Everyone stared at the three mages, shakily trembling on their feet. Well, two of them were standing on their feet, Alice was quite intently trying not to roll over into her breakfast while silently grunting after her short proclamation.

  “What happened?” Zema was the first to break the silence, after several seconds of mute glares.

  “Your ‘safe’ wizard just did something incredibly dangerous,” Elizabeth managed to regain a shred of composure, turning towards the principal. “And you call our magic hazardous.”

  “An eye, like…” Irwyn started, then paused, unsure what to reveal when asking the question burning in his mind. But the similarity was undoubtedly there.

  “Not like the Duke,” Elizabeth shook her head, guessing at his question exactly. “Not a shred of the Void. Eyes are a rather universal symbol. And I suspect that this being might be greater yet… given the degree of detachment.”

  “What are you even on about?” the old wizard finally regained his composure somewhat, for while he had clearly not witnessed what the mages had, three people suddenly almost keeled over just as he cast his spell. It was not hard to associate what might have been the cause. “What eye?”

  “Riverwatcher,” Alice grunted, interrupting. Just a word, but grating on the ears. Capital R, Irwyn was certain. A Name. “The spells asks it to look back, I think.”

  “Time then,” Irwyn nodded. That would perfectly explain Alice’s greater reaction and insight. “What do you mean ‘look back’?”

  “The River. Obviously,” Alice chuckled weakly, then collapsed into a heap again. By then Waylan had made his way to her side and dragged her a bit away from the mess she had thrown up.

  “I feel like I am missing context,” Zema interjected again. “What is this river?”

  “The River of Time,” Elizabeth nodded. “The Channel of Causality. Or the corpse of Chronos if you prefer. As it flows it drags all of Time alongside its waters - eternally, unrelentingly across every reality…”

  “According to some myths,” the principal interjected.

  “I can deduce what something called the River of Time might generally be doing,” Zema nodded patiently, but Irwyn was sure the man seemed a bit unnerved beneath the facade. “But why is this being brought up?”

  “Ask your ‘safe’ spellcaster over here,” Elizabeth said scornfully. “Just what exactly his little magic trick did.”

  “It is a spell-like any other, if somewhat more advanced,” the principal frowned hesitantly. “It hardly warrants such a reaction.”

  “Your wizardry is using marks of powers imprinted upon this world. Ingrained patterns that have developed power of their own merely needing to be fueled,” she said. “And with enough knowledge, you can adjust them. Some of them.”

  “Not an inaccurate description,” the man surrendered.

  “But you’re doing it without any understanding of the difference between marks and Marks,” she said heatedly. “You cannot tell a name from a Name, blindly fumbling in-between knowledge and secrets best left untouched - uncaring for the difference.”

  “Some are more difficult or outright impossible to alter with my ability, as I will readily admit,” he argued back, frowning at the criticism. “But I don’t see how one symbol would fundamentally differ from another. It is all part of the same system our great founder had once established.”

  “Because the one you just used belongs to something very much still alive!” Elizabeth raised her voice breathing hard. A grain of fear was there, justified. It had passed yes… but how difficult would it be for the Riverwatcher to kill everyone present for the transgression? Even everyone in the damn city. Irwyn did not like his odds betting on being far enough away from a Named of Time. He suppressed a shudder of his own.

  “The Mark of a Name,” Irwyn summarized her implication about what the principal’s spell was. A Name would have a symbol of some kind that represented it and held some small degree of associated power. He had once seen several transcribed in that half-finished book which spoke of Names and claiming them - found among the belongings of an ambitious dead man, alongside that flower he rarely thought about.

  Later, he had realized that the exact shape of those Marks was, in fact, rather restricted. There was power to them, yes, but not without price. Except Irwyn did not know the details. From the look of things, the bearer of the Name would know when someone borrowed that power and could in some way react to it. Irwyn had not hazarded using the few in his possession… perhaps that was something that warranted revisiting. He had not brought up the book before since it predated the building of trust and it had been afterward… mostly forgotten.

