Chapter 12: A ROD Style Mess

         With a sudden shift as fast as blinking Rowan is flash banged by the sudden candlelit room. The room looks like a circular attic with a set of stairs leading up to a trap door and leading down in a spiral fashion. Stacks upon stacks of books and papers litter the walls with smaller stacks on the floor with only a clear path between the two sets of stairs and desk that has the most dense stack of books on the right side. Candles on saucers are seen floating around the room, light coming from the late afternoon sun is desperately trying to beam past the thick curtains.

This room and its dense mess almost makes Rowan feel right at home, The Magi stretches and yawns, "That's much better now come down here and take a seat." The Magi scratches their dirty blonde bob and saunters downstairs. Rowan left alone in the room waiting for a shoe to drop on him continues to look around, then carefully navigates the mess to find the path to the stairs. As Rowan reaches the stairs and descends he is greeted with almost more of the same but this time the circular room shape continues. This room has another set of stairs spiraling downward but in the center of the room is a long table covered in more papers and books. There small stacks of books taking a seat in four of the five chairs, half empty bookshelves line the walls of the room.

The Magi rises their arms as they complain, "Ahhh too stuffy!" Then they drop all effort in keeping their robes up and let them slop off their shoulders. The tired Magi now in nothing but their bloomers and a chest wrap yawn as they move to a stack of books on a chair and politely set them on the table. The baggy eye Magi sits down on the other chair then presents the now vacant chair to Rowan as they beckon him to sit. Rowan continued to be shocked by everything here still reminds himself that they are still a Magi, then walks and takes the seat.

The Magi stands to look over Rowan, "Alright Rowboat, how are you feeling after that little blip? Are you showing any signs of fatigue? Are you feeling like you are gonna throw up?" They stop and their baggy eyes glare into Rowan's, "Your not gonna throw up are you? You have to tell me if you do. Know what even better idea." The near nude Magi goes to one of the bookshelves and pulls out a drinking glass to hand to Rowan. He mentally quotes to himself, "If you're gonna spew, spew into this." Rowan takes the glass, "My name is Rowan, and I feel fine, but uh, where are we? Are we still in the prison?"

The Magi sits and writes on a piece of paper, " "Feeling fine", and I'm Vashti, Magi of the archive as you can see." With their off hand waves to the stacks of books while writing. "Good, now that you seem to be able a handle a 4 mile blink pleasantly well." Vashti puts the quill down and looks at Rowan, "I should do a raw reading then test how deep your Mana well is." They stand up and go to another bookshelf to pick up a little box containing a monocle. For a moment Vashti holds the monocle up to look at Rowan through it.

Vashti blinks, holds the monocle out to look at it then to look back at Rowan with it, then around the room. "How many people do you remember were in the summoning chamber when Shur'lee brought you here?" Rowan unsure about ever meeting Shur'lee, "I don't think I ever met them yet, but Braxen is the one who gave me these runes." Vashti rolls their tired eyes, "Of course she dumped that responsibility on that guy." they start looking over the rune work that Rowan under went and whistles, "You only been here for 2 days and he did this to you when you arrived? He really wanted to send another beast in the cells again."

Vashti sits down and pulls up another piece of paper and starts writing on it then stops. "Did he graft the reading rune?" They hold up the paper to Rowan, he takes it and tries to read the page. "I would not know its only a short while ago I started getting use to everyone speaking with their mouths out of sync." Struggling to make any sense of what Rowan is reading, he can tell just by the formatting that its a ledger, with a list of what could be numbers and in brackets are what could be names next to those numbers.

He shakes his head, "No, not really, I don't recognize any of the characters in these words." Vashti gives an offer, "I can graft those runes on you, you have more than enough capacity to hold more." Rowan hesitates, "I don't really want to be stabbed with a stick again, but I won't have a choice if you just freeze me like what they always do." They stare at Rowan almost looking insulted or that they are looking at an idiot. Then they come to an understanding, "Ahh, right, Braxen, that limp certi of a-... No, I don't use "traditional" methods of grafting." Vashti raises their quill, "I use this to agitate the blood in your skin to draw the runes." He asks, "But will it hurt?"

After being reassured that the pain will not be a factor as Vashti did a test with the quill. It dose feel uncomfortable but leagues better than the alternative. As a precaution Vashti did make Rowan freeze as to not flinch when the runes are being applied. "And done." The new runes only took a few minutes of careful strokes starting from the top of Rowan's head trailing down to his brow next to the other set of runes. Once activated Rowan goes blind, he panics and closes his eyes, the paralysis wears off and he opens his eyes to see that nothing changed. Vashti hands him the paper once more, "Read this now."

Rowan sees a series of numbers with names next to them as well as check boxes of shorten phrases on the each line. Near the bottom of the list he sees his number and the numbers of his cellmates with various check marks, but Rowan's line has most of the check marks. "No wonder Kiri was worried about what they had in store for me." Rowan clarifies, "Are all these markings track what kind of runes are on all of us?" Vashti with a sarcastic shock in expression, "Oh noooo~ you found out, that was suppose to be a secret." They chuckles as they casually grabs the page. "Yeah, its so we can measure any ones Mana well and in how much their body can take."

Vashti now adding that page back to a stack, "So now that you can read you can begin your task for me!" Rowan braces himself as Vashti explains in a cute tired tone, "I will need you to organize all the books in this tower for me!" He looks at the mess around him, then looks up thinking about the attic like room. "Hold on one moment." Rowan gets up from the chair and confronts his fears down the other set of stairs, to see a larger room with a libraries worth of half empty shelves and towers of books next to them.

Rowan looks back up to see Vashti going upstairs to grab a tower of books, "I will make it easy for you by bringing what I don't use to you." With a baggy eyed tired smile, "Have fun!"