Orykson floated in his castle, tinkering away with one of his projects, when a spirit flickered into existence next to him. He turned and glanced at his bound elemental.

“What is it?” he asked, his voice a rich baritone. “Have the results for the testing arrived already?”

As he asked, he floated down towards the floor on a current of tightly controlled air and began to walk in the direction of his rooms.

“Yes,” the elemental said. “There were two candidates who partially met your requirements this year. In the city of Pennington, there was a new college student with both life and spatial mana, who possessed an awareness enhancing legacy.”

Orykson hummed as he stepped into the shower.

“And the other?”

“In Daocheng, there was a dropout with life and death mana.”

Orykson hadn’t been to Daocheng in almost a decade…

He hoped Ikki was still doing well. The Time Prince was one of the few people for whom Orykson held genuine respect.

“What was their legacy?”

“An extremely powerful fire resistance,” the elemental answered.

Orykson nodded slowly.

“Neither are perfect matches. Oh well, there’s always next year… though the one in Pennington could be interesting. Remind me to set them up for a job with the Wyldwatch, and if they are able to reach third gate with those resources, offer them a job in my life magic labs. Oh, and remind me to visit Ikki within the next few weeks.”

“Of course,” the elemental said, bobbing its head. “But… there may also be one more. He’s an even less perfect match, but the records were updated almost immediately on his choice.”

“Hm?” Orykson asked, drying off his hair and slipping on one of his suits.

“He possesses two mana types, and a legacy that allows them to choose which mana to use.”

“That’s hardly worth mentioning. If I wanted something so imperfect, I’d just visit the student in Pennington. They at least have a useful legacy.”

“His legacy is a bit unusual,” the elemental said. “This particular legacy is Mana Mirror. It grants him –”

“I know what Mana Mirror does, though I am surprised that it’s still around. He could potentially possess life, death, spatial, and temporal. I suppose enhancing the blending effects of life and death mana could be useful, too…” Orykson mused. “He’d certainly need to do some extra tinkering in one of the Sepulchers, but it possesses potential.”

“Indeed. That’s part of why I decided to override your order about bringing up those with mana selection legacies. The other part was that he immediately selected life and death mana.”

“Really? Now that is curious…”

Orykson ran a comb through his hair, tucked in his pocket watch, and glanced at the elemental.

“What are their records like?”

“No criminal record,” the elemental said. “Mediocre performance in school, though recent psychological and physiological medical records lead me to believe that had to do more with struggling in a setting where he needed to stay still and read, rather than a lack of intellect. He performed exceptionally well in their mana flow studies, after all.”

Orykson nodded his acknowledgement.

“Where?”

“Mossford’s capital city. Less than two hundred miles away.”

Orykson cast a teleportation spell and appeared in a hall of Mossford College, where the government performed the testing. As he walked towards the gymnasium, an unpleasant sight crossed in front of him.

“Meadow,” he said flatly.

The woman in front of him was nearing two centuries old, and she looked it. Her dark skin was covered in wrinkles from head to toe, and her hair had gone gray eight decades ago. She was hunched over on her walking stick – a simple wooden affair.

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“Orykson,” she croaked, her eyes narrowing. “What are you doing here?”

“Hardly any of your business, old woman,” he said, though in truth, he was more than four times her age. She let it show, unlike him, and that grated on him more than it should have.

A Magi should comport themselves better than that. Even when he’d been mortal like her, he never would have allowed himself to age so visibly. He was certain that Ikki wouldn’t have ever let himself look so decrepit, either.

“I don’t fear death, Orykson. Not like you do.”

“Why keep yourself alive past when your body would normally fail, then?” he retorted, and she just sighed and shook her head.

“I’m here to teach someone,” she said.

“What a coincidence,” Orykson said, “I’m here for a similar reason. Though, if he meets my criteria, I plan to actually take him on as an apprentice, not just teach him a handful of spells.”

The woman was silent for a few moments as they walked towards the gym.

“Let me teach him life magic,” she finally said. “Plant magic, at the very least, maybe a little bit of healing magic.”

Orykson blinked. Out of everything his fellow Magi might have said next, that wasn’t what he’d expected.

“Why?” he demanded. “You’re a better plant mage than I am, and possibly a better healer. Why would you make my apprentice more powerful?”

