Several days later, while he was getting ready for bed, the Voice spoke to Serenity.

[The anomalous mark that will send you to Zon has been placed on your staff]

The Voice was checking at the end of every day, to see if they’d succeeded or not and it seemed like they had. They’d both expected it to be on the person’s body somewhere, where it couldn’t be left behind accidentally, but putting it on their weapon was probably almost as good. Serenity chuckled.

No wonder you couldn’t find it on the bodies of the people who were teleported!

[The man who placed it there is Instructor Arkandaeon. Now that his identity is revealed, no future marks he places on students will be allowed to remain. Review of his interactions with you reveal that although you were in his classes, as with all Mage-Instructors from Zon, you had no unusual interactions with him. The only thing of note is that he was one of the three instructors who saw the incident with Thad, and he has taken an interest in the situation. He requested that the young man be accompanied by an instructor at all times to prevent a repeat of “the situation”]

More likely it’s to prevent Thad from going after me.

Serenity wasn’t worried about that, but someone like the person he was pretending to be probably should be.

[Do you wish to transport to Zon now or wait?]

Serenity had already said goodbye to Rissa; they’d expected that he’d get sent to Zon directly from the Tutorial. They hadn’t known which Tutorial, but he was running the ones he could with the disguises he had available in as quick succession as he could; they’d already said goodbye in case it worked. She would follow him once the others arrived.

He had severely limited off-planet travel to and from Earth, restricting it to start only once the Tutorial was complete and even then only to one of three off-planet locations with the permission of the relevant City Lord at the time of travel. Travel to Earth was set to require specific Planetary-level permission for anyone who wasn’t a native or resident of Earth. He planned to relax that in a few months to simply being ridiculously expensive, but he felt like Earth needed some breathing room.

They could get their feet wet by visiting the three major market cities he’d selected as possible destinations. Serenity knew it would get annoying quickly, but for the first few months he wanted it to be difficult so only people who were determined and had a chance to actually make something of it would try.

He’d also let his parents know what was coming. His mother had told him to have fun; she and his father were going to start traveling once her retirement was finalized. Something about digging up old family secrets; Serenity wasn’t sure if she meant that literally or if they were going to go build a family genealogy or something. When his mother wanted to not say something, she was completely capable of talking around it enough you thought she’d answered until later when you tried to figure out what she actually said.

Even his old friends from childhood knew he was leaving. He hadn’t had much time to spend with them since the Tutorial started, but that wasn’t really anything new; most were still in the DC area, so he generally saw them every two or three months when he went to visit.

Most of his friends from adulthood were work friends; with him no longer at work, the connections had mostly fallen away. He’d managed to spend time with a couple since the Tutorial started, but it wasn’t the same at all; they didn’t really have anything to talk about.

His online friends were another story. For them, he’d simply disappeared when the Tutorial took him. He’d dropped into their discord to say he was “still alive but absolutely crazy busy with life”. It was really all the explanation he was willing to give to people he didn’t actually know.

They’d wished him well; two had asked if there was anything they could help with, but he’d simply had to say no. He doubted any of them would believe who he was anyway.

In short, there was nothing holding him on Earth; he’d already done all of the preparation he needed to. As for the Tutorial…

Are you going to remove the instructor immediately or wait until the Tutorials are over?

[He will remain as an instructor until the end of the Tutorial run. While he will be held responsible for his actions, there is no need to penalize students by removing an instructor now that his potential to harm them has been neutralized]

Then I should stay until the end of this Tutorial so that I don’t spook him.

The rest of the Tutorial month passed quickly with the company of the two women. After the disaster with Thad, Mina hadn’t tried to hook up with another man. Fortunately, neither of them had been at all pushy with Serenity, either.

On the last day, Serenity told them to be careful of Thad and that he wouldn’t be there in the next Phase.

“Of course you will.” Mina spoke first, as usual. “Everyone goes on to the second phase.”

Mindy frowned and shook her head. She was the more thoughtful of the two. “Not everyone. Remember the Valiant twins?”

“Wasn’t that one shown to be a hoax?” Mina didn’t give way easily.

Neither did Mindy. “Fine, then what about -”

“Please, you don’t need to argue.” Serenity was pretty sure they enjoyed getting into silly little arguments; they’d draw them out long enough that it was usually clear they were both just arguing for argument’s sake. He was tired of it, even if they were usually fun to be around. Still, their argument had given him an idea of how to handle it; Mindy was actually correct. Variant second-phase Tutorials did actually exist and might well only take some of the first-phase participants. They were very rare and reserved for cases that surprised the Voice and showed him that someone had unexpected potential that could be brought out with a different scenario than the standard one.

