Ranvir frowned down at the letter in his hands, idly listening to the messenger speeding off. It was very few people sent their mail directly to his home. He lived out of the way of even Eriene, which had a small spot where you could collect your letters. It wasn’t a manned outpost of the Psykimes, but it was better than traveling to Crotenus or Limclea.

Kasos was the only person who ever paid the premium to send it directly to his house. Even he didn’t do it all the time, and this letter wasn’t marked with the stamps to come from Cleseira, anyway. If he wasn’t mistaken, this was from Chórofos, checking the return it was some street and building label, which suggested a compound?

The Collegia? The thought struck Ranvir suddenly, and he tore the letter open.

The letter inside was only a few paragraphs long, simple and to the point, though written with a deliberate and practiced hand. Better than I could’ve written it, he noted idly as he scanned it.

“Frija, Vasso!” Ranvir called, directing his voice outside and inside, respectively. In moments, both children staggered forth.

“What?” Frija asked, her hair the usual mess, an entire stick having somehow caught in it. She sniffed and wiped her face with a sleeve, leaving a dirty streak from her nose all the way to her ear. She grimaced and scowled at her arm. “Ew.”

Vasso still carried the book he’d been reading, only halfway down the stairs. His hair was a mess too, though it came from long hours reading on his bed, rather than running through the woods.

“Kids,” Ranvir said, waving the letter around. “I just got a letter from a professor over in Chórofos,” Frija perked up and Vasso frowned slightly. “The rest of this month is a little busy, but I’m planning on squeezing them in as soon as I can. You can have two choices: Either you come with me to the Collegia and talk with the professor or you go stay with either Ione or I can ask Kyriake to look after you.”

“Kyriake’s too strict,” Frija chimed in immediately. “Uh, can we see the waterfalls? I heard there are big,” she mimed the vast size with her hands and arms, adding a few supplementary sounds as well. “waterfalls over there.”

“I’m sorry, no,” Ranvir shook his head. “This isn’t a vacation, though I’ll note it down for a later excursion. It’s going to be work and most of it on the Collegia’s campus, I think.”

“Can’t I stay with Elpir?” Frija asked, shoulders slumping. Her posture perked up as Menace prowled out of the woods, lazily following her. Ranvir noted the few sandy bugs crawling across her shoulders and hair as she turned.

“I’d like to come,” Vasso said.

Ranvir smiled at both of them. “Elpir and Amalia are already busy, unfortunately,” he said to Frija, then turned to Vasso. “That’s amazing. Go pack your things. Plan for three or four days.”

Vasso nodded and headed back up the stairs.

“Ugh,” Frija complained, leaning on Menace’s powerful back. She was barely taller than the hunting cat. Menace had grown into a monstrous size, at least if Ranvir hadn’t spent so long exposed to Graywing before the merge. Though Menace’s paws and ears still looked a little outsized on him, it wasn’t as notable anymore. He was also nearly as tall as Frija over the shoulder.

“Can I stay with Ione? The Collegia doesn’t sound fun at all,” Frija sniffed and crossed her arms.

Ranvir smiled and knelt next to her. “Of course you can,” he brushed a few hairs out of her face. “I’ll miss you, though.”

“I’ll miss you too, Dad,” then she smiled with a mischievous glint in her eye. “Just not as much as I’ll be bored if I go. Would there even be trees to climb? Places to play with Menace?”

“I wouldn’t count on it,” Ranvir had to admit. That said, his only experience with compounds and campuses was the Elusrian War Academy and the Sentinel’s Charter in Legea. He didn’t know how they compared to the Collegia, but rumor said they couldn’t be compared. Though not in the ‘fun to play as a child’ and more in the ‘interesting to watch as an adult’ kind of way. “I’ll pop over and ask her right now,” he kissed her on her dirty forehead and hopped into a tunnel. “If you’re going to stay with Ione, you should get cleaned up first,” he caught her complaints on an upraised finger. “If you’re going to dirty yourself after you arrive, that’s between Ione and you, not me.”

