Lowly took the transfer back to the Garden well, for him anyway. Within a few minutes, he had uncurled his shaking limbs and opened his eyes. There were only occasional whimpers now, and he had even managed to ask a question.

“Is this… the outdoors?”

Lilijoy had done her best to prepare him for a world of sky and sun. Perhaps not as well as she had hoped, if he could mistake the huge open room for what she had described. True, the ceiling was quite high, perhaps eighty feet from the floor, but still. It occurred to her that Lowly had rarely had any reason to try and see something at such a distance; perhaps he, or his entire species was nearsighted?

The image of Lowly wearing glasses made her smile.

“No, not outdoors. Just a really big room.” she told him. “Can you see the ceiling?”

He craned his neck back, his eyes bulging. “No top wall,” he announced. “Small floating walls.”

It took her a second to realize he was talking about the walkways which crisscrossed the room at various heights.

“We use this room to practice hiding,” she told him. “Lots of the people here aren’t very good at it. The first thing they try to learn is how to see in the dark better. Then they try to find each other.”

He blinked at her.

“Come on, I’ll show you,” she said.

They played a strange form of hide-and-seek for the next half hour, with far more hiding than seeking on Lowly’s part, broken up by the time when he realized he could pull the various threads wending their way across the room to make bells chime. Once Lowly figured that out, he couldn’t be stopped from dashing around the room until each and every bell had rung at least once. She enjoyed watching the little guy come out of his shell, though the noise seemed almost sacrilegious, given the room’s purpose.

Thinking back, she remembered that the Labyrinthians had set up quite a racket of drums and whistles when they first encountered them. Maybe Lowly was doing something along those lines? Whatever his reasons, it was something other than cowering, which had to be a good sign.

Lilijoy had more than a little trepidation about bringing Lowly to the Academy, though it seemed to be the best of many bad options. Any choice other than returning him to the Labyrinth would have the same fundamental issues as he adapted to a world entirely alien to his experience. At least the Academy was, ostensibly, there for the purpose of guiding newly tempered Insiders as they grew in power and awareness. Jessila’s situation, she hoped, had been an outlier. Now that she understood just how important Jess was to the orcs, the attempt by persons unknown to gain control of her through Charm made much more sense.

Someone knew just how unique she is. I wonder if we’ll ever know who it was?

Of course, for all she knew, there was some other motivation behind the attempt. What she was sure of was that there was something rotten within the Academy, perhaps due to years of neglect by a Head of School who had turned into a grove of oak trees. Bringing Lowly here wasn’t perfect, but he would have people looking out for him right from the beginning. If anyone tried to take advantage of his naivety, they would have a rude awakening.

After the bell ringing episode, they went back to playing. When it came to Stealth skills, Lowly was something of an enigma, seeming to follow the ‘if I can’t see them, they can’t see me’ school of hiding. Despite this, he was remarkably good at staying entirely motionless and he already had a knack for fading into the background, even when he was standing out in the open with his eyes closed. She imagined it had everything to do with the fact that he grew up in a situation where hiding was almost an entirely social convention, rather than a real possibility.

That, or his mind was just wired differently. She still wasn’t sure exactly what Lowly was, what a Labyrinthian was, for that matter. On the outside, they were some kind of hybrid between an assortment of bipedal humanoids that Rosemallow had tossed into her creation; kobold and goblin seemed the most prevalent, but on the inside… well, that was where the real confusion started. Was Lowly really just his blood, the outer form just a shell or a host even? Could he move into another body, maybe even possess someone?

She didn’t know, and neither did he, as far as she could tell. Talking with him on that subject was an exercise in incomprehension so thorough she couldn’t tell if it was mutual, even with Lowly’s new and higher level of self-awareness. It seemed as if his consciousness might change dramatically for any number of contextual reasons, that he would consider himself as a different person altogether depending on what he was doing, or even what he was feeling. This was reflected in his name when she used Scan on him, which ranged from being a row of question marks to monikers such as Only Eater and Wicked Essence.

If he is his blood, whatever that means, it only makes sense he would have a fluid sense of self. I hope I’m doing the right thing, bringing him here.

