"If you have any other questions, feel free to ask them now," Perdinar said while sipping on his tea.

Tentatively, at first, Tercius took the invitation and so started an hours-long session of questions and answers.

There were many things he asked, but one among those had special meaning for Tercius.

When and how did Perdinar find out about Tercius?

The near-Methuselah-old mage had been in Nurium for a few years before he found out about him. From the man’s explanation, Tercius figured that Perdinar had found him out the moment that he had first entered the Skill World and accidentally harvested Energy for the first time.

Since then, the elder mage admitted freely, he had kept a distant eye on him.

“When you came to visit me of your own volition that first time,” Perdinar said. “I was surprised. Pleasantly, I have to add,”

“I was just looking for books to read,” Tercius said calmly, but inwardly he was sweating a bit.

There was great discomfort in the feeling of being spied on and, apparently, the feeling did not come with a statute of limitation imposed on it. For such a thing to be acknowledged by Perdinar in this way was… better than being left guessing forever, Tercius decided. Especially since he had had no way of discovering the spying itself… Even now, with his sight skills at a higher level than then, he was impotent in detection, let alone counter-action. But soon, Tercius told himself, soon he would be capable of both.

Perdinar chuckled. “I know. And… I also know that something like this can’t be a pleasant thing to hear for someone so alike to the old me. You see… My Mentor had spent cycles stalking me day and night from the shadows, before the first time she came into contact with me to offer me Mentorship,”

“That sounds… unpleasant,” Tercius’s eyes darted to the sides as his back crawled with a thousand tiny insect feet. Would Mistress Kalina do something similar to him? Was she doing it now? Right here, probably not, but back at home…

Perdinar shrugged. “Oh, yes. At the time, it indeed was. Now… It's long past me. But because of her actions, I have learned to detect those obfuscated. Then I learned to obfuscate myself. Since then I never stopped improving in those areas, let me tell you,”

With serious eyes, Tercius nodded. Both of those would have to be on the top of his “to learn” list, as well. As soon as an opportunity presented itself, he would grab it.

Words continued to flow and, as time went by, Tercius relaxed more and more and he was not the only one. Amber had left her perch on his shoulder and jumped onto the table, edging slowly to Perdinar.

“Beautiful creatures, river lions,” Perdinar said, extending a hand to Amber who first smelled the long pale fingers and only then allowed herself to be petted. Within a minute she was arching her back and then rolling over as Perdinar scratched her scales with patience.

“She seems to like you too,” Tercius said.

Perdinar smiled slightly at the purring Amber. Eyes closed with satisfaction, she scratched the table with her tiny claws.

"You've been giving her that Energy of yours," Perdinar looked directly into Tercius's eyes. "Be careful of that. A Well Formation is quite a terrible thing to go through without proper preparations,"

Perdinar’s glacial eyes pierced Tercius like a jagged icicle, touching the part of Tercius inflamed by self-blame.

“Why…” Tercius said, grabbing the table with his hands. “Why… didn’t you stop me from doing this to them? From doing it to her?”

Perdinar tilted his head.

“I was giving them Energy the whole cycle, Perdinar,” Tercius said, his grip tightening. “You knew that, didn’t you?”

“I did,” Perdinar nodded slowly.

“I know that we weren’t speaking at that time, but… You could have sent word at any time and I would have stopped—” Tercius said. “—And now Rona is…”

“Forming a Well without proper preparations, yes,” without any change in expression, Perdinar said.

Slowly, Tercius let go of the table and stood up from his chair. His steps on the stone floor were brisk, an attempt to relieve a bit of pressure that kept rising inside of him. One full circle failed, but a second one found some success. Finally, running a hand over the back of his short-haired head, Tercius looked at Perdinar.

“Why? Why didn’t you do this back then? Why did you let me do it the first time?”

“Why indeed…” Perdinar sighed. “I can give you a dozen different reasons, Tercius. Most of those are for purely selfish reasons. I wanted to see where this Energy of yours takes your family members. I wanted to see how it interacts with other organisms. From what I saw in your case, the effects were only beneficial. I wanted to see if you would find out the negatives of that Energy, if not in yours, then in someone else's body.”

With a fast breath, Tercius looked at Perdinar, and in those calm pools, he could only see his own face. Along the way, he had the same ideas.

