Lissa blinks, before smiling at him. "Oh, sure! I think I've seen you too, though I never got your name." She glances over the food, carefully trying to pick out the items that seem the least nibbled and the most selected by others.

"Theun. You've looked a little lost, have you been settling in all right?"

"I think so?" says Lissa. "I guess it's true I didn't have as much background as everyone else, but I've been trying to catch up! El's been really helpful in looking out for me too." Ooh, eggs. She'll grab one after jabbing it slightly.

"Oh, good for her! She seemed pretty prickly to me. There's a lot to catch up, really. Like 'don't trust anything with a computer unless you've enchanted it', not something you're going to guess from a fresh start."

He grabs his own eggs and some mashed probably-potatoes that's had a lot already taken.

"Yeah, that." A pause. "I...haven't actually broken down my phone for metal, yet." It would feel weirdly final, for her. She's cracked the case open a few times, looking down before plucking out the battery and putting it back together again. "I...I'd miss it, you know?"

"Yeah. I mean, my parents didn't let me have one, but I get it. You're probably good for another couple weeks, but probably not two months. Enough time to write everything down, at least."

She nods as she grabs the last of her food. "I guess some of it's probably backed up on my laptop too, at least. Too bad there isn't a projector so I could host one last anime watching before it goes totally dark."

"I wonder if someone will try enchanting one and bringing it in some year? Star Trek would be my choice, but why choose, right?"

"Something for every genre would be nice," agrees Lissa, looking around. "Did you have a seat picked out already?" she adds.

"Yeah, over there," he says with a gesture to a table that's about half-full, with similar artifices on the arms of the people sitting there. (Theun's matches, though his is higher on his arm, half-hidden under his sleeve.)

He starts to say something more a couple times before he actually continues, like he's double-checking his words.

"...There's a couple things I wanted to talk to you about, but maybe I should get the unpleasant one out of the way first. I'm not trying to badmouth El, I don't think she's a killer and she's doing you a good turn. But... maleficers don't usually stay trustworthy, even if they start out that way."

Lissa bristles slightly, but doesn't immediately get up in arms about it. Probably at least partially because she's holding a tray.

"She's not a maleficer. She got checked in shop class on Wednesday and everything!"

"But she's got... It's possible to get an aura like that without maleficing? ...Well, good, less to worry about."

"I dunno about the aura, but it's not like it's that creepy once you get to know her." Lissa may not be an accurate judge on how creepy the aura is specifically.

"I'm not so sure. I mean, I never met a maleficer before the Scholomance, enclaves generally don't allow them in at all. But I've met one other here - well, that I know of - and she's got a creepy aura like El but not half as strong, and she's from a family who everyone knows are expert maleficers. Pisa, there's exactly one exception to the rule about enclaves allowing maleficers and it's the Pisa enclave. It's been that way since before the Scholomance, for reasons I don't follow."

"Huh, is there some particular sign that someone's from Pisa, specifically?" She pauses. "I guess just whatever sign you use to show you're in an enclave would work there, actually," she adds quickly as she thinks about it.

"Normally I'd say you recognize an enclaver by the fact that they have a power-sharer and by the fact that they generally are richer, but you probably won't be able to distinguish those from any other artifice, or pick up on wealth, terribly soon. The other good way to recognize enclavers is by watching where they sit; at meals with a consistent group of people at a fairly good table, and in the library they have a consistent reading room. The way I mostly notice is the fact that everyone else who isn't an enclaver acts like a kiss-ass to them.

But Pisa, specifically, are a bunch of unusually pale Italians. That table there."

One of the other people at the table with Theun and Lissa does one of those coughs where they're covering saying something else. Theun almost smiles.

Lissa glances over. "I noticed the grouping up at tables part." That's just what normal high schools are like too, except it's mostly personal social rankings driving that. She also remembers something about when they were decorating Julia's room. "Is having a lot of luxury items an enclave thing too, or is that just New York being extra-rich?"

"New York are the richest of the rich, and even they mostly don't have a lot. New York, Shanghai, London, Kyoto, those are the really big names. Having a couple luxuries a person is possible for most people in most established enclaves, you can have them accumulate slowly, one or two coming in with each freshman class or the occasional shop project where someone gets something frivolous and takes that project instead of something useful. I have - reminders of my family, and useful things with added sentimental value, mostly. But I'm - pretty weird, especially for an enclaver."

