Chapter 4 – The First Keepers
The light in the bowl wasn't just light.
Standing at the edge of the stone basin, Jasper could feel it pushing at him—not with hands or heat, but with intent. It itched along his skin and rumbled in his bones, like it was trying to find the shape of him from the outside in.
He'd looked into a Pensieve once, in a practice lesson with Professor Alder. That memory had been neat, contained, like watching a glass bottle someone else had filled. This was… not that.
"This feels wrong," he said before he could stop himself.
"Wrong how?" Fig asked.
Jasper squinted at the swirling glow. Threads of brightness rose and fell, knotting and un-knotting in slow spirals. Every so often, they froze in a pattern that almost resolved into an image before curling away again.
"It's too loud," Jasper said. "Too… close. Pensieves usually feel like you're about to fall into somebody else's story. This feels like it's waiting for me specifically."
Fig's gaze sharpened.
"Miriam suspected the Keepers tailored these chambers," he said. "She thought the memories might… respond to whoever entered. If she was right, it stands to reason they would react strongly to someone who can already see ancient magic."
"Responding is one thing," Jasper muttered. "Sizing me up is another."
Fig's mouth twitched.
"Understandable caution," he said. "But we're here for answers, Jasper. We've risked a dragon, a Portkey, and the bank's security staff to reach this place. I do not intend to walk away because the magic looks at you funny."
Jasper huffed.
"That's one way to put it," he said.
Fig's eyes softened.
"I won't force you," he added. "If you decide this is a step too far, I'll take whatever this memory offers and do my best to shoulder the consequences."
Jasper stared down into the basin.
Threads of light twisted up toward him like smoke in water. The pull under his ribs was stronger now, tugging him closer. It reminded him of the tear—but steadier, less frantic. That had been a rip. This was a door that someone had meant to open.
Maybe not for him. But for someone like him.
'If I walk away now,' he thought, 'I'm back to guessing. And I've had enough of guessing.'
He took a breath.
"What happens if I touch it?" he asked.
"Normally," Fig said, "you place your face into the memory. You fall into it, observe, then return. This… structure might be slightly different, but I believe the principle holds. We see what someone wanted us to see. We come back with what we can carry."
"And if we don't come back?" Jasper asked.
Fig's expression went dry.
"Then the goblins will assume they were right to keep wizards out of places like this," he said. "And Professor Weasley will be very annoyed with me."
Jasper snorted despite himself.
"Wouldn't want that," he said.
He drew in another breath, deep enough to steady the tremor in his fingers. The hum in the chamber rose in response, as if the magic had been waiting for that decision.
"All right," he said. "Let's see what they left behind."
He reached out.
The liquid light rose to meet him.
It didn't feel like water. It felt like slipping his hand through a thin layer of cool mist into something thicker underneath. His fingertips tingled. The hum climbed into a sharp, focused note.
The world tipped.
The stone chamber vanished.
For a second, Jasper was nowhere—falling, but not down; moving, but without direction. Colours streaked past: muted greens, dull browns, flashes of white. The hum became sound, then memory, then both.
He landed on solid ground.
The air was different.
He knew that before he opened his eyes properly. It tasted of summer and dust, of baked earth and dry grass. The constant subterranean weight of the ancient magic had shifted, thinner here but still present, threading under everything like a buried river.
He blinked.
They were standing on the edge of a small wizarding village.
Stone cottages clustered along a dirt track. Smoke curled lazily from chimneys. A few robed figures moved about their business, carrying baskets, talking in doorways, mending fences. Children ran past, laughing, chasing each other with sticks.
Everything had a faint haze around it, as if they were seeing it through someone else's memory—colours slightly too bright, edges just a fraction too soft.
Jasper looked down.
He was still himself. Same clothes, same hands. Fig stood beside him, solid and real, though the villagers didn't seem to notice either of them.
"Memory projection," Fig murmured. "We're observers."
"Good," Jasper said. "I've had enough of things touching me."
Fig scanned the village, eyes keen.
"Miriam wrote about this place," he said. His gaze stopped on a cluster of figures further down the track. "And about them."
Three wizards stood together in the lane.
Two men and a woman, in simple but well-made robes. They carried themselves with the casual authority of people used to being listened to. One of the men looked older, with silver threaded through his beard and hair, his eyes deep-set and calm. The woman beside him had tightly coiled dark hair pulled back from a sharp, intelligent face. The second man was younger, his expression squinting between scepticism and interest.
