All in all, there weren’t many things that I could have learned about the archmage that would have surprised me. It wasn’t as if I was all that familiar with the man, after all, and on top of that, he was known to be ridiculously old and powerful. In short, he was the exact sort of person I’d have expected to have a few proverbial skeletons in his proverbial closet.

That was just it, though -- I’d expected those skeletons to be proverbial. And in a closet.

I certainly hadn’t expected one such skeleton to be looming over me, hands clasped behind its back.

Or rather his back, I supposed. For when the final illusion in the room broke down, the wizened old archmage I’d grown accustomed to disappeared completely, replaced with the aforementioned skeleton. It hardly took a giant leap of intuition to guess who I was looking at.

Whether he was looking back at me was somewhat hard to gauge, as the skeleton in question quite clearly didn’t belong to a human. The general shape was all there, give or take a few joints and substitutions, but it was the head where the difference was made truly clear.

Horns sprouted from the archmage’s skull, their stygian darkness a sharp contrast to the skull beneath them. Rather than spiral off to the sides or shoot up into the air, however, they curved outwards and in to form something a visor. The truly unsettling part of it all came at the horns’ ends, however: When the two reached the site that would have held the skull’s eye sockets, they sharply curved inwards, puncturing the bone. Where the horns touched the skull, a black corona bled out from them, making it look like the archmage had a particularly curious preference when it came to his eye shadow application.

In general, I tried to be a fairly open minded person. Still, I couldn’t say the entire getup looked very friendly. The shadowy black robes he wore didn’t help things either.

While I took it all in, I remained crouched to the ground in a pool of my own blood, openly gaping. I notably failed to find any words for the situation; however, that only made for one of us. As the archmage seemed to realize I’d broken through the illusion, he tilted his skull down at me, the not-eye eye sockets pointed my way.

“Hmm. Well this proves rather vexing, doesn’t it?”

I concurred, if perhaps for different reasons. If he lets me live, I’m totally going to have to sign sooo many Oaths to get out of here, aren’t I?

Before I could say something stupid and get myself magically blasted to bits, I opted to retry my earlier identification attempt, this time on the actual mage instead of his illusion. The results were somewhat better than expected.

Exanther Callithus*: Level 63 Apex of Arcanity, 2600/2600hp, 8321 Prestige

*This target is obfuscated. This target has altered their status. To anyone who fails to break through the target’s obfuscation, the target’s status will display as follows:

Archmage Xander’Callis: Level 44 Archmagus Researcher, 1650/1650hp, 2811 Prestige

Wow, all right. That’s new.

Temporarily ignoring the fact that even the archmage’s fake status had over double my Prestige, I decided to let the archmage figure out where the hell to go from here. Taking advantage of the awkward silence, I pulled up my notifications to see what had happened to God’s Eye, scrolling back to when it had leveled.

God’s Eye has reached level 10!

Congratulations! You have reached the Initiate rank in God’s Eye!

Based on your skill usage, you have been granted the following augment: God’s Personal Private Eye.

God’s Personal Private Eye

Your repeated usage of your skill to identify people instead of objects has caused it to evolve in a more person-based manner. Additionally, repeated attempts to identify those under obfuscation or illusions and those with much higher Prestiges have granted you greater insights into the private affairs of those you identify.

Max identifiable level now * 2 + .

God’s Eye now breaks through nearly all forms of personal obfuscation, illusions, or status alterations without alerting the target or setting off counterspells.

God’s Eye now displays the target’s Prestige.

Note! God’s Eye is not considered class aligned! Leveling speed drastically reduced.

There was a bit of overlap between the new augment and Illuminated Sight, but even so, the improvement was massive. The jump in the max identifiable level alone would have been stellar, but the addition of the Prestige added an entirely new dimension to the skill.

On top of that, a few more notifications followed the rank up.

Pain Resistance has reached level 6!

Bleed Resistance has reached level 6!

Pain Resistance has reached level 7!

Bleed Resistance has reached level 7!

Pain Resistance has reached level 8!

Well, that’s not horrifying at all.

