Archive of Our Own ^beta

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• In every universe, Angus McDonald loved the Caleb Cleveland novels.
• Thus it was only logical that, on the morning before a long train ride, Angus was wandering the bookstore to see if they had gotten the latest Caleb Cleveland novel yet
• (Sure, he could ask the owner, but he’d be a pretty poor detective if he couldn’t even find a single book!)
• In most universes, Angus would leave the bookshop empty handed; the author had not written any new stories.
• In this universe, though, Angus’ hand stopped on a nondescript book nestled between Caleb Cleveland, Another Mystery and Caleb Cleveland Carries On
• Angus tugged it out and smiled as Caleb Cleveland Becomes a Wizard fell into his hands.
• Angus wanted to save it for the train, but surely it couldn’t hurt to flip through it, get a sense of the mystery before he bought the book.
• The prologue, though, was unlike any other Caleb Cleveland novel Angus had ever seen.  
• It spoke of wizards, but not the fire-and-flash wizards that Angus was used to.  These wizards were the ones who found out secret things about the universe and kept it running in its proper order.  To Angus, they sounded more like detectives than any kind of wizard.
• The end of the prologue was the strangest - instead of a lead-in to the events of the novel, it held a “Wizards Oath”.  Angus reads over it once and then reads it aloud, letting the sheer weight of the words roll across his tongue.
• In Life’s name and for Life’s sake, I assert that I will employ the Art which is its gift in Life’s service alone, rejecting all other usages.  I will guard growth and ease pain. I will fight to preserve what grows and lives well in its own way; and I will change no object or creature unless its growth and life, or that of the system of which it is part, are threatened.  To these ends, in the practice of my Art, I will put aside fear for courage, and death for life, when it is right to do so — till Universe’s end.
• The world shivers, and tilts sideways.  Angus blinks as the world rights and then starts to his feet.  He had no idea how long he’d been sitting there, and he absolutely could not miss his train.  He heads to the front of the bookstore and handed over a few copper pieces, and then races towards the train station with a quick “Thank you, sir!” over his shoulder.

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• Despite his worries, Angus makes it to the train station with plenty of time before the train is going to depart. He boards the train and settles down to read his new book.
• (In another universe, Angus learns about Leeman Kessler’s murder while he waits.  In this universe, his blue interceptor book is tucked safely in his backpack, and he misses that clue.)
• Past the Oath, the book no longer appears to be about Caleb Cleveland.  Instead, it contains information about wizardry, about a magical language called the Speech that wizards can use to shape the world.
• Angus, who had always been interested in magic, thinks that this is perhaps the most interesting book he has read.  He races through it, devouring knowledge about how wizards fight entropy, the way they cast spells, and their main opponent, the Lone Power.
• (There are, Angus learns, a lot of stories about the Lone Power.  Stories about how the Lone Power invented entropy, stories about wizards who fought the Lone Power, even stories about the Lone Power repenting)
• Mostly, though Angus is interested in the idea that everything can communicate in the Speech.  Being able to talk to inanimate objects would make gathering clues much easier when he was on a case.
• With his nose firmly planted in his new book, Angus takes little notice of the other passengers as they board the train.  He has already read over the passenger manifest and identifies Graham and Jess the Beheader as they board.
• Angus looks up in confusion, though, when the train whistle starts blowing.  He was pretty sure that there was supposed to be a fourth passenger, and he has yet to see anyone who could be Leeman Kessler.
• Just as he is about to shrug it off and go back to reading his wizarding manual, three men enter from the far end of the far end of the passenger car.
• They are laughing and goofing with each other, but despite their demeanor, these three have a presence that immediately draws Angus’ attention.
• They saunter through to the sleeper car, and Angus turns his attention back to his manual.  He cannot shake the feeling, though, that those three are tied up in something larger than he could even imagine.
• (There are, after all, no coincidences in wizardry)

