In a flash of warm, radiant light and the sound of rustling paper, a loxodon appeared. Some of the students on the quad looked over at him with interest, attention caught by the motion as much as by the magic. Seeing that this new figure was neither threatening nor summoning some horrible magic that would delay classes for the rest of the afternoon, they kept walking, heading for their own destinations with meandering speed. Not much could put urgency in the heart of an underclassman who had already survived a cross-planar invasion.

Quintorius, History Chaser | Art by: Darren Tan

Straightening, the loxodon reached up and adjusted his goggles, then took a deep breath, closing his eyes and flattening his ears happily against the sides of his head. There was something about the smell of one's home plane that couldn't be replicated anywhere else in the Multiverse. Some cosmetic engineer from Avishkar or Ravnica would probably try to start bottling those scents sooner or later, but for the moment, the only way to breathe the smell of home was to go there. Not that you could ever really go home again. History proved that again and again, reminding the bold and the foolish alike that time was a process of continual change. When you stayed in the same place for long enough, you stopped noticing the slow evolution of everything around you. It became static. Step away, even for a short time, and the familiar became new and strange all over again.

Like the school. He looked around himself, drinking in the visible repairs, the changes, the transformations wrought by recovery and the scars left by the invasion. But he wasn't here to stand around wondering at the process of change. His visit had a purpose, so he started walking briskly toward the central arch that defined the campus skyline. It would have been faster to take a cart or one of the fancy new flying conveyances, but he wanted to feel the school around him, to get a sense of what he'd missed. That meant walking.

He took three steps before he tripped on a raised brick and hit the ground hard enough to knock the wind out of himself. Laughing under his breath, he pushed himself back up and resumed plodding in the direction that would eventually take him to the Lorehold campus.

However much some things might change, some of them would always stay the same.

Dean Augusta Tullus's secretary was a young owlin with brown-banded wings and long feathered tufts atop her head. They rose in surprise as Quintorius entered the office, approaching her desk with his head respectfully bowed. She set aside the papers she'd been working on.

"Mage-Scholar Kand?" She sounded more puzzled than anything else, like his presence in the office was too incomprehensible to be true. "I heard you—well, I was told you had—"

She paused, clearly unable to come up with a polite way to finish her sentence. Quint flattened his ears in amusement, smiling.

"Reports of my death or vaporization have been highly exaggerated, which is why I'm on an unplanned academic sabbatical, and not a memorial," he said. "That's part of why I'm here to speak with the dean. Is she in?"

"She is," said the secretary. "You know, er, reports of her death were not exaggerated, yes?"

"I do," said Quint sadly. "I am truly sorry we were unable to save her. She was—and is—an astonishing scholar. Is she available?"

"I'll ask," said the secretary, bouncing to her feet. She paused before heading for Dean Augusta's door to look back and say, "It's nice to have you home, Mage-Scholar."

Quint didn't have a chance to answer before she was gone. Looking at the wall, he sighed. "I wish I were that sure," he said.

The office did not reply.

In life, Augusta Tullus had been Lorehold's dean of order, making sure the students of her college didn't lose themselves in the sweet allure of chaos, keeping to the rules and using them as guidelines and guardrails against the risks history could harbor. In death, she had seen no reason to change her ways. Nothing in the school's charter forbade the dead from teaching, and she could now provide a valuable object lesson in what happened to historians who stepped too far outside the lines.

It didn't hurt matters that she wasn't sorry about the way she'd died. She had fallen standing up for her school and protecting her students, and those, too, were orderly things, things well within the defined scope of her duties as a dean.

She was seated behind her desk when Quint entered the office, and if not for the fact that she now appeared to be sculpted from stone, he wouldn't have known anything was different. She was studying a sheet of parchment, a pen moving quickly across it without her touching it in any visible way. The door swung shut behind him, its latch catching with a muted click. She looked up.

Augusta, Order Returned | Art by: Bryan Sola

"Ah, Mage-Scholar Kand. I admit, when Ketu said you were here, I thought she must have been mistaken. After all, you've managed to amass a truly remarkable number of unexcused absences from class. I know you're allowed to set your own pace for completing your foundational requirements, but there's a point at which it goes from normal student distraction to actual truancy."

"I was off-plane," Quint admitted. Dean Augusta had always had a knack for making him feel like a first-year defending his desire to become a historian. He wasn't even sure she did it on purpose.

