Redeemers

"Chaotic magic lies within us and is reflected in our need for order." I don't know if I'm the right person to tell this story, because I have many flaws. I also don't know for sure what happened to the protagonist of such events, but I wouldn't worry too much about her, because it's obvious that she's one of those people who can take care of themselves. I must admit that I was lucky to have entered that tavern, during my visit to the magical town of Pergamon, either by some kind of divine intervention, or the extraordinary simplicity of chance. The cold wind moved the dry grass and small violet flowers on the ground, the branches and the long orange hair of a lonely girl. She wore a jacket and dark jeans, full of runic symbols unknown to the contemporary language, which radiated a faint orange light from time to time. She took out of her pocket a piece of paper, yellowed and wrinkled, with the classic butterfly of the Eresia guild captured in green wax (if one paid attention to the seal, one would see that the lines inside the wings were small branches). She opened the envelope, read its contents and thought for a few seconds in her place. With the help of that message and a not-so-advanced GPS system on his smart wristband, he arrived at a small meadow of lerisemas, better known as "ghost flowers", with a scaly, white and broken composition. A subtle breeze dispersed spores and invading spikes, but the place was free of Trace (mysterious energy that, a hundred years ago, fragmented the natural course of the world). In the middle of those undernourished bushes and whitish clusters, lay the remains of a mansion that once belonged to Krek, communal hero of Pergamon. The rumors about the supposed Golden Apple, forgotten at the bottom of the precious magical potato sack, were well known, but most of the listeners were not impetuous adventurers or treasure hunters, but ordinary people, lost travelers, municipal employees or inexperienced urban explorers. Such tales, combined with the flora, fauna and particular history of a decadent Pergamon, attracted the interest of foreigners, who in turn reformed its backward economy and introduced advances in prosthetics, biological engineering and fashion (although the most practical and best quality were still a luxury for the vast majority); neon and holograms were becoming more and more noticeable, both in large buildings and in slums. She was not very used to the bustling cities, mainly because of her work with runic knowledge in palm reading, collecting ingredients and selling talismans, although this was the first time she had done so for such purposes. She was a sorceress, like her ancestors, but she was not interested in proving that she was a worthy practitioner of the mystical arts, she only invaded those ruins, gray and eroded like the sky that afternoon, for the Golden Apple. Unfortunately, the only interesting thing there was an imposing wooden staff, preserved under a thick layer of soot and dust, or perhaps, by some mysterious force that the runic engravings contained in their core. She had to hurry, the first drops were beginning to fall. Like any sorceress, she didn't channel the trace into any particular elemental ability, but into its purest form, releasing a raw blast from her hand to whip the dirt off the staff. It held up magnificently, making it clear that it was no conventional stick as most thought, but was enchanted, and perhaps its inscriptions could tell her more about the rest of Krek's treasures; communal heroes often left clues and riddles of that sort in their belongings. That is, if she could find a way to move it first. For a sorceress like her, it was impossible to take off and lift that piece using only trace, without damaging it in the process, but she didn't need powers or strength to solve every problem either. A little cunning and the right tool was enough. Her trusty wristband included, among other things, a 3D scanner, with which she obtained the full body model of the staff, spinning around and making sure to capture every little symbol, drawing and line as clearly as possible, while stealing glances at the sky. She had it! It was time to run! The lerisema fields were dangerous on rainy days because even with a bit of mystical energy stored in their roots, they vanished like magic, like mirages. She hurriedly left that "withered land" (as the places without a Trace were called), taking a last look at the meadow and ruins; an ungraceful plain of invasive grasses and weeds occupied the place. There were reports of disappearances and people who were never seen again, but it was not known for sure what happened in these biomes, where they led. Some spoke of teleportation, impossible for any Trace user, while others said it was a phase change to another dimension; the oldest sorceresses claimed that the ghostly flowers led to the world of the dead, but not even they knew for sure. For her part, she was not willing to prove it. She sighed calmly as she took shelter