“Well then.” Mistress Kalina nodded and indicated for Tercis to take a seat. “This is a bit unconventional, but you and I have something to talk about.”

“Oh?” Tercius said, confused.

Mistress Kalina looked at him, her green eyes searching for something. “You seem confused now, but earlier… I must say that I got the impression… well… it was almost as if you were expecting me,” The woman smiled, amused.

Tercius froze. “W-what? How could I have expected—”

"I'm just surprised by how easily you came with me… One moment you were running away—" The woman chuckled. "—not that I can blame you, my behavior was… and then your reaction…" The woman went into a full-blown laugh. It took her a while to calm down. "—but when I showed you my medallion you simply put everything behind and followed after me without a word…"

Damn, Tercius swallowed, as he realized that he messed up from the start. But I didn't know it was a start… “Well, you are a Head Archivist. If I can’t trust you…”

"Oh no, it wasn't that…" the woman shook her head and the curly hair went everywhere, like rays of the sun. "I saw… relief on your face. I know that you are an intelligent young man. I have seen this with my own two eyes. So, care to explain?"

“Umm…”

"Considering the circumstances we met in, the first time, let me say this. Don't lie. I use a similar spell as those Magistrates do and your heart will give you away. Relax and answer,"

Tercius stopped for a moment to take a deep breath, as his eyes searched the distance for a way forward. Lying wasn’t an option and if he was honest, he was relieved for that. That left tales filled with omissions, vague statements, questions, maybe he could say that he wouldn’t talk about it, but…

Of course, there was the truth.

“I was expecting someone," Tercius said, as he looked at the woman's green eyes.

She smiled. “How positively vague… and who did you, and why—”

“Is this an interrogation?” Tercius frowned, as he regained his footing. It wouldn't be wise to allow her to keep the advantage of the attacker. It was clear that he couldn’t do the ignorant act very well. Acting was still level one, but it could be of use both for observation and otherwise, so he invoked the skill to work. "Am I in some kind of trouble?"

The woman tilted her head a bit to the left, in the same moment he turned on the skill and studied him with a deep intention for a while.

"No, on both accounts. I came here to talk to you," Mistress Kalina took a deep breath. "About Energy. I take it that you know what I'm talking about?"

Tercius nodded calmly. “I do.”

“What do you know about it?”

With a shrug, painfully aware of Amber’s position, Tercius said, “Not much. Maybe you, Mistress, could share something about it?”

A wry smile appeared on her face. “I could… but I’m more interested in what you know…”

“And I am more interested in what you know, Mistress…” Tercius smiled back. “It seems we are at an impasse…”

“This isn’t how this conversation was supposed to go…” the woman muttered to herself in a low voice, but Tercius read her lips. Focusing back on him she said, “Manipulating Energy is… dangerous, in more ways than one, especially when the skill Energy Manipulation is unavailable. Can you tell me how you began using it?”

Dangerous? Tercius narrowed his eyes, as he thought about how to spin this. The woman wasn’t hostile, at least for now, so he might as well get something out of her. “I assume that you ask because you also can manipulate it, Mistress?”

“I can, yes,” the woman said, with some hesitation.

“And here you are, Mistress, despite these dangers you vaguely mention and here I am. Clearly, we both did something right to get to here in one piece.”

The woman blinked her eyes at him, confused. “That is not an answer to my question, Neophyte,”

"Well, I don't know what to say, Mistress. I had Energy, I struggled with it for a long while, and finally, I got the skill to manipulate it,"

“Just like that?”

Tercius nodded. “I admit that it’s heavily simplified, but nonetheless very much true,”

“And where is your Energy coming from?”

Tercius hesitated for a while and then he frowned, seemingly confused.

Acting (1) is now Acting (2).

Tilting his head forward, to suppress a rising smile, he said, “What do you mean where does it come from, Mistress? Didn’t you say that you can also manipulate Energy? You must know where it's coming from, don’t you?”

“I do, but—”

“Then why do you ask, Mistress?”

The woman didn’t answer anything, she only released a deep breath through her nose. Once more Tercius had to tighten his face, to stop a smile from forming. Once upon a time, his old parents had released similar breaths and her expression had reminded him of them.

“You said you wanted to talk, Mistress. So far I only heard questions from you,” Tercius stated.

