Before leaving the mage Academy, Maya stopped by the Fire classroom to check on their progress. And to apologize to Raidah for her abrupt departure, which still made her feel ashamed every time she remembered it.

When Maya entered the room, Vey was the first to notice her. He whooped and started to clap loudly, grinning at her. Fridget turned to see, and joined in.

Before she knew what was happening, nearly everyone in the room was applauding her.

“Wh—what?”

Nearly everyone was there, only Nalana missing from their raid team, and all the researchers she recognized but couldn’t remember the names. Raidah was absent, as was the man with extremely stereotypical wizard getup.

Everyone else was here. All staring at her.

Cheering for her.

Maya grinned nervously, a combination of awkwardness and exhilaration flooding her with too much emotion to handle.

"And that she is! Our breakthrough girl!" Vey shouted, bouncing over to shake her hand. “Once word gets out, you’ll have other groups lining up for your time, but we got you first!”

Maya laughed with him, since it seemed the thing to do, but she really wanted everyone to stop watching her and go back to what they were doing.

“What were you doing before I got here?” she asked, as she noticed the disarray of the room. The desks had been shoved to one side of the room, leaving a clear avenue where Tahpa and Ranon stood. Several others sat at their desks, those that weren’t pushed too close together to be accessible, and others stood beside the cleared area.

“Practicing the second spell. Once we proved the first actually worked, Raidah took the other in for verification. Should be back soon.”

"So they worked?” Maya asked. “I’m glad. I wasn't sure if they would."

"We haven't checked all your formulae, but the ones we have look promising," said a dark elf with a notepad. He looked vaguely familiar, but Maya couldn't think of his name. "It set us on a completely new track for our dragonfire shield project. I can't believe we never thought to analyze gesture complexity along with precision, it's a whole new paradigm."

"Assuming it pans out," said an albino lizardine woman, her voice skeptical. Maya had seen her around but didn't really know her. "Remember that we actually only know that one of these spells actually works. Don't pin too much hope on the noob's theories."

"It's the best hope we've got, Star." Fridget turned to Maya. "You know this is the first significant breakthrough guided by math rather than intuition? The first evidence we have that spells may be calculable rather than all preset. This could change everything."

Star, the lizardine woman, snorted derisively. "What do you expect this to change? We're already doing our best to figure out the sort of thing. What exactly are we going to be doing different now?"

"Research groups won't have to just wave their hands around at random and hope they hit upon the right combination," said the dark elf excitedly. “You haven’t been here long enough to know—”

Maya noticed Tahpa giving incorrect instructions to Ranon and absently started towards him to offer correction. She took two steps before remembering that she couldn't trust her instincts right now. She firmly clasped her hands behind her back and turned back to the argument with a forced smile.

“Come on, Tuan," the lizardine, Star, was saying, "don’t tell me we’re supposed to take the word of a complete noob as to which theories are even remotely correct? She discarded my entire thesis within seconds, if Raidah is to be believed.”

“To be fair, I was going through them all in a hurry,” Maya said without thinking. “I just didn’t have time to fix everything, so I focused on the least erroneous ones.”

Star scowled. “Oh, so my work is ‘erroneous’ now? Who do you think you are, just traipsing in here, hijacking our classes for your ‘personal quest’ and then setting yourself up as some sort of expert on magic? What do you know?”

“I had a few hours of inspiration, that’s all. I couldn’t do it again if I tried. It just came to me.”

“Maya! Raidah’s back.” Vey called. “And wants to talk to you, by the looks of it.”

“Not me,” Raidah corrected. “Shardlord. He said to send you up to his tower next time we saw you.”

“Hey, it was my spell!” protested a human mage sitting beside the dark elf who'd thus far been working quietly. “Why does she get all the credit? She jumped in at the last minute, did a few proof corrections, and suddenly that’s all that matters? I’ve been working on this for months!”

Raidah shrugged. “Calm down, Ben. I’m just relaying the message.”

Maya nodded. “Thanks. It looks like you all have this well in hand, so I’ll stop by there on my way out. I was planning to do some equipment shopping next. Oh, Raidah, I’m not sure if I mentioned, but there is definitely an ice dragon as well as the fire dragon. Do we have any anti-ice spells?”

“I’ll look into it.” Fridget winked. “Ice is my specialty after all.”

“Thanks. I’ll get out of your way, then. Good luck, and thanks for everything. I’ll be back in a few days.”

“A few days? Where are you going?” Vey asked. “Will you be able to look over my spell thesis?”

“I need to levelup significantly before we go against Standalone, I figure that’s my best shot at being useful.” She laughed harshly. “And you do not want me anywhere near your research right now, trust me.”

