The Staff of Magnus.

Its name was almost deceivingly accurate for its purpose. Who would've thought that the god of magic himself would so plainly name his weapons.

Kiir sat cross-legged on her bed, three different tomes open in front of her and countless others carefully stacked under her bed. She was tired, her eyes beginning to blur the words on the page.

The Eye had grown in strength since it had first arrived at the college; she could feel it. Everyone could feel it. Like a constant warm hum of energy, the Eye reached out past the courtyard and Eithis was sure he could feel it even when he took trips down to the tavern in Winterhold.

"Hey."

Kiir jumped, looking up to Eithis, his hands filled with more books, walking into her room.

"I wasn't able to find much more on the location." He dropped the books on her bed. "Most of these are just encyclopedias with some myths and legends. I brought them anyway."

"Thanks, Eithis." Kiir looked down at the new books and groaned. "It's just so frustrating. We know what it is! We just need to know where it is!"

Eithis shrugged. "I don't know where else to look. I've scoured every inch of the Arcanaeum."

Kiir laid back on her bed, eyes closed. She hadn't left her room in over 48 hours and it was driving her crazy. Eithis and J'zargo had brought her dinner both days and she was grateful, but the lack of windows and fresh air was beginning to wear on her sanity. "Are there any other libraries near-by?"

J'zargo walked in then, arms empty of all but a single piece of paper. "If there were, J'zargo thinks they would not be of any more use." He held the paper out to Kiir, "Here! J'zargo drew you a picture to make you feel better. It is Ancano looking short next to a giant, and they are wearing each others' clothes so that Ancano appears uncivilized. It is good, yes?"

Suddenly, Kiir sat straight up. She looked at the drawing and then back up at Eithis and J'zargo, eyes wide. "Ancano!"

J'zargo's ears flicked back, "Yes?"

Eithis scoffed. "I doubt he'd be willing to help us with this."

"No! His office! It was full of stuff about the Eye! Maybe it has something on the location of the staff!" Kiir tried to remember any specifics about the things littering Ancano's office but her mind blanked.

J'zargo laughed. "J'zargo is always up for espionage."

"He'd catch us for sure, and he certainly won't want us meddling with his "thalmor business"." Eithis eyed Kiir. "We can't just waltz in."

"J'zargo thinks Ancano would leave his office for quite a while if he thought Kiir was breaking his rule."

Kiir raised an eyebrow. "What, you want me to go run around the courtyard, screaming my head off?"

J'zargo shrugged. "That could work. Or, this one was thinking, someone could tell him you were down in the city." The khajiit nodded towards the other dorms. "Onmund, perhaps?"

"You don't think he'd check here first?"

"Then you will not be here!"

Before Kiir could raise protest, J'zargo left the room and traveled across the dorms. Kiir went to follow but stopped at the edge of her room. She was near positive a travel twenty feet in front of her wouldn't count as leaving her room, but she had no idea if Ancano had put something magical to keep her in place. If their plan was to work, they couldn't have him rushing in now.

Eithis moved up beside her. "Of course you'll have to hide somewhere."

"I assume you have something in mind?"

A sly grin worked its way on Eithis' face. "You bet."

J'zargo wandered back, Kiir seeing Onmund slip out the door to the courtyard behind him. "J'zargo had a better thought. You thought perhaps more clues to the staff were back in Saarthal and went to check." He winked, "This one thinks we have only a few minutes before Ancano comes storming in."

"Then we'd better get a move on." Eithis stepped outside Kiir's room. "Come on, we'll get you nestled away."

"Shouldn't I come with you?" Kiir asked. "I mean-"

Eithis shook his head. "Ancano will be looking for you and if he finds you it's over; if he finds us without you.. well, he'll know we were behind it, but - you'll still be missing and his top priority. He'll have to let us go to keep looking for you. Come on, we'll come get you when we have a location."

"If you get a location." Kiir corrected. "Are you sure you know what you're looking for?"

J'zargo shrugged. "If we can not find it quickly, J'zargo will grab all that his hands can carry."

Kiir nodded and, taking a deep breath, took a step outside her room. No shocks or flames came for her and she felt no magical energy shift. She sighed. "Let's go."


Eithis stretched his back as he looked down over the courtyard, J'zargo at his side. Onmund had returned a few minutes ago, letting them both know that Ancano had been talking to the Arch Mage, and both were waiting to see Ancano storm across the courtyard.

"J'zargo hates this waiting. Can we not just go in now?"

"Do you want to spend three hours being interrogated by Ancano?" Eithis sighed. "We need him to realize she's gone and let that sink in. I'm surprised he's taking this long. I thought he'd-"

Eithis stopped his sentence short and ducked behind the barrier as the main doors to the college swung open, slamming against the outside wall.

