"...well. Admittedly."

Jojo seems a bit pensive as they exit the stockroom.

Hell. That was probably kind of an alarming thing to say to the kid already experiencing a lot of upheaval in his life. "Sorry, I didn't mean to worry you. Sometimes it feels like madness comes in waves but if skeletons and demons are unrelated sorts of weird things to have happen the rarity of demons is probably the same it was yesterday. Which you'd know better than I."

"...it's not that, really. I'm just considering that I... can't go back. Even if they rebuild the Academy, I've outgrown it. I've been training since before my voice dropped, and in one day of real danger I've learned more than I had in these last three years. If I keep at it I'll be a real hero, like Aribeth. It's better than cooling my heels in school. But... it's a bit sad not to have the choice."

"Oh. Yeah. It's a big adjustment, isn't it, from self-defense in theory to someone actually trying to kill you. I'd like to say reassuringly that you get used to it but actually you're just right, training scenarios really don't ever feel the same again. I must say, though, I've seen a lot of young men meet real battle for the first time and you're handling the shock really well. When would you have left school normally, if this hadn't happened?"

"It probably would've been two more years. - it wasn't my first real battle. Those bandits, when I was thirteen, they would have killed me if I hadn't killed them first." He smiles weakly. "I think you're right, though. The training didn't feel the same after. I think I knew, somewhere in my head, I was just killing time."

"Ah, of course. Sorry, I -- " forgot the deeply personal and emotionally resonant thing Jojo told him half an hour ago? was thinking about Robyn dying in an unnecessary bar fight and not even a real battle and just didn't count it? deep in his heart of hearts never quite learned to sympathize with the victims of bandit attacks because he is a fundamentally awful person who lived mostly on the other side of that blade for four centuries and everyone on this fucking planet over the age of sixteen can see it like he's wearing a nametag -- "didn't... think about that. Um." Deep breath. "Well, you know, I tell my students sometimes, when they understandably complain about being made to sit through mandatory history classes, if you feel like you're not learning the thing you set out to, often that just means you're learning something else you didn't know you needed. Like how to stand up to a famous superhero when she does something you think is unethical, maybe."

Jojo laughs. "A super-hero. I like that. Lady Aribeth really is something more than just a paladin... you're not seeing her at her best. I think I stood up to her because if she weren't so afraid she'd want me to." He considers. "Well - not afraid, the more powerful paladins stop feeling afraid after a while. But I think feeling like they can't do anything to help feels almost the same, to them."

"I think a lot of people who seem like they stopped feeling afraid mostly just got better at not looking afraid because it's bad for morale. And I'm not judging her, of course, nobody's their best on a day like this. But I think either way it was very brave of you - I know churches like to encouragingly tell everyone it's the most simple and obvious thing in the world to just not be evil but something being the right thing to do doesn't always make it not a hard thing to do, you know?"

"Yeah." Jojo shivers a bit.

The temple visit concluded, where would Hob like to go? Neverwinter is his oyster.

It is a lovely city. Even the ambient choking corpsepyre smoke and strident doomsayers cannot quite disguise the fact that it is something he hasn't seen in a long time: a whole city in stone and brick and wood, with not hide nor hair of a car. (He loves cars, don't get him wrong, they're incredibly cool machines, almost as cool as planes, but they take up so much real estate.) Look at these gorgeous wide cobblestone throughways! And that great big bridge over the river with people walking across it! And that big tree right in the middle of the square! What a good tree!!

Hob sort of idles in circles around the fountain for a little while, gazing raptly and commenting somewhat inanely on various completely mundane features of his environment, getting a vague feel for cardinal directions relative to the temple, and then eventually, his mood substantially improved, says brightly to Jojo, "So if there's laundry wizards are there library wizards? I was hoping I might ask one if there's such a thing as a book preserving spell."

"Oh! The Cloaktower's near here and if anyone knew it'd be them, they're the mages' guild, we can pop in? And I can see about getting your handkerchief cleaned while we're at it, I'd almost forgotten."

"Excellent, do let's."

Cloaktower! It's a proper wizard's tower if ever there was one, architecturally improbable and terribly imposing, grand stained-glass windows studded with faceted spheres all up its sides. Jojo goes to knock on the grand doors, which of course open on their own before he can touch them, revealing a long hallway leading into a circular chamber, its walls lined with bookshelves.

A pointy-eared woman in robes stands reading a book by the room's entrance, occasionally taking flaming notes in the air with her finger.

Oh that's incredibly badass. And a good sign; if she's comfortable with the magic fire that close to the book the book is probably magically fireproof.

Hob sweeps a dramatic formal bow (with a six-foot polearm in hand, this gesture has quite a large footprint), and prays wizards care less if you're evil. "Good morning! I am very recently arrived in this lovely city and have come to seek the counsel of those wiser in the arts of magic than I, if I may trouble you for just a moment, madame."

