Arrival

by William Dickey

  ‘Come on Isaac. We don’t need that harlot. We can figure things out ourselves,’ said Mai. ‘She’ll only make it so we can’t speak freely.’

  “Really, you don’t mind that I’m a commoner,” she said, evidently surprised.

  “So long as you don’t mind that I’m an alien,” I said.

  ‘Hey Isaac, is anyone home?’ said Mai. ‘I just wish for once a man would ignore his lower brain.’

  “Ok, I’m in,” agreed the red head.

  “Are you sure? I don’t know very much yet. You are a first year, but you’ve already been studying 6-7 months,” I said.

  “8 months, but that doesn’t matter you must already be good. I heard you flew over the wall. You must have some serious power to do that. All flying magic I’ve ever heard of requires fourth ranked magic,” she said.

  “Fourth ranked magic?” I asked.

  “We rank magic between one and seven by what year a mage would learn it. Fourth ranked magic is something a student normally learns in their fourth year. Since the academy only teaches a maximum of 6 years, anything beyond the scope of the academy is classified as seventh rank,” she explained hurriedly. “But you did fly over the wall, didn’t you? I didn’t hear wrong?”

  “I did fly over them,” I replied. “But I cheated. It only took a first rank fire sigil.”

  “I’ve heard of mages using wind or earth magic to fly, but fire magic. How’d you do it?” she asked.

  “A trick,” I answered, extending my hand and casting the simple fire sigil so a candle sized flame appeared in my palm. “Which way does smoke go?”

  “It follows the breeze,” she answered.

  ‘See, she’s an airhead. She can’t help you,’ said Mai.

  “No- I mean yes, but what if there isn’t a breeze?” I asked.

  “It goes up,” she said.

  “Hot air rises,” I agreed. “So with enough hot air you can lift anything, even a person.”

  “So that’s how you did it. Pretty smart,” she said.

  “Not that smart, I nearly died crashing into a building,” I said.

  “Still not bad.”

  “So you aren’t concerned that I’m not that good of a mage,” I said.

  “Not really, you can still do magic and classes here are pretty slow the first couple months, so everyone can figure out how to tap into their mana. You won’t be that far behind. Besides, you immortals are supposed to learn really fast,” she said.

  “What do you mean,” I inquired. “I thought, while they were here, none of the others were allowed to enter the Academy.”

  “True, but that was only the Academy. Before they went to Castlemere, plenty of them learned through other means and they displayed remarkable levels of talent,” she explained.

  “Ok, if it’s alright then, Isaac Stein,” I said extending a hand.

  “Rose Etheling,” she answered, accepting it.

  “Let’s get to work?” I asked.

  Rose pulled back the chair and sat beside me. “Let’s.”

  Chapter 25: Embarrassed

  Bolevard lived a life full of self-hate.

  He hated his appearance. His nose was twice too long and his ears twice too prominent. His complexion was always a sickly pale that no amount of sun seemed to cure. And his face was so chubby that even though he was actually quite trim, everyone thought him morbidly obese.

  He hated his job, a cashier at a clothing store where nobles walked in and out every day purchasing fanciful new garments and throwing out luxuries that Bolevard could only dream of possessing as ‘rags.’

  He hated his family. His mother had abandoned him when he was six, following his father who’d done so even earlier. Other than a soon to be ex-wife whom Bolevard caught cheating with the milkman, his only family was a batty aunt whose syphilitic mind had grown so addled she could no longer differentiate a pecker from a popsicle.

  He even hated his name. Bolevard, like someone named him the first thing they saw and didn’t even bother to spell it properly. Would you name a child Rood or Streat? Then why name one Bolevard.

  Most of all, Bolevard hated his lot in life. To most, he would be a young man with a decent head on his shoulders and a nice long life ahead. Nevertheless, to Bolevard, his life was doomed. He was a poor commoner who was destined to be an eternal wage slave, never doing anything worth note or notice.

  Bolevard greatest wish was to find a way out of the cycle, to find a way to ascend beyond his status as a commoner, hopefully earning wealth, fame, and the heart of a good woman along the way, or maybe women. Bolevard liked to dream big. So what he ended up doing wasn’t all that surprising.

  It was a bright sunny morning and, like every other morning, Bolevard got up at dawn so he could make the long commute without being late for work. Now you might think that in a world without cars or buses, bridges or toll roads, there would never be much of a commute. Everyone who worked did so within the confines of the city so no one had to go very far, but Bolevard had a different sort of hurdle.

  Bolevard was a commoner and lived in the outer city, but he worked in the inner city. This meant that every day he had to spend the better part of an hour waiting in line at one of the wall’s few security checkpoints. Normally Bolevard spent the time daydreaming but this day something else caught his notice.

  “Attention citizens,” shouted a boisterous gentleman from a hobbled together booth down the block.

  “Attention commoners and nobles, farmhands and factory hands, constables and criminals,” the man paused to make sure everyone on the street was watching before continuing.

  “Most of you already know this but it’s important so I ask you to be patient while I repeat it. Only a few days ago, we learned that the northern savages have been raiding the frontier towns for months, slaughtering countless of our men and doing God knows what to our women. For months, they’ve been bleeding us. Each life they’ve taken a small cut, weakening this land and the peace of mind of everyone remaining in it.”

