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Mira eventually saw Pip off, after patching him up with a healing potion and sharing a fine lunch with him and Tiamat. She really had wanted to tell the old gnome about her final play and likely exit from the Mystic Realms, but she knew he wouldn’t remember.
Mira mused upon the timing of her raid on the Cloud Palace. She felt the need to move and do it right now! Normally, she would plan out every detail of an adventure. She still had the leads from her grimoire search. Those could yield critical knowledge. Information that she very well might need to survive and win this dungeon.
The list was long: A deeper history of this Knight Borador and his Dragon; unearthing the details of the conflict between the old gods and the new pantheon; with special attention as to what that Staff of Law artifact might be capable of doing and how much it could be worth. If her Book didn’t have the history, a trip to the Imperial Arcanum and its Nocturnus Archives might be needed.
She was already very familiar with the Volshuri tribes and the Sea of Grass region, so that angle was good and didn't require further research. This Glaucus character might require exiting the game and investigating in the real world. Every bit of leverage might matter.
But Mira was feeling antsy. She wanted to get on with it! She abruptly stood up determined to go…but then hesitated. She forced herself to sit back down with her brandy, frowning in concern.
Mira could feel the faint Faen threads of fate brushing past her, a familiar feeling from her time questing in the realms. It felt like a storm was coming, an electric charge in the air. Few would even question the impetus to move, but Mira could feel and more importantly “see” the converging lines of fate. It was impossible to tell if those convergences would lead to her doom or fortune but fighting it would certainly also cause trouble.
Mira thought back on her actions over the years. Her dungeon had caught many Fae, but she always treated them with respect. She had offered refreshments, conversation, and games before setting them free. Such a thing laid an implicit debt upon the Faen creature even without mention or threats. Her curse to be forgotten meant that no gods, faen, wizard, country, or player were likely to be targeting her specifically.
Mira viewed the movements of fate as a good thing. She would use those karmic threads to make this her best score ever! She squashed any doubts to the contrary. Entertaining negative feelings while in the pull of the Fae was a sure way to court disaster. If one assumed the role of a fool or martyr, the Faen winds would magnify or twist events to make it doubly so. She would play this game, damn it, and she would win!
She stood up again, settled upon her course, and determined to act. Good or ill, she was ready for her last adventure. Tiamat roused herself sensing the change in her friend’s mood. Reggie’s dark shadow was hovering near her open grimoire; even in death, he was ever the curious mage. Mira was a very generous person, but that grimoire was an extension of her magic and even her plentiful goodwill had its limits.
“Reggie, please be a gentleman and lock up the tower. If any Faen guests wander into the dungeon, please let them go...as long as they promise to leave the tower immediately. And be nice! If someone comes to the tower, tell them to come back later and do it politely. Absolutely no killing! Understand?” Mira said sternly as she walked past the shade to her book.
“Yes…master.” Reggie ground out, with a growl, backing up a pace.
“No. None of that master shit, Reggie. You are the Regent again in my absence, OK? No need to be glum just because you're dead.” Mira chided. Hearing her encouragement and the respect she offered, the skeleton stood a little taller and seemed to grow slightly.
“Very. Well.…. Mira.” Reggie said slowly, with a slight bow. Mira grinned at him and flounced past. She took up the Lore Warden from the podium and placed it in her book. The massive tome snapped shut with a loud clap that echoed in the room as powerful enchantments shrouded and locked it again. Touching the book, it disappeared as she pulled it into the hidden spaces of her Conjuring Talisman that hung upon her neck.
She looked about the room a last time and tried to imagine never coming back. It was hard to imagine. With a sniff, she cocked an eyebrow at Tiamat. Her Casting Sanctum was on the 7th floor, past the kitchen floor, the guest rooms, the Baths, the Enchanting Workshop, and the Alchemy Lab. The penthouse at the tower’s apex was her Master Suite and the central staircase served as her library. The stairway's entire free wall space was lined with nonmagical books, charms, art, and knickknacks from her years of adventuring.
“Hey stinker, are you ready for another race? First to the Casting Sanctum wins!” she yelled and turned. Before she could even take her first step, Tiamat blurred past her, flying up the open center of the spiraling staircase in a flurry of wings.
“Hah! Someone forgot that I'm wearing my new League Step Boots!” Mira cackled as she ran forward, triggering the boots’ stepping spell. The race was on!
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Tiamat sulked near the Urn of Quick Mithril. Mira had easily won the race by three paces. Tiamat had argued that magic use was not declared, so the race was deemed a tie. Mira walked around the pit filled with a pristine layer of shaved Orichalcum powder. The Orichalcum pit was kind of like a Zen Garden in more ways than one. She pulled a book from the bookshelf behind the working bench. It was one of her first valuable finds, lost information from the depths of the Nocturnus Archives.
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Rasmussen's City Sigils of the World was an ancient and forgotten tome until Mira found it from where it was lost in the deep stacks of Nocturnus’ unsorted miscellaneous tomes aisle. The City Sigils in the book were Teleport Beacons for Mages to travel the world quickly. Most of the cities in the book were long gone or ruined now, but some of the Sigils that survived still worked. As this world's ruins included monsters and treasure, Mira’s use of the book helped her find many unexplored dungeons for fun and profit.
