Why yes, someone does appear to be home.  She is, thankfully for the tiny boy's chances of getting in her house, asleep right now --

-- but the wards her sister placed never do, and they're really quite clever.

The panels of the warding schema visible from the exterior interlock, woven together like maille; they seem to additionally be tied to a central node such that an attempt to disturb them, undertaken without sufficient caution, would definitely trigger...something.

Whatever-it-is is...not very distinct or discernible from outside the wards, and that was likely intentional on the designer's part.

He's not sure if those are actually unusual wards or if he's just missing a lot of memories including on which kinds of wards are usual in this country? Either way, he does need to get in there the hard way. He's only been in this body less than a fortnight and has not yet figured out Gates, and isn't sure he would have the reserves for it anyway; he definitely cannot safely tap nodes for energy, right now, with a not-yet-fully-mature Gift. 

He probably doesn't have the fine control to avoid triggering something, even if he could see the full mechanism of the spell, which he can't. He's already gotten quite a lot of practice at both mage-sight and shielding, though. Those - definitely look like wards that bite - but he has plenty of time to carefully layer shields on himself, and examine as much of the the structure as it's letting him see. He thinks he can at least block it from triggering an alarm, if there is one that would alert the house's occupants.

He approaches - not under cover of an illusion, which feels scary, but it's very dark outside - and reaches in with his Gift to nudge the interlocking panels apart enough that he can slip through the weather-barrier covering the window. 

Is he standing directly in front of the panels while he does this?

Nope, he’s crouching down as low as possible to the ground! And also significantly smaller than one would really expect a mage-gifted home invader to be.

Then the couple those-are-probably-levinbolts that stab out from the gap he's prised open with a soft crack, much faster than he expected them to travel, will still likely miss him!

And he can scramble in through the window, then step to the side and wave his hand in a "come-on" gesture, then continue forwards until his outstretched hand runs into something (gently), then turn and face the exterior wall and take no non-autonomic actions despite the deep gong of a warning-bell and the sudden total darkness that falls upon him.

He cannot take any actions but he is absolutely capable of COMPLETELY PANICKING about this! And probably bursting into tears if that counts as sufficiently involuntary! (It's very annoying how often that happens in this body every time something that would normally be mildly frustrating or startling or frightening happens.) 

...Hey wards, what the fuck?

...Well.  The good news is that this Tiny Baby is not dead from poking her wards.

The bad news is why the fuck is there a Tiny Baby inside her wards?!

She shoots her sister a look that reads "you explain this; I've got nothing", and, rather groggily underneath the adrenaline, sets about rearming the system after divesting the tiny child of metallic objects with the distinctive crack of Fetching.

...Well.  Her sister made the 'go ahead' gesture with one knife in her hand, so...hopefully this isn't some sort of absurd assassination attempt.

Sometimes people get that way around her sister; she's getting very tired of giving what she will politely call cultists a good whack in the brain about it.

"What on earth brings a small child out into the middle of nowhere and possesses them to try breaking through the wards on this house?"

There is a firm seriousness that settles over said tiny child if he is not shielded from Empathic influence; it calms the abject panic, but also has overtones of scrutiny that suggest his answer will be judged.

The world also feels a bit wibbly in this moment, heavy in a way it normally isn't; it's very hard to make up a story, it seems, and easy to recall as best as possible what brought him here - though as Ophelia actually looks at the spinning fragments of clockwork machines within this child's mind, she only gives herself more questions.

Oh, and he explicitly can talk now.  Can't forget that.

He's not currently very shielded against Empathy because reinforcing his shielding would be a deliberate action. He will calm down, some. 

He is still notsafenotsafenotsafe and it's easy to recall what brought him here but also to slam down the notsafetothinkabout mental habit - he can't tell if his shields against Thoughtsensing are holding and this is secret and important they can't know can'tcan'tcan't - 

He's calmer but his thoughts are still not especially coherent. He maybe relies a lot on - not narratives, exactly, but plans, in a way that is thoroughly disrupted by whatever she just did on top of the fact that it wasn't fully reestablished in the first place.

He whimpers and does not say anything. 

(To her Sight, his mind is incredibly bizarre. There's far more complexity than there should be, for a child as young as his apparent age, which can't be more than six or seven, and there's an - incredibly solid base, there, something dense and immutable and not at all characteristic of how most minds work, but even more surprising in a young child. There are also some startlingly rich layers of procedural memory, like what she might expect to see in a highly trained elite combat mage. 

...but it's also a little as though it's only half there? As though some new pattern was hastily imposed on a much more unformed substrate, and it's missing a lot of key components and not entirely linking up.) 

...What, as her sister might say, the fuck.

She undoes her blocks, carefully avoiding touching her sister's compulsions.  The restrictions on planning aren't helping; she'll probably gain more from just seeing the reactions as they propagate.

"Does it have something to do with how you have the approximate reflexes and depth of knowledge of a highly-trained combat mage, which I am unfortunately all too capable of recognizing so don't lie to me about it, plus a mental - cornerstone - of the sort I expect more from my sister, that is nonetheless only half-present?"

....Honestly the state of sheer disarray this mind is in is positively offensive to her.  "I am a Mind-healer, and I would greatly prefer to fix whatever problem you are presently having, because to have a mind left in such abject disarray is positively offensive to me - do not pretend you are not having problems, I am a Mind-healer - but I cannot do this, nor can I commit to doing this at some future point, without more information than I have right now."

THIS IS EVEN WORSE THAN HE THOUGHT AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

He’s taking small shallow breaths and quietly half-crying. “I - intend no harm - to either of you - please let me go - I will leave I will not interfere with - anything—”

He really does not talk like a small child. He also seems somewhat nonplussed about the crying, as though he’s unaccustomed to this being his reaction to stress. 

(It’s pretty clear from the clockwork of his mind that it shouldn’t be his reaction, and is one of the elements of his mind’s current disarray.)

"...I am not intending to actively stop you from leaving, given that I saw you mean that.  But I think it would not be wise to go, in your position.  Metis, get the boy something to eat, something warm, and then take his compulsions off.  He's a patient."

And the sound of footsteps vanishes into another room!  A short while later they return; one of a set of fraternal twins, given their apparent similarity in appearance, hands him what feels like a fresh-from-the-oven roll, which - he can take, now, apparently!  And do whatever he wants with it!

