The Abbess crossed her arms and looked at her apprentice with a look that morphed from baleful to wry quickly. “Two years I’ve been trying to spark your curiosity, and now it’s a boy that does it in ten minutes?”

Astri huffed in affront. “I am plenty curious! Why else do you think I came in here? The Third Study is a great place to follow my own interests or review for classes. Until I come in this morning and find a guy just sleeping on a bed in here! Where did he even come from?”

“Hi, I’m Kyle.” I attempted to interject as I saw the Abbess’s eyes narrow.

“I will be interested in hearing from you about these interests that you have been exploring in here without discussing them with me, your master, for the last two years. My third study is not for you to use as you see fit, but for me. I will have to reflect on our interactions in the past to ensure that you have not inappropriately sought to steer me away from using the study so that it might remain vacant. I am most concerned, Astri.”

The young woman blanched under the Abbess’s astringent tone. She opened her mouth to protest but the Abbess stream-rolled over anything she might have said. “I had intended to introduce you to Kyle in the next few days. He will be enrolling as a Novice at the start of the next term, under my supervision. He will be staying here for the next week, and we will work to get him acquainted with Colvale so that he does not start at a disadvantage to the others. You get to be a part of that.

“But, first, I think you need a reminder of an Apprentice’s work. Go practice your ritual shaving in my Second Study. Then go to the library and track down any references and manuals related to the Ice Kings. Bring them here at the noon bell. You are dismissed.”

It looked like Astri was going to say something, and her eyes flicked with confusion between the me and the Abbess for a few moments before a repeated, and sterner, “dismissed” from the Abbess had her scurrying to open the door. The Abbess remained silent as Astri opened it and slipped through. As the door shut, the anger on her face disappeared and the Abbess let out a deep, weary sigh. She shook her head as she refocused her attention on me.

“The books about the Ice Kings will be our first step to figuring out the magic that you’re bringing to the table. But that’s the second step of what we need to do this week. That conversation will continue into your time as a Novice. What is more urgent is getting you to the point where you can blend in. You can speak the language, which is useful. But your basis of knowledge is dangerously low for our purposes.”

I decided to interrupt her. I was feeling more than a little tempest-tossed by the conspiracy that the Grand Abbot and Abbess had sucked me into. I agreed that I definitely lacked basic knowledge, but that included knowledge about why this conspiracy was a thing. I had been disoriented and exhausted yesterday, but even if her apprentice had woken me up earlier than expected, I was feeling at least somewhat rested. Which meant it was time to get my metaphorical feet under me.

“Pause a moment, Abbess. I appreciate your help, but I can’t just keep being swept up in your whirlwind. Why do you keep saying we have a week? What happens then?”

The Abbess laughed, a surprisingly giddy sound, different from my expectations. “Oh good, swept up in my whirlwind. Appropriate, for both of us.” She nodded. “I like that phrase, I may have to remember it.” She walked past me and I was about to bug her about not answering my question when she waved her hand out a window. “What time do you think it is?”

I didn’t understand the question, it looked like daylight. I didn’t know the directions of where I was to tell whether the sun was rising or setting, but it was definitely up. I let her know as much. “Why is that relevant?”

“Because it’s only two hours since sunrise, and only six hours since I left you in here. Given your exhaustion and the aftereffects of the spell, I wasn’t expecting to hear from you for another few hours.” My brow furrowed, I definitely remembered it being daylight when I’d gotten here. But that was apparently only six hours ago, but also a night ago. The Abbess noticed my calculations running and nodded. “Indeed, we only had a few hours of true darkness. We are approaching the Nevernight Festival. For three weeks, the sun will not set on Colvale. The festival marks the end of one year of instruction, and the beginning of another. Each year, the students of Colvale are tested to see if they are worthy of passing on to the next year. The Novice test is first. After it, any graduates are moved into Initiate housing, while new Novices begin moving in to take up residence.

“The excuse that we are going to use is that you cannot move into the Novice housing until the Festival. You would be out of place if you moved in now, with all of the Novices preparing for the Test. That excuse will run out after the Novice Test though, so you will need to be ready. If I held you longer, it would arouse even more suspicion. I would rather avoid that, so that is our goal.”

So it was about to be Polar Summer. I was in a polar region. Admittedly, I hadn’t been outside for very long, but I definitely don’t remember it being cold. Then again, I didn’t really know much about polar regions. My own job had mostly focused on the Indian subcontinent, which was much closer to the tropics. Maybe polar regions weren’t always cold? “So it’s the Nevernight Festival, is the opposite called Neverday?”

“Oh no, that does sound dreadfully dreary.” The Abbess turned. “We just call it Polar Night. The Festival at the end of it is called the Sun Day Festival, and serves as a basic mid-point for the academic year. Good question, though, that kind of random terminology is probably what is most likely to trip you up. Now, if you could please refresh my memory as to the story we cooked up. We’ll figure out which books we’ll need to help you convey the story.”

I nodded. I was in a library, supposedly, so books made sense as a starting point. “I grew up in a small fishing hamlet, father didn’t approve of magic, so made sure we were out on the waters whenever a wizard…”

“Magus.” The Abbess interrupted me on the terminology.

