Unchosen was woken up by freeZe.

She explained: "When I woke up I couldn't find Shadow anywhere. She's probably off doing something important. Anyways, I made us breakfast. Come down when you're dressed."

After getting out of bed Unchosen opened the dresser, inside were several variants of the clothes he had seen the other people in Rockhaven wear.

In one of their alchemy lessons he had talked to Fire about the many facets of Rockhaven's clothes, which were usually made from nether wool due to its durability and comfort. The style of clothing you wore was generally dictated by what guild you were in with the color schemes giving additional information about your fields. Mages would wear robes with colored decorations according to their elements. Enchanters wore robes as well but those tended to be less wide and flowing than those of mages. Alchemists wore long coats. Blacksmiths wore lighter clothes that allowed them to work their forges without getting too hot… And so on.

Decorations indicated your rank within your respective guild, clothes worn by outsiders like himself were usually quite plain as opposed to those of guild leaders and similarly influential figures. The only type of clothes that outsiders were not allowed to wear was the off-duty uniform of the Royal Guard. What this meant for Unchosen was that he would dress appropriately for the alchemist he was, he chose a brown long coat with appropriately colored pants and a white shirt.

As Unchosen went down the stairs into the kitchen, he saw that the others were already sitting at the table, freeZe must have taken Ambigious' long wake up time into account. The others were already wearing their appropriate clothes. Ambigious wore what looked to be a hybrid of regular clothes and an apron, which despite how weird the concept was, didn't look nearly as strange as it sounded. freeZe had exchanged her black robe for a grey one that had decorations held in powerful red and yellow colors, representing her alignment with Fire and Air. Unchosen looked at TehLulz' clothes last…

"Hey, Unchosen, look at my shoulder pads!" TehLulz said, addressing what Unchosen had wanted to ask about that same second.

He replied: "They are… nice?"

TehLulz laughed. "Large is what they are." He then added: "I imagine that the first mages claimed normal robes and the first enchanters were a bit mad that they had to come up with their own thing so they just thought 'Hey, we'll also take robes but robes with oversized shoulder pads that make us look like walking hourglasses, that'll show 'em!', makes sense, right?"

Ambigious said: "And despite everything they manage not to look completely hilarious."

After they were done with eating, they just sat around in the kitchen some more, they didn't know Rockhaven well enough to wander around and reliably find their way back to Shadow's house and they also didn't know how soon or late Shadow or Fire would return.

Their waiting was interrupted by someone ringing the very pleasant sounding redstone doorbell. Unchosen was the first to stand up and walk over to the door. Very much to his surprise it was Carol who was on the other side of the door.

Unchosen said: "Hello Carol. What brings you here?"

Carol answered: "Shadow came to my tower again just earlier. She told me that she will assist in a large enchanting ritual in the Enchanter Guild that you might want to see. She tasked me with taking you there since you don't know the city yet."

Unchosen nodded. "Uh, sure. I'll get the others."

As they walked towards the central plaza, Unchosen asked Carol: "This is okay with you, right?"

Carol smiled. "Oh, it's no bother. I always liked enchantment rituals and I can keep an eye on the tower from afar through my magic. Besides, who am I to deny doing a former archmage a favor?"

Unchosen said: "True, I can imagine that she still has a lot of influence around here. We just know her as a mage we need to protect, admittedly a powerful mage, but still."

Carol replied: "Former guild leaders are highly respected by everyone in the city, well, except for those who did something so terrible that they got their position taken away from them. That is sadly the case for more archmages than the guild likes to admit, no other discipline is as prone to power abuse as mages."

freeZe asked: "What did some of those archmages do?"

Carol said: "Does 'Witch's Cauldron' mean anything to you? A long time ago there used to be a settlement there, not sure if they actually did anything but the archmage in power was convinced that it was a threat. He then set off a magical chain reaction in the area, permanently creating a zone where magic would go wild. The settlement was ravaged by firestorms, stray lightning and worse things. What put the final nail in the coffin for the archmage was that a couple of field mages discovered that the anomaly was growing and we didn't know a way to stop it."

freeZe asked: "So, what happened?"

Carol sighed. "While I usually do not approve of their unrequested interventions, that was the one time where the Mencur-Besh definitely saved a lot of lives. Their mages made stone spikes erupt from the ground, forming massive mountains and containing the spreading chaos."

So it was true then, Carol really didn't like the Mencur-Besh. Her reasons were understandable but Unchosen wondered if she knew the true history of the city she lived in and if she didn't how she would react if she was told.

They silently walked the rest of the way to the Enchanter Guild. On the inside, the guild was made from quartz and surprisingly there weren't any books or runes anywhere on the walls. The enchanters wore robes similar to those that TehLulz was wearing. Carol showed them the way to what she called the enchantment chamber.

The area around the chamber reminded Unchosen of a theater or an opera. There were stairs going up to seats and loges. They were now in one such loge, comfortably sitting on armchairs, looking down into the chamber.

The chamber itself looked quite impressive, a circular room with an elevated platform in the middle, the walls were lined with bookshelves. The platform had four large, unnatural looking crystals growing out of it, bending inwards towards a pedestal. Unchosen assumed this to serve a similar function to a regular enchantment table. Eight slates made from artificial bedrock were positioned around the platform, each slate had one large pulsating rune embedded in it.

