Tenthé approached the college grounds. Everything appeared normal. Same walls, same weird overall shape. What was missing were the Guardians, and, upon closer inspection, the magic forming the wards was different. Tenthé decided to walk around the outside and find out what else had changed.

He reached the place where he used to sneak into the grounds, but now, only the barest of cracks remained as a hint of what had existed previously. Looking closely at the wall, he could see the wards more clearly. Instead of the College magic, they had much more in common with what the Temples used, and, more specifically, the Turtle God’s. Tenthé wasn’t terribly surprised. After a brief study, he continued his journey around the College until he reached the front gate.

Unlike before the re-do, the gate was closed and guarded by a couple of priests. Tenthé moved closer and examined one of them.

Now, this was a fighter! He was young, with callouses on his knuckles, elbows, knees, and feet. His robes were cinched to stay in place if he had to move quickly. He had been shaved bald and was clean-shaven to remove any handholds when fighting. And, he was covered in Pockets. They contained magical and mundane weapons, swords, staves, wands, enchanted devices, and many, many knives.

Plus, he was surrounded by detection fields. They varied continuously, pulsing in and out, shifting randomly from one technique to another. Tenthé turned to look at the other priest, who was almost a perfect a copy of the first. Which made Tenthé wonder what was inside that was so important that it needed guards of this caliber.

If the City could field an army of warrior-priests like these, they’d have no problem with the Horde. As far as he could see, though, that wasn’t the case, not unless the College was stuffed full with more of them.

Tenthé scanned each of the men in more detail, and remained impressed. These two were the optimum warriors possible in this place. The only thing that set him apart was that he’d survived the Pools, for various meanings of survived. That had given him knowledge the priests weren’t likely to have.

Tenthé looked at the gate and walls. The wards were not subtle, but they were strong. That meant the slightest deviation would be detected, and Tenthé didn’t feel like making the effort to bypass them. Best to check out the kitchen entrance first. Hopefully, that would be easier.

Once he reached the stable, Tenthé watched the activity. As he’d expected, the kitchen entrance was being heavily utilized. It was getting late, but this was a busy time for the College; it was when the bulk of the deliveries were made and the night shift prepared for the next day: tasks such as cleaning the common areas and doing food prep.

Also, since the main gates were closed, everyone was obliged to use the kitchen entrance, so in addition to the support staff, there were quite a number of priests coming and going.

After watching for a while, Tenthé saw very few other types of people, most notably, no Magisters or regular students. From what he observed, it was pretty likely that the College had become a center of training for supporting the theocracy of the Turtle. Tenthé was impressed with himself, something the school had taught him was actually useful!

Another thing he’d learned in class was that theocracies tended to be short-lived. They failed because the head god was too inflexible to adapt to things that fell outside of its main focus. Tenthé had the feeling he would get the chance to experience an example of this sort of decline in the very near future.

Tenthé attached himself to a group going in and hop-skipped past the ward check. He was glad that he’d never gotten around to helping the school improve its defenses.

Inside, the kitchen looked much as it always had. Under-cooks were cooking, dishwashers were pretending to work, and the head cooks were wandering about, their interference adding to, rather than reducing, the chaos. Tenthé exited and walked down the hallway to the small dining room, where he found everything a lot like before. Except, everybody eating there were priests, all the way from young kids to near adults. And every one of them was male. No girls, at all.

More evidence that the Turtle God was prejudiced against women, as well as non-humans. Quite a shame. Tenthé wondered if the mystery goddess was regretting how things turned out.

Which brought up another reason why theocracies failed. Infighting.

Maybe, if everything went back to how it was before, he would pay more attention in class. He wasn’t hopeful, but he was coming to realize that stuff he thought was useless might have a point, after all.

But, the Magisters made it so boring!

As Tenthé mused, he strolled out of the dining room and into the halls. Except for the addition of the younger kids, and the fact that every single person had on priestly robes, the school seemed to be much as he remembered. Many of the people were finishing their evening meal and heading to their dorms, bitching and complaining about classes and occasionally pranking each other. From what he could pick up, what they were being learning was similar to what he expected, with a lot more emphasis on the Turtle God, since his effigy was everywhere.

One thing that was different: no Guardians. Certainly, the wards were layered over everything, but the only other defense he could see were a few soldier-priests walking around. They were significantly less alert than the two on the front gate and a closer examination showed they weren’t nearly as well equipped.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

If he had to guess, he would say that the guards at the gate were the elite, and most of the rest were like these. That was good. He wouldn’t want to fight an army of elites. Not that it was going to happen, but you never knew. It was important to keep your mind open to possibilities.

Tenthé headed to the area that had held the Magister’s quarters. As he approached, he found several older priests congregating in the Magister’s dining room, drinking and quietly discussing classes, students, magic, and city gossip. It was both normal and strange: although they all wore priestly robes and were, for the most part, shaved bald, a few were quite scruffy, much like some of the Magisters had been, and if he closed his eyes, it sounded just like the Magisters used to.

