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“Without teachers, it turns out a school isn’t much of anything,” Tzi murmured, slowly leafing through the pages of her Grimoire to read about the new spells she’d just acquired.

“On the contrary, master!” the Grimoire replied.  “We have already gained new spells, which was the entire point of this endeavor.  With the addition of a designated casting space and freely supplied ritual components, plus whatever can be learned in the library, this excursion promises to be quite profitable.  Less so than if we could benefit from actual instruction, but still.”

“Yeah, to be honest, I think this might be the best possible outcome,” said Scio.  “I’m telling you, Tzi, you would not want to study directly under the actual Syrr.  Or to be under an actual Syrr.  Or anywhere around them.  Or alive in a time when they still exist.  Getting to pick over their leftovers without having to deal with them is the most a wizard could possibly hope for.”

“I’d criticize how much you know about wizards,” Tzi replied, frowning and turning a page, “but from what I’m reading here you’re dead right.  These are the basic package of spells for brand-new apprentices?  This is…ghastly.”

“Whatcha got, then?” the Mirbal asked, ears twitching.

“All of them are combat spells,” said the Grimoire.  “Perhaps this institution was meant specifically to train battle mages?  It does seem a curious choice of priorities otherwise.”

“That would be bad enough,” Tzi said, grimacing.  “Yikes. ‘Neuralize;’ this one just causes pain. And…oh.”  She paused, having just turned another page.  “Oh, crap.”

“What is it?” Scio demanded.

“This spell’s called ‘Siphon.’  It…drains a target of their life energy and converts it directly into usable power for the caster.”

“Blood magic,” Scio whispered, folding her ears back.

“Way worse than that!  It’s…ultimate blood magic.  Remember how I told you the weakness of blood magic is how little actual energy it can catch?  This seems to be a hundred percent efficient.  It would be an absolute catastrophe if blood mages on my world found out this spell even exists. And it’s one of the most basic spells the Syrr wanted apprentices to learn!”

“Say it with me,” Scio instructed solemnly.  “It’s a good thing all the Syrr are dead.”

“It is a very good thing all the Syrr are dead,” Tzi agreed.  “Well…  There’s no reason I have to learn Neuralize or Siphon.  The rest of them aren’t a loss, even if they’re not what I was looking for.  Sounds like the moons are dangerous enough that combat spells will come in handy.  I was worried about how far my little Fireball was gonna carry me here.”

“Two of them are strictly defensive, master,” the Grimoire pointed out.  “Also, look at the last spell in the list.  Battle Trance is a temporary self-buff that forcibly stabilizes the caster’s psy for a short duration.”

“That sounds…risky,” Tzi said, flicking through pages til she found it and then frowning at the description.

“Indeed, master, the spell’s description does caution that recovery can be difficult, and that repeated use may have a deleterious effect on the mind.  But as a crisis measure, enabling an ideal casting state even when the wizard is too emotionally disturbed to cast effectively, this could be a real lifesaver.  It is not hard to imagine we may encounter circumstances on these moons in which that becomes relevant.”

“Yeah,” Tzi sighed, shutting its covers.  “I don’t like to think about it, but…yeah.  Well, that’s a few steps ahead, though.  We need to settle on our next steps down here.  Obviously we’re gonna find those ritual chambers the thingy mentioned and learn…uh, some of these spells.  And I should definitely see what I can find in the library.”

“It’s a plan, then!” said Scio.

Tzi grimaced.  “Yeah…  I’m more concerned about, you know, what’s in and around that.  I dunno about you but I can’t say I feel incredibly safe sleeping in here.  And dealing with the Monitor and the Mirbals out there seems like it could be dicey.  Did you notice how that thing glitched out whenever the subject came around to the Syrr?  It’s like it can’t deal with the idea that they’re all gone.”

“Is that what it was doing?  I can’t understand any of that jabbering.  I did see it keep freezing up in the middle of talking.  And the lights turned red, I noticed that.”

“A constructed intelligence should not be brought to a standstill by encountering a logical contradiction, master, much less an unexpected fact,” said the Grimoire.  “Indeed, one of the standards for the viability of a constructed intelligence is its ability to process such things.  The Syrr appear to have been more magically advanced than our own traditions.  If they designed the psybot to reject the idea of their absence, it can only have been deliberate.”

