The tile rushed up and slapped Mirio hard on his back, like a golem had come to life to congratulate him on his escape from the abyss.

He reached out with his hands half expecting to find grime covered tile he could grip to get to his feet, but as he tried his hands wrapped around something soft and warm. The subconscious mind is a strange thing, and at first all he could think of was that he had grabbed hold of a squirrel. Wait, but that didn’t make any sense? Why would a squirrel be in a room like this? Wait, what room is this? Am I in the palace?

If it was the palace what year was this? Everything looked as though it had aged several millennia over.

The fuzzy squirrel in his grip started to squirm as he heard it groan like… A girl!

“Hey, watch where you are grabbing at with those hands of yours. I may be small but its no less impolite to grab a handful!” Rose quipped as she lifted Mirio’s hand off her leg and hopped up to her feet.

“A girl? Oh right, I guess you were standing on the other side of the gate as I came out and I must have bumped into you” Mirio replied as getting to his feet.

Rose shifted her weight to one leg and put a hand on her raised hip, as she playfully pouted, “You know normally people walk through doors and such face forward. It helps, you know, for basic navigation. Rudimentary really”

“Ah sorry, I was preoccupied. I didn’t really have the luxury of turning around at the time”

Rose was already looking up to Mirio with her chin held high due to her short stature but she lifted her chin a little more as she grinned from ear to ear, “Nah, it’s fine, I’m used to it. No one ever looks for halfling folk. Too tall by half some say, but to be honest I wasn’t expecting anyone to come outta that thing”

“I didn’t mean to startle you really, are you okay?”

“Yup!”

“So where is this place if you don’t mind me asking? This isn’t Darlan is it?” Mirio said as he stepped back to survey the room some more.

“Darlin? What do you mean by that exactly”

“It’s one of the twelve kingdoms?”

“Oh that Darlan! Haha, I thought you were calling me darlin for a second. But no, you mean way down south on the other end of the known territories. Right. No this is the northernmost part of the northernmost kingdom, Serenis”

“Serenis?” Mirio said as searching what little he knew of the kingdoms and who inhabited them, “Isn’t it ruled by the smoke skins?”

“Ooh! Don’t let them hear you call em that… While that sort of thing might fly in the south, here it’s considered offensive. Since you just arrived from who knows where I’ll let you off just this once”

“Thanks, I appreciate it”

“Where did you just come from by the way, not Darlan, but on the other side of that gate” Rose said as narrowing her eyes in on Mirio. His tattered clothing was soaked through and crusted over with blood, his skin was callused and covered in grazes, and his right eye was closed and torn through with wild scars. The only thing that wasn’t covered in grime was a single blue dragonscale gauntlet on his left hand and forearm, which to her eye seemed enchanted in some manner to remain spotless.

“Is it okay if I don’t answer that right away, only because I don’t really know myself…” Mirio replied as he anxiously looked around the room for the exit, his eyes finally finding the staircase Rose had descended to get here.

“Hrmm, well aren’t you a man of mystery, most suspicious…”

“Well, thanks for letting me know what is what, I’m going to head to a town and sort myself out” Mirio said as ignoring Rose’s mutters.

“You are leaving?”

“Yeah, its up this way right?”

“It is but you won’t have much luck!”

“We’ll see,” Mirio said with a wink before leaping up the stairs two at a time.

Rose was slack jawed at the stranger’s confidence and demeanor, she was prepared to ask him all kinds of questions about himself but they would have to wait.

“Well whatever” she said as she turned back to the gate and then traced her eyes around the rest of the room in search for something.

Cold air whipped and lashed against Mirio’s skin as he stepped out of the ruins and into the snow. He had expected to exit and find a forest or a path leading toward a town, but instead he stood amidst the clouds.

“Shit”

Snow sizzled against Mirio’s skin as he regulated the temperature with his use of prestidigitation. The crystal flakes pooled into beads on his skin.

It didn’t take Mirio long before he realized he hadn’t drunk water since he fell into the abyss. He lunged into the snow, hurriedly scrambling up the snow in his hands and then melting it into his mouth. He continued shoveling handful after handful towards himself and drinking it down as though it were liquid gold.

Once he had his fill he rejoiced and fell backwards into the snow laughing.

“I’m free!”

“Holy fuck, I thought I was a dead man, but fuck you world! You haven’t beaten me yet!” he said from behind two raised fingers.

“Ahhh!” he said as he stroked his hands through his hair and over his face.

Thick lumps of grime clung to his hand as he did, prompting him to his knees to start washing off the scum, and hurriedly using his prestidigitation spell to purge his clothing of as much blood and guts as he could. After a good while his attempts produced a halfway passable result. Now instead of looking like he had swum through a river of blood, he now looked like a regular person with blood stained and torn up rags for clothes.

