Nameless awoke to a sudden light, the swishing of the automatic door, and an overly loud, "Way to go, chief!" from Morte. He squinted against the light, vision quickly resolving into a surprised looking Shepard and a grinning Morte standing in the door. The weight in his arms suddenly vanished as Liara, also awakened by the light, attempted to jump to her feet, only managing to tumble from his lap onto the floor, attempting to wipe drool from her mouth. "No need to stop on my account," Morte leered.
"That's enough," Shepard said, reaching over to smack the skull upside the head, causing him to bobble sideways. "Liara, why don't you go get cleaned up." The asari seized the opportunity to flee the witness to her embarrassment, closing the door before Morte could follow. "I need to talk to you."
He took a moment to rub his face, trying to shake off the dream he'd been having. Naturally, all he could remember was tiny fragments, of a child trapped in the briars of Ravel's maze, and Fell with three symbols spinning above his head too fast to read. "What about?"
She moved over to sit down in a chair by the desk. "Before we take Tali home, I'm fulfilling my orders, and bringing you to Arcturus Station. Admiral Hackett, my superior in the Alliance military, wants to speak to you and Morte face to face. He knows you can't tell us anything about the Protheans or the Reapers, but after hearing about what you did to Sovereign, he insisted on meeting you before you start teaching everyone."
He saw the distaste on her face as she mentioned his three apprentices. "Is there something wrong with my students?" he asked, fairly sure what her answer would be.
"Not really. Petty Officer Tanaka is good, and you know I like Tali, but Conrad Verner? The guy's an obsessed civilian at best, and now you want to turn him into some kind of warlock?" She waved a hand irritably at the bulkhead. "I can't walk through the crew deck without feeling his eyes all over me."
Nameless leaned forward on the bunk intently. "He has talent, obviously, or I wouldn't have asked him. Had he turned it down, like the embassy guard, I would have accepted his choice. But though he seized this chance for the wrong reasons, I have hope for him yet." He folded his hands together in his lap. "He is so empty inside. The accolades he had won with his work, the beautiful woman who loves him, they nonetheless leave him feeling small, useless, and he burns with the desire to have just one moment of importance."
Shepard sighed, dropping her head into one hand and waving the other in his direction feebly. "Yeah, yeah, you told me all of that when you brought him on board. But do you think you can at least get him to keep his creep tendencies on a leash? I'm afraid if he does something stupid in front of Ashley she'll shoot his belly button off or something." They both smiled at that. "At least Wrex isn't here, he might have decided to use Conrad as a melee implement."
"I will speak to him again," Nameless promised. "The greatest aid for his situation is the confidence that comes with mastering his talent. When do I meet with this admiral of yours?"
She rose from the chair, moving towards the door as he followed. "We dock at Arcturus in an hour, and we'll meet him shortly after that. Since this is an unscheduled stop, we shouldn't have to deal with the reporters."
As they exited the med bay, he moved between her and Conrad, catching his student's eyes with a minor glare, and the blond man gulped and returned his gaze to the scrolls they were all studying. He doubted any of them would get it right on the first try, but that wasn't the point of the exercise. "What's a reporter?" he asked as she started up the stairs, and she fully stopped to look at him in disbelief.
"You didn't have newspapers in Sigil? Something more than rumor to pass around important information?" He wasn't sure why this was so important to her.
"There were criers, heralds, and most of the guilds had their own networks of informants," he replied doubtfully.
She shook her head as she resumed climbing the stairs to the CIC. "Unbelievable," he caught, just before the door closed. Shrugging, he returned to observe his students, all three of them eyes glued to the strips of paper (Raymond Tanaka had produced a private stock used for sending letters back to his great-grandparents on Earth, after Nameless mentioned writing spells on strips of skin).
He gave them another few minutes. Conrad's fingers trembled lightly just above the paper as his eyes flicked manically from one spot to another, apparently searching for a pattern in the symbols. Tali was compulsively going over them, one line at a time, though she was now reading them left to right, unlike the top to bottom as she had last night. Tanaka was keeping a tally on his fingers somehow, presumably of how often the different symbols were used.
