by Andrew Rowe
The chancellor’s eyes narrowed as she glanced around. “I would also like to remind our local students that these transfer students are our honored guests, and they must be treated with the utmost civility. Actions taken against other students based on their home nation will not be tolerated. Outright hostility toward our guests will result in punishment, up to and including expulsion. I would like to make absolutely certain this is clear. If you understand me, reply, ‘Yes, ma’am.’”
There was an awkward and out of sync reply of “Yes, ma’am,” from the audience.
“I couldn’t hear you all. Repeat after me. ‘Yes, ma’am. ’”
We did a little better job at replying in sync that time.
I could see the reasoning behind introducing this policy so early. My father had told me a story about an incident last year where an Edrian student had been beaten half to death after a class where he’d made a remark about how Edria had “won the war” against Valia years ago.
When my father had explained it, he’d said the kid had “gotten what he’d deserved” for speaking against our noble nation.
I felt sick just remembering the talk. Who could justify beating a student just for stating an opposing viewpoint?
Never mind the fact that Edria more or less had won the war, even if they hadn’t conquered us.
I shook my head, pushing the memory out of my mind. I’d do my best to try to be friendly to any Edrian students I encountered. I was pretty confident that the chancellor’s speech wasn’t going to sway many others. The hatred for Edria was too deeply rooted into our culture, even many years after the war.
“Good. There are a number of other rules at this university, each intended to help improve your discipline for your future career. You will find a full list of academy policies among your entry paperwork.”
The chancellor took a breath and then continued.
“As this is your first year at Lorian Heights, each of you will be assigned to one of six divisions based on your attunement. Your division will determine the types of training and instruction you’ll be given, as well as your primary instructor and uniform.”
Divisions? Interesting, I hadn’t heard about this. Sera and I will probably be split up... That could be good or bad.
“Each division will have objectives throughout the year. Completing these objectives will earn points, both for individuals and for their divisions. Each student has a minimum requirement to earn five hundred points to continue to the second year at the academy.”
“Candidates will enter their second year retaining their scores from the first year, and graduates with high scores will enter their military service at a higher rank. A large part of your score is derived from the performance of your division, and thus, it behooves you to work together with your classmates.”
Chancellor Wallace gestured to a man in a gray suit, with a sharp beard and salt and pepper hair. He stepped up to the front of the platform, coming in clear sight, but not near the podium. “Tiger Division specializes in offensive combat. Students with the Elementalist Attunement will be assigned to him. Professor Ceridan will be your supervisor.”
Next, she waved to a woman in a black suit with perfectly straight, shoulder-length black hair. “Professor Orden will be supervising Serpent Division, which specializes in reconnaissance. Students with the Shadow and Diviner Attunements will report to her.”
Professor Orden? Lyras Orden, I presume. I’ll need to talk to her. A shame I’m not in her division; it sounds interesting, and being placed with her would be convenient.
Chancellor Wallace pointed to a man in a purple suit, with a dueling cane and carefully sculpted eyebrows. “Students with the Shaper Attunement will report to Lord Teft and focus their studies on personal combat. He oversees Hydra Division.”
I started hearing students leaning over and whispering to each other, discussing their division assignments, but Sera and I remained quiet. Focused. Neither of us had been assigned yet.
I recognized the next person who stepped forward. She was the teacher who’d helped me with my paperwork after I’d first earned my attunement. “Phoenix Division provides valuable support both on and off the battlefield. Students with the Mender and Enchanter Attunements will report to Professor Edlyn.”
Welp, stuck with the healers. I’m pretty much doomed to obscurity.
Sera must have seen my expression. She gave me a condescending look and a pat on the arm.
The chancellor beckoned to a thin man in a dark blue military uniform, similar to the one the vice chancellor wore. “Lieutenant Talon will oversee Tortoise Division. Tortoise Division focuses on defensive combat and battlefield control. Summoners and Guardians will report to this division.”
“Transfer students with attunements from the other towers will be assigned an appropriate division for their specialization. For example, Soulblades will be assigned to Tortoise Division due to sharing similar combat capabilities to Summoners.”
Huh. I’d known we had some foreign students, but I hadn’t really considered that they might have taken their Judgments at other towers and earned different attunements. It’d be interesting to see what kind of other attunements were out there.
“Finally, there’s Spider Division. You already know if you’re in Spider Division. As the name implies, Spider Division is infiltrators and saboteurs — and that’s exactly what they’ll be doing within all of your other divisions.”
I heard a collective groan from the students.
“Listen closely!” Chancellor Wallace was surprisingly sharp, and the crowd was silenced. “This is one of the most important parts of your first year of training. Each of you will have specific opportunities throughout the year to report someone you believe to belong to Spider Division and any supporting evidence.”
