oOo
Dear Mom and Dad,
No news on Firecat Alley, apart from their previous statement of "Firecat Alley will be sealed until the threats have been neutralized". The trials of Gretta Darkkettle and Harold Quinn, the guard, have started, though. With any luck, they'll face justice.
Since the street was evacuated, all of the previous residents have become refugees, and Wizard City has requested people to open their homes. I volunteered to give up my dorm room to a family, so I've moved into a triple dorm. I've included my new address, so make sure to send your letters there now. Even with people housing the refugees, there are still a lot left, since there were already a lot of people who had fled Firecat Alley and the other streets when the undead invasion began. People have started pitching tents in the Commons.
As for myself, I have two new roommates: Orian Dreamthief, and Sandra Lionheart. Orian is a Myth wizard from one of the larger islets surrounding the main island of Wizard City. Sandra is a Balance student from Wizard City proper. There's a picture of them included with my letter; Orian claims the purple hair is natural, but I don't believe her. Orian seems pretty nice, but Sandra is kind of snooty. Her mother is an administrator for Ravenwood, and her father is a general of the Wizard City guards, as she so proudly told me. I'm guessing the only reason she got the privilege of entering the first Balance class was because they pulled some strings.
Oh, I haven't told you about the Balance school, have I? So, Balance is the newest school at Ravenwood; they don't even have a real classroom yet. Balance has existed as wild magic for a while now, but they only just recently figured out how to capture it in specific spells, and this is the first year they're offering it at Ravenwood. Entrance to the first class was by invitation only, supposedly by merit, but it's an open secret that probably a good half of the class made it in through less-than-honorable means.
In other news, I've been "invited" (forced) into another one of Headmaster Ambrose's pet projects, though this one appears at least slightly safer than the previous ones. I and a group of about a dozen students have been tasked with going through the depths of the Wizard City archives to try to find clues on the possible command structure of the undead, their base, and any previously unknown ways of fighting them. We've been doing this morning through evening every day.
Not too hard, right? Wrong. There's no library catalogue, the archives are a labyrinth, books are vaguely sorted by date rather than thematically, and people haven't always put things back where they found them. It's so easy to get lost in some dusty old scroll or something and lose track of the time, or remember the time but get lost in the corridors. The archives are locked after sundown, and one evening Sarai didn't make it out in time. We found her by the entrance the next morning, muttering about precipitation levels in Cyclops Lane during the drought of 116 A.R. (After the founding of Ravenwood).
Honestly, this task feels impossible. Anything useful is buried in thousands of books and scrolls and documents regarding everything in the 400-year history of Wizard City. Weather patterns, trade agreements, enrollment records, everything. If it was written in Wizard City, a copy of it has ended up here. We definitely have our work cut out for us if we're going to find anything even mildly helpful.
It's still amazing the amount of things you'd never know that you can find here, though. Earlier today, for example, I found the first proposals to build a mill on Triton Avenue from around 80 A.R.. There were originally two possible locations: where it's currently located, and another spot in an area called "Lower Triton Avenue" that I'd never heard of before. The location in Lower Triton Avenue was definitely the better spot based on the description in the proposal, but they built it at the Four Falls instead. There's no mention of why in that document; I'm going to look around and see if I can figure it out myself.
I know, I know, I'm excited about 300-year-old building projects and getting sidetracked from the important stuff. But hey, it's fun learning about the history of this amazing new place I'm living in, even if there are all sorts of horrible things going on. Hopefully my team finds a good lead on the undead and this all ends soon.
Your daughter,
Brynn.
oOo
A/N:
Two to three more chapters left in Part 1 depending on how I divide things up, and then on to Krokotopia!
-The Thunder Alchemist
