There was no visible sign that anything had happened, but a series of visions assaulted him. He saw the manor, newly built with only one wing and the formal hall, and a young family living happily inside it. He saw a man with elaborate face paint and wild hair leading the family in a religious ritual, and wandering inside. He caught flashes of an old stone set in the floor, rough compared to the cut stone around it, and a rabbit being slaughtered above it. The room was small, with bundles of nettle and elderflower, dandelion roots and primrose arranged lovingly around the old stone, which glowed under subtle divine influence.

  “In the old wing, to the east beside the old kitchens,” Taliesin muttered to himself.

  With little care for decorum, Taliesin marched through the grand hall and into the kitchens. He ignored the odd looks from the thralls and servants within, and instead marched past them into the narrow corridor that led to the older east wing of the house. The front of this wing housed the private apartments of the Jarl and his family. He ignored those in favor of the small store rooms to the rear. Several of these small rooms were private quarters for the more important thralls, others were storerooms for provisions and gear. In a forgotten corner of one storeroom, however, was a door that was covered by a wardrobe filled with old linens and various forgotten odds and ends. Dusty crates sat piled atop it, neatly hiding the narrow entrance.

  A casually shaped [Elevate] spell lifted the heavy furniture and allowed Taliesin to shift the wardrobe to the side in the room, where it blocked access to the shelves behind it. As he set it down, two of the crates fell and cracked open and the contents spilled across the floor. Taliesin strode past the mess and pushed open the narrow doorway.

  Inside, the ritual room was even smaller than he’d guessed from his visions. A few bundles of dried out sticks scattered in one corner were all that remained of the old offerings, and the rough stone in the center of the floor’s flagstones looked more like a good way to stub a toe than the key anchor of the manor’s old wards.

  “Milord? Ya got the kitchen folk all stirred up. Why are you tossin’ about wardrobes in… is that a secret room? I’ve always wanted to see one of ‘em! My gran used to tell stories about castles that had hidden rooms and secret passages an’ the like!” came Runolf with an enthusiasm that didn’t match his usually gruff demeanor.

  “Well, by all means, take a look,” offered Taliesin with an amused chuckle.

  “Huh. It’s just a room. Kinda dirty in here,” said Runolf, his excitement somewhat diminished.

  “Not quite the naughty secret your gran described at bedtime, huh?” said Taliesin with a lopsided grin. “I am going to use the room to anchor wards for the city walls and the manor house, though.”

  “So, it’s gonna be a secret magic room?!”

  “Once I cover it back up with the wardrobe, it will be.”

  “Ha ha! That’s even better! My gran would never believe it!”

  Taliesin laughed. “Well, if you’re willing to guard the door so no one else comes in here, you can watch as I cast my spells.”

  “You really mean it?”

  The absurdity of the rough-and-tumble northman, in his heavy furred cloak and with a well worn war axe strapped to his back acting like an excited boy tickled Taliesin who broke out in laughter. But Runolf’s broad grin was irrepressible as he leaned his broad shoulders against the storeroom door to hold it closed.

  “Watch close,” said Taliesin as he turned back to the rough stone.

  The stone was clearly steeped in magic, although most of it had completely drained away. However, in Taliesin’s experience, materials that had been saturated by aether in the past were excellent vessels for enchantments, and this stone would be no exception. His main problem was how to power the wards. He had no desire to personally rebuild these wards regularly, as he would have to do at the barn. Further, he wanted something permanent, that would strengthen and fortify the walls but still allow repairs or improvements.

  After some consideration, Taliesin decided he’d recreate the enchantment from his Torque of Dawn. He went back out into the store room and poked around on the shelves. He found an iron pot, and with a quick [Shape] spellform he casually cut the pot vertically in half. Taliesin left one half sitting on the shelf, while he took the other half into the hidden ritual room. Taliesin pried up one of the flagstones next to the rough stone, and dug out the dirt. He sat down on the ground and made himself comfortable, and with the copper stylus he’d first made in the village and the [Shape] spell, he began to enchant the former pot. He cut into the magically softened iron with ease, forming complex sigils and glyphs similar in style and design to his Torque. But with space came flexibility. A handful of coins from his purse quickly became filigree to infill the tiny arcane marks, to bolster their aetheric conductivity and strengthen the enchantment overall.

  Time passed in a haze as Taliesin stayed focused on the project. Aether infused the former cook pot as the same defensive filters that guarded his own Torque of Dawn from the many strange energies of the sun were etched and embossed. With extra room came extra enchantments, new sigils to hide the energies from divination and detection, and to mask the pot from casual discovery. Finally, the curved iron was complete. Taliesin drew deeply from his Torque and imbued the new enchantments. In an instant, the new power source drained away the power and reached across the many thousands and thousands of miles to the heart of the sun, and drew in the tiniest silver of aether. The half pot glowed with eldritch power as the silver glistened in the purplish light. The glow faded away as Taliesin watched.

