil? No. Clueless, perhaps. Callous, oh yes. Obstinate whenever possible. Willfully dense at times too. His heart and soul belong to the law. He doesn’t like anything that can’t be solved by arithmetic.”

But no beast, Pyrate or otherwise, had ever heard him call his brother by that name before.

This was because no beast of their generation had ever seen the pair as overtly square off before. Not even Flint. And no beast ever would again if Prokvert had anything to do with it.

Which he did not. And Avlon wasn’t about to let him forget that.

“She will answer in her own time,” he said, keeping his expression neutral and eyes firmly upon his goddaughter. “If you’ve someplace better to be don’t let us hold you up.”

Ellie and Drake were silenced. Each in their ways reveling in Prokvert’s most recent defeat.

Amelia didn’t hear. She was wrestling with an old puzzle courtesy of Misloff’s razor.

So spaketh thusly the Great Sage of Mount Refurbishment: “the basic principles of logic are two and are thus: 1.) Nothing can be arbitrary. Every effect must have a cause. 2.) There can be no contradictions. If X is A and Y is B then X cannot be Y.”

That same source would go on to point out that “if we assume that the universe is, by its nature, intrinsically logical, then by no means can it contain arbitrary elements or contradictions. And by that metric, whensoever a phenomenon arises in our narrow pinhole viewport that should appear paradoxical or have no place on our mental map yet clearly have objective form, its logical quintessence must therefore be outside our present understanding, not the confines of objective reality.”

Long, cumbersome invective short, the universe cannot, and therefore does not play dice. Everything that exists and happens therein does so on merit of logical reason. Ergo if that reason does not make sense, it is the fault of the observer not having enough sense to fill that particular cup, not the universe having too small a cup to fit their grandiose ideas.

Amelia’s mind finally managed to drudge itself out of this philosophical swampy mire by a line of thought woven out of dissolute word vines that together comprised what could pass for a cohesive sentence.

“Something I don't understand,” she said slowly, addressing the two senior Pyrates.

“Where did that codex thing you guys had the first night come from?”

Drake and Ellie both turned as stiff and still as a cowering Faun.

Amelia read in that instant of forgotten reserve that either she wasn’t supposed to know about that or Avlon wasn’t supposed to know they had it.

Avlon’s face didn’t change. The Headmaster opened a hand, seemingly to confirm the former. “Go on. It’s a bit late for secrets now.”

Drake took a long breath. Then he explained, “A few weeks before the start of semester, Crow, Tim and I took a private contract out in Draconia. Something about a local harvest Schooner going missing. We figured it was probably just Nagas, so we signed out a ship and went to take a look.”

Ellie nodded.

Drake’s expression distilled from dour to anger. Mostly at himself for not putting the pieces together when first he’d had them. But they needn’t know that.

“When we arrived all we found was a strange hulk floating out in the open Depths. No beasts aboard. Dead silent. Bare poles.”

He looked at Ellie. As expected her eyes were wide and the rest of her face was blanched of emotion.

“So you went in,” she stated. Her tone and expression spelling out as well as any words that this part of the story was news to her.

Drake bowed in a nod. “We scoured that blasted wreck from stem to stern, but she looked about as bad as the next time we saw her. All we found was an old crate in the Captain’s quarters. Or what I assume was the Captain’s quarters. You saw the state of her.”

“That’s where the parchment and codex came from?” Ellie pressed. The tension in her voice gnawed at Amelia’s spine the way such unseemly omens always did.

Drake nodded again.

Ellie’s features darkened. Her eyes narrowed. Her fingers curled into wicked talons.

Amelia's chest and gut clenched in expectation of a blow that never came.

“I don't know who put them there or why,” Drake hurriedly continued. “I’d wager Saedel probably found the ship not two days after we’d left her sitting there.”

“Why didn't you tell me?” Ellie asked.

Knowing the most readily invokable lines of “it didn’t seem important” or “I didn’t want to worry you” weren’t going to cut this particular cake, Avlon raise his hands and offered one instead.

“I told him to keep it a secret until I could have the codex examined by an expert.”

An invisible Magnol pocket burst over the convention. Rinsing them in a shower of crystallized celestial aura.

They all knew that by “an expert” the Headmaster meant Tim. Even Amelia. Her mind ran the calculations and came back with only one viable solution.

Who else could better fill that term than the beast who’d invented a way to kill ghosts?

His brow scrunched into an exaggerated frown. “I think that may be the first time you’ve ever consciously ignored my orders.”

Finally, she set a conceding hand on his arm and in a fuzzy voice said very slowly, as though laying down a brick row, “I suppose … any one you walk away from right?”