"Keepers," Fig breathed. "Or at least some of them."
The older man raised a hand.
As he did, the world… shifted.
Not much. Nothing a normal eye might notice. But Jasper felt it: a subtle tightening, like someone pulling drawing strings around the edges of the scene. The chatter of the villagers dulled. Colours flattened. The hum of magic rose in clear, bright strands around the three figures.
"These are the people who built the chamber," Jasper realised.
The woman gestured toward the village.
"Another report of unusual magic," she said. Her voice was clear, echoing slightly more than it should have across the quiet lane. "Sources say a child has been working wonders without a wand or training."
"Rumour," the younger man said. "Always rumour. The last 'miracle worker' was just a boy with a talent for Reparo who liked the attention."
"This is different," the older wizard replied. His tone was measured, patient. "I can feel the traces from here."
Jasper could, too.
Threads of light curled around one of the cottages, clinging to the thatch, pooling along the path. They were the same kind of threads he saw in the cliff and the vault wall, only softer, thinner—new growth, not old roots.
He followed them with his eyes.
They led to a girl.
She stood near the cottage door, watching something on the ground with intense concentration. Her clothes were simple, patched in places. Dark hair fell untidily around her face.
The hum around her was stronger than around anyone else in the village.
"Isidora," Fig breathed. The name seemed to surprise him out loud. "Miriam mentioned an Isidora Morganach… she thought…"
His voice trailed off.
The girl's attention sharpened. She lifted her hand.
The air in front of her shimmered, threads of light swirling into being. They wrapped around a sickly-looking plant in a battered pot and sank in. The plant straightened. Its leaves uncurled, turning from limp yellow to healthy green in a heartbeat.
"Impressive," the younger Keeper said grudgingly.
"Uncontrolled," the woman countered. "She's drawing directly from whatever this source is."
"Ancient magic," the older wizard said. "See how it responds to her. Not to the village headman. Not to the local healer." His eyes followed Isidora. "To her."
Jasper watched the girl.
She looked tired. Not exhausted, not collapsing, but there was a heaviness in her shoulders that didn't belong on someone that young. The joy of the plant reviving didn't reach her eyes.
He recognised that, too.
"This power seems drawn to particular witches and wizards," the older Keeper went on. "We've seen it before, in centuries past.
So did Alder, Jasper thought. He didn't mention how messy it got.
"This is why you built the chambers?" the younger man asked. "To… tutor them?"
"To guide them," the woman said. "To test their judgment. If we ignore this, someone like her will find their own way to harness it. And the last time that happened—"
"The world nearly tore itself apart," the older wizard finished. "We swore we would not let that happen again."
Isidora moved.
She stepped into the cottage. The memory flowed with her, drawing Jasper and Fig along whether they wanted to follow or not.
Inside, the air was close and dim.
A woman lay on a narrow bed, face drawn and pale, sweat beading on her brow. Her breaths came shallow and quick. A man sat beside her, his hand wrapped around hers, knuckles white. The hum in the room was thick with grief and fear.
Isidora stood at the foot of the bed, fists clenched.
Her father's voice broke.
"Please," he said. "She's in pain, Isa. There must be something you can do."
"I've tried," the girl snapped. "Magic doesn't fix everything."
The hum shivered.
Fig's hand tightened on Jasper's arm.
"Do you feel that?" he whispered.
Jasper nodded, throat tight.
The threads in the air shifted, gathering around Isidora.
Her gaze fixed on her mother's face. On every flinch, every creased line of agony.
"Pain is magic too," she murmured. "It must be. It lives in the body. It moves. It… weighs."
"You should not be here," the woman Keeper muttered under her breath, though Isidora couldn't hear her. "You should be at school. You should be learning Transfiguration and Charms, not—"
Isidora lifted her hand.
Light bloomed in the air over her mother's chest—soft at first, then brighter. It settled over the woman like a translucent shawl. Threads sank into her, searching, twisting.
Jasper felt a drag in his own sternum, as if something were being pulled out of him in sympathy.
Isidora clenched her hand into a fist.
The light shivered and then began to flow toward her.