“You provided all of that without any input from me whatsoever. Honestly, there was even a part of me that didn’t want to see my flimsy effort to get you to the Pyramid compromised. Yet, ultimately, it was none of these reasons that stopped me,” Perdinar said. “It was you.”

“Me?” Tercius said incredulously.

"The way you approached the entire thing. You gave them a choice, Tercius. And despite the warnings of your lacking knowledge, your grandfather insisted on taking the Energy and then, when it proved solely beneficial for the old body and stalled-out skills, your grandmother urged it for herself as well. Remind me, how many months did you warn your willing father and mother away from Energy, fearing the worst for your grandparents was around the corner? Tercius, each of them chose of their own volition to take your Energy and you chose to give it. Whatever the results came from these choices, good or bad, it was not for me to soften or eliminate them."

“Perdinar… the pain… that kind of pain is… If it could have been prevented…”

Perdinar shook his head. "Postponed… maybe, but prevented, no. Your grandmother has some magical talent buried within her, I can tell you that much. Not surprising, now that I think of her origins. She had been quite close to Well Formation, yet before you giving her Energy, her age had stalled her growth almost completely. After you gave her Energy, I was surprised when your grandmother's mana channels did not only grow but thrive. They had come forth with a vigor reserved for youth.

"But… Even if you had given her the Energy that single time, I now think that it would have been enough to tide her over. By the time I realized that, what was done was done. There was no reversing it, save complete mana channel removal. And that, Tercius, is an even worse option,"

Tercius inhaled. “You could have told me what was coming and I would have done… something about it.”

“Tercius… let’s say that I did do that. What exactly would you have done if you had stayed here?” Perdinar challenged. “Take care of her? She had people for that and it didn’t help for long. She still needed help found elsewhere. I suppose that one thing would be different. You wouldn't have the knowledge from which such guilt that you carry is born. Ignorance can be bliss. You told me that, once.”

Tercius looked on, stunned.

“I would have let you have your ignorance, Tercius, had your choice been to stay here.

"But let me illuminate you on another matter. Over the cycles, I've had the opportunity to observe how this Energy affected you. With regular use of that Energy, your mana channels have grown until the extreme limit that your body was able to handle, repeatedly. Any time your channels have come to that physical limit, instead of forming your Well, as it should have, this Energy took advantage of your still-growing body to slightly expand it even further, all to make room for even more channels.

"You're a tall child right now, Tercius, and with the heights of your parents and grandfather taken into account, I can say with almost complete certainty that you will grow up to be a tall man. A very tall man. But I don't think that all of your current size is something that can be attributed to parentage. In fact, I'm certain that it isn't. Now, take into account that another decade of physical growth is still ahead of you, if not even a decade and a half. I made some calculations and in that period, with your heredity and this Energy pushing your growth further, I concluded that you could likely grow to anywhere between two and a half to three and a half meters tall— all without your Well ever forming.

"Only at the point where your growth stops completely would the Well start to form. If you ever stop growing, that is. There is even a small chance that your growth could be prolonged indefinitely, from what I had been able to observe. It would slow down to an infinite crawl but never stop entirely. A tiny chance, really, but… it's there,"

"Now, contrary to you, your parents and grandparents had been out of their growth phase when you started sharing your Energy with them. Their channels would have grown until their Wells would start forming. At that time, you would have had your grandmother, mother, and father forming their Wells. With your father and mother, there would have likely been some overlap. Three non-mages, I have to add. Do you know how long it takes for a non-mage to form a Well, Tercius?"

“Around a cycle?” Tercius guessed after a moment. Taking in all that Perdinar had shared was a lot to process, on so many different fronts…

"Your mother and father would likely take around that much, possibly a bit longer. With your grandmother, considering her age, it will be closer to two. Two cycles of that kind of daily pain, Tercius. You could have had to live through that without knowing what you know now. So I ask again, what would you be able to do at that time but watch?"

Tercius stared up at the high ceiling, rubbing his head. What would he have been able to do then? He had no idea… What was he doing right now? Just trying to find someone else to take the blame? Perdinar? The man just wanted to be left alone…

If there was anyone to blame here, Tercius knew that he had to look no further than himself. That was why he would make sure to fix his errors.

