There was one particular mountain that sat in the Clearwater Ridges.

From a distance it looked much like the other mountains and even when you moved closer, it still looked quite normal.

This mountain had changed though.

The changes on the outside were barely noticeable.

A few very small openings in the rock seemed to have vanished and a couple of new opening had appeared elsewhere.

To see one of the more noticeable changes you would have to move to the western side, low down at the base of the mountain where it reached the treeline of the Moreland Forest.

Two steep masses of the mountain's base had stretched outwards and reshaped.

Though they looked entirely natural, they were not.

They actually reached out almost like they were roots of the mountain, from their highest end joined to the actual mountain, slowly lowering their height as they curved around and breeched the trees of the forest below.

Almost coming together in an oval shape, as if these great roots of the mountain were about to drag a chunk of the earth and forest to itself in an embrace.

If you looked closely, you could see that rather than creating a sealed piece of the forest within their stone embrace, there was in fact an opening at one end that lead directly into the Morland Forest.

As if the stone that surrounded had, by chance formed a natural wall that enclosed roughly one hundred square meters of land that lay within it's oval embrace.

It was not natural though.

Inside this stone enclosure, many of the trees that had once stood were now gone.

New trees lay within, trees that had never been there before. Those trees did not fill that place though, they did not stand where their seeds fell but instead they seemed to have grown around the edges of the enclosure.

As if they wished to be as close to the protective stone walls as possible.

What had been rocky earth with patches of grass and under brush was now rich earth that had been tended to by... someone.

There were quite clearly several vegetable patches set at regular intervals and even some neat groupings of rarer plants.

Some were strange herbs with odd uses and yet still others were the things of plants to be used to simply add taste to a meal.

If your attention turned to the opposite side of this enclosure, to face the mountain itself, you would notice something else that was very odd.

Against the stone or more precisely in the stone, were intricate carvings, odd runic symbols that very clearly had the shape of a large arch.

What was even odder though was that instead of a door or even an empty opening contained within this deliberate arch, there was instead simple stone.

It was completely smooth, standing out even more by it's plainness when being ringed by such detailed and intricate carvings.

Despite it being a very real and very solid piece of stone, despite it being completely joined with the arch around it in a natural seeming and homogeneous single piece, it was an still opening.

If you knew the trick and if you had the ability, you could make your way into the mountain, you would find the first of the largest changes within that had been wrought to it.

And make no mistake, these changes had been wrought, they had been done by the mountain's occupant.

After a short walk down a wide but very straight hall, you would find yourself entering a very very large cylindrical room made from the very mountain.

It was not large because the distance from one side to another was so great, no, in fact it was no more than twenty good paces from the end of that tunnel to the stone of the far side of the room.

It was large because if you looked up, you could see stone stairs that spiralled around, up and up, further and further, as if to reach for the peak of the mountain itself.

But all was not as it seemed.

In the very centre of this round place, there was a single flat piece of stone.

It was not part of the mountain any more although to look at it you would never know.

It was actual a thick disk of stone that was set into a perfectly fitting disk shaped hole in the ground, so perfect that it looked seamless.

This was another thing that you had to know the trick of and if you did, you would find yourself standing upon it as it rose up into the air.

Up and up into the darkness, ignoring the spiralling stone stairs as it moved between the core of them.

When you reached the top you would find two openings.

One was where the spiralling stone stairs reached what was a ceiling from below but then a floor as you breached it, the second was an exact match for the strange floating disk of stone.

It would come to a stop there and you would be amazed at what you found as you now stood on this new floor.

This mountain had once had another occupant, long long ago.

The mountain had changed by their will, what had been solid stone had branched out into a confusing maze, oddly placed arches and rooms throughout.

Those had been much lower in the mountain but alas, they were no more.

Now the mountain had changed again by the will of this new occupant, standing on the disk you would see those changes clearly.

The first thing that you might notice would be that there was light here, light in a place that not only should have been solid stone but was now a very large empty place.

Your attention would have to be directed behind where you stood though.

The stone of the mountain here looked like glass.

Impossibly thick and still in the natural shape of the stone.

