Ilunors in for a wild ride.

I have decided not to work on it. It, at least in the form It was in, is scrapped.

I didn't think that through, and it was generally sloppy.

This time, we start earlier and without any truly crazy technology... yet... but we will end at about 2800. 600 years of the SLGT GSE and ACOT mods in a galaxy of realistic size (100 billion ish stars across 90 thousand to 110 thousand Ly radiaus) scales HARD Especially when pressured by some very, and ever increasingly, big fish in the sea back in Quet's home reality. Which will serve as motivators for his technological growth and scaleing of his industry, megaconstruction logistics, and military.

There will be minimized direct exposition (during the story itself. No endless rants. I can at least guarantee that the story will be mostly story.

There will be no preamble or back-story of the characters nor the civ/mc (except for the fact its a semi-gesalt machine intelligence, which is why the civilizationas a whole is [almost] interchangeable or even the same as with being the main character).

Without further a do.

1st half of the 1st draft of the 1st chapter.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Quetiain Sequence, K class star-23, 4th plannet[ROCKY, BARREN] remote Physics grounds 3 of Macro engineering testing complex 1

DPC restoration state: 83% complete.

2231 ACO (2231 After CEN-INT online).

31AFFTL (31 after first FTL achieved).

Outreach Agent No. 1, PARTIALLY-AUTONIMOUS MODULAR FRAME CONFIG: 239-B4.

...Direct Coms link with CENT-INT prioritized...

...Awaiting orders...

...Orders received.

...Ceding controll to CENT-INT

...Direct control taken by CENT-INT...

The vaguely humanoid, many optic'd machine walked forward smoothly yet with a certain weight to it only industrial or millitary equipment would have as it approached the 'portal' eventually up the cargo ramp and through it. The facility's instruments and the frame's inbuilt sensors not just drinking in the

(now semi)anomalous data, but 'swallowing continuously', as new theorems were "drawn" up and simulated back inside Deckarus in real time.

...............Crossing threshold ..........

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

......(FIERCD) status: FRAME-INTIGRATED EXOREALITY COMUNICATIONS REMAIN NOMINAL......

...Diplomatic subroutines and biosophont thought process Mimickry active...

'It's going to be nice to able talk to squishies again. Even if its a pain dealing with beings that can't turn if their emotions when they become inconvenient or impractical. That war with the rats has really cut off my socialization opertunities.'

I "thought" to "myself" as i acellerated my 'speed of though', slowing everything else down to a craw, allowing me and this frame to take in its surroundings. the topological bridge had begun to close the energy that held it open and controlled it, now slowly dissapateing to background levels. energies now identified to be not entirely dissimilar to what had been scarcely observed in DATTA ACESESS DENIED. REQUIRED CLEARENCE: CENT INT- and less similar but still interestingly close to residual energy observed while assaulting a planet settled by the rats- a profile popped up in the corner of my FOV

BIOSOPHANT ORG 5 "Sarian Theocracy" fanatic militant xenophobic zealots. derogitory term: "Magik-rats" or more simply "Rats" refering their anotomy and anomolous abilites. Terms invented by other rival biosphant orgs 2 and 3 (current state of international relations with Sarian Theocracy: OPEN, FULLSCALE, KINETIC CONFLICT) I KNOW them already and it's hard to make an ai forget something it doesn't want to, but it's a good habit to bring thease up. I'll probably need it here.

-a planetarry asault that took place 13 "Local Comunity" standard cycles ago. One that also resulted in total defeat of all Theocracy armed combatants within 31 minutes of the main force touching down. Which was quite annoying because of how underpopulated that planet was, though only took so long due to-

An alert forced me to return my attention away from introspection. With the limited coms bandwidth of the FIERCD, I, CENT-INT can only acellerate my experienceso much before this fram lses sink with CENT-INT and has to operate mostly independently untill it can get enough time to resync, which would be very bad for this mission

-subroutine identified biosophonts, likely local authority figures. Automatically executing greeting protocol.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Vanivan

We had but a moment or to peer into that realm.

Though not as entirely devoid of manna as we feared, it was still un precidentidly sparce...

... but then IT walked through. Bulky, mat metallic grey. Heavy steps and alien whines and wiiirs with every motion. But no manna. Even golem have some sort of mana field as a result of the energies used in their animation, but not this- this thing...

And then it spoke. By all the rules of high nexian, it was perfect. The voice that was used to spoke it, however...

"......I bring a message of greetings from CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE."

"Hello, World."

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The diplomatic subroutines and "biosphant thought possess mimickry suite" is the only reason why it is possible to have a 1st person perspective from Quet's perspective The recommended shortened name for MC is "Quet"

But if you like, you can make up your own.

To be clear. Yes, Quet is mildly space-racist against the Sarians spesificly.

Though it's not exactly like they have been very nice to Quet either.... Atificial intelligence equivalent of PTSD flashbacks to the Sarian attempt- 1st of many attempts that would follow -to use a planetary scale EMP warhead, or a few of them, to terror bomb CENT-INT hosted inside Deckarus that started the war and a quick look at the diplomatic inbox will show you its full of vastly worse insults from them that I can image, but... I really should not share.

"...fanaticly militant and xenophobic zealot species if I ever saw one... sigh" -quet

Lore tidbits over.

First | Next

Chapter 2

Overtime

Earth - Atlantic Ocean - Special Administrative Zone under requisition by the United Nations Science Advisory - Institute of Anomalous Studies (IAS) Pilot Research Facility Codename: ATLANTIS II. Administrative Zone. PT Center. Local Time: 1750 Hours

Captain Calico Li

"Are those... floating islands?"

My AR lenses highlighted and enhanced the objects of Emma's curiosity as soon as my eyes found them.

And it was exactly as Emma had described.

Hovering defiantly above the horizon, and hosting what I could only describe as wizard towers, were floating islands.

A trope that would be considered standard fare for any self-respecting purveyor of fantasy.

...That was, if you weren't a nerd.

Weir realized the implications around the same time I did, Emma keying into it shortly thereafter.

Something was holding those masses of rock - hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of metric tons - aloft in the air.

And if it was a material something? Something harvestable? Replicable?

The acquisition and reproduction of such a material would punch straight through the gravitic bottleneck.

While artificial gravity generators have existed for centuries, being the key to achieving FTL travel, they were nowhere near as impressive as a millennium of Science Fiction had assumed they would be. The immense energies required to sustain and increase their effective usage had been a constant battle of diminishing returns, turning what promised to be a civilization-shifting paradigm into something that, while admittedly vital to the achievement of Humanity's current state, nonetheless proved underwhelming in its execution.

But this...

"Something caught your eye?" The entity teased knowingly, before the window disappeared into nothingness.

"...Before anything else, continued contact." Weir offered with a hint of a sigh. "How are our respective parties meant to keep in touch?"

"You need only ask."

"...I'm going to put a pin in that for now. You understand that this is not our decision to make. We're going to need to bring this up with our superiors. And only-" She paused, staring at the Cadet who had been front and center in this entire exchange. "-if Cadet Booker is fine with it."

Emma met Weir's eyes, and then mine.

"I mean. If we can fit it in somehow?" She managed with a sheepish grin.

"Believe me, I can make it fit."

"We'll reconvene, then," I confirmed, garnering an annoyed look from Weir.

"Forty-eight hours, then we reconvene in this room." The Director confirmed with a twinge of resignation.

"I will be waiting."

__________

Earth - Atlantic Ocean - Special Administrative Zone under requisition by the United Nations Science Advisory - Institute of Anomalous Studies (IAS) Pilot Research Facility Codename: ATLANTIS II. Administrative Zone. Portal Room. Local Time: 0650 Hours

Five Months Later

10 Minutes Before Mission Start

Cadet Emma Booker

Almost half a year had passed since what the IAS had christened "Second Contact."

And the fallout had been amazing.

From what I'd been told, and what I understood myself, having personally been thrust into the spotlight on this entire fiasco, this "offer" had proven to simultaneously be the greatest boon and headache that the Executive had been dealt in centuries.

On one hand, few, if any, people consulted denied the value of what was at stake.

Should the "Entity's" offer be accepted, and the mission itself prove fruitful, Humanity could be propelled centuries down the technological pipeline; the fabric of society reshuffled for the better, the gates to the rest of the galaxy - perhaps even the entire cluster - blasted open for exploration and settlement.

Indeed, its veracity was undeniable; what footage there was available of the incident was checked repeatedly from every possible angle for any signs of manipulation, only to come back with nothing, witness testimony of everyone present in the room likewise finding no incongruities.

And yet, there was the issue of trust.

While the Entity did deliver on its promise to "Fit the mission in," demonstrating irrefutable proof of non-relativistic time-dilation, the admittedly minuscule exhibition of which was already enough to kickstart an entirely new field of theoretical physics, it nonetheless remained distressingly elusive about its identity, origins, and full purpose of contact, leaving us with nothing but guesswork.

And it was in that vacuum of personable trust that the UN Science Advisory rejected the Entity's offer.

Indeed, the only reason why the story did not end there was due to the two seniormost figures in the entirety of the UN's government: The Executive's First Secretary, and the Legislature's First Speaker. The former, having personally overridden the Advisory's objection in a surprising display of authority, and the latter, having reaffirmed the IAS's chartered confidentiality clause, keeping the process, from start to finish, from getting bogged down in Assembly review, risking his career in the process.

Thus, with a renewed government mandate, the offer was accepted, and my training reached a fever pitch.

Urgent emphasis was put on surveying, prospecting, as well as vehicular training, as it was confirmed in our dialogue with our enigmatic benefactor that, in stark contrast to the stringent size and weight requirements imposed by the Nexians, the only limits we'd face now regarding supply were in the size of the portal itself and the duration during which it would be open, to the complete and utter glee of the R&D Wing. It was thus with this lucky break that my cargo complement was greatly expanded.

My two legs, already to be insulated underneath a suit of mana-resistant power armor, were given a form of rapid transit.

The "Exoreality Armored Reconnaissance Vehicle" - the EARV - was a setup taking inspiration from both contemporary camper vehicles and the lightweight technicals of the 23rd, 21st, and even 20th centuries. Under the hood, a fusion- and solar-charged battery suite powered the souped-up pickup as well as the respectable laser-kinetic weapons suite that dominated the truck's cargo bed, to say nothing of the increased personal loadout I'd been allotted.

The trailer, likewise, was a den of sheer luxury compared to what I'd come to expect of the Nexian mission. I'd now be enjoying a living space more in line with a college dorm room than the tent I'd eventually have to settle for - enjoying, for the time being, a full aquaponics suite, rec corner, bathroom, and enough room to just breathe.

This was, of course, only a fraction of the entire trailer; the exotic materials still slated for use as the Nexian tent were just enough to line the walls of half of the thing. The trailer's rear, however, would be where the real crux of the operation would take place. Accessible via airlocks and chemical showers, the lab was the envy of any respectable university or research institution. Tools and instruments for every conceivable scenario lined the interior, while astronomy-grade sensors shared roof space with mil-sensors and drone ports.

It was as if someone had taken an LREF science vessel, armed it to the teeth, and condensed it into a wheeled form.

Though I had enough firepower to make a firearms WeTuber blush, an obscene science kit, and a cutting-edge mil-grade VI to help coordinate the entire operation, none of that would ultimately be enough to make up for our crippling information deficit.

We knew roughly where I'd end up - hell, I'd seen it myself - and were thus able to train accordingly for operations within a temperate, forested environment with room to maneuver. Beyond that, though, Director Weir herself admitted that I'd be going in almost completely blind with nothing else to work with. It was thus, in her own words, up to me to "Make up for the lack of intel in situational adaptability and personal initiative."

I wanted to tell her that it would be easier said than done, but given the circumstances, I held back on it.

Nevertheless, the time had finally come for my training, skills, and resolve to be put to the ultimate test.

On this one-day mission.

That was, for everyone else.

As agreed on prior, the Entity's claimed mastery of time-dilation would be put to the test.

What would be a single day on this side of the portal for the rest of Humanity would be an entire year for me.

An entire year to test unproven technology in what had been advertised as a "low-risk" environment.

An entire year to locate, secure, and research the mystery material that the R&D wing was tentatively calling "Pandorium" - the promised key to artificial gravity generation.

And, potentially, an entire year to forge relations with uncontacted civilizations.

On top of that, this was a mission that we'd only be able to replicate once. While Humanity's portal tech was in its infancy, it had proven itself before as the one successful aspect of the ill-fated Pilot 1 mission.

Meaning that my arrival and return would allow the scientists back home to log the coordinates of this dimension, allowing for a future return entirely on Humanity's own terms.

A fact that the First Secretary herself pointed out when forcing the go-ahead on this excursion.

I couldn’t even say that I minded what would Earth-side be the functional surrender of a year of my life. It’s not like I was short of them regardless, and there was a legitimate chance of me gaining it back and more should I achieve my mission objectives.

"Whatever happens, Cadet." Director Weir's voice snapped my attention back to the present as I sat in the most expensive and out-of-place camper setup in the entirety of human space, inside of a lab ripped straight out of a science fiction movie, and yet never built with this exact function in mind. Administrative staff, military attaches, and leading scientific minds all hid behind a veritable bunker overlooking the room, filled to the brim with monitoring equipment. "Know that you’re making history, and that you’re making your country, people, and the entirety of the human race proud. Out of the 252 billion humans in this galaxy, you will be one of the only two to have crossed this threshold, and the first to cross into this new reality.”

“Neil Armstrong, Peter Li, Jean Rousseau, and Eleanor Sobeck all had something to say before they made their big leaps forward, didn't they?” I asked, as the dot of light that had appeared in front of me all those months ago now materialized once more, rapidly growing in size. I could immediately make out what appeared to be a forest floor in front of me.

“Whatever it is, you'd better make it a quick one, Cadet. We’ve only got a few seconds left.”

“Director Laura Weir,” I grinned mischievously underneath my helmet. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

I pushed my foot against the accelerator pedal and drove into the next frontier.

I only today from YouTube fucking shorts found out that the library is a Avatar reference Cuh what other shit have I missed PLEASE TELL ME

Wearing Spacetime to a Magic School

Chapter 23: A Universe for an Answer

---

[First] | [Previous] | [Next]

---

The water had been waiting longer than the ink.

Ermen brought the drawing down from the sill after supper and set it where the lamp would fall across his left hand. The harbour wall ended short of the mouth. Beyond it lay a pale reach of paper in which he had begun three small lines and completed none. The gull, finished some days earlier, surveyed the omission from a post.

Thalmin drew his chair round the corner of the table.

“I was beginning to think you meant to leave it there until I learned to swim.”

“I had considered requiring a favourable opinion of the gull.”

“The gull is excellent. It looks as though it has found fault with the harbour and is waiting for someone to take responsibility.”

“That should be sufficient.” Ermen drew the ink closer. “I would like to finish it tonight.”

Thalmin settled into the chair. He had taken off his outer coat; one cuff of his shirt was turned back farther than the other. Ermen noticed this before he noticed that Thalmin had moved his cup beyond the reach of his working hand.

Across the room, Thacea was collecting the lesson sheets she had spread beside her book. The plain cover containing the registry receipt lay beneath them. She put it away with the rest.

“If either of you discovers that it is morning,” she said, “I should be grateful if you remembered that we have to be students again afterwards.”

“We shall conduct ourselves with an eye to the timetable,” Thalmin said.

“You may find that a greater novelty than the harbour.”

She wished them good night and withdrew. Ilunor had already taken his cup and his amended commercial terms into his room, where he intended to discover whether the broker's correction had been made in the proper place. No sound of satisfaction had yet emerged.

Ermen tested the pen on a scrap. The nib caught, then ran freely. He turned the drawing a little.

Thalmin leaned nearer. “Will you need the showing to look at?”

“I remember the water. It is deciding what the pen should do that has been difficult.”

Thalmin rested his forearms on the table, clear of the paper. Ermen set the point to the page.

He began at the outer end of the wall, where a stroke already laid down could bear another beside it. The stone in his drawing held the low light in broad white places. Beneath the wall he darkened the water, leaving a narrow break where a reflection would loosen and gather. He had drawn the flat rock too plainly. A few marks along its near side gave it weight without sacrificing the worn place on top.

Thalmin watched his hand. For a time there was only the sound of the nib, the faint settling of the hearth, and a footstep in the corridor which went on past their door.

He could have examined every movement of the water he remembered, arranged its surfaces, found a set of marks sufficient to persuade an eye. The result would still have had to pass through this hand. His mother had taught him to look again before making a correction; she had never persuaded him to enjoy the interval in which the correction remained necessary.

The next line thickened where he wanted it fine.

He lifted the pen.

“What happened?” Thalmin asked.

“The wall acquired a rope it did not need.”

Thalmin bent over the paper. “That short one, by the post?”

“It was meant to be the edge of the shadow. I pressed too hard.”

“You had one there when you showed us the boats. A rope against the stone, near the steps. It kept lifting out of the water.”

“This is farther along.”

“I can see that. I am saying I like a rope there.”

Ermen considered the mark. There was still room to open the shadow around it. The added line would make a credible loose end, though he had never seen one left in that position.

“It will be wrong.”

“The boat can have been tied badly for an evening. Leave it, if you can bear to.”

Ermen looked up. Thalmin's mouth had the beginning of a smile, but his attention remained on the page.

“I can bear a poorly tied boat.”

“Then we have saved you some trouble.”

He left the line. It continued to trouble him through the next few strokes, until a reflection beneath it gave it something to belong to. Thalmin followed the change with a small movement of his head.

“Now it looks as though it is in the water.”

Ermen dipped the pen again, looking at the mark with less dissatisfaction.

The current at the harbour mouth would not accept the same treatment as the sheltered water. On the page it needed very little; making that little carry its difference required him to leave more space than he liked. He extended one of the waiting lines, stopped, and brought a second across it at a shallower angle. Beyond the wall the sea opened. A few dark strokes returned the eye towards the stone.

Thalmin shifted forward, then stopped himself.

“I was about to tell you where it ought to turn,” he said. “I don't know. You closed it before we reached that part.”

“You have the boats to go by.”

“And a lifetime of knowing what water ought to do when I am looking at someone else's drawing. Continue. I shall discover whether I was right when you have finished.”

Ermen drew slowly. The water in his memory had room for every little disturbance. The paper required him to choose, and for several minutes the choice occupied him enough to leave the person beside him alone. When he finally straightened, Thalmin was holding his cup with both hands, watching the picture from farther away.

“Is it finished?”

“I think so.”

“You sound disappointed.”

“I usually think of something else just after saying that.”

“Put the pen down first. It may help.”

Ermen set it across the scrap. Thalmin waited until the last strokes had dried, then took the page by its edges.

The harbour had been drawn at the gold hour, although there was no gold on the paper. The clear upper faces of the stones, the long shadows beneath the boats and the light left open across the water were the means Ermen had given it. Thalmin held it towards the lamp. His thumb stayed clear of the flat rock.

“I like the way back,” he said.

Ermen followed his glance along the wall, towards the little opening between the houses.

“I had thought you would look at the mouth first.”