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• Having been neatly diverted from his manual, Angus decided it was time to poke around the train.
• Plus, investigating would give him a good feel for how the Speech might help him in his detective work!
• He tucked his manual under his arm and went to go find Jenkins, deliberately projecting childish innocence as he asked to use the leisure room to visit his grandpa’s library
• He stepped through the door of the leisure room, and immediately knew something was different
• His grandpa’s library, usually a silent, echoing cavern, was flooded with whispers just outside the range of his hearing.  Angus stopped, and lent all of his focus towards listening.  
• As he strained his ears, the whispers began to resolve into words. “Look, the boy is back” “Oh, I hope he reads me” “Read me, read me, read me!”  Angus blinked.  The books were talking in the Speech!
• He laughed, a short, boyish giggle, and then, checking to make sure that Jenkins wasn’t paying attention, he tried out his first phrase in the Speech, a phrase that the manual had said was used to greet others across the multiverse.
• “Dai stiho, sirs!”
• The whispering stopped abruptly, and silence hung heavy in the air for a second, before it resumed, louder than before. “The boy’s a wizard” “A wizard!” “Dai stiho, cousin!” “Read me, cousin!” “Read me, me, me, me!”
• (In another universe, Angus loved reading for the sheer joy of the story.  In this one, Angus would come to love it even more for the way the books themselves called to him.)

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• Angus spent a little while in his grandfather’s library, conversing with the books in the Speech, and marveling at how the whole world seemed to stop and listen whenever he spoke it.
• Soon, though, he said farewell to the books and went back to the train.  He had a job to do, after all, and a handful of mysteries to solve.
• As he returned to the passenger car, Angus rifled through his bag and pulled out his blue intercepter book.  
• (In another universe, Angus had seen each notice about the Rockport Slayer as they came in.  In this universe, he was a bit further behind)
• As he begins reading all of the notices, the three men from earlier, a dwarf, a human, and an elf, wander back into the passenger car.
• Angus immediately focuses on them, although he pretends to keep reading.  Three men boarding, when the manifest only mentioned a single Leeman Kessler, would be suspicious enough on its own, but Angus is even more wary of the way the world seems to still around these three.  It’s oddly similar to the way the world stilled when he used the Speech in his grandfather’s library.
• The three of them wander over to the leisure room and engage Jenkins in conversation, which seems to make Jenkins immensely frustrated.
• Eventually, though, the dwarf breaks off from the group and wanders over towards Angus.
• He plops down on the bench next to Angus and begins proselytizing about Pan, of all deities.  It’s kind of a half-hearted effort, more rote than true belief, but Angus made polite small-talk anyway as the human and the elf meander over.
• Angus examines the three men, trying to get an idea of their characters.  After a few minutes of conversation, he’s pretty sure that none of them are the Rockport Slayer, but they are definitely not telling the truth about why they are on the train.
• The dwarf casts Zone of Truth, and Angus lets it wash over him.  Before he became a wizard, he might have contested it, but his manual was very firm about the fact that wizards cannot lie without a great deal of negative repercussions.  Nevertheless, the spell fizzles out mere moments after it is cast.
• The three men whisper amongst themselves for a moment, before they get up and go talk to Graham.
• Angus keeps an eye on them until they head into the leisure chamber.  There’s something off about those three, something he can’t quite put his finger on.  He turns to some empty pages at the end of his manual, and begins to take notes.

