Chapter 20 : Moving in

With all the tests finished Expert Orsana went back to his laboratory. He ignored his assistants's presence and let out his fury now that he was out of sight of anyone else. He hit the pile of paper on his desk but more significantly let a wave of ether erupt from his body.

His two assistants did their best to resist the pressure and didn’t dare to look their master in the eye or interrupt him. After his rage was finally evacuated, the two assistants approached and went on their knees to gather the papers their master had disrupted.

“_ The splinter had passed.” Said Expert Orsana between his teeth.

The two assistants didn’t try to say anything. It was not just that they didn’t know what to say but also that they didn’t want to be the ones who received their master's anger by saying the wrong things.

“_ This Ridelt bastard put me in a terrible position but his results weren’t bad enough for me to oppose his graduation.”

Once again the assistants were silent but their confusions and surprises were mostly responsible for it. They didn’t monitor Nikolaï closely but from what they knew what had been asked of him was beyond what he could theoretically do. Arcanist Amos had read his previous results and was sure that after the injury from the experiment he was doomed.

Arcanist Amos recalled that Nikolaï had paid to postpone his last tests but she had doubted he had been ready for the next one. She wondered if Nikolaï had already the right assets before the experiment and spent the last months trying to go back to this level.

“_ What do you want us to do Master ?” Asked Arcanist Julius.

“_ I recommended him for a room on the first floor, I need you to take care of the papers.” Answered Expert Orsana.

“_ Master !?” Said both of the assistants in genuine surprise.

“_ If I can't get rid of him now I have to act carefully. As long he is here he’ll always remind people of our failure but by appearing as a supporter we can limit the damages.”

Arcanist Julius understood quicker than Arcanist Amos. He was more familiar with how the perception of a story was more important than the story itself. After all, everybody loved second chances.

***

Nikolaï went back to his room and when he closed his door he leaned back against it in silence. The pressure of the day finally broke and Nikolaï slid against the door until he was sitting on the floor. A weird smile formed on his face as he felt relieved that he failed enough to succeed in his plans.

He hadn’t expected Expert Orsana to be present and playing this comedy for the man himself had been harder on Nikolaï than he had thought it would be if it had been his assistants or a tier informer who had watched him.

The crutch, the unstable spells, the second-hand clothes even his apparent state of health had been carefully planned to create a persona of sorts. His success needed to appear as the result of a stroke of luck by a desperate Aspirant not a testimony to his true potential.

The look had been easy, he had bought used boots and a coat too big for him to make him look more diminished than he was. The day before he had also gone beyond board with his meditation and used the poisoning as a valid excuse for the crutch.

The unstable spells had been harder to do than they sounded. The spells needed to look one way but Nikolaï still needed them to do well enough to pass. Undermining something you tried very hard to learn correctly was not as easy as it had looked but his last experiments with Sigil depth made it easier to control the failure of his spells.

If Nikolaï had really wanted to show off he could have suffocated an entire campfire with Air Hole and split the dummy in two with his Spectral Sword. From this point of view, he had completely failed his tests.

Now, in the calm of his room, Nikolaï was confident that his act had convinced everyone even if he was concerned about Expert Orsana’s attitude. He didn’t believe a word of what the man had said and would bet he had only done it because of the crowd. Nikolaï remembered with disgust the small applause when he showed an inch of support to a person he had crippled not so long ago.

The man had killed 7 people and still appeared generous when just offering a nicer room. Nikolaï wondered who was the worst, the man himself or the ones applauding for him.

Anyway, this part about moving in was the thing Nikolaï hadn’t anticipated at all. He couldn’t refuse it without drawing even more intention to himself but was still trying to look at it from Expert Orsana's perspective. In the past, he had seemed to be happy to have Nikolaï being buried under the Tower as soon as possible. He hadn’t argued about Nikolaï finishing his recovery in his own room, away from any healer, so the fact that he had changed his mind was suspicious.

Nikolaï had already an idea about what kind of situation Expert Orsana had created for him but he was still looking for a bigger picture. Having an Aspirant of the 1st Circle and from an average family on the first floor was not going to please everyone. Even with a well-known Aspirant, the situation would create friction with Aspirant under and above.

Nikolaï’s reputation was not of one with talent, his averageness was known and as soon as the aura of Expert Orsana's support faded some people were going to target him. Nikolaï assumed it was part of Expert Orsana's plan and Nikolaï had to confess that it was a good plan. That way he could get others to harass Nikolaï without being involved and just wait for them to push him out.

If it was the only plan Expert Orsana had it was not going to work. Sure Nikolaï was limited but his Third Eye was a joker that made undermining his progress difficult from outside sources. Nikolaï was far from untouchable but he had very few points of pressure. Becoming a Forgerune had made him able to support himself without the need to constantly go on missions for the Tower so his bigger dependency was to the Tower library.