“Yeah, that kind of hubris is Syrr all over,” Scio agreed, nodding.

“I am more concerned about the local Mirbals, master,” the Grimoire continued.  “The nature of their society, even the little of it we have observed so far, is full of potential dangers.”

“That guy Ati-Anin gives me all kinds of bad feelings,” Tzi said, frowning.  “Scio, do you know anything about these guys?”

“I just said I can’t understand their language.  I’ve never even heard of people with all-white fur, either.”

“Hm.  So there are no…stories or legends or anything about this?”

“I mean, it’s not totally impossible my mother kept some things from me,” Scio said with a shrug.  “You know how overprotective she is.  But…nah, I really don’t think so.  We’ve been to moots, we talk with other families and trade with the Raihan.  Sharing memories is very important among Claedh.  I’m pretty sure if anybody knew about this, someone would’ve said something.  Keep in mind everybody’s afraid to go in the Hollow where the entrance is, and apparently the few who found it never got past that horrible illusion trap with the spikes.”

“Obviously we don’t know how quickly Mirbals adapt to their surroundings, master, but even small instances of evolution require multiple generations.  If these Mirbals have been underground long enough to have lost all pigmentation, it stands to reason it has been long enough that their cousins on the surface have forgotten about them.”

“Yeah, they’ve apparently been here since before the Syrr all died,” Tzi agreed.  “Scio, any idea exactly how long ago that was?”

“Uh…”  Scio shrugged.  “Like the book said, many generations.  It could be over a year.  I dunno how long in terms of orbits or turns, no.”

Tzi started to correct her about the length of a year, then realized she didn’t actually know what Dysland’s orbital period was.  Probably not as long as Scio was apparently thinking, but there were more immediate things to focus on.

“Then I guess none of us knows what to expect from them.  We’ll just have to keep our eyes open and be careful, then.  The way they act makes me…nervous.  Especially that Ati-Anin.”

“Indeed, master,” her Grimoire agreed.  “Keep in mind these people have lived for generations under a set of absolute rules, set down by all-powerful authority figures which have been long absent but which are expected to return at some point in the future, and will want to find this place in the same state they left it.  Master, those are the components of a messianic religion, and from the relatively little we have seen, that appears to be exactly what has developed.”

“The cleaning staff turned into a cult,” Tzi muttered.  “Crap, this is gonna be dicey.  Religious fanatics are dangerous.”

“Can you just explain to them that the Syrr are all dead?” Scio asked, her tail waving behind her.

“That’s not a good idea, Scio,” Tzi explained, wincing.  “Cults don’t…  Well, faith doesn’t work like that.  If you conclusively debunk a religion’s claims, that never convinces anybody to leave it.  Except a few who were probably thinking about leaving it anyway.  Mostly it makes them double down.”

Scio blinked twice.  “What?  Why?”

“I’m not actually sure…  Wizards do have to study a lot of psychology to properly control our own psy, but I wasn’t far along into that kind of sociology when I…uh, left.  But I do know that pattern has been very consistently observed over a lot of instances.  You don’t ever want to get in the face of religious fanatics and prove them wrong.  In the worst case, they can get violent.”

“Hm.  Sounds like you’d better hurry up and learn all those combat spells.”

“Yeah,” Tzi sighed.  “With that done was can probably fight our way out of here if we have to…  But I also really don’t want to have to kill a bunch of people over something like that.  Over anything,but especially not because of something that’s really not their fault.  This whole situation is what the Syrr left them with.”

“That’s everybody’s situation, everywhere,” Scio muttered.

“No reason to make it worse,” Tzi said, stepping over to the door.  The object the Monitor had called a summoning stone looked, on closer inspection, like a small lamp.  Which in effect it was, as Tzi discovered upon turning the cylinder of cloudy white crystal to the left until it stopped with an audible click and then ignited.  The radiance was clean and soft, not powerful enough to change the overall level of light in the room by much.

Which was a point, Tzi reflected, looking around.  The lights were more of those indirect things hidden behind the molding of the ceiling.  She’d either have to figure out how to turn them off, or it would be a restless night…

She didn’t have time to begin investigating the possibilities, because the door to her room slid open after only a few seconds.  Standing outside was one of the white Mirbals, in a toga-like garment of fabric that looked more artificial than anything she’d seen the Claedh wearing.  He immediately folded himself to the floor, pressing his face into the ground and stretching out his arms toward her in a posture of supplication that made Tzi feel viscerally uncomfortable.