"...Metis, something that isn't just bread.  He's half-starved, yes, but you remember the scurvy incident."

"...Eh?  I put some preserves in there, what do you take me for?"

"Dear sister, for all your brilliance you would surely lose your head if it was not screwed on."

The banter is confusing.

He…is apparently not standing up right now, whether or not he’s technically allowed to, his legs are not cooperating. It’s cold out there and inside is warm.…

…He peers very suspiciously at the bread without eating it - he’s so incredibly confused about what’s even happening right now, and kind of stuck, between the screaming feeling of notsafehere and the fact that he is apparently not successfully going to go anywhere else.

"Hey."  The Mindhealer crouches down on his level.  "...I know things are pretty scary right now.  I know you have secrets you want to keep, and I'm not going to go prying for them like this, but - well, if you're this scared of anyone knowing even what I do, because I bet that isn't the whole of it - I wouldn't trust me further than I could throw me on that claim.  I don't blame you if you aren't.  But - can you trust that if we actually wanted to hurt you, you would still be under compulsions, and eat your food, please?  Or - if it's not that, tell us why?  ...Metis, get him a blanket.  And maybe a warming rock.  Poor kid's shaking like a leaf."

The other sister can make a blanket show up, sure, plus a quartz that uses some of the spellwork seen in weather-barriers to heat its surface to average human body temperature and no further when activated.

Some part of him wants to feel reassured by that, to feel small and safe and maybe have a hug, and that's not a him-native thought process at all, it just - takes longer than two weeks to retrain all of the habits and procedural memory inherited with a body. 

He does not ask for a hug. He wraps the blanket tightly around himself, though, and eats the roll. It's the first full-size meal he's had in weeks, and much richer than gnawing on raw potatoes. He has to repeatedly remind himself to eat slowly rather than cramming it all into his mouth at once. (He is very disciplined about this, for a tiny child.) 

He's trying very hard to stay alert and on guard, but his eyelids are drooping by the time he finishes the bread. 

Ophelia does not do anything to disabuse him of the notion that there is nothing of him that would appreciate being comforted, though she rather dearly desires to give him a hug.

She is a professional, and he did not ask for a hug, so she will not intrude.

Very much.

"We do not normally have visitors here, but - we can probably arrange for you to have something more comfortable than the floor for sleeping."

...The floor would have been fine and a massive step up from sleeping under hedges or, on the one occasion he was lucky enough to find one, in the hollow left by a storm-uprooted tree. (His clothing is exactly as filthy and stained and questionably-smelling as one would expect from two weeks of sleeping rough without bathing, unless you count the times he had to wade or swim across rivers. It's a good thing he at least remembers how to swim, he thinks that didn't come with the body.) 

He nods. If she seems to want to show him somewhere, he will even push through the exhaustion and stand up to follow her. 

A brief, wordless conversation passes between the two sisters; this leads to Metis visibly doing magic to something he somehow can't see.

"You're going to wash up before you sleep," she says, leading him to a well-appointed, but surprisingly unostentatious, bathroom, with hot running water.

"You'll have to make do with our spare clothes for the night unless you're particularly attached to yours; we'll set up a bedroll for you in the kitchen.  You have the run of the place, except for our bedroom which is warded."  There are ward panels over the relevant doors; they don't look like they bite but they do look like they're harder to shift.

They're just going to let him...be in their house...while they're asleep???

...well, they probably have no idea how dangerous he is. And - it's not as though he actually intends to abuse this. It might be an opportunity to leave, but - he's not going to risk trying to break into the cellar and from there to where he thinks the records cache has to be, not when their wards do that.

(And when they've taken him in and fed him and cared for him, he - has some kind of feeling about that - and one of the elements of the feeling is that he very much does not want to make their lives worse for having offered it.) 

He hasn't ever experienced bathing in hot water in this body. It's - wow - it's an incredibly intense sensory experience, but...in a good way...? It makes it nearly impossible to hold himself tense and alert. He's trying, but when this body runs out of energy on him it runs out hard, and he is having a very hard time keeping his eyes open. 

Yes, they are.  And yes she does, at least somewhat.

And while Metis is going to hang an additional layer of wards on the doorways to their bedroom while he's in there, given this information, just to be sure...she expects they won't be tested.

Ophelia did say he has the run of the place otherwise, and that would include the cellar - such as it is - but she rather thinks sleep will take him quite quickly given even half a chance.

This is why, when Zaril exits the bathroom, he finds a bedroll unrolled, and a message on a stele laid out for him - "If you are going to run off, at least get a decent night's rest and breakfast first.  We won't be put out by it.  --Ophelia"

There's also what looks like it could be one of their shirts, which is surprisingly well-suited as a robe on his frame with some impromptu pinning and rolled-up sleeves; there's also underthings that Metis made her best guess at the sizing of - preferring to not ask, when she did the aforementioned pinning-up - and warm woolen socks.

He does not actually fall asleep in the bath but it's a near thing. 

The guessed-at-size underthings are somewhat too big - after two weeks of barely eating, he's even more underweight than he looks while dressed - but the shirt-robe is warm, and he manages to get into it. The bedroll beckons, but he makes himself stay on his feet, it's the only way he can stay awake long enough to cast some very basic wards around himself.

(Basic, but still shockingly sophisticated for something cast by a seven-year-old.) 

And then he curls up with his warming blanket, and is asleep within seconds of closing his eyes. 

Oh no, the Concerningly Tiny Baby is cute and he wasn't just lucky with their wards.  Ophelia has already adopted him; is she going to be next?

And so the night passes, and the morning sun rises.

Metis Aderiel is not usually an early riser.

On a day like today, though, when there's clearly something hinky happening, it's a wonder she sleeps.  She wakes erratically when stressed, and it's often bright enough that she just doesn't bother trying to go back to sleep afterwards because she honestly can't.

So she's the first, of the three people within their dwelling, to awaken.

...Right.  She's awake.  Now what is she going to do with the child inside her house?

...

Nothing comes to mind about the long term.  What can she do in the short term?

...

...Make him a hot breakfast.  And herself, and Ophelia, for that matter.

What can she do to make breakfast happen...

Well, first, she'll do her chores, and top up the house's artifacts from the ley-line.  She's been looking for a way to get them to do that themselves for years now; as it is, she's mostly just made improvements in energy storage.  It's not nothing, but it's not enough; mage-hours continue to be a limiting factor this day, as they have on many others.