She shrugged. It was done now. Putting him back in her Trial Space would be an absolute last resort, if the Archon even allowed her to do it, and bringing him outdoors… she had a feeling that would be a long and careful project. It was encouraging to see him handling the open space of the large chamber as well as he was, but she suspected open sky and sun would be a far greater challenge.

She was about to try having Lowly find her again, a concept that was still proving elusive to him, when she noticed two things.

First, Lowly jumped in the air, as if he had been stung. Second, a door was sitting complacently in a wall where there had never been the faintest hint of an opening of any kind.

Well, that’s different, she thought. She was quite certain the two events must be related, though Lowly had not been facing the new door and could not have seen it.

“What is it?” she called out to him.

He shook his head, as if to clear it. “Head voice.”

She put aside any concern and got to the point. “What did it say?”

“Come.”

With the door that had appeared, the meaning seemed clear enough. It concerned her a bit that she hadn’t been invited though. She pointed the door out to Lowly.

“Wall different,” he observed.

She realized, then, that he had probably never seen a door as such.

He has so much to learn, she thought, feeling a little overwhelmed by the responsibility she had taken on when she plucked him from the Labyrinth. I wonder if this is how Anda felt with me? At least Lowly and I aren’t running for our lives. Yet.

The door beckoned, stirring her curiosity. Her only concern was that it might be some type of ejection mechanism activated by Lowly’s presence, since he wasn’t a student. It wouldn’t be great if he went through and found himself in the middle of Academy Town or something. She wished Skria or Jess was along; she had never asked them about the details of their arrival at the Academy, or whether they had received some kind of invitation prior to setting out.

Upon closer inspection, the door didn’t offer much insight. It was the same type of iron-bound oak found throughout the building, though it was on the small side. The doors and such in the Academy trended large, to accommodate the wide range of shapes and sizes of the Insider students. Even Rosemallow didn’t need to duck, most of the time. This door seemed more suited to her and Lowly, which wasn’t terribly surprising if it had been created for them. Or him, which seemed likely to be the case.

She reached down to the handle, a bit cautiously, in case the door was inclined to shock her or something for not being the intended opener. The wrought iron was slightly warm to her touch.

“If I turn this handle,” she called over her shoulder, “then I can open this part of the wall. But we don’t know what’s behind it. What would you like to do?”

Somewhat to her surprise, Lowly approached to study the situation. “Is it a forbidden place?” he asked.

She shrugged in response. “It seems like you’ve been invited. Not sure about me though.”

“I never saw the forbidden places,” he said.

Lilijoy felt sure she was missing some context, but decided to ask him later. “Do you want to open it, or would you like me to?”

He stepped beside her, and she could hear his heart beating fast. She couldn’t help but think of the moment she had realized that the true labyrinth for Lowly was the network of veins and arteries that carried him throughout his body.

“The head voice said to come, again,” he said.

“Let’s do it together then,” she said. “You can put your hands next to mine.”

There was just enough room for his hands to fit on the iron handle, and then, together, they pushed it down.

***

Present day:

Magpie was happy to be in the air again. Something deep within her resonated with floating, whether in water or air, with the release from gravity’s bonds, however illusory. Whether it was because of her highly regimented childhood or something that had always been with her, she didn’t know. Her memories from before training as one of Uncle’s little experiments were fuzzy, and most of what she could remember she didn’t want to.

She wondered at times, just how much of a coincidence it was that she had ended up with those same two elemental Sources on the Inside. Water and Air. Guess that makes me, what? A cloud? Sounds about right. Not like that ugly stuff out there though. One of those nice puffy ones on the Inside.

The windows of the airship cabin offered nothing to see beyond stubborn light trickling through smoggy clouds. Conversations had died down and silence hung in the air, resistant to new sound. She was piloting the airship, a task that consumed little attention in the current conditions, as the craft was pretty good at maintaining a set course on its own. Her main job was to keep an eye on the large-scale weather patterns and change course or adjust altitude as necessary to avoid anything truly nasty. A variety of ancient satellites, sustained by Guardian somehow, she presumed, made the task possible, along with an analytical program she had gotten from the Josho Clan. She hoped it would be enough, because if she was truly needed as a pilot, they were in real trouble.

