Despite Tercius’s desire to meet Mistress Kalina as soon as possible, his designated middlewoman had evaporated into thin air and placed his plan on hold.

He had inquired with the secretary that ran the teacher's offices, and the man told Tercius that Mistress Helfira was ‘on a personal leave of absence’ and rushed him off to Master Lazarus for practical lessons.

Three days went by without Mistress Helfira and some whispered that she had fallen ill— a major possibility given her advanced age. Others said that she hitched a ride on the latest expedition to some hellish corner of the planes that were tied to the Pyramid’s space. Apparently, she was known to do that.

When he had asked Mistress Porfira about her mother, the teacher only shrugged her shoulders nonchalantly and told him that he should get used to it. ‘Mother always vanishes, especially when you need her the most,’ were her exact words.

All teachers with whom he had a good enough relationship to ask, only repeated the phrase ‘If the elder had wanted to share whatever happened to her, then she would have’. Master Lazarus told him privately that Mistress Helfira took exception to people who shared information about her, no matter how minute.

Stonewalled and without other options, Tercius' did the only sensible thing left to do. Wait. And while he waited he hoped that Mistress Helfira was well, and if she had escaped without telling anyone, then so what? He could understand her completely, even if her absence proved an obstacle in his path.

A week later some news about the elder trickled down the line to Tercius.

Apparently, Sonia had overheard someone tell Master Lazarus that Mistress Helfira was not the only suddenly missing mage. Mages from almost every guild on the Pyramid were simply gone on a sudden leave of absence. Sonia told Penelope, and Penelope said to Euria, Euria to her brother, and finally, a day after Sonia overheard that, Tercius accidentally overheard Eunim tell the story to J'ro.

Tercius guessed that the news had been diluted and so went straight to the sources. He found his sources in one of the many reading rooms designated for first years, on the first floor of the dorms.

As soon as he asked, he knew instantly that he shouldn’t have done it. It was just one of those things.

“What happened to ‘You shouldn’t do that Penelope’?” Penelope teased him with a sweet smile of turned tables. “I thought you never gossip?”

Tercius’s cheeks went up in flames, as his tongue tied itself into a Gordian knot. He had said that, and a lot more. And despite that, now he was asking… “I…”

“I keep telling you, he is as interested as the rest of us,” Euria supplied with narrowed eyes.

Sonia nodded sagely. “He is just pretending to be superior to us. I’ve read about it,”

Tercius coughed into his closed fist, regaining some of his lost momentum. “I was just wondering if you know anything new about Mistress Helfira, that’s all. It’s isn’t gossip… If you won’t tell me—”

“Ah ah,” Penelope uttered, her index finger waving left and right in denial. “Not so fast,”

Euria turned her mischievous eyes to Penelope. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

“That he should pay a price?” Penelope’s eyes turned the same way, and Sonia’s lit up.

Tercius swallowed. He had told them that all gossip has a price and that they should be careful of what they spread around. Sometime down the line, it might come to bite them when they least expect it. Suddenly amused and aware that a time to set an example had come, he thought, I suppose that my price has come. “What do you want?”

The three eleven-year-old girls huddled together, conspiring in whispered tones with an occasional check to see where he was. Their positions and proximity gave them immunity from his lip-reading, and when they finally turned to him with wide smiles, a chill had gone down his spine.

“We want you to say the line ‘I’m the biggest gossip of the Pyramid’ three times,” Penelope began.

“Loudly, mind you,” Euria added a cover to that loophole, just when his mouth opened.

"In the cafeteria, during dinner," Sonia finished with a raised head and crossed arms as if daring him to do it.

His eyes traveled around the reading room, finding all heads turned his way. Their talk hadn’t been loud, but every student present had found it interesting enough to stop whatever they did and turn their way.

Eyes narrowing, Tercius said firmly, “No deal,” Nose scrunching and eyebrows meeting, he contemplated for a moment. Out of all the parts, only the cafeteria part was the true bother. Students by the dozens and hundreds were eating their dinner there. Sometimes even the occasional teacher. The cooks and servers… Mistress Dea… His cheeks heated just by thinking about it.

Tercius glanced around the room, counting heads. Not exactly satisfied with the number, but with the spirit of a good deal for all in mind, he said, “But we can come to an agreement… if you change the location to here, instead of the cafeteria,”

The three girls exchanged brief looks.

“I’m not sure you understand—” Euria said.

“Deal!” Penelope declared.

Tercius nodded. One was all he needed. “Deal it is,”

As Euria and Sonia questioned the validity of the deal, Tercius inhaled.

