“Hey I’ve been meaning to ask…” Caroline began, unaware of Thio’s internal struggles. “But this is a lamp right? How do you turn it on?”

She was pointing to the round lamp hanging from the ceiling.

“Hm, yes? Like this?” He was puzzled by such a simple question, and answered while showing her at the same time. He reached out and gently tapped the bottom of the lamp. A bright light formed in the center, creating something that looked more like a miniature star rather than a flame.

Her golden eyes turned so round they might have been plates. Grabbing his arms, she hopped in place excitedly. “What was that? How did you do that??”

“Er, it’s a magic lamp so… magic?”

Caroline gave out an unabashed high pitched squeal of joy that made him flinch.

“Magic? There’s magic here? Seriously! That’s amazing!”

“I don’t understand why you’re so excited.” He rubbed his ear. “Everyone can use magic. It’s not uncommon.”

The young woman frowned. “Maybe for you but it’s not for me. I’ve never used magic. Ever.”

“Why?” He was mildly horrified by her flippant response. Not being able to sew or use magic, what kind of backwards place had this girl been living in?

“Because I can’t use magic.”

He frowned. “Nonsense, of course you can.”

“Nope, can’t use it.”

If her face hadn’t been totally devoid of any deceit he’d have been sure she was lying. All humans could use magic. This was a well accepted fact. The idea of not being able to use it was so astonishing he didn’t even know how to begin to process what she was saying. She might as well have claimed she’s never breathed.

“Hold on, hold on…” He put her at arms length and calmly recited: [πληροφορίες]

A bright light suddenly appeared in front of her eyes and then disappeared in a bright flash, leaving her blinking. And then, to Caroline’s utter astonishment, words began to float in front of her eyes. It looked as though someone was writing in the air, right in front of her. They were all backwards because of which side she was standing on, but Thio could read everything just fine.

In front of him, the words looked like this:

Public Information

Name

Caroline Matthews

Occupation

None

Home Location

Thio’s House at Hillsdale

Health

Excellent

Mana

Poor

Birthplace

Sealed

Origin

Sealed

Thio’s spell was a very basic information spell that he’d learned from a merchant a while back in lieu of getting paid. While all humans had the potential to use magic, actually using it required spells and practice. Some spells could be spoken in the common tongue, but others required using an a special language used specifically for magic. For those spells, you either bought them, traded them for something, or went to a school. As he was dirt poor, he bartered.

He pinched his chin, his eyes darkening at what he was seeing.

“What do you see? What’d you do? What are all these letters?” Caroline asked excitedly.

“It’s an information spell. It lets me see basic information about people.”

“Ooooh. That’s cool!” She tried to move around the text to see what it was saying, but it followed her. She pouted in annoyance.

He wasn’t sure what temperature had to do with it, but understood her actions at least:

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Casting aloud [αντίγραφο][Copy in Greek] and waving his hands at the text, he made it disappear. He’d cast a basic “copy” spell on the information. It could be used on anything text, as long as there wasn’t a counter-spell on it. The copied text was tied to a small leather bound notebook he had in one of his bags, which he pulled out and—flipping to the page in question—showing Caroline.

There, in plain black ink, was a copy of the floating words put on paper.

“This is what the words said.”

It surprised Caroline that she could read anything. She understood this language was foreign to her, but if she’d been asked she couldn’t explain how she knew that. After all the words on the map in her memory she should have known, but they’d just looked like nonsense scribble.

“The only normal thing is your name and occupation.” He gave a hefty sigh and then pointed at a bit of text. “And why on earth is your Home Location set to my house?”

“How would I know? Does it even matter?”

It did matter. If someone cast Information on her, they’d think she was living with him. He’d not had a single romantic encounter in his entire life and women usually avoided him, so if anyone saw this they’d jump to all kinds of wildly incorrect assumptions. His reputation was already sketchy, this would make it a million times worse.

