The sky stretched endlessly overhead, a blue vastness so absolute that it swallowed all else.

It was not entirely blue, of course- there was the sun, for one thing. Clouds, too. Even in Arcanis, there were wispy clouds which would never bring rain. They roamed the vault of the firmament like sprites, serving no purpose but to cast occasional shadows on the great golden desert below.

And what a great desert it was, this far northeast of Bast. Without the paltry works of man or jinn to blemish it, the golden sands presented a perfect canvas, a painting, a work of true divinity. The desert inspired different awe in different ways in all those who gazed upon it, but it seldom failed to inspire in some fashion. This was the untrammeled land, the land which had broken the Aeld'norai and seen them humbled, and built back up again into something different. Something new.



But it hadn't always been that way, here. Long ago, in a different age, the ones who would become Jin'Norai had raised a great kingdom here. They had called it "Semitupe", though few people now could explain why, and it was said that they had found immortality "of two kinds, but it was never enough." It certainly had not been enough to shield their kingdom from the Invisible Collapse, which had sunk it below the sands.

And that was exactly why Serapis Hauhet had come here.

It wasn't that nobody had ever come to raid Semitupe's corpse for artifacts, mind- by this point, enterprising archeologists and tomb-thieves alike (when there was any real difference at all) had made inroads into most of the known Mirage Kingdoms. Three miles west was an established camp for entering a fragment of the old city's amduat, where junior archeologists and treasure hunters gathered to squabble over the remaining pots and fragments of carving from what remained of Semitupe's residential district.

What excited Serapis' interest had been something else, the discovery of documents which indicated a complex for the mage-priests of Semitupe several miles away from the city proper, where their rites to propriate Aeolus and the spirits of the sun could be conducted in privacy. If that were true, there could be a cache of preserved artifacts, hitherto untouched by any of his peers, preserved for eons by the magic of the vengeful Rakshasa. Better yet, there might be a cache of artifacts of the archmagi of the kingdom, the kind of thing which collectors to the south would pay eye-watering sums of money for... or which could permanently raise an ambitious young professor into the upper echelons of Bastion's scholars.

"No worries about the sky today, professor."

Serapis' chief porter, Faluo, had somehow snuck up behind the mage again, his footsteps muffled by the desert. How he managed to avoid the notice of the professor's Fathom...? He could only imagine it was some unexpected blessing of the man's absolute lack of curiosity which protected him against mental detection.

"We's weeks off from any of the big sandstorms hitting, eh? Once we get the tents up, we'll be set until food and water makes us leave."

As a professor of Bastion, Serapis had certain perks- for example, he didn't have to pay for porters and guides on this expedition out of his own pocket. Unfortunately, to take advantage of that perk, he had to rely upon the teams assigned him from the Academy's labor pool. It wasn't that the Academy didn't employ the best--they did--but good archeologists learned who the best were quickly, and Serapis' seniors had priority holds on all of them. Faluo was perfectly capable of transporting things and people across the sands, but he wasn't exactly renowned for his initiative.

༺ ☾ Winter 75 year 125 of the third age ☼ ༻
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The documents which had led the mage here were stored safely within the confines of his Pocket Dimension. This would allow him the ability to refer to them directly if necessary– say, if somebody else needed to see them for whatever reason– though he likely would not need to; Fathom had gifted him a near perfect memory at this point. Per the information contained therein, he would begin the process of scanning his surroundings in search of anything that would indicate the presence of the complex he sought. Divination would be of limited use if anything touched by Metaphor was deep enough underground, but at least poking around for traces of thereof couldn’t hurt.

For now, he was avoiding use of anything beyond Mysticism, though if he were unable to find much at all otherwise, he’d have to consider searching with a psychoplasm field.

"Boss! Boss!"

Serapis' thoughts were broken by a new voice. This was Rami, one of Faluo's men, a human of unusually slight build for the porter team. That was because Rami wasn't really on the team to fetch and carry like most of Faluo's people, he was a member of the Tanim Clan, ex-mercenary with ties to dozens of people in useful positions across the desert and a smooth tongue. Aside from getting the team ready access to sites and through the security of various Kingdoms, Rami also had a quick mind, and so Faluo trusted him to instruct the other porters on what was valuable and how to excavate without breaking.

"Eh? What's this noise, Rami?"

