Magister Ahmad Preparing His New Office

The Illusive Study offices are exactly as I imagined back in my apprenticehood. While the Shanghai Villa is rarely overfunding their magisters, that’s because their funding is focused on the Villa itself, expanding their already massive first and second hand sources as well as expanding their physical campus to accommodate an expansion of the student body that likely won’t come if we don’t change some policies soon. But that’s why we’re doing this. Because of the expansions, the magister offices are incredibly nice. I might live in a shoebox, but I work in a palace. I put the last box of my office stuff on my desk, and then begin to take things out, deciding where I want to put them. My office mate, one Magister Guseva, has yet to arrive, meaning I get first claim of real estate along the walls, although our desks were assigned. Behind my desk, over what would be my left shoulder if I were seated and conversing with an apprentice, I hang my personal favorite poster, a call to action to question everything ,even yourself. Not directly, of course. It is an inspirational poster, weaved with a minor illusive magic and some other stuff, so that each time you look at it, the poster is just a little different, but always asking a variation of the same thing. Why not believe.

From behind me, I hear a woman’s voice wonder in some form of Mongolian. I am too rusty, but I’m pretty sure she says something about having heard rumors of me, and being disappointed.

I turn to face her, smile, and lie through my teeth. “I’m sorry,” I reply in Mandarin, “I didn’t catch that. I’d just play along, but if I get something wrong, it would be a let down for everyone. And I’d hate to disappoint people on the first day.” I give her a bit of a smirk at that last point.

She laughs. “I see,” she replies, switching to Mandarin as well, “I take it you can barely understand the Mongol language but don’t want to admit it until you have a better grasp.”

“I haven’t a single idea what you are talking about,” I reply, extending my hand, “I am Qasim Ahmad. I am glad to meet you.”

My officemate takes my hand and replies, “Just call me Zhenya. Hopefully we will work pleasantly together.”

“Okay, Zhenya,” I say as I go back to moving myself in. “Are you going to need help getting things into the office?”

Zhenya looks at me, a bit confused. “You realize we’re illusionists, right?” she half-jokes, “I thought the whole point was we don’t need things like that physically.” She puts her bag down and pulls out a computer that she sets up on her desk. Then she notices the poster again and says, “Huh.”

Qasim shakes his head. “I like my poster and my physical stuff. Makes things feel more professional. Besides, I’m not really much of an illusionist myself.” When she looks at me, rightfully confused as to why someone who isn’t much of an illusionist would be a Magister in the Illusive Study department, I explain further, “My focus is in counter-illusion. The detection, unwinding, and subversion of various different illusive magics.”

“Oh, that’s going to be fun to deal with,” she replies with a grin. “Let’s see who is better, over the course of the semester.” It’s my turn to look confused, so she explains, “My thesis is going to be focused on secondary and tertiary sensation blending the lines between illusion and reality. After all, if you can see, feel, hear, even smell something, what’s to say it isn’t real?”

I pause, then say, “Let’s give each other a week to settle in, and figure out our class and advising schedules before we have our games, but then it’s on.” I extend my hand yet again and yet again she takes it.

Then, she settles down in her chair. “My advisor was kind of terrible back in apprenticehood, how prepared are you?” she asks as she starts to turn on her laptop.

I open my desk to put some spare paper and sticky notes inside, and there is a packet waiting for me. A manila envelope with a handwritten note across it reading simply ‘Magister Ahmad’. I sigh. “Likely more prepared than I think,” half joke as I pull out my phone. I open up my messaging app and type in a phone number that is not saved on my phone. I send that number a simple ‘thank you’ followed by ‘now i owe you one again’.

My officemate looks confused. “So, you had a good advisor, or just one that prepared you for being an advisor? Or something else entirely?”

I smile. “I don’t know,” I say, pulling out the packet and putting it on my desk behind my two boxes without opening it, “I’m not planning on being anything like my own advisor, but she did kind of help show me what I should do as one. After all, we all basically got to exactly where we wanted to go, pretty well prepared for it.”

Zhenya looks up and asks the relevant question, it’s a question I’ve asked myself several times over the course of this summer. “So why don’t you want to be anything like her as an advisor?”

I know the answer. It’s a fairly simple one. I don’t think I can. But I hold back the truth with a joke. “Because she might be Satan,” I reply, “And she is at least frenemies with them.”

Zhenya laughs. “Then don’t tell me,” she says, seeing through my joke but not to the truth. Just enough to tell that I was hiding something. That’s the tricky thing with those of us that study illusions. We tend to notice when things aren’t quite right better than most other people. Then, dropping the laugh and the judgment, she asks, “But seriously, any advice?”

I shrug and start to list out what I learned from Magister Scott. “Basically it comes down to knowledge and authority. Remember that a lot of these people are basically our age, so if we’re too friendly they’ll stop seeing us as advisors and will in turn stop listening.”

