Alix didn’t know how much time had passed when his mind was forcefully grabbed and slammed back into his body. Every sensation came back at once: his chafed wrists, the lumpy chair behind his back, even his slightly overfull bladder. The shock back to consciousness was an uncomfortable one.

Great Mother, what is happening to me? Alix didn’t think he’d have the capability to still be so mind-shakingly terrified after everything that he’d already been through, but his mind surprised him yet again. Staring out into the gloomy warehouse still filled him with dread.

His hands weren’t tied—though with how raw his wrists were that felt like a new development. His legs were still bound, tied to the chair that he sat on. Its heavy metal legs simply sat on bare concrete, giving Alix a view of the wall just a few metres away. He tried to turn his head, but couldn’t see past his shoulder.

Alix forcibly suppressed an urge to call out for help. Wherever he was, it was closer to his captors than any guards or bystanders. Yelling would only alert whoever did this to him. Trying to move his legs let him feel out the shape of a bag that had been thrown beneath the chair.

Maybe I can bribe them to let him go? But it was a useless thought. He didn’t have any money, really. His most valuable possessions—his books and clothes—had been left with him, so they mustn’t want money. Whoever they were. What could they possibly want then? What am I doing here? Maybe they just… have the wrong person? He barked out a laugh. It was stupid to get his hopes up that whoever had kidnapped him in public, in broad daylight and in what was supposed to be the safest district of the whole city.

Alix physically reacted to that, little tremors going up his arms making his hair stand on end. This must be so much bigger than he thought. Straining himself despite the raging pulses of pain through his brain, he managed to slow his heartbeat enough to try listening.

Almost complete silence. He could still hear the blood racing through his ears, as well as the incredibly distant clamour of people, but that didn’t exactly point to any particular place in Lacurna.

And then there—a vague murmuring whisper more like wind than anything else. What was that?

Alix blinked and went still. There were people talking behind him.

Well fine. He was too tired to care. I’ll bite, he thought. He was just about to speak before he was beaten to it.

“He’s awake,” came one of the voices from behind him. The voice carried throughout the warehouse completely clearly, not like the subvocalisations before. Alix could tell it was meant for his benefit. They knew the moment I started moving. The thought was humbling.

“Do you know of us?” the harsh female voice intoned again, “We are the ones that ask questions in Lacurna, and we have some questions for you—”

“Oh great Mother, please just stop. Turn him around at least.” A new, deeper voice came from behind him. Alix blinked at the sudden infighting. The first person had seemed powerful and commanding, but the second speaker acted as if he was her superior. Alix’s mind worked frantically, trying to find leverage.

“...Fine,” the girl said, dropping the intimidating voice. Alix realised that she was a young woman—probably not much older than him, at nineteen. After a moment where Alix couldn’t hear anything, he jumped when the chair began to move on its own. There was a sharp grating noise as the legs rotated in place on the stone.

Alix gripped the seat, white-knuckled. Not because it was particularly fast or unsteady, but the movement was completely spontaneous. He couldn’t see any machinery inside or beneath the chair, nor anything else that would let it move without contact. He watched with anticipation as his captors came into view, trying to discern how they’d engineered the movement.

The first thing that he noticed was that the warehouse extended for quite some length in the opposite direction. The two people interrogating him stood against a backdrop of old wooden pallets and other building materials, around five metres away.

A lean but solid-looking man—the one who’d told off the girl—stood at the forefront. He wore a respectable casual suit, which Alix couldn’t reconcile with the concept of a kidnapper. His face held a rugged sort of age, but Alix had no doubts that he was still in his prime. The girl who’d threatened him stood in a deferential position to the man’s side. She scowled slightly as Alix looked at her, but in a bored way, rather than anything actually scary.

“Hello Asta,” he said pleasantly, “How are you today? I hope your rest on the way here wasn’t uncomfortable.” He shot a significant look at his… sidekick? Assistant? Alix hadn’t figured out the dynamic between them yet.

