"What would be problematic about it?" asks Korulen. "I mean on your end - it'd be hard to scale up the summonings on our end, and if there were more of you I bet it'd get legally complicated, but it sounds like you had another problem in mind."

"Honestly? Most of them would probably get together and then proceed to try to take over a country," explains Adarin. This is maybe a problem he's dealing with at home! Yay. "Not all of them, mind you, but many. They're in something of a desperate place right now and anything looks better than where they are."

"Oh. Well, they wouldn't get far in Esmaar," she remarks. "There's wards on everything and tons of wizards. Plus, you know, Mom."

"I never said it was a decision I supported. I doubt they would get far past 'wards.' If one of those was what was keeping me in the circle, then they wouldn't get anywhere," muses Adarin.

"Yeah, that was a ward. The ones around the buildings are obviously not up all the time or nobody could go anywhere, but they'd activate if anybody got spooked."

"Makes sense. We have shields, but someone needs to keep them up or they'll dissipate. For a larger shield, and keeping it up longer, you'll need more people to help. So it's not really viable unless you're directly in a fight or desperate," he explains.

"Your magic sounds really complicated."

"Yours, too," says Adarin with a bit of a smile. "I think I prefer yours, though, even if mine can make portals. It seems to be friendlier."

"Portals?" asks Korulen.

"Ah, right. It's a way of teleporting from one place to another. You can see through to the other side, and just walk through with no trouble at all at any time. The further the distance you travel the more difficult it is to cast, but I have an easier time of it than this world seems to do with your version," explains Adarin. "Shape of the portal isn't as big of a deal as the distance, so if I wanted to make a really big one on both sides it wouldn't matter much."

"You're going to be rich," says Korulen. "My uncle's one of a handful of wizards who can do teleportation circles and he's rich. Well, mostly for something else, but it's still worth his time to do them, they're that expensive."

He grins. "When I realized that I asked your mother to let the parliament know I was available for portal creation. It might be possible to buy a proper home here."

Korulen nods. "Well, it's sort of hard for single individuals to find housing of the right size in Esmaar. Mostly it's huge extended families all sharing. But if you do a few of those you can probably buy a house regardless."

"Really? That's interesting. I'll keep an eye out, the dormitory will probably be fine for now. Though I might get sick of the lift," teases Adarin, just a little. "So I might get annoyed one day and just put portals everywhere in your school."

Korulen laughs. "I like the lift. We have stairs, they're just - they were badly enchanted and we can't break the enchantment so if you go in them you get lost."

"Badly enchanted? How do you get lost in stairs?" He snickers, just a little. "Do they spiral into themselves and you just keep climbing forever, or...?"

"They're not a spiral staircase, but you could easily keep climbing forever," says Korulen.

"That is an interesting way to get exercise. I'll avoid the stairs."

"Good plan. They'd just tear them out, but we have to have a staircase to comply with fire codes and there hasn't been budget to outright replace them."

"Ahhh... I understand. Though, having badly enchanted stairs sounds like a recipe for disaster if an actual fire breaks out and something happens to the lifts."

"What would happen to the lifts? Anyway, conjuring water is basic. Everybody in the building except kids in their first term could put out a fire. The fire codes aren't designed for a wizard school."

"... I wasn't aware you could conjure water. That is incredibly useful. That's something I can't do, sadly enough," he explains. Adarin's in a good mood, so he jokes a little. "Having my magic compared to yours is going to give me a complex about inadequacy."

"Well, not everybody's a wizard. Plenty of people can't do spells beyond telling time and dusting their living rooms."

He grins. "Okay, that makes it better."

They're approaching the border of the city at this point. It doesn't slope up with small buildings on the outskirts shading into denser, taller ones; it goes from grassland to four and ten and twenty-story buildings. The flagstone path flows into a network of cobbled streets. "What do you need besides clothes and sheets?"