Adrian guided Gavin back past the automaton guards and through the dizzying shifts of the DSA's impossible hallways. The press of bodies was mostly gone this time as they took paths that were more like back alleys than the main paths they had taken to reach Gavin's Arbitration. The hallways here were smaller and more cramped, often cast in deep colors from lights powered by unknown sources and made from strange materials. One pathway had, for some reason, cut through an empty cave lit by glowing lichen that dripped blue water into the bodies of water lining the meandering path.

"Don't fall in," Adrian had joked, "It probably won't kill you, but you can never be too safe."

"Probably? Just probably?"

Adrian had laughed and continued on without clarifying. Gavin would've bet he would be okay, but he couldn't be sure. Eventually they moved into what was obviously a specific wing of the labyrinth, but the decorations didn't make it any easy to navigate or discern its purpose.

Tomes and grimoires lined with teeth and all manner of supernatural bindings stocked shelves that stretched hundreds of feet along walls that moved and reshuffled like Legos next to metal and steel and glass architecture and instruments woven together into and twisting and cluttered hallways that tap danced on the line between spaceship and magical library.

Dashing back and forth were all sorts of beings in lab coats and all kinds of magical robes. Gavin was almost to the floor by someone bumping into him from behind. "Sorry!" squeaked an orc man almost twice his height, wearing wizard robes that glittered with starlight as he almost ran into Gavin and dropped the stack of books they was carrying. Adrian and I bent down to help him, catching the tail end of his high-pitched muttering. "The one day I forget my lab coat with the expanded pockets I end up running errands. Every damn time."

He lifted one of the books close to his tusked face, inspecting it with deft movements as his thick fingers danced around the mouth on the cover that snapped at his fingers. He heaved a thick sigh of a relief, apparently satisfied with whatever he saw as he stood, tipping his wizardly pointed hat at them as he ran off. "Sorry again!" Gavin gaped confusedly at the entire experience.

Adrian had a carefully neutral expression on his face when Gavin whirled on him, eyes narrowed and searching. "I heard that laugh."

Adrian's voice was strained like he was an inch from laughing. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

"I'm not idiot, I know what I heard."

Adrian pulled ahead of him with long strides, hiding his face from view. "You definitely looked like you were, the way you were gaping at them."

"They were an orc! In wizards robes! Talking about forgetting their lab coat at home!"

Adrian turned around to walk backwards, facing Gavin with an an unmistakable twinkle in his eyes. "Gav, don't tell me you buy into stereotype. I don't think I could handle working with a bigot."

"Real funny."

"I'm hilarious. And where we need to be."

Gavin stared dubiously as Adrian made a grand gesture at the cracked and blackened wooden door clinging to its hinges by its fingertips. "Is this where most people awaken?"

"Of course not. We haven't used this place in years since the new place was built. We had to keep up with the increased demand that came with organizational expansion, you see. It's perfectly safe." He pulled at the door and the handle came off in his hand. "Just, uhh. Not pretty."

Gavin peered through the hole left by the doorknob and attached chunk of splintered wood. "There's a lot of char marks in there."

"Oh that's normal. Awakenings have a tendency to be destructive."

"This room doesn't look reinforced."

"Why do you think we changed locations?"

"You're shitting me. Can we not do this here?"

"I am shitting you, and if we awaken you in the main area you'll lose your deniable anonymity because at least a few people in the DSA are guaranteed to be informing on talented awakeners to allies outside the DSA. If you feel like risking the Fieravanti loyalists killing you on sight if they know the truth and the jeopardizing the whole point of this plan in the first place, I guess we could move. Didn't think so. We're here because nobody will check here because you'd have to be an idiot to use this place. It's this or dissection, Gav."

Gavin slumped as Adrian hip checked the door, knocking it half off its broken hinges as he did so. At least there wasn't anyone else in this abandoned hallway. "I told you to stop joking about dissection."

"If you prefer they could make it a vivisection, at least at first. Without magical reinforcement you wouldn't survive that long."

"What the fuck is wrong with you?"

"Quite a bit, probably. I use my connections to get out of the mandatory therapy sessions for combat specialists."

