Why is it that none of us, Earthborn or Native, were given the same class options? Despite the differences between when the Earthborn are given class options versus when those born here earn the opportunity to get a class, no one that I have talked to has ever gotten the same options. I’m sure that over time, I’ll start to find more people with the same list of classes. There are only 62 classes that I am aware of, after all. There must be a level of repetition! An excerpt from Classification Philosophic by Frode Erikson, 4th Cluster

  The gaudy front of the building was a little off-putting. The doors seemed to shimmer like they themselves were illusions and the door was somewhere else entirely. Again, I wished I could see the magic, not only to interpret how it worked, but to tell what was real. I wonder if that is a skill I could learn?

  There was only one way to find out.

  A face appeared imposed over the front of the building, cartoonish in nature. It looked at us curiously. “Who are you, and what do you want here?” the face asked in a booming voice. It was reminiscent of that one scene from the Oz movie. I shuddered at the memory.

  I looked at Harper, who just shook her head and gestured at the weirdness facing us. “I want nothing to do with this, Finn,” she said. “It’s your quest, and this is just way too far off the beaten path for me right now.”

  Resigned, I got down from my horse and handed my reins to Harper before approaching the massive face. “I am Finn, and I am here to join your guild,” I replied. “If, of course, you are projecting a facsimile of yourself, and aren’t a group of enchantments with a limited scope of interaction.”

  “Hmmm. Interesting. Though I am very hurt that you think I might not be real!” the face replied with a pout. “But this is not about me. You want to join the Great and Honorable Guild of Enchanters, right? Then you must find the right door! Ha ha ha!”

  The laughter sounded forced, and a little drawn out. Could I have made a mistake in my approach? I ignored the thought and stared at the front of the building. Then I looked at its only neighbor, to the left. There was nothing to say that the pretentious, magical front was any different other than its enchantments. I looked back and forth between the two trying to spot any difference.

  There were none. And that was just it: the two buildings’ placement of the doors, windows, and even the water stains on the wall were the same. The chances of that were not worth going into. Which meant either one of them wasn’t real, or they were using some sort of illusion to make them mirror images of each other.

  This was one of those puzzles with everything set up to make a person overthink themselves into making the wrong decision. If both of them were real, then the enchanted one was the guild. If only one of them was real, which one would it be? It would make sense that the one doing the advertising was the real one, as they made money off of enchanting items and identifying magical items that people found.

  On the other hand, I could see how it could be the plain one if this was set up for someone who was eligible to join the guild turned up, and the plain one was just enchanted to look plain. Or could the real guild be somewhere in the middle of the two? And here I am overthinking it.

  Taking a deep breath, I closed my eyes for a moment to block out the flashing lights and constantly moving images. Did I need to be able to see how the magic worked? Or could you help me, Vessa? I thought loudly.

  “I smell horse droppings where the flashy one is. The one on the left smells more like different peoples I’ve noticed here,” Vessa replied. “Unless they can do smells. Can you find out if they can do smell, Finn? Can you imagine how easy it would be to trick people?”

  “It really depends on whether I can get in, Vessa. If I do, I’ll ask,” I murmured so only Vessa would hear. “Can you stay with Harper for this part?”

  I felt her stiffen for a moment. “I guess…” she thought. She hopped onto Rocks, then to Harper, who cradled the hatchling in her arms and gave her a cuddle. Vessa let out a satisfied sound and nuzzled Harper’s neck.

  I walked over to the neighboring building and opened the door.

  There was this buzzing noise, almost too low to hear as the two buildings slowly merged, and all the fancy stuff muted to a minimal glow. Inside were a trio of hooded figures, standing in a semicircle in front of me. Beyond them was an empty waiting area with a desk guarding a pair of double doors.

  An old woman’s voice came from the cowled figure to my left. “Welcome, young Finn, welcome. You are here to join the Enchanter’s Guild, yes?”

  “The Great and Honorable Enchanter’s Guild,” intoned the other two.

  I looked at them and took a step back. “I was planning to, but this is almost a little too occult for me,” I replied hesitantly. “How about I don’t and we pretend I was never here?”

  The door slammed behind me. The hair moved with the gust created by force of the closure.

  I swung my head toward the door, eyes wide. I looked back at the three of them, narrowing my eyes. “That was not cool,” I said grimly.

  The rightmost figure turned to the middle one. “Did you really have to do that?” the man chided. “He looks ready to fry us where we stand.”

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  “Tradition!” exclaimed the middle hooded figure. “This guild is built upon centuries of tradition, and I will not abandon it just because yet another young person just out of diapers gets scared!”

  The old woman on the left threw back the hood on her robe and glared at the middle figure. “And that, Archin, is why there are only three of us at this branch! No one wants to move here or join as long as you keep up this nonsense!”

  “So… can I leave, then?” I asked carefully.

  “NO!” the three of them shouted at me.

  “Well, okay then,” I mutter, backing up so my back was pressed against the door. If I were going to have to fight my way out, I did not want them behind me.

  The figure on the right removes his hood and looks at me apologetically. “We’re not going to hurt you, so don’t worry about that. But there’s a ceremony to this, and the whole thing is so ingrained into the floors and walls of this building that once we start, we have to go through the forms. Please be patient with us?”

  I relaxed a bit. The whole thing was just bizarre, yet if I was in no immediate danger, I could play along. “I think I can.”

  The man and woman relaxed, and the woman turned to the sill-hooded middle figure. “Archin?”

