"Might I see it? I typically handle registration for new students," she gestures at the ledger on the desk, "so you'd likely have wound up here eventually."

Cossus is looking increasingly uncomfortable at the prospect of having probably pissed off an actual Gifted. 

"Sure." He goes through his bag and pulls out the letter. He made sure it was close at hand.

Pellia returns to her desk, spreading the letter out in front of her and reading it over intently. After a minute, she offers a single sharp nod. "This seems in order. Cossus, Theve, you may return to your duties. I will take matters from here."

Cossus and Theve don't need to be told twice, and make haste for the door. After they've left, Pellia turns her gaze on Alex again. "Master Alexandr, was it? Maga Lilian writes well of you. I would nonetheless appreciate a more...detailed account of how you came to be in the service courtyard without, apparently, passing through the gate."

"The gatehouse looked unattended and there was a sign that seemed to direct new students to follow the wall towards another location..." Alex begins his story and then goes over the hedge maze, the strange moat and boathouse, and the corridor with it's mathematical pattern and the way he used the rods to let him move the floating pillow unhindered. He leaves out a lot of details including the fact that he kept the sponge.

Pellia listens patiently, seemingly unfazed by his description of events. When he gets to the pillow, Alex hears her mutter, "So that's where that went," and sees her make a note in her ledger.

When he's finished, she thanks him without fanfare. "Your letter seems in order, so we can proceed to registration and placement testing. Maga Lilian indicated you wished to enroll as a future apprentice to the Order of Dreams, that you had a passable but not comprehensive education in liberal arts* and magic theory, largely self-taught, and that you have not yet been opened to the Arts. Is this all correct?" 

*Here referring to common academic subjects like grammar, logic, geometry, and astronomy.

"That's all correct to the best of my knowledge."

"Good, then our next steps will be to contact the Order of Dreams and schedule your placement tests." Pellia is brusque but thorough, explaining that Grawtosh tests incoming students on their knowledge of Petronian and Imperial law, magic theory, written and spoken Miezan, and liberal arts, all of which must meet a certain minimum standard before a student is opened to the Arts and formally apprentices to an Order magus. "You will need to present yourself to the Order of Dreams for induction and to receive your scholarship stipend, and you will sleep in the Picus Wing dorms they share with the Order of Device. There is some...hostility, between the two Orders, so I warn you now that any unauthorized dueling, magical or otherwise, among students will not be tolerated. You seem old enough to know better than to engage in petty squabbles, but nonetheless. 

"After your placement tests, you will be assigned courses to correct any deficiencies in your education before your apprenticeship begins. The current Order of Dreams head, Primus Centho, has been looking for apprentices, but it will ultimately be up to the Order to decide on a master for you. Once you've demonstrated basic proficiency, Grawtosh has advanced classes in some magical subjects as well, for those apprentices whose masters work near the school and are not presently teaching them or using their labor, or for certain focused specialties such as Aetherics war magic or Wrath metamagic." 

Pellia also covers the basics of student conduct, which are mostly unsurprising given what Alex has read of Petronian law but also includes things like "don't assault or enchant the servants"; and how to get around Grawtosh, which mostly boils down to "the Atrium is always down and to the left", "ask a resident if you get lost" and for some reason "don't ever go more than nine floors up without an escort." She also gives directions to the Picus Wing (or rather, directions to the Atrium from here, and to the Picus Wing from the Atrium.) "Second door on the left after the landing is the Order of Dreams office. I recommend heading there after we're done here."

Meals are in the Prytaneum thrice daily; magus laboratories and other Order wings are off-limits without permission, the library is three flights up from the Atrium, don't go in the sealed corridor on the fifth floor, storage rooms are locked and She Will Know if anything is taken from them, any damages of school property will be reported and charged to his sponsoring Order, bring any maintenance issues to her or her staff (they wear grey).

"I don't arbitrate disputes between magi or students, that's Order business, but if you are damaging or disrupting a space I will see you removed from it. Questions?"

"I think that's all pretty clear. I am curious if you have an idea what happened to me with those trials, given those aren't a standard part of the new student procedure."

This earns Alex a wry smile. "Our work here is to teach and test, and Grawtosh can have its own opinions about what that ought to entail. Students who explore its corridors sometimes report similar challenges, though it's rare to hear of the test seeking out the student." Her smile fades. "More than once, it's been for a Named who later tried to assassinate an Imperator. Your experience has...political implications. I'd advise keeping it quiet until you feel prepared for any attention it may bring." 

He starts to try to keep a straight face then realizes that might itself be revealing and eventually settles on saying, "I'll keep that in mind."

Pellia either has a better poker face, or had him pegged from the moment he walked in her office wielding a pair of minor artifacts from Grawtosh's obscure depths and has no further need to update. Taking bets as to which one? 

"If there's nothing else, I shan't keep you farther." 

"I think that's everything. I'll just go ahead and head for the Order of Dreams offices then."

He pauses a moment in case she has a correction and then he follows the instructions for reaching the Atrium. Those are really weird instructions to be clear. He tries to pay attention to see if he can get any sense for how the spatial magic that has to be present is working.

