Chapter 8: Sigul

    Deklos walked down the street toward the university.  It was the beginning of the day, so the lamps that lit the streets were still a bit dim.  Normally, he wouldn't dare be up at such an unholy hour of the day, but today would be his first day back on the job as a university professor since that fateful experiment.

    He had been unconscious for months after the experiment had damaged his mind.  During that time, the doctors had barely kept him alive with some experimental artifacts that put the body into a form of hibernation.  Once he had woken, they discovered that the months of sleep had healed his mind, but caused his body to become weak.  His hands and arms couldn't handle complicated tasks, and his legs almost didn't work at all.  This resulted in him spending a few additional months at the hospital, re-teaching his body how to perform basic functions.

    During this time, Deklos took the time to read up on history.  Since he had no desire to go return to the hospital to sleep for a few more months, Deklos decided to give up his attempts to create an antipodal elemental fusion spell experimentally.  Instead, he looked through the history books, seeking any evidence of an unusual or unknown spell causing upheaval.  Unfortunately, most of the books he read tended to be less than helpful.  One text, however, gave him a direction for his research.  In an old book about the lives and crimes of infamous criminals, Deklos found a reference to someone known as 'Relos the Fugitive.'  This man, it turned out, had stolen a manuscript describing the casting of a dangerous spell, and led the police on a chase all over the Dark Lands.  When they had finally cornered him, Relos managed to get away by casting a form of a teleportation spell.  The part about the lost spell manuscript caught Deklos' eye, so he began to study this incident.  This study consumed his free time for the rest of his stay at the hospital.

    Finally, after months of extreme frustration, Deklos finally managed to become barely self-sufficient again.  The hospital bills were waived in exchange for him refining and producing a quantity of the artifacts for inducing hibernation.  After completing this task for the hospital, Deklos found himself once again a free man, capable of returning to the life he had lived before the accident.  Fortunately, Deklos' irrational desire for revenge against Lideus Magus had cooled, leaving behind a simple desire to be accepted.  As a result, he found himself able to research the concept of antipodal elemental fusion at his leisure, though he still intended to try to acquire it in order to realize his dream of receiving the title of Magus so that he would be accepted on account of his strength.

    Looking up, Deklos found that he was already at the entrance to the university.  He walked through the garden toward the main entrance, appreciating the green while he could before finally entering the main building of the university.  He found the interior almost completely empty, no students or professors roamed the halls yet, and only a few of the secretaries and administrators were present.  A few of them saw him and recognized him, so Deklos found himself already having to deal with explaining what he had been doing for nearly half a year.  Unfortunately, a few of the secretaries that decided to ask about the last few months happened to be some of the more inquisitive and talkative of the bunch, so it ended up taking him quite a bit of time to end the conversations.  A few hours later, the crowds began to arrive, and Deklos found himself able to withdraw to his office without attracting too much attention.

    In his office, Deklos found a box and a folder sitting on his desk.  Looking into the box, he found a pile of papers and projects that his students had completed in his absence.  A note was attached to it that simply read "For future reference."  The teachers' aide that had taken over some of his classes was apparently the sadistic sort.  He placed the box on the floor, taking care not to break any improperly constructed artifacts in the process, and then sat down at his desk.  The folder still lay there, so he picked it up and opened it.  Within, he found a small ream of papers summarizing in the lengthiest form possible the results of his classes during his absence, complete with a listing of the professors and teachers' aides that were currently teaching his classes.

    After filing away these papers, mostly into the circular filing cabinet, he found another note from one of the administrators.  The note hinted at the fact that he was expected to return to his classes as soon as possible, and that the construction of his class schedule would be completely up to him.  Also politely hinted at in the note was a threat of loss of employment should he not take back most of his classes, no matter how inconvenient the scheduling might be.  Deklos merely rolled his eyes at this and went to work at arranging his schedule.  He ended up having fewer classes than usual, mainly due to scheduling conflicts that he had not been present to change, but easily had "most" of his classes back.

