Some scraps of paper seized by a constable from the looters, who were using the book to kindle a fire in the tower.



... the Prioress, Tinker Belle, has agreed with my plan to store the tainted Element here in the tower, but understandably insists that some method more permanent method of shielding it be devised. The tower's walls and Spike's imposing presence can deter excitable unicorns from outside, but if my shielding spell were to fail here, in the presence of a whole order of mages... the consequences would undoubtedly be disastrous. As the Element has managed to escape all static null-magic fields by means of its <obscure, archaic technical adjective> magic, something more complex is in order... I am optimistic that, with our combined resources, the artifact can be secured until a sufficiently harmonious and talented bearer can purify it, as Twilight hoped.

[missing pages, because if I ever run out of excuses to have fragmentary journals, I will have to stop including them as a device in RPGs.]

.. mechanism draws power from the Element itself both to contain its harmful effects and to resist attempts to circumvent it from without. Without a doubt this represents my greatest accomplishment in magical engineering... I only wish that my dear Teacher were here to see it. Besides the occultation necessarily required by the opening mechanism, I've secured it with an astronomical-musical locking mechanism. The star associations should be obvious enough to someone familiar with the elements and popular folklore; the tune is the morose flagellation chant that has sprung up since the start of the bad times... this was at Mother Belle's insistence; I think the tune is too ephemeral to be a good selection in case the Order should lose knowledge of --

[missing sections]

There is a diagram here, with some obscure magical calculations below it.

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