The students were quickly dismissed by the Mentor after Efrain declared a winner, who was desperate to do damage control.

“Okay, okay,” he said, brushing down his coat and coughing, “I see that we have failed to meet your standards. On behalf of the entire academy, I apologize immensely.”

Efrain, now that his temper had cooled, and upon realizing that he actually found the situation quite funny, put his hand on the man’s shoulder.

“No, no,” he laughed, “it was all merely an overreaction. Nicolo loved practical jokes. But, for all that, I doubt he would’ve continued teaching at this academy for years if he had no investment beyond it pranking me.”

And just like that, the man’s hope was restored.

“Yes, yes of course,” he said, “although I suggest you not tell what the inscription says to the other faculty. Some have spent… years on it.”

“No wonder, it’s a personal language we made up when we were youths. It’s a ramshackle, cobbled together thing, nigh-impossible to figure out, unless one was inflicted by the insight of drunken insanity.”

The man laughed, Efrain laughed, and he looked around at the academy’s towers and bridges.

“Well, he did fine for himself, clearly,” Efrain said, “even married an Eisen. Its good to know he spared some thought for me, even if it was to pull one over in death. Now I can’t even get revenge now. Clever bastard.”

“Yes, quite,” said the man, coughing, “now, I would be happy to show you to your office. It’s one of our finest.”

The whole situation wasn’t merely funny, he decided, it was hilarious. Unfortunately for Nicolo, Efrain still remembered some of his more embarrassing exploits. He wondered if the man had a biography that was taught - perhaps it needed some correction by a primary source.

“Well, lead on,” he said to the Mentor.

They proceeded from one of the lower bridges to the largest of the four connected towers. The panelled walls were both old and expensive, indicating that the school was indeed more than a joke Students of multiple ages and stripes went this way and that, some carrying books, others merely chatting among friends. Several more hallways and a staircase or two later, the mentor stood before a tall door.

“And here it is,” he said, puffing out his chest with pride, “one of our best.”

“That’s the second time,” Efrain noted, and the man self-consciously pushed open the door, revealing a narrow room.

It was comfortable, with a large desk taking up most of the space, a small bed and stove tucked into the corner. The wall behind the desk was mostly of modest bookshelves, stocked with tomes, some familiar, others not so much. A single, large window, open shutters flung outward, looked out toward the center of the city. The mentor looked around, and then at Efrain, clearly anxious to please.

“Wonderful,” Efrain said, “I hope I’m not depriving anyone of their space for my short stay.”

“No, no, not at all,” the mentor said, “in fact, your timing was fortuitous. One of the professors has elected to retire.”

“Ah,” Efrain said, sitting in the large chair behind the desk.

“You must be exhausted,” said the Mentor, hovering by the door, “I suppose I’ll just come and check on you in the morning. Supposedly your group is to attend the Festival as honoured guests.”

“News to me,” Efrain said, leaning back as he looked out the open window.

“Would you like a change of clothes, a meal, water to bathe in?” said the man.

“No, thank you,” Efrain said, “in fact, I wouldn’t mind a brief tour, actually.”

The man’s face lit up in response to the casual suggestion - clearly he took pride in the institution.

“Yes, yes, why of course, I would be happy to,” he said, “when would you like to begin?”

“Now,” Efrain said, getting up from his chair and moving past the man.

“Actually, now that I think of it, the last of the evening classes should be just starting,” said the Mentor, “would you like to sit in on one. It uses your books.”

A couple minutes, and Efrain was sitting in the back of a small room, dozens of fresh-faced students looking back between him and a professor at a lectern.

“So, as we discussed in the last class,” said the old man with a beard hanging over his considerable stomach, “actually, who would dare to tell me what is the ultimate goal of magic.”

Efrain was busy rifling through the provided textbook on the matter, his apprehension growing with every page that he passed. He’d forgotten just how bad some of his earliest work had been, and now was reliving his mistakes with vivid horror. Several hands rose, and a young girl who couldn’t be more than twelve was selected.

“Magic is a purest expression of the human,” she said, clearly reciting what she’d learned by heart, “it is an attempt to get away from the base naturalness of ourselves and transcend into something greater.”

Efrain stifled a groan as he heard his early and more poetic pondering on magics parroted back at him.

The class continued on until Efrain couldn’t stand it any longer. The professor was in the middle of explaining how magic could be derived from the environment, which was correct, but that was inferior in all cases to simply deriving it from oneself, which wasn’t. Efrain snapped the booklet shut as loud as he could, drawing the gaze of everyone in the class.

“Alright,” he said, getting up, “we need to stop. Stop. All of this is a mistake.”

The professor, quite confused, looked towards the mentor for any sign that he should intervene. The mentor merely shook his head as Efrain stalked towards the lectern.

“My good man, take a seat for a little while,” Efrain said, “there are some errors of mine I have to correct.”

