NOVEL NEXT 216 (I) Enrolled [I]
Be mindful of who you tether yourself to, son. I say this not to encourage paranoia, but for you to understand that despite your good intentions and noble heart, there will be those who see you only as an instrument. And worse yet, there will be others who think themselves noble but fall to their vices all the same. You cannot save them, especially because they don't believe their vices are vices.
I have not talked much about our cousin nobility. You might know some things, however. You might have already heard some things from the guards and our people. Besides, we Arrows are not a long and noble lineage. We earned our place through prowess and performance, and though few can dispute that, a great many noble houses claim the same achievements in their past, with some still having patriarchs and matriarchs enduring to this day, leftover champions from the wars of the founding.
Understand that though we are a Republic, we are a stratified one. And though the system, our system of governance that is, tries to enforce some level of equity so that everyone with the potential to be great might yet find that potential to be true, it is not often the case. For there are mountains of distance between which is allowed and granted to a noble scion and what meager offerings are left over for someone born to ill parentage and abandoned on the streets.
But beyond that mountain of difference, there are still leagues between the nobility as well. The eldest and greatest hold sway over the Auroral Council as well, and they often have their own games to play. They look down upon us, viewing us as someone might a half-breed child. A disgusting notion, but something that those of the traditions believe, and because they believe it, it bears weight, vile as it might seem.
So, when you enter the capital, stay true to your heart, but don't be foolish. Stay aware and remember this: your talent—your potential—is a weapon that you can use if someone wishes for you to do something you don't want to. I am here. I can be called upon, but so can several other patrons, especially the ones I told you about.
And above all, be wary of House Stormhalt. I do not think their grudge will extend to you—of everything I can accuse Havel, honorlessness is not one of them—but it is best to be prepared. Sometimes even good intentions and necessary deeds will spawn miserable consequences.
-Roland Arrow to Adam Arrow
216 (I)
Enrolled [I]
As the voice fell silent, Shiv stared at the pin hovering before him. It glinted one more time, and he reached out to take it. He'd received an ordainment from the ceremony, but he didn't fully understand what that was.
"I just pin this to my shoulder or something?" Shiv said.
"You can pin it wherever you want, just make sure you don't lose it," the headmaster said, wagging a finger.
"Not gonna get another one if it goes missing, huh?" Shiv asked.
"What? No. We've already taken an extract of your specific mana signatures. We'll be able to replace it in a little time. It's just inconvenient, and the paperwork is incredibly annoying."
"Oh," Shiv breathed. "That's it?"
"What do you mean, 'that's it'? Ah, yes. Of course you're saying that. You didn't have to fill in any forms and coordinate with the guard about a certain identity-risk incident," the headmaster snapped. "I always have to sign off on the paperwork. Do you know how many incidents we have of students trying to get clever by hijacking the pin's mana frequencies to try and influence the academy's Idiot Loci?"
"What's that?" Shiv asked.
"Idiot—the academy's magical network. The simple, reactive mana-mind I constructed with my Psychomancy," the headmaster ranted. "It's practically the main thing people know about me."
"Yeah, well, it's hard to remember things when your brain doesn't receive oxygen for a while," Shiv replied with a shrug. "Brain damage, headmaster. It's kind of shi—uh, bad."
The headmaster did a double-take. "Brain damage—oh, you know what, just have the Biomancers look at you at some point. It'll be good for them. Dear Ascendants, Harry—he's still brain-damaged."
"Might be, headmaster." Irons nodded.
"Well. Somehow, he still seems smarter than a good portion of our current student body. I don't know if that speaks highly of him or bodes poorly for the rest of the louts. And us. Because someone has to teach the poor fools how to be Pathbearers. Isn't that a despair-inducing thought? Anyhow, don't fiddle with your pin. Do you know what happens when someone overtaxes the mana it has inside it? It explodes. Enough to blow your collarbone into your chest. And then there's the cost of a replacement pin, along with another trip to the Biomancers."
"Got it, headmaster," Shiv said. "Not much of the fiddling kind, anyway."
"Well, don't do the other stupid thing, which is trying to sell or get your pin stolen. That is a whole guard inquiry. The good news is that whoever takes the pin is usually quite easy to track down, because, well, they're holding onto the pin. Bad news is that they also have a great deal of the student's information, so that's even more paperwork—even some for you. It's an entire investigative process, and you know how frustrated I am about that already."
The headmaster yawned. He looked to his left and right and then did an awkward twirl. He faced the rest of the auditorium and held out his hands. "All witnesses present, please clap for our arriving pupil, Marcus Blood."
"Unblood," Shiv said under his breath.
