Tenthé sat, kicking his heels outside of Tomas’s office. For some reason, the students had taken issue with the heavy rainfall he’d orchestrated. Tenthé hadn’t bothered to hide since they’d forget him in a day or two, anyway.

He was disappointed. The discovery of the old temples and the catacombs should have provided a platform for training everyone on how to deal with surprises, but his little test had shown they still weren’t ready for the real world.

Which brought up something that had been bugging him. Even with his shielding at a lower level, there was no way he should have been injured in the carriage accident. After he was done talking with Tomas, or, more realistically, after he’d listened to Tomas talk, he would look into the issue. He had a few ideas to check out.

Eventually, he was called in. The Magister sat in his chair, glaring at him.

Tenthé stared back.

After a time, Tomas sighed, “Tenthé, Tenthé, Tenthé. What am I to do with you?”

“Not my fault. They should have done better.”

“Well… I can’t let it go. You managed to hit several members from the leading families. They are demanding action.”

“I can talk to them.”

“Ha-ha, yeah. No.”

“Did you at least tell them how pathetic they were?”

“Who’s on trial here? I will deal with them. Right now, we’re talking about you.”

“They’ll forget about me, anyway.”

“Yes, but we can’t let you take over the College. It is my responsibility to train these students. Not yours.”

“Well, you’ve done a crap job.”

Tomas was getting somewhat perturbed, if the redness to his expression was any indication. Tenthé ran through a few options and decided to go with what worked before.

“Push the bump on the edge of your desk near your left hand and then kick the front where your feet rest.”

“What?”

“Just try it.”

Tomas fumbled around for a moment or two before he hit the right combination. When he did, a section of the top of his desk popped up. It fit perfectly into the grain of the wood and hadn’t been visible until released.

Tomas peered at the little cubby that had been revealed.

“What’s this?” he asked.

“I don’t know, but I saw it before. There're some bars and other stuff.”

Tomas reached in and pulled out a book, a couple of the metal bars, a tray that had a few quills in it, and a tiny bottle. Ignoring everything else, he stared at the bars.

“Gold?” he whispered to himself. “Uh...”

He tore his attention from the metal and examined the bottle. It was most likely ink for the quills, but had long since dried out. He placed the bars and the writing instruments to the side and picked up the book.

He opened the cover and sucked in a breath.

“Oh! This is the journal of a Master Magician Tenderthay!” he breathed. “The dates here show… I say! That can’t be right! These are from before the City was established!”

In a distracted manner, he mumbled toward Tenthé, “Master Magician is an old form. Somewhat similar to Magister, today.”

He began reading, and every so often would exclaim variations of, “My, my!”, “I don’t believe it”, and so on. But, as entranced as he was with what he was with what he was finding in the book, once in a while he would glance at the gold bars.

“Um, sir… can I go?”

Tomas looked up at him, obviously distracted. “Yeah, uh… let’s assume you have been properly chastised and regret your actions… you’ll probably have to do some menial task as punishment. I’ll tell Elishua to pick something. Yes, go… uh-huh.”

He went back to reading and occasionally caressing the gold.

Tenthé left, hoping that Tomas would forget to say anything to Elishua. Tomas’ secretary appeared to be surprised as he walked by her desk, like she’d been expecting the meeting to involve a little more yelling. As he exited through the door, she got up and headed toward the Magister’s inner office door. Tenthé sped up. No sense pushing his luck.

Once again, a distraction applied judiciously let him avoid some of the ramifications of his actions. He peeked at the College Guardians, who appeared to be exchanging funds. He wondered if they mostly left him alone so they could wager on what he did. If so, it had his vote. But, at the moment, it was probably best that he get away from the College for a while. Sure, everything would blow over, but in the meantime, it was a fine time to be elsewhere.

After making his way through the kitchen, he rushed down the passageway to the stable and, as he hit the open air, gave a sigh of relief. Too many people were becoming wise to his tricks. He checked around and, as far as he could tell, Elishua and the Trachteur were no-where near. He scurried off.

Following the road around the City Center, Tenthé plunged into the warren of the Temple district. Here, even the major streets were quite narrow, mostly so the temples could be as big as possible to show how important they were.

For better or worse, he had a plan. It was time for a discussion with Turtle to settle some issues. The god’s temple was smack in the middle of the district and took up a whole block, and once he arrived, Tenthé entered the grounds through the front gate because, for once, he was legit.

He didn’t really know how respectable people went about getting an audience with the god. Being respectable wasn’t a problem he’d usually had to deal with. As he was walking in, one of the priests stationed at the gate gave him a bit of a glare. Tenthé didn’t know what to make of that, he looked just like any of the other students entering and leaving the temple.

