Flinging Rocks at Bureaucrats in a Magical Academy

They reached a tall set of opaline doors etched with celestial runes. Lorvan didn’t knock. The doors opened on their own, soundlessly. They had been expecting him.

Inside, the air was even cooler, approaching the temperature that’d require Fabrisse to wear a coat. He gave an involuntary shiver, the kind that started between the shoulder blades and traveled down his spine like a dropped bead of ice. The circular chamber beyond was paneled in moonwood and shaped like a perfect dome, the acoustics designed to magnify even the softest sound. Fabrisse was suddenly very aware of the dry, decidedly old-leather squeaks his boots made against the tile as he crossed the threshold. He should have worn newer boots.

Three figures stood waiting—not the full Council, and notably not Headmaster Murelien Draeth, who, by all accounts, rarely involved himself unless politics or dragons were at stake. Still, these were no minor faculty members. These were Archmagi—powerful, feared, and very hard to impress.

At the center stood Archmagus Terevin Sil, her robe a starless black that seemed to erase light entirely. To her right, Archmagus Lellian Dir looked like he’d come straight from a chaotic desk battle with a thousand scrolls, and to her left, Archmagus Mikhael Rolen, well, was scratching his shoulder.

I was meant to report to the Department of Aetheric Irregularities, wasn’t I? But this doesn’t look like that department . . .

“Why . . . was he the one left in charge?” Fabrisse whispered to Lorvan out of the side of his mouth.

Lorvan didn’t look at him, but his sigh was world-weary enough to count as a response.

The three archmagi turned to face Fabrisse in sync, and the sensation of being observed intensified.

“You’re certain the headmaster won’t be attending?” Dir asked Lorvan.

“He’s preoccupied with the arrival of our esteemed guest,” Lorvan replied. “Apparently, Professor Kaldrin of the Outer Fold has finally accepted the invitation.”

Dir muttered, “Well, that’s inconveniently timed.”

“Worse still,” Sil added in a voice as cold as a shut tomb, “a Celestial Investigator is en route. From the Bureau of Arcane Irregularities.”

Fabrisse had heard about the Bureau. They weren’t aligned with any academy or magical order, and dealt with things like spontaneous realm-folds, miscast summoning echoes, ancient spell-anchors coming loose, and the like. Basically, nothing that would ever concern Fabrisse.

Fabrisse hadn’t seen both Sil and Dir before; they seem to have arrived from the Order itself. It seemed a terrible idea to let Archmagus Rolen alone in charge of welcoming the Celestial Investigator, the Archmagi, and an ancient semi-sapient relic of unknown temperament.

If they’re busy with world-ending magical malfunctions, they should probably stick to those, Fabrisse thought. Why call me here just to talk about other stuff?

Or am I the stuff?

“Of course they’re coming,” Dir sighed. “They never miss a chance to audit someone else’s disaster.”

“They are precise,” said Sil. “Which is what this demands.”

Rolen was now scratching his eyebrow. “Do they know it’s a student?”

Oh, I am the stuff.

Sil’s eyes, pale as misted glass, settled on him fully now.

“We’ll be direct, Mr. Kestovar,” she said. “We believe there have been irregularities surrounding this year’s Vothiculum.”

Fabrisse asked, “Irregularities?”

“We have yet to determine whether it was a breach in containment, a misclassification of the soul-aetheric field, or—” Sil’s voice remained level, “—a misbehavior on the part of the Eidralith itself.” A soul-aetheric field is the distinct aetheric pattern generated by an individual’s soul when it enters magical alignment, especially during invocations or proximity to relics or entities that react to intent, memory, or emotional state.

Fabrisse thought of the glowing box before it had flung itself at his forehead like a cursed projectile. More specifically, he thought about what it had done after that.

How it had gone still. And then, complete darkness.

Like a lantern that had burned out.

Maybe it had reacted to an aetheric pattern, but he wasn’t sure if it came from him. After all, nobody else brought Stupenstones into the sanctum. Could the Stupenstones have been the catalyst? Then, do they actually have a hidden aetheric imprint that Thaumaturges can’t measure?

“Um,” he said, mouth suddenly dry. “Hypothetically—if a sacred artifact were to, say, stop glowing entirely . . . is that, uh. Bad?”

All three Archmagi stared at him.

Lorvan rubbed his temple.

“Did it stop glowing?” Dir asked, a bit too quickly.

Wait . . . they didn’t know?

Lorvan answered first. “Momentarily. But glow fluctuation has precedent. The logs show multiple aetheric dips with previous candidates. None as stark, but within tolerances.”

That was a lie. Probably. But a smart one.