It would be better if she did. She'd make a fine weapon against any future invaders. To be honest, he had almost expected Phyrexia to run up against the iron wall of her disapproval, realize they were outmatched, and go politely home, horrifically barbed tails between their legs.

"And did going off-plane render you incapable of sending us a notice of academic unavailability?"

"I—no, Dean Tullus. My apologies, but I've been distracted by more pressing matters."

"Academic matters?"

"In the sense that we have much to learn about the topic, yes. But not entirely academic. I believe the matter I'm presently researching is very pressing indeed."

"Then explain it to me, Mage-Scholar." Dean Tullus fixed him with a stern eye. "Now."

Quint took a deep breath and began his explanation, motivated by habit and training as much as by the desire to lessen the weight he'd been carrying through the act of sharing it with someone else. "It began when I planeswalked away from Arcavios for the first time …"

As always, Dean Tullus was an excellent listener. She listened as he described his first off-plane explorations, the visits to strange and unimaginable archaeological sites, and the strange coin motif he had encountered there, worked into ruins and artifacts spanning eons across vast gulfs in the Blind Eternities. Cultures with no commonalities using the same symbols, the same repeating images over and over again. All too often, those motifs had been in isolation, but after a time, he'd started to find little links that bound them together, leading him from one plane to the next.

"I hit a dead end on Innistrad, until Saheeli Rai—a former Planeswalker—arrived through an Omenpath and requested my assistance with a new discovery on her home plane of Ixalan. I was happy to help. And once I was there, I knew I was back on the trail of my invisible empire."

"And that trail led you from here?" she asked, voice sharp.

"Unfortunately, yes. I'm concerned the answers I've found may spell danger. This Coin Empire, or whatever it's to be called, spanned planes and cultures for an unknown length of time—possibly millennia, if my calculations are correct, and you taught me how to order my equations; I know they're correct. And then they just … went away. Functionally overnight, they were gone. I don't know whether they're another Phyrexia, or whether they encountered something even worse, but I know they were on Ixalan. They were here, too, and they may have left something behind."

"Do you want to tell me what?"

Quint shook his head, trunk waving in agitation. "Not yet. Not until I know I'm right. I want you to approve my accompanying your graduate excursion to the Fields of Strife."

Dean Tullus raised an eyebrow, looking bemused. "You needn't come to me for that. Dean Plargg—"

"Is not my academic advisor."

"Am I? Your status is currently in question with the registrar's office—and for that matter, with the bursar. According to the student handbook, only current students can be included in the protection spells that keep us from losing half a dozen second-years every time we approve a trip off campus. Have you heard what happened during the recent Introduction to Magibotanical Environments survey trip?"

Quint shook his head. "No, but—"

"Even so, it seems to me my counterpart would be more likely to approve your presence than I would. He's never met a rule he wouldn't bend if it amused him. Taking a maybe-dropout to the Fields of Strife to get consumed by the hungry dead is exactly the sort of thing he would find amusing enough to attempt."

"I don't want to go to the fields with Dean Plargg," said Quint. "I like him, but he's not my academic advisor, and he wouldn't understand the importance of doing this correctly. And I know that only current students are covered by the protection spells, but that's just students. Teachers are allowed."

"Surely, you're not suggesting that we offer you a position on staff when you haven't graduated."

"No. I'm suggesting you hire me as a temporary teaching assistant. They're covered by the protection spells, regardless of enrollment status. I could come with you safely." He hesitated, expression turning canny. "I'm sure Tolaria would be happy to have me enroll with them, and they wouldn't keep me out of the field."

Dean Tullus eyed him. "Are you threatening me?"

"Merely making an academic observation."

She pinched the bridge of her nose. "You realize this may complicate your reenrollment, when the time comes for you to resume your studies."

"I do."

"This is that important to you?"

He thought about that for a moment. "Weighed against a possible danger to the entire Multiverse … I guess. I guess it is, yeah."

Dean Tullus hesitated, looking at the determined man in front of her. When had he become so certain of himself? She had always been fond of him, charmed by his eagerness and his bright, unfocused scholarship, but she had never seen this man waiting within the boy. Quint had always struck her as the sort of scholar Lorehold excelled at producing: dedicated, intelligent, and disinclined to change the world.

