carl@fire

"Thanks, that was perfect," Carl said. Well, I wasn't gonna kill all the bosses for her, but that was pretty cool too. Kinda messed up my dad joke delivery a little.

"It was no great feat," Ir'alith said, having returned to her more human-y look with her dress—which had maybe been under her scales or something? "I am pleased to aid a friend."

He felt a swell of contentment at the statement. Yeah, gaming with friends really is the best. Not that he was playing a game right now, he reminded himself, having momentarily lost sight of his reason for being here after seeing his daughter in her cool little raid. No, he was only logged in right now for one specific purpose—now that he'd accomplished his goal of dad-bombing Bobby's raid, of course—and the time was swiftly approaching for that purpose to fulfill itself so he could get answers to the questions that were now coming back to him—not that he'd forgotten, of course, because he absolutely hadn't, but he'd kinda just let his curiosity indulge itself the day before with how cool all the magic class stuff was and let the questions, which he definitely had, sink to the back of his mind—so he could get on with his life.

It was shaping up to be a great game-morning too. He'd awoken to a cup of Vol's Super Coffee nearby, which proved that she was definitely also somewhere nearby, probably just finishing up something really quick before she came by to do that hanging out they'd agreed upon. He'd gone to knock on Rebecca's door, but Ir'alith had greeted him instead, informing him that his sister-in-law was still asleep, which had led to their brief, portal-led excursion to do a dad-bombing.

"Think Rebecca's up yet?" he mused.

"Perhaps," Ir'alith said in a thoughtful tone.

"Better check, I guess." He walked past her and pulled open the door to his room—where they'd gone so his friend could undo her disguise without being recognized, obviously—holding it open with one hand as he stepped into the hall. Hope she's gonna be as psyched as I am for these classes again.

Rebecca had been acting odd the day before, at least in comparison to how she usually acted. Whereas she was usually bratty and annoying, yesterday she'd done an admirable job of being not-annoying for most of the day, even to the extent that they'd had some pretty nice conversations. He'd been confused by how touchy she'd gotten once they'd passed the initial awkwardness, but then he'd realized something that put a lot of their shared experience into a different context.

Rebecca was a very touchy-feely person.

It was obvious in hindsight, but after she'd glommed onto him for most of the time between classes, not treating it as if it was anything unusual, he'd realized that she must just be one of those confusing people who always had to be in contact with other people she felt close to. It had no special meaning beyond that and was just a habit, which allowed him to become more relaxed about the whole thing, able to put it into the same context as holding hands while he walked around with Sammy or Bobby when they were younger.

With that said, Carl was not a touchy-feely person at all, so this was all firmly in the realm of him tolerating being touchy-feely-ed rather than appreciating or reciprocating it even the smallest amount. It was a strategy that had seemed to be paying off, as Rebecca had, as if by magic, transformed from being a bratty and annoying to being a pretty normal person by the end of their packed day of learning.

He rapped his knuckles on her door.

"Carl, perhaps I am unnecessarily suspicious, but I have sensed an unusual…aura around Rebecca," Ir'alith said while they waited. "I do not wish to intrude, but—"

The door opened, and Rebecca smiled out at them wearing the same dress as the day before. "'Morning."

"Hey, you're up," Carl said. "Good sleep?"

"Yeah, great actually," she said. She stepped forward, shutting the door behind herself, and wormed her way between them, hugging his left arm like she usually did now while they were walking around. "Class time?"

"Uh, yeah," Carl said, coming to the realization that Rebecca wasn't wearing exactly the same dress, as this one didn't reach all the way up to her neck, though it still wasn't low-cut like what she tended to wear normally. Touchy-feely people are really on another level. He set himself to Maximum Tolerance mode to compensate.

"Great!" she exclaimed. "Can't wait to learn more about that foundational stuff."

"What is foundational stuff?" Ir'alith asked.

"It's like part of the basics of how the magic system works. You know, where you've got glyphs that make things more…thingy."

"Ah, I know of what you speak."

They started up the stairs with Ir'alith following a couple steps behind, made a bit more annoying today by Rebecca's touchy-feely-ness, but it was a well-intentioned kind of annoying, and it was therefore tough for Carl to say anything at this point, imagining that she'd once again point out that she was trying and he wasn't, which was sort of hard to refute since it wasn't an argument he'd ever had or prepared for previously.

"So, you've been up for a while?" Rebecca asked.

"Yup," he confirmed. "Just dad-bombed Bobby in her raid. Went great. Ir'alith one-shotted some boss, and I gave her GM The Talk…" She's probably still freaking out a little. Yeah, no big deal. Just drop in before some super tough boss, land a dad joke, leave before… Well, I guess Ir'alith kinda finished the raid for them, but that's gonna be pretty cool for her too.

