Thomelisa Taken, Pt V

The oak tree in question lived in what might be considered my front yard.  Far enough away that his roots weren’t going to upset my foundation, but close enough that it was no great effort for me to get to him.  I approached him with the respect you should approach any creature that has seen more than one century, and slid my little gnarled key into the unassuming knothole at the level of my hip.

Three heartbeats later, the tree gave a bit of a shiver, and what had appeared to be one solid root split in half to reveal it had been two roots closely intertwined.  As they untwisted themselves and moved to either side, they revealed a hole leading deep into the earth.

Well, sort of into the earth.  More of a pocket-dimension, really, because anyone who dug around the oak tree wasn’t going to find anything but dirt, unless the oak tree had given them access, which he was not likely to do: he and I went way back.

There were hand- and footholds carved into the soil, and I used them to slowly descend into the black.  I didn’t need light: there was only one way to go, and I knew where it led.  Once my feet hit the bottom, I turned to my left and started walking.  Thirty-three paces in the pitch darkness, the smell of earth and vegetable rot filling my lungs, and then I stopped.  I knew where the handle should be- level with my shoulder- but it had been a very long time, and I did fumble a bit until my hand closed over the cool silver.  I pulled it down and towards me, and the door slid open.

There was no light here, either, but one of the spells I always keep prepared is for light- a good half-hour of it stored in the space between my brows, and another twenty-five minutes stored (in five minute increments) in each of my fingertips.  I activated the light on my forehead and scanned the room around me.  How much of this would I need?  Very little of it, if things went well.  All of it, if they did not.  I sighed and turned to my right, where there hung a cross-body bag large enough for a fat book.  It did, indeed, hold a fat book; the inventory of this room.  With it I could summon any piece of equipment to my side, so long as I had my own blood to activate it with.  But it wasn’t instantaneous: if there was something I thought I’d need in a hurry, I’d still have to carry it.  Most of the already-charged items, weapons especially.  But spell components, for the most part, could stay here.  And then, of course, there was the problem that once I’d summoned an item, I couldn’t send it back.  It was a one-way spell, because I had decided it wasn’t worth the cost to charge it both ways- after all, most spelled items, once used, became nothing more than the shell that had held them.