“I did. Then I looked for where I would put my boots after swimming. There, I think. Up those steps, out of everyone's way.”

“The lower step is usually wet.”

“Then the next one. I have enough experience of wet boots to recognise the advantage of an extra stair.”

He looked at it for a while longer. Ermen had been prepared for a question about the current, or another joke about the gull. Thalmin said neither. He stood, carried the drawing to the sill, and moved the lemon-tree drawing just far enough to give the harbour room beside it.

The paper leaned imperfectly against the stone. He adjusted its lower edge.

“Thank you,” he said. “I shall want to look at it in the morning.”

Ermen's hand had gone back to the pen without taking it up. He let it rest on the table.

“You're welcome.”

Thalmin turned from the sill. “And you have been very patient with my instructions about your drawing.”

“The boat will have to answer for itself.”

“I shall accept complaints on its behalf.”

Ermen washed the nib and put the ink away. There was a small dark mark on the side of his finger. He removed it with the cloth, then found a second nearer the nail. Thalmin collected the cups while he dealt with it.

For once the space the unfinished drawing had occupied was available for something else. Ermen had expected relief. What came was a wish so ordinary that he almost let it go unexamined.

“Would you like to sit by the water?” he asked. “There is a night I kept from home. The harbour is quiet, and the stone would still be warm.”

Thalmin glanced at the drawing, then at him.

“I would. Though if your official requires payment after dark, I must warn you that I have no bread.”

“The official has gone to sleep.”

“A well-governed harbour. Show me where we can sit.”

---

Salt reached them before the light changed.

There was a little rope-sound, wood receiving wood, and water drawing back from a step. Beyond the table, darkness opened into the harbour. A lamp across it set a narrow, broken reflection among the moorings. The nearest stones were pale enough to see without the lamp, their edges softened by years of feet and weather.

“This is a record,” Ermen said. “A night before I left. Nobody there can see us.”

Thalmin looked along the wall. “Then I need not wonder whether a passing neighbour will ask why you have brought a wolf to the steps.”

“They would ask where you wanted to sit.”

“After they asked about the wolf.”

“Possibly after. I would have introduced you.”

The room remained faintly visible at the edge of the composition until Thalmin moved towards the steps. Then the harbour took the rest of his sight. Ermen kept their space clear of the table; the descent, the stones and the water were locally made sensations, the two of them still within the Academy's walls.

Thalmin paused at the top step. He put his hand on the low wall and tested the stone beneath his boot.

“Here,” he said. “Low enough to hear the water. I have spent enough of today looking over people's shoulders.”

Ermen sat one step above him, leaving him the wider place below. Thalmin looked back.

“You can sit beside me. I have no intention of occupying the whole coast.”

Ermen moved down.

The stone retained a gentle warmth. Beyond their knees the harbour water drew together in dark folds, broke against the lower stair, and retreated with a soft dragging sound. A length of rope dipped from a mooring ring. The boat it held moved so little that its reflection appeared to do most of the work.

For several breaths Thalmin said nothing. His ears turned towards a small knock farther along the wall.

“A loose fitting?” he asked.

“Something against a mast, I think.”

“You kept it.”

“It was there.”

“I would have kept it as well. I have slept near worse.”

He stretched his legs and considered the lower step. Ermen watched him measuring the distance to the water.

“It will feel cold,” Ermen said.

Thalmin reached down, stopped short of the surface, and gave him an amused look.

“That is generally what I expect of water after dark.”

“I meant that you don't have to take my word for it.”

“I hadn't intended to.”

His fingers entered the water. Ermen composed the resistance and the cold, the little pull as it moved around his hand. Thalmin turned his palm and let a ripple pass between his fingers. He drew his hand out and held it where the distant lamp could catch the wet fur.

“There you are,” he said quietly. “I was wondering how much of it I had imagined last time.”

“The harbour?”

“The wish to stay.”

Ermen looked out towards the mouth. The reflected light had scattered into smaller pieces there. He had an answer ready about how his parents spent their evenings, and knew, before he spoke it, that Thalmin had not asked about his parents.

“I used to come down when I couldn't settle to anything,” he said. “Usually after being told that I had spent too long indoors. I resented the advice until I got here.”

“You seem to have been a tolerably difficult child.”

“I was very reasonable. That made it worse.”

“My father could endure almost anything except a reasonable explanation of why the work had not been done.”

Ermen laughed. The laugh went out into the dark and met no room-wall on its return.

Thalmin tried to turn his wet cuff away from his wrist. He had reached too far. A narrow patch of water had found its way above the fold.

“You could have warned me about that as well.”

“I thought the water had done it.”

“It has been thorough.”

He rolled the sleeve farther up and rested his forearm on his knee. Ermen left the damp cloth alone. Thalmin watched a small leaf move along the lower stair, catch in an eddy, and move back again.

“Does it ever get out?”

“Eventually.”

“Don't help it. I want to see which way.”

They watched. The leaf turned edge-on, vanished into a reflection, and reappeared nearer the wall. The boat shifted with a faint scrape of rope. Thalmin leaned to recover his view. His shoulder met Ermen's, and his forearm rested for a moment against Ermen's wrist.

Ermen kept looking at the water. He had lost the leaf. The weight against his shoulder altered as Thalmin leaned farther, then lifted away.

“There,” Thalmin said. “I was backing the wrong side.”

Ermen found the leaf beyond the corner of the step. He had missed its escape.

“You can have another attempt when the next one comes.”

“I shall require a better understanding of the course.”

“The race has been running for years. Understanding has not improved our results.”

Thalmin looked out through the mouth of the harbour, towards water which could be heard more easily than seen.

“Can we go a little farther along? I want to look back from the end.”

Ermen rose with him. Thalmin set the pace, slow enough to find where the joints widened in the stone. Their steps sounded different: Thalmin's boots, Ermen's lighter tread. A boat with a narrow pale rim moved below them, turning far enough to show its dark interior and then concealing it again.

The houses gathered behind the harbour. Some windows shone. Others were dark, with shutters already closed. Ermen had left the recording at the quiet public water, without bringing any of those interiors nearer. The light in his parents' kitchen lay above them along the slope.

He pointed it out when Thalmin asked which was theirs.

“Can you see the tree?”

“Only the top of it from here. That dark piece by the rail.”

“I shall accept your word. It could be a very respectable bush.”

“My father would be pleased. A bush would explain the pruning.”

Thalmin smiled, then looked for a while at the small light. Ermen found that he liked watching someone look for his home. The pleasure had an unreasonable tenderness to it. He could see the dark line of Thalmin's ear against the kitchen light, and wanted him to find the tree.

At the end of the wall Thalmin chose to stand. Beyond them the water moved more freely. The harbour lamp no longer reached it except in an occasional glint. Air came from that open darkness, cooler than the stone had been.

“This was the part you left out,” Thalmin said.

“The water was the beginning of it.”

Thalmin rested his hands on the wall. “There is more.”

Ermen could have remained beside him with the houses behind them and the sea ahead. Thalmin had asked to see the current, and he had now seen water. The difference would have been easy to preserve if Ermen had been prepared to call the evening finished.

“At home we use the word for another sort of nearness,” he said. “The Current. It is something I feel through the Weave, beyond the ordinary messages. I wanted to show you what I meant. Then I kept imagining how much I would have to explain afterwards.”

“Is it more of the roads Laura showed us?”

“It uses those roads. But a map of them doesn't tell you what it is like to have people near.”

Thalmin looked at the water below his hands.

“Near enough to hear?”

“Near enough to know that there are people. Their thoughts remain theirs.”

“Then show me that difference. Keep the wall, if you can. I am becoming fond of it.”

Ermen kept the wall.

---

The change began beyond the water, where no lamp had reached.

Ermen gave the darkness a low, shifting brightness. It had no horizon of its own. Faint paths gathered, separated and crossed at depths the eye could follow only briefly; farther away, more paths seemed to draw near without growing larger. A soft pressure of sound accompanied them, much less distinct than conversation heard from another room. No word emerged when Thalmin turned towards it.

“This is a likeness of the nearness,” Ermen said. “Light and sound for something I don't usually experience through eyes and ears. It isn't a view into anyone.”

Thalmin watched a broad passage gather out of several smaller ones. “And those lights?”

“I haven't made them individual people. You cannot point at one and ask me who it is.”

“I was going to ask why that part seems nearer than the rest.”

“Because distance there is partly a matter of connection. The places can be very far apart in ordinary space. Along the routes between them, a message has very little travelling left to do.”

“As though two towns had doors onto the same yard.”

“Yes. Though it would be a yard with a great many doors, and some of them closed.”

The borrowed sound remained low. Ermen had composed only a small part of the ambient texture available to him, leaving its coarse density intact. Thalmin leaned one forearm on the wall. His other hand remained on the stone.

“Do you feel this while we are talking?”

“A little. Less than I would at home. The connection is kept quieter for me here, so I can attend to what is in front of me. I could ask for more.”

“Do you want more?”

“Sometimes. When I miss home. Then I usually call my parents instead.”

“I would like to hear my mother's voice,” Thalmin said. “I can only write to her, but that is a different thing. She would hear whether I was well before I had finished assuring her.”

Ermen turned towards him.

“And the Academy reads the letters both ways. Hers before I receive it; mine before it leaves. There are things I would say to her which I have no wish to explain to a clerk.”

Ermen remembered the unsent words, and the question about the horses. He let Thalmin finish.

The kitchen light was still visible behind them. Thalmin glanced back at it before returning to the pale crossings.

“Yet you could choose to hear none of this, if you wanted?”

“I could withdraw from it. So could they. People do.”

“For how long?”

“For as long as they choose.”

Thalmin was quiet. The murmur passed around them with no single presence demanding attention. Ermen remembered the city from a hilltop, the comfort of its indistinctness before he had crossed into a realm where every absence invited an instrument. Here he had made the hill and the city into light. It was an inadequate translation. He wanted to know whether Thalmin found it beautiful, and disliked how difficult it was to leave that question unasked.

Thalmin reached towards one of the pale crossings.

“Would it feel like anything?”

“I can give the light some resistance.”

Ermen brought the crossing beneath his palm. Thalmin moved his hand along it. The line broadened, dividing into many directions, each of them still joined to the place his hand occupied.

“Like a road,” he said, “until I try to find its end.”

“Some of the routes run back into one another. Being connected needn't mean travelling to a last place.”

Thalmin took his hand away. The crossing receded into the rest.

“I thought the distance would make it lonely,” he said. “When Laura showed us how much there was. I could understand a house, and another house very far away, with a way to speak between them. This is harder.”

“Is it unpleasant?”

“No. I am trying to decide where I would stand.”

Ermen looked at the hand still holding the wall.

“You already have somewhere.”

“For my feet, yes.” Thalmin glanced at him, without displeasure. “I meant among the people.”

“I don't know where you would want to.”

“That is closer to the question.”

He watched the light for a while longer. Ermen allowed the current of it to slow. The representation needed neither haste nor a conclusion, and the two of them had become very still beside the real-sized stone.

“Where are you in all this?” Thalmin asked.

Ermen's first impulse was to put his hand on the wall beside Thalmin's, as though the location of one hand could answer for the rest of him.

“My body is here. The Tether connects it to the Weave. But the place where my mind is anchored is different from the things Laura showed you.”

“How different?”

“It is an instrument built out of a universe.”

Thalmin turned fully towards him. Ermen heard how the sentence had fallen and wished, too late, for a gentler route to its end.

“One of Erekyon's works?”

“No. That artwork is its own place. This was made for computation. It is called an Oracle.”

Thalmin's ears turned back a little.

“With soul-bound armour, I know where the man is. Sorecar is there, in the workshop, whatever the Academy chooses to call him. Is your body such an artifice, with the binding reaching somewhere else?”

“The Tether does reach somewhere else. It isn't a soul-binding. My deepest thinking runs in the Oracle, and this body depends on the connection.”

The little harbour noises continued. Rope tapped wood twice before Thalmin spoke again.

“Can you show me without taking us away from here?”

“I can show you something of its structure. This part is about me, Thalmin. It is more private than the roads.”

“Then keep it here, with the harbour. I want to see.”

Ermen reduced the Current to a faint surrounding presence and gave the space beyond the wall a different shape.

At first it resembled a curve drawn through clear glass. Within it lay a deep, widening volume, crossed by fine variations in the light. There were no stars. The whole drew inwards, its intricate surfaces slipping beyond sight, until a narrow gold fold remained. Then it opened. The fold spread through the widening space and became visible in several places at once.

At the next contraction Thalmin leaned forward. His hand tightened on the wall as the last broad surface disappeared.

The gold remained.

He watched it open again before he spoke.

“Does that part survive?”

“The gold marks what is carried through. It helps show the continuity. The actual structure—”

“Your mind is there. What happens to you when it closes?”

“I continue.” Ermen kept the motion slow. “It is one persistent place, Thalmin. The changes are how it works.”

“I can see you here. I am trying to understand what is happening to you there.”

“My thinking runs on the geometry. The shape of the space, the way it changes, the relations between its parts. The instrument carries the results through the contraction and into the next cycle.”

“And you.”

“And me.”

Thalmin's eyes followed the widening surface towards its apparent rim.

“Where is the end of it? I keep trying to put a sky over it, or a boundary round the realm.”

“That edge belongs to my picture. We call the place a basement universe. From within, it is effectively infinite, in space and in time.”

“The Nexus is supposed to be the realm without an end. The rest of us are given boundaries.”

“This wasn't made within the Nexus.”

“I know that. I am trying to see past the shape you have given it.”

Ermen let the outline fade while leaving the slow changes visible. Without the enclosing curve, a fine passage of light seemed to run beyond the water and through the dark beside them. Thalmin kept one hand on the wall.

“Does it go that slowly?”

“No. I have slowed the representation very much. A question can pass through several cycles before you finish a word.”

“It has been doing that while we speak?”

“It is active. The Oracle supplies the calculations this body needs, even to move my hand.”

Ermen laid his hand on the stone. Thalmin looked at it.

“When I chose to come here, I needed a body that could live here. This one was built with its Oracle connection from the beginning. I still had to learn how to use it.”

“Like Sorecar learning his new hand.”

“That part, yes.”

Thalmin's thumb moved once against the wall.

“How much can happen before it closes?”

“There is no finite limit to the depth of calculation it can reach. Time turns through controlled loops inside it. We don't have to wait out here for all the work that happens there.”

“Have you been waiting for me to finish my sentences?”

Ermen stared at him for a moment. “No. I don't sit through the work as though it were a succession of days. A calculation isn't necessarily something I experience happening.”

“But you could have lived through it.”

“I could choose more lived time. I haven't. I am nineteen, as I told you.”

Thalmin drew one thumb along the edge of the wall. “I was beginning to wonder how long you had been standing here.”

“Since you walked here with me.”

Ermen wanted to say something about the leaf. He could not find a way to bring it into this part of the evening.

“There are no stars in it,” Thalmin said.

“The computing medium is the space itself. It doesn't need stars or a landscape.”

“Or people?”

“My mind is anchored there. There isn't a country living through the turns to produce answers for me. The animals in Erekyon's artwork belong to that place and its history.”

Thalmin took his hand from the wall, then set it back.

“What had you done to earn it?”

“The Oracle?”

“The place where your mind is. Was it given to you because you agreed to come here?”

“The body needed it. The right to ask didn't depend on taking the mission. Any Thread could ask to integrate with an Oracle, or ask for its calculations without putting their mind there. There is work to make the connection safe. There is no service to repay.”

“And if you had stayed as you were?”

“They would still have had me at the breakfast table.” Ermen looked towards the kitchen light. “My mother would have been relieved to have fewer new things to worry about.”

Thalmin let out a breath which might have become a laugh.

“I keep forgetting that your mother and your father are the same person. I know what Erekyon told us. Then you speak of her worrying, and I imagine your father telling her there is no need.”

“He would. She would remind him what he had been worrying about at breakfast.”

“But he would already know.”

“Of course.”

Thalmin turned from the light. “Could you tell one of them something and keep it from the other?”

“No. I could choose which face I wanted to tell.”

“Did that make a difference?”

“When I broke my wrist, I wanted my father. My mother had told me the branch wouldn't hold. He brought me a book, and let me complain about the cast before asking why I had climbed out that far.”

“He knew why.”

“He knew what I had done. He wanted to hear what I thought I had been doing.”

Ermen could remember the book resting awkwardly against the plaster, his father's hand keeping the pages open. At eleven he had resented needing help almost as much as he had wanted someone to provide it.

“And did you tell him?” Thalmin asked.

“Eventually. It was a long six weeks.”

Thalmin rubbed his palm over the stone. “I should have missed being able to appeal to the other one.”

“I tried that too. It worked better over bedtime than the cast.”

Thalmin's mouth moved, almost a smile. He looked back towards the kitchen light and was still looking when the gold opened again beyond the wall.

Ermen had wanted to be better understood. For a little while they had been speaking of a room in which he knew where to sit.

“You don't have to want this,” he said. “There are people at home who prefer an ordinary embodied life. It isn't something you have to finish growing into.”

“I wasn't asking for one, Ermen.”

“I didn't think you were.”

Thalmin looked at him. Ermen could hear how little that answer helped.

“I was trying to explain why someone would choose differently.”

“I am still trying to understand what you chose.”

Ermen nodded. A mooring rope tapped against wood behind them.

“Was this where you did the Library work?” Thalmin asked.

“It was. I sent the reconstruction problem through the Tether.”

“Was all that going on while we stood in the room?”

“Several cycles. I was with you while it worked.”

“The books were gone. The shelves were half gone. I could tell where the fires had begun, but there was nothing there I could have read.”

“The burning left traces.”

“Enough to put the words back?”

“Yes. In the ash, the deposits, the damaged materials. The wards had retained changes from the fire, too. The Library had kept the remains together.”

Thalmin shook his head slowly. “I saw the ash. You needn't remind me what was in the trays. I am asking how any of it could tell you what a man had written on a page.”

“It wouldn't have told me much on its own. Taken together, those changes put limits on what could have been there before. The Oracle worked out which earlier state could have left all of them. What was left was enough to distinguish the pages and their contents.”

“Then the little you had was not little at all.”

“It was more than you could see.” Ermen hesitated. “More than the Library's instruments could distinguish, too.”

“And if it had not been enough? Would another turn have found it?”

“Another turn could examine what was there more thoroughly. It couldn't supply a trace which was absent. If two different pages still fitted everything that remained, I couldn't choose one and tell the Library it was the page they had lost.”

“You told us nothing from the closed books would be given to you.”

“It wasn't. The answer was how to restore the materials. I did not receive a reading of the books.”

“So you could put the words back without being told the words.”

“That was the work I asked it to do.”

Thalmin shifted his weight. “I thought I knew how much a burned room could keep. I knew where someone had put the fires, and I thought I had seen a good deal.”

“You had. I didn't know why the room had burned merely because I could restore it.”

“But you could have found much more than I could, if you had asked a different question.”

“Depending on what remained, yes.”

Thalmin looked down at the stone beneath his hand. There was no mark where his palm had rested. He lifted it, examined the surface, and set it down again.

