Cantu

Cantu scurried around the room, hands fumbling over paper after paper, desperately trying to figure it out.

Something was here.

SOMETHING. WAS. HERE.

She could see the glimmer of it in the smeared ink, if she could just look close enough.

Books, scrolls, tablets, all lay scattered across the tables and floor; picked up and haphazardly discarded when they didn't contain the answers she craved.

The slow, pulsing light of a pale yellow flask filled the room.

It danced across the shelves of misplaced tomes and unfinished potions; a dazzling show that always led back to that flask.

It drenched her lab in that light, so pure.

It threatened to pull everything into it.

Cantu's office was always filled with the brightness she both loved and loathed. It was her lifeblood, the soft glow shining through the window, so pure it highlighted the dust around her workshop. She had not moved in hours, eyes fixated on a series of manuscripts spread out in front of her, some on clay tablets, some on aged tomes and others just loose pieces of parchment the origins of which she did not care enough to discern. Just a little more, and then she'd understand, the spiral promised, repeating it like a mantra inside her head. She didn't waste years of her life investigating this, she knew.

She could feel the knowledge at her fingertips, just narrowly out of reach, rubber gloves creaking as she turned a page, a ragged breath erupting in exasperation as one of her mirrors swayed to shine the light right in her eyes. Her lab coat felt stiff around her shoulders, somehow wet with glitter and unicorn dust, charred from the pocket baubles that had blown up in her face when she attempted to recharge them with the orbs of light that floated all around her, after her failed experiment with the damned yellow flask locked away. Another branch of her investigation; their odd bioluminescence, not quite sunlight but something deep in their biological makeup that allowed them to simply glow, defying most basic laws of life, for no matter how deep she gazed into them with her microscope there was no living firefly in the aura.

The only explanation for why they glowed, for why the Light Tome on her hip's emblem shone, was magic. By the gods did she hate magic, dragons taking the most odd phenomena to be true due to the agenda of magic being unexplainable, the status quo meanwhile everything in life had its own reasoning. The way the world ticked could not be explained simply through a shrug and blame of magic, the arcana or supernatural occurrence, for Cantu knew of her own lack of failure. One day she'd prove it, explain the pale yellow flask locked away deep inside her cabinets, shining so pure she had to put dozens of layers of cloth and metal sheets over the drawer so the light wouldn't dare escape from the confines of the cracks in the wood.

She shielded her eyes from the light through the window, the mirror shards spinning, hanging from the ceiling, catching the light from the window and beaming it forward, refracting the beams into a rainbow of colour, a spiderweb of rays that danced on the walls and pierced the dusty flecks in the air. With a single motion Cantu cleared her table, scattering papers everywhere onto the messy floor, hopping between test tubes and glass flasks gathered on the floor of aged scrolls and stacked books, past the cage of a rabbit with golden fur who had a mask with a light rune for a face, affectionally labeled 'Firth', putting on her protective ironforged goggles before reaching the cabinet, shrouded in mirrors and cloth and timmered wood.

The spiral tore away the planks with her claws, adjusting her eyewear to press it further into her scales, ripping the drawer open and squinting from the light that invaded all six of her senses, turning her head away as she cradled it against her chest with the rubber gloves, trying to minimize the brightness. The slow light, however languid, was a dozen times brighter than the sun to her, spreading into and swallowing every object in the room. Cantu struggled to hold on to herself, not lose her footing, setting it down on her worktable.

She knew she was playing a dangerous game, keeping that flask of sheer power here. One day, she'd face the consequences or find what she was looking for; either way, Cantu was willing to pay the price. The flask shone, a soft lustre growing into a brilliance as she shielded her eyes, twisting away to look at her notes from the last experiment, only for the mirrors hung around to betray her most, reflecting the blaze right in her eyes.

Her mania was taking over, the torching light glowing into a glare as she felt it tugging at her, the mirrors clinking, the equipment shaking, papers rustling.

It threatened to pull everything into it.