It was indeed a short while before the advanced students filed out of the common room, leaving just Anesh, Alec and Holly in the far too large and empty room. While Alec wasn’t an expert, now his attention was no longer occupied by his fellow apprentices, he was sure that the room had been designed for a lot more people. The only reason it avoided feeling barren and empty was the amount of comfortable furniture that been stuffed into it.

“I wonder who it’ll be teaching.” Anesh pondered as they waited, the three of them having dragged armchairs close enough to sit facing each other. Anesh’s own a faded once-red thing that probably predated the Treaty of Nex Pax.

“Well who normally teaches Mana Sensing?” Holly asked, legs folded under her on the chair as she lounged against an arm.

“No idea.” He shrugged, “Never took the class.”

“Oh?” The dryad pressed lightly.

“Yeah. They had to correct a couple of things, I’m mostly self-taught, but my mana sensing was already up to par. Otherwise I’d never have been able to do this.” He told them, raising his rune-scarred hands.

“That must have hurt.” Alec said lamely, not sure how to discuss someone turning their own hands into a canvas of wounds.

“Not so much as you think. My parents are apothecaries so I made sure to take some willow bark before I did any of the work, and I kept the tools clean.” Anesh explained, slowly turning his hands so they could get a full look.

“What do they do?” Alec inquired, eyes rebelling as they tried to separate the many interlaced symbols.

Anesh gave them both a surprisingly rakish grin, “Not telling. You’re just going to have to find out the old fashioned way when we spar.”

“That seems awfully unfair.”

“And painful.” Holly added.

“That’s the plan.” Anesh assured them, doing a bad job of hiding a laugh, “Now let’s start getting these chairs piled up by the far wall before the teacher arrives.”

“There will be no need.” Archmage Merida told them all. All three of the mages-in-training startled, and all three very nearly attacked. Anesh’s hands raised and starting to glow blue as Alec reached for his vials and Holly aimed Yew’s staff, though only Anesh dropped his hands once he’d had a couple of moments to realize who it was he’d nearly attacked.

The dark-skinned man paling to something closer to grey as it sunk in just how close he’d come to signing his own suicide note.

The ancient elf rolled her eyes as Holly and Alec didn’t drop their guards in the slightest. “Honestly children, if I was planning to kill you there is nothing you could do to stop me. Now just give me a moment… Animas.”

The spell for a few moments looked like it hadn’t done anything, but then the furniture, including the chairs they’d been sat in a moment ago, rose into the air to begin stacking itself into neat and orderly piles atop the now empty buffet table.

‘...When did the plates get cleared away?’ Holly inquired quietly, the observation making Alec do a double-take.

“Now” Merida began, “We will begin with a basic assessment of your capabilities. Holly, will go first. Followed by Alec. Anesh, I expect you to work with whichever of them has the superior talent while I focus on the weakling.”

As she spoke she pulled moisture from the air, letting the water coalesce into a ball before charging it with enough mana it glowed where the concentration had begun to weave simple spells by sheer chance currents forming inside it.

“We will begin with the remedial method. Place your hand inside the ball and tell me what element I have attuned it to.” The archmage commanded as Holly and Alec finally relaxed, or at least stopped aiming weapons at her.

Somewhat hesitantly Holly reached forwards and pushed her fingers past the membrane of the water, eyes widening in surprise before pulling her hand back sharply, “Earth mana.”

Merida nodded, “Correct. Now, again.”

The dryad nodded, sticking her hand back in and withdrawing it just as swiftly, “Undeath.”

“Again.” Merida barked.

This time Holly took a lot longer, the dryad even considering asking Alec for help before she finally pulled her hand free. “There isn’t one. It’s just mana.”

“Good. Most people just guess. Now for a difficult one.”

Holly tentatively reached into the water, mulling over the phantom sensations playing across her skin. The sensation of sunlight, a light breeze and, possibly the strangest sensation, the feeling that her hand was growing. “Oh I know this one! It’s spring!”

Merida again nodded, “I should have known better than to try that on a dryad. Still an impressive showing for someone with no formal training. Apprentice Alec, your turn.”

