As Jeb continued to walk through the Capital, the crowd continued to give him a wider berth. By the time that he got to Catherine’s business, he almost felt as though the air itself was pushing him onward. It was not exactly an uncomfortable sensation, but it was strange. He was unable to stem the effect. As far as he could tell, the Magic in the Capital was independently deciding to track him, rather than him specifically shifting it.
The painful shriek of a badly played violin assaulted Jeb’s ears when he opened the door. As he stepped inside, he was aware of at least a dozen other instruments playing elsewhere in the building. Only two of them had any explicit connection to Magic. While he listened, though, it seemed as though the songs that each student played began to turn into Songs, however slightly. When the choked sound of a violin ended, Catherine walked to the front room with a small child in tow.
“Great work this week Tiffany!” she said encouragingly.
“Thank you Bard Catherine,” the little girl replied meekly. She carried a violin case, and Jeb realized that it had been her producing the terrible screeching. The child ran over to a man, who Jeb assumed was her father, and the two left.
The door closed behind them and Catherine let out a sigh of relief. It was cut off as she noticed that there was someone unexpected in the room. She clearly only saw Jeb’s Doctoral Robes, because she stiffened.
“What is the-” she began, before looking up to his face. “Jeb?” she asked, voice full of confusion.
“Hi Catherine!” Jeb replied, moving towards her.
She took an unconscious step back before shaking her head. “What are you doing here?”
Jeb’s smile faded slightly. “I just defended my doctoral thesis,” he said, “and I thought that I would come say goodbye before I leave the Capital for my post-doctoral work.”
When she did not immediately reply, Jeb started to look around the room. “It seems like your studio is doing well,” he said.
Catherine finally seemed to have collected her thoughts. “Yes, I finally have a stable roster of students and aides. Sorry that I missed your defense, things have just been so hectic lately.”
Jeb waved the apology off. “It really wasn’t that big of a deal. Honestly, it was more of a formality than anything else. My entire committee had many chances to tell me that there were issues with my work. The fact that they didn’t was telling enough.”
“Still,” she protested, “you’re a Doctor of the Academy now.” She gestured to his new robes, “how does it feel?”
Jeb shrugged. “Honestly, I’m really only noticing the effects of Tiering Up so many times in rapid succession,” he admitted. Seeing her dubious look, he continued, “I’m sure that I’ll feel differently when I’ve settled into it a little more.”
She gave him an appraising look. “I seem to remember that you were Fourth Tier when I graduated.”
Jeb nodded.
“Would I be correct in assuming that you did not Tier Up at all during your doctoral work?” Seeing Jeb’s sign of agreement, Catherine continued, “and let me guess, you saved all of the Level increases for after you finished your doctoral work?”
“I had a good reason for that!” Jeb protested, and she started to laugh.
“I’m glad that you haven’t changed,” she said, finally coming over to give Jeb a hug. After pulling back, she said, “Declan is in town today as well. We should gather the old Emporium crew together. On that note, how is the Emporium doing under its new management?”
Jeb shrugged his lack of knowledge. “Honestly, I have no clue. You know that I was almost completely disconnected from it by the time that you and Declan graduated. Once you were gone, I forgot it existed for a few terms. By the time that I remembered, Dean Aquam had already found a new staff. It seemed like it was doing well last time I checked, though.”
“And when was that?”
“Sometime between when you two graduated and when I just did,” Jeb mused aloud, trying to place it in chronology. “Let’s see, I had found the connection between Glyphs and Bard Songs, but hadn’t started trying to tie Alchemy to anything.” He stopped musing aloud, realizing that he did not have any touch points to link his own personal journey to the passage of time for the rest of the world.
That realization made Jeb realize that he wasn’t even sure exactly how old he was anymore. A glance at his Status showed him that his age was no longer listed, which was confusing. Thinking back on the many times that he had entered spaces where time moved faster or slower, however, Jeb decided that the System had probably given up tracking his age as much as he had.
He realized that Catherine had continued talking and tried to piece together what she had said. Thankfully, he hadn’t missed much. She was just reminiscing about her time at the Academy, and Jeb had no issue joining the conversation.
“Well, I should probably get back to work,” she said a few minutes later. “If you want to come back tonight, though, I’m sure that Declan would also love to see you.”
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They said their goodbyes and Jeb left to go explore the Capital for a few hours. Lionheart Brews was just where Jeb remembered, and he saw that they still had a keg from the Emporium. It was a Brew with a name Jeb didn’t recognize. Drinking it, he noticed hints of a few recipes that he had not given the time to fully develop. Cyprus came out, and the two spent the afternoon chatting. When the bar closed for the night, Jeb returned to Catherine’s studio, where he saw Declan.
The three spent the night going over old memories from their time together. It was a nice end to that chapter of Jeb’s life, and he felt better about his decision to leave. With no other threads binding him, he teleported to the outpost of the Swarm closest to the Druidic Enclave. From there, he began to walk, a cloud of bees flying around him.
The road was poorly maintained, especially for what was supposed to be a Republican road. If it had just been a local path, the uneven ground would have made sense. As it was, though, Jeb had to wonder what disaster had recently struck the region to make the road so hard to pass.