He shoots a dirty look at the cougher, though most of the table is upperclassmen and finishing their dinner by this point. When he glances back to Lissa he looks a little happier than before he did.

Well, if that makes him feel better she won't begrudge him it. She'll follow him towards the table as they talk, as well. "Weird how? Um, if you don't mind me asking."

"Well, I try to help random mundanes who get sucked into the Scholomance get on more even footing with the rest of the school and don't ask for anything in return. This is a fairly stupid thing to do and yet I keep trying it."

She seems to be thinking for quite some time before going, "Oh! Um, is that why you're talking to me now?"

"Pretty much, yeah. I talked with Wendy - small, redhead? - on the first day, tried to give her what warnings I could. Kept an eye out since." He glances over at the emptying table, continues a little quieter. "And also a couple basic spells. A wake-up ward, a fire spell, the basics you need to keep the mals away for the first month or two. If you don't have those already, same offer's open. No strings attached."

"Oh, I don't have a wake-up ward yet. I got a ward spell from the Void but it wasn't about waking you up, it was about keeping the mals from coming in in the first place. And I don't have a fire spell yet, either." The offensive spells she did get seemed to be more about direct forces than any fancy elemental stuff, so far.

"Wake-up wards are much more mana-efficient, for freshmen something you can do every night is tricky without an affinity helping. So, you have paper? These are both English..." and he relates the basics to her.

Lissa pulls out a collection of folded-together sheets of paper, writing down the basics. "The book's ward didn't feel that hard...I don't know what my affinity is, actually, maybe that's a hint?"

"Could be! Lucky break, if it is. Have you asked the Void for anything? Supposedly assignments you get, and if you just ask it for a spellbook, or 'something in English', or whatever, you get something that's at least a little specific. Which could be just for your situation, but it could be your affinity, too. Like, my affinity likes books, especially reference stuff, and I got something for enchanting a library."

"I've asked it for spellbooks, mostly? Like the warding one, and a way to deal with mals, and when I asked it actually did give me a spell to change the flavor of things though that one is too expensive." She blinks. "Huh, if your affinity is books, does that mean it's easier for you to keep them around too?"

"Not sure yet, but without casting anything, probably not, usually affinities wouldn't do that. I have a simple artifice to make them stick around, and I know that was enough with the family library, but family books usually don't run off too much anyway. So last night I put it on a good Mandarin to English dictionary, if it's still around by Field Day then probably I'll sell the service."

She blinks a little. "Field Day? I'm guessing it's not just a friendly competition like out there in the...'normal' world?" It feels weird to use that word, but it also feels weird to treat this as her "normal" right now.

"For some reason, right after fall midterms we have a Field Day. The only holiday that exists inside. Everyone goes down to the gym and participation is the only way to get cafeteria food that day. Also, it's when the school gets really deadly, especially for freshmen. One in seven dies between Field Day and New Year's."

"...just participating? You don't need to win or anything?" Then again, maybe by that time all this mana-building exercise will mean she can compete. On the other hand, a lot of people here have been exercising for way longer than her already.

"I think if you lose badly at everything you might be a little hungry that day, I don't really remember the details. Save up some snack tokens, probably."

"Yeah, I can do that. Are the competitions just normal stuff like any other field day or do they have special magic competitions too?"

"Probably normal stuff? But I don't think I know what mundane field days are like either."

"I think mostly it's just a lot of racing? And some jumping contests."

"There's some team sports, I'm pretty sure. I heard a funny story about tug of war, I think that was during field day. Maybe... soccer? Football? Probably not baseball, I don't think there's enough height for it."

"Oh yeah, tug of war, they definitely do that." She pokes at her egg. A bit more rubbery than she prefers, but mostly acceptable. "Oh right! There was also this game where you throw an egg back and forth and whoever's breaks last is the winner. Though I think here everyone would rather just eat the egg."

"Don't think I'm hungry enough for that... Yet. Maybe in a year. Anything else that's been confusing you?"

"Well, you mentioned power-sharers. What exactly are those?" Lissa chews her egg. It tastes like it would bounce, if she threw it.

