As expected, gaining access to the Hall of Records was a simple task. Its poor security detail - a quartet of sleepy eyed guards who had never once faced a break in, and as such, were not the least bit alert - required no special tricks or dodges to get by. Simply sneaking outside their range of sight was sufficient. Galley could not have asked for a more ideal situation for looking for his answer; indeed, the whole thing was a little too easy. Not suspiciously so, of course, but from an artist's point of view (as Galley considered himself to be), the entire affair was almost insultingly facile.

As depicted, the Hall was huge, squat, and unsurprisingly decrepit. Thick stone pillars lined the front door, and were covered by two of the guards. Galley avoided this entrance, both out of practicality and dignity (thieves invariably require a flashy caper, at least in their own minds). Twisting black in a distended L-shape, the building sported four other doors through which Galley could choose to enter, all locked but also unhindered by security. Galley chose the rear-most portal, a small blocky rectangle that protruded out of the butt of the L (were somebody to imagine the building as a sort of pistol, that is). Smoothly picking the lock, he sighed in dismay. It was just too damned easy. The necessity for quiet in this stage didn't even exist, as only emptied office buildings and bureaucratic stations surrounded the Hall. The rats alone observed his progress.

Swinging the tall, oaken door aside, Galley peered into the darkness, lit only by a few sallow light fixtures. The passages were largely geometric and very coarse, leading the youth to believe that it was a very old building, indeed; there was little evidence of steel or other such metals in the framework of the Hall. He made his way down the yellowed corridors, attempting valiantly to remain cautious yet deeply saddened at how his talent should be wasted.

(It should be noted that Galley had developed quite an ego towards his abilities in the last few years, with the bitter onset of puberty particularly; he felt cocky when on the prowl, and always searched for trouble when it was not present. Such thrills kept the lad from growing too bored and lonesome.)

He passed room after room, filled with hundreds of thousands of files, the entire place a monument to tedium. The sheer scope of his task was readily becoming apparent, and after the fifth large library, Galley was already growing weary of the place. Judging by the mass of documents, he might die of old age before ever being adopted.

Luckily for him, however, Valuan bureaucrats and clerical workers were surprisingly organised, and soon Galley realised that each space was devoted to a different issue of the populace. Taxes, land grants, court records, family histories, geneologies, maps, contracts, settlements - everything had its own little space, divided into generations, years, and months. Indeed, the Hall would never have been so big as it was without containing the whole of Valuan history, or at least all recorded history, and narrowing down Galley's search became exceedingly simple.

The tedium was there, however, and Galley would have to return on three subsequent nights - each as boring as the last, for five hour stretches - to search the grounds for the family he sought. The fact that he knew little of what he might do upon coming across a suitable family remained upon the periphery of his mind constantly, like a circling vulture waiting to swoop down at the worst moment. He had no plan, no keen ideas about what he might do after this step of the process - all was dependent upon a sudden flash of insight, striking down his defenses in that one, pure moment of epiphany. His success or failure was utterly contingent on this, that he would just suddenly know what the plan was, as though all he had to do now was search for it.

It was a long process, for indeed, all Galley knew to look through was records of families; this was coupled with the difficulty of not being possessed of developed reading skills. Half of the first night was devoted to studying up on families from fifty years in the past. Upon discovering the blunder, he'd sworn loudly and longly, leading the guard captain (he'd been appointed as such through the drawing of straws, austere as the position was) to believe the place had suddenly become haunted (no doubt by some vengeful clerk from the beyond the grave who had just found out his old records were now in the wrong order). The thought that, perhaps, an intruder had broken in never entered the poor man's mind.

Three long, laborious nights.

Galley would not discover what he sought until the final half-hour of his third night. He'd already resigned himself to another evening's work when he stumbled upon a record of some note, one that set his senses tingling like no other sheet of paper had since he'd started. It read as such (in an abridged fashion, of course):

Family Name: Voirel

Familial Patriarch: Voirel, Desmond

Mother: Voirel, Lindi (form. Lacit, Lindi)

Married Nov. 23rd, 1XXX

Current Offspring

Voirel, Jelice (age 9 as of 1XXX)

Voirel, Lucy (age 11 as of 1XXX)

Voirel, Tomas (age 15 as of 1XXX; currently enrolled in Spartan Field Academy)

Various information about family history, geneology, acquaintances, occupations, social rank, and so forth; several references to a 'Samson King'

All of this was relatively standard fare until Galley's eyes ran across the notes of young Jelice, who, judging by Galley's internal arithmetic, was about the same age as himself:

'Contracted severe and long-lasting viral infections at an early age. Has been confined to bed in perpetuity, until such a time that subject has been deemed suitable for entering society. Isolation of subject has been prescribed by all doctors to prevent spread of potentially debilitating contagion to the populace.'

Confined to bed. . . isolated. . . interesting. After all, it was all that Galley had managed to find that seemed promising, and this Jelice appeared worthy of following up on. Still clutching the Voirel's folder, the suddenly invigorated youth skipped off to yet another room - it held records of seperate people, rather than families - and dashed about madly, searching for young Jelice's personal profile. It took almost an hour to locate it, much to Galley's chagrin, as the room in which it was located appeared to be in a state of reorganisation. Its huge filing cabinets lay open, with files piled everywhere.

Nevertheless, he located the profile in due time, and found himself a nice, plush chair at the head of the room to peruse it in. Settling down, he flipped open Jelice's file folder (and in this moment was suddenly struck by the incredible waste of paper in the Hall, considering how precious a commodity it was in the outside world) and gazed at the contents. It contained several medical reports detailing his illness - chronic fatigue, difficulty breathing, occassional bouts of severe nausea, and other such pleasant effects - along with a personality profile and photograph of Jelice.

His record had been updated several years prior, so the picture was a little old; however, that did little to destroy the rather uncanny resemblance Jelice bore to Galley. There were some notable differences, of course: Jelice wore his hair much longer, bore a very pale and thin face, and seemed overall to be much more sickly looking than Galley. Nevertheless, it was a striking comparison, and anybody would have recognized Galley in Jelice and Jelice in Galley within a heartbeat. It was as though Jelice was one of those divergent timeline versions of Galley, much as he'd experienced in his dream, one deprived of constant physical activity and a robust childhood (albeit a relatively dismal and dirty one). Even Galley was caught by the similarities, a realisation typically reserved to those not involved in the comparison but looking in from the outside.

It was undeniable. The flash Galley had been searching for fervently for took place. He knew, then, what was required of him: he would, without a doubt, have to become Jelice Voirel.

NOTE: Yes, I know I cheaped out on the years. Bug off.