The red-robed students took off at a full sprint for the safety of the lower quarter, rousing everyone they could find on the way to spread the news. Between the two terrifying old men currently involved in a stare-off, being given an out was much appreciated. Also, there was food involved!
Cataphron and Artorian were soon the only people remaining in the area, still mostly at a standstill as their injuries healed. They collapsed at the same time, no longer needing to hide just how banged up they were to save public face. The students were their judges, after all. A mutual and unpleasant sound erupted from both of them. “Ghaah.”
That bout had taken so much out of them, but that was something that neither would admit. This was the end of the rope. Artorian pulled a waterskin free and downed a significant amount before tossing the rest to his opponent. “So… infernal, huh? What’s that like? Can’t say I’ve ever gotten to talk to someone who has it until now. Are they all self-righteous sods like the Clerics?”
“I don’t want to hear that from your shiny mouth, baldy.” Cataphron snorted. He downed the rest of the waterskin and threw it back. “Noise notwithstanding, if I ever see anything that bright again, I’m killing it on principle. Infernal is by far the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I only had the other two before.”
Artorian pulled out a sack of rations, and threw a second over. He still wasn’t willing to get too close if he didn’t need to. It was snatched from the air without effort. “Before?”
The spindly man grumbled. They were on speaking terms already? Weren’t they supposed to be at each other's throats? Was it going to be like this for the next five years? He hated it, and they’d barely gotten started. “I’m still mad at you, and I want to pickle your guts. But… since we’re going to be stuck talking to each other for the next few seasons, I may as well be the more sporting academic.”
Artorian bit into a piece of honey bread, loudly tearing a whole chunk out. Cataphron felt appalled when he heard it. All these years, and still this uncultured little… forget it. “I’m only going to give you the quick history. Read the rest yourself.”
Artorian crossed his legs and prepared for a story, lounging sideways as a growing list of items made their way into a smorgasbord around him. Each additional item only unsettled Cataphron further. Artorian lived for that glare, so he maintained direct, uncomfortable eye contact.
“When we were enrolled as youngsters, the Academy had nothing to do with cultivation. It was all knowledge for knowledge's sake. Wisdom, Mathematics, argumentations, philosophy, and many other fields of study that all ended in ‘y’. Around two decades ago, things changed when Master Diomedes took over as Headmaster. He veered away from the previous teachings. Different kinds of ‘instructors’ came to the mountain. They offered us ‘favors’. Very strange favors.”
The spindly man took a bite from an apple he stole from the pile and crunched through it while he continued. He wasn’t bothered in the least that he was pilfering from his opponent’s food supply; it wasn’t breaking the rules of the oath.
“These men were strange. They offered to open the pathway to power within us, if only we spent time studying on how better to use it. As an academy of entitled snobby know-it-alls, this deal was laughed at. We all took the offered favors, and nothing was ever the same. I unlocked infernal Essence, and became aware that I previously had two existing Essence channels. Since you’re a cultivator, you know the drill. Rip your connections open as far as possible, have the corruption be gifted to the tankard, and twist the Essence into a string to form a spiral.”
Artorian nodded. He followed so far, even if the beginning was entirely new. He decided to hold his questions for now.
“When the ways of cultivation came, every other field of study fell to the wayside. This Essence gave us power. Boys that were picked on and mocked brooked such insults no longer. The goal shifted from knowledge for knowledge’s sake, to an acquisition for power’s sake. We still gathered knowledge, but it was no longer for everyone else. Mine, mine, and mine alone is how it went. Master Diomedes encouraged this behavior… then things got… suspicious.”
A flagon of elderberry wine was loudly guzzled from, forcing Cataphron to pause his short history lesson. He was going to complain until the wine was tossed over to him. It tasted excellent, if a little too sweet. Where was this geezer getting all this food from? A project for later. “Infernal does one thing very, very well. It breaks down anything it comes in contact with, or at least it tries. The difference between losing something normally, and losing something to the infernal is… profound. When infernal Essence takes something apart, you gain exquisite, masterful awareness of how it was put together in the first place, in some truly impressive detail. It doesn’t matter what that something was, and that includes the body.”
A large gulp drained the flagon, and it was tossed back for a refill. “I understood the way my body worked, and the best ways to improve it from that point forward. I understood muscle, skin, and bone on a level… you can’t get it from a book, from study, from dissection. It’s just not possible. No amount of explanation opens your eyes to the inner workings of something like feeding it to the infernal. Then, once you know, it allows you to remake it. Better. Stronger. Faster.
“You saw that your air blades did little? It is because I no longer bleed. Also, my body is no longer made from weak flesh.” He smiled his sharp teeth at the other academic, expecting to have just thrown a revelation so large at the old man that he’d hold his face and wail like a spurned lover.
Artorian sucked on a grape, unperturbed. He chomped it down after as he rolled his wrist, wanting more. Cataphron continued as sourly as the grape he tried: “We started using it on anything and everything, and we found that decay, rot, decomposition, and concepts similar to infernal natural functions are what allowed us to cultivate from it. Then one day a student died… and the three of us next to him jumped two ranks. Madness reigned that day, and most of the upper academy didn’t survive the night.
