Well, master Mermes is dead. Am I an orphan now? My earliest memories are of being a fatherless apprentice inhabiting the halls of Ordo Magica, so, technically speaking, I have been an orphan since long before today. Yet this is the first time I have truly felt like one. Mermes and I never troubled ourselves with defining the nature of our relationship. Father and son? Master and pupil? Fellow scholars? Perhaps all of those, woven into something for which neither of us ever sought a name. Well. Whatever it was, now it is gone.
I should not allow this journal to veer into sentimental territory, though. He would not approve of it. Reminiscing about all the hours we spent in conversation while working at the laboratory would be... bad form. But I will keep these pages as a testament to his work — which is now mine — because he was too busy, lazy or stubborn to commit enough of it to paper while he was healthy. The sickness took him too quickly, so now I alone remember much of what he knew.
There may be some advantage to that obscurity, at least. Being a wizard of no renown is precisely why I managed to smuggle the Sunstone into my belongings unnoticed. The Sunstone — his only treasure worth inheriting — I shall carry with me: A relic from the Great War, hopefully a source of insight into the very nature of magic.
In any case, my obligations towards Ordo Magica have been voided. These walls grow cold and, faced with the options ahead of me, I choose to depart. What better way to honor the old man than to take our work out into the world? I should seek Vernam in Thistle Hold. It’s the settlement closest to the Davokar forest; he will know where I should venture. I am so very tired from the funeral, gathering my belongings, and all the planning. And I will have to find work there.