But once in a great while, when everything went exactly as it should, they could produce people who would change their discipline for the better. Looking at Quintorius Kand, she felt as if, despite the background of chaos and the invasion, this might have turned out to be one of those times.

Base camp had been established at the very edge of the fields, providing a view of ruined, desolate landscape marked with the endless heat haze of the restless dead continuing their endless battle. Here, the Blood Age had never ended—never would end, as far as the combatants still fighting its skirmishes were concerned. So many of them had died here, over such a stretch of time, that they were no longer capable of anything beyond the fight.

And they would drag you down with them, if you were unlucky enough to catch their attention. Aspiring scholars had been lost here, not every time there was an expedition, but often enough that the protection wards were considered absolutely necessary. As a teaching assistant, Quint had helped with setting the ward lines, and the copper rods that anchored them now glowed and crackled with sparkling, ethereal power, keeping the dead temporarily at bay.

Fields of Strife | Art by: Josu Solano
0255_MTGSOS_Main: Fields of Strife

Inside the wards, anxious second-year students milled, waiting for their assignments. "Why do we call them second-years?" he asked, looking over at Dean Augusta. Away from the confines of her office, her stony form marked her as more visibly deceased.

"Because this is their second year of enrollment, Mage-Scholar. Or have you forgotten the organizational principles of the campus?"

"I know. I only meant … it makes sense to give people a chance to decide what they want to study before we lock them into a college, but why do we start them as second-year members of that college? Shouldn't you have two first years instead?"

"I think there's a reason you weren't enrolled in Quandrix, Mage-Scholar," said Dean Tullus, sounding amused. "If you'll excuse me, I need to remind our aspiring archaeologists of our course objectives. We didn't lose anyone last year, and I'm aiming to keep that streak going."

She drifted away, feet a few inches above the ground, to join the throng and call the students to attention. Quint watched her go, a trace of melancholy coiling in his gut. He'd never been overly interested in studying at the Fields of Strife, preferring to pursue more esoteric archaeological goals. The fields, fascinating as they were, were well-known and understood. There was always more to learn: this was the only place left on Arcavios where primary sources on the Blood Age were still available, and scholars would be studying the rich trove of information the fields represented for centuries. He just preferred to avoid the sight of blood.

Now, this might be the only place he could find the information he needed. The Coin Empire was still a threat; he knew that much in his bones. Even before he'd seen the figure in the tank on Ixalan, he'd been sure the strange insignia they'd left behind would eventually point to something truly dangerous. Now, after what he'd seen, he had no doubts remaining. The snarl designs in the friezes on Ixalan told him they'd been here at some point, and if they were still out there somewhere, they might come back.

He needed more information before anyone was going to listen to the ramblings of a half-educated maybe-dropout, so he needed to be here, to begin his communion with the dead of the Blood Age, who were the most likely to have encountered the Coin Empire directly. He watched Dean Augusta moving through the crowd of students, then turned and stepped intentionally through the protection wards.

It was time to begin.

—he had been a general in life, a leader of mighty armies, commanding his men to fight even as their bodies broke on the endless grinding wheel of war. He no longer remembered what he'd been fighting for by the time an enemy's tusks laid his belly open and sent him sprawling to the dust, the sword knocked from his hand on impact, his last thoughts of his wife and children who would never know his final resting place—

Quint jerked himself out of the fallen warrior's memories, shaking his head until the clash of metal on ivory faded away. The dead of the fields were largely caught in reliving their own deaths over and over again, surprised by them every single time. They didn't retain the fact that their battles had ended, that regardless of who had won their wars, they had died in the process. In that regard, there were no winners.

Breathing deeply in, he looked up at the sky, marking the position of the suns. After the better part of a week on the Fields of Strife, he was getting better about guessing how much time he'd lost. This particular battle was deep into the fields, well away from the shallow terrors where the current students moved and made their notes. Few people made their way this deep into the maze of shades, so the ghosts fighting here were stronger than the ones around the edges. They were all-consuming, almost alive in their ferocity, and dangerous.

Quint understood the danger better now than he had when he'd first arrived; he was losing time as the ghosts overwhelmed him, bouncing from nightmare to nightmare. When he returned to his tent each night, their violent deaths echoed in his ears, keeping him awake. Dean Augusta had spoken to him after the first time he'd fallen into a phantom fugue state.