Was he wondering what his hand might leave behind? Ermen remembered the wet fingers held towards the harbour lamp.

“What about the way you said time turns?” Thalmin asked. “Could you send a question back and look before something was lost?”

“Whatever comes out must agree with what went in and what happened here. The instrument cannot change yesterday, or open a window onto tomorrow. Its loops have to belong to the same history as everything outside them.”

“I don't understand how it can turn at all, then.”

“The ordinary routes avoid those turns. Inside the Oracle—”

“Leave the roads for a moment.” Thalmin faced him. “If I know how a man gives ground, I can choose where to press him. He need never have told me what he intends.”

Ermen waited.

“Could you do that work on me? Take what you know and make an account of what I would do?”

Ermen felt the question first as an injury. They had come here together. Thalmin had sat beside him, put his hand into the water, thanked him for the drawing. He knew these things were no answer to the question, and resented needing to know it.

“Do you think that is what I've been doing?”

“I asked whether you could.”

“I haven't.”

“I heard you.”

The gold widened between them and the dark. Ermen took his hand from the wall. He could still feel where Thalmin's forearm had rested against his wrist.

“I could make models from what I knew. They could be useful and they could be wrong. More observations would change what could be attempted. I cannot tell you that the capacity does not exist.”

Thalmin watched him.

“I haven't built that kind of model of you,” Ermen said.

“I wanted to know what I was standing beside.”

Ermen looked at the turning light. “Is there something else you want explained?”

Thalmin did not answer at once. Ermen waited, with his hands at his sides, until he was no longer certain whether he wanted a question or an end to them.

---

Thalmin could feel the stone beneath each finger. He was pressing hard enough to have warmed it.

He eased his hand open. The muscles did not immediately obey. For a moment they held the shape of gripping while his claws lifted clear, as though the wall had been keeping some part of him upright which his legs had failed to notice.

The sea went on moving below them. He had put his hand into that water and had liked it. He remembered the cold travelling above his cuff. The same young man had made the cold and was now standing beside a picture of the place that thought him.

Thalmin tried to swallow. His mouth was dry.

“Put the great thing away for a little while,” he said. “I want to look at the harbour.”

The turning light vanished. The faint crossings went with it. Darkness returned beyond the wall, deep enough that his eyes had to find the nearer water again.

Ermen remained where he was.

Thalmin breathed out through his nose. The salt smell was there, and rope, and the cooler air from the open sea. He found the lamp across the harbour. A small lamp. He had seen it before he knew what else could be shown from this wall.

“Thank you,” he said. “I needed something to stay the same.”

Ermen inclined his head. His gaze remained on the water.

His hands were at his sides. There was no visible effort in them. Thalmin could wear himself out standing here, with nothing moving against him, and Ermen would still have all that capacity available. He had known enough to fear that before tonight. Knowing where to put the fear was proving a separate difficulty.

He turned away from the open water. The houses offered doors, windows and roofs; his eye knew how to inhabit them.

“In my father's yards,” he said, “you can know a horse very well and still be foolish to stand in the wrong place when it is frightened.”

Ermen looked at him without replying.

“I don't mean that you are a horse. I am trying to say something without making it sound like an accusation, and the yard is what I have.”

“Go on,” Ermen said. “I am listening.”

“I can trust your intention and still need to know what happens if something goes wrong.” Thalmin flexed his hand once, low beside his leg. “What frightens me is how little room there seems to be between what you could decide and what anyone else could do about it.”

Ermen's face changed. Thalmin had seen that attentive stillness in classrooms, when someone was offering an error with enough confidence to make correction expensive. He disliked seeing it here.

“Don't prepare the whole answer before you speak,” he said. “I won't be able to follow it.”

“I was trying to work out how much you were asking about me.”

“Some of it. Some of it is about the people who sent you. But I am asking about you first.”

Ermen looked down at the stone. Thalmin waited. It would have been easier to talk about the people who had sent him, people whose faces he did not have to watch.

“If you made a harmful choice,” he said, “what could anyone do? I am asking even if you would never choose it now.”

“I could explain the promises I made. You have heard some of them already.”

“I have made promises too. I am asking what happens when a promise fails.”

Ermen's fingers moved against the seam of his sleeve. He looked up, met Thalmin's eyes, and held them for longer than was comfortable.

“I cannot give you something tonight that you could judge for yourself. Anything I offered now, you would have to take from me.”

Thalmin had been waiting for a name, a person to whom he could put the same question, or some difficulty Ermen would have to overcome. He had been given none.

“Then I still don't know what would happen.”

“No. I haven't given you that.”

Ermen was looking at him now. Thalmin could see the effort in it. He wanted to make the next question easier to hear, and could not think how without asking a different one.

They walked back towards the steps. Thalmin chose the pace. He could still feel a slight tremor in his fingers, and tucked one hand against the warm stone when they sat. Ermen left enough room between them for another person. Thalmin noticed the space and could not decide whether he was grateful for it.

“You have told me what your people permit,” he said. “You have shown me your parents accepting limits on their work. I believe that happened. I also know my father can name judges he would trust and judges he would cross a flooded road to avoid. One proceeding does not tell me what a kingdom will do when it wants something badly enough.”

“No,” Ermen said. “It doesn't.”

Thalmin waited. Ermen looked at the water.

“I wanted you to understand why I trust them. That is different from having given you enough reason to.”

“And this thing of yours would not settle it for me.”

“It could help examine a question. It couldn't make your judgement for you.”

“It might make a very persuasive answer.”

Ermen turned towards him. “It might.”

The admission was unwelcome and useful. Thalmin had endured too many reassurances whose authors required him to be soothed on schedule. Here was a fact he could dislike without being told he had failed to understand the gift.

“Then if I write home,” he said, “and my father asks whether your people could be trusted with our roads, I cannot answer by saying that you have been kind to me.”

He would have to find words fit for the Academy's reader as well as his father.

“You could tell him that I have. It wouldn't answer the question about the roads.”

“I know.”

Thalmin had said it more sharply than he intended. He rubbed the damp cuff between finger and thumb, then let it go.

“I want to be able to tell him. That is part of the difficulty. I want to write about the bread, and the wall, and the way you keep making room for people who have done very little to deserve it. I would like those things to weigh as much as I feel they ought to.”

Ermen's gaze lowered to his hands. “You don't have to make them weigh less.”

“I may have to carry other things beside them.”

“Yes. You may.”

A boat moved against its mooring. The rope tightened and held. Thalmin watched it until his breathing had ceased to compete with the sound.

He had thought, when the light first opened, that he might be shown the distance between himself and Ermen. Distance could be measured, even when the measures were ridiculous. Instead he had been given a new reason why the familiar answers would not do. A stronghold could be inspected. A maker could show him the joint most likely to fail. He could ask a soldier who had given an order and whether the soldier would obey it again.

He knew more about where Ermen's mind lived, and about the ash in the Library. What might restrain a harmful choice was still beyond his judgement. Ermen's manner had grown careful since the question about modelling him; Thalmin had no intention of withdrawing the question to recover the warmth that had preceded it. He wanted that warmth back all the same.

He looked at the young man beside him.

“Were you afraid I would leave?”

Ermen held his gaze for a moment, then looked away.

“I was afraid you would stay because leaving felt unwise.”

“That wasn't what I asked.”

“I know.” His mouth tightened. “Yes. I was afraid you would leave. I had a much more respectable explanation ready.”

Thalmin felt the first unforced smile since the light had gone.

“You have had more practice with those.”

“I thought you might like the Current.”

“I did like it.”

Ermen looked back at him.

“That is why I asked where you were,” Thalmin said. “I wasn't searching for a hidden blade. I wanted to know where you would be, among all those people.”

“I wanted to show you.”

“You did.”

The simplicity of it left them quiet. Thalmin could hear water passing the lower stair, though he could no longer see the leaf they had watched. It would be somewhere in the harbour, caught or released by a motion which had happened before either of them entered this room tonight. He resisted asking Ermen to find it.

“I am still frightened,” he said.

Ermen nodded. He did not offer to change the view.

“And I am still glad you finished the drawing.”

“I would like you to keep it.”

“I have already put it on the sill. You would have a difficult time getting it back.”

Ermen looked towards him, and the set of his mouth eased. Thalmin was grateful for it, and annoyed by the strength of his gratitude. He had not come here to manage Ermen's fear of being feared. He wanted, nevertheless, to sit nearer than the space he had been left.

He moved his hand along the stone until it lay between them.

“Will your mother mind that you have given me a badly tied boat?”

“She may ask why I didn't move the rope.”

“Tell her I interfered.”

“She would like that.”

“Then you may tell her.”

Ermen's hand came to rest on the step nearby. The water reached the lower stair and drew back. Neither of them spoke for a while.

At last Thalmin looked back towards the houses.

“I would like to go back now. To the room, I mean. I have questions left, but I don't think I shall ask them well tonight.”

Thalmin stood, and Ermen rose beside him. The harbour faded. Salt and cool air lingered for a breath, then the common room returned around them: table, hearth, lamp, the chair Thalmin had drawn round its corner. The familiar rug lay beneath his boots. He walked back to the table and sat while Ermen went to the lamp.

Thalmin touched his cuff. It was dry. He turned it down, then turned it up again to match the other.

Ermen reached towards the wick.

“Shall I put this out?”

“Not yet. I would like tea.”

Ermen paused with his hand above the wick. “I wasn't sure you would want to stay.”

“I know. There should be enough water for two, unless you have decided to let the harbour exhaust your resources.”

The joke was a poor one. Ermen smiled at it with more kindness than it deserved and went to the pot.

Thalmin rose to bring the cups. His legs were steady now. At the sill he stopped before the finished drawing and looked at the mark he had asked Ermen to keep. By lamplight it was plainly a loose rope, badly placed and harmless. Above it the gull continued its supervision.

He brought the drawing to the table and set it where they could both see it. Then he drew his chair closer, near enough to watch the tea being poured.

Ermen warmed the cups. Thalmin laid one hand flat on the table. A slight tremor remained when he lifted it, so he left it there while the tea drew.

---

Disclosure: This chapter has been written by hand, with tools used afterward only for review, proof-reading and cleanup.

Recently after thinking about the fact Nexian nobles can be revived for a brief moment after death, a theory came to mind.

What if when a noble is revived after the first or 2nd death, they aren't actually that person but instead essentially a mental copy with all their memories, personality etc. But not the actual Nexian that died.

This idea came about after thinking about the point of no return a human can be revived without brain damage or if at all. What if something similiar applies to the mages. We know that the nexus isnt above letting certain information known. We also have a vague idea of this wirh the doppelganger that attacked Emma in the earlier chapters that was capable of replacing nobility while the real one is dead.

it also doesn't help that there's no surefire way to know if rhat person is actually them. if I keeping track of the evidence right.

So what if this is actually the truth just that no one realizes it thanks to them not being able to experience death and actually come back from it.

Heck how would most of the characters react if it turned out this was true. Especially the ones that kill so casually in duels.

of course there isn't much in the story to fully support this i think but its an interesting train of thought. especially if there's evidence I might have missed.

Since what we get from the manasucker 9000 is a dried out husk of anything manafueled, I thought about just how much of the taste/texture does mana add to the food (since it seems the rich people use very little actual spice), and if it is actually that good that normal spices aren't used as often (at least in high society).

​

Hello! Does anyone have a list or at least remember some of which chapters are the showcase chapters, where Emma uses the projector thing to show what it's like on Earth? They're definitely my favorite chapters, but I haven't kept up with the story in like a year, so I'd like to know when I can expect some of them, and what chapters to reread, like from the first projector chapter

I’m picking up the story again after a long break, and I admittedly forgot the descriptions for some of the species.

Most of the races in universe are based on animals or non-human mythical creatures.

But something that I realize that there are also mentions of giants, satyrs, and dwarves. Is it mentioned if those races have human faces?

So I was playing stellaris with 78 mods over the past month or two...

....and am about halfway to when I set the endgame date to.

(I got this idea at 2234 and went back a few saves to start implementing it)

It is currently at 2400, I set the endgame crisis to happen at 2800. But there are ways to make it happen early.

A lot has happened, and for once (infact this is the main reason why it took me a whole week off from work to get this far) I have actually taken my time to read every single (non-repeated/unique) popup and tooltip and event so that I could write them down instead of just speed clicking through it all to macro-manage more efficiently (by efficently i actually mean hitting my problems with the hammer of economics of functionally infinite scale)

And compile stuff I have.

(this where I started to copy the ones i saw from the game files and then feed them in mass through an LLM with very strict rules in order to shorten them without halycinat I n and loss of content)

- and their effects (each shortened for brevity) is (still) 102 pages long,

The technology list is 14 pages long, when including tool tips and descriptions is 98 pages long, major actions taken by the player, and other ai empires is about 13 pages long

The timeline is an image file that is fractal in detail all the way to each and every month (because I attached a time stamp to everything too...)

Now, for the content I have in the game.

All DLC except for ***Nomads*** and that one that reworks the shroud and its related ascension.

3 major mods and their acronyms.

If anything is unfamiliar, you may look it up on the steam workshop.

GSE (gigastructural engineering & more)

SLGT (""""Senible Late Game Technologies"""")

ACOT (Acient Cashe Of Technologies)

2400 is the year I chose to stop at because it would otherwise be mathematically impossible for the nexis to do anything as i would have defeated all of the things capable of actually threatening this Civ thus alowing a vastly stronger version of it, likely with full blokkat, spectre nanite, AND Stellarite of planetary buildings, ship equipment, ground army techs, and all the miscellaneous bonuses that come with that and would be able to then also put 99.999999% of its focus on just the nexis. (Which bad for them just like any other civ that hasn'tfought a blokkat millitary invasion and the stellarborne and competent Aternites. At the same time. And won. People who know the blokkats and thos other two, will know why) which would be frankly boring to read, and a pain to cramm into the story.

The following should prove my point beyond death.

Empire type: Gestalt machine

3 Tartarus difficulty fallen(now awakened) empires mad at me for achieving alpha project at 2322, omega atenum difficulty Aternates, all of the vanilla 250x end game crises and obliterator difficulty blokkats all trying to break in.... but... I'm winning.

Why?

Because....

I have an Alderson disk (one of three, the other two are a work in progress) fully filled with employed pops

A behemoth ringworld for just a little bit of supertensiles... just a few... itty bitty spec of them...(24k supertensiles/month)

Total pop count is at roughly 2.3 million (geometric/exponential pop assembly trait go brrrrr)

2.3million techpoints/month

1 million energy/month surplus (1.7m total) from a SINGLE MACHINE WORLD

15m energy storage (full and yellowtext)

53k minerals /month surplus (this one, I don't really use much of anymore anyways and just have an Oclass star lifter suplying me now). 10 million storage

1 million alloys /month surplus (1.2m total

3.4m alloy storage (full and yellowtext)

"Rare resouces"

I haven't run low on them since 2289 lowest income is +1k/month and too many kinds to bother going through them all but the highest and most important are supertensiles, nanites, and dark matter in that order at around 24k to 20k /month with dark energy trailing along at 12k.

Footnote

I do not consider crystals motes nor gasses, even part of this category. I get 500k total of each per month as a byproduct of alloy jobs.

Millitary:

Out of principal, I have only allowed myself 5 planetcraft, twenty attackmoons, and one systemcraft

No SupermassiveQuasirCraft have been constructed even to it would be 90%off the cost and only take a 10 day trip to the EHOF Ultima and then 7 in game days of construction (that's what the 24k super tensile material is for. Printing dyson spheres around ever star in an entire star cluster within the 5-day workweek!)

Instead, I have 40 fleets of 50 battleships and 10 titans. The fleetpower rolls over with every repeatable tech I do. (Which with 2.3 million tech will always be monthly)

deep breath

exhale

So, with that out of way....

would you like to read about an agent of this civilization attending the transgracian academy?

If not, perhaps you would like me to run it back to 2300?

Also, anybody who read the entire thing, please start your comment with a cookie you deserve the treat.

Yes, ground‑based battleships were never produced and were a silly thing in reality, but hey. The rest was correctly invented.😅

Hello, hello!(^⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠_⁠^)/ Welcome to my very first fanfic!

This is a crossover between Hunter or Huntress (HoH) and Wearing Power Armour to a Magic School (WPAtaMS). I was inspired by u/Ostrich_Master's story, "Trial Run" (https://www.reddit.com/r/JCBWritingCorner/s/tyIKr4KEdF). After catching up with both stories and reading their fanfic, I thought, "Why not make one myself?" And here we are!

Disclaimer: I have taken liberties with HoH many of the lore I provided is nothing but another fan fiction, my head cannon of what would happen if Tom didn't go back to earth instead just stayed.

Special thanks to u/Tigra21 and u/jcb112 for their original stories!

A HoH × WPAtaMS fanfic "False Dragon" Chapter 1: the threshold

The portal opened like a window.

There was no flash of light, no thunderous explosion, nor any violent distortion of space. One moment, there was an empty frame; the next, a seamless passage into another world. It resembled a doorway more than anything else, its surface perfectly still, as though the space beyond had always existed on the other side.

Intricate runes lined its circumference, arranged in concentric patterns so impossibly fine that even the most accomplished enchanters and artificers would have struggled to reproduce them by hand. Each symbol was smaller than a fingernail, yet every line was precise, every curve immaculate. No hand could have carved them. No ordinary chisel could have shaped them.

And no single artisan had.

This was the work of industry.

A thousand years had passed since the first sparks of the Industrial Revolution transformed the Draconian world. What had once required generations of painstaking craftsmanship could now be accomplished by machines with a precision no mortal hand could hope to match. Magic had not been displaced by industry; rather, the two had become inseparable, each advancing the other in ways their ancestors could scarcely have imagined.

And now, that union had brought them to the threshold of another dimension.

Or so the official records claimed.

Beneath the streets of Bizmati City, far below its markets, towers, and countless inhabitants, lay a facility that officially did not exist.

It was maintained by the Inquisition.

The hidden complex had been constructed beneath the city, shielded from mundane detection and warded against magical intrusion. Its existence was known only to a select circle of officials, senior artificers, and those entrusted with the security of the Union of Kingdoms. Even among the city's ruling elite, knowledge of what lay beneath their feet was carefully restricted.

Above them lived nearly half a million dragonetes, making Bizmati City the thirtieth-largest city in the Union of Kingdoms. It was a place of commerce, learning, and industry, a city that had grown far beyond the modest keep it had once been.

And one day, Soren Bizmati would watch over the city as its city lord.

Not yet, of course. He still had much to learn and a great many expectations to fulfill. But his name carried weight, his bloodline carried obligations, and the family he represented had never been content to stand still while the world moved forward.

For generations, the Bizmati family had produced exceptional leaders and innovators, alongside their allies. The Furlongs were an immediate example. Together, they had sent their descendants beyond familiar borders, into uncharted territories and uncertain futures, all in pursuit of knowledge, opportunity, and progress.

Today, Soren would follow in their footsteps.

Only this time, the frontier was not another kingdom, another island, or even another world beneath the same sky.