“And your answers were questions and vague replies, Neophyte. Very… shrewd of you,”

"I'm simply worried, Mistress,"

Mistress Kalina frowned. Her spell, no doubt, verified Tercius' claim. “Worried?”

“Yes. You mentioned where and under what circumstances we met. Surely you can see my worry…”

Tercius saw as her eyes drifted to the side, and then returned to him. She remembered. “You’re worried that someone might be using ming magic on you?” she stated. “That I might be using mind magic on you right now to get you to talk?”

“You said it, Mistress.” Tercius nodded.

“Then I’m not a very successful mind mage, am I? So far we only spun in circles. Besides,” she said. “Mind magic upon students is strictly forbidden,”

"By law, it is," Tercius nodded. "Yet where was the law before? Did it stop that woman?"

The orange-haired Mistress went silent as her eyes fell to the carpet.

Slipping briefly into Meditation, he verified that he was free of any kind of mind tampering. There was nothing there and Tercius took the moment to think about strategies once he saw that Mistress Kalina was still thinking. Just from the brief conversation, he was reasonably convinced that the Mistress was not hostile to him. In fact, she seemed reasonable and that made him both relaxed and anxious, for various reasons.

"You do have a way of dealing with mind magic, don't you Neophyte?"

“I do, Mistress. At least I can deal with the kind that woman used. Are there any other kinds of mind magic?”

She reluctantly nodded. “A few… but I’m not a dabbler in even the common sort and besides my word of that, I can’t give you any other proof.”

Tercius noticed that the topic wasn’t a pleasant one for Mistress Kalina, at least it appeared so. Tercius said, “For some that would be proof enough,”

“And for you Neophyte?”

“Even when I feel like it’s true, I prefer to make myself doubt it at least for a while. But… let’s say that I do trust you… provisionally. What is your goal, Mistress, by coming to me this way?”

“Provisional trust. Ha!” the woman barked a laugh. “You know, I believe that this is the first time in… a long while that a Neophyte talked to me this way,”

Tercius smiled wryly, as he took Amber into his hands and deposited her onto his lap. Her claws were getting antsy on his shoulder and he didn’t want to stain his new clothes with blood. He stayed quiet, slowly scratching Amber all over her belly. She started purring and he smiled at her stretching efforts.

“My goal…” the woman considered the words with a small smile. "My goal … is to warn you. Don't use Energy externally inside the Pyramid's space."

"Externally?" Tercius said, confused. "I shouldn't let it leave my body?"

"Don't ever let it leave your Well. If a single speck of Energy is outside of it, it will be noticed by other eyes and ears, at least here,"

Tercius' eyes narrowed in the same moment as the eyes of the woman who sat across from him. Unspoken words were exchanged in mere instants of a moment. He knew it, and by the look in her eyes, she knew it too. Mistress Kalina was both warning him that she knew his secret and giving him a hint about proper Energy usage. Why she did this… the reasons could be simple, complex, and a mix of all in between. His nerves had been getting the better of him, yet now, with the warning and a hint at his side, he suddenly felt lighter than air.

"Thank you, Mistress,"

"Don't thank me," the woman said. "Not for that. Tell me, what do you know about Mentors and Disciples?"

The off-topic change threw him off his game for a few moments and he finally shrugged. "Close to nothing, Mistress,"

"It is a long tradition that reaches back millennia. It's something very close to the Empire's concept of adoption."

"A tradition?" Tercius wasn't sure if he should ask, but he was curious and the woman seemed accommodating enough. "Traditions usually have roots Mistress…"

"So does this one," the woman said and seemed to mull something over. "Well, you will learn one day anyways. Anyone with a Well has… difficulties with siring offsprings… especially those like you and me… so…"

"I’m now… barren? Non-fertile?" Tercius frowned. He had almost said sterile in his old language.

"The proper word is sterile," The woman answered, again with visible reluctance. "And no… not exactly. Our chance is lowered… especially for us active Energy users… well maybe not for you, at least not yet. But that's not it,"

"You can tell me, Mistress," Tercius urged, curious.