"If you're not careful, we can lose you to the fields," she'd said, voice level and more solemn than he'd ever heard it. "If I don't see you making an effort to retain your mental barriers against the dead, I'm afraid I'll need to order your return to campus. You're not a student right now, Mage-Scholar Kand. Even if I didn't care about your wellbeing, which I do, I don't want to deal with the paperwork for losing you to the Fields of Strife."

He'd assured her that he would be careful, that he wouldn't allow himself to be swept away by the turmoil of the dead, then he'd gone right back to what he'd been doing. He kept his spirit shields as high as he could, refreshing them hourly, but there were so many spirits, and they were so furious, that he was beginning to worry that he might be consumed.

Taking another deep breath, Quint made note of the location of the camp, following the glint of the barrier wards to orient himself. This accomplished, he turned and waded deeper into the fields, heading for the wispy shapes of half-visible combatants. The deeper he got, the older and crisper their memories became. He was nearing the boundary past which they had all been ordered not to pass. It was an old line, actively scored into the stone. Even Dean Plargg had been known to forbid his students to pass that intangible barrier. The ghosts beyond were still so angry that there was no pacifying them.

Deliberately, not looking back, Quint stepped over the line.

On some level, Quint had expected the dead to come swarming for him as soon as he stepped into their territory. This was their side of the Fields of Strife; they might not own the land, but the living had long since surrendered it to their care. Cautious and tense, he walked across the field, shoulders hunched and ears back.

And nothing happened.

Quint straightened, beginning to relax. This was easier than walking through some of the better-understood areas near the camp. He could do this. He could—

His next step brought him squarely into the space occupied by a long-dead warlord, a human man with wild hair, battered armor, and a corpse's cold eyes. There wasn't time to do anything but brace himself, and then he was plummeting into the dead man's memory, into the clash and chaos of a battle so terrible it had left no survivors to write the history.

He was born for battle. Nothing else had ever held a place of importance in his life, only the song of sword on shield, the honor of dying for the commanders, the greater honor of surviving for them, of striding, conquering and confident, across battlefields and snarls. His will be the hand that tames this impossible world, and the great ones will celebrate him as he deserves.

Ceaseless Conflict | Art by: Liiga Smilshkalne

The warlord's thoughts were a river, washing Quint away on an unending tide of horrors and flickering, half-understandable images. Some of them held figures larger than anything he'd seen on Arcavios, distant and shadowed enough that they could have been almost anything, from crouching dragons to particularly large loxodon. But he didn't think so. Something about the shape of them whispered to him of Colony's End.

He was getting close. And the man's memories were becoming an overwhelming weight, pressing him flat. For the first time, he really understood what Dean Augusta had been saying about losing himself if he wasn't careful. Oh, he had always academically understood, but he'd been sufficiently stronger than the ghosts he grappled with that he'd never actually felt like he was in danger.

Pushing magically and mentally, Quint tried to step back, tried to pull his own thoughts free. Nothing happened. The images of war and bloodshed continued cascading over him, wearing his own edges away. Forcibly controlling his breathing, he reached deeper and deeper, until his mental trunk brushed against the sizzling, fizzing edge of something so much bigger than himself that the dead man was nothing but a buzzing insect circling his spirit. Firmly grasping the Blind Eternities, he pulled himself forward, through the ghost and into the open space beyond. It wasn't a planeswalk. It was more like playing hopscotch with a tiny corner of reality, and when he opened his eyes, the dead warlord was gone.

Ghosts surrounded him, tangled in their endless battles, but he was alone in his skin, and no longer in danger of being swept away. He trumpeted delight through his trunk, loud as a hunting horn, and took a large step forward.

His foot caught on a rock as he began to lower it, and he lost his balance, stumbling forward as he tried to recover. Arms pinwheeling, he fell, twisting as he did to avoid hitting the nearby rocks face first. Instead, he shoulder-slammed into the ground and punched through the thin crust of stone that had been concealing a deep sinkhole, sending him toppling down into the dark.

There was still dust swirling in the shafts of sunlight shining through the hole opened by his fall when Quint woke up, pushing himself off the rocky ground and squinting up into the brightness from above. He'd clearly crashed through an artificial patch on the rocky ground; the remains of the ceiling proved that, patterned as they were with a polished stone mosaic that was still more than half-visible, despite the ages of dust that covered it. No one had breathed in this space for centuries.

