The five days passed without incident.
Orestis reviewed, commented, and quietly corrected whatever they placed in front of him. The work was straightforward. The systems were competently designed and occasionally ingenious, which made their flaws more interesting than frustrating. No one asked him to do more than observe, and no one seemed surprised when his observations resolved things that had resisted resolution for months.
On the sixth morning, Alke met him at the entrance with a folder and a smile.
“Good news,” she said. “You’re staying.”
“I assumed so. No one told me to leave.”
“That
is
how it works here,” she agreed. “Shall we?”
The formalities began in a room that smelled faintly of old paper and administrative certainty. Alke guided him through the process with the practised ease of someone who had done this dozens of times and found none of them especially difficult.
“Title: External Systems Consultant,” she said, setting a document in front of him. “Classification: Junior Auditor. Department: Systems Continuity.”
He signed.
“This one confirms your access level.”
He signed.
“This one confirms that you will not disclose proprietary methodologies to external parties.”
He signed.
“And this one,” Alke said, placing a fourth document beside the others, with a slight pause that suggested it was her personal favourite, “confirms that the Consortium bears no liability for structural collapse, system failure, or institutional embarrassment resulting from any party choosing to disregard your documented recommendations.”
Orestis read the document with growing amusement. There were three separate clauses outlining the consequences of ignoring competent advice. He especially liked the section that reiterated—at length—that systemic collapse caused by disregarding written analysis did not constitute professional negligence.
At some point in the Consortium’s history, someone had clearly ignored expert advice, watched a system collapse, and then blamed the expert.
“This has been invoked before,” he said. It was not a question.
“Twice,” Alke confirmed cheerfully. “The second time involved a bridge.”
He signed with something approaching admiration.
***
The mana registry was located two floors down, in a room that managed to feel both clinical and apologetic. The registrar was a thin woman with careful hands and a professional demeanour.
“Standard procedure,” she said, setting a small formation circle on the desk between them. “Please channel a small amount of mana into the circle. It measures density, quality, and capacity.”
This was going to be interesting.
Orestis kept a neutral expression and placed his hand on the circle. He pushed a thread of his personal mana through it.
The circle glowed—faintly. The registrar watched the readings resolve, and her expression shifted. Not dramatically. Just a softening around the eyes, a slight adjustment in posture. The particular kindness of someone who had just seen something they considered unfortunate.
That’s… not the reaction I was expecting.
His mana had not crossed the First Circle threshold. A deliberate choice, obviously—but that was not something that could be inferred.
Meaning, the reading showed sub-initiate capacity—negligible by any institutional standard. To anyone looking at the numbers, he would show as magically crippled; a man whose body could hold mana, but never enough to matter.
Normally, he would have expected disdain. Especially within an institution like the Consortium, where mages dominated the hierarchy.
The registrar, it seemed, possessed a degree of compassion. She hesitated, clearly wanting to say something encouraging but unsure how to phrase it without making matters worse.
“The Consortium values theoretical specialists as well,” she offered, gently. “Capacity isn’t the only metric we consider.”
She means that sincerely. Which makes it funnier.
“I appreciate that,” Orestis replied, matching her warmth. The woman was being kind. That she was being kind about the wrong thing was beside the point.
She recorded the results, filed them, and handed him a stamped card confirming his registration. He pocketed it and left her to her next appointment.
A mana-crippled theoretician. That was now his official classification.
As covers go, I’ve had worse. I’ve also had more dignified ones. But dignity was never the objective.
***
Alke offered him a tour of the building. He declined.
“I expected that,” she said, entirely untroubled.
She led him instead to a corridor junction where a slate was mounted on the wall. It displayed a map of the Consortium’s facilities. Departments, workspaces, meeting rooms, archives, and a canteen whose location Orestis noted with careful interest.
I wonder how the food there compares.
Alke pushed a bit of mana into the tip of her finger and pressed the surface. The slate updated the diagrams on the surface, highlighting the current floor.
“Your workspace is here,” Alke said, pointing to a room on the second floor of the Systems Continuity wing. “It was prepared yesterday.”
Yesterday—meaning, before he was officially retained. The Consortium apparently saw little point in pretending the outcome was uncertain. And yet, one final system had still been sent for ‘observation’.
No wonder it had been considerably more interesting than the rest. Someone must have pulled some strings to send me one of their personal projects.
Orestis saw Alke off and then went to take a look at his workspace. On the way, he passed a mage in the corridor who stopped when he saw him.
“New face. Which department?”
“Nowhere important,” Orestis said, without breaking stride.
The mage’s expression shifted to one of immediate, sympathetic understanding. “Ah. Compliance.”
Close enough, I suppose.
He did not bother correcting the assumption and continued down the corridor.
The workspace itself was small—a desk, a shelf, and a window overlooking an interior courtyard. The desk held a quill stand, an ink pot, and a stack of blank assessment forms aligned with measured precision.
He found the place quite acceptable.
***
Orestis walked into the archives that afternoon.