“I’m the biggest gossip of the Pyramid!” his mutating voice thundered in the reading room, bouncing off the walls and startling the girls that stood before him.

As soon as his lungs pulled in more air, he yelled again with the intent to finish as soon as possible. “I’m the biggest gossip of the Pyramid!”

“I’m the biggest gossip of the Pyramid!” Tercius gave everything he had into a final shout.

Red-faced, Tercius turned to Penelope and the girls. Peculiar expressions abounded, and he noticed that Sonia had even taken a step back. If there was anyone in the room who wasn't looking at him previously, now he had made the necessary correction for it to be so.

“I fulfilled my part,” he said. “Now spill.”

The story they shared matched the one Eunim told to J’ro in everything but he did learn something new. Apparently, all the people that went missing were magi with combat experience. Mistress Helfira, while not a combat mage by training, could hold her own against the best ones, it was said.

Another week of study and development went by, and Tercius gave up on his plan despite himself. Even if Mistress Helfira returned now, only a little over a month was left from the first year at the Academy. He could endure that and he knew just how to speed up the time.

Like never before, Tercius threw himself into practice of his skills and the development of his Well.

Seven hours of sleep every day, five hours of classes five days of the week, and around forty minutes of meal time for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The remaining hours were left for practice only. He planned his day to the minute and stuck to his schedule.

***

Back hunched forward and head bowed straight down, Tercius sat alone on a wooden bench in the dorm park, cloaked in his winter coat. Crunches on the fresh snow alerted him of the passersby, but his head stayed bowed. Tercius rested his elbows on his knees, his hands joined to his front, and released a sigh, and watched his breath spread in a cloud of white.

Pulling his coat closer to cover his neck, Tercius breathed in the chilly air. This cycle, the winter had arrived early and the world was overwhelmed with a thick white cover. While the Pyramid was isolated from the outside weather patterns, the degree was not complete. Still, a little bit of snow was an enjoyable affair for the students, judging by the shrieks of laughter he heard in the distance.

Mana Sight [33] flared to life and the surroundings faded to darkness as vague outlines of mana appeared somewhere below him, so brief that Tercius thought he must have imagined them. Mana was coursing through the stone of the Pyramid, and he was pretty sure that Energy was present there too.

Enchantments that obscured the fuel were slowly losing against his ever-increasing Mana Sight [33] and the recently barrier-bound Precision [39]. Looking at the Pyramid with his mana eyes was like seeing black curtains move in the darkest night, one moment blending in perfectly with the background and then next the wind would move them just a bit, and he would see that something was lurking there when just a few months ago his Mana Sight seemed stumped by the emptiness of the clearly enchanted stone. His eyes swept around, tracking that curtain and the ripples he saw from time to time.

Mana Sight [33] is now Mana Sight [34]

That’s more like it, he thought with a smile.

When Tercius had restricted his access to Energy, almost a year ago, the major impact of that decision landed on his leveling speed of skills, but his ever-increasing Well was well on its way to soften it.

By his latest measure, a few days back, he had thirty-two pulses of mana in him at any time. His approximate estimate placed him on par with his five and a half decades old grandmother in mana quantity, and each day his Well was expanded a bit more, and that was excluding the expansion that happened as he grew naturally. Within a few months, he would match Ciron, within a year Lux, and then somewhere down the line Mistress Helfira and eventually Mistress Kalina.

“Evening Tercius,” a familiar voice called for him. Tercius startled. Slowly, he closed his eyes to the darkness and opened them to the surroundings.

"Even—ing…" Tercius choked off the word, his ears telling one story, while the eyes told another. A woman in a gray mage robe stood two meters to his front, looking at him with familiar eyes and speaking using a familiar voice, but… the face that should have been there, wasn't. The broad strokes were there, but… Tercius blinked rapidly in confusion and used Meditation and Mana Sight in quick succession to see if someone was messing with his senses. As far as he could tell, no one was.

The twisting and overlapping folds of the robe hid the woman's amulet, like usual. The scowl that was also a smile was present, but with far fewer aged lines around. The skin around the eyes and the forehead had far fewer cuts that age made than what he remembered. The hair shape and length were the same as before, but the color was off. It used to be snow white, but now there was darkness mixed there.

“Mistress?” Tercius said, hesitant despite what his brain was telling him.

“Close your mouth before something stupid falls out, Tercius,” the woman said harshly, but the smile on her face was one of satisfaction.

"What happened to you, Mistress? To your face? You look… so … younger—" Tercius gaped.

