Oliver Midwinter liked to spend his time doing two things. The first involving reading. A lot. It did not matter what it was that he read. The pursuit of knowledge, of new worlds prescribed was enough. The second was to learn. It was fortunate for the young sorcerer that one typically lead to the other. Since his apprenticeship came to its investable conclusion, he had taken to studying Artifacts as per the request of the other suits of the Tarot. He rose early each morning, ate a hearty breakfast, walked the streets of Radasanth to explore the early markets, and then returned by noon to commence his academic pursuits.

Almost three years went by before he noticed that he had heard nothing, not a peep, from his colleagues and employers. It began to gnaw at him. Niggling doubts swift turned to anxious precipitations, downpours of anger and confusion and, for the first time in many a year, moments clouded by his lack of insight. Knowledge was his power. To have none on something so important left the sorcerer bereft.

“It’s too blunt, isn’t it?”

He scratched his head. The pokey hovel atop his library, a crooked tower with dusty windows and little remorse over its studious state of disrepair, replied with looming silence.

“Of course it is, you oaf.”

He put the quill back into the inkpot and slouched. His spine, aching from hours stooped over parchment straightened out against the woodworm wingback of his former master’s chair. Nostrils flared. Eyebrows raised.

“Well. Too late.”

With a simple gesture, he incited the winds to life around the envelope, which bore the address, and name of the woman who had recruited him into the ranks of the dazzlingly complicated hierarchy of the Tarot. It lurched left, and then as though it were a bird, took flight.

Oliver watched it flutter about the study and spiral towards the crooked doorway. Down it went, caring little for the handrail that clung precariously to the dusty inner walls of the tower. It took in the sights of the alchemist chamber and the library floors (of which there were four), before prancing out into the kitchen and then to the glorious sunshine of Radasanth come heated afternoon.

“Leona will be sure to remind me of my place come suppertime.”

He closed his eyes just for a moment, and quickly found the sleep that had eluded him for days. He dreamt of runic sorcery and mystical maladies, as every good sorcerer did through misspent afternoons.