The only play that he could see was her pushing him into taking the imperfect fit as an apprentice, then corrupting the boy in order to help her kill him.

“If you can’t unravel that mystery, Orykson, then you shouldn’t think quite so highly of yourself,” Meadow said. “The reason’s simple: humanity.”

“Humanity?” Orykson asked, bewildered.

“You’re catching some young person up in your games of power and politics, and it will be far too easy for him to lose their connections to others and become an island.”

“If you’re referring to the fact that I don’t take romantic or –” Orykson began, before Meadow cut him off.

“Primes no, Orykson. I mean the fact that you sit in your tower, playing games with human lives, toying with the fate of nations like a power-mad child,” Meadow snapped.

“I’m hardly the most inhumane or violent of the Magi,” Orykson protested. He was, admittedly, more than a little confused about what Meadow was trying to get at. He had friends, just not ones he’d die for. Was putting himself first really so bad?

“The Death Queen is far more destructive and cruel than I am,” he finally said. “And my labs provide a great deal of the magical infrastructure and research that keeps this half of the continent civilized.”

“Vivian’s day will come,” the old woman responded. “There will always be someone to slay monsters like her. But there isn’t always someone to stop the ordinary evils you spread in the world.”

Orykson shook his head. He had no idea what this madwoman was going on about. The part about the Death Queen’s demise coming was true – he accounted for her fall within the next two decades, at most.

But he didn’t know what she meant about ordinary evils. He wasn’t a good man – he knew that. But most of those he mentored went on to be successful spell crafters or researchers. It was rare for his experiments to go so wrong that they would cause large-scale damage. At worst, he had to terminate a handful of people to contain them.

Well, there were a few cases that had gotten out of hand. But those were rather stark exceptions.

Still, her inane ramblings about hope and family aside, he couldn’t deny that she was an excellent plant mage. If she could pass on her lessons to his experiment, then it would likely surpass the baselines that he’d outlined for its end performance.

“Fine,” he agreed. “Conditions, however. He’ll still be my apprentice. That means anything you teach him has to be run past me first. In addition, I can call an end to your lessons at any point. Finally, no more than one day a week with him. Solsdays only.”

Meadow inclined her weathered head, and Orykson relaxed. That should stop her from being able to cause too much damage, at the very least.

“If you’ll excuse me, Springbringer, I need to ensure my future apprentice doesn’t wind up in the hands of someone else.”

“Of course, Analyst.”

Orykson teleported away then, annoyed by the conversation. He would have preferred to walk to the gym, but spending more time with Meadow would only irritate him further. Besides, he had to take care of the Wyldwatch and Spiritwatch before they could poach his new experiment.

Orykson appeared behind the Wyldwatch representative, a forty-year-old Spellbinder who had been picking his way through the gym, looking for anyone with the willingness to reach Spellbinder – as if it were some great accomplishment – and to also take the substandard pay as a member of the Wyldwatch.

As his teleport spell completed, his bonded elemental also appeared before the member of the Spiritwatch.

He put his hand on the Wyldwatch representative’s shoulder and he turned.

“Oh, hello. How can I help you, sir?” the representative asked, a bland smile plastered on his face.

How refreshingly droll.

“Malachi Roth Baker. I presume he was on your list of candidates to check out?”

“That’s –” the representative started, but Orykson cut him off.

“You’re not offering him any work. He is my apprentice now. I’d be happy to allow you to contact me for more information. I am willing to have him perform missions and jobs for you.”

He handed the man a business card.

“I’m sorry, but I have the right to ask him and propose a counteroffer.”

His bound elemental was having a much easier time with the representative it was speaking to than Orykson was. The Spiritwatch had sent someone competent to deal with candidates who had death mana, unlike this man sent by the Wyldwatch.

This was stupid - every hospital, and even a few gardeners, would be going after people with life mana. Why send a buffoon like this to deal with the life mages?

He took a breath to center himself. It was fine. Then he allowed a tiny bit of mana from his seventh gate to slip into his mana-garden.

It wasn’t enough to cast a spell, certainly not one of seventh gate. But it was enough to send a message.

He pulled power from his fifth gate as well, this time enough to actually power a spell, and teleported away. The lingering strands of seventh gate mana hung in the air, excess power.

If that didn’t scare off the representative, he was more stupid than Orykson had given him credit for.

Then, Orykson set off to find Malachi.