He pushed himself off the ground and got moving. As he walked, he marveled at the fact that the wave of exhaustion he’d experienced a few days ago when he had been out past curfew was absent. He supposed it had been the Guild Leader’s work, and with that man gone, there was no one left to keep it going.
His mind wandered and he was left wondering if he could really trust an entity like the Sage Mind. There were no tales about this creature that he was aware of outside of the story in Gallian’s book, and that encounter had been both brief and mysterious. Though in the end, he really had no one else to turn to, so he supposed it didn’t really matter if the Sage Mind had an ulterior motive, so long as he could save Valeria in the process.
A short while later, he stood near the entrance to the Magic Archives, cloaked in invisibility from Valeria’s ring. He stuck to the shadows to be safe, but it didn’t appear to be necessary. If the guards had noticed him, they hadn’t done anything about it. Teryn waited impatiently for the guards to move like the Sage Mind had promised. At long last they did so, leaving the door unguarded.
He rushed over to the doors and tried them. Sure enough, they were locked with magic.
“Nothing I can’t handle,” Teryn whispered to himself. He chanted a few words and waved his hands to cast a softlocks spell. The magic locks on the doors hissed and groaned. Teryn was worried that someone would notice the noise and come running, but no one did.
Within seconds, the locks were gone. Teryn pushed open the right-hand door just a crack and peered inside. The inside was almost pitch black. He could see nothing of the inside of the building, not a box nor a crate, nor whether more guards were waiting on the other side.
He shrugged. Nothing a candleflicker spell won’t fix. He set about casting one then thought better of it. He didn’t want to draw more attention to himself than he had to. He slowly made his way inside and gently shut the door behind him. Safe for the moment, he cast his spell.
Light sprang forth from his fingers and pushed its way forward, lighting the area in front of him. Much to his surprise, there were no guards on the inside of the building. He was free to look around. He made out what he could of his surroundings. The entryway was mostly clear. Beyond that lay rows and rows of boxes and crates, mostly unlabeled and seemingly strewn about every which way. He found the lack of organization highly disconcerting.
Teryn took one half step forward and stopped himself mid-stride. A thought was nagging him at the back of his skull.
That was too easy.
Even though guards and magic locks would be enough to deter most criminals, this building housed a treasure trove of powerful magical artifacts in a town full of wizards. Surely, they would have done more to safeguard them.
He searched about for some sign of a trap. He couldn’t see anything with his eyes in the dim light, so he cast a havealooksy spell to search for invisible traps.
It didn’t take long before he found one. There in front of him, just a few steps past the entry, was a large pit filled with spikes. Illusory tiles sat atop them, fooling most would-be thieves into thinking the ground was solid.
Not Teryn, though. He was too smart for such tricks. He thought for a moment about how to disable the trap and settled on using a dirtblanket spell to create a path through the spike pit he could walk on.
It took quite a bit of dirt, but it was easier and more secure than trying to float over them. He channeled the spell towards the ground and within a few minutes, he had a clear path he could walk down. He started walking down it and was surprised that the ground held as well as it did. A few quick steps and he was past the deadly trap.
Next, he cast a nightshroud spell over the windows in the building to keep his magical light from being detected by outsiders and boosted the power of his candleflicker light with a candlepower spell so he could see every last inch of the warehouse at once.
The enhanced spell went to work illuminating every last shred of the sprawling building. Teryn’s mind reeled. The sheer number of boxes and crates that filled the halls left him feeling dumbfounded, seemingly creeping forward far beyond what his eyes could see.
I knew these guys had a lot of magical artifacts, but not this many, Teryn thought with a greedy smile. How did they manage to hold onto all of them all after being persecuted as Druins, though, I wonder?
I could tell you, if you really wanted me to, the Sage Mind said to him. It had returned to him just like it had promised earlier.
“Not really,” Teryn admitted.
Yeah, I didn’t think so. Anyway, onto business. How do you feel about . . . theft? He saw an image of a small, wiry man wearing some kind of wool mask on his head.
“Against these guys?” Teryn gulped down an innate sense of guilt that nagged at his brain. “I think my conscience can live with it.”
Good. Conjure up a magic holding bag and I’ll point out anything worth keeping while we search for signs of Valeria, the Sage Mind insisted.
Teryn was a little surprised at just how morally gray the Sage Mind was. Even though he’d told it he was okay with