“How may your slave be of use, great Acolyte?”  The poor guy’s voice was muffled by his posture; he still enunciated clearly.  Tzi had a bad feeling he’d been trained in that specifically.

“Oh, um, you don’t have to do that,” she said hastily.  A second later it occurred to her belatedly that interfering with how they were trained to act might cause problems, but it was too late now.  Besides, watching someone abase themselves like this was awful.  “Please, get up.”

The Mirbal shivered, a single, full-body tremor, and hesitated.  After a second, he stood…mostly.  Keeping his shoulders hunched and head lowered, he folded his hands at his waist, remaining half-bowed before her.

“How may your slave be of use, great Acolyte?”

This…was going to be a problem.  Talking to the Mirbals here was her best bet for gaining more information, but they apparently viewed her as an object of worship.  And also fear, she realized, watching the servant closely.  Though his current posture could be taken for simple subservience, he was too stiff; he was visibly trembling, despite his efforts to control it.  His ears were plastered back against his skull, his tail pressed against the back of his legs and the remainder curled on the floor—and both were also shivering.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Tzi said as gently as she could.  Disappointing their expectations might be risky, but she just couldn’t take much of this.

“It is your privilege to destroy any slave who disappoints you in the slightest, great Acolyte,” he said in a soft monotone.

Tzi sucked a breath in through her teeth, trying to get a collar on her emotions before her psy started to suffer.  Ati-Anin wasn’t even here and she was starting to hate him more by the second.  Just the memory of the subdued glee he’d shown at presiding over this system…

“Okay,” she said out loud.  “Thanks for the reminder.  So, naturally, it’s also my privilege to notdo that, right?”

He quivered once.

“Memories, what have they been doing to this guy?” Scio asked, peeking out from behind Tzi.

“It is not for the likes of a slave to…comment upon your privileges, great Acolyte,” the white Mirbal said.

“I’m just laying out where we stand,” Tzi said.  “I have no intention of hurting anybody unless I have to defend myself.  So if you weren’t planning to attack me or something, we should get along just fine.  What’s your name?”

He quivered again, but dared raise his head enough that he could peek up at her.  His eyes were a pale blue, quite unlike the darker ones of the Claedh she’d met so far.  “My…  We keep scrupulously to the Codes, great Acolyte.  It is written that the Masters and their Acolytes are not to be troubled with the business of slaves.”

Wow, was this exhausting.  Tzi had never even considered how to navigate this kind of social tightrope.

“All right, then,” she said, choosing her words carefully.  “I definitely don’t want to get you in trouble.  Let me just say, then, that I’m much happier being on friendly terms with people.  So, I guess you do what you have to, but if you’re inclined to, y’know…accommodate my preferences, I’d rather know what to call you.  No pressure, though, if it’s against the rules.”

The servant’s eyes cut to the side momentarily as he thought, then he dared look up at her again.

“I…  This slave is named Nin-Ana, if it pleases you to know, great Acolyte.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Nin-Ana,” she said, smiling.  “My name is Tzi.  You don’t have to use it if that’s not allowed, but for the record I don’t mind.  So, is it actually against the rules for me to know your name?  Cos I won’t tell if you don’t.”

She actually, wonder of wonders, got a small smile from him at that.  Small and fleeting, but that was still progress.

“It is your privilege to know if you wish, great Acolyte.  It is simply…unexpected.  It is written that the Masters and their Acolytes are not to be troubled with the business of slaves,” he repeated, his voice momentarily taking on the cadence of a recitation; this was clearly something in which he’d been drilled.  “A most honored slave such as the Overseer has earned the privilege of speaking his name and title in your presence, great Acolyte, but you of course need not address him as such.  A slave is still a slave.”

What an absolute nightmare.  And they were still doing this, after all this time?  Tzi decided she’d better step carefully; the Syrr might all be gone, but this sounded increasingly like there was still some kind of enforcement mechanism at play here for these people to still be so beaten down.  Maybe it was just that they’d started reading the employee manual as a religious text at some point, but then again…maybe it was something worse.  Something with which she did not want to pick a fight.

