When he was just a small child, Tercius had found systems of organizing days fascinating.
Never one to let a point of interest go lightly, he went on to become acquainted with different kinds of calendars, from solar to lunar and lunisolar, from ancient ones used in Mesoamerica to the calendars of the Middle East, from Gaulish Coligny calendar to ancient Chinese calendars to the season keeping systems of Aboriginal Australians, his young self had taken a look at as many as he had found.
The calendar that he used for most of his lifetime was called the Gregorian. It was named after a Pope who had made a minor adjustment to an older calendar called Julian, while Julian Calendar itself was a reform of the older Roman Calendar.
The evolution of the calendars and their diversity told a story about the ages of all continents and he had always been drawn to those kinds of stories.
Following his… whatever happened that got him into this body, Tercius had not even used the calendar for his daily life for years. There was simply no need to use one. Only after he started learning to write did he come to connect the crumbs that he collected along the way and learn of the Empire's nameless solar calendar, with three hundred and sixty-nine days.
The calendar that the mages used, New Pyramid Calendar, was also solar, with exactly the same number of days like the one of the Empire, but the arrangements of the days and months were not the same, nor were the smaller units for time measurement. He knew that an entire class of study during the second year of the Academy was dedicated to adjusting students to the units that the mages used commonly.
His grandmother used a lunisolar calendar for her religious practices and in that calendar, there were four annual solar and more than two dozen important lunar dates that he knew she kept an eye out for. Solar dates were designated as starts of the seasons, and they were respectively spring equinox, summer solstice, autumn equinox, and winter solstice, which was pretty standard simple stuff in his book and it corresponded to the calendar that the mages used.
With the lunar side, things got complicated. Important lunar dates depended entirely on the positions of the two natural satellites of the planet which were known collectively as Children of the Sun or The Twins, or individually as the Son and Daughter, Gray and White, or Vell and Majus. The names were many and dependent on who you asked about them, but the names were of little import. Phases and interactions between those two celestial bodies were where the true confusion started and among that confusion, one special interaction stood out.
Reunion.
The Reunion was called by that name because when viewed from the surface of the planet the two satellites overlapped, and people around the Empire celebrated this event as a time when you should visit close family and spend time with them.
According to the stories heard in taverns and inns, the whitish moon, Daughter Majus, was the faster of the two visible satellites to complete its rotation around the planet while the graying Struggling Son Vell, as some unfairly called him, was known to take its time.
Tercius thought it unfair to title Vell with such a nickname since Majus obviously had the considerable advantage in proximity to the planet. And since he was in the neighborhood of unfair, how accurate were people who called these satellites The Twins? He had to admit that the two looked about the same size when he observed them— maybe even perfectly the same— but what about when you took distance into account? The color? The patterns? The saying that some people have eyes but can’t see was quite accurate, Tercius had to say. Not only was Vell bigger than his sibling but, considering his bigger orbit size, he was also quite clearly the speedster of the celestial family…
The two satellites rotated the same way as the planet and the orbits of the two satellites were at a slight angle to each other and that meant that the event had two points of perfect intersection where it could occur. Through a miracle, according to his grandmother, those two siblings did reunite at least once every year, although twice was also known to happen every once in a while. From start to finish every overlap was only a couple of hours long, so while the event did happen every year it was not always observable— sometimes you just had the bad luck to be in the wrong spot on the planet to see it happen.
His grandmother told him that she had read years ago that depending on the time of the year when it happened some Reunions could become a bit more special than others— like new moons Reunion, which wasn’t even observable, or solar eclipse Reunion, which was observable only certain locations on the planet, or even lunar eclipse Reunion, which was considered a bad omen of uncertain times to come…
But all of these were rare variations, most of which only happen once in a few hundred years.
Oh… Tercius thought. I should steer a conversation with Mistress Kalina about an eclipse of the Reunion… Grandmother said that the last one was just under three centuries ago…
Tercius looked up at the deep night sky. Vell and Majus were up there seemingly hurling to collide into a single spot, separated by a single day of distance. Vell was almost in position, while Majus lagged behind, but he knew that tomorrow evening, just before the sun sets below the western mountains, the two would overlap and this year's Reunion would come to pass.
Separated from the knowledge of her temple, for years Rona never had any reliable way to calculate when the Reunions would occur, but after Tercius started visiting Perdinar and his trove of books, within a few months he had stumbled across the formulas by complete accident. After some struggle to overcome differences in mathematical systems and quite a few language, logic, and simple ignorance hiccups, he had made an accurate, easy-to-understand lunar calendar for Rona’s drifting holiday.
Tercius knew that his finished calendar was accurate because Perdinar had had a complete one— which the mage had offered as a gift, but Tercius had refused to take it. He had wanted to create a calendar, so he did. The only gray spot was that he had used someone else’s formulas to get there… but climbing on other people's backs had been the way of the world from time immemorial.
Approaching footsteps drew his attention to the stairs that led to the roof and he saw a head full of orange slowly rise.