"Unblood," the headmaster corrected. "Yes, yes. Would anyone like to declare their interest? Anyone at all?"
A resounding silence came from all corners of the room, mainly because there was no one in the room aside from the headmaster, Shiv, and Irons. Well, Shiv guessed the gate golems could count, but they were still on the outside, and Shiv doubted they would be offering him any kind of apprenticeship.
I mean, what would I do with them? Shiv thought to himself. Just stand around and stare at the floor? Be security? No, I mean, Marcus is partially crippled, so he's not gonna make for good security anyway. What am I thinking?
"Yeah, probably no one that's gonna—" And for the first time, Shiv received a notification through his pin. A message appeared before his eyes and pulsated with a throbbing vibration. Shiv felt that shudder, and he looked down at his pin as it briefly glowed.
Message Received: Special class privileges unlocked for TacStrat 101.
Shiv turned to Irons and raised an eyebrow. The headmaster did the same. "Really? This one? The brain-damaged boy with a body that resembles a deformed potato."
The Deathless looked down at himself and did his best to hold back his annoyance. "It's just mostly my torso. And my muscles and stuff…"
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The headmaster rolled his glowing, heterochromatic eyes. "Yes, and as my dismembered sister said before the second artillery barrage turned her into trench soup, 'I would've run away if my legs hadn't deserted me first.'"
"I—" Shiv clenched his teeth, but broke. A snort of laughter escaped from him.
"Ah, I knew it," the headmaster hummed with satisfaction. "The ones with the hard and miserable lives all like the pitch-black jokes."
"He probably needs the class more than most," Irons said. "And it will likely be useful for him to get some in-field medic experience if he is to ever make the journey back home."
The headmaster regarded Shiv once more, and then he shrugged. "Oh, that's probably true. But let's not be so certain that Old Brunswick will still be our territory in a few years when the Jotun decide they're stupid enough to try another invasion. Well, boy, you're going to hate this. Captain Irons is an exceedingly reasonable man. And by exceedingly reasonable, I mean, if you perform perfectly in all your duties and tasks, he will not criticize or denigrate you. If you're expecting praise from him, well, you'll probably be my age before nothing at all happens."
Shiv caught a slight shake of Irons's head as the headmaster went on, complaining about how Captain Irons never sang his praises in all the time he'd known the man. "Anyhow, welcome to Phoenix Academy, boy. You have your lapel pin. You have your..." He regarded Shiv's student robes. "Why's there so much blood on that? What'd you do, boy?"
"Uh, my throat burst earlier. Part of my, uh, Curse."
"Your Curse has you bleed several liters of blood down your chest," the headmaster deadpanned.
"Yeah, it's, uh, it's a real nightmare when it comes to laundry." Shiv shrugged. "It's part of the reason why I got really good at, uh, surgery and biology, you know? Because I just bleed and, uh, stuff."
"How often do you bleed?" the headmaster said, a slight hint of disbelief in his voice.
"Oh, like, once a week?"
"Once a week." He chuckled. "You bleed a third of your blood once a week?"
"You can get used to it," Shiv said, lying badly. "The more you bleed, the more blood you get back. After it comes back, you know."
The headmaster blinked. Irons forced his right arm down before he could reflexively face-palm. "Well. Iiiinteresting. Perhaps tell the Biomancers about your special blood regeneration skill too. Anyhow, you're going to be very popular with the rest of the student body. I look forward to whatever nicknames they throw your way. Officially, I stand against all bullying and ill-treatment on campus. Unofficially, I don't have enough time to deal with all of these matters, and the nobility will do all they can to make sure your complaints and suffering find themselves buried unless it is excessively cruel."
Shiv hesitated. "Define excessively cruel?"
"Oh, if you actually get injured or someone kills you, mental trauma counts as well." The headmaster sighed. "Mockery is one thing, but odd as your situation might be, Cursed though you are, you are a student of my academy, and for one student to damage another is an insult to my institution. When that happens, you do not come to me. I will find you, and then I will find them, and then there will be no more discussion about the matter."
At that, Shiv saw both of the headmaster's eyes come afire with kindling mana.
Something tells me I won't enjoy fighting this guy, Shiv thought to himself. He didn't know why, but the headmaster seemed a trickster and a deceiver in combat, and between his Divination and Psychomancy… It was a bit hard for Shiv to hurt someone that might never show up for the actual fight at all.
"Well then, I have stood as secondary witness. Captain Irons, thank you for resolving this situation. Mysteriously resurrected student, I bid you welcome, and if you have any questions, simply direct it into your pin. It will answer everything I can't and don't care to."