  “For months they’ve insulted us, breached our mutually agreed upon borders and devastated our lands.”

  “Now is the time each and every one of you can do your part in helping this nation deal with the beastmen threat. The Archlord has approved the recruitment and training of tens of thousands of our bravest and strongest young men to show those savages their place.”

  “Those who sign up will be paid a minimum of 200§ per month and will have all their daily necessities provided. Furthermore should the worst happen and they fall in battle, the Archlord promises their salary be paid to whatever family they leave behind for a period no less than 5 years.”

  “But those are just the material rewards. Those heroes who achieve the greatest merits are promoted up through the ranks. Besides better pay, if you get promoted enough times you may even be granted a barony.”

  The audience all gasped. If they did well they could change their status, they could throw away the shackles of plebeianism and ensure they and all their descendants held the privileges of nobility.

  “We are only looking for young able-bodied men,” the army recruiter continued. “But even if you don’t fall into those circumstances, I’m sure you know someone who does. So tell your friends and neighbors. Tell your sons and fathers. Tell your husbands and lovers. Tell anyone who will listen because this is a once in a lifetime opportunity.”

  “Now, who’ll be the first to enlist? Who has the stones to stand up for his fellow man and irrevocably change his life in the process?”

  By this point, Bolevard had given up his spot in line at the security checkpoint and had wandered over to the army recruiter like a month to flame.

  “I have the stones. I have the stones,” Bolevard called as he pushed aside the assembled crowd and made his way to the booth. “Sign me up.”

  To Bolevard, it was as if the recruiter had been preaching straight to his heart, action, adventure, and a chance to make something of his life, a chance to become someone
important. Bolevard joined the Knight Corps without reservation.

  A lot changed over the next couple of months. In the first few weeks, the Archlord used diviners and scouts to better assess the goings on in the northern frontier. They quickly found that Mill Valley was hardly the only settlement that had suffered the beastmen. Of the scouts who returned alive, half reported emptied fields and villages, pillaged by beastman raids.

  This spawned an even greater effort on the army. Thousands of young men were recruited to begin their training while proper supplies and armaments were secured, either through trade with the south or more often through local production. The cities forges ran hot day and night as blacksmith’s worked tirelessly to keep up with demand for steel and artificer’s the demand for magic. And most interestingly, earth moving mages raised a second shorter stonewall that had been stored underground, the new barrier defending the entire city rather than just the nobility.

  The common man wasn’t the only ones affected by the military expansion. While many commoners were recruited into the Knight Corps, the noble houses sent their sons and daughters to join the Mage Corps or Strategic Command. This war was the first the north had seen in centuries and many of the aristocratic families saw it as a rare opportunity to earn the military recognitions that they had been so long denied. The southern houses, with the ongoing conflicts with the necromancer dark elves along their borders, had long held greater authority within the realm on national defense. The northern houses planned to prove themselves by devastating the beastmen in a grand campaign showcasing their abilities.

  To those ends, battle plans were laid and the city readied for their troops to move out in late spring. By then, the weather would have warmed to the point of not having to worry about snow even deep into beastmen territory and with any luck, the war would only go on for a few months, giving their forces ample time to return home before winter returned and the beastmen regained the advantage afforded to them by their more rugged forms. Waiting until late spring also gave the city plenty of time to train troops and allowed the newest graduating class of mages to join the fray.

  As for me, things were going well. I spent those few months almost entirely in the Repository of Knowledge. The place was well named. No matter how much I read, I never seemed to make a dent into what was available. I learned many more sigils as well as got some practical experience using them. I learned how to tweak the symbols to gain greater control over the effects and how to tap into ley lines to help recover after an especially draining set of magic. Perhaps most impactful was my studying of artificing.

  Artifacts may have been underappreciated by mages and non-mages alike, mages saw their capabilities as inferior and non-mages saw them as overpriced trinkets, but I saw a lot of potential in them. In many ways, they reminded me of electronics on Earth, giving me several ideas on how to adapt concepts from my old world on this magical technology.

  Through it all, Rose was my constant companion. We started by sharing a study room, sharing pointers whenever one of us got stuck and sharing gripes whenever the work seemed overwhelming. When it came to practicing the more explosive aspects of sorcery, we went outside, finding an empty field outside the city to demolish.

  So that’s how I spent those few months, until the fateful day where things unexpectedly changed.

  “I really need to get a better handle on this Quathalan magic,” said Rose tossing aside the volume she was trying to read. “But this language is so difficult to read.” Rose was a bit stressed out; her finals were only two weeks away so she was even higher strung than normal. As only a guest, I fortunately, didn’t have to participate in such irksome matters. To make matters worse, many of the texts on foreign magic, like the one Rose was struggling with, were written accounts in long dead languages.

  “Here,” I said taking up the book. “Let me read it to you.” The interface translated all this world’s languages into English so I could understand people and be understood. It also translated text so to me reading Quathalan was as easy as reading English or whatever the language Rose was hearing was called. I still didn’t know what the people of this country spoke, whenever I asked the interface translated it to ‘English.’