When the priest jingled his purse, Tenthé clued in. He could probably enter without making a donation, but why cause a scene? Tenthé fished out the only penny he had and handed it over.

The priest moved it up to his face to peer at it with a sneer. The worn brown coin was a very small. Suddenly, the priest’s expression changed and he looked closer. After a moment, he spun around and passed the coin to an older priest standing behind him. The elder took the coin, examined it, and fainted.

Tenthé walked away. He had no idea what was going on, but he was pretty sure he didn’t want to be involved. Elishua had said the penny was worth something, but it couldn’t be that much. It was just a stupid little copper coin.

Having never been in the legitimate parts of the temple before, Tenthé found them to be quite complex, with lots of statues, pillars and narrow passageways meandering about. Behind him, he could see a number of priests rushing around, looking for someone or something. He pretty much assumed that would be him, but he really wasn’t interested in whatever they wanted. Tenthé drew a version of stealth about him and plunged deeper into the temple.

He passed a few senior priests sitting in a circle. They were droning some sort of chant, probably working a spell. Magic, if he wasn’t mistaken. Perhaps they were Oracles. Tenthé was tempted to throw some visions their way, but if it got back to Turtle, there was a decent chance it would cause a few problems. He tabled the idea. For the moment.

Finally, he reached an area consisting of plain hallways leading to and from fairly simply adorned rooms. He had no clue as to what the change in decor meant, but whatever, standing here wasn’t getting him any closer to the Turtle.

Tenthé sighed. He’d probably have to ask someone, although he hadn’t seen anybody for a while. Just as he thought that, he walked into another nondescript little room where some old geezer wearing an elaborate robe was kneeling.

Tenthé walked up to the priest, who might have been meditating. More likely sleeping, as hinted at by the faint snoring.

“Ahem,” he said.

Nothing.

Tenthé leaned close. “AHEM!” he sort of yelled.

The old guy screamed and leaped to his feet. Except he couldn’t pull it off and collapsed back down, then struggled up to his elbows, peering around at the same time. He wasn’t much of a Magister since he didn’t see Tenthé, even though his gaze passed directly over at him.

“Get it together, old man. I’m standing here. Right beside you,” Tenthé said, loudly.

The old guy kept looking and not seeing, then spoke in a tremulous voice. “What are you? A specter, come to take me?”

“Well, except for I’m not a specter and I don’t know who you are, then sure.”

The old guy’s eyes went strange, blurring and changing colors. After a few moments of this he blinked and looked directly at Tenthé.

“Who in the Turtle’s name are you?” the priest demanded.

“I’m Tenthé,” he replied, brightly. He knew it wouldn’t help, which was part of the appeal.

“How are you even here? This is a place for only the most senior of us to meditate!”

“Yeah, sure. I know you were asleep.”

“Well, um, uh, uh-huh.” The priest mumbled, then went on, “Who are you? What do you want?”

“I’m Tenthé, but I already told you that. I have to talk to Turtle. Oh, yeah! Here, he said to show you this.”

Tenthé pulled up his sleeve to reveal his tattoo.

The old guy glanced at it and humphed, “It’s nothing. Just an acolyte sign.”

Tenthé looked at it and exclaimed, “Oh, I forgot.” He spit on his hand and rubbed at the part Bear had made him change. It took a few tries, but eventually, the extra lines were smeared enough that the original tattoo could be seen.

“How about this?” and Tenthé showed him the modified version.

The priest glanced at it, blanched, then grabbed Tenthé’s arm and examined it closely. “That… that’s an Avatar’s mark!”

“Yeah, I guess.”

At that point, the priest put his face up next to Tenthé’s and peered all around his head, much like Magister Grenville had done.

“You… you’re not what you seem!” he said with some awe.

Tenthé had lived quite a while in the Mission District, but even by those standards, the old guy had pretty funky breath. Tenthé ignored it as best he could.

“Uh-uh. I’m just me.”

“How did he make an avatar without me knowing?”

Tenthé saw an opening. “Maybe we should go and ask him?”

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“Yes, let’s do that! If that mark isn’t real, you’ll rue this day!”

Tenthé was fairly sure “rue” wasn’t something he’d enjoy, although a little mayhem might be fun.

At that point, the priest put his hand on Tenthé’s shoulder, hanging on with a surprisingly feeble grip, and let Tenthé help him walk. It appeared the old guy didn’t exercise much, because after a few paces, he was panting. After a few more, Tenthé had to put his arm around him to assist even further.

