I woke up to Kendra’s friend shaking my shoulder. Not very gently either, and by the annoyed look on her face, she had been trying to wake me for a bit.

“Good, I thought we were going to have to get some cold water.” She grumbled. “Anyway, we’re at the station. The rest of us are flying out but Kendra said to let you know that you need to report to the local administration for proper registration and the core classes. And that you have a tentative offer from our managing guild.” She looked at me, with a somewhat blank expression, nodded, and left.

It was raining, which was unfortunate since I only had some spare clothes someone had seen fit to throw my way during the retreat yesterday. Not even shoes. A cold and miserable few hours later, I was finally in the right place.

A guard blocked my way. “You cannot go in here.” He said, bluntly. I stared blankly at him. “I’m here to register.” I said, as calmly as I could manage.

“Su~re” The guard drawled.

I, very calmly, jumped ten feet straight up, air swirling around me. When I landed, the guard was decidedly more nervous. “I am here to register. I am cold. I am wet. My town just got eaten by a Gate. Move”

The guard moved, and I walked into the dimly lit office. It was sterile in the way government buildings often were - white walls, plain chairs, overcrowded infographics and a bored man at a desk.

It took me almost an hour to fill out the forms, since I needed help from the clerk with about half of them. He was a nice guy, and a good bit of the time was spent chatting about nothing in particular.

And then… Lessons. There were three hours of mandatory courses for ‘Extra-Planar Talented Individuals’ as the official forms referred to me now.

They took place immediately, in a relatively comfortable room - the man from before was in with me, since he had to supervise and make sure I actually watched the videos.

The first was simple stuff - warnings about not killing, restrictions, and the very severe sanctions faced by anyone found using mind magic outside of self-defence or live combat. 20 years in prison, revocation of Gate access licences, and not even the slightest chance of parole.

Two-time offenders were banished from Earth.

I made a mental note to pick up a circlet of #’@#’a]s’ to protect my mind.

The next lesson was one on privileges, where and how to claim bounties(both public and private), and how guilds worked.

Guilds, in short, were a company registered with the ECRA, and could not be publicly listed. There were strict controls on how many Awakened could be in a given guild based on contributions to international safety.

The main advantage to being a member of a guild was a slew of income tax exemptions, although Guild dues would cover some of that(but no more than 50% of what the income tax would be per annum), that Guilds could advocate on ones behalf, handle the quite extensive paperwork overheads, and whatever other benefits a particular Guild offered.

At the beginning of the final lesson, I was left by myself. The last two had been quite boring, but I had no idea why the civil servant had left.

The screen flared a dim grey, and with dramatic slamming noises, blocky dark letters slammed into the screen:

The Negative Effects of Skill Use

It faded away to reveal a man in a suit sitting on an armchair in a sterile office.

“Hello” He sounded… exhausted. “My name is Maximilian Taylor. I am a Doctor of Criminal Psychology, Psychiatry, and I am one of the authors of, at the time of recording, the largest study of the psychological impacts of Awakening on the human psyche.”

He paused, as someone handed him a glass of water from off-screen.

“First, we need to recognise that something cannot come from nothing. This is particularly true of knowledge and technique.” He stressed. “Skills, based on a series of interviews with Awakened include memories and habits of the Planar Depths that rest below this universe. In effect, they allow a person to view a tutorial at instant speed and in realtime, that someone else has recorded.”

Another sip, another pause to let me contemplate what I was hearing.

“There is, however, a huge issue that arises with this. Prolonged use of a skill, or a set of skills towards a particular purpose starts drawing out specific personas - long dead wizards, warriors, or other craftsmen who represent the peak of their skill.”

“Sufficient exposure to these personas causes intrusive thoughts referring to things that are not, and never have been discovered. At this point, the affected individual should refrain from using any skills for several days. Our study indicates a minimum downtime of three days, and an optimum downtime of five days or more. Continued exposure without this downtime causes the affected individual to display more habits of whichever persona they have happened to tap into.”

Maximilian took a deep breath, and another sip of water as cold wisps of dread began coiling in my stomach.

“With sufficient exposure” Maximilian said, gently, quietly and with just a hint of horror. “The initial personality is supplanted by the Skills’ persona. At this time, it is not possible to revert this transformation, as the persona is aware of what has happened. We will now read you a transcript of an interview with ‘subject A’, who is one of these… persona’s. We will then discuss the various recovery times, and skill-use to downtime from skills ratio.”

I duly watched the rest of the video, and tried to keep it together. It was going perfectly well until near the end of the session, [Talismania] began to press its need on me like an itch I could scratch, which set my Skills - which were apparently psychic poison - buzzing like a swarm of flies.