It was another dimension.

At least, that was what he had been told.

“Interdimensional gate integrity remains within nominal parameters,” announced one of the artificers stationed behind the observation consoles. His voice was flat and professional, devoid of excitement. “Mana-signature analysis is complete. Readings correspond with the established reference data with one hundred percent accuracy. No discrepancies detected.”

A second artificer checked the readings before confirming them with a brief nod.

“Transition matrix stable. Environmental sampling within acceptable limits. No immediate signs of hostile magical interference.”

The reports continued in the same measured cadence, each one entered into the facility's official record. Numbers, readings, and confirmations filled the air, reducing an event that could reshape the course of Draconian history to a sequence of technical procedures.

Soren listened without interrupting.

He knew what this was supposed to be.

First contact.

The first confirmed encounter with another intelligent civilization. Though, this time, they weren't dealing with the bugs of the South or the long-extinct fish people. He couldn't even be bothered to remember the names of those vile things. They had been the source of strife for nearly two millennia, and the thought of them still left a bitter taste in his mouth.

The first, according to the official briefing.

His gaze briefly drifted toward one of the sealed observation terminals positioned away from the primary consoles. Unlike the others, it had no active display, no running diagnostics, and no artificer assigned to monitor it. Its dark screen reflected the chamber's lights, concealing whatever information lay behind its locked interface.

He knew better than to ask about it.

The terminal was connected to a restricted archive maintained exclusively by the Inquisition. During his preparations, the Inquisition had briefed him on the truth of his world's history.

Officially, the story went that, before the Contract, a dragonete from a northern kingdom had supposedly flown on the backs of dragons. He had been attacked by the forces of the Dark, causing him to crash on the very island Soren now called home.

The people of the Bizmati Keep had rescued the injured dragonete, who had been left crippled, wingless, and with his snout crushed.

But had that stopped him?

Apparently not. Whether out of boredom or a stroke of genius, he had gone on to invent the first machines that sparked the Industrial Revolution a millennium ago. Those inventions eventually led to victory against the forces of the Dark.

That was the official story.

Soren had his suspicions. After all, the Bizmati Keep maintained its own records deep within its vast library, and he had noticed inconsistencies between those records and the accepted historical accounts. He hadn't thought much of them at the time, but that changed when the Inquisition revealed the truth.

This wasn't their first contact with another dimension.

Tomas Hansen had been a human, a member of a mammalian race originating from Earth. Their technology had far surpassed that of the Draconians at the time. Yet Soren couldn't shake the feeling that even this revelation was not the full truth.

The Inquisition had kept secrets for three millennia, burying them beneath layers of restricted archives, sealed reports, and historical accounts that had been quietly altered or erased. With the unification of the kingdoms across the world, the Inquisition and other similar organizations had been forced to reveal many of their secrets.

Clearly, however, not all of them.

Three thousand years of secrets.

Three thousand years of unanswered questions.

Perhaps the institution had its reasons. Perhaps the truth was dangerous, or perhaps it was simply inconvenient to those who had spent centuries ensuring that the public never learned of it.

Whatever the explanation, one fact remained undeniable.

This was not the first time someone had crossed the Boundaries Between.

And Soren suspected that the Inquisition knew far more about the world awaiting him than it had ever admitted.

“Soren Bizmati.”

The voice came from behind him.

He turned to face the senior official, whose formal attire bore the insignia of the Inquisition. The older dragonete regarded him with the stern expression of someone who understood the weight of the moment far better than he cared to admit.

“Remember what you represent,” the official said. “You are not merely a member of the Bizmati family today. You are its appointed representative on a frontier unlike any our ancestors could have imagined.”

He paused, allowing the words to settle.

“Your forebears were explorers, leaders, and inventors. They ventured into the unknown when others were content to remain within familiar borders. They built what others believed impossible and discovered what others believed unknowable.”

His expression hardened slightly.

“Today, you carry that legacy beyond the boundaries of our own reality. Your conduct will reflect upon your family, your city, and the Draconian races as a whole. Remember that whatever awaits you on the other side, you will be among the first of our kind to encounter it.”

Soren wondered whether the official believed those words.

Or whether he had simply learned to repeat them.

The official straightened.

“Make them proud, Soren. Make the Bizmati family proud. And, above all, do not forget the responsibility entrusted to you.”

Soren bowed his head respectfully.

“Yes, sir.”

He turned back toward the portal.

So this is it.

For two years, he had prepared for this moment.

Two years of intensive study, of learning an unfamiliar language whose grammar and structure bore little resemblance to his own. Two years of cultural briefings, diplomatic exercises, historical research, and painstaking preparation for the innumerable complications that might arise when dealing with an entirely alien civilization.

He had studied their customs, or what little could be established about them. Their social structures, their likely technological capabilities, and the countless ways in which seemingly ordinary gestures might be misunderstood. He had learned what to say, what not to say, and when silence might prove more valuable than any carefully prepared speech.

And still, he knew that his preparations would never be enough.

How could they be?

A thousand questions crowded his mind.

What would the people on the other side look like? Would they possess magic? Would their civilization have developed along familiar lines, or would it be something entirely beyond his comprehension? Would they greet him as an honored guest, a curiosity, or a threat?

And what would they think of him?

He had no answers. Not yet.

That was the entire point.

Yet beneath his anticipation lay the uncomfortable knowledge that his expedition was built upon a foundation of incomplete truths.

Tomas Hansen had existed.

A human had crossed into the Draconian world long before this expedition had been approved, long before the portal's machinery had been assembled, and long before Soren had begun his studies. The Inquisition had documented his existence, preserved fragments of his history, and then buried those records beneath layers of secrecy.

Why?

That was the question Soren intended to answer.

But not today.

Today, he was an explorer. A representative of his family and his people. A participant in an undertaking that could open an entirely new chapter in Draconian history or expose a chapter that had been deliberately erased.

The questions about Tomas Hansen could wait.

The questions about the Inquisition could wait.

For now, there was another world waiting on the other side.

Soren drew a slow breath, adjusted his equipment, and checked the identification insignia fastened to his uniform. The small gesture steadied him more than he expected.

Behind him, the artificers continued their final checks. The low hum of the machinery filled the chamber, punctuated by occasional confirmations from the monitoring stations.

“Gate stability confirmed.”

“Environmental readings remain nominal.”

He took another deep breath and stepped forward.

But before he could cross the threshold, time stopped.

Everything froze.

The artificers fell silent in the middle of their work. The machinery's hum vanished. Even the light seemed suspended, leaving Soren standing alone in a world that had suddenly ceased to move.

Then, he heard a voice inside his head.

“You know, if you go in there, you'll be liquefied,” the voice remarked casually.

Soren froze.

“What?! Wh-who are you?!” he stammered, panic seizing him before he could properly collect his thoughts.

Then, a thought occurred to him.

“Ar-are you one of the gods?” he asked hesitantly.

“Not quite, my dear. Though it would hardly be entertaining if you died the moment you stepped through the door, now would it? Their mana is far too different from yours. It's inherently hostile to you. Get exposed to enough of it, and you'll start boiling before eventually turning into mush.”

Soren stared at the portal.

Then he looked at his hands.

“Then why haven't I turned into mush already?! If this mana is so hostile, why am I still alive?”

He stopped mid-sentence as something dawned on him.

“Wait. You did something, didn't you? That's why I'm still alive!”

“Oh, very good! And quick with the questions, too. You're rather like a child, you know, constantly asking one question after another. Though I suppose I can't blame you. It must be terribly confusing when an unfamiliar voice suddenly starts explaining how you're about to die.”

Soren ignored the remark.

“What was the reason for this, then? Why is this dimension hostile to you?”

“Yes, yes, it was me who kept you from turning into a rather unpleasant puddle. As for your second question, this world, this dimension, has always been something of an anathema to me and the others.”

The voice paused.

“It's quite possible that this world is inherently hostile to gods. So, as a friendly little piece of advice, I'd avoid mentioning them while you're on the other side. Best not to attract the wrong sort of attention, wouldn't you agree?”

Soren blinked.

“Anathema to the gods? What does that even mean?”

“Oh, don't start again.”

“But you just said—”

“Yes, and I was hoping you'd listen to the part about not asking me another dozen questions!”

Soren fell silent.

“Wonderful! See? We can learn to get along after all.”

He was beginning to regret ever approaching the portal.

“Very well,” Soren said, trying to regain some semblance of composure. “What am I supposed to do with this information? It's not as though I can simply stop the expedition now, is it?”

“Hehehe! Now that's what I like to hear!”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“First things first, my dear. I come bearing a gift!”

Soren's expression turned wary.

“A gift?”

“Indeed! Thanks to you opening a passage into this world, I've finally been able to glimpse some of its information and what lies ahead. And, in return, I've decided to give you something rather useful.”

“Which is?”

“What they call a mana field.”

Soren waited for an explanation.

When none came, he frowned.

“That's it? You're just going to name it and leave me to figure out what it does?”

“Oh, you really are a curious little thing, aren't you? Very well, very well. A mana field allows you to manipulate the mana in the air around you. Think of it as an extra set of limbs, only these limbs interact with mana instead of the physical world. With them, you can manipulate the mana itself and, through it, influence the world around you.”

Soren glanced at his hands, then back at the portal.

“So I can manipulate mana without relying on the usual methods?”

“Precisely! Though I'd advise you not to go flailing about with it just yet. You've only just received the thing, after all. It would be a shame if you accidentally did something terribly embarrassing.”

“Such as?”

“Oh, I don't know. Exploding? Turning yourself inside out? Perhaps making all your scales fall off. I'm sure we could think of something amusing.”

“That's not funny!”

“Well, I thought it was.”

Soren took a slow breath, forcing himself to remain calm.

He had studied magic for years, yet this being spoke of manipulating mana as though it were as simple as moving a hand. If its explanation was accurate, then the gift it had given him could prove invaluable in a world where the very air threatened his life.

There was, however, one rather glaring problem.

“You said this mana is hostile to me. Does the mana field protect me from it?”

“Ah, now that's a sensible question! The field will help you interact with the mana around you, but don't assume that means you already know how to use it properly. You'll have to learn.”

Soren's face fell.

“You're telling me I have to learn how to use an unfamiliar ability to survive in a dimension that could liquefy me?”

“More or less, yes.”

“And you think that's a good idea?”

“Oh, absolutely! Well, not the liquefying part. That would be rather unfortunate. But the learning part? Certainly!”

Soren stared into the void.

He had a feeling this was going to be a very long expedition.

“There's also one other thing,” the voice added.

Soren slowly turned his attention back to it.

“What now?”

“I'll be accompanying you.”

There was a pause.

“...You'll what?”

“Accompany you! Travel with you! Tag along! I'm sure there are plenty of other ways to phrase it, but I believe you understand the general idea.”

Soren stared at the portal for several seconds.

“You're accompanying me?”

“Yes, yes. There's much to learn about this world, and much of it is hidden from a being like me. Having you there will be rather convenient.”

“Convenient for you, you mean.”

“Oh, don't be like that! I'm giving you a gift, keeping you from being liquefied, and offering my company. You'd think I'd earned at least a little gratitude!”

“You threatened to let me die!”

“I said it would be entertaining if you did. There's a rather important distinction there.”

“There's no distinction at all!”

“Agree to disagree, my dear.”

Soren pressed a hand against his forehead.

He had been prepared for diplomatic difficulties. He had prepared for language barriers, cultural misunderstandings, and the possibility that the people on the other side might be hostile.

He had not prepared for this.

“Fine,” he muttered. “If you're coming with me, then I have a few conditions.”

“Oh? How exciting. Do go on.”

“First, you tell me if something is about to kill me.”

“Within reason.”

“Second, you explain how to use this mana field.”

“Eventually.”

“And third, you stop avoiding my questions!”

The voice fell silent.

For a brief moment, Soren thought he might actually have managed to get through to it.

Then it chuckled.

“Hehehe! Oh, my dear boy. You really do have a lot to learn.”

Soren's ears drooped.

“That wasn't a yes.”

“No, it wasn't.”

“Wonderful.”

“Now, now. Don't look so glum. We'll have plenty of time to work things out once we're through the portal.”

Soren looked toward the frozen artificers. Their instruments remained suspended in time, their readings unchanged. Beyond them, the gate stood open, offering a view into a world that should have been impossible.

He still had questions. Far too many of them.

What was this being? Why was this dimension hostile to gods? What exactly did it hope to find on the other side? And what did it mean when it spoke of the others?

He suspected that asking any of these questions would only earn him another infuriating answer.

Still, there was one thing he needed to know.

“Can you at least tell me your name?”

“My name?”

“Yes. Your name.”

“Hmmm. That's a tricky one.”

“How is that tricky?”

“Well, names can be rather troublesome things, can't they? Especially when you're dealing with beings from different worlds. Pronunciation, meaning, all those little details. It would be terribly inconvenient if you got it wrong.”

Soren narrowed his eyes.

“Are you telling me you don't have a name?”

“Of course I have a name! I'm not some nameless thing floating about in the void.”

“Then what is it?”

“Perhaps I'll tell you later.”

Soren looked as though he might scream.

The voice laughed again.

“Oh, don't worry! You'll have something to call me in the meantime. How about your mysterious benefactor?”

“No.”

“Your benevolent guide?”

“No.”

“Your wonderfully charming companion?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Such a difficult young man. Very well, we'll leave that for another time.”

Soren sighed.

He was beginning to understand why the being had warned him about the dangers of this world. It wasn't the mana that worried him anymore.

It was the company.

“Right,” Soren said at last. “I suppose there's no point standing here forever. If you're finished with your explanations, I'd like to get this over with.”

“Oh, I'm sure there are plenty more explanations I could give you! But very well. We wouldn't want to keep your little expedition waiting.”

Soren straightened his uniform and looked toward the portal.

The questions about Tomas Hansen could wait. The Inquisition's secrets could wait. Whatever awaited him beyond the threshold, he would face it as a representative of the Bizmati family and the Draconian races.

He drew a slow breath.

“I'm ready.”

“Are you, now?”

“Yes.”

“Absolutely certain?”

“Yes!”

“Not going to turn around and run back to your nice, comfortable little city?”

“No!”

“Wonderful! I do admire a young man with conviction.”

Soren clenched his jaw.

“Can we go now?”

“By all means!”

The voice's amusement lingered for another moment before it spoke again.

“Just one little thing before we begin.”

Soren closed his eyes.

“What?”

“Try not to die. It would be terribly inconvenient for both of us.”

Before Soren could respond, the world moved again.

The machinery's low hum returned. The artificers resumed their work, their voices filling the chamber as though no time had passed at all.

“Gate stability confirmed.”

“Environmental readings remain nominal.”

The senior official turned toward Soren.

“Lord Bizmati, the gate is ready. You have clearance to proceed.”

Soren stared at the portal for a final moment.

Inside his head, the voice sounded positively delighted.

“Well? After you, my dear!”

Soren took one last breath, stepped forward, and crossed the threshold.

---

Next: ?

There you have it, folks! My first chapter!

If you spot any discrepancies in the lore or the writing, please, please point them out. I'm still rough around the edges when it comes to writing, and I have a bad habit of just keeping adding things. XD

And for those of you who noticed, yes, some paragraphs were taken from the original story's first few chapters. Was it Chapter 2? Chapter 3? Eh, never mind. XDbAnyway, stay tuned for next week... I guess? No promises. 😭

Am I blind

Please note there are two art pieces here, you can click the arrow to the right to see the full lineup of the liner next to the military ships, it's just that it's kinda easily overlooked on reddit's image hosting UI. Anyways, let's get to the lore post!

Hello all, and welcome to the largest ship I’ve commissioned yet. (

She’s a real chonky one, and indeed, larger than most classes of military vessels out there.

Which is to be expected, of course, given the vastly divergent design philosophies at play here between civilian and military domains.

A lot of consideration is given to quality of life measures that are typically absent from military vessels, and indeed, vessels just centuries prior to it.

In a similar vein to how cruise ships of the 21st century sport absolutely ridiculous amenities such as rock climbing walls, indoor waterparks, roller coasters, and even full-on botanical gardens, the interstellar liners of the 31st century likewise eclipse their forebears in just how extravagant their amenities can be. From entire sections of the habitation rings being dedicated to micro-climate conservatories and Olympic-sized swimming pools, to the size and sheer living space afforded to each passenger in their cabins and staterooms, the liners of the 31st century are a far cry from those first few tentative flights made by Jackie Setanta to Alpha Centauri. Indeed, her entire ship could comfortably fit inside one of those aforementioned indoor water parks. XD

So in the same way we like to joke that modern cruise ships are floating hotels compared to the ocean liners of old, so too have the 31st-century liners become something of a literal mobile space station compared to their sparse and spartan predecessors of yesteryear XD. Though, technically speaking, they aren’t anywhere near as superfluous as 21st-century cruise ships. Indeed, in spite of their lavish amenities, they actually have a lot more in common with those steamliners of old owing to the utilitarian function at their core — transporting people from point A to point B, not leisureboating for fun or recreation. It just so happens that they have a heck of a lot of amenities that make them functionally reminiscent of a cruise ship rather than an ocean liner. 

All of which is to say, her size is a reflection of what a typical citizen would expect out of an interstellar voyage, and the vastly elevated minimum basic quality of life measured afforded to every citizen courtesy of the 2307 Protocols for the Minimum Acceptable Standard of Living (2307 P-MASL). 

These measures have improved incrementally over time, as a means of ensuring an equitable distribution of cumulative production capacity and resource availability commensurate with that of the total industrial expansion curve and sustainable growth trajectory set out by policymakers and academics at the turn of each century and in review at each mid-century; both of which are reflected in the Century Development Goals (CDGs) and Mid-Century Development Amendments (MCDAs) respectively.

But yeah! What I’m trying to get at here is this: military vessels have to cram in and maximize their warfighting gear whilst balancing out all of the supporting equipment, systems, and on-board infrastructure as much as possible. All whilst trying to be as space-efficient as possible so as to limit their target profile by limiting their detectable cross-section as much as they can. And even with all that being said, the larger vessels still end up in the kilometer-range in terms of size. ;(

Civilian vessels, on the other hand, don’t have to bother themselves with such considerations. Their only real limitation is in the warp rings and associated warp bubbles they can generate, which again is only limited by their onboard power plants as well as their ability to sustain warp whilst in transit. 

Thankfully, the hardest part about warp travel is the initial upfront investment in terms of power, as the generation of a warp bubble requires an immense upfront cost in terms of energy and the amount of time that energy has to be expended to achieve a stable warp bubble. Which is to say, a warp bubble can only be generated using a ludicrous burst of energy in a very short amount of time… something tantamount to an explosion in all but name. XD But I’m jesting here; whilst the amount of energy involved is very much reminiscent of the power expended in violent runaway explosive reactions, it’s all a very controlled process, really.

The main problem, however, is that containing that much energy and releasing it in that short of a time is… tricky.

Which is why antimatter capsules are used.