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• Most of the train ride goes pretty much the same in every universe.  The three men play keep-away with Angus’ book, and Angus ferrets out a good chunk of their story before getting sidetracked by the murder.  Magnus, Merle, and Taako wrangle a giant fire crab and steamroll Angus’ investigations of the murder.
• (Angus continues to get the weird, universe-focusing vibes from Magnus, Merle, and Taako every time he interacts with them. Every spare moment he has on this trainwreck of a journey is spent paging through his manual trying to figure out just what it could be, to no avail)
• As the group figures out that the murderer was actually Jenkins, Angus plops down and starts frantically flipping through his manual for something, anything that would help to mitigate this chaos.
• In the background, Magnus, Merle, and Taako are planning something, but Angus doesn’t have time to worry about them.  It’s a wizard’s job to fight entropy, and surely a murderer is the worst form of entropy.
• (Angus is wrong, of course, but he has yet to face the Lone Power, so perhaps we can forgive him, this once)
• He becomes so focused on finding a solution that he does not notice what the THB have done until the door to the cargo car flies open, revealing Jenkins, two homunculi, and Magnus sailing through the air.
• Magnus, Merle, and Taako immediately engage Jenkins and the homunculi in combat, before anyone else has a chance to react.
• Angus steps into the cargo car after Jess and Graham, and is besieged by whispers in the Speech.
• “Hey buddy, hey little wizardling, hey, put me on.  Using your imagination, wizardling, you and I could rewrite the universe, stop entropy before it ever started.  Come on buddy, put me on!”
• Angus, as if in a dream, takes a couple of steps towards the pile of valuable in the center of the cargo car.  He doesn’t even know what he is gravitating towards, but it does not matter, as he is body blocked by Magnus.
• Over Magnus’ shoulder, Angus sees Taako scoop up a monocle with his umbrella and stand, stricken, for a second before shrugging and tossing the monocle into his bag.
• The flow of Speech is abruptly cut off, and the compulsion that was drawing Angus forward flows out of him.  
• But really, there’s no time to contemplate that as everyone goes rushing to the engine to stop the train.  There is some hubbub about handprint locks on the brake, and then Taako’s got a mad plan to jump off the train and send it through a portal.
• Taako casts levitate on Angus, and Angus has just enough time to remember a shield spell that he saw in his manual before he is pitched off of the train.  Angus frantically whispers the words of the Speech under his breath as he goes flying, and feels the shield spell take effect just as he strikes the ground.  He bounces a little, the shield absorbing most of the shock, and then sits up and gives a thumbs up to the other passengers, ready to catch them with shields if necessary.
• And it’s a good thing that he is prepared, because Taako absolutely flubs his acrobatics check, and goes flying off the train like an absurd sparkly penguin.  Angus catches him with the shield spell, preventing any injuries worse than bruised pride.
• The other disembark much more gracefully, tucking and rolling away from the train as Taako sits up and channels Jenkin’s port rod at the gate to Neverwinter.  The train goes careening through as a portal to a garden appears, and then vanishes again, swallowing up the train.
• Everyone pauses for a second, and then there is a collective sigh of relief as they register that disaster has been averted.
• They all part ways at the train station, and Angus gives his business card to the THB as they leave.  He didn’t become the world's greatest detective by ignoring his gut feelings, and every instinct he has is screaming that these three are important.
• Angus chats with the Neverwinter militia for a bit longer, and gives them a rundown of all the details, before grabbing his stuff and heading home to his grandpa’s house.
• When he arrives he makes a beeline for his favorite alcove in the library, and sets his manual on his lap.  It falls open to a listing of local wizards, and there, halfway down the page, he sees his name.
• Angus MacDonald, Probationary Wizard, Pre-Ordeal
• Status: Inactive, awaiting Ordeal
• As he sits there with the manual open, pondering the events of the day, the manual shimmers, and his listing changes.
• Angus MacDonald
• Power Rating 6.8 +/-2
• Status: On Ordeal

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• When Angus saw his status switch to On Ordeal, he knew it was time to put down the mysteries that the train ride had created, at least for a little while.
• Angus had read about Ordeals, and he knew that wizards almost always came face-to-face with some aspect of the Lone Power during their Ordeal, and not all of them survived it.
• Angus absolutely wanted to survive his Ordeal, and to beat back entropy while he was at it.  That meant that he needed to be as prepared as possible for whatever the Lone One might throw at him.
• So Angus spent the next few days preparing.  He threw together the very best adventuring pack he could, stocked with the best potions and weapons that people would sell to a ten-year-old.  
• That done, Angus settled down to study spells in his manual.  He crammed as many as he could into his eidetic memory, hoping to have just the right one to counter the Lone Power.
• As he continued his preparations, one day spun into another, until a full ten-day had passed with no overt sign of the Lone Power.
• When Angus woke up on the eleventh day to normalcy, he began to get worried.  Surely Ordeals were not meant to take this long to even begin! He had read about Ordeals that took a month or more, but that was supposed to be an exception, not the norm.
• Unfortunately, Angus’ manual had no data on why his Ordeal was taking so long to truly begin.  The only advice it had to offer was that wizards should contact their local Advisory if they noticed irregularities in their practice of the wizarding Art.
• Angus sighed, and turned to the registry in the back of his manual.  He flipped forward a few pages, and found the listing for his local Advisories.

