WWW #18: Between the Lines

This is the sound of Worlds Beyond Number.

Golden banners, crimson pennants,

a rack of wands and war staves,

a smell of

singed incense.

Some food beyond in a small kitchen.

Some ripe fruit hanging in the air.

And a musk of someone who stays in peak physical condition.

And a home of someone who

is here and lives life to the fullest in the moments that he is here, but then is gone for long stretches of time.

Suvi, you stand in the doorway looking at silver, a pack ready to go that he keeps packed in a closet of his chambers

is on his shoulder as he holds a scroll in his hand.

Silver's brow is set and a

vacant but determined expression hangs on his face

as he re-accepts that his life is given over to a great cause.

This is a fact of his existence that spares him some great deal of turmoil.

For all of the freedom he has given up

means that he need but be loyal to forces he believes are working great wonders upon the world.

He looks up at you.

Fort Kieran was overrun last night.

They had to abandon the garrison.

Forces are mustering about two days' march away.

They had to shut down the gate at the fort before anyone could use it.

The Archmage Saber's already there.

Okay.

Why?

When do you

does it have to be now?

It has to be now.

Subie

runs runs through a list,

a litany of things that she wants

to do here in this place where she's been vulnerable so many times for the last month.

And beg for a little more time

and to be cold, foolish, and emotional.

And puts it all away.

Because if he could,

and she watched his face as he became the version of himself that she is so fond of,

she doesn't want to fail him in this moment either.

Would you like an escort?

Give me an insight check.

Why must I roll like trash?

On every insight check!

Nine!

So, what you don't see,

or rather what Silver does

an adequate job in disguising,

is

the hope that you would succumb to your emotions and ask for something

so that he might be able to be strong and yet give in to such a request.

Instead,

his stoicism is met by yours.

And he says,

Yes,

let us go.

As you march

through Gavril, court of the citadel,

white gravel stones under your boots,

he shoulders a citadel.

war staff, something a little bit more meaningful over his shoulder.

You see the staff glows with actually some spell energy already contained within it.

The work of

wizards and artificers of plenty.

And

he has his emerald ring on his finger, some armored bracers that not only give him some small benefit, like the braces of the Azure Battalion, but these Citadel Evokers bracers protect from

a fair amount of the horrors he will see.

As he marches towards an

area assembling in front of a traveling door stone, off towards the edge of one of these platforms, you see a small

scintillating golden light arcs overhead as a temporary roof is created to, even from the sky above, cover up the coordinates that are being placed into the sliding circles of stone underneath.

You see other war mages gathering here.

Silver nods to some of them as he approaches.

You also see there are new Tamori here.

The Tamori appeared at the Citadel during your lifetime.

Like you were a little kid when the first ones were around.

You remember meeting Mr.

Callum on the first day that he existed, where you were like nine years old.

You are now 20.

What you're 20.

Yeah.

You are now 20 years old.

You see a new Tamari for the first time.

Several of them

smile

with a deep kind of lava-red glow on like at their the base of their throats as they open their mouth.

They look as though they are lit from within.

Uh, and you see there are others near them that are radiating light about sort of a powerful, icy, hot, white-blue light.

Uh, and each of them you see have uh just matchsticks on them, they have the the

sort of normal Imperial war staves.

But you see, they are Tamori that are fully

armed.

Much like Mr.

Callum, they look

identical, but they don't have any distinguishing feature on them.

You see that they have maybe like

across like a patch across their shoulder, like under the epaulettes of their coats, they have a long sequence of numbers written out,

stylized by the lingua arcana.

So a number as numbers are notated within that language.

And

the sort of hot, icy white-blue ones have a small sort of gem around their wrist on a bracelet that aids with concentration that the red, more fiery ones do not.

Can I cast detect magic and try to figure out what spells these Tamori are?

Uh give me a sleight of hand check to disguise the casting from these beings here.

Fuck.

Nine.

Uh one of the red Tamori looks over at you, says

Are you

interested in what we are?

Uh uh silver you see is busy talking to a commanding officer

and

the sort of Roman smiles, eyes burning like hot coals in the bottom of a campfire.

Oh

yes, I am.

What's your name?

Please.

You see, there's a

as one of the hot icy sort of once over, and there's a crackle of electricity.

Names.

And

they sort of smile and

walk off together as Silver comes back.

You detect magic.

You detect

another.

There's about 15 of each here.

They are ninth level.

In D ⁇ D terms,

they are fireballs and lightning bolts upcast to ninth level,

who

you see

associated with them.

Mr.

Callum is a cantrip.

So he can cast himself over and over and over and over and over again.

And you see that these Tamori here, like the matchsticks are for casting cantrips, so they must have the ability to cast some kind of cantrip of themselves.

You would guess maybe like a firebolt, witch bolt.

But you get the sense that if they cast their true spell, it's the last thing they do.

Oh my god.

And I've never, there's, is this the first time I've seen an execution of something like this

walking?

Yeah.

Wonders never cease at the citadel.

Okay.

Uh, silver.

Hold on.

Uh, yes.

Sky.

Uh, and I'm gonna reach under my glove to like a bracelet that's been hanging so low on my wrist that it's been obscured by my blue gloves and remove it.

And it's just a really simple like white gold chain with a couple stars on it and a little moon.

It's not very special.

It was just.

I know it's very corny that I got myself a little cloaking gift, but

I really want you to have it and bring it back.

Silver takes the gift

and gives you a kiss.

You have to come back.

Wizard Sky,

you have my word.

I'll return.

And I think she leans up and kisses him again

before.

Remembering that there are so many people around and everything's happening and

this isn't the moment she wanted it to be or where she wanted to be.

Yeah, as you pull away from here, you see the sort of the discomfort of this tender display in this place.

Silver walks off towards some other wizards.

You see one of the fiery Tamori look over at you and just go,

Nice little smooch.

You got a fucking problem?

If I've got a problem, then we've all got one.

Do your job.

Can't do anything else.

I think that's the thing that, like, gets Subi's blood up enough that she turns and leaves.

You see a couple of these Tamori sort of

laughing at each other.

And

it looks...

The feeling you got from these ones is very different than you've gotten from any Tamori before.

Yeah.

These are the most powerful spells.

You've only seen Tamori that recreate either like cantrips or in some cases first level spells.

Yeah.

These are like higher, more dangerous, more volatile spells.

And the fact that the first time you're seeing these beings, they're being shipped out.

Yeah.

You also know that it's like, you don't need to know any just based on magical theory alone, the fact that these guys are shipping out without names is not good.

Yeah.

Everything in Stevie's mind as she's walking away,

Fort Kieran fell and they're falling in immediately and taking out like prototypes of high-level Tamori.

This feels like a rush job.

Is there anything I know about like the military importance of Fort Kieran?

Fort Kieran is in a region called Shabal.

It's in the far north.

And

I think on the way there, Silver would have told you if you'd asked, that the garrison was taken by a number of great beasts.

And by the time that they were able to come back, a company of sorcerers from Gauthmai had already set up within.

And you know that Gauthmai is to the far south?

Yeah.

So, uh, and they believe that the Red Fleet is on its way to

that coast, towards the coast of Shabal.

Knowing that my friends expect me to be gone for the night,

I will instead uh,

I'm gonna go to whatever library I frequent the most and look up anything I can on the shapeshifters of Gauthmai and what they've got going on.

And I will go and spend the night in Silver's room.

If I still have the key, I would have tried not to remember to give it back.

Give me a nature check.

Eight

Looking for material on the shapeshifters of Gauthmai, you go to your normal libraries to research and find vanishingly little about the actual practice or substance of those shapeshifters.

There's lots of information about how to fight them.

And basically, what it says is the normal instinct to deal damage, the normal instinct to kill through injury, will be poorly served fighting a a shapeshifter.

That you are much better off trying to do something clever.

Like to use D ⁇ D terminology, you're way better off making them make a saving throw against something like a hold or a banishment or something like that.

That like in a pure fight, a shapeshifter will likely win.

This is the kind of information that your most frequented areas of the Citadel have on shapeshifters, which is like, you want to know about shapeshifters?

Well, here's how you kill them.

Yeah.

And there's very little about their their history, their goals, their ambitions, their achievements.

But they are sort of centered on Gauthmite.

Yeah.

More interesting

searches will happen in the daylight.

Right now, I think she's just trying to comfort herself with anything that she knows feels like a transitive.

Silver would know, and he will be okay and it will be fine.

The next day comes:

Ursulan, Ame, the Fox, Suvi, and a number of hovering platforms,

basically just little lines of light in the shape of beautiful ornate carriages.

So it looks like carriages made of glass, but where half the glass kind of ripples into and out of existence as they move along, just sort of pure force.

These carriages of force trundle along over the beautiful streets of Malakanth Court as it is moving day for the Wizard Sky.

The beautiful red room of Alabast Hall gets all sort of boxed up.

You know, real higgatus-figotus vibes up in there.

Shout out to the sword and the stone.

Ameen little owls is there heckling me.

Who do you go to?

If wizards had been meant to move, they would have been born with U-Hauls.

You see, the

as you arrive,

there is

the massive,

one of the five main Archmagi towers.

And this is the Archmage Silences Tower, which looms large over Malakanth Court.

And there are several buildings that buttress off of it.

And there's a much smaller, like only about, I would say, like an eight-story tower that, which is still.

It's so cozy.

I would say that the Silence's Tower is probably a, let's call it a like 40 story tower um this little eight story tower abuts from a single sky bridge and there is no door on the ground floor oh you gotta be shitting me

what what what it's a starter tower

i'm sorry what how long until you get another one

uh

I don't know if I had to give like a number less than a decade.

He's so old.

Wow.

Wait, you'll take his?

