Cades had stood there, in the middle of the ancient, devastated glass desert for hours, just thinking about what had happened.
The violet flames burning off of his swords had appeared out of nowhere, or so he thought at first.
When he thought about it for about a hour he had finally realized where the incredible power had come from.
He had heard about it before as well.
Cades had finally achieved something that he had only heard about in childish stories and tales of epic heroes and glorious heroines that saved the world from countless dangers.
It was the mystical ability of "aura", a mysterious technique.
However, Cades wouldn't be able to utilize it right now, he would just have to go back to the library and prepare the next step of his journey.
He put the two halves of the golden stone into his fleshy bag and began flying to the library once more.
During his long way home he thought about numerous thing, he thought about the reasons for his sudden ability to utilize aura, he thought about the way he was using magic and he thought about all the things he didn't know because of his inexperience.
And, finally, he realized one thing.
He needed a teacher.
As he finally arrived inside the well known library he could feel that something was off.
The backs of the ancient, hard cover books were cleaner than before, ore than that, there seemed to be more of them.
Even the few books of which he had ripped off a few pages were replaced, they looked fixed, as if they had never even been damaged.
Cades could feel that he wasn't alone.
He had a feeling that he wasn't alone and as he walked closer towards the stone table on which his untouched research materials were still placed, the table was full of countless yellow paper and notes made using magic.
One could not see even a tiny fragment of the grey stone hidden beneath it.
Cades begun analysing everything about the research placed on the table.
When he watched closer at the research that he had spent so many hours on he began realizing that it had been very slightly moved.
During his entire time stuck here he hadn't felt even the slightest gust of wind, not even the littlest rustle of a spider, Cades had never seen anything move inside here, not even the dust accumulated on the books covers and of course it didn't accumulate on the desk that he had been constantly using either.
"Not bad, young ehetrian."
Th voice that had suddenly appeared from nowhere was not a voice, it did not consist of the classic tools of speaking, it was a communication through magic.
Cades could hear the words, spoken in the ehetrian tongue, directly in his ears.
Maybe it was foolish, but.... Cades was happy, even if this was an enemy capable of killing him, he was happy to hear the ehetrian tongue, he hadn't heard it in a long time.
Well... except for Mangel, but Cades didn't want to think of that time.
Even though Cades was unguarded the being speaking didn't attack him but instead continued speaking.
"I've been waiting for you for quite some time. You make it difficult to meet you, Demon of the unknown."
Cades stared into nothing for a few moments but then he started replying, not even registering what the bodyless voice had called him.
"Who are you ?"
The voice seemed to ever so slightly hesitate but soon began replying once more, the way it sounded no more reminiscent of his old teacher than the fake sounding voice it had spoken with before.
"I am Hekima. The demon of wisdom, though I would personally prefer it if you were to simply call me Hekima."
Cades was still agitated but by now he had found where the voice was coming from.
It was coming from a small, dark corner of the room in which a weirdly black spot was located.
"Hekima, you are hiding in that corner on my left, aren't you ? Come out."
Cades was scared of what Hekima was going to do. He had no idea what this demon was capable of and he sure as hell didn't want to needlessly find out but he acted as tough as he could to make that demon feel even the tiniest bit of intimidation.
Not that it would work.
The black spot moved slowly as the voice declared that it would show itself while still contemplating Cades on how sharp he had been in that regard.
It slowly grew bigger and moved forward unexpectedly fast until Cades could inally make out what the origin of the incorporeal voice was.
There, on one of the high shelves stood a raven.
It was majestic with every one of its feather being as black as only onyx could be, its eyes were burning in a violet tone, all be it in a much less intense tone that Cades own eyes and its beak was black like the rest of its body.
The birds body was weirdly intense as the being known as Hekima looked at him with incredibly intelligent eyes.
Cades began talking once more, feeling like the bird was expecting him to do so.
"Why..how..are you here ?"
The bird tilted its small head to the side and began talking while moving its beak in an irregular, unrelated pattern as to what it was saying. It was as if one was watching a bad voice over to a very old tv show where the way people spoke was completely different.
"I live here. You are the one who came here without even looking around, young one."
"I didn't see you here before."
"I was on the mountain known as Karuma looking for a rare spell book that was supposedly hidden there.
It wasn't and I wasted my time. After I returned you were lost in your studies and I began watching. There isn't really a lot for me to do after all. Its not like people would be happy if a speaking crow, a omen of disaster, came to their villages and began talking about food or the weather.
While I was watching you I became quite impressed. Countless people have come here, arrived her over the decades and yet you were the only one to truly, exclusively study. You didn't even care about the gold in the next room. And on top of that, you didn't even know the language the books were written in."
Cades was blind struck by all of this, especially that there was another room filled with gold, not that he would've been able to spend them.
But after a few seconds he began talking once more, remembering how Hekima had called him the "Demon of the unknown".