Emmaline had visited the Master of Scribes only once before. She had been brought to his parchment filled hall on the day of her induction, her head still spinning from the speed at which she had been plucked from her life and thrust into this unfamiliar world. The place appeared unchanged a long room filled with floor to ceiling shelves. Thousands of rolled scrolls were thrust into niches, organized in no manner she could determine. Large codex lay on wooden plinths, chained to the walls with rusting chains to prevent their removal. Every now and then brown robed scribes entered the hall from side doors, scooped up a niche worth of scrolls and vanished back to whence they had come. The whole place smelled of ink, old parchment, and the faint salty odor of the sand which was used to dry the ink. Enough of that sand was scattered underfoot that it rose to knee level in an agitated cloud. Emmaline passed the ten foot tall statue of an idealised scribe taking the scroll of writing from Myrmidia’s hand. This scribe had rather less pimples and ink splotches than any she had encountered but she supposed none of the flesh and blood type were as tall as a small building either. The Master of Scribes sat at the end of the room behind a massive oak desk atop a plinth. Two huge braziers burned with bright clear whale oil behind glass, giving the place an odd stink which made Emmaline wrinkle her nose as she climbed the short steps to stand before the desk. The Master of Scribes was a cadaverous looking man with large wire frame spectacles. Rumor had it that he had been one of the Light Wizards whose power had been drawn away into the celestial choirs. He had thin watery eyes and a slightly palsied hand that, none the less, lifted and drove down a stamp on a series of documents with all the assurance of a blacksmith pounding hot iron.


“Approach,” the Master of Scribes bade her in a dusty voice.  Emmaline had been waiting for nearly an hour and she eagerly stepped forward, laying the scrolls Albrecht had written and she had improved, down on the desk. The old man plucked each of them up and broke the seals, quickly glanced over them and then stamped them before sliding them into a series of wooden cubbys beneath his desk.

“All in order, you are Emmaline Von Morganstern, apprentice to Albrech Theobald Wallenstein of the Golden Order?” he asked disinterestedly.

“Uh.. that is yes, I am Emmaline,” Emmaline admitted, her mind already heading back to the crowd of apprentices and the free food and drink. Albrecht didn’t let her socialize with the other students much and the Gold apprentices she did know were a rather stodgy lot.


“Very well, your master has written highly of you and suggests you may be considered a second year apprentice, yet there is no project on file for you. I assume you will be presenting it at the usual time?” the old scribe asked in a bored voice.

“I uhh.. Yeah of course, the usual time,” Emmaline replied, having no idea what the project was supposed to be or when it was supposed to be presented. She was caught by her own lie in forging Albrecht’s papers and couldn’t very well admit she didn’t have the vaguest idea what he was talking about.

“Very good, you may go,” the Master of Scribes declared. Emmaline nodded and headed back out of the room, wending her way back towards the Magesterium. She was sure whatever this project was it probably wasn’t a big deal she thought as she entered the chamber and helped herself to a flagon of Moot cider. Maybe she could pry the information out of Albrect, tell him she had been talking to the other apprentices… her eye fell upon a group of young wizard enthusiastically discussing something that, judging from their raucous laughter, wasn’t Gorhman’s Seventh Cantrip. Malcador, the apprentice she had seen earlier was there, enthusiastically chattering away. Perhaps he might be able to give her the information he needed. Smiling, she picked up a piece of cherry pie and headed over to the circle.

“You have never seen a girl with…” one of the other apprentices was saying as Emmaline approached, he fell silent and blushed slightly as it became clear she was heading for their group.

“Well don’t stop on my account,” Emmaline encouraged, giving Malcador a companionable smile, “a girl with what?”