Letters of light appear in front of him, floating in the air, in some unfamiliar script that seems to write vertically rather than horizontally.

—And just as he was starting to move, he freezes again.

Okay. Think. In terms of the things he's directly seen so far, this could be some bizarre prank by a Light mage with too much time on their hands - but to kidnap him out of his own rooms at the palace you'd pretty much have to be a god. And what god would snatch him away to their enormous, austere, vaguely tomblike, extremely nine-pointed stone building and then show him words in a language he doesn't understand? It doesn't make any sense. So something that doesn't make sense is happening, and he needs to find out more about what it is and how it works so he can get safely out of it and return home, ideally before his father notices he is missing.

How long has he been gone? Impossible to say. He's been known to stay in his rooms for days, but he still sends for his meals; the kitchen would notice if he skipped breakfast and lunch, they'd probably send somebody up with a tray, the tray would sit untouched, they'd notice when they came to collect it... allow a few hours for the news to make it up the chain of command, as the people at each level debate the wisdom of telling Emperor Siurek his son appears to be missing... by that same evening, his father would know, and people would be getting tortured to death over it. He feels like he got approximately a full night's sleep, so by his best guess, he has about eight or twelve hours.

In which case he'd better get moving, hadn't he. Without taking unnecessary risks if he can help it. Getting back alive is more important than getting back fast. On the other hand, what's an unnecessary risk in this scenario? How would he tell?

Sighing, he leans closer to the floating letters. Examining them probably won't help, but it feels like a better idea than wandering off to be eaten by a void-hole.

As he leans close to the letters, something... communicates with him.

It's hard to get more precise than that, because that's really all there is at first: a sense of something, very definitely an external something, approaching his mind with communicative intent.

His instinct is to recoil from the contact, but a moment later he reminds himself that he is on a deadline here. With as little information as he has about where he is, how he got here, and what in general is going on, if something is offering him answers even in the vaguest possible way, he should definitely not let the opportunity pass him by. It could be the wrong choice and lead to disaster, but so could doing nothing, so could any other action he might choose to take - the problem is that he doesn't know. This seems more like a possible solution than anything else he has encountered so far.

He... would like to talk to the mysterious presence? Is that how you do it?

It seems to be close enough.

The mysterious presence introduces itself, in slow blurry concepts drifting into his thoughts one after another. It is this building. Its function is to distribute - something, a concept he doesn't yet have the context to fully understand. It is not directly conscious but it is able to act and learn in ways related to its function.

...does it know how he got here?

No.

(Can a building lie? Not enough information. Well - assume it's being straightforwardly honest for now. Second-guessing its every statement for hours will not serve his purposes.)

All right, what's this about the thing it's supposed to distribute? That concept is unfamiliar to him. It seems like it might be a kind of magic, but almost completely unlike the magic he's familiar with.

The thing it's supposed to distribute is called taieli in the language spoken by the building's creators. It is a kind of magic. It is not very much like the magic he's familiar with. The magic he's familiar with is not a thing this monument has ever encountered.

...can the building send him home, by any chance?

No.

So he's trapped in a magic building, so far away from home that neither of them has ever heard of the way magic works where the other is from -

He doesn't have the first clue how you'd even begin to solve this problem with the magic of his world, but maybe this 'taieli' thing hops casually between entire paradigms of being...?

It does not. The taieli monument has never encountered evidence of another world's existence before, and if travel between worlds was a common use of taieli, the monument would know.

... he is probably not going home.

He sits down abruptly.

Is there anything to eat or drink in this place—?

No.

If he chose to be evaluated as a candidate to receive taieli, the monument would sustain his life without the need for food or water or sleep for nine days. After that, or if he does not choose to be evaluated, the monument will remain filled with air for as long as he is alive and inside it, but that's all. There is no air outside, nor food, nor water; no one has visited this place in thousands of years.

He curls up in a little ball on the floor and cries with mingled relief and despair. Despair because he is going to die here and he'll never have a chance to fix the mess his father made of the world and Ruava will never know what happened to him and his disappearance will cause a lot of suffering and he can't do anything about it. Relief because he is going to die here and it won't be his fault - if there really is nothing he can do, then he can just stop trying, he never has to watch his father torture someone again, he never has to see Nirue's smile again, he never has to read another report about the capture of a political prisoner, he will never again be asked to kill someone because she's afraid to live.

His surroundings are still and silent. The monument has nothing to say on this subject.

He hasn't cried in - he can't remember. Years at least. He'd forgotten how much it hurts, physically, his throat aches and his eyes sting and his chest tightens painfully - why does the normal reaction to being miserable tend to make you more miserable, that's hardly fair - he tries to pull himself together, not because he has to, just because he prefers not to be crying, and it's dizzyingly strange, being free of the weight of duty...

He takes a deep breath, wipes his face with shaking hands, sits up, wipes his face again because there are still tears trickling down it. Maybe he should try being evaluated for taieli, just to give himself nine more days of life. Does he want nine more days of life? He has no idea and isn't really sure how to find out. It would probably take him more than nine days just to adjust to running on preferences instead of necessities. And then afterward he will die of thirst alone in this huge empty building.

...no. He's getting ahead of himself. If the monument is able to sustain him for nine days, then logically it must be theoretically possible to sustain him for longer than that using the magic that built it. So he could live, if he could acquire the magic and learn how to use it fast enough.