Nikolaï’s Third Eye could still help him make a lot of improvements to himself. Being isolated by a bunch of Aspirants was not going to stop that.

***

A few days after the exam Nikolaï was ready to leave the room he spent so much time through the years. He was a bit bothered by not having many conflicts about moving out, despite the years spent here. Sure in the last months, it was where he had rebuilt himself but before that how many nights of despair he had endured in it ?

“_ Do you miss something ?” Asked the room neighbours.

“_ Not it’s okay.”

Nikolaï had asked his soon-to-be 'former neighbour' to help him carry his large chest through the Tower. Even if the two didn’t appreciate each other it hadn’t been hard to convince him with a small bribe. If the word of Expert Orsana supporting Nikolaï’s moving hadn’t travelled through the lower level of the Tower Nikolaï would have probably had to pay a little more but he wasn’t complaining about that.

His neighbour seemed in some way eager to stay on Nikolaï's good side now that he was someone leaving above ground. Nikolaï didn’t really want to start a friendship like that so he just enjoyed the help politely. All of Nikolaï's possessions were contained in his chest and an overfilled bag he had on his back.

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Climbing up the Tower wasn’t very practical. Yes, the stairs were large enough to allow them to pass but the Tower was very active during the day. There was always someone going down or up and none of them wanted to help them or at least wait for them to pass.

Eventually, Nikolaï and his neighbour arrived in his new room. They were both sweating and Nikolaï’s back was wet from having his bag on him. He put it down and thought about how he was going to try the bathroom sooner than he had thought.

“_ It’s pretty nice.” Commented the neighbour.

“_ Please, look around.” Said Nikolaï, having no reason to chase away someone who just did him a favour.

The neighbour looked around mumbling to himself. Pretty nice was accurate to Nikolaï. The Room was a bit bigger than the one he had underground, enough to have a rather imposing wardrobe without taking all the place. He had a bed, a desk, enough space to move around without bumping into the walls and a bathroom really similar to the one he had downstairs.

The thing which no comparison with his former room was the presence of windows. Two of them high as Nikolaï size from the pelvis to the head and wide like two of him. Nikolaï looked around him and couldn’t stop a sight of contempt leaving his mouth. Yes, the room was a poisoned gift but being able to see the sky even if it was through the blurry glass was genuinely enjoyable.

As Nikolaï continued to look at the room he noticed something. He had gotten used to seeing elementium all around him so aberration or irregularity in the way it moved and gathered had become easier to spot.

Next to his wardrobe was a mirror, big enough to look at his upper body and Nikolaï was pretty sure that the object had thin traces of ether in it. Forgerune could be used to enhance materials and objects. It was not by imprinting a spell Sigil on them but by holding ether into the object a certain way.

Depending on what the property needed to be enhanced the work could rapidly become harder than just creating a Glyph. Nikolaï had started studying the subject and made a few tries by enhancing the general resistance of a small piece of wood. The differences were minor but they were experiments, not prototypes of anything.

Nikolaï went closer to the object and tried to identify what kind of property the mirror could have enhanced. Its solidity would make sense since it was not just a piece of polished metal like the one he previously had underground.

“ Maybe its reflection ?” Wondered Nikolaï.

He also thought about something he had read about effects which provided dust to gather and could be neat for something that needed to stay clean.

Searching for an answer amused Nikolaï. He pushed a bit of ether into his Third Eye to look at the mirror in its active state. More was revealed to him and a pattern appeared at the centre of the mirror. The pattern was strangely familiar and suddenly Nikolaï turned pale.

“_ I’ll go now.” Said the neighbour behind Nikolaï.

Nikolaï turned around to face his now former neighbour and stuttered a polite answer to thank him for his help. Then he walked away from the mirror to accompany the leaving fellow to the door. After they said goodbye Nikolaï closed the door but stayed still, back to the mirror, for a few seconds. He got his head straight to act as naturally as possible when he started to unpack. He opened his chest and put his books on the desk, setting them apart next to his bag of clothing. He took out some notes and papers and made sure none of his ink bottles was broken or spilt.

Then he went to the wardrobe and opened the two doors widely. They didn’t open completely, only remaining at a bit more than a 90° angle and Nikolaï brought his backpack to it. With both doors side by side, Nikolaï opened the bag and put some cloth on the furniture. Behind the doors and through the wood he used the full power of his Third Eye to look at the mirror once again.

The Glyph he had seen was clearer and Nikolaï discreetly opened the book he had caught with his bag. It was a Grimoire he had copied some time ago and had browsed through when trying to analyse Sigils. He found what he was looking for, a spell called Spectral Eye. He remembered it because he had a wide interest in spectral types of spells even if Spectral Eye wasn’t on his list of spells he wanted to learn.

