A thousand years was a long time. But a focus was what kept you from descending into madness. Balthazar's was his search for the Prime Merlinian. His search had carried him across continents. The vast distances he'd had to travel had never bothered him. But that child could also be located anywhere across the vast stretches of time.

Time was a funny thing. Balthazar had started thinking of it as a spatial landscape; it was the only way to logically keep track of things. If you lived seventy years a place only changed so much. Stretch it out to a thousand and civilizations rose and fell, a single point in space could undergo any number of changes. And his travels meant he had seen a lot of places. At first, it had been arduous. Decades would pass between leads. Then there were the failures. So many potential candidates, but Merlin's ring had rejected them all. A number of times Balthazar had run a diagnostic spell on the ring, plagued by the thought that the blasted thing had somehow broken. Deep down he'd known it was far too powerful a device for that to happen in a mere millennium. At first he'd blamed himself for these failures, but even this thought had faded with the years. What was he, an immortal sorcerer, but still a man constrained by the bonds of time to do, if the object of his search lay at the far reaches of the future? All he could do was cross those distances as he had trudged across the distances of Europe and Asia, and of more recent times America. Only no beast of burden or construct of man could speed his journey. Neither magic nor its close cousins science and technology had found a way to do this, as yet.

The only solace was the illusion that time sped up as he grew older. Years became a small fraction of his total existence and at times he would find himself wondering where an entire decade had gone. But men rarely lived a thousand years. No one that had, it seemed, had bothered to record that at some point this apparent law of nature became inverted. For the last hundred years or so, with barely a hint of any potentials, those years had dragged.

Time was indeed a funny thing, but Balthazar could no longer appreciate the joke.

With a frustrated sigh he slammed the cover to the thick folder of loose leaf paper on his desk. Half of its contents were already strewn in a semi-circle about the desk, dismissed as useless. Balthazar had recently procured a large number of birth and family records from the local authorities. One small blessing from the passing of time was the improvement of the systems used to store this sort of information, and legislation requiring it actually being kept in the first place. And it was easy to access for a thousand year old sorcerer. The authorities would probably be upset about his treatment of the documents, but they would never know he had them. The originals were still in place; Balthazar had used a spell to create these copies. This had required a great deal of energy. There had been microfilm copies, but taking those meant more work when he got back to the shop to read them. He still preferred paper. With any luck technology would soon come up with something that wouldn't require he waste so much energy on so trivial a task.

Technology in itself did not add much to his current frustrations. It was, again, the time issue. Near a century had passed now with nothing near a solid lead. Oh, he'd paid a few visits to children on vague hunches, as well as semi-regular visits to a few of the local orphanages (whilst mankind had largely improved on its stewardship of children, they still had a tendency to drop off the unwanted and this, in Balthazar's experience, had on occasion included those with magical abilities). But that was still a long shot. With the passage of time, recently accompanied by the rigorous and accelerating pace of science and technology, the concept of magic and of sorcerers had become outdated. No one believed in them anymore, and whilst their existence did not hinge on the belief of the masses, it made it a hell of a lot more difficult to seek out anyone who would help, or those potential Merlinian's themselves. The irony was that as mankind roared towards the ability for the common man to actually access magic, or at least have machines and devices that would do this for him, they completely dismissed the notion. The conversion of steam to power, the harnessing of electricity, all of these were things a sorcerer could do with the wave of a hand. Now it was a common thing. But this was apparently the realm of science; magic was dead.

All of which led to Balthazar Blake in some run down little shop, pouring through records rather than trudging across deserts, and he was still getting nowhere!

With a snarl he tossed what remained of his 'reject' pile onto the floor, stood to his feet, and let the building internal energy that had been sending his hands shaking into his ring and out into physical realm. It emerged as a small, but unexpected, plasma ball which danced across the shop and exploded with a pop against a shelf, tossing a few books to the floor in a flutter of pages. "Dead indeed…" he muttered, one eyebrow raised at the sudden disarray. Then he gritted his teeth. An involuntary plasma ball was one of the most basic of indicators of a wandering mind, something liable to earn him a cuff up the back of the head from Merlin, when the man had still been alive. Of course it was something he'd learned to control early on. Apparently, something was slipping.

"You seem to be getting grumpy in your old age."

Balthazar whirled at the voice; he should have detected an intrusion into the store instantly. There were a number of spells on the entrance that would cause an unwelcome visitor a nasty fright; a customer (annoying things) would have simply set off an alert that would let Balthazar know they were here. But much like the far more low-tech instalment of the bell above the door, these required that he was paying some amount of attention.

"Maggie…" he let out a huff of air as he recognised the woman standing just within the store's entrance. She was young, as Balthazar measured age, barely seventy years old he recalled, referencing back to his mental time-map. And yet her features were deep set in wrinkled skin and her hair a not unpleasant shade of grey. She still managed to pull off a fairly simple and almost business suit looking grey dress; this accented by a splash of red in the hat she wore at an odd angle perched atop her hair. A sorcerer herself, she could have worn anything she wanted, but fitting in being a priority he suspected she'd gone with what someone like her could be expected to afford. There were far worse women's fashions Balthazar had seen over his many years, not to mention some of the men's. It was something he'd stopped logging in the time-map years ago, although he usually made an effort to know what was currently acceptable. Not doing so sometimes led to… issues.

"Does that happen a lot?" Maggie was staring at the blast mark on the edge of the bookshelf.