To look at this exact spot from the outside of the mountain, you would not be able to see within. From the outside, the mountain's stone was as solid and dark as it ever had been. The only thing that looked slightly out of the ordinary were two very small, hardly noticeable square holes to either side, from which came what appeared to be wood smoke.

It was only from within that you could see beyond, to look down upon the vast expanse of the Morland Forest below.

If that were not strange enough the large space here, a place that looked like a large great hall. One with masterful geometric looks to it's shapes. Straight edges, exact angles and repeating patterns that made the mass of runes carved over almost every surface, seem almost orderly.

If you looked upwards, fifty feet above where you would expect to find the stone ceiling, you would behold a wonder.

Not dark stone but instead the very sky.

Although, that was not entirely accurate.

You would find the stone ceiling if look looked very closely but it was a stone ceiling that like that wall, was like glass.

Instead of looking out over the expanse of the Morland Forest, you instead gazed upon the sky.

If you disregarded those unnatural wonders and looked around this place a little closer, you would very quickly realise that this was not just an empty place at all.

There were in fact many things here, both unnatural and mundane.

The long hall was almost the same size as that strange enclosure below, if not in width then at least in length.

One hundred meters perhaps, from the odd glass wall with the view of forest below, all the way back to the dark stone at the opposite end.

It was probably close to a third of that distance perpendicular, from left to right.

Looking around you would see many more arches from here.

They were evenly spaced on each side of his long hall, they were very wide, too wide for any doors.

You would easily be able to see inside them as you moved down the hall.

One looked like a small library, with stone shelves that housed books, made up the walls of that room, with enough room in the middle for a single, but large wooden desk and the chair behind it.

Another room looked remarkably like a kitchen, mostly made up of that seamless dark stone of the mountain like much of this place but polished to gleam faintly.

Other rooms housed different and seemingly unlikely functions, so very odd that such things would be here within this mountain.

There was a single large balcony that ringed this hall, more of a walkway wrapping around it and serving the function of an open corridor for a second, higher row of arches.

A second floor to this place but with a difference, none of these arches were open.

Like that strange and unnatural entrance, housed within the enclosure far below, they were intricately carved on the outside but where the others had been open space, free access to the rooms beyond, there was once more blank but very solid stone.

If you managed to get through one such expanse of blank stone, you might find a large room of stone.

One that contained many rough wooden boxes, wooden boxes that had been defaced almost entirely with yet more runes.

These boxes were set upon even larger stone shelves, the stone of these shelves much thicker than the ones in the small library, able to hold the greater weight.

If you continued to move towards the end of this hall you would find what was perhaps the oddest looking thing of all.

Level with this second floor, seamlessly merging with that balcony walkway that ringed this hall, there was, at the far end, directly opposite that strange glass-like stone, an open space.

As if there should have been a single large room here but the stone wall that should have housed an arch was entirely missing.

Instead you had a room with only three walls to it, one room that was as wide as the hall.

What was truly odd about it was that this three walled room 'contained' what looked to be a simple home.

There was a fire place carved out of the dark stone at the far end, even a fire alight within it.

There were two more bookshelves here but unlike the ones of stone below, these were made of wood.

In fact many of the furnishings were made of wood here, they looked to have been built with care as they gleamed slightly by the firelight, clearly having been worked smooth and polished.

A single, low but very large slab of polished stone sat on the floor, close, but not too close to the fire.

It served as a table and around it were what looked like sofas.

Like the kind you might find in a home of a normal person elsewhere, not hidden within a mountain.

If you looked very closely you would find that the sofas were made from thick sturdy wood, the frames at least, while the seats and rests were woven like the wicker of a basket.

To see such a thing though, you would have had to lift up the furred animal skins that lay upon them.

On one of them, seated close to the fire, was where a robed figure sat.

It looked almost wraithlike in the dark worn robe.

It might have been a statue if not for the movement of it looking upwards at the slowing lightening sky that reflected from the stone ceiling.

Odd, that this figure would gaze up at the sky, when clearly this small home, this little piece of normality in an unnatural place, was so perfectly positioned to look down over such a grand hall.

