Tulian Republic

  Unnamed Mage's University

  Thirty-One Days Until Spring

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  Garen

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  The first night in his new quarters had been a productive one, Garen decided. His wards had been easily accepted by the former headmaster's domicile, and the old occupant's protective measures had been easy enough to sweep aside, considering the decade of inattention. After arranging the room to his liking, he had got to work.

  First among his priorities was an evaluation of the energies within the city. A proper appraisal would only be possible on foot, but traipsing across the whole of Tulian was obviously inactionable at present. Instead he cast his senses out from within his quarters, trailing delicate silken wires across the city. Several encountered magical reserves considerable enough to prickle at his consciousness, but only in the pces he had expected: the new Artificer's Guild, and the Peasant's Theatre in which the Champion resided. The only oddity was the bay, something within which, upon his probing, had brusquely severed the line with the finality of a leviathan. The severance feedback had set his right eye twitching uncontrolbly for minutes. He did not know what it was, but Sara had preemptively cautioned him to leave well enough alone the subaquatic portions of Tulian, and so he was not overly armed. Likely something resided there that she would appraise him of in time. If she took too long, he would take up a more delicate investigation, but not for weeks yet.

  Morning had long since broken when he emerged from his preliminary casing of the city. He cracked open his eyes and other senses to find, surprisingly, two guards still posted beyond his door. He had ordered them all away once his first stage of wards had been empced. It was rare that he found individuals loyal enough to their masters that they would knowingly disobey an archmage, and though their presence irked him, he knew it spoke well of Sara's governance.

  Great power and authority, unfortunately, had not yet robbed him of his pettiness, and so he threw open the doors suddenly, striding out in his bathrobe. The guards, loyal though they may be, leapt back while readying their weapons.

  "Has anyone been to see me while I slept?"

  "Ah! Oh. No, sir, no one has arrived, not yet." The man that answered him hastily returned his halberd to its resting position. "We were told to case the lower grounds before the Governess's midday arrival by Steward Evie, but also were ordered not to leave your presence by the Governess."

  "And the hour?" Garen asked, ignoring the contradictory commands they were boring under. He already knew the time, and wished to move on to other questions, but asking after such things helped stymie mysticism from growing about his person.

  "About half through the morning, sir."

  "And neither of you have taken a break since st evening?"

  The man and woman guarding his door looked at one another, as if unsure of how to answer. Timidly, the woman answered.

  "We're were ordered to guard yer door, sir."

  "And you would have continued doing that for exactly how long?"

  The woman shrugged, pinly discomforted by speaking to one such as Garen. "'Till we couldn't, sir."

  "Or until we were ordered otherwise, of course."

  "O'course."

  Dangerously loyal, Garen appraised. Soldiers willing to work to their own detriment were the shining ideal of many a military commander, but he had seen what that dedication could do when poorly directed. Another topic to address with Sara.

  "Well then, if you are to be outside my door until such time as the stars fall from the sky, I think it best you are educated on the dangers. My wards, should you act with Intent to breach them, will kill you. It will be a very loud, messy death. You are soldiers, so I'm sure you know the sort. The kind of death meant to dissuade others from trying their hand at the action which provoked it."

  Twin gulps proved their satisfactory comprehension, so he continued.

  "So long as you make contact with the bounds of my chambers without Intent to cause mischief, you will be perfectly safe. I do recommend, however, that if this pce should come under attack, and you are unable to prevent the aggressors from reaching the door, you adhere to the following procedure." Garen untucked his hands from his bathrobe, demonstrating the motions as he spoke. "Pce both palms to your ears firmly, like so, and open your mouth very wide while closing your eyes. Just before the enemy comes into physical contact with my chambers, throw yourself to the floor in a clear, open space. The debris tends to collect in corners, and it may be difficult for healers to locate your body if you take shelter there."

  To Garen's pleasant surprise, the two guards did not allow their obviously frayed nerves to get the better of them. The man even took his helmet off, tucking it beneath an armpit, and mimicked Garen's posture.

  "Like this, sir?"

  "Open your mouth wider. Equalizing the pressure is necessary to prevent the inversion of your lungs. Good. Now, in the actual event, you would want to shove your palms over your ears as hard as possible, but that's rather painful, so don't do so now."

  Halfway through his expnation, the woman had taken her helmet off to practice as well. He made a few adjustments to their positions until satisfied, then motioned for them to lower their hands.

  "That will do. It would seem the Governess does not intend to leave me unguarded, so if any others come to repce you on this station, please familiarize themselves with those protocols." Now that the busywork was done, he turned to the matter that actually interested him. "You referred to Evie, the Governess's partner, as a 'Steward?' I was not aware she held any titles at all."

  Of all the things thus far, this innocuous question got the soldiers the most consternated. They repeatedly traded anxious gnces while hemming and hawing, scratching their necks while starting and cutting short a half-dozen sentences. The better part of a minute passed before they settled on any single expnation. It was the woman, with her heavy rural dialect, that got herself together first.

  Well, for a measure of 'got herself together.' It was still a rather rambling expnation.

