"Are you well? Rex asked, stepping backwards from the person who had just vomited on his carpet.

  "Damn, there goes my lunch," Banks said pulling himself to his feet. His body felt worn and tired, like it was stretched out and worn down, or like he just came out of a long illness. "Yeah, I'm fine it's definitely the Festering Stream, which means my recommendation is to evacuate."

  "For how long?" the man said, causing Banks to fall silent, as he thought back, searching his memory, trying to glean intent from the Stream.

  "Probably not long, but it's going to get worse before it gets better," he said after a while. "I heavily advise that you get her out of here, before the rest of those burn out." He pointed at the talisman, another one slightly dimming as he spoke.

  "You have my gratitude," Rex said giving him one of those noble bows. "Do you have a place to stay?"

  "No, I'm flat broke," Banks admitted. "I was just going to collapse in the street like a man."

  "Well then please let me offer my humble home for as long as you will be staying here," the man said. "Jordan, can you please prepare a guest room for our friend."

  "At once my lord," the butler said and Banks nearly did a double take as the butler seemingly appeared from nowhere. He made a note to focus on keeping up his mana vision for longer periods. The old him would never be caught so off guard. "Please follow me." Without waiting to see his response he turned and left the room, and Banks shrugged and followed him, before they tried to make him clean up his mess.

  Despite seeming more strict at first the butler was much more patient then the guard who guided him into the mansion. Every time that he stopped to admire the artwork the man would engage in a conversation about that piece, discussing the history of how it was obtained, and slipping in various facts about the history of the Mondue Family. In that journey that took nearly half an hour he learned that they were one of the founding families and that the Sline family once split off from them. That they owned the vast majority of farmland in and around the city and that they had a history of acquiring foreign crops and animals and trying to grow and breed them here. The banana that he ate was a result of one of their attempts and so the two of them had a brief but productive discussion about food produce, before he eventually stopped at a door.

  "This is your room," he said handing a key with a symbol of a deer, that matched the symbol on the door. Dinner is at the tenth hour. I can come and bring you to the dining room at that time if you wish."

  "That would be great, Jeeves," Banks said, as the butler blinked in confusion, obviously not getting the reference. "You wouldn't happen to have a library, would you?"

  "Library is just down the hallway, up one flight of stairs and second door on the left," the butler said. "Only the first floor is available to guests, I'm afraid. The second floor is for members of the family only."

  "That's perfect," Banks said as he slid the key into the lock, taking a look at his room, before closing it again and sliding the key into his pocket. "I do want to continue my reading."

  "There is also a games room for family and guests, and a local bar for all inhabitants of the manor if you are interested," the butler stated.

  "Thanks, but I don't feel like talking to people right now," Banks admitted, with a grin. "Have a good one Mr. Butler man." Wordlessly, he strolled down the hallway, giving brief looks towards the surrounding artworks before eventually he found the library, helpfully exactly where the butler said it would be. Smiling, he stepped inside, eyeing the rows of books on shelves, decades of accumulation, kept and preserved incredibly well and as he looked the smile fell off his face, before he reached into his pocket and pulled out his bottle of pills. Wordlessly he contemplated the pill bottle, now half full, before he slid it back inside his pocket and then walked over to the nearest shelf. He contemplated the many titles and picked the least dry one, a story about an expedition of some explorer who discovered some ancient ruins. He grabbed the the book and walked over to the table taking a seat and putting his chin on his hands as he started to read.

  He sat alone for hours, calmly reading, time slowly unwinding as he indulged in the quiet nothingness and he felt his nerves relax, wishing he could just sit and read forever. Unfortunately time waits for no man, or almost no man. He paused, marked the chapter...

  -2.5 hours earlier

  He flipped the pages forward until he got to the chapter and continued to read. Time whizzed by as he found himself more and more engrossed at the adventures of Dr. Cornelius exploring a ruin which he recognized as belonging to the Ancient Capherlons. A race of people bound in ceremony that focused on ancestor worship in an attempt to transform the most powerful and venerable into gods, an absolutely foolish endeavor. Their research into bloodlines and the transformative power of the gods predated the Galade Empire by millennia, but it was also much rougher and harsher, leading to a caste of demigods that slowly went insane and ended in the entire civilization being just another footnote in history.

  Still it was interesting to witness their civilization through another, much less informed perspective and so he found himself absorbed in the book and forgetting all of his worries until the a knock at the door, swayed him from his focus. He turned his head to see a familiar young girl. The same one with glasses that he had seen at the library before. On closer examination, she looked a lot like her mother, same black hair, pale skin and yellow eyes. Probably some kind of sight mutation shared between them, that her father didn't share. He was ruminating over the matter, and her words passed him by, he only refocused after she appeared to be waiting for an answer.

  "Sorry I didn't hear that," he said deliberately putting the book down to indicate that he was now actually paying attention as opposed to before.

  Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

  "I said my mom appears to be getting better," she said smiling.

  "I know," he said. "The Festering Stream is momentarily repulsed. It is obvious that she would recover. Why aren't you speaking to her?" Why are you speaking to me, the unspoken assumption went.

  "Dad said you're a magician," she said, her tone implying a question that wasn't there.

  "A magician is simply somebody who uses magic more than ordinary," Banks said. "By that metric I could be said to have done a bit of magician-ing back in my day. Why do you ask?"

  "Would you like to go onto the second floor of the library?" she asked.

  "No," he said, immediately picking up his book again.

  "Why, not," she asked genuine confusion in her tone. "There are genuine spell books up there."

  "Genuine spell books, how amazing?" he said in a tone of droll amusement as he picked up his book.

  "I thought all magicians were always on the lookout for spell books," she said, her voice rising in intensity. "They are real, not the knock offs you find in second hand book stores."

