Chương 36: Sartheon

The staircase to the hall was not what I had expected. It rose from the base of one of the lower buildings in a wide spiralling arc, and the steps themselves were transparent, made from something that was neither glass nor crystal but from below it looked like a ribbon of fractured rainbow winding up the side of the building, and the first-years were filing onto it in a long uneven line while two older students in academy robes stood at the bottom shouting directions.

"First-years, this way! Stay to the right, keep moving and do not stop on the steps, you will have plenty of time to gawk later!" The staging area had transformed in the twenty minutes since Professor Ashara had dispersed the crowd. Returning students were splitting off toward different buildings, their Shadows carrying trunks and cases up narrower staircases or through arched doorways at ground level.

Supply carts were being unloaded by academy staff in grey uniforms and a group of what looked like third or fourth-years were running some kind of drill in a courtyard off to the left. Somewhere above us, music was playing from one of the open walkways between the towers, though I could not see who was playing it. We joined the line for the staircase, Rael and Eydric beside me, our Shadows a pace behind, and we had not climbed three steps before it started.

"Excuse me, you are Howl Aridis, aren't you?" It was a boy around my age with a Draeven crest on his collar, flanked by two others.

"I am. It's nice to meet you."

"Abert Draeven. We were at the trials together. I was in the written hall, three rows behind you. My father told me to introduce myself if I saw you. He serves on the eastern trade council with your grandfather's — well, with one of your house's representatives, I think."

"Oh. That's—""And this is my cousin, Hael, and his friend Deren, they are both from ally families of your house." I shook their hands one by one, though it was a bit more formal than I hoped for. Then came another boy, this one taller and quieter, with a Kaelith crest.

"Aridis." I looked at him.

"My name is Soren Kaelith. I will not take much of your time. I simply wanted to say that I hope we get along during our time here. Let me know if you need anything, I know a few seniors here who owe me favors."

"I see. Thank you, I will remember that." He inclined his head once and fell back into the line, which I appreciated more than he probably knew. And it went on. By the tenth step I had been introduced to at least fifteen more people, some my age and some well above it, all of them working from instructions their families had given them before they left home. In a sense, I supposed we were all the same here. So I smiled at all of them. I used their names when they gave them.

I asked where they were from when there was time to ask. Rael handled the ones I could not get to, smoothly redirecting conversations that were going on too long, and Eydric stood on my other side and said nothing, which served as its own kind of boundary. I did want to have friends, but for some reason… most of them made me feel less like me, and more like the Axiom of house Aridis. It bothered me less with Rael and Eydric by my side, but it also made me less excited about their enthusiasm.

We eventually reached the top as I turned and looked down, gasping despite myself from the sight. Above us, the towers of Sartheon rose into the sky, and from up here I could see what I had not been able to see from the ground: more buildings, higher up, connected by bridges that looked like threads from this distance, with figures moving along them.

"Come on," Eydric said.

"They're opening the doors." I reluctantly turned from the view, wondering how neither of them seemed the least bit fazed by all this. The doors of the main hall were ten times my height, pale wood banded with gold, and they swung inward as the line of first-years reached them. The interior opened up in front of us, and I heard three separate people gasp at the same time. There, those were my type of people.

The walls inside were pale, almost luminous, and a golden line ran along the edges of everything: the window frames, the pillars, the long curved benches that lined both sides of the hall in tiered rows. Sunlight came through tall arched windows and hit the gold and the white together while a thin, clean scent hung in the air, incense of some kind, light enough that you noticed it only once and then it became part of the room. I excitedly stepped inside.

The benches filled quickly as three different students gestured at the empty seats beside them as I passed, and a fourth actually stood up and offered his spot near the back, which I graciously refused and left before he could make a thing of it. We found a spot near the front row, and Rael and Eydric dropped onto the bench on either side of me without comment.

Our Shadows took positions in the standing gallery along the back wall with the rest, and the hall settled into a low murmur as the last of the first-years filtered through the doors and found their places. Then a smaller door opened behind the platform. Through it stepped a man, followed by four other people in a loose procession.

I recognised Professor Ashara among them, her copper hair unmistakable even from the back of the hall, and beside her was the shorter man with the clipboard from the entrance trials, Alderman Bryce, and two others I did not know. But it was the man at the front who held my attention.

"Is that the rector?" someone whispered a few rows down.

"Must be."

"He looks,,, young for it, no?" He was younger than I had expected a rector to be. Not young exactly, forty perhaps, with brown hair cut close, a clean-shaven face, and a sense of seriousness in him. I had seen him before. It took me a few seconds to place where, because the context was so far removed from this hall that my memory had filed the two in different places entirely. But the face was the same, and when he turned his head slightly to speak to Ashara I caught the profile and it clicked.