  "Well, she doesn't, sir, none to her name, 'far as we're aware– we bein' the soldiers– but she's one of the important sorts, y'see, both in the military and the, uh, civilianery, and so just callin' her 'Evie' don't feel right, so we was getting to talkin' about what to call her, when we weren't talkin' right to her, 'cause then it's easy 'cause you just say yes'm and no'm, and the thing we came up with for her was steward, like a lord's house, 'cept she's THE steward, of all'a Tulian, if y'take my meaning? I hope?"

  Garen nodded slowly, digesting the expnation by degrees. "I... believe I follow. It seems you felt improper without an honorific title for one who holds such authority, and created your own to soothe the guilt?"

  "Er... yessir. Sounds 'bout right."

  "Then I suppose the choice of 'Steward' is apt. I would recommend clearing it with the Governess, however. She has quite an aversion to any terminology which resembles the framework of nobility, as I'm sure you're aware. Perhaps..." Garen tapped his bearded chin thoughtfully. "Steward of the State, to be used as the full title? The Governess has often spoken to me of wishing to emphasize the authority of the nation as a whole, rather than any individual's influence. I believe 'Steward of the State' would be appropriately deferential to the Tulian nation, rather than implying Evie's authority is drawn from the Governess herself."

  "But... ain't it?" The woman asked meekly.

  "At present, yes. But the Governess doesn't enjoy that fact, and endeavors to change it. Regardless, the choice is yours. I offer only advice. You said the Governess is to arrive at noon?"

  "Yessir. And she's an awfully punctual sort."

  More like Evie is an effective manager, Garen thought. "Thank you for the information. As for whether you should sweep the interior for hidden threats or remain guarding my door, I recommend you guard my door. It is generally safer for one's career to follow the orders of your master's master, when conflicting demands arise. I will be in my chamber in the meantime, preparing for her arrival."

  "Should we, uh," the man eyed the warded doors of Garen's chamber with a new respect, "knock? Or holler?"

  "There will be no need. I will note her arrival."

  "Aye, sir."

  Garen retreated back into his headmaster's room, waving the door shut with a thud. Good kids, those guards. Better than most of Vesta's staff. Should they apply for mage training, he would expedite their application.

  "Now," Garen said, cpping his hands as he looked about the room. "Where to start?"

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  Sara

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  Sara clomped up the university's stairs in her most practical set of boots, the leather tips of which had been completely worn through to the steel tips beneath. Evie gracefully flowed up the tarnished steps in her test armor-padded dress to Sara's right, the elegance of her bearing at odds with the university's ruined interior. Hurlish had remained outside to shepherd the package to the interior courtyard, her soot-stained biceps necessary to overcome any obstacle that required lifting the fifteen-hundred-pound contents, but would be joining them shortly.

  The once-vaunted Tulian University was a shadow of its former self. Insects had eaten away all of the cloth, rugs, and softer decorations of the building, leaving rain-soiled wood the only surface visible. Sara had ordered even the better-preserved portions of the building's wallpapers peeled off and discarded, both because she wished to inspect the bones of the building, and because it was ugly as sin. Apparently tacky yellow floral designs were preferred by the doddering elderly even in this world.

  They completed their climb up the stairs and turned a corner, heading down a hallway that Sara knew well from her overseeing of the renovation.

  "I really don't envy any student that's trying to figure this pce out on their first day," Sara noted to Evie. As the university had been built on a steep hill, before the earliest Old Tulian mages had terraformed the city to a more level grade, they were still technically on the first floor. How high the so-called first floor was, and how many flights of stairs it took to reach it, varied considerably depending on one's location within the university.

  "They are to be the elite of Tulian's intellectuals, Master. Surely an irritating floor pn will be beneath their concern."

  "Just 'cause you're good at drawing glyphs doesn't mean you know which first floor set of stairs actually takes you to the first floor."

  "Perhaps." Evie picked something off the bust of her dress while they walked, flicking it to the floor. "I suppose it might be better to consider it not a 'first floor,' but a 'street level' floor. The other floors, basements, and sub-basements could be beled not by floor, but their retive height to the exterior street."

  "Huh. Good idea. I'll have to pass it on to whoever ends up in charge of drawing the signs for this pce."

  "I'm sure such minutiae will be at the forefront of your mind, however many months from now that concern becomes relevant."

  "Hey, a girl can dream. Maybe Amarat'll give me a perfect-recall ability. That'd be sweet."

  "As if you need any more divine aid when it comes to social matters."

  Sara's lips quirked up. "Weren't you the one that told me you would happily take any divine aid offered to you, no matter the reason or source?"

  "Yes, but that's a far cry from actually requesting it."

  "Well, what's the point of knowing I have an unfathomably powerful being watching my every step if I can't put in a request every now and then? I think I've earned it."

  "You aren't even certain what your Quest is, Master, beyond the nebulous idea of opposing evil. How can you be sure Amarat is not profoundly dissatisfied with your work thus far?"

