The provost had apparently met Kaius when both were far younger, so the dean of admissions pleaded patience to Gregor, claiming that the matter could be settled quite easily once the old man arrived the next morning.

However, Gregor saw no need for arbitration. Simply put, the problem was mortal, and Mildred needed this detour to be quick.

Further, the notion that there existed or could exist an authority able to interceded in this matter was entirely insulting. There was not. That was impossible.

Worse still, Mister Admissions had somehow found the bottomless reserve of gall necessary to suggest that this could possibly end without violence.

Gregor held sacrosanct the notion that no man or thing could claim right or ability to decide his matters for him, be it a mage-administrator, god, demon, or something otherwise animal, vegetable, or mineral. Not anymore. Not since Kaius, whom Gregor had twice killed for that exact offence.

Remote enough was the chance of Gregor wanting or needing such intercession, but even further removed from possibility was the chance of him ever allowing it. Meddling of that kind would never be permitted, much less invited, and Gregor certainly had the power to prevent it, and even if he didn’t, he would never believe it.

So, no. He would not wait.

Leaving ADMINISTRATION, Gregor hobbled with violence, which was an impossible task that he somehow made reasonable. His single eye was eager and he seemed almost gleeful in his mad way, though not in the insane kind of mad way, but in the more regular, wizard-typical way of madness.

If he were a more domesticated man, Mildred might say that he had a pep in his step, but he was not. As the case was, saying that he had a violence in his hobble was roughly equivalent.

Some afternoon classes had evidently released their prisoners to the world in the time Gregor and Mildred had wasted with bureaucracy, because the campus was decently populated now, and quite a few of the mages and magelings who were milling about clearly felt Gregor’s rage. He was magically radiant with anger, and those talented enough could feel this as a quasi-physical thing, like gravity, or the radiance of the sun.

Under the half-stupefied, half-cautious gazes of these few, glowering Gregor stalked forward, feeling pleased with this circumstance despite his fury. He knew they felt his power, and he did not doubt that it gave them cause to fear his anger too.

It was gratifying.

They kept looking, which was a kind of incidental admission that he was worth looking at – an unconscious defensive measure to keep the self aware and away from a potent threat. They had no choice but to keep track of him, for his presence held the promise of certain danger to some unknown somebody. It could be anyone, or maybe everyone, and so their primal instincts for self-preservation told them to keep well-appraised of Gregor’s actions.

That was why they looked. It was an affirmation of power and pride, and it felt right.

So he made no attempt to contain himself, rather, he redoubled his obvious agitation. Moving with all the menace of a man who brings a mattress to a pillow fight, he tried to inflict upon these lesser masses the distinct implication of absurdly violent means and intentions.

Gregor wanted them all to know that his anger would not be without consequence.

Intentionally showing off by etching a few new runes into his staff while using it to walk, the wizard made a wide glance over the passing literati with his mean eye while during his hobble to nowhere in particular.

Of the few that returned his gaze, most were young and furtive, with some being old and cautious. Many were nothing, powerless and purely book-learned with no real presence, but some were decent.

Among these, he noticed a witch – the only one he had seen in his brief time at the university. She met his glare with a raised brow from beneath the brim of a big droopy hat, and he judged her to be significant.

Significance meant competence, and competence meant the likely possession of information that Gregor would like to obtain, so he limped his way over to this rarely encountered peer.

For one reason or another, witches deal far more with other sorcerers than wizards do, just as wizards deal far more with monsters, so they like to know about people who are worth knowing, thus, if the campus thought that they had a Gregor present, a witch would know about him.

Seeing his approach, she held her ground and quirked her brow a little more, which spoke significantly to her competence. A mage would not have been so nonchalant at the sight of Gregor’s menace.

Drawing up to her, Gregor offered neither introduction nor explanation. Instead, he jumped straight to his business. “I am being impersonated.” He declared.

Her brow raised further, somehow, and she responded after a brief pause. “The mages will expel you.” It was here that Mildred became unable to follow the conversation. What did she mean?

Gregor, however, experienced no such difficulty in comprehension. “That is their consequence to suffer.”

She shrugged. “Who?”

“Gregor, apprentice of Kaius the Elderly.”

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“Ambitious. You will owe me a favour.”

“A minor favour.” Gregor allowed.

She nodded. “East, the trapezoid monstrosity with the minarets. He has appropriated your master’s office.”

Without a word, Gregor nodded and departed, leaving Mildred to follow along with the distinct impression that she had been party to only half of that dialogue, with the unknown remainder being the subject of some kind of mutual exchange of understanding in the form of non-verbal implications which only made sense to witchy and wizardly minds, like they were speaking in fluent subtext attached to slightly sequential statements purely for convenience.

Of course, the conversation made sense in retrospect, but it was still a little vexing that this witch seemed to have a better understanding of Gregor than she did, though they had never met.