Anyway.  Breakfast.

Eggs will do; she'll get out a pot of honeyed apples from the cellar, as well.  It's chilled, for extra longevity, but she'll bring a warmer to the table for the boy - not that he couldn't do it himself, but she hardly wants to do it herself either.  Cut up a loaf of bread for toast; the remainder will end up containing her lunch, she bets.  Possibly the kid's lunch too.

...She doesn't know his name.  Huh.

She wonders, while the eggs get scrambled practically on automatic, about what in the absolute fuck could be driving - a combat mage, a seven year old child, both in one - to be like this.

Because he's - so competent, and so scared, and - he said he intended no harm - like he expected there was something they'd want to harm him about, which - she thinks it's not about the break-in.  He would have said if it was about needing food for whatever reason he was wandering out here; she trusts Ophelia's assessment, such as it is, and he's not the sort of person who makes up secrets just to have them.  But no, he has - some sort of secret.  And he thinks they'll hurt him, or he'll get hurt, or maybe they'll get hurt, if they know what it is.

Ophelia trails in later, and starts her morning routine after confirming that she did not have an excessively weird dream last night.

...There is still a child in her bedroll.  He still looks half-dead, but that's much better than full dead, which - if he hadn't found this place, he might well have ended up all the way there, and that would be a crime, because - even his half-broken mind is positively brilliant.

The tiny child is very sleep deprived.

He nonetheless stirs at the sound of her footsteps, extending mage-sight enough to check the wards - 

- safe -? 

Warm and comfortable and indoors and his wards are intact but he has no idea where he is. Which means wake up and orient to decide if he is, in fact, safe. 

He doesn't move or open his eyes, but his mind ripples through a quick pattern that has no business being in a seven-year-old's head, as he extends mage-sight further and then focuses on retrieving his exhaustion-blurred memories of the night before.  

Oh, that's...very.

That is - such a worrisome reaction to be capable of having, she thinks; who hurt him like this?

"...You're in my house; you broke in looking for something you haven't yet found, last night, and my sister's wards caught you, but she and I don't believe you're going to hurt us, and we don't want to hurt you, so since you're here, we're at least giving you a warm meal and camping supplies before you continue on with whatever you're doing, if it's trekking about in this weather.  You need more sleep than you've yet had.  You should go back to bed.  The food will still be warm and there for you."

Her voice is a gentle murmur, and it's backed up with a soft Empathic sincerity.

...Right. Mindhealer. He remembers that from yesterday. 

It's improbable, all of this is improbable, and that means - coincidence - he's pretty sure coincidence is nearly always bad. But being warm is good, and now that he's stopped moving he's noticing how drained and weak he feels. He really does need more rest, this body has very little in the way of reserves to fall back on in an emergency, he needs to be - in better shape than this, before it stops being a stupid idea to go try to find and break into a different records cache. 

(Now that he's awake and uncompulsioned, he's shielding against Thoughtsensing and Empathy, rather well, but not against Mindhealing Sight. The pattern in his mind is much less purely scared than before, much more coherent, there's - suspicion, situation-analysis, the clockwork-balancing motion of weighing the pros and cons of a decision, in the calm analytical way that a skilled military tactician might.

...He'll stay.) 

"Mmm," he manages, and is very quickly asleep again. 

There we go, that's better.

She gently restrains her maternal instincts from doing anything rude.

Metis has to call in and cancel Ophelia's appointments; one thankfully-dodged assassination attempt on her unattended sister is two too many, and while she trusts her sister's judgement, she's not leaving a kid around here unattended however absurd their instincts.

He was up very late, and is going to sleep until past noon before he's anywhere close to rested. He's also very easily startled, but if they arrange not to walk near him, he'll mostly sleep through. 

When he wakes up, he's - more lucid than he's been in days and possibly since he woke up in this body at all. He hadn't realized how little of himself was functional, before, how much he was running purely on instinct while most of his proactive planning wasn't working. 

(It shows in the clockwork of his mind; it's still a mess, but at least the incomplete mechanisms are less gummed up with exhaustion, and moving more quickly and smoothly.) 

- he's incredibly confused and confusion nearly always means danger, but, now that he's emotionally on more of an even keel, he doesn't think he's in immediate danger from the people who took him in? It would be bizarre for them to feed and clothe him and give him a bed to sleep in and then outright murder him in the morning. Also he's ravenously hungry. 

He scrambles up and pulls the blanket over his shoulders like a cloak and looks for food. 

The food's there!  In a little weather-barrier that's keeping it warm.  Metis is also present, tinkering with something idly.

"Welcome back to the world of the living, sleepyhead.  ...It just now occurs to me that we never got your name after all that; shall we do introductions?  I'm Metis Aderiel."

...he's not giving them his 'real' name, whatever 'real' even means in this rather complicated situation. It's...probably far enough away that it's not a risk to give his newly-inherited name, if he leaves it at the first name only?

"Zaril," he says, and a polite "may I?" about the food even though it's very tempting to dive in with both hands. 

"Zaril.  It's nice to meet you, Zaril.  Yes, that's for you; go ahead, please do eat."

It's really good! He's still not used to rich food, and can tell that eating too fast will make him sick, but it's taking a lot of willpower not to. 

When he's done, he...holds still, and waits, unsure what the confusing strangers are planning to do next. 

"...so, do you have...any plans for what you're doing next?  And would you be amenable to a shopping trip where my sister hovers over you like a broody hen -- okay, she isn't actually going to be doing that, but she has basically written out the writ of adoption already.  She really wants to - see you flourishing.  You're very impressive.  If also somewhat concerning."

She has a funny feeling that she doesn't know the half of it.

His plan was to break into their basement and get access to his records and piece together more of - well, himself - and of what he's supposed to be doing next, he has dim memories of a secret academy in rural Rethwellan and some sort of infrastructure project in the very far north and maybe other things but it's still so hazy. Reading the notes will help, he always remembers more than it feels like at first. 

It would in fact be really nice to stay here a little while, put back on some of the weight he lost and get his reserves into better shape before he attempts a longer journey, but how is he supposed to explain the existence of a surprisingly extensive 900-year-old library underneath their cellar???

(Do they know it's there??? It would be awfully hard to detect, buried in the rock with the kind of shielding that's hard to spot, but the one who's a mage seems very good at magic -) 

He'll - keep thinking of a way to bring up the cover story less suspiciously than the truth. "- I will stay for a time, if you are willing to have me." 