Ash looked up at the first signs of dawn that reflected through the spelled stone and sighed.

He was feeling slightly nostalgic.

It was time to leave the mountain.

Oh sure, he'd left before, plenty of times in fact.

Mostly he had made trips out of the mountain back to civilization not too long after he had arrived here, those trips out had become less frequent as time had moved on.

He had been so naïve.

Expecting to live in a mountain for years with only a few tools, some seeds and a hope of mastering his magic.

Pride had held him back from leaving at first, not wanting to admit that there were so many things he had needed to bring to the mountain to truly live here.

It had gotten easier though and as he had eventually brought back more things to correct his mistakes, he had found himself not really needing to leave much any more.

His trips out of the mountain had shifted in intent, not for things necessary for survival but rather for more knowledge.

Books.

Over the years he had amassed quite a collection, a collection that at first had been very utilitarian but that had almost inevitably grown and expanded into books on the most obscure of topics.

This time though, he would be leaving again for a different reason.

He didn't think he would leave this place forever, in fact he was almost certain he would return here but he was leaving with a purpose that would take him further away from his mountain and for longer than he had ever been away before.

This time, he would not mask his face with illusions.

This time he would leave to feel the sun on his skin.

It was time to go back out into the world, time to do what needed to be done.

He had already stayed here longer than he had planned, almost an entire year longer than he had intended to.

The vortex of knowledge that had been in his head had almost entirely stilled.

Only occasionally would a ripple or splash rise up to catch him by surprise.

He thought of himself as 'partially trained'.

As he had known for a long time, the knowledge he would slowly come to have would be, at best, sporadic. After these years, he had found himself with absolute mastery in some things, random things, useful things, things he understood and yet still didn't really have any real use for.

He also ended up with partial knowledge of even more things, once more ranging from incredibly useful to absolutely bizarre.

There were even some things he had learned to do that he had absolutely know knowledge of, no foundation or real understanding of them and yet still he could do them. Like a movement learned

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from practising it over and over again without knowing what use such a movement would have, only to find yourself suddenly be able to a song on a lute if one was placed in your hands.

One such skill wasn't a magical one but instead a mundane one.

The knowledge of how to use an omaran fairly well.

It was basically just a sword, if admittedly a slightly odd one, but never before had he known how to wield any sword nor had he ever ever even heard of an omaran.

This only accentuated the worst of things though.

There the things he knew that he was missing, fundamental principles, actual experiences, and simple pieces of logic that were taken for granted by those who had truly learned them.

And so he had sought out more books, not another grimoire and not even books of a specifically magic topic, though he had managed to acquire a few. No, he had instead sought knowledge of what most people would think of mundane things, things that required no magic, things that didn't really seem that important.

Picking up small nuggets of information, using them to better understand himself, the world around him and the things he already knew.

He had learned much.

Not just from the grimoire and it's vortex because without question, it had been the single greatest piece of information he had gained, something that had changed his life.

Rather he had learned more about the world from careful study than he had ever thought someone would know.

In his childish logic, more of a subconscious thought than an actual plan, he had had an kind of expectation that once he left the mountain, he would be the smartest man alive.

Foolish and naïve.

Now, even as he thought back on the days of struggle that he endured at first in the mountain, it felt like it had happened to someone else.

Almost as if the memories themselves had come from a grimoire of their own.

He had changed.

A boy had entered this mountain, and now that it was time to truly leave once more, it was a young man who left.

A man who had something to do, one who had many plans to put into place.

One who while taller, stronger and much wiser than before, still held that tight knot of anger within.

It was a cold thing now, but volatile.

It was something that could explode into a thousand knives at any moment, but instead remained a cool thing.

Watching.

Waiting.

He had needed time.

He had had time, now it was time to act.

Ash stood, looking down at the stupid hall he had built.

When he had mastered the shaping of stone, he had gone overboard.

Making this grand hall had been a childish thing, even after he had begun to gain a good grounding in rune-craft and littered the stones he had shaped with runes, they were still childish things.

More than was needed, far more and most of them unused.

He shook his head a little ruefully at himself as he stood in his actual retreat.

The small pocket of normality in the otherwise grand expanse.