Yeah, that's what I'm training to do.

We don't have to talk about it.

He's a very nice man that will live a long time.

How are you going to furnish this whole place?

I do not have enough furniture.

It is going to look crazy for a while.

Okay,

well,

um,

I can grab a couple of the old milk crates from the bakery for some temporary furniture.

Oh, you're so sweet.

Please do not do that.

Thank you.

I will

buy furniture.

I can do that.

But thank you.

That's so.

You're so sweet.

Um, can we get, would you guys want to decorate?

Like, do you want a little room?

And we can all stay together?

I was assuming as much.

The Spectre must have a room in the Wizard's Tower.

Agreed.

And Ami, and you'll have a room too, and we'll all stay in the tower.

And we'll figure out a way for you to get in and out that's more convenient than the

door through the rest of the tower.

We'll figure it out.

Yeah, I.

that sounds good, but I

do need to go check back into the cottage soon.

Oh, okay.

I mean, I

still have some business to conduct here, and we still have a lot of things to investigate for you, but

I should definitely

at least go back to the Silbury Gate

as soon as possible.

But, like, just for a little, right?

Because

you could do.

I mean, Cram Cramer and she was always

out.

Well, she was.

And maybe, but she was the witch of Toma.

And so am I.

Well, no, no, no.

No, no.

You're the witch of the world's heart.

And this is part of the world.

So maybe be here.

You

always

know how to drive a hard bargain.

So let's.

A week.

All right.

Let's at least, let's at least

put this on hold for a week.

I have like a big meeting to be studying for and I need to gather allies about.

Yeah, how are you doing, by the way?

Oh, God.

Terrible.

So I went over and Silver got deployed.

So

we're doing great.

It's fine.

He'll be fine.

He'll be back.

But

that's happening now.

so

it seems like the lull in the war

is

unlulling

in a way that feels bad for me in a personal way that i don't want to process yet

i'm gonna stop talking now let's move things yay yeah i'm gonna lift stuff

you guys begin moving and we actually the as you're moving stuff you see sort of walking up through hallways carrying boxes uh you see that a number of uh sort of normal

like

stone constructs begin to also help carry some of the heavier bits of furniture.

You guys are more carrying boxes and tomes and things like that.

These are a little bit more fragile and require a little bit more care.

Um, the fox, uh, sort of panting along next to you, you see, he has just one little basket of potpourri in his mouth from the bathroom.

You see, he goes up and looks at you, Ahme, boss,

do you think

what happened last night in that bathroom?

Well, the reckoning came for me.

It's time for me to take on my responsibilities as the Witch of the World's Heart.

And

we gotta get back to the cottage, but also I don't know quite how to leave here.

Do you remember what you said to the little fairy?

Yes, I do, actually.

I said that

I said my apologies and my regards, and that I'm newly Witch of

the World's heart, and I let her pick the location of the meeting, which is not something that I'm supposed to do.

Oh,

uh, well, oh, oh, tell her that the fairy lied, and then I wrote it, I wrote it in my handwriting.

Oh,

well, tell her that that's not your handwriting, and then she says, Yeah, well, and then she'll ask you to do handwriting, but then I'll say, but then hide your hands in your sleeves and say your hands got cut off.

I could could just actually write with my left hand.

Maybe.

And then she wouldn't be able to understand the handwriting and be like, oh, this is clearly not your handwriting.

But she wouldn't be able to understand any of it.

Because you'd be writing it backwards.

Hey, Fox.

Yeah.

I think that maybe actually it might be time for you to learn to read.

No.

Oh, no.

Oh, boy, I don't want to wear a read.

Spits the potpourri out.

Oh, you're a potpourri?

Yeah.

You witness

moving in here.

The Archmage Silence appears.

You see, he goes...

Oh, Wizard Sky.

Welcome finally with your name cloak to the Tower of the Glove.

I hope that you enjoy your stay here.

You will be so much closer

to the comings and goings.

It is ever busy here in

my tower of solemnity,

where in the business of the citadel is conducted.

Come, come, I shall show you objects of note.

This will be your page, Julia.

And you see that there is a young girl who's about like 16 years old.

You see that she has a white, sort of crisp robe with a small tight sort of blue vest over the corset.

You see that illusory powder white clouds move reflecting the sky above on her vest.

And she has a little bright sun pin, a little golden pin, and she smiles.

You see her eyes as well.

The irises are very intense sky blue.

You also believe are reflecting the sky.

With like some reddish strawberry blonde hair tied up behind her.

She goes,

a pleasure.

I'm very happy to report.

Thank you so much.

You see, Silence goes, Yuli comes directly from Banners, which you went to Banners.

Banners is the court for kids that are gonna make it to the Citadel, and Demings is the court of kids that are not gonna make it to the Citadel.

There's some deviation, like about five to ten percent of Banners drops out, and about only five to ten percent of Demings makes it into the Citadel.

Um, but So she's from Banners.

What was your name again?

Yuli?

Yulia.

Yulia.

Hi.

I'm Skye, and I very much like what you've got.

This is nice.

I like this.

I'm studying to take the entrance exam for the illusion discipline.

Oh, that's fun.

If there's anything aesthetically in the tower that you want to be changed, I am happy to change it on a temporary basis until a permanent artificer's

solution can be achieved.

You are very eager.

Do I know any of your family?

My

aunt is

the wizard, the sword of the Citadel.

Oh.

Oh.

Oh.

Hey.

Yes, this is Yuli.

Yulia is a cousin,

but there are weird delineations because Steele was taken in childhood to come join the Citadel.

So her siblings are non-wizards.

And this kid came to the Citadel and maybe, you maybe had some relationship with Steele, like coming up through the things, but did not live at Steele's house.

Amazing.

Yes.

Oh, yeah.

Okay.

The resemblance.

That's great.

You're great.

Yulia.

Oh, we're going to have a great time.

Yes.

That's so fun.

Thank you so much.

I, I, if there's anything.

And to Bear and to Amay, your honored guests, your honored friends, the

guests, sorry,

if they require

anything, then I will get it as quickly and swiftly as I am able in service of the Wizard Sky.

Pey Julia,

I really like that top.

Could I have one?

Like yours?

Because I too am a servant of the Wizard Sky.

Oh, servant, big word.

Nope.

Nope.

I mean, I

protect her.

I mean, you know, I hey, it's, I'm, it's not a word.

I'm a word I just thought it sounded more official, you know.

Oh, yeah, no, you know, my servant.

I don't have servant.

We're all.

Yeah, I.

Amish, shut up.

Um, you see that she looks over and says, I, I, I would

at once, but, um, and you see, looking over at the door to the Tower of the Glove, there's you've like crossed this little sky bridge up on the fourth floor floor of the Arkan Age Silences Tower.

You see that there is a massive,

almost like

three feet across emerald gemstone set

into a brass basin within the wall.

She gestures to it.

It stands just inside the doorway, almost like the receptacle of like holy water, if you were to like walk into a church or something in the shape of almost a bird bath or some other kind of basin uh she gestures to it and says i just actually have donated to the um you see the archimage silence says uh important

actually

this

arith depository uh is actually claimed by

uh you uh first.

I was instructing Yulia as to use it.

From this point forward, Yulia, I would use it only at the ending of the day on your way home.

you may actually be required to use some of that energy in service to your wizard.

However,

there is a timer on this, so it will remain at your disposal until such time as you have refreshed your day.

The fox would like you to explain what an Aeris

depository is.

Yes.

For the Fox, an Aerith depository is where.

Pretty sure

I thought it was an Aerith.

See, the Fox looks up and says, Yeah, I heard Aerith.

Yeah.

Okay.

The depository is where wizards can put their.

We have a finite number of uses of magic before

rest and recuperation are required.

And

if another mage

puts their magic into there,

I would be able to access it and use it if I need it.

It's nice.

We're not wasting here.

Do you understand that there are wizards at the front line of the Empire's war for its own freedom and salvation from enemies abroad?

Those wizards have but the same fraction of Arith that their potency at this arcade art affords them.

Meanwhile, here at the Citadel, we busy ourselves with study and research, with

an equivalent portion based on our own potency accumulating day by day.

They have great need, and we have relatively none.

The act of spellcasting occurs mostly for frivolity, recreation, or in some cases an aid to study here at the Citadel.

So, a system of these depositories and of the great Arith

turbines and gathering pools within the center of the citadel, that that energy might be shared across our vast empire through this.

And you see, he taps the emerald ring, much like Subi's on his own finger,

throughout the Empire, from all to those whose need is greatest.

So

you

do spells with other people's juice?

If I need to.

Can you save your juice for later?

Do you send yours to this uh depository?

I do.

Uh, if I don't, towards the end of the day, if I

have excess, I will send it forward in hopes that uh those of us fighting

could use it.

Oh,

please don't call it juice.

I'm so sorry.

That's all right.

Archimage.

It's all right.

It's just not what it is.

You see, he look he looks and says,

the Argomage Silence looks over and says, and to your question, which of Toma,

the

necessary,

it is, generally speaking, frowned upon to dip into the community coffers while one has one's own personal resources available.

That makes sense.

That makes sense.

Can anybody use it?

And is it,

like, do they, how do you, how do you keep them fresh?

Because, you know, sometimes.

Do you know what's going to be great?

I'm going to tell you a story, not around my boss or the impressionable youth next to me.

What does it taste like?

What is the, does it, does it have a smell?

Kind of tangy.

I will.

You say, kind of tangy.

And Lisa Fox says, it's juice.

And you see,

you see that the Iron Silence says, be be quiet.

And you see that as

he says it, the whole tower kind of echoes as the Archmage Silence says, be quiet.

