Deacon and the gang headed toward the Tower mages guild. It was becoming late afternoon and they only had a few hours left of daylight. Ralph recommended they acquire the necessary gear as well as alert Jacob to the situation. Nods all around as they reached the road The Tower was located on. The building wasn’t more than five stories tall and one of the largest in the city. It had smaller buildings surrounding it. Some accessible from the road as well as some behind a shimmering wall of force. Amanda commented that if you weren’t in their guild, you could not pass that barrier spell.

They found the outer entrance to the guild shop and entered. The door swung opened at the slightest touch, light pouring out onto the street, and a cacophony they couldn’t hear while the door was closed. Inside, books were flying above patrons heads as attendants helped customers search through bins and shelves as far as the eye could see. Deacon popped his head back out of the door looking at the building that could be no more than the size of an average two-story home, yet inside it reminded him of one of those big box stores back home. Deacon stumbled forward as the door shut behind him.

“How may we help you today?” said a young man in light blue robes. He was very familiar to Deacon. As he racked his mind to remember, a thought came to him. This young man was rail thin with platinum hair and large oval shaped eyes of light blue. Immediately Deacon thought of Verus the Guild Master of the Tower.

“Excuse me but are you related to Verus?” Deacon asked getting slap to the back of the head from Amanda.

“Well, yes, I am. It’s a little difficult to hide the resemblance. There aren’t many Kel’Aish here on the plateau. My name is Tantus, he is my uncle. Yes, yes, we are very proud of his ascension in the Griffin Kingdom. First Kel’Aish to become a Guild Master. But back to my question, can I help you find something?” Tantus asked with a sad look on his face.

“We need to find items or potions to help us clear out a nest of Corpungie. They have poison tails.” Amanda said flatly.

“Poison protection. I have just the thing. This way please.” Tantus said striding off to the right of where they were standing.

“Kel’Aish?” Deacon asked Ralph in a hushed voice.

“They live in mountainous regions. Very magically gifted with air and water. You can usually tell their specialty by the color of their eyes. Not usually as dim as this ones. Typically they are much more vibrant.” Ralph answered quickly.

“Ok let us see here, yes, yes, we have rings of poison resistance of various strengths. There are some potions of poison immunity that will last a set amount of time based on the strength. Finally we have a spell of cleanse poison. It’s a minor spell so we can sell it freely without asking for guild clearance. Does any of this interest you?” Tantus asked after dusting off a book he’d just opened on a small table.

“Yes, how much for three rings of resistance mid-tier, two immunity potions low tier, and Deacon will be paying.” Said Amanda. Deacon immediately shot her a look and when he turned to Ralph for help, he was suspiciously looking at something on one of the shelves.

“Excuse me did you say Deacon? As in the hero of Iron Mountain, the Champion of Chimera, and the reason we’ve had a massive influx of new magic users join the guild for training?” Tantus asked slamming the book shut.

“Yes, that’s him right there.” Amanda said pointing at Deacon.

“No, no this will not due. You are a hero; you can’t purchase these generic baubles. I will teach you the cleanse spell. Consider it a thank you for all you’ve done for us. Give me your hand please.” Tantus said quickly coming around the desk to grab Deacons hand.

“Wait you don’t understand, Amanda help I…” was all he was able to say before light bounced back and forth between Deacon’s hand and Tantus’s. There was a loud crack and a bright light before everything went silent in the shelves around them. Books that were recently flying overhead fell to the ground while some things that were glowing with magic light just winked out. Deacon, Amanda, and Tantus were laying on the ground immobile. Ralph had hurried over followed by several guild members who were working in the shop.

Deacon started to stir but his head was groggy. When he opened his eyes, he noticed he was no longer in the shop. They had been moved to a sitting room of some kind. There were soft rugs, couches, chairs of all kinds. If Deacon didn’t feel like his head was about to explode, he would have sworn there was a bean bag chair. As his vision began to clear he could see other figures in the room. Tantus was passed out on one of the couches, his left arm hanging off the edge with his hand on the floor. Amanda was propped up in one of the chairs head tilted to the right and hood still up. Deacon wondered absentmindedly how she managed that. Turning his head he could see Ralph slumped down in a chair facing a desk made of still water. It was physically the substance of water held in a nonmoving state. It wasn’t ice, you could see that it wasn’t frozen. Behind the desk sat the very tall and visibly angry Verus speaking to his aide and then addressing Ralph. True to his word Verus was wearing a full three-piece suit he must have purchased from Mentalba. Royal blue just like the tailor said. Deacon tried to get up and flopped back down onto the couch he was sitting on.