The spell created a floating eye connected to the caster's sense of sight. The spell wasn’t hard to cast, it was considered a level 1 spell, but he required a lot of time to handle. Accepting the vision of a new eye was really disturbing for the caster and even when closing his regular ones he could suffer from dizziness and vertigo.

If the range of the spell hadn’t been so short maybe Nikolaï would have shown more interest in it but it wasn’t the case.

The Glyph in the mirror wasn’t Spectral Eye but many parts were similar and Nikolaï was pretty sure that the mirror had been turned into a spying tool.

Nikolaï couldn’t let his emotion take the best of him, he took a deep breath and expulse it slowly. Once down he puts on a mask of indifference and gets back to settle in his room while thinking.

Obviously, he needed to get rid of the mirror but by doing so he could reveal more about his ability to see elementium and ether than if he had simply ignored it. He had to be cautious about his next moves or he could expose himself.

Disposing of the mirror was important but finding who was beyond was crucial ! Nikolaï had already a suspect in mind but it didn’t seem to add up. Even if Expert Orsana had clearly the means to build an object like that its range needed to be taken into account. Expert Orsana laboratory or even his quarters were at least 6 levels higher in the Tower. It was impossible that such a low-level spell could work from that far.

While Nikolaï continued unpacking he checked the rest of the room but only the mirror was a spying device. He sat down at his new desk and opened the Spectral Sword spellbook in front of him. He didn’t just pretend to study it but looked at how he could determine the exact range of the mirror without touching it.

The spellbook had pieces of answers, Nikolaï knew some of them too and he consulted some of his other books to build a hypothesis. He thought about leaving his room to visit the library but hesitated. He wondered if the mirror wasn’t there to check when he left and stole his stuff. It was a bit stupid but he had heard worse rumours than that.

Eventually, Nikolaï arrived at some conclusions. First, the eye in the mirror was limited. Its vision, if not blurry, was not going to work at night or if the light was too low. Second, the wall of the Tower was used as a conductor for elementium, the range had to be quite short to avoid parasites. Nikolaï would bet that the mirror was unusable during dusk but he couldn’t confirm it. Anyway, for him, it meant that only his direct neighbours were his primary suspects.

For now, it looked like the mirror was part of an attempt to bully a peer rather than the act of a powerful Expert. It was not good but the idea was a bit relieving for Nikolaï.

He pictured how the area around his room was made to try to figure out who was looking for him. Underground, the rooms were just put next to each other and connected by a corridor. The rooms all looked alike and so were the corridors. Above ground, there was a greater variety of rooms and the ways they were arranged.

Nikolaï's room was grouped with four other similar ones and they shared some kind of lobby which had a main entrance that led to the rest of the tower. The lobby was rather spacious and sometimes Aspirant had turned them into a common area. It was not the case in Nikolaï's situation, the lobby was only occupied by a table with a vase of dead flowers that nobody cared about.

If Nikolaï was right about the range of the mirror all of his neighbours were in it but he knew for sure that one of the rooms was empty so he had only three suspects.

Nikolaï was in the dining hall. He had locked his most precious possessions and his money in his chest before leaving his room. He doubted someone had taken the trouble to build that kind of device just for burglary but it was better to be safe than sorry.

While eating Nikolaï look around the other Aspirants in the hall. Now that he had forced himself to eat regular meals he had become more familiar with the faces of the other Aspirants but that didn’t mean he knew their names. He knew the name of his new neighbours by looking at the small plates next to their doors, it was this way on the first floor, but didn’t know what they looked like.

In this crowd were his three suspects but Nikolaï couldn’t know which one. He needed a plan and someone who could give him answers but he didn’t even know someone like that.

Nikolaï had turned into a loner during his time at Dzürkül. The time when he mingled with other newcomers and had his good look brought him the attention of a few boys and girls seemed a long time ago. Nikolaï didn’t crave the intention but right now he had regretted not cultivating some of those relations. Friendship was an alien word in the Arcanist language as Nikolaï sadly discovered but having some acquaintance would have been useful for him right now.

Eventually, Nikolaï went back to his room and tried to ignore the fact that he could be watched and meditate.

It had been hard to focus and even harder to find peace of mind. The night had come and Nikolaï was lying down on his new bed. He knew the mirror couldn’t see a thing but was still feeling uneasy. It was like having someone else in the room just sitting in the corner, ignoring Nikolaï but still here.

Nikolaï didn’t sleep well that night. He kept thinking about his training and his Forgerune activity that he couldn’t do freely in his own room anymore.

Thinking about Forgerune gave him an idea. He needed to check if one of his neighbours was one.

Preoccupied Nikolaï eventually found a way to sleep a little.