The gray-haired woman who seemed to be the leader of this outfit was engaged in animated discussion with Galen's friend. They broke off as Tiro entered the courtyard with Oliver in tow, turning to face them.

"Oliver, this is Sindra Talhassian, our noble leader."

She gave him a brief, tight smile. "Oliver. Nice to properly make your acquaintance."

"I wish I could say the same," he said humorlessly, "But these aren't exactly promising circumstances."

She chuckled, shrugged as if to say, What can you do? "I trust Tiro has explained exactly what those circumstances are," she said instead.

He nodded. Beside him Tiro shifted on his feet, looking between them.

"Do you have any other questions?" Her tone was somewhere on the friendly side of neutral.

"Yes. What do you want with me, precisely?" he asked, glancing over at Galen's friend, who was watching him carefully.

Oliver didn't exactly care what they wanted with him. It was obvious, in any case. But he had no intention of working with them or giving them anything beyond the bare minimum he needed; he simply needed to convey the impression that he did.

"I should think that would be obvious," she said.

"I thought you weren't interested in my knowledge of physics," said Oliver.

"Personally, we're not. We think such knowledge can only lead to the doom of our world and others," she said. "But unfortunately, we don't have the luxury of standing by while the Empire makes use of it to advance the chokehold they have on my people."

"I understand," he said.

"Do you? If we don't learn what we can from you and turn the Empire's own weapons upon itself," she said, tone lowering ominously, "then we are doomed."

"Strong words," Oliver said. "A touch grandiose, some might say."

"Some might. And they might die along with this world, if they were wrong," she shot back.

"How do you know I have any knowledge of value?"

"We don't. We simply hope, as always. What do you need to know in order to help us?"

"I need to know what I'm dealing with," said Oliver. "I must learn how magic works in order to share with you how I might weaponize it with my knowledge."

"Very well. I suspected as much," Sindra said, "Tiro has already begun the process of acquiring a teacher for you."

"I look forward to learning from them," said Oliver, and he did. Very much.

"Excellent. Anything else?"

"I have an appointment tomorrow evening with a magister from the college," he said after a pause. "Might I leave to make that appointment?"

"An appointment? Who with? What for?" she asked sharply, glancing at Tiro, who shrugged.

"That is my own business. But… I may have shared with them that I have a theory of the elements that surpasses their own."

The look on her face was like a storm rolling in across the distant ocean horizon.

"What did you tell them, precisely?" she asked.

"Very little. Mainly, I hinted," Oliver said.

"You may have undone yourself," she said. "We will wait and see. If word of this passes to the Empire, they will certainly send somebody to investigate."

"Investigate?" asked Oliver.

"You think they're fond of the idea that one of their little projects is running around free in the outside world? Certainly they will have been looking for you. If you are caught then all of our chances are gone up in smoke. You will remain in this house and you are not to leave or show your face in the windows until we have given you the all clear. Galen and Arlo will watch you," she said, glancing pointedly at Galen's friend and then at Galen, who loomed in the doorway behind them.

Well. There went his lawncare job, and any chance he had of learning magic from the magisters of the college.

He'd better be able to learn quickly and well from whomever they brought in to teach him.

"And Oliver? One more thing. We've disabled your system, so don't even think about trying to escape. Understood?" She caught his eye, stared at him, waiting for a response.

Of everything they'd done to him, up to and including actually killing him — something he'd yet to process, given it had left no physical or mental mark beyond a period of protracted unconsciousness and a headache — that seemed to be the most invasive. He felt his inner self crawling at the thought, a wave of revulsion passing through him.

Oddly it was a sensation that had been missing when Polephenes had disabled his system to help him, despite the fact that it was likely the same man and the same method as the previous time.

Well, he'd dealt with worse. A part of SERE school included desensitization training to common methods of torture, including methods of degradation, of breaking the will, of causing one to devalue oneself. He'd endured them. He'd endure this too. He stared back at her and nodded once, expressionlessly.

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—

The next morning, he was roused early and fed a quick breakfast by Iseult, who treated him with a resentful caution, like one might treat a wild, injured animal. He realized that he had intruded into her life and spilled blood in what was possibly her childhood home, and found that he felt a little guilt at what had happened.

Upon being brought to the courtyard he found the magister already waiting for him; an elderly woman, short, stout, and wearing an expression that boded an ill temper and a long day. She was dressed in plain, straight robes of black and wore her gray, thinning hair pinned tightly at the nape of her neck.

"You're late," she snapped as he entered the courtyard, trailed by Galen, who took up a watchful post behind him.

"I wasn't aware there was a time set," he said.

"That's no excuse," she responded. "My name is Madame Carrix, and it seems I'm here to oversee the training of a useless pathless whose only achievement in life has been to somehow fail at dying by the proper age. That would be you, yes?"

There were so many things absurdly hostile about this statement that he couldn't even find himself to be upset, more bewildered.

He glanced around. The courtyard was the same one that in which he'd met the rebel cell the previous night, with a cobbled stone floor and high walls with ivy creeping up them blocking out the sight of any neighbors.

"Yes, that would be me," he said, upon finishing his examination of the courtyard.

She trod around him, peering at him.

"How old are you, boy?" she asked.

"I'm thirty six," he said neutrally.

"And when was your system Impressed?"

"A month or so ago, perhaps thirty days."

The translation spell was in fine form this morning; she didn't so much as flinch at the undoubtedly foreign units of time measurement, simply nodding to herself with a sharp, birdlike motion.

