The “Mage Slave” block took place on the sixth floor, after lunch, in a blank workshop unlike any of the others — desks, tables, all the same fixtures as everywhere else on this floor, but no mage’s name on the door.
Apparently this was the general-purpose lecture room, where older apprentices gave instruction to their underclassmen in exchange for credit toward their own research.
Personal research cost resources, and resources cost money the tower didn’t hand out for free.
Lodging and meals were the only things provided outright — everything beyond that had to be earned, one way or another, by assisting the mages already established here with whatever projects they happened to be running.
The trio sat down in the same order they’d settled into earlier that day, waiting for whoever was coming to instruct them on their next move.
Eventually, an older apprentice — sixteen or so, by the look of him — walked through the door, stood at the front of the room, and laid out a short stack of notes.
“Alright, everyone, listen up,” he began.
“These next few minutes are going to decide your foreseeable future here at the tower.
Whoever you choose to assist in their research may very well set your entire advancement path in stone.
This will also be the mage who helps draw your circuit, provided it’s still undrawn.” The apprentice’s eyes flicked briefly toward their little group as he said it.
“Mage Ellowen is currently researching the degenerative effects of light-based casting on Dark-natured flora — specifically, how prolonged exposure to concentrated luminance accelerates decay in plant life attuned to the Dark element.” The apprentice set a sheet of paper down on the table at the front of the room.
“Mage Cyrrus is investigating resonance amplification between Wind magic and adjacent elements — the theory being that certain frequencies of wind-based casting can be tuned to harmonize with, and strengthen, spells cast in tandem with it.” He laid down a second sheet.
“Mage Reinhardt’s research concerns Earth’s structural applications — specifically, the formation of complex architecture from composite materials.
His most recent findings have started bleeding into both Wood and Metal theory as well.” A third sheet joined the others.
“And Mage Corren is conducting a comparative study on metallic subtypes — how variance in a metal’s density, purity, and structure affects the resulting magic drawn from it.”
He continued through three more research projects, listing each off the same way he had the first four, before finally setting the stack of papers aside and gesturing toward the table at the front.
“Alright.
Go sign whichever sheet you’re interested in.
First come, first served, and once your name’s down, it’s down — no swapping later because you changed your mind.”
The three of them stood at roughly the same time and made their way to the table together.
Adeleine signed Cyrrus’s sheet without much hesitation.
Rian signed a different one entirely, and Wren took his turn last, pressing his name onto Corren’s paper before he could think twice about it.
They drifted back toward their seats together, papers settled, choices made.
“So — which project did we all pick, then?” Rian asked, jovial as ever, dropping back into his seat.
“Cyrrus, obviously,” Adeleine said, tucking her pen away.
Wouldn’t make sense to pick anything else.”
“Boring.
Predictable.
Exactly what everyone expected of you,” Rian said, grinning.
“That’s the idea,” she replied, entirely unbothered.
“I went with Zephyr,” Rian said.
At Wren’s raised eyebrow, he added, “Lightning.
Velocity, speed, that sort of thing.”
“Thought you were a Metal affinity,” Wren said.
“I am.
Doesn’t mean I can’t study under someone working a different element, if it gets me somewhere useful.” Rian’s grin sharpened into something a little more serious than usual.
“Sharp’s about the edge — about how fast, how clean, how precise a cut can be before it stops mattering what it’s cutting through.
Our founder got it further than anyone before him ever did.
But he did it slow, over a whole lifetime of trial and failure.” He tapped the table once, like the thought had settled into something solid.
“I figure if I understand real speed — the kind lightning runs on — I could get somewhere he never did.
Push Sharp further than he managed.”
Wren didn’t say anything right away.
It was the first time he’d heard Rian talk about anything that sounded less like confidence and more like actual hunger.
“And you signed Corren’s,” Rian said, nodding at Wren.
“Figured as much.”
“Wanted to understand what Metal’s actually made of, before I try pushing it anywhere,” Wren said.
“Seemed like the smart place to start.”
Rian clapped him once on the shoulder, grin back in full force.
“Look at us.
A whole table trying to out-legend a bunch of dead sword saints and old bloodlines.”
“Speak for yourself,” Adeleine said.
Someone at this table has to be the reasonable one.”
Rian laughed before standing back up.
“Well, better go see what the mages want us to work on for our first day.”
“Right,” Wren said, standing up.
“See you guys at dinner, then?” He started toward the door.
“Sure,” they both replied, walking out at the same time.
Room 5-F looked exactly as it had a week prior — metal shards littering the worktables, the same faint iron-and-rust smell hanging in the air.
Five apprentices sat inside already.
Two of them Wren recognized from his own class.
One more he recognized from the week before.
Wren recognized him instantly — the same boy from a week ago, sweeping the same workshop, still in the same grey and gold robes.
Their eyes met for half a second across the room.
The boy looked away first.
He didn’t say anything.
Didn’t offer the same tired line about servants not belonging in a workshop, didn’t so much as acknowledge that Wren had walked through the door at all.
He just turned back to whatever he’d been organizing on the desk in front of him, shoulders a little stiffer than they needed to be, jaw set in the particular way of someone working very hard to look unbothered by something that clearly bothered him a great deal.
Wren almost wanted to say something.
He decided against it, and took an open seat near the back instead, next to a girl he didn’t recognize who gave him a brief, curious glance before returning to her own notes.
Nobody else in the room seemed to know quite what to make of him either — not open hostility, not the cold dismissal from before, just a careful, deliberate kind of not looking that Wren was starting to recognize as its own particular flavor of attention.
He almost laughed.
A minute of standing still, and now half a workshop couldn’t decide whether to stare at him or pretend he wasn’t there at all.
A door at the back of the room opened before he could dwell on it further.
The mage who stepped through was tall — taller than Reinhardt, taller than Ellowen, tall enough that he had to duck slightly under the frame on his way out.
Grey hair, cut close and practical, framed a face that looked like it had never once considered smiling worth the effort.
He surveyed the room in a single, unhurried sweep, the same quiet authority Wren had come to expect from every mage in this tower, except colder somehow, more exacting — the look of a man who measured people the same way he measured metal.
“Mage Corren,” Wren thought, and felt the ache behind his ribs stir faintly, like it already knew whose workshop it had walked into.