"Dinner's good!" He says agreeably. "Have it with me?"

"May as well."

Maybe she'll learn if he truly is important from context clues.

"Lead the way?"

He does look quite alarmingly drunk. He's sort of vaguely wandering and then sort of vaguely passing into the hall and then sort of staggering towards high table with all the most dangerous wizards alive, mumbling to himself.

Oh no oh no what is she doing it's been a day

-Either very important or about to have a political splash radius ABORT MISSION.

"Oh! I see miss Naevys over there, I had something I wanted to ask her. Perhaps another time sir?"

He actually isn't especially listening. 

Then she is free to veer off and 'wander' elfwards.

Unfamiliar political landscapes are stressful...

"There you are thank the Goddess where have you been why were you invited to high table why did you leave are you all right?"

She's really excited about chemistry! Apparently so are people compared to whom she is extremely small and unimportant!

"Oh, I had a lovely day. Some sightseeing, research, and absolutely nothing disassembling my head from the inside... That came out harsher than I meant. I had some Dwarves make a thing, I'll show you after we eat. I like Dwarves. How are you doing today?"

Dwarves. Why did it have to be dwarves. 

"Oh don't worry your head is actually doing better than expected! Sightseeing? Oh - I didn't think of that, you've never seen anything - more importantly how did you meet the Transmutation Professor and what does he know and what's going on?" 

There are not that many senior faculty members and now two of them have involved themselves in as many days this isn't good. 

"...He wanted to see some chemistry but was too drunk to insist. Or to tell me who he actually was."

...Hmm. Just bite the bullet and ask the quiet part out loud. "Are Professors likely to have people murdered or, well, investigated and conveniently found guilty or things like that?"

Oh no she's asking questions like that out loud- 

Oh no she turned him down-

"...Not these days, there are lots of stories but mostly that was a long time ago! I think they think it's beneath them now, but they control all the Academy's resources and they're around permanently and they interfere, they can blackball you, also they're extremely powerful and, ah - eccentric, most people that good at magic are-"

...Sigh. "Understood. I do see how I'm trampling all over the informal rules, Naevys. Because I don't already know them and trying to pretend I do is... Useless. I don't know that my future is here either. What happened yesterday was profoundly uncomfortable and frightening."

...

"Oh. Oh, of course, I'm sorry! I didn't want to explain and spook you at first, and I'm used to it, and you said you were from a university I didn't fully realise how different it must be! But I can explain! Er."

She should just say it.

"I am so sorry about yesterday, I should have seen it coming. I... have never heard of a successful apprentice giving up... you're a wizard now, Dr Baika, it's how you're shaped. I honestly don't know what happens if you try to stop. I'm sorry, I never thought-" she does look quite a lot like she might cry.

...She pats Naevys on the shoulder.

"That's what we get for plowing ahead in confident ignorance. I did ask. Nothing to do about it except move forward. And learn more next time to stop a similar screwup. Powers like this are all fraught."

She nods.

"...Thank you. And - well, clerics have a different set of problems and it could always be a lot worse. ...For what it's worth I really don't think it could happen again, and - wizardry is a wonderful thing. It is a shame you didn't actually get to experience casting a Spell. I'm not going to take risks with you again, though. You should be able to feel it, actually, if you concentrate, you've rested now - the place in you where Spells belong, the shape you're starting to take around them..."

She shakes her head. "Not going to go looking for that until I read a book about how this is supposed to work and have all my questions answered. If you want to see my idea for making money though, after dinner we can visit that lab. I stashed it there for now. I need to go back out and sort out riverside property and some other things tomorrow..."

"Riverside property?" All right, that's interesting. "I would love to see it. I... think technically only Faculty are allowed to do wizardry in trade, and they don't call it that - oh, you're not even doing magic, are you! I don't think there's a rule against that, nobody would have bothered!"

Now the harder part.

"As for a book - there are lots of works on the theory of Spells. I'm not sure about one on basic elements... I'll see what I can find for you?"

"I'd appreciate it. Or just... An actual lecture on how this is supposed to work? What is a spell slot. What was your book for. Why did it blow out of me and try to disinfect you. Why am I so sure it was trying to disinfect you in the first place?"

"Oh! Oh, all right, I'm sorry that might in retrospect not have been clear!"

"Remember, all this is a simplification, it can be complex and at higher levels things start to blur together, but-"

"Wizardry is the art of using your own awareness, your consciousness and intelligence, to alter the world. It's - some ideas, words, states of mind, they have mystic significance."

It's a little frivolous, but-

She flicks her wrist and her hand blazes suddenly bright with a handful of bluish fire. 

"I can do this because I understand the Element that is Fire, because I have shaped a part of my mind and soul the right way, because I can think in the right sort of... pattern. But that can put enormous strain on your mind and soul, it's arcane. A poet once said wizards burn their own souls for power, and there's something to that."

"Spells are specific... fragments of sentience, you could say. A soul shaped like mine can contain them, it's the right shape, like a cup for water. They can do complicated things. But it's your wizardry controlling them still, like how water takes on the shape of a cup, you can affect how they come out, exactly how much depends a lot on you and a lot on the Spell. 'Spell slot'... it's a loose term for the Spells you can hold inside you. They're unique, in a way. When you cast a Spell it can - honestly the best way to think of it is that it leaves you, in practice it's more complicated, it's more that it sort of burns out, but best practice is to ignore them. That book was my spellbook - a copy of a Spell is that Spell, because they're ideas, so we use them to prepare Spells, get them to enter into us. That Spell is the safest one there is, it's a helpful invisible servile force - not a person, there's nobody having that idea of servility, it's just the idea itself. I would guess some part of you wanted the place cleaned? Spells take on some of your shape. I didn't know you thought I was so dirty."

"If you're going to be cutting people open- To help them- Which I did a lot- Everything is dirty until proven otherwise. Nobody wants an infection."

She taps her fingers on herself and shivers. Maybe her Shard can deal with the... Hole or receptacle in her mind? She gets the mental sensation of a confused shrug, and something like 'get a ton of detailed scans and then we can cook'.

"...Self-replicating infomorphs? I suppose that makes sense. I've corrected the issue I had the first time, but... I don't really want to pick up another one still unless there's a compelling reason to."