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“So… What are you up to?”
Knoll looked up from his book and towards the woman sitting next to him. She sat on a rock with her feet resting on the ground below, and her head tilted slightly as she looked at him curiously. Knoll didn’t know why Marisa had joined him, but after she had completed her training for the day, she had marched up the hill he sat on and asked to join him in passing the time. That had been about an hour ago, and the two had stayed there quietly as the time passed, neither of them really sure what to say. It hadn’t been a horrible time, per se, just odd, even for Knoll’s standards.
“I’m looking through a book,” Knoll responded before looking back at the tome in his hands. “A very old book.”
“...what kind of old book?” Marisa continued to ask him. She had leaned over to get a better look at it, and her head was close to resting on his shoulder. Unsure of what to make of the situation, Knoll held the aging text closer to her.
“It’s an old shaman’s tome,” he began to explain. “It’s rumored to contain a dark spell so powerful, it can level an entire mountain and strike down entire armies.”
Sliding off the rock, Marisa sat down directly next to Knoll, her arm just barely touching his. “Sounds scary,” she said as she put a hand on the dusty, leather cover. “Do you know how to read it?”
Knoll shook his head. “It’s in an old language- one even older than the great dragon Morva, and there is none left who can decipher it,” he continued explaining. He watched as Marisa traced around the decor on the cover, trying to get a sense of the text written on it. She seemed rather interested in the design.
“That’s a shame,” she said before moving her hand away from the cover. “I was hoping you’d be able to.”
A bit concerned, Knoll gave Marisa a strange look. “Such a power is dangerous, and even if I could read it, I would let the tome’s words die with me. It shouldn’t be allowed to fall into the hands of any mage willing to misuse it,” he warned. Marisa seemed to be understanding, however, and leaned back to look at the sky.
“It’s strange to think that there’s a force so powerful that it should be locked away forever,” she mused as she looked at the clouds floating by. “It’s kind of like the Demon King, don’t you think?”
Nodding in agreement, Knoll looked up at the sky as well. The clouds were rather dark. “I’m sure it’s not the only object like this either. One cannot know what artifacts and weapons we have lost due to their great power,” he told her. The world was quite mysterious, and there were always strange forces at work. In his mind, there were undoubtedly more powerful objects that existed, but they had all been destroyed or hidden away. He wondered if he could find them.
“I wonder if there’s any swords out there as strong as that book,” Marisa mentioned as she stretched. A bit curious, Knoll looked at her and placed the tome in his lap.
“And why do you wonder that?” Knoll asked. Marisa shrugged and laid down on her back, Knoll joining her a second later.
“I just think it’d be badass to cut down an entire mountain.”