Not for the first time, Mildred felt like an outsider peering into the intricacies of an alien culture. Perhaps this was why wizards – and witches, by extension – were so difficult for the uninitiated to deal with; regular people simply lack some crucial understanding.

Thinking further, it occurred to her that wizards are likely so accustomed to maintaining their insular decades-long master-apprentice relationships that their interpersonal interactions invariably trended toward a reliance on common understanding, because, from youth to maturity, they interacted almost exclusively with only a small pool of like-minded others.

In other words, they usually take it as fact that reasonable others will think like them and arrive at the same conclusions that they have, because that has likely been true for most of their lives, and because they have so little experience interacting with people who do not conform to this assumption. In even simpler terms, the traditional upbringing of a wizard will typically result in a socially stunted adult, which, Mildred considered, is likely part of the reason that the university has abandoned tradition.

It seemed rather obvious when she thought about it like that.

The end result is that wizards will habitually omit supposedly superfluous facts and statements in conversation, assuming that anyone worth speaking to will be readily able to deduce things which the wizard considers obvious.

Despite Gregor’s grim air and murderous intentions, Mildred felt rather buoyed by this new insight into the culture of wizards, as if the fog of difference between her and Gregor had thinned, and she could see him just a little bit more clearly.

***

The office assigned to Kaius as part of his sinecure had been difficult to find, but Gregor had found it, secreted away in the rarely-visited bowels of the professors’ lodge, which served both as a place of residence and a place of work, and also as a place of anything else a professor might want. The space was malleable – Gregor could feel the stretch – so it stood to reason that countess elective additions could be made to the assigned domain of any professor that wished it. The place was like a tower in miniature, but with neighbours. Repulsive.

It was no wonder that Kaius had never acknowledged his position here.

Gregor stood before the door and tried it telekinetically, knowing flesh-rending security measures to be common. Finding it unlocked, he flung it open like he owned the place, which he should.

Peering inside from the threshold, he spied a short stretch of narrow entrance corridor that ballooned out into a more proper office, with red upholstery and desks and paintings and such. Gregor paused for a moment, appraising, feeling, and found no magical traps or deceptions, so he motioned for Mildred to stay where she was, and entered.

Limping into the narrow space with a staccato step-clack-step-clack, Gregor found himself beset on all sides by gunfire.

Bullet-blown holes blossomed along the walls of the corridor to spray him with splinters and lead, and he felt a great magical eminence from behind.

Dazed and reeling, Gregor counted eight shots. There were men behind the walls, soon to shoot again.

Reacting fast, he telekinetically swung his staff out wide into one of the walls, turning as he did to face the magical threat.

He did not think that his wards could have survived ten. As it was, two punched through, grazing his cheek and shoulder. A moderate calibre, he figured. Certainly much smaller than whatever had gone through his leg.

Though only a fresh-cut branch of no significant weight, the enchanted staff slammed through the wall with minimal resistance, crumpling it and a few of the men who stood behind.

Fully turned, Gregor caught a fast glimpse of his sorcerous adversary, then teleported behind the other wall. Materialising, he found himself in the midst of four men, who wheeled about their weapons to face him with all the speed of experience, but it was not enough. They were rent to ribbons.

With that brief glance, Gregor had seen his magical foe, but far more importantly than that, he had seen the flat wall behind the gnarled old mage. The door was gone.

It was a trap. Gregor had been baited and trapped. His rage grew. Perhaps there really had been someone gallivanting around under his name, or perhaps not. Perhaps the information had been entirely fabricated. Either way, the news of an impersonator had been intended to draw him here.

Primarily, he guessed, the trap was meant to kill him, but a likely secondary consequence was his momentary separation from Mildred. Neither of these things could be permitted.

Telekinetically grasping a few guns, he fired in the direction of the mage before teleporting behind the other wall. There were two survivors, who only survived very briefly before their own guns were also added to Gregor’s one-man battery.

Flashing back into the corridor, Gregor found the ancient mage at ease, caring little about the few bullets to strike his wards and nursing three separate fireballs.

He spoke in a raspy voice born from years-frayed vocal cords. “I was concerned that you might possess Kaius’s Veil, but I suppose you killed him before he could teach it. Stupid of you, though I admire the deed.”

Seeing that the fellow was content to just stand there and speak, Gregor began preparing his own fireball. The corridor then changed, and he found himself facing the mage in a large square chamber of stone. Doorless, of course.

Gregor said nothing, noting only that the fellow held a wand of bare unicorn ivory and seemed to have exceedingly sturdy defences. A core member of the institution, most likely. Probably a minion of the Worldeater, or maybe a mage whose services they had retained.

Either way, he was an opportunistically perfect test subject for Gregor’s recent innovations in the realm of things that go bang. The man was to suffer violent cavitation for his infractions.

“I am-”

He did not care who the old man was, and would allow the mage the satisfaction of thinking that he did.

Gregor launched his fireball.