Mark cocked his head in response to Naomi's declaration of her unusual class. “A Tome mage? Is that rare?”

Naomi nodded. “Very. In fact, I’m the only one in Palmyre, so you needn’t be concerned about people casually prying into your Tome. The two spells I used on you would be beyond the reach of anyone who hasn’t spent the last 15 years travelling the globe in search of other eṉakkumancers to hone their craft, and that’s on top of their initial studies to become a mage.”

Mark stared at her, trying to parse what she’d just said. “15 years? But we’re the same age. Aren’t we?”

She smiled. “Are you sure? You don’t sound sure.”

“I can do math,” he noted.

“Perhaps,” she said, “but it’s difficult to get a correct answer if you have undefined variables hidden within your formula.”

This wasn’t adding up. If Naomi was the same age as him but had studied for years to become a Tome Mage, how did that work? She looked utterly human. Did humans age differently here?

Unless….

Out of curiosity, Mark inspected her again:

Name: Naomi del Storr

Species: Unconfirmed (non-human humanoid suspected)

Renown: Level 27 Eṉakkumancer (Tome Mage)

Base Stat Average: 28.9

“You’re not human?” he asked in surprise. Only after saying it did it occur to him that the question might be offensive, but Naomi didn’t seem bothered by it.

“You would do well to remember that in some regards, your Tome’s accuracy is bounded by your own Base Stats,” she said. “If your Intelligence or Charisma are too low to pick up on certain details, they won’t be reflected in your Tome. You’d be surprised how many people overlook that fact.”

“But you’re—”

“Not human. Indeed. And you have a class I can’t even pronounce. How do you pronounce it, by the way?”

“மாற்றம்,” Mark answered.

Naomi nodded to herself, repeating ‘martum’ under her breath as though memorizing it.

“Regardless,” she continued, “I will be happy to share some details of myself later, but your nature is what brought me here, not my own. First things first.”

“Fair enough,” he said reluctantly. “If nothing else, I’m glad to know that other mages can’t simply look at me and see my, uh, ‘predicament.’”

“Which brings us to our day’s topic,” she said, leaning forward. “What is that class of yours? One of the obstacles of Tome magic is that every person’s Tome is expressed in the owner’s native language. If you don’t speak the language, you have to use intermediary spells to read their information. I wasn’t surprised that your Tome’s base language isn’t Palmyrian—my Tome’s base language isn’t Palmyrian either—but I have never, in all my years, seen a Tome with two languages in it. Let alone one written in an entirely novel alphabet. I couldn’t even translate it magically! It completely flummoxed my spell.”

He stared at her, waiting for her to continue, but she didn’t say anything. “Uh, was there a question in there?”

“Yes!” she said. “Why in the gods’ names would your class come packaged within an entirely different language? I only skimmed the surface, but everything related to your class came in that bizarre script.”

“I have no idea,” Mark answered truthfully.

“Really?” Naomi asked. “It must be related to the nature of your class in some manner. Which phylum does it belong to? Given your Renown, I’m assuming it is within the Occupational kingdom, but I suppose Battle is also possible if you haven’t used it much.”

Mark scratched the back of his neck uncomfortably. “I really don’t know how you would categorize it.”

She stared at him. “How can you not know your own class’s phylum?”

“Because I don’t?” He raised his hands when he saw her frown. “I promise I’m not being facetious. My class is a complete mystery to me. That’s why I went to the Mage’s College in the first place.”

“But that’s not possible,” she said. “You had to have done a class quest, and those always reflect the class’s phylum. What was your quest?” She cringed. “I’m sorry, that’s a very personal question. Just tell me it wasn’t something awful. I’m interested in your class, but if you had to sacrifice anyone—”

“What? No! Why would I sacrifice anyone?”

She shrugged. “Warlocks would. Although that language in your Tome isn’t demonic, so I somewhat ruled it out already.”

“I didn’t sacrifice anyone, I promise,” he said. He did kind of destroy that spirit when he made his staff, but he was pretty sure that didn’t count.

“What did you do, then?” she asked.

Mark thought over his options. Yes, his Intelligence wasn’t through the roof, but it didn’t need to be to know that getting into the nitty gritty of how he acquired his class was off the table.

Realistically, it was best to avoid the question entirely.