  Sara shrugged helplessly. "Lack of hellfire ripping my body apart from the inside out? Who knows. Considering the whole thing with Hurlish and the crib, I think Amarat's plenty capable of giving me a nudge in the right direction if she wanted to. You ask me, it's really on her if I'm going the wrong way."

  Evie pinched the bridge of her nose. "Master, please do not antagonize a god. It never works out in the favor of mortals, I assure you."

  Sara rolled her eyes, but did gnce at the ceiling. "Sorry, sorry. Hope you've got a sense of humor, big girl."

  "Did you just call the Goddess Amarat big girl?"

  "Hey, I saw her once, sorta, and her shadow swallowed gaxies. It's a perfectly accurate description. Now, probably best if you look less frustrated with my stupidity. The guards are waiting up ahead."

  Sara didn't know if the guards she'd assigned to Garen had spent the entire night in the perfect military posture she found them in, but they certainly looked the part of stalwart guardians when she arrived. With the Metalworking Guild– soon to be Metalworking Union– finally accepting the bst furnace's products, there had thankfully been enough iron and steel in circution for even those on civilian assignments to get a decent set of armor. Hurlish had finally pounded weapon and armor terminology into Sara's head, and now she knew they were wearing visored sallet helmets, kasten-burst cuirasses, and single-pte faulds over their waists. To save on production time, if not material, the steel protecting their arms and legs was of no particur design, articuted simply, with gaps in the protection appearing in different spots depending on their posture. While far less protected than a true Knight, Evie had found no precedent in the historical record for rank-and-file infantry to be so heavily protected. The Tulian army had no chaff. That filled Sara with pride.

  The sharp sp of armored gauntlets against their breasts as they saluted her arrival, however, smothered that pride in uncomfortable embarrassment.

  "Governess on the grounds!" The first guard barked, as if there were anyone other than his fellow to notify.

  "At ease," she hurriedly said, waving a hand. Evie had stubbornly convinced her over the course of months to accept such military protocol, ciming it necessary to maintain discipline, but her mere arrival interrupting entire rooms from their work was something Sara still found unbearable. If she was going to be their General, however, she had to grit her teeth and take it.

  "What did your sweep find?" Evie asked.

  Hardly rexing from their ramrod salute, the guards turned to address Evie with their hands folded behind their backs. "We did not perform a sweep, ma'am."

  Evie blinked dangerously, silent for a count of two. Sara scooted slightly between her girlfriend and the guards.

  "And why is that, Sergeant Tavil?"

  A muffled voice from the door cut the man off before he could draw breath.

  "Throw me under the cart!"

  The man gamely continued as if none but him had heard the shout. "Per our charge's advice, the commands of the Governess superseded your own, ma'am. As the Governess instructed us not to leave him unprotected, we remained."

  Evie's tail shed, her voice cool. "Mage Garen is a civilian, not yet even a citizen of the state, and is without any authority over you, Sergeant Tavil. What convinced you to follow his orders over my own?"

  "He gave us no orders, ma'am. Only advice that the Governess's instructions superseded your own, considering the conflicting demands." His posture shifted slightly, expression hidden by his lowered visor. "Do your own commands take precedent over the Governess's?"

  Oh, Sara liked this guy. Evie had clearly recognized him, while Sara hadn't, but she made a note of his name now. To throw something like that in Evie's face, Sergeant Tavil had to have some fucking balls. Sara stepped aside, no longer interceding. She wanted to see how this would py out.

  Evie, for one, involuntarily shed her tail even harder, her words icy. "So you saw fit to pce the safety over a foreign national over the protection of the Governess?"

  "No, ma'am," Sergeant Tavil said with a shake of his head. "I pced the wishes of the Governess over your own."

  Evie started to open her mouth, then bit it closed. Sara doubted the guards could discern a thing beyond the coolness of Evie's tone, but she could read the fury in Evie's posture. Not at the guards, who were pinly in the right, but at herself, or maybe something more ephemeral. Perhaps at the error of pcing her troops in the position to make such a decision necessary, or at her concern for Sara, now knowing they had carelessly walked through a building that hadn't been cleared of threats. Sara doubted Evie knew herself. Either way, the feline was left to stew.

  Garen saved the moment by flinging the doors open, dressed in the same pin but comfortable attire as always.

  "Do y off the poor boy, Evie. He did as he thought best. Now, please, come in."

  Seizing the lifeline the distraction represented, Evie swept forward into the room without hesitation. Sara trailed a bit behind, leaning to whisper to Sergeant Tavil. She knew Evie's keen hearing would pick up her words, but also knew Tavil was unaware of that.

  "You did the right thing. She's just mad because she didn't do her job as perfectly as she usually does. Don't worry about it. Good poker face, by the way."

  "Thank you, ma'am," Sergeant Tavil whispered back. He lifted his visor, leaving Sara mentally reassessing her estimate of his composure. His skin was white and cmmy, sweat running in veritable rivers to pool at the padding around his neck. "I must admit, I was concerned."

  "No need. Now, uh, go get some water. Looks like you need it."