  “Well done on not angering anything enough to wipe your nation from anything resembling a map yet,” Elizabeth clapped sarcastically. “Now please, do not try to cause mass extinction in the region again while we are still present.”

  “This is slander,” the principal almost bellowed. “These spells have been used for two centuries without any issues. Your little act is not convincing against the weight of history.”

  “Nothing has happened before, eh?” Waylan opined, nodding sagely. “Always means that nothing ever will.”

  “None of the Named - if you can recklessly call upon more - have been bothered enough to take issue so far,” Elizabeth disagreed. “Maybe they did not notice such small uses. But this is gambling. Matters of Names are not for mortal beings like us to meddle with! There are only so many times you can roll the dice before something takes enough offense to settle the score despite the distance it would have to travel. For all we know one could already be on their way.”

  “These symbols have been for the most part passed through generations of masters and apprentices,” the man insisted. “There have never been any issues. Certainly no ‘Named’, whatever you mean by that.”

  “Such Marks cannot be easy to come by,” Irwyn interrupted the argument. “Where would you even find one?”

  “Good question. Usually through bestowment or learning from someone who had been shown,” Elizabeth squinted looking at the principal. Convincing him did not seem likely. But the different train of thought at least calmed her somewhat – presented a different possibility.

  “This particular spell has been left behind by our founder himself, as I said,” the principal explained. “It is rightfully quite powerful, though it requires much more mana in turn.”

  “Fine, let us assume this is power bargained for – and for the sake of all the bystanders I hope it is. That suddenly makes your founder much more interesting,” Elizabeth decided. “That is not the kind of secret just anyone could learn, even with luck.”

  “And to what end?” Alice interjected, weakly sitting up. There was still an edge to her voice and gaze.

  “This spell finds the sources of wizardry,” the principal waved his hand to a spot right next to him. There, in the air, hovered a cerulean dot. A blue drop, visible to the naked eye - exactly at the spot where the principal had cast the simpler spell from just minutes prior.

  The old man then touched the spot of blue and it sprouted, revealing a symbol. The very same dual mark that he had used earlier to showcase how the starting point had been found. It quickly shriveled back to a point when he removed his hand. There were a few other such blue dots around the room if somewhat dimmer but indeed nothing at the spot that had been identified as the origin of the blue flames by the earlier magic.

  “AND YOU ARE LOOKING THROUGH THE RIVER OF TIME FOR THAT!” Alice burst out laughing, a disconcerningly maddened tinge to her voice. Then a ring flickered on her finger and her breathing calmed. Her eyes cleared. “You are essentially killing flies with an artillery barrage. Incredible.”

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  “A spell is a spell. Even if it requires as much power as twenty, the gap is not nearly so vast.”

  “Maybe we are exaggerating this,” Irwyn eventually said. “Let’s assume that the founder had indeed obtained these with permission – then adapted them for use in wizardry. How difficult would that be?

  “Strike a deal with several Named beings to leave as legacy?” Elizabeth pondered out loud. “Not impossible for someone sufficiently powerful. At least Truth mage. But why would he bother? Convincing or bribing Named is not easy. What point would there be?”

  “That only makes me think this founder had a sufficient reason,” Irwyn nodded. “Not a simple man.”

  “Of course he was not simple,” Zema interrupted, the major had been quiet but intently listening to every word spoken. “He was the one who chose the place for this city from which a nation sprouted. Taught the first settlers how to create our plastics and how to make our unique ceramics. A polymath of the highest degree: Engineer, wizard, doctor, architect, and many other things.”

  “The greatest man to ever walk these lands,” the principal agreed without hesitation.

  “And where is he now?” Irwyn thought to ask.

  “This nation is well over two centuries old and he had not been a young man when founding it!” Zema said with some hints of zeal and regret.

  “Yes, but that wasn’t the question,” Elizabeth nodded.

  “Who could possibly live for so long?” the major sighed regretfully.

  “It might be difficult to list them all,” she instead smiled. “That’s why we are curious: Those with enough power can survive unexpectedly long. But surely it would have been an important date to mark the founder’s death?

