There were towers here, nestled amongst the dwellings of the mundane rich. Not real, proper towers, with stories and legends and battlescars, but the metropolitan homes of mage lineages who stayed sedentary beside the convenience of the university, mocked up to have all the appearances of real places of power, but none of the weight, and none of the blood-soaked history.

These were not like Gregor’s tower, which had a presence that pressed against magical minds. No, these were just shallow nods toward the idea of power.

They were thin, squat things surrounded by neat gardens, made to look beautiful on the outside. Gregor had no doubt that they were tastelessly decorated on the inside too, with elaborate artifice for security and convenience that really only existed as a status piece.

He knew that he could crush them if he wanted.

As might be expected, these towers were all constructed in the vicinity of the university, so after being driven past a few of these, they arrived at the campus. It was a sprawling mess of marble and sandstone that stretched haphazard out and up across expensive realspace real estate, rather than being smartly compressed in some hyperbolic pocket. Paying the driver and dismounting, they began to stroll through the place, going from strange building to strange building, searching the plaques that straddled every doorway for some kind of administrative office.

Gregor was too proud to ask mere mages for direction, and Mildred enjoyed the sights.

All around, there were too-thin spires connected by bridge-staircases and buttresses which flew, supporting buildings which should not have been supportable, alongside other artefacts of perversely anachronistic architecture, cut free from the need to be functional by mage builders, and now existing only as novelty pieces to satisfy aesthetic demands – demands which had evidently grown ludicrous in absence of the regular constraints of architecture, like the usually-vital need to maintain some lenient balance between the weight and strength of the structure.

It was like a pervert finding out that his favourite taboo had just become legal, and thus more easy to experience. That won’t do. He’d think. No fun in that anymore, so he’d go and find some further extremity to reach.

This degenerate magical architecture made Gregor scrunch his brow, but Mildred found that it was interestingly reminiscent of places she had seen in the Golden Empire. Perhaps this was just how they built things in mage-rich places, or perhaps this was a distant imitation. Upon voicing this thought to Gregor, he remarked that continental sorcerers were generally less than those in the Empire and were often desperate to obfuscate this fact, so an imitation here wouldn’t be surprising.

Either way, this place was old – filled with history and steeped in thick magic for longer than even history could remember. Gregor wouldn’t have been surprised if parts of the campus had developed a personality, as is common for things that soak in magic, like hats and towers, and even staves, robes, and rings.

Hmm. He had a thought. The world was fairly thick with magic, and there had been a long time for it to soak… Perhaps… Hmm.

It was mid-afternoon, which meant that the thoroughfares and roads and pathways were all less busy than in both early afternoon and late afternoon, but still busy enough there were mages all around around to stare at the the single-handed, single-eyed wizard with a limp, and the oddly tall gun-strapped woman that walked beside him, which was fair, Mildred felt.

As she looked around, she noted that most of the studentish people were definitely older than Gregor, who seemed like he should be comparatively more senior, being that he was a full wizard rather than an apprentice. Though, perhaps the disparity was just a matter of terminology.

She leaned close to ask. “Are they all students, or apprentices, or do I just call them mages?”

At this, Gregor made a nasal sneering sound. “You may call them whatever you like; the mages here have no firm fondness for tradition, so it may as well not matter.”

“Well, what would they be when compared to you?”

“They would be nothing, for this institution has devolved into the practice of a very flawed system of mass-education.” He explained loudly, intending to be overheard. “There are no masters, so it doesn’t make any sense at all to call them apprentices, but that is what they call themselves. They have only the instruction of their professors for a mere six years, which they erroneously suppose to be sufficient, before their education is deemed complete and they are given leave to call themselves proper sorcerers.”

“…And I suppose wizards do it the ‘correct’ way.”

“Witches and wizards are not mass-produced. One master ministers to one apprentice, beginning as young as possible, and ending either with the death of the master, however that may occur, or otherwise at the point by which the master considers the apprentice to have become their equal. Death or parity, the saying goes.”

“I see.” Mildred responded, having not quite listened to everything Gregor said. Her curious mind had been led astray by a tangent topic that he had incidentally introduced, and which she had previously pondered for some time.

Mildred pursed her lips. “By the way,” she then quirked her brow, “how long did your education take?” She finished strategically, slipping her rhetorical foot into the epistemological door.

Gregor, however, shrugged and gave her nothing useful. “No clue. Kaius obtained me before my earliest memories. Certainly longer than six years.”

“Well…” Mildred then asked her real question, “how old are you?” It’d been bugging her for ages.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

“I don’t know.”

“…Huh?” She blinked slow with confusion.

“I have no clue how old I am. It never really mattered.”

“What.” Mildred was floored. “It never mattered?”

“No?”

“But what about birthdays?”

This gave Gregor pause. “…I assume that I was born on a day, but I’ve no idea which one.”

“No, I mean, a birthday, a celebration.”

“A celebration for what?”

“To commemorate the day of your birth, obviously.”

He squinted in genuine confusion. “…Why?”