And you see, there is a moment where you feel almost against your will flung into a state of meditative reflection as you realize that this Archmage, doddering old man though he is, is some incredibly high-level wizard.

And he goes,

To the Solarium.

Yulia, please assist the construct.

The boxes are all clearly labeled.

See, Sinus Coverion says, How happy I am.

Sky and silence appear for the ages.

And when you are settled in, you will come upstairs and I will give you a tour of the main tower, a tower that you will spend much time in, I am sure.

And he gives you a little hug.

Oh, oh, I hug him back so gently.

This is the greatest day of my life.

A little bit.

Thank you.

He takes two steps and then looks around and you see uses his little green ring to make a dimension door.

Yeah.

The fox looks over and says, so it's juice.

And I do the like, is Yulia gone?

Yulia has walked off to help direct the constructs.

Hey, it is juice.

And the reason I dye my hair is because I played in one of these once just to see how much i could channel out and i almost killed myself so whatever you're thinking don't do it it's a bad it's a bad it's a bad time how old were you oh 14.

oh oh my looks at the fox

It almost killed one of my best friends here.

So I understand that you guys have a beautiful, like, sneaky moment.

Please don't make me mourn you.

yeah okay

don't drink the juice no don't drink the juice if you drink the juice you will be cursed with the knowledge of how to read

I'll be sticking to milk

Abria, please describe the

area of Subi's new tower that has been set up for her to do the majority.

There are so many empty libraries in this.

They have actually like your books from your old place come up and fill half the shelves of one story of the library space available to you.

And basically, the whole rest of the Citadel is open.

Like, this is a place for you to call books up.

It'll be recorded that you've called them up from the greater libraries, but you don't have a limit on how long you can check out scrolls and other books for.

The Citadel's resources are available to you.

If something has to live at your library because you want it to, that's totally fine.

And basically only an Archmage's intercession can get that book released out into like other sort of coverage.

I've had a list for two years of the books that I'm calling up.

And I'm going to say 40% of them are spite to friends.

Oh, were you excited to get to read that one day?

It's in my library.

They start.

So books start honestly coming in even early.

Your moving is like a fraction of the moving that's happening this day.

It's mostly just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, like new books coming out of the rest of the citadel to fill up your wizard's tower.

Describe what your actual, it's not the storage area, what your actual, and you would have a couple of workspaces, depending on if you're doing alchemy or creating a construct, but like where does your

most

like persnickety spellcraft

wizard workstation, where is it in the tower and what does it look like?

How is it arranged and laid out?

I think there's no universe in which it's not the sort of tiny

sloped roof, like attic space at the very top of the tower.

The one that's above the main room you would use for either like your sleeping quarters.

It would just be a storage area, but that's going to be my favorite space because I've been, again, I've had time, especially in the last year when most of my duty was make sure silence is awake or when I can allow him to be asleep and then just daydream about what I will do when I'm here or in his tower later.

I start casting illusory enchantments.

I want to always be able to see the sky above me.

Incredible.

The conical

top of this wizard's tower is

replaced with a beautiful scintillating glass, much like the glass of the Arian, the sand of the desert.

For those that are gazing into this space from above, what do they see on the surface of the glass tower top?

Looking down, I think this is where all of the red lives.

I think it was very nice for it to sort of be in her apartments and to live in this space where, like, that color that

it's been my favorite color for so long long lives, but it's part of a life that I

only

want to reach to in private.

It's my secret color that's just for me.

So, uh,

things that were like rugs and wall hangings and duvet covers, all of that becomes tapestry around the wall.

And this room is again like buffered and soft and swoopy and full of fabric and comfort.

And yet, that like center

just has.

I'll go back and do it later, but I'm just going to kind of chalk block out my sort of ritual sigil where magic that I will cast again and again that is mine will sit at the center of a room that reminds me of the person I used to be and the sky that watched it.

And everything on the floors below will be perfectly appropriate for the Apprentice Archmage sky.

Gorgeous.

You look up and see, sort of, in one direction, the towering might of the Archmage Silence's main central tower, which is a castle unto itself.

But out beyond, Silence is towards the edge of Malacanth Court.

So you also realize that quite nicely, basically the only way you can see into your tower is from Silence's tower.

For the most part, you're just looking out at the edge of the area in the beautiful white desert.

It's a bright, sunny day.

You can tell that at night, especially as you like, you know, are like floating up, like as you get up towards the top in the later hours, you're going to see like incredible vistas of stars and constellations here.

gorgeous desk, which is sort of like rounded to the round edge of the tower.

So it's almost like the, it's like the cockpit of a star.

It's like the bridge of a starship in here a little bit.

Like it's a rounded room, but there's this great workspace where you have surface as you turn in all directions.

And you see that there are a number of shelves that from the conical roof just descend slightly and accordion out into perfect tiny shelves full of,

you know, almost like the hinges of a tackle box or one of those jewelry cases that like complicated little machines that it goes.

And suddenly you're looking at multiple shelves and the shelves have drawers, and the drawers have compartments, and within the compartments are tiny little nautilus shells, and miniature insect horns, dried and iridescent, small scarab,

little scarab compound eyes.

And then next to that, you see little elements of volcanic ash mixed with glitter and glass.

You see, there's like all sorts of vast and sundry treasures, coins.

There's an entire drawer that's just coins of dead empires and kingdoms.

Just a stocked wizard's sanctum.

And hanging from one of those, you see as they come down,

hanging from string are three corked and stoppered labeled bottles of ink.

You see that one of the, you would know exactly what these are.

One of them to the left is a bottle of blue ink, deep, sort of like rich royal blue.

Its bottle has a slender neck, but it is angular and multifaceted, like a gem.

Hanging from the cork is a little tab that says Cyril.

C-Y-R-I-L.

In the middle is a squat black jar of regular black ink, and the little name tag there says Enzo.

And then to the right, you see that there is a,

it looks clearly like a little bit larger and sturdier.

It's also the only one that's not clear glass, but you can tell the ink inside is red through this kind of like amber old liquor bottle, it looks like.

And you see that one has a name tag from it that says Vandal.

Vandal.

Hey, Bear.

Bear.

Yes.

You want to see something crazy?

It would be unreal if you could continue to surprise me.

But go ahead, give it a shot.

Ollie pops her head head in the room.

Did you say crazy?

Yeah, come on, come on, come on.

Okay, you can't always come in here, but today we're coming in here, and it's going to be great.

So check this out.

And I'm going to go to,

let's go middle bottle.

Okay.

And you can also make a history check or an arcana check.

You know what these are.

Yeah.

But you can make a different kind of check if you want.

Yeah, let's get a little check.

My instinct is to play with the black

ink, but let me just, can I get a little glance?

A little arcana to see.

Yeah.

Is this the biggest mistake I've ever made?

Give me an arcana check.

22.

Hell yeah.

You can see from it that the black bottle is the oldest of these ones here.

You see that, and I think on that 22 arcana, you could tell that the bottle on the right, the red one that's in the amber bottle, that is not a well-prepared repository.

So that's not an arcane ink bottle.

That's just a bottle that has that ink in it.

Oh, okay.

And then the one on the left,

the blue bottle, I think you can tell has the least amount of ink in it.

I should probably open the blue one.

It will probably be the safest as I reach out for the black bottle and open it.

You open the black bottle and you see that the ink swirls around

and it attempts to crawl up over the lip like it's looking for a surface,

but it can't quite get up out of the lip unless you pour it out.

I'm gonna tilt the bottle towards Ursula.

What are you doing?

What are you doing, Suvi?

Yeah, look, do you want to meet Enzo?

Uh, what?

Who?

Uh, and I'm just gonna reach behind me and grab.

This is one of the petty books that I took from my roommate that I don't like that ended up doing a bunch of transmutation, and she was so excited for a book.

So I'm just gonna grab it by the spine, uh, crack it open, and in the middle of some beautiful diagram about how to turn it does it I don't know I don't know what it says I'm not even looking and I just pour this bottle out onto a book all of you watch as the ink falls through the air

an old face with like long ears of ink and a long impish nose and two

big eyes appear in the ink as they open the like the there are whites in these eyes that appear in this jet black ink that

as it hits the book boom and

a little probably like eight inch tall imp.

It has like wings of black ink, spindly arms and legs, this like incredibly long pointed nose.

Looks sort of in a distinguished old man's kind of face with these long pointed ears back.

Every shape within the shapes of him is triangular, with the exception of two big eyes.

And you see that he sort of looks around as sort of almost like mosquito looking he's like a little mosquito ink guy and you see he looks at the page that he hits

and looking at it he goes

diagram of some sort of well no no no that's and you see that he takes a finger and begins to mark something and he's like ending with a proposition and you see he begins to update the margins of the book as he just starts writing in it.

You would know he's getting stuff wrong.

Yeah.

He's not.

Like, you immediately see, he turns a page and says, Diagram scrammaticus incantatum.

No, no, no.

Oh, okay.

Oh, this is great.

Wow.

Enzo?

You see, he whips around and says, Enzo, hi.

Hi.

Hello.

Hi.

I'm Amy.

Amy?

Hello, Ami.

Oh,

Amy.

Are you?

A-M-E?

Yeah!

You see, he just

has a toe behind him and writes it in the book behind him.

Are you an ink spirit?

Evil.

Oh, yes, I am.

I am a spirit of ink.

Some call me an ink demon.

I call him an ink demon.

Hello, little demon.

The wizard of the tower.

There we go.

Do I now behold she of these many tombs?

Yes.

Yes, you do.

Uh.

Um, Sufi, who is this?

So, sometimes when you do a bunch of magic, it kind of kind of gunks up a little bit.

Like, you know how you can get, like, lactic, like, lactic acid, and it makes your muscles sore after you work out?

Sure, Steele's tried to explain that to me before.