She looked over the others, who were either cultivating or Inside, it was impossible to tell which, of course. She felt a little jealous of either activity. The concept of having a system that she could improve directly through her own efforts was very appealing. She hadn’t dared to ask Lilijoy about it, didn’t want to turn a ‘maybe someday’ into a ‘no never’. While their relations had been cordial, Magpie knew that it would be a long time before she was trusted. She worried it might be even longer before she was trustworthy.

Not that she had any plans for betrayal; it was more that she had come to appreciate how one’s setting could change one’s self. She quite liked the Magpie she had discovered on Kuroudonain, but she wondered if her new sense of stability might change just as easily.

She was also a little impatient to get back to the Inside. There had been a time, not so long ago, when she had vowed never to return to the Academy, thinking the place was little more than a social club for clannies. It didn’t help that the connection she had to the place, her trainer, had been severed when she left the Flock. But the siren call of the magic classes had drawn her back. Where else would she find teachers eager to teach and, in a revelation somewhat startling to her, peers to work alongside?

It was hard for her to explain, even to herself, but it felt like the mental and emotional discipline of studying magic was also helping her… become. What, she still wasn’t sure. What she did know for sure is that there was some meaning to it beyond conjuring fancy effects in a fantasy world, that by improving her ability to hold an image of a perfect sphere in her head, to pull the energy from her Water Source and fill the shape with water from her environment, to move it according to her will, she was improving herself.

She was a bit embarrassed, but the feeling was so strong, she had tried to duplicate the feat on the Outside. Of course it didn’t work, but as she stood by the edge of the sad little creek waving her arms and chanting the mnemonics that helped to order her thoughts, she felt the same sensation in her heart. Nothing changed on the outside, but on the inside… she couldn’t help but feel there was a metaphor there, somewhere. She still couldn’t help but indulge in the fantasy that, if she just tried hard enough, just focused a little better…

Sitting in the airship, Magpie chuckled at her own immaturity. I didn’t get a real childhood, after all, just give me this one, okay? she asked herself. She wondered how many others had tried the same thing, wondered, just a little, if anyone had ever succeeded.

Putting her childish thoughts to bed for the moment, she checked the weather again. As far as she or her program could tell, they would be safe for hundreds of miles. After that, things got tricky. The weather around the equator was fairly stable, and a globe with less heat meant that big storms were rare, especially this time of year. The farther north they went, the less predictable things would be. She was afraid that even the Josho Clan’s weather program wouldn’t help much after they passed the Tropic of Cancer. It was designed for the stable air above the equatorial Pacific Ocean, not the world of ice and snow that began in Northern Mexico. She didn’t know what the weather would be like up there, and neither did anyone else she was aware of.

I bet at some point, I’m going to really wish I had Dean Reunification along.

The old woman was a bit crazy, that was for sure, but Magpie had been surprised, shocked even, to find that under that relentless drive and mild fanaticism was someone deeply invested in her student’s growth. The trick was to treat her like a river; as long as you went with the current, the water would be kind to you. Magpie had been quite reluctant when Attaboy suggested asking the Dean to be her new advisor, but now she wouldn’t have it any other way. Dean Reunification was all magic, all the time, and that suited Magpie perfectly.

She felt her stomach drop as the airship caught a downdraft, or a pocket of low pressure, or something. Whatever it was, it was too small to show up on her scans. She enjoyed the more intimate connection to the wind that the smaller craft offered, though it was no substitute for the sensations she had felt the first time her advisor took her to the sky.

“This magic is far beyond you,” the Dean had said as they soared far above the Academy, cloud dappled fields and forest stretching to the horizon below. “But you must learn the feeling of connection with the wind. Learn that feeling and hold it deep within your soul, for it will be your beacon as you travel through the wilds. With it, you may not know where you are, but you will always know where you are going.”

The woman was full of advice like that, vague and mystical, yet somehow immediately applicable, to her anyway. Even now, Magpie could feel it, the winds within her resonating to her surroundings. She had yet to connect to the Pressure Clade, let alone been able to summon the slightest breeze, but she could feel it, feel just how close she was.

It felt like freedom.

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