The air coming in through the hole lessened his natural concern about gasses gathering underground, and he straightened, turning in a slow circle as he looked around himself. The walls of this carefully symmetrical sinkhole were lined with shelves, and those shelves were piled with treasures that belonged in a museum, artifacts that must have dated back to the Blood Age. He recognized some of the pottery shapes, and the specific knapping on the ceramic knives. He'd seen things like this before.

But not these things. This was a trove that could justify any number of deeper expeditions into the fields, riches beyond even the primary sources represented by the dead. And he'd simply … fallen into a major historical find. Again.

He didn't have any of his tools with him, hadn't been planning on actual archaeology today. He took another look around, then selected a ceramic knife from the edge of the nearest shelf. It had already been spattered with dirt and pebbles from his fall; it was disturbed, and without a toolkit, he needed something to prove to Dean Tullus what he'd found. Everything else could be documented with archaeomancy and studied in situ once a proper team had been assembled.

There was a narrow entryway leading out of the room. The ground beyond it seemed to slant upward. Quint turned to trudge in that direction, only pausing when he thought he saw a geometric glittering out of the corner of one eye. But when he turned around, there was nothing there, so he just kept going.

Stepping over the boundary back into the warded and well-protected camp came with a feeling of relief Quint wouldn't have anticipated. The ghosts had been surprisingly distant during his walk back across the fields; it was as if they'd wanted to avoid the knife that he was carrying. Or maybe that was just wishful thinking and he'd simply done a better job of avoiding their haunting places.

Dean Augusta was outside her tent, watching impassively as the undergraduates moved among the shades. She turned at the sound of Quint's heavy footsteps, a look of brief surprise lighting her sculpted features.

"Mage-Scholar Kand," she said. "I didn't expect to see you until the evening."

"Dean," he replied, puffing slightly from the exertion. He held out the knife he'd taken from the cache, blade flat against his hand, to make it clear he meant no threat. "I have made a discovery."

Her eyes widened. "Where did you get that?" she asked.

"Like I said, I made a discovery." He scrunched up his face in brief self-deprecation. "Fell right into it, you might say. Past the second boundary line, in the territory of the deep shades. There's a whole cache of artifacts there, older than any I've seen brought back from the fields in my lifetime."

"And you disturbed the site?"

"By falling into it, which was literal, by the way. I brought this to show you the scope of my find. I didn't touch anything else. I needed academic advice."

She nodded slowly. "That was the correct approach, Mage-Scholar. Good work. The cache has held for centuries. For now, you need to sleep and eat something, lest you join the dead. You'll return to the site tomorrow at first light. Take Mica with you."

Quint blinked. "Mica?" He'd barely spoken to the geomancer.

"Yes. His connection with the earth will keep him isolated from the more dangerous spirits, and you can protect him from what remains. I can't move that far without assistance, and most of these students are too green to delve so deeply into the fields. Mica will help you document your findings, then we can come up with a plan for preservation and removal as necessary."

It was difficult to explain the urgency he felt. Quint sighed, nodding in agreement.

"Yes, Dean," he said.

Morning found Quint stepping back over the boundary wards, a buff human undergraduate bounding along beside him. Mica wasn't much of a conversationalist. The young geomancer was a natural fit for Lorehold, being so attuned to the mineral world that he sometimes forgot flesh and bone existed. He had no real gift for the spiritual side of their magic, but his geomancy was unparalleled.

Quint wasn't honestly sure Mica remembered who he was. He wasn't entirely sure Mica was actually the geomancer's name. It didn't actually matter. He almost lurched across the fields, sidestepping ghosts with eerie ease. Quint had given him rough directions, and it seemed like that was all the man needed, because he was heading the right way. Quint followed briskly in his wake, taking advantage of the brief break in the endless parade of ghosts that Mica's passage created.

When they reached the hole in the ground, Mica paused for the first time. He knelt, touching the broken stone, then shot Quint a sharp look.

"I didn't mean to," said Quint. "I tripped. There's an opening over there." He waved a hand, indicating a seemingly natural cave connecting to the underground tunnel into the sinkhole.

Mica nodded, straightened, and trotted toward the opening, leaving Quint to follow once again.