He gripped the edges of the lectern, trying to decide how best to approach this, and begun by clearing his throat.

“Is knowledge truth?” he said, prompting a rash of confused stares.

He departed from the lectern, and walked in front of the students.

“Again, is knowledge truth? Is knowledge automatically, by definition, true?”

“Well, yes,” said a young man slowly.

“Ah,” Efrain said, rounding on him, “so, if I were to stumble on half a conversation a noblewoman has about some innocent meeting she had with a young man, mistook it for an affair, and reported it to her husband, would I be lying?”

“Well, yes, kind of?” said the boy, his brows furrowing. Several of the other students blushed at the impropriety of the statement.

“But that was using the knowledge I possessed, and if knowledge is truth, then where is the lie?” Efrain said, sitting on the edge of the table, “all I did was relay my knowledge, hence, relay the truth to my friend, her husband.”

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

“I- I-,” said the boy, “then you were misinformed.”

“Precisely,” Efrain said, taking the book from before him and walking back to the front of the class to raise it before the children.

“The truth cannot lie, by definition, but knowledge can, implying that it is a distinct entity from the truth,” Efrain said, as he rounded the lectern.

“Perhaps it is not a matter of relaying the truth,” called the mentor from the back, “but inferring the truth only from half-knowledge.”

Efrain pointed the booklet towards him.

“And that is why he is a mentor and you are still students,” Efrain said, “but what is the point I hear you asking?”

A few genuinely seemed to think he could hear their thoughts and shrank back from this strange, belligerent man.

“The point is this - the books you’re reading are nonsense. Inferences made from a tiny amount of knowledge, by an overconfident idiot.”

The professor started forward at this sacrilege of the texts, but the mentor held him back.

“Now, if you’re intelligent, which I’m sure all of you are, you should be asking about now, ‘how could he possibly know? Who is he to come into our class and start making such claims?’ That’s good,” Efrain paused, and pointed to the cover.

“Would someone care to read me the title of this particular text?” he said.

One of the students, another boy, looked down and began to say in a high, weedly voice.

“Basic Principles of Magic: A Treatise,” he said, looking up to see if he’d somehow passed whatever test Efrain was given him.

“Keep going young man,” Efrain said, nodding him on.

“W-written by Nicolo Eisen, Efrain Belacore, and Avidius Armsted, compiled by Nicolo Eisen and Avidius Armsted.”

“Which is to say, ‘principally written by Efrain Belacore and Avidius Armsted, with footnotes of historical nature by Nicolo Eisen.’ He was always more interested in the history anyways,” Efrain said, slapping the book on the lectern.

The children all looked back and forth between each other, trying to see if any had an understanding better than themselves.

“To answer your question,” Efrain said, “the reason I both possibly know and get to come into your class and make such claims is that I am the middle name on your textbook.”

The explosion of curiosity and confusion was a delight to Efrain, who held up the book to the ceiling, pointing to it.

“To be clear, my name, young ones, is Efrain Belacore, and I’m here to tell you why half of my book is wrong, and the other half is incomplete.”

The class sat in dumbfounded silence, trying to gauge what the appropriate response to such information could possibly be.

“Let’s start with something simple, though, young lady,” Efrain pointed to the young girl who’d given the first definition to start the class.

“Y-Yes, professor?”

“Restate your definition, if you’d be so kind,” he said, which she did word for word.

“I wrote that line when I was under the impression that magic was apart from the natural world,” Efrain said, “in the sense that it could be used to transform it, to add value to it, much like some artists will say that their paintings cut through to the soul of the subject, removing the mortal veil on top of it or some hogwash like that.”

Efrain walked in front of the class.

“We are all part of the natural world, even if we strive to rise above it, whatever that means,” Efrain said, “you get cut, you bleed, you do that enough you die, your body returns to the earth, and so on and so forth. Magic is an extension of all those natural processes, not something apart from it. So, young men and women, do not spurn the world in the pursuit of magic.”

Efrain spied a beautifully made pin, stuck in the hair of a young woman.

“Excuse me, could I borrow that for a moment?” he said, gesturing to the pin.

“Uh, y-yes, sure,” she said, hastily pulling out the pin and letting her hair fall around her shoulders as she presented it to him.

“Thank you very much,” he said, as he held up the pin.

“Right, do not spurn it in the pursuit of magic, rather, embrace it. Seek inspiration in it,” Efrain said, focusing on the butterfly motif.

Again, unbidden, the memories of exploding light and claps of sound.

Copies of the exact butterfly carven on the head of the pin streamed out, following trails of light to explode into pinwheels of light. The children shrieked, at first in fear than in delight as the show continued, and Efrain handed the pin back to its owner. She looked at the pin in what seemed like awe, checking it over for any alteration.