“Those people you met on each level? They’re all that was left. They lived in the remains of the deceased; it’s amazing for cultivation. We all needed something a little different to stop gaining so much corruption. So we settled on the layers we were compatible with, and promised not to interfere with one another unless it was for lessons.”
A large pink cloud rose to the sky. That nuisance of a man had set up a smoking device? Artorian was taking big, aggravating puffs from it. Cataphron might not be able to harm the old student, but that pipe thing was free game. He leered at it and put the idea aside for later exploration.
“Master Diomedes said that he ‘found a great disturbance of the dark’ and left us for what he called ‘secluded cultivation’. Meaning he left us as he descended into the tunnels. We’ve been trying to mine our way down ever since they collapsed from earth tremors. Rather, we made the slav… students do it. Our surroundings began to reflect what we needed to grow stronger. You came in through the Oldwalls? I’ve not heard that name used in ages. I know it’s Xi’an now, based on some mad Noble that came through and bought the whole thing. Then he got stupid drunk one day and made a glorious exit, never to be seen again.”
A loud slurp made Cataphron shoot up. “That’s it, I’ve had enough of you! I’m going down.”
Artorian watched the infernal cultivator stomp off with a pleased expression until he was well out of sight, not even bothering to pick up his lavish treats. Once gone, Artorian’s expression turned into a hostile snarl. His nose scrunched up as he regarded the empty space with disdain. He could only keep the ruse up so long. It had been taxing, though he agreed with part of that last-mentioned statement.
“Yes, you are… you are going down.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
Cataphron tore half his hair out after a single week. He sat on the ground to center himself, just to clear his senses of the recurring nightmare. Ever since that ‘party’, his senses played tricks on him. He saw spots
of light where there were none, heard sounds where there was silence, and felt pricks of pain though he was unharmed.
His mounting frustrations were vented on a venue currently known as ‘the cave of a thousand screams’. It was his retreat. It was cold. It was comfortable. The brightness and the sound didn’t reach him, preventing the post-battle migraine from resurfacing. At least It was a nice cave. Many screaming punches had gone into its creation. Crafting a lasting image of himself had been a plan for a few years now, but never before had he felt the need to leave something behind with any urgency.
Not until recently.
Cataphron spent so much time in his man-cave that the students matching his Essence channels now came here to find him. While it was the common social norm for the student to approach the Master, the Skyspear ex-Headmaster was neither hospitable nor cordial. Meetings were an unpleasant experience for all parties involved. Questions received only grunts as the agitated academy remnant worked off his irritation by grinding granite to dust using nothing more than his fingers. On the few occasions Cataphron did leave seclusion, it was with a quick pace and the sourest of expressions.
Jacobsen and Makkah—both earth-Essence students—had been hoping for some actual guidance from someone they’d been told rolled the same boulder they did. They knew beforehand that the original social rules applied, so they had come prepared. Unlike with their new teacher, this one required a great deal of fealty. They both had to remain bowed in the hand-to-fist stance until the Master addressed them.
Unfortunately for them, the water, earth, and infernal cultivator wouldn't spare them a look. Dealing with people caused the echoes of a migraine to resurface, and those made him irritable. This didn’t change that not showing propriety was unhealthy. It dropped your chances of a reply from grunt to a dissatisfied sneer. The C-ranked cultivator reacted poorly when the slav… students, drat them, didn’t show him appropriate respect and fealty.
He expected to be bowed to; being Master entitled him this. Cataphron didn’t even notice when the waiting students departed without having received answers. He hated this sudden upheaval of order. He hated the colorful leaf-and-petal robes the students now wore. He hated knowing where they’d gotten them, and how that insufferable old bird seemed to have them in spades.
Why did such a fickle man have years worth of clothing with him? Entire collections had unspooled from one of his spatial pouches. He put it out of mind, and wondered where it had all gone wrong. At first it had been him in charge, and those initial few days had been perfect.
When he’d left his adversary, who was smoking from that ridiculous pipe, he’d descended the steps and gathered the students with a command. Cataphron made the students understand that following the directives he wanted was better for them, and they’d bowed to him. Excellent. Exactly as it should have been.
When he passed, they bowed with their fist to palm. He snapped at them for pose correction now and again, but they learned swiftly enough. Cataphron thought to take his time and pick choice students over the next few weeks depending on who showed promise. Pleasing the entire student body? Ha!
He’d teach only the strong and let them oppress the rest for him. Cataphron needed to focus on his own cultivation, as he had been for years before that bothersome geezer arrived. There’d be a few weeks of turbulence, and then everything would equalize in his favor; as it always had.
Then he’d missed a day. One. Miserable. Single. Horrible day. Artorian had irritated him with some nonsense, and a few hours of strength-training to get his mind off the matter had turned into a full moon’s worth of body tempering. Upon returning from self-seclusion, the Skyspear Master had found an entirely different dynamic active in his school. No longer were the students divided by tier, rank, or residential level. They had been provided new robes and clothes, and they had all been put on equal footing.