“I would ask that you attempt to avoid spacing off. Additionally…” In a move that was likely to haunt my dreams for the foreseeable future, the bone comprising the archmage’s skull bent, dragging his tooth-filled mandible into a scowl as he examined the general state of me. With a wave of his hand, he simultaneously cleaned away the remaining blood and healed me back to full health. “There we are. Now! I find myself rather curious. What are you? And no, I’m afraid that’s not a rhetorical question. Here.” As was par for the course by now, a drawer opened up and a long oblong stone came flying out towards me. I snatched it from the air as it neared.

This time around, I didn’t even need to identify it, recognizing it from when I’d first come to Sylum: It was a build stone. Suds had made me use one immediately on entering the city to show him my entire stat sheet. He’d also been overwhelmingly clear to never, ever use it for anyone else.

“Didn’t you agree not to do this? I feel like I very pointedly should not be showing you my entire sheet.” Sure, the archmage already knew something weird was going on with me, but there was a big difference between knowing vaguely and knowing exactly.

All at once, the mana permeating the room took on an oppressive quality, almost physically weighing down on me. It was like the time the archmage had intimidated Warram for me, except now I was the object of his displeasure, making it much, much worse.

“I’m afraid that was not a request. Current events have superseded earlier promises. Once I understand how you broke through my illusions, we can proceed from there.” Entirely unconcerned, he smiled at me, the absence of lips making every grin a toothy one.

Okay. Well. Let’s hope the archmage isn’t looking to kill a Protagonist and grab a boon? Because I’m not seeing an easy way out here. I could attempt to hastily use a recall stone, but I doubted I could activate before the archmage froze me or interrupted it somehow. Even then, I wouldn’t have been surprised if he was able to follow the teleport.

With a defeated sigh, I did as requested. A few moments later, the archmage shouted out.

“A gods’ blighted Protagonist!” He spat off to the side, and without his body having salivary glands, I was fairly sure he’d gone through the trouble of conjuring the water mid-spit. “Of course it had to be that. Miss Astorius, do you know what Protagonists are? They’re basically the sentient form of politics but for gods. Always starting drama. Stirring things up when they’re perfectly fine unstirred. Should you currently be worrying, I’d like to assure you that I’d rather melt down each and every bone in my body before receiving an Antagonist’s Mark.”

Well, that’s reassuring at least? It sounded like I wasn’t about to be murdered, which I admittedly counted as a plus.

Without another word, Xander’Callis -- or Exanther, I supposed -- started rifling through drawers and shelves, seeming to eschew his usual levitation spells in an effort to find something.

“Um. Do I get any sort of explanation about what’s happening here? I mean, I won’t ask if that’s going to make you kill me or something, but… what the hell is going on with all this?” I gestured vaguely to his menacing bony form feeling a need to at least know something.

He dismissively waved a few phalanges my way. “If you have not caught on, I am an undead. The living form is horribly inefficient in a variety of ways, and necromancy is one of the standard work-arounds. Should you ever grow old enough, perhaps you’ll make a similar choice.”

I mean, I kind of doubted it. Could he even taste things like that? Did his sense of touch still work? More importantly, could he even get drunk anymore? That seemed like a bit of a dealbreaker for me, but considering how old he was, I figured I’d give him the benefit of the doubt that he’d thought over the tradeoffs pretty well.

“As for what I’m doing here, research takes reagents. Test subjects. Minds to bounce things off of. Much easier to do it surrounded by other like-minded individuals, and there’s only so many times you can work with dark and shadowy cabals before you tire of them getting broken up by the law or slaughtered by demons. I figured it would be simpler to retire to the middle of nowhere and funnel some resources into a local mage college. To that end, I arrived here a good few centuries back. As neither my original species nor my current undead form tend to inspire the warmest of welcomes in these regions, I should hope I need not explain the illusion to you.”

That was shockingly less convoluted than I’d expected it to be, although if this was “the middle of nowhere,” I wasn’t really sure I wanted to know what he considered the middle of somewhere.

“So. Next question. Am I supposed to call you Archmage Callis still? Or Archmage Callithus? Exanther?”