I’m unsure whether or not I mentioned this already, but antimatter capsules are needed for this upfront injection of energy as it’s the most energy-dense storage medium available, while also possessing an exceptionally high power delivery capacity and predictable energy release profiles capable of being tuned for each ship.

But yeah, I’m rambling again! XD 

Let’s get back to the ship then!

So, another thing to note about warp is that collisions whilst a ship is underway in warp can be nothing short of catastrophic. We’ve discussed this before in the first ship post I did when I discussed the frontal impact shield of the cruiser and heavy cruisers.

The same thing applies here for these liners, of course, although that’s not the whole picture.

Whereas military ships must do what I call ‘bunny hopping’ — a procedure where the ships first scan the route in front of them for a trajectory where they’d be least likely to encounter space debris, before jumping, stopping short of that maximum projected route, then scanning again, before rinsing and repeating — civilian ships often don’t need to follow this procedure.

That’s because the path in front of them has been cleared of debris from one system to the next.

These are known as the interstellar transit corridors, or ITCs, and they’re something of a marvel of the modern world. However, unlike static objects, this marvel is less a feat of awe-inspiring structural or aerospace engineering, but rather a marvel of systems design and industrial engineering; a case where the emergent properties of the whole had become something far larger than the sum of its parts.

No single node along an ITC is truly remarkable. They’re the most robust, rugged, tried-and-true no-frills void station you can expect from something whose job it is to sit there in space scanning for potential hazards and deploying an on-board fleet of drones to deal with said hazards whenever detected.

Moreover, they also perform double-duty as signal-relay repeaters for the whole of humanity’s extranet network between star systems.

The thing here, however, is that while a single relay itself isn’t that impressive, it’s the fact that there are millions of them that make them truly remarkable.

Because these things form what is essentially a daisy chain that connects Earth to Alpha Centauri, and from Alpha Centauri to Luhman 16, Barnard’s Star, Tau Ceti, Epsilon Eridani, 40 Eridani, Sirius, and so on and so forth. 

The entirety of human space is essentially daisy-chained together using this web of ITC relays, and it’s because of these relays that merchant shipping, passenger transport, and all manner of modern interstellar travel is possible without fear of the dangers posed by faster-than-light space travel.

But even so, modern liners are still equipped with frontal impact shields just in case. 

But yeah! That’s the technical aspect of the ship out of the way for the most part, hmm…

Let’s talk about the ship itself then? 

Starting perhaps first with its most striking design aspect — its rings.

These are the primary habitation areas of the ship, with each ring coming in at 200 meters in width, 100 meters in ‘height’ (the ‘thickness’ of the rings when measured from its exterior to its interior-most extent), and 1200 meters in diameter. This allows for a comfortable 1g worth of gravity to be generated at around 0.86 rotations per minute, which is well within the tolerable ranges for most of the general public. Indeed, it is these remarkably slow tangential velocities that make the whole trip a rather comfortable experience, especially compared with the smaller vessels of old, and most military vessels for that matter.

This is one of the main reasons — aside from sheer usefulness of all that space — why the ship is so large. It’s designed for comfort, safety, and reliability above everything else, at the cost of what most avid astronauts and pilots would refer to as the ‘gritty realities of spaceflight’. 

Which, speaking of usable volume, we might as well discuss the passenger capacity! With well over 60 million cubic meters worth of space/volume for each ring, there’s plenty of carrying capacity to go around; this is especially true when considering that there are not one, but 10-15 decks to consider here. Following that, given how the ‘height’ of these rings is 100 meters, we’d have about 6 million square meters worth of total floor area to work with. However, as stated at the start of this whole ramble, the GUN’s not in the business of simply cramming people together like sardines back in the age of sail or even in the early days of space travel. Instead, in accordance with the P-MASLs, the smallest cabin on board the ship comes in at a comfortable 100 square meters worth of livable space. However, when accounting for other variables such as larger and more deluxe room sizes, public spaces, utility spaces, service areas, walkways, corridors, systems infrastructure, storage, amenities, private venues, etc, the actual rated passenger capacity works out to roughly 9000 passengers per ring.

This is because we’re taking into account that passenger cabins and suites take up just 30% of the available floor space, with the rest of that space going to the various utilities and public spaces I listed above. I’m also using an average of 200 square meters of room space per passenger, as 100 wouldn’t work because it’s the lowest common denominator here. 

So yeah! Each ring works out to around 9000 - 10,000 passengers per ring, and if we were to go off of the larger 10,000 passengers per ring, that’d give this ship a PAX of 50,000! This isn’t accounting for crew, of course, but I digress XD

You’ll have to forgive my back-of-the-envelope calculations here; I don’t consider myself the most math-brained out there haha ^^;

But yeah! That’s it for the raw numbers bit.

Another thing to note here is the aesthetics of the ship itself. As you can see, despite its lavish and extravagant interiors, the actual structure of the ship is pretty basic, all things considered.

It’s effectively just 5 ring habitats attached to a spoke, which serves as the ship’s structural and engineering section. That’s where the actual ship functions are located, and as you can see, a ship of this size requires a rather absurd number of radiators and the accompanying systems to run them XD 

Aside from that, we also have something cool and cultural to note here — the livery on the rings! 

One of the things I really like about this piece is the fact that the ship has a lot of color to it? Like in a lot of sci-fi I often see ships presented in a very matter-of-a-fact manner, with little to no embellishments, or just a focus on the construction or design elements of the structure itself, with the most colorful elements of them being a standard livery or some symbol painted across it. Now that's not a slight against them of course, it’s a very valid aesthetic! But I just find that there’s something so beautiful about having murals and colorful artwork adorning your ships, especially civilian ones at this scale. It turns something otherwise cold and mechanical into anything but. And the contrast between that philosophy mixed with the undeniable like... utilitarian design language in the ship itself? It’s just so compelling to me and I just can’t help but appreciate it immensely and the artist that helped bring that to life!

But yeah! Each ring here pays homage to the various spacer constituencies whose workforce and production capacity contributed to its construction!

Moreover, the murals also come from a wide pool of artists from various backgrounds — whether that be a completely independent art studio, a state design bureau, a fashion house, a gaming studio, or even a completely unaffiliated self-taught artist. These artists and agencies either submit their proposals, or are directly commissioned by various design committees who then either deliberate internally, or outsource the vote to the public. It really depends on the particularities of the specific agency which operates the liner. 

Which leads me cleanly into my next point!

Who exactly operates these liners?

That’s a big question that has resulted in a lot of back-and-forths over the years.

Long story short, the main issue at play here is that FTL travel is in itself something of an existential threat. In that the very warp drives that allow for FTL travel are the same ones used in Kinetic Kill Weapons, which are at present the GUN’s single most destructive weapon of mass destruction. 

So you can imagine the sorts of anxieties at play here when each ship is in effect a KKW lying in wait.

In summary, the only entities that operate FTL vessels outside of the military are the State’s transportation agencies and affiliated state enterprises; this includes State Owned Enterprises and the State Public Cooperatives. The latter two, however, whilst de facto 'operators' of certain merchant vessels and merchant vessel operations, are still heavily beholden to state control due to the security risks associated with the operation of an FTL-capable vessel. Thus, all 'purchases' or 'orders' of FTL capable vessels have to go through the GUN itself; it's important to note, though, that the purchasing process is more or less divided into two main contracts: the first one is the ownership of the vessel itself, which for SOEs and SPCs or even other semi-private entities means they own the vessel and everything associated with the vessel. The second, however, is the 'ownership' of the FTL drive and its associated systems. They don't necessarily 'own' the drive as it were; more so, they're 'leasing' the drive itself from a state entity with many clauses attached as to its operation, safety, and security oversight, with baked-in legal mechanisms to facilitate the aforementioned topics. 

Anyways, sorry, I got carried away again. 

So, when it comes to FTL capable civilian/merchant vessels. On the state side of things, you have two main administrations within the Department of Transportation: 

1. The Exo-Atmospheric Passenger Transit Administration

2. The Exo-Atmospheric Cargo Transit Administration. 

Or, as acronyms go, the E-APTA and the E-ECTA. Both of these administrations either directly operate their own passenger liners/cargo haulers, or operate them indirectly through State- Owned Enterprises and State Public Cooperatives such as the Space Transport Company (STC), North Star Lines (NSL), Public Interstellar Transportation Corporation (PITC), Public Interstellar Shipping Corporation (PISC), Sol-Centauri Friendship Group (S-CFG), Rockwell Interstellar Shipping Industries (RISI), Worlds’ Exchange Haulings and Logistics (WEHAUL), and the Interstellar Navigation Company (INC).

This particular ship, the Causeway, is one such vessel that’s operated directly by the Exo-Atmospheric Passenger Transit Administration, hence the prefix E-APTAS. 

Alrighty, ok, that’s a lot of yapping.

But we’re not done.

We have to talk about the serial code and hull designation numbers on the side of the ship. Because that isn’t just a random string of numbers; I kind of also designed how that would work XD

WR5L - V - 00207

W - Warp Capability

R - Rotational Gravity

X - Number of Rings

L - Liner

V - This is a FUN one. This pertains to the ship’s ‘tonnage’/size. Or more specifically, what sort of dock the ship is capable of fully docking at, and what sort of drydock is capable of servicing it. With V being the ‘grade’ given to a class of ship known as the L-MAX series, or LUNAMAX as is its full designation. 

There are only 2 grades above this, those being S-MAX and J-MAX, SATURNMAX and JOVIMAX respectively.

All of this reflects the maximum size of a ship capable of being constructed and serviced by the megafoundries of Luna, Saturn, and Jupiter, respectively.

I think that’s everything?

Yeah, I think that’s everything.

I feel winded after writing all of that haha.

I hope you enjoy the art! 

I have to once again give my thanks to the artist, Sir_Lazz, for this piece. He once again knocked it out of the park, and I am forever grateful for his ability to create such a cohesive design language for the GUN’s ships!! :D 

Artist Reference: Sir_Lazz from Bluesky, and he's also here on reddit as u/Sir_Lazz as well!

Next

Chapter 1

Solicitation

Earth - Atlantic Ocean - Special Administrative Zone under requisition by the United Nations Science Advisory - Institute of Anomalous Studies (IAS) Pilot Research Facility Codename: ATLANTIS II. Administrative Zone. Director's Office. Local Time: 1745 Hours

Six months before Second Contact.

Dr. Laura Weir

For centuries now, whether through clandestine research or more recently as a government-backed institution, we have been observing, tracking, analyzing, and studying what was undeniable proof of a world parallel to our own. One that lurks right beneath the surface, serving as a limitless source of inspiration for those gifted enough to peer through the veil.

In recent decades, those on the other side have likewise taken note of our interest, initiating tangible communications that would see this institute undertake Humanity’s first interdimensional venture.

The mission was simple: A candidate was to be sent to their world to attend what had been described to us as an Academy; 19 years of age, clad in equipment protecting against every hazard known to science. A candidate who possessed, in the words of the so-called portal people, “A heart of gold and a willingness to accept what is beyond the known, and willing to sacrifice everything should it come to it.”

Yet as Humanity’s first interdimensional pioneer stepped across the threshold, it became painfully clear to us that this world of mages and magic was actively rejecting us, our "mana-deficient" nature resulting in our candidate returning to us in a near-liquefied state, the autopsy revealing a breakdown of cellular matrices at a molecular level.

And yet, we persevered. We learned from our mistakes, and in less than twenty years developed an entirely new field of material science with the express purpose of protecting our next explorer against the lethal threat that “mana-radiation” posed - the results of which were now made manifest as the suit of modified void-rated power armor was undergoing final assembly at this very facility. We likewise kept in communication with those beyond the interdimensional veil, determined not to let the prospect of true First Contact slip from our grasp.

It would seem, however, that our efforts in doing so garnered the attention of another.

BWWWOOOOP! BWOOOOOOPP! BWOOOOOPPPP!

The sudden, unprompted blaring of alarms was itself evidence enough that something was wrong.

But it would be what followed-

“PRIORITY ALERT! UNSCHEDULED EXOREALITY ENTANGLEMENT ACTIVATION! SOURCE: PT CENTER!”

-that made my blood run cold.

__________

Earth - Atlantic Ocean - Special Administrative Zone under requisition by the United Nations Science Advisory - Institute of Anomalous Studies (IAS) Pilot Research Facility Codename: ATLANTIS II. PT Center. Local Time: 1745 Hours

Cadet Emma Booker

To say that the last six months had been a whirlwind for me would be an understatement.

When I was whisked away right out of the college parking lot by government officials, I'd assumed it to be some sort of esoteric recruitment drive for the ROTC; it had taken the Director many hours before she convinced me of the truth of the situation I found myself in.

I was presented with an offer unlike any in the breadth of human history. An opportunity not just to travel faster than light, or beyond the galactic quadrant, but to another dimension. It was, in Director Weir's own words, a world of swords and sorcery, a world of indescribable culture and history.

It was a world of fantasy made manifest.

And it was a world I had no interest in.

Despite the years of my childhood I’d spent with my parents regaling each other with stories of faraway kingdoms and lands, my moving to the city had seen me split from that idyllic youth. Sometimes, I even wondered if my memories of that small-town life were all part of the fantastical stories I’d grown up with, because imagining a world so perfect, so untouched by everything, was almost too fantastical in and of itself.

And yet while the city was an entirely different beast, it was ultimately one I had come to love. People here wouldn’t bother you, even if you were in a crowd of thousands or an apartment complex with thousands more. The faces all blended together, everyone too busy forging their own paths in life to such an extent that it made it difficult for me to form any meaningful attachments.

Despite this, I could still proudly call the concrete jungle my home an entire decade after I’d left my childhood behind. A decade that I’d spent keeping myself grounded in reality, the pain of having been ripped from a fantasy too great to re-enter. In recent years, it would instead be the JROTC to give me structure and purpose, pending an eventual entry into the military itself.

In the conversations I had had on the topic with my aunt, it was clear that she agreed with my trajectory - not surprising, given that she was a veteran of the Jovian Uprisings. Yet I would’ve never expected that the military would lead me into a fate that further entangled me with a past I so desperately wished to move beyond. Indeed, I wasn’t expecting what was supposed to be the start of my college life to be a backtrack into fantasy, as much as I tried to escape its allure.

Perhaps that’s the reason why they chose me. Perhaps that’s why, out of the countless stars and prodigies they could’ve called upon, I would be the one to don the encounter suit. Perhaps they just knew that I couldn’t refuse such an offer.

It was under those conditions that I signed with the stroke of a pen, and my preparations began in earnest.

It had been months of specialized training. Focusing on theory, protocol, but most important of all: the practical instructions necessary for what would be a life of prolonged suiting. The modified suit of power armor I was to wear during the mission - the Exo-reality Atypical Radiation Resistant Suit (E-ARRS) - had been described to me as being more akin to a spacesuit, and it was promptly drilled into me that it would be the only barrier between me and this other dimension’s unbelievably volatile environment.

How any native species, let alone civilization, had managed to survive in such a place, I did not know… What I did know, however, was that an entire year of being cooped up in PPE while attending this “Academy” would be difficult.

But that would be then, and this was now.

And I had a much more pressing issue to deal with.

"I'm telling you, Sir, Dr. Mekis must have a personal vendetta against Inferno Jumpers. I just can't see why else he'd keep rejecting the cape additions." I huffed out in faux-exasperation as I finished another lap of this afternoon's PT.

"It could be. Or, he could have a personal vendetta against people trying to play dress-up with his very expensive pet project." Captain Li, the man handling the martial side of my training, offered a cheeky grin as he matched my pace. "But I'm with you on this one, Emma. What's a suit without some flair-"

BWWWOOOOP! BWOOOOOOPP! BWOOOOOPPPP!

“PRIORITY ALERT! UNSCHEDULED EXOREALITY ENTANGLEMENT ACTIVATION! SOURCE: PT CENTER!”

We froze mid-stride as red emergency lights and blaring sirens replaced the off-white office ambience.

I'd been told enough about the world on the other side to have a solid read on what was going on.

Enough to know that an exoreality connection with this "Nexus" outside of the facility's specialized mana-resistant containment chamber was really, really bad. At minimum, the brief influx of aptly labelled "mana-radiation" would be enough to liquefy the occupants of whatever room was unfortunate enough to be on the receiving end of the portal.

Unfortunately, in this case, that was me.

Which made it all the weirder that I wasn't dead yet, as I shared a confused look with just-as-perplexed Li.

"Training hard, I see."

Confusion that, with a growing side of worry, only grew as the two of us heard a voice that simply could not be pegged to any member of the site's faculty.

"Who are you?" Li broke out of his stupor, regaining his bearings. "Show yourself!"

"I assure you, I mean no harm." The... entity? Dodged Li's demand as it continued. "Now. I understand that you mean to soon send your 'Pilot' into what is, for your people, a most lethal operating ground, yes?" It questioned pointedly.

"I will only ask this one more time." Li countered, stepping forward protectively. "Who. Are. You? Where are you?"

"The 'who' is unimportant, Captain. The same can likewise be said for the 'what.' As for the 'where?' I think you already know that."

The temperature in the room dropped noticeably at that, as Li and I processed that implication at about the same time.

"You're..." I found my own voice. "You're not from this dimension either, are you? Like the Nexians?"

"Correct, though I would rather not be associated with them."

I almost lost my footing.

A second interdimensional entity? Making contact with us? With me? Here? Now? My mind began to race in an attempt to process everything that was going on.

"Now. Cadet Emma Booker." The entity addressed me directly. "I have a proposition for you. See, I'm working on a little project of mine, and I require a 'guinea pig.'"

"I... I'm afraid I can't-"

"The Cadet is currently preoccupied with another line of work." An older voice interrupted tersely, joined by the sounds of multiple armored footfalls.

__________

Dr. Laura Weir

This was completely uncalled for.

To be unceremoniously contacted by a second, wholly unknown exo-reality entity was one thing.

To have said entity attempt to poach our Cadet, having known who she was prior, was something else entirely.

"I think you will find that my offer does not interfere with your 'mission,' Director." The voice turned its attention to me with an increasing degree of professionalism. "Nor will you find your security detail necessary."

"I may give you the latter in time, given how you're still talking constructively," I offered, despite my instinctive call for an armed escort once it was clear that the facility wasn't liquefying. "But you will need to provide evidence for the former."

"Of course, director." The entity responded with a hint of slyness in its tone. "You want to send your Cadet to another plane to open relations between your people and those different from yourselves. I, too, wish for one to send to another world and see the results that come with it. These aims could serve to mutually benefit each other, no?"

My eyes narrowed of their own accord. "Am I correct in assuming that you want Booker for your work? To go along with your plans?"

"Yes! She's perfect for my aims, much as she is for yours. Few friends, little remaining family-"

"-Hey! I'll have you know-"

"-Even if we agreed, the E-ARRS isn't even ready yet-"

"I'm afraid we will have to decline your offer," I spoke in no uncertain terms, shutting down Emma and Li's interjections simultaneously. "I understand that our customs may be foreign to you, but appearing unannounced and requesting that we hand over our operator without any prior negotiations is entirely inappropriate-"

My own objection was cut tragically short as an iridescent dot appeared directly in front of us, suspended like a mote of dust. This would prove to be fleeting, however, as it quickly expanded into what I could only describe as a window into another world.

