Enter Only

Enelen's office was a strange and downright bizarre place. At first glance, it certainly seemed normal enough. It was just an office, neat and organized to the nth degree. It was filled with books, all lined up on the shelves (alphabetical by author), without a single thing out of place. Enelen's desk was large, wooden, and for the most part the entire office seemed unbothered by the fact that a tsunami had gone through not all that long ago.

The only really unusual thing about the office was that you couldn't get in. You could open the door, and you could step in, but the moment you did you'd simply find yourself back outside. One of the first things Enelen had done was set up the spell, preventing anyone unwanted from getting in. Only someone particularly skilled in undoing magic, or someone who was themselves antimagic was going to be able to get in. He didn't even bother locking the door, opting instead to let people puzzle the entire mechanism out themselves if they tried to get in when he wasn't in office.

The act of knocking and being let in was enough to bypass it, but that required Enelen himself to let you in. The knock was important, so he kept the door perpetually closed, even if the little sign indicated he was in his office at the time.

The noise of the knock - a short metallic noise - was enough to irritate him, and Enelen immediately leaned back in his chair, letting out a small huff (even if he was the only one who could hear it). Didn't they teach people how to knock on this world? The spell didn't even work properly unless you knocked on the door.

"Knock on the door, then come in." If he was lucky, it was his teacher's assistant arriving. If he wasn't, he'd just accidentally let in a student come to pester him with inane questions that were all but guaranteed to be in the source material. Enelen enjoyed academia, and he didn't actually mind students, but he found himself frustrated with how quickly some of the students jumped to 'asking for help' rather than trying to figure it out on their own.

He supposed he was lucky that, of all possible things, an over-reliance on teachers was his biggest issue. Considering he'd jumped into the multiverse totally blind, he was lucky he'd landed on a place with humanoid life at all, let alone a place that also had mages and was open to multiverse hoppers.

Assuming you knocked and Enelen said aloud (because it had to be aloud, he couldn't just grunt it out), the office was normal enough. There were no signs you'd just passed through an immense magical barrier. Only the magically sensitive would be able to feel the charged atmosphere of the room, and just how much magic was contained within.

Enelen didn't even look up at the noise he could only assume was someone nearly falling over, eyes running over the paper in his hand for several moments afterwards. It was only when his eyes reached the bottom of the page that he set it down and looked up that he paid any real attention to him.

His first impression was not a pleasant one - the boy (man, really, because he couldn't have been more than a few years younger than him) was attractive. It wasn't that Enelen was in denial or anything, but ht wasn't exactly keen on finding anyone working under him attractive at all.

"Teacher's assistant. Aid makes it sound like I'm old and infirm and need someone to carry me around." Aid was such a nasty term. "My name is Enelen." No surname, and apparently calling himself 'of the stave' confused people. The fact that he had his staff just behind his shoulder apparently tipped them off enough.

"Do you have any personal experience with magic?" It wasn't necessary, but he felt like he should really know before he started talking.

Enelen took a moment to consider what the no meant. On one hand, it meant he would be starting from square one. On the other, it meant he wouldn't be starting in the negatives, either. He'd seen too many students show up to class not just without any understanding of magic, but with ideas that were completely wrong. Magic was a diverse field, and there were a lot of ways that people could go wrong with it. Too many my way or the highway mentalities, when magic itself was extremely malleable.

"Maylynn, was it?" He said, eyes sweeping across his desk. Somewhere he had his files on his teacher assistants, only he hadn't thought he'd need them, so they were lost for the moment.

He'd just have to find it later.

"Magic is an imprecise art. People who say that magic is just science we haven't yet understood are idiots, because science works in rules, and magic works in intentions. There's no such thing as a hard and fast rule with magic. Something that might seem like a rule to one person can be completely ignored by someone else. I'm incapable of casting magic without my staff. Meanwhile, others can make do without any material aid at all. Coming in with no experience might be better in the long run--you can learn as you go."

In truth, Enelen hadn't given much thought to what he would actually do with a TA. Sure, there had been lots of moments where he'd thought to himself that a TA would help, but at the moment? Nothing.

Instead he leaned back, pulling open one of the drawers on his desk and rifling through until he found what he was looking for.

"Here," he began, setting a thick stack of papers onto his desk. "Is the outline of what I expect to cover in class. It's an overview, but it should give you a general idea of what we'll be doing." Without much warning, he slid the pile over, letting it rest right in front of Maylynn.

"Hopefully that won't be a problem?"