He had been at the estate about a year ago. The only time in years that outsiders had been allowed into my wing. Three of them had come, robed in dark colours I had not recognised, and they had sat in chairs along the wall of the eastern training hall while my various instructors put me through a full afternoon of sparring, glyph work, and mana control exercises. They had watched without speaking and written things down.

One of them had asked Bellos a question at the end that I had not been close enough to hear, and Bellos had answered with a single nod. I had not understood what was happening at the time. Bellos told me a week later, in his usual flat voice, that the visitors had been from Sartheon and that the afternoon had been an evaluation to confirm I met the minimum qualification to be invited to the entrance trials. A year after that visit, the letter had arrived on my desk and everything since had followed from it.

The man who had sat in one of those chairs along the wall of my training hall was now standing on the platform at the front of this hall, and he was, apparently, the person running the academy I was about to spend the next four years inside. The hall went quiet on its own when the rector stepped forward. Instead of raising a hand or clearing his throat, he simply moved to the front of the platform, and the murmuring settled.

"Good morning, everyone," he started.

"My name is Nero Hervus Cain. I am the rector of this academy, and I will be here for the duration of your time with us. It is good to see so many of you." Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. His voice carried well without effort, and there was a warmth to it that I had not expected. He did not smile, exactly, but his face was open in a way that made the hall feel less formal than the gold and white stone around us suggested it should.

"I know today is a great deal to take in. New buildings, new faces, a staircase that some of you are still recovering from." A small ripple of laughter moved through the benches.

"So I will keep this brief and clear, and then I will let you get on with the business of settling in." He clasped his hands in front of him.

"The eastern registry hall is open as of this morning for path selection. Shield or Crown. You have seven days to register, and once registered the choice binds you for the duration of your first year. Transfers can be requested at the year's end, though they are rare and never without cost."

"I will be plain about the week. It exists for those who need it, not for those who want it. Practical assignments are drawn against declared paths, and a group that has not declared is a group we cannot send anywhere. If you already know, go today. If you do not, go and ask someone who does, and then go today." He moved on without pausing for effect.

"Uniforms are to be collected from the quartermaster's office on the ground level of the second tower before sunset today. Two sets, fitted on the spot. Please do not leave this for the last hour; the quartermaster's staff are good at their work, but they are not infinite." Hmm, I'd have to remember that.

"Some of you must know this already, but there is no class registration. Sartheon is a military academy. We train officers for the kingdom, and everything here is arranged around that. We do not admit students without formal schooling and prior formation, so we do not intend to spend four years teaching you what you already know." A lot of students seemed to be happy about this as I noticed smiles around me.

"You will be evaluated on missions," the rector went on.

"When a mission shows that you are lacking in a field, you will be assigned a class in that field, and you will take it until the gap is closed. Some of you will sit no classes at all in your first term, and some of you will sit a great deal. There is no shame in either, as you are here to be made competent, and that takes what it takes." He then took a step to the side.

"Housing. The faculty has assigned you to groups of three to six, and those assignments are final. Note that your group is not only who you live with; it is also who you will be sent out with. Every mission you run in your first year, you will run with the people whose names appear beside yours on the lists outside this hall. Learn them, and get along." I looked at Rael and Eydric, and found them looking at me as well. I really hoped we'd end up on the same team.

"Each group will need to produce the name of a room chief by tomorrow morning. The chief leads during practical assignments, missions, and any exercise the faculty sets. How you choose is entirely up to you. I ask only that the name reaches the faculty office on time." He paused here, as if to let the room catch up.

"Now. I want to explain to you how the academy measures your progress, because it is important that you understand it from today rather than learning it through a mistake." He spoke steadily, without rushing.

"Every student begins at zero points. Regardless of your entrance score, your house, or your name, you start here on equal footing. Points are earned through your academic work, your practical performance, your conduct, your service to the academy, and any recognised acts of merit. They are lost through misconduct and breaches of the academy's code, in amounts proportional to the severity of the infraction. Your professors operate within a defined structure when awarding or deducting points.

The system is firm, but it is not arbitrary." This made me think of Kyren.

"Two numbers will matter to you at the end of each year. The first is the survival threshold: 450 points for first-years. If your cumulative total falls below that number at year's end, you have failed the year. The second is the advancement threshold: 650 points. If you fall between the two, you remain enrolled but repeat the year. You may repeat a given year up to five times before the academy is required to release you, and the overall maximum stay is ten years." Hmm, that sounded… reasonable?

"The full details of the point structure, the categories of misconduct, and the penalty ranges are all written in the handbook you will receive with your uniforms this afternoon. I encourage you to read it carefully. It is not long, and it will save you a great deal of trouble." He looked across the hall, and his gaze moved slowly from one side to the other.