“I don’t know, I… I’m sorry for this, Perdinar. I’ve some issues — Wait…” Tercius said, his mind sprung with an idea that he had already shared with Mistress Kalina. “Could I have used my Energy to speed up the process of Formation, once it started? Would something like that work?”

For the first time since they started their conversation, Perdinar stopped petting Amber and his eyes went wide.

“An interesting idea, Tercius. Very interesting… Maybe… It could work, I suppose…” Perdinar blinked at him and then muttered to himself, “This kind of Ark’ane being able to adapt itself to individuals with ease… Oh, I should have thought of that…”

As Perdinar retreated to his thoughts, the sole unknown word of the murmured bunch grated Tercius’s ears.

Ark’ane.

He only knew one Rurd which had the exact same suffix Rurd. In tier one Rurdic, the spoken part of Magik language, Mana was Mund’ane.

Mana and, if he was not wrong about the context, Energy. Mund’ane and Ark’ane.

Only just now did Tercius realize something.

Perdinar spoke around a dozen languages—and that was just what Tercius knew of. Where before Tercius thought that the man was studying dead languages, now he thought it more likely that Perdinar had learned them when they were still spoken. Looking around at the nearby shelves, he knew that there had been many books written in strange languages. Did he know all of them? Tercius shook his head as his eyes narrowed. That was not the important bit.

Perdinar was no stranger to codes, that was the important bit.

Yesterday afternoon Tercius had taken a little time to sort through everything that he had… appropriated. Stolen, actually.

Besides the money and jewelry, which Tercius didn’t bother with for now, from Caeso he had taken a backpack where among other things he had found two leatherbound stacks of letters, each as thick as his palm was wide. Not to mention all the letters he had found on the table and in the table drawers of Caeso’s office. Considering that he had taken everything portable that Caeso had had in his personal possessions, Tercius had been disappointed when he found nothing that would show him an easy way to decode the strangely worded letters.

No obvious codes in obvious code-books, or something similar, would mean a long slog of searching for patterns.

Normally, he would quite like to dedicate any amount of time to that, but right now time was in short supply and Tercius figured that there was a possibility that he simply did not have the capability to identify the means of decoding. After all, if they were not obvious straight away, that didn’t mean that they weren't there. Hiding the decoding medium was only logical after all.

He had thought of asking his family members to have a look at everything later today and even including Mistress Kalina should they fail to find it, but… maybe Perdinar could help?

But, first, he had to clear something up.

“Perdy…” The familiar nickname slipped and Tercius didn’t bother correcting.

Perdinar looked at him. “Yes?”

“I can understand that you don’t want to bother with other people’s issues.”

“I thought you might,”

“But still… I would have liked a word of warning from you, Perdinar,” Tercius said. “You didn’t have to give it to me. You could have given it to them after I left. Any amount of preparation would have been only beneficial.”

“I could have indeed, at any time.” Perdinar nodded. “And I chose to not do it.”

“You’re making this very difficult, Perdinar.”

“Because I’m agreeing with you?”

“Yes!” Tercius’s hands formed into fists. “I’m somehow still expecting you to show a bit of guilt.”

Perdinar shook his head. “Everything was done in proper order. You gave them a choice and they took it. They will grow from their tribulations.”

Tercius swallowed. “And if she dies from it?” he whispered.

"Even though it really shouldn't, I think that in that case, your current guilt will be the thing that grows. Other things will come to grow as a result of it."

After grinding his teeth for a bit, Tercius's clenched hands relaxed and he sighed. He couldn't refute the truth stated, nor could he get truly mad at the man and his actions or lack thereof. For the first time, Perdinar's propensity for direct honesty was so… sharp.

He considered Perdinar a friend, someone who would provide help in spite of everything, and yet… the reality painted another picture. In some bizarre, stretched-out way, for Perdinar, providing help meant staying out of matters. Or maybe Tercius was just using a familiar framework to understand something alien. Or, perhaps, he was just expecting too much from Perdinar.

The friendship was clearly not mutual, at least it was not in the way that Tercius defined it.

But all things were relative, friendships included.

Most people of his old world have shaken their heads at where he had drawn the line between what a friend and what an acquaintance was. Yet, for him, there had been nothing in between. His definition had been so different, that even his own family thought him odd for it.

