The Hall of Heroes

17. - The Bath

"Wh-wh-what are you going to do n-n-now?" Duzz asked the owl.

"I had this idea I would maybe revert back to my owl form once we severed the connection with the other world," the owl said, "but since I haven't, I should maybe think of finding myself a new way of living."

"When magic spills over the edges of the worlds, things change. They don't go back to where they were before." Crefar spoke like a true scholar.

"Y-y-you know y-y-your way around all th-th-this, right?" Duzz pointed at the pile of inventions and chemicals lying about the room they were in.

"Yes. I can't say I know as much as my master did, but... I can do what he did." the owl said. "I do have my own ideas what to do, but... I don't think any of it is possible now. I have to deal with the situation I'm facing."

Duzz looked back at the squirrel. "I g-g-guess you're going to need a n-n-name to go by, r-r-right? People c-c-can't just keep calling you the o-o-owl?"

"Yes, I suppose you're right. That should perhaps be the first thing for me to invent. My name."

The squirrel that had been hidden inside Tereza's hair all the time poked its head out and the owl noticed it for the first time.

"Oh!" the owl said. "Hi there, little guy. Lucky you, you weren't there at the moment the two worlds merged. Look at what happened to me!" Suddenly, the owl stopped short and as if struck by a sudden thought, it began laughing.

"Wh-wh-what?" Duzz asked.

"I think I've got it! Oh, yes, this is good. Very good indeed." the owl couldn't seem to stop laughing.

"What? What have you got?" Crefar tried to make some sense out of the owl's strange behavior.

"My name. I've just come up with one. Vietroplach. Ahahaha."

Duzz and Crefar looked at each other, confusedly.

"Vietroplach?" Crefar asked.

The owl chuckled. "Yes. I remembered a book my master had in his library, it was a study on flying contraptions and one of those that had been tried some time ago was named by its inventor a 'Vietroplach'. In the language of its origin it means something like an 'air-rouser'."

"And so, as you see, we need to find out what is the source of this magic that is influencing us." Crefar explained his and Duzz's story to Vietroplach, sitting at a table Hekto overturned back, drinking a mug of wine scavenged from the plundered cellar. "I think you could guess from our behavior that we are not from around here."

"You have to understand - I am an owl." Vietroplach said. "It is very hard for me to read people. So no, I have to apologize, but I could not tell that you are not from around here."

Crefar sighed and looked at Duzz, who just kept quiet. "Well, you talk and behave in such a learned way, you had me fooled," Crefar commented.

"Imitation. I've simply adopted my master's way of speaking, because it is the only one I know."

"Well, anyway. We are not only from a different place, we are also from a different time." Crefar said. Vietroplach's head tilted to one side.

"There is this ancient artifact down to the southeast. It's called the Hall of Heroes. We are it's... sort of... victims. And we believe it is a remnant of the Necromancers, or the Tomb-herders as some called them. But we know nothing about them, or their magic, or how to find them. Would you know anything that might give us a lead?"