by Darkbringer
“I’m sorry,” I told her as I nodded my head left to right to indicate I didn’t have. “I’m just looking for administration.”
“Second floor, Mister.” She walked out and stood beside me and pointed down the hall to where I could see steps going up.
“And what’s on this floor?” I asked her curiously.
She walked down the hall and I followed closely behind her as she pointed to the first door on the left. “Here’s where the messages and packages come to, and where you can go if you have any you need to be delivered. Messages can be delivered free to anyone who attends the school or stays at our dorms. To deliver to the city is a fee of two copper for the first six circles or a silver to deliver to the outer rim. To deliver outside the city requires the use of the messenger’s guild, and they have a representative here who can discuss the price depending on how far you wish for the message to travel.”
“That’s convenient,” I told her as she started on down the hall further.
“These next few rooms are for slaves or workers only. It’s where they store and sort a lot of the messages and packages that come until they can be delivered, and it’s also where a lot of the school records are held. For a small fee, you can have someone help you access the public information on various things from the school here.”
“Such as what?” I asked, all curious.
“Task records, member profiles, student grades, group standings, teacher and counselor ratings. There’s a lot of information available in the public records, Mister. It’s unfortunate that a lot of people don’t use it very often. You can learn a lot about whom you might be attempting to form a group with if you just come here first and look up their school records. I’d suggest never joining a ‘pick up’ group, without first researching the members a little beforehand. I didn’t, and now I’ll be spending the rest of my days a slave for my foolishness.”
She hung her head and a sense of sorrow seemed to emanate from her, so I gently patted her on the shoulder. “Sorry, Mister.” She looked up at me with her pale brown eyes and shook her head left to right. “I’m sorry. I can’t please you, at the moment. There aren’t any other slaves back yet to watch the floor. If you want to wait a few moments for one to return, then I can be with you.”
I jerked my hand back almost as if it’d been burnt! All I wanted was to offer her a little sympathy, but apparently slaves like her were free to use to indulge one’s pleasure with. No wonder she was sad! Sitting and watching the closet, and moaning whenever someone wanted her to, seemed to be all she did around here! And to think – De’Nara had offered to let me have Lee as a slave if I really wanted her!
“That… that’s OK.” I told her while trying to smile. “Maybe some other time, then.”
I thought a joke might help me feel better at least, but she just nodded. “I’m not well trained yet, but as long as there’s someone else here to watch the floor, I’ll do my best. They call me ‘Swallow’, and I’m best with my mouth, but you can enjoy me however you wish. I’m certain the school would be happy for me to have more practice, as long as you’re not one to break anything. Bruising is fine, but school policy doesn’t allow breaking unless you wish to pay the healer’s costs.”
“That… That’s OK,” I repeated. “I should probably go ahead and talk to them upstairs. The idea that the worst that would happen is I’d get stuck with a few healer’s bills for ‘breaking’ parts of a person really bothered me, and I rushed on up the steps and away from Swallow.
Immediately on reaching the second floor there was a wide opened sitting room and a receptionist at a desk looking bored while glancing over some papers. “Can I help you, sir?” She asked in a bored nasal tone.
“Uhh... I hope so,” I replied. “I’m Michael, I’m here to attend the academy.”
“Do you need to sign up, are you transferring from a different school, or have you preregistered?” The woman, who was dressed in a simply looking white dress was wearing glasses and had her hair up in a bun. She’d only glanced briefly at me, and really didn’t seem that interested, as she was busy pulling out papers and glancing over them.
“I’ve preregistered,” I told her while sitting down by hobo-pack, opening it and digging out a few letters. When I handed them in her direction, she took them without even looking up and checked their contents while making little “Umm hmm” sounds to herself.
“It appears that everything is in order. Do you wish a common room, a semi-private, or a private room?”
“What’s the difference?” I thought I’d taken care of all that stuff, but apparently there were a few things you had to decide on when arriving.
“A common room has four people staying in it,” she told me, “whereas a semi-private only has two, and a private room is just you.” Before I could ask about the difference in prices, she went on. “Common is ten gold a month, semi-private is twenty, and private is thirty. All rooms come with free meals and snacks in the cafeteria and have a curfew from night’s bell till morning’s bell. The wing leader of your floor will check in to make certain that you’re in your room on time, and failure to make room-call can result in fines, demerits, lack of privileges, and school punishments.”
I didn’t like the idea of sharing a room with other people; it’d be hard for me to practice my magics around a bunch of roommates; but I didn’t want to stand out by paying for a private room either. Thirty gold was what an average commoner made in a month’s time. I don’t think very many would be willing to spend that amount just for a private room, unless they had wealth and status. Of course, I had wealth and status; I just didn’t want anyone to know it.
“I’ll take a common room,” I told her, a bit reluctantly.
The woman nodded to herself, made a few checks in a box on the page in front of her, and then pulled up a key and handed it to me. “That’ll be thirty gold for the semester, and another five gold for the two weeks before the semester begins. We’re currently on a break between semesters, so there’s no curfew. If you have a place to stay in the city, you don’t need to rent a room until classes begin. After the start of the semester, all students are expected to stay in the dorm rooms, unless they can show proof of property in the city where they live.”
