We wandered around for what felt like hours. At one point, we even ended up in a dead end and had to turn around. It felt like it was past midnight, and while I was not tired, I started to grow hungry. It was right as we turned the corner that I noticed the hunger, but all thoughts left me as a bright light shone down on us. I allowed my orb to go out and looked around. We stood at the entrance of a massive cavern. Star crystals of various sizes covered the ceiling, offering enough light that it felt like a midsummer's dream.

In the middle of the massive cavern were three circus tents, each striped with an unusual color. It was a bit odd to see such frivolity after wandering in the dark for so long. But given what I had seen throughout the day, my ability to be surprised had muted.

I turned to point out the tents to Uncle Finneus and remark on them, but he was gone. All I found was sand and salt. I assumed he had gone to scout the tents without me, as I was louder than him. Deciding to wait, I began to wander around the entrance, looking for a place to hide. A bit to the right of the opening, I found a large boulder with a small gap between it and the edge of the cavern. Deciding it was a good enough hiding place as any, I started maneuvering my way into it.

As I slid forward, I momentarily lost my balance. Deciding it would be the easiest way behind the rock, I let myself fall forward, planning to catch myself as I hit the ground. Only, there was no ground to stop my fall behind the rock. Terrified that I was falling to my death, I cried out to the fire using my staff as the conduit. It answered in an instant, surrounding me with a thick layer of fire on all sides.

For those ungifted, who have never touched magic and are wondering how I could breathe while engulfed in flame, do not stay confused. Understand that when magical flame, or any magic for that matter, is within the control of a caster, it exists in two places: our world and the spirit world. My flame is not burning the oxygen around me while I hold it in stasis, thus I can breathe even though it's wrapping me in a blanket. But such lectures on the subject should be saved for the long-winded professors at Wembridge, who, if given a chance, will orate to anyone who will listen on a particular magical mechanism that has caught their obsessive fancy. Uncle Finneus once told me a story of how he had spent a weekend trapped in the library of Wembridge with a hexologist, arguing which city within the Empire had the best sewer system. Such is the range of those for that university.

But I digress. Let us return to me, presumably falling to my death. My attempt to protect myself from the fall was to wrap myself in flame. The one key point to note was that instead of making the trigger point for the spell to enter entirely past the veil, my own decision, I attached the trigger point to a parameter. The rule was that when the flame came into contact with the ground, it was to enter past the veil and explode. I fell for what felt like hours. But when my flame did make contact with the ground below, it did its job, exploding outward and cushioning my fall. While unhurt, the sudden explosion created more force than I was expecting, and I blacked out.

When I awoke, I found myself in a dimly lit corridor. Moonstones covered the walls, with one being every four feet, offering enough light to see, but only just. I looked around and could just barely make out the burn scars on the walls and the floor from my spell. It must have been quite an explosion, given the amount of residue.

“I’m surprised someone hasn’t already found me,” I said aloud, dusting myself off.

Try as I might, the enchanted clothing Uncle Finneus had given me would not let go of the dust. Sure, the clothes survived a blast so hot it would kill any normal human, but getting off some of the dust that had covered them? Not a chance.

Giving up, I looked above me at the hole I had fallen through. It was a good fifty feet above me, and a metal ladder led from where I stood all the way up. I cursed under my breath. Of course, there had been a ladder. I debated going back up the ladder and following my original plan. But since I was already here, I turned my attention to the newly discovered tunnel. I’m unsure what gave me the courage to walk down the tunnel. Perhaps it was my uncle’s rude comments, but forward I moved.

The tunnel was nothing to be impressed with. It looked like humans had been the ones to mine it, given how uneven the ceiling and walls were. Everything was going fine, and then I rounded a bend and ran headlong into a short Narjee warrior. The warrior leaped back, and before I could even think about calling for my magic, a sword was at my throat.

“Ahh, it's you, Bartholomew. These tunnels have my senses in complete disorder. How did you get down here?”

While I was unable to recognize him, I guessed. “Uncle Finneus?”

The short Narjee nodded his head, “Yes, yes. Now tell me how you got down here.” He said this with his sword still at my throat.

I turned back the way I came, ignoring the sword and pointing. “There’s a ladder that leads up into the cavern we were at when you left me.”