But, well… He understood Caroline’s whole life was a mess right now, just based on what he’d gleaned from his spell. The fact that she’d latched on to him so quickly, to the point of thinking of his house as a “home”, he couldn’t truly criticize her for. She had nothing else. If he wanted it changed, he’d need to find her a real home to do it.

He rubbed his temples, mumbling a “Never mind” and moved on: “While Birthplace is normal, I’ve never gotten an option for Origin before. And I’ve never seen sealed information like this either. If someone is using a counter-spell, it shows the information as blocked or simply blank. But sealed…” He scratched the side of his head. “I think that means you can eventually find the information out, but I don’t know what the criteria for that might be.”

Caroline lightly touched the word “sealed” on the page. “Doesn’t it also mean someone sealed this information? Could that be why my mind is so messed up and weird? Someone did this to me?”

Thio blinked several times. That hadn’t actually occurred to him, but the theory did seem possible. When people didn’t know where they came from, you saw “none”. When people didn’t want you to know information, you saw “blocked”. Perhaps if the information was sealed it was meant literally: no one could know, not even the person themselves.

If so, he’d learned something really interesting. If a sealing has been done on a person, it could be done and undone. As with all spells, knowing the rules were important. If he found the right person, he might be able to get her information unsealed.

“I suppose you’re right.” He finally agreed. “I’ll ask around and see what I can find for this too.”

He felt guilty at her hopeful look. The problem was he suspected Sealing to be a high quality spell, possibly something used for sketchy purposes. It had the markings of political intrigue. And this town was just too small for that kind of thing. He doubted he’d fine anyone. And if he miraculously did, how could he afford to buy the spell? Something this powerful must have a hefty price tag on it. (And that’s just assuming they’d even sell it to a nobody like himself.)

He changed to the topic to something safer: “Perhaps the reason you’ve never used magic before is because of your mana is poor.”

“What’s mana?”

Ah, this girl really knew nothing.

“It’s your own unique magic. You could think of it as invisible hands. With mana, you interact with other kinds of magic. The stronger your mana, the more magic you can do.”

“Oh… and if my mana is poor then…”

“Right, it means you can’t interact with magic much at all. In fact, using magical household items like my lamp too much will probably exhaust your mana. I’m not trying to alarm you, but that’s pretty bad. Every where you go people enchant and charm things with magic for later use, it’s common. Having poor mana… well…”

“Wow, that sounds bad. But when I said I can’t use magic I didn’t quite mean it like this…”

“How did you mean it then?”

Caroline tilted her head. “I think magic isn’t normal where I come from?”

“You must be mistaken. Magic is everywhere. Even if your entire family were like you, magic would still be there. Perhaps your sealed status is confusing you in this?”

She hesitated, brows furrowed in confusion, before shrugging. Caroline understood he was wrong but doubted she could convince him. Too much of what she knew was vague and indescribable, making it hard to properly explain anything. Without a proper explanation, there was no way she could refute him, so she just gave up on the idea… for now.

“What about my heath being excellent? That’s good at least, right?”

“It is but it’s also unusual.” He tapped on the little book. “If poor mana is as bad as you can get with magic, then excellent is as good as you can get in health. And it means more than just being strong against illnesses. Having excellent health means you not only heal unnaturally fast, but you rebound from exhaustion quicker, have high immunity to lots of poisons, and an incredibly high defense against physical attacks.”

“Hehehe. Cool.” She envisioned a tall muscular man wearing a red cap with a triangular design on it. She was just like him! In her mind she gave a hearty laugh but then felt sad because she couldn’t share her joke with anyone.

What was running through Thio’s head: Again, what does temperature have to do with it?

“It’s a great thing to have, yes. It’s just really rare. Still, that is good news. It means that you can get a manual labor job fairly easily.”

She managed to keep her face neutral at this comment, but internally she was throwing a tantrum: I don’t want to do that! I’ve never worked manual labor! Never! I don’t want to start now! Even if I’ve got some cool abilities, I don’t want to be working out in the hot sun and sweating my butt off.

But aloud she commented dryly: “How lucky am I? Can’t do anything with magic, but I’ve got a hearty body that can take a beating.”