The entrance was unmarked save for a small plaque that read
Records and Reference
in lettering so understated it seemed to be apologising for existing. Inside, the air was warm and dry, smelling of treated leather and old paper.
The front desk was occupied by a man with shaggy hair that looked like it had been cut by someone who understood the concept of scissors but disagreed with their application. He wore round glasses large enough to give the impression that his eyes were conducting their own independent surveillance of the room.
He looked up as Orestis approached. His gaze was sharp, unhurried, and faintly territorial—the expression of someone who considered the archives a personal domain and visitors a negotiable inconvenience.
“New?” the man asked.
“Yes,” he replied simply, feeling no need to elaborate.
The archivist studied him for a moment, tilting his head in a disconcertingly avian manner. Then nodded as though confirming something he already suspected.
He slid a token across the desk, but kept two fingers on it, not releasing it yet. “What are you looking for?”
“Infrastructure,” Orestis replied.
The archivist released the token. “Third floor. Don’t reshelve anything yourself. I have a system, and it is better than yours.”
“I haven’t described my system.”
“You don’t need to. Mine is better.”
Somehow, I believe him.
Orestis picked up the token—a dark metal plate etched with sigils and runes—and gave them a cursory glance. Most of the functions were standard enough: unlocking wards, activating catalogue systems, preventing theft.
Then he paused.
A couple of runes had been woven seamlessly into the rest—etched by a different hand. Orestis could tell the difference.
Their function was interesting: continuous positional tracking paired with temporal logging.
Tracking the token’s location made sense. It could be misplaced, and a retrieval function would be useful. But recording when it was in a particular place—and for how long—seemed somewhat excessive.
He could guess who was responsible.
Orestis held up the token and pointed at the runes. He raised an eyebrow at the archivist.
“Really?”
The archivist glanced at the runes, then smiled faintly at Orestis.
“Yes,” he said simply, offering no further explanation.
The similarity to his own earlier response was not lost on Orestis.
Well played.
Still, it wasn’t like Orestis couldn’t see the logic behind it.
His domain, his rules.
Orestis nodded. Then said, “I didn’t catch your name.”
“People call me the Owl,” he replied, with the resigned dignity of a man who had clearly lost a battle he never agreed to fight.
“The glasses?”
“And the hours.” He adjusted the glasses in question. “I neither encourage nor discourage the name. It simply persists.”
Orestis looked at the Owl—at the shaggy hair framing his head like disordered feathers, the large round glasses, the abrupt head tilts…
He absolutely encourages it.
And I doubt he intends to tell me his actual name.
Orestis chose not to pursue it and turned to head upstairs.
“If you need something from restricted stacks, ask me directly,” the Owl said. “Don’t ask Oversight—they’ll say no on principle and then send a memo about it.”
Orestis gave a small acknowledging gesture.
He spent the next two hours on the third floor. The collection was meticulously organised—failure reports, remediation records, post-incident analyses, system degradation studies. Everything indexed, cross-referenced, and maintained with the kind of obsessive precision that suggested the Owl viewed disorder as a personal affront.
Orestis could appreciate that.
He found what he needed within the first forty minutes. He spent the remaining eighty reading things he didn’t need but wanted to. The Consortium’s institutional memory was extensive, and Orestis had always believed that understanding how an organisation remembered its failures told you more about it than how it celebrated its successes.
When he returned the token, the Owl glanced at the stack of volumes on the return shelf, then at Orestis.
“You read fast,” the archivist observed.
“I had good material.”
The Owl’s expression didn’t change, but something in his posture suggested the compliment had landed exactly where intended.
***
That evening, he activated the call-node. His mother answered on the second pulse.
“It’s done,” he said. “I have a position with the Consortium.”
His mother was quiet for a moment. When she spoke, the relief was audible. “What does that mean? For the notice?”
“It means the Consortium considers me their personnel. Kallistrate’s recall applies to citizens available for service. I am no longer available.”
“And they can’t override that?”
“They can try. It would require formal negotiation between two institutions, which takes time neither of them wants to spend. For practical purposes, I’m out of reach.”
“Good,” she said. Then, softer: “What do you actually do there?”
“I review systems and make recommendations.”
A pause. “You sound like your father when he doesn’t want to explain the bookkeeping.”
She’s not wrong.
“It’s genuinely what I do,” he said. “The work is straightforward. The people are competent. The filing is extensive.”
“Are you eating properly?”
“Yes.”
“Are you
actually
eating properly, or are you saying yes because you know I can’t check?”
“Both.”
She laughed—short, warm, entirely his mother. “Write to Eirene. She sent a letter asking after you.”
“I will.”
“And eat something that isn’t pastries and whatever’s convenient.”
“I’ll make an effort.”
“That,” she said, “is what you always say.”
The connection faded. He set the device down and sat in the quiet of his room.
The Consortium had him. Kallistrate could not reach him. His workspace was prepared, his classification filed, his mana officially registered as negligible. He was exactly where he needed to be: employed, protected, and profoundly underestimated.
Now the real work begins.
As always, if you’d like to read more, I’m 5 chapters ahead on Patreon, along with extra lore and author notes.