I had spent most of the evening taking in the sights and sounds of a city I had lived in for many years, determined to make them a memory to be held for when the Pestilence leaves it a ruin. It was a somber walk, one where I paused to take in the laughter from taverns or the arguments of couples. I watched children play in the streets and merchants haggle with customers.

More so, the disappointment I felt in King Sena’s reaction plagued my thoughts. While certainly, he had to defend his people against the Mirtallean threat, it was his dismissal of the importance of the Pestilence that bothered me. I hoped the threads of loyalty the tea has woven into the other nobles would garner my warnings enough attention to make them act if he wouldn’t, but I harbored doubts as well. It almost felt like a betrayal of sorts.

I returned to the Scholar’s Delight feeling quite useless, even though I knew many of my other plans could potentially work. I had come to the realization that I had hoped the king would see the merit of my warnings, and having that hope dashed created a feeling of futility in my actions. This did not lead to a pleasant sleep that night. The morning provided a breakfast of oatmeal with chunks of chicken and grapes, which seemed to be the regular meal of the inn.

The next morning I didn’t wear my military robes, instead donning a rather plain, if particularly soft, burgundy robe. The robe had additional angular cloth pads on the shoulders with golden embroidered lines at the edge, an imitation of priestly garments. It hailed from a time when wizard academies and priestly orders competed for prestige, though I doubted anyone would remember. I hoped to re-introduce the style as a method of uniting the two in common cause.

I looked forward to spending today in the city, but every time the door opened, I saw a figure standing there, right outside the inn. A figure I knew waited on me. He was a rotund man wearing an apron splashed with flour, and under his arms, he bore three tomes and six scrolls. I could only grimace at the visage and the implied threat.

A representative of the Baker’s Guild had somehow found where I stayed, and now I was faced with a possible confrontation with a powerful demon of bureaucratic warfare. I ate slowly, as I planned my escape.

I wasn’t certain it would work, given I didn’t know how the man had tracked me to where I stayed, but I had no choice but to commit to it. There were many folktales of powerful wizards, warlocks, witches, and the like that could transform into animals to travel. A witch that took the form of a raven. A wizard transformed into a fish to swim away.

It was ridiculous, in my opinion. Even if one could accomplish such a change, it was fraught with quite a few misconceptions. A bird’s mind couldn’t possibly hold the entirety of a wizard's. Birds were, by and large, very stupid animals. I couldn’t imagine the nightmare it would be to transform into one and realize that one’s mind was now limited to hunting for worms. Regardless, it formed the basis of my plan.

So it was, that when I stepped from the busy tables of the Scholar’s Delight Inn and into the crowded streets of Sena City, I cast an illusion spell, two in fact. One cloaked me in invisibility, while the other provided the image of me transforming into a bird and flying away.

I was quite satisfied in the shocked faces of others in the crowd, and even more satisfied with the look of consternation that crossed the representative’s face as he squinted at the slowly disappearing bird. With a sigh of relief, I managed to make it three streets over without bumping into anyone and there, I dropped the invisibility in favor of an illusion that made me appear as a common scribe and took the shortest route to the Arcanum of Elementalus.

The stop there was quick, I’d dropped the illusion to meet with Dean Scot to organize a meeting of all the Masters that evening, and made my way to a busy market to seek out niceties that I missed. After lunch at a tavern, the orphanage was my next destination.

The orphanage was as I had left it, but the nun who opened the door didn’t look pleased with my appearance.

“Greetings, Wizard Fargus,” The nun said with a bow before turning to let me in. I didn’t recognize her, but that had been a common occurrence throughout the last few decades as I paid less and less attention to the women overseeing the children.

When I followed, I noticed that even the children didn’t seem to be as excited as they normally were when I visited. The two-story building, which was normally filled with the active sounds of playing children or lessons was instead quite subdued. It was their lunch time, so I joined them for a meal of thin soup and old bread served on wooden dishes.

I considering filing a grievance with the Baker’s Guild on their provisions, but that would need to wait. The nuns seemed to pay neither me nor the children any attention as they whispered to each other in the corner.

The child sitting next to me was a girl of maybe ten years of age, with long brown hair tied back into a single braid. I leaned over and whispered to her, “Why is everyone so quiet?”

Given that no one else was talking but the whispering nuns, the eating seemed to stop and the eyes of all the children fell upon me. The girl looked about, surprised, then at me. Then her eyes darted back to the nuns nervously.

Another boy, thin with dark hair and of about twelve winters, loudly answered from across the table, “The army man came by. Said everyone over fourteen had to join the war.”

Even the nuns stopped whispering at that, but the child seemed to take pride in having been the one to speak such poor news. Other children fidgeted about nervously in their seats or moved their spoons about in the bowls.

“Now, Peter—” one nun began, but I raised my hand towards her to stall the conversation.

Conscription was a common occurrence throughout the kingdom, even when there was no war in effect. Orphanages were also normal places to gather young soldiers, as the children didn’t have parents to hide them and didn’t have a class path in mind. I, myself, had been conscripted from this very orphanage once upon a time.