• Carey Fangbattle
• Power Rating: 3.4 +- .4
• Status: Available for Consultation
• Location: ◼◼◼◼◼◼ ◼◼ ◼◼◼◼◼◼◼, ◼◼◼◼◼◼◼◼

• Killian Stormaxe
• Power Rating: 3.8 +- .2
• Status: Available for Consultation
• Location: ◼◼◼◼◼◼ ◼◼ ◼◼◼◼◼◼◼, ◼◼◼◼◼◼◼◼

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• Angus stared at his manual for a second in disbelief.  What was the point of offering up information only to snatch it away again at the last second?  Sure, it made a good mystery and all, but he needed their advice now!
• Angus huffed and stood up, dropping his manual to the floor.  As it landed, it opened to the blank area that he had used to take notes during the ride on the Rockport Limited.
• Angus sighed, and leaned down to pick up his manual, and then did a double-take
• His notes had patches of the same smudged text, blurred and unreadable.
• That didn’t make any sense; he had written those notes, and there was no reason for the manual to redact them!
• Angus focused on his memories, to recall exactly the facts that the manual had distorted.  It had been less than a fortnight, so the memories should still be clear.
• Indeed, Angus could recall with ease almost all the events of the train ride, but a few things, such as the original aliases that Magnus, Merle, and Taako had offered and the object that they had been trying to retrieve, were faded and indistinct.
• Angus flipped through the manual and found a memory-enhancement spell.  That level of detail blur was totally out of the ordinary for him.
• He read out the words in the Speech, and felt his memories sharpen in his mind’s eye.  Now, instead of indistinct blurs, the missing memories were a sharp, headache-inducing static.
• Angus kept poking at the memories for a while, and the longer he looked, the pieces fell into place.  This went beyond just the train ride, Angus realized, as he delved deeper into his memory. Words dropped and trailing off, important facts left to mildew in the fog of memory, and a regular, repeating pattern of forgetting, spread out across Neverwinter.  It was woven through old cases and daily life, an insidious kind of entropy that was pulling people apart.
• (An Ordeal, after all, is a problem that one specific person is the answer to.  What better Ordeal for a detective than a disappearing mystery?)

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• Angus spent the next few weeks gathering information.  Anyone in Neverwinter who was willing to talk to a boy detective was plied with innocent eyes and a wide smile to talk about things that they had forgotten.
• And, slowly but surely, a picture began to emerge.  Stories of villages, lost and forgotten, of devastation that could no longer be remembered, of an echoing grief that lingered though the mind knew not why.
• (As the pattern developed, Angus grouped things into two, or maybe four different categories.  First, there was the devastation caused by altering somethings form, possibly split into circle-of-black-glass and other transmutation.  Second, there was devastation caused by creation, possibly split into plants and not-plants.)
• Once Angus had exhausted the stories of all the natives of Neverwinter, the logical next step was to check outsiders for this same entropic memory loss.
• Luckily for him, Neverwinter had a huge shopping hub.  It wasn’t hard to hang out in the market and turn his boyish charm on unsuspecting shoppers.
• Angus’ current target was a pair of women who appeared to be provisioning for an extended expedition.  The smaller of the two women, a wirey dragonborn, was laughing at a joke that her larger orcish friend had just told.
• Just before Angus approached the two women, they turned away from the stall that they were looking at and stopped dead in their tracks, staring at him.
• Angus stared right back, eyes catching on the familiar metal bracers on each woman’s right arm.

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• Angus knew that he had to say something, quickly, and he had to choose his words carefully, so as not to spook the two women away.  He should have no problem with that, right? Words, after all, were a wizard’s trade!
• “Hello, ma'ams! Do you know Magnus, Merle, and Taako? You have the same bracers and everything!”
• As soon as the words left his mouth, Angus could have smacked himself.  The two women were clearly trying not to draw attention to themselves, and a little boy loudly calling out names to them could hardly be conducive to that.
• Oddly, though, his over enthusiastic greeting didn’t seem to be drawing the amount of attention that a loud child in a marketplace usually gathers.  Not a single person glanced over at him, and everyone’s eyes seemed to flow right past the two women.
• The orcish woman seemed to shrug off her concerns first, and stepped forward in a menacing manner.
• “Who are you? And how do you know about the ◼◼◼◼◼◼ ◼◼ ◼◼◼◼◼◼◼”
• Angus’ eyes lit up, and his mind started racing.  He had heard that static before on the train, and knew it now to be the same type of static that covered over the missing memories. For Angus, there was only one conclusion to draw.
• “Eldest, fairest, and fallen, greetings and defiance”
• (Wizards rarely go astray by following their gut instincts.  Rarely, though, does not mean never.)