It looked like smoke, like steam, like something both visible and not as it streamed out of her mother's body and into Isidora's outstretched hand. The woman on the bed gasped. Then, slowly, her expression eased. The tightness around her mouth softened. Her breathing deepened.
Relief washed through the room.
The hum changed.
It was sharper now, focused on Isidora. Her eyes fluttered closed as the stuff—whatever it was—poured into her palm and then vanished, absorbed.
The memory flickered.
For a heartbeat, Jasper saw… something else. Another room, similar but not, another woman, another girl. The same spell. The same threads. Then it was gone, replaced by the scene in front of him again.
He swayed.
Fig caught his elbow.
"Incredible," the younger Keeper whispered. "She tore the pain away."
"And took it into herself," the woman replied. Her voice shook. "That isn't healing. That's… theft."
Isidora opened her eyes.
She looked… lighter. Not happy, exactly, but relieved. Her shoulders had eased. Her mother lay sleeping, face relaxed for the first time since they'd entered.
"It worked," Isidora murmured. "I can do it again. I can help them all."
The older wizard's face hardened.
"And then what?" he asked softly. "When you are heavy with everyone else's suffering? Where will you put it?"
Isidora didn't answer. Her father was already sobbing with gratitude, kissing her hair, thanking her.
The memory twisted.
The house, the village, the Keepers all blurred, smearing into streaks of colour. The hum surged, then fractured.
Jasper felt himself falling sideways again.
The chamber snapped back into existence.
He stumbled, bracing a hand on the cold stone rim of the basin. Light spun in the bowl for a moment longer, echoing the shapes they'd seen, then stilled, settling into a calm, soft glow.
Fig had gone very quiet.
When Jasper looked up, the professor's face was drawn tight, eyes distant.
"She could not control it," Fig murmured. "Miriam said the same in her letters. Isidora learned to rip pain out of people, store it. She thought she was helping. The Keepers thought she was tampering with forces too vast to be contained. In the end, she…"
He stopped himself.
"In the end, bad things happened," he finished, choosing his words carefully.
"And the Keepers built… this," Jasper said, gesturing to the chamber, the bowl, the symbols in the walls, "to stop it happening again?"
"To select someone," Fig said. "Someone with the same ability to see and wield this magic, who would make different choices. Better ones."
His gaze fixed on Jasper with uncomfortable intensity.
"Someone like you."
Jasper swallowed.
"That memory felt wrong," he said. "Not just because of what she did. The way it… moved. Felt like there were… other versions underneath it. Other times she tried. Other times they watched."
Fig stared at the empty air where the village had been for a moment.
"Miriam wondered if the magic recorded traces of outcomes that never quite settled," he said slowly. "Possibilities. Half-memories. You might be feeling those."
"Possibilities don't normally make my head hurt," Jasper muttered.
Fig huffed once, without much humour.
"Unfortunately," he said, "the more you interact with this kind of magic, the more… entangled you become with it. Miriam believed that, too." He straightened. "But we can't afford to walk away from this. The Keepers want to test you. We need to understand their terms."
Jasper looked back at the bowl.
The liquid light looked innocent now. Ordinary. As if it hadn't just dragged him through someone else's worst day and made him notice the bits that didn't fit neatly.
"What now?" he asked. "Do we wait for them to send a letter?"
As if in answer, the chamber hummed.
Lines of light flared along the walls, running in narrow circuits. Symbols ignited one after another, marking a spiral path around the room. The floor vibrated under his boots.
"Or," Jasper amended, "they make their point more directly."
The hum peaked.
Stone moved.
Segments of the floor rose in tall, rectangular pillars, forming a jagged ring around the basin. More blocks lifted at the edges of the chamber, creating a rough path that led away from the centre and up into the shadows above.
Fig took an involuntary step back, then steadied himself.
"Constructs," he said. "Stone guardians. I've read about these in old accounts of the Keepers' work."
The tip of Jasper's wand warmed in his palm.
He didn't remember moving it into his hand, but there it was, ready, the wood fitting against his fingers the way it did when he was bracing for a fight.
Shapes detached themselves from the pillars.
At first Jasper thought the rock was sliding in clumsy chunks. Then the chunks unfolded.
Statues stepped free of the stone.
They were tall—twice Jasper's height, at least—armoured in heavy, carving-suggested plates. No faces, just smooth planes where heads should be. Each carried a great stone sword, point scraping grooves in the floor as they took their positions.
