The Carnival at Moonbright
The Story Begins

The clouds covered the light from the stars, pushing darkness against the lights inside homes, taverns, and closing shops of the late fall evening. The rain came down in sheets, soaking and making pools on the cobblestone streets of Moonbright. Near Haron’s Castle, underground in the Archmage Tower, a male gnome sat in his room in a cozy chair near the shelf of books and a small desk with a large candle lit on it. Leaf had no idea of the rain outside in his comfortable space, lost in the books sprawled on the table before him.

The room was small, a round area maybe seven feet in diameter, but it was more than enough for a person of his height and stature. A bed across the room from where he sat and another candle near the door were the only other detectable items in the room with stone walls. The candle near the door hung on a slight relief, with nails sticking out and a small metal plate underneath to catch these nails. While not a perfect science, the candle will, over time, burn down, releasing the pins to the metal plate with a quiet TING. Each nail that drops since the candle has been lit notes the hours that have passed by. From looking at the pins in the metal plate, Leaf had been sitting in this room for over three hours now, going through these books.

Leaf was surprised to hear a tapping at the door, a delicate knocking sound. He combed his fingers through his brown hair, stood up, and walked to the door. Again, the sound repeated and echoed through the room. Leaf opened the door slowly and examined the hallway and stairs before him.

Just above his eyesight, a spectral hand hovered, waiting for recognition.

“Yes?” Leaf asked curiously.

The hand gestured its index finger towards the stairs, then proceeded down the hallway and to the floor above. Leaf blew out the candles in the room quickly, then obeyed. While a more petite figure, standing under four feet in height, he moved quickly behind the hand and watched as it ascended one flight, two, three, all the way up to the fifth floor of the tower.

The room was a laboratory of many dissimilar things. One large room with bookshelves on the western wall, a fireplace near it with two relaxing chairs, one small and one ordinary in size. The eastern wall contained tables with bottles of liquid, some bubbling, some frozen, all different colors and shapes. In the middle of the room was a rolling table with a cadaver laid upon it.

The body had only arrived today, and Leaf was excited to see what new things might be learned from this body, like the many others that have come for scientific research and analysis. It may be a more complex and not attractive job, but the studies gave way to so much potential.

The spectral hand moved inward towards the center of the room, then flew upward and through the ceiling. Leaf looked around, noticing that his mentor was not there, nor did he hear him throughout the tower. Scraping sounds came from above, and Leaf realized someone was on the roof. Looking around, Leaf knew there was no staircase, ladder, or even an open hatch that would take him to the top, so he focused on his studies and inspected for magic.

As he investigated the area on the northern wall, Leaf found that a subtle shimmering effect was appearing and disappearing. He walked towards it, took a deep breath, and stepped through it. Gravity lost its use. Time seemed to wrench away. Then, just as quickly as he stepped through, he was on the roof of Archmage Orin Sungrove’s tower.

On the roof, tables, bottles, and other apparatuses were sprawled out on wooden tables, with tents protecting them from the rain. In the middle, an elven man with dark cherry skin, rubber boots, and goggles over his face was putting a metal contraption together. It looked like a mix between a weather vane and a large staff made of metal. Leaf assumed it was probably some type of conductor since tonight’s storm had a high chance of lightning.

“Archmage Orin, you summoned me?”

The elven man turned around, his blue robes dry as if magically repelling the water from him, and placed his goggles onto his keffiyeh.

“Ah, yes, Leaf. I know that it is getting late, but I wanted to ask you to do a small favor for me.”

“Whatever you need, sir. How can I help you tonight?”

Archmage Orin tinkered with a few items on the table to his right, then flicked his hand outward. The spectral mage hand materialized before him, grabbed the scroll off the table, and brought it over to Leaf.

“I need you to go to the Athenaeum, please. This scroll has the two books I need, and I seemed to have forgotten to grab them while out today. Take this scroll to the librarian Rosemita, and she will help you. She already knows I requested these books, so she should have them ready for me.”

“Yes, sir, I’ll go right now.”

“Oh, and Leaf? I was hoping you could do me a favor and grab one of the cloaks near the doorway before you go. They’ll repel the rain, and you’re already drenched from being up here.”

Leaf nodded, turned on his heel, dropped back into the ground through the portal, and quickly equipped himself for the quick errand.