    For the remainder of his day, Deklos went back and reviewed the lessons that he would be teaching in his classes for the next few weeks.  He had been away for almost half a year, so he figured that one day more wouldn't hurt anyone since there were already people teaching his classes for him.  He worked through the normal lunch break, eating some food he had brought from home while continuing to review the lectures that he was scheduled to present in the following weeks.  The material was certainly not new to him, but he had somewhat forgotten how to explain the techniques of various fields of applied magic to students.

    Finally, it came to the end of the day, when all the classes were finished up and the students had returned to their apartments and dormitories to cause havoc until the early morning hours.  Deklos was exhausted, but at least he was prepared for actually teaching his classes again.  He left the books and papers on his desk where they were, and took care not to trip over any particularly volatile artifacts that his students had produced as "class projects" in his absence.  He closed up his office, and walked down the mostly vacant hallways toward the entrance.  On his way out, he smelled a faint trace of smoke coming from the magic labs, but did nothing about it.  After all, he had caused the worst magical accident that the university had seen in a century, so who was he to criticize a student that let a fire spell get somewhat out of control.

    The empty hallways gave way to a sparsely populated street, and the bright lighting of the university became the dim light of the night lamps.  Deklos trudged on down the streets toward the building his apartment was in.  The outlines of the building blurred in the dim lighting, though Deklos could see every detail of the buildings in his memory.  He had walked this street many times, both in the bright light of the day lamps and the dim light of the night lamps, and he knew the form of this street as well as the techniques of artificing.  He continued on toward his home, fading away into the shadows of the street at night.

* * *

    The stone walls were damp to the touch.  He knew that the cavern he was in was close to a source of water, and that he'd have to be careful using spells in here.  One misplaced spell, and he might either cause a cave-in or a flood, depending on how unlucky he was.  He checked his backpack, just to make sure that the book was still intact.  After all, it just wouldn't do to destroy such a valuable book.  No, he had to get rid of it by hiding it where no one will find it for hundreds of years.  Someone will need the information in this book someday, but it's too dangerous to let just anyone have it.

    He continued to walk down the dark corridor, a simple light spell illuminating the way in front of him.  Shadows writhed and twisted along the walls, brought to life by the wizard's spell.  In the distance, he heard water dripping, slowly forming stalagmites and stalactites like the ones he could see all around him.  The tunnel stretched out as far as his light allowed him too see, so he continued on toward his destination.

    The tunnel was long, but not endless.  Before long, he found himself at the mouth of the cave, and peered out into the darkness.  He concentrated on his light spell, adding power to it so that he could see his surroundings.  The area outside the cave seemed to be a barren wasteland, but in the distance, he thought he could see the shadows of some unusual rock formations.  Curiosity got the better of him, so he walked toward the structure to see what it was.

    To his surprise, the thing he thought was a rock formation was actually a building, a guardhouse on the perimeter of a town.  The style looked very similar to that of the city he had come from, but with some marked differences.  Instead of being perfectly smooth and unadorned, the structure seemed to be quite a bit more jagged.  Sharp corners and engravings distinguished this building from the ones he knew so well.  Lifting his light source up, he examined the engravings.  To his surprise, the art was a depiction of a battle.  On one side, there were men in the robes of mages.  They seemed to be shooting or throwing something toward the men on the other side, who were for the most part adorned in the simple clothes of peasants.

    This artwork puzzled him, so he sat down to think about what it meant.  Then he heard footsteps behind him, the soft tap of feet against the ground.  He turned around, and held forth his light spell.  What he saw before him froze him where he stood.  Before him was a man wearing chain mail and wielding a pike.  The man's appearance was fairly normal, pale skin and dark hair.  What truly distinguished him, however, was his eyes.  His eyes were red.  Then he grinned, revealing a pair of fangs.

* * *

    Deklos awoke with a start.  The dream he just awoke from was fresh on his mind, and images of the monstrous man consumed his thoughts.  A few minutes later, he recovered his rationality, and realized that the dream was probably due to his endless study of Relos had created the dream.  Turning his mind toward the reality of the day, Deklos pulled himself out of bed, and began to go through his morning ritual of dressing and taking care of hygiene.  He walked into the kitchen, and began to prepare some food to eat.

