Newly Laid Plans

Mason Tolovius, master magician, lowered his notebook and looked over each of the three senior apprentices seated at the circular table in front of him. Each of the three had a different reaction—Alex looked away as if trying to avoid attention, while Samuel and Jane met his gaze with more confidence. Yet the willingness to make eye contact said nothing about how competent a learner really was, and the only way to know that was by debate, discussion, and assessment.

"I've read your thesis drafts. All good starts, but more work is needed. As you all should be aware if you've done your preparation for today, your theses are all on closely related topics, which is why we are having this group discussion." Mason pointed towards one of the apprentices. "Samuel! In your thesis, you proposed that elementalization is an inherent property of magic itself, not a limitation in a magician's abilities?"

The apprentice in question nodded. "Yes, sir! My thesis presents an elementalization framework based on the studies done by Lord Hammerton involving his experimentation with demonic summoning, as first inspired by older writings by Jularis the Magnificent."

"Very good. Just as you wrote in the summary." Mason gestured to another apprentice. "Jane, provide a possible counterargument."

Jane hurriedly flipped through her own notes. "I... It's... Certain experiments following up from the Hammerton Trials have called his results into question. My thesis follows the work of Kimor Azaris in proposing potential explanations involving biological limitations of magicians."

Samuel responded quickly. "Kimor Azaris? Those experiments do show a strong inherent limitation in a magician's versatility, but that doesn't necessarily address the root idea about elementalism. Fundamentally, the concept could be interpreted..."

As the students started to discuss their theses, Mason played his part as teacher. He started bouncing their ideas around, making them alternate between questioning each other's proposals and defending their own against criticism. However once the students had gotten their debate properly started, they kept going without Mason needing to prompt them much.

Mason smiled faintly to himself. This particular topic was easily one of the most abstract and difficult amongst all the various thesis topics which senior apprentices were allowed to select from, yet these three had chosen to challenge themselves. Magic was rare enough amongst the general population that anyone who showed talent would be trained, yet those who truly aimed for mastery would find the process competitive and trying. Many years back, Mason himself had been a senior apprentice just like these three seated at the table in front of him. And now he was back at the Royal Academy of Magic, not as a student but as a master magician and mentor. A teaching role had never appealed to him while he was younger, but now it felt like something he exceled at.

Finally there was one particular idea which made Mason cut into the apprentices' discussion. "Hold on a moment. What was that you said?"

Jane paused, unsure if it was good or bad that one of her comments had attracted Mason's scrutiny. "Professor? I was just saying that the older writings by Jularis the Magnificent might not be considered reliable. The author isn't exactly accredited with the guild, is she?"

"The Magician's Guild does not officially recognize the achievements of a vast pool of learned minds, purely because they are dwarfs, elves, mer, centaurian, or indeed, anything other than human. And yet we find reference to the advancements of the other sapient species in so much of what we must study." Mason kept his face neutral as he spoke. Officially he was only supposed to be teaching the guild's beliefs, but here his personal ideals threatened to intrude. "Jularis the Magnificent was a brilliant thinker, and her being a dragon should not distract us from considering her ideas purely on their own merit."

Samuel nodded happily. "Thank you, professor! I was just thinking exactly that as I was writing my thesis."

"But don't give too much credit to her writings as inspiration for your thesis. The Board of Arcane Academics will like your work much more if you only mention Lord Hammerton," Mason added. Though his face remained calm, inwardly he felt a tinge of frustration at the general state of the world.

It was the most basic of concepts—people liked to visualize the world as being divided into groups, and they much preferred people who they saw as belonging to the same group as themselves. It wasn't even a purely human weakness. Mason had visited dwarfs in their desert fortresses, centaurs in their jungle cities, and dragons in their mountainous eyries, and always this same belief prevailed—that one's own species was fundamentally superior to all others—which made cooperation and communal advancement that much slower for all.