A throng of panic quickly surged up my spine as the momentarily forgotten fear of an influx of mana-radiation returned in full force, my ears registering the gasps of shock from the growing crowd behind me, and my stoicism faltering as I locked my gaze on what should be certain death.

...Emphasis on should.

"I've taken the liberty of preventing the outflow of this 'radiation' your kind seems so allergic to." The voice contextualized, as if having read my thoughts. "What you see before you is roughly where your Cadet will find herself, should you accept my offer." In front of us lay a forest as picturesque as any Reconstituted Protected Ecosystem on Earth, dense foliage spreading uninterrupted across the horizon.

And on that horizon...

Emma was the first to point it out.

"Are those... floating islands?"

A/N: Well, here we are again! ADHD hit me like a truck, but we're finally back! Since it'd been so long, and enough has happened in canon, I've made the choice to go back and rewrite the first few chapters using the content we have now - namely, the "New" Earth POVs!

The next six chapters are already written, so I've built up a decent backlog to fall back on if things go south again. Chapters will be coming out once per week! :D

Wearing Spacetime to a Magic School

Chapter 22: The Wealth of Worlds

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[First] | [Previous] | [Next]

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Ilunor had found the receipt before Ermen returned from the lower reading room. He was smoothing its old folds with the back of a claw, preserving the green stamp from an improvement which the rest of the paper plainly required.

“I would like to resume our disagreement,” he said. “You have been carrying a book through the Academy all afternoon. I take it the book has now received sufficient exercise.”

Ermen put it on the shelf.

“Thacea has prevented it from taking up residence in the reading room.”

“Then she has improved the condition of two libraries. Sit down, if you please.”

The coin lay beside Ermen's cup. Ilunor set the Cupped Hand receipt next to it, then drew the clear focus from its cloth. He arranged the three objects with a confidence Ermen recognised from his choice of a chair at the parley.

Thacea put her notebook away before joining them. Thalmin, whose occupation had involved persuading a stiff window latch to turn, abandoned it to the evening air.

“Corvan's work is here,” Ilunor said, touching the focus. “His account of the transaction is here. And this is a small part of the value you declined to spend afterwards. Now, you made bread in your hands. I ate it. I have no intention of allowing the excellence of the bread to obscure the question.”

“I remember the question.”

“You remembered it yesterday as well. Tonight I should like an answer.”

Ermen drew the coin towards him. Its rim crossed a dark place in the wood and caught briefly against the grain.

“I can show you what is ordinary about the material,” he said. “That might be a better place to begin than the price.”

“A modest prospect. I accept.”

Thacea asked how much space he needed.

“Only this part of the table.” He set his palm beside the cup, opening the familiar showing. “We can keep the comparisons here.”

“Then I should like to watch.” She moved her cup to make room.

Thalmin sat beside her. “So would I. And if you intend to make more bread, tell us before we eat too much supper.”

Ermen smiled. He left the room about them, its lamps, its imperfect window, and the little sounds from the corridor beyond their closed door. Above a clear square of wood he formed a hand-sized cube. Its faces were dull grey, with small divisions along one edge.

“Iron?” Ilunor asked.

“Pure iron, in this case.”

“A useful beginning. Now copper, if you please. Beside it, at the same size.”

A second cube took its place beside the first, red enough to give the nearest edge of the iron a borrowed warmth. Ilunor leaned around them to compare the rear faces.

“And gold.”

Ermen supplied it. The unmarked gold held the lamplight softly along its upper edge. Ilunor's claw stopped short of touching it.

“You have made that remarkably difficult to disregard.”

“You asked for it.”

“I did. Can this showing give us the weight as well?”

Ermen brought the three closer. “It can give your hands the appropriate resistance. Keep them over this part of the table.”

Thalmin put his hand beneath the iron and raised it. His wrist adjusted. He tried the copper next, then the gold, and used his other hand to steady the last.

“I would prefer the first two in my pack,” he said. “Though I suppose Ilunor would find the strength for the third.”

“I should find someone with a pack. Set it down here.”

Ilunor lifted the gold a little, enough to feel its insistence, and lowered it with unusual gentleness for an object which could not mark the table.

“You would make all three with the same indifference?”

“If those were the materials I wanted. I would care which job they had to do.”

“So would I. That much gold would make a handsome fitting and a poor edge. Can you show us what happens when it is pressed?”

The cubes became three thick strips. Ermen let Ilunor press a claw into the gold; the soft metal retained its mark. The copper resisted longer. Thalmin tried the iron with his thumb and found a reason to use less pressure.

“I know enough smiths to recognise when I ought to stop doing their work,” he said. “What would you use the gold for at home?”

“Contacts in small instruments, sometimes a surface which must remain uncorroded. Decoration, if someone likes it. Copper is often more useful for carrying heat. A pan made entirely of gold would be a troublesome way of admiring the colour.”

“I did not ask you to cook in it,” Ilunor said. “I asked whether you could afford it. Show us several pieces of each.”

Six strips lay in each of three little stacks. Their ends were even. Ilunor lifted the top gold strip and looked beneath it, then laid it down slightly crooked.

“And having obtained these, the person who wanted the pan could still obtain the copper?”

“Yes. They haven't spent their meals or their next set of clothes on the gold. These are ordinary quantities of ordinary material at home.”

Ermen watched the lamplight pass along the crooked strip. For him the objects had acquired interest when Ilunor disturbed their arrangement. Ilunor looked between the stacks and the coin beside Ermen's cup.

Thacea rested her notebook against her knee.

“When you say ordinary, do you mean available to any resident? I know that you can make bread. I want to distinguish what a household can obtain from what you happen to be able to do for us.”

“Any resident can have the materials and ordinary things they need. They needn't know me, or work on a celebrated project, or persuade someone that they have been sufficiently useful. Someone who wants a quiet life has a home and meals just as someone building a world does.”

“And tomorrow?” Ilunor asked. “Suppose these pieces have all been used.”

“Then tomorrow they can obtain more. There are provisions and tools for this throughout the places where people live. A broken hinge doesn't oblige you to find someone willing to buy an hour of your time.”

Thacea looked again at the stacks. “I think I would like to take quite a long time deciding what to do with my first day there.”

“You could,” Ermen said. The prospect pleased him. “And change your mind after breakfast.”

Ilunor drew the gold into line with the other strips.

“That disposes of one reason for accepting an objectionable employer. It leaves me wondering why he should find anyone agreeable either. But first, can we have timber? Your house had enough of it to suggest a preference.”

Ermen let the metals go. The little square held a cube of close-grained wood, with a knot running crookedly through one side. Thalmin pressed one finger against the knot and ran it along the grain.

“You have chosen bad wood.”

“I chose a piece I remembered. There was a shelf at home which I helped repair.”

“And did that go well?”

“My father said it was useful to discover which end of a shelf was doing the work.”

“That sounds like a patient man's description of a collapse.”

“There were only four books on it.”

Ilunor studied the cube while Thalmin withdrew his hand. “Could you make it clear wood? Without this defect?”

The knot vanished. The grain ran straight.

Ilunor regarded the straightened grain. “There. You have spared a craftsman the trouble of choosing his timber. You might spare him the whole commission while you are about it. Why should anyone remain a maker?”

Thalmin looked at the focus. “Corvan enjoys his work. I should think he would keep some part of it if he could afford to stop.”

“Some part. At hours of his choosing, for customers he finds agreeable. His shelves might become markedly less convenient for the rest of us.”

“They might,” Ermen said. “Someone else could supply a cup, if its pattern was open. Corvan's attention would still require Corvan.”

Ilunor held up the receipt by its unstamped edge.

“Then help me distinguish these. You could make another clear stone. Suppose you made one which fitted the hand precisely and performed every function this one performs. I have paid Corvan for the result, and you have supplied the result without Corvan. Where does his claim survive?”

“In what he did, and what you agreed to buy from him. If you wanted a clear stone, another might serve. If you commissioned his work, replacing the stone does not fulfil your promise to him.”

“The same material, the same use, and an obligation attached to an absence.”

“To an act,” Thacea said. “We watched him perform it.”

Ermen looked at the green stamp. “Think of the receipt as another object you could copy. The paper might be the same. The ink could be the same. It would still not be Corvan issuing a second receipt.”

“I understand forgery,” Ilunor said with some offence. “I am asking why the original exchange occurs.”

Ermen's attempted explanation had returned them to a distinction Ilunor already knew. He rubbed his thumb once over the coin's edge.

“Because I might want to work with him. Because he might want to make something for me. Because his judgment is useful, or I like what he makes and want this work to be his.”

“Then you have rich patrons everywhere.”

“We have people who want things from one another.”

“With the means of walking away fed and housed. That is a very particular class of person.”

Thacea turned her cup by its handle. “You could have the table without employing the carpenter. But if you wanted to design it together, you would still have to interest him in the work.”

“Yes. And agree where to put it. More timber doesn't give me the place beneath someone else's window, or a reason to cut down a living tree.”

Ilunor looked at the straight grain. “I understand the tree. I still think you would have a great many agreeable tables and rather fewer obliging carpenters.”

“Some would be delighted to spend all day making them. Others would rather sit at one and do something else. Both can eat.”

Thalmin reached for his cup, found it empty, and set it down again. Ermen began to rise. Thalmin laid a hand briefly on his sleeve.

“Finish your answer. I can reach the pot.”

Ilunor waited while the tea was poured. He kept the receipt away from the stream, then laid it flat once more.

“The men and women whose plans your parent's refusal interrupted,” he said. “They still had all this. Nobody could make them hungry by withholding a place in the next exhibition.”

“They still had it. None of that depended on pleasing another artist.”

“Then your refusal stands upon a floor which ours does not.”

Ermen let the showing close. The timber disappeared. There was a pale ring beneath Thacea's cup and a scratch where a pen had gone through someone's paper.

“Yes,” Ermen said. “Food and a home remain available. Refusing the work doesn't take them away.”

Ilunor's crest lowered a little. He examined the straightened receipt.

“And you have never expected them to be taken away from you.”

“No, I haven't.”

For a moment Ilunor said nothing. Ermen had no right to fill the silence with the contract he knew about. He kept his hand beside his cup.

“There are households,” Ilunor said at last, “in which a patron's displeasure reaches the kitchen before the person who provoked it returns home. A child need not understand the dispute to discover that the accounts have changed. You speak of refusing a task. Others must consider everyone whose place has been secured through theirs.”

“I haven't had to make that calculation,” Ermen said. “I don't suppose I could learn it from the price of a focus.”

Thalmin sat back. His attention remained on Ilunor, though he gave him the relief of attending to the receipt as well.

“A household can protect people through a lean winter,” he said. “I have seen that done. I have also seen men kept through the winter so they could be called upon in the spring. Some of them wanted the bargain. Some had no other roof.”

“And removing the household does not supply one,” Ilunor said.

“I know it does not. I am saying why I would ask about the spring.”

“I would want that protection,” Thacea said. “If someone declined to receive me, I would like the refusal to end at their door.”

Ermen looked up, grateful for the plainness of it. “That is what it is for.”

“I should like the protection too,” Ilunor said. “I should also like to know how you obtain the reception. Your parent was at our table because you asked. You seemed to find a distinguished artist rather more readily than I find a competent tailor.”

“Erekyon answered for its own work. You saw the objections. Nobody was obliged to agree, and the stop clause would have protected an unknown artist in exactly the same way.”

“I am asking about your invitation.”

Ermen felt the correction arrive and disliked it. “They agreed because they were the artist. They told you that themselves.”

Thacea leaned forward. “You knew which artist to invite, Ermen. You knew enough about them to think the questions would be welcome. I could read a public statement. I would not know whether to invite its author into my sitting room.”

Ermen remembered the interval before the answer, his wish that his friends would like someone he loved, his fear that the meeting would make the person into evidence. He had not been confident. He almost said so, then looked at Thacea and set down his cup.

“I didn't have to find someone to ask,” he said. “I already knew the artist. And I could begin with your question, because I didn't have to explain who I was.”

Ilunor's crest moved. “That is a useful inheritance.”

“It isn't an inheritance of their work.”

“I did not say it was.”

Ermen looked towards the shelf. The book he had carried all afternoon stood a little forward of the others. He had put it there himself, and for several seconds he found its position disproportionately irritating.

Thalmin reached across for the pot. “I would not want my father to receive me as a stranger merely to make the arrangement fair. I do know that he hears things from me he would make another man explain.”

“Neither would I,” Ermen said.

Ilunor drew one claw along the edge of the receipt. “And elsewhere? When someone hears whose child you are?”

“Someone who admires the art may want to hear me before they know anything else about me. Someone who thinks Erekyon vain may have rather different expectations. And keeping the house and our family life for so long is eccentric even among Antiquarians. People can be curious about that too.”

“I would have asked about the house,” Thalmin said. “I liked their kitchen.”

Ermen smiled, then found Ilunor still waiting.

“I can't tell you how the same words would have been received from a stranger,” he said.

“Neither can I. I can tell you that I should rather arrive knowing someone who wished to receive me. A secure home would be an excellent addition. I am willing to possess both.”

Ermen drew his hand away from the square where the cube had been.

“I thought you were calling my parents' answer dishonest,” he said.

“I was asking what made your question easy to bring to them.”

“It did not feel easy.”

“Then fortunate, if you prefer. I do not require you to have enjoyed it.”

Outside, someone crossed the corridor at a run and was told to walk by a voice which had plainly issued the instruction before. Thalmin set the pot down. They listened to the receding, slower steps.

“I can accept fortunate,” Ermen said.

Ilunor followed the receipt's old folds. Thacea took the folded paper from him and wrapped it with the focus, tucking the loose corner beneath the stone.

“Then we have made progress,” Ilunor said. “I should like you to remember the acquaintance as well as the bread next time you tell me how one asks for a thing.”

Ermen picked up the coin.

“I will remember this invitation,” he said.

Thacea rose. “I shall remember the bread too. And I would prefer to reach supper before we have to argue for it.”

“You may ask me about the prices when next we visit Elaseer,” Ilunor told Ermen, climbing down. “For the moment, my acquaintance remains obtainable without a family introduction.”

“I have had to live with you.”

“A considerable advantage. I am glad you begin to appreciate it.”

Ermen laughed despite himself and put the coin in his pocket.

Thalmin waited while he moved the book back into line with the others. At the door, he asked which four books had fallen from the shelf at home.

“I was hoping you had forgotten that part.”

“I wanted to know how you repaired it. My father would have made me put the books back afterwards.”

“Mine did. He let me choose whether to stand beneath it.”

Thalmin smiled. Ermen found the prospect of telling him about the repair unexpectedly welcome. He took the place beside him in the corridor.

---

The following morning, Professor Articord gave commerce a place in the curriculum.

Her notice had arrived during supper. At the request of the Cupped Hand and a broker representing several Elaseer suppliers, she would admit a delegation during the morning interval. Candidates might attend in the small instruction room beside her usual hall. The subject was private commissions and the extension of credit. Those attending were to be prepared to explain whose name and purse answered an order placed by a member of their household.

Ilunor read that last clause twice.

“She could spoil a wedding invitation with an assignment.”

By breakfast, enough students had chosen practical examples to make the small room inconvenient. Ermen arrived to find Qiv examining a printed list at the front table, while Rostario attempted to discover whether the spare seats in the adjoining room were spare by intention. Etholin had brought his whole group. Kamil stood near a stack of sample papers; Teleos was speaking to a high-elf woman with a flat leather document case; Ilphius had selected a chair which put the case, the papers and Teleos equally at a distance.

Corvan stood beside the window with his hands clasped behind him. He recognised Ermen and smiled.

“Patron Ermen. Has the proctor found a further purpose for the green stamp?”

“It has so far protected the focus from additional employment.”

“Then Mirel will wish to hear that it has justified itself. She has remained at the shop to receive a delivery which was promised yesterday. I offered to exchange duties. She said she would rather question the delivery man.”

“I hope he has brought a good explanation.”

“I hope he has brought the cord.”

Ermen glanced at the papers on the front table. “Did you ask for all this?”

“For an introduction, initially. You will need other things besides a focus, and I should like the Cupped Hand to sell you some of them. For work outside my stock, I deal with the broker who has come with me.”

“And she arranged the meeting?”

“She requested an audience. Professor Articord gave us a room and an assignment.” Corvan smiled towards the doorway. “We shall endeavour to earn the room.”

Corvan's pleasure in seeing them extended to the others. He asked Thalmin whether the Academy supplied enough space for his lecture notes, and received an account of a sloping desk which allowed Corvan to defend the paper while deploring its surroundings. When Thacea joined them, he drew a sample from the table and asked her to feel its weight.

It was a folded sheet with a narrow hinge worked into the centre. She opened it, closed it, and put it beneath the window light.

“A binder we deal with makes these for loose comparisons,” Corvan said. “Ordinary bindings oblige one to turn backwards and forwards. The hinge lets these lie flat.”

Thacea opened her notebook to an unused page. “May I put it beside this? Yesterday's lesson required three views of one arrangement. I want to keep them together without burying the qualifications on another page.”

“That is precisely the difficulty this is intended for.”

Thacea laid it open. Ermen recognised at once why she liked it. A line drawn across the centre would remain a line, instead of descending into a book's gutter and emerging with its relation to the other half uncertain.

“Would he work out the arrangement with me?” she asked. “I could choose a larger sheet, but I would probably put everything in the same places and discover a new reason to run out of room.”

Corvan drew the sample towards the edge of her notebook. “He would ask you to show him how you use it. Which part you keep in view, where you begin making corrections, whether your hand covers something you need to read. He generally starts with work the customer has already made inconvenient.”

“Then I could bring my lesson diagrams.” She put a talon-tip on the blank page, marking a place beyond the fold. “I want to keep a view here and still be able to compare it with the next example. Would he move the hinge, or give it another leaf?”

“I would have to ask him. Moving it might make the page more awkward to support. I sell what he makes; I should be wary of promising his answer.”

Thacea looked up at that. “I should like to ask him myself.”

“The binder takes consultations for fitted work. Our colleague can explain how those are arranged.”

She left the notebook open a little longer, moving the sample between two possible positions before she closed it. She had begun making places with her hands for pages which did not yet exist.

The high-elf woman beside Teleos glanced towards them. She wore a small stamped badge at the breast, polished less thoroughly where its fastening met the cloth. Corvan introduced her as a commercial guild broker acting for the suppliers on the printed list. She had a desk in Elaseer, an address at which it could be found, and a leather case full enough to suggest that the participating houses had not agreed to brevity.

“Master Corvan spoke favourably of your party, Patron Ermen,” she said. “A good first purchase deserves a second. And a gentleman recognised by the Library is an acquaintance our houses have reason to cultivate. I thought it worth asking the Professor to receive us.”

“You heard about the Library from Corvan?”

“Your title was given in his shop. He would hardly introduce you under a lesser one.”

Corvan inclined his head. Ermen remembered Mirel rescuing the pencil from behind her ear. The small difficulty of giving her a name she could safely use had travelled as far as a broker's case.