“That’s it?” Alec spluttered, more than a little startled. He’d expected Holly’s half of the lesson to take longer than a minute.

“For Holly yes. She’s already shown herself to be far beyond the limits of basic mana sensing. I’ll have to amend her schedule to get her moved to the advanced class. Now, your turn.”

For a moment he considered protesting or procrastinating, but there really wasn’t much point. The truth would out eventually. “Okay but I’m not very good at it.”

“That’s what I’m here to assess.” Merida told him flatly, though it seemed to Alec that the ball of water flared even brighter as he reached for it.

Closing his eyes Alec tried to focus on the sensation of water upon his skin, the slight coldness of it, and all the other sensations that his brief contact with the sphere was giving home, slowly identifying each one and carefully dismissing them from his mind as he sought what he knew would be there. A sensation without a cause.

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The last time he’d done this exact exercise he’d managed to feel it, but only barely. A tingling on his skin that should not have been there. The only other time he’d sensed mana, or at least its nearest equivalent, had been from Tza’rahlitzek.

The demon queen had been a beacon of light, a weight on the world, so that Alec would have known exactly where she was with his eyes closed. Even he, with his poor mana senses, could not have missed her if he tried.

Now that he knew what he should be looking for, Alec was optimistic even as Archmage Merida told him to identify the type of mana she was filling the sphere with. But as the seconds slowly turned to minutes Alec found that not only could he not tell what type of mana was being used but that he couldn’t sense anything at all.

For a moment he was tempted to blame Merida pulling a trick, using water mana or something similar so that he’d be forced to differentiate between the wetness of actual water to the phantom wetness of the mana or some such ploy, but only for a moment. Despite her antipathy towards them, the ancient elf had played it straight with Holly, and besides, what was there even to gain by showing him up like that?

With an audience of one and with any such deception doomed to be brief by its very nature, which left only one possible conclusion.

“I can’t sense anything.” Alec said in leaden tones, withdrawing his hand to stare at it in consternation.

“Hmm.” Was all Merida said at first.

She’d read the reports from Guardian Ilvere about Alec’s difficulties sensing mana, and had, she’d believed, compensated accordingly. There was enough mana in that small sphere that it was in danger of going critical and casting a spell at random. Even most infants would have been able to sense it.

Merida made a quick decision, “Apprentices Anesh and Holly will wait in the corridor for their own safety.”

That certainly raised some alarm. Holly opening her mouth to protest. Merida got in first. “I’m not going to harm him. Intentionally anyway. But I am going to do some risky spellcasting. If you are concerned for him then I assure you that being out of the room is the easiest way to keep Apprentice Alec safe. That way I can focus just on his safety rather than splitting my attention.”

‘It’s fine Hol.’ Alec assured her, feeling her concern almost as keenly as his own through the bond, and doubtless vice versa.

‘What if she tries something?’ The dryad fretted, not looking his way as she, rather slowly, headed for the exit whilst Anesh hurried ahead.

‘I doubt we’d know even if she did.’ Her partner admitted, not exactly a master of reassurance. ‘It’s like she said, if she wanted us dead we’d be dead. It really is that simple.’

‘I don’t like it.’ Holly growled in his head, ‘What if she’s just trying to make it look like an accident? Making sure there aren’t any witnesses?’

‘Next verse same as the first.’ Alec sighed internally, ‘It would be like trying to stop Erebus. And we need to respond accordingly. Just go with the flow and try not to drown in the process.’

‘Very well. But I’ll be piggybacking you the entire time. First hint she’s actually doing something evil and I’m hitting her with everything we’ve got and I expect your support.’

‘You’ll have it.’

Once Merida and Alec were alone, the archmage took a deep and calming breath, “Let’s see if I remember how to do this. Martyr’s blood but I hope I’m wrong. Let me know if you feel anything.”

Whatever Merida did, the effect upon Alec was almost instant. The teenager felt like the entire side of his body facing her was stood way too close to a fire, lurching away from Merida instinctively.

“What was that?” He spluttered, glaring daggers at the archmage.

