With a sharp exhalation of breath, Spark sent the drying sand fleeing across the parchment as if aware of the dark mood behind the act. Gently, he set down the quill plucked from his right wing the day he first learned to write his own name, it's piercing tip stained black with the ink used to form heavy words- a sharp contrast to the almost pure white of the feather. As if released from a trance, he rolled his neck, shrugging his shoulders to ease the tension that had grown between his wings. His feathers were not so pale now. While they had yet to take on the deep brilliance of true years, he had learned a great deal since he first set foot upon the path of learning. A great deal. His eyes ran on ce more down the angular script, letting the feelings resonate between his eyes and the words, his crest of hair starting to rise as it sometimes did- and he could almost feel it. Like a bird in his chest, pushing to get out. Soon.

"Dearest father,

Things do not go well here at Mistwell University, and I would have doubts about this message even reaching your eyes were not I confident that bad news travels swiftest. As I mentioned in my last letter, the trip itself was an ill omen, and I count myself fortune's child for that escape alone, but the dangers I've seen since enrolling make me long for my days of confinement on the sea, if you can believe it. My confidence in the faculty is mixed- as instructors they are without par, and I find myself unable to flee though my heart pounds each night as I try to take rest in these walls. Their judgement outside the classroom is what has me ready to abandon all hope of manifestation and accept exile.

I hope the letter I sent immediately after my escape found you- I shall not recount the details again here, but upon finally reaching the university, worn and bruised and dangerously low on funds, I was, after being rushed through orientation due to my lateness of arrival, punished for such lateness. I pleaded extenuating circumstance, displaying my bruises and offering a full and detailed account of my imprisonment, but, father, I do not think that I was believed. I was told that I would have to serve what they called "detention". I had fled one prison, it seems, for another.

This "detention", though, did not involve detainment. Rather, I and several other students who had for one reason or another come under the malign eye of the administration, were sent on a mission to assess and attend to a residence which had recenly been bequested to the university by some supposed alumnus. Only now do I look back and wonder under what circumstances this donor shed his corporeal manifestation.

The other students are an odd lot- not exactly the brightest stars in the sky, as my account will no doubt convey- yet unaccountably charming. Perhaps it is that we have faced, and surmounted, mortal danger together, or it is my thirst for strange and exotic cultures- I cannot truly say. Let it suffice to say that I find my loyalty bound so strongly that, were other considerations aside, I would stay here despite the danger in order to help my friends in facing it. I know that you would not turn wing on comrades of blood, and I could not call myself a Stormchaser were I to do so myself.

On our way to the mansion, we encountered an oddity- an illusionary tree of the Golen Apple. Some company-starved gnome had apparently turned his not inconsiderable arcane talents toward the bedivilment of passing travellers and we found ourselves the unwilling recipients of his quite dangerous sense of humour. We left with the apples which reverted to stones, and before long came upon the university's new residence. Yet the gnome, I feel sure, played a hand in what befell there.

I have never, in all my days on the wing, seen such a disgusting and deadly structure. Overrun with the undead! While attempting to assess the contents and board up any broken windows, we were repeatedly attacked by all manner of monstrous insect and walking dead. And hanging on the wall at the top of the stairs? A Soulscape Painting! Just who was this mysterious "donor alumnus"? None of us knew this at the time, but it was that painting that was responsible for the soulless terrors that tainted the air of the place. Several of us who let our eyes fall upon it were drawn into a shadow world, escaping only when something broke our gaze. Later, I watched a member of my party become posessed by an insane anger and turn on me, about to unleash sheets of fire. He would have, too, had I not shot him square in the chest at point blank range. I had no intention to hurt him as badly as I did, yet I was out of my wits in fright and knew not whom I could trust. It was good fortune that the administration sent with us a curing wand, or I feel sure our rotting corpses would be roaming the grounds even now, our souls lost forever. I immediately left the house and refused to enter the lower levels again, having no desire to suffer oblivion or the endless agony of undead existence. And yet I was in the minority.

