"That ice spear thing was cool too!" Sindri continued to declared his interest in many of the cards they'd seen as they walked up to the front door of Ewan's manor, repeating himself several times with only slightly different word choice. "Obviously I get more power form light cards, but variety is probably good too!"

  "Uh-huh." Dryth replied absently as he opened the door and stepped into the foyer. "That does sound like a good idea."

  Sindri arced around to look up at Dryth from below. "What's with you? You've been spacey since we left the card shop."

  "I'm ruminating on an idea." He dropped the sack of toad pieces on the floor and stretched out his back. "Two ideas actually, but I need to talk to Ewan about them before I know if they're good ideas or not."

  "Okay! I can wait until you're sure. But that Solar Burst card though! I would look so cool doing that!"

  "Yeah, well it's out of our grasp for now. That thing probably costs an absolute fortune since she wouldn't even give us a hint at what the price is." Dryth reached down to grab the sack again and noticed something he'd been missing. There were no endless looking hallways stretching off away from the foyer. In fact, there was a perfectly normal looking staircase he hadn't seen before that led to a normal looking second floor landing. There was an open arch leading into a sitting room and two doors that were closed in the places that doors normally would be. The only hallway Dryth could see was next to the staircase and led deeper into the manor, but not in a spatial weirdness way, just the way an ordinary hallway would. Dryth could even see the end of it from where he was standing.

  Sindri picked up on Dryth's confusion and started looking around. "Are we in the right house?"

  "I thought so...? We walked to the right spot and the outside looked the same. Could something have happened to the house?" Footsteps came from down the hallway and Dryth looked up to see Ewan walking toward them with an undefinable glowing purple something floating over his shoulder.

  "I don't know why you want to go out the front door, you're some kind of space elemental or something, why not just vanish from my sense?" Ewan asked, addressing his complaint to the incomprehensible existence next to him. "Why do you care about the principle of the thing? Isn't that beneath you?" Ewan walked right past Dryth and Sindri, opened the door, and waved at the thing as it floated away. "Alright, alright, I understand. Goodbye! If you ever need another contract, you know where to find me!" After waving after the being for a moment more he shut the door and turned around. "Oh! You two are here. Welcome back. How was your first job by yourselves?"

  "What was that?" Dryth demanded, staring at the door where the thing had vanished.

  "Space elemental, I think. If space is an element it makes sense there would be elementals of it, right? They never confirmed though, which seems odd." Ewan glanced over his shoulder, looking intrigued. "I wonder if there's some reason it would be a secret..."

  "Why is the house weird?" Sindri asked, ignoring what had just happened.

  "Ah, dear student, you will find that the house is not weird, it is in fact no longer weird and is now once again normal!"

  "Huh?"

  "This is what it looked like before it got all twisted and weird," Ewan informed him in a more normal tone. "The contract's over so the house is back to normal."

  "Was that what you made the contract with?" Dryth asked, pointed at the door, which he was still staring at.

  "Yes it was, good deduction. It needed a place to twist up in order to grow somehow, but that also left it vulnerable so we made a deal that I'd protect it while it did it's thing in exchange for, well, no point spilling secrets around. Anyhoo, I'm back to being much more free with my time! Not that I'll be dialing back lessons or anything, I'm just not stuck here as much as I was."

  "Wasn't it supposed to be a couple of months still till the contract was done?"

  "Yes, apparently it finished faster than expected." Ewan shrugged in a "what can you do?" way. "Normally I'd say that this kind of circumstance is why you make sure that your contracts have out clauses in case of changing circumstances, but you don't really need to worry about that Dryth. Either way, it means I'm free to spend free time outside of my house for the first time in some time, which is something to look forward to."

  "Don't go to town!"

  Ewan furrowed his brow. "I'm sorry?"

  "The town we were at, Far West! You can't go there."

  "Why not?"

  Sindri looked down at Dryth for support but he was still too out of it. "The guy at the bounty station, Holter, he said that you shouldn't go to town for a while. Dryth asked why and Holter was about to answer and then Dryth asked if it was about you being romantic or something like that and Holter said yes and Dryth said he didn't want to know any details."

  "Oh." Ewan looked amused and smiled to himself. "That's fine then, no need to make anyone uncomfortable." He seemed to noticed Dryth being out of sorts for the first time. "Dryth?" He snapped his finger several times in front of Dryth's face. "Dryth? You alright?"

  Dryth jerked back away from Ewan's hand and looked around frantically. "What? What?"

  Ewan peered at him, looking concerned. "Are you alright?"

  "Uh, yeah. Sorry." He rubbed his head to stave off the light headache he felt building. "Something about that thing just..." He shook his head to dispel the fogginess in it. "Something. I don't know how to describe it."

