"Agent Sim will take you for a week, or until you are fully integrated," the man said. "He is your officer until then."
He pointed at another man across the room, one who was completely absorbed in his phone.
Callum said politely, "Nice to meet you."
Sim literally ignored him. He did not lift his eyes off the screen even once.
Callum genuinely got angry.
Later, in a car moving him to another location, Callum asked, "Why is a spatial mage so valuable, Sim?"
Sim explained without much interest. There was no real attack power in spatial magic. The work was mostly transportation. "Basically, you're a loader."
Callum asked, "What do you do?"
"I'm a pyromancer," Sim said casually. "A little aeromancy too. Front line work."
Callum looked at him and thought, so I got handed the stale half of the loaf.
"Who does the Guild fight?" Callum asked.
Sim, fiddling with his phone, said that some agents hunted rebel mages here on Earth. The rest fought on the front lines of the six portal worlds.
Callum asked about the portal worlds.
Sim explained that they were semi-planes — sealed-off, forbidden pockets among the multiverse. The Guild protected them. Then he listed them off: vampires, shapeshifters, fae, the ones of dragon lineage, sea monsters.
"That's five," Callum said. "The sixth world?"
Sim simply said, "Empty."
Callum held him in a long silence and just looked at him. He could not believe any of it, not even for a second.
After some time the car stopped in front of a building. Inside the office, Sim put a laptop in Callum's hands and said, "Get your first information from here. I'll take you to East Headquarters tomorrow." Walking toward the door, he added, "Be ready."
Callum started reading on the screen.
Magical energy came in two categories. He read it carefully and understood: there was the ambient magical atmosphere, from which mages drew power, and there was a mage's own personal mana, which was called Vis, and which could take on specific and unique aspects — a mage's particular talent.
He leaned back in the chair in frustration. He wanted to learn everything, and there were only basics on this laptop.
He realised something else too. Most children learned all of this in kindergarten. He was starting from the back of the room.
He decided to begin with something simple. There was a mechanical pencil lying on the table. That should be easy.
He gripped his own forearm, extended his open hand toward the object, and tried to channel magical energy through it. Blue energy came off his palm. The pencil began to slide on the tabletop. He concentrated and said, "Push," and the object flew away from him with real force, a vibrant blue trail behind it, straight up into the ceiling, where it went in and lodged.
Callum celebrated quietly. The pride was clearly visible on his face.
He rested his chin on his hand and thought about it. That was basically brute-force magic. He had used ambient mana instead of his own Vis, but it had worked.
He looked at his tattooed wrist. Being the Guild's pack horse was not so bad, if it came with an excuse to practise.
But he had to understand what he was getting into.
On the laptop, he found it.
More than half of the Arcane Regulation Guild's recruits ended up as casualties. Mostly from combat crimes, or from contact with the demi-planes. The casualty rate for the region was almost hidden in the documents, buried the way something gets buried on purpose.
It was an open secret that the entire system was political. Almost all of the casualties were wizards who did not have a powerful family, or who did not have a guild connection.
Callum thought it through. Archmages lived for hundreds of years. Obviously there was some big game being played here. They had consolidated everything. They did not even need that much power any more. They did not have to lift a finger. The system itself did the dirty work for them, and the bureaucracy insured its own existence.
He closed the laptop. Let all of this go, he thought.
Sim was snoring on the sofa.
They were ready to put everybody else under their thumb, Callum thought, and call it service.
He got up out of the chair and decided. Callum Wells would rather be free and die. If that made him a rebel wizard, fine. He would just have to be careful.
He went to the safe and withdrew a large amount of money.
He zipped the bag. One mistake and it would be over, visible to the Guild.
He put the bag on his shoulder, opened the window and slipped out.
The sound of Callum's sneakers on the sill knocked Sim out of his sleep.
Callum realised his mistake immediately, and hoped it had not been noticed.
The agent threw the door open violently. The room was empty. In fury he put both hands to his head. This happened on my watch.
A green aura began forming around him. Sim's energy intensified. Let's see how far it can run.
Out on the street, Callum was coming through the crowds and sweating. He had a few minutes of lead time, but he did not know how fast Sim was. Then he remembered — pyromancer and aeromancer.
Elsewhere, Sim's fist was glowing green. He began to levitate, and then he shot skyward like a bolt of green lightning.
Callum thought nervously that escape was impossible.
Sim was above him in the air, behind him and closing. He was thinking angrily to himself that the idiot should have come up with a better excuse. Otherwise this made him an enemy of the Guild, and a rebel wizard would come to the notice of the Guild's most dangerous agents.
Sim thought about alerting Agent Theran, and then furiously rejected the idea. It was a matter of reputation. Nobody else needed to know about this. He accelerated.
The green lightning bolt closed the distance and Sim reached Callum easily in the crowd.
Callum suddenly noticed him alongside. Sim froze there and looked at him with a sinister expression. Callum was shocked, and then furious, and he ran quickly but not immediately in the direction the sound of Sim's voice was cut off behind him. He knew he could not run away from a man like that. He was just a body slipping through the cracks of a crowd.
People on the street noticed some commotion in the air above them. Maybe the weather was changing. They ignored it.
Callum realised the crowd was not watching him. People passed within inches of each other and were completely blind to his magic.
At first he thought the crowd itself would limit Sim's abilities. But he needed another plan.