There was one sigil she needed right now, a lost stronghold in the middle of the Sea of Grass. Coincidentally, this was the same stronghold she had used recently for her last character farming expedition. Fae fates at work for certain, where chance was a very real force and coincidences were the rule and not an accident.
“Ah ha, here it is. The Arnot Stronghold of the Eldamire Empire, back when the kingdom included the Sea of Grass over 400 years ago. This should be fun using our original full-strength characters. We were lucky to survive our end quest with those new characters we were leveling.” Mira said cheerily, trying to soothe Tiamat’s bad mood.
“Luck had nothing to do with it,” Tiamat spat. “That Greater Viper would have killed us all if I hadn’t caught that firetrap gem and tossed it down the beast’s maw.”
“Yes indeed, my friend. You saved us all that day. Now, are you ready to do it again?” Mira said, with only a little sarcasm. With Tiamat’s nod, her mood a least a little mollified, Mira pulled one of her more complicated contraptions from the workbench’s drawer.
The Sigilscope was a blend of real-world optical engineering and Mythic Realms magical enchanting. It looked somewhat like a vintage tintype camera with a huge parabolic lens of AetherGlass and coated with a thin layer of Aegisite. The device was far too fragile for use in exploring, but this was Mira’s working hack at cutting and pasting the most complex spell forms, sigils, and magic mandalas. She was quite surprised when the Mythic Realms AI allowed it to work. It was technically within the game’s mechanics, but it was a bit of a hack.
She held both handles of the boxy device over the book's page, framing the City Sigil for Arnot in its viewfinder. She pushed her Qi into the device and a flash of Akasic energy burst from the device and hit the page. The energy rebounded and struck the mechanism’s large lens. An inverted image was painted faintly on the Aegisite layer, identical to the page’s detailed sigil.
“I love this next part.” Mira laughed.
Using raw mana manipulation, she floated the device into the air, so it was directly above the smooth plain of orichalcum powder and she activated the Sigilscope’s “paste” function. Akasic energy pulsed out of the lens and slapped down into the powder leaving a perfect enlarged duplication of the Arnot pattern.
“So much more satisfying and quicker than manually drawing the damn thing,” Mira said. She turned to the Urn and saw Tiamat already holding the Urn's ladle with a hopeful look.
“Yes, yes. Tiamat, would you do the honors of filling the pattern?” Mira asked.
Tiamat dipped the ladle for a full spoonful of the silver fluid and flew over to the pattern embossed in the sand pit. As she flew, a fine trail of silver trailed behind the ladle, connecting the contents of the spoon with the liquid still in the urn. Tiamat delicately tilted the handle and poured the Quick Mithril into the pattern.
The sigil filled in quickly as the liquid continued to flow from the urn to the ladle and onward, into the sigil. Only when it was completely full, Tiamat finally pulled the ladle back and the flow was cut off. She flew the ladle back to its hanger near the urn.
Mira had an active mana well deep below her tower and storing materials like Quick Mithril down there for long periods imbued an enormous magical potency to any materials kept there. Teleports took tons of mana, but if you had the time and materials as Mira did, that power could be borrowed from natural treasures, real and manufactured.
Mira put the Sigilscope back in its drawer and returned the old book to its shelf space. Mira glanced about the room and spied the Urn with an upraised eyebrow. She pulled her Polyphial Flask from its holster and opened it. She used the ladle to start a floating pour of Quick Mithril into the flask. In no time, the urn was dry, and she put the ladle back.
“Waste not and all of that. You ready to rumble, cutie pie?” Mira asked. Tiamat smiled and landed on her shoulder. Mira bent down and flicked the liquid with a finger and a pulse of Qi. The liquid turned gold where she touched it, solidifying. The change raced through the pattern transforming the Sigil into a firm platform.
When it was done, Mira strode to its center and gathered her power. The Akasic energy in the room was dense. This was the focal point, guided by the tower's architecture, from the captive Ley font. Mira felt the sigil shift under her, space warping with powerful energies. With a sense of extreme motion, they felt the Sigil sliding as it stretched across space to its matching anchor sigil. With a crash of thunder and lightning, the duo disappeared, and the Casting Sanctum was empty again.
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Mira’s sight, normal and magical, was blinded by the teleport. This was always the most dangerous part of instantaneous travel. She felt the comforting weight of Tiamat on her shoulder and spoke.
“We were here only a couple of weeks ago to finish leveling those beginner characters for sale. I wonder if the dungeon quest was minor or major. If the quest hasn't reset yet, this place should be deserted.” Mira said, as her eyes slowly adjusted to the gloom. Minor quests in the world game reset daily and quests that were more important and tied to regional storylines generally took longer, weeks, or even months.
Mira snapped her fingers using a small cantrip to produce a glowing light. The sigil under their feet matched the book’s pattern perfectly. Of course, if it hadn’t the teleport spell would have failed. They had successfully traveled to the Ruins of the old Arnot Stronghold. She pushed more power into the glow spell and a wall came into view. It looked weird, with huge, banded sections and a scaled finish.
Mira’s confusion evaporated with a rush of adrenaline as the “wall” shifted. She looked up into two glowing red eyes and spoke.
“Yeah…. looks like the dungeon has most definitely reset already, Tiamat,” Mira whispered as the Giant Viper loomed overhead. Before she could say anything more the snake struck.
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