The terms seem reasonable!

This wizard has third-circle spells and a magic shop where he makes scrolls and rings and cloaks and headbands and hairpieces. He can train an assistant, though he's brusque and kind of incurious about why the things that work, work.

That's fine! Aroden isn't much for chitchat anyway, and he has enough curiosity for both of them. He uses Detect Magic a lot, it's a cantrip so he can cast it whenever he's undistracted for a few minutes, and he takes a lot of notes, and looks at them at home.

He casts the cleverness spell rather often during this period; he's strong enough now that it doesn't take all his magic for the day, and besides he has his focus for casting spells he didn't prepare, and it seems worth it to have less non-cleverness magic if he can very carefully target the cleverness periods to master the technique sooner.

He continues to check, every fortnight or so, if he's gained enough capacity to add another spell in his morning preparations. 

And eventually he has; he can prepare four first-level spells, and the next time he thinks to try it instead, two second-level spells. After a bit more practice he can do both of those things at the same time. They're all gradually lasting a little longer, working a little better, too, as he practices. 

Rumor has it that the rift in the north is expanding. They're calling it the Worldwound. 

He is going to cast all of his spells every day, and push his concentration and control to their limits, and study hard at the wizard's shop, and cast his intelligence spell more than is arguably reasonable. Those two-and-a-bit minutes are the only times that he feels slightly less...cut off from all the most important parts of himself.

He tries to find out what people are doing about the Worldwound. (Someday he'll be able to address that kind of thing - arguably right now he could run off and try to found a movement, but it would slow everything else down and he would probably get killed and...it's not worth it, but he still cries about it sometimes.) 

There's discussion of organizing a crusade. Iomedae's church would be leading it. The problem is that Iomedae's church is the only source of healing and divine magic in large parts of Cheliax now that Aroden's gone, and she's a new god, she doesn't have that much power, and she seems to be expending a lot of it on the Chelish civil war, maybe because Asmodeus is too. Probably there'll be a crusade anyway; nothing else can possibly save Sarkoris at this point, and it's not like it'll stop at Sarkoris. 

...Sigh. 

The world is not going to irretrievably fall apart in the next fifty years, he tells himself. He will, eventually, be able to build something out of these ruins. A lot of people will die in the meantime. But hopefully most of the dead in his old domain will go to Axis, and it'll be all right. 

Saba asks to learn magic. He has successfully learned to read and write, and his teachers say he's clever, though he is actually mostly just diligent.

Aroden is delighted! He scoops Saba up and hugs him and says of course he can learn magic, although he's young and so it might take him a long time and a lot of work and he will have to be patient with himself. 

They can almost trivially afford to start him his own spellbook, with just Prestidigitation in it to begin, it's not much ink at all and both of the adults are using their own spellbooks every day to earn a living.

Aroden sits down with Saba for as long as he has the attention span for it, and tries to talk him through the magic. Casts his illusion and does visualizations of how it's shaped. 

Saba is so excited and proud!!! He can't quite understand it yet but he tries very very hard.

That seems very normal and expected. Aroden will give him a week or so of lessons, trying to poke at it different ways, give him as many angles as possible to grasp at it, and then if Saba wants, he can cast the intelligence spell on him, and then Saba needs to concentrate very hard and look at his spellbook and the pictures they drew together, and see if it falls into place then. 

With the intelligence spell on him Saba can PREPARE A CANTRIP except the intelligence spell wears off before he's done, and he fails, and he's so upset about it.

Aroden picks him up and hugs him. "Hey, hey, I am not disappointed in you at all. You are only going to get bigger and cleverer over time. I think maybe the next thing is to work on concentrating and holding complicated things in your mind. It is like a muscle, and will get stronger. I will teach you some exercises to do just in your head, and we can do it together, when I do my studying and practicing? And then we can try again when your brain is stronger. Like this." He flexes his bicep. "And, you know - you are already very far ahead of me. I was a grownup before I even started learning." (This is in some sense true.) 

Saba will practice those exercises so diligently. 

Aroden gives him lots of encouragement. He thinks a lot about how to break down his understanding of magic into very simple terms, to translate into the little boy's internal language. (This is actually helpful for his understanding in general, it feels like an investment too.)

He doesn't want to try again too soon, because repeated failures will be demoralizing, but after a month of very diligent practice, he suggests they try again. Does Saba remember how it felt in his head, when he was smarter and he could build up the structure of the cantrip? Can he look at his spellbook and do it now? 

