Are there common rooms nearby? He isn't planning to stay up too late tonight, it's been a long day, but he might have cause to in the future.

The Order of Dreams has a small one he's visited already, though it's mostly scholars and apprentices. If he asks around, the second floor has larger rooms for students and he can get directions thereto. (Most students have not yet joined an Order, but the choice of common room still signals allegiance to some degree. Device and Dreams share one.)

Good to know. He'll read a little more from Fundamental Principles of the Arcane before he sleeps for the night.

His sleep is undisturbed. In the morning, there's breakfast available in the Prytaneum. According to the Amanuensis Office, Alex's primary course is in a first floor classroom, seven-eighths of a turn around the Atrium, down the corridor, and across from the statue of a winged fox. 

Hopefully people won't mess with his food during breakfast. Regardless he'll arrive at his first class eager to learn with a pen and a notebook to take notes.

His breakfast also passes unmolested. 

Students, mostly children but with a handful of teens and unGifted scholars, file in to the classroom as Alex arrives. Not long after he takes a seat, a gnome woman wearing a riot of color and an enormous feathered hat bustles in through a side door, carrying a trunk nearly as large as she is. She thunks it down on a raised platform, then spots Alex and waves cheerfully. "Ah, we have a new student! Hello! I'm Magister Alidade, what should I call you?" 

Oh good, hopefully that's a pattern that continues.

That is a very big hat. And a big trunk he wonders if she's using magic to be able to lift it or it's just light... or maybe she's just that strong. Has anyone said which order she's a part of?

"You can call me Alex or some variation of Alexandr Lustig if you prefer."

"Welcome, Alex!" Alidade then busies herself removing a series of objects from the trunk and placing them on a large desk near the front of the classroom. She requires a stepladder, but does not seem bothered by it. 

After a minute of this, after the last few students trickle in, Alidade begins: "Each year on the autumn equinox, a twentieth of the harvest in towns and cities across Miezia is taken in and burned, the ashes scattered onto the fields as part of an ancient Avernian ritual of plenty. If the twentieth given to fire is the finest and choicest among all that the fields produce, then after the burning is complete, a handful of unburnt seeds may be sifted from the remains, and in those seeds is concentrated the ideal Form of Herbam.

"Welcome, class, and today we're going to continue our lesson on the RAW MATERIAL OF ARCANE POWER, or 'vis' for boring Miezans. Yesterday, we covered how vis is commonly concentrated in a physical form associated with one or more Arts of magic, and the defining features of each. We have the ten Forms, Animal, Aquam, Auram, Corpus, Herbam, Ignem, Imaginem, Mentem, Terram, and Vim; and more rarely the five Techniques, Creo, Intellego, Muto, Perdo, and Rego." 

Alidade unrolls a long strip of fabric and hangs it on the wall behind her, showing the symbols of all fifteen Arts, starting with the Techniques. 

(These don't precisely match the symbols Alex has seen; they are more finely detailed, and in books Alex is used to seeing Herbam resemble roots and seedlings, and Ignem a fiery bird, among other differences.) 

"As a special treat for you today, I have managed to convince the stingy authorities of Grawtosh to temporarily part with several educational specimens, in the name of magical study! It helps that an apprentice recently mistook a valuable pawn of vis for refuse and removed it from the lab during spring cleaning, although in their defense it took the Form of gryphon dung." This sparks a chorus of giggles from the younger students. "In any case, they have my thanks; I was able to make the case that properly educated apprentices would not make such a mistake.

"And for today's hands-on practice, you'll get to prove me right!" Alidade spreads her hands to indicate the items on the desk. "I have here a number of vis-bearing objects. Your challenge today will be to attempt to identify the Art or Arts with which each item is associated; you will write down your answers in secret, and whoever has identified the objects most accurately and precisely after fifteen diameters* will receive a special prize. And before you ask, no, the prize is not vis," she adds, observing an apprentice drawing breath, "I don't have that kind of funding." 

*A diameter is the approximate length of time it takes for the sun to move its width across the sky, or about two minutes. 

On the desk are ten objects: 

- A blackened chunk of bark
- A piece of liver in a glass jar
- Two vials of liquids, one clear and one a deep red
- A mirror that glimmers with light
- A carved bone amulet
- A large reddish eye floating in a jar of translucent liquid that distorts its appearance
- A polished wooden wand with a gilded handle
- A large stone acorn

"You may line up in an orderly fashion to examine the items more closely. Don't make off with any or I will be deeply peeved. Luck and skill!"  

Hmm, on a first glance:

the burned bark seems like ignem and maybe herbam

depending the liver could be animal or corpus

the clear liquid is probably aquam

the red liquid probably being blood and therefore again corpus or animal

a glimmering mirror feels like it should be imaginem,

the eye could be mentem or maybe he's overthinking and it's just animal or it could be both

A wand feels like vim

and the stone acorn might be terram and herbam.

He'll line up with everyone else and try to see if he can observe any helpful details from up close and especially if he can feel anything with his somewhat unreliable magical sense.

On closer inspection: 

- The bark feels faintly staticky to the touch, and looks more scorched than burned
- The liver is rough, with distinct lobes, marking it as animal rather than human (Congratulations on a successful Medicine roll)
- The mirror reflects a bright light in one particular direction, and from that angle the sun can be seen reflected within, blinding in its brightness
- The eye sends a shiver down his spine when he meets the pupil, and he feels faintly sick
- The amulet has the look of a partly finished craft project, carved with sigils, and includes a string of knucklebones
- The acorn is about as heavy as one would expect if it were made entirely of stone, which is to say, very

It is hard for Alex's unpracticed sense to discern much over the constant background thrum of Grawtosh, but Alex does notice a very faint note in tune with the bark's static. 