She cleared her throat.  “Okay, then!  So, I need to use one of the…ritual labs, I think they were called.  And apparently I have to requisition some reagents, too…”

Nin-Ana took two steps back, pivoted to the side, and bowed low, bending his upper body parallel with the floor and gesturing up the hallway.

“As it is written, great Acolyte, we stand ready to serve.  Your needs have been made known and slaves have rushed to prepare everything.  This slave will be honored to show you to the space.”

“Lead the way, Nin-Ana,” Tzi said solemnly.  At least he seemed a little more relaxed about her.  Baby steps.

***

She of course hadn’t seen much of it yet, but Tzi was starting to get the impression this complex wasn’t very large.  That made sense; how big could this mountain be?  The perspective she’d had up above had made it hard to tell, but as mountains went it had to be on the smaller end, to judge by how quickly she was able to walk up and down it.  Also, she didn’t have a good feel for how far underground they were.  In any case, it was a relatively short trip to the ritual labs.  Nin-Ana led her back up the hall, across the pentagonal nexus with the bridges, and down another one.

Scio, of course, stuck with her; they hadn’t even needed to discuss it.  Neither of them wanted to split up in here, especially since everyone else present seemed to consider Mirbal lives worthless and resent the Claedh girl’s presence.

This hall widened a bit after a short entryway.  Tzi identified the designated spell lab by the presence of two more Mirbals outside it, both of whom plastered themselves to the ground in obeisance as soon as she came into view.

Tzi forced herself not to sigh out loud.  Much as she wanted to, there was a very real risk that any expression of disappointment from her would result in someone getting punished.  Possibly to death.

Nin-Ana stepped to the opposite side of the hall, facing the door, and bowed again.

“Thank you, Nin-Ana,” Tzi said politely.  “Um…everybody stand up, please.”

They did, with the visible nervousness she had come to expect.  Both of these were female, and while Tzi wasn’t absolutely certain, she thought one of them might be significantly older.  The fur on their faces obscured the signs of aging to which she was accustomed, and being all white they didn’t even show graying.  But the woman on the left had a faint stoop to her shoulders, and her fur had a subtly ragged quality Tzi had seen on elderly cats.

The older one (if her guess about that wasn’t wrong) shot Nin-Ana a sidelong look which was distinctly unfriendly before returning her full focus to Tzi.

“We welcome you, great Acolyte,” she said, reinforcing Tzi’s impression; her voice suggested later middle age or so.  She bowed deeply while speaking.  “Your needs have been made known; all has been prepared as it is written.  This slave has the honor of organizing the ritual materials.  All magical supplies held in the Halls of Elucidation have been stored using crafts of the Masters, and are made available to you now, as fresh as the moment they were harvested.  I have laid out the necessary components for the first spells of an Acolylte, as it is written.  If you find aught amiss with the provided supplies, great Acolyte, please destroy this unworthy slave for failure.”

And there it was again.

“Thank you,” Tzi said in her most carefully polite tone.  “Please, stand upright.  What’s your name?”

The Mirbal woman had straightened as instructed, but now froze much as Nin-Ana had, glancing again at him.  Her ears twitched to the sides, twice.

“I…  I-it is written that the Masters and their Acolytes are not to be troubled with the business of slaves…”

“The Acolyte wishes to know the names of those who serve her,” Nin-Ana said softly.  “It is not what we expected, but it is not against the codes.  We must not be disobedient.”

The older woman’s mouth tightened in a momentary flash of anger before she suppressed it and put on another subservient expression, leaving Tzi with the impression that she was glimpsing some of the internal politics of the resident Mirbals.

“If it pleases you then, great Acolyte, this one is Mi-Tinu.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Mi-Tinu,” Tzi said, then turned to the third person.

She also bent double in supplication before speaking.  “This unworthy slave has the honor of cleaning and maintaining the ritual chamber prepared for you, great Acolyte, and will attend to ensure it continues to meet any needs you have.  Please destroy this unworthy slave if all is not arranged to your expectations.  Ahm…and…my name is Edo-Mawi.”

