Endless Devotion (DC/Cultist Simulator/Book of Hours)

*Rrrriiiiiing*

You turn around under the blankets, moving your head under the pillow.

*Rrrriiiiiing*

You groan at that. You were sleeping so well. And teaching basic anatomy to a bunch of children is really not your idea of relaxation. You need your sleep.

*Rrrriiiiiing*

...Maybe if you don't answer it will go away?

*Rrrriiiiiing*

You groan once more your deep annoyance and coming vengeance on whoever is forcing you to answer the phone. Fine. Fine. Time to act like a responsible adult, however much you don't want to. Still, you are not getting up unless you have to. Magic is at least useful for that.

You cast a hurried Info Filter over the receiver - calling people and whispering memetic hazards over the line was all the rage twenty years ago, and you are not sleepy enough to fall for the oldest trick in the book - before materializing a Mage's Hand and ordering it to bring you the phone. Once you feel the cold plastic of the phone on your ear, you grunt aggressively at it.

"Ludwig," Alexandra nervously says, the sound of screams and explosions clear in the background, "We need your help. Now."

You sigh. If Alexandra says it, then she needs it. You trust her enough for that, even if you are still very grossed out by the way the Schwarzs are trying to set you two together the same as a kid would smash two Barbies while shouting 'Kiss!'.

"Ludwig, we need you know!" Alexandra almost shouts, which, yeah, not getting lost in your thoughts, bad idea.

"Yeah, yeah, keep talking, I'm getting exactly where you are. What's the problem?" You mumble as you slowly get up from the bed, stretching and yawning at the same time. Casting high spells while sleepy is a very stupid way of committing suicide after all.

"There is a forest fire here! It's, it's an incendio, and -"

"A forest fire. In the middle of autumn. Just a month after the start of the semester," you deadpan as you start the mental stretching exercise required to make sure you are ready for casting. You usually try to list every single bone in your hand for that - the frustration when you always forget the last two is enough to wake you up.

"Yeah, Ludwig, it's a forest fire. And right now there has not been any damage, but it's getting worryingly close to one of the lesson halls, so we really need your help putting out the fire before we have any problems," Alexandra rambles while you move your fingers in the bone-breaking mudras required for the Bhikkhu's United Chanting sympathy divination.

The divination - once used to make sure that every Buddhist acolyte was chanting the same exact prayer - has met a resurgence a couple of decades ago, once it was discovered the ease with which you could use it to find out the whereabouts of a phone caller. Sadly it also meant the death of prank calling in the Weisswald household, to the despair of six-year-old Ludwig.

The divination gives you an exact position in space - which from your spotty memory should coincide with the lesson hall Alexandra was talking about - and you take a deep breath before casting Dante's Juxtaposition Step and appearing in front of Alexandra. You cover your smirk at her quickly aborted little shriek and look around the office you are in. Yep. This should be the office of one of the language professors, lesson hall.

And, from the red light coming from the window, Alexandra was not joking when she talked about the fire. Dammit.

You ignore Alexandra as you walk right next to the window and look outside. The forest is burning, the trees nearest your building coming up in flames meters high. Luckily all the campus buildings are tucked inside forest clearings - the trees are all at least five meters away from the nearest house, but still, that's fire you are talking about. It won't take much for wind or just luck to brink cinders or sparks around and set a few buildings on fire, and let's not talk about all the fallen leaves on the ground. Still, this is suspicious.

You strengthen your eyes for a couple of seconds, and - yes, the fire is contained only to the vicinities of campus. Super suspicious. Which, combined with the rest, means only one thing.

"Yeah, this is a probing strike," you drawl as you lean on the window in front of you, eyes on the fiery wonder outside.

"What?" Alexandra asks right next to you, and you startle for a moment. You forgot about her. Embarrassing.

You shake your head and look outside, trying to find weird or arcane patterns in the flames. "This is probably a probing strike. I knew we should have covered our tracks better. One of the Families probably got curious about our college and decided to prod us to see if we were Weisswald assets or not," you answer her. And no arcane patterns, as expected as it is disappointing.

"I... isn't that a little... much? They are willing to set a forest on fire just to see if we're Weisswald?" Alexandra asks you, sounding a little shaken. Which, yeah, understandable, the Five Families' inner politics seem pretty insane to you too, and you have been essentially tutored on them for the last fifteen years. To her, an incendio must seem like something of an unreasonable action.

Poor, naive child.

"It's really not. This is them being considerate," you explain to her. "I know that your family usually does not touch foreign stuff much - the Sigmeyers handle it, if I'm not wrong - but this is still really tame. They suspect us of being Weisswald patsies, so they throw a wrench in our spanners and see how we answer it. Pretty standard stuff, really."

You glance at Alexandra, and see her look at the fire, lost for words. Probably still aghast that a forest fire is considered essentially a greeting among families. But, well, that's the power that middling wizards can throw around: something like this has stopped fazing you when you were 13.

"Fire is also the perfect medium for it: fire and water by their nature purify and clean their surroundings. This lets them simply start the fire with a few spells, corral the fire so that it doesn't engulf the whole forest - that would bring retaliation on them - and stick around while the fire devours every single proof the fire isn't natural. No one gets hurt, but it will damage our operation unless another wizard intervenes - and in that case, they got what they wanted, certainty that this college is a Weisswald outpost. And, again, no one gets hurt - these buildings are evacuated, right?" You turn again to Alexandra, who just nods at you, a conflicted expression on her face.

