Interlude

  Yan Mikeln was fast asleep when he was stirred awake by the gentle tickle of something against his nose. Before he was even able to identify the offending stimulus he rubbed his nose and rolled over. The tickle returned signaling something greater than a simple itch or acute sensation.

  His eyes popped open and saw a seed floating in the air in front of his face. It was an odd seed, one of the ones that would fall in a spiral as it detached from its home branch. In his grogginess Yan was taken aback, but quickly soothed his alarm as he knew it must be a message from one of his many agents out within the field.

  Yan reached out a hand and gripped the twirling seed.

  “Hey Yan…What? Shhhh, of course it's a leaf…a seed counts now shhhh, oh shit is this thing on uuhhhhh wrong number! Someone grab–”

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  The magical message stopped mid sentence. The spell within the little messenger prompted him to respond.

  “This is Yan, who is this?” his voice was still groggy and still quite confused.

  As he sent the seed off, a fat leaf the size of his hand slapped against the window of his room. He watched with a look of confusion as the leaf slowly worked its way down the glass and wriggled under the lip of the raiseable portion of the window.

  He snatched it out of the air before it could accost him to the degree of its fellow.

  “Hey Yan! It’s Roden…no I’m not going—…wait nevermind that part, it’s Roden. We made it to the Outpost. See you soon!”

  Yan rubbed his eyes with a finger and a thumb. Before he could respond a forceful wind rattled the window as if it were determined to enter. By that point Yan had cast his Sight of the Archmagi and observed what he noticed to be a magical wind slowly working its way into his room.

  He puzzled at the sight as he’d never seen a message coming directly through the wind, but he’d seen stranger in his days. He moved to the window and cracked it to allow the wind in as if it were a stray cat.

  “You up, cacaw?”

  Yan groaned as the clipped message finished, but chuckled at the memory of himself as a young man sending equally drunken messages around the world in the wee hours of the night and morning. Yan shook his head realizing he was going to have to be the one to give those boys the talk about sending magical messages while drinking.