  "I know they are," he said, deciding better of it and actually putting the book down for now. "What family doesn't collect a certain level of spell books. If not written by their own members. Wait a minute, don't tell me what's up there. Let me guess." He lifted up his hand. "Up there will be one to three standard Mana Core Construction techniques. Then there will be one or two that will be super powerful techniques to refine your mana but they will be so hyper-specialized that you will need a special constitution to be able to use. Then there will be one or two techniques to build a Sacred Body. There will be one or two full Spell Trees. Then there will be a heap of miscellaneous spells that range from decent to worthless. A handful of fighting techniques, maybe one complete fighting style if you're lucky. I'm not even including the boring things like a record of family history and familial ledgers. Is that it? There is always the same stuff in each secret family library."

  "Are you not interested in any of that," she asked in a whisper after a long while.

  "I have my own Core Construction technique," Banks said, waving his hand. "It happens to every magician eventually. You keep switching to more and more specialized methods until you are forced to create your own. I had my own Sacred Body, which worked well for me until I lost it and I currently don't have the resources or will to reconstruct it. I know a few good spells and I don't have a lot of desire to learn a few decent ones. As for fighting styles, well I get by. I probably couldn't even use any of them as a reference to improve my own."

  "So there is nothing that you need?" she asked.

  "A warm bed and food, are more valuable for me right now then any level of magical knowledge you could provide," Banks admitted. "Why are you so eager to offer me more knowledge. I thought at first that you were coming on behalf of your father, but it seems that is not the case. Can you speak clearly?"

  "Um, I was hoping that you...would take me on as your apprentice?" the last few words were spoken incredibly swiftly as if she was trying to get them out as quickly as possible. "My brother got apprenticed to somebody and when he came back his magic was so much more powerful than before. I've been trying to learn the family magic, but it just doesn't click, and sometimes I read and read and it feels like it just doesn't improve."

  "Not an uncommon story," he admitted. "I suppose you've spoken to your dad." The older man felt like a powerful magician, easily powerful enough to be one of the strongest in the city, a true pillar of the family.

  "I did, but he couldn't find a suitable, Core Construction method for me," she said. "I've practiced all of the methods and eaten mana rich foods and meditated in high mana areas, but it's like I've plateaued. My brother is already nearly as strong as my dad, and I'm... just not."

  "Hmm, shake my hand," he said raising his own hand in an imitation of the the same move that her father had pulled on him earlier. "After a bit of hesitation, whether due to aristocratic decorum or just the common sense of not taking the hand of strange older men, she took his hand and he sent his mana through the shared link. He slowly pushed mana against mana feeling it out before he came across something familiar, and a moment of clarity gave him some insight into the situation. Her father probably subtly encouraged her to come here, it was the kind of wordless read between the lines aristocratic bullshit, that he hated.

  "106," he mentioned casually. "That's your mana level. It's extremely high for the fact that you haven't constructed a proper core. That pseudo core you have is not going to carry you further."

  "I know," she said. "It requires at least 200 in order to become a magician, does it not."

  "I don't know the cultural definition of a magician," Banks said. "But the level of Strange Elements in your body are also unusually high."

  "What does that mean? Is that good or bad?" she asked. "I know very little about them," she admitted after a while.

  "It won't kill you and it could make you powerful," he said after a while, knowing that he was not going to be able to get back to his book anytime soon. "People with an abnormally high level of Strange Elements in their body are known as Strangers. As a Stranger generally you have a type of ability, which can be activated and controlled by your mana. Think of the ability as a weapon and your mana is the hand that wields the weapon."

  "I don't feel an ability," she said. "Is there some ritual to activate the Strange Elements?"

  "Some people are active from birth, some activate from stress," Banks said. "Call it testament to the security of your family that you've never endured such stress."

  "I've been stressed," she defended.

  "It requires a different degree of stress," Banks rebutted mercilessly. "There is a ritual that I know, that will place your body under stress and awaken the Strange Elements." He paused, looking at the eager face. "I'm not going to do it now. I'll give you the instructions and you can do it before bed. Just get me a pen and paper."

  "Here you are," that butler said as he appeared from a corner of the room, nearly causing him to jump out of his skin. He frowned as he saw what passed for pens in this age, before he nevertheless scribbled down the instructions. After a minutes silence, he handed back the now filled piece of paper and the girl eagerly leaned into it, reading desperately while the butler didn't move, only glancing surreptitiously.

  "Is that Wish Heed Must Room?" she asked after a while.

  "I believe our guest actually wrote Witch Head Mushroom," the butler said. "Are you sure about these ingredients. They look like they may cause nightmares if ingested before bed."

  "That's the idea," Banks admitted.

  "I have to do this Uncle Jordan," the girl said, determination in her eyes and after a moment the butler nodded. That nod seemed to signal assent, because in the next second the girl was off, probably running to gather the ingredients.

  "Thank you for your help, sir," the Butler said inclining his head. "If there is anything you want in repayment, please ask?"

  "Extra dessert, tonight," Banks said straight away. "All this talking and reading is making my sweet tooth act up."

  "Just dessert?" the butler repeated.

  "Can you answer my question?" he said, not waiting for a response. "How close was I to guessing the contents of your secret family library."

  "Almost spot on," the butler admitted candidly. "I will get the chefs to whip up something special for you sir."

  Later when he wolfed down his third helping of sweet melon pie and washed it down with a special type of Roc egg custard, he couldn't help but feel that he had gotten the far better end of the deal. He passed a hurdle of small talk, and minor obligations and another late night reading session and eventually drifted off to sleep in a comfortable bed for the first time that he had been in this city.