He turned to TehLulz and asked: "What are those big runes good for?"

TehLulz explained: "For general purpose enchanting runes printed on paper are more than enough. Printed runes never are completely accurate though. If you perform a specific enchantment often and want it to be of the best quality, you use runes from stone tablets, those tablets usually contain all the runes you need for an enchantment. The slates here are just of an even higher quality, the runes on them are the most important ones for the enchantment. This will be a memory book as far as I can tell from the runes."

Unchosen said: "It makes sense that they would only use the highest quality here."

As he looked back to the chamber, a door opened and a group of enchanters walked out one by one, Unchosen counted sixteen. Fire was among them, no other Mencur-Besh were present. Fire was wearing enchanter robes as well, his were black and had a large, red Eye-and-Claws emblem on the chest. Unchosen had seen it on several other Mencur-Besh in the city and assumed that it also served as a symbol for anything Mencur-Besh related.

Fire appearing seemed to have prompted Carol to speak again, albeit hesitantly: "Going back on what I said before, I don't dislike all Mencur-Besh, just those that meddle with things where they have no business being. Those I know personally are actually quite nice and Fire seems to be no exception. I guess they are quite like us in that respect, there are always some who don't know where to stop."

Unchosen just nodded since he wasn't sure if he would have been able to hide his amusement about what Carol had just said. If only she knew the true nature of the Mencur-Besh. Judging by what she just said he wasn't sure how she would react if she found out. It was just another sign that the Mencur-Besh masquerade was working perfectly.

In the meantime the enchanters had arranged themselves along the edge of the platform. Half of them were holding stone tablets, which probably had runes on them according to what TehLulz had said earlier. A last person walked in through the door, it was Shadow, she was wearing a black robe with rich decorations of various colors.

Carol explained: "As you can see, the interior is built from quartz instead of artificial bedrock, this is because when the first inhabitants found Rockhaven, the guild houses were actually completely empty, large halls. Now, having sixteen enchanters shout at the top of their voice can be extremely destructive to quartz, which is why an Ender mage is required to contain the energy. The strength of the shield also determines how powerful the enchantment can be, seeing that this is a former archmage we are talking about, I can imagine that they won't have to hold back."

freeZe asked: "Have you ever had that role?"

Carol said slowly: "Once, but I don't talk about it."

She then moved her chair a bit forward to hide a crack in the wall of the loge that Unchosen hadn't noticed before.

He looked down again, he saw that Shadow was getting ready to cast her spell, her runes were already glowing. A purple force field started creeping over the quartz, radiating from Shadow outwards and covering all quartz surfaces within a matter of seconds.

Carol whispered: "Wow, most mages just project a cylinder around the enchanters, this is so fancy."

Fire stepped forward and placed a book on the pedestal in the middle, then went back to his place. The enchanters threw each other quick looks to make sure everyone was ready. It was time for the enchantment to begin.

A short, curly-haired woman standing next to Fire was the first one to speak, her powerful voice filled the entire chamber and made the runes on the slates glow more brightly and pulsate more quickly. A few other enchanters joined into her monotone, making the glowing runes separate from the slates, leaving behind carved negatives. The eight large runes formed a circle around the curved crystals, the enchanters' voices stopped for a moment, then rose again. Eight of the enchanters kept their voices at a constant pitch, keeping the runes in place, occasionally varying their tone if one of them tried to return to its slate. The remaining eight enchanters now also began, their voices were much more varied and erratic compared to the others, each one was attaching the runes from their tablet to the large rune in front of them. One by one the smaller runes separated from their carved counterparts and went to their places.

Unchosen had seen the process of enchanting before in the base but what he had seen there was no comparison to what he saw and most importantly heard here. It was like listening to a very abstract choir, although the rhythmical, deep shouts from the enchanters with the tablets could very well pass for drum beats.

Several minutes later, all enchanters had attached their runes to the big ones, now they all spoke in unison and guided the large runes towards the center. When they had almost reached the book, all voices stopped except for Fire's. As if to compensate for being alone, his voice suddenly gained a strange otherworldly resonance that was unlike any Unchosen had heard anywhere before. The runes shuddered and then snapped into the book faster than he could look. The curved crystals lit up with energy, focusing it into the book with four narrow beams. When the infusion process was done, Fire's voice stopped and Shadow's barrier faded. Unchosen could see a general sense of celebration amongst the enchanters.

He turned to TehLulz. "So, any details on this one?"

TehLulz said: "All I can tell you is that it was one of the most complicated enchantments I have ever seen, not as complicated as… you know, but still."

It was easy to guess that TehLulz was referring to the eye he had examined in Drandin but he couldn't go into more detail since Carol was here.

While they walked down the stairs, Carol asked excitedly: "And? How was it?"

Ambigious answered: "It's like a concert, I like it."

The others nodded. As they were about to leave the guild, they saw Fire and Shadow come out of a door, Fire was talking to the enchantress that had stood next to him during the ritual, Shadow waved them over.

She said: "I hope you enjoyed the show, I certainly did." She then turned to Carol and said: "Thank you for accompanying those four here. We'll now go eat something at that alchemist's restaurant close to here, if you want you can come with us."

Carol said: "I would love to."