"Are you sure?" Diana gave Ian a skeptical look.
"Yes."
Ian nodded, his expression serious.
Seeing his face, Diana realized he was not joking.
She quickly leafed through several of the documents.
A small portion contained insights, but most were conjectures related to Wizardry.
This counted as knowledge?
Diana raised an eyebrow. If she had not known Ian, she would have thought he was playing a trick on her.
Several seconds later,
she said slowly, "All right. Knowledge submitted to the Silver Society generally needs the approval of at least three scholars. As it happens, there are three here now. You'll have to come with me."
"All right."
Inside the Silver Society's Appraisal Hall, soft light bathed the circular chamber of white stone.
The documents Ian had submitted lay on a table at the front. Three scholars sat behind it.
"Diana, you're not joking, are you? This many?" A red-haired Wizard stared in disbelief.
"You'll have to ask Ian." Diana looked across the table at him.
"Ian, are you sure this isn't a joke?" Chahara asked him.
"I'm serious,"
Ian said.
He remembered the Wizard before him: Chahara, who had been an apprentice scholar when they first met.
In the past two years, Chahara had published a new article and become a scholar. He had also advanced to the late First Ring. Ian did not know the other man beside him, an older-looking Wizard with heavy bags under his eyes and a stern face.
"None of the Society's documents are the ordinary stuff you find outside. Getting them past me won't be so easy."
"That's Liam. He's a late First Ring Wizard, but it took him more than thirty years in the Society to become a scholar," Diana told Ian through a voice transmission.
Ian's expression grew more solemn.
He