They hobbled their way through more corridors. These were still sparsely decorated, probably because so few people were allowed back here. Tenthé sort of liked it, as opposed to the garish frescos and carved figures that populated the main areas.

The old man directed Tenthé down a small hallway to a very plain door. It certainly didn’t smell like the garden. The priest pushed away and shuffled to the door, which he opened, revealing a toilet.

“When you’re my age, you do not ignore the call of nature,” the priest over-shared as he slammed the door behind him.

Tenthé hung out, ignoring the noises coming from the toilet. After quite a while, the priest exited, grabbed his shoulder again, and off they crept.

After retracing their steps back to the main corridor, they continued on. It was a good deal further than should fit in the temple, but this mismatch of dimensions seemed to be relatively commonplace, as far as Tenthé was concerned, even though mostly everyone kept telling him it was quite rare.

Eventually, the two of them entered a room with a small fountain in the center and a few other corridors leading off in various directions. The priest stopped to catch his breath. Not for the first time.

“Well, here we are,” he declared.

Tenthé looked around. Not the large garden he had been expecting. There didn’t appear to be anything special, although, as he sniffed, he could faintly smell something like plants. He checked with his magical sight, but nothing was immediately obvious. Or rather, there was too much magic present for Tenthé to be able to find a thread to where the Turtle resided.

Obviously, this was some sort of test. Whether or not there was anything here, the old priest wanted him to figure it out. Tenthé wasn’t surprised; he was in the heart of the domain of a very powerful god, so it was extremely likely there would be magic that he would find difficult to deal with, at least initially. And, old farts liked their tests.

As Tenthé dropped to the floor to meditate on the problem, the priest almost joined him when his main source of support vanished. Tenthé tried to get into the correct frame of mind while the priest grunted and groaned, struggling to make his way to the ledge around the fountain without collapsing.

Tenthé looked around with his sight and was quite impressed. There were either no rooms around him, or many of different shapes, and there were no passages, or quite a number. This was excellent camouflage. He approved. He kept looking, varying the way he did it, trying to find some useful information. But solid results remained elusive.

The priest let out a little squeak when Tenthé changed tactics and released a bunch of his mice. He gave them orders to look everywhere for something to eat. They spread out, enthusiastically carrying out their task. It wasn’t overly likely that they would find anything, but it was a simple thing, so… why not?

He searched up and down the planes. It appeared the Turtle had covered them too, since the results were ambiguous.

Before he went entirely medieval on the temple, he turned his attention to his avatar mark. To his magical sight, it glowing brightly. Perhaps it would show something if he moved around and used it to illuminate parts of the room?

As Tenthé stood up, he felt a little tickle in the back of his mind. Lo-and-behold, one of his mice was missing! Unfortunately, he hadn’t been tracking them, but it did tell him that there was some hidden passageway, somewhere. He dedicated more of his attention to keeping track of the rest of the mice.

With renewed enthusiasm, Tenthé paced around the room, examining everything by the glow of his tattoo, all the while varying his magical sight to catch any hint of weirdness. Near one corridor, there appeared to be a slight anomaly overlaying the wall and the adjacent archway.

By now he was getting a little tired of this game, so he reached down toward the Heart and gave it a gentle tug. The whole temple, and as he found out later, half the city, had a minor quake. Sure enough, the area he was interested in didn’t move like the rest of the room. Tenthé repeated his tug, but this time, he used his hand to grab the fabric of reality where the strangeness on the wall was, and then pulled. Something broke and a ghostly passage opened, releasing the smell of the jungle that he remembered from last time.

“No, no, no!” the old priest yelled. “You’re supposed to use the mark to ask for a way through, not bash it in with brute force! Who taught you!”

“Well, no-one,” Tenthé replied.

“What?” the priest exclaimed. “That’s why we’re here! Gods damned God! What was he thinking!”

Tenthé was amused. Contrary to what the priest was yelling, his experience with gods and such was usually like this. They cherished their secrets and didn’t know, or even care to know, what an ordinary person knew or thought.

The priest was uncomfortably close again, peering at him. “What are you, boy? What you did just now isn’t something an avatar should be able to.”

“Wasn’t my idea to be anything. Turtle made me. That’s part of why I’m here. I want to talk about what’s going on. I’m pretty sure he left out a lot of things. More like, all the things.”

The priest trailed behind as Tenthé followed the new corridor. As he walked, he reached into his cloak and hauled Bear out.

“Put me back! I can’t help, leave me be, I’d rather watch!” Bear whined. He was not overly fond of making his presence known to a powerful god.

“Shut it! Turtle knows something and he won’t be affected by the forgetting. I want some answers and I figure I should ask about you, too. You’ve been with me since I can remember, but I don’t really know much about you, either. I think having you around might make this meeting more interesting.”

