Inexplicable rifts were opening everywhere. Beyond them were fleeting glimpses of emerald grasslands and deep, unknown expanses of boundless void.
Only the Old Wizard, shrouded in a haze, and his laboratory bench remained unaffected.
Ruger, too, was tumbling and drifting.
A classroom?
A tiered lecture hall?
With his backside pointing upward, Ruger widened his canine eyes.
Plans seemed unable to keep pace with change. The drifting doors had also bewildered the two assistants struggling to move through the air.
Eleven doors floated about, no longer arranged in the fixed order they had occupied along the corridor.
The petite female Wizard's words flashed through his mind again: the Old Wizard's supposed identity, her conjectures about this place. What exactly was it?
A name His Excellency would certainly know. He might not know its exact name, but he would certainly know this kind of place, and it was connected to another of the Old Wizard's identities.
A place difficult to associate with the corridors and laboratories they had seen.
Ruger caught sight of the room resembling a spacious tiered lecture hall. There was another door on its far side, an open one. In that hurried glimpse, he could see buildings beyond it, a square, the corner of a sculpture on a pedestal, and people walking about.
The answer was all but obvious.
He had considered this answer when the female Wizard spoke to him earlier, but it differed somewhat from what he had imagined. It had appeared before him in a far more surprising manner.
A Wizard Academy.
Naturally, the Old Wizard's identity called for a different form of address: the esteemed Eight-Ring Wizard, Headmaster Erlilines.
And that description of him-a veteran Wizard who, according to the records, liked to seize passing Wizards or Apprentices to serve as temporary assistants-now needed rephrasing