I'm not one for self torture. When Gandalf and his classmates were practicing a magic that I couldn't participate in, I decided I'd entertain myself elsewhere. It didn't hurt that the door was conveniently left open so cats without thumbs could walk out.

I sat just outside the door for a moment and glanced back. No one had noticed me leaving as they were all focused on their work. Such good little students.

It was beginning to frustrate me, some of the things about magic that I just didn't get. I could feel magic in my whiskers. I could sense it very clearly now, although I can't yet determine the type of magic or what it does. I am getting very good at knowing where mana is. Actually, I should differentiate those. Mana is not quite the same as magic. Magic is made of mana, and mana is what you use to do magic. But it's more like the difference between fuel and fire. It did make me wonder if there were other sources of magic than mana.

Eh, that doesn't matter right now. I'm still learning mana and I don't need to complicate this shit any more than it already is.

But back to mana. All the kids could use it. They could move it through spells and trigger effects with it. None of the lessons were about how to access it, how to touch it, or how to move it. It was expected that they'd all already know.

I can't do those things.

There are things the professors have talked about like 'intent', 'shape the spell', and 'concentration'. All of these concepts don't actually tell me anything about how to use mana.

Why can't I use mana? Is it because I'm a cat?

Ugh. I'm done with these thoughts again. Let's go check out this tardis. I stood and walked along the balcony.

Yup. That's another thing. I know that a tardis is something that's bigger on the inside than it is outside. And maybe it can do something else? Eh. Where do I know that from? No idea. Who uses a tardis? No clue. I guess they were normal things in my old world. I don't actually know.

I've already taken a moment to appreciate the beauty of the place. The primary materials were wind sculpted white sandstone, with blond wood balustrades curving as if the tree grew that way in high wind. Sharp color accents gave the feel of petals on the wind. Whoever designed this was an artist. All of these special towers were gorgeous, honestly. But what was their purpose? They weren't spread about the city like trophies, so beauty wasn't the main point. And there was mana here. A fair bit of it.

And also birds. A fair bit of them too. Familiars, I bet. I peered around the atrium at the swooping avians.

I've got an entire magical tower to explore and about a half hour or so before class ends. What do I want to do? Find something shiny and valuable of course. Like a hidden secret.

Wandering aimlessly around corridors was boring. I wanted the good stuff on this field trip. And since this was a tower, that meant either going way up or way down. Since I didn't know if these things had basements, I decided up was the most interesting choice. It had nothing to do with that's where I could sense the most mana.

I walked with purpose, like I knew where I was going. It's the easiest way to be invisible. There were people who were aware of me though, like those three upperclassmen over there. They were talking to a professor and all of them had wing patches sewn on their shoulders. Either these guys were in a club of some type or had learned how to fly. Or something else entirely. I liked the idea that they could fly though. That would be fun.

Oh look, stairs! I wasn't sure I would find any, this being so open and presumably the go to magic tower for flight. The other towers used elevating platforms. In this one I guess you walked or flew. Or I just haven't spotted the platforms yet. The stairs were tucked away so that was a possibility. As I went up the floors there were classrooms, boring, what looked like dorm room hallways, more boring, and then offices. Those piqued my interest a bit, but most of the doors were shut. Oh the tribulations of a thumbless cat.

I sat in a shadow and looked around. This was the sixth floor of the tower, which from the outside looked to have no more than seven floors. From this vantage point, It felt like I was half way up. I could tell there was more mana up here. I bet the top floor was loaded with the stuff. Alas, I couldn't fly and the stairs ended here.

Getting an accurate sense of this building was impossible. I knew how to judge a space and know when there were secret rooms or hidden safes. But that was all moot when a wizard could just create space out of nothing.

I have so many things to learn here before I can pick up my old trade. I'd get rusty if I wasn't careful. Actually, I hadn't given that much thought. Do I want to keep doing my old trade?

I looked up at the open iris at the top of the tower, and then at the surrounding spaces where there had to be unique and valuable prizes. There were treasures here that did more than look pretty.

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Yes. I liked my job.

As I was looking up I noticed a shadow under the balcony above me. There was an open duct or tunnel there, and it was the perfect size for a cat. I'd need to make a leap from the floor to the ceiling to get in.

My body knew what to do, but it wasn't actually that good at it. It took three tries to make the height, and then I discovered that my claws were sharp enough to sink into the soft sandstone here. I clawed the last few inches into the tunnel.

There was a stiff and steady breeze in this tunnel, far more than a typical air duct. I think I'll call this a breezeway. At no time did the breezeway darken, even though it was made of stone. It was like the white of the sandstone defied darkness. I trotted down what proved to be a maze of connecting tunnels. There were openings into the offices that had their doors closed. Others went down to the dorms and classrooms, and the ones I followed went up. I wanted to see what was at the top of this tower.