He was fortunate his modesty was still somewhat protected, even though the holes in his trousers were skirting dangerously close to revealing too much.

“Fuck, which way do I go down the mountain, don’t want to end up on the wrong side and have to climb it again” he said as he looked around.

Rose blew dust off of one of the murals along the wall, her ear twitched and the corner of her lips tilted up as Mirio slumped down at the base of the stairs.

“Kinda hard to get to town when there is a mountain in the way isn’t it?” she chuckled.

“Yuuuuup!” he said like a bored kid at the back of class.

“You could help me out here if you wanted, then maybe I might tell you which way to go to get to town”

“Ugh, I’m tired, I just want to eat normal food, have an ale, and find a nice fluffy bed”

“I hope you don’t expect any of that soon, it is at least a weeks journey down the mountain, maybe two if we take the safer route”

“What? Oh hell no… How? What?! MOTHERF#@K%&” Mirio said before hanging his head in defeat, “Fine, of course it is a week’s journey from here. Right then, so then, how do I help exactly?”

“Come over here, and hold the torch, I need my hands free so I can copy it down on some parchment”

“You want light? I don’t need a torch for that” he said as he clicked his fingers.

The room flashed white as the shadows hiding within the four walls were obliterated all at once. Mirio held a small orb in his hand and then tossed it to the center of the room where it glimmered like a chandelier made of sunlight.

“You are a mage!” Rose said as she rushed a few steps towards him in excitement.

“Uhuh…”

“This is great, I’ve always wanted to meet a real life magician, and to meet you here of all places. It must be fate!”

“Is this amount of light good for you? Or should I dim it down a bit to uh, not disturb the dust?”

“No, that is a great help, thanks, now just give me a minute to jot this all down”

Minutes passed as she traced out each carving on the wall and copied them down.

“So, you some kind of archaeologist?”

“No, I’m just a simple village girl, I just…” she scrunched up her nose, “Don’t you just find this all fascinating?!”

“I might at any other time, but, right now? I honestly couldn’t care less”

“Let me put it in a way sure to get through to you then, haven’t you ever wondered why there hasn’t been a war in over a thousand years”

“Isn’t that because the kingdoms have a treaty?”

“On the surface, yes, but I don’t think it is just that”

“What do you think it is then?”

“I don’t know, but I think this place might hold the answer”

Rose put down her quill and pointed to the walls all around them, “Also just look at this, isn’t it cool! These murals are the first writings on magic ever. And look!” Her eyes scanned across the walls with wonder. “There! It looks like training exercises for developing magical abilities!”

“Can you read it?” Mirio asked dismissively.

“Well no, but when I get home with it I’m sure to figure it out!”

“That is all really admirable” Mirio said as swaggering over to her and leafing through her notes, “But this is an ancient dialect or maybe even coded language, you won’t be able to decrypt it without the right cypher”

“A cypher?”

“Yeah you know, a lexicon given to the initiate mages to grant them the right to read these walls and know their meaning”

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“Why would it be behind a cypher?”

“Well, mages are traditionally pretty guarded about who they teach magic, so it is common practice to guard notes with cypers. They love to control the flow of information, it is what these walls are probably talking about no doubt”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you see this part over to the right, this is a nine part sequence. Where there is a row three high and three across. It is a method for teaching magic circles, it is emulating your line of sight”

“Line of sight? How does nine boxes recreate that?”

“Just hear me out, stand to this part of the wall chest straight, and look at it directly. This is the middle square. Then on the very edge of your vision you will hit a wall of black, if you then twist your neck left or up or whatever direction, you will turn just enough that what was once the furthest wall on one side is now the furthest wall on the other”

“So, our head can only really turn to nine different positions, unless we turn our chest. Great but what does that have to do with magic?”

“Well, magic is like a language, but it is a bit weirder than that. Think of it like an organizational system. You have nine sections of your visual space to work with. So you can craft one part of a spell in the left, another in the right, and then bring them to the center of focus in the middle”

“Okay, I’m following, but why does organizing matter?”

“Magic is all about context, hrmmm, how to explain this. Take the word SET for example, if you put it into different contexts it will mean different things. Set it down on the table, a sequence of actions, to set your eyes on something… If you change the context, you change how something is seen”

“I’m still not understanding why the nine boxes”

“You define different facets of a thing in different boxes, which then lets you juggle multiple conflicting ideas at once. And do you remember how I said magic is weird? Well, the point of magic is to contrast conflicting contexts against one another, and to find the transitional key between those contexts, sometimes called the glyph”

“Huh!? Can you say that again but dumb it down for me please, I’m just a village girl!” she said with a playful little pout.

