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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Someone" data-source="post: 1787014" data-attributes="member: 5656">It´s a quiet, dark and fresh room, in a tavern next to the city´s wall. As is normal at humble houses, the furniture is only several mats to sit on and a slightly larger one, eroded by the use, that holds a pot of tea. Minah sits down, creacking like a splintered stick: the travel through the city left him exhausted. Menghil knows the tavern´s owner when he enters the room: he sailed with him once. “I´ll stand watch outside, and warn you if someone comes” whispers “There´s a hidden door there” Minah nods and waits until you´re alone and ask you how did you get involved in the whole mess and listens with attention. Finally it comes his turn to speak:“You sound sincere, so… I´ll be too. Anyway, I won´t live much longer, and you confirmed what I was thinking… though I don´t know where to start.”“Every word in the travel log, if you have read it, is true. It helps when you have to remember so much things… see, the young merchant that started to write it, two hundred and eighty five years ago, got lost in the Sea, as it happens too often, when a violent storm threw him out of course. Finally the ship arrived at an island: nothing more than a huge black rock, jagged, ominous. But they could spot nothing dangerous, so they decided to circle it to look for a pot or a bech where to repair the ship.”“The merchant didn´t know why –perhaps he was just bored- but he decided to explore the island, and maybe climb the peak. Alone, he explored a bit of the island: it was a perfectly normal one, and being avid of adventure, he was a little dissapointed. But see, he found a couple of huge bronze doors in the flank of the mountain: and avalanche has almost buried them, and they were twisted and battered enough for an human being to pass through.” Minah coughs a couple times before continuing.“What lied beyond the doors? A castle or a temple? A mixture of both and a safe. There were deadly guardians, and clever traps. Our merchant avoided the traps, hide from the monsters and dodged the guardians –skilled and brave, you say? No, I don´t know what spirit or god was smiling upon him, but he was just lucky- and arrived at what rested beyond all of the dangers.”“It was rather dissapointing: A huge room, a vault supported by colums; in the centre, a large fountain –almost a pool- bubbled with clear water. Whatever the treasure, it was already gone, so the merchant, thirsty, drank from the fountain as he prepared to leave the place.”“The water restored his energies, and healed his wounds. So that´s what is was: a healing water. He took some of it with him, but it turned to be useless when he left the room. Anyway, the merchant made his way back through all the dangers, and returned to the ship.”“Years passed, and they turned decades. The merchant managed to build fame and fortune through some lucky business and adventures in the Savage Lands; it was the envy of the growing Tangrabah. ´You look the same as always´, he started to hear. ´Man, you look like a kid!´. He took them as compliments, until he realized they were right. He was too young: as healthy and agile as he was… when he took the water.”“The fountain of youth! He failed to recognize it. They wasn´t easy days: should he reveal it, and help the people of the world? Tell it´s existence only to a handful of chosen? Keep it to himself? While he decided, he thought that he would have to dissapear someday; his ever young body was already attracting attention. So he ´married´ in a far land, and with the use of this magical hat, appeared each day with the age he should have, until the moment that he replaced himself as his own son. That happened… 10 times.”“I don´t have to say it by now, but of course I´m that merchant. I have three hundred and two years, and believed I was going to live forever until one good day, about two months ago, I got up and my hair was white. Wrinkles were in my face. You would ask that why I didn´t prepared my ship and left immediately looking for the fountain, but I realized that I already lived enough. Belive me, three centuries are enough” he waves his hand “and I built enough wisdom to be already prepared for the next journey; official explanation: Abu left the city, and his father returned. Zosimo helped a lot with that. But ah, then I saw him.”“The new vizier. I´ll never forget his face: I saw him some days ago, and he was the same as when he left, sixty years ago, when he was 25 and the black sheep in the royal family. Rumours about him were horrible; he was supposed to be a dabbler in the dark arts: necromancy, pacts with evil genies. Tried to seize power, but failed and was exiled. He drank from the fountain, too, I´m sure, and tries to hide all evidence of it; the book and myself, it seems. What puzzles me is why he left me alive.”</blockquote>

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