No longer was the old lady bent in the back or white of hair. I can’t even call her an old lady anymore. She seems like grandmother's age! Oh. She… is she… has she… become an energy user? But…

"Oh, you mean this?" Mistress Helfira said, touching her newly refreshed face with surprising gentleness. "Just a few well-spent Repository Points,"

“Repository points?” Tercius murmured. What does that mean?

“Let’s just say that I went on a hunt and caught a big fish,” Mistress Helfira said with a smile that showed that the old lady was no shrinking violet. “So what do you think? I figure at least two decades have fallen off of me…”

“More like three...” Tercius still couldn't believe his eyes! If he could get the same thing for Rona and Ciron… “Mistress… how expensive was your… youthification?”

"I'm broke as a as non-mage, Tercius," Mistress Helfira lamented with half a heart. "Hundreds of thousands of points, collected over decades of work, exploration—" the woman huffed. "Even teaching. All gone in an instant. Well, not an instant, it took me a few days, but you understand what I'm saying,"

“Hundreds of thousands!” Tercius choked on air.

“Anyway, I heard you came looking for me from multiple sources. I’m sorry for disappearing so suddenly and without a word, but both had been requirements for the task that is now behind me,” the younger Mistress Helfira said. “And as you can see—” she indicated to her face. “It had paid off,”

“It’s completely alright, Mistress, no need for an apology,” Tercius said. He still couldn’t quite come to terms with what his eyes saw…

Practice completely forgotten, he followed this new 'spring-in-her-step' version of Mistress Helfira to her office, all the while asking her about the procedure of de-aging.

“There’s little I can share, I’m afraid,” Mistress Helfira shrugged as she waved a hand. The curtains pulled back, and light flooded into her office. “I entered a small chamber and fell asleep as if filled up with some kind of liquid. I do dazedly remember mana sweeping over me… probably spells of some kind. Then I woke up yesterday looking like this,”

“Do mages use this chamber often?” he asked.

The elder snorted as she eased into her chair with a lot more grace than what he remembered. "Well no. As I said, it's a bit on the pricey side… I don't believe I'll manage to collect enough Repository points for a second time around… Well if I were to lead an expedition… hmm…"

While the elder lapsed into contemplation of her own capabilities and possibilities, Tercius did likewise. There was only a week of classes left and then the final exams of the year would begin. All would be concluded just as the last month of the year began. Following that, he presumed that Mistress Kalina would contact him somehow.

***

The revitalization of Mistress Helfira brought about a new wave of gossip on the Academy grounds, one that even he couldn't escape from. Like little birds everyone tweeted, expressing disbelief, wonder, and questions with each breath— during breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Students suddenly wanted to be like Mistress Helfira, and follow in her footsteps as an on-the-field mage. Teachers spoke more often of her, some admiring her dedication, others less so. Some were vocally jealous, mostly older Masters and Mistresses, while others only gave whispers of what they would have done with so many points.

Tercius ignored it all to the best of his ability. He returned to his schedule of practice, focusing on Mana Sight [34], but never neglecting his Mana Manipulation [25] and Mana Metamorphosis [11].

The last day of classes came and Mistress Helfira gave a closing speech in the large amphitheater, giving a brief summary of the things they learned, then a brief summary of the things they will learn next year.

“Some of you had Mana Manipulation before you came to our Academy. Some of you gained it here,” Mistress Helfira said, her eyes sweeping the students.

Tercius glanced to his left. Eunim, Euria, and J'ro sat there. Only the downcast J'ro still lacked Mana Manipulation. To his right sat Penelope, Lomera, and Sonia, and all three had the skill.

“Some of you had Mana Metamorphosis before you came to the Academy. Some of you gained it here,” Mistress Helfira said.

In their small group, so far only Sonia, Euria and he had Mana Metamorphosis.

“Students.” Mistress Helfira intoned the word and the subjects of the call shifted in their seats, as a wave washed over them, one so palpable it could have been a spell if only it had been powered by mana. “To those of you struggling with one or both. Persevere and give it your best. If you fall, stand back up and try again. It took me four cycles to gain Mana Metamorphosis. Four cycles! If I had given up at any moment, during all those cycles then today I wouldn't have been the one standing here and giving this speech. Persevere and try again, especially when you fail and be sure to remember this—" Mistress Helfira said, clearly preparing them for a powerful finish of her speech.

A silence rocked the amphitheater, as everyone neared the edge of their seat. Tercius heard his own heart pumping.

"Exams start next week. Nine sharp, just after breakfast. Be there."