“Hahaha, I just went from zero to a hundred there didn’t I? Well, magic is about deciphering what makes things the same, and what makes them different, so you can find what is constant and what is variable. The common parts can be translated into a simple shape and remembered that way, while the variable parts have to be understood by their relationships to each other. When you create a common half and define the variable half, you can work out how things move”

“How things move? What things?”

“Contexts”

“How do contexts move? That doesn’t make sense, don’t they stay the same but things fit into different contexts?”

“Kind of… They both stay the same, and are morphed by how you look at a thing. The mages believe that all things are defined by the ether, and that when context changes it does so because the ether weaves itself together differently, and this is what they are tracking with glyphs and magic circles”

“What is ether?”

“It is kind of like a translucent fire or how heat makes mirages in the desert, they say that nothing in the world would have an identity unless it was shaped by the ether to have a name. Kind of like, a baker knows the difference between a bun made with salt, and a bun made with brine. To everyone else it is the same, but they can distinguish it. Without the ability to distinguish things differently they are treated as the same”

“Wait, I think I get it, kinda! You put different ingredients in different boxes, then you think about how the flavors mix and change each other. And it is weird because they can influence each other simultaneously!”

“Exactly! You got it!”

“So the nine boxes here are about how things mix and merge, and how meanings differ from how you look at something”

“Yes, and you use this to separate your definitions and perspectives. But more importantly, when you cast a spell, you can’t just throw up any old circle anywhere, you need to know which box to put it in, and then organize each variant relationship appropriately, so that the ether responds to you”

“It responds?”

“Maybe that isn’t the perfect word, but you might get my meaning that certain truths ring louder than others. Some experiences in life are had and forgotten, while others linger with you for a lifetime. In the same way the ether can define itself stronger by you getting closer to a perfect definition of a thing”

“And then it creates the spell? You create the idea of light, and it becomes light?”

“Wow! You are sharp as a whip… Errr… What is your name?”

“Rose!” she said as jumping up and down in celebration of understanding her first lesson in magic.

“I’m Mirio, nice to meet you”

“Likewise”

“Oh, but one more thing Rose, while you are sharp, and really smart, and you got the point of the lesson. Your conclusion isn’t actually right… Annoying, I know, but you are close! Spells don’t just come from describing a thing, it is much much much weirder than that in truth. Some spells are not all that complicated though, so with the right sequence of contexts, poof, light! But others… Not so much”

“I think I know enough for now, I’ll just stop at, poof light but I’ll harass you later for the rest”

Mirio smiled warmly at little Rose as she bounced about in front of him, scribbling down notes. For a moment he had forgotten how exhausted he was, but it came back with a vengeance, slapping him with a fatigue that dropped him to the floor.

“Guess, a soft bed was too sweet a dream to have” he mumbled, as his eyelids fluttered and then closed.

“Mirio” rose yelled out as clambering over him, “Mirio!”

…

The nature of magic is strange indeed.

The whirl of warding spells in Mirio’s blood clashed like beasts inside of him, and with them carried echoes of the horrors he had lived in the abyss.

Abstract shapes formed in the shadows of his mind, warped and looped, and transformed. A beast’s fangs one moment, his hand holding a dagger the next, and through it all the smell of blood. That rotting, acrid, scent of death that had dulled his senses over the last year in that hole of a place.

What did it mean to him to have survived such horrors?

Did he want to be redefined by them? And made into an agent of the darkness as Ladon had wanted…

Or in refusing her, did he want to follow the gentle thrum of song that now echoed in his heart, knowing that he did not need to obey her?

Each choice fought to dull his senses one way or another, a fight between left and right, up and down. Different ways to organize the world, and different allegiances that held it together.

Rose was right, why was he not curious about why there hadn’t been a war in over a thousand years. Wouldn’t it have been more natural for kingdoms to clash as all things eventually do? What manner of spell was weaved to cast such a net?

Is this the right idea? Or was his mind rambling as it fell into a long awaited slumber.

…

Embers of a fire snapped and crackled, as Mirio returned to consciousness. He was expecting to feel the hard comfort of the stone under his neck, but instead was supported by something fluffy and warm. Almost like fur.

Wait.

He peered out from behind groggy eyelids and spied Rose curled up beside him. She had lit a fire, and lended him her thighs to rest his head upon. He smiled at the kindness it showed was buried within her and rose off from her slowly so as not to disturb her.

He sat up by the couple pieces of coal still shimmering with gold and orange wisps.

Though it was a dream, he still remembered the choice that emerged there, seemingly a decision between following Ladon or Akur. On the one hand Ladon cared about the world in her own twisted way, but on the other Akur seemed self aware even though he seemed utterly corrupt as the price of it.

“I’m not choosing either of you, just so you know” he whispered to no one in particular.