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  Then, without any ceremony at all, he jammed the powerful new artifact he’d made into the dirty hole he’d dug beneath the flagstone, and scraped dirt over it.

  “Milord?” asked Runolf, who was still patiently leaning against the door. “Did you just bury your magic cooking pot?”

  “Indeed I did,” said Taliesin absently as he kicked the flagstone back into place and stomped on it a few times to make sure it wouldn’t wobble. Then with one final spellform, his aether reached down into the floor and linked the crudely made artifact to the rough ritual stone in the center of the floor.

  Aether poured constantly into the stone, an endless stream of power that would fuel the ward anchor until the artifact was destroyed or the sun burned out of the sky. All around the manor, Taliesin could feel old enchantments awaking. Wards crawled up the walls and arced over the courtyard. Protections once made only by ritual snapped back into existence to guard the Jarl’s hall and hearth.

  Then the light in the room dimmed and shadows crept in from the corners. An icy dread crept up Taliesin’s spine. Behind him, Runolf drew his axe and crouched into a defensive stance as he looked around for an enemy he could sense but not see.

  Whispers abounded in the shadows, echoing “sacrilege… sacrilege…” in rasps and wails too quiet to hear but too loud to ignore.

  “You have desecrated my shrine and claimed my protection without offerings or ritual. You’ve broken my oldest rites and profaned it with this… is this the aether of the sun? Wait, where is all this power coming from? It’s not… oh I’ve not received an offering this powerful in far too… Who are you?!”

  “I am the Archmage Taliesin. Some call me the Storm Lord. I apologize, ancient one, for I thought this keystone was unclaimed. I sensed no power remaining within.”

  “The power was gone, not spent or lost but stolen by that Vanir monster, Freya. Slain and banished I was, my followers lured away and my plinths broken. I’m a faded soul, trapped in the Void, but your offering refreshes me and gives me power enough to converse with you.”

  “Ah, so perhaps ‘sacrilege’ may be too powerful an accusation, if this power is truly a boon instead of a bane. Perhaps you could even save enough to reconnect to the Akashic Records and claim a new portfolio.”

  The shadows in the room reacted negatively to Taliesin’s argument, with hisses of anger circling the dim light that now glowed from within the old shrine stone.

  “How do you know such forbidden lore?! And now you claim to know what is boon or bane to one such as me? I was the goddess recognized in the first fresh eggs of hen and fowl after winter’s thaw, and the lean hares caught in wild hunt as they sought out the first shoots of spring. To those in warmer lands, I was called Eostre, but to the hard men of the north I was called Ostara. Who are you to offer me the heat of the sun instead of the warm blood of sacrifice?”

  “I am a man who seeks to defy the fate decreed for this world, who is building his own base of power one pebble at a time. You are a defeated goddess, bereft of life and power, and if I end this offering that you spurn, you will spend an eternity in the Void. What is it they say about looking a gift horse in the mouth?”

  “I am not a mortal who can be won by trinkets and bribes. My very nature is bound into Spring and Beauty, Love and Fertility - like Freya. Yet Freya also claimed Bloodlust and War, and was too strong for me when she sought to wrest away my being. I am who I am.”

  “Yet you cannot be more? Spring is about rebirth and change. It is about defeating the death of Winter. You may not be able to defeat Freya to reclaim your old domains, but surely you can use your own nature to evolve into something new. Claim this aether from the sun, for the first days of Spring rely on the warmth of the sun’s rays as surely as you must rely on it now.”

  “Such wisdom from a human. You speak with age beyond your years, Archmage. Yes, I will accept your offering. I will use this new Spring to grow into new domains. I’ll claim the domains of Change and Growth, and the heat of the Sun. For the light of day can be nurturing or terrible, and when my new power waxes I can seek Retribution.”

  “Um, great, so are we all good here?”

  “You have demanded no boon of me, Archmage, yet boon shall I grant and favor will I ask. In my gratitude, I shall help maintain any protective magics you tie to this shrine. It is but a small reward considering what you have done for me, but I can do little else just yet.”

  The goddess’ voice was oddly vulnerable in confessing this, and Taliesin felt touched. “A prize hard given is more valuable than one that costs little.”

  Ostara’s voice did not acknowledge his response, but sounded more confident when she continued. “The favor I ask is this. On the day of the vernal equinox, rescue the woman who knows not she is with child. She will bear me back into the world, and return me to life. I shall grow to adulthood in a year and a day, and ascend once more to war against the gods.”

  At that, the shadows faded away completely.

  “What was that?” asked Runolf. “Was that your magic?”

  “Did you not hear the conversation?”

  “No milord, I saw only dark magic before you banished it.”

  “I may have just accidentally resurrected a goddess,” said Taliesin with an uncaring shrug. “Come, I’m hungry. Let’s get this wardrobe back in place and go find dinner.”

  Meanwhile, somewhere else, high above and yet adjacent to the normal planes of existence, in a home next to the Void filled with the click-clack of a loom weaving an endless tapestry, came an uproariously cackling laugh of an old woman.

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