I was stirred from my deep sleep by the creak, crack and groan of the door slowly opening. I was fully awoken when a force yanked me out of bed and compressed my limbs to my torso.

“Who are you? What are you doing in here?” A voice I did not recognize accused me from the doorway.

I made a fairly inarticulate sound as I pried my eyes open. The tumble out of bed had caused me to be lying face down on the floor and with my arms and legs pinned, it was going to be a challenge to move. I tried to wiggle and twist myself about so that I could at least see something other than the fringes of my hair as I tried to look towards the voice. A painful rap of my shins against the bedframe convinced me of the folly of that particular approach. The pain jolted me further awake and my pained yelp was followed by an annoyed. “Who the hell are you? Untie me!”

“Untie you? What kind of dumb barb…” The voice cut off with a frustrated sigh at my struggling and I felt myself being yanked along the floor and then lifted up. I found myself hovering an inch off the ground with my arms and legs still bound. At least I was facing the door and my accoster now. It was a young woman dressed in one of Colvale’s uniform. She didn’t have any of the broad, sash-like stripes that the Grand Abbot or Abbess did, but there were a few other patterns and thinner, vertical stripes. I had no clue what those patterns meant but I guessed they meant something from the way her brow furrowed as she took in my blank robes.

Most important to me, however, was the glowing disk of clear energy in front of her hand. The clear glowing energy was steady and I could vaguely see outlines in the air of energy reaching out and wrapping around me. “You break into the home of a Master Air Mage, and your first thought is that you’d be tied up?” She snorted in annoyed disbelief. “Now, who are you?”

“Master Air Mage? You’re not Abbess Irense! Now release me!” I protested before being cut off with a hurk as one of the air robes smacked me in the head.

“I’m the one holding you up by air. Now answer my question before I summon the Abbess!”

That’s it, summon the Abbess. Let her see you attacking whatever the hell I am to these people.

“Go ahead then.” I nodded over to the knot of energy the Abbess had left glowing by the desk. “She left that alarm for me to activate when I woke up. She said all I had to do was touch it but since I can’t, I’m sure it will be fine for you to do it.”

The woman looked with confusion over at the knot of energy and the walked over – maintaining the damn air ropes – and tapped the knot of energy. It flared, I got the vague sense that something was happening but then the knot collapsed. After only a brief pause there was a second flare, this time of the lime green energy that had brought my bed. When it faded, there was an additional set of robes and a pair of black slippers as well as a note.

Because I was still tied up, my accoster was the one to pick up the note and read it aloud. “Put these on to replace your clothes. The Grand Abbot and I will come soon.” Her face paled a tad but then looked at me. “Why is the Grand Abbot coming to see you? That makes no sense! And why are you replacing your clothes? You still haven’t answered my first question: who are you?”

“That’s a lot of questions.” Perhaps I would realize on reflection this wasn’t my smoothest way of operating, but I was grouchy from being woken up like this. It’s hard to be nice to the person who is holding you a few inches off the ground. “Name’s Kyle. Would you please put me down so I can change clothes? It might also be polite to give me your name too.”

The woman harrumphed but released her spell. My feet hit the floor unevenly and I had an awkward moment of catching my balance in thin socks. “I’m Astri, apprentice to the Abbess. I haven’t heard of you, and I’m in the Third Study regularly, so don’t try and lie about being here a while.”

“Wasn’t going to.” I barely restrained my irritation as I stalked over to the clothes and grabbed them. “I just got here yesterday. I barely have my head on straight well enough to figure out what to tell you. Now get out of here so I can change!”

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“And let some random trespasser loose in the Abbess’s offices? I don’t think so!” She crossed her arms defiantly.

“Then at least turn around.”

“Nope.”

“Well then, I guess we can both sit here and wait. You can explain to the Grand Abbot and the Abbess why I didn’t follow their directions.”

She actually growled at me. I had read the expression in books, but someone actually growling at me in frustration was a new experience. A defiant glaring contest ensued. I won. “Just don’t try anything. I won’t go easy if you try to break anything or attack me.” She turned around and stood there tapping her foot.

I looked around the room is disbelief. There was a desk, some chairs, and my bed. My heart jumped when I saw the sneakers that I’d kicked off the day earlier. The spell disguising them as local footwear had been canceled when they left my body, so they were just sitting by the foot of my bed. She hadn’t mentioned them, so I had to hope that she hadn’t noticed. I was supposed to be hiding the whole ‘not from this world’ vibe after all. I kicked the shoes fully under the bed and then figured out how to undo the robe.

