Wren woke up feeling more rested than he had in weeks. He blinked a few times, dazed at the light. He must have slept in, the sun usually didn’t crest over the mountain till near noon, but-

He was in the middle of trees. On top of grass, not on a mountain, not recovering from being kicked off of said mountain, unaware-

“Hello, my name is Nor. I believe you are very confused, and I want you to be a-ok.”

“Aokay?” Wren repeated. Unlike the girl he met yesterday - Selena, what happened to his village, what was that sword- focus on the present - he spoke perfect Teethtongue, right up until the last word.

“You’re from the little teeth, then. It means the same as alright. My sister saw you in the river, and she healed your wounds.”

Without scarring or any casts. “You’re magicians.”

The man - thin but muscular, looked to be from up near Jaggedine by the nose and hair - paused, considering his words. Wren stared, slightly confused. There wasn’t another explanation, was there?

“Now, I can tell you’ve seen some pretty strange things recently. Probably need a moment to process it all, but don’t worry, I’ll be here if you need me or away if you don’t. But correct me if I’m wrong, you’ve seen anything tricky and strange as of late?”

The fox. The trickster knew about the monster attack. They had given him a warning, but he had foolishly misread it. If only he hadn’t if they had three hours to prepare instead of one they could have had some more involved defenses, more than that he should have talked to Selene about what monsters there were, he should have -

“I’m taking by the look on your face, you have? What do you think it was, if you don’t mind me asking?”

He knew. Probably knew more about spirits than Wren did, so Wren had to be careful with his choice of words.

“I helped save your life once, and what you say in the next few words could potentially allow me to help you a lot more. So spill, I won’t hurt you no matter what you say. I swear it.”

He did make a good point, Wren thought. If he was a Trader Wren wouldn’t have been sold by the swear, but he was a Teether. Teether’s kept their word.

“I think it was a spirit. It spoke in tongues, and it called me it’s nephew. It said it was the child of the mountain. It warned me I would face a monster, but misled me to who that monster was.” A moment of realization dawned on Wren.

“Is my village safe? Are those wolves defeated? Did it attack the village? There was a girl there, with a golden sword. Are they enemies? What’s going on?” Wren was near screaming at this point.

Nor listened patiently, and Wren was too preoccupied to catch any brief moments when his composure broke.

“Alright. I’m going to try to explain a few things to you. Can you promise to not panic or interrupt for one minute? I understand that you’re stressed, and it is totally reasonable!”

Wren nodded slowly, and man nodded in response. Suddenly, his facial features changed; he grew younger for a brief second, then older, than looked like a trader, before finally settling on the most muscular Teether that Wren had ever seen. After freezing a moment, he started to talk.

“I also am what you would call a spirit. There’s no need to be alarmed; of all the characteristics you mentioned, the one universal to all spirits is truthfulness. I mean you no harm.”

Wren gulped, the sudden panic only mildly abated by the rationalization that this technically decreased the amount of danger he was in. Yesterday, he would have been curious about the spirit.

Now, he knew better.

“You can’t say blatantly false statements. Lies of omission are possible.”

“True, but I don’t know where you came from, and promised that I would take care of you. Is that good enough?”

“Who did you promise it to? I thought you said your sister found me in the river, and that hardly seems a reason to promise not to harm me.”

The man - spirit - Nor grinned. “You’re sharp. I can’t say how I found you, but I can tell you this: she who tricked you made sure you were taken care of afterwards. I know it doesn’t mean much, but I do not think it likely she provoked the attack or would allow the destruction of your village. If anything, I suspect that your village will come out richer for the ordeal. Magic beast corpses fetch quite a price.`

Wren paused for a second, relief breaking weeks of stress. Even though it only solved his most recent stressor, the rest were far, far, away.

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“Why me?” Wren asked.

“I don’t know either. Apate took an interest in you for one reason or another, and that’s good enough for me.”

“Apate?”

“The spirit you met. She’s … eccentric, but has a good eye for the interesting. Furthermore, it’s frowned upon in our circles to reveal our existence. To be blunt, the only reason we are talking is that I was pretty sure you already knew the deal. If you do my sister and I one favor each, we’ll help you out.”

“Help me with what, specifically? And what’s the favor?”

“We’ll teach you two branches of magic to the best of our ability. We will teach you the necessary languages to get into the Diomedan School. You get in, and in one year’s time you help us with whatever we need to get in. You also don’t tell another soul about us, though Apate’s fair game. I’m not gonna mess with whatever shell game she’s in. Good for you?”

“You want to go to a human school?”

Nor giggled, which looked odd on his current muscular form. “You want to know how I knew you wanted to go to magic school too? Everyone wants to go to magic school! Who doesn’t dream of being a mage? And for us old spirits, there is no better place to be young again.