“You certainly act entitled,” Star sniffed. “Come and go as you please, is it? No regard for anything but your own plans? We know not when you’ll deign to grace us with your presence again, so just be prepared?”

Maya laughed weakly. “It’s not like that at all, but I’m too tired to care. If that’s what you want to think, I won’t stop you. Sorry I can’t help, Vey. Good luck with your thesis.”

Ignoring the words that continued happening behind her, Maya walked away. She paused for a moment after leaving the building, standing to breathe deeply the cool night air. If she’d stayed much longer, she was sure she’d have ended up screaming.

Or starting a civil war.

No, with her current luck, best to remove herself from the equation entirely.

And visit Shardlord, apparently. Not her first choice, but who was she to deny the archmage?

She approached the gleaming tower with mild trepidation, but no force prevented her from access. She knocked at the door, which slid open almost at once.

“Hello?”

“Straight ahead and up the stairs, first door on the left,” said a guard standing just inside the door. “He’s been expecting you.”

“Well, he did invite me, so that’s not surprising.”

Maya followed the instructions, ascending the gently spiraling staircase to the third floor. The indicated door stood ajar, so she tapped lightly on it and pushed it open.

Shardlord stood in the center of a triangular room, his feline body entirely covered in a thick layer of magic. Every slow movement he made set the magic glinting with ever-shifting rainbows in the light from a diamond chandelier.

He wasn’t wearing his grand archmage robes at the moment, nor any of his elaborate accessories, just a sleeveless black tunic and leggings barely distinct from his dark fur.

She hadn’t noticed much about him at their first meeting, so overawed by the trappings of his Archmage status and overwhelmed by everything happening. Now she saw him in a different light, it was hard not to notice how beautiful he was.

There was no other word for it. He had a lithe, sleek build, accentuated by the slow careful movements he was focused on performing.

At first Maya thought it was some kind of martial arts, but then she recognized the motions. It was the same spell Tahpa and Ranon were practicing back at Opal Hall.

She began to feel awkward, like she was intruding on something personal, so she cleared her throat when he failed to acknowledge her.

“You wanted to see me?”

“Maya Stader. I did. Please, have a seat.”

Maya looked around for anything resembling a seat and found one corner of the triangle occupied by bookshelves, two comfortable chairs, and a small table with a lamp.

She sat, watching as he continued the movements again and again, wondering how long he expected her to wait.

Then the magic he wore flickered, and he suddenly stood robed in his complete regalia. Maya blinked at the change - she’d never seen anyone swap out equipment so quickly. In a flash, Shardlord slid through the motions, taking less than half a second. He tossed the magic upwards, where it exploded into a wave of flame that flowed down and out in a sphere around him, then drew back in just as suddenly. A flaming sphere hovered just above him and he laughed aloud.

“Brilliant. Simply brilliant.” At a gesture, the flame exploded outward again, then retracted. “Minimal upkeep.” He raised a hand, tapping gently at the sphere. “Non-damaging in its inert form. Provides—” The lights went out for a moment, the fiery globe continued to illuminate the area brightly, then they returned to normal. “Very good lighting. Excellent.”

He smiled, and Maya found herself incredibly aware of her unreasonable past history of attraction to felinis guys. Stupid, stupid thoughts, no, he was the Archmage, not a tutorial NPC, she would absolutely not be crushing on him, nope nope never.

She still blushed. Thank God for her feathers.

“Now, to business.” He strode over and sat down, tail curling around his waist as he did so. His expression shifted and his tone lost any lightness. “Maya Stader. I have it on good authority that you have been traveling in the company of a known Domitian. As much as I’d like to believe your recent breakthroughs are proof of your dedication to my cause, there are altogether too many coincidences with you and Domitius’s followers to continue discounting his involvement in your life. I asked you upon your arrival if you were a spy, which you naturally denied. Now I must ask you again.”

“What?”

Of all the reasons Shardlord might have for calling her here, that was not what she’d expected.

She floundered for a moment, trying to think of how to refute such an obviously ridiculous accusation.

“I’ve never even met the guy.”

Shardlord leaned back in his chair, tail-tip twitching. “Let me describe to you a scenario, before you go too far with your denials. You joined the game several days ago, this fact cannot be denied. For the first day, you were an unknown factor. None of my people encountered you. None of them saw you. Where were you?”

“I was doing noob quests because I didn’t know—” Maya began, but he raised a hand to cut her off.

“You came to my academy the next day. I asked you then why you had not come directly to me. What new player wouldn’t know the factions before joining? But your revelation of being a newly-uploaded Founder changed that. My suspicions were allayed - for the moment. I offered you my hospitality, and for a few hours it seemed all would be well.”

