Felix "Phoenix" Rook's Story

"Hey, hey, watch the shoes!" Gregory snapped at Felix, and abruptly stopped in the middle of harnessing a dopey, splotched horse with doleful brown eyes to his rickety cart, and turned his attention to Alexandria. "Don't touch anything!"


"Quit yer flappin," The Halfling retorted. "Your wagon's older'n dirt, and besides, ye ain't got naught but dirty linens and old boxes up there."

"I'll have you know, those are priceless antiques!" the errand-runner barked.


"Don't forget," the Halfling cautioned the duo, waggling a finger at Alex as she climbed onto the dusty platform, maneuvering boxes, and sat down next to a half-open crate with the words, 'Take to Arielis' scrawled in fresh paint on the side. "Be back at the Hall by tomorrow evening. Uthis' been working all day on that spell... Be a real pity to see all that magic go to waste."

"Wouldn't it," Gregory muttered under his breath.

...

On their way out of the city, sans one Halfling, the grumpy errand-runner, silent since leaving his house, maintained at least an appearance of aquiescence aside from the annoyed looks he gave Felix, until he suddenly cried out and yanked on the reins, bringing the horse to a full stop in the middle of the street.

"No, get off!" he shrieked, shooing at a lithe black creature that had jumped into the driver seat next to him and surreptitiously wormed its way onto his lap. "Bad, bad kitty. No!"

Gregory attempted to shove the cat away, but it nosed his arm and slinked underneath. He drew back, as if in horror, and tried to grab the feline by the scruff. The cat yowled and leaped, just missing his head, and scrabbled over his shoulder, onto one of the boxes next to Alexandria.

The errand-runner suddenly held his breath and put a finger under his nose, turning his face toward the late afternoon sunshine.

"Ah-ah-ah," he heaved, tossing his head back, mouth wide open, and sneezed, "Choo! Achoo! Achoo! Achoo!"

Sniffling, he wiped his nose with the back of his sleeve and glared over at the cat, who only blinked in response.

"Stupid animal. Fine, he's your problem now," Gregory grumbled and picked up the reins.

As the cart began to move again, the feline sat down and peered back and forth between the duo, licking his chops, probably looking for his next victim.

"Quit yer flappin," The Halfling retorted. "Your wagon's older'n dirt, and besides, ye ain't got naught but dirty linens and old boxes up there."

"I'll have you know, those are priceless antiques!" the errand-runner barked.

"He's right, Ferdy," Felix added jokingly as he clambered aboard the cart. "Those boxes are priceless antiques. They've even got some valuable-looking mildew on 'em, too!" Meanwhile, Alexandria listened to what Ferdirand told her before assuring the Halfling that she'd make sure they were back in time for the spell.

...

The journey to Gooseneck was pretty uneventful, but to the duo it was a welcome break from the usual adventuring career. It seemed like, for the first time in ages, they could just sit back and watch the world go by for a while. Felix put one arm around his friend as they watched the clouds in idle contentment. Suddenly, they were surprised by Gregory's loud sneezing. Just like that, their little moment was gone.

When the cat decided to take a closer look at the two mages, Felix wasted no time in picking the cat up, probably to do the very same thing. However, before the pyromancer could utter the blatantly obvious concerning how adorable the little feline was, both he and Alex started sneezing uncontrollably. And yes, quite a bit of it went in the poor cat's face.

"Blast it!" Gregory griped, barely giving the feline a backward glance as they turned down the last stretch of road into the outskirts of town. "That's 'Mr. Snuffles', he said mockingly. "The old hag Gertrude's cat got out again. I don't know why she lets that thing run amok. She thinks he's some master magic-sniffer. Well, I'll tell you something, all it does is wreak havoc and make trouble. You can't even get near it without sneezing your head off!"

Mr. Snuffles shook his head, and with a noise that sounded very like a sneeze, wriggled out of Felix's hold using the mage's lap as a launchpad to propel himself into one of the open crates. He poked his head out and glared evilly at the pair before slinking down out of sight, where he remained until at long last, just after nightfall, they pulled into town.

When the errand-runner finally brought the cart to a stop by a group of mages standing near the sundial, the town's local landmark, a tall, white-haired woman clad in a belted slate blue robe met the arrival with a stern face. Several of the younger men and women stopped talking amongst themselves and looked up as the duo stepped off the rickety cart.

"Well, well, would you look what the cat dragged in?" someone hollered in the crowd.

No one noticed the black feline creep out of the box and slip to the ground, disappearing into an alleyway, silent as a ghost.

Archmage Tess gave Felix the slightest of nods, whether in approval or acceptance, it was impossible to tell, but her clasped hands twitched in the slightest, as though she wanted to open her arms in that matronly way, but as ever, due to her station, she had her reservations and as such, remained placid.

"Phoenix," one of the guys called, waving him over. "Hey, Phoenix! Man, it's been too long. Where've you been?"

Even though the journey to Gooseneck took a while, the welcoming committee alone made up for it. The group of mages who were cheering couldn't have been beyond apprentices, for the most part. Either way, they were Felix's kind of people, and he was not going to pass up the chance to speak with them.

"Where haven't I been?" the pyromancer answered with a grin, jumping off the wagon to join the crowd. Before long he was telling them about a few of his more well-known adventures - but without the embellishments - in return for news about what had happened at the Academy while he was gone. It turned out that things had been a bit more uneventful than Felix had expected, even after the fire all those years ago. The faculty had obviously done a good job in maintaining order.

