“I’ll walk you both off. I believe that you both stay at the Commission Dormitory.” Mr. Tona said, placing his hands on the two students’ shoulders, as they stepped out into the corridors of the Commission.

  The door shut behind them with a bang, presumably the work of the poorly managed anger of Sage Yeltz. And with a thin geometric line, all three were teleported back down to the lobby of the Tower.

  “...Will she be okay?” Seraphine asked glumly, looking up at Mr. Tona as he whisked out a cigarette into his hands.

  “Eh, hard to say. But she’s clever enough to deal with things on her own as much as possible. Our job is just to support her enough to push through.” Mr. Tona replied, narrowing his eyes at the approaching commissioner.

  “Hey, you can’t smoke here!” The man yelled out, walking briskly towards them.

  Mr. Tona flicked his fingers at this comment, teleporting a single sheet of paper right in front of the commissioner’s face. The paper wrapped around his face like a mask, dropping the man to his knees in shock.

  Mr. Tona whipped around and pushed along the two of them briskly towards the exit, huffing and puffing smoke all the way like a cancerous chimney.

  “...What was that?” Aurelius asked curiously, glancing back at the man, who had now recovered with a face as red as a tomato.

  “Oh, just a signed slip for guard duty downstairs. You know, in the dungeons.” Mr. Tona said casually with a mischievous smile.

  And as Mr. Tona said this, Aurelius saw the man reading the slip. The man’s face turned from anger, confusion, to denial quite quickly as he read through it, ending his emotional upheaval by looking in terror at Mr. Tona.

  “...Why do you have that? I thought that kind of duty was the punishment for misbehaving mages. Do you even have clearance to issue that out?” Seraphine asked, clearly unamused.

  “First of all, he was bothering me, who happens to be his superior. And I am most certainly qualified to issue those punishments. I’m a sage you know!” Mr. Tona replied, with indignation in his voice.

  “...I can’t believe that Sage Yeltz trusts you enough to run the DME training. Actually, I can’t believe that she trusted you with what happened just now.” Seraphine said in annoyance.

  “As prickly as she may be with me , I am one of the few people that kid trusts in life.” Mr Tona scoffed.

  “You know she talked about you a few times in the past, and I have to say that I don’t have a favourable impression of you, Mr. Wally Tona.” Seraphine shot back, as they crossed the road over to the other side.

  Aurelius didn’t quite… recognise the path that Mr. Tona was taking. Aurelius could swear that they were supposed to be walking the other way…

  “Eh, I admit that Yeltz doesn’t have a lot of confidants. Or friends. Or a life in general. Just think of me as a default option. She’s probably doing this to keep an eye on me so I’ll avoid trouble or something.” Mr. Tona shrugged.

  “...Do you cause a lot of trouble?” Aurelius asked as they started going… in the right-ish direction.

  “A fair amount.” Mr. Tona replied, snapping away another one of his cigarette butts.

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  “One of the shenanigans I’m most proud of is when I sent one of those DME idiots to break into the division secretary’s house.” He said proudly.

  “But why?” Aurelius asked, furrowing his brows in puzzlement.

  “Haha, I don’t quite like the fellow, Warden White. He only sees the intestinal walls of the higher ups from how far in his head is into their colon.” Mr. Tona explained. “And I decided that one of my favourite DME students could do with some extra brain exercise as a match made in heaven.”

  “...So they didn’t know they were breaking into his house?” Seraphine asked in disbelief.

  “Correcto. White permanently demoted him into doing guard duty at the vault.” Mr. Tona said, smiling mischievously. And Seraphine gave the old man a sharp glance at the explanation, clearly not very amused.

  “That does sound like an issue involving a severe lack of brain matter.” Aurelius commented, remembering the guards that he ran across down in the Commission vaults, and wondering which one was the man that Mr. Tona was referring to.

  “Watch your step.” Mr. Tona said to Aurelius, allowing him to dodge a piece of gum on the ground that he had missed as he stepped into another… wrong corner.

  With a snap, he sent it away, and continued his story, “I gave him the order to bring back the most valuable thing from Warden White’s room.”

  “The poor sap had no idea what to bring me, and in the end teleported to me White’s entire closet! I got into a bit of trouble from Yeltz for that, and she gave me a bunch of forms to directly punish idiots like that in a more ‘professional’ manner.” Mr. Tona said, laughing heartily at his reminiscing.

  “Are you not even concerned about Ms. Yeltz? How can you feel so comfortable joking around in a situation like this?” Seraphine snapped, glaring intently at Mr. Tona.

  Mr. Tona paused, letting out a puff of obscuring smoke before looking around to observe the passer-bys in the busy intersection of the Commission Tower.

  “When you live long enough, you’ll eventually realise that there are things that one has to care about, and things that one can live without.” Mr. Tona started, making Seraphine balloon up in wrath.

  “I’m not religious. But I do subscribe to the idea that things work out in the end. Trust that things will be fine at the end of the day is the only way that I’ve known how to live for a long, long time.”

  “I had faith that Yeltz had the iron in her blood to ascend as an archsage eventually, and overcome her stupid destiny. And now that she’s found an alternative that’s actually… reasonable now, I’m quite certain that things will work out for her.” He finished, shrugging his arms casually.

  …That kind of mentality is what got ME KILLED. Aurelius almost said aloud, remembering how this idiotic man sold him off to the Fae Queen just to become possessed by Her himself.

  “What a stupid idea.” Seraphine grumbled, glaring at Mr. Tona.

  “Eh. You’ll live and see.” Mr. Tona declared, taking a deep drag of his cigarette.

  And within the next 3 more steps and an equivalent amount of awkward silence, they stopped in front of a completely foreign building with a sign that said… Ember Crockery.

  “We’re here. I recommend this place to grab your dinner.” Mr. Tona announced, turning his heels to leave the scene.

  “...Wait. Where even are we?” Aurelius asked at Mr. Tona who had already started to walk in the other direction.

  And as Mr. Tona snapped his fingers with a wink, he left them with the last piece of nonsense.

  “I have no idea.”

  ???

  “I'm starting to hate that old man.” Seraphine grumbled, breaking the awkward silence with an aggressive plunge of her spoon into the pile of… What was supposed to be fried rice.

  They were seated in the rather empty restaurant named Ember Crockery, and clearly, Seraphine was not enjoying her meal.

  “I think you just picked the wrong choice of food.” Aurelius said casually, savouring a bite of his taco.

  “Well, how was I supposed to know that of the 5 things they offer on the menu, the non-taco option would be the worst thing on the MENU!” She grumbled again, making Aurelius shift in his seat uncomfortably.

  “Where's Sylven?” Aurelius asked curiously, eager to change the topic of conversation to something more… neutral.

  “Oh, she doesn't really like arguments, so she went into hibernation for a while.” Seraphine explained, pulling the rat out of her coat pocket.

  “I thought she was a fully descended familiar?” Aurelius asked curiously.

  “Even fully descended familiars like to take breaks sometimes.” Seraphine explained with a sigh.

  And the table fell into awkward silence once more, a rarity given the extroverted nature of Seraphine.

  It was clear that she was… quite disheartened by the conversation with Sage Yeltz.

  But what even was her relationship to the sage? Aurelius wondered…

  However, given the probably impolite nature of the question, Aurelius decided that asking that directly was not something he should… do.

  So coughing lightly to break up the silence, Aurelius ventured on an adventurous question. One that had been bugging him since just now.

  “So what does Sage Yeltz have?”