Grawtosh: Is magic! Very magic! Kind of overwhelmingly magic, actually! It is hard to get a sense for anything over all the MAGIC. 

Alex's magic sense isn't very precise, but his understanding of math is considerably more so. The corridors of Grawtosh are not consistently inconsistent, but at least some of the implied inconsistency vaguely reminds Alex of some postulates he's encountered regarding higher dimensional spaces projected onto lower dimensions. 

The corridors do seem to mostly behave themselves for now. Alex soon finds himself exiting a side door into an absolutely enormous circular chamber whose curved, columned walls are covered in dozens of bands of runes and whose ceiling...does not appear to exist. To all appearances, the afternoon sun illuminates a fractal mosaic of polished stone, across which scurry dozens of servants, students, and apprentices on various errands in an almost hypnotic clockwise rush. After long minutes in dimly lit corridors, it's kind of dazzling. 

It's beautiful. He just soaks it in for a minute. And then he starts looking for the door that will lead him to the Order of Dreams.

Directions: Complete one-and-a-quarter circuits of the Atrium floor, take the first large staircase on the left up three flights, turn right along the corridor and go up another flight, take the second door on the left after the landing. 

The landing in question is bracketed by a long hallway on the left and a pair of windows overlooking the river on the right. The floor is tiled in irregular mosaic: small pieces, mostly blue and silver, a pattern that isn't quite a wave and isn't quite a sky. Farther down the hallway, the mosaic gives way to a stone floor worn smooth by use.

Turning down the hallway, the second door on the left opens into a low-ceilinged room, eclectically furnished with a wide table, mismatched chairs, a couple desks, and a few shelves of varying height. Every inch of the ceiling is covered in a massive, multi-part painting centered on a group of magi, conjuring beautiful scenes outward in radiating spokes towards an enormous audience near the walls: nobles, scholars, soldiers, foreigners, angels, devils, demons, fae, and magical beasts familiar and exotic. 

A water jug sits on a shelf under a small window, overflowing slightly and dripping onto a small collection of decorated cups. A half-dozen scholars cluster around a table covered in books, scrolls, and drawings. They don't appear to notice Alex immediately, absorbed as they are in a cheerful argument over a half-finished sketch of a Scaled One. 

A blond youth is strumming a lute in a chair by the window — no, actually, he is making lute-strumming motions, and lutelike sounds are emanating from the total absence of a lute in his hands. 

Fascinating. Alex takes a few seconds to just take in the room and then he'll speak up. "Hello. I'm a new student and Pellia sent me here."

There's a bit of a scramble at the table and then, by apparent consensus, a black-haired woman with a paint smudge on her cheek stands to greet Alex. "Oh, um, welcome! Primus Centho is working right now but he said to get him if — Chariclo would you go check the Liminal Lab?"

The blond woman so addressed makes a face. "Oh, must I, he hates being disturbed at work." 

"He never says anything," objects a freckled boy holding a quill. 

"Yes and it's horrible." But Chariclo gets up to brush past Alex into the hallway. 

The musician waves without missing a note. 

"Thank you. I was inspired to join the Order of Dreams by Lilian Weald and that's how I ended up here. I got the impression that this order is fairly new so maybe one of you knows her?"

"Oh yes, Lilian's wonderful," opines the first speaker, to knowing nods by a couple of her fellows. "I'm Marcia, by the way." 

"You're pretty old for a student," remarks Freckles, earning him a Look from Marcia.

"So I've been told. But I don't think anyone's too old to learn new things."

"Well said," nods a bespectacled man on the far side of the table. 

A short woman in an embroidered dress elbows him playfully. "So how come you still can't draw?" 

"Calligraphy is much more dignified. Ow!" A piece of crumpled parchment bounces off his ear. 

"How did you discover your Gift so late?" asks the sandy-haired youth responsible. "That must be a story." 

"Perhaps it is, I don't exactly have a starring role though. I came here after meeting Lillian and showing her around a festival. That day she discovered a plot by a rogue Magi to enchant my entire village for some sort of ghastly ritual the rogue had planned. Luckily Lilian and another mage by the name of Aeschivus were there and they were able to save my village. I hadn't really contemplated coming here before then."

This elicits wide-eyed interest from all present. Distraction from the topic of Alex's status as a former hedge magus:* Success!

*Imperials pattern-match Gifted students of magic who are not Order members into this bucket regardless of whether they know any actual spells. 

They cheerfully grill Alex about the Incident at Eriksmont until they're interrupted by Chariclo's return. She opens the door for an tall, grey-haired magus whose robes have a curiously washed-out appearance, as if he hasn't been entirely in color for a decade. The musician stops immediately. 

"Primus Centho, this is the new student, um..." Chariclo trails off in awkward silence, and there's a sheepish murmur from her fellows as well, who have just realized that in all the excitement, nobody asked the new student's name. 

"Alexandr Lustig," whispers the magus, voice so soft that Alex wouldn't be able to hear it at all, if it weren't for the respectful silence that falls upon the room in the very same instant. "You are expected. With me, please."