“What! Aren’t we friends? I’ve stuck with you through everything, even that weird no body Pool. Give me a break!”

Uncharacteristically, at that point, Bear started to smoke. And scream. He wriggled down to the floor and tried to run away.

Tenthé looked back. The priest was casting some sort of spell. He sighed and ate the magic. As expected, the priest collapsed. Probably because he lost his magic, but maybe not. He was old.

Tenthé turned around, hoisted the priest onto his shoulder, then continued down the corridor. Bear was dragged along by the containment boundary. They made an odd sight as they entered the jungle.

To his magical vision, there was no doubt that the god was here; a monstrous nexus of power was centered in the room. Tenthé headed to where it was densest.

Sure enough, Turtle was standing in a pool, eating weeds. His jaw moved side to side as he chewed. He was positioned so one eye faced the approaching ensemble. Tenthé dumped the priest on the ground and sat on a boulder as Bear tried to hide behind it.

Tenthé was not a negotiator and he knew gods. Knowing he needed to make a point, he made a tap and opened it; the magic in the room began draining away. Turtle plugged the hole, so Tenthé opened a second one. The god put a shield around Tenthé to block his ability to cast taps, but it didn’t work, so Tenthé kept opening more and the God kept plugging them.

The game continued until there was so much stress in the local space that the area grew unstable; strange things began to flash in and out of existence.

“Enough,” Turtle said. “You’ve made your point. Whatever it is.”

Tenthé stopped and stared at Turtle, who returned the stare while it chewed.

The god, being a god, predictably declared, “You know, I could have done much more.”

“Me too,” Tenthé replied.

“I suppose,” the god replied, obviously unimpressed. “What do you want?” he added, after another pause.

“You’re the god of big things. Big deals, the rich, and long-term plans. You have something going on, but you screwed up. Whatever you’re working on, trying to use the Horde in your House war was just dumb. You would have been in trouble when the Word started making more warriors out of people.”

Turtle looked surprised, if a turtle could be said to have any sort of expression. At least he stopped chewing for a moment.

“You also screwed up something else. There isn’t any ductwork on the ceiling anymore. I guess that means you put it in so I would come here, the first time.

“So. You arranged our meeting, probably because you wanted to stick this mark on me. Why? I’m not sure, but right after I got your tattoo, I was hit by Magister Tomas’ carriage.

“And, another thing. I think you can help me figure out how…” Tenthé reached behind the boulder and pulled up a squirming Bear, “… this fits into where I came from.”

Tenthé was fully aware that it was impossible for Turtle to tell him the whole truth. Gods, being what they were, always believed they knew better than anyone else. But he was hoping for something, some sort of hint that there was a plan that wasn’t completely stupid.

Turtle began talking. “You want to know about your little friend here? He’s a particularly amusing piece of work. He was a mediocre magician, but made up for it by not being too bright. I have to say, the change is an improvement.”

Bear retorted, “Yeah, well, I remember you, too. You’re a lot bigger now, but I’m pretty sure it’s all hot air, and that is certainly a key ingredient for an old fart like you!”

Tenthé felt no urge to interrupt. Let them spar.

The god was becoming annoyed. “As I recall, you impressed one too many girls. Something to do with the wife of the head of a House? You couldn’t talk your way out of it, plus there were some missing valuables, weren’t there?”

“So, Bear wasn’t some important mage who volunteered to help?” Tenthé asked.

“Ha… ha… ha,” the god laughed slowly. “Is that what he told you? Ha… ha… ha.”

Tenthé looked at Bear, who was avoiding his gaze. “Well…” he prevaricated, “I may have exaggerated a few minor points. There was a bit of a Tribunal involved in reviewing my contribution to society and they allowed me the honor of assisting in one of their projects.

“Purely out of my sense of duty, I volunteered. Besides, I was not suited for a lifetime of labor in the mines. At least, not after I found out that nobody ever escapes.”

Tenthé was a bit confused. “So, way back when, you guys somehow knew about me? Shouldn’t I have been trained, and all that? I mean, better than you did? I died!”

Bear looked a little uncomfortable. “You got it wrong. This was before you were born. Like, even I don’t know exactly what happened.” Bear nodded at the god. “He might have some idea.”

“Um, yes,” Turtle started, “At the time, things were somewhat chaotic. Before I explain, you need a little background. There’s a whole society of Magisters, gods, and others that oversees the Dreamer and his aides, because the Dreamer needs a team, someone to take care of all the details to make his Dreams solid enough to endure.

