There was another round of investigation after that, and Aemric didn’t give much more information than he already had. He did beat most people in the dorm to the punch, though, and was even privy to some more information by the end of the day; the investigators put some trust into him, seeing as he was doing the reporting now.

  The magic department knew that the magic came from his floor, that was one thing. Someone below said it was above, and someone above said it was below. They also thought it was in his wing of the dorm, too. It wasn’t a big field to search through.

  He needed to get the hell out, pronto. If he stayed quiet for a little while longer it would be fine, but considering he’d just given the Red Scale permission to throw Tiria at whatever dangerous maneuvers they wanted to, it was going to get louder.

  He cursed himself for having made that decision, mind. As much of a hassle as that girl was, watching her die wasn’t fun. But what could he have done? If not that, they’d probably lock her away or something, considering how useful she was going to be just as a messenger, and presenting that gift helped win the Red Scale Master’s favor.

  Aemric did plant a seed in the investigators’ minds, though: he’d acted scared over the phone. Only faintly, maybe more like nervous, but still. When the investigator showed up, he expressed a desire to move out since the last spell was really big. Maybe that would throw them off his trail a little, or maybe they saw right through it and were just waiting for proof it was him. Regardless… they told him sure, he could leave – the comfort and safety of the students was their priority.

  He ramped up the search for a new place to stay. To hell with the essays and the classes: an education was the last thing on his mind right now. By noon, he already found a temporary hotel and even sent a message to the university telling them he was dropping out. They at least had a partial refund system, so his parents were going to get some money back. It was only the first year… probably not a big deal.

  Aemric packed up, cleaned up, wiped the sweat off his forehead, and then left. He didn’t need to turn in his keys yet, so he decided to hold on to them until it was needed… maybe they’d be useful, or maybe he’d left something behind in his room by accident. By late afternoon, he was in the hotel, and had some breathing room as a result. The place was closer to that park, but it was still far from perfect.

  Aemric settled down on that comfy-as-hell bed… oh. Cheap and last-minute really did count for something. The hotel was pretty tacky and the bed felt scratchy. Plenty of reason to move out, at least.

  In any case, he took the moment to Dream. Nothing loud, just checking in on his two new favorite people.

  Tiria was practicing with her staff, in that same sparring room. There was even a guard with her again. Aemric was very tired of this sight by now. He pushed past that, and had Tiria take a break for a moment.

  “How ya feeling, champ?”

  Tiria’s face twitched once she was in control again. “I’m fine.” She said aloud, and nodded to the guard. He spoke into an earpiece quietly, while the conversation in the middle of the room continued.

  Aemric figured that probably wouldn’t hurt. Nothing they had thrown at him yesterday had been a problem for him. “I really didn’t think you would tell them like that. I guess it worked out, though. I didn’t even really know I had a boss.”

  “They, at least, seemed competent.”

  “I’m getting better at this, I swear. No more practice sessions, at least.” He internally chuckled; she really had no idea how much practice he’d just gotten. He barely knew, either. It felt like an entire day had gone by in that room. “I don’t think I really got how seriously you took your job before, either.”

  “Serving the Scale is my duty, as it was my father’s duty before.”

  “There’s some kind of line between just your duty and killing yourself just because they asked.”

  Tiria seemed surprised by this. She stiffened up, and hesitated. She went back to murmuring. “I did?”

  “Your father handed you the knife… It was kind of terrifying. No hesitation. It uh, took me a while to get over it.”

  Tiria shook her head. “Enough.” She turned to the guard. “I’m going to go back to my room. This… conduit seems to want to talk.”

  The guard nodded, and followed Tiria out. She went through several hallways, a flight of stairs, and a few doors to get to the room Aemric had seen before; the guard waited outside.

  She sat down on her bed. “I’m not that person.”

  Aemric was very confused. As much as all that had distressed him, he had never really thought it was outside the realm of things she would do. “What do you mean?”

  “I do my job, but I wouldn’t do that.” She put a hand to her forehead, hiding her eyes from his perspective. “I didn’t think my father would do that either. We… he and my mother, they taught me to act with loyalty and clarity, but not like that.”

  “Oh… I’m sorry.” If she wasn’t committed enough to the organization by default, then it was because she didn’t see another way out.

  “I told him hoping that he could get a magician to help me. We’re- he’s important enough to request one without the Master’s involvement.” She took a long breath. “I still knew what that knife was for when I saw it afterwards. That’s what took him so long… it usually stays in my mother’s dresser. It wasn’t so sharp before, and it didn’t need to be if it was for trying to escape.”

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  “I’m very, very sorry. Really.”

  Tiria didn’t cry about any of this. Her eyes didn’t even water, which Aemric realized when she looked up at him for a second. She held herself together surprisingly easily, like she’d always known how her father would have reacted, but she never wanted to believe it. She rested her head in her hands for some time, then asked, “Are you human?”

  Aemric briefly thought that was a silly question to ask, but then he realized that just yesterday he’d alluded to very-non-human entities existing out there. “Yeah. I’m from New Dardania, same as you.”

  “Do you have a normal family?”

  “Yeah. I’m… well, I guess I was a pretty normal guy until very recently. Just some college student getting a degree in history that he uh, probably never really planned to use.” There were definitely enough of those around that revealing this could do no harm.

  “I always knew you were male.”

  “I haven’t been peeking, I swear.”

  A stifled laugh came from Tiria; Aemric wasn’t really sure what she thought was funny. She’d definitely been uncomfortable about his being able to watch her unannounced before, and he couldn’t blame her for it. Still, she didn’t seem to care, now. Maybe the other, far greater problems were just winning out and making the old ones look silly. In any case, she then asked, “Did you ask for these powers of yours? Or did they just fall on your head?”

