text: You decide you need to find out anything you can about this mysterious correspondence before you do anything as rash as opening it. Your knowledge of the magical is only just in its fledgling stages and you can't be too careful where dark magic is concerned. If there's one thing you've developed from your studies since you became a magical apprentice, then it's a healthy sense of paranoia.
  
  You place the envelope down on the desk; just as your fingers leave the paper, you could swear you felt a slight vibration from the envelope. Nothing significant, just enough to tingle the ends of your fingers. You frown at the envelope as it sits innocently on your book laden desk but it doesn't look to be vibrating or doing anything unusual at all so you start to look for a book you think might be useful.
  
  Your fingers drum along the spines of the books on the shelves as you scan the titles. Aha, that's the one you were looking for and you lift the thick, leather bound tome titled 'Traps and Trips to Rattle Wits'. You were never sure if the author of the book intended the title to rhyme and this had always annoyed you a little, but this only resulted in making the book more memorable to you.
  
  You push the papers covering half of your desk to one side, some of them falling on the floor to join the other orphaned notes which had fallen there from previous similar desk clearing flourishes. You place the book on the now cleared aware of your desk and turn the first few pages until you find the chapter listing. You run your finger down the page until you find the one you were looking for, 'Concealed Traps in Everyday Objects'. You note the page number and turn the pages until you find the right chapter.
  
  You're sure you've seen something about how to detect spells like one which could be contained in this envelope somewhere in this chapter and you flick through the pages, feeling more and more anxious as you do. You find a section in the chapter specifically focussed on hiding nasty surprises in parcels and letters' you turn the page and there it is, half a page devoted to how to detect and dispell traps like that.
  
  It's a simple enough spell which can be enhanced with a very basic potion so you set about gathering the ingredients you need from around the room. Your mentor calls it the work room but you've always preferred the term laboratory. There are bottles and boxes covering shelves, filling cabinets and lining the edges of the room on the stone floor in every nook and cranny. You think it was probably an organised space at one time or another but as more things had been acquired, and the available space had lessened the organisation had gone right out of the window.
  
  The ingredients you needed are all common ones though, so you know exactly where to go to find each one. You look around to make sure your mentor hasn't come into the room and you open up the cupboard that your bed sits upon and take out a mechanical contraption which you know she would strongly disapprove of. You carefully insert the ingredients into the pot at the base of the machine then you light the fuse around the side and you stand back. It makes a bang when it starts up but steam starts to pour out and the pistons pump up and down and you can see the pestle going in and out of the pot at the bottom which is turning around at the same time. The whole thing makes quite a racket but it's late enough that your mentor is probably asleep and she can sleep through an airship landing so this is unlikely to wake her.
  
  After a few minutes, you pull a lever which disconnects the pistons and the steam dissipates. You remove the pot and your ingredients are a fine powder, absolutely perfect for your needs. You take the powder and stir it into the tea you had been drinking before your evening was disrupted by the letter and drink it all in one go.
  
  You grab a few candles from a drawer, not strictly necessary for the spell but you always feel like candles make it easier; it's probably all in your head but that's a good enough reason to use them for you. You draw a circle in chalk on the stone flag which is clear of detritus by your desk and carefully place the candles around the circle and light them using a candle from your desk. You pick up the envelope from where you left it on your desk and as soon as you touch it, you get the same uneasy feeling back that you hadn't noticed had worn off. You shudder slightly and place the letter within the circle on the cold, stone floor.
  
  You kneel down next to the circle, place your finger on the chalk circle, close your eyes and quietly repeat the words of the spell a few times. Whilst you're saying the words, you focus your mind on what you want to know. You think about the envelope, about the strange feeling which seems to surround it and you think about how you want to see through the outer envelope, how you want to see what is contained within. After a few minutes, you open your eyes and look at the letter within the circle.
  
  It looks to be glowing, no, wait, the envelope isn't glowing but it's covered in strange symbols which are glowing. It doesn't look like any language you've seen before. Quickly you grab some paper and a pencil from your desk and try to draw as many of the symbols as you can before they fade away and the envelope looks just as it did before.
  
  You frown at the letter and at the symbols you've written down and instead of finding out if opening the letter will trigger a magical trap of some sort, you're left with even more questions instead. If you didn't feel comfortable about the letter before, you're convinced there's something very strange about it now.
  
  What do you do with the letter now?
  
  > burn the letter without opening it.
  The uneasy feeling about the letter gets too much for you and you hold the letter closer and closer to the candle, you're not sure why but you're overcome with a need to burn the letter, to destroy it. Your mind is certain now, the letter must be completely eradicated, it must be burnt, but your arms are stopping you from reaching the flames.
  
  You concentrate harder, you focus all your will on pushing the envelope towards the candle but your arms feel like they've become steel, they are utterly rigid.
  
  You start to panic now, the letter can't be here, it can't stay here; you don't know what will happen if the letter is allowed to exist for a single minute longer but the dread in the pit of your stomach tells you that it will be something truly terrible.
  
  You whip your body around to the left with your arms still rigid in front of you. A flame dances across the bottom of your palm and you stop with the letter right over the flame of another candle. Your arms try to jerk away but you hold them steady; holding them still feels a lot easier than pushing them forwards had been.
  
  The paper begins to blacken where the flame meets the letter and it spreads out across the envelope quickly. The burning reaches your fingers but you just can't let go. You're sure your fingers must be burning now, but you can't feel it, you're just mesmerised by the letter which is emerging from inside the envelope as it burns away. The paper is acid green and somehow untouched by the fire.
  
  As the black and crisp envelope flakes away, the letter inside finally succumbs to the fire and begins to burn. Suddenly, a mark forms on the paper in brilliant light so bright you have to turn your face away from it. The light dims and as you look back, you see that the mark on the paper which has lit up and the same insignia as was imprinted in the wax seal. The G fades away leaving only the tentacles illuminated until the fire engulfs them too.
  
  When the last fraction of paper burns between your now angry red fingers, your grip is released and a flood of pain from the fingers which had been gripping the paper in both hands crashes into you like a wave.
  
  You collapse to your knees on the cold stone floor, your hands still held out in front of you but searing with agony now and you're not sure what came over you, why you felt the need to burn the mysterious letter and you start to feel pangs of regret.
  
  The next morning, with your hands bandaged up as best you had been able to manage with your fingers crippled, your mentor wakes you from your bed. You open your eyes to see her pushing back the curtain which separates your bed from the rest of the room where you work.
  
  "You need to wake up." she says, with an urgency in her voice you haven't often heard. "It's your sister."
  
  Any tiredness you felt from just being woken is gone in an instant as adrenaline surges through you. "Leanne?" you ask, your voice higher than normal. "What about her? Is she alright?"
  
  "She's gone." replies your mentor. "I was near to your parents' house this morning as I came back from the market and heard the ruckus." She hesitates before she speaks again, letting the words sink in to my brain as I try to think exactly when had I last seen my little sister. "I think she was taken yesterday." she says grimly.
  
  Your mind races and as the pain aches from your fingers you find your thoughts going back to the letter you burnt last night. The strange letter which arrived on the day your sister was taken. Why had your burnt it, what had come over you?
  
  You can hear your teacher speaking to you still, but it is all a muffled echo in your ears as you lay back down in your bed, staring at the spot on the floor where you can see the ashes of the letter you hadn't swept up last night. The same feeling which had made it so impossible to move your arms the previous night seems to be affecting your whole body and the image of a G wrapped in tentacles seems to fill your thoughts and your vision and you don't even want to move anymore, you don't see why you should even try.