"Yes… well, we can have offsprings. It's simply that the mortality rate is very high,” the woman shrugged. “Very, very high. For female mages, even the rare times that we do get pregnant, the late stage of gestation proves terminal in over ninety percent of cases and that number only goes up for those like me. Male mages have a higher success here if they practice polygamy— a practice where someone has multiple sexual partners— but again most pregnancies are terminal even with non-magi. The solution for the root of the problem was never found and most simply prefer to … avoid the problem altogether and this is especially true for us Energy users when another reason is accounted for,"

"I see…"

"Anyways, we drifted from the original topic. A Disciple, as far as our law is concerned, becomes a child of the Mentor and that allows the Mentor to pay Repository Points on behalf of the Disciple, allowing the Mentor more freedom in teaching advanced topics. Topics such as Energy. Of course, this spending has a limit,"

Is this going where I think that it's going? Tercius thought.

"I am willing to take you in, if you are agreeable, to be my Disciple,"

There it is… Tercius thought. She said it!

"Mistress… I… this… this is a tempting offer," Tercius swallowed. "But… you just said that I would be your child? I don't even know you…"

"You don’t have to accept… just… think about it… and you can take your time. Once you finish the first year, you can come to live with me for two months of pause… Just don't use Energy externally in the meantime," Mistress Kalina said. "Oh and one more thing. It's custom for when a Mentor proposes adoption to a potential Disciple to do it properly, so just bear with me…"

Suddenly, she stood up and the room exploded. Tercius flinched and raised his hands to protect his face. For a moment he thought that he would end up cooked by the heatwave he saw, but then he realized what it actually was. Mana. He was submerged in foreign mana. It was cold, freezing and he saw it even without a skill in all of its monstrous magnificence. Tercius had trouble breathing properly, frozen under the watery deluge of pure mana. A part of his brain noted that he had never seen mana of such thickness and viscosity that it threatened to suffocate him. Then, in the same rapid manner that the mana exploded with, suddenly it imploded — a veritable storm of clouds and lightning returning to circle around the body of the mana monster that stood before him.

Amber, suddenly free from the suppression, flung the wet spot she made on Tercius's legs towards the woman. The yellowish liquid merely hit the swirling mana and spiraled around only to fall down onto the carpet. The brave little creature stood up and started hissing towards the woman, but Tercius held her down and whispered calming words.

The middle-aged woman stared at him with supernaturally blazing eyes, as her black dress and wild orange hair whipped about under the influence of the thick mana.

“I, Kalina Zorya, Mistress of Alchemy and Wards, Guardian and Enforcer of the Laws of Magi, Curator and Head Archivist of The Repository of Knowledge of The Order of Magi, hereby invoke the honored Rite of Adoption. I ask of you, Tercius, to be my Disciple. I pledge knowledge and guidance for your mind and body, to support and guide you along the path of your magical craft to the utmost of my ability.” The words of Magik vibrated in the air, each ethereal and seemingly powerful enough to ground his bones to fine dust. His teeth chattered as moments went by while the water thick mana slid back into the body of the Mistress. Despite his shivering body, Tercius watched in awe at the occurrence. How much mana was that… Tercius whistled internally as he rubbed his burning eyes from a single peek with Mana Sight. He would have to do something about this skill…

"I had wet myself on the spot when my Mentor did that to me…" the Mistress smiled in reminiscence. "You seem to have pulled through without such an incident… thought I can't say the same for your little creature…"

Breathing heavily, his back drenched from sweat, Tercius only looked dumbly at the green eyes of the Mistress, unable to say a word.

"That was the first part of The Rite of Tfenn. 'Tfenn' means 'adoption'. By tradition, a Mentor must show her power when proposing, both to reassure and humble a potential Disciple. I could have gone even further during my 'show', but I had to keep the perimeter closed so that no one outside feels or hears anything…" Mistress Kalina said and went on to translate the contents of what she had said in Magik.

Tercius had somewhat understood what she had said in Magik, but not everything. “Alchemist, Warder—”

“Don’t worry about that. I dabble in other fields, as well, it’s just that these are my primary ones,” the woman said. “If you are interested in a particular field I don’t know already, I don’t mind sparing a decade or two to learn the basics of it…”

"A decade… or two…" Tercius murmured with a blank expression, startled at the number she just mentioned so casually — as if she was talking about untas in a fish market. Mistress Helfira's behavior towards this woman came to him and he looked up, as he grasped an inkling of a realization. Is she… “Mistress…”

Mistress Kalina sniffed. “It’s rude to even think about such a question, Neophyte… but yes… I’m old. Not the oldest, mind you, but certainly old by your standards. We active Energy users have ways to stave off the ravages that time leaves upon our bodies— indefinitely if our craft is good enough,”