As the students continued their lively debate, there was suddenly a knock on the room door. Mason and the three senior apprentices were currently in a discussion room in the Royal Academy's library, and the walls were enchanted to prevent sound from escaping. Mason raised an eyebrow as another professor peeked in through the window which opened to the corridor. "Let me see what he wants. You three carry on."

Mason stood up from the table, allowing the students to keep discussing their ideas. He left the discussion room and stepped out into the corridor. "Mason! So sorry to interrupt. I see you were helping some apprentices with their theses," said the other professor, looking apologetic.

Mason smiled warmly. "Timothy, always a pleasure to speak with you. What do you need? Do you have some more demonic contracts for me to vet?"

"Yes please, if you're not too busy. Just some routine contracts, and sorcery is your specialty." Timothy smiled widely and held up a sheaf of papers. "I already owe you a favour, so we might as well make it double. The day you ever decide that you need me to make a golem for you, you'll get the best golem this academy has ever seen."

Mason chuckled and took the offered paperwork. "I'd be glad to help you. Making golems is such tough physical work, whereas checking demonic contracts is just reading. I do enjoy the work."

"To each their own. My expertise is in building, not reading," Timothy noted. "How's your wife, by the way? I didn't see either of you the other day, when all the teaching staff went out for dinner together."

Mason made a non-committal shrug of his shoulders. He strolled over to the other side of the corridor, where large glass windows let him look out over the academy's training field. There wasn't much to see outside, as it was past sundown and snowing heavily. "Oh, Izagor left the capital last week. She's off visiting relatives and won't be back for a few weeks."

"I see. Somewhere nearby?" Timothy asked.

"No, not so close. In the..." Mason paused as he thought about how to explain it. "Her family lives in the distant reaches. I doubt you'll have heard of the name of the place. It's very far south-east, quite remote, and outside of the empire, actually. I suppose it's fairly obvious based on her complexion and mannerisms that Izagor wasn't born a Marlander citizen like us."

Timothy frowned slightly. "Is it safe for her to be travelling alone? I know the train lines are usually well protected, but recently there's been all this news about bandits or those... those Akostan rebel groups causing unrest."

Mason knew that he should have kept a straight face, but couldn't help but chuckle. "Hah. I would pity any bandits who tried to rob my wife."

"Ah, yes. She's a magician too, of course."

"Indeed. Izagor isn't technically guild-accredited as a mage, but she's certainly competent in her own way. I did offer to go with her to visit her family, but my students need my help too, and Izagor was certain of her ability to take care of herself," Mason said.

Timothy nodded understandingly. "There's always a balance to be made. Work is important, but so are friends and family." He clapped Mason's shoulder in a friendly manner. At just past three decades of age, Mason was one of the younger professors at the Royal Academy of Magic, whereas Timothy was much older and almost double his age, but the two had quickly become good friends. "Well, here's hoping she has an uneventful journey! When she gets back, you two really must come over for dinner. Perhaps mid-next week?"

"I'd be glad to accept your hospitality."

"Fantastic. Now one last thing—I saw your recommendations for journeyman postings, but I've heard from the arch wizard that guild quotas are being changed..."

As the conversation moved on to another topic, Mason's mind still lingered on thoughts of his wife. She had only been gone for a few days, yet already he missed talking and spending time with her. Throughout any normal day at the academy, Mason would have been subconsciously gathering a list of interesting topics or new developments to tell Izagor when he got home and saw her again, just as she would be eager to tell him about what had happened with her day. Now she was gone, and loneliness felt worse than even in the times years ago before they'd met. This wasn't something Mason had been worried about when they'd been discussing Izagor's plans to visit her relatives, but now he was coming to really feel her absence. Izagor's presence had completed him in a way which he hadn't fully comprehended.

Suddenly a loud, repeated ringing of a bell snapped Mason's attention back to the present. "Bong, bong, bong!" At first Mason thought it was just the academy's bell tower sounding off another hour passed, but then multiple bells started to sound in unison, forming an overlapping cacophony. "Bong! Ding! Cling! Dong-ding!"