“Correctly identifying an individual Spider can yield a reward of up to one hundred points. However, if your entire division fails to identify even a single member of Spider Division by the end of the year, each division member will lose two hundred and fifty points. And incorrectly identifying someone as a Spider will result in a loss of up to one hundred points.”
Well, that last part means I can’t just write down everyone I can think of. I’ll have to keep thinking about this, maybe trade some information.
I wonder if the Spiders lose points if they’re identified? Probably, but if not, maybe I could make an offer to get one of them to come forward?
She smiled. “People for Spider Division were selected from all possible attunements, and thus, you cannot identify them that way. Attempting to discover the spies in your midst should be a valuable exercise.”
Chancellor Wallace folded her hands on the podium. “I’m sure you’re eager to meet your classmates. Thus, we’ll be concluding this ceremony. You will find your schedules within your orientation packets, but you’ll need to head to the dispensary to pick up your uniforms and shield sigils. Good luck... and keep your eyes wide open.”
***
Our first order of business was picking up our uniforms, so Sera and I headed toward the dispensary.
“So, who do you think we’ll run into first?” Sera nudged me.
I hadn’t really thought about it. “I’m... not sure?”
She grinned. “I bet a bunch of our friends are here. I know Patrick and Roland passed the tests. Maybe we’ll get in some of their classes!”
Hrm. Maybe that really was Patrick I saw earlier.
“Yeah,” I said absently. “That’d be nice.”
Sera rolled her eyes. “Please, restrain your enthusiasm, I can’t take the intensity.”
I tilted my head at her. “Sorry, Sera. You’ve gotta keep in mind that I haven’t seen any of these people in years... I didn’t exactly keep in touch. I don’t know if Patrick will even remember me.”
“Oh, don’t be so dramatic. The two of you were practically brothers when you were little. Patrick still talks about you all the time. He’s excited to see you, even if you’r
e not. Try to look a little happier when you talk to him, for his sake?”
I grimaced, but I nodded in agreement. “I’ll try.”
She was wrong about one thing, though. I only had one brother, and I’d lost him. Patrick, as much as I’d enjoyed spending time with him, was just a friend.
That said...
She was absolutely right that I was being needlessly grim. I needed to at least try to cheer up a little. Being a walking rainstorm wasn’t doing a service to anyone.
I took a deep breath, trying to clear my head. “How are you doing? Are you happy to have an attunement?”
She raised an eyebrow at me. “Uh, yeah, obviously. And my attunement is kind of amazing, too. Sorry you got stuck with that one... I know it wasn’t what you wanted.”
“Eh, I’ll probably get used to it.” I doubted that, but I was not going to let myself get dragged down into another depressive spiral. “Any idea what attunements our friends got?”
Saying the word “friends” was a little strange. I hadn’t seen them in so long, I didn’t know if I had that right.
“Oh, I didn’t ask, but I’m sure we’ll find out soon enough.” She stopped and pointed a hand. “Hey, I think that’s the dispensary over there.”
We headed over, only to find a line leading out the door.
Of course there was a line.
We kept up the small talk as we waited. I admit, I felt a little better from it. It was good having a peer to talk to after such a long period of time. I still wasn’t sure if I was ready to face my old friends, but Sera’s presence was growing on me.
After we finally made our way inside, we got marched into separate fitting rooms, where university staff took our measurements.
The tailor gave me a speech he’d obviously given a hundred times.
“You’re a size medium. All uniforms are white, but since you’re in Phoenix Division, yours will have red accents. You get two uniforms. You will need to wear them during all classes and testing sessions. Civilian clothes are permitted during other activities. Keep your uniform immaculate. There are several cleaning facilities on campus, which you can locate on your map.”
He set aside two folded uniforms, then went into a cabinet and retrieved a silver pin with a school insignia about the size of a coin. “Pin this to your uniform before every class and test. Do not forget this, it is absolutely mandatory. The shield sigil gives you basic protection against spells — this is both to handle accidents and to assist you in classes that involve combat exercises.”
The tailor handed me the pin. “You will need to recharge the shield sigil every week, as well as before any class that actively involves combat. You will not be permitted to attend class without a pin, and failing to wear your pin more than once can result in disciplinary action, up to and including expulsion. The same is true for failing to properly recharge your pin. As an Enchanter, you will learn how to recharge the pin yourself, but for the time being you may have your pin recharged at the Divinatory.”
I nodded and accepted the pin.
“Sign here for your two uniforms and the shield sigil.”
I signed the paperwork, accepted the bundle of uniforms, and then went to meet Sera outside.
***
Sera and I would be staying in different dorms. I was in the cleverly named “Phoenix Male, Building #27”, and she was in the equally scintillating “Tortoise Female, Building #14”, but they were both in the same general direction, so we walked together.
She gave me an appraising look. “Odds that Spider Division is real?”
I shrugged, briefly debating telling her that I was in Spider Division. Which, of course, I wasn’t. “After some thought, I’d put it somewhere between zero and, hrm, one hundred percent. Plus or minus a bit.”