  Central to Quathalan culture is the concept of fate, a deep-seated belief that regardless of the chaotic motions and seemingly unpredictable core to all of nature’s processes, there is a set path that is followed. It is only because of our inability to see the path that we assume randomness, but nonetheless to the Quathalans all is predetermined.

  This tenant is believed to have been central to the development of their clairvoyance magic, which is unmatched in both scale and accuracy across all of Tautellus. Little is known about the actual rituals used but there are several limitations. First, Quathalan clairvoyants are only able to see the future from their vantage point. That is to say, that they can only see through their own eyes in the future…

  Rose was entranced by the descriptions of powers held in far off lands. As the reading continued, she slowly drew closer. I could feel the heat radiating from her, its growing intensity a pleasant nervousness.

  ‘Hey, there’s no good reason for the two of you to be so close,’ Mai huffed, squishing herself between us.

  “Shh, calm down,” I whispered.

  “Isaac, am I making you nervous?” Rose giggled, overhearing and misinterpreting my message to Mai as one I’d made to myself.

  I could feel Rose’s warm breath against my cheek. A strong hip ground against my side as she shifted even closer. My heart fluttered with anxiety and my experience with the fairer sex was so lacking I was at first a bit relieved when we were interrupted.

  †Sense Jeopardy†

  “Huh,” I grunted.

  ‘Your Spidey senses are tingling,’ said Mai

  Seconds later, a band of older students in the same gaudy attire I’d grown accustomed to seeing on the Xebryan aristocracy burst through the door and entered our study room.

  “Get the fuck out,” ordered a particularly tall, angular man in a jade green robe. Three of his friends flanked him: two big thick men and a girl with purple hair and a set of narrow framed glasses colored to match.

  “You two plebeians are lucky enough to even be allowed in the Repository now clear out. This room has been reserved for those who can best benefit from it,” said the purple girl.

  “You can’t reserve a room,” said Rose. “The rules state the rooms are first come first served.”

  “The rules don’t apply to commoners and foreigners like the two of you,” said the man in green. “Now, get going before things become less polite.”

  ‘Polite? Things are already a far cry from polite,’ said Mai.

  I stood up, violently knocking over my chair before taking a few steps closer. A red hot rage burned in me, I couldn’t stand more bullying. After my experiences on Earth, with Warren, and in some ways, with Mai, I wouldn’t take any more bent arms, regardless of the situation. I knew these people were probably stronger than I was, but I didn’t care. “What do you mean reserved, there’s never been such a thing.”

  “There is now,” said the man in green.

  I tried to press him again but before I could, Rose pulled me aside. “Do you know who that is?” she said indicating the man in green.

  “No,” I replied. “How would I? I’ve never been in the Academy. Well, except for the once,” I corrected. “But I spent most of that time in the trash.”

  “That’s Deimos Kittredge. He’s a fourth year battle mage, top of his class. He’s favorited to win the Millenius Tournament after he made it to the semi-finals as a second year and the finals as a third,” Mai explained.

  The Millenius Tournament was a famous competition held once a year to test the prowess of the nation’s youth. The competition was so well known I had first heard of it in Mill Valley where bards and storytellers frequently regaled audiences with blow-by-blow descriptions of the best battles.

  ‘Fight. Fight. Fight,’ Ma
i chanted, multiplying herself a dozen times over to encircle and fill the room.

  I refused to bow down to Deimos’ despotic behavior. “So,” I muttered defiantly and much to the surprise of the intruders, I moved to shove them back out of the room. That turned out to be a mistake.

  ‘Pfft, shoving? Come on, Isaac. You can do better than that. Give him the ol’ one-two,’ said one of the chanting Mais.

  Deimos pushed back. “We have a fighter on our hands don’t we. Shall I show him what a real fight looks like?” His friends’ grinning faces all nodded.

  “Well,” Deimos continued. “We can’t go around disappointing a crowd, now can we? I think I told you to leave the room.” I felt a sudden force on my chest, a giant pull that thrust me from the room and tossed me across the library floor. A crowd of people glanced over at the sudden commotion. The Repository was normally fairly empty, but with exams so close, the building was packed.

  I lay sprawled out on my back when the invisible force hit me again. This time pushing down on me, crushing the air out of my lungs.

  “Know your place,” barked Deimos as he stood over me. “Right here, at the feet of your betters.”

  ‘You can’t let it just end like this,’ said one Mai.

  ‘Fight dirty if you have to,’ said another.

  I was on my back, struggling for air, but I refused to give up. I swept a leg across the floor knocking out Deimos’ feet from under him. He fell face first. His head slammed against the floor at an unfortunate velocity, fast enough to cause a fair amount of pain but not so fast as to knock him unconscious and forestall his vengeance.

  ‘That’s how you do it,’ Mai cheered.

  “Oh, you did it now,” said a purple haired girl with glasses as Deimos got back up. An enormous gash across his forehead marked my success over him. A success he wouldn’t stand for.

  “Step aside Menardi,” Deimos ordered the purple haired girl as he tilted his head to give his neck an audible crick.