Tenthé continued on to Tomas’ office. He peered in through the open door and saw a priest sitting where Tomas’ secretary used to be. He decided to lean on his Runner persona again.

Tenthé came out of stealth, being careful that he didn’t perturb the wards. Once fully emerged, he strode through the door.

“Hi,” he said to the priest. “I have a missive for someone named Tomas. He was supposed to be here, at the College.”

“Um, sure. The name doesn’t ring a bell, but I can check.”

“Yeah, I asked at the front and they sent me here.”

“Lazy bastards. They have the same records I have.”

Tenthé waited while the priest searched through a tome.

“Here it is. There was a Tomas, only one of that name. Not terribly strong, but fairly capable. Graduated a few years ago. There’s something referring to further notes… give me a moment.”

The priest started paging through the book.

“By the way, why would they send you here? Tomas hasn’t been a student for quite a while.”

“Well, it’s kind of embarrassing. Someone was cleaning up the Runner’s storeroom, and moved a shelf. Behind it, we found a bunch of missives. We’re going through and delivering them. That’s the best we can do.”

Tenthé was pretty proud of his lie.

“Ah, here we are. Oh, I’m sorry.”

“What?”

“It says Tomas was killed in a skirmish with the Horde scouts, a few years ago. I think you’re out of luck. You might want to clean up more often.”

“Yeah, thanks.”

As Tenthé left, he wondered what the Magister had done to get on the bad side of the Turtle God. Maybe because they had some way to counter the Dreamer? Whatever the reason, he wasn’t going to figure it out right now.

In any case, there was one more thing he wanted to check before he was done here. Tenthé pushed himself into the plane where the Guardians used to live. It was surprisingly difficult. The plane still existed, but felt like it had been shoved far back onto a distant shelf in a disused cupboard. Tenthé persisted and finally made it through. Where he emerged was very quiet. Nothing moved. He cautiously walked through the empty halls, expecting to turn a corner and find everyone, but nope.

This entire domain was constructed for the Guardians so they could watch the school, live and train, but, for all intents and purposes, it was a duplicate of the real world with mostly the same rooms and hallways, courtyards, and training fields. Everything looked as he remembered, but without the Guardians.

Another aspect that seemed very short-sighted, the Guardians had provided a broad base of strong abilities that were now missing from the repertoire of the City.

And where was the Guard? It didn’t seem likely that the machinations of the Turtle and his friends would have much effect on a being that may have existed since the beginning of forever. Tenthé used his vision to look up, out, and over for any hint of the Guard, but the best he found was a teeny-tiny taste. Nothing solid.

If the Dreamer and the Turtle had a way to push the Guardians and Guard away, they might be more formidable than he thought. Not that this would dissuade him from doing what he was going to do, but maybe he’d have to be a bit more careful. Given time, he could probably track down the Guard, but there was no indication that it wanted anything to do with the City as it was, now.

He popped back to the real reality and made his way down to the kitchen and out into the night. Tomorrow he would see about talking to the Turtle.

It was getting late. The City was asleep, but a Runner could be called on at any time, so the patrols left him alone as he traveled through the quiet streets. When he arrived at the fort, he discovered it to be on high alert.

He made his way to the main chow hall. Even at this hour, it was fairly busy. Inside, the level of hubbub was higher than usual. He grabbed a tray, filled it, then joined a group of soldiers he knew.

“Hey Tenthé,” one of them called. “You hear what happened?”

“No. They sent me to the far side of the City. Did someone throw up on the general again?”

“Ha, no. This time we had a break-in. A band of rogue Magisters raided the prison, slaughtered a bunch of regulars and broke out a crowd of hardcore underlives. They reset the wards when they escaped, killing even more of the boys, good soldiers all. The Dreamer’s going to have to bring them back tonight, although, from what I hear, there wasn’t a whole lot left. Most likely, the deaders won’t remember much.”

That was something Tenthé had overlooked. He’d kind of forgotten there was an active Dreamer, now. Didn’t mean he would do anything different, the soldiers he had killed didn’t weigh on his conscience. He thought over what they’d done in the prison. His spark left nothing, and the Envoy had atomized her soldiers. Whatever the Dreamer did to bring them back, maybe they’d remember, maybe they wouldn’t. He shrugged. No matter; he’d deal with it, whatever it was.

It was also nice to know he was a band of rogue Magisters.

So far, he had accounted for the Envoy and the kids, but Leo, Elishua, and the Magister remained at large. For the moment, he had no plans to track them down. They were adults, or close enough, and would have to adapt, improvise, and survive.

He did wonder how Magister Grenville fit into everything. He was getting the sneaking suspicion she was more than what she appeared to be. She wasn’t the hidden goddess, but wasn’t just a simple Magister of Mystical Studies, either.

Her cookies were really good, though.

Enough thinking. He’d come up with a rough plan of what to do tomorrow, which was about all he ever had, so he headed in the direction of the Runner’s quarters to grab a bunk and catch up on his sleep.