Nameless activated his omni-tool, glancing at the time before clearing his throat. "Alright. You've all had at least three hours to try and memorize the spell, assuming you slept last night." The last was directed at Tali, who had a reputation for staying up late working on projects. "Now, we go down to the cargo bay for the practical." Reluctantly, they all rose from their chairs, clutching the papers as they joined him in the elevator.
Down below, the bay seemed much emptier without the salarians or Wrex. The quartermaster and his assistant had the contents of a crate scattered across a square meter of desk, trying to find or tally something, and he ignored them, leading his students to the empty area between the Mako and Ashley's weapon table. "Now, put the papers away." Both Conrad and Tali folded theirs up, while Tanaka rolled it, but all of them put the scrolls away. "Ash, pick who goes first."
"Sure, Tanaka. What's this spell do?" she asked, putting down the barrel cleaning tool.
The vaguely Asian man swallowed nervously, stepping in front of the other two. "It's a basic offensive spell, which shoots a blast of light that should feel like a hard punch, from a novice like them." Seeing the eyes go wide on two of his apprentices, he smiled calmingly. "Go ahead and target me. It's not like you're going to kill me."
"That's not very reassuring," Raymond muttered before closing his eyes to meditate for a moment. Pointing a hand dramatically, he rattled off a string of nonsense syllables. Disappointingly, aside from a glow momentarily surrounding his finger, nothing happened.
"Next?" Conrad and Tali glanced at each other, and she stepped forward. Her delivery was less vocal, and less dramatic, and disappointingly had even less effect, not even generating a glow. Or at least, Nameless amended mentally, nothing visible outside her suit. "And last," he gestured to Conrad.
Screwing up his face, he flung his hand at Nameless, and a tiny ball of light did shoot out from his hand, though it hit the scarred teacher to no visible effect. "Alright. I didn't expect any of you to get this spell on your first try," he admitted. "Conrad came close, though. The point was to let you feel the magic energy in your thoughts and in your body. Now, Tali, pull out the scroll and try reading it, instead of holding it in your mind."
Reluctantly, she unfolded her paper, and her helmet nodded slightly as her eyes flicked from the paper to his face, and suddenly a marble-sized ball of brilliant sunset orange light flew from her hand, smacking his shoulder audibly. "That was done perfectly," he said, rubbing the injury.
"That's it?" Ashley scoffed. "Not very impressive."
Nameless stopped what he was going to say, glanced at her with an upraised eyebrow, then back to his students. "Tanaka, read your paper. Ashley, activate your armor."
Grinning, she did so, bouncing on her toes to mock the man. "C'mon, Tanaka, stop trying to hit me and hit me!" Eyes narrowed, he flipped his hand, unrolling the scroll, and read the words. His pellet was a pale jade green, and to everyone's surprise but Nameless, it blew through both shields and armor as though they didn't exist. "Damn, not bad," she said, poking at the molded breast of her armor. "That would have missed by heart by maybe an inch."
Raymond flushed with please (and maybe a little embarrassment) as Nameless caught his students attention again. "Lesson one, technology here doesn't have a counter to magic – yet. There's no reason it can't, but right now, you're something special. Lesson two, at your best, each of you has less power than the weakest weapon on that table over there." He waved at the weapon table to illustrate the point. "Power comes with practice, experience comes with practice."
"So we go back up and study this paper until our eyes fall out?" Tali asked, sounding somewhat doubtful.
"Read it again," he said, and she raised the paper, surprised to find it blank. "A mage needs to hold the spells in their mind, to learn how to set aside a piece of their memory like a piece of paper and store the power there. Once it's used, it's gone." He reached into the skull, pulling out three more scrolls. "This one – not dangerous to the crew – is what you'll be studying. Once you have proven you can hold one spell – this spell – we'll move on to more complicated lessons."
It was nothing more than a simple light spell, one he hadn't even bothered to record in his spell book. Taking the pages, they reluctantly split up to study individually, and Nameless went up to the CIC.
Joker was just pulling the Normandy up to an airlock, and he stood at the back of the room, watching the crew work. When Shepard turned around, he nodded respectfully. "Ready for this?" she asked.
"Of course," he responded, and they walked forward to the airlock. Once through decontamination, and a mercifully short series of challenges and salutes from military sentries, they stepped into the station. While the Citadel was large, graceful, and full of lingering light and color, Arcturus was smaller, and somehow filled with the distinctive hustle and bustle of humanity. In a way, it reminded Nameless of the foundry of the Godsmen, filled at it was with thousands of people trying to build their way to a better, brighter, more powerful future.
