Sins of Greed - A Tale of Two Fools, Book One

Chapter 4 - The Scrolls

The door to Kirlin's Scrolls and Scryers swung open, much as it had the very day before. 

Abben looked around, weary. He was looking for an imp. After quickly scaling the front of the shop, he did not find the creature. 

"Hello?" asked Abben. 

No one answered. Abben took a couple more steps, going deeper into the book store. He could just see a back room from where he was at, with a faint glow coming from within. 

"Master Pinof?" 

Still no answer. 

There was a little bell on one of the tables in the front of the shop; Abben picked it up and gave it a shake. The heavy clinking noise it made echoed throughout the room. 

"Kirlin?" 

"A moment!" came the voice of Kirlin from the back room. Very faintly, Abben could hear the fluttering of leather wings. He knew that to be Morticus. 

Abben waited patiently in the front. Or rather, impatiently. He wanted this business with the scrolls to be over with, and he wanted to get out of Bidvale. He had Spriggans to write about.

After a couple moments, Kirlin stepped through the door of the back room out onto the main foyer of his book shop. As he saw Abben, he beamed a gigantic smile. 

"Abben!" he exclaimed excitedly. 

"Hello, Kirlin." Abben smiled back. The old man came up to him and gave him a warm and friendly, if rather vigorous, handshake. 

"How are you today, my boy?" asked Kirlin. 

"I am well, and yourself? Where is our leathery friend?" 

"Oh, Morticus is in the back room cleaning up." He looked annoyed. Lovingly annoyed. "It's all he's good for; last time I asked him to transcribe a book for me, he ended up losing some of my best quills. His little paws, you know. Can't hold onto them." 

Abben chuckled. "And how are you, Kirlin?" He asked for the second time. 

"I am well, my boy. Well enough. Though what I found on those scrolls... serious business." He looked worried. 

Abben cleared his throat. "I'd rather not know. I'm just the delivery boy, after all." 

Kirlin seemed to have not heard him. "It took me all night to translate, but I did it. Abben, it is written in the Faefolk tongue. Those scrolls must be eons old. I had to wear my heaviest set of gloves and had these things," he stopped and pointed at his spectacle gadgetry on top of his head, "on the thickest lens simply because of the raw magic that was emanating off of those parchments." 

The Faefolk. Abben did not want to know what was on those scrolls. Not until he heard The Faefolk. The Faefolk were a race of sapient beings, almost legendary, that lived hundreds of centuries ago. Not much was known about them; they were said to live in parts of what is now the border between Lurinlia and it's neighbors to the north, Keffin. They were an intelligent race that had the first written language and were, according to modern historians, the first practitioners of magic. Or the inventors of it. The lines were always blurred between creator and first disciple. Abben had found them to be somewhat of a guilty pleasure since he was a boy, always wanting to know as much about them as possible. They had always piqued his deepest interests. 

He perked up, giving Kirlin his undivided attention. "The Faefolk? What was on those scrolls, Kirlin?" 

Kirlin did not seem to notice Abben's change in interest. He pulled out the scrolls from the side drawer that he originally hid the scrolls in when Kelek entered his shop the day before. "I shudder to think of it, my boy. I'm of a mind to keep these from Evelia. I don't know if she can be trusted with this."