“Good progress today with those color morphs, neophyte,” Mistress Kalina said.
"Thank you, Mistress," Tercius said. Earlier in the day, Mistress Kalina had shown both him basic morphs to make his mana observable with naked eyes, teaching him how to make his mana turn red, orange, and yellow. He also learned that this was the way that the Academy taught students who were struggling with shaping complex constructs properly because they lacked a sensing skill of their own. The provision was that you had Mana Metamorphosis beforehand, of course.
Besides morphs and shapes, Mistress Kalina's lessons on instruments were a clear indicator of a high-level teaching skill on her side. With his Quick Learner to help him retain everything she taught better, he was making serious progress in very little time. Besides teaching him some technical aspects of the oud, which she did not play but she had some crossover knowledge from the lute, and helping him remember Rona’s lessons, Mistress Kalina was even teaching him how to infuse mana into his fingers and then strings properly, so that one day he could cast spells with the oud.
Beforehand he thought that Mistress Helfira had a gift for teaching, but now seeing how Mistress Kalina juggled him, Penelope, Aurelia, and even little Leo who just pounded a small drum— with surprising rhythm, Tercius had to say— and succeeding in teaching each of them something where progress was very clear, he had to say that Mistress Helfira still had a way to go. Hells, he had an even bigger way to go.
“I noticed that your sight skill has advanced again,” Mistress Kalina said with a nod. “What you unorthodox Energy allows is rather remarkable, I have to say,”
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This morning his Mana Sight reached level [46] right in the middle of morphing practice with the woman and he had guessed that she found out about his Mana Sight, solely on how she looked at him at that moment. But he was surprised that it took a few levels for her to notice. He broke that barrier three days ago by adding the Wandering Eyes function.
Tercius had no idea how to answer that, so he let the silence between them grow, as he turned his eyes back to stargazing.
One thing he noticed immediately was that her presence was not a source of discomfort anymore. The past few days had cleared the air on his side and allowed him to see that she was no more a deity than he was, despite her power and the wide range of abilities, spells, and knowledge. She had to eat, sleep, shit and urinate, shower, and cool herself when the heatwaves struck, it was just that she had more options for any of those things.
“I have come to a decision regarding the question you posed,” she said.
“Mistress?” he glanced at her for a moment and saw her still looking up.
“I am risking a lot if I tell you,” she said after a few moments of silence. “I hope you understand that,”
“I’m afraid that I can only begin to understand the full scope once I know what is your reason, Mistress,” Tercius said slowly as he placed his arms in the low of his back.
“You… you were right about your assumption. The first time any new signature of Energy is discovered is… special,” Mistress Kalina said slowly. Tercius thought about using Acting to help him, but even at [20] the skill was a burner that Mistress Kalina’s twitching nose would be sure to notice.
“I remember that smell of Energy you had that day in Chameos. It was so faint, that if only a few more weeks had gone by, you would have slipped past me without notice,” Mistress Kalina said, as she closed her eyes and inhaled a deep nasal breath. “I knew immediately that the Energy was unstructured and that your body was not rejecting it… so I knew that it was yours and not a spell cast on you,”
Tercius kept his mouth shut and ears wide open.
"For a while, I even entertained the notion that you were a polymorphed mage," Mistress Kalina said. "A spy. An exiled mage returned to wreak havoc. Even though I smelled quite clearly that there were no spells on you, I took no chances. You never know what an unethical mage might have created in exile. If you can recall… a few days after the event in the Court of Chameos, you had a fever, yes?"
Tercius nodded after a moment of thought, while wondering where this was going. “A fever and a… another symptom, Mistress.”
“In the spirit of honesty, let me offer an apology in advance for causing you infirmity.” she said, taking a deep breath.
“I spiced your evening meal with a handmade special, to test your organs. You see, all polymorphed organs… act strangely when under specifics kinds of stress, skin in particular,” she admitted.
"Oh…" Tercius said as a sudden desire to leave came to him. People tampering with his food… poisoning it… it was something straight out of a nightmare. As his breath and mind grabbed horses to flee for the hills, he reigned them in. "So my fever and…"
“—Your fever and diarrhea were two completely normal reactions to my potion.”
Tercius took a seat on the floor of the roof. His legs were protesting his standing effort.
"It was then that I knew without a doubt that you were a new Energy user, an active user mind you— a child who did the impossible," Mistress Kalina sighed and came to sit in front of him. Her green eyes looked at him with a kind look. "You see, once someone new to active Energy use is found, his or her Lineage is traced,"
“Lineage, Mistress?”
“Line of Mentorship,” Mistress Kalina nodded. “Mine is that of Grand-Master Tergaron, First of His Line,”
“But… I don’t have a Mentor. Not yet at least…” Tercius said. He had decided to accept her offer anyway, but now… waiting a little longer and hearing what she had to say didn’t seem like a bad idea.