With that, the headmaster disappeared. Instead of it being like a normal teleportation with pressure, he simply burst like he was a soap bubble, vanishing from sight thereafter.
"Does he do that a lot?" Shiv asked.
"More than I would prefer," Irons replied.
"I'm still technically here," the headmaster's voice echoed telepathically. "And in case either of you is planning to mouth off to me, do not. I might not be able to hear your words, but I can read sour notes rippling from your minds, and I do not appreciate them. They will hurt my feelings."
And with that, the Legendary-Tier headmaster fell quiet again.
"Well, he seems fun," Shiv said under his breath.
"It's a bit of a game to him," Irons explained. "Part of it is his personality. The other part is performance." He turned and fixed Shiv with a hard glare. "Do not underestimate him. Do not get careless in his vicinity. He already suspects you of a few things, but he will not pry, not unless it affects the academy directly."
"If he suspects me, then why isn't he gonna do anything?"
"Because you are not nearly the only student with dangerous secrets. Dangerous secrets also mean lucrative Pathbearers and potential allies for the future. That, and the academy is a subversive battleground of another kind. Nobility actively recruiting their own vassals and assets against each other. The houses are arraying their own forces, and between the cracks, there are also subversive elements like Aviary and revolutionary groups fomenting."
The Deathless tried to remember where he had heard that before. "Fermenting?"
"No. Building up. Gathering."
"Ah."
Shiv took all that in. His incredulity only grew. "So then, why hasn't the Prismatic Guard or the Ascendants come down to stamp them out?"
"Because the academy grounds also serve as a hunting tool. No one here engages in heated conflict, at least not in most circumstances." He briefly frowned at Shiv, and the Deathless simply folded his arms.
"Look, I spared you guys from a bloodbath, something that would have probably killed a few thousand students at the very least if it ended up spiraling the wrong way."
"And from how you described it, it barely didn't." There was a bit of judgment in Irons's voice.
"Best I could do for now," Shiv said.
"Yes, and I'm going to see that is improved however I can."
"Is that why I'm going to take the same class Adam did?" Shiv asked.
"That, and it would give us an excuse to work together and for me to assign you additional tasks. Especially if you are to have an alibi for operating in odd places beyond campus grounds."
"Oh yeah, the thing with Melissa. Listen, we can get started on that as soon as you get some details. The only other thing I really want to do is check in my dorm." Shiv paused. "Do I actually get a dorm or something? How does this work?"
"If there's a room in one of the halls open, you will see it assigned to you. However, since you have arrived late, Marcus Unblood's prior living arrangements might have been shuffled or adjusted."
"So, you're saying I'm homeless? Well, this takes me back to the time I was eight."
"Eight? You were homeless when you were eight?"
"Yeah. Wasn't all bad if you knew which dumpsters—forget it. I'll figure something—"
Irons shook his head. "Check your pin. It is connected to the academy's network for information. That's what it is mainly for."
"The Idiot Loci thing?"
"Only certain students and the headmaster call it that," Irons grumbled.
Shiv regarded his pin with interest. As he focused on it, a set of notifications appeared before his vision. The same set that materialized when he first arrived on campus grounds. Instead of being an unknown guest, however, he was now a fully fledged First-Year. He had voting privileges, and they were connected to various events.
Potential speakers and friends could be scheduled via the academy's budget, and then there was a special section for on-campus options. A single bullet point remained beneath the options, and he felt a tickling sensation in the back of his mind as he kept his gaze locked to it. It expanded into a subheading titled Housing.
As he kept his gaze fixed on that as well, a descending bar filled with options plunged down to the bottom of his vision. As he looked down, he found the bar to be scrollable. There were over eight options he could select from, a lot of different dorm rooms with their amenities listed behind them. One bed, one workstation, and a shared restroom were the norm. All except for one choice. That one seemed to lack a proper workstation, but the bathroom wasn't shared.
Welcome, Marcus Unblood (First Year Adept)
Votes
- Next Week's Weather Cycle
- Potential Events
On-Campus Amenities:
- Housing (8)
Manticore (1 Bed; 1 Shared Bath; 1 Workstation)
Dragon (1 Bed; 1 Shared Bath; 1 Workstation)
Griffon (1 Bed; 1 Shared Bath; 1 Workstation)
Mermaid (1 Bed; 1 Shared Bath; 1 Workstation)
Unicorn (1 Bed; 1 Shared Bath; 1 Workstation)
Hydra (1 Bed; 1 Shared Bath; 1 Workstation)
Kraken (1 Bed; 1 Shared Bath; 1 Workstation)
Carrot (1 Bed; 1 Bath)