I am attending an assembly of some sort when a red light fills the windows, casting a bloody glow over the room. My teacher calls the assembly to a halt and begins herding everyone out. In the courtyard we can see a great bze stretching up into the sky from the other end of the city. Someone utters the phrase “fire wizard.”

  I split off from the crowd making its way to the nearest shelter, instead choosing to head in the direction of the confgration’s source. By the time I reach the burnt-out husk of the lecture hall the fire has died out and the wizard is nowhere to be found. A surprising number of chairs and desks are still recognizable but everything is covered in a soot-bck slime.

  My teacher catches up with me, but I have already started using the ash-slime dregs of the fire wizard’s spell as a conduit and offering to an otherworldly being that will grant me the power to see what happened here (among other things). My teacher has warned me against calling upon such entities before and is doing so again, but I tune her out. The middle of a spell like this one is no time for an argument.