She brings her around to one of the doors to the dorm building, and sort of awkwardly nods-and-smiles her way in.

"... so as long as we don't bother anyone too badly, it should be fine," her explanation concludes, with a certain amount of false confidence. The kind man gave her a path to follow, and she is following it, even if she isn't entirely certain how things really work in university dorm buildings.

She gets in easily. In front of her, there's an empty reception desk; a sign indicates that someone will be there at 8 AM tomorrow. To the right, there are elevators that seem to require a keycard, but to the left there are some unlocked doors: a laundry-room, a small fitness centre, and some sort of common room: couches, chairs and tables, some board games, and an old, bulky TV. There's a first-aid kit mounted on a wall. A little exploration also turns up an electric kettle, some mugs, and some teabags and hot chocolate powder.

Occasionally a student passes through the hallway, but nobody comes in. Small windows positioned high on the wall would not make them visible from the street. Emily and Concordia have, for the moment, privacy.

She relaxes a little, and drags Concordia over to the common room area.

"S-So we can just ..." Emily starts to say, before trailing off and trying to think what comes next. It's kind of been a whirlwind.

Concordia pokes around the room, finding most of the contents unfamiliar — although the furniture is obvious enough, if built in a barbarian style.

The big flat glass block is ... probably a spell focus of some kind? Maybe a heating element? And the racks of little pouches are probably stimulants or silphium powder or something like that. This is, after all, apparently a place of learning.

Emily sees her poking around the hot chocolate packets, and gives up on coming up with a plan. She's hungry, and tired, and still on the edge of being overwhelmed. It's ... probably fine to take some hot chocolate.

"Here, let me," she says, filling the kettle.

Concordia watches the kettle make hissing noises as it heats.

"... is it summoning flames inside the water?" she guesses, trying to peer into the spout. "That's dangerous, because it means you can't have the normal safeties against not summoning flames that intersect with something; you could turn it into a weapon pretty easily."

"No, it's ..."

Emily shakes her head. Normally she would love to explain electricity, but right now ...

"Can we just ... sit in silence, for a little bit? And then we can have hot —"

The words stop on the end of her tongue again.

"Hot, uh, sweet-and-slightly-bitter tree-spice milk and sugar drink?" she tries. "What, do you not have chocolate?"

"The Empire has all kinds of spices," Concordia automatically replies. "But I haven't heard of 'chocolate', no. I like a lot of teas, though. If it comes from trees, is it like cinnamon?"

"A little?" Emily hazards. "Only it's not so, uh, spicy? Or, it can be, I think."

She shakes her head.

"It's not important, you'll see for yourself soon enough."

She lapses into silence and watches the kettle, wrapping her arms around herself.

Concordia searches for something to say. She's not without compassion for Emily's plight — she doesn't know how well she would have handled things at her age, frankly — but she also doesn't know what to say.

She needs Emily, at least for the moment. Moreover, she needs her functional. She doesn't speak the language, even if she's probably going to have to change that, and until she does she's really only going to be able to see the city through the lens that Emily presents.

For tonight, though, they have the basics covered. They have shelter and tea, and this will have to suffice. Tomorrow, she can suggest trying to find someone who ... wants a mage-bodyguard for their heir for prestige, but can't afford better than a foreign trainee, maybe. Or who wants tutoring in the Empire's basic casting style.

Emily is startled from her stillness by the whistle of the kettle.

She quickly pours water into the two cups, and hands one to Concordia, wrapping her hands around the other.

It's warm, and it smells good. Wisps of steam curl up from the surface, and she inhales them.

But one more goal accomplished leaves her yet again adrift. She pads over to the couch in the corner, and curls against the armrest.

Concordia mimics her, settling at the other end of the couch. It's tempting to try the 'hot chocolate' immediately, but she knows enough not to burn her tongue.

After a few minutes, she takes a tentative sip, and then perks up.

"That's pretty good!" she remarks. It's a bit watery, but that's to be expected with tea. Mostly, it's very sweet.

Emily nods silently.

Concordia takes another sip, and then balances her mug on her knee.

"Hey, we've got this," she tells the other girl. "I may not know much magic, but I know some, and there's always people willing to put mages to work. We can find a market tomorrow and start advertising," she suggests.

Emily screws her face up in frustration.

"That's not how it works!" she retorts. "I think you're a lot further from home than you think you are, Concordia."

"I think we both are," she adds quietly.

Concordia reaches over a hand to gently rub her back.

"So you'll tell me how it works," she reasons. "Not right now — in the morning. We're in a pretty good position, comparatively. Plenty of people have to deal with worse. I just wanted you to know that we're in this together."

Emily sniffs, and takes another sip.

"... thanks," she says after a moment. "Yeah, I know we can try to sell your magic. But ..."

She struggles for words.

"You have the wrong genre," she finally explains. "There aren't really open-air markets where people ... haggle over silks and spices. But we could probably be street magicians. Uh, performers who do magic tricks on street corners to entertain crowds and solicit donations."

That sounds so weird. Why would professional mages stand around on street corners entertaining people when they could be doing something important. Maybe it's a government program of some kind, since barbarian governments need some way to maintain order amongst an uncivilized and unruly populace?

"Then that's what we'll do," she agrees.

Emily finishes her hot chocolate, and Concordia wordlessly pulls the smaller girl against her side, rubbing a hand on her back and soothing her to sleep.

She'll have to wake her if someone comes in and says anything, since she doesn't speak the language, but otherwise she can let her sleep and process.

Concordia intends to stay up and watch, for a few hours at least, to make sure they really are safe. But soon the warmth and the quiet overcome her, and she, too, falls asleep.

Concordia wakes up to an unexpected noise close by. She opens her eyes and sees the room is much darker, and the door is swinging open. Then, a few seconds later, the doorknob rotates on its own, and the door closes once again.

She muzzily blinks sleep out of her eyes.

"Is someone there?" she wonders aloud, before remembering that she's a mage now.

Novice unstructured characteristic divination scaffold: SELECT * FROM people

Concordia's attention is drawn to a man standing near the door. He hadn't been invisible, exactly, but until her spell pointed him out her eyes and mind had simply ignored him.

The man is hideous, deformed. His jaw seems misshapen, and his fingernails elongate into dangerous-looking claws. He's wearing a faded jacket and even more faded jeans. His ears are far too large, his nose far too small. He holds a black smartphone in one hand, and the other hangs near his side -- and near the pistol on his belt.

He doesn't move, staring at Concordia. 

She is suddenly wide awake. She recognizes the weapon for what it is — something capable of briefly slowing down a Chasm beast, and therefore most likely capable of utterly obliterating her.

But ... the man has some kind of attention-diversion magic, clearly, since she didn't spot him until she used her divination.

She looks around the room, deliberately not letting her eyes linger on him, and hopes that it looks natural. Then she stretches, and drops a hand to Emily's shoulder, gently shaking it.

"Emily, we have to go. There's a mage here, and I don't think he's friendly," she says, her calm tone at odds with her words, risking that the mage won't have learned Imperial either.

"Wha—?"

The man walks with silent footfalls to the corner of the room, waits, and watches. He's pointing the phone's camera at them.

"Act natural," Concordia says, in the gentle, cheery tones of someone who does not know anything is wrong. "There's a man here, invisible. He has a gun, and he's pointing some kind of spell tablet at us."