“So distance. But be careful about too much distance,” Zhenya replies, “I never talked to my advisor because he refused to engage with us at all.”

I nod. “That’s where the other half comes into play. Knowledge. You have to know what they’re going through and what they are capable of. What they want and how they can achieve that. And you have to use that knowledge to help them.”

She nods. “So, talk with the other Magisters and Maestros about how my advisees can best get to where they want to go, look at the last advisors notes on the kids, that sort of thing?”

I nod. “In part, but also make sure to keep up with their lives, even though you probably don’t want to get involved in them. So you can know if advisee number three is going through a rough time at home and so you should encourage them to get an early internship to avoid that stress, or advisee six is out here partying every night and so will likely struggle with more homework intensive classes.” Then, just to complicate things further, I do add, “And remember, the purpose of the distance is to make sure they always see you as someone whose advice they ought to take seriously. There are a lot of ways to achieve that without necessarily removing yourself from them entirely.”

“How’d your advisor pull that off?” she presses.

I shrug. “That’s complicated. Related to the whole demon thing. And not something either of us probably can or should try.”

Zhenya begins to type something up, but not like she’s writing something. More like she’s taking notes on something. Given our discussion, I’m guessing she’s looking at the previous magister’s notes and then trying to find what it’s important to remember and where she needs more information. Don’t know that for sure, of course, and quite frankly, it isn’t worth looking up. I sit down at my desk. Looking at the envelope sitting there, I turn on my phone and check. A response. Just a simple ‘is that so’. No punctuation, nothing fancy. I delete all the messages individually, and delete the number. I know she’ll likely do the same. After all, Magister Scott is a paranoid sort. Putting the phone on my desk, I flip the envelope over to begin opening it. My phone rings.

I sigh, holding up a hand in apology to my officemate, who is too engrossed in what she’s doing to notice. Or at least, that’s how she’s playing it. I look at the CID. It’s Nicole, which means I really ought to take it. Just in case it is important. It isn’t, but it would be bad form not to pick up. “Is everything okay?” I ask immediately.

On the other end, Nicole groans. “No, but yes,” she says unhelpfully. Fortunately, she likes to talk so she elaborates, “Nothing for anyone but me to worry about,” she says, “But now I get to basically have three years of job training. Do you know what I get to do? I get to take classes on paperwork and finances and all those boring things normal people did for the last four years. I’m basically a college student, except everyone in my college is old and stuck up.”

I shake my head. “You wanted this,” I remind her.

“Yeah, yeah,” she says, brushing me off, “I know. But that’s because I want what comes next, after this. But you want to know all the other Basilica Magisters in training? Imagine an army of Parises but without any of the fun bits of her personality. Except, of course, for the three people who are literally just here because they’re waiting for one of the external agents in training to die a horrible death so they get to transfer. And those guys are even worse, because they act like they’re just inherently better than the rest of us.”

I sigh. She’s mostly just frustrated because technically the rest of us outrank her now. Court Magisters in training are technically not full Magisters in the eyes of the Magisterium, which means for the next three years, Justin, Silvia, Paris, Brendan, and I all can boss her around at official events. Then she’ll be happy bossing us around for basically ever. I think Brendan is planning on clawing his way up to be a Greatest Maestro, and so he’ll be on equal footing in most official events, but the rest of us aren’t planning on making that big of a wave ourselves. And a well-positioned Court Magister holds more sway than most Greater Maestros could ever muster. “I know. But remember…” I begin

Before I can finish the thought, she interrupts me. “Yeah, I’m not an idiot, Qasim. I need to make nice with the ones with the biggest sticks up their butts because they’re probably the ones with fancy names and legacies like Paris. I can be nice with people who bore the crap out of me, but I’m going to need to vent some times.”

I sigh again, this time making sure it’s loud enough for her to hear over the phone. Then I say, “Just remember the rest of us have busy lives, so maybe spread out your venting?”

“I refuse to call Brendan until he apologizes,” she insists, “And Paris will get all ‘what did you expect’ on me if I do. But I’ll spread it out between you, Justin, and Silvia.”

“You can also go be like a normal grad student and find a local bar with plenty of normal outsiders to vent to,” I offer.

“It’s almost like you don’t want to talk to me?” she jokingly muses.

Grinning, I shoot back, “Almost? I thought I was making that crystal clear.”

“May misfortune follow you always,” she says, our own joking little antagonistic farewell.

“I forgot your girlfriend’s name was Fortune,” I joke back. Chuckling, we hang up.

Zhenya looks at me. “Everything alright?” she asks.

“Just a friend complaining,” I answer, “Nothing dire.” I finish opening the envelope and pull out the pages inside, just enough to read the headers. It’s a name, one of my advisees. Flipping through, it includes some of the other Magisters as well. Exactly what Magister Scott would want me to have. Enough rope worth of information to hang myself, along with everyone else in this place. These next few years will certainly be interesting.