Our day starts with yet another confusion about how the dorm works. The windows in the dorm are strikingly similar to doors, which we are having difficulty getting used to. Towendros startled Anchor Root, a Kholo student of the Rain-Scribes by accidently barging in through the window in her room. It took a while until we could calm her and finally get details of our perquisite task from the Tempest-Sun Mages.
They have prepared for us a lesson in applied force with mercy. Pugwampi gremlins, creatures that warp luck into misery, had infested a storage. We resolved to evict, not exterminate. Research yielded their weakness: an aversion to the pure chime of silver. Armed with bells and sacks, we became not warriors, but pest-controllers. The chaos in that storage was a tangible thing—a cloying aura of misfortune. When the twisted little creatures appeared, their very presence made competence falter. Then, I called upon my unwelcome guest—the Apparition of the Endless Gifts. Letting its fey essence flow through me, I did not become myself, but a nymph, an embodiment of pristine, captivating nature. The glamour was a lie, but a compelling one. It disrupted their malice, a different kind of chaos to counter their own. Combined with the deafening peal of silver bells, it created enough confusion for capture. We found them hoarding magical glow rods, drawn to the light like moths to a different flame.
We took them to the jungle. There, I quieted the fey chatter within me and listened instead for the older, deeper voices of the land—the spirits of root and stream. We sought a place of balance, not too close to civilization, but safe. Releasing and healing them felt correct. They are creatures of the First World, however twisted; they belong in the wild tapestry, not in a dusty academy closet. It was midwifery of a sort: delivering them back to their proper place in the world.