It wasn’t long before I started missing everything back home. You might say that it seems like there wasn’t much to miss, that from what I’ve been telling you it sounds like it was all shit. But, shit or not, what’s familiar sticks with you, makes you want it back as soon as it’s gone. Especially if you’d just been uprooted like I was.

And it wasn’t all shit, not really; I mean, I was comfortable at Morji’s place. At first, after I’d gotten fed up with the apartment in Methulum and moved out - or, more accurately, fed up with cramming ourselves into whatever small corner we could find, regardless of whether it was pure shit or polished shit - I felt a little awkward staying in Morji’s place for free. Yeah, I was doing him a big favor sparing him from working with someone close to Cypher or anything like that - well, until now - but it still felt like I wasn’t pulling my weight, like I didn’t deserve to be there. But I settled in eventually, yeah. I settled in, and I got more involved with the band, and I found my independence. I found a mode of living that I could work with.

And in return for the few years it took me to achieve that, I was facing a total reset. Material conditions wouldn’t be such an immediate concern anymore; I could tell by just looking around at the trappings of the living quarters I’d been assigned. That place was insane. Is insane. I’m still living there, you know. Just like Morji’s place, it became home after a while. Yeah, I could’ve taken over the King’s suite, but I didn’t. I just saw no reason to when I was comfortable in the philosophers’ quarters.

At the time, though, it was completely alien to me. After my initial steps into that room, the euphoria dissipated and it suddenly seemed cruel, monolithic, too still. The vaulted ceiling was way too high, the window was too tall, the unmarred sky outside too blue.

I walked up to that window and pressed my forehead to it, the light outside burning my eyes. I peered downward and felt like I would capsize and go tumbling. The city below was like a sickly gray bed of moss and the landscape past it like a different moss, rich green, within which the gray trickled away. It felt like late afternoon, and the sun was to my right, so I figured the window was pointed south. Hell, I was so high that I figured I could’ve made out the orc fortresses if I’d had better eyesight. Truth is, you can’t; the Kinjas are in the way, and even if you had elf eyes, stuff at that range becomes so blurred it’s hard to tell what’s what.

I jolted as I heard a knock at the door. I didn’t wanna answer, but I complied and opened it. It was a kid who looked a bit like Jol if he’d actually eaten a decent meal once in his life. Longish blonde hair brushed to one side, all wrapped up in a white toga with thin gold bracelets. “Well . . .” I stammered, “You look important.” What I meant is that he looked good.

He gave me a half-smile. “I wish. I’m just an assistant. I tend to the philosophers’ needs. Ylde, you?”

“Raena,” I replied. “I have an aunt named Ilda.”

“Not Ilda,” he corrected. “Ylde. It’s an older, gender-neutral form of the same name. I get a lot of comments on it. May I come in? Help you get acclimated?”

I looked behind me, checked the room as if I had something to hide. “Yeah, sure.” I stepped away from the door, let him examine the room.

“You’ve got one of the nice ones. Well, they’re all nice; what I mean is, the window’s at a good angle, won’t put the sun right in your eyes when you’re sitting in the living space.” He started up the staircase to the loft. “Did you check under the bed? You’ve got a decent library of books stashed there, as well as a locked tablet for your personal use.”

“I haven’t had time to check much of anything,” I admitted, following him up.

He knelt and turned a knob at the base of the bed, pulled out a drawer containing neatly arranged stacks of books as well as a separate compartment that held the tablet. “Now, I have to advise you: if you’re going to use this tablet, don’t bother trying to unlock it. That’s what the workshop is for, though you need one of the elder philosophers’ permission to go in there during off-hours.”

I slid the tablet out from its slot. It was light, its surface smooth and untouched. “And how do I go about getting that?”

“You just ask them. I assume you’ve been introduced already?”

“No, I’ve been in the hospital this whole time; I only just got here.”

His eyes widened. “Oh, I see. Right. You’re the new unit. In that case, you’ll likely be meeting them soon. There are three of them: Rathia, Krothe, and Virean. If you’re lucky, you’ll land an apprenticeship with one of them, though that’s not common.”

“How many philosophers are there total?”

He closed the drawer, stood up. “Twenty-three in total, until now. This new batch you’re a part of, there’s four of you.” He made his way over to an armoire, opening it to reveal several stacks of cloth of varying colors and shapes. “I assume you haven’t looked at this yet, given that you’re still wearing hospital scrubs.”