The bells were designed to be heard throughout the academy, and they were clearly audible despite the bell tower being above an entirely different building. Even the heavy snowfall did not supress that loud sound, nor did the quieting enchantments in the library's walls.

Mason's fellow professor, Timothy, paused mid-sentence. "What? That's the general alarm! Don't tell me some student let a demon out of a summoning circle again," he muttered.

"I've reviewed the demonic contracts for all authorized research projects—there shouldn't be any active summoning right now, unless someone's been doing unauthorized work behind my back. Could the alarm be for a fire? I heard that Professor Daltez was testing a new batch of alchemical agents today, preparing for the upcoming term," Mason suggested.

"No, no. I spoke to Daltez's assistant just after lunch, and she said that their experiments were finished in the morning. Even if they had other tests, I don't think they would continue working up till now. It's well past sundown already," Timothy replied.

The Royal Academy of Magic was a place of great power where magicians of all levels of experience came to study and research, and that came with the opportunity for many things to go wrong. Over the past year Mason had heard the general alarm sounded for a variety of reasons including miscast fireballs setting the training field on fire, broken summoning circles with rogue demons (thrice, in separate events), and even a very agitated sphinx getting loose from its cage in the zoology department.

However, the timing of the alarm was unusual. Normally any sort of incident would occur during the daylight hours, when the academy was bustling with activity. Instead, it was now past sundown and most classes and research work ought to have stopped. Students and staff alike would mostly have returned to their accommodation, be that in the academy's hostel or residences in the nearby city.

The three senior apprentices stepped out of the discussion room, their debate now ended by the alarm. "Sir? What's going on?" asked Alex.

Mason glanced over the apprentices—they were all merely a decade younger than him and barely past the threshold for adulthood, yet now they looked to him as if he had all the answers. "I don't know. Some sort of incident, I imagine."

"Don't you worry. Probably just a false alarm," Timothy said. Turning around sharply, he briskly walked down the corridor. "Come, Mason! To the operations room. You three apprentices, make yourselves scarce."

"We'll have to continue our discussion on your theses some other day." Mason hurriedly re-entered the discussion room and swept all his notes into his satchel bag, which he grabbed along with his winter coat. Just before following after Timothy, he also paused to address the apprentices. "Pack up your notes quickly and head back to the hostel. If you see anything that looks like a fire, an escaped monster, or an open portal to the otherworldly plane, then stay well away and alert a staff member!"

This had a mixed response—Alex and Jane nodded, but Samuel was holding his staff and had an excited glint in his eyes. "But sir, what if you need our help? If there's a demon loose, we could help you fight it!"

"Absolutely not. Get back to the hostel and don't go looking for trouble." Mason ran hurriedly after Timothy, catching up to his fellow master magician after a brief sprint.

"You shouldn't have mentioned demons or monsters to the students. That just makes them want to get involved in the excitement—typical adolescent heroics," Timothy told him as they continued walking. "But it is probably a false alarm. Nothing for us or them to get all excited about."

"Let's hope so," Mason agreed. He started pulling on his coat as they walked. Coats, cloaks, and the more classic robes were the standard attire of most magicians, usually emblazoned with the symbol of the Magician's guild on the shoulder, chest, or back. But at this time of year, anyone, magician or not, would be wearing a coat if they planned to go outside in the cold.

The library was mostly deserted as they moved through the building. Beyond it just being past sundown, it was the middle of winter and between term sessions. Most of the young apprentices weren't even in the academy at the moment, except for the senior apprentices working on their final projects and theses.

When Mason and Timothy exited the library's front doors, they were greeted by the sight of a stream of bright magic shooting up from the academy's bell tower. Like a continual lightning bolt which rose from the ground, the magic climbed upwards and then spread out in all directions, smearing into a shimmering, translucent dome which encompassed the dozen buildings making up the Royal Academy of Magic.

"They've raised the shields!" Mason noted. He could see his own breath clouding as he exhaled in the winter air, and he pulled his coat tighter around himself. A heavy layer of snow covered everything nearby, dampening all sound except for that cacophonous ring of the alarm bells. Finally the alarm bells finally fell silent, leaving behind a deafening silence.