She pouted but called on Menace. “Come on! Let’s go bath,” so Frija and Menace rushed towards the bathroom, the big cat excited for the water.

Vasso winced and stretched as he stepped out of the pocket-space, pressing his knuckles into his lower back. Ranvir grimaced in sympathy, though he didn’t feel the strain himself.

Traveling through space powers was fast, but unfortunately not as instant as Ranvir would have liked. In some scenarios, it was close enough. Ranvir’s training and power systems had increased the range of his tether-sense to the point he could reach Eriene from his home, though it was a twenty-minute walk away. His actual range varied slightly on the day and his recovery, but he average a kilometer and a half.

As far as he could tell, that put him above every single Master back in Vednar and in competition with most High-Urityon. Even so, he was growing more comfortable with Graywing’s powers every day, which grew his range even further.

If his growth kept in line, he would outstrip Kyriake’s reach within the next two months. Despite all that, he still couldn’t beat Kasos’ five kilometer range. Ranvir might’ve gathered potent tools, but it would not beat training and control.

All of this came to mean that when Ranvir created a pocket-space, he stretched his tether-sense as far as he could reach, then subverted the intervening space and opened a new aperture connecting to the border of his tether-sense. Repeatedly.

It was mind numbing work, but it was faster than manually moving the connection across the plane. Most messengers tended towards wind or light mana. Light mana could rival—and beat—his pace when strong enough, but space mana needed little strength to match what Ranvir was doing at the moment.

It just wasn’t fun. It was very boring and had none of the thrill of leaping into the skies at speed, or rushing across the ground so fast the features blur. So while speedy, it lacked the reasons messengers took up their job in the first place.

Vasso enjoyed it, though. He got to occasionally look out over a pretty landscape and spend the rest of his time sitting next to a lantern and reading.

“Wow,” the boy muttered as glimpsed the Collegia. Ranvir had to agree. It put the academy to shame. Greatly so.

The Collegia was a huge, sprawling complex of architectural combat. Each building an attempt at showing off and displaying intricate carvings, from figures of Korfyi’s legends to arabesques so intricately carved it had to have taken months or even years by a trained braced.

Though each building seemed to keep to a three or four story requirement, the rest was apparently up to the creator’s own discretions. The nearest building had completely forgone the first floor for an arcade like construction, with a few amphitheatre like divots build into the shade for lectures.

The next building over had the corners done in glistening iron, rust free and shining like it was polished every day. Detailing and other smaller touches were marked in brass that shimmered similarly.

Then one that had water running through between the bricks instead of mortar. Ranvir couldn’t imagine how they’d done it, but it seemed even sturdier than the regular buildings and though it wasn’t as flashy as the one adorned with metal, it left the entire building with an ethereal presence. The windows, too, were made of water.

At the center of the compound was the largest building, though it was perhaps the most understated. It was a simple construction with a slightly raised center structure of red brick with normal mortar. A clock face hung center of the slightly raised roof. The wings on either side of the building had an open-air corridor in the middle, allowing passersby to be seen as they strutted into the towers on either side of the structure.

Each tower was bigger than the Master’s Tower back home and Ranvir could feel the mana pulsing off each of them. He knew not what their purpose was, but they weren’t buildings at first, that much he was sure of. These were mana-items cloaking themselves as regular buildings.

Perhaps more surprising to Ranvir, was the nature intertwined throughout the buildings. Copses of trees, a field of flowers, small hedgerows creating little areas for people to sit, more fantastical plants as well. One bush was completely transparent as it rose from the ground, spreading out like it was water thrown by a fountain. Ranvir would’ve almost believed it too, if not for the slight breeze ruffling the tiny droplet-like leaves.

“This is incredible,” Vasso muttered, as Ranvir directed them towards the main building. The letter told him to go to the receptionist, and she’d direct them further.

“It sure is something,” Ranvir said, his wings rustling where he’d wrapped them around himself. If someone didn’t look too closely, they might be mistaken for a bulky cloak. But only if they really weren’t looking too much. “Let’s just hope the Professor Faidar is as impressive as the Collegia’s grounds.”