As he thought about what it would mean to follow Ladon, he saw that it meant self loathing, and unending anguish, for the pursuit of a goal that ultimately was meaningless. Yet, when he thought about what it would mean to follow Akur, it was like a thousand whirling spikes rose within him until he choked on the horror.

Neither course had meaning to him, and even if they were the architects of the current state of the world, why must it be that way? What had happened in ancient times? How had it all come to this?

He hung his head between his knees and reached out with his senses, linked up with the tiny whirling magic circles in his blood. He had created these circles to resist Akur’s curse, and had learned through habit how to keep them running without thought or care, yet without them… He pondered. Without them he would also be in ruin as the curse would take his soul, and leave it as an offering to Akur.

“Fucking savages… Both of them”

He clenched his hand tight and then let it loose, then repeated it as a soothing gesture to work out the knots in his mind.

“Why can I use the dagger like I do? If it is a catalyst that Akur uses to alter the fabric of reality, then why can a guy like me handle it? Wouldn’t he encrypt it? Or is he that arrogant that he didn’t think I would figure out how to make a repeating ward circuit?”

“Maybe he is arrogant like that, but honestly, I don’t know. It could all be a trick… He isn’t exactly one to be forthcoming or obvious. Whether I use this, or I don’t, both could be part of a plan”

“Shit shit shit…”

“I can’t seem to catch a breath,” he chuckled sadly.

“Am I really that weak, or are these bastards really that strong… What am I saying, of course they are. But they shouldn’t be. Where are the gods? Don’t they care? Or are they afraid”

“And the black hand… Why worship the guardian, is he not like Ladon, but with a focus on fighting the gods rather than Akur”

“But holy shit, that thing knew how to fight”

Mirio clenched his hand again, this time it flickered with ethereal blue light and vanished for a moment before reappearing.

It was a spell he had been working on in the abyss, a card of his own to play in this game, a trick he had learned from the guardian. One must always be prepared.

…

Rose felt him as his pressure eased up off her legs, how could she not, she had been wrestling all night with the idea of kicking him off so she could get some sleep. Men and their giant melon sized heads, it was ridiculous how they had all that grey matter up there, and yet still they were the most incredulous of all the races forced to cohabit the realm post cataclysm.

What is he muttering?

Something about savages that battle against each other, a dagger, and Akur?

The black hand? The guardian?

Wait…

Who is this guy?

He said he was from Darlan, and he walked out of this rift to the abyss, and now he is talking about all manner of things. He’s not telling me something, maybe something happened in the war, something to do with the black hand, and maybe this Akur guy is involved. And Ladon? Wait, isn’t that the old tongue word for river? Who besides the lady sorceress would be named after a river? Maybe I’m just wanting it to be about her though.

A compulsion she could not explain welled deep within her, and before she knew it she spoke from a place that echoed her struggle within.

“What does the Dragoness have to do with the black hand, and why did you mutter about the guardian. I heard rumors that a court mage became one of the new fingers, and he came from Darlan. Why are you here? What is really on the other side of that gate?”

“You know” he whispered under his breath, “It really isn’t polite to eavesdrop on a man struggling to make sense of his demons”

He sighed and tipped his head toward the ceiling for a moment, searching for the patience to not go too far in his quips to her.

“To answer your question, the Dragoness as you call her, made a deal with that new finger. In order for the power to banish the guardian, set upon us in Darlan, he only had to give her me in return. And so I was sent to the abyss, to either die, or become her servant. And I am here because I refuse to do either, and because what is on the other side of that gate is nothing less than a nightmare”

Rose gasped.

Part in shock of the revelation, but another part because she couldn’t believe how rude she had just been to ask such a thing. If this was all true, this man had gone through something terrible, and by the look of the skar over one side of his face, it had not left him unmarked.

“I’m sorry” she purred softly, as she sat up and gently touched his shoulder.

“It’s okay” he said as he warmly clutched onto her hand for a moment and then let it go, “I shouldn’t have dumped my baggage like that, its my own to bare”

“I don’t mean to be indelicate, but, my father always says that us halfling folk are strong not because each of us are big in stature, but because when we come together we all move with one heart”

“Huh?”

“It means, you don’t have to do it all alone”

Mirio smiled curtly, “I appreciate it” before distancing himself from the idea and focusing in on a spot on a mural, “Hey, there it is”

“What is?”

“The lexicon, it’s a riddle, they didn’t hide the cypher. They disguised it in the story of the walls as a test for the new initiates!”

“And you just passed their test? Just like that? No one but halflings from Riverstone have seen this place in over a thousand years and you figure it out on a whim?”

“Not a whim, there is a rhythm to how everything is laid out. It stuck in my mind because it was familiar. Though, it is strange, the cypher reads like a song”

“What kind of song?” Rose said as her ears perked up.