  The Sergeant's visor bobbled comically as he nodded his agreement. Sara stepped into Garen's quarters, leaving the poor man to recover from his ordeal. The door swung shut behind her.

  "Greetings, Governess," Garen said, sweeping his arms into a bow.

  "Ain't in public no more, big G," Sara responded, walking up to hit Garen with her most complex shitty-Detroit-public-school handshake. Magework had accustomed him to complex hand motions, but he still stumbled as Sara guided him through a prolonged five seconds of fist-bumping, hand pumping, and knuckle-taps, finishing with a slow finger-wiggling wave that pulled slowly away from him.

  He looked down at his hand, mystified. "What in the world was that?"

  "Ignore her, Garen," Evie called as she moved to pull a tea kettle from a cooling pte across the room. "She's being overtly bizarre so as to break down your formality, which she is uncomfortable with. Just be gd she didn't choose crassness, this time. Gods know what profanity she would summon up to appropriately shock you."

  Sara frowned, crossing her arms. "It's not as fun when you straight-up tell them that, Evie."

  "Yes, well, one of us has to seem mature, and it certainly won't be you or Hurlish." Evie carefully brought the tea kettle to a small table in the middle of Garen's quarters, carrying with it a pte and four teacups. "Will we begin the day's activities here, Garen? I assumed so, considering the readying tea."

  "I haven't the faintest clue," he admitted, even as he accepted the cup of iced tea she poured. "Mm. Thank you. I assumed Sara would be leading the show, so to speak. I have much to offer, but little knowledge of what is expected of me."

  "Mostly, I wanted your knowledge of the Royal Mages. Necessary defensive measures against them, their offensive capabilities, their defensive capabilities, things like that. I'm not hoping for any magic-killing-arrow, but the mages are decidedly the enemy force I know least about, and that's got to change."

  Garen frowned slightly. "I was under the impression that my work would be purely civilian, Sara."

  "And it will be, for the most part. When it comes to military matters, I just want your opinion on the enemy's capabilities. Nothing more. You can focus on civilian stuff as much as you want. Evie's already prepared you a starter packet."

  "A starter packet? Meaning?"

  Evie finished pouring her own gss of tea and sat down in Sara's p, reaching to Sara's hip to pull the documents from the bag of holding. She produced a half-inch thick pile of papers, bound in twine, scrawled over every inch with Evie's neat handwriting. The feline handed it to Garen, then tucked her legs up into Sara's p and settled her head on her chest.

  "That there's the cumutive result of months of me going, 'huh, I wonder what Garen would think about this,' each incidence of which Evie dutifully recorded. A lot of it's knowledge from my home that I think would be valuable to distribute in this world, but I was too paranoid about the side effects of to do so on my own, or avenues of research I wish you to pursue with magic, rather than my native technology."

  Garen unwrapped the twine, carefully taking out the first few pages, which were written with charcoal nubs, from before they'd had a steady supply of ink for Evie. Sara sipped her iced tea patiently while he perused the headlines, which Evie had done her best to keep sensible, despite Sara's tendency to ramble.

  "You are awfully interested in the means to generate rotational motion, Sara," Garen noted. He flicked through more pages, finding simir headlines all the way to the most recent papers. "Very, very interested. Am I allowed to know why?"

  "Sure. In short? The ability to turn things in circles is the ultimate foundation of every technological advance that has ever occurred on my old pnet." Sara took another sip of her tea. "And beyond. We nded on other pnets, eventually."

  Garen's head snapped up at her. "You what?"

  "The nation I was a citizen of put men on our moon, the celestial body I've expined to you in our letters. And both that nation and several others put remotely operated vehicles on other pnets, tens of millions of miles away. The farthest device we still had contact with was capital-b Billions of miles away, when I left." She tapped her fingernail against the porcein teacup. "And you know what we had to figure out before we did it?"

  "Circles?"

  "Circles. Goin' real fast in 'em."

  Garen set the packet of papers down slowly, leaning back in his chair. His eyes narrowed at Sara. "You are an experienced stateswoman, Sara, but it seems you are becoming too comfortable in my presence. I can see through your ploy. You are making a mockery of me. You are stating complex topics in deliberately childish terms so as to undercut the severity of your request."

  "Maybe a little bit," Sara admitted. "But it's all still true. If you want to move fast over the ground, you spin wheels. If you want to go fast in water or air, you spin propellors. And electricity, which we've discussed before, is best generated by spinning stuff in circles around other stuff. Only problem is, on our world, we found that the best way to spin stuff in circles also involves pumping absolutely unfathomable amounts of poison into the air, and within my lifetime, the pnet was probably going to start choking to death on it."

  Sara nodded to the papers. "When you aren't educating others, that's what I want to be your work. Don't worry, I'm not going to give you knowledge on how to actually build those complicated, dangerous, world-changing machines. Not only would it require a good amount of re-invention on my part, I don't want those machines to exist here, and you don't want them, either. No one really wants them. Probably not even the gods, if the ck of technological progress over tens of thousands of years of civilization is any evidence. But I will give you information on what powers them, because if they come into existence despite my best efforts, I do not want a repeat of the disasters that chasing fossil fuels brought on my pnet."

