A few hours earlier...

  Stella strolled through the Towers of Myst as if she belonged there. It was the best way to blend in and the number of students who attended the university were so vast in number that no one knew everyone. Of course, many of the students wouldn’t remember their own time there. If they failed or dropped out, as many of them would, their memories of most of their education would be wiped along with their status as a mage.

  In addition to the students, the Towers of Myst also housed many full-blown sorcerers, most of whom were natural recluses, known to only very rarely venture out from their offices or labs. It was one of these recluses who Stella was here to see. An old friend and one of the few who knew of Stella’s two powers. They had an agreement about that. Stella gave her friend body and blood, and in return her friend kept her secret and provided her some secrets in return. Snippets from books only sorcerers were supposed to see and lessons in magic. Even though Bambi had once studied here, and had escaped with her memories intact, and knew quite a great deal about magic, she hadn’t technically graduated, and of course not even the archmages knew everything.

  The city of Myst was tightly nestled in a small valley surrounded on three sides by steep mountains and on the forth by rough seas. There was a port but few sailed into it. Most transport was by teleport. A small fraction was by car through a long tunnel that punctuated deep into the north-western range, although metal structures, including cars, were forbidden anywhere in Myst itself. Once you got here you walked, jumped, or flew. There were no horses or farmland in Myst beyond a small smattering of pig farms. There was the occasional pegasi, and an excessive quantity of cats.

  The university was not one building so much as it was a labyrinth of connected grand stone towers, manicured sky-high gardens, and an almost infinite number of underground classrooms, labs, and libraries, which weaved it’s way into the mountain and around at least two sides of the city. Some said the school even extended beneath the city and into parts of the range on the south-eastern side, but if it did few had seen any evidence of it and there were no buildings sticking out of the rock or looking down on the city from the south-east like there were from the western sides.

  Stella knew her way around. Even if she hadn’t, her magic made it easy to find the correct path. Trying out every option in her head was faster than walking. She did have to be a little careful though. Any psychic nearby would find their visions affected and their power reduced. A good psychic might even understand what that meant and try to seek out the source, but the risk was low. Good psychics were rare even at Myst.

  The bigger risk was the mindwalkers, and of those Myst had many. But Stella had good practice with them. Bambi was the best. She’d been top of her class before she’d left this place and Stella could mostly deal with her unless she was really digging. Stella’s own mother had been a mindwalker too. There wasn’t a day she could remember from her youth where she hadn’t had someone trying to read her mind. She’d figured out a way to split herself into parts back then. To think at different levels, to put up walls and distractions. All the techniques to keep a mindwalker superficially out Stella had mastered long ago. As long as she didn’t draw any direct attention, she’d be fine.

  She had once hated the feeling of someone tearing about their way inside her head, had longed to be free of it. But over time she had grown used to it and sometimes when she was alone she found she missed it. It was often easier to think something than it was to say it and it was the form of communication she was used to. Her childhood had taught her to be very careful with what she said, to always maintain a perfect outer shell, to bury herself deep within. So as an adult she had found herself gravitating more towards those who knew how to breach that shell, to look inside, to read her mind, to see at least a glimpse of her regardless of whether they had her permission or not. Because being used was better than being alone. Being wanted was better than being rejected. Her outer shell was so perfect she wasn’t sure how she might be received if she ever broke out of it. She wasn’t sure she even knew how.

  Stella watched the young sorcerers walking by in groups, their long dark cloaks billowing out behind them, and she wondered what it might have been like to be among them, be one of them, surrounded by friends. She often wondered that about a lot of people. Bambi had saved her from her mother. Bambi was kind. But Bambi was no substitute for true friendship. Nor was Murphy. Coal she loved. She loved him too much, but he did not really even know her. Not like Gabriel did. Few people did. Not even Feathers, the friend she was here to see. But Gabby was mean, not always but often enough. Stella knew that but she also knew his history. He was like her in a way, separate from society but smart enough to blend in. Maybe if she could help him then there was hope for her too.

