“Just give me a moment to get this water into the drains, Mistress, and we will be on our way,” Gael said.

When Mistress Kalina nodded, Gael took that as a cue to start singing. His singing Magik was significantly more fluid than the spoken one had been, but Tercius realized that just as he rehearsed his Stone Attraction dozens of times, Gael had likely done the same with this water-repelling spell song. With Mana Sight Tercius observed the young man’s high tenor eject a thin bubble of mana, saturating the puddle with it, and then morphing it slowly to bond with that rainwater. All of that to rid the grooved stone floor of water.

If Amber was here…

The Familiar Bond was still there, present at the back of his mind, and Tercius took a moment to see if he could reach out to his familiar. He could firmly feel the direction she was in and that was about it. He couldn't send a message to her as he used to and he most certainly couldn't fall behind her eyes and see what she saw.

Distance, it would seem, had an enormous impact on the bond.

To banish the string of worrisome thoughts that suddenly crawled up, Tercius started observing the circular space that housed the beacon on a pedestal in its center. The room was spacious, around ten meters in diameter, and now that Tercius had had a chance to observe it, he noted a few things. There was a small raised area at the other end of the room, walled by a thin metal-looking fence. But it was the walls that were more attention-grabbing. They were smooth and reflected some of the dim light given off by the enchanted orbs embedded high on the walls and he could swear that he saw some kind of movement in them. The ceiling itself was domed and as Tercius inspected it, he saw lightning tearing the sky apart. A moment later, he heard it.

Is that… glass? Is the dome made from glass? Tercius thought as he started looking at the material more closely. It certainly had a smoothness to it and even a bit of that reflection. The walls and the dome were likely made of the same or a, possibly, similar material. Something with a small degree of transparency, from the looks of it.

The wind howled outside and the rain seemed intent to wash away the mage-made structure as Tercius and Mistress Kalina waited for young Gael to finish.

Looking at the portion of the wall that had let him and Mistress Kalina get inside, Tercius noted that the wall now seemed seamless. So many questions about this building material suddenly came to him, but he was not sure if now was the right time nor place to ask them. Listening and observing were always better than speaking when in new environments and around new people, Tercius knew.

“All done. Please, follow me,” Gael said.

Their exit from this floor was a partially fenced hole in the floor, the raised circular area that he noticed earlier near the opposite wall. A similarly fenced platform waited for them, a snug fit for the hole itself. The platform proved spacious enough for the trio to board without overcrowding it and when Gael spoke the commands, the platform started to go down. The vertical tunnel swallowed them up and within a few seconds of traveling down the well-lit stone structure, they stopped before an indentation in the walls, a meter-long hallway that led to an intricately carved pair of wooden doors.

“Mentor is inside,” Gael said as he stepped off the platform and went over to knock on the door.

“Enter,” a male voice firmly stated in Magik.

Gael grabbed both handles and opened the wings wide, indicating for Mistress Kalina and him to enter. “Please,”

Mistress Kalina took the lead and Tercius followed behind her. As soon as they got in Gael left the room and closed the door, leaving Tercius and Mistress Kalina with a man of dark skin color, his dreadlocks, and short, finely-shaped beard black, yet the onset of graying was observable.

“I know that the signal you sent earlier already did this, but please indulge me for a proper introduction,” Slowly, the man rose from his chair and looked at each of them for a moment. “My name is Kayonga, Keeper of Everstorm Towers.”

With a reach for his neck, the man pulled on a string and took out his Amulet. Mistress Kalina’s hand rose and her fingers made a spell.

Mistress Kalina was the senior of the two, and from the etiquette lessons that Mistress Dea taught him, Tercius knew that he had to wait for all his seniors to present themselves. She had given him no prior instruction for this, so… Would she invent some name or would she give her own? He would follow in her footsteps in any case…

“Kalina, Constable of the Magi Law,” Mistress Kalina stated as she pulled out her Amulet from beneath her shirt and showed it to the man. Kayonga — Master Kayonga or alternatively Keeper Kayonga, Tercius reminded himself — sang a quick spell and nodded satisfied.

Then his eyes turned to Tercius.

Tercius placed an open palm on his heart and gave a slight bow. “Tercius, Student of the Academy,” Fishing out his own Amulet, he let it rest on his palm. As the deep Rurds were sung once more, a shiver ran through his hand as foreign mana invaded his mana channels.

“So… the message from earlier spoke of lodgings?” Master Kayonga said, as one thick eyebrow rose in question.

“We will need two rooms and food, Keeper Kayonga. As of now, I don't know how long we will stay, but all expenses will be covered by me personally.”