  "Sindri, did you feel anything strange from Dryth just then?"

  "No, he felt pretty normal."

  "Alright then." Ewan still watched him with suspicion and worry. "That wasn't a normal response to those kinds of beings though, so let me know if it happens again."

  "Will do!" Sindri replied, then he froze. "Oh no! Dryth felt weird again, like that one time he did, while we were hunting gremlins! I got so excited I forgot!"

  "Do you remember what happened specifically?"

  "No. Dryth, do you remember?"

  "Um, I remember you saying ti happened but not what was going on."

  "Damn!"

  "Well, try and keep it in your minds if there's a third occurrence. If there's no urgent issues to deal with, shall I give you two an actual tour now that it's possible?"

  The manor without the spatial weirdness was quite nice on the inside. The bare stone bricks that had been so prevalent across the infinitely spanning hallways were only in the basement, where Ewan had the secure areas including the combat testing room and the "dangerous laboratory" which neither of the pair had been to yet. That was where the space being had been, which explained both why Dryht and Sindri hadn't been there and why there was so much stonework in the spatial weirdness.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  The rest of the home was light and airy, with pastel colors decorating most areas and the occasional piece of art of decorative plant sitting in a vase or in a pot that spruced things up.

  "You have no idea how difficult it was to water all my plants." Ewan complained at one point.

  Most of the building Dryth and Sindri had already seen, from their bedroom to the laboratory where they studied to the kitchen and dining room. With the house back to normal they did discover that Ewan's bedroom was right next to theirs and that the kitchen and normal laboratory were on the first floor while the bedrooms were on the second. It was all incredibly pleasing to Dryth that he wouldn't have to walk as much to get anywhere and that the toilet was now much closer to literally everything else in the building.

  "It's a shame," Ewan said, staring longingly at the straightforwardly shaped domicile, "I was hoping to convince them to stay longer and leave the house like that..."

  Dryth debated asking whether Ewan wanted that to have happened so he had a better chance to get certain cards or perhaps because the payment for the contract was that good, or if he'd wanted his house to stay all strange and disjointed longer. Then he realized that one of those answers might make him attack Ewan and thought better of asking.

  "But yes, that's the house as normal. Think you can find your way around?"

  Dryth stared at him before answering, deadpan. "I think I'll manage."

  "Fantastic. Well then, the day's ending, would you two like to tell me how your job went and then get in a late lesson or tell me how your job went and go off to do your own things."

  "It was great!" Sindri exclaimed excitedly. "We got a job to hunt mosstoads, which Dryth says might be frogs! We found one and it saw me coming or something cause it jumped out and started blasting water everywhere, then another one showed up and knocked Dryth down and covered him in mud, but he shot it inside of itself and I took out the first one! Then when we were getting Dryth out of the hole, a third one showed up and bit Dryth on the leg! I killed that one real fast cause it was a bastard for biting Dryth! Then we started going back to town and a fourth one showed up and tried to bite Dryth again, but he got out of the way and I got to bite that one too! Then we got back and got paid and Dryth got all mad at Holter because of some test thing because Holter didn't tell us that the toads were ambush predators and I didn't really pay attention to that part but the we got clean and we got paid less than the thing with the gremlins because of economy and warehouses and then we left but we had to go back to get the toad meat and then we went to a card shop and saw some really cool cards!"

  "He doesn't have to breath to talk, you see." Dryth cut in, seizing a pause in Sindri's long summary to force his partner to stop. "Let's him go forever."

  "I have more!"

  "Could you wait one moment so I can ask Dryth some questions about the bit you weren't paying attention to?"

  "Fine." Sindri allowed grumpily. "But I get to finish the next bit!"

  "Of course, of course." Ewan looked down at Dryth's legs. "Actually before that, you were injured?"

  Dryth pulled up his pant leg and showed off the bite wound which had some ointment lathered over the punctures. "Wasn't the worst bite I've ever had. Got some ointment from a herbalist Holter recommended to keep it from getting infected."

  "The old man across the street from the county station? That's fine then he does excellent work. Now, what's this about Holter testing you by giving you not enough information?"

  "He said it was to test us to see if bullshit would bring out the murderer in us, or something like that. He talked about how there are jobs that are more complicated than just 'go kill this many monsters' and he needed to gauge us to see if we can take on those kind of jobs."

  Ewan's expression grew conflicted. "That isn't... wrong per se, and you do need to learn for dealing with incomplete or no information, just as a general precaution for life... Let me know about any tests of his you run in to. If they reach and unacceptable level I'll step in."

  "But until then they're a learning experience."

  "Precisely. Sindri? Please resume."