This is just too weird. Why is he speaking to me like he didn’t just kidnap me? It almost sounds like we’re old friends. He said ‘Asta’. I was right after all, he’s got the wrong person. Relief overcame him.

“Sheesh I was gentle,” the girl rebuked, flapping her hand. The man ignored him in favour of giving Alix a searching gaze.

“My name isn’t Asta,” he said eventually, embarrassed at how weak his voice sounded, “I think you are mistaken.”

“Oh, well of course your name—” The man began, before sharply cutting himself off. His eyes widened and he quickly subvocalised a string of words to the girl beside him. Alix could barely lipread, but he picked up at least a few curses. After some sort of nonverbal agreement, he turned back to Alix.

“If I may ask, who are you then?” Alix noted genuine curiosity.

“Alix Lanyura,” he said honestly. He wasn’t a good liar, and deception could just make things worse for him.

However his captor had planned this interaction, Alix could tell that this wasn’t it. Another unknowable conversation ensued between the two, ending when the girl got frustrated and said aloud:

“Oh I saw him myself. Just this morning at the Academy. It was a sure thing, Karsus. If Reyla had actually taken responsib—” She cut off sharply when she realised, but the damage was done. Alix tried to wrack his brains for anyone strange at the school that morning, but became even more disturbed when nothing jumped out in his memory.

Then she seemed to have an idea. “Look, Alice-whatever-your-name-is, have you noticed anything strange about yourself today? Anything at all?”

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Anything at all huh? Is she fishing for something in particular? But with the headache still wracking his brain, he could hardly deny it.

“No,” he tried anyway, wincing when the girl shot him a scornful glare, “Just… just a headache. It’s nothing, I promise, I’m fine—”

“What sort of headache?” Karsus asked, clearly curious. Even someone like Alix could read his face. But why were they so interested in his stupid migraine? The man’s sidekick looked like she’d won the lottery.

“Like a pulsing throb from the middle of my head, spreading to behind my eyes and the top of my spine.” Alix tried to put the sensation into words. Even as he said it, another wave of pain rushed over him. He was getting more used to it, but that did little to lessen the blow. “But I’ve had it all day. Since this morning.”

The girl gave Karsus a significant look as the two burst back into an underhand conversation. Alix felt completely aware of how absurd it was, having a conversation like this with people who’d kidnapped him. I’m… alright, not certain, but I’m pretty sure they don’t want to hurt me or extort me. Because I’m the wrong person. They’d mistaken him for someone named Asta. I hope whoever Asta is, he’s far away. Alix recalled how effortlessly they’d subdued him and carted him away.

“You have the wrong person,” he said in the voice he thought would earn the most sympathy, “Please, just let me go. I don’t remember your names or faces,” he lied. He still hadn’t found the younger woman’s name, but Alix was sure he could identify her face in a crowd.

“I think we do have the wrong person,” Karsus said eventually, sighing, “Where do you live? Cityside, right? You better get going now, before the bridge closes.”

Alix almost burst with relief—he could’ve broken down and sobbed right there. He missed some spoken words as the two kidnappers stepped forward and walked around him, disappearing from view into the empty warehouse behind. As they did, a third figure stepped out of the shadows behind a stack of wooden crates. Alix gulped at the third man’s hooded face and the unmistakable sheath of a rapier by their side. He flinched when he whipped it out right in front of him, but the blade only rang against the concrete after passing through Alix’s leg bindings.

While Alix gratefully massaged his ankles, he heard a voice behind him—Karsus’ assistant.

“Sorry,” she muttered, speaking to Karsus, “I thought messing with his head during his Medallion exam was the right call, but if it’s not Asta—”

Alix’s thoughts burned red-hot. Mother spare me. If it was this girl who caused me that delirium during the exams… I don’t know what I’ll do, he admitted. But then flashes of the event came to him, mind addled, scribbling absurdities on the paper. And that explains why I had such sudden clarity after I left the exam hall. Though how they did it I have no idea.

“Excuse me?” Alix spoke, rising from his seat and turning around to face the others. Though he didn’t want an answer. “Though nevermind, I heard just fine. Tell me, what’s your assistant’s name, Karsus?” He played around with the word, making sure that the man knew Alix had memorised his image.

