59. Games and Puzzles

As I sit on a cushion and stare down into a cup of hot tea, it’s easy to see why Allison gave up on magic. Everybody has been doing their best to comfort me, today. Not just my headmates, but Talla, Tara, and even Anna, though it’s only the second time we’ve met. That’s how I’ve found myself sitting in Anna’s lab with a plate of sweet pastries, tea, and an assortment of games and puzzles to freely choose from.

I do appreciate it. A little. The warmth of the teacup on my hands is comforting, even in the intense summer heat, and the flakey crust of the pastries has a subtle sweetness that reminds me of croissants. It’s...nice. But that happiness is like a tiny drop in an ocean of overwhelming hopelessness.

It’s not as bad as yesterday. I feel a bit like myself again, but with that awareness comes pain. I know that this crushing feeling is being caused by magical strain, but that doesn’t blunt the impact one bit. It just makes me feel that much more worthless for being too stupid and weak to shake it off.

“You’re ruminating again,” Anna notes from across the table.

She’s been quiet, for the most part. Welcoming me into the lab and letting me relax here. Happy to converse if I engage her, but not the type to force the issue. Good company.

“Sorry,” I mutter into my teacup, taking another sip. “Not trying to.”

The tea is hot enough that I can feel it warming me all the way down to my stomach. I’m glad to feel something through the muted static that seems to envelop my entire being. Eva spoke to our other headmate—even got a name. I should care more about that, but I can’t bring myself to. I should be focused on learning magic, but the thought makes me queasy right now.

Anna sighs. “Could you teach me a game?” she asks. “One from your world. Something simple.”

Did we ever tell her about that? Whatever, I can’t remember and it’s an open secret anyway.

I look up at her and shrug. “Sure. Paper?”

She slides a sheet of paper across the table, along with a charcoal pencil. I quickly scribble a simple three by three grid and place a circle in one of the corners.

“Tic-tac-toe?!” Maggie exclaims. “Are you fucking kidding?!”

“You make a, uh, [cross],” I try to explain, demonstrating the symbol for her. “Three in a row wins.”

The scientist stares down at the sheet for a few seconds before sliding the sheet back over and shaking her head.

“A bit too simple, sorry,” she says. “I can already tell that this will always end in a draw unless one player makes an egregious error.”

“Even without playing?” I ask.

She taps the side of her head and smiles. “Skills. This is my job, remember?”

I purse my lips, considering what else I can easily replicate. Then I hold out my hand, balled into a fist.

“[Rock],” I say simply, before sticking out two fingers. “[Scissors].” Then finally holding out my whole palm. “[Paper].”

“I cannot believe you,” Maggie groans.

“We go at the same time,” I explain. “[Rock] defeats [Scissors], which defeats [Paper], which defeats [Rock].”

Anna doesn’t need any further explanation for why, or what the words mean. I can tell she’s already breaking it down into its most basic elements, so I’m not surprised when she frowns.

“That’s almost pure chance,” she says. “No different from flipping a coin or rolling a die.”

I shrug. “Almost. The throw is just part of it,” I argue. “We’re already playing the real game.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Oh? How so?”

“Prediction and manipulation,” I reply, once more regretting that I’m not as advanced in the language as the rest. “I’ll throw [Rock].”

Anna laughs. “Oh, I see! A bluffing game—albeit a very rudimentary one. Is this really the best your world has to offer?”

I shake my head. “No. Just me right now.”

“Fine, let’s play a few rounds,” she says.

It takes a couple of tries to work out the count, but she plays along. I’m not actually very good at Rock, Paper, Scissors, and I was fully prepared to just throw rock every time, but I’ve got a secret weapon.

“Anna likes things to be neat and orderly,” Allie advises me. “She never plays the same thing more than twice in a row, and only does it after losing. I think she’s trying to throw randomly, but she’s avoiding patterns. Throw whatever loses to her last play.”

Following that advice, I manage to win seven out of ten games before Anna catches on to the strategy and adjusts. We only play a few more rounds after that, but she seems to enjoy herself.

“Very interesting,” she says. “I like the race to recognize and adapt to each other’s strategies. It’s still a bit simplistic for my tastes, but I admit that I underestimated the emergent meta-strategical elements.”

“Sorry,” I murmur, going back to my tea and snacks. “I know it was boring.”

She shakes her head. “Not at all. You know, I was surprised that you chose to come here of all places to destress from your magical shock.”

“It wasn’t really my idea,” I hedge.

“Still, Professor Talla could have taken you anywhere, but you came here. Did I really make such an impression?”

I reach into our satchel to retrieve the puzzle cube she gifted me. “I like games and puzzles,” I tell her. “Even got offered a class. This one reminds me of home.”

“You certainly seem unusually familiar with it,” she comments. “Did you take the class?”

I shake my head, idly shuffling the cube as I speak. “I need to learn magic.”

Anna hums thoughtfully. “Unlicensed thaumaturgy? And it sounds like you’re pushing for a four-star class like me.”

My hands freeze in place. That was careless of me—I don’t usually let things like that slip.

“Uh...”

“Don’t worry, it’s not actually illegal as long as you’re not obviously casting in public places,” she assures me. “You’ve been studying under professor Talla, I assume?”