  Yes, there were many mindwalkers at Myst and sometimes Stella wondered if some of them might be friends. But Murphy was right and Stella didn’t need to look far into the future to know how interested they would be in her two powers. And worse, how fast, the entire weight of the sorcery council could crush any goals the guardians had. It was important she stay hidden, that any friendships she made here should be carefully restricted. There was not a mindwalker in Myst who could safely be her friend. So she kept her distance from them and she kept her mind as closed as she could from all the rest. Even Feathers.

  With the mindwalkers and the psychics mostly accounted for, all that remained for Stella to be careful of were the borrowers and the binders. Both had power reading capabilities and if she got too near one of them she’d stick out like dragon in an owl rookery. But once again, her power came in useful for avoiding them.

  Into the deeper parts of the mountain she went, down where the halls were lit by fire and lanterns of strange and inconsistent types. Some halls were lined with bright blue caterpillars contained in jars, others were red beetles whose butts glowed so bright they were difficult to look at directly. Once she had found a hallway lined with taxidermied cat’s all sitting upright, with glowing eyes which followed anyone who walked along it. It wasn’t the strangest thing about this place, anyone familiar with the nature of blood magic understood that there was no shortage of cat bodies in a sorcery school.

  Stella found Feather’s room with ease. She knocked once to give warning and then she entered, knowing Feathers was unfortunately in a perfectly decent state.

  Feathers was a shapeshifter, one whose sex and form changed with the moon and all her moods. The only constant was hair colour, a stark white much like the moon herself or the feathers of a swan. Today it was short and fluffy and Stella longed to run her hands through it. The antlers were something new but definitely a cute addition. So were the freckles. Feathers’ favorite build was wiry and slim in structure, and neither quite male nor female. Stella would have preferred a little more curve, whether it be in fat or muscle, but she could not complain. The variety Feathers offered was a treat. Unfortunately, she knew before she even opened the door that Feathers was not in flirting mood.

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  It was a pity because the long walk down had made Stella feel quite lonely, and while she may be required to keep a mental distance from all who resided at Myst, there were no such rules about the physical distance and Stella considered it a more than adequate substitute. Feathers was a favorite, not just because of the variety but because Feathers rarely ever left the university and Stella liked her relationships contained, controlled, and predictable. In a way, they were all different worlds which Stella could slip in and out of as she needed. She knew what each would ask of her and what each would provide in return.

  Feathers was variety, new experiences, not just the physical but the mental too. Today, it seemed would mostly focus on the latter. Magic and its very nature was Feathers’ fascination.

  A pair of eyes found Stella. Their colour shifted from green to blue to pink to a mix of all three as they watched her walk across the room and find a perch on the edge of a desk. She opted for a sort of sexy pose, one that showed off her bare legs, in the hopes she might still have some chance of enticing her quarry into a different kind of play, but Feathers remained distracted and disinterested, turning quickly back toward whatever experiment had been interrupted.

  The room was decently sized and functioned as both a bedroom and a lab. The bed lay at the back wall. It took up little space being not much larger than a regular sized single. Feathers did not entertain a lot of company, at least not that kind, and even those sorts of activities tended to be viewed with a more intellectual point of view, something Stella had been delighted to find opened the door to all kinds of novel experimentation and exploration.

  Feathers stood in front of a table at the other end of the room. Despite being far underground, there was a window whose view looked down upon the city of Myst. Stella was never sure if it was a portal or a 3d illusion. She had once managed to stick her head through it and it had behaved exactly like a real window set high up in the mountainside. Sunlight also seemed to be able to penetrate in, although even Feathers hadn’t been able to explain how the thing actually worked. It was a mystery they came back to from time to time in casual conversation.

  “Stella! Perfect timing. Come over here.” Feathers beckoned, giving no more than that initial glance, focus now fixated on the instruments on the desk.