    As he ate, Deklos thought about the events of the past few days.  Ever since that first day back to work, classes and research had consumed every waking moment of the day.  If he wasn't giving a lecture on the practical application of darkness-based spells, he was poring over history books, searching for any little clue that might help him track down the book that Relos had stolen all those years ago.  Day in and day out for four days the teaching and researching had continued on unabated, and now Deklos found himself completely worn out.  Worse, the activities of his days were creeping into his nights, giving him disturbing dreams like the one he had last night.

    Luckily, there were no classes today, so he decided to use his day off to relax for a change.  He was not going to research history today, instead he'd go through his spell book library.  Learning new spells always relaxed him, and it would engage his mind enough that he wouldn't become bored.  Walking over to his bookshelves, he took down a few books.  He carried them over to his desk, and sat down to read.  He looked at the titles, and found that he had chosen mainly books on the subject of time-activated spells.  He was surprised about how much he didn't remember about spells that would only reveal themselves after a set period of time.  He considered using these in some of his classes, using the technique to hide questions on the tests until half of the allotted time was up.  Shaking his head at the notion, Deklos returned to his reading.

    An hour or so later, he returned to the bookshelf in search of different books.  Replacing the books he already had on the shelf, Deklos looked at the titles in search of something that might interest him.  He was considering looking at a book on the application of wind-based spells to the construction industry, when a strange title caught his eye.  It read simply, "The Journal of Relos the Archwizard."  Wondering why a journal was on his spell book shelf, as well as if the Relos mentioned in the title was Relos the Fugitive, he pulled the book down and began to read.

    He flipped through the book first, and found in the very back a small essay that described the theoretical foundation for teleportation magic, and went on to describe a spell for teleporting a person to a specific location.  Reading that small section, he remembered why it was on the spell book shelf.  A number of years ago, he was going through the things that his late parents' possessions, and found the journal under a pile of his mother's old clothes.  He read parts of it, and found it mostly boring.  The section on teleportation magic, however, made it well worth keeping.  He had decided to surprise his students one day by teleporting directly from class to his office and back again, and the look on his students' faces were priceless.  Of course, that was before he realized how expensive it was to teleport himself places.  He hadn't touched the spell in years because he didn't have a need to teleport himself anywhere.

    Deklos turned back to the journal section, and began to read.  After all, he was curious about who this Relos character was, and why he had researched teleportation magic.  The first half of the journal described a man much like himself.  Relos was apparently a scholar at the university, specializing in research while doing teaching occasionally if the need arose.  The man had been particularly skilled with dark elemental spells, but was actually interested in refining past research.  He had taken an ancient work about teleportation magic, reproduced it in the laboratory, and refined the technique into a general-use spell.  Of course, the massive element requirements were still present, but he was unable to pursue this particular branch of research.

    The second part of the journal certainly got more interesting.  Around the time that Relos was working on cutting the energy cost of teleportation, a friend of his asked him to keep a certain spell book from the university's archives safe.  A few days after receiving the spell book, Relos began to experience visions, where a man shrouded in shadows pleaded with him to hide the spell book in a particular place.  This kept up for a few weeks, until Relos agreed to hide the book.  That's when he met the man from the vision.  The man talked with Relos in person only once, but gave him instructions as to how to hide the spell.

    The spell was supposed to be hidden away by teleporting to a particular sealed chamber and leaving it there.  The teleportation spell was nearly identical to the one that Relos had worked on, but used three siguls to position the end target of the spell instead of using a pair of markers.  The man had prepared the three siguls ahead of time, and left them scattered across the dark lands so that no one else could use the spell.  Relos found the first sigul in the dusty archives.  The second sigul he found in his desk at home.  He had recorded the design of both of these siguls in the journal.  The journal never said if he found the third sigul.  The last journal said that he was going to go through "those caves" the next day, and hopefully he would find the third sigul there.  The next few pages were blank, and then the treatise on teleportation began.