Who knew that each side had a secret? Secrets that could change the tides of war in an instant. They played against the balance--the push and pull of power--invisible to all as the Kinsmen continued to push forward.
Two years had passed since that f...
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Nagan found himself wandering the halls. No aim in mind, but it wasn't as if he was aiming to have something on his mind in the first place. Master Dagmire's words had struck him harder than he cared to admit, and they were all he was afraid of. This...all of this didn't feel right. What was the Council looking for during all of this? Something wasn't adding up to him.
That was when something near the ceiling caught his attention. A couple magical presences were lingering around—which was expected considering how many mages were in this building—but one of them felt eerily familiar. It was a dwarns.
Master Erswell's? And Nagan recalled seeing Erswell take a right from where he took a left. The location he was now lined up with that direction, and if he recalled correctly, there was a library up ahead. Not one that contained anything important—he remembered Rin mentioning there was an even bigger archive below that not everyone was allowed to access—so this one was filled with books the public could access. That didn't mean Nagan didn't chuckle a bit at the irony if this presence really was Master Erswell's. Well...there was no harm in confirming his suspicions, right?
The library within the Council of Thirds was smaller than the one on Carvolier and kept to one floor, but that didn't mean the size of the room was anything less than spacious. Long tables ran down the center as bookshelves stacked on either side. Some shelves were embedded into the walls, but most of the space was reserved for large paintings and other grandiose, decorative features. Doors and other archways were placed between as well, all leading to secluded areas or other sections of the library as their public archive grew out of the space. No one but himself stood in the main part, but he could still see the remanence of three presences heading further in. Nagan stuck to the walls and in between shelves as he followed them.
He had gone through an archway and another room before he encountered something surprising but not unknown. Silencing barriers were invisible to most, but for a magic affinity, they hung in the air with a slight shimmer as one got closer to it. What this barrier was, Nagan didn't know quite yet, but all three presences lead beyond it.
He carefully prodded at it, wary that it would inform those who stood inside it of his own presence. He shook his head after the thought. This was a public area, and he had every right to be here as anyone else. If anything, as far as anyone else's business was concerned, he was simply looking for something to read.
With his mind made up, he pressed his back to the bookshelf behind him and nearly against the barrier itself. It shouldn't activate as long as he didn't pass it, and the last time he checked, he couldn't walk through solid objects. He shut his eyes tight as he carefully began unraveling a small hole into the silencing wall. Risky, but well worth it when done correctly. All barriers could be broken through, after all. It only took a bit of patience and someone who knew how the magic worked. Slowly but surely, Nagan began hearing the hushed whispers of the people behind it.
One voice was the most apparent and the loudest of all. Master Erswell must have trusted the barrier well. The other two, however, were much quieter and harder to hear. Nagan didn't recognize them, but one of them struck him as vaguely familiar. If there were others, they had yet to speak. It took a bit more fine-tuning for Nagan to hear everything being said.