Three of them.
They turned toward Jasper and Fig in unnervingly perfect unison.
"Well," Jasper said, keeping his voice level by sheer spite. "That looks promising."
Fig's jaw tightened.
"They're testing how you handle conflict," he said. "Miriam thought the Keepers favoured… practical examinations."
"One out of ten for the exam board," Jasper muttered. "Do they at least mark on a curve?"
The nearest guardian raised its sword.
Blue light pulsed along the blade.
"Jasper," Fig said. His tone snapped tight. "Remember. Basic casts, shields, and movement. You won't be able to brute-force these."
"I wasn't planning on it," Jasper said.
The guardian swung.
Jasper threw himself sideways as the blade slammed into the stone where he'd been standing a heartbeat earlier. The impact shook the floor. Sparks—no, not sparks, threads of light—flew from the point of contact and sank back into the ground.
His wand was already up.
"Protego!" he yelled as the second guardian's sword came down.
A golden shield flared into existence around him. The sword hit it and skidded, the force sending shivers up his arm. Cracks spiderwebbed across the shield like ice on a pond, then broke apart.
Too slow.
He moved, instincts screaming at him to keep shifting. The statue's blade lifted again; he darted in close instead of away, jabbing his wand toward what passed for its chest.
"Depulso!"
The blast of force hit the stone square-on.
Energy rippled across its surface, making the carved plates shudder. The guardian staggered half a step, then rebalanced. A groove marked its chest where the spell had struck, faint but real.
"Target the weak points!" Fig called. He was moving too, wand drawing arcs of light as he cast. A curse cracked against one guardian's shoulder joint, popping the arm free. The statue transferred its sword to the other hand.
"And what are those?" Jasper demanded.
As if in answer, the world sharpened.
For a fraction of a second, the hum of the chamber surged and rearranged itself into something like sight. Lines of pale blue traced themselves over the guardians in Jasper's vision, highlighting cracks, joints, seams where plates met.
There.
Necks. Knees. The places where the chest plates hooked into the back.
Seeing them was instinct. Recognising what to do with that information was something else.
He shifted his weight, wand hand steady.
"Fine," he muttered under his breath. "Let's see if you break the same way as everything else."
He darted toward the nearest guardian, weaving under its slow, heavy swing. The floor vibrated with every step it took. He could feel the momentum building in its stance.
"Confringo!"
The Blasting Curse hit at the base of its knee.
Stone cracked. The leg buckled. The guardian pitched forward, sword biting into the floor. Jasper threw himself back as it crashed down, the impact shuddering up through his feet.
The hum flared.
For a moment he saw—not here, not now—the shape of another guardian collapsing somewhere else, another time. Same crack. Same fall. He heard someone else shout a victory he hadn't earned, then the image was gone, leaving him gasping.
"Jasper!" Fig shouted.
The second guardian lunged.
Its sword came in low this time, sweeping. Jasper jumped, the blade passing just under his boots. He hit the ground in a roll and came up with his wand already slashing through the air.
"Levioso!"
The stone sword jerked upward as if yanked out of its grip. The guardian lurched in surprise, overextended.
"Depulso!"
The force spell slammed into its chest. Off-balance, the guardian toppled backward, crashing into one of the raised pillars with a sound like a rockslide.
The third statue had been advancing on Fig, who was doing a decent job of keeping it at bay with a combination of shields and precise curses. As Jasper watched, the professor's wand flicked, sending a cutting spell straight into a hairline fracture at the statue's neck joint.
The head came off.
Stone light flickered and died as the guardian shuddered, then froze mid-step.
Silence fell.
The hum slowly subsided from a fighting pitch to a more watchful murmur.
Jasper's lungs burned. Sweat ran cold down his back, mixing unpleasantly with the damp from the waterfall. His heart hammered against his ribs hard enough to hurt.
He realised his wand was still raised and forced himself to lower it.
"All right," he said, breathing hard. "Any more of those?"
For a moment, nothing moved.
Then the shattered guardians dissolved.
They didn't crumble. They didn't fall apart. Their forms simply… unravelled into threads of light, which sank back into the floor and walls as if the chamber were re-absorbing them.
Fig let out a long breath.
"Well done," he said. "Very well done. You adapted quickly."
Jasper snorted, bending to brace his hands on his knees for a moment.
