Rynn watched as the last light of the setting sun slowly gave way to the dim candlelight. The large library windows refracted colors and patterns through the ancient glass, which danced up the ceiling until the night’s shadow slowly swallowed the tallest bookshelf in the library, the last traces of sunshine vanishing up into the rafters. The vast room almost seemed to grow smaller in the dark, though Rynn assumed this to be a trick of the light and not any kind of magical enchantment. Despite the plethora of magical literature the library contained, the books, bookshelves, checkout process, and filing all remained quite mundane. Rynn appreciated this, as it kept them comfortably employed.
Working second shift in the school’s 24-hour library certainly had its busy points, but tonight in particular, a lazy Saturday evening, seemed to drag on for ages. As the sun left the sky, so did most of the students leave the premises, returning to their homes, apartments, or dorms. Within a few hours, Rynn had completely caught up on the backlog of sorting and filing documents, research, and field reports. By the time they finished replacing the last of the books to the shelves, the clock was striking 10 pm, and they noticed that they were quite alone. They scanned the tables, walked through the shelves, checked each of the reading nooks, and didn’t find a soul.
Spotting a rare opportunity, Rynn ran back to their desk, jumped on top, and shouted, “Hello!” Yet, despite the enormous size of the room, there was no echo. Rynn had always suspected there was some kind of sonic dampening enchantment placed on the large, open space, but it wasn’t covered in librarian training, nor had they ever spotted any runes or glyphs, so they’d been left to wonder. With the school’s greatest and only remaining mystery solved, Rynn took a brief moment to enjoy the peaceful stillness of the silent night.
And as soon as that moment passed, they fell swiftly into a desperate boredom.
They sat down in their desk chair and leaned back, balancing on its hind legs for a moment, staring at the candlelight dancing upon the room’s high walls. I could get a head start on my divination homework, they thought. It’s not due until Wednesday, but there’s not much point putting it off….
Their thoughts drifted back to the present moment as their eyes drifted down the wall and to the library’s main entrance. Subconsciously, something registered as wrong about the large, intricately carved oak frame with its wide, open doors. However, it wasn’t until Rynn consciously paused their train of thought to examine the doorway that they actually processed what was off. A thick smoke covered the floor of the hallway outside, completely obscuring the tilework, and that cloud was slowly rolling in through the library door. It rose maybe a foot off the ground at its edges, and as the smoke billowed, shades of blue, green, and purple emerged from the rolling depths, carrying with it small crackles of similarly colored electricity.
Two immediate possibilities crossed Rynn’s mind: either another wizard at the Academy had carefully crafted an elaborate, powerful, and colorful illusion to play a prank on them, or someone’s experiment had gone quite wrong, and they might be very much in trouble. Rynn weighed the possibilities and determined that either way, they should probably try to track down the source of the enchantment.
Rynn sighed and pushed their chair back. Their first instinct was to try and detect what sort of magic had created the cloud, but after several fizzled attempts at casting the detection spell, Rynn briefly considered giving up their goals of becoming a wizard forever. Settling for a more mundane approach, they walked up to the cloud and stuck their hand inside, bracing for a shock or caustic burn. To their surprise, they felt nothing but an almost soothing, cool numbing sensation that trickled up their arm. Figuring the feeling was harmless, Rynn waded into the clouds and through the hallway, tracing the rippling disruptions running through the smoke to what they assumed was the source.
The cloud seemed to grow thicker and taller toward that end of the hall, until it completely swallowed the spiral staircase down to the basement. There aren’t any labs downstairs, so no one should be practicing magic down there, Rynn thought. But there are a handful of first year classrooms, and I suppose it could be a first year student dabbling in something they had no business attempting….
They debated turning back briefly, pretending the library door was closed and that they never noticed anything amiss, but their conscience wouldn’t let them. They checked that their enchanted dagger — a family heirloom that was admittedly more ornamental than practical — was still strapped to their waist, just in case. They hoped they wouldn’t have to use it, but the worst case scenario was that a rogue Shadow or Fey had broken loose from a Summoning spell, and Rynn didn’t know how to banish one of those. Or how to banish anything, for that matter.
They waded through the thick, cold smoke as it slowly rose past their calves and up to their knees. Slowly, it crept up to their groin, and they realized that what they had initially identified as a numbing sensation was being caused by a small amount of magical static clinging to the clouds. They wondered if the smoke would be safe to breathe, all things considered, so they pulled an enchanted scarf out of their bag of holding and wrapped it around their mouth before dipping their head into the cloud. The enchantment wasn’t particularly strong, nor was it designed for air filtration, but they figured it was better than nothing.
Rynn had originally thought a temperature-regulating scarf was a rather pretentious gift when their father had first given it to them, especially considering that a regular scarf keeps you just as warm for a tenth of the price, and you can take it off if you get too hot. Briefly, they almost felt guilty for saying as much. Almost.
They wrapped the scarf around their mouth and nose, closed their eyes, plunged their head into the cloud, and took a test breath.