After my vision failing me for less than a second, I got through the other side of the portal and saw a rather grand room, with bookshelves lining the walls and an exit on the wall left of me at the very end of the walls of bookshelves. I turned and saw someone rushing down the stairs, which I just now noticed and shouting something inaudible. Slowly more of my senses were coming back and it became easier to focus again, and I realized what they were saying.

“-aster! Did you find the stone? Also why are you dressed in those old rags? You know what the other mages think of you already, if they see you in those you’ll become a laughing stock!” As if the boy, who couldn’t be much older than me just noticed me, he jumped back slightly and exclaimed “Who are you! How did you follow master!”

The boy, who was still panicking at the fact that someone followed his master was dressed in a dark gray robe and had grayish hair along with pale skin, and wasn’t much taller than me.

“Calm down Igor, calm down.” The old man seemed a bit peeved but tried to put on a friendly display. “This is our new scribe.” He said in a rather serious voice “Alexis has some skills in making parchment that appears to be cheaper than traditional parchment while maintaining quality, due to its origin being from plants rather than hide.”

“Interesting, but why did you pick her as a scribe? Don’t we have plenty of people who want to join the tower already?”

“Patience, Igor my boy. How about you escort Alexis to her room? She will be staying in the research and living hall number four, so please make her feel comfortable.”

“Master, isn’t that hall reserved for disciples? Wh-”

“Igor, just do it. Can’t you listen to master without question just this once?” Charles, who was at this point standing right next to me asked, then heaved a long sigh.

At first it seemed like fists were going to fly with how they both started eyeballing each other, the same way I saw many bar fights start, but Igor just shrugged his shoulders and gestured for me to follow him.

We walked out the door to the left, and arrived in a long corridor. We took a left and Igor lead me up a set of stairs. The stairs were thin and I nearly slipped a few times on the stone, which was much worse than the wood of the room prior, but eventually I made it up.

We went up and exited the stairs at a door. No hallways just one door. “This is your room.” Igor took a set of keys from inside his cloak and unlocked the door after trying a few keys. He guided me inside and handed me a steel key with a bunch of notches in the end “This is your key to get back inside. They are expensive to replace so don’t loose it.” He then walks back outside and closes the door, and I get a good look around the place. I was in a long hallway with windows on either end, and candles with a bright white flame were mounted on the wall, without any wax dripping from them.

‘Those must be the magic candles I’ve heard a bit about in rumors. Supposedly they are a new invention and they are quite a good product.’ I walk down to the first door of the hallway, deciding to start in order from first to last, and open it. Inside I find a small cube like room with empty bookshelves lining the wall and two small indents in the wall. I look at them and find that one was a simple indent, possibly to hold some sort of safe, and the other was human sized and had a translucent wall on the top and bottom, which showed a long tunnel going up and down.

I take my attention off the endless tunnel and see a grand oak desk in the center of the room, with a set of ink on the table covered to preserve it, and drawers on the back of the desk along with a wooden chair covered in pelt seemly strategically. I tried pulling out the drawers and the top one was full of bottles of ink, alongside an ink that was shiny purple. Deciding its best not to mess with the unknown I leave it as is and move on to the drawer on the bottom, which was twice as big as the drawer on top and went to the bottom of the desk. Inside it were a few books with words I’ve never seen before in my life but my brain immediately reminds me of their meaning “A disciples guide to the seventeenth gray tower of Midgard, written by Mage Luke Avius” Reading the cover, she was first in confusion, then in shock, then denial. “Why am I in Mage Avius’s tower? Could it be that that old man was Avius himself? How is it possible that Avius just invited me to his tower without needing any prior qualifications? No, that must not be Avius, but rather his disciple, and he invited me with Avius’s permission. But even then that's a stretch as there’s no way a Mage would take a commoner as a disciple.”

As Alexis was in thought the sound of wind peaked her attention. She looked for its source as it got louder and realized it was from the hole in the wall.

It got louder and louder until the blue barrier on the bottom of the hole opened up and Igor slowly emerged, holding a tray of food. “Master Avius said that he wanted you to get used to your rooms first and requested I bring up some food. It’s not like I wanted to be here.” Igor put the tray on the table, being careful as to not knock down the ink and left quickly. After taking a second to realize what happened, she now understood she was in the Mage Avius’s tower and that was more than likely Avius.

Putting her thoughts on why she was here aside, she looked at the food on a metal tray, similar to a flat shield she saw a knight carrying once, except much thinner. On it was a plate of white bread, and a few cuts of a meat she had never seen before alongside a wine glass she had only heard about with a white liquid inside of it.

She immediately took a bite of the bread, which is mostly reserved for royalty and tears formed in her eyes. ‘So GOOD!’ She thought to herself.

Alexis has been having dry, and hard bread which was the meal of commoners for so long that when presented with good quality food, she was amazed.

She wolfed down her meal, tears of joy in her eyes the entire time, and immediately was tired from eating so much. ‘The bread was great, but the meat was even better. Who knew you could have meat that good! Also the beverage served was amazing too, it tasted a bit sweet and fruity but not too much at the same time. Who knew they made drinks besides alcohol this good?!’

After getting up and trying to shake off her drowsiness, Igor came up really briefly to take the tray, and was quite to surprised to see me with tears in my eyes and a massive smile on my face, but decided not to ask and went back down with the tray.

After a small amount of food coma bliss, I went out of the study and walked to the next room.