  “The latter. I mean, the idea of having some cool ability sounded neat before this, but I never would’ve taken the job if I could pass it on to someone, you know, better-qualified.”

  “It’s my luck, then, that has me puppeted by someone so incompetent.”

  “Well, I can’t really argue with that… What’s this feel like to you, anyway?”

  “It feels like dying, each and every time you take control. All feeling seems wrong, all ability to move is gone, I can’t even move my eyes. All I can do is see and hear and think in a body that isn’t mine. I don’t breathe, I don’t blink, I don’t do anything myself.”

  Aemric became very careful about taking over to talk to her, and spent a lot of time thinking about what to say.

  It was long enough that Tiria seemed to notice and added, clearly just to make him feel better, “It’s not so bad. I’ve gotten used to it.”

  “Really?” Sure, he’d watched her actually die a few dozen times by now, but she didn’t see those timelines.

  “Mm.”

  “You know… this might sound kind of weird, but I think I’ve gotten used to seeing you die, too.”

  “That’s even stranger to think about. I knew you knew something about the future, but… How many times?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe twenty or so. Three or four on the first day, once with the truck, and a lot more just yesterday. That’s when the uh, boss stepped in.”

  “...I’ll try to take better care of myself.”

  “Please do. Still, I think the only thing you could have prevented was telling them about me, and I can’t really blame you on that one.”

  Tiria fell silent, thinking that over again. “It was a mistake… wasn’t it?”

  “I’m not sure yet.”

  Next was the less-fun one. Norvash.

  The President of Sal Tudi was actually doing something important this time. A meeting with some of his advisors; Aemric let it play out. Most of it was going over ‘typical’ things; inflation numbers, complaints from various important entities, and updates on various upcoming speeches and events.

  It didn’t mean much to a normal guy like Aemric, though he sat through it for a while regardless just to see what he could learn. He felt like he was growing up at light-speed with everything that had happened lately, but he still had to guess at everything in the meeting with the number of shorthands, equations, and acronyms they were throwing around. Norvash, meanwhile, was surprisingly active and capable of engaging with the scene, and didn’t appear as the slob that he had in his own home before. The advisors were naturally still doing their jobs, explaining things he didn’t know and in terms that they were clearly beyond in their own fields, but the President was still only behind by so much.

  As the reports and such came to a close less than an hour later, and most of the cabinet filed out, Norvash brought something up. He turned to his propaganda minister – as a dictator-for-life, of course he had one of those. “Say, what do the people think of magic?”

  The minister found it an interesting topic. “I’d need to put it through the counters for the real numbers, but magic is generally popular. It makes daily life easier, and it’s flashy. What kind do you mean?”

  “I mean, if we put effort into a larger magical research department, would it improve public perception?”

  Norvash’s chief magician found the need to speak up. “It would certainly help us to have extra resources over here. It might take a few years to put us on the map again, but magic is crucial in certain economic and military fie-”

  “Yes, yes, I know.” The President gestured for him to shush. “For the moment, the public eye?”

  The propaganda minister nodded after a moment. “It could certainly be spun.”

  The Chief of the Economy piped up. “It would also be very expensive for what good it does. There are still a good dozen highways that could use high-level funding, never mind the trains. People like having good roads and fast transport, too.”

  Propaganda shook his head. “Not as much as magic, I’m almost certain. We’ve never gone after magic before, it would be quite novel to them.”

  Norvash turned to the magician. “Well, for now, try and do an estimate on what it’ll cost us. I want to have something to show for it in a few months; not ‘years.’”

  The chief magician sighed; he knew the cost was high and knew that explaining would dissuade the president from much funding. “That would require bringing in outside help… paying foreign magicians to work here instead, to use their existing high-end expertise, and that means better workspaces, not just salaries. Components, arcane gems, assistants. That would all need to be imported, since we don’t have enough of them ourselves…”

  “I see.” Norvash rubbed his temples and sighed. “Then… perhaps try to hire one well-respected magician from elsewhere. Prop him up, and then do something for the long run. Ideally he’d be good in some unusual field, no?”

  “Maybe… mental magic, perhaps. Or-”

  The president’s face lit up. “Perfect. That should do. Do the research and present some possibilities soon. This might be the funding you’ve been begging for for so long.”

  “Of course, Mr. President.” The magician’s expression told everyone in the room how much he wished he got to use that funding for something more meaningful.

  The room was then cleared, the core cabinet dismissed. Some of them briefly complimented Norvash, though, saying he was more focused than usual. Aemric lowered his perception of the president a little after that.

  Still… he was clearly trying to put in some effort to get rid of the control on himself. ‘Some unusual field’ was almost always mental magic. People had to toe ethical lines on that one all the time, so it wasn’t a well-developed kind of magic. Sort of like necromancy, but that really didn’t have a lot of practical use: animating bones or corpses was just inferior to animating rock or steel, even if it was cheaper in the short term.

  Aemric decided to let him carry on with the plan, regardless. Stopping Norvash here would be difficult, since he’d just find another way to struggle. If he thought he had a chance at ‘curing’ himself he might play nice in the meantime.

  Instead, Aemric had a less-strenuous talk with the president where he suggested putting funds towards magic studies, to maybe find something out about the demons or at least wind up with enough magicians to throw a few fireballs at the enemy when the time came. For obvious reasons, Norvash thought it was a good idea. Maybe he’d be more lenient on the budget, but at least he’d probably think he really was being sneaky.