The construction of the crystals had proved to be painstaking work - layer upon layer of quartz over magic. Fortunately, the process didn’t significantly change as the crystal grew in volume. On the whole it was a relatively simple, if precise operation, magically speaking.

In fact, it could largely been done nigh-unconsciously if one got into a rhythm. It was like stacking circular plates on top of of each-other, each one sliding and fixing into place. All Efrain had to do was feel the ‘click’ of the magical layer settling into place, and let the crystal grow on top of that, and so on.

Efrain had kept at it through the hours of the night, Peurla’s Truth and Plenty sitting open on a table he had pulled up. Time had quickly blurred between checking gauges, folding crystals, and reading about the interplay of the conflicts between the merchant classes and the ecclesiastic orders.

The first fingers of lights alerted Efrain to the incoming of dawn, much to his frustration. The crystal had only grown imperceptibly, despite the hours of work he had invested over the night. Normally, such a thing was, at worst, a minor irritation, but today it weighed especially heavy. As he withdrew his digits from the candracul inserts and shrugged off the helm as magic dissipated into the environment.

In theory, it was possible to construct a crystal in a matter of hours, if one should have sufficient mental acuity and magical power. Efrain had considerable amounts of both, but they were still nowhere near the amounts necessary. Perhaps if the environment was more saturated in magic he could grow it considerably quicker, but there were only a few places that he knew of on the northern continent that might serve.

For now, there was nothing to do other than chip away at the slow growth, night after night. The crystals had also proved to be annoying fragile, liable to breakage when he attempted to apply magic to their finished forms. He had spent several of them in the manner, weeks of work gone with a crackle and ping as the crystal shattered. He had gotten better, more efficient and faster at producing them, so he could take some degree of solace in their loss.

But all that being said, the cloud of irritation that floated over him did not dispel. He sighed as he pulled up one of the many scattered chairs around him and plopped down into it. Drawing Truth and Plenty, into his lap, he began to thumb the yellowed parchment. The binding had clearly begun to fray some time ago - Efrain would have to get that replaced. He had taken exceptional care of the majority of his books, but time had taken its inevitable tole. That really should’ve been his first indication of just how much time had past, he supposed.

He flicked through page after page of dispute after negotiation after dispute. Finally, he had wound his way to the beginning the very first page settling against his fellows as he read the inscription. He nearly dropped the book down when he saw the written date. He slowly closed the cover and lowered it down to the floor as he drummed the armrest of the chair.

Two hundred years. Two hundred years of reading, administration, experimentation, shut away in his little castle. To him, it had only felt like a handful or so. The gravity of the leap suddenly came to him - two hundred years of development, of trade and churches, of magic and experimentation unknown to him. It was the first time he had seriously considered the implications of the passage of time.

His fingers went from armrests to his temple as he rubbed his skull, or at least as well as he could with no skin. A series of alarm bells that had laid dormant had begun to ring with the onset of logical analysis. Efrain had ‘hosted’ many different people over the year, adventurers, explorers, and academics. But never, not once, had he’d been approached by a church agent. Oh, absolutely, there had been people who had professed belief, often before falling off a wall or being beaten to death by an undead horde. But never had there been a member of the church, and never a Paladin.

Upon further consideration, he realized that presence of a agent of the church was even worse than it had initially appeared. A paladin was not like to rove around by herself, and especially not so far afield in the wide world. Her presence could very well mean that a vanguard was not too far behind, which meant trouble, especially if there was more than one of them on their way.

Efrain straightened up, taking the book with him as he rose and placing on one of the many tables for later use. He supposed he had better take another crack at the finances, to see if he could summon up the gold from nowhere that he so desperately needed.

As he padded he way back to his room, helm under one arm, he decided to peak outside on one of the many north-facing balconies. The sky above was blue and cloudless, just as perfect as the day before. The greens below, however, were far from it. Efrain leaned over, trying to get a better look, to gauge just what he was seeing.