“Out of curiosity, do you actually need to know how I got my class, or do you just want to know?” he asked.

She frowned. “I don’t understand. Didn’t you come to the Mage’s College because of our extensive records on the nature of classes? Even if I couldn’t find it on my own last night, knowing how you received it might at least let me find mention of it somewhere in the archives. Not knowing your class’s phylum would make that extremely difficult, though.”

“Ah,” Mark said, nodding. “Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure my class isn’t in your archives.”

“Now I really want to know.”

Mark laughed. “Sorry to disappoint. The truth is, my main reason for going to the Mage’s College was to get a baseline understanding of how magic works so that I can get a handle on my own.”

Naomi held up a hand. “Wait. You’re a spellcaster?” She looked at him. “And you’re saying you can already do magic? Without even knowing what your class is?”

Mark scrunched up his face. “Kinda?”

To his surprise, Naomi started giggling. Hardly what he was expecting. Shock? Sure. Bland indifference? Why not. But giggling?

“What’s so funny?” he asked.

“What’s so funny?” she said, leaning forward. “Do you realize how much training is required to get your Intelligence and Willpower high enough to sense mana? I started with both over 25 and it took me five years. Five years! Five gruelling years of study simply to earn the quest to sense mana. Yet here you are, telling me that you can already cast spells despite having zero training?”

Mark wasn’t sure whether she was getting mad or legitimately found it funny. “Uh, I wouldn’t say I can cast spells, exactly. Or sense mana. I think? What’s that feel like?”

She stared at him with a flat expression. “You can’t sense the current of mana flowing around you as it travels through the ley lines?”

“Nope.”

“Mana like water in a stream, like wind in the air. None of this is ringing a bell?”

“Should it?”

“Unnnggg…” she said, dropping her head into her hands. She looked up at him, her dark eyes glowering. “You, sir, are a boor.”

“Excuse me?”

“You heard what I said. Do you have any idea how hard I’ve had to work to gain a measure of control over magic?”

“Well, see there you’ve got me,” he said, holding out his hands. “I don’t have any control whatsoever. That’s kind of my problem.”

“But you have done magic.”

“Yes.”

“Then I stand by my previous statement that you are a boor.” She sighed and leaned back against the wall. “Of course, your life is in constant danger now, so that’s one trade-off to consider.”

Mark perked up like a meerkat spotting an eagle. “Come again?” He’d been concerned about the chaos aspect of his magic putting him at risk, but she didn’t even know about that part—why would his life be in danger?

“I don’t know where you come from, but Palmyre is not the place for a non-mage magic user,” she said. “Even clerics and druids are merely tolerated, and that’s only because nobody wants to anger a god or ruin the harvest.”

“But why would someone want to kill me?” Mark asked.

She looked at him. “You asked if I was going to kill you the moment I showed up at your door.”

“I asked because of what happened with that guy at the Mage’s College, not because I thought there was a general, ‘let’s all agree to kill Mark’ situation! I haven’t done anything!”

“But this is Palmyre,” she said, as though educating a particularly confused toddler. “The college is extremely protective of the ley lines, and they are willing to take whatever measures they think necessary to protect them.”

Mark held up a hand. “Okay, you’re losing me. What’s so special about the ley lines here, and how does that have anything to do with me?”

Naomi sighed and shook her head. “You really don’t know anything, do you? If you did, you certainly wouldn’t have come to us.” She got a considering look. “Then again, if you could feel the maṉa pulam, you probably wouldn’t have needed to.”

“What’s the maṉa pulam?” Mark asked, eliciting a sharp cringe from Naomi.

She muttered under her breath. “‘What’s the maṉa pulam,’ he says. Oh, just the fundamental reason Arenia has magic, that’s all.”

Shaking her head in resignation, she said, “The maṉa pulam is the term we give to the ley lines surrounding Arenia. They create the flow of ambient mana that we manipulate when performing magic. They emerge from the planet at the south pole, move across the surface of Arenia, then descend back into the planet at the north pole.

“Think of a peeled orange,” she continued. “You know how it is divided into slices? Picture the lines separating those slices. That’s what the ley lines flowing around Arenia would look like. There’s ambient flow everywhere—magic can be done anywhere on the planet outside of the north and south poles—but the ley lines are the points of greatest stability.”