I shook my head. “They look kinda complicated to put on.”

“They can be at first,” he said, picking out a stack from the bottom shelf, “but you’ll get used to them. Here, this one’s pretty simple.” He unfolded the stack, revealed a beige poncho-like garment. “You just slip it over your head, secure it using these buttons on the sides, wrap the belt around it. The buckle goes on your left side, got it?”

“Yeah, simple enough.” I took the clothes from him and put them on the bed.

“I could always help you with some of the more intricate ones if you wanted. There’s no shame in it; I admit it takes some figuring out.”

I felt my face get hot. “No, that’s okay,” I assured him. I wasn’t about to have someone else dress me, as appealing as the thought may have been, him looking as damn good as he did.

“And just giving you a heads up,” he continued, “I’d wash up and get that on within the next hour. It’s customary for master philosophers to take potential apprentices someplace nice on the night of their arrival, and they’re bound to come knocking soon.”

I scowled. “They don’t even give us a single night? You know, to recuperate? Things’ve been rough since I got to the palace, in case they haven’t -”

He laughed. “Oh, they’ve noticed. It’s more for the masters than anything else; a couple of them who’ve got space for another apprentice or two in their schedules will round up newcomers and decide who gets who.”

“Doesn’t sound like they respect us very much.”

“They’ll respect you, in time.” He started back down the staircase, stopping briefly. “Are you good? Let me know if there’s anything else you need. You can summon me via the tablet - my contact’s already in there - as well as keep in contact with other philosophers once you meet them.”

“That’s what this place is missing,” I realized. “A phone.” They’d given me the means to talk to other people within a small segment of the building, but hadn’t provided any way of contacting people I knew prior. An oversight, perhaps?

“I know there are ways of reaching people on the outside,” he assured me. “I’d talk to whoever you end up apprenticed to about that. You could also just use a payphone when you’re down in Condouth.”

“Got it.” I made a mental note to do that when I got into the city. I’d get in contact with Morji and explain things to him, make sure he and the others knew I’d only attacked Kar ‘cause he’d attacked me, make sure they knew why I’d tried to give that money to Groth and all that.

Ylde left and I cleaned up, took a long shower and pulled off all the bandages. My injuries were hardly anything, just surface-level scrapes. I fiddled with that poncho-shirt thing a bit, tried to get it looking natural. When I had it on, I still wasn’t sure whether I was wearing it right but I settled for what it was. The sky outside was a faded gray when I heard the next knock at my door, and I opened it to find a small army. Well, not so much; there were four people, but it felt like a lot.

The two masters were Klia and Jorg, both of whom looked pretty young; they didn’t fit my mental image of what I thought a master philosopher must look like. Mid-thirties, maybe. There were two others with them, who didn’t look nearly as roughed up as I must’ve looked. We stopped to pick up a third on our way out. There wasn’t much talking among us as we descended the palace, though Klia and Jorg were friendly enough, asking us about the kind of place we’d like to go for dinner and such. None of the important talk yet, though I’m sure that was to come. I would’ve preferred it come sooner, given how lost I was feeling.

We passed back through the hall that I’d been through with Helt and made our way down through a maze of staircases - and one pretty lavish gondola that circled a sort of crystalline art piece that hung above the ground floor - and passed through what I thought was the exit, given that we emerged into a cityscape with roads, cars, and the like. I noticed that there was still a plane of glass above us, though, supported by a porous weave of scaffolding. Many of the buildings down here were towers that reached from floor to ceiling, the building’s top indistinguishable in design from its bottom.

I wasn’t the only one who noticed. “Is this still the palace?” one of the recruits, Thuli, asked from beside me.

“Yes, though it’s all civilian down here,” Klia confirmed, hailing a taxi that was already stopping to pick up a group of guys. It veered from its course and headed further down the road to our position, and the others obviously weren’t happy about it but they just shut their mouths and waited for another. Klia and Jorg got in the taxi, beckoning for us to follow. “Well, come on,” she insisted before giving the driver directions. I was in the backseat next to Jorg.

She continued her spiel. “Yeah, the palace spans miles on the ground. It’s structurally necessary. The whole building would topple otherwise, so you’ve got all this.” She gestured vaguely upward.

