The label on the door read “Junior Mage Qualification Chamber: Open” in a very convenient piece of literalism and effective signage.

To get to the door, Nathan has gone on the most mundane of adventures. He walked up flights of stairs, flights whose even and level stone was exactly as smooth as proper and exactly as rough as ideal for traction, flights wide enough that even with his staff in hand he didn’t feel cramped. He wound his way through the wending halls of the floor he’d been directed to, following clear and concise directions which guided him unerringly towards his destination.

In other words, he had walked for quite some time in a somewhat tedious, mostly contemplative silence, and then arrived at his destination without any particular excitement.

He had taken in the sights on the way there, in a manner of speaking. Opening himself up to the magic of the environment, he had seen not so much active spells as the containment fields for active spells. Everything of any particular interest in its own right was wrapped up tight, stable beyond his ability to see any meaningful amount of spillage, but the systems themselves that kept those enchantments stable were slightly less efficient. Those glyphs glowed, if only barely, under magesight; they emanated mana, life force and spiritual force and the impetus of magic all wrapped up in one word. They were networked into one system, each of the stabilizing enchantments part of a series of the same and each of those split into parallel sections—and the reasons why this was true were entirely beyond Nathan’s understanding, just as they would be if it were electrical circuits except moreso and in different ways.

Mana had a taste in his sight, which was startling to him, as he had never had synesthesia in his life on Earth. The magic of the barkeep had been flavored forceful; the maintenance and stasis enchantments keeping everything humming along perfectly tasted of blandness.

Which made sense, of course, and Nathan realized the sense of it a few moments later. What flavor could something possibly have if it were going to support every other flavor, every other texture? C₅H₈NO₄Na. But failing that, blandness.

And so in this manner did the itinerant young man, and indeed he was itinerant even if his itinerancy was of a completely different nature from what other people assumed, arrive at the door he was directed to.

Other than the label, the door bore only a metal panel at the precise height and location to push on were one to open the door that way. The panel had Pull engraved upon it, and this, Nathan suspected, was the first test.

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In this, he rapidly concluded that he was correct. The enchantment that dwelt in the metal panel tasted of malice, and he very much did not want to touch it.

He considered unweaving it for a long moment and then set that thought aside. The door was solid wood all the way through, and mundane in build, so that was hardly an avenue of approach—if this were a Mage Without Qualification examination he might have been expected to deconstruct over a hundred pounds’ worth of door on the spot, but certainly not as a Junior, even though he knew he had options which could permit him to do so.

They were not, however, options which he wanted to make public. So he continued searching.

It was the lack of hinges which clued him in. He had suspected that the door would open towards him, but if so, where were the hinges? He had hunted for them for a long minute before concluding that they were either hidden behind illusions or absent entirely, and he had rapped all along the reasonable places for them with his staff to no avail. Of course, it was entirely unreasonable of him to assume that there must have been hinges on his side of the door for the door to open towards him, but he was fortunate enough to have been correct in that regard.

And then, dismissing even the possibility of hinges, he looked down and was enlightened.

Raising the butt end of his staff, he placed it gently against the wood of the door at chest height. He hummed to himself as he worked, unconsciously employing the sound as a crutch as he blended in the most superficial of ways the material of the staff into the material of the door. And then he placed his palms upon the staff, concentrated on thinking of the staff-and-door as one single unit with an intent that drew upon the magic that coursed through the world and through him, tied that intent into one of the leyflows which he had previously been disinclined to interact with, braced himself, and pushed.

The door slid smoothly open on its tracks.

Smiling, Nathan recovered his staff and stepped inside. First test completed, he thought to himself, and he was quite wrong.

That had, in fact, been his third test. It was simply that he had treated the paperwork which was the first test as being an antecedent to the examination rather than part of the examination itself… and he had overlooked even the possibility of the second test. When he forbore to interact with any of the standing enchantments in any way, he had passed that second test which they had set him: to not fuck with that which he neither understood nor was in any place to repair or replicate.

A Junior who disturbed any of the equilibria enough to ruin the delicate systems would be judged far more carefully, and would be failed outright if they neither fixed the breakage nor reported what had happened. But Nathan simply passed the magics by, observing them peaceably and not even considering interacting with them—incurious, perhaps, by Jejuna standards; but he would have described himself simply as…

Well, as the slightest bit mature.