Nodding, I pulled a small pouch out of my boot and withdrew a single gemmed coin from it. The secretary looked up a little bug-eyed as she took it. “One Andorian King’s Crown,” she told me.
Crap!
Have I blown my cover already? I’d forgotten to change my travel coin into a smaller denomination before coming here. Andorian King Crowns were worth fifty gold coin – they weren’t something that a normal traveler simply pulled out of their purse. Nervously, I waited for her to ask me where I’d gotten such a coin – I was trying to come up with a good excuse, but failing as my mind was blank – but I was relieved when she finally sat it down and pulled a few coins from her drawer and sat them back on the desk.
“One platinum, five gold is your change,” she told me in her monotonous paper-pusher voice. “You’ll be in room 204, at the Eagle House, on 6th Northwest. The quickest way to get there is to head past the outer exit. Would you like an escort?”
“Nah. I’ll find it,” I told her. I just wanted to get out of here now, before she might ask me about my coin.
“Do you want a guide to show you around the school?”
“No thanks. I’m good.”
“Then,” she looked up and finally smiled towards me slightly, “I think we’re done here for now. Classes begin in two weeks, and you should receive your schedule and counselors name sometime next week. A message will be delivered to your room, and if you need someone to read it for you, you can come here and one of the slaves on the first floor will take care of that for you. Your wingleader will introduce their self to you before the semester begins and will give you all the dorm and room rules. If you have any questions about classes, or the school itself, feel free to ask either them or your counselor for advice; that’s wh
at they’re here for.”
“Thank you,” I told the lady as I took my change and key and tied my stuff back up into my pack.
“It’s been a pleasure,” she lied to me as I headed to the door. It’s never a pleasure for a paper-pusher to have someone bring them more work to do. If there was any pleasure involved in it for her, it was in seeing me leave.
And, like that, I was registered at the school and had a key to my new room!
A Common Room
Leaving the register’s office, I walked out and decided to head to find my room next. The trip out the back gates and to the ‘Eagle House’ dorm only took a few minutes to make, and the building itself didn’t stand out compared to the others around it. It was an old stone building, five floors tall, with stairs located on each end of the building. I took the first set of steps that I came to and went up to the second floor until I found room number four and unlocked it with my key.
Going inside, the room was much smaller than what I was used to – after all, I’d been raised with my own private room that had its own bath, study, and walk-in closets. This room was tiny compared to that, with just enough room to hold two sets of bunk beds, and a single dresser with four large drawers. There weren’t any chairs, couches, tubs, tables, or desks in here at all. When the school assigns a ‘bedroom’, it’s basically a bed in a room, it seems.
Going over and trying the drawers on the dresser, I was surprised to see that they had built in locks, and the top three drawers were already locked. The drawer closest to the floor was unlocked and pulled open easily for me, and inside was two smaller chests (they reminded me of cigar boxes back from Earth) and a plain silver key. Looking in the small chests, they were empty, so I was assuming that this drawer must be available, so I took unpacked my hobo-sack and, since no one was currently around, used my magic to clean the dirt and grime away before packing my stuff in the drawer.
Once everything was tucked away as I wanted it, I shut the drawer and turned the key in the lock to secure it. Out of curiosity, I tried my new silver key on the other three drawers and was relieved to see that it wouldn’t open them. There might not be much space that a person could claim as their own in these common rooms, but at least it did seem as if the school was trying to make it possible to feel secure in leaving our things here.
Content now that I’d packed and stored my gear all away; I walked over and tested out the bottom bunk bed near the door. It was slightly hard and lumpy, but it was better than the hard ground – or at least I thought so at first before I actually laid down and tried to rest upon it for a bit. It didn’t take but a few moments of stretching and trying to relax before I felt some small insect crawling on me. Slapping it away only gave me a few moments respite, as soon there was another little bug happily crawling up my arm. Inspecting it closer, I could tell it was fleas!
The beds were flea infested!
What type of place kept flea-infested bedding for people to sleep on?! I guess when you ask for a ‘common’ room, you get a really common room!
Disgusted, I got up and flicked a wave of fire magic across my body to eliminate any little bugs that might be on me. Then, a touch of earth magic to warp the wooden floor at the door, to keep it from opening if one of my roommates showed up while I was dealing with the problem. And finally, a touch of fire magic to pull all the heat out of the room. In moments, the windows were frosted over, ice covered the ceiling, walls, and floor; and the temperature in the room dropped hundreds of degrees. If it wasn’t for my magic keeping the air around me warm, as a buffer against the cold, the moisture in my lungs would’ve frozen and I would’ve died within moments.
Not content to simply make it slightly cold, I continued to use my magic to drain the heat from the room until I was certain that any living beastie in here with me would be frozen solid. I don’t know how durable a flea is against the cold, but I figure even they will die if I drop the temperature a few dozen times lower than freezing. If their blood freezes, they die. Right?
