It was Quiverus’ fourth month as governor.
Four months! That’s a long time to be governor!
The thought made him quiver.
This month had been an eventful one. This month he had used his power as governor to open the Arcane Archives, which had been closed for centuries due to their sensitive nature. One would think that he might’ve used his power to grant only himself the right to access it, and no one else.
But Quiverus was a kind-hearted soul, and didn’t think he was particularly better or more worthy than anyone else in the kingdom, even though he was governor. So instead of only granting himself access, he opened it to the general public—dangerous though the archives were. If one man had access, it was only right and just that everyone had access.
And so it was.
Luckily for Quiverus, who may have made this particular decision somewhat rashly, there wasn’t any sort of PSA about it. The Archives had been closed for centuries, but now that they were open again, it wasn’t like there was a giant sign advertising it.
Did the kingdom have several dark sorcerers who would’ve loved access to that information?
Absolutely.
Should they ever get their hands on it?
Absolutely not.
Were they ever going to discover that the Arcane Archives had been reopened?
No they were not.
They were all so busy trying to sneak into the Archives in other ways, they would never have thought to check the door. Evil sorcerers just don’t think like that.
In any case, with the Archives open, Quiverus had been able to spend some time searching through them. Not a lot (he had a kingdom to run, after all), but some.
And wouldn’t you know it, something that he had discovered had been useful.
On one of the days when he had been spending his hum-drum lunch break in the basement of the Archives building, he happened upon a book that said, “Unpleasant Curses, and How To Break Them.”
Feeling seen, he opened it.
He wasn’t sure what to make of what happened next. Rather than looking at ancient alphabets or parsing the grammar of demons, instead he found himself rather suddenly looking into what appeared to be another world.
It wasn’t convenient, mind you. It was one of those things where you’re pretty sure the designer didn’t think it through.
The book didn’t grow to become a door or anything like that. It just provided a book-sized window into another world.
This was not very useful—not unless you are a caterpillar, squirrel, or very small badger, anyway.
Nonetheless, Quiverus peered though, because it was a very curious thing to have happened.
He spun in a circle while looking through the book, and determined that he was in a cottage somewhere. In fact, over in the corner, he could see a fireplace—and someone stoking the fire!
Desperate for answers, he called out—“Hello, there!”
He then realized that may have been a rash thing to do, and quickly prayed that the person at the fireplace was kind and considerate…and not some demon from the nether world who, now aware of an open portal, would somehow use it to invade all of Quirinius.
ns216.73.216.253da2
and then Add to home screen.