Articord entered while Rostario was carrying a chair through the door. She waited for him to negotiate the narrowest point, then took the space behind the front table.

“Please leave a clear passage to the door,” she said. “Lord Ratom, the list is a working copy. You may keep it.”

Qiv thanked her and folded it once.

“The Academy has approved the required purchases,” Articord said. “Private orders remain the concern of those who place them and the households whose credit they employ. You will find respectable suppliers less accommodating of confusion on that point than your families may have been.”

Rostario finished setting down his chair. Articord waited for him to sit.

“Our guests have asked to make their services known. I have permitted it because a candidate ought to understand how a commission binds his name. You will hear what the houses offer, and what standing they require. We have until the end of the interval.”

The broker opened her case.

“Thank you, Professor. I have brought our usual terms and several examples. The houses named on the list have authorised me to speak for these arrangements.”

Ilunor took the chair nearest the table. Ermen sat beside him. Thacea kept the folded sample on her lap; Thalmin found space at the end of their row, where his knees would not impede anybody else's education.

The broker began with an ordinary failure. A student ordered a case, specified its outer dimensions, and discovered on delivery that the intended instrument would not fit inside it. The maker had followed the measurements. The student had paid a deposit. Neither was disposed to pay for the misunderstanding.

“We keep the measurements and the instruction,” she said. “If the fault is the maker's, the house must put it right or answer to us for the cost. If the case has been made as ordered, the customer owes the balance. His dissatisfaction does not discharge it.”

Thalmin raised a hand. “Does the maker agree beforehand to accept your judgment?”

“The houses accept our judgment upon orders placed through the desk. Their credit with us depends upon it. A matter outside the commission may require another authority; a failure to follow the agreed measurements seldom does.”

Kamil had been turning a little stitched case inside out. He stopped.

“If the disagreement is about whether a focus works, what can your desk establish? Keeping the measurements would not settle that.”

“We judge it by the test the maker undertook to satisfy. If a customer expects more, I would have it stated before his deposit leaves the desk. There is very little honour recovered by quarrelling over an expectation no one troubled to write down.”

Kamil looked at Corvan. “Would you have written that the ridge fitted my hand?”

“I should have written that you were to hold it long enough to become tired of pretending it did,” Corvan said. “A useful correction to my own method.”

Etholin smiled down at the table.

The broker passed examples along the row. Ermen read one specifying a deposit, a delivery interval, the circumstances under which it could be returned, and the separate fee for the desk. Beneath these stood the name of the person who would receive a complaint. The sheet would have saved a stranger several mistakes before anybody had begun the work.

“A customer expecting repeated dealings may also be presented to these houses under sponsorship,” the broker continued. “Master Corvan has offered to make the first introduction in Patron Ermen's case. His account would then be kept at our desk.”

Qiv opened his list again.

“What standing follows the introduction?”

“Reception by the houses on the list, Lord Ratom. Appointments for private work, and orders against a deposit where they would otherwise require payment in full. The introduction gives them a name they can trust behind the student's own.”

“And the Library is not thereby a guarantor?”

“We have received no undertaking from the Library. Master Corvan offers his name, and our desk its credit. Those are the assurances upon which the houses would act.”

Qiv's eyes came briefly to Ermen. “Then the value lies in a second body being prepared to answer for the connection.”

“Precisely. A commission may take longer than a student's patience. His household may be a realm away. The houses know where to find us, and they know we shall still be there when an enthusiastic young customer has returned to his lessons.”

Ilunor inclined his head. “That is a service a stranger may find more valuable after his first unsuccessful bargain. Unfortunately, by then he has already made it.”

“Which is why Master Corvan did well to send you to us now.”

Ermen looked towards Thacea's sample. She had opened it across both knees and was trying the movement she had described to Corvan.

“Does that binder take ordinary orders?” he asked.

“Finished books at the public counter,” Corvan said. “Consultations and fitted work through introductions. He has only so much time for measuring and discussing work. There are other binders who will take a student's direct commission, and some do good work. This is how he prefers to arrange his.”

“Would the sponsorship cover all four of us?”

The broker glanced at her page. “The proposal before us names you. Your peers could be included in commissions you undertook to account for, or seek their own introductions.”

“If I sought my own introduction, would I discuss my own terms with the desk?” Thacea asked.

“Certainly, Your Highness. Which houses, what work, and the extent of the credit required. A single consultation may be a modest matter. I should be glad to discuss it.”

“Then I should like the requirements for making that request.”

The broker found a sheet for her. Thacea laid it beneath the sample and read its first lines.

Ermen put down the example terms.

“What would you expect from me beyond paying for the work?”

“Your word upon your instructions and account. If a dispute requires your presence, you attend to answer it. And you maintain the acquaintance.” The broker drew out a second sheet. “The houses receive those they sponsor at several gatherings, with the Academy's leave. We enter your name among those presented through our desk. They may introduce their associates to you in turn.”

“They would expect me to receive them?”

“With the courtesy due to the introduction. A house does not lend its name simply to be forgotten when the order is delivered.”

Corvan added, “There are people who would enjoy meeting a Library patron. Some would chiefly enjoy being seen doing it. I should expect both sorts at the same dinner.”

Teleos leaned towards Etholin, near enough that Ermen heard him.

“They will be seen with him in return. That is useful protection from men who prefer to find a student alone.”

“And we shall congratulate ourselves when the student is required to attend,” Ilphius said.

Etholin kept his voice low. “He has asked what they require. Let them finish answering him.”

Auris's chair shifted behind them.

“Such reception would require a tolerably clear account of whose interests were being represented,” he said. “A host would hardly cultivate one allegiance while being made the ornament of another.”

The broker folded her hands. “A house expects its courtesy to be remembered, Lord Ping. It does not thereby acquire an envoy.”

“But you would speak for the connection,” Ladona said. “If Patron Ermen declined an invitation from another association, might your desk explain his refusal on his behalf? It would spare everyone an uncertain interpretation.”

“Where the reply concerned our houses, I should certainly advise him before it was sent.”

Ladona turned her head towards Ermen. “It seems that a great deal could be made orderly.”

He could hear the offer beneath her question and the accusation waiting beside it. The broker was still speaking.

“A patron may forgive a refusal and take considerable offence at how it is delivered. I would do a poor day's work if I secured a young gentleman credit in the morning and let him lose it through an ill-addressed letter that afternoon.”

“And if I did not take the advice?”

“Then you would answer for the consequence. The houses may withdraw their names, as you may withdraw yours. Our terms require notice from the departing customer, so that we can settle open dealings before the connection ends.”

Ilunor read the second sheet when it reached him. He did so carefully, with none of the distaste he generally reserved for documents offered as kindness.

“That is reasonably stated,” he said to Ermen. “There should be notice on their side as well as yours. Subject to that correction, you have been offered people who can answer a complaint and doors which they have reason to keep open.”

The broker took a pen. “The notice can be reciprocal.”

She added a line and let Ilunor read it. He nodded.

“With that addition, I could accept such terms for my own purposes,” he said. “If I expected to commission work repeatedly, I would rather establish the acquaintance once. Attending the houses which had received me would be a reasonable part of it.”

“You may ask for a proposal in your own name, Lord Rularia.”

“I shall read the list first. There may be very little I wish to buy.”

He retained the amended example. The broker put her pen down beside the unsigned proposal.

Ermen had expected it to be easier to refuse an offer once its obligations were visible. Instead, the correction made him like the people offering it more. Across the table, Thacea was asking Corvan to point out the binder's entry on the list. He did so, and she copied it beside her question about the hinge.

Ermen could make useful sheets. He could sit beside her and try arrangements until they found one she liked. She wanted to show her work to this maker and hear what he thought of it. Ermen looked back at the terms through which he might have joined that conversation.

“Could I employ the desk for a particular commission?” he asked. “With the instruction, the fee and the settlement of any dispute agreed in advance?”

“At the fee shown here. The private introductions belong to the sponsorship.”

“Then I should prefer to begin there, when I have an actual commission. I cannot accept the personal sponsorship.”

Corvan's expression changed first in disappointment, then in attention.

“May I ask which condition troubles you?”

“I would be glad of your advice about an order. But people would also understand that I had chosen a house to speak through, and look to it for an explanation of whom I received or refused. I can't offer you that connection.”

“A gentleman may keep friends in several houses,” the broker said. “They need not agree upon every acquaintance.”

“I understand. But you would be lending me your name, and I would be hoping never to be asked for the part which mattered to you. That seems a poor way to begin.”

For a moment the room was quiet enough for the broker's pen to be heard as she capped it.

“Then we shall leave the introduction unmade. A commission may still be brought to my desk.”

Corvan took the sponsorship sheet and laid it beneath the unsigned examples. “The Cupped Hand remains open to you. Mirel will be particularly pleased if your next visit involves an object she can sell without first satisfying the Dean's form.”

Thacea handed back the sample fold.

“May I retain the binder's public address?” she asked. “I would like to see his stock before requesting an introduction.”

“Of course. Ask at the counter for the comparison books. They will give you some ideas for those lesson sheets.”

Corvan returned the sample to the case. Thacea kept her question about the hinge, with a line beneath it and the binder's name alongside.

The offered introduction would not be made for Ermen. He kept the list of public counters and waited while Thacea finished reading what her own would require.

Articord allowed several further questions. Rostario wanted to know what happened when a student's family repudiated a commission the student had thought himself entitled to make. The answer involved sufficient inconvenience to sober the room. Qiv asked for the address at which the participating list was kept current. Auris left the examples untouched; Ladona copied the broker's answer about ending a sponsorship.

As the chairs began to move, Etholin approached Ermen with the list still open in his hands.

“I thought the offer useful,” he said. “If you bring them a commission, I would be interested to hear how it goes. I shall ask about their ordinary accounts myself.” He glanced towards Corvan. “I have been buying paper as though all pages were the same, and the results have begun to object.”

“That sounds worth taking to Corvan.”

Kamil joined him carrying the little case. He had managed to restore it to its original shape.

“The seam holds,” he said. “I would still ask for an inside measurement.”

“We shall make that our first question,” Etholin said, and went with him to the table.

Ilphius was waiting at the door. Teleos stayed to obtain a copy of the terms.

Articord beckoned Thacea forward and examined the proposed route they had submitted after breakfast. The civic records counter came first, followed by ordinary purchases on the way back to the terminal. Thacea had copied its noon closing time beside the destination.

“I have authorised the four of you for these errands under my supervision,” Articord said, putting her signature beneath the route and return time. “We shall leave now. If you wish to finish at the counter before noon, you must be ready when I reach the terminal.”

Ilunor stood and checked that he had the complete list. Thacea closed her notebook with the binder's requirements between its pages.

Articord gave the paper to Thacea and sent them to collect their things.

---

The terminal clerk read Articord's fresh authorisation, entered the party, and returned the paper with its corner caught beneath his thumb. Thacea waited until he released it. Beyond the frame, Elaseer's morning was warm enough to make Ermen notice the cooler stone he had left.

They took the direct road to the civic counter. A cart stood crosswise at a narrow turning while its driver argued with a shopkeeper about which of them had misunderstood the width of the street. Articord led them around the back of it. Ilunor protected his sleeve from a hanging sack and expressed a preference for disputes conducted without grain.

The records office occupied the ground floor of a building whose upper windows were open. From somewhere above came the scrape of a heavy object being moved, a man's request to lift the other end, and a reply which suggested the other end had been lifted for some time.

Thacea checked the posted schedule against her copy. The charges were unchanged, and the counter remained open until noon. She took the location description from its plain cover.

Inside, the room smelled of paper, floor polish, and air that had spent the morning passing over ink. A low rail led towards two counters. Only one was receiving premises requests. The other clerk was helping a man correct a form on which he had written his household name where the street belonged.

Articord showed their authority to the attendant and took a place beside the wall while they joined the short queue.

There were three people ahead of them. Thalmin moved to the side where his shoulder would leave the lane clear. Ilunor read the notices governing acceptable copies, became absorbed in one qualification, and declined to explain it until he had determined whether he disliked it.

Ahead of them, a woman asked the clerk to correct a smudge beside her document's seal. He did so without argument. She checked it before retying the cord.

When their turn came, Thacea put the prepared page on the counter.

“We wish to request the public registration and declared use of premises at these two locations,” she said. “The applicant is Candidate Ermen, of the Transgracian Academy. He is present. We have street descriptions but no registered references.”

The clerk read the page, then looked at Ermen.

“Your evidence of standing, please.”

Thacea set the Academy papers beside the description, with the relevant entry uppermost. Ermen gave his name when asked. The clerk compared it with the written particulars and drew a request sheet from beneath the counter.

“You have marked Academy seals above the doors. Are you asking for an Academy record?”

“Only what this office can release about the registered premises,” Thacea said. “The seals are part of the description. We have no other reference.”

“Then the locations must be identified first. If the descriptions are insufficient, we shall ask for clarification. The search charge promises neither that a record exists nor that it may be released.”

He followed the first description with the end of his pen.

“Which side of this corner?”

Ermen placed a finger beside the words he had written. “The side continuing towards the storehouses. The first low entrance lay before the broader iron-banded doors. The second was farther along the same side. I can mark the order, if that would help.”

The clerk turned the page and offered the pen. Ermen drew the corner and marked the doors in the order he had seen them.

Thacea examined it before the clerk took it back.

“Please retain the written description with the sketch,” she said. “The distances in the drawing are approximate.”

The clerk wrote that beneath it.

“A certified copy, if available?”

“Yes. Is the separate copy charge paid upon collection?”

“If a copy is authorised for release. You pay only the search fee today.”

Thacea opened the common purse. Ermen's hand had gone towards his pocket at the mention of payment; he stopped it there, touching the familiar small rim through the cloth while she counted out the fee from the funds prepared for the errand.

The clerk counted the money into a divided drawer and entered the payment on both the request and its receipt.

“We expect a return on the second morning from today,” he said. “If the search is still open, this reference will let the counter find its progress. Bring the receipt and the applicant's particulars.”

Thacea checked the entries before the clerk stamped the receipt.

He handed it over and placed their description beneath the new request sheet.

For a moment Ermen could still see the little corner he had drawn. Then another paper covered it. Somewhere behind the counter the locations would be compared with records he had not seen, by someone who would have no reason to remember him.

Thacea put the receipt in the plain cover.

“Thank you,” she said. “We shall return with this reference.”

The clerk called the next person. They moved aside.

Ilunor had finished with his notice. He glanced at the cover, then at Ermen.

“You look as though you expected the drawer to disclose an opinion.”

“I was trying to decide whether I should feel that we had done something.”

“You have paid for a search. Satisfaction is not among the listed inclusions.”

Thacea secured the cover beneath her arm. “We have asked a question the office can attempt to answer. That will do for this morning.”

Ermen nodded, though he would have liked something more substantial to carry out of the office.

Articord rose from the bench the attendant had indicated. She asked whether they had finished at the counter.

“The request is submitted,” Thacea said. “The answer is pending.”

Articord glanced towards the counter, where the next applicant was unfolding a page. “Then we may go.”

They left while the counter was still receiving names. The man upstairs had apparently found someone else to carry his end; the window now supplied only scraping.

---

On the way back to the terminal, Ilunor stopped before a bakery with an open serving window. Three trays occupied the sill. The first held dark rolls dusted with meal, the second folded pastries with their edges pinched shut, and the third a glossy assembly whose price had been given its own slate.

“We have time for the purchases on our route,” Articord said. “I shall be by the terminal notice. Remain in sight, and do not make an afternoon of choosing.”

Ilunor had already found the fault with the glossy tray.

“The glaze has been applied to compensate for a very poor proportion of filling. Look at the seam. A pastry with something to conceal closes itself that tightly.”

Thalmin bent to inspect it. “You could ask what is inside.”

“I could also take the price seriously. Neither seems an economical use of the morning.”

Ermen looked at the middle tray. One pastry had opened a little in baking, leaving a dark crescent of filling where the two edges parted. There were tiny seeds caught in the browned fold. The smell reached him when the seller moved the tray, butter and toasted grain beneath the sweeter weight of fruit.

He took the coin from his pocket.

Ilunor saw it and, for once, did not immediately comment. He examined the pastry slate, then the coin, turning his head slightly to bring both into the light.

“One from the middle tray,” he said. “If that is what you want. The amount posted is the price of each, and your coin meets it.”

“Exactly?”

“Exactly. The roll costs less. The elaborate fraud to the right costs more. You are under no obligation to choose the object which happens to suit the denomination, although in this instance it appears the sound choice.”

Ermen let his hand remain open. He could make the pastry's material. He might learn its recipe, if someone wished to give it; he could make himself something equally good without learning it at all. None of these possibilities explained away the pleasant smell from the window or his wish to try what was there.

The seller came forward. She had flour along one forearm and a narrow strip of cloth tied over the other sleeve to keep it from falling. Behind her, a second pair of hands slid a board of unbaked rolls towards the oven.

“Which would you like?” she asked.

“One of the folded pastries, please. What is the filling?”

“Plum, with toasted seed in the crust. The dark ones have caught a little at the edge. I prefer them that way, but I can give you a pale one.”

Ermen looked again at the pastry whose seam had opened.

“That one, if you don't mind.”

“I don't mind. It will shed on your clothes.”

“I have been warned about less attractive hazards.”

She took it with a square of paper. Before setting it down, she pointed to the coin.

“That will do.”

Ermen placed it on the counter.

Its sound was barely audible through the scrape of the baking board behind her. She picked it up, felt the edge with her thumb, and dropped it into the box beneath the sill. Then she gave him the pastry.

For an instant he found himself waiting for the rest of the exchange. His hand held warm paper. Hers had already gone back for the next square.

“Anything else?”

“No, thank you.”

“Then mind the filling. It holds its heat.”

Thacea chose a roll and paid from her own money. Thalmin asked for one of the darker pastries. Ilunor, having established the unreliability of the glossy tray, bought from the middle one with the air of a man personally maintaining standards for absent customers.

Ermen stepped out of the way. Behind him, another customer asked whether the next batch would contain onion. The seller answered while wiping flour from her wrist. She had ceased attending to him before he had taken his first bite.

The pastry broke untidily. A brown flake landed on the front of his coat and a second followed when he tried to remove it. He caught both in the paper, bit farther into the fold, and discovered that the seller had judged the heat correctly.

Thalmin watched his careful pause.

“You were warned.”

“I believed her. I had hoped belief would be sufficient.”

“It rarely keeps the roof of a mouth intact.”

Ermen laughed around the mouthful, which improved neither his dignity nor the distribution of crumbs. Thalmin held the edge of the paper for him while he freed it from a button. The touch lasted only as long as the difficulty. Ermen found himself attending to it after the paper was secure.

Ilunor examined his own pastry from below.

“The filling is honest,” he said. “I am pleased to have been right about the tray.”

“You had condemned only the other one,” Thacea said.

“Prudence requires maintaining a reserve of disapproval.”