"And Ir'alith went with you?" Rebecca asked.

"I did," the woman in question confirmed.

"Carl, you're just taking your friends from here to meet your kids?" Rebecca asked in a low voice.

He shrugged, except he couldn't really shrug with how his arm was being hugged. "Yeah?"

"You don't ever think about any potential danger?" Rebecca asked even more quietly.

A frown pressed itself down over his brows, and not just because they'd stepped out onto the seventy fifth floor, which was flooded with kids milling about who weren't at all adorable like Bobby's elf character. Is it dangerous? He turned the idea around in his head. Not really sure how? I don't know Ir'alith as well, but she only came with me in VR, so that's not gonna be a big deal in any case. I know Vol a lot better, and sure, it was a little weird having her show up at the house, but she was super cool about it, and that steak was awesome. His thoughts turned again towards the other things his friend had done earlier real-today, and he was again forced to cycle his thought processors as the active one deadlocked itself.

"Nah. It's fine," he said. They again reached the door to the glyph classroom. Better not be late to everything again. He pulled the door open, and Rebecca walked through, followed by Ir'alith, each of them murmuring a thank-you on their way.

"We have new additions to our knowledge consortium, it seems," said the tall-ish teacher at the front of the room. She tilted her head down to regard Rebecca. "You may refer to me as Magister Romalieaux the Fourteenth, or simply Magister. Introduce yourselves, then have a seat wherever you like."

Carl looked around suspiciously. Isn't that… Did she forget us? I guess maybe she's got a lot of classes? The classroom looked exactly the same as it had yesterday, though he hadn't been paying a ton of attention to all the kids.

"I'm Becca," said Rebecca.

"I am Ir'alith," said Ir'alith.

"I'm Carl," Carl said, already taking his first step up the stairs so he could get a seat in the first row again.

Rebecca filed in to sit next to him, and Ir'alith sat on the other side of her. "Can't wait for another exciting class!" she whispered, giving him a big smile.

He grinned back with a nod, feeling like they were on the same wavelength.

"Now then, you've arrived at an opportune time," said the teacher. "We've just begun our first lesson of the day."

Carl pulled a notepad and pencil out of his inventory and began to write as the teacher continued her lesson. After a few minutes, the door to the room opened again, and a familiar kid walked in.

"And who might you be?" the teacher asked.

Feeling some super strong deja vu right now.

"Gramnom Efigra," the kid said with a bored look on his face.

"If you're going to be this late, why even bother to join us at all, I wonder?" the teacher asked just like she'd asked yesterday.

The kid grimaced just like he'd done yesterday. "Um, so should I go, or—"

"No," the teacher said with a theatrical sigh just like she'd done yesterday. "Take a seat. Perhaps you'll be lucky enough to find a fellow student willing to share their notes."

Gramnom headed up the stairs, slouching into a chair in the uppermost row and not bothering to take out anything to write with, just like he'd done yesterday.

The lesson resumed, but then it paused again after another minute or two.

"Mister Efigra, am I boring you?" the teacher called.

What the heck is happening?

"Uh, well—"

"Do you lack the funds to acquire something with which to take notes, or do you lack the interest, I wonder?" the teacher asked.

This is super weird. Carl glanced to his side, but Rebecca was looking ahead with eagerness, not even seeming to notice that everything was happening just like it had yesterday.

The lesson resumed again, and he put all that out of mind, focusing instead on the topic at hand.

Glyphs, he inferred since this was clearly a little ways into the topic, were sort of like itemized magic. Provided that he knew the exact way to transcribe the intended use of magic, anything could be represented as a glyph—though it was pretty dangerous to try if you didn't know what you were doing, apparently, since some types of glyphs could expel the inputted magic power in a sudden rush if created poorly, causing an explosion that, according to the teacher, could range in strength from knocking you over to disintegrating a country. Obviously the last part of that was just some in-game hyperbole, and a number of the students had chuckled along, excluding a certain Gramnorn Efigra, who looked like he was still kinda smarting from getting chewed out for coming late and not even bringing anything to take notes in.

With that said, it was apparently not very common for glyphs to be used on a singular basis. When Carl had first gotten the hang of the concept, he'd imagined crafting them onto various objects—like swords, or shields, or maybe even bullets—with, for example, a fire-producing glyph added in order to create a giant fireball when the item struck something, but this was, he learned, just not going to work at all, and it was the mistake that every clueless noob made when they started learning about how glyphs worked.

Carl paused. He raised his hand.