Currying favor with cheap gifts? The gall of the longbeard! Such tactics wouldn’t work against the tide of his fear-mongering. The students were told to do ‘what they were good at’ and ‘what they liked to do’ in pursuit of growth. Where Cataphron had done the intelligent thing and cultivated after securing nutrition, that old miser wasted his time giving lectures and lessons without regard to who had the skill to apply those lessons.
Artorian had the students in a tizzy. After encouraging the students to teach each other to read and write, he locked his next lesson behind their ability to all read and write. Not even the gifted were given lessons if the worst student couldn’t use this basic ability. This ultimatum spurred them to chat and debate amongst themselves. In fact, they learned that nothing taught a lesson as quickly as needing to teach it to someone else.
Cataphron felt ill at the restructuring. The world is too unfair for such things! Artorian would fail eventually when he ran into the inevitable wall that some people simply couldn’t learn if they didn’t have the innate gift. “Phah.”
After the change of clothes, Artorian had given out bundled bearskins. ‘Pillows’, he’d called them. Wasn’t much of a pillow when you could unfurl the skin and use it as a blanket, but it was a meaningful gesture when they hadn’t owned anything of their own during their tenure here.
Cataphron scoffed again. Those starved, scrawny little beanpoles certainly weren’t going to stay warm just by huddling together. He’d show them how to make a proper fire one day soon, for now he needed to regain the exoskin lost in the fight. Abyss those light lances!
Many things seemed odd as Cataphron went on his stroll. He saw new varieties of seeds being planted. Some kind of cleaning effort was ongoing, and baskets of food were being hauled up the steps. When had they even acquired woven baskets? Where were these mountains of nuts, fruits, and giant meat chunks coming from? Thinking about it just made him see spots, the migraine returning in an instant.
Holding his head, Cataphron turned on his heel and returned right back to his private, little dark sanctum. These minor changes in his academy didn’t matter. He could address them when the residual damage he suffered was gone and he wasn’t feeling completely awful.
Unlike his predecessor, Artorian neither needed nor wanted any of the filial propriety, nor compulsory acts of respect. He pulled students from their bowing, brushed them off, and poked their noses with a smile. “Tut, tut, tut. None of that now.”
He’d gone around and met with the students as groups. He attempted to shake wrists with as many as were willing, he asked their names and tried to get to know the students on a personal basis; learning of their joys and complaints. Most importantly, he learned how they got up here and what they’d like to do from now on. He gave them choice. If they wanted to stay and learn, he had presents for them as inductees to the new academy he wanted to build.
Artorian had gotten those who wanted to remain out of their rags and into significantly better robes. The size wasn’t a perfect fit all the time, but clothing was clothing. A warm bear rug went a long way to help with the cold mountain nights when they didn’t have much of anything to use for fire. Artorian directed them to take pieces from the old estate and burn them when needed. The building had to go regardless; it was a wreck.
Those who accepted the robes were assigned basic tasks. Clean up the courtyards, the steps, stairs, and resting areas. Clean it all, empty old filth, toss the broken, make room for the new. When asked about the ‘new’, Artorian was a bundle of excitement, “Wouldn't it be grand if we grew some new types of food? We have the water, the air, and the sun! All we need is a few well-maintained areas.”
Opening his hand, he showed seeds they’d never seen before. He explained some would grow food, others trees, and some were for a different purpose altogether. It was important to get a great variety, after all, he wanted to get bees up here. Then they could all have honey!
So, like the enthusiastic, invigorated students they were… they got to work. Groups cleaned, gathered, cleared rubble, planted seeds, and hauled water. The grandfather taught them how to weave ba
skets from long grass, and not to address one another by the old ways. They were all students of the new academy.
He received many questions about his magic, and responded carefully and with many pensive beard strokes. Answering was both important to retain their interest and properly grow their skill sets in the future.
An enthusiastic young lady had been first, “Can we do what you do? Someday? Can it be taught?”
Artorian had nodded while sitting on his rock, a book from the library open in his palm. His response had set their hearts alight, “Of course you can, my dear. You all can. Though the journey is long and the path is arduous. You must know a great many things before you can even begin. However, you are in luck!”
He snapped the book shut for effect, and motioned all around him. “You are within the crumbling walls of an academy that once knew all there was to know. If we can rebuild it… those who devote themselves to betterment here will certainly find success. One must only persist. The only way to fail is to cease walking the path.”
Hands shot up with questions, and he motioned the book at a student, who nearly shouted, “What do we need to know before we can do magic?”
A pleasant chuckle left Artorian. “Well…”
He brushed his beard, and took a moment to think it over. He didn’t actually need to pause, but the wait glued the students to his words. “One must be able to read and write. We shall start there. Once all the students can do so, I shall give a full lecture on the next step. This pattern will continue as you help one another learn. Lessons in the future will open up to all of you when none have been left behind. Those who grasp content quickly would do well to become a teacher for those who struggle the most. In doing so, both will learn great lessons.”
He motioned the book at another raised hand. “What comes after reading and writing?”
Artorian merely held up the book and tapped the spine. “Study. After one can do the basics, they must understand the ways of the world. The lessons and teaching of those who have come before shall lay the foundation of understanding. Once you have understanding… well.”
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