章 13: The Great Wisti
He is skeptical to enter the tower at first. Used to a large number of guards in the red kingdom, make him wonder if he is even in the right spot due to the lack of security, in fact, ever since he has crossed the bridge there is no sight of any guards nearby.
He opens his mouth after a few seconds of contemplating his options standing in front of the large open, oval portcullis of stone, thinking asking Drachen would be best but he stops midway, he doesn't want to depend on her for everything.
Taking a step forward, he utilizes his staff to move the thick purple curtains that block his vision of the tower's interior and is taken back by the luxurious and lavish decorations that lay on the walls, pillars, arches, and candelabra of the long hallway in front of him.
Iron decorations and expensive-looking carpets, but while the place looks no different than a noble's wealthy palace, it reeks of that all too familiar smell of old books that make Das involuntarily smile.
One of the many curtains that seem to act as doors move and from within appears a Braunner wearing a golden robe with intricate arcane designs. He is carrying several brown scrolls in his arms.
"E-Excuse me!" Das shouts lowering his hood and approaches the man who looks at him with confusion "I am the archmage, I need to speak with the Great Wisti"
The Braun squints his eyes at Das and slowly moves forward at the other side of the hallway, aiming to go through one of the curtains.
"I, well..." Das struggles to think of a way to make him understand so he snaps his fingers three times, a tiny fireball, a bit of lighting and a tiny beam of light appear with each snap.
The Braun raises an eyebrow and right as Das believes he has understood what he means, the man rushes this time out of view.
"Pffft HAHAHA!" Drachen pops out and holds her stomach while she laughs at the annoyed young archmage "What was that?! But at least I got what I wanted from this trip" She cleans a tear from her eye and turns around, clears her throat, and shouts " Anquad jalhaa tahaht mana haalat"
After a couple of seconds, several men dressed just like the first one appear from within the curtains and other rooms. One of them approaches Drachen, clearly puzzled by the fairy and the two begin to talk while Das looks at them with his arms folded in front of him and displeased look.
Eventually one of them approaches Das and motions with his hand to be followed.
"You are welcome" Drachen said as she sat on Das's shoulder.
"You could have told me you knew Braunarian"
"I could have, but I wanted to have my fun" She confesses playing with Das's hood.
"Listen, I know how you usually are, but this is a very important task I've been given, so if you can please not mess with me as much I would be thankful"
Drachen pouts and stretches on his shoulder.
Das takes it as her saying "Okay" and moves his attention to the end of the hallway.
Once he goes through the curtain he looks in awe at the unbelievable amount of libraries on seemingly every wall of the tower. The place itself must be divided in two layers, the first one with all kinds of rooms and the second with tasked with being the legendary library. However, he sees no way to reach the dozens or hundreds of other floors.
The man on the robe guides him to the middle of the room, once Das stands in the middle the man uses his hands to let him know he has to stay there and moves a couple of meters away.
He says some words and the ground beneath Das's feet begins to glow with white rune energy, turns out he is standing on a stone platform that begins to rise and levitate upwards at a fast speed.
Das quickly gets used to it, thanks to all the time he has spent levitating on his own, and is glad he won't have to spend any of his energies on going all the way to the top.
He takes glimpses of each floor, all are filled to the brim with libraries and robed men that carry scrolls or make sure everything is where it belongs. There are purple hanging banners with the symbol of the Dominion. A golden eye with five runes around it in a circle.
After some time, the platform begins to get slower and comes to a sudden halt once it reaches the top, going through what seems the roof at first but then is shown to be a large circular room with only one door in front of him.
Das notices that all this time the tower has no light from torches, but instead, it uses some type of crystal that glows a dim but luminescent enough blue light on the candelabra.
He steps out of the platform that still has its runes glowing and as soon as he is on the floor, the runes die and the platform begins to fall at an alarming speed.
"Tell me I didn't screw up just now" He whispers looking over the edge of the circle and sighs in relief once the platform stops in mid-air right before it crashes on the first floor.
Soon, his attention is drawn elsewhere. Specifically, behind the stone doors, there is loud shouting but the doors must be thick enough to muffle the sound so he is only barely able to hear.
As Das approaches, the doors are blasted open from within, making him prepare for a confrontation.
A group of small humanoids wearing fancy clothes of leather and silk appear from inside. the Kleinners.
They look very similar to humans, except that they are no taller than four feet in height, their muscular, stoic bodies look slightly comical. They are all bald with one small gemstone on the middle of their foreheads, their skin pale, and large beards for the men on the group. Eyes that look completely white at plain sight, but a trained eye realizes that their iris is of such a light blue color it makes it seem almost white.
"You disrespect our people with your silly jokes and want us to agree to your outlandish, unrealistic, one-sided trade deals?! Shove it up your arse!" One of the Kleinner turns around and sticks his middle finger out at the Braunner inside the room.
"Come on! You don't what me to laugh at the fact you use STOOLS to use our bathrooms?!" The Braunner shouts at them right before historically laughing.
The Kleinners scoff and walk past Das paying no attention to him while Drachen suspiciously looks at them through her safety nest. One of the dwarfs speaks in Braunarian once they stand at the edge of where the platform goes and they give their backs at the Braunner in the room, speaking to each other in their own language.
"Hey! by the anti-social attire and fancy staff you must be the new archmage! come on in!" The Braunner speaks to Das waving his hand.
Das is relieved that he seems to know Geradosian since the tongue both parties were using with each other before was the useful trade tongue. The only language besides his own that Das understands. He makes a mental note of increasing his knowledge of other languages later as he walks into the only room on this floor.