“But the palace gardens aren’t covered; where are they?” Thuli insisted; more quietly, she added, “I’m just curious, you know?”

“It’s okay to be curious,” Jorg said. “You know about the south corridor?”

“Yeah,” Iannik, another newbie, volunteered. “It’s where they send in ground shipments, right?”

“Yep,” Jorg confirmed. “From the outside in, you’ve got the courtyard, where the gardens Thuli mentioned are. Then you’ve got the south corridor inside the bubble -”

Thuli interrupted him. “Bubble?”

“Yes, all this,” Klia clarified, gesturing upward again. “Everything under the glass is called the ‘bubble,’ informally. The corridor leads up to the palace’s main entrance, though it’s only really used by mages in large numbers or for shipments coming in. Big shipments, that is; most stuff can be carried on the back of a fully grown dragon.”

“Damn,” Iannik muttered. “Are we gonna get to work with dragons at all?”

Jorg chuckled. “No, not much, anyway; we might make a modification or two, but mostly, dealing with dragons is up to the mages. They ride the younger ones. Wait, who was the - what was it - spellweaver? You know, the general’s thing?” He scratched his scraggly beard.

Klia glanced back at him. “Which general? Kassian? Dewal?”

“Yeah, Kassian.”

“Oh yeah, his pet project.”

“Spellweaver? I think that’s me,” I murmured.

Jorg looked at me like he’d just realized I was an elf or something, but not Klia. She seemed neutral about it. “Oh, wonderful. Then you’ve got a chance at working with dragons. Is that something that interests you or is Iannik the only one who shares my fascination?”

I tried something like a smile. “I actually used to work in a shipping facility with dragons. You like them?”

“Well, like isn’t a strong enough word. I think they’re fascinating, I really do. Who knows how or when they were made - that’s all lost to the past, given the King’s agenda, like it or not - but somehow they’re born with a spell chip. Well, it’s not even a chip, really. It’s just gray matter, but its structure is incredibly similar to the structure of the chips they implant in mages.”

“A process that you’ll have to go through, or so I hear,” Jorg added. “That’s got to be rough. Are you okay? When’s the procedure?”

“Tomorrow, I think,” I guessed, based on the fact that Avia’d told me to be there at five.

He scoffed. “Tomorrow? No, I doubt it. They’re probably calling you in to map your chip.”

“To what?”

“They’re gonna see how many spell slots they can put on that thing, figure out where they should put it so that it yields the most.” He almost visibly shuddered.

I was confused. “I thought they already did that today. They did all these tests -”

“Oh, that’s just the start of it,” Jorg continued. “It’s gonna get weirder for you.”

“Jorg, you’re scaring her,” Klia scolded him.

“Wait,” Iannik interrupted. “So is she a philosopher, or . . .”

Klia’s answer was, “Of course.”

Jorg’s was, “Not quite.”

“The way Kassian explained it to me,” I started, “is that I’m both. Philosopher and mage, that is.”

Klia grinned. “The way I see it, you’re a philosopher who’s doing field work. Honestly, if I didn’t have to go through the surgery, I’d love the opportunity to -”

“The opportunity to what?” interjected Junae, the other recruit, who had, up until now, been quiet. She was sitting on the other side of Jorg. “The opportunity to torch the innocent on behalf of whatever fucker’s sending money the King’s way?” The whole taxi was quiet. “The opportunity to kill people? Scare them?”

Iannik laughed. “Let’s play ‘spot the edgelord,’ huh?” His grin disappeared and he slunk a little into his seat when everyone stayed silent.

“Junae, right?” Klia started, her voice soft and even. “I understand your concerns. I do. And I hope that, as time goes on, I can help assuage them. Okay?” No response from Junae. “I know you’re angry, and I think it’s pretty brave of you to voice these things. They need to be said. Keep that fire, okay?” Junae fidgeted around in her seat as the car slid to a halt in front of a ritzy club, and both Klia and Jorg got out without a word to the driver.

“What, you don’t even pay?” Thuli inquired.

“No, they send us an invoice; King takes care of all expenses,” Jorg clarified. “Come on, let’s go eat.” I followed the two master philosophers, risking a glance back at the gaunt frame of Junae - still wearing street clothes - who tailed us a few paces behind.