  “He had vanished during the Independence War,” Zema frowned, realized his audience had no idea what he was talking about, then elaborated. “That is, when the Western Kingdom’s expansion touched upon our border upon which they suddenly decided that these lands have always been theirs and thus we should be submitting to them. The exact date… his fate was never confirmed. The last time he was seen we solemnly remind ourselves of as ‘the Day of Departures’.”

  “This whole nation of yours seems meticulously designed,” Elizabeth said. “Almost too much. Like it had been built with a purpose. And now I wonder: Is it an achievement of one man who had stumbled upon secrets beyond mortal ken? Or one of many cogs in the machine of some immortal, toiling for centuries with an explicit purpose in mind?”

  “Rudeness is one thing but such insults are over the line,” the principal spoke up.

  “Ah, think nothing of it, I was just curious,” Elizabeth shrugged and let the topic drop. “The histories of foundings can be… fickle. I have been made privy to many secrets of my own nation's birth that would be most upsetting to the public. But I can see that at least in this, you are believers in the myth.”

  “You seem much more keen on myths than us,” the principal scoffed.

  “I would not dismiss this out of hand,” Zema carefully said. “So you claim some of these original spells invoke the power of ‘Names’.”

  “Are we really humoring their stories,” the principal asked.

  “Can you prove the opposite?” the Major questioned. “Besides, it would not be unlike the founder to forge potent pacts with great beings to safeguard our nations in his wake. Much like gods, yet not leaving us beholden to them. Tell me that would not fit among his other feats.”

  “I would still use it sparingly,” Elizabeth reminded. “Comparing Named to gods is already an insult - you do not understand the depth of their powers. Whatever pact might have been made, it is not binding to those beings. I cannot be sure about the others but part of the Riverwatcher looked here when its Mark was invoked.”

  “And mages can sense them when this happens, yes?” Zema asked.

  “Some,” Irwyn explained. “We are talented and therefore more sensitive. Alice is closely tied to its element and thus experienced it far more strongly.”

  “If you ever want to make a powerful mage run, pull that off again,” said Time mage chuckled from the ground. “I would run for my life if I felt that thing look vaguely in my direction. My grandfather probably would and he did not fear even half of the Dukes.”

  “Or better yet don’t keep doing something so reckless,” Elizabeth encouraged again. “Especially while we are near. I don’t want the be around if you happen to call upon Gluttony or anything adjacent. I have been warned the current Name is completely mad.”

  After all the commotion they were allowed to examine the room… but frankly, there was not much. The smell of Rot was basically non-existent even to Irwyn’s nose given how much time had passed. The burns on the wall had no magic left in them, the ashes had been cleaned up long before. Simply, there was not much left to examine.

  That was ultimately fine. They had wanted to be taken seriously by Zema so that they would be allowed in on hunting the undead. The Major was certainly viewing them more severely after that, even if not in all the best ways. When they left he promised to establish a liaison to keep in touch and then promptly left with the Principal, presumably to have a more private chat.

  Once they got back to their apartments Elizabeth raised a privacy bubble with a smile. The first thing she said was simple:

  “We finally know what this nation believes in, I suppose.”

  “The founder?” Alice2 asked with some surprise. “Sure, I know a bunch but I am, you know, not from here.”

  “Neither are we,” Elizabeth nodded. “I thought it would be best to come to you first since you might have a unique perspective.”

  There was no real communal area besides the telegram room in the basement so they had invited the girl to their apartment. It was much like Elizabeth had said, except there was a bit more to it. The girl would know what the Republic wanted people to hear - and also much of what their enemies did. It was indeed a different angle than most locals could provide.

  “If you are sure?” she was still hesitant. “I mostly know what I studied for the citizenship test.”

  “Everything you might have heard could be interesting,” Alice{original} encouraged, and that was finally enough. Her namesake began to talk.