The room is circular with no visible corners. With six pillars around it and a large square wooden table finely carved resting on the middle, together with comfortable wooden chairs that Das recognizes come from his kingdom.
"Come, come! Sit anywhere you want, negotiations always awaken my appetite" The Braunner sits in clearly, the most ostentatious and expensive chair of them all.
He wears a set of impressive robes white, bronze and purple. His chest was exposed with a large emerald hanging from his gold necklace, earrings on his long ears, and half of his head was shaved perfectly while the other half was a large, untamed mess of wavy purple hair that he tried to fix with his ring filled hands as he sat.
His most intriguing aspect was, however, his eyes. The right was a powerful and extravagant green that demanded attention while the left was a shadowy purple that looked at Das and immediately inspected every single little detail of him. From his mannerisms to the number of wrinkles on his tunic.
From within his somewhat baggy robes, he pulls out some metallic, spherical object that reacts to his touch and opens slightly in the middle, dim blue light akin to that of the candelabra emanates from it. He speaks to it for a brief moment and then hides it back from where it came.
Now that both of them sit directly in front of each other, separated by at least seven meters, the Braunner leans on the table and holds his hands in front of his mouth.
"I am the Great Wisti, Afzal Sediq. What brings such a young, pretty boy to my boring library?" He winks at Das with a mischievous smile.
Das, while feeling a little uncomfortable, still reddens at the compliment, something he is not too used to.
"Hey! You are three hundred years too OLD to hit on my boy!" Drachen shoots out of Das's hair and threateningly points at the face of Afzal mere inches from it.
"Good to see you too, Drachen" He says laughing playfully.
Drachen flies back to Das's side and sits cross-legged on his shoulder.
"This place gets better and better each time I see it, you have been up to something haven't you?" Drachen says throwing him a curious look while she raises one eyebrow.
"It's all thanks to the ancients! If we had just a fraction of their knowledge..."He looks aside for a moment as he pictures a world where he has all the technology of the ancient, mysterious civilization before he looks ahead again and this time focuses on Das "But where are my manners. You must have a reason to come here so suddenly without sending a messenger to announce your eventual arrival"
"Y-yes. Ahem, listen..."
Das tells what he went through the day before, earning interested looks and the complete attention of Afzal. Once he is done, the Braunner leans back on his chair and taps his fingers on the table in rhythmic succession. Taking in the information.
"This is very interesting, if there is anything Drachen doesn't know it immediately becomes into something I'm interested in, and if that something represents a possible threat, even more."
"I'm glad that's the case, I want to request permission to look through the library and try to find anything regarding the manipulation of dead bodies"
"Denied" Afzal says without hesitation, Das seems shocked but before he can say anything, Afzal raises his hand to stop him "The library, even if it is no older than you, has more than one million books and countless scrolls waiting for translation, decryption, and analysis. If you think that you can accomplish anything by looking through them all on your own, then you are not too bright "He says almost mockingly "So, I will get some of my people together and assign them the new daunting task of going over all the texts and information we have, in the case anything is found, I will send someone over to your capital and let you know"
Das smiles for a moment before respectfully bowing his head.
"Thank you, Great Wisti, for the much-needed help"
"Nonsense! It must be terrible for such a young human like you to deal with something of this magnitude...I'm sorry about your dad, by the way. He was a great and powerful man"
Das's smile vanishes and he raises his head.
"He was" He says intertwining his fingers on the table.
The room falls silent for a moment, making Afzal clearly uncomfortable, but just as he is about to say something he notices the platform has gotten up again and carries a couple of servants.
"Ah! finally, I called some food to be delivered to us" Afzal calls the servants in with his hand.
A pair of human slaves enter the room, each carrying a silver plate with food each.
"Thanks to Hashnamakar for our quick cooks! You will apologize to me if I prefer the mushrooms and fish dishes of my people over your bovine favoritism "He says as the servant places the plate in front of him and hands him a pair of wooden sticks.
The food he is given is all balls, the meat of the fish, and the mushroom. He picks one with the wooden sticks and eats it smiling with satisfaction. The servant that stays to his side also carries a golden jug that pours wine on a goblet that he then hands his master.
"Enjoy, we also have human food today so you are in luck" Afzal says and takes a long sip of his wine.
Das stares at the red piece of meat in front of him, with a knife and fork waiting to be picked. He grabs the utensils and cuts the meat open. The stench of cooked flesh invades his nostrils, together with the hardened texture of the meat and the red liquid that oozes out of it almost make him gag.
"Thank you for the thought" He says standing up from his chair "But with this matter settled I would like to return to my kingdom and resume my duties as archmage as soon as possible" Das places the hood over his head and flashes a faked smile at Afzal.
"A shame. You are welcome any time, Archmage "He raises his goblet at him and the archmage departs "Maybe I shouldn't have brought up his father. Hm" He says once Das descends on the platform and shrugs, continuing to enjoy his delicious meal.
クリエイターの想い 
PenguinSam64
PenguinSam64 Damn, is so hot in the country I live in right now. I don't think I have ever mentioned this but English is not my mother tongue. It is actually ESPAÑOL!!! AHHHHHHH!! but I enjoy writing in English. I'm mostly self-taught so excuse if my writing is not the smoothest, I learn more every day to make it the best I can possibly offer to you all!
I made a novel in Spanish called Orange Buffet, but it never got grabbed by any publisher.
Anyways, have a great day and if you could drop a power stone to help me I would appreciate it wholeheartedly!
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