“You can stay however long you need and like. There is plenty of room and the food is excellent. The weather… you get used to it.” Master Kayonga nodded as stepped around the table and came near Mistress Kalina, a small, confident smile on his face. “And once you get some rest from your journey, Constable, perhaps you will join me for dinner? I’m sure that you have some interesting stories to share—”

The Keeper was obviously attempting to flirt with the clearly not interested Mistress Kalina and Tercius found it difficult to listen for multiple reasons. And since he was worried about just how much time this little education trip would take and had zero interest in other people’s personal business, he let his thoughts take him away.

He was not as worried about what he had to learn about religious interaction as he was about the spell that he would have to learn.

Crystal Shield had taken him a better part of three months of everyday work and even though Mistress Helfira spoke in amazement of what he had done, vocally marveling at the speed of his achievement, Tercius had been quite subdued about it. His many advantages — his Mana Sight added to the relatively high Mana Manipulation and the then rapidly climbing Mana Metamorphosis, along with his ability to easily understand the instructions given in the spell of how to use specific morphs at certain times in appropriate places — made Mistress Helfira’s words of praise, in regards to those very points expressed relative to his apparent age, very unpleasant to hear and bear.

That was not to say that he felt ashamed of his current ability and the work it took to get him to it. His skills and their levels were paid in a way that he imagined few could pay for repeatedly and, hopefully, those very advantages would allow him to learn this spell required for the Rite as soon as possible.

All of my awake time needs to be allocated to learning this spell, Tercius thought. Now if we could only get to these rooms and get started…

“— I will call for Gael to take you to your rooms.” Keeper Kayonga said.

“You have my gratitude, Keeper,” Mistress Kalina said.

The man revealed his pearly teeth with a pleasant smile. “It is my pleasure to serve a Constable of the Law,”

Gael was there within the minute and the Keeper instructed him on the arrangement for the rooms and food that Mistress Kalina asked for. Their rooms were arranged to be in the tower where they arrived, named Tower Black Rose, or just Tower Black, for its black domed roof. Each floor of the Tower had from two to four rooms and once Gael lead them to an empty floor, he unsealed a room for Mistress Kalina and Tercius got the room next door. Upon unsealing Tercius’ room and showing him to unlock and lock it, Gael just started explaining some information about the Towers themselves.

The Towers were all connected via an underground network of tunnels, which were mostly there to link the various Towers to storage spaces. The terraced hillside on which the nine Towers were built was apparently created with proper drainage in mind, so Tercius could go for a “storm walk” on the paved paths around the terraced gardens, and move from Tower to Tower that way. There were enchanted raincoats on all ground floors, placed conveniently near each entrance, to protect walkers from the extreme weather.

Gael went on to inform them more of these terraced gardens, which were apparently filled with flora capable of enduring the savage winds and the year-round rains, and all were capable of surviving on only a small amount of sunlight. Everstorm Towers only had a single day of sunlight per week, on average, and while the rain, the wind, and the lack of daylight could wear down on the nerves, Gael told them, the occasional view of spectacular clear skies washed away all accumulated weariness.

The basements of Everstorm Towers were also where the famous "Stormy Weather" fruit wine was made, fermented from some cultivated local slow-growing berries.

He is in charge of visitors, Tercius told himself.

“Thank you for that, young Gael. You have been most informative.” Mistress Kalina said.

Thankfully, Gael took his cue. He excused himself immediately, promising to get both of them for dinner later in the day. As Gael vanished along with the elevator, Tercius closed the door and turned to Mistress Kalina.

“Can you just show me how to use that elevator, Mistress?” Tercius asked.

He would likely need access to Mistress Kalina in the coming days and he would rather not impose on others to help him make a one-story ride, nor would he use his telekinetic skill in the presence of mages. He had Mana Manipulation and Mana Metamorphosis, the two skills required for interaction with almost all complex mage-made enchantments, so he just needed someone to show him what and how. The command spells were made simple and short, an effective way to make observation pointless.

Mistress Kalina sat down in a chair. “Of course. It’s rather simple, once you know how,”

“And I would also like to start on this spell required for the Rite as soon as possible, Mistress,”

“Yes, I would like that too,” Mistress Kalina said, waving a hand over a low table and making a spell-box appear. “Read it and let me know if you have any questions.”

***

*****

***

In his repertoire of spells, Tercius had learned a single spell for each of his mana affinities. Stone Attraction, his first foyer into the spell world, was a rather simple spell when compared to his second spell called Crystal Shield.

Yet both were far more complicated than making his mana appear to the naked eye in various colors, something he just learned in the past couple of weeks from Mistress Kalina.