(She hasn't discovered it yet, or she absolutely would have dug into the place.  This doesn't preclude that she might go looking, though, now that she has even tenuous evidence that there's something to be found...)

"Ophelia will certainly be glad to hear that."

...Whatever is up with this child, he certainly doesn't have a poker face worth a damn right now.  He looks so hopeful, even through what's obviously his calculating face.

"I think I am too."

...He nods, because he's not sure how else one is supposed to respond to that. 

Are they going to...make him go shopping? Why? He won't argue, it's much better than them asking him more suspicious questions, but crowded public places are Bad when he's still this incompetent at shields and situational awareness. 

They are not, in fact, going to make him do this, no.

"But I imagine that you will in fact want to have clothing that actually fits you, and while I'm sure Metis could arrange for measurements to be taken and turned into clothing without your particular input...

"You presumably have preferences, and it is much easier to accommodate them if you share them when they are immediately relevant.  And correct me if I'm wrong, but you may not even be fully aware of what you prefer in terms of - sensory experiences, so you will need to check at some point.

"Am I missing something...

"Ah.  Yes.  The reason you were out here in the middle of nowhere in the first place would be - a factor in planning this impromptu adventure, wouldn't it.

"Or rather, the reason you were alone when you arrived here.

"...You have someone looking for you, don't you, and you don't want to be found.  Because - given the frankly absurd skills you have, you can't not draw notice, for good or for ill, on your own.  Well.  Good news, you're not on your own.  Bad news, we do have our own troubles, not that we - expect them to be acting up...except that we absolutely should so I don't know why I was so certain your presence is a good idea, not that I'm going to lock you up in here or kick you out, either way...Metis!  Prepare the wardline for Shenanigans if you haven't!  There's too much Weirdness happening!"

"I did that when you canceled your appointments!"

Blink. Um??? 

(They're not completely wrong! Though the real story is a lot more complicated and strange than just having ""someone"" after him. Probably it's for the best, that they've quickly jumped to the simpler and incomplete explanation.) 

"If you have your own - problems - and expect to perhaps be attacked in public then I think I would prefer not to go shopping," he says tightly. "I am not going to be very bothered if the clothes do not fit perfectly. ...I do know how to sew." 

"We don't normally expect that.  But yes.  We're not going shopping.  We probably will be going to the city, though, unless you can convince Metis that she can trust you to not blow up the house while we're absent.  I only have the one life to live and I'm not giving up on the people I can help with it."

He doesn't wince but it takes some effort. (He does, slightly, wince internally, it's visible in the gears of his mind.) 

"I have no reason to try to blow up your house but I understand that you do not - know me - and am not expecting you to take me at my word. I...will come with you, if that is what is convenient," even though cities, and attracting attention at all, are both nervewracking when he knows he's still substantially impaired. 

"I don't think it's that my sister doesn't take you at your word that you will not be trying to blow up the house.  It's that she has a lot of things that could go wrong if deliberately meddled with, and subconsciously expects you to go and meddle with them without necessarily knowing what they are or how they work or how to handle them safely, because that's what she'd do, in precisely your situation, if she was bored and alone in a wizard's laboratory - and the house isn't her Work Room, that's over the hill there, but she does a lot of theoretical work here that turns into dangerous practice.  Not anywhere near the scale of the Cataclysm, thank goodness, but...we had to see a Healer, and replace an entire wall, after some of her experiments with only magelights."

Ophelia sighs.  "If you can keep up with her, though, she'll probably teach you whatever she knows out of sheer joy at having found someone who can keep up, so - I ask, as her sister, that you avoid taking advantage of her in that way, at least until we can be trusted with an idea of what you'd do with that knowledge."

She pauses, contemplating something.

"I'm - fairly certain that whatever you're here to do is terribly important, but - you don't have to do it by yourself.  You're - here for a reason, and if we thought it was a horrible reason, you would not still be here.  You risked your life on these wards because you thought that very reason was more important than yourself.  It's probably more important than either of us, too."

The casual mention of the Cataclysm gets a visible flinch, though reasonably well controlled, and a much more obvious ripple of reaction in his mind. Whatever the Cataclysm means, to this small child, it's tied up in - deep agonizing regret, though it isn't quite shaped the usual way that guilt is, and a weariness that really has no business belonging in a young person's head. 

He manages to refocus, though, and then she'll probably teach you whatever she knows out of sheer joy at having found someone who can keep up is painful in an entirely different way, grief and loss and loneliness and confusion... 

- um. He does not, actually, think that they would approve of what he's doing here. Or at least not the context behind it, they might be fine with the records and cache of magic artifacts. Delighted, even. But the reason for it is...no. Not something he can tell these random, generous, kind people who took in a child traveling alone. 

He doesn't actually start crying again but it's a near thing. That was a lot of emotions in quick succession, especially for a brain and set of mental habits which is still in a very real sense that of a seven-year-old, however much most of him has nearly two millennia of practice in emotional regulation. 

...That's...

"...It really is terribly important, isn't it," she breathes out, softly.  Her voice solem and quiet, she continues: "If the worst disaster known to man, a thousand years gone, is, to you, so agonizingly personal.

"What do you need?"

...Actually this is just incredibly overwhelming and he cannot deal with the thing where apparently all of his emotions are incredibly obvious to the Mindhealer and so he's leaking information left and right and he should just LEAVE NOW but he - 

- doesn't want to leave, not yet, not the first place he's experienced in probably-centuries where people were kind to him for no reason at all, and he's NOT safe here but it's so, incredibly, tempting, to feel like maybe he can be... 

Also he can't think with the Mindhealer looking at him and being sympathetic and she has no idea what he's planning, what he's going to do, what he's spent the last seven hundred years desperately looking for a way to avoid. 

"Can I," he says in a small pinched voice, "please, be, alone -" 

"We'll give you some space."  She will in fact leave him alone until lunchtime unless otherwise indicated.

...Perhaps they'll go buy him clothing -- no that's a horrible idea to do when there's this much stuff happening around them.  It'll have to wait.

...The little kid in the other room was probably alive during what?!  She has so many questions!  ...It's not an appropriate time to ask them, and she knows that, but she has them anyway!

...And that might mean that whatever he broke in here for is possibly of critical importance to Not Having Another Cataclysm, so, she'll be in her Work Room, trying to figure out if she can find secret underground passages by measuring the force exerted upon a weather-barrier that filters only air.  Well, the inert portion of air.  Too much of everything else occurs in rocks, she thinks.