"So you just... let them do it? You don't even help?" Alexandra grits out, leaning at you and frowning prettily. "If a fire starts, we could lose months of progress! Let alone the hit to our reputation!"

You just smile sadly at that and put a hand on her shoulder before squeezing. "I could simply whip up a bit of rain and end this in a few minutes, but it would be obvious I used magic. And we are not ready for the other families interfering with us yet."

"They are already interfering!" Alexandra shouts, pointing at the fiery mess outside the window.

You shake your head. "No. They are probing. And if we do not answer they will write us off as normies, or as Weisswald assets unimportant enough not to warrant a mage, which is the same thing in their eyes. Believe me, it's better not to act right now, take the punch on the chin, and call for the fire service."

"And what if they probe you again?" Alexandra asks you.

You hesitate at that, and from the way Alexandra's eyes light up, she has not missed that. "We cannot simply get walked upon and stay silent. This is not how you get respect. They are probably testing to see if a standard mage is here, right?"

"...Probably."

"And you are not a mediocre mage, Ludwig. Can't you just go out there and... awe them? Just, make it clear that this place is not to be messed with?"

You frown at that. You could do that. It will surely work in getting you a few months of peace. The problem is...

"That would attract even more attention," you explain to Alexandra. "It would put the other side on the back foot, get us maybe a semester of peace, but then they would know there is something interesting here, and the Weisswald family -" does not have the power or influence to scare them off in that case - "would be better served in using its influence somewhere more needed," you end up uninspiringly.

Alexandra sighs at that, rubbing her nose. "Do we even know which family is doing this?"

You nibble your lower lip at that. You have been looking for an answer to that question since you got out of bed. "...probably the Equili or Christokis. This is not the Benevento's style, too little grandstanding for that. And the Morgans would never set fire to a forest. Don't know which one of the two, though."

"...So you are going to do nothing. All that strength, and you just do nothing?" Alexandra finishes with a defeated tone. You feel a bit guilty about that. It's clear that Alex is a bit in awe of magic's capability and very attached to this college. Still.

You shake your head. "This is for the best. We cannot survive what the interest of the major families will bring down on us-"

"Then bring as much interest as you can here! Play the ends against the middle!" Alexandra very rudely interrupts you, pointing a finger right at you. "You are trying to break off from the Weisswald, aren't you? Or at least do something they would not approve - oh, please, you were obvious," Alexandra rolls her eyes when she sees you start to fidget and look around. How has she found out?

"What I want to say is: this is your chance. Bring as much attention to this place as you can, and then open it to the other families. Do you want a haven of learning free from the Weisswald's control? This is your chance. Make this place seem as bigger than life, and then invite the rest of the Families here, one by one. Make the other families have a vested interest in this college, so that they too will protect it from the other families, and in the middle, there will be you, collecting the gains. That's what you want, right?" Alexandra excitedly says, pacing right beside you and wildly gesticulating.

And the idea is appealing. It would also be probably the only way the Families would stop harassing you, the Weisswald being as weak as they are. Still... "That would mean having to play Family politics, and you can never be sure you are winning there. And for it to succeed, we would need to be interesting. Right now we are only a college in the middle of the woods. You are putting the cart in front of the horse."

"But it could work, no? Then you could stop this?" Alexandra says fervently, looking you right in the eyes. Pleadingly.

...and you can't resist. You sigh and nod. "Yeah, it could work. But -"

"No buts." Alexandra interrupts you before grabbing you by the hand and pulling you out of the office and towards the exit. You sometimes miss the robot Alexandra seemed to be the first time you met her.

"...you just don't want this place to burn, do you," you say wrily at her while she pushes you outside towards the fire, the warmth of the incendio noticeable even here at meters of distance.

"...maybe," she mumbles, and you snort at that and at the situation. Here you are, in the middle of the night in your pajamas, pushed around by your assistant and a few meters away from a forest fire.

"I still think that doing nothing would be better!" You shout over the noise of the fire, but Alexandra does not deign to even answer you, simply daring you not to save the college from the bit of damage it would get from the fire.

You snort at that and shake your head, looking right into the fire.

Okay, now, time to choose.

What do you want to do?

[ ] Do Nothing: Alexandra will have to deal with it, but you will do nothing. Let her call the fire brigade, you will only cast a few unobtrusive spells that should limit the damage. There will be no suspicion on the NUHL, and until you again rock the boat, you should be safe from outside intervention. But the college will sustain a great deal of damage, in materials, time, and reputation.

[ ] Stop the Fire: Alexandra has convinced you. You will stop the fire with your trusty spells, and show off while you are at it. You are no ordinary mage, and you will show this. If you are lucky you could also find the culprit and demand reparations from the family in question. Of course, there will be problems: you WILL attract attention, and as cool as Alexandra's plan might seem, there is no certainty that you could survive this attention.

[ ] Call Winter Incarnate: Alexandra has convinced you. You need to be interesting and attract attention, and you have just the best way to do it. There is a reason you use skills to access the Lores: synchronizing with the lores without the skills as a filter is dangerous, and prone to making the sorcerer more than a little strange. But when you need power and awe, there is nothing better than to call upon Winter unending, your arcane might a servant to Lady Death. Well, after that Alexandra will not be able to say you haven't got enough attention, for good and for ill.