He tries again. He gets - something? The spell stabilizes but it's really sloppy and he can barely do anything with it. He is nonetheless incredibly delighted and bounces all around the room shrieking with joy.

Aroden is so proud of him. He walks around beaming all day.

This spell is very useful, he tells Saba once he's calmed down, because you can do all sorts of things with it - he can explain it in a more detailed way later, but, in very basic terms, it makes a thing in the world just a little more the way you want it to be. Which means you need to be thinking very clearly, and know exactly what you want it to do, and that's very hard and will take practice. He suggests Saba practice turning one of his toys different colours to start, and then maybe moving things without touching them. Saba can cast it more than once in a day, since it's a cantrip, but he might not be able to grab the energy back yet, so he could get very tired and should stop. 

Saba in fact can't grab the energy back and gets very tired but he thinks this is WORTH IT. He turns his toys cool colors and can occasionally move things a tiny bit. 

He's doing so well! He should keep practicing his exercises for concentrating, so his brain gets stronger at it, and doing things with the spell. Once he gets a little more reliable at colours and moving, Aroden tells him that actually this is the same spell they used to make their food taste good, back during the bad famine year, and maybe he can try making his dinner taste like different things than it is.

Aroden keeps at his studies at the wizard shop. 

And one day the city is abuzz with gossip and fascination and no small measure of terror - there's an army at the city's doors, led by the enormous fierce senior elementals of the southern deserts, and by a man who claims to be descended from, the ancient pharaoh. He is a powerful cleric of Abadar, he says Abadar chose him to restore the lines of Osirian god-kings. The church of Abadar is with him, of course; the church of Sarenrae is, too, has apparently been in on this for a year.

Rumor has it that the pharaoh is ethnically Gerundi, like the people of Osirion, unlike the sultan and the Kelesh nobles. Rumor has it that his name is Harun of Abadar. Rumor has it the sultan fled the city. Rumor has it the sultan agreed to fight him in single combat. Rumor has it that the sultan is already dead. Rumor has it that the Empire of Kelesh will send their own army in, by magic. Rumor has it they won't bother. 

It's an exhausting number of conflicting rumours and Aroden isn't very inclined to hunt down which one is true. There's no violence near their area and hopefully there won't be - most of the rumours point at this being a remarkably well-organized and fairly bloodless coup and he doubts the city's inhabitants would be inclined to contest it. 

He tells Parmida and Saba to stay inside. Plans on preparing Mount the next day so they can at least get out of the city if that seems warranted. There is very little else he can do and he hates it. 

At least the background sense that this country is ripe for a coup is no longer hovering in the back of his mind. He tells Parmida that he's a little relieved. "I think this was almost certainly going to happen, and - this is not the worst way it could have happened." 

And he keeps his head down and waits for the rumours to settle onto one story, and for any fallout to land. 

"It seems...good?" she says, a bit cautiously. "Being our own country again. Like in the ancient days."

The rumors solidify. The sultan fled with his family. The Empire of Kelesh agrees to concede Osirion independence, in exchange for assurance that Keleshite citizens can retain their property, their positions, and the protection of the law in independent Osirion. The pharaoh assents to this immediately. Sothis will be the capital, as in the ancient days. He's having a palace built under the Dome. He says Abadar will select the next pharaoh from among his heirs; he says that Abadar has lent him more than the usual degree of His power, that he is like the ancient pharaohs half a god. 

The churches host a lovely independence festival.

Aroden has no particular patriotic attachment to Osirion as a nation, but...it does seem good, tentatively, it feels like things settling into a more stable resting state, instead of triggering a longer period of instability and violence, which felt like a way it could have gone. Sothis feels - safer, at least in expectation. 

He is a little uneasy about living in the same city as a powerful representative of Abadar - despite his transferred memory of Abadar being rather fond, Abadar could still have been the one who betrayed him. But it's not like the pharaoh is likely to ever pay him any mind. 

At the little wizard shop life chugs on as it did before. There's more demand, maybe. He can get competent with minor magic items. He can save up the money for Detect Thoughts.

A while after that he has enough money for Detect Thoughts. He pays to copy it, and puts it in his spellbook. 

Prepares it the next morning, anticipation and relief singing in his ears. "...Parmida, do you mind if I read your thoughts?" 

"- no, go ahead -"