He locked eyes with her. Then he smiled and took her hand between his. “Today’s a nice day for a walk.”

Her eyes softened. She leaned forward and ruffled his scruff with her muzzle. He then bopped her nose lightly with a finger.

This was all their way of nursing such wounds.

Avlon leaned back and clapped a round of once for a ring of the solidarity gong. “Very good,” he said. Then, with an impish glint he said at Drake, “we might just make a real pirate out of you yet boy.”

Amelia chose this moment to walk over and do what she thought was the bravest thing she had done to date. In front of Ellie and Avlon, she put her arms around her Captain’s middle and squeezed him.

“For what it’s worth,” she said into his fraying cloak. “I’m glad you did what you did.”

Drake patted her shoulder and Ellie joined in the huddle.

Avlon waited until the three managed to separate before speaking the last of what had weighed most on his calling their meeting so early upon arrival.

“It's a worthwhile trait of any beast, Pyrate or no, who has the sense and will to not act blindly. But it’s an invaluable skill and makes a true leader.”

His smile broadened as his eyes drifted to the corded pouch around Drake’s neck. “I confess, don’t quite know what to do with all the voodoo you all have tracked back home with you.”

He pointed at Drake’s glowing necklace. “But I do know you’re the right beast to carry that.”

Avlon then slapped the generous padding of his armrests and stood. Instantly commanding the full attention of the whole office.

“And it is I therefore formerly name you Captain Drake of the Silver Syren and her valiant herd beasts your official crew.”

He waved his billowing robed arm in a consecrational gesture. “What say you?”

Ellie and Amelia beamed as Drake stood tall and proudly proclaimed to all, “I don’t presume to speak for others, but I accept the position gladly Headmaster.”

Avlon grinned like a patient hunter lording over a clean kill. “Well spoken.”

He then rounded the desk. Diligently Herding Prokvert nearer the door as he did so.

“I think that's enough fun for us all for one day,” he said. “You two had best go and get yourselves some food and a night's rest. We'll finalize all the details once you’ve had time to recuperate.”

They got up from their chairs, bowed slightly to Avlon, and then to Prokvert. As they left together, Drake and Ellie remained fixedly conjoined at the wrists. Like a pair of trees that had grown together over many seasons, they were now permanently intertwined.

Amelia envied them immensely, while she remained uncomfortably seated.

Once they were safely out of earshot, Avlon then turned to Prokvert. “I think your talents will be better served elsewhere, brother,” he said, “I will handle this particular matter myself if you don't mind.”

Prokvert was about to protest, but self-preservation made him think better of it. His brother's mind was made up. And there wasn't a force in this universe that was going to budge him once he’d chosen to march down a particular road.

The Head Secretary folded up his travel easel and strode out with as much dignity as his years under Flint’s left wing appointed.

On the way he offered a few choice words to an approaching figure as they met and passed.

“Good luck with your new Oraculum, Professor,” the Head Secretary hissed. Then he stomped off downstairs.

The Old Wanderer opened the door a crack and peered inside. An expression inhabiting the niche between disquiet and contempt creasing his face even more than usual. Which was an achievement for the records in itself.

He saw Avlon heave a long year of a sigh and sink back into his chair. “I don’t know how …” he heard the Headmaster mutter into his hand.

“Am I interrupting,” the old Sage asked, moving the door aside without touching it. Startling both adoptive kin out of their respective meditations.

“Not at all,” Avlon said, suddenly reanimated. “In fact your timing could not be more on the mark.”

He’d gotten halfway up to offer the aged reptile a hand, but the wizened Magus tutted his old student back down and nodded at his knobbly, scarred, lovingly bandaged and totem-laden walking staff.

“A rock cannot run,” he said with a twinkle of elderly glamour, “but it will outlast even the biggest and brightest of flames.”

Amelia leapt at the sound of that familiar rolling cadence.

“Shanter!” she cried, leaping up automatically to offer him her seat per both her own habit and hospitality custom.

He waved a pallid green hand and a lower, wider, more Tortoise-friendly chair appeared out of thin air beside hers.

Amelia and Avlon both boggled at it for a moment, and then at the conjurer.

“A simple trick,” the old Magus said, lowering himself onto the concave stool, “and an old one. But very handy.”

The ancient Master took a moment to settle himself, then leaned forward to study his most eager disciple.

“I’ve heard what Naarfynder has put you through shibulba. All of your crew. But you yourself in particular.”

Shrewd and forthright. Just like Amelia remembered from all those passing sessions in her tailing years. With the exception of Avlon, he had always been the one whose scarce visits she most dearly looked forward to.