A few hours later, Jeb’s walking showed him a small town that reminded him of a smaller Humdrumville. A half dozen buildings lined the street. Drawing nearer, Jeb frowned.
The town was in terrible shape. The buildings he had seen from afar hardly seemed able to stand. A few children peeked out of the building in the best condition. They seemed terrified of the stranger.
One, however, was brave enough to step out. He was wearing nothing but a few rags, held together more by luck than anything else. Between the holes of the shift, Jeb saw ribs clearly protruding.
Jeb quickly searched his pack, finding the travel rations he had packed. He held them out to the child, who hesitantly reached out for them before stopping.
“What will it cost me?” he asked, looking Jeb up and down.
“Nothing,” Jeb replied.
The child shied back. Jeb realized that he didn’t believe him. Unable to think of anything else he could do, he set the food down and continued walking through the town. He heard the children scramble out as he passed through, and did his best to suppress the feeling welling up in him. It wasn’t quite rage, but it was close. Who could have let a Republic town fall into such disrepair?
The next town he came to was in slightly better condition, but he saw a panicked crowd gathered around a well. When he approached, the crowd parted, and Jeb was struck by the sound of a discordant Magic. Murmurs of “Mage” followed as the crowd closed around him. Jeb hardly noticed, drawn by the snarl in the fabric of Magic that was becoming second nature to him.
When he reached the well, Jeb saw the issue immediately. There was an ancient Enchantment etched into the stones around it. At a glance, Jeb saw that they worked to pull moisture from the air and condense it into the bucket at the bottom. They had corroded from age.
Looking at the wilting plants in a nearby field, Jeb guessed that the well had given up a few days before. With a brief flex of intention, he destroyed the well, turning the stones into dust. Even as cries of alarm sounded, the dust swirled around Jeb. He shaped complex Glyphs and runes out of them, enforcing his will on the reality around him.
The snarl of a broken Magic was gone from the weave, but the hole in its place was almost as painful for Jeb to look at. A few seconds later, a new well stood where the old had been. It radiated a power that the oldest in the town had only the vaguest memories of.
Just for a moment, Jeb felt like he could see into the future. The well he had built would last lifetimes for the town. As years turned to centuries, though, the Magic he had woven would degrade as well. Almost without thinking, Jeb created a barrier of air, pushing the crowd back.
Hidden from view, Jeb sat crosslegged and pulled threads from the weave of Magic. He expanded the Enchantment. Rather than simply pulling water from the air, it would slowly Create Water for the town.
The working was incomplete. With a start, Jeb realized that he had left the water completely bound to the well. It could be removed, sure, but the soil around it would remain completely dry. Breaking the wall of Magic, Jeb saw that the town would flood.
This might be a larger undertaking than I had meant to do, he thought wryly. As he tried to pull away, however, the Magic that had pushed him ever forward held him back. Jeb understood then that his Class would not simply allow him to work feats of Magic. It would require him to.
Calling the bees closer to him, he set them to dancing. What had initially been a switch became a slider. The well would collect water, but some would be allowed to seep into the nearby soil. The Mana that the townspeople emitted would feed the working, and it would strengthen them. With a final flourish of the stylus he had no memory of Conjuring, Jeb made the Enchantment self healing.
The wall of air faded. As the townspeople rushed in, they found that the stranger wearing robes of shifting midnight had vanished. Someone cautiously pulled the bucket from the gleaming well. The water inside was cool and sweet.
Over the next year, Jeb continued to travel to the Druidic Enclave. With each day, the push from Magic made his steps lighter. A tracker would not be able to find any mundane traces of his passage. Looking around, however, even the most Magically deaf of trackers would be able to see the Magical traces Jeb left.
Towns which had been dying for generations were revitalized. The man cloaked in midnight, as he became known, appeared and disappeared without speaking a single word. In his place, works of Magic gave people who had given up hopes of anything but a quick death reasons to live again. A hive of large bees established themselves at each great work, seeming to act as protectors for the work. The Midnight Cloak continued to move, surrounded by the buzzing of uncounted bees.
The stranger’s heart broke a little more each day as he saw more and more people that the Republic had failed. He realized how sheltered his upbringing had been. Everyone had food, shelter, and clothing. The land around him was rich, which meant that the residents were able to treat it well. Too many of the fields he passed were barely able to produce the food that a family would need to see them through the year. They were unable to build stores, and so the soil never had a chance to recover. Those towns were the hardest for him to help. He left Enchantments which would slowly heal the land, but knew that it would be generations before the towns would be able to sustain their people.
With each passing day, the Doctor forgot a little more of his past life. He stopped using his mundane senses at all, following the small flaws in the weave of Magic around him. As the fabric grew more and more whole, it pushed him all the harder to the next rent in it. One day, the Magic around him disappeared.
He blinked, eyes once more taking in light. In front of him was a wall of emerald green grass. It radiated power, and the man cloaked in midnight knew that he would be unable to pierce it with strength. As though acknowledging as much, the grass parted, and he stepped through.
He was transported to a world before civilization. The air was sweeter, and it carried with it a sense of unleashed wildness. The birds in the air flew without fear of man, tearing into each other as they spotted prey.
All at once, Jeb remembered who he was.