We have either underestimated the bravery or the stupidity of the landbound, father, and I strongly suspect that we have done both. One of my companions, a brawny elf who reflected little enough light to begin with, was cursed by one of the incorporeal creatures, leaving him noticeably more the fool. Somehow, and I still cannot say how, he convinced every other member of the party without wings to go back into that house to face the wailing spirits that stood between them and the third floor. Somehow, they survived, and, just as I had entered the third floor through the roof in the hopes of allowing them to meet their duty without throwing their lives away, their much-tousled heads popped through the trap door.

We compiled what few objects of value there were- including the painting- and started back for the university the following morning. The morning after our return, we were debriefed- I made my outrage clear!- and told to trot the painting over to one of the diviners. He immediately recognized the necromantic aspect of the item and the fool suggested we take it to the professor of necromancy- in the crypt. He was glad to have it, but showed a disturbingly relative view of good and evil. He even expressed a sincere interest in when I jokingly offered to procure corpses for him! His office hours were in the darkest hours of night, so we all went straight to our rooms to sleep once we left him smiling and rubbing his hands before that evil image.

At this point I was already wondering if coming here was a mistake. But when the next day finds us summoned to the crypts by the very member of the faculty who sent us on that ill-fated mission, I began to wonder if I'd ever see the outside of Mistwell alive. An unnatural fog had descended over the graves, and as the professor led us deeper inward, we heard the sound of the earth being pushed aside as the dead rose around us once more. The professor, it seems, knew this would be happening, yet did not inform us of it and demanded that we follow her!

I could hardly see the tips of my wings, but I could hear them out there in the fog. And somehow I knew. I knew that that painting had awakened every single spirit interned here and set them to kill. I took wing. And as my voice cried out the warning "Undead! Undead in the crypts! Help!" I flew like a bolt of lightning straight for the chapel. I do not remember the words, but I must have babbled about positive energy and alerting the senior clerics as I emptied my waterskin out on the cold tiles and moved with purpose toward the font of holy water.

I returned, and just as I was entering the fog, I saw Mykoth fleeing the scene with what must have been the painting. I sprayed the contents of my waterskin on the milling dead below, and the hiss sent the stench of the dead up to choke me. Seconds later a sudden rattle of bones and sagging of rubbery flesh signalled the end of those who had forsaken the grave. I overheard something about Mykoth, the painting and the top of the Tower of Arcane Arts, and I flew out of the fog, hungry for the sunlight again, and determined to see the end of that painting.

With a swoop I had the icon out of the burly elf's hands and pulled sharply up to close in on the top of the tower, a hundred feet up. As I approached, I could see a pentagram in the center of the roof, so without stopping I dropped the wretched thing there from fifteen feet up. I then emptied the rest of the holy water onto it in hopes of banishing its evil, and a satisfying hiss rose as the stream of liquid hit home. I immediately left to refill from the font and when I returned? I returned to find the professor of arcane studes, removing the painting from the pentagram! And preparing to take it downstairs for storage. These people did not wish its destruction, but its employment. I discovered today that they mean to use it in war, to raise up the dead against their enemies.

I cannot stay here, and yet I cannot leave. There is great evil afoot, and I fear not only for my life, but for future of this entire land. When we parted, we knew that our gazes might not meet again, and though I will not deny the duty I have to my family, I cannot abandon my friends, I cannot abate my curiousity, and I will not abide a cage. I am at what grandfather called a "sharp point" and I can feel my future teetering above me, balanced like a sword a breath away from falling. If you never hear my voice again, know that I have been and always will be your son, a Stormchaser.

Spark Stormchaser"

Steady hands folded the paper, and soon his signet ring cooled the deep blue wax that sealed it to the house of Stormchaser. The stars pierced the night and though it was cold, he knew he must take the letter on the first leg of its journey tonight- he could hardly entrust it to anyone here to see it delivered. There was a merchant two towns away he had met who had given him a meal and a bed and directions to Mistwell after he'd escaped from the pirates. It would be good to see the friendly face again and to know that his words would already be outside Mistwell's walls before he saw his rest that night.