"So, mana storage I assume you've already heard about? It's possible to build much bigger mana storage than any one person can fill, and that can be much more efficient - loses less mana when you transfer into it or out of it, doesn't leak over time, generally closer to the ideal of 'I put mana I can't hold into this box and take it out later', though if I understand it right you can't actually hit that target, just approach it. Every enclave who can manage it - well, there are a couple weird exceptions - has one of those in the Scholomance, hidden somewhere in the upper levels safe from thieves and mals - they're called power sinks. A power sharer is an artifice that's linked to a power sink, and lets you pull from the sink or push your extra in. Seniors generate way more mana than freshman, something like two hundred times as much, so they fill the sink, and freshmen can use it in emergencies. And then seniors use a lot of it at graduation, but usually some is left over, so every year the sinks get more full and the safety margin for the enclavers gets larger."

"Oh, wow. Enclavers really do have a lot of advantages, don't they?" notes Lissa, with a slight tinge of jealousy. "It seems like every time I think I understand what they're like it gets...bigger? More?"

"Yeah. Yeah, they - we - really do. Depending on who you ask, everyone else is only invited to the Scholomance at all to make it so there are easier targets for the mals, because no amount of advantage is enough, apparently. Don't have to outrun the tiger..."

Lissa stabs another bit of her food. At least this is less rubbery. "Technically, I wasn't invited at all," she notes around a mouthful of food. "Although I'm guessing this year's kind of an outlier."

"Just a bit. I mean, trying to be fair: if you'd stayed outside, you'd probably have died to a mal and never known what hit you, so you have a better chance inside. Enclavers can tell a story where indies and mundane-borns are invited to the Scholomance because it improves their chances of survival. That's even the- mission statement? "To offer sanctuary and protection to all the wise-gifted children of the world." But I don't think many people really believe that. It's a pleasant side effect that lets us justify it to ourselves."

She flinches a bit at his frank assessment of her survival odds, but nods. "I guess I'd rather spend four years in here where it's easier to survive and where I can actually get an idea of what I'm up against," she says. "And this place isn't even big enough for 'all the wise-gifted children,' is it?" She recalls Julia mentioning something about trying to expand the available size.

"Yeah. In Africa and South America and some other places, not even all enclavers get in. New York might expand it, and Shanghai and India have been talking about building their own for a decade or two now, and if it's as big as this one, maybe we'd start catching everyone. If you just look at the consequences, that's... good, I guess? But by accident.

I hate the way our world works. Not that there's shit to do about it, nothing that really matters. Just stupid charity on the margins."

Lissa sighs as she pokes at her food. It's not something she's really thought about much, the idea of the world being inherently unfair. "Well, if it helps someone, I don't think it really counts as stupid," she says at last, after poking and nudging her food around for a while.

"I don't regret it, that's for sure."

There's a pause as she chews on the inside of her cheek for a moment before speaking up. "I'm glad you tried to warn me. Even if you didn't need to warn me about El. And...thanks for sitting with me and explaining more stuff, I guess."

"You're welcome. Uh. I should warn you about something. In the Scholomance, people don't give things away. Just about ever. There's two exceptions: graduation alliances, and... romantic relationships. Normal people would treat this like I was asking you out. Which I'm not. But if someone else just gives you stuff... that's the subtext."

"Oh, er-wow. Really?" Lissa rubs the back of her neck, flushing a little. "Um, okay, I'll make sure not to lead people on by accident or anything..."

"If that helps you remember. Pretty much everyone needs any advantage they can get, none of us can afford to give stuff away. So everything's transactional in here. Even friendship. I'm from a well-established enclave and I still probably can't afford to give anything away. But I'm... ethically challenged. So I'm doing it anyway."

Man, wizard ethics are weird, she does not say. Since technically she's getting an advantage from it, after all. "Well, um, now that you said that I feel like I should give you something. Like, just as a thank-you gift or something."

"I'll take it if you want. But... I told Wendy, I'm a rich idiot and you should take advantage of me. Same goes for you. Hearing that El's legitimately not a maleficer is... definitely useful and I doubt I would have heard it otherwise, so it's not like I got nothing out of this conversation, if that makes you feel better about it."

"Oh, really?" Lissa sounds surprised, but she supposes that is a bit of useful information, and information is a trade good here. "I guess that's good to know. Actually, do you want me to draw you something?" She's heard one of the Shanghai freshmen is apparently selling art, though she doesn't know if anyone actually took him up on it.

"Hmm. Nothing I want now, but I might take you up on it later?"

"Sounds fair to me. I'll owe you then." She's probably going to doodle a personal portrait of him in her sketchbook anyways, but that'll pretty much just be for her.

"Sounds good. I should probably get back to the library..."

Lissa nods. "Don't let me keep you, then. Thanks for the advice."

"Happy to give it. Good luck, Lissa."