The chief porter's tone was brusque--probably annoyed that his moment to suck up to Serapis had been interrupted--but Rami paid it no mind, well aware that he was too valuable for Faluo to mistreat. Beyond that, however, the lithe porter's eyes were sparkling with excitement, the kind of look which really only ever meant...
"Tami found sommat, boss. I think the professor should come have a look, it's... phaw, I can't even describe it. I think it's a building, only halfway inside stone, boss!"


"What, like built into the amduat..." Faluo's confusion was palpable. The finding of a building, sure, that was exciting enough news to come get him and Serapis. But many buildings in Arcanis led into the vast caverns below the surface; even in the times of the Mirage Kingdoms, that had been pretty common. After all, if you had a large space not subject to the scorching heat of the sun or the whimsy of the wind, you'd be a fool not to build an access.
"No, boss, it's more like... it's fossilized, almost. Come, come, I can't do it justice with words."
Faluo gave Serapis a sidelong look, communicating his wariness and confusion, but turned to follow Rami anyway. After all, that was what they were there for- and if there was something unexpected, unprecedented even? Well, that would be all the better for the college's purposes.



Once the professor and porters arrived at the site, the reason for Rami's excitement and confusion became apparent. The porters had begun with a very traditional setup, driving stakes into the ground and stringing ropes between them to delineate the dig site; several such markers had been put up in various areas, and there were signs that they had begun the tedious and labor-intensive process of shoveling loose sand into piles (downwind, so that they did not simply blow back overnight). A few pavilions had been set up, with dromedaries and horses lashed up and mostly unpacked.

All of that work had been interrupted, however, as the various laborers and porters crowded around one of the digsites. Faluo swore and shoved his way through them, admonishing them with threats and curses until they backed away; but even in the face of their boss' rage, they continued to hang back, clearly wanting to see what was going on. When Faluo and Rami had cleared a path to the dig, they saw...


A golden spire, clearly man-made, was rising out of the digsite, surrounded by rocks. No; upon closer inspection, it was embedded into the rocks. The porters had dug out the sand and loose earth around it, then hit a layer of rock over whatever building lay beneath.

The golden spire itself was not that surprising. This was a typical feature of important buildings in Semitupe, and there were a half-dozen well preserved examples of it at the other site three miles away. It also wouldn't have been that surprising to find a building under rock- that's what it meant to build in the amduat, after all. But Semitupe had used these spires as part of their rites propriating the sky and sun, and to concentrate metaphor thereby. They had not built them underground.

Faluo still looked lost, but Rami turned to Serapis with great interest and excitement.

"What could have happened here, venerated scholar?"

In another culture's context, that might have been read as mockery, but Arcanis had a formal register for low-ranking clansmen addressing those far superior, as well as for times when one wished to express deep respect. Rami was apparently even keener than Faluo had realized, and recognized the potential value of this find.

"And if the whole building lies below rock, how are we to enter?"

༺ ☾ Winter ?? year 125 of the third age ☼ ༻
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Sand whirled as it began to compress and spurt outwards at the edge of the field of Imber, blowing upward into the air around Serapis' zone of control. Although the psychokinesis pressed only outwards, the shifting pressures of the grains somehow resulted in a spin, looking almost like the ghostly memory of a tiny sandstorm, as if the Breath of the World had incarnated in miniature around the archeologist.

The porters took a step back, even though many of them had seen the like before. Laborers, even ones who worked with the academy, tended towards a superstitious awe of magic; all the better, as far as the professors were concerned. A cowed and wide-eyed populace was much less likely to try to bring their petty squabbles and political issues to bother the great and powerful. Their boss, Faluo, didn't move in the least. Doubtless he'd seen this sort of spell cast a hundred times before- and his prodigy, Rami, did his best to emulate his boss in this. He looked a bit uneasy, but nobody got far in their careers without doing some things which made them uncertain.

Meanwhile, the mage himself continued his descent into the sands, confident at least that he would encounter no real difficulties until he actually found his way into the ruin. There were often wards and traps in the ghostly remnants of the Mirage Kingdoms, but practically any magic left outside and buried in the desert for this long would have been broken and drained by the shifting sands over thousands of years, and the sorts of predator like the greatwurms of the deeper desert would never venture this close to mountains. The worst monster he was likely to face here were angry stoats.

Within a minute, Serapis' efforts bore some fruit as the whirling sphere of imber dug deeper. Perhaps ten feet below the feet of the expedition, his sphere made contact with a solid surface- not rock, but tile. Blue tile, in fact, once a brilliant turquoise, now dimmed and dulled by scratches and sand.