“Mindy’s right, I’m just not being sent to the same place you are. I’m lucky and have forewarning, that’s all.” Serenity paused, then added the statement he hadn’t really wanted to. “We traded phone numbers. If you call mine, Janice should answer; she’s my personal assistant. I probably won’t be available when you get out of the Tutorial, but she’ll be able to take a message.”

At this point, he could have told them who he was, but he didn’t think they’d believe him and he simply didn’t want the pointless argument. They were nice, but at the end of the day they were simply acquaintances, not even as close as Echo or Doyle.

Mina waved her hands in the air as she spoke. “Oooo, man of mystery.”

He should have known she’d do something like that. Serenity grinned in response. “You remember that. It’s more true than you think it is.”

At least now they wouldn’t be able to say he hadn’t warned them. And he hadn’t actually lied to them; his name was Thomas. He just hadn’t told them his last name or his Name.

Of course, that was if they ever reached out. Serenity figured the odds were better than even that they wouldn’t bother. It would have been quite a while after he disappeared when they returned to Earth, after all, and they’d known him for less than a month.

When the world dissolved around Serenity at the end of the Tutorial phase, Serenity found himself in the familiar place-that-wasn’t-really-a-place the Voice used for transportation, especially when it was handling both distance and Time.

It was a good thing that the mixtures Honoria had made to stabilize his transformations were sturdy; the environment he was in right now was one that might have made it difficult to stay shifted, otherwise, and he wasn’t certain he wanted to immediately reveal his nonhuman side yet. It would probably shorten the amount of time it would last, but at least he should be able to shift again once it did; the Rift would be accessible. He probably didn’t need the last four.

Serenity relaxed and paid attention to his surroundings; he could already tell that the way the Voice did things was the way Serenity would if he made the spell, but there were definitely still things he could learn from it.

This would help several of his Concepts and might even give him slightly better Affinity. It was far too good an opportunity to miss.

He made the best progress in Topology, which made some sense since it was one of his lowest Concepts. At some point, Serenity thought he’d fold it into either Liminality or SpaceTime, but since he wasn’t certain which yet, he simply left it separate.

When the space around him shimmered and turned into the walls of a building, with bars instead of a front wall and a door, Serenity had some idea of the situation the other Earthlings had found themselves in. It was more and more obvious that it was a deliberate trap, probably for anyone who caught Instructor Arkandaeon’s attention.

Serenity took a moment to look over the entire cell he was in. There was something that quickly caught his eye; there were runes along the floor near the bars and another on the ceiling. The ones near the bars were clearly set up to provide an additional magical barrier, but they were badly damaged and probably didn’t work even when they were charged, which they weren’t.

The one on the ceiling was a different story. It was a rune of Sleep. Once Serenity recognized it, he realized that his Mind and Sleep Resistances were preventing it from affecting him.

On the other hand, it did seem to be having a rather nice effect on his Sleep Resistance. The Voice must not have mentioned it because he hadn’t realized it was happening; the Voice was usually disinclined to give information out for free, after all.

Serenity reached out to Curio and found that the kitten was fast asleep. Well, that was probably just as well; if nothing else, it made him easier to hide.

Serenity saw movement on the other side of the bars. There was no way an ordinary Tier One human would still be awake under the influence of that rune, so Serenity decided to pretend to fall asleep and see what happened. There were some things in his bag that he didn’t want to lose, but at the end of the day it was all replaceable.

Once he settled himself inside the cell, acting like someone going to sleep (and carefully moving to conceal Curio), he heard people moving around outside. With Eyeless Sight, he could even see once they were close enough; the bars were solid, but they didn’t block the rest of his vision any more than they blocked airflow.

It was a solid twenty minutes before anyone opened the cell door. “Seemed to take an awfully long time to go to sleep,” the person who entered muttered. He was alone, and Serenity was confident he could overpower the man if necessary, but he doubted it would be.

Serenity understood him, even though he wasn’t speaking Bridge. He was speaking … was that Aeon? Serenity wasn’t certain, but he thought it was. Why would the locals speak Aeon on Zon? Aeon wasn’t far from Earth, but Serenity didn’t remember anything about its history; perhaps this man was from Aeon, not Zon?

The man suddenly drew his foot back and kicked Serenity’s hip. It was hard enough to cause a bruise but that was all, even for a Tier Zero human. Serenity felt it, but not strongly; his Pain Resistance meant that he didn’t even jump much. Serenity made it seem like he’d been startled partly awake, then settled back down.

The man watched Serenity without moving for more than a minute after he settled back down. “Awfully close to awake, too, but definitely under the spell. Good. Gonna have to write you up as resistant; that’s good, he’s been wanting some more resistants. Not sure why, this batch has had a bunch.”