There is totally something down there! 

It's underneath their cellar. Quite a ways underneath. There isn't any kind of noticeable hatch or trapdoor, and there any air for a while, either; there must be some kind of passage, but it's entirely filled in, and if the stones filling it are moveable, they're perfectly fitted and the cracks between them are impossible to detect via this method. 

But below that, there are - not detectable shields, there's nothing there to mage-sight, but she wouldn't necessarily be able to detect discreet shields, since mage-sight doesn't work very well through ten feet of rock. And something is in the way. 

...huh.

She checks this once, twice, thrice, that there is something she cannot move a spell into - maps out what she reasonably can of the boundaries - 

Her next step is to - first, Fetch a tiny bit of stone to the surface, from right next to the barrier, then - open a Gate in the hole she made, because, really, how was this kid planning on getting in there, digging?  She doesn't think so!  But she doesn't actually know what's down there, where.  Opening a Gate into a solid object would suck.  So she's being careful, preparing a small niche through which to spy, and also doing it through a buffering artifact so the backlash doesn't hit her if the wards bite.  Also because Gates are pretty fucking hard to hold in your head all at once.

And with a Gate up close, she can actually see the barrier with mage-sight! 

It's not a technique she's ever seen before. It's neither a single sheet, nor interlocking panels like hers; it almost looks woven, or maybe more like some very intricate multilayered-in-three-dimensions macrame pattern, but entirely made of a single unbroken thread. 

- and woven through that single-yarn shield, which seems to be generically against magic, are more detailed wards. The room is going to also be warded against many spells that route partially through the Void, like variant shield-piercing scrying or the special variants on the standard communication-spell. It is inconveniently warded against Fetching. 

It's probably not warded against Gates, if only because this is nearly impossible even in theory and straightforwardly impossible in practice. 

She can see some of the barrier's surface, but cannot see through the barrier; one of the things it blocks is mage-sight, and plausibly there are even more wards and shields tucked in layers behind it. 

...It's so beautiful.

Also terrifying.

But mostly just...

Beautiful.

...

"I think I found his thing.  Do you - no, he won't want us to see."

"...Do you think it would be a good idea to check what's in there anyway."

"...That really depends upon which definition we're using for good."

She sighs.  "I hate this part."

...She thought that the risk of not being a good enough wardbreaker to survive boobytraps a thousand-year-old wizard defuses in their sleep would be - a sufficient weight on the scales to make this Not Her Problem.

Unfortunately, she's too good at arguing with herself, and she can still make really tiny Gates.

And if the peephole Gate gets blasted...well, if it's not being blasted hard enough to kill her on the surface, she thinks she can probably survive.

...She's going to get her spare Gate-buffering artifacts out first, though.

There's a three second delay, during which she can get a peek at - not very much, actually, unless she's able to quickly cast a mage-light through the Gate, in which case she'll see smooth-finished stone walls, a perfect cube of a room, with (magically shielded) crates stacked four and five deep against two and a half walls - the remaining exposed wall has an embossed threshold that might be intended for Gates) and floor-to-ceiling shelving against the fourth, filled with a mix of books and smaller boxes and miscellaneous artifacts. 

- and then the wards bite, though it could be a lot worse, the total power output is moderate. The levinbolts that come at her tiny Gate from a dozen directions manage to hit it directly, though, which speaks to a very high level of complexity and skill in the set-spell, to build in a mage-sight sensor and responsiveness. 

Yeah, she already had the light ready to go.

"...Oww.  Those are - very good wards.  ...We should probably tell him we've - found his supplies, if he wants them."

"...I hope, against my instincts, that it will feel like less of a - violation - than I think he will experience, in knowing that we know - so much more than he wanted known.  But - he should know."

...It's been long enough that it would, at least, be reasonable to have lunch.

"...Bring him lunch.  Bring up the subject only after you've given him the food and he is eating.  Talk about the interesting magic.  I - think he will think more kindly of you, for this - be less likely to panic and run - though...there is so much pain, still, from - a wound he has forgotten.  And so much of my conversation with him picked at the scabs that I'm not sure his heart's not bleeding from it."

...Metaphorically.  Not literally.

"...Be careful.  But - moreso, be kind."  Normally, that last portion would go unspoken, because - they both do try.

Nothing's normal, now.

And so Metis busies herself in the kitchen for a little while, sheer nerves driving her through the preparation of a more elaborate lunch than she'd usually make to put this tense conversation she's about to have off for one more minute -

But there's no escape.

She knocks on the door to their sitting room.

"Hey Zaril?  It's Metis.  You feel like you're up for having lunch?  I have some food ready, if you do."

Zaril has been sitting cross-legged in his bedroll, hugging the blanket to himself and wishing he had paper. Thinking through everything without paper is slow and effortful and kind of hurts his head. 

They know way more about him than he's comfortable with, but - aren't in fact reacting with horror? Even if they don't know the worst parts. Most people would be...scared, of the unknown, of the impossible and unusual.

They're not scared of him. They want to feed and clothe and reassure him. That...means more to him than he would have expected. 

And he is, in fact, very hungry again. His stomach has now had two actual meals in a row and is clamoring for this situation to continue. 

He stands up. "Yes, thank you." 

And Metis can bring in his lunch!

Though it seems like she's not leaving just yet, after handing it over.

Once he's started eating, she almost throws herself into one of the nearby chairs and says, with about the same tone as someone who's discussing the weather, "Found your supply cache, by the way.  It's really impressive work; I'm going to be trying to figure out how to stabilize a spell woven in three dimensions like the wards are for months, probably.  Oh, and - we're not going to take anything, it's yours, and it's not like I can succeed if I try anyway because of the interior set-spells - but if you want to get down there let me know and I'll gladly cast you a Gate.  ...Should probably get you a way of signaling you want out beforehand, actually, or - probably something for cleaning the air is better but it'd be best to have both ready - I'm, assuming that you can't cast Gates yourself, yet, or you'd have probably skipped coming in here at all."

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH????

...she still doesn't seem angry? Or upset? He's so confused. She's...offering to help? 

"The air should be fine," he says quietly. "There is a set-spell for it." He squints at her. "I would have expected you to - have more questions." 

