"Nice to meet you," Mishki said to Cassandra's friend, Miriam.

Back at the inn, Cassandra had been kind enough to offer to escort Mishki back to the Adventurers' Guild and introduce him to Miriam, who could help with Logan's wagon request.

The scroll archivist curtsied. "And you, too, Mishki. I'll gladly file a carriage request for you."

Mishki liked her already. She hadn't made any sort of surprised face at seeing his green skin.

"I'd offer you a tour of the operations control station," the kind girl said, "but I'm afraid this is pretty much it."

The room smelled of parchment, but Mishki only saw two scrolls on Miriam's desk. Instead of housing all the documents in this room, the Adventurers' Guild apparently used a giant contraption of intertwining tubes to store and fetch the countless documents. Behind a glass dome that extended so far its depths looked hazy, shelves upon shelves of scrolls were visible. Clawlike machines whirred around at blurring speeds, and Mishki wondered if any two had ever collided, but the system seemed to work just fine.

Other glass bubbles were visible, too. The one he, Cassandra, and Miriam stood in was the Sphere of Protocol, but there were plenty of others too.

The steady ticking of a large, ornate wall clock complimented the quiet, consistent hisses and hums of steam and shifting gears.

Cassandra glanced up at the clock and snapped her fingers. "Oh no. I'm going to be late getting back to Senna." She gave Miriam a hug. "I'll catch up with you soon, I promise. I want to hear all about how you got assigned here." She bent down and hugged Mishki too. "If there's anyone who can help you with requests, it's Miriam. I'll see you tomorrow before training begins!"

She exited the room.

Also back at the inn, Cassandra had been a few drinks in when Logan's request had come in. She couldn't keep up with drinks the way Bromlin and Senna could, and had overextended herself by promising to help Senna study the reaver bladehead they had looted in Gnashridge Heights. Senna needed someone with magic to channel light into the item for some test.

"Let's get you that carriage," said Miriam. "Give me just a moment."

She walked over to her control panel, flicked a switch, twisted two knobs, and then pressed a button. The hum of the machinery deepened as a row of thick glass tubes rattled in their sockets. Each tube glowed faintly blue and jutted from Miriam's station at a slant, meeting a band of metal connectors before continuing straight upward into the ceiling.

When the button clicked, the glass stayed fixed, but the metal bands unlocked and twisted, shifting their links from one tube to another. Thin filaments slid out from each connector, drawing back just enough to break contact. Then the filaments stretched across the gaps to different sockets. One by one, they latched on, elongated, and locked into place so that each tube now redirected somewhere other than it had originally.

Miriam inserted the two scrolls she had been referencing into different tubes, where the rolled parchment was sucked away into the ceiling.

She turned a crank and pulled a lever, which made the contraption readjust once more. Every tube took on a more subtle, golden hue, and this time, it popped out a new scroll.

"Sorry about that." Her words came out a little mumbled as she distractedly opened and scanned the freshly delivered parchment. "It's always busy in the days leading up to a ceremony since we have to get everything in order to open up the site of power. I had everything calibrated to the blue paths."

Mishki assumed blue was referring to the blue glow of the tubes, but he didn't want to intrude and interrupt her. If that were the case, he suspected the tubes' current golden glow related to travel and procurement arrangements.

Meanwhile, Miriam continued idly speaking. "You wouldn't believe all the checks that have to be put in place before the class assignment ceremony. We have to limit how long Caerwyn is exposed to the mana currents inside. With all the potential for mana scarring, you can probably imagine—Aha!"

She tapped a spot on the scroll to mark her place with one finger, then stretched for a quill. Her reach was just short, so Mishki helped her.

"Thank you." She ticked off a box, unfurled more of the parchment, and then paused as her hand hovered over another section. "Ah, and where were you sending this?"

Mishki gave her an address just a few blocks away from the actual Mages' Guild. Based on Mariv's message to draw as little attention as possible, they figured it best not to have an Adventurers' Guild vehicle arrive at the mages' doorsteps.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

When he double-checked his messages to make sure he got the address right, Mishki chuckled as he re-read some of what Logan had typed out. It was an in-depth recap of some advances Alden had made in testing his Permaflect skill. Logan had clearly been used as a quill for Alden based on the extraordinarly precise language explaining the process.

Others might find Alden's intellectual interests tedious, but Mishki enjoyed it. Life in a goble colony hadn't given him many people to bounce ideas off, but Alden provided that for him.

Everyone on the team gave Mishki something he had never had before. Cassandra was protective of him, and Bromlin and Senna always went out of their way to include Mishki. Logan was always one step ahead in making sure Mishki was comfortable.

He really did like them all.

Which is why, after leaving the archivist sphere and stepping into the open air, he trembled when the headache hit.