Confusingly enough, the archmage recoiled at the question, his jerky movements causing a few of his bones to rattle out.

What? I was only trying to be polite.

“Exanther? You mean to tell me you did not simply peer through the illusion, you actually successfully identified me as well? And without me noticing? Quite a skill you have there… I admit, I fail to think of a circumstance in which you’d be referring to me by my true name in the third person, as I’m about to riddle you with Oaths against that, but Xander’Callis and Archmage Callis will still suffice.”

Cool. Cool cool cool.

With that figured out, we settled into a somewhat awkward silence for a time as Xander’Callis continued to rifle through his study until at last my curiosity won over once more.

“So. Whatcha looking for?”

“Training aids,” came the brief response.

Training aids? Something told me the archmage wasn’t in need of much training himself. “Wait, for me?”

It was hard to tell with the whole “horns impaling the eye sockets” thing, but I somehow got the sense the archmage was rolling his eyes. “Yes, for you.”

Okay, clearly that wasn’t the intent of the question. You have to know why I’m asking that. “Right. Didn’t we go through a few rounds of you saying you’re not going to train me anymore?”

Probably not the most important thing given the whole “the archmage is a skeleton” revelation I’d just had, but look: If there was one thing I’d grown exceptionally good at in the last year, it was rolling with the fantasy punches. I liked to think it would take a bit more than this to faze me for too long.

In a move shockingly reminiscent of Suds, the archmage used his telekinesis to flick a small metal ball into my forehead, eliciting a sharp yelp and a wince from me. “Firstly, you’re more interesting now. Secondly, half -- well, more like a quarter -- of the reason I dislike interacting with others is maintaining the act of being human is exhausting. Thirdly, I find it prudent to keep an eye on you to make sure the Oaths hold. Fourthly, I feel disturbingly confident that if I let you go, I’m going to be blindsided and get roped into something god-related. I would rather be ready for it when it comes.”

Huh. Well. Hurray?

I guess I still had a magic teacher.

Over the course of the next few minutes, Xander’Callis ended up finding everything he was looking for before hastily writing something long-winded down on a few pieces of vellum. When he was done, all the items -- vellum included -- were telekinetically shoved my way. Quickly sorting through them, I found most of them were wearable objects in some way -- contact lenses, rings, socks and more.

“Here. Sign all these or I kill you. Also, put all of these on when you get home. They’re training aids.” Almost as an afterthought, he tacked on one more thing. “Ah! And here. Some new spells to celebrate your recent growth. Enjoy, apprentice.” A hard, bony hand clamped down onto my head before a torrent of knowledge rushed into me. I held out for a split second, and then all at once, I passed out.

At least top five, I decided. Maybe higher.

Presently, I was lying in bed trying to figure out where the day had ranked in terms of “weirdest experiences I’d had since becoming a Protagonist.”

Lesbian goth god and her valkyrie girlfriend might still win out, but definitely top five.

After the archmage had woken me up, I’d gone through with the Oath signing, making a solid two different people I was now Oath-beholden to. The archmage was quick to inform me, however, that his level in Oath magic was likely significantly higher than that of anyone I’d met. Whereas breaking my Oath with Verin would have me see some pretty rough consequences, if I somehow found a way to break the one with Xander’Callis, I’d almost certainly be dead.

Nice. Good.

The terms weren’t that bad, though. All I had to do was not tell anyone that the archmage was secretly a freaky undead necromancer.

Wildly enough, that wasn’t the end of the weirdness: The archmage had opted to give me a quick lesson plan.

Apparently getting a magic school from the Novice to Initiate rank was just about getting your mana core familiar with a particular mana type. You didn’t have to pay much attention to what you were casting. You didn’t have to put any intent into it. It was almost robotic, in a way.

According to the archmage, the “right” way to get from Initiate to Apprentice, however, was a touch more involved. The Initiate levels were all about making magic second nature. Magic wasn’t supposed to be thought of as a tool, but instead as an extension of your body. Using it was supposed to come as instinctually as walking or breathing.

Not that anyone actually managed that in practice.