  Archin made a disapproving noise and nodded. “As I was about to say before the interruption,” he muttered and cleared his throat. “You must prove your worthiness to join! The Enchanter’s guild requires you to demonstrate your abilities.” With a great flourish, Archin produced a stick from his left sleeve and held it out. “Enchant this stick,” he commanded.

  I took the stick and looked it over. It was, literally, the most ordinary and standard-looking stick. Its very nature was clear. But they wanted me to add an enchantment to it. I didn’t know what to go with. Should I do something with offensive capabilities, like add Firebolt to it? I hadn’t done anything like that so far. I could add my Light spell to it, as I had before with success. In fact, that had been my first enchantment. My skill was not very high, but I needed to do something to get into the guild.

  I shrugged and cast Enchant Light on the stick. In that moment, I wondered at the name of the spell, because it had “enchant” in the name, but I could use it on myself, as well as objects. I didn’t know if it was something I wanted to ask about as it was a Mage spell.

  The spell didn’t take, and I tried it again with no success. I was starting to panic, so I surge cast Enchant light on the stick. The stick glowed in my hand, brighter and brighter until the room was filled with its light.

  “Enough, turn it off!” one of them cried out.

  With a thought, I turned off the spell, but the stick continued to glow. I willed the stick to stop glowing, and the light subsided.

  There was an explosion of flowers around me. That was weird. I wondered if it was part of the ceremony.

  The old woman held out her hand. “Well done, Finn. May I see the stick?” She took the newly enchanted piece of wood, and it briefly turned back on and then off again. “Remarkable. How did you get it so bright?”

  “I don’t know, really. It just sometimes happens like that. I’ve only been doing magic for a few months,” I admitted. This was a subject I really didn’t want to talk about, not wanting to out myself. If I could just complete this quest without making more trouble for myself… wait a minute. How did she activate it? Is she a Mage? I thought in surprise and bewilderment.

  She must have noticed my confused look. “Once something is enchanted, it doesn’t matter whether the user’s class is the same as the enchanter. Just one of the many things that you’ll need to learn.”

  “Right,” said Archin, finally showing his face. “Now that you’ve been able to show at least some ability, enough to be accepted into the Guild, there is the matter of your entrance fee. If you’ll follow me?”

  Now that I could see their faces, some things they had said made more sense. Each of the three Enchanter’s Guild members was at least in their seventies. We stopped at the desk, and he pulled a large book out of a drawer and set it on the desktop. He opened it, and from my point of view, the book looked more like a ledger. “What’s your full name, Finn?”

  “Finnegan Walsh,” I said, resigned to having to give him more than just my preferred name.

  “Could you spell that for me?” He nodded as I did, filling in a couple of other boxes. “Good, good. Now, on to the matter of the Guild entrance fee. Ten gold coins.”

  Giving up ten gold coins was hard, as I had little money left. But I handed it over. Besides, the Voice had said that I would receive a fifty gold coin reward for completing the quest. “Here you go,” I said with forced cheerfulness and handed him the majority of my money.

  Archin noted the fee paid in full and gave me a smile. “Congratulations, you are the newest member of the Alsiger branch of the Enchanter’s Guild! And you are just in time. Come with me,” he exclaimed excitedly. “We have work to do!”

  I followed the old man past the desk and through the double doors. The room beyond was clearly a workshop, with tables overflowing with various items with notes attached by various means, including string. The other two elderly members were already at work examining items and taking notes.

  “So what do you know about identification, young man?” Archin asked.

  “Um, other than it’s something I can’t learn to do as an Earthborn?” I replied archly.

  Archin stopped and looked at me with surprise before breaking out in laughter. “Who told you that nonsense?” The other two broke out laughing as well.

  “My mentor, Juan, told me that it was a magic that no one could learn,” I replied. I was a little taken aback, as it had been something that I had just accepted as the truth. Heck, everyone I had talked to about it had agreed.

  “Cole, why don’t you educate our young friend here,” Archin said, amusement playing across his face as he walked over to a table.

  The other old man, Cole, finished his chortling and beckoned me over. “Come here, Finn. The Guild began spreading the idea a couple of generations ago to protect the Guild’s interests,” he explained. “Really, all you need is the Enchanting skill to learn the spell, and to be a magic user of course. It’s one of the Ten Universal Spells, and the Guild controls its teaching. There is nowhere else that it can be learned.”

  “Wait just a moment. How do you control something like that?” I asked curiously. I knew back home that no matter how controlled information was, there was always a possibility of a bad actor. Passwords, clearances, even special rooms to contain said information could be defeated. Heck, we’ve had multiple elected and non-elected government officials, as well as government contractors, steal top secret information and share it with various countries, to the detriment of the USA. Countless people had died because of those thefts.

  “Well,” Cole said slowly, tapping the side of his nose and grinning. “We are the Enchanting Guild, after all. All the spell books of Identify Item are kept in house, and enchanted so they can only be read by a member in good standing of the Guild. Otherwise, they burn up in a flash!”

  “But what prevents someone from learning it and writing a spellbook without the enchantment?” I asked. “Wouldn’t that be a workaround?”

  He looked at me in surprise. The woman answered for him without looking over. “I assume, since you’re an Earthborn, you haven’t been told yet. Only Mages can write spellbooks of any kind. And other than the rumors being spread by the priesthood of Nathas, there aren’t any Mages wandering around.”

  “Thank the Gods!” agreed Archin.

  Holy fuck, I thought. If that were the case, I needed to stay quiet.

  Cole glanced at me. “So, what’s your class, Finn?”

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