Right as he reached this revelation, he nearly ran down Shepard as she hissed in anger. "How the hell does … never mind," she growled. "We'll have to detour around," and she was interrupted by the target of her rage, a dark-skinned woman in a flattering red dress, with a device of some kind hovering over her shoulder much like Morte followed Liara around for the last week.
"Commander Shepard! Humanity deserves to know what is being done to combat the geth invasion!" she shouted, causing heads to turn all across the docking concourse. "Please, Commander, a few questions for you," the woman then seemed to catch sight of Nameless, "like what in the hell is that?"
He looked at Shepard, who waved him forward with a clearly ironic after-you gesture. As he stepped up beside her, the floating device turned on a bright light, illuminating them, and he smiled, putting all of his considerable personality into it. "What did you want to know?" he asked.
She all but melted into his arms, despite his appearance, and fifteen minutes later as they walked away, Shepard was still shaking her head. "How do you do that?" she asked. "Have you done something like that to me? I mean, when you first woke up, it was weird and crazy and in the space of five minutes it was normal to stand around chatting with a guy who gets up thirty seconds after I put a bullet in his heart." She put a hand over her mouth as they stepped into an elevator. "I'm babbling, aren't I?"
He had to laugh at that, as the elevator rose astoundingly swiftly compared to the Citadel or the Normandy. "Only a little bit. So, what was that floating thing? Some kind of mimir?"
She puzzled over the word for a moment. "It was a camera. They broadcast images and sound across the galaxy. Do you remember the hologram, er, illusion, of Hackett shortly after you woke up? It's like that, kind of."
"Ah. So, she was attempting to damage your reputation in the eyes of the people." He nodded as they exited the elevator, oblivious to the many staring people in uniform. "Now I understand your anger."
"And you did a good job of containing it and controlling the situation," Hackett said. Shepard quickly came to attention, saluting him, and he returned it before stepping aside to usher them into his office. "It's already on the extranet, Commander. She comes off like a bad audition." The scarred older man turned to Nameless, reminding him of Dak'kon. "You're obviously Nameless." He held out a hand, and Nameless shook it respectfully. "Welcome to Arcturus. Now, tell me about magic," he ordered as they all sat in his office.
The next two hours went by as Nameless dredged up everything his fractured memories of past lives could hold about magic and how it worked, following pointed and insightful questions from the admiral. Finally he leaned back in his chair, satisfied. "I still wish you could teach people faster," Hackett lamented. "But once you get them to the level of capable apprentices, you'll be able to turn them loose and take on new ones?"
"I suppose so, yes," he replied. "I expect that Tali'Zorah will return to her people then, Tanaka will no doubt get reassigned to try and teach students chosen by bureaucrats, and Conrad will," he paused, "actually I'm not sure."
"Probably go back to stalking galactic heroes," Shepard muttered darkly.
"Don't count on it," Hackett admonished her. "The man holds a doctorate in dark energy theory, and he taught for several semesters including guest lectures on Thessia." She blinked in surprise at this information. "But hopefully he will come work for the Alliance as well. What about other non-human students?"
"I don't know," the mage replied. "I've only met the one krogan. Garrus is a decent sort, and most of the turians I've met, however briefly, also seem so. I like Liara, but most of the other asari I've met get on my nerves. I haven't met enough salarians to tell." He turned to Shepard. "I don't know the names for all the other species well enough to say."
Hackett nodded. "I'll talk to my counterparts in the Hierarchy, and work out something to get you some turian students." He rose from his chair, prompting them to rise as well. "Thank you for coming. You've given me a lot to think about, and now I have a lot of work to do. Dismissed, Commander, Nameless." Shepard saluted again, and they left the office. Hackett was already typing on his computer before the door closed.
"So, did that go well?" he asked her as they left the military headquarters.
"Actually," she pondered, "I think so. At least, it didn't go badly." She glanced over her shoulder. "That's the first time I've ever met him in person. He's one of our best officers."
Nameless nodded. "I would agree." He would have said more, but the growling of Shepard's stomach was loud enough to interrupt. "I suggest we find a food vendor."
"You read my stomach," she deadpanned.