The teacher called on him immediately. "Yes? Carl?"

"Uh, didn't we cover this stuff yesterday?" he asked.

The teacher gave him a look of total confusion. "No," she said after several seconds. "We didn't, and you weren't present for yesterday's lesson that I can recall."

"What? Yeah I was," he protested.

The woman stared at him for a short while before understanding flickered into her eyes. "Ah. Carl, nothing from yesterday was graded. This is the beginning of the term for the class, and we'll have a few more days before you need to concern yourself with that. Now, as I was saying, a foundational glyph is…"

Carl blinked. What the actual heck. He continued to focus as best he could on the material.

The teacher was doing a Mariana Trench-depth dive on foundational glyphs now, which were pretty hard to describe, and it might have been difficult for someone less experienced in understanding complex systems to even begin to do so, but this was Carl Maximus Weathers, so…

He tried to focus, but it was impossible. The lesson was identical to the one he'd already taken copious notes for the previous day, and, against his will, he found himself swiftly growing bored.

"Okay, was it just me, or was that really weird?" Carl asked as they walked through the hall towards the stairs, which they'd take to the seventy second floor for Magic Theory.

"Weird how?" Rebecca asked, having again resumed touch-feely-ing his arm the instant they stepped out the door.

"It was like that was the exact same thing that happened yesterday," he said. "Everything. The way she made us introduce ourselves, the way that kid came in late and she heckled him, all the material…"

Rebecca frowned up at him. "Are you sure? It seemed just as interesting today."

They started down the stairs, and Carl continued to grow increasingly annoyed.

"I'm pretty sure it was all the same," he said. "I mean, I wouldn't have raised my hand to ask about it otherwise."

Rebecca made a thinking sound. "You might be right?" she said a few seconds later, but she didn't seem too convinced.

Alright, well, the next class is gonna clear things up.

"This is interesting," Ir'alith said. "It is not very accurate, but it is still interesting to hear the opinions of humans on such matters."

"Interesting?" Rebecca said. "Isn't it disappointing? Humans have magic, even going so far as to attempt to defy their natural place with it, but they can only come this far?"

"Perhaps. I believe it is better for a people to have an opportunity to rise above their status than to be held in shackles by their ignorance, however," Ir'alith said.

This is some kinda heavy philosophy discussion right here. Not sure I'm really equipped to jump in. Also not really sure the existence of game-magic justifies having this kind of heavy discussion.

"Ignorance can be so freeing though," Rebecca said with a giggle. "Imagine the existence of a man from another world. He comes here, to this place, and he sees magic, but he does not recognize it for what it is. Will he be happier if he learns the truth, or will he be happiest to remain unaware?"

Kinda interesting to think about. If someone from another world without tech came to ours and logged into New Era, they might think it was actually a different world with how realistic it all is.

"You have asked an intriguing question, Rebecca," Ir'alith said. "Still, I believe knowledge should be shared. I would illuminate the darkness for such a man."

Further discussion was cut off as the reached the watery door of the classroom. He opened it, and Rebecca and Ir'alith entered while he held the door—not that he was holding doors as a sexist kind of thing, of course, because he was well aware that women were both willing to and capable of opening doors on their own, but he felt like opening and holding doors today since it put him at the back of the line when they went places and gave him an extra couple seconds to think.

"Three of you, eh?" the general called, which was… Well, it couldn't be like yesterday since there were only the two of them yesterday. "State your names."

"Becca."

"I am Ir'alith."

"I'm Carl," Carl said once more.

"Hello, Becca. Hello, Ir'alith. Hello, Carl," shouted the twenty six students seated in the Magic Theory classroom in unison, giving him a sense of deja vu so powerful that he nearly fell over.

"Well said!" the teacher said in a commanding voice. "I am Magister Bellum Dant, formerly General Bellum Dant of Mocuria. Be seated, and prepare for instruction."

Ugh. No way. It can't be…

Rebecca started towards the back of the room, pulling Carl along by the hand—most likely when she noticed the blank look on his face—as she went. He spotted the empty seat in the middle of the room, but he felt a sense of dread and continued past it, sitting down absently in the back corner of the room next to his sister-in-law, who was watching him and still holding his hand as they sat, almost definitely because she'd noticed the sense of shock he was suffering from—although on this occasion, he was definitely just too bewildered to appreciate the gesture of concern.

Ir'alith sat on the other side of Rebecca, and the general began to talk again, though Carl was feeling more and more weirded out with every word.

"Right!" the man at the front of the room shouted. "You're all fresh off recruitment, and there's a massive information gap between you and mages you'll be encountering on the battlefield."

Carl groaned.