"What…?" Balthazar glanced back over his shoulder. Of course, she'd seen his moment of weakness. "No. Not recently…" It you didn't count last week as recent. He turned his back to her and moved to pick up the two books that had toppled, giving himself a few precious moments to hide his fluster.

His hands were still shaking, the blast had done nothing to reduce the pent up energy. He'd been sitting at that desk for over fifteen hours, if his internal clock wasn't cracking up as well as his energy control. He'd spent the previous six actually getting a hold of the documents.

"Do you need a hand with that?"

"No!" he snapped, a little more harshly than he'd meant to. He gritted his teeth again, placed the books back in their rightful place, and drew in a breath. "Maggie, sorry. I've been busy. Here, let me get you a chair." He moved back to the desk and lifted the high-backed one he'd been using over and helped the woman into it.

She was strong for her age, well, for her current state of aging. At least, that was what Balthazar remembered when he'd last spoken with her. As he helped her into the chair he could feel her sink into as if it was a relief, and she'd seemed perhaps the slightest bit shaky as she'd moved across the room. It didn't surprise him, only sadden him. This was the one aspect of aging the thousand year old man had yet to experience.

"Just give me a minute…" He hurried into the next room to grab another chair. He paused on his way out, and with a flourish brought together a tea pot and a few stray tea cups. Another flourish sent a splash of water into the teapot and there was no issue with vibrating the molecules of the water in an instant. He emerged barely seconds later with the tea tray floating obediently behind him. Now that had managed to expel some energy and when he set it down in front of Maggie her smile was enough to make him feel just a little bit calmer.

"Now if only I'd found someone with your manners when I was younger," Maggie said with a faint smirk as she took one of the tea cups.

Balthazar felt the slightest smile tug his lips as he settled himself in his own chair. He was long beyond that sort of comment making him uncomfortable, which was a good thing, considering he was already frustrated and flustered from the night's efforts.

Which was of course exactly what Maggie chose to direct his thoughts back to. "So have you found anything?" she asked, lifting the edge of one of the documents still valued enough to earn a position on the desk top.

Balthazar sat back up straight, trying to hide his tension. Well, he had a job to do. There was no point sitting around sipping tea just because he hadn't gotten enough sleep. He'd done the calculation. He'd probably wasted three to four hundred years sleeping over his lifetime. It wasn't something he valued much anymore, though he was starting to wonder if he should. Surely it was only the lack of sleep that was contributing to his wandering mind and short temper of late.

"No. This is all useless. It used to be so much easier…" he bit down on the sentence, fearing he'd launch into a rant that would only make his fluster more apparent.

"Don't stress," Maggie said, placing a hand lightly on his across the desk. "The search is what I came to talk to you about. I didn't think you'd get far with all this paper based research."

"It seems to be the only thing that works anymore."

Maggie knew about his search for the Prime Merlinian. Balthazar had established she was trustworthy years ago and procured her assistance. Of course, among the Merlinians (and unfortunately the Morganians) the prophecy was well known, as was the name of Balthazar Blake. The belief in this ever coming to pass had faltered though; Balthazar had found too many, even among the Merlinians who scoffed at the idea of prophecy. Which of itself was simply a statement of probabilities, eventually the right combination of DNA and environmental factors would come together and the Prime Merlinian would come into existence. It was only a matter of time, Balthazar's old friend. Maggie was one of the few he'd found recently who'd been willing to help.

"I think I've found a lead," she said. "Balthazar, are you listening?"

Balthazar blinked at her dumbly. "I… pardon?"

"I've found a lead."

He'd heard her right the first time. It was just that this was one of the last things he'd expected her to say. "You… so soon?"

"I've been helping you for twenty years, Balthazar."

"Of course," Balthazar leaned back in his chair, drew in a breath. He didn't want to argue the relativity of how short a couple decades really were. Or seemed. In reality everyone else experienced time in the right way and he was the odd one out. "But you're sure? What have you found?"

"A girl. She's currently an apprentice to one of the Merlinian's I know."

"Who?"

"Albert Spencer…"

Balthazar nodded. "Charming fellow. I remember trying to explain to him the prophecy… you know, you can always tell the intelligence of a man by what he laughs at."

"He's not that bad. I've spoken with him. He recognises his apprentice is gifted. It took a bit of convincing, but he can't see the harm of his protégé trying on a ring."

Balthazar stared at her across the desk for a moment. "And you're sure?"

"You've told me what to look for, Balthazar. I wouldn't have come to you if I wasn't sure. You've been out of contact for ages, I can only assume you've been busy…" she glanced at the mess off paper strewn about the floor. "Why else wouldn't you come see me for months on end?"

Balthazar felt a brief jerk of realisation as he again consulted his time-map. Maggie was his closest associate at this time, and she was right, it had been nearly a year since he'd consulted with her. An apology died on his lips, there just wasn't an excuse he could think of. "Maggie," he said instead, "thankyou. You don't realise how hard I've searched for this…"

"It's just a lead…"

"It's more than I've had in over a century." Balthazar stood to his feet. He was again feeling a rush of energy, but this time he had an outlet. A focus. Doubts had crept in over recent years, even if they hadn't halted him in his purpose. The lead brought fresh excitement and hope. "Let's go now." He reached out a hand and grasped Maggie's. He tugged her gently to her feet.

Keeping his pace in check out of respect for the frailer woman, he led her down the steps of the shop and out into the sunshine, searching as he did so for a cab.

"What?" he asked, catching Maggie smiling up at him.

"I haven't seen you grin like that in years. It looks good on you, Balthazar."