If you ask me now, I don’t even know why I did it.

Maybe I did it because Thermock looked so sad, alone in her enchanted glass prison. Maybe I did it because she made me doubt Derek, my kind and benevolent maker. Or–I have had this thought on more than one night since that fateful morning–perhaps Thermock cast some sort of evil magick on me.

Whatever my reason was, all I know is, the next thing I knew, I was double locking the basement door–with myself on the inside of it.

I had never disobeyed Derek–not in all my life–and in that moment, my belly filled with twittering yellow flapping wings of anxiety. I remember standing there with my back against the locked door, breathing in and out, heart pounding, trying to get a hold of myself.

At last, I did indeed gather my wits, and finally, I approached Thermock’s jar.

“You’re doing great,” she squeaked, and for a wonder, the little creature winked at me. “Now let me out of his jar,” she said. “Me and Blueboy. You know he’s not quite right in the head. An enchanted jar is no place for him.”

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Now I am not very good with runes, but I know a thing or two, and when I placed my hands upon the lid of her jar, a distinct set of etchings engraved with magick raised up and glowed there. The glow was a bright white.

The letters were beautiful to behold, so delicate and full of detail.

“What do I do?” I said.

“Get that little book over there,” said Thermock, pointing behind her to the bookshelf, where Blueboy’s jar was housed, and where columns of dusty hardcovers lined the shelves like filtering baileens. There Blueboy glowed, too, and I reached around his jar to the spine of a book reading, “Intermediate Stasis Spells.”

“No, no, no,” squeaked the Thermock, “Not that one. Two over. No, one back. Yeah! Yeah! That one!”

The book I took from the shelf was nondescript. It had nothing written on the spine…until I took it into my hand. At that very moment, silver runes glowed upon its surface. At first, they were pale gray, then they brightened to a brilliant shimmering silver. I gasped in awe.

“Whatever do they say?” I said. Derek had never shared any of these secrets with me. And at that moment, it guilts me to say, I wondered with envy why.

“They say get me the hell out of here,” squeaked Thermock, “now open that book to page 672.”

I opened the book, the cover of which I could not even read, to page 672.