This sort of roof had been found before in Semitupe, in the surface ruins, though always broken apart- if they excavated the whole thing, it might make for a mild curiosity... but nothing which would advance a career. It also meant that he was probably at least twenty feet up from any door, which was-

"Aeolus' BALLS."

Faluo's startled cry rang out above Serapis, though he couldn't immediately see why. A moment later, the rest of the porters began to shout too; cries of pure, raw excitement. For a few moments, even with his superior Mystic's senses and expert training, the professor couldn't discern any reason for such an uproar. This was due to the angle at which he stood.

When Serapis looked back at the form of the roof taking shape within the Imber-dug pit, however, the reason for the excitement became plain. A brass-clad object was sticking out of the side of the roof, ten feet long, as wide as Serapis himself, bent and broken by ages of wind and earth, but still recognizably... a telescope. This wasn't a temple, it was an observatory. And there was only one kind of person who would have the kind of resources and power you'd need to build that.

"Magus!" someone shouted, enthusiastically, "Magus' tower!"

A cheer went up as the porters considered what this meant. When the Jin'Norai of the Mirage Kingdoms built telescopes, it was to study and track the influences of the other planes of being, and that meant they were trying to manipulate their energies for their purposes. That meant books, and charts, and clever little instruments... and it also meant artifacts. Real magic, not just the scraps you could scrounge out of the buried basement of some minor lord's manse. Cutting-edge stuff, maybe, the kind which a porter could make a lot of money if they could smuggle off the site and find buyers for.

It also meant that Serapis would only have so long with this site to himself before word got out. Within a month, there would be a dozen teams digging sites around here.

༺ ☾ Winter ?? year 125 of the third age ☼ ༻
<>

It was, of course, something of a pipe dream to expect to find any window which hadn't been caved in by the weight of the sands over the centuries, and that is precisely what Serapis located- an entryway which had once been secured by sturdy glass and banded iron, but was now merely buried and smashed remains. The uppermost floor, at the least, was halfway flooded with sand, creating a cavernous pocket around the bent shape of the skyglass telescope which had once dominated the room.

Still, as Serapis' sphere moved the sand away around him, he could make out some tell-tale details. Here, a bas-relief carving depicting constellations- there, a mostly-buried chair, carved out of stone but ingeniously shaped to look like it was one of the naturally-grown wooden seats of distant Aelheim. That was one of the affectations common throughout the Mirage Kingdoms, when the banishment of the Jin'Norai had been only a recent memory. Such furniture was no longer in vogue in Arcanis, but it would still make a fine piece for some collector who wanted yet another item of discussion in his parlor.

Other knick-knacks became apparent as the professor's spell slowly sifted through the sands. There was a metal tool of some kind, presumably used in calibration. There were a set of lenses--perhaps useful to the Academy, perhaps not--lying amid the wreckage of the case they had been contained in before the leather binding it rotted away. To Serapis' right, part of a statue was revealed, showing a complex winged figure. The statue was hard to look at directly, for it had been wrought to give the impression of something with more angles and curves than could feasibly exist within a space, alongside many sets of wings, several of which had snapped off under the weight of time and earth. Some sort of icon, perhaps? Skygazers often harbored some worship of the celestial realms...

But all of this was forgotten in an instant as Serapis' sphere uncovered the stairwell leading downwards, deeper into the tower- and buzzed, sparking as it quarreled with the field of metaphor already limning the doorway. The floor below, it seemed, had been hermetically sealed, all points of entry covered with layers of magic intended to keep even gasses and alien forms of metaphor out. Moreover, those wardings had somehow held, all this time, pushing back the sand. That meant that the floor below should not be flooded with sand. Perhaps its contents would even be intact?

Better yet, it meant a mage's demesne, and no mistake. But, most exciting of all, it meant that mage's work was still drawing power from somewhere.

Exciting... and daunting. The mages of the Mirage Kingdoms had been, by and large, powers unto themselves. One powerful enough to own this tower and keep it safe and working centuries after their death...? Who could say what kind of traps or guardians they had left?

This presented Serapis with a dangerous quandary. This was the kind of exploration which could make his career... or kill him. And though he could return to the Academy and easily get support for a team of mages to aid him now, that would inevitably mean word would get out, and it would risk someone else getting in first. So what to risk? Life, or some success which might be even greater?

This has been a delightful exploration thus far