"That is the administrative side of things. Room assignments, team lists, and building locations are on the boards outside. Collect your uniforms before sunset. Register your path and classes tomorrow morning. Deliver your room chief's name by tomorrow morning as well." He nodded once, to the room as a whole.

"I am glad you are here. All of you. Sartheon has been many things to many people over many centuries, and what it becomes for you will depend largely on the choices you make inside it. I hope you make good ones. Welcome, and good luck." He stepped back from the platform, and the four faculty members rose with him, but before they reached the smaller door, one of them, a tall woman with grey-streaked hair and a pair of spectacles pushed up onto her forehead, turned back to face the hall.

"Before you leave. Your group assignments." The hall, which had been about to erupt, held itself.

"On the walls around you, you will find lists. Touch the paper and say your name aloud, and it will display your assigned group, your room number, and the names of your fellow members. These assignments are final, as the rector pointed out." She gestured with one hand, and from the top of every wall in the hall, long sheets of silky pale paper unrolled themselves downward in smooth, silent drops, dozens of them, each one covered in fine dark script.

"Take your time, read carefully and please do not crowd." She then turned and followed the others through the door, and the hall erupted. Benches emptied as students surged toward the walls in a tide of robes and elbows, and within seconds the papers were surrounded three and four deep, names being called out, fingers pressing against the silk, small flashes of light as the enchantment responded to each touch.

"I really hope I am with you two," Rael said as we stood up.

"I know it is unlikely with sixty-seven of us split into groups of five or more, but if there is any justice in this academy's sorting method—""Me too," Eydric said.

"Mhm." I meant it more than the sound suggested. Whatever logic the faculty had used during the entrance trials to put the three of us together on Team Twenty-Eight, I was hoping some version of it had survived into the room assignments. We had spent fourteen hours in a forest learning how to function as a unit, and the idea of starting over with strangers while Rael and Eydric did the same in separate rooms was not something I wanted to think about.

Rael reached the nearest paper first, pressed his palm against it, and said his name. The silk shimmered once, and a small block of text appeared in front of his hand, glowing faintly. He read it, then sighed.

"What?" I said.

"Group nine." He read the names off one at a time.

"Circe of House Marrow. Lira of House Venn. Metys of House Ozen. Tomlin of House Gareth."

"Circe?" I leaned in to look.

"The redhead?"

"The very same. I suppose she is now my roommate for the year. Well, not roommate exactly, we are on the same team but I'm pretty sure the girls are housed separately. Still. Team assignments are team assignments." He did not look unhappy about Metys, at least. But the absence of my name and Eydric's on his list left some bitterness. Eydric then stepped forward, pressed his palm and said his name.

"Group fourteen. Soren Kaelith. Abert Draeven." He read the other two names, neither of which I recognised, then stepped back from the paper and looked at me. Neither of us said anything for a second.

"Well," Rael said quietly.

"It was worth hoping for." …I had not expected the disappointment to hit as hard as it did"Let's see who you're with, then." said Eydric. I waited for two more students to finish with the paper before I stepped forward, pressed my palm against the silk, and said my name.

"Howl Aridis." The paper shimmered, and soon after, the text appeared. There were three students standing beside me who went quiet. One of them made a sound, a soft oh, and it did not sound like a good oh. I read the names. Group 7 Howl Aridis. Tomás Stark. Varen Ghol. Jaerik Oss. Kael Suth. Dren Malkai. I did not recognise four of the names. Tomás I suspected I knew as the boy from the practical exam who had given us tonic and run his flag to extraction.

But Varen Ghol, Jaerik Oss, Kael Suth, and Dren Malkai were names I had never heard spoken by anyone in any context. Behind me, the murmuring had started and this time, it wasn't the usual Axiom murmuring I had grown accustomed to ignoring. I felt as if they pitied me, and I did not like it.

"Who are you with?" Rael had appeared at my shoulder, reading over it.

"Tomás Stark. Varen Ghol. Jaerik Oss. Kael Suth. Dren Malkai." Rael read the names once, and then, in true villain fashion, he started laughing, drawing looks from a dozen students around us.

"Rael." Eydric hissed.

"Stop."

"Hahaha! Oh, my days. I am sorry, I just—""It is not funny." I strongly agreed.

"It is deeply funny. It is the heavens' way of evening the odds, with everything Howl already has going for him, and now—" He wiped his eye.

"— this."" Stop." Rael took a breath, steadied himself, and pressed his lips together. He managed about three seconds before another small laugh escaped, and Eydric rolled his eyes while sighing. I looked between the two of them.

"... Could someone please explain what is going on?" Eydric turned to me.

"The four students on your list, aside from Tomás, are first-years. But they are not in their first year. They have been here for some time, all four of them, and they are quite well known."

"Well known for what?"

"They are called the degenerates."

"... The what now?"