He sighed. “The problem with public information, is that it is public. Everyone knew Maya Stader had been uploaded. It wasn’t front-page news, but anyone caring to do even a little research could find the full list of names for family members added in this batch. It would require only the tiniest lie, the slightest insinuation, to make yourself seem genuine.”

“I’m not—”

“And then,” Shardlord continued, overriding her, “you were ‘kidnapped’ by Rominian, very publicly, and that seemed to be the end of that. I’ve lost more mages than I care to admit to their practices. They are far too skilled at evading the safeguards in place for player safety. I knew it would only be a matter of time before they’d forced you to log out and filled your slot with another of Domitius’s flunkies.

“Yet, not two days later, you reappear. Miraculously escaped, with some story about secret quests and misunderstandings. You, my dear, have come to rely on that ‘secret quest’ excuse a bit too heavily.”

“It’s not an excuse, I—”

“You set my Fire class on a different course, effortlessly redirecting their energies in your chosen direction. You ‘correct’ theory papers into working spells. And then, as though satisfied that you’ve played your part to perfection, you promptly go off with Sevard.”

Shardlord finally fell silent, staring at her intently.

Maya couldn’t help it, she laughed. “Sevard? That’s what this is about? But he’s a mercenary! He dosen’t even care about your rivalry. He’s a solo rogue.”

“I’d suggest,” Shardlord said, his voice cold, “that in future you perform a bit more research before coming up with your cover stories. They begin to lose their credibility under the weight of so many coincidences and vagaries.”

“But it’s not a cover story! I obviously can’t prove I’m actually Maya Stader, though my fragmented memories definitely indicate such I have no way to prove it. But as much as it sounds suspicious when you say it like that, I really haven’t had any contact with Domitius or his followers. Most of those times when I mysteriously disappear, I was at the player combat arena. I’m a member of the Shadow team there.”

She was babbling, and she knew it. Nerves were getting the best of her. Why did she always end up rambling senselessly? What was wrong with her?

Maya tried to calm down, but she hated being falsely accused of something, especially something so inane as trying to betray the mage academy. Was frustration better than nervousness? Neither would serve her well here. She had to be calm. Emotional reactions were flawed reactions.

“And Sevard?” Shardlord asked.

Her voice held an edge, despite her attempts to curb emotion. “I told you, he’s freelance."

But, then again, how could she guarantee that? He was a trickster. He could very well be a sworn Domitian, just trying to stir up trouble in the enemy ranks by ‘befriending’ the naive newcomer. She didn’t want to believe ill of Sevard, but how trustworthy could a trickster/rogue actually be? Especially when she’d only known him for half a day.

“Or at least that’s what he told me,” she added weakly.

“Domitius has sent me an ultimatum,” Shardlord said, abruptly changing the subject. “He demands that I cease all reputation farming for the next week, and require the same of my entire academy. Last time he engineered a push like this, it resulted in the unlock of the Frozen Clefts zone. Is he really that close to unlocking another already? Or is it a bluff?”

Frustration returned in full force. “How would I know?!”

“It is in everyone’s best interests for new zones to be unlocked,” Shardlord said, ignoring her protest. “But, knowing this, Domitius may be trying to strengthen his position at my expense without actually having the resources necessary.”

“If you both want areas unlocked, can’t you work together?”

“That is exactly what he wants. But if we act together, I lose my advantage. How do you think I’ve kept up with him all these years? It wasn’t by acting rashly, by throwing myself and my friends blindly into his traps. So, is this a trap? Or a genuine opportunity?”

Maya stood sharply, no longer able to keep her temper in check. “I have no idea! I’ve tried to tell you, I have nothing to do with Domitius. But if you won’t listen to me, then I have shopping to do. You’re welcome for the new spell. I truly love magic and want to be a part of this academy. But I’ve had a very trying day, and will have an even more trying weekend, and I’m not in the mood to put up with this sort of one-sided false accusations!”

Shardlord waved a hand dismissively. “Yes, yes, your outrage has been noted. Go about your business. This is only a warning. I’m watching you now, and I only have so much tolerance.”

Maya didn’t trust herself to respond. She stalked down the stairs, out the door, and into the street, fuming. Why couldn’t things just stay simple and stable? Every time she managed to get one part of her life on track, something else turned to chaos.

She was half tempted to hunt down Rominian and request a meeting with Domitius simply because Shardlord was being so unreasonable. But that was almost certainly her negative luck trying to make her mess up even worse, so she resisted the temptation.

She took a deep breath and glanced to where her local map should appear to guide her to the merchants.

It didn’t.

Ah, right. She hadn’t visited the Travelers’ Hall yet in this iteration of her character.

Well then, that would be her first stop. And she was not going to let any more interruptions stop her. She was going to get new equipment, and she was going to do it right.