It was more challenging than I’d expected. I also nearly dropped it once I’d gotten it off and it suddenly reverted to the original shirt that I’d worn into the portal. My pants did the same thing. I was not quite up to changing underwear in the same room as this stranger, even if her back was turned. I threw the un-transformed clothes under the bed quickly and then did up the new clothes, figuring out how to tie cloth drawstrings on the pants and then figured out the toggle system for the shirt. The first time I tried, I didn’t get it quite right and the shirt hung open a bit. I figured out a way to tighten them but when I told the woman I was dressed and that she could turn around, her face told me I hadn’t quite gotten it right.

I was spared from having to respond when there was a shimmer in the air and then the clouds assembled into the Abbess while the Grand Abbot shot up out of the floor with the telltale shine of brown magic.

“Alright, let’s get this over with.” The Grand Abbot said with a voice that torn between irritation and resignation. A glance took in the room, including Astri the interloper. “Irense, see your apprentice out for a moment, but bring her back in a few minutes.”

Astri looked like she wanted to protest, but the Abbess didn’t give her a chance before shuffling her out the door. The Grand Abbot turned his attention back to me. “The Abbess informed me about her failed polymorph. I decided that I would try a few tricks beyond her skill in Body Magic. Then I will return you to her care. Hold still.”

The next two to three minutes were very boring for me from a physical perspective, as I was reduced to a passive observer of what was being done to me. It could have been interesting, if I had known the first thing about magic beside that it existed here. A circle of rust colored magic took shape before him. From what little I could tell, it wasn’t as complex as the polymorph spell the Abbess had tried on me. The energy it released hovered and swirled around me for a few seconds before returning and settling into an orb over his shoulder. A second spell formed in his hand, this time a new color I hadn’t seen before. In fact, it was pretty much every color, an iridescent shimmer that reminded me of the God of Magic who had awoken me back in the space between realms. That spell formed very quickly and was much smaller and less complex. It’s effect, however, was very interesting. The Grand Abbot’s eyes started to glow with the same color, which stood out strongly against his dark skin and made him look completely otherworldly.

No sooner had that spell slipped into place then he started to form yet a third circle, this time once more the iron rust of what I assumed to be Body Magic. It was by far the largest spell that I had seen to date, covering almost his entire body. At times, the orb from the first spell seemed to be feeding into it at various points as the rows filled in with magic. When it flashed in completion, I could see the magic flow over me but once again it felt like it failed to grab hold of anything even as it continued to swirl.

“Huh…” The Grand Abbot sounded stumped. The glow in his eyes did not fade as he examined the swirls of magic. He paced around me. “This is quite interesting. I have never seen anything quite like it, the magic just won’t take hold. Hmm …” He stroked his tightly woven beard, hands idly pulling threads loose before allowing their naturally tight curls to spring them back into place. “But does it hold against all magic…”

A quick flash of magic whose leafy color I was barely able to perceive before it completed was followed by a sudden flare of pain. My yell was half for the pain and half for the surprise as I looked down to see a wooden spike protruding from the floor and through my calf for a second before retracting back into the floor. The Grand Abbot was paying no attention to anything other than his spells though, as he bent down. “Hmm … so not defense against direct attacks. Is it just Body Magic?” Yet another spell formed quickly in his hand, the rust color again and the hole in my leg closed back up instantly. A second Body Magic spell, equally as fast, gathered the blood that had briefly spilled from my leg up and floated it over to a vial the Grand Abbot had mysteriously produced.

“So Body Magic can heal you, and magic affects you normally so long as it doesn’t try to change you in some fundamental way. I have no idea why that happens.” He looked at me, excited as the glow of magic faded from his eyes. “That’s incredible! It’s been forever since I’ve learned something new about magic! There’s nothing I can do about it for now, but that won’t stop you from enrolling after the Nevernight Festivities end and we begin a new term.”

He raised his voice and turned to the door. “Abbess, you may return with your apprentice now.”

It wasn’t even a minute later before the door reopened. Astri the apprentice was leading and the Abbess was following with a somewhat sour look on her face. The look changed to one of surprise when she saw me standing there unchanged. I guess she had not been expecting the Grand Abbot to fail to transform me.

The Grand Abbot nodded. “You can see as you can see. I will be looking into this, and will let you know if I discover anything.” With a glow of brown magic, he was sucked back into the earth, leaving me alone with the Abbess and her apprentice.

Who apparently, was quite fed up with the mystery and waiting. “Will someone tell me what in the name of the Eternal Wastes is going on?!”