Hmm, that largely matches his expectations.

He will write down his guesses:

- Scorched Bark: Auram (Lightning)
- Liver: Animal
- Clear liquid: Aquam
- Red liquid: Corpus
- Mirror: Imaginem
- Bone amulet: Corpus and Vim
- Eye: Mentem
- Wooden wand: Vim
- Stone acorn: Terram

He wishes he understood more but he shouldn't expect to have much chance of winning this competition upon first arriving. Much as he wishes he could. It's a little disheartening but it only reaffirms the importance of studying diligently and trying to learn.

After everyone has written down their guesses, Alidade gathers the notes, skimming each, and bids the class to sit down again. 

"Good work, everyone! And remember, our goal here is to learn, so don't be too disappointed if your predictions didn't work out. Take it as an opportunity to figure out what you missed. And if you managed to guess right by chance, pay all the more attention to what could have made you more confident! Now let's go through them one by one." 

Alidade holds up the piece of bark. "Each autumn equinox, a great storm gathers near a certain mountaintop, and lightning strikes the top of the highest pine on its slopes. Properly stripped and prepared, the bark yields Auram vis. The static is a giveaway, as is the telltale pattern of scorch marks." 

She holds up the jar of liver next. "Students of anatomy will recognize an animal liver by its roughness and distinct lobes; students of arcane lore may know that the essence of a magical beast often concentrates in the liver. This is a piece of the preserved liver of a gryphon, one of the last of its kind to have lived in Miezia, and it contains a pawn of Animal vis.

"As for the two vials," Alidade holds up the clear one, "This is a distillation from the laboratory of an Aetheric magus, who worked with aqua fortis, a colorless and highly corrosive liquid. The creation of this single vial took most of a moon's change, and yielded a pawn of Aquam vis. The second vial is blood from a faerie offered as payment of a debt to Grawtosh; as a part of a powerful creature with a gnomoid body plan, it naturally contains Corpus vis."

"But your notes say the blood is Animal and the liver is Corpus?" objects one student. 

"Indeed they do, Gaius Aetolus," nods Alidade, "and that is because I have taught Intellego specialists before, and I have important knowledge to impart regarding overreliance on magical perception in an adversarial environment, such as when one is attempting to cheat on an assignment by peeking at the teacher's notes." 

The named student lowers his hand, looking chastened, several others grinning at his discomfort. 

"That covers the easy ones," Alidade says brightly, and several grins fade. She holds up the mirror next. "The first ray of sunlight from the summer solstice is captured within this mirror, along with the image of the sun itself. The former is Ignem, the Form of light and heat; the latter is Imaginem, the Form of images. This object thus contains a pawn of both. And yes," she tells groaning students, "I do give partial credit for correctly identifying one of these." 

Next she picks up the amulet. "This is the unfinished talisman of an apprentice of the Order of Chains who wandered into a regio and did not return. Note the partially carved sigils? This was clearly intended to hold an enchantment, and as any aspiring artificer ought to know, enchanting first requires the investment of Vim to create a lastingly magic receptacle. This talisman would have held a Corpus enchantment, but is currently only Vim."

Alidade picks up the wooden wand, using it to point to the jar of translucent liquid. "And this is the eye of a basilisk!" 

Several students gasp. Someone screams. A few look like they are going to be sick.

"An entirely reasonable reaction," remarks Alidade, "But don't worry, it was a young basilisk. And the fluid contains the worst of it. And as a magical power capable of killing with but a glance, the Art associated with this object can only be...Perdo! Yes, it's rare enough that some textbook writers don't make mention of it at all, but Techniques can be distilled into vis just as well as Forms. They have to replace the preservative for this one every month, as the presence of the eye degrades it! Isn't that just fascinating?

"Anyway, let's move on to the stone acorn." She taps the object in question with the wand. "Students of history will recognize it as a seed of the Century Tree, reportedly planted as a thin column in the main courtyard at Grawtosh's founding, by the first head of the Order of Sustenance. It bears but once a decade, and its acorns always contain Terram and Herbam vis in equal parts."

Alidade puts down the wand, consults a small scrap of parchment, and picks up a clay figurine of a three-faced woman. This elicits glances of puzzlement from the class, since the figurine couldn't possibly be important. "This little lady is rather special," Alidade remarks. "She's the reason most of you wrote down nine guesses for ten objects. I had a time getting her out of storage, let me tell you; she has a way of fading into the background, you see. That's probably how three pawns of Mentem vis managed to go unused for so long. Congratulations to those who noticed, by the way." 

"That's mean." 

"That's magic," Alidade counters sharply. "Half of what makes a successful mage, or scholar, is paying attention. Sometimes all the warning you might receive, from a cursed item or a forbidden spell, is a faint note of dissonance that something isn't quite right. Better mages than all of you have died, for lack of a willingness to heed that faint note. The next time you find yourself in a classroom, or a laboratory, studying some unknown piece of magic, and you notice a strange detail, such as the number of objects on a table not matching the number you have written down, avoid the temptation to dismiss it as not important. Better yet, cultivate that respect for the unknown everywhere you go. It could save your life, one day."

This prompts a round of pensive silence. 

Alex will diligently note that all down and upon the final revelation he'll be as shocked as the rest of the class. Could he have noticed that? Why didn't he notice that? How can he get better at noticing things like that.