Yeah, I also didn't listen when she explained.

Yeah.

But it works well for this.

Uh, magic and spells and research kind of have that too.

And when they build up too much, they make a nasty little fucker like this guy.

You see, Enzo has moved over to you, and to you, Ahme, and said, Ahme.

And correct me if I'm wrong, but spirit always knows you are a witch.

Correct.

And I believe a

great witch.

Well, I'm a pretty okay witch.

You see, he goes, well, the world must know.

And he writes on your dress in huge staining ink.

He goes, A-M-E-P-R-E-T-T-Y-G-W-D-W-I-T-C-H.

Pretty good witch.

Do you find this charming or shall I make him stop?

He got me pretty good.

And

he says, you there.

Yes.

Oh.

You see, he flits up to your face.

I'm going to take a hand down.

You have been edited.

What?

Ah!

Ah!

Ah!

Where's your ink?

Sylvie, am I allowed to swing a sword in the air?

You cut him straight in half, and ink scatters all over the ground.

Enzo!

Oh my god.

Are you okay?

You killed him.

Suvio.

The fox licks him.

All ink tastes bad.

Don't eat the ink.

Yeah, don't do that.

Um, shit.

Well, you killed him.

I was a...

Oh, sorry.

I pressed to digitate

my dress clean and everything, but I try to scoop up the piles of ink.

Oh, that's okay.

I've got two more.

What?

Is he like dead?

Dead?

I'm sorry.

I didn't.

I just...

No, that happens.

Is he?

No, you like 10 gold pieces of materials and you can bring him.

Yeah.

He's there for a little bit.

Okay, you know, he screamed about how he wanted to edit me and I was like...

Yeah, that's...

Why did he...

That was weird.

I'm assuming the glamour.

That was my first thought.

That makes perfect sense.

Yes.

Oh, my gosh.

Well, yeah, but

you're wearing makeup and he's not looking.

Oh, you're edited.

I'm...

This isn't...

This is my natural, yeah, I'm wearing makeup.

Yeah.

Just a little bit.

All right, pretty good witch.

Oh, my gosh.

So, uh, yeah, they're, those are in those bottles.

Uh, generally speaking, you want to give them stuff to do or they'll

stain your dress

and ruin.

Letty's book that she's been dreaming of reading for two years.

Uh, I do not fix any of his weird marginalia.

I close the book and put it back on the shelf.

You can see, Amy, looking at this, why ink demons would be such a huge problem at the Citadel, given this one has one of the more beneficial instincts and is still just updating books with wrong information.

Yeah.

All right.

Are we going to do that again?

Oh, no, we don't have to.

Are you okay?

I'm fine.

I just, I want to be ready so I don't kill any more of them.

Oh, no.

I can,

I'll get him back in a little bit.

That's fine.

What are the, I i mean okay wait so this byproduct of magic like right like magical runoff for wizard spells uh i don't i don't think that there's not like this for any of my magic or any spirits magic that i've seen well i i give me actually give me a religion check you can give me religion or arcana

uh 12.

i think

what Sufi is referring to as a byproduct doesn't gel with your understanding of the spiritual world.

I think that to you,

I think that Ahme's initial reaction of like, oh my God, an ink spirit is exactly right.

Witches do not limit the world of spirits to exclusively spirits of nature.

There are spirits of the celestial heights.

There are spirits of,

there are ancestor spirits.

Like there is the idea of people going to,

you know, people have different visions of like what an afterlife would be or being able to look over their family from some celestial or nature-based paradise.

Like, lots of different cultures within Umora have different ideas of what happens to you.

Like, there is a spiritual dimension to all things,

and there are a lot of things which are of artifice.

So, the idea that, like, ink, even though it might be man-made, would not have some spiritual dimension to it.

No, of course, there's a spiritual dimension to ink.

Yeah, so it's not like extra, right?

I mean, it's just an ink

spirit

that you use the kind of demon.

But I understand our differences in

the ink demon

that you

summon or that you

well, he kind of exists, and if not corralled properly, will ruin everything.

You've seen this place is 140% books.

So

we

sort of have a sense of when you, when you see an ink

grab him, bottle him, give them stuff to do, keep them busy, and then it's a sort of mutually beneficial

relationship.

Great.

So you're also now going to have a little guy?

Yeah, yeah.

I'll have a little, is that?

No, just no, it's just another little guy who's

hangs out with us.

Hey, Ursulon?

Yeah.

Don't make me, I'm not like them.

What, a little guy?

I'm not a little guy.

I mean, I'm a pretty big guy.

You're all big.

I'm normal.

I'm regular size.

All right, Fox, I apologize.

You're regular size.

So we're going to have another regular size guy.

Yeah, we'll have another regular size guy.

Thank you for apologizing.

This is really healthy.

I like this.

We're getting better.

We had a great time with those sausages the other night.

Yeah.

Oh, God.

I'm really good at words about smells.

You are good at words about smells and weird at describing sex what did i get wrong

i'm not attracted to anybody here you can talk about sex yeah

no it wasn't it wasn't sad it wasn't aww

like oh that's cute all of you have enormous weird bodies Okay.

All right.

Okay.

All right.

I don't like this anymore.

Hey.

No, you watch.

I'm saying the truth.

Okay.

Yeah, that's that's your normal size guy.

And I've got a couple little guys.

They're not the same.

A familiar is very cool.

Fox, you're very cool.

Thank you.

And these are just little

kind of just things that we have stewardship over.

And it's nice.

And they'll make a nice cup of coffee, whatever you need.

It's great.

What?

You make you coffee?

Oh, not yet.

Those are brand new.

Do your proofreading?

No, they don't do.

Excuse me.

I would never let a demon proofread my work.

Are you kidding, Fox?

We are.

Come on.

If you learn to read,

I will get you and feed you anything that you can

read.

Do you want me to eat books?

No, no, no, no, no.

Any words that you read.

You want me to eat words?

What can I do to incentivize you to read?

I gotta go to sleep.

You see, he lies down.

Oh, he went to sleep.

When does the

is he gonna go into heat?

Like

now?

Oh, no, no, no, no.

Never again?

So he has to be celibate with you?

Well, I just think he it's hard for him to find someone else, you know?

What do you mean?

Now that he.

You see foxes all the time.

Well, but they're not foxes like him.

Oh, oh.

Yeah.

Oh, because he's the one that did.

Oh, that's weird.

Yulia walks in and goes.

Hi.

Oh, Wizards Guy.

I see one of the ink demons.

Do you want me to, I can actually take care of.

You're good.

Okay.

Hi.

Well, if you're busy with important matters, I can reconstitute the ink demon with some of the, we have some of the resources necessary.

You don't have to bother yourself with that.

Oh, that's really sweet.

Thank you.

Yeah, if you can get that done, it doesn't have to be now.

In the next couple of days, that'd be great.

Perfect.

Yes, I will do.

I know

Enzo's the oldest one from the tower.

So the other two are more relatively new.

Yeah, do you have any intel for me on Vandal?

Vandal is very aptly named.

And I believe Cyril writes poetry.

Oh my gosh.

Can we open Cyril?

Can we open Cyril?

Can we open Cyril?

Can we open Cyril?

Yulia, can you open Cyril, please?

Okay.

And you see she goes over and opens the blue one, pours it out, a similarly constituted, but this one has more of like a

porcine.

He has more of like a porcine snout and little tusks, little gargoyle-esque wings are a little small.

See, he goes,

Oh,

hi, bud.

A poem for my lost comrade and so.

And you see, he begins to just scrawl on the wall, like a spirit made of jet black ink, a friend for all who yearned to think,

Of marginalia, proof, and pen who lived and died to live again.

Oh, that was really good.

Well done, Cyril.

You're gonna clean that off the wall right now.

Thank you so much.

Please let my poetry live forever.

But on the wall, so that other people might come and discover that I was a great poet.

Interesting.

Uh, how about a little deal?

Okay.

Are you good at making coffee?

Yes.

Are you lying?

Yes.

Okay.

If you can't make it.

If you get good at making a little latte for me, I will let you put your poetry places that I will not immediately claim and I will start precipitating this one off of my favorite rug.

You see, he goes, my poem!

My rug!

He goes,

I sail away to the library to collect vast resources on how and whence great lattes might be made.

Is there

any

part of making a latte which you would describe as creative?

Oh, I think so.

Latte art.

You can write poetry on the front.

Oh, oh, and you can put little poems on the napkins under the coffee.

You see, honestly, Cyril says, I shall away, mistress, to find and figure out from whence the great lattes may be made, if I might, a poem.

One more, one more, one more.

The wizard's sky of blue and black.

Caffeine she needs and yet does lack.

Cyril, demon of the ink.

To better now, he must go and think.

And see,

I shall learn to make great lattice.

And flies out the window.

I'm leaving that one.

I feel like the first one was better.

It was, but this one was about me.

Oh, that's fair.

Also, I think that a lot of their poetry is going to be very ink and think heavy.

Yes.

Just because it's like a very easy rhyming scheme.

Yeah.

I like it.

I like it a lot.

I like Cyril a lot.

That was great.

He didn't attempt to edit me.

Yeah.

So

I'm all thumbs up.

We're all in the clear with Cyril.

You want to see a vandal for a different day?

You want me to open it now?

I mean that we should open it now.

Why not?

Let's go three for three.

you open it.

You open it.

Okay, fine.

Just cock it.

A little red, he's got no nose, fang, devil horns, comes out and goes, shit ass, and flies down the hall.

Oh.

Okay, sorry, sorry.

I'll get that

so far.

I'm gonna go chase her.

I'm gonna take care of this.

Thank you, Killer.

You have to go climb out of a window the entire side of the tower in huge red ink.

It just says, cock.