  "So... yeah," Sara brilliantly summarized. "Your job will be, in essence, to find the best way to use magic to spin various things at various speeds, all so people don't start burning coal and oil. What those circles will be for only I'll know, but working in the dark is the catch for this job. I want you cutting the problem off at the head, even if I have to guide your knife."

  "And it is an important job, Garen," Sara warned him, preempting the objections she expected him to have. "I'm going to be introducing the barest elements of mechanical automation to Tulian, because I have a moral obligation to make my citizen's lives easier, and while I'll try to keep it to only the basics, there's no telling when we'll hit the tipping point of exponential progress. A vague, nebulous moment when discoveries start begetting discoveries which beget discoveries, a self-perpetuating, accelerating loop, beyond any one person's control, even a Champion. If someone realizes the principles of the automated loom I'm building can be extended to, say, powering a printing press, someone might realize it could be used to pump water out of mines, and then–" Sara snapped her fingers. "Boom. I just started the countdown to apocalypse."

  Garen set his tea down, vanishing it into the aether, and settled into his chair, and observed Sara very, very closely. He said nothing. He listened to Sara talk.

  "I haven't met many mages since I arrived in this world, but of them, I think you're probably the most powerful. Knowing that, yes, I recruited you in the hopes that you can find a better way to spin stuff in circles. I don't care about the details, but it has to be some method that doesn't produce toxic chemical byproducts, doesn't stuff the atmosphere full of carbon, and is powered solely by magic, a resource which can never run dry so long as life survives on this pnet." Sara hesitated. "And I guess you'll have to discover where magic comes from, for certain. We don't technically know there's no negative byproduct to its rge-scale employment, and we'll want to confirm that before we go hog-wild. I hate to imagine what the magical equivalent of pollution is. So... yeah. Learn how to spin circles real good, then divine the precise underpinnings of one of the fundamental forces which binds your reality. That's your overarching goal in Tulian." Sara finished off her iced tea, slurping it loudly. "But in the short term? I'd like to know what kinda spells your wizard buddies like to fling."

  Garen looked at Sara. Looked at the papers. Time seemed to slow as Sara watched his eyelids begin to close.

  A multitude of expressions, visible only in the infinitesimal twitches of muscles beneath the skin, flew across his face. To anyone else, he would have seemed utterly impassive. Sara ticked the emotions off as they appeared. Horror was forcibly bottled up into mere Trepidation, moderated by Concern over his demeanor before Sara. Trepidation was then steadily swept under by a rising tide of Curiosity. It was a particurly hungry variety, and it thus drowned the other emotions. He deeply feared the danger of these secrets in the hands of others, but not enough to forgo their investigation personally.

  Garen's eyelids met bottom, finishing his blink.

  Sara suppressed her smirk. Hook, line and sinker.

  He quietly tied the papers back into their neat stack, then tossed them aside, where they were swallowed by nothingness. He nodded respectfully to her.

  "Then, if it is the abilities of mages you will be facing in battle that you wish to evaluate this first day, I will recommend we take this discussion to the courtyard. You've always struck me as the type to prefer demonstration to discussion."

  "That's perfect, actually. Hurlish was already preparing her own work out there for us."

  They left Garen's quarters together, and Sara ordered the guards outside his room to head home. They'd been on duty for near sixteen hours, she'd realized. Not a particurly physically demanding duty, true, but wearing armor for that long took its own toll. She once more made sure she had Sergeant Tavil's name and face memorized, then followed Garen and Evie down the hall.

  With the dramatics completed, Sara made an effort to bring things back to a happier tone. Garen hadn't acknowledged in any way her request of him, but she knew he'd do it. There was no point in pushing it right now. So instead she pointed out the windows at the tenant buildings that stood opposite the university, there at the westernmost portion of the city.

  "Remember when I said the architecture in Tulian sucked?"

  "Mm?" Garen stirred from his thoughts, following her pointing finger. "Yes. Asinine, I believe you called it."

  "Well, there's a perfect example."

  Garen raised an eyebrow. "They seem pleasing enough to my eye, Sara. Fairly standard fare for Tulian, very simir to much of what the urban peasantry of Sporatos reside in."

  "Are they asinine aesthetically? No. Practically? Absolutely." Sara waved to one of the three-story buildings that was in better condition, probably occupied by a family or two. "See that? All stone, with big, wide windows facing the sea, and a firepce in every living space. The hell were they thinking?" Sara waved wider, indicating the general vicinity. "This is a typhoon-prone equatorial wetnds with violent seasonal shifts. Half the year it storms every day, the other half there's barely a drop to drink, and it's hot as hell the whole way through. There might be some valid reasons to use stone for construction, stability, and yada-yada-yada, but there's no excuse for the thickness of it, nor the firepces, and certainly not the insuting roof structure. It's all built to imitate Sporaton architecture, and that also means it's next to impossible to get at the guts of the building for repair."

  "The Tulian people of yesteryear did view Sporatos as an example of culture they cked," Garen noted.