"Let's… not make a habit of that, yeah?" he said. "I'd rather my first day of term didn't come with a practical exam in 'don't get crushed by statues.'"
Fig's smile flickered and actually held this time.
"Unfortunately," he said, "I suspect the Keepers have a different syllabus in mind."
The chamber groaned.
It wasn't a sound Jasper wanted to hear in a room deep under the earth. The floor shivered. Fine dust drifted down from the ceiling.
"That can't be good," Jasper said.
The hum sharpened.
Light flared again—but this time it wasn't soft. It was harsh, white-gold, bursting up from cracks that hadn't been there a moment before. The stone under their feet split, lines racing outward from the pedestal.
"Move!" Fig barked.
They stumbled back as fissures opened in the basin. The pedestal with the bowl of memory remained intact, but everything around it began to break into floating segments, chunks of floor hanging in mid-air, suspended by thin veins of light.
Far away—somewhere beyond the walls—Jasper heard another sound. A deep, grinding roar that had nothing to do with this chamber and everything to do with the bank.
"Ranrok," Fig breathed.
The name tasted like iron in Jasper's mouth.
Voices—distant, echoing—filtered through the cracks.
"…told you I had connections…"
"…Miriam's research was mine by right…"
"…you have brought me what I wanted…"
Fig's jaw clenched.
"They're here," he said. "Ranrok. And someone else. Rookwood, if Miriam's suspicions were correct."
The hum gathered in the centre of the room.
Above the basin, light coalesced into a swirling knot, twisting into a rough vortex. It wasn't a tear; Jasper knew that now. Tears howled. This… called.
The floor shuddered again.
Pieces of stone broke away entirely and began to drift upward, drawn toward the swirling heart of the magic.
"We need to leave," Jasper said.
"Agreed," Fig said. "But…" He looked at the vortex. "I don't see a door."
The air beyond the open vault rippled.
Stone reshaped itself, forming an archway that hadn't existed a heartbeat before. Beyond it, Jasper glimpsed the round vault chamber—and two figures standing just inside.
Ranrok, he recognised from the paper, though the grainy moving photograph hadn't done him justice. In person—or in whatever this was—he radiated fury and conviction, his eyes burning with a light that had nothing to do with the glow from the chamber.
Opposite him stood a tall wizard in fine robes, his sharp features twisted into a smile that didn't reach his eyes.
"…you said we would find a source," Rookwood was saying. "Power the Ministry couldn't dream of."
"And we have," Ranrok replied. His gaze slid toward the open passage as if he could see all the way down. "But someone else has been here first."
His eyes flared.
He took a step toward the arch.
Fig swore under his breath.
"Back," he hissed to Jasper. "Stay out of sight."
They pressed against a segment of wall that had decided to float a few inches off the floor, using it as cover.
Boots echoed down the passage outside.
The hum in the chamber climbed higher, as if the magic itself was bracing.
Ranrok stepped through the arch.
His gaze went straight to the pedestal, to the swirling knot of light above it. Greed—pure, unhidden—flashed across his face. Rookwood moved beside him, eyes narrow, assessing.
"This," Ranrok said, "is what they tried to keep from us."
"There's more than one chamber," Rookwood said. "More than one… store of whatever this is. Once we understand how to access—"
He broke off as his eyes landed on the shattered marks where the guardians had been.
"Someone has already done the difficult part," he observed.
Ranrok's gaze swept the room again, sharper now.
Jasper felt that look like a pressure against his skin, trying to find the shape of him the way the bowl's magic had.
For a heartbeat, he thought Ranrok would see them.
Then the vortex above the pedestal pulsed.
Light struck outward in a sudden wave, slamming into Ranrok and Rookwood both.
They staggered.
The goblin snarled, raising a hand as if to ward it off. His palm met the light and burned, the edges of his outline blurring for a moment.
"This power is not… yours," a voice said.
It wasn't Fig. It wasn't Jasper. It came from everywhere and nowhere, echoing off the stone, threaded with the same timbre as the memory they'd seen. Calm. Firm.
A figure formed inside the vortex.
The older Keeper—the one from the village—stepped out onto a platform of light, his robes unmoved by the swirling energy around him. His presence anchored the chaos, calming the shuddering stone.
"You were not brought here," he said to Ranrok. "You forced your way in."
Ranrok bared his teeth.