It helped too that the Tortoise’s beak added a tickling bite to his curled Zenithir Amurzan accent. Accenting his consonants with sensory meridian clicks and clacks like gravel stones toppling down a rocky incline. Sounds that Amelia had always found intoxicatingly satisfying.

His golden rune hemmed shamanic robe was tattered and worn and stained with the mud and grime of a thousand lands and a hundred times that many parfeet.

His neck and hands were bedecked in a dozen different styles of ritual iconograph jewelry. Jeweled pendants, glyphic medallions, rings made of old coins.

His staff bore a pack crossbeam, over which were slung provisions for a small military unit. All about the hooked knob and serpentine shaft were slung varietals of slung gourds, hooked flasks, belted pouches and homemade talismans.

Each and every item signified a notch in the Red Roamer’s metaphorical belt. And another reason why the Roberts batch had loved him so.

“Your actions are commendable,” the Professor stated, tapping his staff on the stone floor like a gavel. “Especially for one so young. The White Wand Trials were designed to strictly punish those unwise and unfit. To test every aspect of the mind, will and character. Even the most veteran warriors and advanced Magi have struggled to pass. If the records are to be taken at face value, which I would naturally caution against, they have proven fatal to far more powerful champions than your meager self. You will of course note my meaning no offense.”

Amelia nodded. Even as her chin and eyes fell as her eyes were drawn into another dimension. It was rare for Shanter to offer such unabashed praise. To be given it was a mark of high honor, even if only by her own standards.

The old Tortoise raised her face, and with it her mind, towards his with a delicate, surgical finger.

“Hold yourself up high shibulba,” he proclaimed. “For you have done what no beast in a thousand generations could. And likely none will for a thousand more to come after.”

Amelia wriggled out a sheepish smile. “Well … I had a little help.”

“So you did,” nodded the Professor. “More than Prokvert’s account report suggests I think. Not just any beast could have walked into Iradyl’s Sanctum … without help.”

He angled his pointed chin in place of the actual question.

Amelia wished beasts wouldn’t do that. She prepared reluctantly to elaborate, but Avlon stopped her. “If the Mother Goddess had meant her words for other ears I’m certain she would have said so.”

Amelia sagged under the intense relief of burdensome reopening of jars she would rather remained sealed. At least until she’d had a chance to properly sleep on them.

Shanter slowly nodded. His disappointment read as clearly upon his features as words across a page.

“Professor.”

“Hmm?”

“About the Trials … Why did Saedel need me to get the Wand for him? I mean, I understand why he couldn't just send a ghost. They don’t have blood. But why couldn't he have just done it himself? I mean … Iradyl called him a False God. But I don’t know. He seemed pretty godly to me.”

The ancient Master frowned and shook his wizened head. Then he shrugged his large drooping shoulders and admitted, “I could not say. Perhaps she meant it that he was simply unworthy.”

This prompted in Amelia another thought. Several actually. She should have had them earlier, and now she berated herself internally for her cognitive deficit.

“Mast … er … Professor?”

“Hmm?”

“The island … Naarfynder … It was created by Sir Francis right?”

Shanter nodded. “The Necromancer,” he spat. “Indeed. Via the use of some of the most intricate and complex magickal formulae ever devised. How or where or from whom he could have learned such things, I can only begin guess.”

“But Iradyl’s Sanctum is said to be from the Before Times. How did …?”

Her voice carried off along with her embryonic thoughts. Lost on a migratory stream of fanciful neverland speculation.

The Professor stroked his long, pointed beard. A knowing frown furrowing his wrinkled brow. “And you’d like to know how the two could be this way conjoined when one precedes the other by such a vast margin.”

She nodded.

The old Tortoise sat back in his seat stroking his long white finger of a beard.

“Very astute. And troubling. I would need more time to ponder a detailed hypothesis. For now I should think our esteemed pirate somehow found and constructed his island pattern around the Sanctum to conceal it. Possibly so that he may try to force his own way inside in a time frame best suited to him.”

It was then that a pair of bells tolled in Amelia’s ears. A pair of torches winked into starburst life behind her eyes.

The old Sage knew faces like an old sailor knows signal flags. From many a trying lesson back in Amurza he recognized this one as being the signal for a battle nearly over and won.

“Sir Francis …” She muttered. Her eyes darting as though tracing the final patterns to a large invisible puzzle. “The Necromancer …”

She looked back at the Sorcerer. A mad glow of triumph about her xerodermic skin. “It all fits,” she declared. The impact of her words fracturing her delirious zeal, allowing space for the black gel of revelatory horror to seep in.

“This would explain how he was able to accomplish such an impressive feat,” Shanter mused, seemingly unaware.

“Though this brings us to our old problem through the back way. Where in the Seven Spheres did he dig up the single oldest, most powerful and, by logical extrusion, most adamantine construct in the known universe?”