Gosh.

Amay start run running down the hall after him fuck weasel first day first day first day you say fuck weasel and this demon flies back in what you say fuck weasel and new one i love you

you see uh you see he writes butthoop on her head vandal vandal

uh shit ass i said that and you see flies way

motherfucker you see he like whips out a little forked tail as he's flying to and he's like flying so fast that's barely legible.

You think he's writing penis on the floor of the hallway

as he flies down.

Vandal, go get us food.

Huh?

Go get us food.

Dunghead!

Stop giving him ammunition!

I love you!

I love you!

She says, really?

Yeah.

She flips over and goes, I'm Vandal.

I'm a Mank Demon.

I'm Ame, and I'm a witch.

You are a witch.

You see, he does bow.

You speak for the spirits and to the spirits.

I do my best to do so, yes.

Then you have my respect.

Thank you.

Fucko.

Turd muffin.

You see, he looks over and says, you

Sky, you're the wizard of the tower, aren't you?

Yeah, I am.

What's up?

Well, you like what I'm doing?

I don't.

I don't enjoy it.

Ah!

Ball sack!

And you see he flies away and writes ball sacks.

Okay, okay.

I need to do stuff!

I gotta do stuff!

What the fuck task do I give him?

Uh, Vandal.

Ask him to go get us some croissants.

Yeah, dog, I need you to get me some.

Okay, you gotta go to, uh, what is the candle?

Uh, Candle Street Bakery.

Go to Candle Street Bakery.

You need to ask Mr.

Callum very rudely for you.

Nicely for you.

You could ask him however you want to ask him.

I'm not going to micromanage you.

I'm going to need a bunch of croissants

and whatever.

Do you eat?

Huh?

Do you eat?

Yeah.

Are you lying?

Yeah.

Okay, great.

Three bottles of whatever you come across.

Tell them it's on the Wizard Skies account and then come straight back here without writing anything anything psychotic on anything.

Yeah, yeah, sorry, bud.

You see, he flies out the window towards Candlesbreak Bakery.

I don't like that one fucking day.

Not at all.

It's Cyril on day.

Cyril, all goddamn day.

Later that day, Vandal comes back with some croissants.

Enzo is reconstituted.

You see that they are all, it's very hard to manage when there's more than two of them out at the same.

It's very quickly like, oh, I could come back and have a lot of books ruined in a big, big way.

And you see that also, you realize that, like, as the ink settles, it becomes harder to press, digitate, and clean.

It's like you're like, okay, I can erase the ink, but some of this ink needs to stay on the page because that's what a fucking book is.

So I can't just like erase the ink.

It's like, it gets a little bit hairy, but eventually you get all three of them back in their bottles.

And you also see that there's nothing about them being, they're like immortal things that don't eat or sleep.

So being in a bottle is a state of relative comfort for them.

They're not trapped.

It's just sort of a neutral state of being as they kick it in a bottle.

Kick it in a bottle.

And actually, I think you would know, Amy, as you sort of perceive them with some witchy sensibility when they're in the bottle.

These ink spirits are very tied to the concept of potential.

They want to write.

So being in the bottles, even though they want to write, isn't bad.

You almost feel like when they're in there disembodied, their body just becomes liquid, that they're just kind of in there dreaming of the things they might say one day.

Sweets.

Okay.

All right.

All right.

All right.

You're settled in here enough.

I think

I should do some research and

go see some people, I think.

Okay.

For what it's worth, if you ever need any books,

I can just

I know you like to go out, though.

So, if you want to go, but you can always just ask for them and they'll come here.

Yeah, I guess that works too.

Books have helped before, yeah.

Uh, you've never wounded me so much.

By the way, I'd like to, uh, I think I still have with my things the uh book of the the stars of the southern skies and the

uh charts of with with the shapeshifters came with us yes so i i just uh i i spread them out on the floor um

a little bit yeah oh

oh i'm wondering now if if these mean anything more to me now that i have the benefit of my training with grandmother wren sitting on the rug in your study and your study for being a workspace is quite comfortable deep soft high back armchairs rugs everywhere cushions this is a place for long-term study which means that it is not sterile.

It's actually quite comfortable, filled with charms.

Many candles are lit, floating.

Yulia's gone home for the day.

And stars are overhead as you are finally finished moving in.

And spread out, stars of the southern skies, along with the diagram of urine.

Amate, you get a smell like the bile you expectorated as your curse was broken back in Port Tallinn, as the scroll is like opened up.

Ah,

oh,

it smells like, are you okay?

Like, like

that, that, like, like, like the curse and like, like,

uh, oh, bile.

Oh.

I'm gonna lean over and delicately sniff.

Uh, give me perception checks, Ursulan.

And Ursula, I think you are here too.

The fox is snoozing.

You're here.

Uh, there's, there's croissants and food laid out.

You have one of those, like, melon and prosciutto sandwiches, like

the Chinese takeout container.

100%.

You guys are kind of, especially with Steel, with Silver's sudden absence, a sudden feeling of like, I think,

Suvi, you have a sudden sort of feeling of, well, here I am.

I'm a mage of the Citadel.

I have some obligations to the Archmage silence that take about an hour out of my day each day.

And other than that, I am beginning to be trusted with the management of my own time.

And there is a degree of horror in the realization that your mark upon the world,

the powers that be are assuming you will make it

and that you will make it on your own time under your own initiative.

So there's a certain degree of like spreading these books out where you realize There is no

finger above you pointing at where the next step is.

You're just in your study trying to figure your own world out.

Looking at stars in the southern sky and looking at the diagram, what do we get on our perception checks?

13.

10.

23.

You smell that bile.

It's a, there's, it smells like iron and blood.

It's mixed in.

It's the accurate smell of bile mixed in with iron and blood.

There is something about it that smells,

for lack of a better word, it's like pungent even though the ink is long dry.

And there's almost a smell, like obviously it has iron in it.

There's a smell to it that is artificial, this saccharine, weird, sweet, like there's some kind of feeling to it of like, oh, this doesn't feel like natural in a weird way.

The diagram is an intense one that shows

a kind of like almost Da Vinci-esque like anatomical man and one of these animals.

This is a diagram of shapeshifters.

It's old.

This was made in the first 50 years of the Citadel.

So it's this is like a 150 year old document.

Really old stuff like this.

Obviously wizards know how to care for this stuff, but the Citadel has dramatically increased in the past hundred years.

So you're in one of the situations where like 80%

of your books come from the last 40 years, right?

Like think about it, it's just like, oh, it's spinning up.

The engines spin up.

It's an asymptotic increase in the power of wizardry, right?

Ursulan, you actually know that this beast form,

and the diagram is one of a shapeshifter.

This is a beast that you have always thought of Suvi as being

like just a form shapeshifters can take.

This is actually a creature that exists in the world of spirits.

You remember from your childhood

called a Garin.

G-A-R-R-A-N.

So you recognize this as a type of animal that

someone's shifting into.

That someone's shifting into.

I mean, maybe it existed on Umora at one point.

But so you just have a knowledge of beasts and wild things that goes beyond.

So you would have a name for this type of animal that doesn't even exist on the page.

Anything?

It's a Garin.

It's a

Gorin.

And I immediately looked at the page and be like, where is that written?

I didn't see that.

It's a Gorin.

We have them in the spirit world.

Oh, it's like an actual

creature.

What would I know about Gorins from...

They're incredibly tough.

They're basically like these like, you know, fucking Clydesdale-sized hyenas that have opposable thumbs.

So they're like arboreal.

They're, I think that you would know that they're really scary, dangerous predatory animals.

But

I think you'd make the connection that for a creature that's used to having hands, they're about as dangerous as a beast can get while still being able to manipulate things with a set of hands that's relatively...

So you think of it as not necessarily like, what is the nature of this creature?

It's a creature, it has the same instincts that all beasts have.

It's predator.

But you're like, oh, if you know how important to like humans having hands is.

So, it's like, I think you would isolate that as that's an optimal choice.

If you wanted to be able to fight, but didn't want to give up the ability to hold or carry things.

They're incredibly dangerous and still have

still dexterous, still able to

use tools and those sorts of things, but

very,

very scary.

Are they all are they all humanoids that shapeshift?

No,

they are Garin.

They are born Garin and die Garren.

How

I think, Ames, we cut over to you too.

You're like testing with your alchemist supply.

You touch the page and are able to see and tell that the smell has been added to this page.

It's um,

it's the smell was added to the page.

Um, afterwards, perhaps to

you said that the curse smelled like your your parents' friend Yorin.

Yeah,

like blood, but worse.

Uh, give me a little like arcana check here.

Uh, 15.

15.

Uh, I think you see, uh, I think 15 is high enough where you say Yorin, and you remember how wildly that name was spelled?

Yeah.

And you wonder if it means if there's some etymological connection to the type of creature and what he is literally named, or if that was the name he was born with.

Name.

His name.

He's a weird name.

Cyril, write this down.

Of course.

Incredible.

Yes.

Do I have any license?

Can I write it?

I mean, I'll get the point across, but you know.

Sure.

Purple, and then we'll check out on it later.

Very well.

Sweet.

Be prosaic.

Wait.

Spell Yorin.

He goes, E-I-O-G-H-O-R-A-I-N.

And I think you immediately linguistically, yeah,

connect it as like

either of the

or son of or something like that connected to garin

oh

okay uh

his name is

names are so important yorin's name talks about what he is thank you this puts

it's a it's a piece of the puzzle uh

they added this who added the smell what are you what are you doing why are you sniffing that um this the scent was added in later potentially to

clue somebody in to how a Garin smells.

Makes sense.

Almost everything in the Citadel involves identification and usually a route through which you can destroy it.

Do you know, do Gar all Garins, Garin smell like this?