“Right, a magus from Colvale came through to do the testing. He died, I made my way here to get tested, and you swept me up because of my unique magic, other affinities, and old age.”

“Do you know about sailing fishing craft to be able to sell that from a practical standpoint?” The Abbess turned and looked out the window pensively as she reflected on my story.

I shrugged. “Probably. I don’t know what kind of boats you have here. My real dad used to take me sailing when I was a kid, taught me some basic knots and how to read wind. I haven’t done it in maybe 15 years, but it would probably come back to me if I had to.”

She sighed. “I suppose that will do. It’s better than many other covers. It requires the least stretching of the imagination for your time and place and gives a good blanket excuse for any ignorance you unwittingly betray. It will be impossible to get you completely up to speed before the term begins.

“However, I’ll give you a few corrections and terminology to throw into your story. First, it isn’t called testing, but awakening. We aren’t looking to see who has magic, but who has useful quantities and qualities of it once it is activated, or awoken as we prefer to call it. Everybody has magic, but most people, especially those in the lower classes, don’t have much and it isn’t worth training them. Coming from a small, poor community, your ignorance of magic will be more excusable. A magus from Colvale likely would have swept through your community every two to three years or so. Most people are awoken in their early to mid teen years, although Colvale does not accept students until their mid to late teens. Their movements aren’t secret, so this fictional father could have snuck you out the three times it would have mattered, starting from when you were twelve until you were about eighteen. By that point, any visiting magus would have assumed you’d been through the awakening but nothing significant had happened and would ignore you.

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

“And you remembered that the fields of magic are called affinities. You do indeed have a unusual number of them. But we prefer not to call any affinity truly Unique. We call them Rare instead.”

“The goddess called it a Unique Affinity when it was revealed.” I argued back. While rare was still cool, unique sounded cooler in my head. I had enough pride for that, and a unique affinity would likely open more doors.

“And so it is, for now.” The Abbess shrugged. “Almost every affinity we know about started off as a Unique Affinity for the first person to unlock it. One of the things we’ll be studying is what trait of yours led you to unlock it. Once we have that understanding, other people will start to appear with it as well. That has been the pattern with all the other Affinities, until they spread all over the world. Over time, they’ll become more common. Perhaps studying you can help us figure out how Rare Affinities work.” A slight smile touched her face for a moment. “It isn’t just as a cover that our story is that I’m studying you.”

Any further conversation was cut off when my stomach let out a low gurgle of protest. It wasn’t anything extreme, since I was far from starved, but it had been a little longer than average since my last time eating anything. The Abbess turned and looked surprised at the sound. “Oh, right. We should feed you. Fortunately, the library has its own cafeteria, so we don’t have to go far. Put your shoes on. We’ll discuss which books you need on the way.”

I obeyed the directions, picking up the last piece of the outfit that they had provided for me. I wanted to ask about the teleporting objects, but it seemed like the Abbess was more focused than that. As soon as the shoes were on my feet, she bundled me out of the room. I knew that I had been taken through this hallway on our way to the Abbess’s third study last night, but my mind must really have been out of it, because it looked very unfamiliar in the light of the new morning. To my surprise, there only three doors in the hallway, including the one we were exiting right now.

The Abbess hurried me past all of them to the staircase. As we descended it was clear that it wrapped around the outside of the tower. Which seemed very inefficient to me as a means of ascending and descending. I grumbled about that to the Abbess and she shrugged. “There is an interior well, but we reserve it for emergencies. You’ll understand why when you are more advanced.”

I could feel the hunger growing in me as we made our way down, my stomach’s rumblings getting more and more pronounced. I remembered that my parents used to joke that when my mom said she was hungry, my dad had 15 minutes before she was a completely different person. I could feel how that was a thing. We descended past many levels of other hallways with doors coming off of them. It seemed interminable to my hunger, but my mind recognized that it was only ten floors before it changed pattern. Instead of the doorways opening inward to hallways in the tower, now the doorways led outwards to much longer hallways. The most important change though was to the inside of the stair spiral. It was completely open, the tower apparently sitting on top of a massive domed vault. Looking down at the vault from the opening to the lowest floor of the tower, I could easily see the contents of the vault. It wasn’t just a massive open space, but was rather structured like a stadium, with bench seats climbing up several floors around an open central space that had a handful of statues and other items that I couldn’t make out.

I couldn’t decide whether the number of people moving around was large or small compared to the space, but it was clear that this was a much busier section of the library than those upper levels. Black robes with all manner of decorative patterns were moving about the floors. On the first few floors, I saw other colors and styles of clothing, but mostly a lot of the black robes.

The Abbess waved a hand over the open space. “That is the chapel for prayer services in honor of our patron goddess, Elenia. The library is wrapped around the shrine on these levels. You will only ever need to use the first five floors, which is where the general access library and cafeteria are located.” We continued to descend, a bit more pep in my step now that I knew where the food was. I was looking forward to the kind of food served at a magical cafeteria. “The rest of the library is made of specialized sections, which we generally restrict access to. Knowledge is a very useful tool, but it can be dangerous in the wrong hands. Over your time at the Monastery, you will gain access to some of those sections, as they would be helpful to you and you prove yourself capable. Above us, in the shrine’s tower, were studies used by select Masters to educate their Apprentices and conduct some less destructive experiments.”