  Stella did as requested.

  Feathers looked at her with a thoughtful frown. “Hmm. It would be much easier if we could shave your hair.” Feathers handed her a cap covered in electrodes. “Put this on.”

  This was not unusual. Collecting EEG data from Stella’s brain while she performed various tricks and magics was a common occurrence in this room. And Stella would have been perfectly fine with cutting her hair short, unfortunately for her, her healing magic seemed to extend even to her hair. It had its length and it would not alter it for anyone. Nor did it seem to grow past a specific point. Each and every strand remained forever exactly 21 cm long. When she had been young it had taken a little longer to grow back, but as an adult the process rarely took more than a few seconds. It was slower if she was tired. They had tested that. Feathers had even worked out a mathematical equation for it, taking into account all sorts of variables. The model wasn’t perfectly right but progress had slowed enough that Feathers had eventually moved onto other areas of interest.

  The only exception to Stella’s hair length was if she was using shapeshifting magic, but unfortunately that tended to interfere with whatever other thing it was that Feathers was trying to study.

  Feathers continued talking. “I’ve been trying to do this on myself and a few others but I haven’t been having much luck. I’ve got a theory I think you might be able to help me prove.”

  Stella didn’t ask what the theory was. She already knew exactly what Feathers was going to say but she didn’t interrupt. She liked listening to the way Feathers spoke, soft and gentle but also quick, as if everything was extremely exciting.

  Feathers prattled on, uncaring as to whether anyone was actually listening or not. “So, you know how when people use certain types of infusements their thought patterns tend to be very similar, likewise how a lot of spells are written with the intention of creating a very specific type of thought pattern, well I figure, that in theory any witch should be able to do any sort of magic. All that needs to happen is to have the right type of thinking unlocked.”

  Stella was sceptical. “If that were all it took, surely more people would be able to use more than one power.”

  “Yes, but see, I think it’s a little bit different, deeper maybe than with using infusements so I need to compare the thought pattern of one using a specific infusement versus using natural magic. The problem is of course people are horribly variable as it is and while there are patterns no two mindwalkers think exactly the same, right? But you, you have two powers. So I can get two natural measures from essentially the same person and two infusement measures and maybe even one of you using both your powers at once and that would be really interesting because is there a difference between you using each power versus both together? And that, you see, could tell us a lot about how we might unlock the potential for naturally using more than one power in others.”

  “Wasn’t there a theory going around that a huge part of it was genetic?”

  “Yes, there have been a couple sorcerers doing studies using blood transfusions and transplants and things. One guy even switched out a person’s eyeballs, surgically not magically. But nothing has really come of it so far. My theory is, it’s all in the mind. I mean, that’s how it works for spells.”

  “Wasn’t there one study which suggested blondes tended to be naturally better healers? Even with infusements.” Stella asked. She knew the answers to these already too but she enjoyed the way those multi-coloured eyes lit up and the way Feathers hands never stayed still.

  “Well, yes, and there is a correlation between natural hair colour and natural powers but it’s not definitive and you know, what a person’s hair colour is does also affect their perception of themselves. Another sorcerer was looking at the effect of different hair dyes on magic using ability and she found there was a small effect. But obviously dying your hair for a specific test is going to put your mind in a different state than if you had your hair dyed at 3 years old and every few months since right. And someone did try getting a mindwalker to alter what colour a person actually thought their own hair colour was but of course that’s not that simple when you think about how often a person looks at themself or how many interactions are actually affected even by little things. And even despite all that, there’s no such thing as an isolated mind alteration. And controlling the entire mind is impossible and dangerous of course. You’d need much more than just a mindwalker.” Feathers paused to take a breath. “Although I suppose I could try a test with a mindwalker casting through another person. You know, taking control while they use their powers, and doing different things. Hold this.” Feathers handed Stella the grounding wire and then spun around to search for a pen and paper.

  Once Feathers had made some notes on things to try later, the experiments began.