again under the porch of her hut, a cabin style from the pre-mystical period. Modernized, warm and comforting, it was the ideal place to catch her breath after a long walk through the cold plains of Pergamon. The few windows and skylights provided just enough light during the day, but on dark nights like this one, the fireplace, lamps, computer, and the occasional fluorescent ingredient or gadget took over without a problem. She left the bracelet in projection mode on the table in her laboratory-room, helped herself to a piece of pumpkin, ginger, caramel and chocolate pie from the kitchen and watched the rain from a small cubic space at the back of the hut. The only function of that narrow corner was reflection and, on this occasion, she had a reason to use it. The letter she received that morning was sent from the commune of Eresia by an unknown sender, who required her advice as a sorceress in exchange for a small favor: partial information (emphasis on this last word) on the whereabouts of the Golden Apple. The strangest thing was not her request to communicate through letters, since email and other moderately supervised networks existed, but that this person knew about her interest in the sacred fruit of the heroic Krek. On the other hand, she had not even decrypted the inscriptions on the staff, although most were random engravings without much sense. Did this stranger really believe that he would find what he needed in them? And who could know something so specific about a character without much relevance and forgotten? The data decoder then put the staff into the background and projected a new hologram, with all the data he managed to recover. Most of it was intact and incomplete, while others triggered error notifications, due to the scratches and drawings left by its owner on the original surface. There was one in particular, a single runic symbol that directly caused the reading to fail and did not correspond to the universal mystical dictionary, although he could not be sure that it was one either. He tried to replicate it in his laboratory, placing both hands on the sides of an imbuctor (a small, square and simple device used to enchant different objects) imbuing first a rune of pebble, another of basalt and, finally, an expensive rune of obsidian. In no case did it work, that engraving was false, but then... why did the rock implode and break? It was definitely not normal."Perhaps it's time to pay that place a visit, "to herself, looking at the green seal on the letter. The sorceress walked on the outskirts of Eresia, where the beauty of heaven and earth were reflected in a lake of shallow, crystal-clear waters, shores full of pebbles and mossy rocks in shades of green, brown and crimson, as well as sandbanks invaded by birds. On the horizon, rocky elevations, outcrops and, further ahead, the great sculpture of a bearded old man, covered in leaves and half incorporated, sculpted years ago by an unknown Mitannite artist. The Hermit of Entima was the "fravenshi", or custodian, of the most important and famous library in the western region: the Entimateca. That one resembled more a palace that extended hundreds of meters underground, possibly for more than five kilometers, with hundreds of rooms and shelves filled, mainly, with popular copies, cheap books and, gossip said, unpublished testimonies and research on what happened a century ago. However, it was there because of the treatises on mystical alchemy, whose main function was to obtain the "aliksir", or Trace oxide, by degrading it and fusing it with raw materials. That was the basis for most isotopes, runes, potions, complex ingredients and magical foods, but the ultimate goal of alchemists was to obtain the Icnospea (sometimes called Ousipea or Pemptosipea), that is, the primordial Trace. It was thought that the only way to obtain it was by combining elements, perhaps more difficult to obtain, such as Carmot, Alkahest and Imprura. Even the most serious scholars attributed amazing properties to it, such as lighting eternal lamps, enchanting and disenchanting equipment, purifying the environment or returning the Trace to its pure form. Finding something related to that rune would be like looking for a needle in a haystack, so she asked for help from a duo of wanderers, old twins with long beards who wandered around and kept order in the Entimatheque. They led her through whitish rooms and corridors, crossed by circuits of mystical energy, similar to roots and semi-transparent wiring, in charge of feeding and maintaining a network of luminous flowers, attached to the marble walls and red carpeting."It's not common to see a young sorceress around here," said one of the aquamarine hooded figures."It must be someone genuinely smart"."I'm just curious. I like stories and myths, you know?"Ha! Alchemists, who know everything that exists, have plenty of those, " his twin burst out laughing."Apparently not everything, "glancing at the immense library that stretched out beneath his feet.