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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ConnorSB" data-source="post: 1255136" data-attributes="member: 14273">Here's the next instalment:"Revelation"The thing about it was that Kel didn’t want to take the tablet to Dronosus. Sure, the sage could most likely unravel its secrets, but Kel didn’t want that. It was his find, they were his secrets, and the only ones who should benefit were him and his organization. Dronosus was a powerful man, with connections, and Kel knew that once he went to him, the information was no longer his alone. He would have to share, and Kel didn’t like sharing. No kobold did, especially with non-kobolds. Yes, Mevendrezek taught sharing and community. But he also taught his people the need for self-improvement. Jevean Smithe, the Beetle’s greatest cleric and follower, even said so in his teachings. He called it the Silent Hand: individual completion and gain was ultimately good for society. By pursuing one’s own goals first, one actually benefited the extended clan.Kel was a devout believer in the Silent Hand.And so it was with much footdragging that Kel entered the Pavilion of Sages. Like most of Seacliff City, the pavilion was ancient and spacious. It was a U shaped building, four stories high, built of yellow-white stone that curved seamlessly at the corners. It was decorated in the usual ways, repeated hexagonal patterns of beetles, and the vines that grew up the walls along the carefully carved relief lines added a tastefully organic touch. The roof was yellow tiles, many inscribed with runes of stability and strength. The interior of the U was done up a bit differently. The middle of it was a great grassy courtyard, blooming with flowers and a spacious rock garden. The stone walls gave way to treated glass. Doors were set into it, and walkways ran along the inside walls of the courtyard freestanding, with beautiful stairs running between them and airy bridges connecting the two sides of the U at various levels. These were the workplaces of the Sages, for beneath the building was one of the city’s biggest archives.All the works contained within its walls were secular or close to it, as the City’s biggest archive, that of the Church of Mevendrezek, had long ago required that it be the only purveyor of such texts. True, many sages kept a copy of the Mevennocon for reference, but they were not to lend it out or allow the study of it by the public. It was a great hassle, but such was the politics among those who catered truth.This is how Kel’s thoughts wandered as he took the stairs up to the third floor and entered the spacious office and home at the base of the U. He turned and noted the view, out over the courtyard, flanked by the two wings of the building, and then out over the city. Down Baron’s Hill if flowed, along the Street of Charms and then up the Hill of Gods, finally ending at the Temple of Mevendrezek, which was shaped like a great beetle, its wings just starting to unfold into flight. He turned back to the office, to this time and place, to the assistant sitting at a desk in the center of the office, great doors behind her. As Kel had come here before, he knew that the entire back wall was but a glammorred wall of force, and was quite transparent from the other side, allowing Dronosus his own magnificent view, of both the city and his assistant, a pretty young kobold woman, her scales a deep green, like moss.“I don’t have an appointment, but its important. Very important.”“I’m sorry sir,” she said in a cheerful voice, “Dronosus doesn’t like unexpected visitors.”Kel looked past her, as if he could see through the glammor to the sage himself. He winked.The assistant was nonplussed, and fell silent. They both heard the sage’s voice from within. “Let him in, Jora.”She removed a hexagonal key from around her neck and put it to the door’s lock. There was a faint glow of purple and the doors swung inward. Kel stepped inside.And there was Dronosus, just where Kel guessed he was. He was a tall being, huge compared to Kel. His features were some mix of human and beast, with great tusks emerging from the corners of his mouth, jutting out from his bearded chin. More horns lined the edge of his face, two rows up to his forehead. The sage, if he had stood, would have been at least eight feet tall, closer to nine. His dark blue skin was mottled and wrinkled with age, but he bore it well. Dronosus was an ancient Ogre-Mage, but it was a stately kind of decrepity. His great black beard was streaked with grey, but this may or may not have been intentional.“Hello Kel. You have something important to show me? I don’t work for cheap.”Kel tossed a sack up to the sage. His hand shot out violently, grabbing the bag of coins from their air like a swooping bird of prey would catch a fish. The claws of his hands completed the analogy. “Of course. May I?”The small reptile-man came around the side of the desk. It was far taller than him, and he had to reach high just to be able to put the tablet onto its surface. He reached blindly with the stone, but managed to put it on the desk without knocking anything over. At least that Kel could hear. The ogre-mage lifted the stone to his face as Kel used a nearby bookshelf for a ladder and climbed up onto the desk. He stood on it, a mess of papers beneath his feet.For a few long minutes the sage studied the tablet, mumbling under his breath.“It was found deep in the mines, Dronosus, by one of my scouts. He pulled it from a wall covered with the same sort of writing. I had the miners who were working nearby seal up the cave the wall was in, just in case.”The sage seemed oblivious. But a minute later he set the stone down and peered at the kobold. “It was good that you brought this to me before the church.”“How did you know I haven’t taken it to the church yet?”“Because its heresy, writ in the same tongue and by the same hand as the original Mevennocon itself.”</blockquote>

Verification