The woman looks up and raises one sculpted eyebrow.

Then she looks at his diamond earring, and has an abrupt coughing fit. When she recovers, she marks her place and closes her book. "Of course, my good sir. I am Eltoora Sarptyl, and I imagine I know enough of the arcane to assist you."

That was ... a different unexpected kneejerk reaction to the sight of him ... which is ... probably ... better? Maybe??

Well, nothing for it, he'll understand these people eventually or he won't.

"A pleasure to meet you. Professor Robert Gadling, at your service," because he's not not taking the opportunity to introduce himself as a fellow academic to a real live wizard, even though he kinda stopped really inhabiting the role of Professor Rob sometime this morning when handed a sword. "Though I suppose," charming c'est la vie grin, "if I spend too long distinctly on a different plane from my university I shall be fired in absentia and cannot reasonably go around introducing myself as 'professor' anything. Ah, in any event, I have a book I would like to protect from the ravages of time. Is there a spell for that?"

Blink.

"Yes. If you would like it permanent you will need a moderate quantity of diamond dust - about two ounces, five thousand gold - but I can cast it for a two-week span here and now if you tell me where you're from and what you teach and why that jacket has a silk lining but not a fitting enchantment."

"Perfect, deal. I do not have any such quantity of diamond dust to hand but I'm sure I can get it eventually." He produces the Tales from his jacket pocket, and pats it fondly before handing it over. To Eltoora's eye, it is the sort of book that it's really rather odd doesn't already have such an enchantment: elaboratedly illuminated, currently as undamaged as though it was printed yesterday, and written in what appears to be very, very, very old Illuskan. "To answer both your first question and your third, I'm from a city called London, on the island of Britain, where we have, by what I understand of local standards, an extremely advanced textiles industry and extraordinarily little magic. I teach history, due to being an incorrigible optimist who thinks this might someday manage to help anyone not make the same mistakes over again."

Eltoora removes another book from her robe pocket and begins studying it intently. "Such is the lot of the historian," she remarks. "Optimism in spirit, as you can tell by their pessimism in practice. I'll be fifteen minutes preparing the spell. If you've another errand, you may leave the book or bring it back when you're done, as you wish. I can hold my end of a conversation while I prepare, though, so there's no need to flee for fear of boredom."

"Thank you! I'd love to stay and chat. I know this is sort of a large question but what's it like being a wizard? I've never met one."

She smiles into her spellbook. "It's like knowing that with fifteen minutes to prepare, you can do whatever you set your mind to - within certain arbitrary and ridiculous constraints. Like if you learn enough, you can see the way the universe is woven, and how to wriggle your fingers between the fibers to weave it to better suit you. It's like standing on the shoulders of ogres, and knowing that they're standing on giants, and below them dragons - and knowing that some upstart bastard gnome is going to stand on you, and wishing him the very best." She chuckles. "How's that? A large question, a poem instead of an answer."

"Oh, I love that, thank you. What sort of arbitrary and ridiculous constraints?"

"If you wish to kill someone with fire, ice, lightning, acid, sound so intense it liquefies the bones, raw arcane energy, or - for those who specialize in certain magics in which I do not dabble - the siphoning of their very essence, you are in luck. I can do it in dozens of ways, sequentially or all at once, to one great warrior or a hundred conscripts. However, if you wish to weave a set of curtains from a heap of cotton, you had best study well; that magic is of a kind with those that choke armies, or stride continents, or turn men to frogs."

"Wow. Okay. I suppose that if I say 'what, really, why' the answer will be 'for reasons you need an entire DPhil to understand'? - er, that's a roughly decade-sized academic qualification in my culture - "

(Which of course means he has several, but his first three runs through modern academia were Greek literature, astrophysics, and architecture, followed by his current stint in the history department, and he was planning to do economics next, having been having a surprising amount of fun doing finance since the advent of computers. Instead he's now kind of tempted, following Professor Rob's untimely and presumably lethal disappearance, to pick something that will make him less embarrassingly unqualified to share any of the wealth of modern technology in case this ever comes up again. The powered loom is a glory of human achievement and he absolutely does not even a little bit know how to build one.)

" - but sound so intense it liquefies the bones?" Do not say 'what's that feel like', absolutely do not say 'can I try'. "And this is just naturally somehow more straightforward using your magic than - well, okay, now that I'm saying it out loud I do see how it is inherently less complicated to make a man into a puddle than into a frog. Puddle's higher entropy, yeah?"

Eltoora's ears twitch violently.

"After I have finished preparing this spell," she says conversationally, "which should be rather shortly, I am going to put a translation spell on myself and make you say entropy again. Context makes me think I want to know what it means, and I suspect if you try to explain, we will run up against the very limits of our dialects' mutual intelligibility."