Mistress Kalina nodded slowly. "Upon discovering a new active user of Energy, meaning someone who has the ability to draw Energy from a Well and therefore has Energy Manipulation, the Repository would have alerted me and my colleagues of you, and as protocol dictates we would have been in obligation to use the Chamber of Truth to verify who your Mentor is. The Chamber is foolproof. Even erased memories would prohibit you from speaking falsely in there,"
“If your Mentor-less background were to come to light, to the Repository you would become Tercius, First of His Line, and you might have noticed how us mages place a lot of value on our titles,”
Tercius nodded.
“That’s because Titles have power in the Repository,” Mistress Kalina explained. “That Title I mentioned, First of His Line, means that a new chair would appear near the four old ones. The first new chair after… fourteen hundred years,”
Tercius blinked repeatedly. There was so much here that he wanted to ask about that he didn’t know from which question to start.
“Are you saying… Mistress, are you saying that I could have become a Head Archivist? Instantly?”
She shook her head. “That’s not how it works, I’m afraid… but you’re not exactly wrong,”
“So how does it work? What does the chair mean?”
“It means that you just opened a new set of everything. A fifth Head Archivist. A fifth Curator. A fifth Enforcer of the Law. Each of those can only be filled by someone who wields Energy and is either you, your Disciple, or someone further down your Line, but before any of the Titles you named becomes active, some work is required to be done—”
“—work that I have no way of completing,” Tercius murmured. “Not as a barely trained mage, a neophyte,”
His eyes wildly ran from left to right, as he saw the future in each corner of his vision. “If that chair is solely mine, I would have either been made a puppet and left to sit on it while spewing whatever was whispered in my ear, or forced to take a Disciple and be asked to leave or maybe even killed outright—”
Mistress Kalina exhaled. “That’s… a bit extreme,”
“But possible, yes?” Tercius said with haste.
“No… well maybe, but if… no. The puppeteering that you mentioned would be impossible unless… unless it's done of your own free will, but then it's not puppeteering, is it? Coercion is also not applicable. Forcing people to take a Disciple is impossible. A single word in the Chamber of Truth and the whole thing falls apart—”
“What about if I don’t make it to the Chamber in time to do the annulment, Mistress? What if I accidentally expire? The Disciple would keep—”
“We would ask the questions of the Disciple, Tercius…”
“Oh…” Tercius said slowly, his winded body and mind slowly losing tension with each of Mistress Kalina’s dispels. The woman let him have his time to process and he took it with both hands. Slowly he went over the conversation from the start, from the moment he saw her emerge from the lower floor.
“You said earlier “The Repository would have alerted me”… and then “to the Repository you would have become”... the way you spoke…” Tercius said, the Spirit living in his own home coming to mind as a question formed itself. He saw her eyes sharpen at his words, but he had to ask. “Mistress… Is it alive? Is The Repository a living being?”
Mistress Kalina sat near him, quiet as a statue. Her eyes seemed to be assessing something in him. “In a way… yes. But also no… It's… complicated,”
“I see… and does it—”
“Tercius, we have strayed,” Mistress Kalina said, as she stood up and swept her hands across her pants. “What the Repository is, is of no consequence here. You asked me why I asked you to become my Disciple and now I gave you the answer. Now it's up to you to decide on my offer. Have a good night,”
“And you, Mistress,”
As she left, Tercius nodded slowly. The ball was his now. From her explanation, it was evident that she didn’t want another Line forming. Why else prevent it by incorporating him into her Line? Four chairs… four Lines… He could only speculate.
But he knew one thing without a doubt. He had no desire to mix himself into that powerpot. Even if there were no real dangers to the position, which was still highly debatable, how would mages in the know react if a Neophyte, the lowest of the ranks, suddenly jumped over to the highest of the ranks in a single move that took a couple of seconds…
The word “Pissed” would probably just begin to cover it…
There was bound to be a single individual who wouldn’t mind offing him for the good of the many, regardless of consequences.
Tercius had come to the Pyramid to learn about spells, not mix himself into such things. He did not plan on staying there for good so whatever Mistress Kalina gained out of him becoming her Disciple, he was gaining more by taking her for a Mentor.
He was gaining peace of mind, which was a rare commodity lately.
Tercius sighed.
Just the previous day he saw his grandfather speaking to someone from a neighboring yard, straight through the green hedge. His grandfather. Talking to a neighbor. That was all kinds of suspicious… unless the other person asked for advice on construction. Or if his grandfather saw him construct something idiotic. But no. The old man was up to something for days now. This morning, Tercius found him rooting through the storage room, muttering to himself and when Tercius offered to help, the old man just happened to find whatever he was searching for instantly…
Besides an abundance of Energy, the main reason why Acting had gotten to [20] was that he had a lot of opportunities to apply it.
Then there was the issue that for the men of il'Drusus family didn't appear yesterday. The emptiness they left behind was palpable... This day still had a few hours remaining...
Hopefully, it wasn't a calm before the storm.
But even if it was… his work with skill/spell experiments was in the final phases and after he finished everything later tonight, he should be doing his first attempts tomorrow… maybe even in the early morning, before breakfast, if he finished his examinations earlier than planned.