The soft flicker of an oil lamp burning low was all that illuminated the room, perched on an old mahogany desk strewn with scrolls, books and papers written in varied and ancient dialects. Leaning on the desk, one arm beneath his head as a pillow, unkempt black hair masking his face, the man breathed deeply and serenely, dead to the waking world. He was dressed simply, in the soft brown robes of a scholar or mage. His skin where visible was pale, the pallor of someone who had been spending a lot of time indoors lately. But the man did not look sick, or weak - the loose fabric of his clothing left a lot to the imagination, but what could be pieced together brought the image of a man not particularly young but not old either, compact and strong, slim but muscular.

A small head, crowned with long black hair pulled back in a loose ponytail, peeked through the heavy oak door of the study. The girl's eyes were a bright leaf-green, curious and sparkling and full of life. She was young, a child still. She padded softly across the room, picking her way through the floor hazards - a huge broken bookshelf leaned against the dusky wood-panelled wall, its contents moved to the floor in neat piles. Her pretty yellow dress grazed her ankles, white floral designs on the hems and long sleeves. Her pale socks were dusty, growing more so as she traversed the room.

She drew up beside the sleeping man, glanced at a piece of paper scrawled with symbols and their key, and looked at him for a moment with a glint of mischief in her eyes - vulnerable, undignified before her - but the look passed and she put her small hands on his broad shoulder and shook him gently.
"Father," she called. "Father, wake up!"
The man murmured sleepily, and the words could have meant anything. The girl giggled, and renewed her assault on his shoulder. Grudgingly he awoke, sitting upright in his sturdy old chair, stretching out with a great yawn. His tired, dark brown eyes still seemed lost in his dreams for a moment, before focusing on his daughter.

"What time is it, Denira?" His voice was deep, gruff - he still sounded very tired.
"It's only lunch time! Did you stay up all night again with your books?" Her voice was cheeky and musical, accusing gently.
"Maybe."
"Well, you can go back to sleep after you feed me!"
He laughed at this, feeling his own stomach twinge a little in hunger. He allowed his daughter to lead him by the sleeve, down the narrow hall, bare but for an old and faded rug. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes with his free sleeve and rolled his stiff neck.
He felt a little guilty for leaving his daughter without breakfast, but though she was young she was already quite independant, perfectly capable of fending for herself except when it came to use of the old and tempermental stove. He would make up for it later, he told himself, and would allow himself the day without pursuing his texts. He had been so close, though, before sleep had claimed him - He could feel himself on the cusp of understanding, of finally breaking through the layers of riddle and metaphor and ancient, long-dead tongues. His studying of just four books and supporting material of various scrolls and papers had gone on for months now - they had baffled men much wiser than him, and been regarded as junk by many lesser. He knew otherwise, though - his area of expertise in fact covered these ancient tomes, as well as his own personal burning curiosity. Enigmas wrapped in mysteries, they had frustrated him as much as they had excited him. He loved to learn, to study, to crack codes. Nothing was safe from his curiosity.

No matter how ancient. Or forbidden.

As Denira darted around the kitchen, hastily cleaning up the mess left by who knows what she'd been up to, he went through the motions of preparing a pot of soup with the remaining vegetables from the pantry - almost bare, he noted, he would have to go shopping tomorrow - leaving it to bubble and cook. It would take too long for the girl, he knew, and so he waved her out from underfoot in the pantry where she had found and stolen a wheatcake and reached up to the high shelves to take down a loaf of crusty home-baked bread, wrapped in a white cloth. He tore it into quarters, and gave her one, putting aside the rest on the old stone counter beside the stove. As if remembering his own hunger he decided against this and took another quarter for himself.

They sat together at the wooden table, older than both of them, but strong and faithful. They did not converse much, except for the occasional burst of idle chatter from his daughter and his own replies, but the silence when unbroken was comfortable and companionable. The man had brewed a pot of sweet fruit tea - an Ionian delicacy he'd taken a liking to on one of his travels - and had poured for both of them, steam curling from the drink and filling the air with a pleasant scent.

Denira's mother Fennel had died while she was still a baby. The loss still hurt, even seven years later, but he had buried his sorrow for her sake and did what he could to raise her alone. The girl remembered very little of her, but he did, and he would be reminded of her whenever he looked at his daughter. She'd inherited his dark hair and pale skin, but aside from that she was almost a perfect copy of her mother - green eyes, a gently upturned nose, high cheekbones. Light and dainty. She'd have the boys of the village wrapped around her finger when she grew older.

His work demanded more and more of his time, but for all she looked like her mother, Denira had inherited much of his personality and did not mind her own company. He felt bad spending so much time in his study, but his daughter never complained, encouraging him or lightly chiding at worst. Besides, she was out more than she was in, running amok in the village with her troupe of scruffy friends - who were NOT allowed into his study, especially after the incident with the enchanted lodestones - and enjoying playing out on the village green. She was doing well in school, bright and quick, resourceful and brave. He loved her dearly, and was proud of her, though his nature would not let this be plainly seen.

She was also beginning to show signs of a mage.

Once upon a time, before he met her mother, he had been a wandering mage himself, forever in search of forgotten crafts and buried powers. Not for the enhancement of his own, mind - he was a scholar at heart and simply wished to preserve the knowledge of these forgotten, forbidden magics. To know them as they were once known, to understand. It had taken him to dark places, and less dark places. He had developed quite a sense for magic potentiality and depth over the years. And now his daughter was positively oozing it.

He'd been hearing stories from the villagers lately as well, when he deigned to go among them. The eyebrows of another girl with whom it was known she had an intense rivalry had been singed clean off her face one day. She'd somehow managed to coax dozens of frogs from the nearby river into her school, causing chaos. Sometimes, odd things would happen around her that could not quite be explained.