Avlon stroked his chin. Though his face held professionally passive, Shanter knew his old pupil like the suns know the horizon.

Amelia nodded, as it was suddenly all she had the energy for.

Like the solvent folds of a river current wearing on every granular deformity of a river stone, she was finally starting to feel the true monumental tax her adventure had levied of her mind, body and spirit.

But she had one final question. One she so feared sleep might let escape from her that she willed her mind and mouth to work against her body’s own accord.

“How did I do it?” she asked. “I didn’t pass the Trials on my own.” She looked down at her hands as though expecting to see a mote of blood still on them. “I mean … I practically had an itinerary.”

Both Masters looked at each other. Avlon laid his chin on webbed fingers. “Spoken like a true academic,” he said.

Shanter pulled his robe in around his rocky shell and sucked in a long, ponderous breath.

He nearly knocked his spectacles loose as he leaned forward. He fingered the air as though rifling through an invisible book.

“Who deserves what or does not is irrelevant. In a way, you might say the Wand has a mind of its own. Another way is to see it as a metaphysical lock. One whose tumblers turn only for those whose key karmic resonance speaks in harmony with its own. Like how a key fits into only one particular lock.”

A sudden bolt of livid intensity shot through his aged face at that fleeting moment. For one jitter of a phantasmic moth’s wingbeat, it turned his deep cyan eyes into a pair of molten sun disks.

But a perfectly ill-timed yawn causing Amelia’s eyes to shut at the exact instant blinded her to it.

“I doubt Saedel could have used the Wand even if he’d come by it on his own,” the Tortoise concluded somberly.

As he got up to leave, he waved his hand once again, and his chair vanished into the same innocuous void from which he’d pulled it.

He then removed Dolsenec from whatever pocket of discorporate reality he’d been hiding it in and gave it to her.

It purred gently at her touch as a kitten to its mother.

Apparently expecting as much, Shanter leaned heavily on his staff and said in a wistful candor as though he were passing down an esteemed heirloom, “it seems to favor your hand over mine.”

Amelia tucked it into her jacket. Then she yawned longer and more deeply than she had in over ten twists of the lunar dial.

“I look forward to our studying together formally, young hero,” the Sorcerer said, hoisting his posture up an inch as though raising a declaratory banner. “It should prove a most valuable experience for us both I think.”

As she was moving to leave, for some reason the Sorcerer wondered aloud, “do you by chance know what became of old Long John?”

Amelia stopped and her hands automatically weaponized themselves. Clutching the air betwixt balls of extent fury hard enough to make her knuckles crack. Without turning back around, she stood there motionless except to shake her head at the pitiless stone.

“He ... I ... I think he was still bound … to the ship … The Sleeping Giant … Or maybe Saedel. Somehow. I don’t ... I couldn't save him. I …”

She choked on a lump, then covered her mouth so her mentors wouldn’t hear her cry.

“I'm sorry,” she croaked to the wall, trying to wipe her grief away into her cuff. “I’m so ...”

Whatever might have come next was strangled by a cold iron dagger treacherously rammed through the back of her mental throne.

Thin trickles of tears escaped down the walls of her face as her whole body shook from the insurgent onslaught of rage and grief.

Avlon stole over and laid a consoling arm around her quaking shoulders.

He took a spare bit of clean cloth from his pocket and offered it to her. With a leaking heart and a trembling hand she accepted it and wiped her embarrassingly sodden eyes and nose.

A moment later Shanter appeared next to Avlon. Had she the wherewithal just then to ask how he’d moved so fast she likely wouldn’t have needed his actual line. Which was coming up presently.

In the softest mode she’d ever heard from him, the old Tortoise said, “I think you'd best get some rest now.”

Amelia started towards the door. Then she stopped halfway out and turned back. She had her mouth open to form a question but Avlon stopped her mid-breath with a gesture of formal command.

“Go on now. Off with you,” the old pirate urged in a familiar tone, warm but stern. “You've had a long and arduous adventure Daisha. And a much longer road’s ahead of you. Pyrate’s first rule: the day is money, but the night is golden.”

She nodded. Very sure he just made that up. But with a dreamy utterance of “good night” she turned and left anyway.

She trudged down the tower stairs, through the Light Walk and up to the girls’ dorm tower. All while only vaguely aware that she had moved at all. Her only thought being that of a long bath and a warm bunk.

If she’d been listening, she might have overheard the Headmaster ask Shanter how a ghost might pull a living body through the solid boards of a ship.

But she was solely focused on her ambition to sleep until the next Era. Or until she got kidnapped or the Blunder Twins blew something up again. Whatever came last.