“I am not his assistant,” she bristled, turning back from the wall they’d been walking towards.

“Fallon quiet,” Karsus said, and Fallon did exactly that. She hissed at him a little before the man held up a hand. “I think we might be seeing him again sometime soon, anyway.”

What’s that supposed to mean? I wouldn’t step within a hundred yards of these freaks if I had any say in the matter… though they might not give me one.

The man sighed and turned to Alix, but before he could speak, Alix did first.

“How did she do it?”

There was a beat of silence. “What?”

“How did she screw with my mind? Was it drugs? I didn’t eat anything foreign before the exam.”

Karsus stared at him like he was crazy, before slowly speaking. He enunciated his words like talking to a child: “With magic, naturally.”

So casual, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. Alix had never heard of such a thing. Using magic to make someone ill? It made no logical sense. Nothing he knew about magic possibly supported the theory… and yet, he was loath to simply discard an idea, no matter how improbable it might be.

“That doesn’t quite fit what I know about sorcery,” he said hesitantly, trying to hide how unsure of himself he’d now become.

“No,” Karsus said, amused, “I’m sure it doesn’t. Listen, you want to redeem yourself, right? To earn your Medallion for the natural sciences.” He paused, but Alix didn’t trust himself to respond, so Karsus continued. “I can give you that. Alix, right now you know nothing. Not the science you thought you did, not magic, not even the city you live within. You want the truth? Come and find it. Science and magic have more in common than you think, because either way, being ignorant can get you killed. And who knows? Maybe you can, ah, update your definitions.”

The man reached a hand into his cream blazer and drew out a slip of paper the size of a playing card, flicking it lazily across the room where it landed by the base of Alix’s chair.

Then he turned back to the thick stone wall. He bared empty palms to its surface, then with a monumental tug of something that Alix couldn’t quite see, the wall began to move. Rock and concrete split apart under the sheer magical power the man exerted. Alix’s headache twinged again. But he couldn’t look away, enraptured by the spectacle of his captors creating their own exit.

Once it was big enough to walk through—only a few seconds, twenty at most—the two interrogators and the still-hooded swordsman stepped through the gap into an unremarkable alleyway behind. As the gap closed up again with nothing more than the effort from Karsus, Alix could’ve sworn he saw Fallon shoot him a smirk, right before the rock sealed together, with nothing to indicate its movement.

They were gone, leaving Alix with nothing but the card and the distinct impression that he’d been played.

He just stared, dumbfounded. There were so many things wrong with that, he didn’t know how to begin categorising them. He didn’t have a Beacon, for starters. But as well as that, Alix hadn’t seen any sort of visible power source. And the energy that must’ve been required to move so much stone is unimaginable.

Alix picked up the card. On it was written a single address.

“He promised that I could redo the test. I think,” he said to himself, numbly. There was no way he could get it so wrong a second time. Alix nurtured a small beacon of hope inside himself as he made his way out of the warehouse. Warm enough to offset the fear gnawing at the back of his mind. Fear that the other shoe would drop, his results for the test would arrive and that the strange group he was entangled with would find him wanting.

Alix was correct: he’d been taken to a run-of-the-mill warehouse on Crownside. The sky was the colour of burnished copper. And Alix realised that he would have to move fast to get to the Crown Bridge.

It was simple. Even though he hadn’t been to this region of Lacurna before, navigating the sensible, planned districts of Crownside was much simpler than the sprawl of the main city. He found his way to a main road, and from there the darkening water of the river. Alix sprinted towards the bridge which was in the process of closing for the night.

The Redjacket tried to stop him, halting Alix and asking his purpose. But a flash of his student slip and the word ‘Exams’ made him relent. Alix scrambled over the bridge in a flash. He was home by last light.

He unlocked his front door without any disaster happening, pushing his way up the stairs and towards his bed. He was hungry, but getting food would be too much effort for his tired, pained mind. Alix thought it would be hard to sleep with the headache, but his body proved him wrong.