Chapter 12 (I Take Off My Robe and Wizard Hat)

  Alex and Fereday discussed details for a few minutes while I sat and stewed with my thoughts of deicide. After so many millennia, now that I was useful to her she was suddenly being helpful? I wasn’t buying it. There must be some other reason why she hadn’t directed her minions to go kill the kalkydra before it started fucking around with abyssal energy. She certainly had the capability to see something like that coming.

  Whatever.

  The end result was that we would exit the school after it crossed over the ocean to the northern continent, kill the kalkydra, clean up whatever residual corruption was left around the area, and then stitch up the bounds of reality to hopefully prevent further incursion. I wasn’t sure exactly why we were meant to wait, as I could very easily open a portal from here directly to where we needed to go, but that was what was decided.

  In the meantime, Alex would continue to pose as her previous self, and I would teach the class I’d signed myself up for when I still thought I had a century to kill waiting for her. To that end, I crafted a pair of devices, one for falsifying identification data, and the other that would generate the appropriate appearance of normal elvenoid skin, both of which she’d be able to hide within her heartwood. After an appropriate period, she’d go through the biomancy graduation interview and aim for a middling grade, presenting nothing that stood out as either exceptional or terrible.

  With all of that decided, we stood, and I returned the two chairs to my storage. Fereday snapped her fingers, dispelling the barrier she’d fueled with a portion of her domain influence, and the projection faded from existence. Alex looped her arm through mine, and we headed for the door.

  “Are you going to return to your desk job?” I asked.

  She tapped a finger against her lips contemplatively before replying. “Yeah, but just until the end of my shift today. I think I’ll tell Niallin that you hired me on as a personal assistant.”

  “Want me to insinuate that we were fucking back here? We’ve been gone long enough for that to be plausible.”

  “Hmm, I suppose that we could take a few moments to make that the truth.”

  “A few moments? My lady, you wound me. A proper fucking requires longer than a few moments.”

  “Who said anything about a proper fucking? Besides, your bullshit entropy field could turn those few moments into an entire year.”

  “Oh, I suppose it could.”

  I threw up an entropic field, increased the flow of time within as high as I could manage, and shucked my robe.

  We walked back into the reception area a short time later, robes, hats, and hair somewhat disheveled. Niallin, the shift supervisor, glanced over in our direction. In response, I held up two fingers in a V with my palm toward myself, gave him a goofy grin, and waggled my eyebrows. He rolled his eyes and asked, “did you find everything you needed?” I nodded. “Oh yes,” I said, “this one’s assistance has been exceptionally helpful.” He went back to reading his novel. I noticed it was a different book from before, and looked to be a sequel where the rabbitkin and the werewolf get married. How lovely for them.

  Not much else had changed since our departure. The catatonic asshole had been dragged into a corner, and someone put a lampshade over his face. I wasn’t entirely sure what that was all about, but didn’t care enough to ask. I waved good-bye to Alex on my way out, before I smacked myself on the forehead and turned around. I’d completely forgotten to fill in the paperwork for my employment contract, and I didn’t have the housing assignment documents. Memory skills were useful, but for some reason they couldn’t fix scatterbrains.

  Someone had once accused me of being an organizational mastermind, which was just laughable. Even with [Hyperthreading] allowing me to spin up many thousands of simultaneous thought processes, each one of those processes was still limited to my own ability to focus. In fact, I had a few hundred threads going right now dedicated to building the code array I’d need to properly seal the abyssal infiltration into this reality, and an extra dedicated 10% were required to keep them all focused on the task at hand. Then another 10% for those project managers, and then finally one more to manage the managers. Even then, I had to check in from time to time to make sure they were working on the right problem. My mind was a hive of a bureaucratic nightmare.

  The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  Most of the time, I could let things simply drift into whatever direction my interests fancied, and problems would eventually be solved, and I was fully capable of focusing on an interesting problem for several thousand years in a row. The problem here is that I did not find sealing exotic matter or energy that was created through the interaction with the abyss to be terribly interesting. I spent enough un-time in that un-reality after each life I had here on Pallos thanks to the diamond witch, thank you very much.

  Wait, I was doing something... The paperwork, right.

  I looked up and glanced around the room, and saw that half of the room was glancing in my direction, possibly because I was blocking the entryway and staring into the middle distance with a glazed over look on my face. Oh well. Alex’s station was currently between helping people, so I walked back over to her.

  “Yeah, so I actually completely forgot to fill in the paperwork for the housing assignment and employment contract,” I said, sheepishly, while scratching at the side of my neck. A smile appeared on Alex's face that instantly brightened my day. “I know,” she said while holding out a stack of papers, “My shift is nearly over, so why don't you sit down and finish it here, and I'll head out with you then.” I returned her smile and said, “I’d love that, thanks.” I grabbed one of the seats from in front of Alex’s desk, swung it around to the side, sat down, and started working on filling in the various forms and reading over the terms of my employment contract. The various clauses were written exactly as obtusely as I expected from immortal bureaucrats, not that anyone could actually enforce breach of contract on me, though anyone ambitious enough was welcome to try.

  There was only one surefire way to kill me, and anyone capable of the feat tended to explode before reaching a high enough level to touch my vitality. The law of averages was a real bitch, however, and over my multitudinous incarnations, there was a single occurrence of a particularly absurd mage who managed to erase my entire body, killing me. I did learn later that the mage ended up exploding himself in the process. It was honestly a very good thing that all the ascended of Pallos agreed to suppress any knowledge of the cause. I had suspicions that Night had learned the truth during his adventures off world, but he certainly wasn’t dumb enough to attempt experimenting with the conjuration or encouraging anyone else to try.

  And now I’ve lost track of which page I was on. Oh well. I started flipping through the pages and signed the last one, at which point the entire stack vanished, teleported away by a spatial clerk. Well, most of the stack; I still held the page with my housing allotment. Since I had some time to kill, I checked in with my other mind threads to see how the array construction was progressing, which was surprisingly still on target, with only a few additional projects having been completed in the process by rogue threads as expected and factored into the deadline goal. One of those projects was a method for repairing space around a fractured portal that was still active, something that had been bothering me for millennia after being unable to solve the problem the first time I encountered such an occurrence.

  I was still reviewing the completed projects when Alex stood and indicated to me that her shift was over, which was punctuated by the bell indicating the end of the first block. I stood up from my own chair and we both went to speak with Alex’s supervisor, Niallin, to explain that Alex was quitting this job so that she could work for me.

  “Yes, yes, employment here is at will, and you can do whatever you wish. However, what I don’t understand is why a spatial magic professor would want a biomancy student for a research assistant,” the Elf griped.

  “And personal assistant, don’t forget. The truth is that I’m terrible at keeping notes and daily activities organized, and it’s easier to pay someone who already has those skills to do it for me than it would be to free up a skill slot in order to do it myself. I only need someone who can organize my experimental notes and remind me when to leave for appointments. Alexena here impressed me earlier with how quickly she retrieved my packages from that storeroom with its organizational system having clearly been put in place by a follower of Xaos. I’ve also been assigned a house that is entirely too large for me to make effective use of the entire space alone,” I said.

  Niallin eyeballed me for a moment, then glanced at Alex. “I’m sure that isn’t the only reason, but you are an adult and able to make your own choices in those matters. Fine, fine. I’ll inform Administration that I have a shift vacancy. At least you bothered to tell me, unlike most of the students.”

  We offered pleasantries, said our goodbyes, and that was that. We walked out together and headed for the house.