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• The dragonborn woman recovered first, and started laughing hysterically.  Angus and the orcish woman both stared at her, bewildered.
• After a few minutes of gasping laughter, she calmed down enough to choke out a proper greeting
• Dai... Dai stiho, cousin!  We are on errantry, and we greet you! I'm Carey Fangbattle, and this is Killian Stormaxe
• Angus was perplexed.  He was absolutely certain that the static was being used by the Lone Power to wear away at interpersonal Bonds, and yet, here were two wizards (Advisories, even!) who were clearly working with the source of the static.
• He opened his mouth to question them further, and then thought twice about it.  Even though they did not seem to be drawing a lot of attention at the moment, the center of an open air market was hardly the place to hash out such a delicate matter.
• Angus pondered for a moment, and then invited Carey and Killian back to his grandfather's house. No one but him ever used his grandfather's library, so it would be the perfect place to hold a discussion.  Plus, all of his notes and research were there, so it would be a great time to get an Advisory's opinion on his Ordeal, if he decided he could trust them.
• They walked back to Angus' grandfather's manor mostly in silence, although Carey kept letting out a snort of laughter every so often.  Killian followed the two of them, flipping through a manual that she had procured seemingly from thin air.
• When they arrived at the manor, Angus lead them to the library and started to relax a little.  This was his home turf, surrounded by the now-familiar whispers of the books.

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• Carey and Killian talked with Angus for a while, and although most of the details got staticed out, Angus decided that he could trust them with the research that he had done for his Ordeal.
• He stood up from the table where they were chatting, and retrieved his chest of notes.  Dozens of scrolls with interview transcripts and a handful of maps, heavily annotated, tumbled out as he upended the chest onto the table.
• He spread out the map of Faerun first; it was what he found to be the most stunning bit of research.
• Dotted across the map were symbols, indicating confirmed and unconfirmed disasters that seemed to line up with huge swaths of forgetting.
• “You see, ma’ms,” Angus said, after he got everything laid out, “I’ve been tracking the static, and its effects”
• And then Angus proceeded to lay out all of his research, in polite, if childish tones. The spells he’s been using to isolate the static from normal memory degradation, the way he has observed friends and family members growing more and more distant.  The way his own grandfather no longer recalls his name, or even much about Angus.
• (He can’t really help the childish bit. He does all he can to seem mature and dignified but Angus is, after all, only 10)
• He spent two and a half hours describing everything he had found, as Carey and Killian exchanged more and more worried glances.  Towards the end of his talk, they almost seemed to be holding a silent argument.
• And then Angus showed them his biggest discovery.  He had figured out how to track the entropic spread, like ripples in a pond.  And, at the center, there was always those distinctive disasters.
• Angus finished, and turned to the two Advisories, certain they would know what to do about this entropy, or at least what direction to point him in.  To his shock, the two women stared at him for a long moment, and then Killian stood up.
• “Would you excuse us for a moment, Angus?” She said, as Carey also began to stand up. “We have to discuss a… delicate matter”
• “I.. of course, ma’ms.”
• The two women headed out of the library, and closed the door behind them.  Angus, with only a moment of hesitation, crept after him, and put his ear to the door.
• On the other side, Carey and Killian were holding a fierce whispered debate, but strain as he might, Angus could only hear snippets of it.
• “...if the ◼◼◼◼◼◼◼◼ is causing entropy…” “...sure we can’t tell the Director…” “...we’re sevarfrith...” “...excellent researching skills…” “...only 10-years-old...” “...he is a wizard…” “...keep an eye on him…”