“Imp, bring some food and water.” Verus got up and moved around his desk as Ralph got out of his chair.

“What happened?” Deacon asked holding his head.

“It appears my nephew tried to teach you a spell and, in his excitement, it backfired on him. It should not have nullified minor magical items in that whole row but that’s what happened. He should have just received a mana headache. I assume the incident has something to do with you?” Verus asked.

“Probably, I’m sorry, I’ll pay for the damages. Is everyone alright?” Deacon said frowning.

“We’ll get to that; everyone is fine just unconscious. You are the first one to wake. Any idea why this happened?” Verus asked.

“I have a bane called Null Magic. It prevents me from using any elemental projection magic of the first tier of Arcane energies. At least that’s how I understood it from Bael.” Deacon answered.

“Bael? The God of death? She would know, I guess.” Verus asked.

“It also protects me from that tier of magic. Sort of a give and take.” Deacon continued.

“Ok that makes much more sense now. Considering no one was hurt and most of the items were Tantus’s anyway, I’ll chock this up to just bad luck instead of a rival guild attack.” Versus said as he went over to the now stirring Tantus.

“Are you ok, nephew? Your eyes. What happened to your eyes?” Verus asked getting excited and starting to cast a spell.

Deacon looked over and noticed Tantus’s eyes were all white now. No shade of blue was left. His first immediate thought, “this was going to cost him.” Ralph made his way over to Amanda checking on her. She began to stir as well but was worse off than the other two. Verus completed his spell and gasped. He immediately turned to Deacon who covered his head with his arms bracing for an attack.

“I’m not going to attack you champion. Whatever transpired between you two has changed my nephew. He is the first Kel’Aish in hundreds of years to be purely aligned to air. We are all mostly water and air with some leaning heavier in one direction or the other. There hasn’t been a pure air in a very long time. But this may explain why he was so terrible at spell casting.” Versus said trailing off and calling for his imp. Tantus got to his feet wondering what all the commotion was.

“How did we get up to uncle Versus’s office?” Tantus asked.

“Spell botch combined with the Champion of Chaos.” Deacon said.

“Yes, yes that makes some kind of sense. Did you learn the spell?” Tantus asked.

“No. You don’t understand. I can’t learn magic, I can’t use spells, and I’m also protected from basic elemental spells.” Deacon said.

“That’s odd, my slate says I’ve successfully transferred knowledge. Standard message when teaching someone.” Tantus said.

“Crap hang on, let me check my slate.” Deacon said.

New Spell learned- Cleanse Poison- This spell will remove poisons and toxins…target can not use magic. Trailblazer has activated and converted this spell into a prayer called Toxic Waste.

New Prayer- Toxic Waste- You can cleanse a target of poisons or toxins sending it into The Black. The resulting transfer of energy creates a ball that can be used to attack a target resulting in disintegrating whatever the ball touches. Damage type holy; The Black.

“Well I didn’t learn the spell, but I did learn something better.” Deacon said with a big toothy grin. Suddenly Verus was standing in front of him again starring down at his face.

“What happened to your eyebrows?” he asked.

“Race change. Very messy, we should get going. Don’t want to trouble you anymore than we already have. Ralph is Amanda good to go?” Deacon asked and got a head nod from Ralph.

“Hold on one moment please.” Verus waived Tantus over to him. They had a short conversation with Tantus getting very animated. Suddenly they separated and Verus strode forward.

“Deacon, would you allow Tantus to travel with you for a while? I understand you are headed to the Deep Dwellers city of the Shattered Sky, am I right? Tantus here is studying to be an artificer. The plan has always been to send him there to learn from the Gnome Artificers who live on the floating islands that help give the Shattered Sky its name. You could consider it a personal favor. He could also use some real-world experience.” Verus said inclining his head.

New Quest- Escort Mission- Verus Guild Master of The Tower at Iron Mountain Plateau has asked you take his nephew to the Shattered Teeth with you. Rewards; a favor from Verus, unknown.

“I don’t see why not.” Deacon said shocked by this turn of events.

“What about the items we need for the nest?” Amanda asked.

“Of course, consider done.” Verus replied

“I know the cleanse spell, so we won’t need them.” Tantus said confidently. The three adventurers looked at each other then back to Tantus before they all said.

“We’ll take the items.”