“I see,” I answered, and went back to eating the cheap soup as I thought the matter over. The children followed my example.

“Wizard Fargus,” the nun I had interrupted approached a few minutes later, the other two not far behind.

“Yes?” I asked, pausing in my meal to look up at the woman.

“We know you have great sway throughout the capital, and wanted to know if there is anything you could do to save these children from this future?” she asked.

I looked at her, seeing real hope and fear in not just her eyes but the other nun’s eyes as well. It was heartwarming to see that they cared about the children, as that wasn’t always the case. Yet, I didn’t have a good answer for them. I didn’t have enough sway to exclude them from conscription, nor the time to sort the matter out.

In all honesty, I had no idea how to go about it, even if I wanted to. I wasn’t certain I did. While becoming a soldier might lead to some deaths, having combat classes may also save their lives when the Pestilence arrives. All I could do is shake my head, “I am sorry. Short of adopting them all, I see no path I can take to help. Surely your order could press the matter?”

The nun shook her head as well and they retreated back to a corner to continue whispering. After the meal, I took the children outside to do my normal enchanted toys and story-telling. While at first, they didn’t seem interested, within an hour their moods had lightened much. By the time late afternoon had arrived, the group of children was almost too tired for dinner. I bid the children and their caretakers goodnight as I departed to travel to the Arcanum.

While the roads and paths to the Arcanum were normally a swift walk for me, I found myself taking longer due to the need to circumvent several Baker’s Guild representatives. It seemed they were insistent to see me, for whatever reason, but I had neither the time nor the interest in seeing to their mountains of records and forms.

When I finally arrived at the building no less than three of them were standing in front. Two women and a very thin man, all in floured smocks. Beside them rested a pushcart with a stack of scrolls resting on top. I had returned to my normal illusion, that of an older man, when I turned the last corner to get to the Arcanum, and they spotted me straight away.

“Wizard Nemon Fargus!” one of the women called, crossing her arms as if she was a mother about to scold a child.

I smiled and waved as I approached, “There you are! I’ve been looking for you. Right on time. Right on time.”

The remark was enough to halt whatever prepared speech the woman had, but not the man. His nasal voice spoke with an expectation of listening that I just didn’t have, “Wizard Fargus, we only have seventy-six documents for your review. We could be done by—”

“Excellent! Now follow me, there is much to do,” I cut him off as I entered through the Arcanum and headed towards the lecture hall. The three Bakers all rushed to begin pushing their cart behind me.

The Arcanum of Elementalus consisted of four buildings and two towers. The foremost building housed most of the administrators, and I walked through that building to get to the courtyard behind it. The courtyard was in the center of all four buildings, with a lecture hall to either side and a dormitory opposite the administrative building. I could see the Masters making their way to the lecture hall to my left, and followed behind them.

Calling the entire building a lecture hall wasn’t entirely accurate. It consisted of one large lecture hall and six small, with the smaller ones broken up into three on each floor. The Masters, those who taught the students of the academy, wouldn’t themselves be found learning in anything less than the larger one.

As I entered the hall, I found that it was almost entirely full, nearly thirty rows of a hundred seats all occupied with mages of different calibers and specialties. Even a few of the students had managed to make their way inside, no doubt the favored upcoming mage of their particular master.

“For those of you joining us, Wizard Fargus has called this meeting to give a lesson this evening. Wizard Fargus is one of the founding members of the Arcanum, and has recently achieved the fifth tier. With over a hundred years of teaching here, many of your own spells and courses were designed by him.” Dean Scot spoke from the podium at the center of the hall, his voice echoing out over the crowd.

I walked down the broad stairs between the seats and made my way to stand by his side.

“Wizard Fargus, are you ready to begin?” he asked in a low tone. The man’s once salt and pepper-colored hair had taken a turn for mostly salt, though his face was just as youthful as when we last met.

I answered him, though I spoke loudly enough for the enchantments in the podium to catch my words and carry them across the audience, “Seal the doors and ward the room, and I shall.”

While this measure startled some, stealing secrets was one of the harmless hobbies practiced amongst the various academies, and the staff responded quickly enough to my demand. When the mages were finally settled in their seats, and the Bakers’ Guild representatives standing awkwardly at the rear of the lecture hall, I reached into my bag of holding and placed items on the podium.

On my right side, I stacked tomes. On the left side, I stacked scrolls. Once I had done so, I magically reinforced the enchantment to carry my words and spoke as clearly as I could, “Here, I have the test,” I pointed a finger on the tomes, “Those mages who learn these spells in their entirety will be granted the opportunity to read these.” I moved my finger towards the scrolls on the right, “These are the written requirements for several fifth-tier classes.”

I didn’t include all the classes I knew, of course. Only the most basic ones. But considering how closely that information was guarded and the price one had to pay to get it, what I was offering was worth a mountain of gold.

The reaction among the audience, the sheer eerie silence that pervaded a room filled with hundreds of people reflected that. I saw greed and hunger on the lips of nearly everyone in the room. Only the students looked about in confusion.

“Now that I have your full attention. Let’s talk about why. Because surely that thought has crossed your mind,” I began.