After leaving the tavern, Wil reconjures the tome and starts a spell to locate the rest of them. The townspeople that are out and about give very wary looks to the pair, but leave them be. Wil looks back at Saphyre, stops his spell for a second, says "They have always been that way. Really grates on a guy after a while," and restarts his spell. Saphyre watches him work with furrowed brows, only tripping over a couple of items while observing as they walk to wherever Wil is leading them. Saphyre catches a glimpse of the staff, as he pulled it out to aid in the casting, narrows their eyebrows before it disappears under the invisibility spell again, and shrugs. Wil pulls out a small arrowhead from his pocket, mutters something else, and it points in the direction of the library. He turns, looks at Saphyre, and asks "Shall we?" Saphyre curtly nods and follows Wil, who only seems to be slightly following the arrowhead. Every few minutes, Wil needs to stop, and recast the spells, always keeping himself between the staff and Saphyre when he does so, and making the staff invisible when putting it back, only getting more weird looks from the townspeople.
After nearly an hour of not quite following the arrowhead, Saphyre gets fed up with Wil and demands "Why aren't you following it?" Wil timidly responds, "I still haven't worked out all the kinks in the spell. As much as I hold myself in high air, it's all a pretense. I need to do that. My family didn't like how I left to pursue expanding my powers, so I need to prove to them that it was worth it. But, at the end of the day, every spell I cast doesn't work as well as it should, and more than once, I have… exploded, to say the least, trying to figure out how to work a spell."
To Wil's surprise, Saphyre lets out a bitter chuckle. "That's better than I can do." Wil raises an eyebrow and they flick their hand, sending a small ember skittering weakly across the ground before it fades. "My magic is limited; I can't shape the rivers or shake the mountains. It only comes to life in my creations." They open their hand to reveal a tiny metal dragonfly and its wings buzz, carrying it around their heads and back into Saphyre's pocket.
Suddenly, the arrowhead points straight down. Wil stops, and looks at it. "Well, I guess we are here. The library with tomes of the cities history. Below us." Wil reaches down and feels the ground, closes his eyes, and breathes deeply, and promptly, a huge ball of fire explodes from him, engulfing both Wil and Saphyre. Saphyre notices that they aren't hurt at all, and moreover, doesn't even feel the heat of the fireball, despite being completely surrounded by it. Saphyre hears Wil mutter "Damnit," under his breath, patting the fires out that appear on his arm, and he tries again. This time, Wil disappears. A few seconds pass, and he reappears. "It's down there. About 100 feet. I can teleport us both down there, but it's going to take a bit. Unless you trust your own magic to get you down there." Saphyre scoffed and shook their head. At this, Wil takes their arm and they crouch low to the ground, Wil repeating the process.
Saphyre braces themself for another ball of flame, but it never comes. Instead, after a couple of minutes, their head spins for a moment and they open their eyes in a different place, cooler air drifting across their skin. They stand up slowly, their eyes quickly adjusting to the darkness and they begin to survey their surroundings. Saphyre looks over to Wil, seeing him casting more spells, with his back turned to them. When he turns back, his eyes are much brighter than before, and he seems to have a shimmering, blue aura. Wil quickly remarks "Darkvision, so my eyes adjust and armor, because, unlike you, I can't wear any. It interferes with spell casting." he says, gesturing to Saphyre's pointed ears and leather armor. He walks by Saphyre, puts his hand on their shoulder for a second, mutters something, giving Saphyre some extra armor as well, and continues on.
As the pair looks around, they see a cavern in front of them with a vast lake stretching as far as they can see. On top of the lake, glowing blue lotus flowers float silently, although the surface of the water remains black and glasslike, impenetrable to the eyes. Wil steps forward to examine but Saphyre sticks out an arm, holding him back.
"What's wrong?" Wil frowns down at them.
"Just… a feeling." Saphyre scowls back and then stares at the water, not moving a muscle.
"I can't detect anything in this lake and you want to stay here because of… a feeling?" Wil says after more muttering, and this time with his eyes starting to glow the purple and blue of his eyes, showcasing the stark difference between the colors of his eyes. "No magical auras at all. Whatever you think is in this lake, isn't magical, but I'll trust you on this."
Saphyre reaches back slowly, pulling out their bow. Wil raises an eyebrow when they pull back the string with no arrow in it until a small spark flares in Saphyre's hand and a dark metallic arrow with what looked like tiny embers glowing from within materialized from the string forward, perfectly rested on Saphyre's other thumb, ready to aim. They fire it into the lake and keep doing so until they hear a loud clink! and the waters begin to swirl.
"Great. Now that you are done with your experiment, I vote we just fly over the lake." Wil says reaching to his back. "You first, because I can't cast the spell on you from the other side of the lake." Saphyre walked to the lake and as Wil muttered, they began to float. Leaning forward, they found that they could drift through the air. When their feet hit the other bank, they stumbled a little, knocking into the corner of a small doorway. As they walk in, they see that after a few more feet, there's a much older-looking door with every number and size of heavy gears and levers on the front. When they slide a hand along the teeth of one of the gears, they think they're getting dizzy until they realize that the ground is shaking just slightly… and the shaking begins to grow as the water stirs faster, a serpentine, metallic figure leaping out of the center of the whirlpool.