“Not much,” I admit, going back to fidgeting with the cube. “Just some early tips.”

Come to think of it, Talla hasn’t really taught us any more magic since we arrived in the city. She’s been pretty busy behind the scenes, and most of the time we’ve spent with her has been at her clinic.

“Really?” Anna asks, surprised. “Have you just been exploring thaumaturgy on your own, then?”

“A little,” I reply. “Only a few spells.”

I’d show her my notes, but I don’t have them handy, she wouldn’t be able to read them if I did, and they could potentially reveal too much about our class. So I guess I wouldn’t show her my notes. Stupid. Ugh, I hate this.

“I won’t ask about your potential library of skills, but is there a reason you haven’t done more?”

Oh right, I’d been meaning to ask about this. I might need Allie’s help to find the words, though.

“I think creating spells is...uh...” Come on, I even specifically tried to learn this word before.

I’m just about to give up and ask Allie when Anna interrupts me.

“Contextual?” she offers.

“Yes! Thank you,” I say, before realizing what that means. “You already know that?”

“Sort of,” she hedges. “It’s commonly known among mages that spells are personalized, but it’s difficult to collect data on the subject. Privacy about skills is already a big obstacle for class theory, but mages are both uncommon and particularly secretive.”

“But spells are contextual?” I press.

“In a way,” she says. “This is speculative, but my favorite theory is that it’s the intent, rather than the person or situation. The skills are bricks, but it’s up to the mage how to assemble them. Thaumaturgy skills are the mortar holding those bricks together.”

I nod. “That’s what I thought too. With the last spell, it felt like there were other shapes, but I wanted a different one. It was hard.”

“Is that why you suffered so much shock?” she asks.

That would be a convenient excuse, but if I say yes to that, she’ll definitely consider it a data point. I don’t want to mess with her research after she’s been so helpful.

“No, that was something else.”

I slide the last piece of the puzzle cube into place and set it down on the table, solved.

“Even while holding a conversation,” Anna notes, raising an eyebrow. “Impressive.”

“Thank you,” I reply, smiling. “I want to talk about magic more, but not right now. It hurts.”

Her eyes widen. “Oh! I’m sorry, that was insensitive of me. I got stuck in research mode again.”

“It’s fine,” I assure her. “It helped. I think we can try another game, but it will need some pieces.”

Anna leans closer. “Oh? We have lots of figures. Some of the lab members only come here to practice their carving and painting.”

I have to laugh. Even a world over, some things never change.

* * *

Anna stares down at the makeshift board, frowning. An eight-by-eight grid on paper, which she had to help Vi make because the human struggled to draw the grid cleanly without skills. For some reason, Vi insisted on shading every other square in a pattern through the entire grid, despite the fact that—by her own admission—it has no impact on the rules of the game.

On either side of the board, various pieces are arranged in two neat rows. Finding the pieces was quite a challenge, between Vi’s difficulty communicating and the limited resources in the lab. Vi wanted identical pieces of different colors on either side, but Anna had to compromise.

It’s a war simulator of some kind—a popular genre of game, thanks to the obvious practical utility. Anna was worried that the grid would make it too simple until Vi started explaining the rules. A front line of foot soldiers with simple movements, defending two of each specialist, each with their own class and skills. It’s an impressive abstraction for how real-world battles work, albeit with unrealistically perfect information.

“It bothers me that it’s not rotationally symmetrical,” Anna notes. “Why mirrored instead of rotated?”

Violet glances up at her, already much more animated than she was when she arrived, and shrugs. “No clue.”

Fair enough. It would be silly to start changing the rules before even playing the game anyhow. It took some time to communicate how each piece moves. Anna suspects that there are some translation errors, but the basics came across—foot soldiers can only advance, bodyguards move orthogonally, priestesses move diagonally, the empress can do either, and the consort can move to any adjacent space. The mages were the most confusing, due to their ability to pass over other pieces and odd movement patterns, but it’s fitting for such an unpredictable role.

It strikes Anna as odd that it’s the consort, rather than the empress, that must be taken to end the game, but she just accepts it as an odd eccentricity of the foreign game.

“Are we ready to begin?” Anna asks. “This...what did you call it?”

“[Chess],” Vi reminds her. “I don’t know what the word means in our language either. It’s just what the game is called.”

“You move first,” Anna suggests. “I’ll pick it up as we go.”

Violet shrugs, and Anna feels a little bit bad for deceiving her. Going second isn’t just a matter of learning the game. She watches closely as Vi pushes the foot soldier in front of her consort forward two spaces.

[Analyze Play]

Calculate the efficiency of an action within a game. Dramatically increased Awareness and Will while doing so.

A useful trick for picking up and testing new strategies, but also valuable for testing the overall complexity of a game. It was useless for [Rock, Paper, Scissors], but allowed her to instantly solve the simple circle and cross game.

Anna stares at the board for an uncomfortably long time, her skill not quite giving her the information she’s looking for. Instead, a dull ache forms behind her eyes before she has to stop trying.

“Oh! That’s a really good sign,” she declares excitedly.

“What is?” Vi asks.

“Don’t worry about it,” Anna replies with a wink before mirroring Vi’s move. “I’m just looking forward to learning this game.”