After stepping in, the energy in Kir’s hand vanished.The interior of the office was everything one could expect from a professor of arcano-technology.

The office itself was much larger than the human sized door suggested. There was not a speck of wall that was uncovered by disorderly blueprints and incomprehensible notes seeming to be written in a personal code. Books dotted the landscape of the office, small mechanical creations rather, taking their place on the shelves. A desk had been tipped over to the right of the room, with a blast mark before it, likely being a consequence of a failed experiment. On the far wall hourglasses of varying sizes measured the passage of time with wreaths of flame and pieces of inked, torn parchment fluttering madly. At first glance the roof appeared to be a diagram of a star chart in conjunction with the physical location of the academy, but after some time it seemed to shift slightly, more stars appeared with the apparent rotation of the earth. Finally slightly left to the centre of the room, a wide stone table levitated with a hum of energy. A figure sat hunched over the table, sparks flying from the tool in his hand as he altered one of the pieces of metal sprawled over the workbench.

With how engrossed the man was in his work, it was difficult to tell the right time to interject. When dealing with fine rune-work, the slightest interruption or hesitation could ruin the mana circuit. Kir remained silent, breaking the man's concentration and damaging his work wouldn’t be the best first impression. Time passed slowly, hope would build as each break in the welding might signify the end of the circuit, but that hope swiftly died as the welding started up again. Soon enough however, the man placed down the tool and metalwork, swivelling his chair in Kir’s direction.

Now wholly visible, his appearance was made clear. The professor was of short stature, likely of gnomish blood. What few tufts of hair he had were singed at the end, likely from the same explosions that blackened his crimson robes. He flicked his hand, a familiar looking book materializing from nothing. Looking a bit closer, that book looked very familiar. Realisation dawned on Kir’s face as he opened his backpack to find his spellbook mysteriously absent.

“Mage Hand, Dancing Lights, Mage Armour” The thief croaked out.

The man began to leaf through the book but stopped at a page and looked up incredulously.

“Telekinesis? This is far beyond you but...” He looked back down to the page documenting Kir’s spellwork “Interesting”.

As the man hopped off the chair, his form shimmered with white energy and appeared at one of the bookcases. Kir wanted to react, he was in his rights to behave indignantly, but the most he could hope for was some magnanimity. After browsing through his collection for a moment he picked out a tome as he stepped back, his form once again gleaming white and reappearing at the workbench.

“I see, a supplementary application of Uvil’s third theorem, inspired”

The man abruptly snapped the book shut and teleported before Kir, holding his spellbook out.

“A very curious wizard indeed”

Now up close Kir could see the professor's features up close, wrinkled but with an unmistakable gleam of brilliance in his eyes. He had kept on the multi lensed monocle he was using for his smithing, comically enlarging his left eye. Kir’s instinct was to snatch his spellbook back but he collected himself and mumbled a thank you as he took it. The two stood in silence, the professor holding his gaze expectantly.

“Oh, I was wondering if you could help me, I have a portion of an unknown circuit and I was hoping you could help me decipher it” Kir held out the picture on his phone, trying his best to muster a smile.

Professor Simmons however, kept eye contact, entirely ignoring his phone, almost like the man was examining him.

“Your repertoire is ill-conceived and lopsided, yet somehow you’ve found a way to use a spell beyond your means” Simmons reached up to his monocle, dropping one of the lenses to magnify his view.

“You are not a student”

Kir remained silent, he had voiced his request, doubtless no good would come from pestering the man. Without warning the short-statured man reached up and plucked an errant flyaway hair from Kir before shifting once again to his workbench. His words became mutterings as he examined it under light and tossed it away once satisfied with his conclusion. Whatever intention that had, it seemed to sate his curiosity.

“The circuit, gimme” The man beckoned Kir to approach.

He had turned the workbench and swept his tools off with no regard for their potential fragility. As Kir approached, the man snatched the phone from his hand and began to recreate the design with a practiced ease on a sheet of blueprint paper. The speed and precision with which he copied it down was almost supernatural, Kir could barely track the strokes of the pencil, as if the design was simply appearing on the page. Without pause the professor began a query.

“What drives you?”

Kir cocked his head slightly

“I’m sorry?”

“What drives you to study magic” He added, now extrapolating a further design from the circuit Lyra provided.

Kir paused, lost for words. It was a deceptively simple question. One that he found he had no immediate answer to. He didn’t understand the relevance at the time but the wisdom of a powerful mage is not something one should easily dismiss. Introspective philosophical thought wasn’t something Kir often gave much time to, instead directing his thoughts to the one thing he spent most of the time focusing on. Magic was beautiful, but that wasn’t what motivated him.