Give me perception advantage.

We'll take the 15 on the die plus perception for 17.

This doesn't smell like Garin to you.

I mean, it does partially, but I think, Ursulan, you got close enough to Garin in the spirit world.

This is a long time ago, but smell is so connected to memory.

The smell of iron and blood and bile.

No, there is a deep musk on this page that you do recognize as that smell, but you're good enough at layering smells together that the blood,

you've smelled blood on shapeshifters before.

Some shapeshifters, that process is very violent.

And it's just that there is like literal injury, or even internally, that you smell fresh blood or bile as their body changes underneath them.

The iron, you can't place at all.

And iron has been, I mean, blood has iron in it, but there's this strong thing to it of like, is that extra?

And Suvi, you remember from your childhood that that smell was always at the front of the smell when you smelled urine.

Did you see?

I'm sorry to make you.

Is no, you're good.

Did he ever iron on him?

Iron is traditionally used to hold spirits and

oh, on his tusks.

He had iron on his tusks, and he's a son of Garin.

Is he a wayshadowed spirit in some way?

I don't I don't know.

I don't know, but maybe Steel

replicated his smell so Grandmother Wren would know

him specifically?

I don't know.

Well, I mean, if it was Steele who added the smell, then we can simply ask.

Steele brought all of this via me to Grandmother Wren because she was out of the way.

Oh, that's right she had given up.

Yeah.

But who made did she if she made these charts, then surely she has some instances.

Oh, she didn't make these charts.

These are very old.

150 years.

You also see on the diagram that there is no

indication of iron on the diagrams.

I mean, if we follow the logic that Ahme is putting forward about him being a spirit, is there anything to

the iron being used to anchor him here

or connect him

to bring him to this plane, hold him here in some way?

The iron seems to be very important and knowing that he's the son of a spirit

that would be a good tool you said steel

says they can't find him you know they have all of the tools of the citadel and they can't use divination to find him

i wonder if that's in any way connected

I think you all also see at this point that up in a box on the desk are all of the assembled notes you have.

Speaking of, because you have this stuff on your end here right now, you also have all these.

I think you probably have five different boxes alone of just the things you've gathered from the Citadel on Soft and Stone.

Yeah.

I think looking at Stars of the Southern Skies, you don't see a connection in this book to Suvi's very powerful memory of her namesake as the Wizard Sky and anything like that.

Give me an insight check.

22.

Okay, Sufi,

as you read Stars of the Southern Skies, you are reading a

incredibly,

for lack of a better word, like basic to intermediate book

on

constellations and astronomy for

wizards and you know astronomers looking at the southern sky, the hemisphere of the southern sky.

You don't see anything related to what was going on in the attack on Ruve or the attack from Ruve to the Citadel.

Nothing's

correlating to a timeline.

All those things you're looking for do not exist in this book.

This book exists to define a number of movements reliably from celestial bodies throughout the southern hemisphere of Umora.

Nothing.

I mean, looking over the book, does that clocks as, oh, this is pretty, this is pretty intermediate.

Like, this isn't high-level anything,

right?

Like, I would know that, like, yeah, okay, I remember reading something like,

did Steele's pretty smart?

But did she Steele say why she sent these?

She sent this one to Grandmother Ren along with it?

No, I didn't know why she sent the diagrams of shapeshifters.

Not until now.

She told me when we got back.

Maybe we should ask her about the stars.

Yeah, we can ask her about all of this.

But

do you think maybe there was something in this book or the information or why she would send a normal,

not very enlightening book to the smartest, oldest person in the world who's probably very good at star stuff?

Do you think it was like some other kind of message?

Well, I remember when we first saw it, we looked for any sorts of codes or signs or

anything.

I mean, this doesn't mean anything to you, Ursulan, right?

No, not at all.

Oh.

Where is Steele?

Can we ask her?

Oh,

she's probably in and around her tower.

Or

she doesn't go out on like normal deployments, correct?

She does from time to time.

It actually occurs to you that she may very well be dealing with Fort Kieran.

Fuck.

Whatever happened to Fort Kieran was sudden and terrible, and they sent a lot of troops and experimental

efforts along with.

So, my guess is they sent Steele also.

But we can go check.

She's got a whole tower?

Yeah.

You go over to Steele's tower.

It's not even late at night.

It's like 9 o'clock.

You see, answering the door is Ishra.

Ishra is sort of a 15-year-old daughter, the first daughter of Steele's second husband.

Her hair is very close cropped.

She's bleached it.

She's sort of very pale, a little bit sickly looking.

You see, she just opens it and goes,

oh, hey, Skye.

Hey.

Hi.

I'm Ishra.

Hi, I'm Abe.

Bear.

Hi, Bear.

We were hoping to speak with

Steele.

She flew out.

She took a skyship up north.

Yeah.

Okay.

Oh.

She said to, you see that there's a noise behind her.

She walks inside.

And you guys see an older, kind of wild-haired man.

He's got like real bristle bristle-brush, gray and white hair, sort of mad cap, long beard,

sort of a

high-arched Roman kind of nose with a pair of little golden spectacles sitting on it.

He looks a little bit older than he is.

Like he's probably only in his early 60s, but he looks like a little bit older than that still.

Wizards.

You see, he looks over and you recognize this as Sonder.

Hey, hi, Sonder.

Hi.

He goes, oh,

hey,

Hey.

How are you doing?

He goes, Wizard.

He's like, he looks over at both of you and he says,

and

do we hope for clear Sousies tomorrow?

Uh-oh.

Uh-oh.

Hey, come here.

It's very fun.

Hi, hi.

You're very funny.

It's very funny.

Give him a kiss on the cheek.

Okay.

I like this.

This is this Sousie light up here.

Okay, okay.

It's a very good.

You know what?

No.

I like it.

This is nice.

I have a different name now.

You see, he says, oh, she didn't get a chance.

She sends her apologies.

She had to head out.

Lickety split.

But it was big night last night.

I know today was the tower.

She was going to run by and meet you today.

Sandra has big house husband of important women energy.

Yes.

And, you know, he's like an okay wizard.

He's in his early 60s, and you would bet that he can, like, maybe he can fly.

You know, like, it's like, you know, he hasn't like hit the books that hard, you know.

So he goes,

he goes, she wanted to meet up with you and do it at the tower.

She felt like that would be very special to do, but she left them upstairs.

Yeah.

So you can go take, you can go take a look.

See if he takes off immediately.

Thank you.

he looks and says okay uh peppermint chamomile hibiscus um we got you uh you want yes you want little

i have yeah i actually brought some too if you want to you want to do some tradesies uh oh lula little tea merchant came in

well it seems like you like a lot of decaffeinated ones so yeah i can't stay up everyone in the citadel is buzz buzz buzzing around yeah yeah it's uh i found that i I really got a lot of blends these days, you know, and I like me doing ones that are sort of based on

the seasons.

Based on the seasons.

Talk to me a little bit about seasons and witchcraft.

And do you guys want to sit?

You guys want to come sit?

Where do we start?

Okay.

Uh-oh.

Salon's kicking off.

Here we go.

And you see he goes.

You see he goes into a little area.

He like spins a crystal that starts to play some sort of ethereal quiet music.

And it's just sort of a crystal bubbling on a little fountain of water.

He goes over to Ursula and goes, Bear, you hungry?

We have a little bit of honeycomb hanging in a basket over here.

I'll take just a bit.

Suvie, if we can keep it quick.

Yeah, got it, got it.

Thank you.

You walk upstairs.

This is Steele's little sort of like home office.

This is not like her tower.

This is not the...

This is the Tower of the Sword, but it is the residence.

Yeah.

And there is a book that is a private sort of journal, and you see that there's a ribbon left in the middle towards the front.

One second.

Immediately open it.

There is a scrap in the middle of the book that has been torn out of some other ledger and left on this page here.

The end of a sentence saying,

All our hearts, XO, XO,

Chandri Newell,

Amon Kedbariket.

Oh,

it's a beautiful name.

Those are beautiful names.

I

resist the urge to leave the scrap

and fold it and fold it and fold it again and jam it into the palm of my gloves.

I mean she could have put it in something else if she wanted it in something else.

What's the journal page open to?

Give me an investigation check.

Christ!

Can we give Suvi advantage if we're willing to listen to this man talk about tea just a little longer?

Uh, I will say you can, but you have to say something that this guy would find genuinely interesting.

Steele's been asking me to try

yoga.

We've been doing a lot more stretching.

Do you like to stretch?

He looks at you and says, buddy,

You don't know the first thing about how to stretch, okay?

My...

I have to, when the sword of the citadel gets back to the residence at the end of the night, I gotta get into those shoulders like I'm building the foundation of a new tower.

Do you understand what I'm saying?

But do you do your flow in the morning?

Oh, I'm loose as a goose.

You could pour me down the steps.

I could

easy.

Here, come, come do something.

We got a great come to this archway.

Yep, here's what you're gonna do.

Okay, put your hand out in front of you.

Yep.

And I want you to just walk your hand up the wall, walk it up the wall, walk it up the wall.

And now lean in and just feel that stretch your chest.

Can't you just feel like your diaphragm open?

Okay.

Hey, I just remembered some huge news.

We got ripe kumquats in the kitchen.

I'm kidding.

You know that it's so funny that the peels are actually the sweet part of it.

The inside is far more tart.

You know, one time I had one

growing right next to a small lemon tree, and they just crossed the two branches, crossed, crossed, and

I should have been a witch.

This is the kind of stuff I'm interested in.

Sir, you would have done, you would make an amazing witch.

Botany is such an underserved science here at the Citadel.

And I'll tell you, let me show you.

Can I show you something?

I have some lemon saplings.