If he hadn't made this part, had instead continued to live in the cold grandeur below he thought that on this day, the day he would leave the mountain.

He might have left with his nose high in the air, like the noble he was, but filled with their arrogance, their belief in their superiority.

He acknowledged his own noble birth and that he thought of himself as better than the nobility, in the sense that he was likely more of a real person than any of them but he knew that it had nothing to do with his birth.

It was from the things he had learned himself, the things he could do, the things he had done and the things he had received from the grimoire.

He felt as though he had gained a small portion of wisdom, not the kind to feel like a wise man but enough that he knew there was much more to the world than just himself, much more to learn, to experience, much more to life.

But first he had things to do.

Sighing out a breath, Ash began to prepare.

****************

I didn't actually end up leaving that day, I had a surprising amount of things I needed to do first.

I intended to return to my mountain and so rather than simply abandon it and let time take it's course, I instead did what Althalan had done albeit in a slightly different way.

I stored my things, things I would not be taking with me into rune-carved boxes. Preservation, stillness but not a complete suspension of time.

That was still beyond my ability.

Book shelves were emptied and the books packed away into their boxes, then the boxes stored in room I had opened for use, then the other odds and ends that weren't already in boxes.

A storeroom that while not exact magical in nature beyond a few runes and spells to keep the air a little fresher and halt the inevitable collection of dust.

Not like Althalan's approach, in which entire rooms had become places that pushed back time.

It instead contained boxes that themselves would keep their contents preserved, my version of Althalan's rooms scaled down into these simple wooden boxes.

I had a lot of things to put away.

By the time I had satisfied myself that everything I needed stored away was safely put in it's place, half of the day had already passed by.

I still needed to 'pack' for my journey.

One of the most useful things I had learned was some spacial magic.

It was useful but also vastly terrifying in the possibilities that it held for things to go wrong.

To go wrong on such a fundamental level that reality could actually reject what was wrought, such a 'rejection' by the universe was a minor thing to it but an almost comprehensible horror to the one who bore such a chastisement.

I had, after years of very very careful experimentation managed to master some minor uses of it. Even when I had known from Althalan's teachings that what I wanted to attempt would work, even though I knew that my workings were perfectly aligned I had still worked my way up to it in the smallest of steps because of the feelings that accompanied them.

One of the strongest of all the feelings that overlaid the many memories from the vortex were the feelings of caution tinged with dread that came with the use of spacial magic. I had learned very quickly to give Althalan's judgement the proper respect it deserved.

But my slow and perhaps overly cautious approach had yielded results and it showed clearly in the method of packing I was currently using.

I would be taking with me a single bag, it looked exactly like a simple but well made leather satchel. To hang over a shoulder and come to rest on my side, it looked like that because that it was that it was.

But inside was something slightly strange looking.

It looked to be almost like an oversized book made out of wood and a small amount of stone.

It was about one and a half feet by one foot and only five inches thick.

The 'pages' of this wooden book were covered in what were most definitely the most complex, most intricate and delicate runes I had ever carved.

Each 'page' of the four rune covered wooden pages were covered in them, all the space completely used up save for a small and very delicate looking handle on a hinge that folded down into the wood, into a small groove that had been shaped for it.

Pulling one of those handles would not do anything at all that a normal handle attached to a flat piece of wood wouldn't ordinarily do, but if you pushed a little power into it...

Then something very unexpected would happen, suddenly pulling on the handle would pull the rune covered wood with it, now seemingly the face of a drawer only there was, from behind, nothing there.

The small space beyond was actually the size of a chest, the 'face of the drawer' appeared to be where the side of the chest would be, only the rest of this chest was...

The simplest way to describe it was to say that the space 'inside' was neverwhere, neverwhere and neverwhen. It was there, clearly by the simple fact that things were stored in this chest space but once the face of it closed once more and the power ceased, so did it's place in reality.

In reality and time actually, if only slightly.

Perhaps even more confusing that spacial magic was time.

Even as what I had created worked, the aspect of time in regards to my chests was odd.

Things inside would keep, food for example. An apple would last perhaps three times as long as it should have inside the chest.