She rolled her eyes. “It’s probably just a mind game. They want us on edge.”
“I’m not so certain about that. Maybe they’re training some people for covert operations? This is supposed to be a military sponsored school.”
Sera raised her hand to brush a strand of hair out of her eyes. “Could be, or maybe they just really wanted one division per giant tower monster.”
I snickered. She had a point. “It’s a useful mnemonic device. Everyone knows the god beasts, so you’re not going to forget the division names easily.”
“I suppose. I just feel like they’re doing the Spider thing to distract us from something else — maybe a more subtle test.”
I chuckled. “You’ve got the family paranoia, at least.”
“I’ll try to take that as a compliment.”
“You always were good at pretending.”
***
We finished our speculative banter and arrived at her dorm, parting ways there. It only took a few more minutes to find my own building, virtually identical to the one she was staying in. The buildings themselves were three story structures, and from their rectangular shape and size, I guessed they housed about a dozen rooms on each floor.
Finding my own room was simple enough. I already had the key; it had been delivered to my home a few days before I left, along with my orientation paperwork. I turned it in the lock and examined my new home.
It turned out there wasn’t much to examine.
The room was barely larger than a closet, with a thin bed taking up nearly half the space. The remainder contained a generic wooden desk, a chair, and a cabinet. I found a neat stack of documents on the desk, containing more information about the school and another map of the campus.
The crowded space didn’t bother me as much as it could have. I’d grown up sharing a room with my older brother until his disappearance, so I was used to having limited space to work with. While some nobles lived in opulent manors with dozens of rooms, House Cadence was comparatively small. Our house had risen into the ranks of nobility through exemplary military service, not our money.
I shrugged my backpack off my shoulders, stretching, and locked the door behind me.
Freedom.
I took a breath of the air that belonged only to me, closing my eyes and savoring it.
For the last two weeks, I’d felt unwelcome in my former home. My father’s disapproval had been almost palpable. I’d done my best to avoid him, and I had some good excuses. There was a seemingly endless supply of documents to prepare for attending the academy, and I studied more to learn more about my attunement.
So, what did I do with my first moments of free time?
More reading.
This time, something a little more interesting.
I flipped open Trials of Judgment, flipping to the last thing I had written.
Still no reply.
Frowning, I set the book aside. I had other reading that I wanted to do.
I dug through my pack, finding a book on runes that I’d borrowed from my father’s library. An Introductory Primer on Empowering Runes by Conrad Lake.
I’d read the beginning before, and I understood the fundamentals. Enchanters had the ability to permanently infuse objects with power.
To do this, I’d have to start by finding the runes that corresponded to the effects I wanted on the item. After that, I’d inscribe the object with the runes. That was the easy part.
The hard part was finding a power source for each rune. Since I only had an Enchanter attunement, the only mana I had access to was “raw” mana — basic, unfiltered stuff. Most enchantments required specialized types of mana, like fire mana to empower a rune to make a flaming weapon.
There were two main ways of getting the mana I needed to enchant something: either I could find a person who had the right kind of mana and transfer it from them, or I could transfer the mana from an object that contained mana. Like, for example, the crystals sitting in my bag.
I wasn’t reading through the book to figure out what I could do with my crystals. I’d already done that, and come to the conclusion that the few crystals I had weren’t all that useful on their own. Slimes were the weakest monsters in existen
ce and the mana crystals they left behind were raw, the same type I could generate on my own. The barghensi’s crystal was earth mana, which was more useful, but not something I had any use for at the moment.
No, for now, I wasn’t going to make anything. I needed to learn about what I already had.
I unsheathed the sword the Voice of the Tower had given me about half way, examining the shimmering blade and the four runes on the surface. I was careful not to touch my skin to the aura of frost — I didn’t know if it would hurt the wielder or not. That was one of the first things I’d need to figure out.
I found my quill and ink and one of the pieces of orientation paperwork I didn’t care about, drawing the four runes that I’d seen on the surface of the blade. After another moment of thought, I flipped the sword over and checked the other side to see if the etchings matched.
They did. Just four runes, then.
Then, having copied the runes, I searched through the enchanting book to find them. I only found two of the four.
The first was a pretty simple rune, one I’d seen elsewhere: a Rune of Resilience, useful for making an object harder to break.
The second was definitely some kind of Rune of Ice, but it differed from the basic one presented in the book. The shape was similar enough to be clearly related, but the one on the weapon was surrounded by an octagon of intersecting lines, one of which connected with the rune.
I spent some more time searching the book for the other runes, but they were nowhere to be found. The book’s notes on the basic Rune of Ice indicated that items enchanted with it were dangerous to the wielder, so I decided it was best to keep my hands as far away from the aura as possible, at least until I could discern what the more advanced rune meant.