Saul looked back at the woman sitting in the gnome Wizard’s library, who was staring at him…contemplatively? He stepped into the room and offered his hand, and she stood for a moment to shake it.

“Saul Ficial.”

“Natalie.”

“You don’t have to talk to me about your abilities or anything,” Saul said awkwardly, “I can just go, it’s fine.”

“Warlick asked me to talk to you as a favor to him,” she explained, “he didn’t want to be too rude, but wasn’t interested in talking to you. I’ve learned to couch almost any discussion I have with him in combat-adjacent framing. That’s about the only thing he’ll really engage about willingly. I wouldn’t mind some scholarly discussion, I fancy myself something of an amateur thaumaturge. Anyway, you wanted to be a Wizard too?”

Saul’s eyebrows rose, and he took a seat opposite her, “That’s not strictly true, I only learned what exactly Wizardry is yesterday, but I have wanted abilities that will allow me to experience every kind of power there is for as long as I can remember. I study thaumaturgy myself, in fact.”

“Really?” she glanced out the window and muttered under her breath, “what are the odds.”

“Er, yes? So do you mind telling me what sort of abilities you have? I’m familiar with several examples from records I’ve read, but haven’t encountered anyone with power copying or theft in person.”

“Sure. So, using the abilities of others is obviously very potent, meaning those powers almost all have substantial limitations or weaknesses. One of the most ubiquitous—”

“Is an inability to replicate passive abilities!” Saul cut in, “sorry, I came to that conclusion myself after finding that flaw mentioned in all but two power imitation abilities I read about. Other common limits seem to be only being able to copy abilities from a certain icon or icons, needing to be physically near the source of the ability, needing to touch the source, needing the ability to have been actively used recently, or even in once case, the source to have been killed by the user!”

“Precisely! My abilities don’t seem as impressive when I have to explain why they’re impressive. What do you think of this: of my six meta-abilities, a full five of them let me use passive and active powers!”

“That is incredible. How is that possible? Did you have records of those powers to try to follow? I assume there’s more to it than that, even with the exact same Idol, icon, and fragment, there wouldn’t be a guarantee.”

“Getting the first one technically should have been the most difficult,” Natalie recounted, “I had to awaken seven abilities that suited my Idol before I could even try to get the powers I wanted. With that much momentum, the only way I was able to shift direction was with external help. Warlick used a mentorship spell to help me get a power that he has. It’s one of the best meta-abilities I’ve ever seen, even with its limitations, to the point that I think it normally would only appear in a specialized Wizard like him. The second was the same ability, but for a different icon. There was a chance that the mentorship spell wouldn’t stretch that far, but it actually worked.”

“What is this amazing ability, exactly?”

“It’s originally from the light icon, though I have an identical dark icon version. The official Wizard’s name for it is Learn Light Ability. It essentially lets me learn to use any ability from the light icon. The big part is that once I learn to use one, I can switch it out with other abilities I’ve learned. It’s like a Wizard’s power set in microcosm.”

Saul sat for a moment to think through the implications of the ability. It was all but perfect. Limited to one icon, sure, and he still wanted other abilities that weren’t, but if he could get Learn Death Ability or something similar, the possibilities would be amazing.

“You see how good it is.” She continued with a slight grin. “That power is Warlick’s ticket to full immortality. He was able to make part of the ability into a spell, and the Wizards want an immortal version of it.”

“Don’t they want your dark version as well?”

“If I told them, sure, but my mother told me to save it to use as a bargaining tool in the future.”

“I guess that makes sense,” Saul agreed. “What are the other four ‘meta-abilities’ you mentioned?”

“Number three lets me use any ability that someone currently near me has, as long as I’m vaguely aware of the ability. Four lets me block an active ability that someone nearby has with the same condition. Five and six actually don’t require copying an ability at all. Five gives me a random ability from any of the elemental icons whenever I use it. No way to predict the ability or get back to a previous one. Six is even better than the first two, except it’s actually awful. It works the same way and I can learn abilities from any icon, but the only way to learn them is to use two icon fragments. And the ability that it gives is random.”

“Scholar’s scrolls, that’s a lot. Like, a lot a lot. I’d never quite planned what exact abilities I want out of the combination I’m going to use, but now I want the same ones you have. I don’t suppose you could copy one of those mentorship abilities and use it on me?”

“Probably not…what combination are you going to use?” she asked. “Actually, why haven’t you used it already if you have one? You look about twenty for a human.”

“If I tell you, will you actually seriously consider helping me with this? Otherwise, I probably shouldn’t. I haven’t used my combination yet for personal reasons, and yes, I just turned twenty-one.”

“My birthday’s this month, I’ll be twenty one. What are the odds.”

The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

“Happy early birthday?” Saul said, hesitantly, “you keep saying that. Will you try to help me with this or not? If you can, I can get my family to give you money, icon fragments for your ability, whatever you want within reason. You could single handedly save me months of travel.”

“What family did you say that was, exactly?”

“House Ficial of Enchre and Ficial Barony in the Duchy of Elicaster in Oriawell.”

She made a face like she’d just smelled something foul. “Wonderful. We need to go talk to my mother.”

“What does that mean? Has my uncle done something to offend you?”

“No. Come on, we need to go now.”

