The musty cellars beneath Musana’s glimmering perch housed the Order of the Sun’s Device Support Department. Portly solamancers, acne-encrusted apprentices, and a couple of theological support friars in bright yellow robes moved laconically amidst tables laden with enchanted objects. Huge tomes with titles like Liber Usus and How to Handle Your Rod lay scattered amongst the wands and amulets, as well as a conspicuous army of mugs half-filled with cold coffee.
The Human behind the front desk could have been mistaken for an Ogre, were it not for the solamancer’s robes he wore and the care with which his handlebar mustache had been waxed into perfect shape. The huge man hunched over a sputtering sprite stone, weaving precise threads of fire and light into it with hands like bear paws. He wore a wooden name tag engraved with a small sun and lettering that said “HELLO! MY NAME IS JESH WATTERS.” Mr. Watters apparently felt this accessory satisfied any social obligations he had to the customer, as he did not so much as look up from his work when Jynn approached the desk.
“Hello, I’d like to—” the archmage began.
“Ticket,” said the attending wizard absently, sliding a slip of paper across the desk.
“Of course. Where are my manners?” Jynn muttered. He took a pencil stub from a small tin cup and filled out his personal information, a brief summary of his challenges with the wand, and checked the box that indicated the job should commence with urgency.
Mr. Watters frowned down at the ticket. “That’s an omnimancer relic.”
“Yes.”
“I’ll have to get a noctomancer in here to work on it with us.” The massive wizard didn’t look up from the slip of paper.
“Yes.”
Watters scowled at the paper. It took a certain sort to devote all their time and energy to the maintenance of magical devices, and that sort somehow managed to maintain a reputation for poor interpersonal skills amongst the Academy of Mages—an institution best known for settling petty grudges with reality-warping blasts of sorcery. Jynn suspected the attendant taking his ticket had been selected to man the front desk for his ability to form complete sentences that directly related to the current conversation.
“It’ll need a week,” said the solamancer.
“I thought service on a wand takes two days.”
“We’re getting a lot of stuff like this in.” The attendant affixed the completed ticket to the wand with a ball of wax and set it on the counter behind him. “And so are the noctomancers. There’s a queue.”
“A lot of what stuff?” asked Jynn.
“Omnimancer relics,” said the wizard, shuffling various enchanted devices around the shelf. “Nornstones. Theological support monk tools. That sort of thing.”
“Ah.” This marked the usual spot in a conversation to thank the attendant, and to receive a wish of a good day in reply. Yet the archmage was lost in a sudden flurry of thoughts, and the attendant’s attention had never really been on the customer, so the exchange sputtered and died like a campfire deprived of logs.
The omnimancer’s brow furrowed as he made his way up the stairs. Simultaneously malfunctioning nornstones across the city could have been a coincidence, of course, but the coinciding failure of so many devices used to measure coincidences seemed too… coincidental to ignore. The breakdowns themselves might have been an indicator of heightened levels of latent—
“Jynn?”
The archmage looked up from his pondering and found himself staring into a familiar set of dark eyes. “Oh! Laruna! What are you doing here?” he blurted.
The solamancer glanced around at the conspicuous number of mages in bright orange, yellow, and red robes moving in and out of the Tower of the Sun’s main gate. “Taking a class.” She shrugged, and a slight blush bloomed in her cheeks. “But what about you?”
“I… uh…” Jynn glanced about, wishing he’d brought Patches along, then realized that the truth could be framed in a fairly innocuous manner provided he didn’t ramble on about his father’s research. “I dropped off a device for repair.”
“Another magical accident?” Laruna asked.
“Not this time,” said Jynn. “My nornstone wand is acting up.”
“Oh?” She flashed her teeth in an amused smile. “Working with latent fate? You must be trying your hand at divination.”
“Something like that,” said Jynn. “I have noticed an increase in the amount of coincidental or serendipitous events recently.”
“We do seem to be running into each other a lot.”
“Ah, yes. Ahaha. But I’m more interested in… well, it just seems that lately events have been funneling together. Specific needs suddenly being met at exactly the right moment, circumstances lining up in just such a way, funneling people toward something… that sort of thing.”
“What other—?” Laruna began, but she was cut off by a red-faced bannerman wearing a courier’s feathered cap.
“Laruna Trullon! And Jynn Ur’Mayan?” he boomed. “Must be my lucky day! I thought I’d be up and down the halls of at least two mage’s towers finding you, and here you are right on the sidewalk, havin’ a chat! Guess this means I can give you both your messages at once.”
The mages shared a wary look as they accepted two sealed scrolls from the courier. “What is this about?” asked Jynn.
“The biggest quest of the age,” said Gorm Ingerson, his beard shining like copper in the lantern’s light. “Slayin’ the Dragon of Wynspar.”
Burt waved his cigar at the Dwarf. “You said the dragon was the biggest ruse in history.”
“Which makes this the most obvious trap in history,” Heraldin added.
The party nodded in agreement. Six Heroes of Destiny and one irate Kobold sat around a small table in the dim taproom of Moira’s Tavern. Six scrolls of royal mandate and one ashtray sat in front of them.
“And ye know what that means,” said Gorm.
“This could be the opportunity we’ve been waiting for,” said Laruna with a grin.
“You’ve been waiting for him to send you into a trap?” said Burt.
“We been waiting for the right moment to talk about the dragon,” said Gorm. “Now he’s back with no evidence of the dragon, and we can make a case against him directly to Andarun’s nobility and guildmasters and business leaders.”
Burt exhaled a long, silver-blue stream of smoke. “S’probably exactly what he wants,” he said.