And you see,

he walks out

so much for your survey you may roll with advantage there we go 17 on the dice for a total of 23.

I'm so sorry you're no it's all right it's all right

it's all good data

you see a list of books

called up by steele to her tower and something given to

it's sort of written out in this journal, and you see that it's clearly not what she actually ended up writing.

It was like her scratch in a journal of books that she would need.

And if you flip through looking for all these different books, you see a lot of them have to do with the history of spirits that have been bound or captured within the citadel.

And you get back to the first page, you got a 23, right?

You see that there is a note, and these are almost notes that she's keeping as she's going through some of these texts.

You alight at one of them and see

a word that I don't know if you would know the significance of, but you just see

that it is underlined.

You see

a line of a number of different creatures, and there's a lot here.

You see, there's sort of like a couple different names, a couple different titles, and you just see one

that says Badger.

And on two pages before that,

you see that she gets a,

there's something crossed out in a requisition of histories.

And underneath it, she writes

Hawthorne Crest Battle of Starlings Ford.

Sir Curtain.

Oh my god, Badger.

What is Badger?

Uh, and I will

rip a page out of one of the blank ones in the back with a little note next to like the torn edge.

Like, I didn't get a clean tear.

I never have.

I never will.

And in the like little torn edge, like, Suvie took this.

Yeah, I write Subie.

Suvie took this and I love you.

And I'm sorry.

I'll do it again with a little heart.

And then start writing down Badger and the Battle of starling ford like anything in and around those words on it was on two pages right yeah separated and there's lots of notes in between them but they're just like these are ones that your your eyes sort of alighted on for whatever reason yeah i'll just sort of mental map like the stuff around those words that uh pulled me and just write it down

Yuzu jam, Yuzu ice cream, Yuzu candy.

Oh, great.

Yuzu drops.

Everyone's going to have one bite of a lychee frozen yogurt.

What are we doing?

Hi.

And I made it, not with magic.

I made it by hand because I think there's a part of it.

There's certain little lost arts.

And if you're doing things magically, you don't know how they happen.

But hold on.

Everyone stay right here.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Moment you lose.

Straight up for the first time, I don't want to eat.

Like, I'm honestly, this man keeps feeding me little bites.

Yeah.

He loves little bites that he makes by hand.

Is that different?

Because even every time he offers me one, I just want the whole damn thing.

Right, right.

Oh, I'm so sorry.

Saunder, you're the sweetest.

I love you.

I have to go.

What?

I'm having an emotional reaction to information.

Oh, got it, got it, got it.

Everybody take Gorp and go.

Uh-oh.

But I grab a little baggie.

We'll share.

Yeah.

And hey, bear.

Strength.

Yes.

But it's flexibility.

Of course.

You know, it's flexibility.

Yes.

Motility.

Motility.

Yes, yes, yes.

Thank you so much.

We We have to go.

Bye, bye.

Bye, everyone.

Get home.

Congrats.

Wizard Scott.

Thank you.

Wizard Saunder.

Like, it's cool that we're both like the same.

Gotta go.

You guys head out from there.

Did you do that?

Did you think you have tea?

I don't know.

I'm not going to process anything.

It's great.

It was good to read and I liked it very much.

And if I stop to feel any emotion from the last 24 hours, I'm done.

But we're focused.

I see.

Well, if you ever at any time, okay, go, oh, yes?

No, you go.

Oh, okay.

If you ever at any time need to chat, you know, please, please feel free to find me.

We can just have, have some tea or booze and we can talk about, talk, talk, talk about feelings.

Ooh.

I love spending time with you and you are my true friend.

And that was, that sounds very bad to me to have a time where you have to dedicate to feelings.

But I will talk to you about anything.

Sure.

Sure.

Because you're the best and I treasure you.

And

our time, I don't know how long we'll have.

Woo!

Woo!

Woo!

It's so, there's mint in the air.

We gotta go.

As there were several oils he wanted us to rub on ourselves.

He suggested they would reduce stress.

You arrive back at the Tower of the Glove, adjoining that Tower of the Archmage silence.

God, I cannot wait for Dimension Door.

Walking with your feet sucks.

Okay, couple things.

We're walking it back.

Parents' names, not the proper one.

There's some notes here, and I'm just going to unfold what I've written and fully hand it to you about

the names and words, Hawthorne, all those things around Sir Curran and the word Badger, which doesn't mean anything to me, but

This is from Steele's notebook.

Yeah, I almost took the whole thing and then I realized I am in good graces and I got to keep that for just a while.

Well, of course, the Battle of Starlings Forge is

where I met Sir Curran in my...

The Battle of Starlings Forge is where Sir Curran died.

The night that you met

centuries ago when you first wandered into the mortal realm, you met in the days preceding the Battle of Sterlingsford.

Um

so that's that badger.

Um

I mean

me and Sukuran never spoke of a badger, but

my sister Kalia took the form of a badger, but I'm not

I think this perhaps in some way relates to Steele.

Steele made an offer at one of our trainings

maybe a week ago with regard to

helping me

return to the spirit world.

Oh.

Can she do that?

I don't know.

I'm.

Do you...

What did you tell her?

I did not wish to speak about it at the time.

And I assumed that perhaps the matter had been dropped.

Well, do you want to?

We would understand.

If you.

Of course you.

I.

It's.

It's not a matter of.

I mean, it.

I did have a desire to return.

I tried many times, many, many times to return.

And was unable.

And

had closed myself off to the idea.

So it has been difficult to imagine a world in which it is possible.

So I have not

very much put it from my mind.

So I don't.

I don't think I have an answer for you as to whether I do or do not.

You want me to also?

There has to be something.

Anything I can find on Way Shadowing?

I mean...

I mean, even more,

is there a chance that my sister is here?

Is there any list for the book that

Steele was reading?

Yes.

What was the context of Badger being written?

Oh,

I was kind of working my way back to France and there were a list of books that

she's been requisitioning

and it was sort of just in a pile of thoughts.

It was amongst a lot of things, but this felt important.

Well, I mean

you don't have to have an answer right away, of course.

This is something worth thinking about.

You've had to sit with this a long time.

Take your time, of course.

Well, I mean, perhaps we.

If Ahme's the trail that Arme was on earlier is correct and Yorin is perhaps in some way hiding in the spirit world I mean perhaps I won't have a choice

go

oh

have you had you ever met a human before coming through

no

no no never

but I we would also I mean perhaps there are parts of the spirit world that are more welcoming but but the Great Bear would not be somewhere that a human could survive for long.

Oh.

Well, maybe not ordinary humans, but, you know.

Yeah, right.

A witch can, yeah.

Ame would, ooh.

No, I'm not.

He would love you.

He'd be like, hey, little witch.

Oh.

You could be.

Bear's new stepmom.

Suvi, stop it.

Suvi, stop it right now.

Is he attractive?

Is your father attractive?

Amy, you stop it right now.

Don't we have important wisness,

wizard business to discuss?

Wizness.

You arrive back in Suvi's study

amongst the red cushions.

Okay, can I make one quick stop?

Yes.

As we were getting back into the room, I would have stopped at the Aerith

and just, hold on, I'll catch up with you.

And I think a new ritual is starting at the end of the day.

It's normally an afterthought for Suvi.

She forgets things constantly,

but she will begin a deliberate

at the end of the night when she knows there is no more great work to do.

She will pour all the remnants of her magic in and hope that

any of it reaches to Silver and can protect him.

Give me an arcana check.

Please, guys, don't fuck up my moment.

Natural one.

Oh my god.

You send this Aerith, this power,

source of your magic, deep into the emerald, thinking only of silver

and wanting it to go to him.

And you know unshakably and without question

that that magic goes to the heart of the citadel to wait,

disappearing endlessly into the rest of that source below.

The citadel will see it used, how the citadel will see it used.

Let that be enough.

And I go and meet my friends.

A more somber Sufi enters the chamber here.

It is.

Having traveled to the Tower of the Sword, which is pretty close.

These Arc Magic Towers are, you know,

Malakanth is not not the biggest neighborhood in the world but it's getting to be a little bit like after 11 o'clock at night um

are there any other studying you do here in this place there are you have the yorin diagram you have uh the stars of the southern sky you have all the things about soft and stone and your research there uh with this new information gleaned from

steele's

journal, which as you go back to think about it, must warrant some conversation with Steele.

Absolutely, you mean she just, it's like it was on a to-do list on her desk that she left your parents' name on.

So clearly, this is not top secret classified, whatever, but uh, uh, it's interesting because it's so close to you.

She wanted me to see it.

She wanted me to help.

This is what I'm good at.

This is what I do.

I will

look into this.

If I have anything to report, do you want to know, or is it?

I would like to know, yes.

Okay.

Um, and I'll go over to the ink, uh, the ink bottles, and I will let Cyril back out.

Great.

What an energy, just immediately.

Oh,

don't be sad, Cyril.

But within my melancholy moans, there lies a great untapped heart which beats with such passion.

He's so sensitive.

Don't say that.

No, no, no, it's a good thing.

It's a good thing.

You're hurting him, obviously.

Yeah, no, no, no, no, no.

I I mean,

the soul of a poet must d needs be sensitive, of course.

To be wrapped with the ebb and flow of life's many maelstroms is the destiny and curse alike of each great poet.

Honestly?

Good words, the delivery

makes me feel crazy.

Latte, new chance.

It's a new day.

I need.

It's 11:15 p.m.

Okay.

New day for you.

You're out of the box.

Hey, don't question me, but I simply meant to inform the great wizard Sky

lest her spellcasting be rent asunder by

miscalculation of the hour of the day.

We appreciate your fastidiousness.

We do.

Coffee, so much.

Please.

Cappuccino, Macchiato.

