Twenty years after the end of the Fourth Shadowwar, Thomas Gown is a happily married family man with a beautiful wife and a perfect son. When he takes his son back to Lexandria University to arrange for his wizardly education, however, he learns tha...
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"Have you heard?" asked Tassley excitedly, dashing into the alchemical workroom.
Thomas, Karem and Edward were carefully measuring out tiny quantities of powdered plant extract into hundreds of small, glass tubes. Further down the wooden bench, Pondar had painstakingly rebuilt his alchemical apparatus and was only waiting for his assistants to finish preparing the ingredients before starting his experiments all over again. Pondar himself had left for the time being, to see about procuring the last of the essential ingredients, and had left his assistants to carry on without him. He had a healthy mistrust of his assistants' abilities, though, and when he returned he would scrutinise their work in minute detail to make sure it was up to the necessary standard before proceeding further, and the Gods help them if it wasn't.
"What news?" asked Edward, looking up. He stretched to ease the cramp in his shoulders and heard his spine creaking and popping.
"The mystery intruder's struck again," said Tassley, hopping up to sit on the bench next to Thomas. She crossed her legs and her lab robes, which were only belted around her waist, parted at the knees to reveal a perfect ankle. She still hadn't given up on him. "Crept into the Owen Maglia building and smashed Artur's crystal tears. All of them!"
The others stared in shock and stopped what they were doing to gather round.
"Artur's incandescent!" the girl continued. "He's shouting that he wants him flayed alive. Hung, drawn and quartered, banished to the Pit, everything he can think of! I've never seen him like this before! He's out for blood and I don't think he cares whose."
"The same man?" asked Thomas, fingering his chin where the intruder had struck him.
"He fits the description," replied Tassley, "and he was dressed the same; naked except for a lab robe. They caught him this time, briefly."
"Briefly?" asked Karem.
"He got away again. They locked him up in a magic proof cell. Solid stone walls except for a massive iron door, all heavily impregnated with anti-magic. When they went back to interview him, he was gone! Vanished without a trace!”
“That’s impossible!” declared Thomas flatly.
“Well, that’s what I thought,” replied the girl, “but I overheard a couple of them talking about it, and apparently something like this happened once before, years back. A wizard was being held in a magic proof cell and an accomplice busted him out by shoving a transdimensional portal into the room by sheer brute force.”
“Is that possible?” asked Edward in amazement. “But if the saboteur had an accomplice that powerful…”
“Yeah, he could have just blown up Artur’s lab with magic spells,” agreed Tassley. “Doesn’t make sense.”