"I mean - I have so many questions, like how and what and why, but I always do, and - it seems to me that it's not the right time to ask them, you know?  You're - still recovering; it would be rude.  You'll tell me what you want me to know, when you want me to know it, and - that's your business; it's your secret to keep or disclose.  And if you think it's important for whatever happened, is happening, is going to happen, to be utterly secret - well, I imagine you'd know more than I do about that!  It's your - secret anti-Cataclysm plan?  Or...something.  But it's - important.  And I - trust you to be trying to help the world, rather than ruin it.  So - I'll help.  Because I can, because what sort of person would I be, if I refused a moment of my time to something as important as this?"

He's stopped eating. He curls his knees up in front of him in the chair and hugs them to his chest. 

"If you - trust people to be trying to help when you know as little about them as you know about me, you will often be wrong," he says quietly. "I - you are not wrong but you really should not be confident of that and it– if I cannot guess what would change your mind..." 

"In the middle of a panic attack your first instinct was to say, and mean, that you meant no harm, that you didn't even want to disturb us.

"You're a mage old enough to have seen the Cataclysm, and you're - still here, still fighting for something so important that it's the bedrock of your mind, even when your mind's broken.

"Sure, you could be some - peerless actor with a plan to tear down the world because you hate it - but...at the point where I force myself to assume that everything is the worst possible thing it could be, I just seal myself in my Work Room and wait to die, because surely the world in all its evil is going to kill me.  It's tried, before; I plan my travels to never intersect with high concentrations of worshippers of Vkandis, because they keep trying to assassinate me.  But - I refuse to give up on hoping that the world is better than that.  That - we can make it better if we try.  That - people, working together - can - learn, grow, shape the world, the arc of the future -

"Even through the dangers power brings, in the hands of mortal men.

"I know those dangers all too well - there's a simple modification to the spell that makes magelights, that renders the parts of the world it illuminates ongoingly dangerous to health, if powered in sufficient quantities.

"I occasionally cast it for a Healer friend who's trying to develop new crops, because it makes seeds do interesting things when they grow.

"...As far as I'm concerned, your - sheer conscientiousness, with what you're handling, with - the weight you carry - speaks for itself, honestly.  And this is - nothing I can't afford to give, no unearned benefit of the doubt.  I - don't know what you're planning, but...Ophelia is a good judge of character.  And she thinks that - what you're doing is the best you can.

"...There aren't a lot of people who've ever been kind to you, huh?"

He flinches, visibly, when she mentions the assassination attempts. There are unpleasant memories, there, and his emotional equilibrium is still so easily disturbed. He takes a deep breath, though, and manages to refocus on her and listen through the rest. 

It's true. It's true that he's - trying, incredibly hard, that he has been for so many centuries, because he can't walk away because (the Tower and the stars) because he made a vow and it's - the first time he can remember (though probably not the only time, he remembers very little right now) that someone has just - acknowledged that, unasked, without his even having to explain. 

There aren't a lot of people who've ever been kind to you

...he starts crying. It's not a voluntary decision, it just seems to be the thing happening now. 

Would he like a handkerchief, his blanket, or a hug?

"It's okay, it's okay, there you go, let it out...you're not alone, anymore, promise..."

Somewhat to his own surprise, he does want a hug, actually. 

- and once he's in her arms, the body seems to have reflexes about this! He finds himself clinging to her like a limpet, smushing his face into her shoulder, and it feels - safe the way that sleeping behind impassible wards feels safe, he didn't know that could even be a thing... 

She murmurs reassuring things that are, in her best estimation, true, and just...keeps the hug going, as soothing as possible.  He needs it.

...Maybe she does, too, honestly, she was - so worried for him, to be trying to do all this alone...she thinks he's - starting to change his mind, on whether shutting out absolutely everyone is a good idea. 

...She hopes he can find someone to confide in, no matter who.  Even her sister's careful image of - invulnerable unflappability, of infinite care - that mask needs to come down, sometimes.  She's seen her sister cry.  She doesn't think the wizard in front of her has let someone see them cry for a thousand years.

He sobs into her shoulder for a while, his small body slowly relaxing.

Eventually it would probably be nice to have a handkerchief? And maybe a glass of water, because his throat is actually sore from crying, he hadn't even known that bodies would do that. It seems stupid. 

He doesn't show any particular inclination to leave Metis' arms. It's strange, but - there's a basic baseline okayness that he can usually achieve just fine without hugs, and he hadn't realized until now has been inaccessible ever since he woke up in this body. It's so much easier to think like this. 

"I think I ought speak with Ophelia as well as you," he murmurs softly into Metis' shirt. "I - would appreciate a Gate to my records cache - but I should, should - explain some things first. I prefer not to - exploit your help on false premises." 

Then Metis can send her a signal to come in, and give him a handkerchief.

Ophelia treats this sight as entirely normal, when she enters, and sits in the remaining chair, after nudging it a bit so that it does not directly face the tableau.

"I gather you want to speak with the both of us, Zaril?"  Her voice is - feather-light, holding no expectations despite the question she's asking of him.

"Mmhmm. I -" 

This is so hard. Why is this so hard. 

"- you know more about me already than almost anyone." Even his allies. "But you should - I should - you need to know what I am planning. If you - want to help." 

Is telling them a good idea? He's not sure! But - one of the hard-learned lessons of the last five hundred years is that he does have to take that leap, once he's made a character judgement of someone and assessed that they could be allies in his project. Because they can't be his allies, if they don't know what he's trying to do or why. And - his explicit reasoning may be impaired right now, which arguably means he shouldn't be making a decision of this gravity until he's more oriented, but - it's a window that won't stay open forever, to work with them in good faith. And his gut is telling him that Ophelia and Metis have already demonstrated the core traits that mean they'll react to his plan by wanting to help. 

He leans into a not-exactly-memory of the tower and the stars, for courage. (It's very clear to Ophelia's Sight that he's doing something, leaning into the core of bedrock-stability in his mind.) 

"I am about seventeen hundred years old, though - obviously not in my original body. I spent the first eight hundred years after the Cataclysm trying to rebuild, and it - never worked - and eventually, to oversimplify it considerably, I realized it was because the gods opposed progress and nothing would really change until humanity had a seat at the table with Them. I...tried communication, and it never worked, and for most of the last five hundred years I have been. Planning a way to make a new god. One that will speak for mortals." 