"I take what wizards hoard," he said. "What you stole from us. From goblins. From everyone."
"This magic does not belong to goblins or wizards," the Keeper said. "It belongs to the world. We are its stewards."
Ranrok's eyes blazed.
"No," he said. "You are its gaolers. I will not let you bind it any longer."
He thrust his hand out.
Dark energy burst from his palm, slamming into the Keeper's image.
The projection flickered, then steadied.
"You cannot harm me here," the Keeper said. "But you can damage what surrounds us. And if you do, you will be buried along with your anger."
Ranrok snarled—a sound more beast than person.
"I am not afraid of stone," he spat.
"You should be," the Keeper said softly.
He lifted his hand.
The pillars around the edge of the chamber shook.
Shapes unfolded from them again—but these were larger than the statues Jasper and Fig had fought. Three towering guardians rose, eyes burning with white fire, their stone swords thicker, heavier.
They turned, in perfect unison, toward Ranrok and Rookwood.
"Jasper," Fig whispered urgently. "We are not part of this fight. We need to get out while they're… distracted."
"What about them?" Jasper asked, nodding at Ranrok.
Fig's jaw clenched.
"If the guardians bury them here, that is no great loss to the world," he said. "But if we stay and they survive, we risk being caught between them and the Keepers' defences. We cannot help from under a pile of rubble."
The guardians moved.
Ranrok unleashed another blast of dark energy. It hit the nearest statue and splashed across its chest, leaving scorched grooves but failing to stop its advance. Rookwood threw spells too, curses like jagged blades, which nicked stone but did little else.
The hum in the chamber was almost deafening now, the combined noise of guardian magic and the swirling vortex overhead.
Jasper's head pounded.
"You said there was no door," he said.
"I said I didn't see one," Fig replied. "I was hoping the magic would provide."
As if on cue, the vortex above the pedestal changed.
The swirling knot of light twisted tighter, then unwound downward, pouring itself into an arch of pure brilliance that formed between two floating chunks of stone. Through it, Jasper saw—not the round vault, not the passage back to the cart—but somewhere else.
A long hall. Tall windows. Floating candles. The glint of a thousand eyes on a hundred raised faces.
Hogwarts.
Fig's breath caught.
"A direct route," he said. "Of course."
The guardians clashed with Ranrok's power behind them, stone blades meeting dark energy with detonations that shook the chamber. One statue's arm shattered under the force of a particularly vicious blast; another drove its sword into the floor, sending a shockwave that knocked Rookwood off his feet.
The arch to Hogwarts flickered once.
"We have to go," Fig said. "Now."
Jasper hesitated.
Leaving meant letting Ranrok either die here or escape on his own. Both felt wrong. But staying meant being crushed between stone and fury with no guarantee he'd even slow the goblin down.
He thought of the memory of Isidora, taking pain into herself until she couldn't see what it was doing to her. Of the Keepers, hiding knowledge instead of sharing it. Of Alder, telling him that trying to hold everything on his own shoulders was its own kind of arrogance.
They couldn't fix this today.
Maybe they could live long enough to try later.
"Go," Jasper said.
Fig didn't need telling twice.
They broke from cover and sprinted for the arch.
For a heartbeat, Jasper felt Ranrok's gaze snag on him—recognition flaring, not of his face but of the particular flavour of magic humming under his skin. The goblin shouted something he couldn't hear over the roar.
Light swallowed them.
The chamber, the guardians, Ranrok, the vault—they all dissolved into brilliance and then cold, clear air.
Jasper stumbled forward.
The hum of ancient magic shifted again, threading itself through something vast and familiar. Stone. Candlelight. Hundreds of voices, all muttering at once.
He blinked.
They were standing just inside the doors of the Great Hall of Hogwarts.
Every eye in the room was on them.
Professor Weasley, seated at the staff table, rose slowly to her feet, her expression a complex twist of relief, exasperation, and something like vindication.
"Professor Fig," she said, voice carrying easily across the hall. "Mister Hemlock. How good of you to join us."
Jasper swallowed, suddenly very aware of the state of his robes and the grit on his face.
'First impression,' he thought bleakly. 'Nailed it.'
The hum settled into the bones of the castle, familiar and strange at once.
Whatever the Keepers had started, whatever Ranrok wanted—it had just followed him home.
-------------------------------------------------------------------