It seemed to me that the vault was growing wider as we descended. It was probably only my hunger that was making each step feel longer, although I could imagine a valid architectural reason for such a thing. It turned out that the cafeteria was on the fifth floor. Which, to be honest, I was a little surprised by. It seemed inefficient to put it anywhere other than on the first floor, as it meant food had to be transported up. When I asked the Abbess, she just shrugged. “This shrine and monastery are 1000 years old, some things about it are just odd. Besides, the difficulty in transportation is lessened by void magic, which can be used to teleport things.”

That made me perk up. “Void magic is one of my affinities, isn’t it? Does that mean I’ll be able to teleport myself around? Could we use that to avoid having to climb back up to your studies?” I asked hopefully.

She laughed as she opened the door to the cafeteria. “Eventually, yes. Today, not so much. True teleportation is very hard for people to do with themselves. I don’t think any of the people here are actually proficient enough to teleport people. There are a few who can make teleportation enchantments that are sufficient for objects, like the bed in my study and the clothes you’re wearing now. But people are a lot more complicated. Until you figure it out, you’ll just have to climb the stairs. It’ll be good for you.”

“Or figure out a different affinity’s movement spell. Like the Earth Step the Grand Abbot uses, or whatever you use to move about.”

The Abbess nodded, a glimmer of amusement in her eyes. “Indeed. I think you will be a quick study here. Maybe you’ll even learn fast enough to actively help us study you. Now, we still need to discuss which books you’ll need from the library. For the next week, you’ll mostly be sequestered in my Third Study except for conversations with me or Astri, or the Grand Abbot if he stops by again.” I really hoped he didn’t, not after the way he’d handled our last conversation. I think I managed to keep the hesitation from my face, however, as the Abbess just continued. “I have Astri looking in one of the specialized history sections for books about the Ice Kings. They were an ancient civilization in this area before the monastery was here. I have a vague memory that they used a type of magic that might not be too dissimilar to your own storm magic and could help us figure it out. That will be a long project though.

“We need to give you a few basic primers that will help you fit into our society.” She held up a hand to tick off a few concepts. “In order to sell your backstory, you’ll need something about the geography and fish of Colvale Valley. Something on sailing craft.”

“Is there a section in this library that deals with fictional stories?” I asked. “Reading some stories set in village life might help me create believable characters and events from something other than pure imagination.”

The Abbess looked at me with surprise. “I never would have thought of that.”

I shrugged. “I had a career before…” I remembered that I wasn’t supposed to talk about things like the summoning or Hero business in public so I waved a hand to try to indicate ‘everything’ and hoped she got the passage. She nodded in apparent understanding. “Part of it was what was called open source gathering, which was looking at cultural products to see what a target group was thinking. Understanding cultural references was important to understanding that. If I’m going to create a believable story that other people will accept, it should have recognizable hooks for them to connect with.”

As the Abbess considered my point, we made our way over to the food counter. It was disappointing. For a place with magic, there was not much magical about the library’s cafeteria. There were a couple of large pots with a few different soups, and an option of a few different types of sandwiches. Granted, I didn’t recognize the names of the animals. Maybe one of them was some kind of wyvern or dragon or something. There was one that looked vaguely like roast beef, and only had a few vegetables on it, so I ordered that. The Abbess got a bowl of a some kind of thick stew with lots of things in it I didn’t recognize.

When I bit into it, I could feel the blood rush into my face and I quickly swallowed so that I could cough in surprise. Maybe I hadn’t been too far off the mark with my idle thought. While it looked normal, that meat had a very powerful kick. The Abbess laughed at my antics. “We should add some kind of primer on cooking. I assume you picked the vergan sandwich because it looked simple. Vergan is an inherently spicy meat, so cooks tend to leave it by itself in dishes.”

I coughed again and took a drink of water to calm my throat. “It isn’t bad. But that definitely took me by surprise.” Now better prepared for what I had gotten, I took another bite and was able to enjoy the taste as well as the spice. “But, yes, some information about food would be helpful.” I took another drink of water.

As we ate, we talked about a few other things that might be helpful. There was also a consideration of time, as I only had a week to absorb this information. We decided to ditch any discussion of the economy besides the basics of coin denominations and average prices, which the Abbess just told me. When I brought up questions of political status, the Abbess hesitated. “We can get you a recent history of Colvale, but it would be suspicious if you knew too much. You’re a village rube, after all. They’re not generally known for detailed knowledge of political players. Actually, it might make sense for that to be what Astri sees you studying when she’s around. It’ll give her a sense of what you’re doing with the time. It will also give you two something to talk about.”

The rest of the meal passed in silence, as I had no idea what I could talk about with her that wouldn’t bring up something we weren’t supposed to talk about. It didn't take long anyway, a sandwich and a bowl of soup hardly made for prolonged fare.