Together, they descended into the earth, emerging into the treasure house of the underground hoard. Quint froze as soon as he entered, ears going flat.

Someone had been here. Objects on the shelves had been moved around, leaving streaks in the dirt. He was reasonably sure that a few of the smaller artifacts were missing.

It hadn't been any of the students, he knew that. Dean Tullus had called them all back to base and was spending the day on a lecture detailing the methods for quickly packing and clearing out a site that was in a dangerous location and couldn't be safely left as it was. And the dead had no reason to move their own artifacts.

While Mica moved to the center of the room and knelt again, beginning his conversation with the stone, Quint turned, moving slowly. This time, when he caught the geometric glitter out of the corner of his eye, he stopped turning and held that angle, beginning to inch toward the light. Some Omenpaths were only visible when viewed from the exact right angle.

Like this one, it seemed. Following the light took him to another narrow opening and through it to a natural cavern, smaller than the first, and clearly not as modified: the walls were rough, the ceiling low, and the center of the room occupied by a woman in clothing he recognized from a brief stop on Thunder Junction, carefully wrapping pieces of pottery in leather sheets.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

She barely glanced up. "Can't move breakables via Omenpath without taking care to wrap them nice and secure first," she said. "Thought you lot were archeologists. I'd think you'd know that."

"I do, but you—why are you taking those things? They're not yours!"

"Not yours, either." She glanced up through a fringe of dark hair, flashing him a fierce grin. "Don't get all high and mighty with me now. I know you people don't mind a bit of graverobbing when the mood suits you. I've got a buyer for old Arcavios artifacts over on New Capenna, and when something doesn't have an owner, it's not theft to take it where it's going to be properly appreciated. The apple farmer doesn't rob the tree."

"That's … These things do have an owner. They belong to Arcavios. They belong to history." He paused. "Mostly history, I think. You can't take them."

She shrugged. "You can't stop me."

Quint frowned at her, then stomped his foot to kick up a cloud of dust as he etched sigils into the air with his fingers. Echoes filled the cavern, bouncing off the walls and kicking up clouds of gray-white dust that coalesced, slowly, into ghostly figures. They were more faded than the shades roaming the fields; not the restless dead, but the summoned. They moved toward the woman with hands outstretched.

Flashback | Art by: Flavio Greco Paglia
0115_MTGSOS_Main: Flashback 0333_MTGSOS_ExtRM: Flashback

She pulled a whip from her belt, flicking it at the nearest of them in snaps of hot blue light. Some of them recoiled, but more kept coming.

"This isn't very hospitable," she snapped, glancing back at Quint.

"You're not a guest," he replied.

She glared, grabbing her half-filled pack as she jumped to her feet. "See how warm a welcome you get if you ever come by Thunder Junction," she said. "Ask for Stella Lee. I'll make sure you have the reception you deserve."

He stomped his foot again. More figures came out of the walls. Stella Lee, moving fast now, leapt into the Omenpath and was gone, leaving him alone with the echoes of the dead.

For a moment, he considered going after her. Then he looked at what she'd left behind, and he sighed.

No. This mattered more.

Quint returned, arms full of recovered artifacts, to find Mica with his hands pressed flat to the cavern floor and eyes closed.

"Something walked here," he said. "A long, long time ago. Something that shouldn't have walked here."

He pulled back his hand then slammed it into the floor, driving it through the stone like he was digging into a piece of hot bread. The stone rippled then peeled back as he pushed against it, revealing a stretch of shale, gray and irregular, and marked with a line of fossil footprints.

Quint's breath caught. The tracks, long and clawed, matched the hands of the creature he'd seen preserved in Colony's End. Whatever it was, its kin had walked here. The Coin Empire had definitely reached Arcavios. Above them on the wall was a tile mosaic of an armored creature with a lance in one hand, fighting a tentacled horror from beyond the realms of imagination. He'd seen such things before, in the Biblioplex. Stories of the terrors that awaited outside the Blind Eternities, in the lands where nightmares dwelt.

"We need to document the site," he said, proud of his voice for not shaking. "Dean Augusta is waiting for us."

Mica blinked at him. "I found fossils," he said.

"So you did, and they need to be documented as well. We bring history into the present by making a record and pushing it into the future." Quint looked around, weary all the way down to his bones. "We have work to do."

Mica nodded and rose, and the work began.