�����The great wizard Kalmith the Green sat in his study, an ancient leather bound tome open in front of him. He had unearthed the book while cleaning out the attic of his castle, amidst sorcerous paraphernalia that hadn't seen the light of day in over a thousand years. And as he read the cryptic runes contained within... a brick hit him in the back of his head.

�����Stunned, Kalmith could only stare at the brick for a few moments. "Old, tumble-down castle... the entire place'll fall down on my head one day," he muttered, dismissing it. Snorting in consternation, he returned his attention to the passage he was trying to decipher.

�����A few seconds later... BAM! Another brick, larger than the first, slammed into his gray-trimmed cranium. And, this time, he realized that it hadn't been an accident. He had read the exact same rune that he had read before, and with the same effect. It had to be a trap glyph, to prevent anyone but the author from gleaning the information contained within the book that it guarded. With a word, the archmage erased the glyph completely, leaving no evidence it had ever been there.

�����Reading onward, the wizard soon found himself stifling a yawn. He found that he was growing increasingly tired, staying awake solely by the force of his will. Waves of letharge emanated from the book, washing over him and straining against his mystical defenses. Slowly, he managed to speak the three-syllable word of magic that would cancel the spell of sleep. As he did so, another rune vanished from the pages of the book, and with it the urge to rest. He read on...

�����Minutes passed, and the aged wizard found no more trap runes. "Strange," he muttered. "This is too easy. There's a trap coming soon, and you can bet it'll be a big one!" Reading onward, he found himself growing increasingly uneasy. It was almost a relief when, as he just finished reading a short passage, a huge, yellow skinned creature jumped off the page and leapt to the attack. "Troll!" he gasped, as he recognized the accursed thing. Shouting a tounge-twisting phrase in the language of magic, the wizard caused an ancient sword to leap off its place on the wall of his study and attack the brute, slashing the thing to bits. Puzzled, the mage stared at the creatures severed limbs... there had been something he hadn't liked about trolls, but he couldn't remember what. Then, as the pieces of the troll began to twitch and join together, he remembered what it had been: They regenerate! "Not in my home, you don't." he said; and, with a flick of his wrist, banished the thing back from whence it came.

�����Reading onward, Kalmith was surprised as the air in the room suddenly grew cold, and a strange serpentine figure appeared in a burst of green flames.

�����"Thief," it hissed. "How dare you touch that which belongs to the sorcerss Canaelda? You will pay for your crime." Saying that, the naga gestured with its snake-like tail and a cone of intense cold swept towards the wizard.

�����"I think not. Canaelda is dead. This book belongs to me now." And with a gesture from the archmage, the naga's spell collapsed into itself, condensing into a small, fist-sized sphere of ice. With a nod, he sent it flying back towards the snake-thing. When the sphere exploded on impact, the naga wizard found itself trapped in a second globe of ice, unable to move. A few moments later, the globe shattered, destroying the creature contained therein. Relaxing once more, the wizard turned towards the book and at last managed to decipher the cramped, hastily-scrawled writing, revealing an ancient formula long believed to be lost. Rushing to his laboratory, Kalmith grabbed components off of shelves, mixing them in a large brass pot and bringing the compound to a slow simmer over an open flame. After a short time, the wizard's concoction was ready. Raising a spoonful to his lips, he smiled in pleasure at the old familiar taste. "Canaelda's Red-Hot Fireball Chili," he read aloud from the ancient tome in triumph. His mother always was a good a cook as she was a mage... her traps and her chili proved it; and she always had been a bit overprotective of those recipe books. Some things never change.