  At first, it was all the things Irwyn had already learned. The prodigy, the polymath, the father of a nation. In some stories a spry middle-aged man of deceiving strength and great wit. In others already old and wizened. The agreed upon time between the first stories and the last was apparently 50 years almost exactly. He was like a hero of any folk story, except their founder was the protagonist in all of them. From deceiving a dragon into looking for the end of the world - something particularly unlikely given monsters were not really possible to converse with - to stopping a plague by inventing a miraculous cure less than decade from the city’s founding. And of course, anything and everything in-between.

  Then on the death of the man, when he had gone to rally the troops during their War of Independence. The Day of Departures which commemorated the last time he had been seen… And not much more. There was no proper story there, no real myth Alice knew of what might have happened. As if it had been universally accepted that this impossible, perfect man just vanished. Strange.

  Once she got talking it was possible to eventually also guide Alice to speak of what she had heard in her youth to the West - even if reluctantly. It was not much, even near the border as she used to live. Two things stood out at least: That priests to one of the Kingdom’s gods called the Republic ‘seed of the false prophet’ when disparaging it a few times. And that if such a topic ever came up in a conversation, the Republic was talked about with scorn with many believing their founder had just been a traitorous nobleman fleeing execution for past crimes.

  Eventually, Alice excused herself, saying she had something to do soon. But by then she had told them everything that she probably knew. That left the Federation’s quartered to mull over what they had been able to glean from all that.

  “One thing does not fit,” Elizabeth said once she re-established their privacy.

  “Ain’t no one that perfect?” Waylan guessed.

  “No, I think I know what she means,” Irwyn said, “It’s the population.”

  “Where did the people come from,” Alice grasped with a nod.

  “Some of the stories speak of settlers but the only nation near is the Western Kingdom,” Elizabeth nodded. “But later history says the independence war started after their expanding borders met - if they were settlers from there it should have happened sooner than in almost five decades.”

  “Maybe they just walked for a while?” Waylan suggested.

  “Then there would not be enough of them for a plague to ravage. Cities like this would not be filled within a couple decades - especially not if you account for the professions providing food. A massive exodus is not feasible in such numbers. You would need a great degree of organization and maintain supply lines.”

  “Well, you cannot exactly make people on the spot,” Waylan shrugged.

  “Perhaps there was a nation already near here,” Irwyn suggested. “Or maybe some warring tribes, remnants of an old kingdom? It would probably be possible to erase and replace that history.”

  “More of a unifier than founder,” Alice mused.

  “Maybe,” Elizabeth admitted. “Or perhaps there used to be another fully functional nation? We should look into that. Maybe a library – don’t you roll your eyes at me Waylan. North is a desert, South is the forest but what is East?”

  “Another strange thing is that we haven’t heard a name,” Irwyn said.

  “Well, we didn’t ask,” Waylan smartly noted.

  “You would think it would be mentioned more when speaking of the founder,” Elizabeth nodded. “Let’s see if we can find anything. Who knows, maybe it will be a Name instead.”

  “Why would a Named be spending their time on this,” Alice beckoned her hands towards the room. “Seems like a waste of time.”

  “Why not,” Waylan shrugged. “Immortal, right? Maybe he wanted to be a hero for a bit, then fucked off.”

  “We can only gue…” Elizabeth started.

  “Oh! Wait,” Irwyn exclaimed, interrupting. He had been kind of keeping track of the light telegraph going on beneath the ground with varying degrees of focus. Not enough to really translate any of it but he had maintained awareness. That was how he noticed that one seemed to be suddenly ending in their basement.

  “What?” Waylan asked but Irwyn raised a hand to stop the questioning so that he could turn his mind to the task in front of him.

  The streams of light were quite close to each other in the ground and incredibly slim. The lack of magic did not help the difficulty any, nor did the general daylight in the rooms between them and the basement. It was definitely much harder than when he had been on the street level. Still, Irwyn did manage to interpret it. Well, most of it. He had apparently missed the first few words before noticing at all but the overall point was clear. To the point he could relay it before even seeing the end.

  “Well, I am pretty sure Alice has just been assigned as the promised liaison.”

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