He's curled up and shivering in Metis' lap and pretty clearly on the edge of a panic attack again, but his voice is still level. "The default way to do it will require....a very very high power input. I have looked hard for other ways, half of the staff at my organization are employed in research for that, but - the way that would definitely work is blood-magic." And he shrinks into a ball, as though however much courage he can try to summon, he still believes on a deep level that he's about to be attacked for this.

His voice is very small. "Ten million lives." 

...And now Ophelia is hugging him.  "...Is that why the Eastern Empire..." is like that, she doesn't actually ask, she doesn't even frame as a question.

"...I - think you may be in the right place.  To find an option that doesn't cost - so many futures.  And - gods, even if nothing of what we have or can find is of use to you.  If that's the sort of thing you need...our lives, we'd give, as best we could.  Metis, especially.  She already wants to kick Vkandis Sunlord in the unmentionables.  ...I think that my sister will have more questions on the practicalities than I do."

"...Now's not the time for them, though.  We've all been - experiencing unusual amounts of emotion.  So we - should probably, take some time to recover, from feeling.

"Remember this: those ten million lives, they aren't dead yet.  And they may never be, if we're - clever, lucky, industrious enough - to find a way that works without that sacrifice, or within the costs we pay by living.  There is still hope, Zaril."

Snuggle. “I know. S’easier when I have - a reasonable level of emotional regulation.”

"I take it you don't...normally come back as a child?"

Would he like hair-petting, perhaps?

“Usually older than this. The age when - mage-gifts awaken.” 

From which they are plausibly just going to infer more of the details of his immortality method, but if they didn’t react badly to the ten million people, he - doubts this is going to be the sticking point.

(There’s nonetheless a flicker of not-safe-need-to-orient-stay-in-control that flows across his mind, but it’s visible to Ophelia that it’s more habit than anything else.)

…He would like hair-pets, though his elbow-length hair is very matted (it’s at least clean after his bath.)

Metis actually made a spell specifically to solve tangles, because it's a problem she cannot be arsed to solve the long way when she has it.  It's soft and tingly.

"...That must...hurt a lot.  To - do.  To be - responsible for.  And yet - in your position...I'd - hate every moment, but - you're doing the best you can, I said that before and I'd mean it if I said it again, knowing everything I do now."

And now he’s teary-eyed again, though at least he’s not actively bursting into tears. “…I think I am finding it very disorienting that you are - sympathetic, about this. It is not your fault.”

"...like I said," she murmurs, "there's not many people who've ever been kind to you."

She's going to keep petting him; he clearly needs it.

"You can cry, you can feel, we're not gonna hurt you.  We want you to be in the best shape you can possibly be."

He will maybe take them up on that, and cry on Metis' shoulder while she pets him. 

...For five minutes. He really does need to look over his records and get his head into better order; he feels, right now, like the tower and the stars are a single steady point and everything else is...jagged not-quite-properly-assembled fragments, that only mostly line up and work the way he expects his mind to work. And crying in a cuddly grownup's arms makes it feel like everything is okay but is not, in fact, solving any of his problems. 

After five minutes, he tugs away, and scrubs at his face with the handkerchief. "I should– could I trouble you for a Gate to the records cache? I can disable the alarm so the countermeasures will not hit you."

He thinks for a moment. "- I would rather go in alone, I think - sorry, I am sure you would like to see it..." 

"I'm sure I would too, but it's your records cache, not my records cache.  Let me just..." She rummages in her pockets, finds nothing, Fetches something with a crack.

She passes him a - paired artifact?  "Just flick this to on when you want me to Gate you back up, if that's something you'll need, and I'll check back in - an hour, otherwise?"

And then: Gate!

Gate! He dispels the alarm immediately - it's not actually hard, it just requires having an intuitive sense of where to look - and Metis does not get whacked a second time by his countermeasures. 

And then the Gate is down, and he should be unscryable here, shielded against Thoughtsensing, shielded from Mindhealing Sight...

He sags to the floor and curls up in a ball and - 

- what. 

Just. What. 

What is happening to him and why. 

That...was a serious of ridiculous coincidences, and all lined up to keep him with these baffling people - the fact that he's in a seven-year-old's body, the location of the records cache, the Mindhealing Sight that meant they already knew most of his deepest secrets. 

Why???? 

The assumption is of course that it's hostile, but - here he is, fed and rested and safely in his records cache! With access to all of his notes, he could probably figure out a short-range Gate within the candlemark, and disappear. 

Should he, in fact, Gate off and disappear and make his way alone back to his fledgling organization? 

It would be the safe thing to do, the paranoid thing to do, but - it's been a lesson hard-learned over centuries, that always taking the path of maximum caution is not the way to win, here. For that he needs to recruit people, and it's been centuries, now, of overriding old, deep-baked instincts that he can only trust what he's personally verified, and sometimes, instead, extending an offer in good faith for someone to work with him, if they seem like the sort of person who might want to. 

Metis and Ophelia seem like very much the sort of people who could be recruited for his, well, project. He could quite badly use a bright and scientific-minded Mindhealer in particular, even, for certain research avenues that have been put off for centuries because that set of criteria is hard to fill. If he had met the two of them under normal circumstances, he would certainly be considering whether to cultivate them. 

He didn't meet them under normal circumstances, though. He met them under insane coincidence circumstances, and the priors are VERY STRONG that this makes it a setup for events to go terribly wrong. 

He doesn't want to Gate away and disappear. 

There are some logistical and tactical difficulties with that plan. It's a long way. He needs a lot longer than a candlemark in a records cache to be meaningfully less impaired. The systems he had begun setting up to allow him to step in and take over as his own "lawfully nominated heir" assumed he would be, like, thirteen. 

But, more fundamentally, he doesn't want to leave because it was nice, being held. Because it's been so hard getting through completely normal challenges, in this body, and - right, there's probably some kind of developmental maturity thing here, and a different set of existing cognitive and emotional habits, it makes sense that being hugged by grownups is much more - associated with comfort and safety - to the brain he took over. 

And it wasn't just that - it's the material help, and the kindness, and the - thoughtfully trying to give him what he needs - the saying reassuring things that actually land, most people are basically incapable of saying things that come across as reassuring to him until they've known him for years, but Ophelia had it down within minutes and he doesn't think it's entirely thanks to the Mindhealing Sight. 

So where does that leave him? 