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• After a few minutes, the argument died down.  Angus scrambled back to the table as the door opens, and Carey and Killian stepped back through it.
• They walked over to him, and Killian opened her mouth, only to be elbowed by Carey.
• “You got to do it last time,” the dragonborn muttered, before turning to Angus. “Angus, how would you like to help us save the world?”
• Angus just kind of blinked at her.
• “I… ma’ms, isn’t that what I’m already doing as a wizard? Like, fighting entropy and the Lone Power, and all that?  It seems to me like saving the world is just kind of… the job description for wizards?”
• Killian started to shake with barely controlled laughter, and Carey pouted.  She turned to the map that was still spread out on the table.
• “Let’s say there was a group of people that were dedicated to stopping these specific kinds of disasters.  And that joining the group would mean going off somewhere, and maybe not seeing your friends and family for a while.  But the world might be a better place, because the group was able to stop some of these disasters from occurring.”
• Angus squared his shoulders. “Well then, ma’ms, I’d say that I would like to join such a group.  I swore an Oath to help the world, and it sounds like helping a group like that out would be just the way to do it!”
• Carey nodded, and looked a little bit sad, but also proud.  She and Killian started to gather up the scrolls and maps, with Angus’ help.
• Once they had everything gathered up, she turned to Angus, and asked him if there was anything else he needed to take with him.  He hoisted his backpack, which already held his manual, some supplies, and a crossbow (it was always best to be prepared) onto his shoulder and shook his head.
• The three headed out of the manor, and then out through Neverwinter.  They walked for a while, and once they were out of sight of the town, Carey stopped and pressed the rune on her bracer.  She and Killian turned and looked towards the sky, and Angus, confused, copied them.
• For a moment or two, nothing happened, and then Angus saw a shape start to resolve in the sky.  A sphere seemed to arc out of the clouds and descend, settling down in the grass a few feet away from the trio.
• Killian and Carey walked over to the orb, and Angus jogged along behind them.  Killian tapped the side of the ob, and it swung open, revealing a sort of cab with four chairs.  The two women dumped the scrolls and maps onto one of the chairs, and then hopped into the orb. Angus followed, cautiously, and then the door swung shut behind him.
• Angus sat down as Carey started to tap on her bracer again, and then a balloon popped out of the top of the orb and started to inflate.
• The orb began to lift off of the ground, and Angus watched with a wide-eyed wonder as Faerun quickly retreated below them.
• He turned around to ask the two women a question, and was immediately struck speechless by the sight of one of Faerun’s moons hanging in the sky, far, far closer than it had any right to be.  He gasped as a porthole opened in the side of the moon, directly in the path of the orb.
• The orb swung into the moon, and for a second was enveloped in darkness, before giving way to a brilliant, blinding light.

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• Angus blinked away the spots from his eyes as the door of the orb opened.  He gazed out at the dome-shaped room surrounding him for a moment, and then blinked one last time as Killian started to usher him out of the orb.
• The ground seemed to sort of swim underneath Angus, and there was a faint sort of buzzing in his ears.
• Angus shook his head once, and then, in a flash of insight muttered a few words under his breath in the Speech.  The now-familiar spell to isolate memory interference took hold, and the ground steadied.
• Everything was a bit blurry, now, as if Angus had forgotten his glasses somewhere, but he was able to function much better.  Despite the blurry vision, he gazed around in awe. The level of memory distortion it would take to cloak something as large as the moon, especially while he was standing on it, was truly phenomenal.  Angus reached into his backpack to pull out his manual and take notes.
• Before he could get it out, though, Carey came up from behind him, arms once more full of his scrolls.  She tugged him towards what he thought was a door, though the blurriness really made it hard to tell.
• On the other side of the door, there was a vast, grassy expanse.  Carey maneuvered Angus on to one of the benches, and then turned to him.
• “This is… well, this is a little outside of the norm, so I’m going to go get everything cleared with Madam Director, and then we can get you inoculated.  Just wait here for a little bit, I’ll be right back.”
• Angus nodded, and settled into the bench.  He pulled his manual out of his backpack, and began making notes on all the things he had learned that day, all of the new observations to add to his research.  He spent a good while at it, but Carey had still not returned by the time he had finished, so he flipped forwards in his manual, intending to read over some more information about detection spells while he waited.
• Angus caught a glimpse, as he flipped past, of his own wizard’s listing, still marked as “On Ordeal.”  He rather felt that his Ordeal ought to have come to some sort of a confrontation by now, as it seemed like it was stretching on far longer than most.
• Angus had barely managed to get a handful of pages into the chapter on detection spells when Carey came rushing back over.  He popped up off of the bench and shoved his manual back into his backpack.
• Angus followed Carey as she lead him across the courtyard, and into an elevator, and then out again into a bright corridor.  Carey nodded at a pair of guards that were standing in front of a door at the end of the hallway, and then gestured for Angus to enter the room.
• Angus stepped beyond the door frame, and was immediately overwhelmed.  There was a said, lilting melody filling the room, emanating from a bard playing the violin in the corner of the room.  But what really caught Angus’ eye was the enormous tank with a glowing jellyfish floating serenely in some sort of viscous liquid.
• Carey walked up behind Angus, and then up to the tank.  She climbed up the ladder at its side, and dipped a glass into the liquid, then climbed back down and handed it to Angus.
• Angus swirled the glass a little and sniffed at it, but other than the slight viscosity, it appeared to contain normal water. He looked over at Carey, but she simply raised an eyebrow, so Angus steeled himself and took a large gulp of the liquid.