Rolen, still scratching his eyebrow, chimed in, “The stopping of glowing is written down in the aetheric trace logs. Went dark the moment it hit him. You should’ve seen the velocity! I personally noted down the sound it made on impact. It was ‘BAM!’, for lack of better words.”

Dir turned slowly. “And you didn’t bother to mention this, Archmagus Rolen?”

“You should’ve read the logs.”

Terevin Sil’s eyes narrowed by a fraction. “Your diligence is always appreciated, Archmagus Rolen,” she said, each syllable smoothed and sharpened like a polished icicle. “Though next time, kindly preempt the need for archival excavation.” There was no anger in her tone. That would imply wasted energy.

Rolen scratched the side of his head again and muttered, “I flagged the entry in blue. Thought that meant something.”

“Blue,” Sil repeated. “For a containment-class anomaly.”

“It’s a nice color,” Rolen said mildly.

Dir coughed into his sleeve to hide a laugh. Fabrisse didn’t dare breathe.

Sil’s gaze didn’t waver. “Back to the matter at hand. Mr. Kestovar, we are not here to chastise you. But we do require clarity.”

Dir added, “The Eidralith reacted to you in a way it never has in recorded history. It chose contact. Direct, unsanctioned, and—to be frank—violent contact.”

Rolen didn’t have anything to add.

Sil ignored him. “Since then, it has remained dormant. The traces show no further resonance. We cannot determine whether you severed its link . . . or completed it.”

Fabrisse’s mouth opened. Then closed. Then opened again with a small noise that could have been a vowel or a hiccup.

Dir leaned in slightly. “You didn’t do anything, did you? Did you whisper a forbidden name or perform a Soul Feeding?”

“No?” Fabrisse said. He didn’t even know what Soul Feeding was. “I didn’t try to do anything. I just—I was holding the Stupenstone.”

“Silico-Dormant Obscura,” Lorvan corrected.

Sil’s eyes stayed fixed on him. “Did you feel anything, Mr. Kestovar? Any irregularities or anomalous sensations within your—” she paused, choosing her next words with care, “—essence? Or anything that might suggest a tethering of will?”

Fabrisse stared at her.

Dir leaned forward again. “We ask because, as Archmagus Rolen noted in the logs, you were heard muttering something about a ‘sky-thing’ after you regained your consciousness. That’s not terminology we recognize from sanctioned Vothiculum mnemonics.”

Oh no. He hadn’t expected Rolen to be so attentive. Why did I say ‘sky-thing’? Stupid stupid stupid.

Don’t look at Lorvan. Don’t look at Lorvan.

He looked at Lorvan.

Lorvan didn’t look back at him. They had agreed—explicitly—not to tell anyone about the glyph. Not the Archmagi, not the Order, especially not anyone from the Bureau.

As Dir spoke, a tendril of smoke curled from the tip of his index finger, tracing idle loops in the air before fading. Fabrisse widened his eyes. Was that intentional? The smoke didn’t smell like anything in particular, and Dir didn’t seem to notice it, which made it all the more bizarre.

Fabrisse was about to answer, but Lorvan spoke first, “An internalized metaphor, likely. Mr. Kestovar has previously recorded dissociative phrasing during high-aether events. I’ve annotated it.”

You WHAT? Fabrisse blinked. Since when?

“He described similar imagery in a First-Year breath chamber test,” Lorvan added.

Dir squinted.

Sil’s gaze was as piercing as ever as she turned to Fabrisse. “A metaphor, yes? You are certain?”

Fabrisse nodded with desperate conviction. “Yes, ma’am. Just a, uh, general metaphor. I didn’t have something literal hovering around me. Or inside me. Haha. That would be weird.”

Lorvan spoke, “Mr. Kestovar has been under observation since the incident. If there were signs of latent internal tampering or emergence, I would have logged them.”

Okay, he’s just straight up lying now. I went home for a day. Home! Unsupervised!

Nonetheless, he said it with such crisp authority that even Dir seemed satisfied.

For now.

Sil gave a fractional nod. “Very well. But understand, Mr. Kestovar—if anything surfaces, no matter how minor, you are to report it immediately.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Fabrisse swallowed and managed not to glance at Lorvan again. He’d just watched his mentor lie outright, and effortlessly at that, to protect him. He really ought to thank him for that. Say something, at least. But he already knew how it would go. Lorvan would wave it off like brushing chalk dust from a sleeve, mutter something about protocol, and then assign him ten hours of aetheric trace transcription just to reestablish the balance of the universe. Okay, the last part was a tad exaggerated. But he would definitely get assigned to glyphcraft annotation or something.

