His heart thumped in his chest.
Ruger hummed as he walked along the path. Though he looked relaxed, even taking a stroll in the Garden, he knew that new changes had already begun, changes he could not stop. There were things even the Old Wizard could not prevent, let alone a Kobold like him.
He strayed a little from his intended route, drawn by a flower larger than his head-or, to be precise, three flowers.
They grew just off the path. Rather than the usual pale yellow, they were a solemn, somewhat lifeless yellow, as though they had once been darker but had faded. The three stately yellow blossoms clustered together, clearly belonging to the same book, their centers curled into the shape of scrolls.
Those scroll-shaped flower centers actually gave him a distinct sense of age, as though they were three ancient scrolls that had survived for many years. Even their edges bore dark brown markings resembling wear.
Ruger walked over, raised his hand, and stood on tiptoe to gently pull out a scroll. The flower dipped slightly under the pull.
The scroll unfurled to an unexpectedly great length.
Pollen shook loose unnoticed in his hands.
"Ten of the Most Outlandish Yet Impossible-to-Ignore Conjectures Concerning the Soul"
-Some things can never be proven or definitively disproven. How absurd, and yet they exist, impossible to ignore, just like Tridis's dreadful pies.
Ruger looked from side to side. For the first time, he had begun reading a book only to let his attention wander. It was not that the book failed to interest him; its very first sentence had deeply captivated his little heart. He was looking around because all three scrolls covered only the first section, the first of the supposed ten conjectures.
His brief visual search yielded nothing. Ruger