“So, it’s shaped like the planet’s magnetic field, then?” Mark asked. He’d seen many pictures of the Earth’s magnetic field, and they looked like what she was describing.

“A magnetic field?” she asked, looking at him strangely. “I’m not familiar with the term.”

Oops.

“Maybe it’s just a different name for the maṉa pulam?” he said lamely.

“Sure. That must be it,” Naomi answered flatly, her tone showing what she thought of his explanation. “As I was saying, the lines of our hypothetical orange represent the ley lines; the places where the flow of mana is most stable. However, even those have instability to them. The lines shift and fluctuate in unpredictable ways. For most magic, those changes are irrelevant, but when you get into the highest orders of experimentation, the slightest shift can destroy years of research. Palmyre is special because it has the least fluctuation of any ley line on the planet.”

Now Mark was starting to get it. “Ah, okay. The stable ley lines make Palmyre the best place on Arenia for research, and the Mage’s College likes their monopoly, so they don’t tolerate non-College magic users.”

“Exactly. If they let anyone set up shop, this place would be overrun.”

Mark could see the logic. The Mage’s College had the best real estate on the planet—why wouldn’t they want to maintain that edge? Killing every magic user who walked into town, though? That seemed a bit harsh.

“Why don’t they just throw foreign magic users on the next boat out of town?” Mark asked. “It’s not as easy as blasting people into charcoal, but I can’t imagine the Palmyrian leadership is okay with the Mage’s College running around, performing extrajudicial executions with zero oversight.”

“Of course, they’re not,” Naomi said. “But there is a veneer of innocence plastered over what everyone knows is the truth. Someone dies, the college denies involvement, and it is difficult to prove otherwise. There are also…mechanisms…in place that prevent the college from abusing the situation.”

“But why?” Mark asked. “What is the point of all that killing?”

“Because they are terrified of anyone damaging the stability of the ley lines,” she said. “That’s why they are especially harsh on non-mage magic users. If you’re a Sorcerer, a Warlock, a Shaman, or what have you, and you live elsewhere on the globe, you likely see a trip to Palmyre as the one you’re not coming home from, no matter how innocent your intentions.”

“Awesome,” Mark said with a grimace. “Super happy to hear that. Can’t they just stop people from doing stuff that would mess up the ley lines?”

“Not if they don’t know what messes up a ley line.”

“Wait, you’re telling me they’re killing magic users for something that might not be possible?” he asked incredulously.

“Yes,” she said with a shrug. “But fear can lead to ‘temporary’ measures of a drastic nature. Given enough time, those temporary measures can morph into permanent policy, and permanent policy can one day transform into organizational dogma. The prejudice towards other magic users has been part of College belief for so long that it would be heresy to suggest otherwise. Given what’s at stake, it’s not even all that surprising, to be honest.”

The reality of Mark’s situation sunk home, and he swallowed loudly. “And, uh, you’re different, right? Just need to know if you’re planning on killing me now.”

“I am,” she said. When Mark’s eyes went wide, she clarified. “I mean, I’m different. My family isn’t so provincial in their views, and my studies abroad weren’t just with mages. There are those of us who believe a lot of good could be done by inviting other forms of magic users into the College, but we are a stark minority.”

Mark let out a sigh of relief. His situation was dire, but the fact that he’d tied himself to one of the few mages who didn’t see him as an existential threat to their way of life was an incredible stroke of luck.

That gave him pause. Wasn’t that too lucky, considering his Luck?

It was something he’d have to think about. Maybe once I’ve raised my Intelligence a few points, he thought ruefully.

“If you disagree with how the Mage’s College operates, why do you work there?” he asked. “You decided to return, even knowing what the place is like.”

“I came back for the same reason everyone else is here,” Naomi said. “Even if I have to work at that gods-forsaken front desk while I pay my dues, there’s magic I want to do that can’t be performed with a ley line fluctuating all over the place. I don’t want to live this close to the Kaos Dimma any more than the next caster, but we all do it because it’s worth the risk. Is something wrong?”

Mark could feel the heat in his face, the room swirling as he processed Naomi’s words.

As soon as she said it, he knew. He had to ask the question, but he knew.

“What’s the Kaos Dimma?” he asked, hiding his inner cringe.

Naomi cocked her head at him. “You know. The Fog of Chaos.”