Lost and alone, disheartened by failure and wanting only to go home, Thomas Gown and his companions face the darkest hour of their lives when they stumble across a remnant of the once mighty Agglemonian Empire. There they make a stunning discovery t...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
They stopped at every room they came to and looked image, finding very much the same kinds of things that Matthew had seen during his first foray. Some of the rooms appeared to be conference rooms, with dusty and brittle centuries old chairs arranged around large tables and with cabinets and cupboards in the corners and against the walls. Others appeared to have been workplaces, or perhaps classrooms, with rows of desks and small tables, each with its own chair. Still others seemed to be storerooms, piled high with crates and boxes whose contents had long since perished and decayed out of all recognition.
One room, smaller than most of the others, was empty except for dozens of cabinets fixed to the walls, each one identical to the one in which Matthew had found the diamond necklaces and made from the same almost indestructible magically hardened wood. Some of them opened, and each one contained several identical items. A dozen silver bracelets. Twenty emerald brooches. Half a dozen pairs of leather boots. Most of the cabinets were still locked tight, though; the locking spells apparently still as strong as the day they'd been cast.
"Why would they lock these away so securely?" wondered Shaun, looking closely at one of the silver bracelets. "It doesn't look particularly valuable."
"Maybe it's an antique," suggested Diana. "And if it was an antique back then, just think what it might be worth today!"
"More likely it's magical," said Jerry. "Let's see."
He cast a reveal spell, and soon the ornaments were glowing brightly as the magical fields surrounding them were made visible. The wooden cabinets also glowed as the spells making them unnaturally hard were also made visible, and those that were still locked had electric bright straps of light across them, some brighter than others indicating those that had passed the test of time better than the others. Most surprising, though, was that the entire volume of the room was filled by a faint luminescence, and when Thomas looked out into the corridor, he saw that it extended all the way to the edge of the magic spell's area of effect, probably indicating that the magical field it represented filled and surrounded the entire complex.
"That must be the spell that creates the gravity," said Lirenna, staring at it in fascination. "It seems to have some kind of structure. Look."
The other wizards looked more closely at the luminosity and saw that she was right. It seemed to be composed of almost invisibly fine strands of light running vertically from floor to ceiling along which rainbow colours were flowing downwards. It was almost as if gravity itself had been made visible, and they all stared at it in adoration until the spell expired and it all vanished, leaving the room looking drab and empty.
"That was amazing!" said Diana, her eyes glowing with delight. "And to think that it's all around us all the time, even though we can't see it any more. The clerics of Tizar say that there's another world all around us that we lack the senses to see, a world of incomparable beauty, and now I know they're right."
