"I definitely want a word with the management on a variety of counts, I'm just really unclear on the motives and the mechanisms here," mutters Cam. "But yeah, you're a rock. Maybe one of the wizards in the directory knows, maybe I should figure out how to visit a housecat."

"Are you sure you want to talk to those guys?" says Iggy. "Me, I wouldn't trust 'em as far as I could throw 'em."

"I could probably throw a housecat reasonably far," Cam says. "It's always better to have more sources, anyway."

"Not if they're the same people who're throwing you into a war without even telling you you're on the front lines."

"You think the housecat would do me actual harm above and beyond standard issue danger if I go have a talk? I'd be more circumspect about actual Powers. I don't have enough information to want their attention personally yet."

"I've never met this housecat, how should I know? But it tells you something about these people that they send kids to do their dirty work, doesn't it? Even the wizards are part of that system - you see any of 'em showing up to warn you? You're right there in the directory, they could do it anytime."

"If they're checking the directory," Cam points out. "If they can spare the time. If they think warning me would help. If they can visit a fourteen-year-old boy at home without my mom being weirded out and calling the cops - admittedly not a problem the cat one has. If they didn't already try and just happen to show up while I was in school or at the library or down the street with Leafy or out at the theater. There's not that many wizards in the directory, I wouldn't be surprised if nobody has all the right features and luck."

"Kid," says Iggy, "they're magic. If they wanted to talk to you, I'm sure they could find a way."

"If it's a priority. I don't know what they're doing with their time, because the world doesn't really look to me like it's got highly effective altruistic wizards running around doing useful things to it, but I haven't met 'em, I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt for now. Frankly even if I had staggering amounts of magic power I would not necessarily spend amounts of it on individual kids liable to encounter trouble any more than it would make sense for Norman Borlaug to go grab a ladle at a soup kitchen. They don't know that I'm planning to be unreasonably effective and therefore an efficient use of time. A warning might not help. Maybe one of them kicked you into my yard specifically so you could warn me, I don't know. I'm steepening my learning curve as much as I can but the manual was all cautionary about boosting my brain."

"I guess. How do ordeals go? How do wizards die?"

"I only ever saw the one..." says Iggy.

"It's still a data point."

"He was doing a spell," Iggy recalls, "I forget what it was, but it went wrong... and the next thing I knew, we were in some kind of horrible alternate dimension. Big Bad seemed surprised to see us. That's why I think it's the other guys who pull that kind of thing. Anyway. We got out of there okay, but he'd overheard some of its plans, and when we got back... well, I guess it didn't want him telling anybody."

"He just - keeled over, or was there a more typical cause of death?"

"I guess you could say there was a fight," says Iggy. "It wasn't much of a fight. He said half a spell and then went up in smoke."

"That sucks. ...How does sensing stuff work for rocks? You don't have eyes. Or even a vestibular system, how can you tell when somebody kicks you?"

"I am a magic rock," Iggy explains patiently. "I was a wizard's pet for a while; that kind of thing has effects."

"Sure, you're a magic rock, but, like, Grace can't feel it when I pat her, she doesn't have a nervous system. I assume magic is involved in how you could tell that I was sitting on you or that somebody picked you up, but that doesn't tell me what it's like."

"I don't know what it's like for you either," says Iggy. "Why don't you try turning yourself into a rock?"

"I don't even know if that would yield the same experience," Cam points out, "leaving aside all the other reasons it seems like a poor choice. Are you discerning roughly the same facts about your environment that a human would be, though, even if you're doing them through funky magic senses?"

"Sure," says Iggy. "Tree, sky, ground, chatty human who doesn't watch where he puts his butt."

Cam snorts. "I'm chatty? Anyway, if the Big Bad can just literally set people on fire, and it pays attention to every newly oathed wizard, why are there any leftovers?"

"Hey, if you wanna know how people survive their Ordeals, I am not the rock to ask," says Iggy.

"Yeah, I think I'll go visit that cat," Cam says, flipping to the directory in his manual.