For the past few days, he had been suffering headaches, and they were growing worse. They weren't normal either. The pain went deeper each time until it seared his brain. Yesterday was when Mishki had recognized a feeling in the headache that reminded him of the mental plane where he had confronted the warlock.

The headaches were coming more frequently. He had been suffering one right as they entered the guild the other day, but it vanished the moment he had stepped in the door. It had reappeared when his foot left the threshold as they headed to the inn.

That was part of the reason Mishki had wanted to stay in the Adventurers' Guild. It was perhaps a desperate hope to bank on that the guild walls were something that would keep the headaches muted, but just these last few had become overwhelming. The pain was one thing… but recently, the pain was as if it resulted from someone else's thoughts jabbing into his mind, trying to insert themselves as his own.

Thoughts about hurting the others.

He hadn't mentioned the headaches to anyone yet because he didn't want them to kick him out of their company. He wanted to read through the guild's extensive library for any instances of goble history or lore. Had other warlocks ever been overthrown? If so, what usually happened?

Mishki's mind was his pride, and if he lost it to this other… thing, he wouldn't be able to bear it.

He squeezed the bridge of his nose, his sharp nails digging into his leathery skin enough that it actually hurt. That pain normally helped take his mind off the pain of a typical headache, but not this one. This one was deeper still, and beyond physical.

Until now, there had been a certain idea included with the pain, but it had never been vocalized in words, allowing Mishki to play dumb and ignore it. Now, though, it came as an internal voice.

"Your nails are so sharp, you could rip their throats out easily. They would never expect it. You can go back to the inn, sleep beside them, and do it in the middle of the night. This is your chance."

Mishki staggered midstride across the courtyard. He was only halfway to the main building, where his room was, but the intensity of the horrible thought brought him to his knees.

He started to get up, clenching his eyes to shake the pain away. Each step came forced, as if his body was trying to lock him down outside. Whatever this was, it knew the guild walls—whether inside the archivist sphere or the main guild hall—were giving him sanctuary, and it was trying to get to him in the moments while he was unprotected.

"You have abandoned your people. Honor your family by doing this, and they will take you back. They will raise you above themselves and worship you."

He took a deep breath and shoved the thoughts aside. He couldn't get rid of them.

If this had come as an attack on him in the psychic plane, he could at least rely on his memories of his psychic battle with the warlock. This, though, was affecting him in the physical world.

Without Avalyn to help him transcend to the psychic plane, he had to rely on remembrances of the feelings and try to fight it off.

As he fought the thoughts, the pain lessened, and the words went back to their amorphous concepts. But he still understood the idea behind those abstract thoughts. He could taste the bloodthirst in them.

To his surprise, when he opened his eyes, he hadn't made it closer to the guild. Instead, he had traveled all the way to the city's main gate.

Two guards at the gate noticed him, and their stances were unsure. Mishki recognized their faces from when he had first arrived, so they must remember him. But Mishki had taken his disguising outfit off since he was promised safety on the guild grounds. If anybody walked past the gate and looked in, they would see him.

That wasn't all, though. The guards weren't just unsure of how to handle that scenario. They were tense.

It had to be Mishki's facial expressions as he battled the unwanted thoughts. It was those same thoughts that had guided his steps here, he was sure. They had probably also contorted his face in a wild way.

Mishki would not let the intrusive thoughts win.

Even with them still there in the background, and with Mishki unable to banish them completely, he poured all his willpower into drowning them out with new thoughts of his own.

I like books. I like tea. I like my team. Yes, my team.

The thoughts roiled in disgust as they tried to batter Mishki's attempts down.

Mishki kept repeating these things in his mind, and one step at a time, he made it back to the main guild building.

The moment he stepped through the door, the thoughts winked out. Only then did he realize how heavily he was panting. He pressed his back against the wall, took a few calming breaths, and then looked around him. The receptionist, Agnes, was at her desk. She was fidgeting with some paperwork and casting concerned glances his way.

He put on a smile for her, and she slowed her busywork.

Mishki didn't want to waste any time grabbing any goble lore books he could find. He went up to Agnes and asked for directions to the library, and from there to his room.

Mariv's message, too, still lingered in his mind. What if this had to do with whatever the reavers were planning? He decided against it, though. Whatever this was, it shared a certain feeling with his thoughts from the hive mind. Even the reavers hadn't known how Mishki's warlock sought to betray them, so if it was related to something goble in nature, he didn't think the reavers would have had the ability to trigger this inner mental turmoil. His warlock may have been strong, but the reavers were stronger. If they had access to some powerful mind tool, they could have used the same tactic to keep the warlock under their thumbs.

He tried to take comfort in the fact that it wasn't the reavers who were behind the attacks.

But not knowing the root somehow made it worse.

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