I turned back around to find that the sword at my throat had disappeared, and the Narjee warrior had turned back into Uncle Finneus. Everything, down to the clothes, which had been reddish leather armor, had changed back into what he was wearing when we left the house earlier that day. Of course, everything was clean. I looked down, comparing them to my torn and dirtied clothes, shaking my head.

While I was inwardly complaining about the differences in cleanliness, Uncle Finneus stood there, thinking. “How very interesting. It appears, Bartholomew, that I have been moving in the wrong direction. There must be spells disorientating my awareness. I should not have ended here.”

“Where were you supposed to end up if not here?” I asked with a grin.

“Child now is not the time to quote my own nonsensical phrases back to me. I need to find this hex and destroy it, or else we’ll be wandering around for hours longer. I do not want to be here even more than we’ve already been,” said Uncle Finneus.

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“Um, Uncle Finneus, it's only been like twenty minutes since you abandoned me in the cavern above,” I said.

Uncle Finneus shook his head, “Quit being dramatic.” He rolled his eyes and pulled out his watch, “I will need to put in an order for another one, but as you can see, three hours have passed since we were right outside the cavern.”

He showed me the watch, and it took a second for me to acknowledge he was right; too much time had passed. Maybe, I had been unconscious for far longer than I had thought. “How are you going to find this hex thing?” I asked.

“I’ll simply track it,” he said, closing his eyes.

He extended his arms out wide. As I watched, his nose grew three times the size it was before. If that wasn't strange enough, a few moments later, his ears started doing the same. When the transformation was finished, he looked like some sort of strange elephant crossbreed. Even his hands had changed, growing larger and producing webbing that connected the fingers together.

Uncle Finneus then began to slowly spin in a circle. The air around him seemed to ripple with every movement, much as if he were swimming through water. He seemed to touch something because he recoiled from it. “There you are, you slimy bastard,” he growled, finally opening his eyes.

I must mention him opening his eyes more than once because it was so odd. Unlike his other changes, his eyes hadn’t gotten bigger. Instead, the irises had turned from their usual blue-grey into a dark purple. The pupils had also shifted, changing from black into a glowing silvery white. Much like one would see when examining the center of a magical matrix under a nanoscope.

The purple-eyed elf reached out into thin air and pulled from it a greasy, shadowy clump of goo. He grinned, “Thought you could hide in plain sight, did you now? Such a creature should know better than to try something like this without at least two cartomancers. You were only hiding on the third plane, to begin with. Such ridiculousness. To think it took me more than a second to find you. How did I not feel it? Ah, there it is, another creature was hidden inside, acting as a dampener. What a unique way of doing things. The dampener acted slowly, cutting off my senses bit by bit, making sure I didn’t notice as it drew ever closer.”

Uncle Finneus tossed the creature up, then kicked it into the side of the wall, where it splattered. “Perhaps I should have kept you around in a jar instead of outright death. You would have been useful in tracking down your creator.” Uncle Finneus sighed, “It's been a long day, Bartholomew. Let’s go, I now have a better idea of where we are going. We need to hurry though, I fear Garnachi will arrive sooner rather than later. And when he does, the small window we have for research will disappear.”

Off we went, towards danger for what felt like the thousandth time in the last six months. One would think that I would learn to stop following, but for some reason, I couldn’t help myself. Maybe Uncle Finneus was righter than I’d care to admit about the unchanged barbaric nature of the elves. Mayhaps we were still as wild as our ancestors in the recesses of our souls.

We set off at a brisk pace and kept that speed for a while. We came across a few monsters, but Uncle Finneus killed them without slowing down. That is until a rat-looking creature the size of a small bull flew through the air and attacked us. Uncle Finneus dodged the first swipe of its claws easily, while I threw myself into the wall of the tunnel.

The creature turned around and acted as if it was going to make another pass. Uncle Finneus stood with weapon drawn in the middle of the tunnel, ready to dodge and then repost. The creature flew at him, then at the last moment, breathed fire on my uncle, catching him alight. Uncle Finneus started cursing and began to roll on the ground. The fire was put out in a moment, but not before his face and hair were singed. When the creature came back for a third pass at him, Finneus did not wait. Instead, he charged towards it, eyes glowing red. He leaped off the wall and latched onto the rat as it flew past.