Think of the boredom! Two choices: stay alone or hide in a world without magic. It’s been far too long since either of us have spread our wings, and you could give us that. The best kind of trade helps both parties.”

“Why don’t you go now? What do I bring to the table?”

“You decrease our risk. To be found out for us would be such a pain. But if you can hide your identity and vouch for us, our transition will be smoother.”

“What magic would you teach me?”

“Can’t tell you unless you agree. You could claim spirit sightings like half the country bumpkins if you wanted to, and we would still have some safety. If you were to reveal our magics? Oh, that would be a bugger and a half.”

Wren pretended to think about it. If he could go home, Old Boya could have gotten him sent to the Nemean School. He knew that whatever eldritch forces brought him here wouldn’t bring him back, and even if he didn’t he would have still chosen a primer on magic.

Both the Nemean School and the Diomedan school were a part of the Twelve Schools of the Emperor. The line of Emperors who founded them were long dead, but their legacy lived on. The Schools were the greatest in the world, the only schools were magecraft was a subject. Even then, only a fraction of their students were able to be mages.

Wren dreamed of becoming a mage - as Nor pointed out, everyone did - but for the sake of achievable goals his plan was to become a Spearmaster who was good enough to fight mages. Mages and royalty would pay well for someone who could defend them against supernatural threats.

His long term plan was to cozy up to the mages, and get some real power. He would bring riches back to his town, and stop the needless loss of lives to the mines. If bread wasn’t so expensive, miners wouldn’t have to spend the entire day inhaling fumes. This just accelerated his plans.

The only worry he had was that he had no clue what the spirit’s goal was. They had never strictly said what their reason for making the deal was, just a series of vague platitudes which he couldn’t understand. They were spirits practically made of magic. Who cared about being old or lonely when you were immortal?

Regardless, his decision was made.

“I accept. Thanks so much for the chance.”

“That’s a relief to hear. Also, the two of us don’t usually stay in one place, but we decided to start erecting a place for you to live. One of us can help you build it up, but we don’t really have the same needs.”

For the first time Wren looked around.

“Where am I exactly?”

“Ah, yeah, you’re in the Bile. Don’t venture too far off, okay? We’re pretty far out, so Thea and I will scare off most everything.”

“What do you mean by deeper in? Why do you live here? Maybe the creatures don’t attack spirits, but I’m a human - I’m gonna die.”

Nor gently shook his head. “The forest has grown over time. At first, it was actually an eighth of its current size. But it grows, growing larger and larger and concentrating more and more power as long as consistent attempts are made to fight its spread. The Merchant Federation stops its spread along its eastern border, and an alliance of almost all the River Kingdoms is trying to push it back along the south. They fight but a fraction of its strength, however; the deeper in one goes, the stronger the monsters become. They also become stronger as time passes. Even if all the kingdoms of men banded together, fighting into the depths of the woods would be a great challenge.”

“That doesn’t really help me. If you’re afraid of seeing humans, we can’t be that close to the border. I’m still at risk of death.”

“If you were here alone, you would be in grave danger. But as long as you stay near the riverbank, Thea and I can protect you before you notice.”

As Wren’s mind returned to a sense of normalcy, the mundane started to crowd out the raw sensation of his past few days. He had an opportunity, and although it wasn’t exactly how he envisioned it he would still make the most of it.

All medicine is poison, depending on the dose. Both ambition and indignation were like every other medicine in this regard. At his home, it left him feeling helpless. He couldn’t really prepare for the Nemean school in any appreciable way, as much as he wanted to get any edge that he could. He was just as unable to fix the problems of those he cared about: as long as mining was what put bread on their table, his family would have to mine. Whatever it did to their health.

Here, in a crazy, incomprehensible situation, Ambition was panacea. His desire to make the most of the situation kept away the fear of mistakes, the fear of the unknown, and the fear of death. He knew what he wanted to do, and the problems he would fix with power. The rest was just details.

“When do I learn magic?”

Nor chuckled a bit before responding. “Not ‘I’m starving, what will I eat?’, or ‘How will you protect me?’, isn’t it? I’m curious: did you figure out the answer or assume we figured it out? Because while I’ve taught magic before, I’ve never needed to eat, so you might want to get that sorted first.”

“Can you answer my question?”

“Thea!” Nor yelled at someone behind Wren, but as he looked behind him he only saw a river. “You’re teaching him in the afternoon. I’ll get him food.”

Nor turned to me and stood up off the grassy floor. “Let’s find something to eat that won’t kill you on the spot. Hopefully I remember right. It’s been a while since I’ve had to remember what humans can eat…”