"And your path; it was described to me as resembling the accounting tables of a shop or business. Yes?"

"I—well, yes, I suppose. In a manner."

"Fascinating, most fascinating. What possessed you to manifest such a path, I wonder?"

He was about to respond when he realized it was most likely a rhetorical question.

She finished her pacing, stopping in front of him.

"What is your interest? In what form would you like the system to aid you, once you've mastered it?"

"I'm primarily interested in purely magical abilities, and if there are mental enhancements I can use, I'd like those too."

"I see. Nothing physical, then?" she asked, peering over his body.

"Unless it can grant me magical strength and stamina in a matter of days," he said, "I'm not interested."

"With the System, anything is possible. Provided you have enough mana," she mused. "Still, I think your first assessment is the most accurate. You would do well as a mage. What domain of magery would you prefer?"

"Domain?"

"Oh, pantheon divided, do you know nothing of magic?" she exclaimed.

"I do not," he said. "I don't know what they've told you—"

"Not a word," she said, raising a finger and cutting him off. "I've no idea where that lot dug you up and I have no desire to know," she said.

Hmm, interesting. So she wasn't a direct part of the Moderates, then, or so he could infer from her lack of knowledge as to his origin. And she'd prefer to keep it that way. That was useful, potentially.

She tutted disapprovingly. "Right, I've no time to school you in the finer details of the history of magic, but I can give you a high-level overview."

He nodded expectantly. This was what he'd been waiting for, and though she didn't seem inclined to let him get a word in edgewise, perhaps he'd learn as much as he needed to know regardless. She began pacing the courtyard as she spoke, speaking quickly and in clipped tones.

"Magic in its current form was created with the introduction of the system by Myrddin the Elder—"

"I'm sorry, by whom?" He couldn't help but interject, earning himself a harsh glare. The name was oddly familiar. But he couldn't quite place it.

"Myrddin the Elder," she continued after a brief pause. "A great wizard, one of the greatest of the archmages to have trod this world. He ascended not long after casting the spell which gave birth to the System, having trod his path to the fullest. His knowledge, spellcraft and spellforms, his legacy, was passed down to his apprentice and nephew, Myrddin the Younger, and by Myrddin Younger to his own apprentices. Every System in existence today can be traced to that first incarnation, from the System that was Impressed upon Myrddin the Younger." She paused for a breath, and he saw his chance, and seized it.

"What is it, exactly?" A question he'd been dying to ask for weeks.

"The System? The System, as it exists today, is the latest refinement in a long chain of interconnected, sentient spells all stretching back to the System of Myrddin. It was created as a means of assisting us lesser mortals with the weaving and casting of spellforms."

"Spellforms?" asked Oliver.

"That which gives rise to a spell when imbued with mana," she said. "Most spellforms, of course, are far too complicated for the mortal mind to cast unaided with any degree of intention. Before the System was created, as our legends say, were the Black Ages, the times when wild magic ruled the earth and humans were as like unto the elves and daemons and faerie, lacking control of ourselves and our mana, fighting and killing each other in droves over what scraps survived our race's ravaging hunger. It is the System which allowed us to cooperate with one another and form leagues and alliances to carve out our own swathes of land within which to live. It is for this reason that many worship Myrddin the Elder as the grandfather of humanity and the Myrddinites sacrifice to him still in secret."

Oliver nodded hesitantly. That was… a lot to take in.

"But enough history," she said from the other corner of the courtyard. "I can see your eyes glazing over from here. If you wish to master your system such that it does not destroy you, and to become a mage beyond that, then we must learn what you are dealing with and parlay that into such a path as we can. I warn you, it will not be easy, and further, there is a good chance that your path cannot be changed at this point."

"Um, right," he said. "About that. I think I've already changed it once or twice."

"Is that so?" she asked, a little of the hostile intent radiating off her bleeding into curiousity. "Most typically don't possess more than one mental model sufficient to sustain the complexities of the System."

"Sorry? Mental model?"

"The System is a living spell of unfathomable complexity, Oliver, and as such it must cloak itself in concepts that you already grasp, or else you would lose your pitiful, weak mind in its vastness," she sneered.

"Oh. Right. I think that might've happened once already," said Oliver, shivering at the fading few recollections he bore of his time as the Unity. Her hostility was a small, trivial thing indeed in the face of that… supernatural experience.

"Indeed? Then you are lucky indeed to be standing here. Most who gaze upon the face of the system do not return. It is and wild and vast thing, I'm told."

"And beautiful, too," he murmured.

"So, a pathless who has witnessed the Underpinning," she said. "Intriguing. Well. Do not think so highly of yourself. You are no archmage yet."

"I never—"

"The first and most important spell you'll need to know, regardless of what domain you specialize in, is known to the educated as the Eyes of Gelmagidion, and also by the cruder name of mana sight. I will teach it to you now," she announced, approaching to stand in front of him. "Sit down, crosslegged, and close your eyes."

He looked at her, trying to decide if he wanted to obey her peremptory tone or set the tone of their relationship straight by setting some boundaries, then mentally shrugged as she stared at him at once both patiently and dismissively. He was here to learn, not to relate to her.

He sat, crossed his legs, and closed his eyes, heart beating quickly in anticipation.

A moment later, she placed her hand on his head, and it was only because he'd been through this experience already and was so forewarned that he was able to navigate the sudden influx of sensory input that crashed into his mind.