“The pin is intact,” Efrain said, “like I said - inspiration. I had no need to change it.”

The mentor was by his side, clapping at the show.

“I say, marvellously, marvellously done,” he said, “a finer display of magic I’ve never seen. You truly are a master.”

“If that passes for a ‘fine display’, mentor, you are easy to please,” Efrain chuckled, “now, I suggest we leave the poor professor to his work.”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” the Mentor said, “after all, you’ve just ruined the integrity of the text he taught from! Students, you are dismissed from your studies for the day. Emilio, take a break for tonight, me and master Efrain have some discussions to have.”

It crossed Efrain’s mind that he might’ve just signed up for some extensive work in the near future. This however, was his academic integrity, and he wasn’t about to let those notes be his legacy, if he was going to have one. They took up the conversation in the hallway, leaving the students filing out behind them.

“That was simply incredible,” the mentor said, “I’m shocked that you were able to do it off the cuff. Just like that.”

“It was nothing,” Efrain said, “and that’s not self-praise, mentor. If you’re not able to do simple illusions of light like, then ‘my’ books have led you astray.”

Efrain stopped to look out through a window, seeing the central pyramid and its rooftop garden. “Though that’s not entirely fair to Nicolo and Armsted. I’ve been travelling and studying for nigh-on two centuries since I left. I’ve learned much more than what they were left to work with.”

When Efrain turned back to the man, he found that he was bowing low.

“What are you doing?”

“Oh please, master Efrain,” said the man, “please, led us back to greatness.”

“What?”

“You are truly, the most knowledgeable, the most revered, the most brilliant-”

“Stop that,” Efrain said, “I left my patience for flattery about a half-thousand miles west. Say what you mean, plainly.”

He tried to tell himself that was the truth, but he couldn’t deny it made his chest swell to hear such things, especially after so long on his own.

“We need you,” said the man, astonishing Efrain as he wiped tears from his eyes, “we are but children, stumbling around-”

“Do you do this with every guest?” Efrain said, trying to tamp down on the delight he felt.

“What? N-no. Be the mentor! I will gladly renounce it, if you are there to take the place. Lead our school, master Efrain!”

Efrain held his face as he considered what the man had just said.

“No,” he said, quashing the image of mentor Efrain squarely and firmly right there.

“B-but why?” the mentor blubbered, “anything you want, I’ll give it to you, anything! Name it and-”

“But I will rewrite those gods-damned books you have. Fill them with my current knowledge, which is far superior than that poetic dreck that I made back in the day,” Efrain said, “I would not be able to live with myself, if I left you with that swill.”

“Oh thank you! Thank you!” said the mentor, clasping his hands.

“Now, let’s get back to my office,” Efrain said, “I’m finding myself quite tired of this whole affair.”

“Yes, yes, of course,” said the man, straightening himself and gesturing the way.

“Tell me,” Efrain said, “your begging seems to indicate that the academy’s future is dire.”

“Oh, it’s bad,” sighed the man heavily, “we simply haven’t been able to produce things that are of much use. It is our shame, and as such, we’ve moved much of the studies to other, more practical subjects. Maths, history - magic is quickly becoming a pure pursuit of knowledge. The Eisen matriarch seems not to mind, but Poutash, and many of the established houses, well…”

Efrain nodded as he climbed the main stairs, shuffling by students. He tried to ignore the irrational guilt that plagued him. He’d just managed to put a lid on it as they reached the office, where within he sank into the chair. The mentor stood nervously by the door, almost like an attending student, not the director of a school. Efrain wondered how he got the position in the first place.

“Well, that was enlightening,” Efrain said, “I’ll retire now, I think.”

“Of course,” said Avencia, “yes, we shall leave you to it. I will have dinner sent up.”

“No need, we had some in the city,” Efrain said, “I don’t eat all that much anyways. Tell me, are there any particular teas you’d recommend? Local speciality or imported, I don’t care.”

The man thought for a few moments.

“I would have to ask someone else, but I will send up a set as soon as possible,” he said.

“Oh, and the books,” Efrain said, reclining back on the chair and looking out the window.

“Which books?” said the man excitedly.

“All of them. Any of them that bear my name,” Efrain said, “In fact, just send me all your core texts for magic. If I need any sort of historical references, I’ll make up a list while I’m reading them.”

The man practically stumbled over himself, thanking Efrain profusely and indicating that the entire curriculum would be sent up, as well as paper and ink. When the door shut, the quiet seemed almost unnatural to Efrain after the busy day he’d had. He picked up a book from the shelf, some piece of Karkosian history from a man he’d never heard of.

He sat back down in the chair, and curiously, he found his eyesight beginning to swim as he tried to parse the page. His body felt… heavy, exhausted even. He tried to resist it, tried to fight it as the book fell open on his lap, but his vision darkened, and soon Efrain had drifted off to sleep.