I circled the desk, a drained mahogany, with tattered stains like scars and marks like wounds, it was the kind who’s history you would want to question. I stroked and prodded the wood, almost feeling for marrow while trying for any tells of hidden storage or craft, not that I'd really be able to tell the latter.

I didn’t know when Lunar would return, and Velma was even more puzzling, so I had to be quick.

Velma may run discrete meetings, and know craft I’ve not even heard about, but she was still Velma. Still flawed. If the scribings weren’t so flaming important, I doubt she would have done more than the bare minimum with them. Velma was a reactive person, she’d fix her mistakes, but she made plenty.

To be honest I should have looked through her desk when I was still trying to ‘learn what I can’. Velma’s desk was way too tidy for Velma.

She often carried stacks of parchment from her desk to her room twice a cycle, I’d bet those were the scribings. She never wrote at her desk- despite its stains- so she must take the papers to her room to make the tak we’d have to translate into lower tongues. My resolve strengthened. I’d search this desk ragged.

Five inks, slightly left of the edge; one ajar from the rest; A draw left slightly opened; The papers on her desk ascending more and more chaotically with each stacked: I took a quick mental note of the state of things, I was good at loading up on information, maybe from all the books, maybe from all our scheming. So I was pretty sure I could return everything to the exact way I found it.

First, I scanned the papers. They were all in low Urlin written by different merchants, mostly talking about new scrolls and books for the tomes. She never let me near her scrolls, but I’d seen a few from random glimpses into her room, and judging from the what the merchants said, what I’d seen was just the nail off the ogres foot.

I rummaged the draws finding some of the poems she made us learn when we arrived, I guess they weren’t just random, or maybe she just hadn’t sorted them out since back then. The bottom right draw contained my reflection floating on a smooth surface. It looked like several glass windows fused. Like a hardened clear sea in a basalt frame. I’d only heard of mirrors up until now, from vain rambles of embers. The artificers that made them where sages in their own right. Usually what they made had too much value for me to ever come across it.

The rest of the draws came up blank too. Frustrated, I started looking around the desk again. I inspected the chair and only found myself a whiff of its age- to my dismay. I felt around. Nib-less scribbles on the desk, scratches on one of the legs, blotched deep ink stains. I was feeling for triggers or anything of note really. Defeated, I plopped into Velma’s chair. I tried desperately to channel her thinking. Where would she put it?

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I looked once more towards the beads on her desk. There were seven all of different colors. Transitioning cleanly from red to purple. The medley of hues seemed familiar but I couldn’t quite place it. The beads grew to feel more and more distinctive in my hands. They all looked, and by touch seemed, the same. Yet they made different noises when they hit each other. The more time I spent with them the more each bead started to turn into its own world. Seven beads of seven sounds and feels. Then it struck me.

I had an idea of something that could explain their significance.

Me, Lunar and Ju didn’t know about our birth, the orphanage didn’t tell us anything of it, so we made up our own. We aligned it with the testing so it’d be easy to celebrate with most of the embers from the village gone. We’d usually trade our best gifts, be it our best steals of the year or the most meaningful finds and makes. Last year Vam did not let Jusuf leave the Keep on punishment, so we had to celebrate the day without him. Lunar gave me a manuscript. It wasn’t particularly large but it looked old. Pages rightly browning and the cover tortured by time. She said what I took for as a joke, that it was a lost book from the six holy Templars, mythed teachers to the Great Sage himself, the supposed the founders of the Kingdoms.

I didn’t believe her of course. Though the book still looked valuable. And I’d given her a silk dress I managed to steal from a travelling merchant’s wife that I wasn’t sure would fit her, so I had no rights for complaint.

The book turned out interesting but useless. It showed a great war so tumultuous lands were split and seas were made. But throughout there was few words. The book was a faint memory now, but something about the beads forced it back into my mind.

I rushed to my room to get it. Picking the book up from below my bed, I had to swat away others piles of texts and notes around it. I flicked through, scanning the diagrams.

The book showed men and monsters alike at war. Two sides locked in conflict. There was seven men in total, all on the same side. They wore little attire, showing flesh with no shame- something the church would consider evil. They all wore short dress-like beast skins around their waist, each marked with numerous bloody streaks like a deadly counter.

They all had black tattoos on them as well. They showed animals, shapes and weapons. I saw one man with a big bird printed on his wrist and the same beast flying high above him. What stood out the most was an angry looking man leading their ranks. He was draped in a robe made from beast skin, but this time it was much more than just a beast. It was a dragon, complete with scales each bursting with a soul of their own.

I didn’t know what was different about the book, but it wasn’t the same as the last time I looked at it. There seemed to be more going on than I remembered. Regardless, nothing explained why the seven beads reminded me of the book. I flicked through the pages again, noting more the movements of the attacks, how they were formed and by who. The book did not speak of their hand signs, and it was kind of hard to notice them with all the grand fights at show, but they were there. In counting there were seven, some requiring wrist contortions and finger twists. I tried mimicking them, and felt more than a twinge of disappointment when nothing happened.

In my displeasure I thought obviously the warriors couldn’t exist. All they church mentioned was the Great Sage.

But something tugged at me. There must have been something to all this. I couldn’t let it rest. I kept on reading.