The White Wizard

The White Wizard

A season had passed, the snows around the whitewashed walls of Brewfell giving way to spring’s first shoots, and still the wizard read. Robed in white, he hunched over a desk in the dimness of one of the city’s forgotten archives, eyes flitting across a book’s pages. 

He reached its end and, with the quiet reverence due all writing, pulled its cover shut. Then, he turned to the massive shelf and selected his next—his two thousand and thirty-first text since he’d come searching for the formulae.

He slid a weathered brown tome from the wall, warmth coursing through him as he touched the leather binding. A smile teased at his cheek. He had a good feeling about this one.

He laid the book on the table, about to lift the heavy cover when a sound… distant, inaudible save for his magically enhanced hearing, rang out from above: The grinding of the hidden door of stone. Someone, likely a spy for the dark lord, had found their way in.

He glanced over his shoulder, towards the winding stairs back up into the city, and then he opened the book. It would be a while yet before they made it down. He had a few moments. He flipped through pages of alchemical notation until a diagram caught his eye—searing water forced through a powder and filtered into a flask.

“At last.”

He snapped the book shut, stowed it in his satchel, and scooped up his staff. As he trod up the stairs, the crystal at his staff’s head began to gleam with power. The dark lord’s forces, try as they might, would not stop him from delivering these secrets.