When most people entered Merlok’s library, they saw exactly that - a library. A library with a very messy desk, mind you, but an otherwise ordinary library filled with magic books. Keen-eyed observers may have spotted the strange titleless book at the back of the library, which didn’t really fit in with all the rest and seemed strangely ominous, but they were assured by Merlok that it was a completely ordinary magic book, just like the rest. No one ever spotted the oddity in the bookshelf that hid the secret passage. Which was probably for the best, because the secret room it led to hadn’t been cleaned in 50 years.

Merlok knew he had been putting off cleaning the secret room for far too long. He would go in on occasion and leave it messier than it was before. It was getting to the point where even he couldn’t make heads or tails of the methods of his mad organization.

It was the early hours of the morning when Merlok decided to finally clean the secret room. He entered his library, making sure to stick a ‘do not disturb’ sign on the doors with blu-tack before locking the doors and heading to the secret doorway bookcase. He threw a cautionary glance over his shoulder to make sure the strange book was still in its forcefield before pulling out one of the books on the shelf in front of him. There was a click, and Merlok put the book back in place as the doorway opened. Once it had opened completely, he stepped inside the secret passageway, making sure to close the door behind him.

It was a short walk down the passage and into the mess he had left in the secret room. One of the filing cabinets that were embedded in the walls was left open, books left scattered on the floor were blanketed by a thin layer of assorted papers, and the only thing visible amongst the clutter on the small desk on the right was the worn framed photo of the Wizards’ Council back in its prime.

“Oh dear, where to begin…” Merlok muttered to himself. After assessing the room once again, he decided to start with all the paper sitting on the books on the floor. Some were old spells, some were new spells, some were fanmail, and there was also a hand-drawn picture of himself in crayon drawn by Princess Macy when she was two years old. He decided to hand the picture up on the wall.

Once all the spells and fanmail had been filed away accordingly, he moved onto the books they had been covering. Merlok couldn’t remember why he put them down there in the first place. Unlike the books in his library, these were simply novels and field guides and the like. They were a guilty pleasure of his, and thus were filed away in the secret room instead of being on the shelves of his library. (They would have gotten muddled up with the spellbooks anyway.)

Then there was the clutter on the desk. Merlok couldn’t remember bringing half the things on it into the room in the first place, but he managed to find them all places in the filing cabinets. And then, just as he was almost done clearing up the clutter, he spotted two more books. He instantly recognised them both, even though they were face-down. Choosing to ignore one, he propped his staff against the desk and picked up the other book, turning it over in his hands. The words on the cover sent chills down his spine: Wanda’s Magical Wizards’ Council Diary. Her name was written tidily on the line above the rest of the title in glittery blue gel pen that was now starting to fade.

The diary was something all Wizards’ Council members were gifted by the old council head, Krystopher Talbal, on their first day. Most either forgot about them in varying amounts of time or used the pages for shopping lists. Merlok was one of the only council members that used his Magical Wizards’ Council Diary extensively, and did so with the glitter gel pens he was gifted by Krys until they both ran dry to boot.

As he stared at the front cover of the old diary in his hands, the memory of how the Magical Wizards’ Council Diaries got onto the desk came flooding back to him. He was feeling a sickly kind of nostalgic, and decided to fish out his and his sister’s diaries out of their filing cabinet. He only skimmed through his own diary, and once he was done he dared to finally take a peek at his sister’s. The beginning was standard fare which recounted her first few days in the Wizards’ Council, but that alone was enough to make the nostalgia even worse. He decided to not read any more, and left the diaries face-down on the desk before leaving the secret room.

The urge to take another peek inside his sister’s diary overwhelmed him. Biting his lip and hands shaking, Merlok opened up the diary once again. He skipped a few dozen pages ahead. Just a peek at the end, he thought. But then he noticed… the pages became blank halfway through. Merlok couldn’t say he was surprised about the blank pages, but he was surprised by the fact so many had been written on. He curiously flicked back to the last page that was written on and began reading the hurried handwriting of the final entry.