“It’s not a trick question” Simmons was apparently growing impatient “some wish for the power to crush the challenges of the world underfoot, others embark on a fruitless journey to enlightenment, driven in their battle against mortality. So tell me, what drives you?” Throughout the conversation he had yet to look up from the page, as if complex calculations were hardly an impediment when holding a conversation.

Kir’s thoughts wandered to high minded rhetoric put forward by learned scholars, searching for an answer that might satisfy such a man. But the candidness of the question suggested he was searching for something else. Kir smiled, of course, it’s so simple.

“I want to be left alone, I want the ability to never have to leave my home without being bothered by the trivialities of the world”.

Professor Simmons was one of those men who had cultivated a perpetual frown on their brow, as if the first word he used when coming out of the womb was cantankerous. However, when Kir answered his question, a slight smile danced at the corner of his mouth.

“As good an answer as any” Simmons replied, placing his pencil down and admiring his work.

“Then tell me boy, what are you doing with this?” He gestured to the blueprint.

Kir moved closer to get a better view. He was astounded; through a small snapshot of a larger circuit, the man was able to extrapolate the entire device. However his amazement was sullied slightly by the fact that he had no idea what the device was. Simmons must have read the confusion on his face as he began an explanation.

“This is an incredibly antiquated power matrix, Designed in the dark ages and only ever used in thought. It’s largely inefficient and has been replaced many times over by far more advanced arcano-tech. It’s creator called it “The Animation Paragon”

Kir frowned, completely confused. Why would Sable need this? He’s released from his bonds and the first thing he does is take control of the underworld, that he got. Concentrating power is a common occurrence for malaligned wizards; many overlords have risen and fallen in the last decade alone. Unless Duke, a warlock with likely next to no understanding in any form of theory, had an uncharacteristic interest in archaic arcano-tech there was no discernable reason for it to be in his possession.

“There’s no practical use, but there is a theoretical one,” Simmons pondered, stroking his beardless chin.

He teleported over to his bookshelf for a moment before returning a moment later. How the man did it, Kir had no idea. But he was relatively confident he wouldn’t be able to do outside the confines of his office with any level of frequency. While searching through for a page Simmons began to theorize.

“The circuit works by gathering mana from six equidistant gathering points, when processed through the matrix it gathers the energy to a central point. The intensity of the focus essentially shatters the formation. To be able to maintain it, the circuit would need some kind of divine essence and somehow be able to rewrite the rules of magic”

“Yeah, the flow would clot here and here, collapsing a few seconds before completing” Kir commented, pointing out two spots on the diagram and not noticing the final comment.

Simmons grunted in affirmation.

“Disregarding its general inadequacy there is a theoretical use. About a century ago, an unnamed wizard lost his wife to the Spanish flu, and his sanity in the process. As wizards are wont to behave, the man's hubris overtook his common sense. He began to work tirelessly to serve the goals of many a wizard, to cheat death. In this circumstance through the means of the Animation Paragon”

Simmons paused for effect.

“Naturally when he made his attempt, the circuit didn’t work and he died immediately, taking out a city block with him.”

Kir blinked at the narrative whiplash then refocused his attention.

“But the point stands that if the paragon was anything more than a thought experiment, he would have likely succeeded”.

Resurrection, according to legend, happened all the time before the shattering of the otherworld. There were stories around the world of clerics invoking divine power to pull an ally from the icy grip of death. While still able to channel divine power, such celestial intervention has long since been lost. Kir took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes, unsure what to do with this new information. Simmons grabbed the phone off his workbench and offered it back.

“Dangerous magic aside, there is a much more pressing concern”

Kir flinched, what could be more pressing than some crazed wizard trying to recreate this wildly unstable matrix.

“Your potential as a wizard is impressive, but if you continue on your path without proper guidance you will in all likelihood permanently stunt your progression and injure yourself.”

“What?” Kir was taken aback.

“Well I have a class to teach, goodbye” With that the man clicked his fingers, forcefully sliding Kir out of the room and slamming the door shut.

Any attempt to open the door was met with a painful electric shock coursing through his body. Mumbling something about getting the point Kir turned and made his way down towards the stairs. Despite being entirely lost in the prison of his own mind, finding the entrance hall was a simple task. Just find the first student he could and hope to the gods that they were leaving, after three tries he was successful. By the time he had finally left the academy shard he found that more time passed than he had initially thought.