"Oh. That makes some sense. Uh, I do not think you need to freak out, for what that's worth? I'm fine."

"Yeah you are now but only because I noticed you were coherent earlier than usual and cared enough to, like, help you? And oh no I told my boss you were acting weird. Oh no."

"Was I? Acting weird?"

"For what I thought was a fire sprite ritual! Yes! Yes you were! I don't know if you're acting weird for a djinn ritual because those are probably super immoral and I don't know how you're even alive!"

"Well, if they got the human part's consent maybe they got the djinn's, too."

"Okay, maybe, but why wouldn't they, uh, have someone more qualified for watching you than an academy dropout working at a shitty job? Literally anyone more qualified. For an extremely dangerous, near suicidal ritual that the consent form probably didn't bring up! .... Yeah no I found your consent form because I wanted to show you to help ground and reassure you once you remembered your name and it wouldn't screw up policy or whatever!! It's over in that box over there!!"

He flings himself at one of the long abandoned boxes and rifles through it for the consent form.

"See! Here! Signed! Zheras! No! Mention! Of a djinn!! Anywhere here! Nowhere at all!"

He displays the sheet of paper through the barrier. There is indeed no mention of a djinn in this consent form that is signed with the name 'Zheras.'

"...huh," he says after reading it.

"... So I guess since your consent form is null and void, on account of having been drafted and signed under false pretenses," says Quael, slowly, "then the only morally upstanding thing to do for you is to let you out."

He frowns again. "Let me out?"

"You've got control of your fire, right? And no urge to burn down everything around you?"

"Right..."

"Sooo.... this room is not actually helping you settle in any way. It's just a safety feature so you don't burn down everything within reach. If you are not a danger to your surroundings, then you do not need to be here. All it's doing is just keeping you in one spot that is recorded in the logbook and readily available to whoever has the pull to make your ritual with a djinn instead of a fire sprite."

"Logbook?"

"There's, um, a record? Of who you are, where you are, and what sort of thing you volunteered to have metaphysically shoved into you. Because that's just responsible?"

He nods. "I suppose it is."

"Right. So. If there is in fact a crazy conspiracy going on and I have not snapped and gone crazy conspiracy theorist, then your location is known. And I would like it to please be unknown, because whoever shoved you and a djinn together should maybe not know where you are, because I uh. Can't imagine someone would do that and then just leave you be? Since you can in fact successfully not set everything around you on fire, I'm just going to let you out before I talk myself out of it, okay let's see how this goes this is the most terrifying thing I've ever done!"

After a few seconds of fumbling with drawing things on the doorframe, he brings a charm up to it to verify that yes, this barrier needs to come down. This completed, he waves a hand through the empty air of the threshold. No barrier stops him.

"Okay, done, please don't set me on fire by accident that would really suck!"

"I will do my best," he says dubiously, and walks over to the threshold then through.

The air is a bit uncomfortably cold, but it feels fresher. Less weighty and stale. Magically, there's more subtle flavors drifting on the air. Bark and some kind of fruit and and a hint of garlic float down the corridor. Quael smells a little bit like parchment and ink and rosemary. The taste of salt and chalk drifts on the air from the room behind him. In comparison, the room was quite dull and boring.

"Also how about I show you the exit and then pretend I never saw you and quit my job, like, yesterday. How about that."

Ooh so life is less bad than he'd expected yay!

"Okay, that sounds good." Pause. "If you quit your job, does that mean you're allowed to have sex with me?"

"Um. Um? Um," he splutters. "No that's not how that works it's not a stamp of sex approval from the board of sexual ethics overseeing my sexual conduct before sex may ensue, it's a my comfort level thing, and also um, now is really not the time because, you, um." He pauses. "That is not the standard amulet for this ritual, what is going on."

"Huh?"

"Your necklace thing. It's all, uh. Ultra expensive? Like could buy an estate in an upper class neighborhood expensive. Maybe I should rethink quitting my job and just skip to fleeing the country."

"Oh. It makes sense though right? Since I am half djinn rather than fire sprite."

"Yeah but there is no way it's just helping you not explode it's got too much stuff on it! I am not at all qualified to say what it does instead but, but, that looks like the sort of thing a really good sorcerer would wear if they, like, personally were besties with the emperor and the best pyromancer in the empire and why are we still standing here I feel very much like we should book it literally right now!!"