“Six months since son’s birth. Late evening, haven’t checked time.

“I consulted Monstrox in Brightwood Forest earlier this evening. He gave me advice on what to do with my son and how to control the darkness. While I’m not sure about what he said about the latter… I know for certain that hiding my son away in magic stasis is the right choice. I don’t want to expose him to dark magic and hurt him. Maybe someday I’ll be able to come back for him and raise him without worry. But for now, I need to go into the countryside and find somewhere to put him in magic stasis.”

Merlok’s blood ran cold. Dozens of questions flooded his mind - shouting, running wild - before washing away and giving rise to a goal. He had to find his sister’s son. If he was still in magic stasis, then maybe he could try and raise him for her. It wouldn’t be the same… but it would be enough, he hoped.

His questions raised still burned in the corners of his mind, but they would have to wait. He had to start his search for his nephew.

---

Merlok had found one problem with the final entry in his sister’s Magical Wizards’ Council Diary: it was vague. The only hint as to her son’s whereabout was that he was in the countryside somewhere. And that could have been anywhere in Knighton. Merlok had searched the kingdom practically from top to bottom over the past five years, asking everyone he met along the way if they had seen a baby in magical stasis. Maybe he was phrasing his question wrong? No one knew what magic stasis looked like - they barely knew what magic looked like at all.

Nonetheless, he wasn’t going to give up. His schedule wasn’t too full that day, so he decided he would head out again. Even if he didn’t find his nephew, he would still get some good exercise.

Merlok ventured deep into the countryside, so deep that villages were few and far between. He eventually found himself in a village called Hayvale - a small yet energetic place that made and sold a lot of hay. Merlok took to his routine of asking the townsfolk if they had seen a baby in magical stasis. None of them had. Before leaving the village, he asked a travelling salesman the same question.

“Can’t say I have,” the salesman replied. “I dunno nothin’ about magic.” He glanced down a path leading out of the village as he added, “But…”

Eyes growing slightly wider, Merlok asked, “Yes?”

“There’s a place called Dnullib not too far from here, and the people there believed that the big hill near their village was cursed,” the salesman explained.

“Dnullib…?” Merlok echoed. “…Unfortunately, I can’t say I’ve ever heard of it.”

“Not a lot of people have. I passed through there for the first time in a few years yesterday, and apparently now they think the curse is in the village.” The salesman shrugged as he concluded, “I dunno what happened, but it might be worth checking out. I know there’s a guy who sells local maps with the place on it in town.”

With a single nod, Merlok said to the salesman, “Right. Thank you for your help.”

The salesman returned the nod and watched as Merlok headed off to check the shops. He soon found the maps he was told about, bought one and headed on his way to Dnullib. The walk there didn’t take too long, and it made Merlok wonder how he hadn’t heard of this village for so many years.

The most likely answer to his question was given to him as soon as he stepped foot into the village. There was no Holo-Tower. It was incredibly bizarre that it lacked one - every other town in the kingdom had one. Dismissing the strangeness of it all, he went further into the village and asked a greengrocer if he had seen a baby in magic stasis at all.

“Do you mean Clay?” was the greengrocer’s response.

Brows furrowed in confusion, Merlok asked, “Who?”

“Clay,” the greengrocer repeated. “A hiker found him on the tall hill about ten years ago. He was in some sort of forcefield, apparently, and the hiker accidentally broke it. He was brought here and he’s lived here ever since.”

“…I see. Where would he be now?”

“Eh, probably somewhere in the streets doing something for food. Poor lad lost his guardian when he was five, and the rest of us don’t want a curse on our houses.”

Despite his discomfort with the thought of the Dnullibians willingly leaving a child without a home to protect themselves from a nonexistent threat, Merlok thanked the greengrocer for their help and continued to look for his nephew. So he had been named Clay… That would make his full name Clay Moorington, wouldn’t it? …It had a nice ring to it.

Merlok’s attention was soon drawn to the voice of a young boy shouting to himself, “Do not test me! I am a knight of the realm!” Merlok was almost certain that he had found Clay, but he had to be sure.