On this matter, Tercius realized that for the first time ever, he was the one who stood in their shoes. For a moment that was so hilarious that he started chuckling. As Perdinar looked at him with a curious expression, Tercius just shook his head. He would have to think on this further but at some other time.

“I have come into possession of some coded letters. Can you take a look?” Tercius said, slowly piling the table with stolen property.

Perdinar picked up one letter and skimmed it only to do the same to three more before he glanced at Tercius.

“How did you acquire this, I wonder?”

“Oh, you know how these things go… I went for a walk and it turned out to be one of those long walks of discovery.”

Perdinar chuckled. “You must walk to interesting places then, Tercius.”

“I think that one of these is a book of the codes used in those letters and I’ve gone over them all, but none are being obvious about it.”

As Tercius handed them over, Perdinar deposited the six small books on the table, arranging them into a row in some order only he knew the meaning of. Finally satisfied, he gave a long gaze over the neatly arranged crowd and reached for one. Picking up a small book, the shabbiest of the bunch, Perdinar opened it and started reading.

“You see the wear and tear? This one is used quite often and… there are a lot of coded letters here… A coincidence or something else? Hmm… a prayer book, is it?” Perdinar fell silent as he inspected the pages and it took him a few minutes to speak again. “Hmm… Yes… Look here—” Perdinar tapped the finger at the edge of the page and traced it around. “—look at these paintings.”

Of course, it's that… Tercius thought as he took the offered book and brought it close to his eyes. The paintings were themed to appear as forked lightning, encircling the whole page, and looking at it closely Tercius tried to see what Perdinar meant. He failed.

“Ignore the main lightning trunk and focus on all spots where the branching ones cross over each other. The letters are a bit deformed, but those crossed lines make up a writing system of a language called Bellian. Each letter is separated by those tiny horizontal lines stemming from the main branch if you can see them."

“Yes, I can… wait… Bellian?” The word sounded familiar. “Like Augusta Belia?”

Perdinar nodded. “Bellian was once a language spoken in the Endor… what’s the word for it… they don’t have the word for it, do they?” Perdinar sighed. “The Endor… semi-island, where the capital of the Empire is today.”

Semi-island? A peninsula? Tercius thought. “Can you read it?”

"I was fluent in it, once upon a time," Perdinar said as he looked at the page while pushing Amber away. The little creature minded terribly that a book was getting more attention than she.

“Let me see… Yes…" Perdinar mumbled in Magik before he switched back to Empire's Common. “There are some differences from what I remember, but they are minor issues, easily corrected. Observe here. These seven characters, for example, are spoken as “fehrial” in Bellian, which is the number three. These ones say “foplia", which is close to "foplios”, which was eight in Bellian. What we have written here are numbers, as they have been spoken. Now we need to see if we can find some way to apply these numbers to those letters.”

“And there are so many ways how these numbers might influence these letters…” Perdinar seemed excited as he said that.

Tercius shook his head helplessly.

Just the first few ways that he imagined made his head spin with possibilities. This would likely turn out to be a very time-consuming job. Well, he did find out about the Bellian language, so that was something. Since Septimus's family was using a near-dead language to aid their code, if some free time showed up, learning a thing or two about it would likely be a good idea… I’m sure that Perdy has something to help me learn… And Language Acquisition has stalled out for a while now… It might be time to change that… but how exactly?

“I will finish these translations and you go and examine those letters, Tercius. Try to see if there are any kind of strange marks on them. Anything out of the ordinary — something written around the edges, indentations in the paper where nothing is written, and so on. You never know, but a single clue might help narrow this considerably.”

“Actually, I don’t think that I can stay any longer,” Tercius said.

Perdinar hummed with surprise as he wrote down Runic numbers on paper. This was a golden opportunity to see how Perdinar meant to tackle this possible monstrosity, but…

“Well… there was this insinuation of a possible beating if I were to run late for lunch, so…” Tercius said as he sighed with embarrassment.

Perdinar hummed with understanding.

“Do you want me to leave all of this for you here?”

Perdinar hummed in agreement, flipping a page of the prayer book and then jotting down the sequence of numbers from that page.

“Can I come back tomorrow?”

One more humm of agreement came and Tercius called for Amber to come to him, as he headed home.