Gavin wasn't going to touch that with a 10 foot pole, assuming Adrian wasn't joking. "Moving on- what do I need to do to awaken?"

Adrian pointed to the center of the room towards a big circle of runes surrounding a patch of ground covered in scorch marks and scars layered so thickly that the surface was depressed several inches into the floor. "Just sit right there in the center and I'll activate the spell."

"I'm going to need a bit more than that. That's a lot of char marks."

Adrian rolled his eyes, making a show out of checking a watch. He wasn't even wearing one. "Fine. You're going to sit in the center of that circle there and it's going to flood that area with Aether until the saturation is high enough that it kickstarts your own personal Aether generation. You used to have to get someone really powerful to help you if you didn't awaken naturally, but some guy automated the process almost a century ago and we've been using it ever since."

"Some guy?"

"Nikola Tesla, if I remember correctly. Come on, chop chop. This isn't the only thing we've got to do today."

"Nikola Tesla- sure. Is this going to hurt?"

"A bit, probably. Varies from person to person and we don't really know why."

Well considering Gavin was zero for one in magical transformations not being an absolutely agonizing experience, he might as well get it over with. He walked into the center of the circle, a carbonized and scarred surface of uneven stone that stabbed him in the ass as he sat down cross legged in the center of the runes. He shifted around a bit, trying to get comfortable. "Ready as I'll ever be."

"Good luck!" Adrian said with a smile, pressing the big red button on a small control panel in a corner of the room. Soft green light suffused the room as the runes lit up with emerald runes, and a dome of lime green energy extended up from the runes sealing him in.

Gavin's sixth sense had been active ever since he woke up. It had been second nature for Ser to use their second nature to be aware at all times, constantly assessing the world around them. That was one of the few skills he'd already integrated, clearly having been deemed a priority in Ser's sacrificial spell, and now Gavin had a large portion of Ser's skill in sensing Aether.

The base had actually been rather sparse in Aether. The craftsmanship of the place drained energy easily and wasted little and every other door seemed to insulate magic to some degree. On top of that, all the mages he'd bumped into were skilled professionals, and thus leaked less Aether into the air than one might expect.

The almost magically dead exterior made the incredible amount of power flowing into here a blinding contrast. The amount of energy being used in this system was titanic. Level-a-few-buildings-in-a-pillar-of-divine-light kind of titanic. The worst part is that this thing shouldn't even work.

His Ser-given instincts had already given him a method to awaken his Aether. It would've taken several days of focus and dedicated meditation on the Aether around him, which would have been much, much shorter due to his already developed sixth sense and the assimilation he had gone through.

He was already mostly attuned the Aether around him, and almost ready to allow it to awaken him. When he was told he would be getting awakened today he'd assumed they were going to be using a powerful potion or blessing of some kind to accelerate the process, not whatever this was.

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It shouldn't have worked. If high Aether density was all it took to awaken someone then manufacturing armies of magic users would've been trivial with enough money and man-hours. Gavin adjusted to be more comfortable, driving his attention towards exactly what the runic array was doing.

The magic density continued to climb until goosebumps raced across Gavin's skin. A promise power and overwhelming possibility pervaded every inch of the dome so completely that it was almost physical. His eyes were closed as he explored the sensation, feeling for what was going on. The effect was subtle enough for him to miss it at first, but once he did it was impossible to stop feeling.

There was a subtle tugging at the edges of his soul, subtle enough that he wouldn't have been able to tell it was happening if he wasn't looking. But how? High concentrations of Aether wouldn't lead to soul effects. He stared at the green runes, a headache building as he tried to pull knowledge from Ser's memories that he hadn't assimilated yet. He got a migraine and almost nothing for his efforts, but he at least had a guess at what was going on now.

Runic languages thrived on context. Most scripts were pictographic or thrived on complex arrangements of characters into single spaces to convey specific signified that contributed to a final spell. That meant the interpretation and use of a single runic syllable could vary wildly based on the context of its placement, a fact that often made it impossible to hone in on how a piece of Runic Sigilry worked without someone to explain it.

Without the breadth of Ser's knowledge on the subject accessible yet he was stuck in the dark on the actual magical structure, but he could be sure that something relating to the runes was causing the movements at the edge of his soul that were just enough to help the awakening process along and accelerate the attunement.