Hovering over the lake, just a few feet from the other side, Wil gasps and screams in some language unknown to Saphyre's ears, and the beast stops just a foot from Saphyre, its head just wide enough to fit in the doorway. Its eyes glowed a deep orange and it whipped around, lunging at Wil. "What's in there?" Wil shouts, and Saphyre turns their attention back to the door. They try to turn the handle, but the door jams, some part of one of the levers stuck in a hole in the side of the wall.
"I… I think the door is broken!"
"Then fix it!" Wil shouts, in between more shouting in the odd language, and what sounds like a wide and varied assortment of curses from Elvish, Dwarvish, and Common. Saphyre turns their attention back to the door, finding the hammer on their belt and frantically smacking loose gears back into place, indecisive as to whether to curse in Common or Elvish along with Wil and settling for both. They hear Wil shouting real spells along with the obscenities and work harder, hoping he hasn't become the lake serpent's midday snack as they begin aggressively slamming the lever with their shoulder, begging the door to budge until lit finally begins to roll forward, guided by a mesmerizing set of smaller levers at the side of the door that act like gear teeth, dragging the door along the wall until the opening is big enough to fit them.
"WIL!" At hearing this, Wil looks over, sees the door open, and with a final shout in that odd language, a blinding light, and a clap of thunder, he gets released from the serpent's grasp, flips, and lands on the coast. If he had been listening closely enough, he might have heard Saphyre mutter "showoff" under their breath. He doesn't hesitate before sprinting for the door, and as soon as he and Saphyre are inside, they close the door after. Wil looks closely at Saphyre and simply states "I only did a front flip. I am not always a showoff." Saphyre just rolls their eyes.
They turn towards the new room and are met with a vast library with shelves of books as far as the eye can see, which, in the dim light, isn't actually that far. Wil mutters another curse under his breath and says "This is going to take forever to find the correct book. Guess we better start looking." After a few minutes of searching, Wil figures out the organizational system, moves over to the history section, and finds the tomes for Aura. After some investigation, he grabs all the tomes, and stores them… Saphyre can't quite tell where, but it's in the same place that the original tome went. After grabbing all the tomes that they were looking for, Wil seems keen to continue looking.
"What are you doing?" Saphyre implores. When Wil continues searching, they continue. "We did what we came here for! We finished our mission! Let's get out before we're eaten! Come on!" They tug at his sleeves until he finally turns around.
"Tomes of history aren't the only things down here. There is bound to be spell books, and they should be right around… here." He stops and points at what must have been some of the most ragged and torn-up books in the entire library. "Many wizards before me also kept spell books like I do," he pats at the leather book Saphyre saw him flipping through in the tavern, "The amount of spells I could learn from these…" He quickly grabs all the spell books, and says "Ok. Now I am ready." When he looks around, he gives an exasperated sigh as Saphyre pokes and prods at some books a few shelves down, thinking that Wil was going to be looking for a while. When Wil's words register a few moments later, they perk up and tuck a book under their arm with close to zero stealth, following Wil. Wil pretends not to notice, but is secretly glad that they are grabbing more of the books. He will have to return sometime. There is more knowledge here than he could absorb in a lifetime, and he would be willing to spend one doing so, if he didn't have other priorities. Before leaving, they both glance around wistfully once more.
They walk back to the door, and Wil hears something on the other side. Once again, curses come from his mouth, and he quickly says "The serpent's back. Apparently, the one lightning bolt didn't do enough." Saphyre gives him eyes that said "Oh really? Didn't notice!" eyes and readies another ember-bright arrow in a hurry. Wil looks at them and says "Don't. We have the tomes, we should be able to teleport out. It's just straight up, let's say 500 feet, because I don't know how much further down we are than when we got here." Saphyre looks dubiously at Wil and says "Isn't that a little much?" And he simply responds with "Nonsense. You ready?" Saphyre grabs a small shield from their back and Wil furrows his eyebrows but says nothing as they nod.
Wil casts his spell, and as Saphyre guessed, being little ways off the ground was an understatement. Saphyre holds the shield above their head and begins slowly drifting down to the ground, while Wil just swan dives. Just before hitting the ground, Wil mutters something, and slows down just enough to not get hurt and lands on his feet. He takes a second, brushes himself off, and looks up at Saphyre like "What's taking so long?"
"I told you, my magic works on my creations!" They shout down at him. "It's a parachute!" When they land, they gesture to the small feathers and strange-looking symbols carved into the underside, smirking. Wil just shrugs and says "I'll stick with my type of magic," and without thinking about it, grabs his staff, and shows it to Saphyre.