“When the last Dreamer died unexpectedly, there was a massive search for the new one, but as time went by, many of the staff went back to their families. There simply wasn’t any reason to keep them around. Many things were put into storage, including your friend, here.

“It was only years later that we found out it was in your company and you seemed to have the earmarks of the Tenth Hand! I can tell you, that was a bit of a shock. We investigated and discovered you had received some form of training, although it was… unconventional, to say the least.

“As to how you ended up with Bear… we never did uncover the details.”

Tenthé turned his gaze to Bear.

“Don’t ask me!” Bear exclaimed. “They put me in a room, cast a pile of spells, and I don’t remember anything until I found myself being dragged around by some grubby kid! You were five or six, and a complete street rat. I honestly don’t know what happened.”

The God stared at Bear with one eye, “And you didn’t see fit to get in contact with us?”

“Well, no, your Bigness. You’d done what you said, stuffed me in this doll, and I felt there was no reason to trouble you. I think it turned out pretty well, anyway. By the way, you told me I wouldn’t age, but you forgot to mention my… um, important bits would be fluff. I am quite offended.”

After a short silence, Tenthé spoke up, “So… I wasn’t one of the people you picked to be what I am?”

The God answered, “My goodness, no! I have no idea how you ended up as a Hand of the Dreamer. The evidence is pretty strong because you have him,” he nodded toward Bear, “and seem to be entirely too competent at causing a ruckus. This talent is supposed to be aimed at an enemy, usually the Horde. You also have all the other hallmarks of the Tenth-Hand-of-the-Dreamer: the forgetting, and the inability to read or count.The fact that you don’t age is new.”

“So, what happened when I got hit by the carriage? It’s like those stories where a hero fights a million enemies and then dies falling out of bed.”

“Um… well…” the Turtle mumbled.

Tenthé had an aha! moment and jumped up. “It was you, wasn’t it? This mark! I should have known! Somehow you used the tattoo to make me think that I just reduced my shielding when, in fact, I turned it off!”

He rushed up to the god and stood right next to his eye.

“You did something to me, didn’t you!” he yelled.

He pulled back his sleeve to bare the tattoo. He stared at it for a second, then his eyes flashed through more colors than green and brown. After a moment, he covered his arm again.

“There!” he declared.

Bear was the first to break the silence. “Um, what do you mean by “there”? What did you do? Should we be running?”

Tenthé reached out and poked Turtle hard in the shell. His finger went in deep and the god let out a yelp!

“Ouch!” the god yelped. He bent around and nuzzled his shell. “What did you do? It… it’s all soft and gushy!”

“Figured that tattoo might go both ways. It’s only fair. You changed me, so I changed you. Nothing big. All I did was get rid of your shield, like you did me. It’ll be okay in a few days.”

The god looked at him. “Hah. No problem, I’ll just fix it and… hey. HEY!”

“Yeah, good luck with that.”

“You used Magic on me! You can’t do that! That’s the death penalty!” the Turtle yelled.

Tenthé started walking briskly toward the door. “Well,” he said, “Bye.”

Tenthé grabbed Bear and went into stealth. He’d been working on it and was fairly confident this version would work, even here in the center of the god’s power.

“Kid, you’ve got balls the size of an ox. You realize he can’t let this go.”

“Actually, I’m pretty sure he has to, at least for now. Long term, yeah, we’ll have a problem, but he needs me for some reason. No idea why. I’ll have to think about it. Besides, we could have called for help if we needed it.”

“What? That old geezer priest? He won’t do anything.”

“Nope, not him. Right, Isabell?” he said loudly.

In his mind, he heard, “Dang! I thought I was being all sorts of sneaky! How did you know?”

“Didn’t, ‘til now.”

“Damn!” both Bear and Isabell exclaimed with respect.

After a moment, Bear injected, as diplomatically as ever, “So, what else did you get? You must have rummaged around while you were in there.”

“Uh...” Tenthé replied, hesitantly.

“Argh! Let me guess, you didn’t do anything except screw up his shell. What were you thinking? We could have found out so much!”

“Well, I figured it’d be mad enough. If I got into the other stuff, Turtle might of felt he had to do something. Not sure I’d win if we had a fight.”

“You have a point, I suppose,” Bear admitted, grudgingly. “Still, it was an opportunity that won’t come around again. And, even so, Turtle got off light.”

“Well… maybe.”

“Wait! I know that tone. What did you do?” Bear asked.

“Uh… Nothing.”

“What sort of nothing?”

“I may have… let out a few of my bees.”

“Oh, my Gods!” Bear screamed. “Run!”

They just made it through the front gate when the first roar shook the temple.