Ancano was running across the courtyard, his Thalmor robes billowing nearly straight out behind him.

Eithis motioned to J'zargo and both swiftly made their way back inside the college. They wasted no time descending the stairs to where Ancano's office stood and pushed open the door. He'd left in such a hurry he must've forgotten to lock it.

His office was dark, save for a small candle lit on Ancano's desk.

J'zargo lit a magelight spell and both he and Eithis gasped.

Ancano's office was a mess. Kiir has mentioned that the place was less than clean but this was far more than either of them has anticipated. The walls, the floors, even parts of the ceiling were covered with loose pieces of paper. Some seemed to connect drawings that looked like maps and others were covered in mad ramblings.

Eithis leaned back to lock the door- they didn't need any uninvited visitors. He was careful to step in the few bare patches of floor left open. This just got a whole lot more difficult. "Where do we even start?"

He'd turned to look at J'zargo, but the cat had already begun digging through the piles of paper on the floor.

Eithis followed suit. He bent down and pulled up the first paper his hand touched. The text on the page had been entirely scribbled out with ink, with only a few 'no's' scrawled in the margins. Looking back down, he realized a majority of the papers looked like this. "I think the floor is the discard pile."

J'zargo reached up and yanked a piece of paper off the wall, ripping a corner.

"Hey!" Eithis snapped. "Do you want him to know we were here?"

"He will figure it out eventually." J'zargo eyed the paper. "These are no help. We know all of this already."

Eithis looked across at Ancano's desk. "Maybe we should see what Ancano was working on most recently."

Ancano's desk was no different than the rest of the room, in a state of utter disarray. The lit candle was dangerously close to a set of books. Droplets of spilled ink surrounded the inkwell and a quill was left sitting atop a stack of papers, slowly coloring them black.

"These all look the same," Eithis lamented.

J'zargo started sliding open drawers and, after a few seconds, pulled out a leather bound journal. He grinned. "Ancano's personal diary perhaps?"

"We don't have time to be reading about Ancano's sexual frustrations." He grimaced as he realized his own words, "Actually I'm not sure I'd want to even if we had the time."

But J'zargo had already opened the journal and began skimming the pages. His grin fell to a confused, opened mouth stare. "This is the Arch Mage's."

Eithis, who'd resumed scouring the desk, snapped up. "What?"

J'zargo held up one of the open pages for Eithis to see and, sure enough, the writing was a clunky print- nothing like Ancano's script.

"Are you sure that's-"

J'zargo flipped to the front, where 'Savos Aren' had been written on the inside cover. "What is Ancano doing with this?"

Eithis moved to position himself behind J'zargo so he could read the journal over his shoulder. The journal entries were sporadic, written inconsistently. There were jumps from a few days to a few months between entries. They were mainly retellings of the day like any other common diary, but, Eithis noticed, the entries were from the time when Savos was still a student himself. "How old is this?"

J'zargo shook his head.

They flipped a few more pages, skimming entries until a flash of darker, fresher ink caught Eithis's eye. "Wait, turn back, what did that say?"

Suddenly, a loud bang erupted from the door. Someone had just slammed into it and the string of curses that followed it sounded like Ancano.

Eithis shot a look over to J'zargo.

J'zargo slipped the journal into his belt with one hand, and with a wave of the other, a white light engulfed both of the boys.

J'zargo grinned at the seemingly empty space where Eithis stood, and looked down at his own hands, pleased to see that, save for a slight ripple effect at the edges, they were both quite invisible. "J'zargo picked this one up from Kiir."

"Nice!" Eithis whispered as he pulled J'zargo with him towards the corner of the room, just as Ancano burst into his office.

The Altmer was clearly frazzled, his long blonde hair a mess atop his head. His robe was askew and his eyes looked tired but still frantic. He looked around him, Eithis holding his breath as Ancano's eyes passed over where he and J'zargo stood.

Ancano then moved towards his desk, shuffling the papers around before suddenly stopping. He looked down and scowled.

Eithis and J'zargo had already made a move towards the door when Ancano roared. He slammed his drawer shut, which J'zargo just then realized he'd left open, and Ancano shoved the entire contents of his desk onto the ground.

Eithis pulled J'zargo out and they made a break for the courtyard.


Kiir sat in the Midden, shawl wrapped tightly around her shoulders. It was surprisingly snowy down here, where it should not be able to reach. She stayed near the entrance, hearing creaks and groans of ice further into the cavern.

Suddenly, the hatch above her swung open and blurry motion melted into Eithis and J'zargo as they dropped down onto the ground.

Kiir smiled at them, even more so when J'zargo handed her a journal. She greedily took it and became skimming the pages, grin turning into a frown. "What is this?"