Some vital part of Mildred twinged in horror. This was wrong. It flew in the face of reason and reasonableness. No birthday? Knowing him and what he’d said of his master, she hadn’t been expecting any jubilation, but nothing, really? Not even a simple acknowledgement of the passing of another year, or a session of lonely brooding in a dark corner of his tower? Nothing at all?

She was flabbergasted.

Was this why Gregor was the way that he was? Likely. Probably.

“Golly.”

Perhaps this wasn’t the end of it though. Perhaps he held many secrets of this horrifying nature, and his whole menacing being was a composite of compounding wrongness – an uncanny amalgam of terrible truths. Just what in the world had his childhood been like for him to develop so abnormally?

Did Mildred even want to know?

They then arrived finally at a door marked ‘ADMINISTRATION’.

Upon approach, the door opened itself, revealing a hallway of oddly sensible aspect, with wainscotted brown-cream walls and a wooden floor. It was almost disappointingly normal when compared to the strange aesthetic philosophy on display outside, except for the fact that it seemed to extend into infinity.

Proceeding down the mostly regular corridor, they passed doors alphabetically labelled boring things like ‘ACCOUNTING’, ‘ADMISSIONS’, and ‘ALUMNI’. They were looking for ‘FACILITIES’, Gregor assumed, so they had a decent amount of hallway to cover.

“Are you going to need to pay?” Asked Mildred, somehow managing to ignore the abnormality of being in a corridor with a vanishing point, and then another thought, “Do we even have that much money?” She said, switching accidentally between ‘you’ and ‘we’, and choosing not to notice.

“Students do not need to pay.”

“…But you aren’t a student.”

“My master was a professor here. Not a real one, obviously, but they awarded him an honorary seat so that they could claim him as a member of their institution, and though this is mostly an institution of mages, wizards do occasionally attend, so they have accommodations for real apprenticeships. Thus, I should qualify as a student, if only by technicality.”

“What if you don’t? Your master is, uh, dead, after all.”

“Then we shall break in at night.” He said, as if that were reasonable.

Reaching ‘FACILITIES’, Gregor pushed in and found a shrivelled little bureaucrat busily paperworking. He made his case to the little man, who responded that it was certainly possible for Gregor to make use of the academic amenities provided for free to students by the university. However, he needed to first visit ‘STUDENT SERVICES’ to obtain written permission to be provided with a permit to make use of these facilities.

So then, Gregor and Mildred made the long trek down the hallway to ‘STUDENT SERVICES’, only to be informed that, certainly, while it was possible for Gregor to be provided with written permission that would allow him to obtain a permit to make use of the facilities, Gregor would need to first present his writ of enrolment, which was a kind of student identification that he did not possess, being that he wasn’t really a student.

Thus, they went back up the corridor, past ‘FACILITIES’, all the way to ‘ADMISSIONS’. It was an unpleasant trip, made all the worse by the knowledge that they would need to go all the way back down to ‘STUDENT SERVICES’, and then come back up again to leave. Mildred was beginning to share Gregor’s prejudice against mages. Compared to this bureaucracy, breaking in at night was seeming rather attractive.

In ‘ADMISSIONS’, they happened upon the resident paper-monger taking his afternoon tea – a tidy man with a pencil moustache and spectacles.

Gregor made his case once again, introducing himself as Gregor the Cripple, apprentice to Kaius the Elderly, and requested documents which affirmed his rightful status as a member of the institution.

This time, however, his request was met with neither some half-affirmative delegation to another department, nor the satisfactory resolution that he actually sought.

Instead, the bureaucrat fixed him with a stern look. “Young man,” he said, “wizards are serious people.”

“I… am aware?” This was already known to Gregor, who considered himself very serious indeed.

“What you’re doing is dangerous, particularly because you’re doing it here. Wizards kill for less, you know. I’ve seen it happen.”

“What? Speak sense.”

“Lad, the wizard that you are trying to impersonate is currently at the university, and he and his master are not people to be taken lightly.”

Mildred looked to Gregor, and he looked to her. Understanding took hold, and she saw his face grow flinty.

“I take it that you didn’t know.” The spectated man fixed him with kind of look one might level at a freshly-caught cookie-jar thief. “Look, young man, I am aware of the foolishness of youth, and I don’t think you should die for it. I am not unreasonable, so I will overlook this indiscretion of yours,” he delivered another intentionally serious expression, “and I will keep it a secret. I suggest that you do the same, lest your neck grows an inconvenient gap. And young lady,” he turned with a judging brow raised, “I advise you to be more discriminating with the company you keep.”

“…Impersonation, you say?”

The air was heavy now, and Mildred knew why. She’d felt this before when her wizard was in one of his murderous moods. “Gregor," she cautioned, "no killing messengers. It’s bad practice.”

“And culprits?” He was apoplectic.

She knew that this wasn’t just some insult – it was a capital offence. Gregor’s pride was sacrosanct, and some poor fool was going to die for touching it. Moreover, this was a matter between him and others of his alien culture. Even being his current employer, Mildred had no real right to interfere, and she respected him enough that she didn’t want to. She sighed.

“These are your people, Gregor. Do what you want.”