But then again, not everyone went through what the archmage called “training.”

After the quick lesson, I’d been sent back home and told to “put on my training aids.” Warily, I took them all out.

The first was a pair of wrinkled, black, ankle socks. Not quite knowing what to expect, I identified them with trepidation.

Sog and Desiccation, Cursed Socks of Ruin*

This pair of enchanted socks has been fine tuned to make the wearer’s feet as miserable as possible, useful only as a training aid or a torture device. When worn, Sog and Desiccation will alter the moisture of their respective feet, randomly making one unpleasantly soggy and the other itchy and dry.

*Note, these items’ effects are conditional! All effects removed while the wearer is at zero mana, in battle, in a dungeon, or attempting to sleep. All effects negated once the wearer reaches the Apprentice rank in Water Magic and Air Magic. Effects will scale with the wearer’s ability to negate them.

“I’m sorry, but there’s no way we’re being serious right now. I’m supposed to wear these?” Even a single second of wearing soggy socks was enough to ruin my day. Fluctuating between that and rapid-onset eczema was not how I wanted to spend my time.

Admittedly, the whole point of the socks was that I’d been given a way to deal with their effects. I pulled up my notifications, going back to the new spells the archmage had forced into my head.

Dampen

Dampens a target object or creature.

Mana cost variant depending on strength of effect desired.

Dry

Dries a target object or creature.

Mana cost variant depending on strength of effect desired.

The idea was that whenever the socks effects would trigger, I’d learn to instinctively cast the needed spell at the needed strength. If the archmage was to be believed, I wouldn’t even notice the effects of any of the training aids by the time I was done. I didn’t believe him, but it was cute in theory, at least.

I went through the remainder of the objects, finding them to be much the same: Contacts that would grow blindingly bright or completely dark; a ring that would rapidly grow, forming thorns to dig into my finger, or rapidly wither, letting off weak contact poison; an pair of earrings that would have my ears alternating between frostbitten and burnt; an anklet that would randomly decrease my weight, causing me to float away.

For each of the objects, I’d likewise been given one or two spells to counteract their effects: Shade, Tint, Vivify, Deaden, Invigorate, Chill, and Encumber. The last of those felt a bit superfluous -- when used on myself, it did much the same as my earth boots did -- but the spells weren’t about adding to my repertoire as much as they were about helping me train.

I sat there for a time, trying to decide between putting them on and going back to the archmage to refuse. In the end, though, I already knew what I’d pick. I wasn’t particularly keen on pissing off the archmage right now, and if perhaps a bit rough, the aids likely would help me out a ton. It was hard to remember sometimes, what with all my carefree school life, but I was still an underleveled Protagonist. Choosing not to level my magic wasn’t really a luxury I could afford.

With a sigh, I opted for the least offensive of the objects, the contacts. With my various types of Arcane Vision, I could always make myself immune to blind effects if I really needed to.

Warily, I put them on…

Only for them to hit up against something hard?

Wait, what?

I moved a finger up to one of my eyes, finding that I seemed to already have a pair of contacts in. Confused, I took them out, hitting them with God’s Eye.

Rock-Repellent Contacts

+1 to all known Detection skills

Prevents dust and dirt from getting in your eyes.

Wait. Didn’t I get these from the Drawgin Mud Dungeon? They were the reward from the original boss -- not the hidden shower elemental, but the rock golem that Jason had ever-so-gracefully yeeted around the room by himself.

Have I been wearing the same pair of contacts non-stop for half a year without realizing it?

Well.

Ew.

We’re just going to not think about that one too hard.

After thoroughly cleaning them, I threw them into my spatial pouch and replaced them with their significantly less pleasant counterparts.

Almost immediately, the room began to grow brighter and brighter, forcing me to cast off a few Shades in quick succession. Right as I was getting the hang of it, the room began to darken, the tinted material managing to sidestep my god-granted darkvision.

Still. This isn’t so bad, is it?

Emboldened from my initial success and having properly steeled myself, I hastily put on the rest of the aids before I could chicken out. It couldn’t be that bad could it?

As it turned out, I was so, so wrong.