100X Returns: Starting with 1,000,000 System Points

Chapter 33: Chapter 33: Alphina’s Other Research

I found Alphina in the Arcanum’s modest public reading hall the following afternoon, hunched over a spread of dense academic texts with the particular intensity of someone who’d forgotten to eat properly in favor of research.

"You look like you haven’t slept," I observed, settling into the seat across from her.

"Neither have you, judging by those circles under your eyes," she countered without looking up. "What brings you to the Arcanum? I thought you’d decided the migration anomaly wasn’t worth your urgent attention."

"Different problem," I admitted, and laid out the ledger’s contents in careful, measured detail — the trafficking pattern, the coded entries, the deliberate avoidance of Watch attention, everything except the parts that would require explaining exactly how I’d first found the warehouse’s hidden floorboard.

Alphina’s research-sharpened attention locked onto the ledger’s coded passages almost immediately, her earlier fatigue apparently forgotten. "May I?" she asked, already reaching for the pages before I’d finished nodding.

She studied the code for a long, silent stretch, occasionally cross-referencing something against one of her own open texts, expression shifting gradually from curiosity into something more troubled.

"This isn’t purely mundane code," she said finally. "There’s a subtle arcane component woven into several of these entries — a suppression rune, faint but consistent, applied to specific transaction lines."

"Suppression meaning what, exactly?"

"Meaning someone with genuine magical training has been actively obscuring these particular entries from casual detection — not just coded language, but a rune designed to make the eye slide past certain passages unless you’re specifically looking for them." She traced one such entry with a careful finger. "This is Arcanum-level technique, or close to it. Whoever’s running this operation either trained here themselves, or paid someone who did."

I felt the weight of that settle uncomfortably. "You’re saying someone from your own academy might be involved."

"I’m saying someone with that level of training exists somewhere, and the Arcanum is the most obvious source in this region," she said carefully. "Doesn’t mean current faculty or students. Could be a former student, gone considerably astray from whatever path they were meant to walk."

She pulled a fresh sheet of parchment toward her, beginning to sketch the suppression rune’s pattern from memory with the same meticulous care she’d applied to the migration maps. "I want to research this properly — cross-reference the rune’s specific style against known techniques taught here over the past decade or so. If I can narrow down when and by whom this particular variant was taught, we might have a lead toward who’s actually applying it now."

"That could take time."

"Everything worth doing properly takes time," she said, a faint, knowing echo of Jones’s own caution. "But I’d rather hand you something concrete in a week than something speculative tonight."

I studied her a long moment, genuine appreciation settling in alongside the day’s mounting frustrations. "Thank you. For taking this seriously."

"Missing people are considerably harder to dismiss than migrating wildlife, whatever your priorities suggested a few weeks back," she said, though without real bite, more gentle needling than genuine reproach. "I’m glad you finally found something that actually moved you to urgency."

She sent word three days later, a hastily scrawled note delivered through the same runner system Jones used, asking me to meet her at the Arcanum’s private archive rather than the public hall.

"I found something," she said, without preamble, once I’d been shown into a small, quiet study room stacked with older, more restricted texts. "The suppression rune’s specific variant was taught here roughly eight years ago, under a visiting instructor who left the Arcanum’s employ shortly after — not dismissed, officially, but the circumstances were vague enough that I suspect something unpleasant happened that the faculty preferred to keep quiet."

"His name?"

"Vasilen Thorncroft," she said, sliding a faded faculty record across the table. "Talented, by all accounts. Also, according to the more candid notes I managed to dig up, increasingly obsessed with practical applications the Arcanum considered ethically questionable even for academic research."

I studied the faded portrait accompanying the record — an unremarkable, forgettable face, the kind that could disappear easily into a crowded tavern without drawing a second glance.

"Do you have a current location?"

"None on record," Alphina admitted. "He vanished from any official Arcanum or Guild tracking shortly after his departure. But—" she pulled a second sheet forward, "—I did find something else. A former colleague of his, still teaching here, mentioned in passing years ago that Thorncroft had a particular fondness for masks. Called it an affectation, something about performing anonymity even among trusted colleagues."

I felt something cold settle at that detail, some instinct flagging its significance before I could fully articulate why.

"What kind of masks?"

"Theatrical, mostly. Harlequin-style, from what little the colleague recalled." Alphina studied me carefully, noting my reaction. "Does that mean something to you?"

"Not yet," I admitted, though the phrase settled into memory with the weight of something I suspected would matter considerably more before this was finished. "But I’d like to keep pulling this thread, if you’re willing to keep helping."

"Already ahead of you," she said, a faint, determined smile crossing her tired features. "This is the most interesting research I’ve done in months, missing persons aside. Try to keep me involved, whatever you find next."

I promised her I would, and left the Arcanum with Thorncroft’s faded portrait and a masked man’s unsettling affectation both weighing heavily on a mystery that had, in the span of a single conversation, grown considerably more personal and considerably more dangerous.

