Sometimes your own culture likes to shock you

@"Thoth"

Iliril of the Chant

Going to the admissions office for course registration wasn't quite panic inducing but being the sort of hypersensitive person that he was, Iliril still felt like he was about being judged for his choices. Although, to be entirely fair, it was a toss up between his choices and Enelen's choices at the moment. He did trust more in the other mage, however. He had been there longer, after all, so that was perfectly normal and Manta Carlos was so strange.

Iliril had planned to be in and out as quickly as possible but it seemed like his timing was a bit off because the office was empty when he got there. A "gone to lunch" note was sitting on the front desk, without anything else to tell when the person would be back. A look at the clock, however, said that it was a bit passed one. This was about the time that people would be coming back, right?

He sat down in a chair just in sight of the door, anxiously straightening the papers he had brought with him. Now that he was being forced to just wait, Iliril was starting to second guess himself all over the place. Maybe he hadn't filled out everything correctly. Maybe the classes were full. Maybe he had to actually choose a major right then and there?

Every passing minute seemed to take forever.

Iliril of the Chant

He was so nervous about the entire situation that Iliril actually didn't notice that anybody else had entered the room until he heard the sound of somebody settling into a nearby chair. Glancing up, he saw a man about his height sitting almost across from him on the other side of the room, also holding a good amount of papers and looking vaguely annoyed. Out of habit, the mage turned away almost immediately. Two heartbeats after that, he felt compelled to take another look because something was not right with this picture. An odd element of familiarity had just started to set in and Iliril needed to know why.

There was a staff. That was all Iliril needed to see before the look turned into a flat out stare. No fucking way. He mentally checked off each thing he saw. Brown robe, gaudy staff, and a very small brown pin in the shape of a diamond.

Enelen will be overjoyed. Iliril on the other hand, felt dismayed and terribly confused. A fully fledged mage from his world was just sitting over there and casually minding his own business. His brain was debating implosion from how. Normal it all seemed.

Three weeks ago, Iliril had been stranded on a dead planet, resigned to the fact that he would just starve to death with everybody else. Two weeks ago, he had been pulled into the house of some strange family of blue-haired mystics the next world over and spent the entirety of his stay in hysterics. Last week, he had been shipped over to the Academy, exhausted himself by doing nothing of importance, and accidentally met Enelen. This week, it looked all he had to put up with was the fact that something out there really want to rebuild the School of Staves at Manta Carlos.

Actually, now that he thought about it, this was almost relaxing in comparison to everything else. A bit like dropping a box of hammers on his foot. Yes. Completely manageable. That was why anybody who might happen to be looking at him right then would see his face going through a number of expressions which all could be properly translated as various versions of What the fuck.

And then, finally -because he had let Enelen have the first word that other time and now he felt compelled to take his own turn- Iliril swallowed, and asked the man, "S-so, I d-don't s-supp-pose y-you're f-from Id-doc-crase, t-too?"

Come to think of it, why was it that he was seeing Enelen all over this man's face? Was this just the common appearance in that region?

Iliril of the Chant

Wait, wait. Something wasn't right here. Iliril blinked at the man's smile because the expression completely transformed his face and the younger mage swore that there was something there that he was supposed to have recognized. It was a simple nagging thought in the back of his mind. You should know this, Iliril. It's not that hard.

The voice, though, Iliril could place immediately, and the fact that he could sent chills up his spine. He was a Chants mage, after all. People's voices did change overtime, especially men, and that meant he had a lot of practice getting used to working with that. Chants were awful to work with when your voice was beginning to crack. It had to be balanced out some way.

So that was why his internal compass had gone straight from "Seems Kind Of Like Enelen" to "Probably Really Is Enelen, Wait What." Because that was impossible. He had seen Enelen just. Yesterday. He was shorter. Much shorter.

It took him a few seconds to process exactly what Definitely Not Enelen was saying. He hadn't actually thought the older mage had come from Idocrase. It was just a guess, because there was no School of Staves in Sard and Iliril figured that he might as well ask for Enelen since he wasn't present. The realization that his guess had been right deeply startled him although, maybe that was just to be expected. Maybe it was all just about their starting locations. Idocrase would always have a path to Manta Carlos and Sard would always have a path to-

A little hesitantly, Iliril tipped his head to the side, brushing away the hair that hid the pin on his earlobe. He didn't like where his thoughts were bringing him to because it was astoundingly easy to feel bitter. He wished, more than anything, that he could simply cycle back to the point where all he could feel was tiredness. That was so much better, wasn't it?

"N-no, m-my f-friend's f-from Id-doc-crase." He didn't actually know what to call Enelen but it was simpler just to call him a friend. Judging by how close they lived, they were probably going to end up talking a lot anyways. "I'm f-from t-the C-Chant-try in S-Sard," he said, doing his damn best to just take the conversation in stride like the other mage was. "Eas-stern d-des-serts," he added after a moment. "In K-Khalk-ked-don. Y-you've p-prob-babl-ly n-nev-ver h-heard of it."

Iliril of the Chant

Already, Iliril found himself disliking this older mage just through his tone, though the admission that he actually had been to Sard before was a nasty shock. If they were going to start stereotyping so soon, however, Iliril could name quite a few things about the mages in Idocrase. Like how everybody lived in their giant alabaster towers and apparently regularly sat on their staves because there was no way that a person could naturally be that elitist and that much of an asshole unless they really always had something uncomfortably shoved up there.

Enelen was an exception because Enelen was Enelen and this was a completely sound line of logic.

Iliril was not normally a petty person but then again, most people didn't starting poking sore topics, whether intentionally or not. Enelen was an exception, too, because at least he knew Enelen didn't mean it. This mage, however, was too old to have an excuse.

"Y-yes, I k-know," it was Iliril's turn to say. He wasn't quite snappish yet but he could be soon if certain lines of conversation were followed up on. "W-we t-tried t-to g-group up, t-too, w-which w-worked f-fine f-for t-the f-first w-world and n-not at all f-for t-this one."

"T-there's onl-ly one ot-ther m-mage h-here," Iliril said, annoyance leaking through into his voice. "Y-you p-prob-babl-ly d-don't k-know h-him. H-he's j-just a s-stud-dent."

For a moment, he tried to envision an encounter between Enelen and this other Staves mage. It just seemed weird to him. "If y-you're g-going t-to b-be ins-sult-ting, t-though, m-mayb-be y-you s-shouldn't s-see h-him." At the very least, Iliril would go to Enelen first to explain things and let him find the man instead of the other way around. Somebody, he figured, ought to be happy. But at the moment, he was just as unimpressed with this mage as the mage was with him.

Iliril of the Chant

All right, now you're just doing it on purpose. Iliril bit back on the retort before it could actually come out because he was not going to have a shouting match with this man in public. "Y-you k-know w-what I m-meant."

Maybe behind closed doors was okay but this was the admissions office. People could come in at any time. He was starting to see, though, why so few people ever ventured out of Sard. If everybody on the outside was like this, then why even bother?

Still, he found himself frowning deeply, and not just because of his sincere and quickly growing dislike. Even though he really wanted to just sulk away, he was being held there by the strangeness that was how much of Enelen he was seeing in this room. Maybe they're related? But even if they were, that must have been the most extraordinarily strong blood tie ever because the more Iliril listened, the more he thought that the two of them sounded almost exactly the same, only a bit of the pitch was different.

He tilted his head to the side, trying to mentally match up features and found it a disturbingly easy task to accomplish. Iliril rubbed his eyes a bit. He was still annoyed but above all, he was suspicious and becoming concerned for his own sanity. "W-who d-did y-you s-say y-you are ag-gain?"