The Demi-Plane Caught on Fire
Often times I burn with rage when I feel overworked and under appreciated, but never have those feeling felt so literal as this last couple of days in my role as a Mid-Level Mage at the Grand Celestio Council of Wizards. There’s no good way to preface this predicament other than to say it as it is: the demi-plane caught on fire.
Of course I assume you’re thinking, “Alexan, if the demi-plane caught on fire, the demi-plane you work in nearly everyday, if that demi-plane caught on fire surely you wouldn’t be expected to keep working in there? Surely you’d get a couple days off until the issue was resolved, or perhaps allowed to do your work from home?” If you thought that, dear reader, you be absolutely incorrect.
When I first arrived at work on one of the days the demi-plane was on fire, my hand was burnt slightly when I went to push open the door on the material realm. Already a bad sign. I only had a second to stand there, pondering my next move, before the door was pushed open from the inside, and I was beckoned to move quickly by a chorus of voices.
As it turned out, we couldn’t leave the door to the demi-plane open long for fear of the fire spreading to the surrounded forest. It was at this point that I could in fact see the extent of the fire that was raging through the demi-plane. As I describe it in the next part of my letter, imagine that as you are looking around, you are also hearing my confused swears and curses and I question everyone as it what is going on and why we are still in here.
Everywhere you looked, the walls, floors, and ceilings that surround our work space was licked in flames, hovering gently just along the surfaces like when a spark spreads across an oil spill, but there was no indication that any of the fire was close to diminishing. Outside the performative windows that allow us to look out into the greater magical expanse of the demi-plane, fire raged and swirled as if attached to wind itself, presumably sustained by the flowing magical energy all around us. When I asked why the fire didn’t swirl like that around our desks, I was informed that Gail, the air elemental woman I introduced to you all last week, had been instructed to strategically blow the fire back and remove the oxygen sustaining it just enough to keep the work space functional. All Gail’s efforts did nothing to address the impenetrable heat.
Between my yelling and complaints, I did manage to get an answer about how the fire started. It seems that some young flying beast native to inter-planar dimensions like our demi-plane had gotten separated from its flock, and in its excitement to explore had crashed into the elemental plane of fire and torn a small gap in the fabric of realities. We quickly received word from one of the Top-Echelon Mages that the creature was unharmed and had been reunited with its folk, a feeble attempt to distract us from the fact that they were not going to let us go home until the ends of our shifts despite the raging fire all around us.
I write you this letter now from my desk, using a bit of fireproof parchment, and a pen I fashioned from the flames. A pen I will keep at my desk from this point forward, to remind myself that despite my frustrations it could be worse, but as of the time I write this, that reminder is not yet needed. Because the demi-plane is still on fire. I am still in the demi-plane. While it is on fire.
May the moon shine favorably and without hesitation upon you,
Alexan Drytus
