The next morning’s plan to meet the two Warriors for more practice was interrupted when Florian was awoken by a slight nudge to the side. His eyes opened instantly, and though he was groggy from the lack of sleep he’d gotten that night, Florian tried to examine whoever had poked him.

He couldn’t see anything in the darkness, for the torches had long been extinguished for lights-out. However, he could see that the person was wearing some kind of armor, their silhouette more bulbous than normal. Some long fabric draped around them, ending at some point beneath their waist. This was one of Jones’ guards, then. The guard whispered to him, his voice urgent “Lord Jones requests your presence.”

Florian’s eyebrows rocketed upwards. That was more than just a little surprising, if he was being honest. “Okay, give me a moment to put on shoes and fresh robes.” He moved to the footlocker at the end of his bed, trying his level best to not accidentally elbow one of the other disciples sleeping next to him in the single row of beds that dominated the annex.

He breathed a sigh of relief when he exited the small building, happy that he was no longer walking on eggshells. He remembered the last time someone had been accidentally woken in the middle of the night. The amount of sabotage a poor person could go through was ridiculous, ranging anywhere from suspiciously missing clothes after the offending party was in the shower to straight up psychological warfare in the form of planting Warriors’ used socks underneath their pillows. Though he doubted the other disciples would do something like that to him, given his seniority, he still had no desire to test that hypothesis.

Larry and Terry were missing from their posts, the time definitely too earlier for them to be up by now. Instead, it was manned by a single guard, one who might have been able to actually give Hornbeck a run for his money in a contest of crushing a mountain with a flex of their biceps. The guard nodded to them as they passed, Florian being led deeper and deeper into the keep, climbing a single flight of stairs and winding up in a corner room on the second floor.

The guard, who refused to divulge his name despite Florian’s pestering, opened the door and ushered him in. Florian offered for the other man to go in first, but he was shrugged off. So he walked inside, curious to see what Jones wanted from him. Except when he got inside, he found that he stood within a study filled to the brim with books of all kinds.

Textbooks detailing topics of all types sat on the ground, stacked as high as the eye could see. Smaller primers sat on bookshelves, these little books lacking any kind of focus. In fact, the only focus that Florian could see in the entire building was that on the desk were a pile of public administration manuals.

Before he could inspect them any further, Jones walked out of an adjacent room, taking his seat at the desk and indicating for Florian to take a seat at a couch that had been pushed towards the center of the room. From a drawer, Jones produced a couple bottles of wine, both dating far before Worldbreak. These were veritable treasures in the modern world, which made his pouring them into a pair of glasses to share with Florian all the more peculiar.

It only started to make sense once they had both drank some of their drinks. “Florian, I fear that your master, Sir Theodosius, is plotting something to coopt my position here. While I believe this to be the case, I am hesitant to condemn someone who as taught me so much. Instead, I’d like you to follow Theo around and examine his goings-on, informing me as to whether he truly is switching his allegiance away from me and toward himself.”

“I guarantee you, Jones, that Theo has always been looking to do something like this in the future. I don’t really think that should have ever been a question for you.”

Jones winced. Clearly, he felt the same as Florian did. Theo’s ambition and his need to be the highest authority was on display for everyone to see, regardless of whether they knew the man or not.

“I need you to do something to stop whatever he’s up to.”

“I don’t think I really can,” Florian admitted, flabbergasted as to why she’d be asking the favor of him. “You know very well that Theo is the most powerful wizard here by a great margin.”

Jones spoke up again, his body language still indicating his pleading. “That is true, but you have a large contingent of students who participate in lessons that Theo hasn’t touched in weeks. They’d be more loyal to you, the one who has helped them, surely.

Florian tossed the idea around in his head for but a moment, deciding that that was all it was worth. “I’m sorry, Jones, but I don’t think I could do much at this time.”

And that would be true until the day his leg was healed. There was a snowflake’s chance in hell that he would cross his master at this point in time, and not only because Florian had no love lost between Jones and himself. Florian took the ensuing awkward silence to mean that he was dismissed, and chose to just begin preparing for classes, hoping that he wouldn’t keep his students waiting for him to officially begin class.

But he knew that something of great import had just happened, even if he refused to participate. Jones was drawing a line for Theo, and if the wizard dare overstep, Florian imagined that the repercussions would be severe, if Jones could leverage them before the wizard leveled everything.

Suddenly, he wondered if Theo would be doing something similar in an effort to recruit him to the cause. Silently, he hoped so. It would give him more leverage to force the wizard into keeping his promises.