...Already kind of exhausted again, apparently, after fifteen minutes of hard thinking. Still feeling very disinclined to head out on his own again. Wanting a hug

Also he shouldn't waste any time here having emotions. He...will dig out some of his actual records and start reading notes, though it continues to be the case that this is weirdly harder with a seven-year-old brain. (Easier in some ways. He actually thinks he might be able to jog more of his former memories back to the surface, there's more - mental flexibility - but sustained cognitive effort is much harder.) 

An hour after the initial Gate in, Zaril will be sprawled on his stomach on the floor - on top of a bedroll he dug out - with most of a crate's worth of carefully bound magically-preserved notebooks around him. The one currently open in front of him is written in some kind of incomprehensible cipher. 

...Metis shakes herself awake from the trance she's fallen into as she tries to get a woven ward-sphere to stabilize, as her (clockwork) alarm goes off, in a jarring ringringringringringringring of bells.  What was that one for...

Oh, right.  Check in on the tiny baby archmage under their basement.

...Where was her research on thermal management and 'invisible' spell-efficiency, again?

And then, if she --

"This thought leads directly to important things getting exploded.  Are you sure that's worth it?"

...Yes.  Yes she's sure.

The carefully-implanted thoughtcatcher, concert-work she did with her sister, reloads her context, with a faint feeling of deja-vu --

-- if she works out the same sort of invert spell she did for darkness in levin-bolt form...

She - and he - could harness the levin-crank, or lightning strikes.

Ophelia, meanwhile, has to make arrangements for continuity of care, given that doing her rounds is simply out of the question with her ongoing family emergency.  One day, she could make up.  Perhaps even one week, with effort.  If, as she suspects, she is going to be absent for weeks or months, though...To leave her patients in the lurch would be simply unconscionable.

She finishes dispersing her patient load around the office's therapeutic mesmerists, as the closest available substitutes to herself, and sighs as she reflexively operates the mage-artifact that will deliver her communique to her healing-office's support staff.

Realistically, she's pretty sure that everyone she works with knows that a "family emergency" is, coming from her, code for - as Metis would put it - "some absolutely fucking batshit bullshit is happening, again," but it's still true enough that she's playing by the rules she made about unexpected leave.

The hourglass she's meditating upon drips the last grains of sand into its lower bulb, and her primary locus of conscious awareness shifts once more from the inside of her office to the world around her.

Metis's usual alarm to not forget things is ringing again; good.  She still wants to be present for the check-in, though.  Zaril is...still fragile.  She would be too, in his position.  There's just too much going on, and all of it far outside the bounds of probability.

Well, no, there's always the chance that this did truly happen by chance...but that's much more unlikely than there being meddling afoot.

There barely needs to be a look passed between the sisters before they pass through a Gate to Metis's secondary Work Room - not the one she uses for working with chemicals, though they do share a wall - prior to opening the Gate to check on Zaril.  He'll appreciate the security; they'll appreciate the lack of volatiles.

And it is Ophelia that speaks through the small Gate that ultimately opens, crouched down, her voice soft, but sure.  "Hello Zaril; it's been an hour, and we're checking in on you like we planned.  Are you holding up alright?  Is there anything you need?  Metis has been looking through her research, and she's found something she thinks is promising for your project, if you'd like to hear about that right now."

He sits up. "I have a great deal more reading to do, but - I would be curious to hear what Metis has found, I think. ...And I have some documents I would be willing to share that you mind find interesting." 

He will scramble up and then try to haul over a crate of books that's nearly as big as he is. 

"We could probably help with that, if you'd like.  Would you prefer meeting up here, or...?"

"I would prefer that." He isn't feeling totally ready to just...invite them all to sit around in his private records cache, even if it is under their house and Metis can demonstrably Gate in whenever she likes. 

...He will accept help with his crate. Books are heavy and a couple of weeks of near-starvation, on top of being seven, wasn't exactly good for his muscle strength. 

Metis will --

-- be halted by Ophelia before she goes through the Gate to help with the crate of books.  Ophelia will help with the books, instead.

...She pouts a bit at this because she really wants to see inside the ancient wizard's secret lair, but that's probably exactly why Ophelia shifted the books instead of her, being as she normally prefers to avoid dirtying her hands.

And Ophelia will give Metis a Look as she's pouted at.  Respect his boundaries, sister, you are excited to find out more but he is terrified of us and for good reason.

Perhaps not terrified, but regardless, he needs to have space that's for himself, which is why she will not let her sister violate it.

...Okay, yeah, that's fair.  She wouldn't be very keen on letting a relative unknown into her volatile Work Room either on this short notice.

The - lack of exchange, really, passes in most of a blink, and the moving of the books not that much more; Metis eagerly takes custody of the crate once the Gate's down.  "Alright, who's going first?  Do you have a preference about that?  Because I want to tell you what I have here, but I also want to see what you think worth sharing, because - your ward scheme is a work of art, you know?"

The crate is full of books that mostly look very old. (He figured that treatises he wrote on magical research a thousand to fifteen hundred years ago, and on the other side of the continent, were mostly not going to be incredibly sensitive, or risk revealing capabilities he doesn't want the allies of the gods to learn of.) 

"I do not really have a good order to show you, this is just - a very wide range of magic that I need to review anyway and I am not sure how much of it is known here. I am curious about your thing?" 

"Well - I imagine you remember the way things went darker than usual, when you broke in?

"That was a standard light spell, turned inside-out.  Except that it doesn't take as much power as the equivalent magelight should!  And I don't think you can scale that wide enough to become magepower-positive, so really it was just a curiosity, and I try not to explode myself or risk being exploded, most of the time, but - you could get power density worth harvesting if you can invert levin-bolts, and I have a mechanical way to generate the levin - not to mention harvesting lightning."

"You have a mechanical way? Does it scale past static sparks?" 

- he narrows his eyes. "How many times did it explode when you were testing it?" Because the gods would not like that. He's not actually 100% sure if he ever followed that route of research himself, but he probably explored it a little, and stopped because it really sounds like the kind of thing that would take a lot of work to get as far as anything really useful, and in the interim there would be explosions.  

"As long as you can spin a wheel very fast or with sufficient force, yes, it very much does.  Even hand-powered.  I tried chemicals, but those tended to have containment failures at statistically implausible rates, so I - well.  Started aggressively isolating things that could change from the experiment, and ended up with what I'm calling a levin-crank.  And the math works out, if you try to scale it up, though I haven't thought it worthwhile."