Dir made a note with a stylus that looked unnecessarily sharp. “We’ll continue containment analysis on the Eidralith itself. But the lack of resonance doesn’t rule out a secondary trigger.”

What does she mean by ‘a secondary trigger’?

Rolen finally chimed in, scratching the side of his head. “Might be worth mentioning—we’ve also locked away the object Mr. Kestovar was holding at the time of impact. Not the Eidralith,” he added quickly, “the stone the student was holding before the incident.”

Ah.

“A very launchy stone, that one,” Rolen nodded to himself. “It’s being kept under a wardlock in Lower Containment, Chamber Seven, if you’re wondering. Bit of a sulky artifact now. It’s not reacting to any test we’ve conducted, but I guess we shouldn’t expect too much from a Silico-Dormant Obscura.”

[SYSTEM NOTE: Key Clue Received – Stupenstone Location Logged: Chamber Seven, Lower Containment]

Hearing this clue just made it worse. Chamber Seven was deep-research clearance. It was off-limits unless you were a lead researcher, a relic-handling apprentice, or one of the handpicked graduate students with a badge enchanted to not explode upon entry. Lorvan didn’t even have access—he’d said so once while very grumpily waiting outside the Archives with two coffees and a grudge.

Fabrisse, on the other hand, was neither a researcher, nor a graduate, nor even someone who remembered to label his lab jars correctly. He didn’t even know where Lower Containment was.

Wait. Maybe Greg can fill out a Research Interest Declaration Form. If anyone would gleefully sign up for paperwork, meetings, and seven levels of containment training just for the chance to be within arm’s reach of a sulky Stupenstone, it was Greg. I just need to tell Greg the stone is essential for the Preservation Annex of the Sanitation Codex and he’ll be in. Probably.

“So, Mr. Kestovar?” A sudden voice jolted him from his thoughts. “Is that a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’?”

Fabrisse blinked. “Yes?”

Sil’s eyebrows lifted the smallest, most disapproving fraction. “You are agreeing to a memory transference ritual supervised by the Bureau?”

Fabrisse started to speak, realized he didn’t know how to answer that truthfully without making things worse, and settled for a noncommittal noise that could pass as assent or protest. Unfortunately, that noise sounded like a dying flute.

“Aha,” Dir said dryly. “Bold choice.”

“I—I mean—”

“He meant to say he declines,” Lorvan said as he stepped forward like a warding sigil. “Under Charter clause 4.3a, memory rites conducted without prior consent and third-party review constitute cognitive breach. I’ll submit the necessary waivers for pre-ritual disclosures.” He met Sil’s gaze evenly. “Unless, of course, the Council prefers this matter to escalate to inter-order arbitration.”

Sil’s eyes narrowed. Dir raised an eyebrow. Rolen looked impressed, possibly.

Fabrisse nodded far too fast. “Yes. That. What he said.”

“Very well,” Sil said. “We’ll reschedule the transferral hearing pending Bureau oversight. In the meantime, you are not to approach the Eidralith, the artifact or attempt any self-initiated recall rituals.”

“Understood,” Fabrisse said.

“We do not assume guilt, Mr. Kestovar,” Sil added. “But the Eidralith is a relic that prefers clarity. If it chose you in error . . . we must consider what that says about its design. You see,” she continued, voice gliding with deliberate precision, “there have long been debates about whether the Eidralith is passive or adaptive. You may have—unknowingly—answered that question for us.”

She tilted her head, not quite smiling. “Which would make you a significant anomaly, Mr. Kestovar. And possibly, a proof of concept.”

That made Fabrisse’s stomach turn. He wasn’t sure which word was worse: ‘anomaly’ or ‘concept.’

Dir sighed. “You’re free to go, Mr. Kestovar. Remember this. Contact your mentor if you sense any irregularities in your psyche.”

As Dir turned away, another lazy ribbon of smoke unfurled from his fingertips, drifting like he was exhaling through his hands. This time, Fabrisse was sure he was doing it on purpose.

Smoke thaumaturgy’s a thing? Fabrisse thought, baffled. What did that even entail? Was there a curriculum? Did you set things on fire gently? Was this what subtle intimidation looked like?

He opened his mouth to ask Lorvan. Closed it again. Maybe now wasn’t the time for elective questions.

“Yes, sir,” Fabrisse said, already halfway turned around.

Lorvan gave the Archmagi a shallow bow—more perfunctory than polite—and placed a firm hand between Fabrisse’s shoulder blades.

They departed. If Fabrisse never saw the interior of that chamber again, it’d be far too soon.