"I think this is just the standard procedure now, to raise the shields whenever the alarms sound. We had some policy changes ever since that sphinx broke out and went to terrorize the city. The local governor was quite upset." Timothy's voice was controlled, though he no longer looked as calm. The older professor had his hand in the pocket of his coat, holding onto his wand even if he hadn't drawn it out yet. "It could still be a false alarm," he added.

"Could be," Mason agreed.

Stepping down the library's front stairs, the ground was covered with a thick layer of snow turning everything white, but the heavy snowfall had been abruptly halted. The academy's shields were a simple but effective security measure—once the spells had been triggered they would prevent anything except light from passing in or out, thus containing any monster, demonic entity, or other possible threat from escaping out of the academy and into the wild, or worse, towards the nearby city.

But in isolating the academy, the shields had also blocked off the weather, cutting off the wind and leaving the chilly night air feeling totally still. The Royal Academy of Magic was eerily quiet as the two professors walked from building to building, crossing the short distance to the bell tower. Mason could hear the snow crunching beneath their boots as they walked down the road.

Located near the centre of the Royal Academy of Magic, the bell tower rose up from a large rectangular building—the administrative hall. Just like all the other buildings making up the academy, enchanted lanterns were used to illuminate both the inside and outside of the building. If not for these lanterns, it would have been difficult to see anything at all, for there was no starlight or moonlight tonight. Mason could see snow building up outside, forming layers against the magical shields which would occasionally slide off but would never pass through.

Climbing down a flight of stairs to the administrative hall's basement, they reached the academy's operations room. The room was busy but not packed, and Mason saw about a dozen other staff members. Most of them were cleaners or technicians, and the few who appeared to be actual magicians looked mostly to be just research assistants who had been monitoring overnight projects.

Marking the centre of the operations room was an immense bipyramidal crystal about twice as tall as a person. This glowing, cyan-coloured crystal floated in the air, suspended by metal chains which shined brightly even in the indoor lighting. Crystals like this were located in every academy building, serving as anchor points for the tracking spells which monitored magic throughout the campus.

Standing by the side of this crystal was a golem. Tall, blocky, and made entirely of whitish stone, the golem was covered in glowing etched lines which might have looked like aesthetic decoration to an uneducated observer, but which any magician could instantly tell were magical runes. The power trapped in these runes was what kept the golem animated, and the extreme complexity in the runes was what imbued this golem with the moderate level of intelligence needed to work in the operations room.

As head of the academy's Department of Animated Construction, Timothy was the master magician who had built many similar golems which roamed the academy as security or brute force labour. He immediately began addressing the golem. "Golem, what's going on? Report."

The golem had no mouth, but it spoke with a voice that was almost identical to its creator. At other times Mason would find it amusing that it sounded like Timothy was talking to himself, but the situation now was more serious. "General alarm. Security incident detected. Shield protocol enacted."

"Well I can see that! Golem, elaborate on the root cause of this security incident," Timothy continued.

The golem replied in its flat, impassive voice. "Sensor array reading out of bounds. Unidentified magical source—"

"Golem, shut up," snapped a thin woman walking over from the other side of the ops room. She was wearing a magician's coat just like Mason and Timothy, and she gestured to the two professors. "Fess up! Is one of you two responsible for this?"

Mason bowed his head politely. "Arch Wizard Lanus, good evening. What exactly is going on? We were just in the library with some apprentices when the alarm bells went off."

Arch Wizard Lanus was the head of the whole academy, and her competence with magic was only rivalled by her competence with management. Sometimes Mason wondered if Lanus' frizzled hair was the result of her work with lightning magic, or if she just liked it that way. Her current expression was stonier than the golem's. "Viga lamntrin," muttered the arch wizard. With the wave of her hand, a miniature illusionary version of the whole academy appeared out of tiny air, fitting neatly on her palm.