And if he could live - perhaps indefinitely - or at least as long as he was able to keep himself going - with an unknown form of magic... even if the monument has never heard of a way to use taieli to travel between worlds, he got here somehow, and that means that in theory there exists a way to get back.

He draws his knees up to his chest and presses his face against them and refuses to start crying again. It's such a tiny, ridiculously implausible chance - he was so close to being able to stop - couldn't he just assume that returning home really is impossible, and go from there -

No. And he's already wasted enough time succumbing to the temptation of abandoning his duty. No matter how tiny the chance, no matter how difficult it is or how long it takes, he will do everything he can to return home. He is Fareine Korovai, prince of Eianvar, and his father's empire is his responsibility.

Standing up would be beyond him, just now, but it seems unlikely that the building will care. He addresses it in his thoughts again. What would he have to do, to be evaluated as a candidate?

The evaluation process is different for everyone, but it will involve staying in this building for nine days, and no physical harm will come to him during that time.

Would he like to be evaluated?

(He would like to go to sleep and never wake up—but he can't do that, he can't, he really truly does not have it in him to walk away from his self-imposed duty to the people of Eianvar. As long as there's any chance he could make a difference, he will go on.)

He composes his mind into as unambiguous an affirmative as he can manage and directs it at the monument.

His intentions are acknowledged. Evaluation will begin.

First, some background information...

There are nine ainelin - elements, aspects, fields - that together make up the system that is taieli. They're not divided by personal compatibility like the elements he's familiar with; you either have the magic and can use all the elements, or you don't and you can't. Simple, orderly, symmetrical - at least at this level of abstraction. Things get a little messier in practice.

Doing magic with taieli is a matter of applying one or more ainelin to an object or situation to achieve a desired effect. The only limit to how many you can use at once is your attention and working memory, and the only limit to how big an effect you can achieve with them is that plus how much practice you're willing to put in first in order to expand your range.

As part of its function, the monument is able to teach him about the nature and uses of the ainelin. It will now do so.

He is certainly listening.

Although the ainelin come in no particular order, the one that is normally listed first is epru: void, absence, lessening. Erasure, removal. With epru, you can diminish a thing, make it dimmer, colder, quieter, or vanish it completely; but you had better be careful not to get rid of something which you might later wish you hadn't.

Then there's ileyi: energy, fire, creation. Heat and light and sound and motion. With ileyi, you can create; but by itself, what ileyi creates is undirected explosions, and it needs to be coaxed into anything more specific.

After that comes rilte: reflection, innovation, continuation. With rilte you can copy, alter, extend; as long as you have something to build from, you can keep improving on it indefinitely.

Next, soryo: cycle, balance, orbit. Tides, days, seasons; erosion, formation. With soryo you can create stable cycles that strongly resist being pulled off course. A planet that never strays from its orbit; a clock that never falls out of time. But the blessing of stability can also be a curse: enough soryo will keep a cycle stubbornly turning according to its original plan even if its creator has second thoughts and wants to tweak something.

Right in the middle, tsaer: edge, threshold, separation. With tsaer, you can join what was once divided or divide what was once joined; you can set boundaries that keep certain things from entering or leaving certain areas. You might think, looking at tsaer's neatly symmetrical applications, that its mistakes tend to be easily reversed, but this is not always true; putting something back together can be very different from never having taken it apart.

The next aineli is beshenn: stasis, structure, permanence. With beshenn, you can build things that will last, or preserve existing things against harm or decay. Of all the ainelin, this is perhaps the one whose mistakes are hardest to fix. Use too much beshenn, and whatever you have preserved will resist all attempts to change it, even for the better.

And then, with an entirely different set of problems, there's poai: life, biology, vitality. With poai, you can bring lifelike attributes to things not traditionally alive, or work with living things in a way broadly similar to a Wood mage's lifeshaping. Of course, working with life and the living is an area with a lot of potential for trouble; living things tend to have characteristics like autonomy and preferences and the capacity to suffer.

Speaking of autonomy, there's also kiina: identity, agency, personality. With kiina you can give your creations a mind of their own, fully or partially - a complete mind and personality, or just individual characteristics like the ability to learn or act independently. You can also create an inviolate identity check, or guard a personality against alteration by outside forces, or (with considerably more difficulty) make those kinds of alterations yourself. The ethical implications are obvious.

Lastly, naharr: chaos, transformation, destruction. Anything and everything. There is no theoretical limit to what can be done with naharr; but the practical limit is that the more of it you use, the more unasked-for effects it will give you alongside the thing you actually wanted. There is not much use in turning yourself into a hundred-foot-tall legendary monster if in the process you also turn your entire planet and everything on it into a handful of pebbles.

He's so fascinated by the ainelin themselves, at first he almost misses the background knowledge that sneaks in behind them. Ileyi tells him how stars are made, and that they are the same thing as the sun; rilte explains that moonlight is just sunlight reflected off the moon, which is why ileyi and rilte are culturally associated with the sun and moon respectively; soryo comes with a quick education on orbital mechanics. It's - half unsettling, half amazing.

How long has he been here? He has no way to know, but he suspects it's been hours at least. His father could start looking for him any minute. He needs to put that out of his mind; if he dwells on what's happening at home without him, he will be less effective in returning there.

Okay. The monument can consider him educated on the subject of the ainelin, at least to a basic degree.

Now what?

Now the monument would like him to explain why he wants the magic.