Was the number three significant?

The answer was yes and no.

Yes because clearly that is how much longer things last for, surly that number cannot be dismissed, right?

No, because no where, or at least no where I could see did the number three play any significance to the runes that made up this magic.

It wasn't like I had accidentally added a series of runes that specifically said how much time should pass or at what speed in the place that was neverwhere and neverwhen.

In fact, there wasn't anything about any passage of time in the runes. I had configured, planned and tested them myself before actually carving them so I knew that they were intended only as a way to make use of space that didn't exist.

Yet even with nothing to account for the passage of time there was still the unmistakable fact that time seemed to pass three times slower within.

It was something that while I didn't think was a problem, in fact it was useful if anything, but it was something I had absolutely no explanation for.

I didn't even have the ability to understand the how or why of it, it simply was.

To all my senses and to the best of the knowledge I had, they were stable.

I had used one then more as I had created others on my trips out of the mountain.

I had wished at the time that I had been able to make such a thing if not before I headed to the mountain then at least soon after arriving.

Those trips out of the mountains to what had been a small settlement at the time, Diggin. They would have been so very useful for bringing back food, instead I had had to take a couple of packs with me

I had barely been able to carry them at the same time, having to stop frequently and occasionally leave a pack hidden in the forested while I went ahead with another. Going back to retrieve the pack later and catch up to where I had doubled back from.

It had been gruelling work but I had needed to eat.

Now, I had only to carry the weight of this tablet, this odd book inside my leather satchel.

I held within it the room of four chests.

One was filled with valuables.

Bars of gold, silver and other metals. There were gems of different sorts, cut and uncut and even a few other materials, magical wood and stone albeit in very small amounts.

The rest of the chest was full of leather pouches that contained coins, coins I had made myself out of the raw metals. They were average in size, matching the sizes of most of the different kinds of coins in the world that I knew of.

Only they were minted in the name of a place and for a people that no longer existed.

The place Althalan had thought of as 'home'.

One side of a coin had a mountain and a symbol over the image that looked like an 'X' with a circle on top of it, a symbol that was repeated on the opposite side.

These were the coins that had been in common use in a place called Olerette, a place Althalan considered home. I knew that such a place was no more, not even remembered by any history books I had ever seen.

It had been a place far out to the south east, over the ocean on a different land.

Now my coins all looked to have been minted in that long forgotten place, save for the fact that they were obviously newly made.

I would been plenty of wealth if I hoped to enact my plans, despite the fortune I carried in that chest, it was still barely a fraction of what was still in the mountain.

The next chest contained several books on various topics and several more books filled with my notes. There was a small case that held all of my inks and writing accessories firmly in place and another case that held tools for engraving and carving.

Only taking up maybe half of the room in the chest, the rest was filled with small boxes of various sizes, each one containing a different tool or device that I might need. Perhaps most would remain unused but I knew that if I needed a specific tool for a working and I had left it here in the mountain, I would curse myself over and over.

The third chest was mostly empty, especially compared to the other two packed chests.

There were a couple of knives, forks, spoons, cooking pots, a pan or two and some cups. There was a single set of clothes, rough from hard use that were leaning more towards not fitting me than fitting me and a worn bedroll.

The remainder of it's contents were a piece of cheese, some dried deer meat and a bottle of wine.

The fourth chest was entirely empty.

I would buy food enough to fill the rest of the third chest but the fourth would be for clothing. The ill-fitting clothes I had on under my faithful but ragged robe weren't fit for much more than keeping off the chill.

I would have to buy better clothes, maybe even buy the fabrics and make them myself.

I was looking forward to a better pair of boots too.

All that would come once I reached civilisation again but after all was ready and I could leave, the sun was already setting.

So I spent a last night in my mountain.

The next morning, I walked to the clear stone to look out upon the Moreland Forest.

Instead of turning for the stairs or the stone disk I instead decided to take the fun way down.

With a wave of my hand the clear stone parted and I walked forward to stand on the stone of the mountain that served as a ledge.

Pausing for a moment while I looked out.

With another flick of my hand the stone behind me began to close back up as I leapt forwards into the open air.