I wasn't going to get there through these ducts though. I quickly figured out that the tunnels didn't connect the whole tower. I would have to exit this breezeway and enter a different set in a room somewhere. I was also running out of time. Class would be ending soon.

I could hear talking occasionally from the breezeway. People were so polite. I heard lots of "Excuse me," and "Sorry, I'm running late,'' or "Pardon me, coming through."

I came to the highest room I could get to and figured this would be the best bet for switching breezeways. It looked like someone's workroom. Bookcases lined half the room and there were three tables. One was covered in apparatuses that I didn't know the use of. Another had maps and diagrams. The third had a young man with the wing patch doing something with a small flat object and taking notes.

There was another breezeway opening on the other side of the room. By the looks of it, I could walk all the way around on the tops of the bookcases, with only two jumps between them. The problem was the bookcases had lots of junk on top.

Normally a cat would have no trouble with this. I should have no trouble with this. But I was still relatively new at being a cat. And this cat body was actually still a cub. My legs were shorter than they would be if I were an adult housecat, and my feet were so big they were practically clodhoppers. I was awkward and clumsy still.

Could I land silently? Could I jump without being seen? Unlikely. Go back?

Nah. I decided to carefully make my way around. I took my time across the first bookcase. The second was more clear, and an easy jump across. The wing guy never looked up. From the second bookcase I could get a better look at what he was doing and what was on the second table.

It wasn't a map or diagrams on the table, but a blueprint. I couldn't read the words, but I can recognize building schematics when I see them. And the naked bones of a building sitting on the table like that got my curiosity up.

It was a building with areas blocked off, and what looked like cells. There were a few open spaces that had notes on them. Arrows pointed to a few spots here and there with more notes. Access points?

This looked like a prison. Some of the layouts struck me as odd, but I didn't know much about keeping magic people behind bars. I focused on the blueprint and did my best to memorize it. As soon as I tried I thought of several different mnemonic tricks to help me and knew I'd done exactly this before.

One of these days I'd figure out what exactly was going on with my memories.

I was distracted by sound coming from the coin-like thing the guy was fiddling with. He gave a relieved sigh and titled his head to listen. I focus both ears.

"If he comes by again, will you go?" I heard someone saying from the coin.

"No way. Scorpius hasn't been back at all. I'm not going." This one sounded really young to me.

"It's got to be better than here," another young one said.

"Or he's dead and can't come back. I'm not going to go."

"Scorpius is an ass. I like it better with him not here."

There was a shout from outside and the wing guy tossed a book on top of the coin before heading to the door.

I had a split second to make a decision. The coin thing was some sort of spying device. The guy was looking at prison schematics. The possibilities as I saw them were: he was investigating a jailbreak, he was planning a jailbreak, or he was involved in some type of trafficking.

The fact that he hid the device cinched it for me. I was taking it. If he were an honest investigator he wouldn't have felt the need to do that.

I was down off the bookcase, slid the book out of the way, grabbed the coin in my mouth, then back up onto the last bookcase and into the breezeway in less than three seconds.

"Just a sec, I'll be right there," the wing guy said and came back into the room. I could hear him rummaging around and then, "oh shit, oh shit, oh shit."

I scooted as silently as I could away from him. I took the next shaft upwards and then turned right to head to the balconies. Once I was somewhere level I spat out the coin.

It was made of stone and the size of a coin. It resembled a sand dollar as it wasn't truly flat but peaked a bit in the middle. It was cloudy white quartz with a hint of green. I don't know if by taking it I turned off the spy feature, but it was quiet right now. This wasn't what I had in mind for this adventure, but that was fine.

I picked it back up in my mouth and once again cursed my lack of pockets. Time to head back to Seth.

I rounded a corner and got a face full of bird.

"Gack!" I said as I nearly choked on the coin.

"Aahk!" said the bird as it tumbled by then kept flying.

Shit. I had swallowed my stolen magic spy gadget.

"Watch where you're going, dumbass!" I hissed quietly. Not like the bird would know what I'm saying even if it did hear me. But it made me feel better to say it. Fucking inconvenient. I was not looking forward to retrieving that spy gadget.

I kept going to the end of the breezeway and was about to hop out when I was struck by another fucking bird.

This one was big. It swooped out of a bigger side tunnel just as I was jumping out onto the balcony and we collided in mid air. The eagle crashed into the balcony. I sailed over the railing and into free fall. I was heading for the floor some eight or so stories down.