The magic continued to work as he focused on his deductions, the runic matrix saturating with Aether that lent a viscosity to the air that choked him with its metaphysical weight. Each breath felt a little more heavy, and he felt pain begin to blossom all over as little needles of fire buried themselves into his skin.

The space behind his eyes throbbed as his breath shortened. His soul felt even worse as the massive concentration of Aether suffused everything, even the sliver of the void in his soul and Gavin watched it began to grow. It grew ever so slowly, a little slim blade sitting his soul like a ticking time bomb. The slight burning ache he'd been feeling ever since his temporary death that had been shifted to the back of his mind grew worse.

The pain built as little burning needles bloomed deep beneath his skin, crawling through his body with the faintest of crackling sounds that scoured away the mundanity of his previous self. Anyone nearby capable of sensing the soul would've felt it hum as it sucked in the surrounding Aether like a starving vacuum to fortify and build itself up.

Eventually the power reached a tipping point and Aether burst forth from all over his skin. Void magic crawled from points on his body that weren't quite there, eating away at the green barrier sealing him in the circle. Fire and rock launched in every direction as his skin, spirit, and the space around him warped.

Adrian ducked a shard of stone that slipped through a gap in the shield, shutting down the Aether condenser with a tendril of water as he moved more power to the shielding wards. That should've been done automatically, but this thing was old. The elemental phenomenon stopped soon after, and Adrian whistled at the damage now that nothing was obscured. A number of the runes on the floor were wiped out, and the pit had dropped a few more inches.

Gavin opened his eyes slowly, taking in his surroundings. "Did you just whistle at me?" He looked down, suddenly hyperaware of the situation with the sudden lack of his borrowed nursing scrubs.

He was inordinately grateful that Adrian didn't take the chance to crack a joke about his nudity, instead jabbing him with a needle attached to a small metal readout as he replied with a shake of his head. "Nah, just your awakening, but-" he gestured to a small side door, "there should be some stuff in your size in there. Having your clothes get destroyed by a dramatic awakening is pretty common."

Adrian tossed the display to Gavin as soon as he came back out dressed in the only available style of clothes, dress pants and a button up. He caught the device, spinning it around to read what it said. 88.37% "That's your awakening percentile. It's based on the amount of raw Aether you're working with immediately after awakening compared to all recorded cases we have on file. That's pretty much the peak of what pure humans are capable of, so lucky you. We're not done yet though. More prep work, as always."

"Shouldn't I be like, I don't know, sworn in first? I feel like we're doing this a bit out of order here."

"Why? You're not actually joining the DSA. You're not even going to be officially working for us, so there's no need for the full oath and process you'd normally go through. What we should be doing is making sure you're able to accurately and convincingly explain the exact series of events that led to you joining up with the faction of heirs Marco and Alessia Fieravanti. Luckily for you, your exposure to the mundane world was relatively public and importantly, recent, so giving you too much information about the Fieravanti's is more likely to make you slip up than not. Trust me, that's saving you from having to read a lot more preparatory briefs." He shivered.

"It sounds like you've done this before."

"You mean being a handler or someone going undercover? Can't say I've done either, but I've been involved with this kind of work long enough for the point to be moot. You're looking at the newly appointed leader of the Fieravanti Task Force, and as the ranking member of our group in the building you're stuck with me."

They were moving again, back down unfamiliar hallways of steel and stone and Gavin was spending the time confirming one of his guesses about the building they were in with gentle probes of Aether. The actual structure of the place shifted dynamically to meet their needs. It was surprisingly clever, and not something that Ser's memories had encountered before though Gavin obviously didn't have all of them yet.

As his best guess, there was a governing intelligence integrated into the system enabling the hallways to adapt and predict their path, which is why each turn they made was preempted with waiting doors leading just where they needed to go. It was a convenience that drastically shortened any trip through the facility.

Gavin appreciated it; he was still a bit unsteady on his feet as he adjusted to a new level of physical capability. Already his body felt healthier and stronger than it had this morning which threw off his movements slightly. His thoughts also felt a little quicker and smoother, like he'd slept well for the first time in his life a bit of mental fog he had long since stopped noticing had finally lifted.