Merida for her part looked equally annoyed. There was a flash of light that filled the room for just a moment, the sensation leaving with it. “That.” She said with the forced calm of a munitions technician who just realised they can’t remember which wire was which, “was very bad news. On the bright side I don’t have to replicate every esoteric energy I can remember. The bad news is you have a serious health condition. Correction, you have another serious health condition.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.” Alec replied, not about to be badgered or scared into a half-answer.

“That was chaos. The mana of the Hells. And you are apparently not just able to sense it but are in fact highly sensitive to it.” Merida told him, voice softening just a little, “It makes sense that the healers missed it when you were debriefed. I doubt it would occur to anyone outside the Path of Summoning to even check. In short, as things stand, you are incapable of sensing mana. I am sorry.”

“That’s impossible.” Alec protested, “I have sensed mana before. I know I can do it.”

“No. You could do it. Now you can’t. At a guess your close proximity to such a high concentration of chaos as a demon queen, and in such an early stage of your training rewired your mana receptors to detect chaos instead.”

The teenager took a few moments to let that sink in, “What are my options?”

“As things stand, there are three equally awful possibilities ahead of you. Without outside assistance you will have to learn how to use your own magicka as medium through which to sense mana. It’s a more advanced technique, and frankly will make you a poor mage where you can only actively seek out mana rather than just passively reading the room. Normally it’s just reserved for high precision work with alchemicals and artifacts.”

“And with outside assistance?” Alec pressed, Holly echoing that same question in his head.

“Either we would have to arrange for you to be trained in the Hells, an expensive and hideously dangerous prospect, where you would learn to properly sense chaos then transition that same training back to mana, much as demons themselves do. Or you would have to spend likely several hours every day soaking in a bath of mana-saturated water then be detoxed for acute mana poisoning, until your body attuned back to its normal state. Which would be a hideously expensive and dangerous prospect.”

“Which would you recommend?” He asked, trying not to sound too dejected at the news.

“None. They’re all absolutely terrible options with minimal chances of working and still having you alive at the end of it. And it would be a work worthy of The Ancient to persuade either the Necropolis to fund the mana treatment or find a demon trustworthy enough to train you and powerful enough to protect you.”

“...I might know a demon like that.” The words were slow, hesitant even as Alec thought for just a second he might have a solution.

“If you’re referring to the devil of guardianship known as ‘Lana’ I fear you will be sorely disappointed.” Merida told him, smothering hope in its cradle almost as an afterthought, “Since she was sent back to the Hells there have been no less than twenty attempts to summon her. Either she’s found a way to change her true name – not an entirely unknown occurrence – or she’s already back on Reath somewhere safe from scrying.”

“So what do you intend then?”

“There’s no way I’ll be able to get a Necropolis committee to sign up to that kind of commitment for a single student, even an archmage’s apprentice. Instead I will do a round of the older alchemy labs and the deeper stacks of The Whispering Archive for any lich that’s gotten too engrossed in their research by a few decades and see if they’ve time and mana to spare for a worthy cause.” She told him before noting his somewhat perplexed expression, “It happens more than you think. Remove the needs of a body and it’s far too easy to get lost in one’s work, and the work needed to even become a lich requires an obsessive personality by default. It’s why I’ve never taken the leap. I’ve less than no desire to become one more faded relic pondering questions who’s answers were found centuries ago if I’d but the inclination to ask.”

“Maybe don’t say that last bit when you ask them for help?” Alec suggested lightly.

Merida’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “Whilst Archmage Erebus might have appreciated a bit of sass, I do not. I am already sticking my own neck out to aid you, the disrespect is unbecoming.”

For a second it looked like the teenager would argue on pure reflex, but he just nodded, swallowing whatever Erebusesque barb had risen to mind. “I’m not ungrateful, Archmage Merida, just severely confused. You fought hard to have Holly and I killed, so why are you helping us now?”

“Fortunately I do not require your gratitude or your comprehension.” The elf told him coldly, “Just accept that I have a vested interest in your life that I did not have when I sought your death.”

“That could prove difficult.” He admitted with a defeated shrug.

“Thankfully I don’t require that either. Now, signal Holly to reenter. We will be moving on to the next lesson on the schedule. Hopefully you will prove more capable in a fight than you have in matters of magic.”