Walking up to the boy, Merlok asked, “Hello there, young man. You want to be a royal knight, do you?”

The boy yelped in surprise, almost dropping the broom in his hand, before composing himself and turning to Merlok. He opened his mouth to reply, but only ended up gasping as he saw Merlok’s staff and attire.

“You’re… You’re the royal wizard!” he exclaimed, pointing at Merlok.

With an amused chuckle, Merlok replied, “Indeed I am. And who might you be?”

“My name’s Clay,” the boy replied. So it was him.

Unable to stop the wide smile on his face, Merlok said, “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Clay. I’ve been looking all over for you for many years now.”

Eyes wide, Clay asked, “Really? Why?” He brought his broom closer to his body as he asked, “Are you here to tell me that I’m a wizard?” The look on his face as he asked was almost fearful.

“Oh, no! I simply… needed some company. Even wizards get lonely from time to time.”

“That makes sense. I get lonely lots too,” Clay replied. Merlok’s heart felt as thought it had shattered into a million pieces just hearing that.

“Well, would you like to come with me? You can stay in my tower for as long as you’d like,” Merlok offered.

Clay’s eyes lit up. “Really?”

“Really.”

“Yes please!”

With a smile on his face, Merlok beckoned Clay to follow him as he said, “Come along, then. We have a long walk back to Knightonia ahead of us.”

---

Merlok’s tower wasn’t really meant to house more than one person, but he tried his best to make a good living space for Clay. Merlok had cleared up half of the second floor and placed everything on the stairs so it was out of the way while he cleaned. Clay had a nap on Merlok’s bed during this time, and by the time he woke up, the rearranging phase had just begun and he insisted he help out. So he did, with smaller things like putting vases and assorted trinkets in certain places. He also insisted he put the sheets on his make-shift bed - a couch Merlok bought from a dungeon sale a few years back - so he could get a head-start on learning how to make a bed.

“Hey Merlok,” Clay asked as he adjusted the sheets on his make-shift bed, “if you have magic and you’re as wise as everyone says you are, you must know a lot about things other people don’t, right?”

“Well, I try not to use my magic for prying into people’s lives, but yes,” Merlok replied.

He paused his adjusting of his sheets as he asked, “Do you know what my last name is?”

Merlok’s body went cold. He hadn’t expected Clay to ask about that so soon. By extension, he also hadn’t thought of an excuse to cover up how he knew Clay’s last name. But Clay had inadvertently given him one, hadn’t he? Merlok supposed he could go with visions of the past if Clay pressed the matter…

“As a matter of fact, I do!” Merlok told him. “I used my mystical magic powers while looking for you to find out that your last name is Moorington.”

“Moorington… I like it!” Clay went back to adjusting the sheets on his bed as he quietly chirped his last name to himself.

To see Clay so happy put a smile on Merlok’s face. He went back to his own organization, and the two of them worked on their own parts of setting up the room for a few minutes before Clay suddenly asked, “Wait, what about my family crest? Do you know what that is?”

Again, Merlok hadn’t expected Clay to ask about that either so soon. He was honestly expecting Clay ask about the crest first, seeing as he wanted to enroll into the Knights’ Academy in the future. He would probably get the the royal lion crest if Merlok legitimately didn’t know, but he felt like maybe it would mean a little bit more to Clay if he did have a crest to call his own.

“I’m afraid my magic did not tell me that,” Merlok told Clay, “but you can have mine.”

Clay’s eyes lit up. “Really? What is it?”

“An eagle - a symbol of courage and bravery.”

“That’s so cooool! I bet it’d look awesome on my shield if I get into the Knights’ Academy!”

Merlok smiled. “I’m sure it will.”

He knew Clay wouldn’t be living with him for too long - he doubted anyone would turn down a request to enroll someone into the Knights’ Academy if it was coming from the royal wizard - but he would make sure those years counted for the both of them and everyone who couldn’t make it.