*****
A servant ran down the twisting corridors of Thraewnys. He had not worked for long in his duty and she certainly knew what kind of a woman his ruler was reported to be. But this was irrelevant to him, as he had only enrolled in guard duty for money. He cared not to whom he was working for, provided his wallet would be filled. The palace was a maze indeed, but he had learned the turns of the corridors surprisingly quickly. He felt pride in being able to make his way through the seemingly endless corridors of Thraewnys with ease; some of the numskulls in the palace guard could not manage that even after years of trying. It was great to run here in the corridors where it was cool and quiet. He came to a sturdy door and without thinking opened it - and stepped directly into Raelia’s chamber without knocking first.
Raelia and Il’sharat lay on the floor kissing and caressing when all of a sudden the door flanged open and a young man stepped in, face lit with the heat of running. Raelia could not believe her eyes confronting this arrogance and almost forgot her position for a second.
“How dare you!” she screamed. The young man opened his mouth to say something, puzzled at what was happening. Raelia was too quick to act. She screamed again, this time a word in a tongue that no one else in the room, if in the whole palace, could understand. She flapped her palms together so that her fingers were pointed towards the boy. Fiery bolts sparked from her fingertips and blew directly through the servant’s chest and spread around his back, surrounding him in a blaze. He had time to feel a shocking wave of heat for just a second and then there was only a pile of ash left on the floor and a smell of burning flesh lingering in the air for a while before mixing with the other smells and scents of the chamber. Raelia gasped angrily and shook her fists at the pile of ashes. The moment with Il’sharat had passed. She gave herself some time to calm down and then looked at Il’sharat, who had already stood up.
“Come to my room later” she purred, already surprisingly abated. Il’sharat also knew that that the moment was gone, and did not try to contradict her decision when she continued: “Now get lost. I have some work to do!” Raelia walked to her table, but changed her mind and turned around to speak, but the elf had already gone his way.
“Damn elves”, she said, but this time her voice was much more relaxed. Despite the irritation she could not resist concentrating on him for a little more. She concentrated and closed her eyes, and sent a telepathic message to him. A very vivid and lurid image it also was.
”That will keep him on his toes for a while” she laughed to herself and started exploring the rolls of parchment spread out on the table in order to find a solution to her problem. Once in a while she fingered some bottles on the shelves, sniffed or tasted the strange contents therein, and mumbled something that would be mean nothing to common mortals. It was hard for her to decide what to do. Using her magical potions she tried to concentrate her mind and let the tentacles of her thought reach inside her memories, digging all the way to the bottom in order to find some answers and there she suddenly found and old memory hidden deep in the vaults of her evil mind.
“Decamod” Raelia spoke aloud. "Perhaps I already have access again." The Decamod was an ancient spell book - truly an ancient one. Few mortals had ever dared to probe its contents, because its tongue was forgotten knowledge from ancient times. Nobody really understood any more how the book worked, except it was only accessible once in a lifetime of a mortal. Not written by mortal beings, not really a book at all, it was a powerful entity in itself, dwelling in the hidden universe that resided between its covers. According to a legend an ancestor of Raelia had found the Decamod lying somewhere in the abyss of mount Wandoria. Such mountains had, as the legends say, in the times before time begun, been pushed up from the rock and living earth by mighty wizards, to serve as abodes. It was believed one of them had been the creator of the formidable book. Raelia’s predecessors had attempted to use the book – or what parts therein they had dared to look at – in their long search for the grave of Firnaraee, but of course the grave had not been found and it had been stored in the secret library of the palace to await the time it would reveal its secrets once again. Raelia grinned with delight and left – almost ran out of her chamber. She headed straight for the secret library, but still a thought lingered in her mind. A detour to a certain bedroom first would be very invigorating…