Oh, hey, Megan.

What do you think I would like?

I think.

Read me like one of your poems.

Then I shall read you while crying.

Oh, wait.

I think you'd like a flat white

Alright, to make it two flat whites.

Going for

it.

I would love some green tea, please.

Some matcha.

Two flat whites and a green tea.

Coming right up.

Buzzes out of the room.

Okay.

I have so much work to catch up on and I

am not going to read books.

I just, I can't.

Like, I can't.

I don't have the attendance band to sit and read about it.

So I'm going to go and tomorrow.

Oh, God, it's late.

Okay.

Um, I guess maybe tomorrow I'll go out and I will

try and find some of grandmother, Grandmother Wren's allies here in the Citadel.

Um, the two of you, of course, are.

I don't know if you've actually mentioned the, because you would know some of these people in the citadel.

No, I'm, oh, I, I see.

I, I, I'm sorry.

I neglected to give you the actual names of

the the contacts.

But yes, I apparently have friends and allies all across the world of Amora.

But specifically in the Citadel, apparently there's Golt the Artificer, who's at Tiller Mill, Sly's Brooch, Head of Divination,

Pomeroy and Quinnathranmir,

who are spirits.

And I just, I kind of want to check in and

see how I can prepare for my duties and to see what they know about Grandmother Wren.

And perhaps they know something about the League of Whispers and the Alkynador.

Those names, did any of her allies that she mentioned

for me?

Pomeroy is what the spirit is called.

You don't know Pomeroy the name offhand because Pomeroy is a spirit that works in the court of Zhao.

Zhao College is the conjuration college.

You know some of it because your father, Soft, was a conjurer.

You,

you know, he was a teleportation specialist and your mother stone was an apturer.

The Kassov Collection is specifically a collection at Gossemer Plaza at the center of Zhao College, which is where the conjurers study.

It's one of the 24 courts.

Pomeroy,

you've maybe heard of, but you know that if they work at the Kassov Collection, that's a collection that basically keeps tabs of and manages all of the bound spirits and entities within the Citadel.

So

your knowledge, if you're a spirit working at that place, you're almost like a spirit working as like a,

for lack of a better word, like keeping tabs on the other spirits that are being housed, invited to, or kept and bound and imprisoned within the citadel.

Galt, you know,

Galt is Hanna's father.

Oh.

Galt?

Down in

Telivermill?

Yeah.

Oh, I don't think you got to meet her.

I don't remember if

she was even there last night.

My friend, Hannah, the person I told you almost died when we were playing

in the wells.

Oh, the one who you said could make me a shield and then we shouldn't bother her about making me a shield.

That, Hannah?

I think it's time to bother her about a shield.

Oh, lovely.

The last person you would know, the wizard Sly.

Sly is in Kabani, which is the diviner's court.

Sly

is the head of the Office of Preemptory Catastrophic Deviation, which is one of the old.

Sly is a very old wizard.

He's over 100 years old.

Whoa.

And

he's been around for a long, long time.

But he's just one of many.

There's a lot of life-lengthening things that older wizards do.

So these offices that there's kind of a, I think a young wizard would sort of go like, ooh, they get old and they congeal and there's kind of a

film at the top of the hierarchy where you get put in these offices where now you do this and this is why you're still helpful.

The Office of Preemptory Catastrophic Deviation,

your understanding of that office is it's a bit of a joke because it's an office dedicated to averting apocalypses and world-ending events that are in their like pre-nasency, where it's like they have a 0.001% chance of happening.

And when it moves to 0.002,

there's this office that's like, ah, something appears on the horizon.

Like, it's an office of like this one diviner, this like one soothsayer is responsible for things that are huge risks that have less than a fraction of a percent of a chance of happening.

Huh.

Ooh.

Ooh.

Sly?

Are you sure that's

your ally?

That's what Grandmother Run said.

Okay.

Either Grandmother Ren has a penchant for sticky old wizards doing bullshit in the corner,

or Sly is secretly the coolest.

My money's on the first one.

He does.

He's just,

he dreams of apocalypses and wonders if they'll have.

Look, bias, bias.

I see it.

I see the look in your eyes.

I'm sorry.

We can go find any and all of them in the morning if that's what you want to check in with.

I would very much like to do that.

And it sounds like we could also get a shield for Ursulan.

And also with Pomeroy, perhaps inquire as to

other spirits.

It's going to be...

I don't think you're going to like it there.

You might not like it there.

I'm not going to tell you how you're going to.

I don't like it there.

The cast off collection is kind of where we store all the information about the spirits that are here, both with and maybe a little bit against their wills.

Interesting.

Now, when you say

against

their wills.

Sometimes, okay, look, I know the way you're both looking at me, and I'm going to

do it.

I just

please explain.

Sometimes there's big,

mean

spirits that wizard taxonomy would classify as a demon

that cause problems.

And so we grab them.

Trap them.

So they don't cause problems?

Look, it feels thin now.

It feels thin.

It felt like it made more sense.

I get, I get, I get how it sounds.

I get how it sounds.

Well, we'll go and have a look.

Okay.

Yeah.

I think

if we need to,

if we need to, please don't.

I still, it's my sword.

You gave it to me.

The next day,

you all awaken.

And I think.

I didn't sleep.

Subi did not sleep.

I also slept as little

as late as felt appropriate.

I snuck out to go train.

Nice.

Went out and trained that night.

Coffee all night, and I'm going through my parents' stuff.

And I'll sleep in the training room.

I sleep in the training room.

In the training room.

Ame, as you drift off to sleep, you see the fox comes over and crawls on your chest.

He looks up at you.

Hey, boss.

Hi, Fox.

I'm getting a little antsy.

Why?

I've been away from real grass for a long time.

I know.

To be honest, me too.

I really like being here with my friends, and right now we have some important work still to do here.

But we're gonna go get- we'll go back to the cottage soon.

I told Suvi at least just

a week.

Which we have that much work to do, possibly even more some.

But then we're going home.

A week, okay.

Yeah, we can do a week.

You think those other witches are gonna get mad?

I hope not.

Yeah, me too.

Okay,

okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay.

Um, all right, there

three

colors.

There's, oh, there's a little bit of red in the rug.

There is blue on the tapestries.

And...

Mmm.

Green on that.

Oh.

Fake plant?

It's a fake plant.

As Ahmed drifts off to sleep, Ursulan, you train down below.

Where is Ursulan?

As he trains, having heard about the Kasov collection?

Ah,

I think Ursulan is in

is in him and Steel's training room, uh, and has pulled out one of the dummies

and is just hacking away at it.

Uh, just to a little bit more I think the the form gives way to uh Wrath.

And I'm gonna say that I bonus action cast Wrathful Smite, and I'm just giving it to this uh training dummy.

Your training

sword.

Are you wielding Wave Breaker?

Oh, yeah.

The smell of honey and mist fills the air, and you

sever the mannequin in half.

I go get a second one from

the cupboard.

And we move to Suvi.

You're up all night.

Cyril's back in his bottle.

There's a

little cappuccino.

The cappuccino on top of it, it's, you know, the words are all messed up, but on top of it, it said,

A wizard studies ever late,

her shoulders heavy, burdens great.

Yet light will ever meet the sky for one who always wonders why.

I really like Cyril

and slam back the whole drink.

If his magic is a place I cannot reach, then my mind will extend in every direction here.

There are so many mysteries.

Ones for me and ones for my friends.

And I know I am selfish, hoping that they'll stay.

I know they can't.

And I'll apologize tomorrow for selfishly asking.

There's always going to be more time.

But I need to spend whatever I have on figuring this out.

I can figure it out.

Give me an investigation check.

11.

Pouring over these.

Remember,

you now have a homunculus.

Go ahead and roll with advantage.

Oh, look at that.

What is a fucking wizard's homunculus for if not exactly this?

The caffeine does its job.

Ah!

23.

There we go.

Zero.

There is more stuff.

You know, these five boxes, the notes are so small and prisonickety.

Give me a question Suvi is trying to answer here in the research that she is staying up feverishly this night to accomplish.

Where is the focus of her study?

There are so many answers to questions in here.

You just need the context to know what they are answering.

Like you look at their writings and you don't always know what the writing was for or what the spell they were researching was.

Something seems brilliant but disconnected from something else because you don't have them to consult with and say, why did you put this here?

What is the question you are trying to answer in the negative space of creating your parents from the record they left behind?

Looking at my parents, that sort of race between conjuration and abjuration, creation and pushing forward and defending.

Who was in a bigger rush?

Were they trying to find something new to find a new edge or shore up a defense against something that they saw was coming?

Going through their scraps,

you find

a message of dismissal from the Citadel.

For a name that you only just learned was your mother's.

Prior to her getting her name cloak,

you see that she was dismissed and banished from the citadel and that the order was later rescinded based on an outburst against one of her teachers

whom she accused of treason against magic itself.

And that's all for this episode of The Wizard, the Witch, and the Wild.

That's fucking rude, bro.

Are you like this?

That was Lou Wilson as Ursulan, Erika Ishi-e as Ame, Abria Iyengar as Suvi, and Brennan Lee Mulligan as Everyone and Everything Else.

Worlds Beyond Number is produced and scored by Taylor Moore and edited and designed by Jared Olson and Taylor Moore at Fortunate Horse.

Welcome to the team, Jared.

Your staff of the Fortunate Horse is in the mail, I promise.

Thank you to Michael Gelfie for additional sound design and to Will Savino for additional music in this episode.

Will is a terrific tabletop composer, and you can find mountains of his wonderful music on Spotify, YouTube, and Bandcamp, and anywhere else you care to search for it.

Check out the show notes for links.

For even more like this, join us on the World's Beyond Number Patreon.

We'll see you there.