I found myself returning to the Arcanum more frequently over the following days than I’d anticipated, ostensibly to check on Alphina’s continued research but genuinely, if I was honest with myself, for the company as much as the information. She had a way of approaching even the ugliest discoveries with a scholar’s careful, unflinching curiosity that steadied something in me I hadn’t realized needed steadying.

"You keep looking at that portrait like it owes you an explanation," she observed, one afternoon, catching me studying Thorncroft’s faded likeness for the dozenth time.

"Feels like it should," I admitted. "Man taught here, presumably had colleagues, students, some kind of ordinary life before whatever pushed him toward this. Hard to reconcile that with cots folded in a hidden room."

"People rarely announce the turn before they take it," Alphina said, settling into the seat across from me with the particular gravity she reserved for genuinely difficult subjects. "I’ve read enough case studies on magical corruption and obsession to know the pattern. Talented people convince themselves the ordinary rules don’t apply to work important enough, and by the time anyone notices, the damage is already considerable."

"You think that’s what happened to him? Some noble research goal gone wrong?"

"I think it’s possible, though I wouldn’t call anything about trafficking people noble, whatever justification he’s built for himself," she said, a hard edge entering her usually measured tone. "More likely, whatever ethical line the Arcanum drew that pushed him out was already a symptom rather than the disease itself. People capable of this kind of patient, organized cruelty rarely start there. They arrive gradually, one rationalized step at a time."

I turned that over, thinking of my own careful compromises since waking in this world — the secrets kept from Thorne, the calculated deflections, the deliberate withholding of my true capability even from people who’d earned genuine trust. Nothing remotely comparable to what Thorncroft had apparently built, but the shape of gradual, rationalized compromise felt uncomfortably familiar regardless.

"I want to ask you something," I said, after a quiet moment. "If it turns out Thorncroft’s still connected to the Arcanum somehow — informants, sympathizers, anyone still loyal enough to warn him we’re looking — would you be willing to keep pursuing this anyway? Even if it meant exposing people you might have once respected?"

Alphina met my eyes steadily, no hesitation in her answer. "Meren’s mother deserves an answer more than any faculty member deserves my loyalty," she said simply. "Whatever this costs the Arcanum’s reputation, that’s a considerably smaller price than what’s already been paid by every family who’s lost someone to this."

I felt something ease in my chest at that, a confirmation of exactly the kind of ally I’d hoped I’d found in that boar-guarded clearing weeks earlier.

"Then let’s keep pulling the thread," I said. "Together."

She smiled, faint but genuine, and returned to her research with renewed focus, and I left the Arcanum that evening feeling, for the first time in weeks, like the investigation had finally found its proper footing.

Alphina’s promised note arrived three days later than she’d originally estimated, apologetic in tone but considerably more thorough than I’d expected for the delay. Beyond Thorncroft’s identity and his fondness for masks, she’d managed to trace a secondary thread — a small, obscure guild of independent enchanters operating on Tula’s fringes, known informally for taking commissions the more reputable Arcanum-trained crafters wouldn’t touch.

"I don’t have proof they’re directly involved," she cautioned, when I arrived to review her findings properly, "but the suppression rune’s specific construction matches a technique this particular guild has been known to teach its members. If Thorncroft commissioned the concealment work on that ledger from outside sources rather than applying it himself, this guild is the most likely candidate in the entire region."

"Would they know what the work was actually for?"

"Doubtful," Alphina admitted. "Independent enchanters like these tend to operate on a strict don’t-ask policy — they take commissions, apply the requested technique, and collect payment without inquiring too deeply into the client’s actual purpose. It’s part of what makes them attractive to people who need discreet work done."

"So even if we found them, they might not know anything useful."

"They might know Thorncroft’s current appearance, though, or where he’s been operating from recently, if he’s commissioned work from them more than once," she said. "Enchanters like this build relationships with repeat clients, even ones they know better than to ask too many questions about."

I turned that over, weighing the value of pursuing yet another thread against the mounting frustration of an investigation that seemed to spawn two new questions for every one it answered. "Do you have a name? A location?"

"A name, tentatively — a woman called Ressa, operates out of a modest shopfront near the eastern canal district. No confirmation she’s the specific enchanter who did this work, but she’s the guild’s most senior local member, and if anyone would know, it’s likely her."

I thanked Alphina for the thorough work, feeling the investigation’s shape slowly, steadily filling in around the edges even as its center remained frustratingly obscure. "I’ll follow up on Ressa carefully," I said. "Won’t push too hard, in case she genuinely knows nothing and I only succeed in making her nervous."

"Good instinct," Alphina said, a faint, approving smile crossing her tired features. "You’ve gotten considerably more careful since that first afternoon in the boar clearing, you know. I remember thinking you’d charge into anything without a second thought."

"I’ve learned a few hard lessons since then," I admitted. "Mostly from people considerably more patient than I naturally am."

"Then I suppose those people deserve some credit," she said, "for whatever it’s worth, watching you apply it now."

I carried that small, warm exchange with me longer than the investigation’s grim details, a reminder that even amid trafficking rings and disgraced instructors and old, dark cult histories, something genuinely good had grown out of a chance encounter with three overgrown Tuskboars in a quiet forest clearing.

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