Was it some kind of mechanical or mundane pathfinding algorithm? That would make more sense, as large scale divination on on a massive complex like this would be impractically expensive, but then again that awakening circle should've been the same. Using that amount of raw Aether in a single awakening was ridiculous.

Though that thought did bring up a question. "Why am I getting sent on this mission? Wouldn't it be more practical to use an actual member of the DSA? Seems like a waste of resources preparing me to do this."

Adrian started ticking things off on his fingers. "Well firstly, without you showing up we probably wouldn't have interfered at all. The succession crisis has a relatively minor risk of a serious escalation and they haven't crossed any lines that would make us obligated to intervene. Secondly, most of our solutions would've costed way more that was worth spending on a problem this small. This idea was one of the few that were cost effective, but we needed someone who can fight and doesn't have known connections to the DSA. While we have agents that meet both those requirements they're either too valuable or not well situated for this specific task."

"Then I showed up and just happened to meet the requirements."

"Yep. It's cost effective. Especially because thirdly, The Board wants you eliminated as a threat, while the Executives want a potential asset like you trained. This is the obvious solution. I kind of figured this was going to happen, 's why I told you not to worry. Now wait here. Follow me in and the defenses will attack you."

Adrian entered a long code, then spun the large vault door wheel that pulled out a bolt well over a foot in diameter out of the wall before slipping into the room behind the thickly warded vault door. He came out a few minutes later with a folder that he held out to Gavin. "Take this. It's a low-clearance briefing on the Fieravantis and the major players you'll have to pay attention to. You can work on this while we workshop your cover story."

Oh joy. Homework. Gavin opened the folder and glanced over the dossiers within. They contained fragments of information on the dead Fieravanti Family Head and his six heirs, along with a dozen or so important figures ranging from dangerous fighters to important managers in their operation.

"Don't worry, you don't need to memorize all that. Revealing you know everything in there would likely bring more suspicion onto you, not less." Adrian glanced over my shoulder, tapping two of of the photos. One was a headshot from a social media post, the other taken from a distance but with enough quality to make out their features. "Make sure you can recognize these two though, they're the successors you're going to be supporting. They're more sympathetic to the DSA's interests than the other candidates."

"Marco and Alessia Fieravanti. I heard their names during the meeting."

"These three here," Adrian pointed out the second, fourth and sixth heirs in the pile, sliding their dossiers out and placing them on top of the paper stack, "are the reasons we're interfering. They've formed a coalition in an attempt to seize power from the first heir- who's backed by the word of the previous head and Fieravanti's old guard- and are stepping up many of their illegal activities to do so."

He made face, clearly finding them distasteful. "They're ramping up trafficking and mass alchemic distribution all around the world to fund their recruitment, pushing smaller criminal groups out of the underground as a result and creating a lot of tension and violence in Europe's magical community."

He pulled away, leaving for yet another place they had to visit today. No longer measuring his pace as much, Gavin had to hurry a speed up to keep up with their much longer legs. Pushing Aether into them to strengthen them he managed to keep pace, read a briefing, and listen to Adrian's words at the same time. "Our predictions had them falling on the Tongueless' hit list within a few months and planned to swoop in to clean up the resulting power vacuum, but that was always going to be a messy affair. This will be much cleaner. If you do your job right, that is."

"That's a lot of trust to put in me," said Gavin slowly, pages moving between hands as he did his best to pick out the important bits. "I'm still not convinced you need-shit," he cursed as a few of the papers slid from his folder and he stumbled as he tried to catch them. They fluttered to the floor mockingly as all the papers but a handful clutched to his chest scattered in a pile. With a heavy sigh he knelt down to pick them back up, trying to assemble them back into a semblance of orgainzation. "I'm still not convinced you need me for this job."

"And that's why your perfect for it. Talent like yours will draw eyebrows, but it won't draw the same type of attention as evidence of formal training would, and that's what we want. Eyes on you, on the moves you make. Mix that with the show we're going to put on and you'll slide right into the Fieravanti like you were born to be there. Trust me. And once you're in, all you've got to do is ensure that Marco or Alessia ends up on top. Easy."