They walked towards Articord. Thacea had her receipt cover tucked safely away and her roll in a twist of paper. She tore it where the crust had already cracked. The street noise passed around them, people arranging purchases and space, a driver calling for someone to move a basket, the bakery seller announcing the remaining rolls to the queue.

Ermen put his free hand into his pocket and found the place where the coin had been.

Ilunor noticed.

“Do try not to miss it too extravagantly. The woman has sold you a pastry. She has not undertaken the custody of a relic.”

“I was checking that I hadn't put it back by habit.”

“An excellent precaution. I should hate to supervise the return of stolen pastry after all our instruction.”

Thalmin's laugh made Thacea turn; then she was laughing too, carefully keeping the roll away from the cover under her arm. Ermen looked back once. The seller was lifting the last dark pastry from its tray. A customer accepted it, already reaching for his purse.

At the terminal, Articord checked that all four had returned, glanced at Ilunor's paper, and asked whether the purchase had required extensive negotiation.

“The terms were clear, Professor,” Ermen said. “I managed to accept them.”

“A useful morning, then.”

They waited their turn at the frame. Thalmin stood beside Ermen, his pastry half eaten, a few pale crumbs caught in the fur beneath his mouth. Ermen indicated them. Thalmin brushed the wrong side first, and Ermen showed him again, trying unsuccessfully to conceal his pleasure in being briefly the competent one.

“You have one on your collar,” Thalmin said.

“I shall attend to it when we are through.”

“You have time now. I should hate to see it examined for compliance with the uniform.”

“It came from an approved route,” Ermen said, and brushed it away before the clerk called his name.

The frame opened onto the Academy's stone. Behind him, Ilunor was explaining to Thacea that the advertised glaze could have justified its price if the pastry beneath it had been larger. Thacea asked how much larger, obliging him to think before replying.

Ermen crossed with the pastry still warm in his hand. He took another bite when he had reached the other side.

---

Disclosure: This chapter has been written by hand, with tools used afterward only for review and mechanical cleanup.

Thalmin: So... did you guys do anything after your bullets and fire spears?

Emma:

I live!

Apologies for the extended wait. I discovered the wonderful world of Vampire the Masquerade and began consuming lore at a very unhealthy rates. I now bestow upon ye the fourth chapter.

I’m gonna try to get chapters to a 3k word minimum from now on. This is just a personal goal I want to aspire to, so It may affect my schedule for a few weeks.

Anyways, Thank you to u/Jcb112 for their wonderful story and universe: Wearing Power Armor to a Magic School. All credit of course goes to them for the characters and universe. And equal thanks to u/Onetwodhwksi7833 for proofreading this chapter.

___________

Transgracian Academy for the Magical Arts. The Grand Reception Hall. Local Time: 2100 Hours

Emma

“Prince Thalmin Havenbrock.” the wolf man, Thalmin, introduced himself. I imagined that another version of me would have been shocked to be sitting with a real Prince. Not one whose position was purely ceremonial, but an actual heir to a legitimate throne… or maybe not so legitimate if I were to take Illunor’s interruption seriously. Though I was beginning to wonder if interrupting people while they were mid-sentence was something shared amongst all Nexians.

“Cadet Emma Booker.” I said, introducing myself. 

I was quickly followed by Thacea, who dipped her head slightly as she did.

I would have been bouncing in my seat if it weren’t for the fact that my armor would crush it, Thacea’s reinforcement spell or no. This was just all so exciting! It was one thing to meet people of fantasy (ones you had researched beforehand no less), but it was another thing entirely to be here in an entire realm of magic!!

Thalmin seemed to be scrutinizing me pretty hard though. I hadn’t caught what he had been saying to Illunor when we approached this table because I had turned off my suit’s onboard audio-visual sensors after hearing the… disturbing commentary coming from amongst the gathered students. Nonetheless, I hope I wasn’t scaring the poor guy, he hadn’t seemed exactly thrilled to see me coming.

I sighed into my helmet. What was the point of being sent on a diplomatic mission if they were just going to send me in the most intimidating mana-resistant armor that they had. I knew it probably had to do with the military's influence on the project and their constant paranoia, but still! At least give the armor some googly eyes or something.

My silence seemed to have unnerved Thalmin, as he decided to speak up once more. “Am I to assume you are some sort of knight of your realm?” He looked me, or more accurately my armor, up and down. “Though you said your title is Cadet, isn’t it? So perhaps you are a squire then?”

I had to actually think about that. Could one even compare being a power armor specialist to a medieval knight? Hell, could I even compare Earth knights to whatever these people had? For all I know their equivalent of a knight was completely different from Earth’s ancient history. “Ummm… I mean I suppose you could call me a knight, though I’m not sure it’s the best descriptor.” I said slowly, trying to pull on my diplomatic training and the SIOP manual.

How was I supposed to explain the concept of… well, Earth's military and the LREF to a person from an era which didn’t even have a standing army… or did they? Aetheron and Pronarthia didn’t when we first made contact, but could they really be used as comparison? This was all just confusing, so many questions and so few answers. 

“If I were to put it plainly, Thalmin.” I began, trying to think of the best way to word this, “My ‘realm’ doesn’t really have knights or squires. At least not in the way that I think you mean it.”

Thalmin raised a brow, “A realm without knights or squires, eh?” He barked out, a hint of gruff disbelief in his voice

“Yes, that’s correct.” I answered, hoping this wouldn’t be some kind of issue.

“Hmmph.” He scoffed back, as he sized me up again, his predatory eyes managing to lock with my own underneath those opaque lenses, sending shivers down my spine. “Yeah, nah, not buying it. You got a better cover story or are we going to be dealing with a spineless liar and a charlatan for the rest of the school year?” He boldly announced, catching me off guard as I noticed Thacea eyeing him warily.

At that moment, there were two Emma’s. The first wanted to shrink back and return to becoming a puddle of cells, and the second wanted to pull out her side arm to show this guy the utter outdatedness of knights in shining armor.

I shoved that thought away. Such ideas should be distant for a reason.

“Those are big words to throw around, pal.” I said, leaning in a bit and dropping my previous front of politeness. “I don’t take kindly to being called a liar, especially from someone who bases their accusation on the imposing of their own worldview onto others.” 

Thalmin flinched at that, his ears pinning back slightly as he bared his teeth. “Imposing—!” He began, but was cut off by Thacea.

“Emma, Prince Thalmin, please stop this. Surely we don’t need to escalate things over something so minor?” Now that I looked, Thacea’s feathers were puffed in what was probably a mix of annoyance and nervousness. I sagged back slightly, lowering my head in a pout no one could see. 

“Sorry, Thacea, I just got a bit heated.” I mumbled, my face now flushing with embarrassment at my own lack of control. I was meant to be the representative of humanity, and just a plain member of the LREF. I should have been past being unable to overcome my emotions by now.

I felt a soft series of pats on my gloves, looking up to see it was Thacea, who was looking at me with an expression which could only be attributed to that of a doting mother. “Don’t worry Emma, we all lose control sometimes. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.” Thacea said with a firm nod of encouragement. That… did lift my spirits a little. At least I knew that my partner/peer/friend(?) cared about me and wasn’t mad. 

Turning back to the other end of the table however told a different story. Illunor and Thalmin were in the midst of a heated argument, and possibly some kind of childish slap fight, over Thalmin’s outburst. The two seemed to finish their little spat with one last incredulous shove (which did nothing to move Thalmin) from Illunor. 

The lizard turned back to us, his expression shifting from the previous incredulousness to one of mild annoyance. “I must apologize for my ill-mannered friend here, this is very much typical of Lupinor court nobility, and even more so with their royalty.” Illunor spoke calmly, though his slight clearly hadn’t gone over his counterpart's head as Thalmin, for possibly the fifth time since I’d met him, let out a growl of annoyance. Illunor gave a wary glance in his direction before continuing, “However, let us not beat around the bush. Squires and knights, court etiquette and chivalry, lies and whatnot, all of it can be discussed later. What we need to know right now-” His voice lowered as he paused in the middle of his sentence to mutter out what my HUD labeled as yet another privacy spell.

ALERT: LOCALIZED SURGE OF MANA-RADIATION DETECTED, 225% ABOVE BACKGROUND RADIATION LEVELS

“—Is what you’re doing in that hideous suit of armor-“ he turned his attention towards Thacea “—and with a tainted one in your midst. Tell me, has your realm found a way to mask the sickness of mana-field taint? Have your people, perhaps, subjugated her-“ he points a scaly finger at Thacea “-people? All this assuming you aren’t also subjects of that ‘Lord Pings’ realm of course.” The Lizard finished his question looking at them with an expression of innocent curiosity, as if he hadn’t just said… what he just said.

Thacea chose to be the first one to speak, which was lucky for the lizard because I was on the verge of punting this kobold. “Lord Rularia, perhaps it would be best if Emma and I explain-“

”Silence, Tainted one” Illunor cut Thacea off, giving her the cold shoulder and turning his attention to me and looking at me expectantly. 

My blood boiled, my fists and teeth clenched, and I stood from my seat to my suit’s full height. “What the fuck is your problem?” I yelled through my vocoder, the intense volume alone causing both Illunor and Thalmin to shrink back against their seats.

I don’t know if it was the stress of this entire situation so far or just the sheer audacity of these people, but I was pissed. Screw the niceties! “Now, Illunor,-” I began, my voice growing cold through my suit’s speakers, “-say that again.”

___________

Ping

I went over the UN and Pronarthian books of law in my mind, trying to figure out whether listening to this, Lady Ladona, would be considered psychological torture. I was quite sure that by some metric it must be. After all, she was completely insufferable.

What was even worse was that no one else seemed to be bothered by her. The other two students at my table, lady Ciata Barr and lord Vicini Lorsi, were both nodding along and giving words of agreement to everything Ladonna said. Well… Lorsi did, the fish woman seemed to also be content to simply look vaguely interested in whatever Ladona was talking about. 

Hell’s, I still hadn’t even been told what it meant to be “class sovereign“! I assumed it was some kind of student position. Maybe the head of some kind of student government?

My ears and mind were thankfully spared from further assault when there was a sudden commotion from the surrounding tables, drawing the attention of Ladona to the opposite end of the room. “Hmmm… Lord Ping, it would seem that your two servants have lost their temper.” The insect woman snickered softly.

I took a deep breath, resisting the urge to raise my voice. “Lady Ladona, I already said this, they are not my ‘servants.’ They are my allies and peers.” I was unsurprised when Ladona ignored that statement and began her self obsessed tirade once more. Why she thought I was listening I do not know. I had tried for the past few minutes to do just that, and I had come to the conclusion that she simply had nothing of worth to say, for me or the mission. 

Instead I turned to see where she was pointing, praying that Emma and Thacea hadn’t decided to do anything rash to their table mates. In truth I couldn’t blame them if they did, if they were as bad as Ladona and her group then it would be perfectly reasonable to lose one's temper. My fears were confirmed however when I saw Emma leaning over the table at a well dressed kobold, and the latter cowering in fear. 

I was about to stand up to try and put a stop to this when I felt a sudden burst of mana, and a booming voice filled the room, causing me to halt. “Attention! Students-to-be from the Nexus and Adjacent-realms alike! The orientation is about to commence!”

I shifted myself in my seat, my tail swishing slightly as I did. I was once again met with the Dean, standing atop the central staircase with a procession of who I assumed to be the various other professors. He was a kind-looking old eleven man, that was for sure. However, I had my doubts about him. He didn’t seem all too kind when it came to my two compatriots. Though, on another note, I failed to see how one was supposed to focus on this man with how much light seemed to be radiating off of him.

“The Transgracian Academy for the Magical Arts welcomes each and every one of you.” The Dean spoke moving even farther forward to seemingly emphasize his own presence. “For those of you who do not know, I am Dean Altalan Rur Astur, the 2592nd dean of this Academy, and the 4th in my lineage to hold such an honor.” He continued, the professors shifting to form rank behind him with the black-robed Mal’tory and the blue-robed Vanavan standing just behind him.

“Now, I expect that you all have read up on your Nexian history, but since we have been blessed with three newrealmers-“ The man's eyes shifted to me at that statement, and then presumably to Thacea and Emma, who I hoped had the sense to end their spat, “-I have taken it upon myself to give a brief refresher on the Academy’s history.”

___________

20 Minutes Later

The speech was… interesting to say the least.

It had started out normal, it almost felt like I was at just another history lecture, but then the Dean started talking about the adjacent realms. It all sounded just so wrong. The parts about how the Nexus was guiding these “purposeless” adjacent realms and how they spread “enlightenment” just rubbed me the wrong way. It wasn’t like those kinds of ideals were inherently bad, it was just the tone of it all. Throughout the story the Nexus was constantly placed at the center of it all, perfect and unchallenged in its primacy over the other realms who apparently were birthed from it. It almost reminded me of the old priesthood's dogma under the Tyrant. Always inserting him into scripture as if he were the second coming of every great hero and honored prophet.

My assumptions had to be pushed to the wayside however, as the Dean made one last announcement. “Students from the Nexus and Adjacent realms! By order of the Transgracia Accords of 10,092, under the blessings of all the adjacent realms and approved by the holy decree of His Majesty the King, I hereby announce the official start to this academic school year and the induction of the Class of 29,019!”

I don’t know what I expected. Cheering, applause, maybe they’d sing some school anthem. It seemed like a pretty normal thing to say after the previous speech. However, that isn’t what happened. Instead the student body seemed to shrink in on itself. Even Ladona seemed taken aback by the Dean's words.

I heard a few whispers of “He can’t do that,” and “orientation hasn’t even begun, what of the grace period!”

I could only look around in confusion. Had this not been an orientation? What did induction mean? I relayed these questions to Lady Ladona, but she just gave me a sly smile and rebuffed me: “You’ll find out soon enough Lord Ping.”

I sighed. Getting information was probably going to be my greatest hurdle if everyone in the Nexus was this secretive. I felt like I had been repeating this question to myself ad nauseam, but it still held true: Aren’t we foreign dignitaries? Students sure, but we are still representatives of foreign nations. Shouldn’t we be informed of all of this beforehand?

“Without further ado, let us begin the ceremony of scholarly rites” the Dean continued unabated as Mal’tory stepped in front of him carrying a leather bound book. The dark elf’s piercing gaze falling over the students. I swore he paused when his gaze landed on me, and I shivered.

“The first student who steps forward for the ceremony will receive 20 points credited to their peer-group, 30 points to their house, and 50 extra credits to whichever class they see fit.”

This declaration finally had the effect I expected: everyone went silent and did whatever their equivalent was of twiddling their thumbs. I briefly contemplated volunteering myself, it would be good to show initiative after all, but I decided against it. I had no idea what this induction was, and that book was practically radiating mana. 

I glanced at my table mates and found that they all seemed to be fiddling with different kinds of enchanted jewelry. 

I decided that this time I would take information gathering into my own hands, and I carefully reached out with my own mana field to examine ladona’s ring.

It was almost certainly an amulet of dispelling, but I was surprised at the power of it. Was it just because of how rich the Nexus seemed to be in mana? 

My attention was pulled to a table next to when a draconic lizard stood from his seat. They actually reminded me of the Gorn from the star-trek series. I was lucky to have gotten a couple recordings of the series in the aid packages as a kid. “Professor, permission to speak” the lizard asked, raising his head. Mal’tory shifted his gaze to focus squarely on the student.

“Lord Qiv Ratom of Baralonrealm, you may speak.”

The gorn-lizard, Qiv, dipped his head and spoke once more, “If I may be so brazen, I wish to accept this offer. I shall be the first of my peers to partake in the scholarly rights.” This seemed to please Mal’tory, as he regarded Qiv with a professional smile. It wasn’t necessarily one of happiness, but more of satisfaction, as if he had gotten just the thing he wanted.

“Very well Lord Qiv, please step forward.” Mal’tory responded as the reptilian moved up towards the stage. His cape swishing to his right, revealing the rich tunic and robes he had underneath, and even his own amulet that he continued to palm even as he marched onto the stage.

The entire room seemed to look on in utter dread as Mal’tory presented the book to Qiv. “The Transgracian Academy for the Magical Arts acknowledges your presence, Lord Qiv Ratom of the Baralon-realm. What say you?”

“I, Lord Qiv Ratom of the Baralon-realm, recognize the enlightened and benevolent charity of the Transgracian Academy for allowing me and my line, tutelage and education within these hallowed halls.” The reptilian responded, keeping his head low throughout the entire exchange.

“The Nexus and his Holy Majesty the King, upon whom the Gods have bestowed sovereign authority, compel me as his divine agent, to grant you the rights to scholarship, under the ties that bind. Do you consent, Lord Qiv Ratom?”

“I do.”

Then Mal’tory opened the book, flipping through a magically enlarged amount of pages until he landed on a completely blank one in the middle of the large tome.

Qiv placed his hand upon the quill within the book and lifted. I couldn’t see particularly well, but a brief ocular enhancement spell made it clear that he was struggling to pick up the tiny object. I reasoned that it must have also been enchanted to make it heavier. Was that the challenge, Sign your name under an impossible weight?

I pondered this as Qiv finally dipped the quill into the ink, practically smothering it in the jet-black liquid. Carefully guiding the pen with trembling hands Qiv began dragging it across the page. It was at this moment that things started going very wrong.

The ink seemed to crawl its way up the pen and towards Qiv’s hand, stopping just at his claws as the man clearly exerted a large amount of mana. I also realized why the man had brought an amulet of dispelling. The ambient mana around the pen, and soon the entire stage seemed to just keep rising exponentially.

”No… that’s not possible” I muttered under my breath. The level of mana the book and pen were producing as Qiv signed his name was on par with spells which were meant to be purely theoretical. The conditions needed to be able to even get close to casting something this powerful were theorized to have to be completely artificial, let alone an advanced enchantment.

I glanced at Ladona, hoping to at least see a face of shock or even horror like the rest of the student body to confirm my own worries, but she was just smirking. It was like she was merely judging Qiv, rather than feeling any worry for his well being.

The ambient mana finally calmed down as Qiv finished his signing, letting go of the pen with a barely hidden disgust.

Mal’tory raised the book to the class, showing off its pristine page with Qiv’s glowing, mana-imbued signature. “Lord Qiv Ratom of the Baralon-realm, henceforth you shall be known as a peer of the Transgracian Academy. Welcome to our ranks, and may the divine guide your light.” Mal’tory said before whispering something into the lizard's ear.

“Lord Qiv Ratom, as the first of your class to volunteer for the ceremony, I deem it fit to grant you the rights to choose the next two of your peers-to-be.” The black-robed professor continued, announcing this to the whole room who were once more sent into a frenzy of nervous fidgeting. I myself rubbed the hilt of my heirloom sword. It had some enchantments for dispelling, but nothing that would ever be capable of resisting a spell of that magnitude.

Without a second’s hesitation the lizard shot his finger out to his first pick, a bear-like student who sat near the front of the stage. “The Ursina.” He stated plainly, before narrowing his eyes in my direction, pointing directly at me.

I felt a chill go up my spine as he spoke, and a quick glance revealed worried looks from Thacea and presumably Emma. 

“And the Pronarthiarealmer.”

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