  "Great! So, we went into a card shop and the owner is an old lady who seems really strict but she might be nice-"

  "Missandra?"

  "Yeah!"

  "She's an excellent card merchant who could probably dominate the market of a much larger city if she wanted." Ewan commented.

  "Well she was weird when Dryth asked about magic cards and said some stuff about the Association being annoying and then Dryth asked if it was the law and she said no and then asked for his license and he said he didn't have one he's with you and she was like okay thats fine then I know who Ewan is here are my magic card and she has one that would let me explode!"

  Ewan took a step back, looking completely flabbergasted. "What? Why would you want that!?"

  "It's called Solar Burst." Dryth told him before things went much farther sideways.

  "Solar- Oh, that one. That doesn't make you explode Sindri, the energy explodes out from around you."

  "Same thing! I want it! It looks sooooooo cool!" He curled tighter around Dryth in a deep pout. "But she wouldn't even tell us how much it is."

  "Sindri, I told you a dozen times just on the walk back," Dryth huffed, rolling his eyes, "It doesn't matter how expensive it is, you can't cast it, probably not for years!"

  "I just need to hold onto it long enough to put my magic power pool into it one hundred times!"

  "I..." Dryth rubbed his forehead. "It doesn't work like that!"

  "I'm not going to spoil things for Misandra if she doesn't want to tell you the price, but Dryth's correct Sindri you won't be able to cast that for a very long time." Ewan told the coatl gently.

  Sindri looked away from both of them, still pouting.

  Dryth patted his partner a few times but didn't try and draw him out of his sulk. "There were some other interesting cards she had including some good attack cards of various elements, but honestly what I was most interested were the non-elemental spell cards she had, especially the support ones."

  "Support spells can be very useful. Anything catch your eye?"

  " A couple actually." Dryth hefted the sack of toad meat. "One of them makes things you're carrying lighter for a time, which is great for bringing back loot or dead bodies when a job calls for the entire monster carcass."

  Ewan seemed to notice the bag for the first time. "What's that you have?"

  "A sack of toad meat for Sindri. The agency didn't want it and apparently he finds it tasty."

  "Oh..." Ewan stared at it for a moment before shrugging. "Not the most odd food item I've had in my home. Let's take it to the kitchen and store it." He led the way downstairs and into the kitchen.

  After tossing the sack into the cold storage area for meat and dairy and such Dryth went back to the topic he wanted to discuss. "That got me thinking and I asked a couple of questions." He reached up and tapped Sindri until the coatl was paying attention. "I've been thinking about the future. One of the things I've been worrying about is keeping Sindri fed as he gets bigger, but the other was maneuvering with him once he reaches a certain size." He glanced toward his partner. "In a few years you're going to be bigger than me, right?"

  "Yeah, I'm already growing so it won't take too long."

  "Exactly." He turned back to Ewan. "Once that happens he won't be able to ride around on me and he might become too unwieldy to come inside places. I doubt he'd be happy with waiting inside while I do stuff inside."

  "I wouldn't, that sounds dumb."

  "There's also the fact that one day he'll be too large to even fit inside any building." Ewan pointed out.

  "Sure, but that's far enough away I'm not going to stress about it yet. The idea of non-elemental support magic got me thinking though, is there a spell that would let me change the size of things?"

  Ewan nodded. "Yes, there is."

  Sindri leaned in close. "Are you going to make me bigger!?"

  "I was thinking smaller actually, so that even when you're too big to be inside I can shrink you and still take you with me."

  "Oh, that's cool too."

  "Hmm..." Ewan looked at them consideringly. "Given that Sindri is a better combatant when it comes to being in close with the enemy, especially so as he grow larger, Dryth staying back to attack from range and support Sindri sounds like an excellent plan..."

  "I was talking about letting him fit in buildings."

  "Of course, but the spell for changing the size of things can go upward or downward, so making him bigger will be possible as well..." Ewan started walking off, toward the laboratory. "Shielding spells would be good as well, and I'm sure I can remember those hasting and strengthening spells if I try hard enough..."

  Dryth followed after him, trying to get his attention back. "Ewan, Ewan! I want to learn to make Sindri smaller so he can fit places!"

  Ewan whirled around. "I think that settles it! We'll focus our curriculum on Dryth learning to pure cast some support spells with a smaller amount of time dedicated to getting you new combat spells, while Sindri will focus all in on the fighting bits for now!"

  "That sounds awesome! I'll be really big and get to explode!"

  "You're not going to explode!" Dryth sighed, realizing protest was fruitless in the face of their twin excitement. "Fine. But we're starting with the shrinking spell first."

  "Shrinking and growing, like I said it's a size changing spell you can choose which direction on the fly."

  "I'm gonna be huge!"