“Look, I don’t mind helping you with whatever this is, if you’ll at least consider helping me,” Saul hedged, pulling out his schedule for backup, “but I have an appointment I can’t miss in a little over an hour.”

“That will be with the Architect, or maybe just Nadine.” She replied without looking at him. “My mother.”

Saul looked down at his schedule and up to her retreating back. He vaguely remembered Uncle Nathan asking after a daughter yesterday. Apparently, it was a day for family issues. He followed her down the stairs, pausing long enough to get Matthieu.

“Where are we going?” the guard asked.

“We’re going to see her mother,” Saul said, indicating Natalie, who was walking just ahead of them, shoulders set. “I have an appointment with her anyway, a full elf named Nadine. Will there be any safety concerns with that?”

Matthieu winced and leaned closer to Saul to talk quietly, “not unless you keep saying things like that. Don’t use her and him or he and she when you refer to an elf. Especially the ones that live in the city. Use ‘iel’ if you can, or just ‘they’ if you have trouble pronouncing it.”

“Why?”

“Don’t ask that either, it’s just how elves are.”

“Oh, you don’t have to worry about that with my mother,” Natalie remarked over her shoulder with a note of bitterness, “she’s happy to play at being everyone’s mom. Sometimes even mine.”

Matthieu made a face that said he wasn’t touching that with a ten-foot pole, and Saul decided to do the same. They walked on in silence.

When they reached Nadine’s house, Saul and Matthieu graciously offered to wait outside while Natalie talked to her mother. They sat in wooden rocking chairs on the veranda watching the long grass in front of the house sway in the intermittent wind of the slightly cloudy day.

“So, any chance you can tell me what her deal is?” Matthieu asked after a while.

“I think she thinks her mother is trying to set us up together.” Saul replied.

“Oh. Any particular reason?”

“No idea, I’ve only met Nadine once, yesterday. She was, sorry, they was, uh, were nice. How did you say that other word again?”

“Iel,” Matthieu said. “A bit like ‘I yell’ in your language.”

“Sure. Anyway, iel was nice, and I think iel liked me. We had a bit of scholarly discussion, as my uncle put it.”

“The Architect is well known around here for helping people figure out their future. Maybe they thought you’d get along well with iel daughter? I don’t think they’d try to push two unwilling people into a relationship.”

“Good to know. I’m just guessing from Natalie’s reaction.” Saul explained. “I don’t know her mother well enough. It was nice talking to Natalie, we share an interest in thaumaturgy, which isn’t very common.”

“Ah, that reminds me of when me and my wife were awkward teenagers, some of the only people our age using the public training yards.”

Saul stared at the man for a long moment. Finally, Matthieu cracked a grin.

“I’m kidding! Well, I’m not, but I have plenty of friends I share interests with besides my wife. Has anyone told you that you’re kind of intense? I thought you’d be more easygoing, like your uncle. No offense.”

“It’s fine. I had a long day yesterday. And the trip here was tense, we got attacked by people at one point.”

“That’s rough,” Matthieu put his feet up on the railing, “I’ve only really fought monsters, but I’ve been warned that it feels totally different when it’s a person that’s trying to kill you.”

Silence returned as Saul contemplated his own attitude.

The door to the house opened, and Nadine appeared.

“Good afternoon Saul, Matthieu, I’m sorry my daughter left you two out here. Come on in.”

Once again, Matthieu was left in the parlor, which turned out to be where Natalie was.

“Do show our guest proper hospitality,” Nadine told Natalie firmly, then led Saul upstairs.

The two settled in the same room as yesterday, the Mirror having long since faded.

“Thank you for meeting with me again today,” Saul said with a polite smile. “I wasn’t aware of how important you are yesterday, I really appreciate you giving me some of your time.”

“You’re quite welcome, young man,” the elf replied, smiling in turn, “but don’t go putting me on too high a pedestal. I try to make time for everyone that comes to see me. Just because someone has an important role, doesn’t mean they’re better than anyone else.”

“I see. If you don’t mind, could you please tell me how you prefer to be addressed? I’ve been told I should address elves in a particular way, but your daughter said otherwise.”

“You are welcome to refer to me as you would a woman. Most elves won’t mind whatever you call them, but those of us in and around this city do tend to have stronger opinions about it. In this area, just using the elf’s name is probably best unless they tell you otherwise.”

“I’ll do that, thank you,” Saul agreed. “Could I maybe inquire why?”

“Please don’t be crass, child.”

“Sorry. To be honest, I was warned. It’s just, you have to know how curious that makes people, right?”

“Let me reframe that curiosity for you, then,” Nadine said patiently. “How would you feel if a child walked up to you and asked you to describe what your genitals look like?”

“Eugh, that would be…uncomfortable. In several ways. I’m sorry.”

“Apology accepted. Now, I promised you another cantrip and a lesson in history yesterday. Do you want to get started on them, or do you have anything else you want to talk about? I certainly wouldn’t mind getting to know you a little better.”

Saul let out a long sigh, sagging back in his chair. After a moment, Nadine sat back as well, letting him think. She looked practically diminutive in the orange armchair. Saul had a sense that Uncle Nathan trusted her, but her own daughter clearly had some antipathy toward her. It would be foolish to discount that; Natalie was the same age as him, not an angry, rebellious teenager. So, how much should he ask?