"The Arch Mage's journal."

Kiir looked up, her face twisted in confusion. "What? Why in the world did you bring me this?"

"Ancano had it," Eithis said as J'zargo reached forward and opened to a page that only had the first three lines filled in.

I've made a mistake. The Labyrinthine was a mistake. That place is cursed. I mustn't let myself forget, so here I write. Such is my punishment.

"The Labyrinthine" was underlined in a fresher set of ink.

"The Labyrinthine is an ancient Nord city southwest of here," Eithis explained.

"But this says nothing about the staff," Kiir questioned. "So Savos went to some cryptic place years ago, what does this have to do with the Eye?"

"Why would Ancano have this and make note of it?"

Kiir looked back down at the page. "That means Ancano has already read this."

"And he knows that we took it from his office." J'zargo chuckled. "J'zargo might have forgotten to close the drawer."

Kiir felt her heart rate double. "We have to get there before he does. He already has a head start!"

There was a silent agreement as Kiir reached for the ladder. There was a twinkling at the back of her mind that had her wondering about the Arch Mage's involvement in all this. How had Ancano gotten his journal? Moreover, why had Ancano taken it in the first place? If Savos knew about the staff, why hadn't he said anything before?

Kiir peeked out of the hatch and then swiftly pulled herself up. She reached a hand down to Eithis and J'zargo before the three sprinted down the bridge and through Winterhold where Eithis led them out behind the Frozen Hearth. The half-ruined building still had most of its roof and inside was a deep brown, nearly black horse that tossed its head and nickered at their arrival. It was shorter, but also much more stout and powerful looking that Isles horses.

Eithis hurried over and placed a hand on its muzzle, "Hey there Queenie, want to go for a bit of a run?" He quickly untied her lead and turned to Kiir. "This is her Royal Majesty, Queen Alfsigr."

"You have a horse?"

"He has a horse."

"I have a horse."

Eithis heaved onto her back and held his hand out for J'zargo, who grabbed on and swung himself up. The two of them fit nicely and Kiir wondered how this was going to work. J'zargo nonetheless held a hand out to help her up.

Kiir paused. "I.. don't think that's wise." She turned towards the only other horse stabled in this makeshift barn - a pale tan one. Holding out a hand in front of her, she approached it, grabbing its lead when she got close enough. "If anyone asks, it was an emergency."

J'zargo grinned. "Agreed."

Kir mounted her horse and settled in. Gods, she hadn't ridden in years.

"How have you not mentioned her? She's beautiful."

Eithis pulled on his reins and Queen Alfsigr began to trot towards the road. "I don't know? I'm sure I must have… I come down here and see her most days."

Kiir moved her horse beside him. "That's what you've been doing?"

J'zargo turned to look over his shoulder, leveling her with an incredulous stare, "This one did not think it was a secret"

J'zargo leaned back around and gripped Eithis more firmly as Eithis shouted something and shifted forward. Kiir was surprised when Queen Alfsigr broke into a run, but managed to direct her horse to follow without too much trouble.

Eithis turned sharply, steering them off the road as he apparently decided to try for the shortest path: running as the crow flies.

With the icy breeze whipping about them, Kiir could feel a nagging doubt puddle into her stomach. If they were wrong about this, they had to start all over again- and deal with whatever punishment Ancano decided was fitting. She shivered.

The snow got progressively thicker and the wind got progressively stronger as they neared the ruins. They came upon the Labyrinthine just in time; any longer and they wouldn't have made it at all before the blizzard made riding any further impossible.

Kiir dismounted and ducked her head further behind her scarf as she traversed up the steps to the main doors. She shoved them open with surprising ease and welcome the gust of warm, if dank, air. "I didn't see any other footprints. Do you think Ancano has already been here?"

Eithis shrugged, brushing snow from his shoulders as he led Queen Alfsigr just inside and out of the wind with him. "I'm hoping the horses got us here first."

"Hopefully." Kiir replied. Or perhaps he went to the real location of the staff. Kiir pushed that thought from her mind. She moved her horse just beside Queen Alfsigr, looping its reigns around a nearby pillar. She gave it one last scratch on the head before moving inside the Labyrinthian.

"Is a labyrinth not another word for a maze? This one sees how large this place is and worries."

Kiir hummed. It was mossy, made of stone, and impossibly old- just like Saarthal. But where Saarthal held the air of a ruin, this place was something completely different. It felt ancient but... alive? There was an essence filling the air that Kiir couldn't ignore.

She pulled her hair from her hood and turned to address her friends when something off to the side caught her attention. Eithis saw it too, startling a bit as the mist manifested into a figure.

"Is that... Savos?"