Small acts, as an acorn was tiny next to the tree it would become. But an untrained mage who didn't know their own power was a disaster waiting to happen.

Ah, but he wouldn't allow any disaster. He wasn't much of a teacher, more of an eternal pupil himself, but he would do all he could to teach his daughter to rein in her strength and harness it. Wouldn't do for the warlock and his witch-child to be hunted from their homes with pitchforks and torches, now. Maybe he would send her to a school for mages - just as he had been, when his powers awakened and he accidentally exploded his mother's favorite armchair while trying to kill a wasp that had blundered through the open window. The memory brought a smile to his face, and he rubbed his strong jaw with his hand absentmindedly. She would protest - and it would hurt to make her go. No... He would not make her go. But he'd make sure she understood that it was probably for the best. It'd been an... interesting part of his own life, and he knew she'd benefit.

"Hey!", His daughter's voice startled him from his pondering.

He made a small noise of questioning, warming his hands around his mug, and she leaned across the table. Her face suddenly looked much more serious.
"What's Icathia?"

He tensed, the shock clear on his face. His daughter frowned at his reaction. He opened his mouth as if to speak, but could not find words.

Icathia. Icathia... The name had haunted his dreams, flitted through his books like a ghost of words, never where he looked, but always over the next page, in the next cypher or stanza or sentance. It promised power and understanding. And yet, he realized with an odd, detached feeling, he knew nothing of it. It was what he had sought but not yet found. A word he hadn't read yet. An answer to a question nobody asked.

So how did his daughter know of it?
"Where... How do you know that word?" There was no point saving face - his tone carried his surprise. His brows knit together thoughtfully, and the girl scuffed her feet against the smooth wooden floor.

"I wasn't being nosy! I just, I saw it in one of your books. Well, I think I saw it. It's hard to explain. It's something important, isn't it? I wasn't reading your books, it was on the pages you were lying on when I went to wake you!", Denira replied, curiosity overwhelming her. As if to silence herself from saying more, she took a fast gulp of her tea, pulling a pained face as it burned her tongue and throat.

Now, that just raised more questions than it answered.

"I have no idea. Can you show me where you saw it?"

It was her turn to be shocked. A frown marred her delicate face. How could he have missed it? Still, she nodded, excited that she knew something he didn't, for once. She darted like a minnow from the kitchen, before he could follow, and he heard her trip over something in his study with a curse that made him raise his eyebrows - he would scold her for that later - and returned with the heavy book splayed open at the same place he had fallen asleep on, struggling to hold it with both hands but placing it gently on the table as if well aware of its pricelessness. She hopped up onto the seat and pointed to a small passage at the bottom of the left page, faded with the ravages of a thousand years, but still barely legible in the hand-wrought script of a language the name of which was long-lost.

He read the words again. He couldn't understand them. And that in itself was odd, because it was written in the same script as the other page, and that he could read just fine. He wracked his memory, what was blocking him from understanding? There had been spells on this book, he remembered taking them apart, peeling back the layers of defence. He thought he'd got them all - it wasn't the first time he'd dealt with books that had been "locked" in such a way by their original owner. Usually, he could sense them before he even touched the cover. But he didn't feel anything, and again why did his daughter see clearly? She shouldn't even understand what the symbols were!

The man was baffled.

"Denira... I can't read it. I think there's something that keeps me from reading it. Can you copy the passage for me? Do not speak the words aloud, they might be dangerous."
Denira nodded solemnly, as her father fetched her a piece of paper and a pen. Her eyes took on a faraway look that made him frown, worried, as she scrawled down in messy handwriting what she could make of the symbols, translating them into letters which were not so foreign to her eyes. Penmanship had never been the girl's greatest strength, but he could not complain.

Yioglthr thgic thrucaty ilg Icathia gth uaoyg iyg tlu itoh Icathia lrurh gtoh uayg iyg yiglth ulth icau gh ulryig gh ray girhy tlu itoh hr tacgiy catogth ilog choi glth aithy

That, he could definitely make sense of. It was a very old language, known only from scattered remnants found in the deserts of Shurima. Only four people in the entire world could read it - he was one of them. It was speculated to be the mother tongue of a race from the wastelands on the east coast of Valoran, sitting between the great Barrier Mountains and the wilds of Kumungu. It was a land nobody ever travelled to - the place was dead. Dry, empty, and desolate. No wildlife. No plants. No people. Perhaps once it had been habitable, but not for many centuries now. Nobody had ever explored the land to any extent. There'd never been a reason to.

Well, he might have just found a reason. He was not a man who believed in coincidences.

"Thank you, Denira. How do you feel about staying at your Aunt's for a while? I may be going on a trip."

"To Icathia, father?" Her eyes met his, solemn jade to excited mahogany. She didn't like it when he left her. But Aunty Meg was always good to her - and she did a lot of baking. Her mother's sister had never been able to have children of her own, but had always longed to - she lived in the village and had demanded to help with her care when Denira was born. Struggling with the grief of losing his wife, and juggling his research with being a single father, he'd welcomed the help. Meg had inserted herself neatly into Denira's life - she would never replace her mother, but her support was a major help. Their personalities often clashed, but his respect for her was untainted.

She'd stayed with her a few times before, when her father went on "trips" - and came back, sore and weary, but triumphant, often carrying a precious cargo of books or notes or relics. Sometimes he told her all about his travels - she'd perch on the arm of his chair while he rested and spoke, listening raptly with eyes full of wonder. Sometimes he only told her small amounts. Her curiosity burned, and she worried that he put himself in danger. But he always came back.

Always.

"Yes," Kassadin said, placing a hand on his daughter's shoulder in a comforting gesture. "To Icathia."

The soup boiled over, forgotten for the moment.