Patches of yellow were flecked through what were supposed to be evergreens, subtle, but more than enough to notice in the forest canopy. Efrain stayed for a while, spying little islands of faded colours reaching far to the west and around the bend of the valley. That was odd, it almost looked as if the trees were dying, which he’d never seen in all his time in the valley.

He wondered just what had been the cause of such a discolouration, as he turned to walk down the darkened hall beyond. After retrieving some articles of light wear, he returned to the throne-room standing in half-light. He drummed his fingers on the armrests of the throne, over and over, once gain mulling over his various options, as much as those words held any meaning in his situation.

He took a step back to gaze at the throne, looking over the tarnished silver and burned stone. The top half the throne, despite his attempts to repair it, had a great crack shearing throne the stone. It seemed to stick out in particular, a dark gash on the face of not only his throne, but a shadow on the whole environment around him.

He summarily decided that a new throne would be high on the list of prospective replacements. Something maybe a little less… well, whatever this was, and more ‘him’. He turned on his heels, circling to look at the wings of his castle. A crossroad lay before him, to the north, his experiments and tinkering awaited him, ever ticking away in the twilight of his workshops. To the south, his libraries and his accounts, and to the west, well, nothing really. Nothing god seemed to come out of the west, to be honest. He lingered on the doors at the far end of the hall, the east.

He was suspended in a moment, where things felt far more important than they did. He had learnt over the course of what he now had been made aware, many years, to dispel such moments. They were a confinement of the senses, a temporary illusion, nothing more. He turned toward the south, resolved to dredge up every last gold piece he could.

Then something snapped.

To an ordinary person, they wouldn’t have noticed, or, if they did, if would only be the barest impression of a thing. A flicker in the hue of the light, or a strange, concurrent flutter in the motes in sunbeam. But Efrain was no ‘ordinary person’, his being was fundamentally rooted in magic, immersed in it.

Whatever the thing was, it slammed against Efrain like a wave breaking across his entire ribcage. At the same time, it passed through him, dragging at his being like a dozen fingernails over every bone. Whispers echoed out through the arches of the hall, vanishing into the darkness. Voices rang out for a flash of sound, then faded into silence.

Efrain staggered toward one of columns, nearly missing and toppling over to the floor. There was a odd, fizzing feeling around all of him, like hundreds of tiny bubbles were crawling their way up his bones. When he finally felt slightly more secure, he pulled himself up.

“What in the world?” he wondered aloud as he walked unsteadily to the end of the hall.

With a shove he pushed the heavy doors open, the frigid breeze buffeting him as sunlight poured in. The yard stood as it always had - empty frozen mud that stood to his attention. The faintest trace of the great pulse still hung buzzing in the air.

Efrain stepped down stone topped stairs out onto the ground, casting this way and that to locate a source for whatever had just happened. Unfortunately it seemed that whatever had caused it was nowhere near him, for there was no sign of anyone or anything.

Efrain turned around to regard the eastern wall of his keep. It rose in a neat rectangle, the frontal balcony arrayed before the entrance to the main hall, until it meet the ugly hole right in the centre. How did she even get up there? And more importantly why? Efrain thought as looked at the cracked stones. He understood a certain thirst for theatrics, but was climbing all that way to crash back down really necessary?

A sound that crossed a hiss and a whinny made Efrain jump around. To his side a smaller version of the horse-thing that Carnes had ridden pawed the ground before him. Its slitted eyes regarded him with an emotion Efrain couldn’t quite place. Curiosity? Reverence? Affection? Or was that his imagination inserting itself into where it didn’t belong.

Efrain reached out slowly to rub its ‘head’ to which its various interlocking parts shuddered. The thing tossed its mane and blinked at him, and Efrain realized that the emotion was expectancy. And here I thought that you were supposed to be a paradigm of subtlety, Carnes, Efrain thought as he scratched the creature again. Efrain once more looked at the boarded up remnants of the Paladin’s entrance. It almost beckoned to him, calling him to find a way to fix it, to go back to the library and figure it all out.

“Piss off,” said Efrain as he decided that he needed a holiday.