  "Well, they shouldn't have. The city's tenant buildings are stuffy, cramped, and overall dogshit design for the local environment. How did they spend four centuries building this crap without realizing that? Did no one have the balls to tell the kings that 'hey, maybe building exactly like our snowy northern neighbors is a bad idea?'"

  Garen chuckled. "Perhaps some did, Sara. They likely were not in the position to have the king's ear for long."

  Sara scoffed. "Feudalism is absurd. I've got no idea how it sted so long, both on this world and my old."

  "The power of tradition is not to be underestimated," Garen intoned. "Even among the oppressed you wish to liberate, I think you'll find a shocking amount of resistance to change. The comfort of known agonies is oft preferable to unknown chaos."

  "The devil you know is better than the devil you don't," Sara quoted. "That's a phrase from my old world. I guess people are people, no matter where they're from, huh?"

  "It would seem so. Though, as I understood from your letters, there were only pure humans in your world? That would lend your prior home a certain amount of cultural conformity, I imagine."

  "Oh, boy, you'd be surprised." Sara's expression grew dark. "If anything, it was worse than here. I'm honestly amazed how tolerant people are to the different varieties of humanoids. Not too long ago in my world, people decred whether or not someone was a human or animal depending on shit like the angle of their cheekbones or the color of their skin. I'd have expected people rocking fur and tails to get ostracized way, way harder."

  "There are some nds that suffer under such delusions," Garen admitted, "but they are few. With the inherent biological specialties lent by those of varying ancestries, a homogenous society is often at a strict disadvantage when set against a more diverse people. The histories abound with monoethnic kingdoms being overwhelmed by the strength of orcs, outmaneuvered on the field by dextrous catfolk, and driven from the coast by Azarketi coalitions."

  "Huh. Power of diversity is a more literal thing here, I guess. That's pretty close to what helped my old nation to end up the most powerful, back on Earth. Accepting lots of foreign immigrants let us grab a lot of talent that wouldn't have benefitted us in other nations."

  "Then your leaders were wise–"

  "Nope."

  Garen ughed. "In that one respect, at least, I would say they were wise. It is well known to Continental statesmen that diversity of ancestries is a strength. As a matter of fact, King Sporatos recently enacted several policies to encourage such. Humans are now taxed for every third and greater child beyond the age of ten, while catfolk, orcs, and Azarketi receive proportionally greater reductions in their obligations to their lords beyond their third child."

  Sara frowned, and even Evie, so focused on guarding, looked mildly disconcerted.

  "That's getting a bit close to eugenics for my liking, if I'm honest with you," Sara said. "Doesn't matter if you're pying favorites or pushing them down, treating minorities different than the rest never goes well."

  "Yet another term I am unfamiliar with, Sara. This eugenics you speak of, I assume it is a poor policy to enact?"

  "Oh, gods," Sara groaned. "File that question away for ter, buddy, because that's not one I'm going to expin anywhere with the slightest chance of someone listening in."

  "If you insist."

  As they turned another corner, Garen very nearly stumbled directly into the chest of Hurlish, who was leaning against the wall, breathing hard. She looked at Sara, then at the stairs she'd just climbed, and scowled.

  "Shit. If y'all were coming to see me, why'd I waste my time heading to you?"

  Ignoring the compint, Sara moved to make introductions. "Garen, this is Hurlish. Hurlish, this is Garen. You've both heard plenty about the other, but now you've got a face for the name."

  "A pleasure to meet you, Master Smith," Garen said, inclining his head.

  Hurlish continued to pant heavily, looking down all eighteen inches of her height gap over Garen. Groaning, she shoved herself off the wall, leaving behind a sweaty imprint on the wood. She'd worn nothing but simple breeches and a leather vest today, her breasts bound tightly in Azarketi-nylon, all the better for working in the increasingly dry heat. Hurlish extended her hand.

  "They don't call us Master Smiths here in Tulian anymore. Just smith."

  Despite the sweat and soot soaking it, Garen happily shook her hand.

  "Another of Sara's influences, I assume?"

  "Yeah. Somethin' bout being good at one thing doesn't make you better than someone else overall or whatever. And I think she just doesn't like the word in general, I guess."

  Evie's tail twitched. "Is that so, Master?"

  Kxon arms began ringing in Sara's mind. She lunged for the simplest, most effective lever she could find, and smiled lecherously.

  "I make exceptions for when it turns me on."

  "How fortuitous," Evie said sarcastically, rolling her eyes, but Sara caught the small smirk she was hiding.

  Thank God. With that unexpected bomb deftly defused, Sara gnced at Hurlish's state of dishevelment. "What's got you all worked up, by the way? I don't think I've ever seen you this sweaty."

  "You definitely have."

  "From working."

  "Heh. Well, it was work. I'm good looking, but even I can't find a girl that quick." Hurlish turned around and began stomping down the stairs, the wood creaking under each footfall. "Courtyard didn't have a good way to roll the cart in. Had to shove the fucker up half a flight of stone stairs. Sucked dog shit."

