Thirteen
Astralode's Tower, Myst City
Sleep did not come easy for Marin.
Seeing her long-lost love, Umbra again reminded her of the Night of Flames when Brie burned.
When the terrifying monsters attacked, she had been hidden away in the rafters of her parent's cottage while her parents barricaded the doors and windows.
But it was in vain; the specters broke in and carried them off.
She recalled vividly the entire night tormented by screams and extinguished lives.
The next morning, she had searched desperately for her parents only to find their bodies being piled up on a corpse-filled cart to be sent to the cemetery.
Umbra was gone, lost in the fires she assumed, his mother dead.
She had no reason to stay in that terrible place and joined the refugee caravan departing for Myst City that same day.
She vowed on that day, among the wailing cries of her neighbors that she would become strong enough to one day save innocents from the atrocities she saw.
Unlike many of the other refugees, revenge didn't consume her; she would never forfeit herself to such hatred.
Her salvation came soon after she arrived.
The chronicler and master wizard, Astralode was working on an enchantment to track magical ability in the city and noticed a huge spike in power coming from the slums.
Astralode quickly tracked down Marin as she languished in an alley.
He had taken her in as his ward from that day forth, loving her like a daughter.
She lived with her new guardian in the spiral library tower among the greatest literary collections in all of Turbulus.
Every day Astralode trained her in the magical arts, encouraging her to study the books of the greatest enchanters in history and watched with pride as her powers developed at an unprecedented speed.
Astralode was only permitted to leave his tower on rare occasions, but Marin visited the slums of Myst city daily.
Many of the refugees from Brie were not as fortunate as her and ended up living in poverty among the poorest of Myst City's citizens.
She had appealed to the King to allow some of the refugees to live in Astralode's tower, but to her frustration every time she was denied.
She on the other hand was well-provided for and even invited to the fancy banquets of the noble families, gifted with fine silk garments and jewelry. Many of the refugees developed a distaste of her affluence and became increasingly hostile.
She rarely visited the slums now and devoted all her energy to her training under Astralode. But she never forgot the faces of her loving parents, her love for Umbra and all the sacrifices made for her sake.
The next morning Marin descended the levitating spiral staircase from her room into the main hall and library.
"Good morning, Marin!" Astralode called out from behind a pile of books and scrolls laid out in front of him. His beaming personality was a facade, Marin knew this, but welcomed the effort he put in around her.
The library shelves dominated the chamber, many stories high and perfectly categorized. To keep his immense collection organized, Astralode had created a multitude of familiars.
To the untrained eye they looked like simple floating white-silk gloves zipping around the shelves, but these magical helper hands tirelessly cleaned and organized the entire tower. The marble floors were always perfectly shined and not a speck of dust was ever present in the entire tower.
Marin sat down across the massive table littered with Astralode's scrolls and open books.
One helper hand waited patiently for permission to clean up the table and re-shelf the books tapping its fingers on the table edge.
Snoozing under a pile of papers was Marin's own familiar- a helper glove named Lefty. Something went wrong when she conjured this strange helper hand, it was almost always asleep and refused to do any work.
Astralode saw that it made Marin chuckle every time she saw it so he suggested they keep it around, now he used Lefty as a paperweight.
Astralode sat around his notes; today he was researching his latest project for self-sustained magical barriers.
He was an ancient wizard with a long silvery beard and wild messy hair. He always wore a loose-fitting vermilion silk robe. Despite being over eight hundred years old he glowed with vitality and had the kind-hearted playful nature of a young man, but in secret he was a morose and stoic man burdened by his immortality, he was truly an enigma.
One of the helper gloves brought over a cup of freshly-made tea for Astralode and another for Marin.
Marin refused the offer in the sign language the familiars communicated in.
The moment after she stood up from her chair a helper glove was cleaning it. Astralode's familiars were obsessive cleaners, even bothering the old wizard from time to time with their fanatical tidying.
"I'm going to see Umbra later tonight," Marin announced as the helper gloves fetched her cloak and staff. She checked the runes on her trusty staff to see if they had been magically recharged like she did every night.
She glanced quickly at the mirror by the door, her blonde hair was disheveled with bed-head and her eyes were pale from fatigue.
I'll sleep soundly when Umbra is free.
"Say hello to your boyfriend for me!" Astralode called out to embarrass her. He snorted loudly.
"Be quiet!" Marin replied with blushed cheeks.
Every opportunity he got Astralode loved to embarrass her like an immature father would. Even in serious moments, but she could sense it was out of love.