A look of surprise appeared on the sorcerer’s face. A promise that she had lived with for her whole life had just been fulfilled. Her mouth flapped wordlessly for a few seconds as she processed what had just happened.

“You would name me now? But I have not yet committed any great deeds in your name. This is highly irregular.” She was clearly flustered as she spoke, but it was equally clear that my words had made her happy.

“I intend to give all of the sorcerers assigned to me a name soon,” I said, desperately trying not to seem like I favored her over the others. “Trust me, it is for my own gratification. I won’t be able to differentiate you guys unless you all have distinct names.”

The sorcerer held her cheeks in her hands and turned away from me. I allowed myself a self-satisfied smile now that her back was turned. This was precisely the reaction I wanted to induce. With her back turned to me, she said, “Amber. Why did you choose the name Amber?”

“Oh, that,” I said, trying not to let my grin influence my tone. “It’s your hair. Your hair is the color of amber.”

“Thank you,” Amber paused for a long second before adding, “sir.”

“Well,” I rubbed one hand through my hair and cleared my throat, “now that we’ve dealt with that, I still have a few questions.”

“As you say,” Amber turned back to me. She clearly wanted to move past the awkwardness of the present moment. “Your request is my command. What are your questions?”

“Just two for now. One: What is a Cognoscenti? Two: Why do the Revenants have guns?” As I asked this question, I started walking again, and Amber followed soon after.

“Oh, that,” anger appeared on Amber’s face, though I could tell it wasn’t directed at me. “To answer your first question, the Cognoscenti are the people of Merkopia. I am a Cognoscentum. We are broadly followers of the God of Machines, but some Cognoscenti have betrayed the edict written upon our very souls. This brings me to your second question. Spread across the continent of Rubigo are enclaves of traitorous Cognoscenti; some of them have copies of the holy blueprints, and they have been using them to make weapons for the Revenants. The fact that even one Cognoscentum has turned against GM and his Apostles is a great shame to all of my people.”

“Uh huh,” I said, focusing on the information more than Amber’s apparent contrition. My thoughts were drawn to the book I had recently been reading. “Two more questions. What is an Imperial? What is a Patrician?”

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“An Imperial is a human from the continent of Rubigo,” Amber explained. “A Patrician is an Imperial who can summon forth a Divine Beast and wield powerful magic. There are nine Patricians, and they are all self-serving. They frequently go to war with each other, unlike the Dark Apostles.”

Perhaps the Dark Apostles of the past had been like that, but I doubted the current Apostles were as monolithic as Amber wanted to believe.

“A final question,” I began. “Who would win in a fight, a Dark Apostle or a Patrician?”

“The Dark Apostle would win, of course,” Amber responded without hesitation. Zealous certainty burned in her voice. I was quickly reminded of the power-scaling arguments I had gotten into in the Old World. There was no way Amber would give an unbiased opinion on the matter. She was a Star Wars fan, and I had just asked whether the Death Star could beat a Borg cube.

“While the Patricians have access to magic equivalent to a Dark Apostle, they are still merely human,” she said. “A single punch from a Dark Apostle would kill a Patrician.”

“Noted,” I said, and I made a mental note that the Patricians were a major threat to us. If Amber had to qualify her statement that one of her religion’s vaunted demi-gods would beat a Patrician, then they were certainly no small threat.

At that point, we approached a heavy set of double doors. Each door was twenty feet wide and forty feet high, and both were made out of thick wood. When we walked to the Great Hall a few hours ago, Poldra opened the door, and she didn’t seem to have much trouble with it.

Without much thought, I put a hand on each door and pushed. I could tell that the door was high quality as it gave a little bit of resistance as I pushed, unlike the other flimsy doors I had used since I arrived in Castle Bosporus. It felt like I was opening a shop’s door and there was a pressure differential between the shop and the exterior. I had to brace my arm slightly as I pushed, but I didn’t have to put my shoulder into it. The double doors opened slowly with the sound of wood creaking against metal hinges, and the sound filled the large entrance way that held the door.

I stepped out into the evening air and stretched my arms. That was the first time since I had come to Castle Bosporus that I had strained my muscles. Amber stepped through the door behind me as I looked out at the Castle.

It was the dead of night, so I couldn’t see much. I was looking out at the long bridge that separated the structure I was in from the other structures. The bridge was lit every thirty feet by gas lamps, so I could trace its path even in the darkness. I realized that the bridge went to the left but not the right. This was strange considering that the structures of Castle Bosporus were arranged in a circle. I walked a few dozen feet to a place where I could get a better look at the structure to my right.

Looking out into the darkness, I saw a structure composed of towers and battlements. Strangely, it was at a significantly lower elevation than the structure I presently occupied.