  Garen made a noise of interest. "Something heavy enough to trouble one such as you? Your feats of strength were oft reyed to me by Sara, perhaps ad nauseam. You've piqued my curiosity."

  "Yeah, well, good, because I'd be mighty pissed about carrying that thing if you weren't gonna take a look at it."

  "You could've waited until we were there to help you, Hurlish," Sara said.

  "Why? I could move it, so I did." She tossed a gnce over her shoulder to Evie. "And I wasn't carrying it on my stomach, either. I pushed it up some steps. Don't get all worked up."

  "I hadn't assumed you would even dare take such a risk," Evie sniffed.

  Garen looked between the two women, confused. "I'm afraid that particur bit of subtext escaped me. You worry about a smith carrying heavy loads, Evie?"

  "When she's pregnant with our child, yes," Evie responded. "Hurlish has shown next to no sensibility in regards to her own wellbeing these past few months."

  Garen opened his lips with a little pop, gncing between Hurlish, Evie, and Sara. Sara offered him only a shrug.

  "Oh, yeah. I forgot to mention that. Hurlish is pregnant."

  "That's... Well, congratutions, I suppose. Your letters hadn't spoken of a man that had entered your peculiar camaraderie, so I will be eager to meet the father."

  "It's me."

  "Ah?"

  For a fraction of a second, Sara caught Garen's eye flicking down to her crotch. It was too quick for anyone else to notice, much like when she caught someone sneaking a peek her cleavage– which included nearly every non-asexual being she'd met since entering this world– so she ignored it. Seeing that Hurlish's shoulders were shaking with barely controlled mirth and Evie's tail was bouncing in amusement, Sara didn't offer Garen any greater expnation. He remained silent for quite a while, at an utter loss for how to recover from whatever social conundrum he'd just stumbled into. She let the comment hang. She had to let her girlfriends have their fun, sometimes.

  Thankfully for Garen, they reached their destination in short order. As was befitting of a once-prestigious university, the interior courtyard was sprawling. Cobblestone walkways marked paths between various doors across the cut-out portion of the university's interior, sandwiching what had once been carefully pruned flower gardens. When Sara had first surveyed the university, those gardens had overtaken the entire interior, hiding the entire floor in a writhing mass of twisted vines. Clearing it had been difficult, but productive, revealing meandering cobblestone paths and a few sturdy iron benches, all connecting to a central stone pavilion. That fifty-foot circle of stone tiles was now dominated by a rge, wooden crate, the one that Hurlish had bodily hauled into pce.

  A number of people were sharing pcid discussions across the pavilion. The noonday sun was beating down on several individuals Sara recognized, and a number she didn't. There was Lieutenant Shale, who had been pced in charge of the Tulian Army's thousand-strong Military Engineer corp, trading words with Kispa, the alchemist in charge of the gunpowder project. Ignite was an unexpected addition, as was the patrol of amateurish-looking guards he was busy instructing, but they weren't in the way of anything. She'd told him about her pns to go work with Garen that day, and he supposed he wanted the trainees to get used to being near important people at work, so that they wouldn't turn into intimidated little church mice like some of the Guard's rookies did.

  "More of an audience than I expected," Garen noted.

  "Honestly, me too. I thought it was just gonna be those two," Sara said, indicating and introducing Kispa and Lieutenant Shale. "But for testing certain portions of what's in that crate, I was hoping you'd be able to throw up some privacy spell or something simir, anyway. So I guess it's not like anything's really changed."

  Garen hummed his acknowledgement as they moved out into the steaming Tulian heat. This was Sara's first proper experience with the Tulian dry season, and it was a jarring discrepancy. Even living directly adjacent to the sea, it had been days since the st rain, when she didn't think they'd broken twelve hours without at least a light shower before. If what was in the crate became necessary to use during the course of the war, Sara would be gd for the change.

  "How will we begin, Governess?" Garen asked, reverting to formality now that they were among others. "I know you likely have a great many questions."

  Sara blew out a breath, thinking. "I don't know. There's so much I want to learn, and even more that I need to know. Easiest stuff first, then. You're gonna be running a magic university, right? How do you recruit people for that? I mean, can anyone do magic, or is it a bloodline thing, or what?"

  "The basics, then."

  "Hey, don't give me that crap. You literally came here to be a teacher."

  "I suppose that's true." Garen cleared his throat, straightening his posture. He knew Ignite's troops would be listening, and was making a point to remain professional. "No, Governess, not everyone can become a full-fledged mage. While anyone with the requisite knowledge can manipute the energy within themselves to some degree, it is a select number that are capable of true spellcrafting. This ability is not hereditary, as some fanciful tales like to suppose, and neither is it predictable in its manifestation."

  Sara groaned. "Oh, man, I hate that. I always despised the movies where only people born with magic can do it. That would be so awful, to want to be a mage, but you literally can't just because you got a bad roll of the dice when you were born."

  "It is not so bad as all that, Governess. After all, there is a simple way to tell whether or not someone possesses the capability for spellwork."

  "Yeah?"