"So, who's the elf?" asked one of the mages. Before she could say anything, Alexandria was brought forth and introduced to the crowd, courtesy of Felix. There were one or two people who weren't keen on the idea of trusting elves, but since she was the pyromancer's friend, there was little they could do to argue. With this out of the way, Felix left Alexandria with the crowd to speak with Archmage Tess, one of the few people he highly respected.

"Sorry 'bout that, ma'am, but my adoring fans insisted that I visit them," he said, shaking her hand and smiling. "It's been one hell of a while, hasn't it? Anyway, what's going on in Gooseneck that requires the attention of an Archmage? All we were told before we got here was something about... I dunno, things getting messed up? The faculty didn't have much details for us to go on."

The corners of Tess' eyes crinkled as she cupped her own thin, frail, fingers over his and offered a heartfelt squeeze.

"Too long," she agreed, releasing his hand, and cast a critical eye briefly over the elf before allowing her lips to turn up in the slightest of gestures. "It is good to see your years away from the academy have not gone to waste."

"On my return with the class visiting Fort Nuoro this afternoon, I detected a temporal anomaly that, while of no discernible origin, seems to be coming from within the town itself. None of us have been able to pinpoint its location, and if not for the strange happenings since last night up to the Watch's discovery of the recent murder victim this morning, I would have not thought to look for it."

The archmage began walking at a slow, measured pace around the circumference of the sundial, occasionally surveying one of the many buildings surrounding the town centre or glancing at each symbol and 'hmming' in noting some passing detail.

"As you may recall, for thirty years, the Gray Scholars, a group of the academy's elite students and professors, have been on the hunt for an magic book allegedly written and secreted away by one of the Drenn themselves. When sought after, the book erects a barrier within a certain radius preventing its discovery. It is said the mysteries of our world lie within its pages, and whosoever dispels the enchantment and locates this book will potentially wield the power of Ruyn itself.

"That is not all," she continued, stopping at the north-facing copper lemniscate on the sundial, and ran her fingers across the symbol. "Just before the fire, unbeknownst to the public eye and most of the students, one of the Grays went rogue and tried to unleash a spell strong enough to tear a dimensional rift spanning across the realms. You may remember Professor Belmont, our adept Chronomage?"

The old woman paused to led the name and titled sink in.

"He was one of our top scholars. The Council of Mages placed him under investigation shortly before you were expelled. Despite never going to trial, they exonerated him of all charges of arson based on lack of evidence of his involvement, but impeached him on grounds for abuse of magic. Angered, he threatened the council mages with retribution and disappeared shortly thereafter, though we learned through his writings he may have been close to finding the book. What may happen upon unlocking the secrets of that tome is all wild speculation, but I know of no other mage in Zamil powerful enough to fathom let alone dispel an anomaly of this proportion. If he is here, in Gooseneck, vouchsafe he will prove a most formidable adversary."

Felix paid attention to the what the Archmage had to say... at first. Looking at the sundial, he estimated that it might have had something to do with the temporal disturbance in the area. The pyromancer tried his hand at examining the thing as best he could, missing a large amount of vital information in the process while his attention was diverted. It was only when Belmont's name was mentioned that made him listen up. He'd heard quite a bit about the Chronomages, but mostly just in whispered rumours, and on one occasion smuggling out a book from the library from the restricted section that mentioned them a few times. Would they actually have to fight this guy? Even with the advantage of numbers, would it even the odds against a formidable opponent? Hopefully it wouldn't come to that. Maybe they'd just find the... Wait, what were they looking for again?

Alexandria had listened to Tess, and immediately saw a problem with their mission; they were looking for a book that was enchanted to mislead people who purposefully looked for it. However, she suddenly saw the confused look on Felix's face once the briefing was over, and a plan of her own began to form.

"Felix, you're the only one who can do this." the elf said to her friend out of the blue.

"Wait, me? Why me?" Felix asked.

"Because the item we're looking for is... uh..." Actually, that question was a pretty good one. Why need him specifically to find the book? "Because it can only be sensed by powerful fire magic users. You're the only pyromancer around here!" she finished. It managed to not only convince him, but appeal to his sense of heroism, and without any further input necessary from the healer, Felix mustered the rest of the group to fall behind him. Luckily he didn't ask where to start looking, because that was a question that most likely couldn't be answered by anyone present.

"I'll explain this to you on the way, shall I?" Alexandria said to Tess as the two of them followed the wizardly procession.

Felix, followed by Alexandria, Archmage Tess and two students from her class, strode through the town centre, their trek taking them past the sundial, Gooseneck's only popular landmark which cast no shadow under nightfall and the boundless cloud cover of slow-moving stratocumuli. Vertigris deposits formed a crust at the base of the sundial's gnomon, around the die cast symbols representing the hours and eight celestial signs of the zodiac in a nearly perfect annulus. Its most notable feature was a large, bright lemniscate cast sideways in the copper, forming a double loop into which dust and grit had settled.

Outside the town centre, where the rain had long since ceased falling, pockmarks speckling the dirt were nearly trampled flat by passing feet though mud particles still sloughed off dusty wagons and rain gutters onto the cobbles. The narrow streets wove complex patterns through the town, sometimes doubling back or leading to an entirely different network. However, near the end of one of several residential roads lined with nondescript shacks with small farms, the street split off onto a junction illuminated by an oil-burning lantern hung from a hook on the siding of a dilapidated brown house. At first, Felix saw nothing beyond the lamp's yellow-orange glow. Then, Tess motioned toward the right, starting to suggest they head that way, when she suddenly shifted her attention.

"Look!" she exclaimed in a loud whisper, pointing in the other direction as a darkly clad figure jogged across the gap and disappeared into a maze of houses on the next street over.