“Hello, Edo-Mawi.  Please stand up—and in fact, everybody, there’s no need to bow every time you speak to me, okay?  It’s, um, inefficient.  I prefer to have all my business done as swiftly as possible, so no unnecessary affectations, please.”  Sure, that would do for an excuse.  Tzi was profoundly uncomfortable with all this bowing and scraping; if she hadn’t been worried about inciting backlash from the Halls’ management, she would probably already be trying to incite an uprising.  Aside from the risk of losing access to the Halls for her own purposes, though, Tzi sensed the possibility of danger in rocking the boat too much.  She had no idea what the Monitor was capable of; she’d never even heard of psybots before.  It seemed obvious that something was forcibly keeping these people in their subservient position.

“It shall be as you say, great Acolyte,” Nin-Ana said solemnly.  One of Mi-Tinu’s ears twitched again.  Yeah, there was definitely some tension there.

“Well, then.  This is the room?  Great.”  Next to the door beside which the Mirbals had arranged themselves was another set of three handprint panels.  Tzi pressed her palm into the human-sized one in the center, and the door obligingly hissed open.

Since none of the locals seemed inclined to make the first move, she stepped right through.

Tzi was standing in a kind of antechamber.  Rectangular in shape, it clearly served as a storage space for materials as well as an entryway; the walls at waist height (for her) were lined with a single wide, continuous shelf.  Along this on the left side were currently laid out trays, each bearing neatly organized piles of materials.  Mi-Tinu’s work, apparently.  Ahead of her opened what must be the ritual chamber itself, a pentagonal space without decoration.  More lights were tucked away behind the ceiling molding, these a clean white that didn’t alter the color of the gray stone walls.  Most of the floor was taken up by a flat, featureless stone circle, wide enough to lay out any ritual inscription Tzi had ever seen.

“Looks perfect,” she said aloud, mostly to reassure the Mirbals clustering behind her.  And indeed, Mi-Tinu smiled, bowing and dry-washing her hands, while Edo-Mawi let out a very soft breath of relief.  “Let’s see…where to begin…”

They didn’t answer her, of course, clearly recognizing a rhetorical question and obviously trained not to speak when not specifically required to.  Putting that out of her mind, Tzi pulled out her Grimoire and stepped over to the trays, opening the book to her new spells.

Neuralize and Siphon were off the table, obviously.  That left her with a broad selection of weapons, which she didn’t feel great about, but after all there was utility in such things.  Kinetic Bomb, Sonic Bomb, Kinetic Strike, Flamethrower (yikes), Chain Shock, Plasma Beam, Poison Cloud (yikes),Sever, and Wind Blast.  Every spell came with a handy description, just as with the spells from Knauer’s books; Tzi was already beginning to see a cultural difference, there.  Instead of the somewhat florid language she was accustomed to in magical writings, the Syrr descriptive texts were both terse and detailed.  Honestly, she quite preferred it.

There were additionally, as the Grimoire had noted earlier, two defensive spells; Tzi paused to study the descriptions, which laid out clearly their differing applications.  Kinetic Shield was best for repelling physical and energy attacks, but it had vulnerabilities as its barrier was phased to allow the caster to breathe and stand upright.  Air would pass through, leaving it open to gas attacks, and it stopped at the ground, meaning the caster could be struck from below.  Wind Shield was less effective at actual defense, but would swiftly dispel gaseous attacks and was powerful enough to deny footing and easy movement to enemies closing into melee range with the caster.  That would be handy if she encountered any of those underground gasses Scio had talked about.

Tzi decided to start with Sever, a spell which would simply cut anything at which it was aimed, relative to the caster’s magical ability.  According to the text, the average Acolyte at the beginning of their training could cast it with sufficient strength to visibly score metal and stone, and fell a cinnamon stick tree in less than ten casts.  Only the context of the other spells bundled with it made her think of this as a weapon; had she encountered the spell by itself Tzi would have assumed it to be a simple utility spell.  She didn’t have to cast it at people, whatever the Syrr had expected.

“Okay,” she said aloud.  “I’ll need chalk, uh…verbinth scales, three vruph incisors, quartz, obsidian chips, something called—oh.”

She had looked up from the pages of her Grimoire to find that Mi-Tinu had silently stepped in and was now holding up one of the trays.  With her head lowered in a posture of supplication, of course, which Tzi decided not to comment on this time.  This was indeed the tray laid out with the necessary ritual components for Sever.

“That’s perfect, thank you, Mi-Tinu.  All right, let’s get started!”