In her own words, the mana morphing sequences that she taught him were barely counted as spells, and once Tercius saw them as such, with his own eyes, he wondered privately why a mana coloring spell wasn’t the equivalent of training wheels for new mages, instead of actual spells like Stone Attraction, which were more robust in mana quantity and shape.

Why were these shorter semi-spells, that came with a comparatively lower mana cost, not the first learning material that an aspiring student got to actually learn mana metamorphism?

The first answer to that self-posed question was that it had something to do with some internal policy, which Tercius as a student could only interpret through the prism of its apparent results as he saw them — at least without resorting to directly asking the question to someone in charge. And he didn’t want to ask that kind of question even of Perdinar, someone frank and found near the top of the Pyramid, let alone anyone else.

Another thing that was stopping him was that Mr. Sullivan, his friend, and teacher, had instilled in Tercius a form of independence of seeking answers from established sources. The old man had always encouraged Tercius to develop his own answers even to the most trivial of questions, for in doing so he learned how to think properly.

So… What would happen if there were better metaphorical training wheels for mages? There would be more actual mages? Highly likely. Why was it that established mages wanted fewer new mages? Even if that supposition in his question was proven to be true, and although he could give a few answers to that question from the top of his head, Tercius found that he didn’t really personally care about that aspect that much.

The choice of a mage's training wheels intrigued him because he wanted to learn more of the underlying principles of what was being taught, namely spellwork because with those principles behind him he could learn to learn better.

And now, while studying the first few morphs of his third official spell, that same desire to understand the principles came surging anew.

Unlike his first two spells, this one was not based on his affinity to either stone or crystal. But the very beginning of the spell’s morphing sequence was identical to what he would do to make his mana visible to the naked eyes.

Why was that? Was it a coincidence? Or, if he were to find other non-affinity spells, would he see the same sequence there as well? Despite wanting to understand this mystery further, Tercius had to let it go for now and focus back on studying the spell.

His days at the Tower Black were kept simple. Rise early, study the spell, eat when called, sleep.

Mistress Kalina was there to help him with anything to do with the spell, and explain to him a few key points of interaction with the mage-offshoots. These lessons started with some groundwork.

First, she explained the meaning of a specific title.

The title Mistress and its male equivalent, Master, were high tier Rurds, which when deconstructed into commonly spoken Rurds respectively meant "She Who Learns" and "He Who Learns". The sex-specific version of the title was given to a Mage by a Guild Council of Mages — all of whom were already in possession of the title — upon successful training completion.

Priest and Priestess, or in plain Magik, He Who Serves and She Who Serves, had their roots as offshoots of the Repository Mages and it was this story that Mistress Kalina shared with him on his “religious study” breaks.

Apparently, Spirits were relatively new arrivals on the planet, present merely a couple of millennia, and there were a few mages alive today who had lived through that turbulent arrival and even more turbulent centuries that followed. Many mages died before the peace was forged. Unfortunately, Mistress Kalina didn't delve deeply into that part of the story.

As Tercius understood the rest of the story, the new generations of Pyramid mages, those born post-schism, looked to these priests and priestesses as some wayward cousins of sorts. There had even been some efforts done to reincorporate the descendants back into the fold of proper mage-craft and away from the use of the destructive and chaotic Energies of the Spirits, but without much success.

Yet he could only imagine how it was to these surviving mages who got to see mages who were willing to serve and tend to Spirits.

It was through these lessons, placed into break time between spell practice, that Tercius realized that getting his grandmother out of there might not be as easy as he thought. Mages and Spirits did not mix well, apparently, and he was not sure what his appearance would cause. Yet Mistress Kalina assured him that as he wasn’t still technically a Mage, only a Neophyte, the Spirits would likely stay out of his way. It was the humans that he would have to worry about, Mistress Kalina told him. She also said that diplomacy would have to be the way forward with this and that she would only be there for him as an advisor and a potential exit out of the situation.

But if it got so bad that he had to take the exit she offered…

Four days went by, with Tercius only leaving his cozy room for the dining room or the bathroom. The spell "Announcement" took him every hour of those days and he finally managed to cast it successfully. Then it took him another day to make sure that his spell became less and less involved with luck.

Finally, on the morning of day six, Mistress Kalina gave him a page with his part of Rite of Tfenn for him to memorize and recite, sing, gesticulate with his hands, or dance out, while casting Announcement. The trio of witnesses that they would need would arrive within the day of his successful attempt at doing that.

During his study days, the start of the new calendar year came and went and Tercius barely noticed.