I think I’d heard somewhere that fleas can survive cold temperatures. How cold? Damned if I know! To be safe, I let the cold air linger for a few moments, utilized my air magic to create static electricity, and ran currents of flash lightning all around the room. Since there wasn’t anything electronic in this world, like there was back on Earth, all I had to worry about was not catching anything on fire. And, just in case fleas are somehow lightning resistant, I then reversed my fire magic and rapidly increased the temperature of the room up to the point where I felt things might be close to spontaneously combusting.
I figure flash freezing, electrocuting, and then flash heating the room almost to the point where things would combust should kill all the pests in here. At least, I hope so…
After several long moments of holding the heat to the point that it would almost blister the lungs to breathe it, I finally settled the environment in the room back to normal. The whole process had taken me about fifteen minutes from start to finish, and I was thankful that nobody had shown up to test the door in that time. With a last little tweak of earth magic, I straightened the wooden floorboards back down so the door would open and then I lay back down on the bed.
This time, much to my relief, I was happy to find that there weren’t any friendly visitors trying to share my bed with me. Content, I finally closed my eyes and took a nap for the evening.
Talk about a common room! Life here certainly was much different than what I’d experienced so far back home on the island!
Meeting DINO
“Hey you!” Someone was nudging me rather roughly while telling me to, “Get out. That’s my bunk.”
As I was beginning to stretch, I suddenly found myself tugged roughly and unceremoniously dumped onto the ground. Blinking away my confusion, I looked up to see Dangerous Idiot Number One standing over me, fuming. “Dino? What are you doing here?”
“Dino? Who the hell is Dino?” The young man standing over me was skinny and pock-faced, but he held himself with an air of superiority. “I’ll have you know, good sir, that I am Mageflame the Magnificent; Wizard of Fifth Circle Potential!” Extravagantly he bowed and pretended to flourish an imaginary hat. “And you, sir, are in my bed.”
Honestly, I thought he looked ridiculous. “Sorry, I didn’t know which bunk was free,” I told him honestly. “I was a little tired from my journey and wanted to rest for a bit. I apologize. I meant no harm.” I tried my best to suck up to a pompous ass like this one, rather than deal with his bruised ego for the next few years.
“Fear not! I shall forgive you this time.” Dino; I’m afraid I’ll probably always think of him as Dino to myself; held out his hand and helped me up from the bed. “Your bunk is that one.” He pointed to the top of the other set of beds. “It’s the worst of all spots and is reserved for the newest member of the room to deal with. This bunk,” he pointed back to his own, “is on the bottom and nearest the door. It makes it the easiest to get in and out of, so it’s the best bunk. It's reserved for whoever has been in the room the longest, and that would be I.”
Would be I? Yep. He’s DINO all right. Nobody sane talks like that. Apparently, he must think it sounds impressive. To keep the peace, I won’t be the one to tell him he’s being an idiot.
Coughing lightly, I held out my hand towards Dino. “I’m Michael. I’m new here, so I guess I’m in your care. If I make any mistakes, I apologize. I’m not very used to city life with a lot of other people.”
“’Tis fine,” Dino told me exuberantly. “I too once heralded from a common family, before my might and perfection was discovered. Fear not! No one here shall look down upon ye too much.” Then he laughed like an idiot. “After all, ye shall be the one on the top bunk looking down upon others!”
“Uhh... Right?” What the heck was I supposed to say to something like that? Yes, I see your point! I shall look down over all you idiots… What an idiot!
“So, who’re our other roommates?” I wanted to change the subject and
see if Dino could at least give me some useful information about whom else I was staying with. “Any cute girls in here?”
“Girls!” Dino sounded shocked. “In a boy’s dorm? God’s forbid, that’s not allowed!”
“Oh.” I tried to sound disappointed – which, in fact, I was. I was disappointed that he couldn’t tell that I was joking about such a thing! I really wasn’t expecting to find girls living in the boys’ dorm to begin with. The more I talk to Dino, the more I’m convinced he’s a complete moron – and apparently, he’s attended the school for the longest of anyone in this room, since he has the ‘best’ bunk.
“Never fear, though,” apparently, Dino completely bought my disappointed look, “there are plenty of fine members of the opposite sex at the school itself. Even someone such as you should be able to find someone there.”
Someone like me?! I couldn’t help but sigh and shake my head lightly. I’d already bedded two princesses and might even have a child growing in one of them – and he was making it seem like it’d almost be an impossible task for any decent girl to like me! One of these days, I’m going to tell him the truth, just to watch Dino’s head explode from jealousy! Not that he’d believe me, I’m certain.
“If you’d like, there may be some of the common girls which I can introduce you to, later,” Dino offered magnanimously.
“Uh… Sure.” I tried to sound enthused, but I was certain that any girl who knew and chased Dino simply had to be idiots themselves. People like him are contagious, I think. Honestly, the less time I spend around Dino, the happier I think I’ll be.
“Good! Good! Anything for a brother of the room!” Dino was smiling from ear to ear and acting as if he’d just agreed to donate both his kidneys to save my life. “You’ll find we take care of each other here! If there’s ever anything you need, ask one of us as we’ve all been here for at least a year now.”