First: A New World

The Kael-room. That was an interesting turn of phrase. Kael knew this tower like the back of her hand; she had been living her for nearly a century before – before she lived here for quite longer in some sort of suspended animation, she supposed. A hundred years. The tower came with a grant. Now that was interesting. Who had provided such a thing? How had the tower’s presence been explained? She was fairly certain much more than a hundred years had passed. Buildings she could see from the windows looked far beyond the current – the current-when-she-slept abilities of normal humans, and there hadn’t been enough wizards in the world to raise so many towers. And yet many of these buildings appeared to be well over a century old, if the aging signs had not changed utterly.

She paused to look out a window. The world around her tower was so much more crowded, and the people in so much more of a hurry, than anything she remembered from before. All those people. Were they heroes? Were they adventurers? Who would come to a seat of the muses that would need to see a Kael – a Kael, not the Kael, and even Kael could recognize the phrase Back Stage.
They were putting on a show, weren’t they? Some sort of Kael Show. Why are you bothering me, Pesky Mortals? It was something she had certainly done from time to time.

But – there were too many buts. Kael ran her hands over the robe from the “back-stage” robing room and considered it for a minute. It looked the part, certainly, although the part around the bodice was a little tighter than she tended to wear when she was working – snug-fitting was good, kept things out of the potions. Tight enough to restrict breathing? That was less good, especially when you needed to be able to smell if a potion had gone wrong.

And how wrong a potion could go! She had never meant to miss so much of the world!

She shook herself. That would come later. For now, she could certainly – what was it – play the part? It seemed to be some sort of stage-play in situ, pretending to be – well, herself, or some version of herself that wore fancier robes and did not go up into the tower.

She wondered how much of the day playing the part was supposed to take, and what, exactly, a fake-Kael would have been doing. She would be brewing potions up in her Tower, or, down here, perhaps preparing ingredients, looking out over the world, planning her next step.

She paced the room. This had been her secondary workroom and storage facility, back when she was ali – no. Back when she was Queen of the Wilds, Wizard of the Tall Tower, maven of all knowledge that heroes sought. She was, it seemed, definitely still alive. Now it had been set up to look more like her primary workroom above, except the open “fire” and the giant cauldron were never what she would have used. There were far too many risks in such a set-up.

A piece of paper caught her eye. She picked it up, curious, and found herself looking at Joaon’s handwriting.

Joaon. She nearly dropped the paper.

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