The rat screamed in pain as Uncle Finneus began to stab it over and over. In an effort to remove him, the rat flew straight into a wall. They were about fifty paces away from me, so I jogged over. I found Uncle Finneus dispatching the creature. For effect, he spat on it, before reaching up to touch his burnt hair. Uncle Finneus nodded his head at me, as he sheathed his sword back inside the cane. “Nothing I couldn’t handle by myself. It would have been nice to have a little assistance though.”

I offered a weak smile, “My bad, Uncle Finneus, I was distracted by the creature, and before I knew it, the fight was over.”

Uncle Finneus snorted but said nothing else. We continued on our way, and I glanced over a few minutes later. Uncle Finneus had returned to his normal pristine condition, his hair looking none for the worse. It was as if the battle had never happened.

When we came to a fork in the path, Uncle Finneus didn’t bother slowing and took the right one. Five minutes, then ten, then fifteen minutes passed as we continued down the tunnel at a light jog, meeting nothing. Finally, there was a sharp turn in the tunnel, and we were standing before two identical black silver-metal doors.

I walked over and banged on the left door. The muffled rumble and horrible smell that the door released confirmed that it was, in fact, black silver. As everyone knows, vibrations within the metal catalyze a reaction that produces a horrible smell. I’d heard from my elven teachers, that some humans can even faint at the smell.

I had half a thought that someone would come and open the door to see who was knocking at this time of day. It was unfortunate that no one appeared, and my attention went back to my uncle. He was kneeling before the right door, fiddling with some tool I had never seen before. “Uncle Finneus, what is that tool you're holding? I can’t say I’ve ever seen it before.”

Uncle Finneus glanced over at me but continued to tap the strange tool along the bottom of the door. “I’m trying to unlock the door, Bartholomew.”

I blinked, “I understand that,” I replied. “What I don’t understand is how. There are no physical locks. Neither are there magical locks or at least none that I can see. I’ve seen the elders cast spells that find hidden things, but I’ve never heard of a non-magical tool that can do something like that. Unless you are doing something else?”

Uncle Finneus continued working, making his way up the side of the door. “Before I explain,” he said, “Why don’t you tell me what you know about black silver? Do you know where it comes from?”

I paused, thinking. “Well, I know the basic story, about how it’s the feces of some evil god. Which is why it smells, and somehow grows denser the more you attack it. Because of that, it’s often used as part of a defense such as a gate, or door.” I shrugged, “That’s it, I guess.”

“Hmm,” said Uncle Finneus sighing, “Whoever taught you about black silver did not tell you about the most important feature of it. Black-silver treats magic, the way it treats all energy. It ignores it. It treats magic like it’s not real. Why don’t you throw a fireball at the door in front of you, and you’ll see what I mean.”

I shrugged and called the fire, telling it to rise to my finger. When a large ball was formed, I flicked it towards the door. The ball of flame traveled in a lazy arc. Instead of bursting when it contacted the door, it popped like a bubble and disappeared. I glanced to see what my uncle had to say in response to the demonstration. It was soon apparent that he had not stopped to watch and was busy knocking on the door with his tool.

I eyed the door, thinking aloud. “So, since magic does not affect the material, it’s impossible for it to have a magical lock. The lock must be mechanical of some sort. Which is why you're looking for a hidden contraction. That tool has nothing to do with magic, does it?”

As I was talking, Uncle Finneus reached out a hand and punched at the wall to the side of the door. Instead of stopping, his hand went straight through. There was a grinding of metal gears and the doors slowly opened. Uncle Finneus turned and winked, “While the lock itself might be mechanical, the mechanism and the areas around the door can be a mixture of mechanical and magical. The contraption here is barbaric in its simplicity. It uses just a little bit of magic, and basic at that. If we have a moment after everything is finished, remind me to tell you about my time in Vargas. The things they use black-silver for are spectacular. This,” he said, pointing to the lock, “are the machinations of a child, copying a skill the parent has taken decades to master.”

Uncle Finneus shook his head in disgust then turned to the open door, “I hope I have not offended you too badly, Master Mashda. My nephew is still very young, and his mother has asked me to teach him the ways of the world. When teaching things, some things that are usually left unsaid must be brought to light, even if it may interrupt the peace.”

A much younger, thinner version of Garnachi stepped out of the shadows in rather dramatic style. He was flanked by a large group of Narjee and a bunch of his creepy monsters.