  Garen gestured to Sara's sword. "Desire. You, as one who wished to create spells even before transferring to this world, were marked as one who is capable of doing so."

  Sara pursed her lips, frowning. "...Run that one by me again. You can only do magic if you want to do magic? Isn't that redundant?"

  "You are close to understanding, Governess, but your cause and effect are reversed. It is the tent capacity for 'magic' that creates the desire to practice spellcraft, not the inverse. If you are capable, you desire it. If you are not, you do not. The majority of individuals, unlike you, have no interest in risking their lives to pursue Tavan's gifts."

  "That's... Wait. When we met, you were doing tryouts for mages under House Vesta. How can anyone fail a tryout if wanting to do magic is the surest sign that you can?"

  "There is a fine line between seeking spells for their own sake, and seeking the power and wealth they bring. It is easy to delude oneself into the belief that you wish to be trained as a mage for the beauty of it, when in reality you are blinded by avarice. Thus my irritation with the failed applicants, who revealed themselves as little more than irritating sycophants."

  "But... who doesn't want to do magic?" Sara looked over at Ignite's trainees, who were doing their best not to be distracted by the free lesson from an archmage. "You're telling me people in this world see what someone like you can do and think to themselves 'nah, I'm good'?"

  "Again, Governess, while they may covet the power of spells, it is only when one loves the pursuit of spellcraft itself that the capacity is revealed. For example, while many wish to become master artisans for the associated accim, wealth, and recognition, how many wish only to pursue art for its isoted virtues? Far, far fewer."

  Sara tapped her foot on the stone, listening to the steel-toed boot click. "But, like, still. It's magic. I can't imagine anyone not wanting to do it."

  Garen chuckled. "I have had this conversation many, many times, Governess, with every young mage I have ever trained. It is difficult for ones such as ourselves to understand, but it is true."

  Sara turned to Evie, who'd moved over to Hurlish, wiping the orc's sweat off with her enchanted handkerchief. If she was lingering a bit longer on the muscles, massaging them appreciatively as she cleaned, it was a small enough difference to give her pusible deniability.

  "Evie! Do you want to do magic?"

  There was no response. Evie just kept cleaning Hurlish off.

  "Evie!"

  The feline blinked rapidly, forcefully pulling herself off Hurlish's biceps. "No, Master," she finally said.

  Sara's eyes bulged. "What? But it's magic!"

  "And?" She returned to wiping Hurlish down, this time slightly more chaste. "It is difficult, dangerous, and requires decades of one's life to master. Why pursue a skill that may end with inadvertently engulfing oneself in fme when you can hone your skills with a bde?"

  Sara couldn't believe it. "Hurlish? What about you?"

  "Hell no! I've seen what that shit does to people. Fuck all'a that."

  Sara was utterly bewildered. Here she was, thinking she knew her girlfriends, and then they went and said things like that. Behind her, Garen ughed richly.

  "As I said, it is a strange thing. You and I will likely never be able to see things as they do, I'm afraid. Some propose that whatever aspect of the soul Tavan has impnted in mages is also responsible for the change in mindset. I do not necessarily subscribe to this theory; I find it much more likely motivation pys the rgest role. Still, I must admit the evidence lines up rather neatly."

  Sara smacked her lips, working through her thoughts. "Okay, I guess that makes sense, but you said anyone can do magic, right? So even if you're just in it for the coin, you can still eventually learn spells?"

  "Yes. In fact, the histories record a number of accomplished mages who did not have the innate talents of others. Their sorts often gravitate to artificery, rather than pure spellwork, but no one is fully incapable of becoming a mage. Only... limited, perhaps. The common comparison is that of a blind man learning to paint. And like a blind man learning to paint, at times their ck of certain properties may create something unique, a curious artifact that a so-called true mage may never have considered."

  Sara nodded. "Okay, okay. Makes sense. So, for the university, would you only be admitting students with natural talents?"

  Garen surprised Sara by pausing, deliberating before he answered. His eyebrows furrowed in thought.

  "...No," he eventually decided. "No, I will not. You pce emphasis on a great many things, Governess, but equity most of all. If I were to limit applicants in such a way, I think you would not approve."

  Sara cocked her head. "Good choice. Odd that you made it, but good choice. You're right, of course, I wouldn't have approved. And you saw the trap coming. Not often that someone manages to predict where I'm leading them in conversations."

  "I would like to think I am some social savant, but I doubt that to be the case. More likely, I am simply familiar with you in a way most aren't from our letters." Garen looked about the courtyard, paying particur attention to Lieutenant Shale and Kispa, who were still milling an awkward distance away. "Shall we move on to the demonstrations, Governess? I wouldn't wish to hold you."

  Sara actually had blocked out the whole afternoon for this meeting with Garen, but she wasn't going to say no to speeding things along. She readily agreed and called out to Ignite, having him assemble the trainees into a rough approximation of a battlefield formation. It was smaller than the actual hundred-troop blocks the real army used upon the field, but it gave Garen an approximation of what the Sporaton mages would be facing.

  "Alright, big boy, let's see what you've got. How would you go about fighting your way through these guys?"