Aeres Academy - Chapter 2 preview

By the time I made it to my destination, the crowd gathered around the grey-and-black stone building was substantial. Large, wooden double-doors carved in bas-relief showcased the crest for Aeras academy on both doors, ivy and filigree works showcasing the various monsters common to the dungeon along its edges. Humanoid knockers, squat four limbed creatures and leaping spiders, a cat-like lizard creature and more all stood in stark relief at the edges, emerging from leaves or hanging off vines. The massive doors leading to the main building for the Aeres academy main building merged with a singular wall, built twice the height of a man to help contain the fault and the creatures that might emerge from within itself.

Adventuring academies ranged in size and importance, just like our colleges in the real world. In this case, though, their size was just as much a feature of the size of their vault as the gifting of buildings and funds via powerful and self-important graduates. The larger the fault, the larger the academy without fail – if nothing else, to ensure the containment of the monsters within.

I slipped into line, joining the jostling crowd that sorted itself out in slow dribs and drabs. My mind turned to the most recent altercation, a part of me hoping that the pair had chosen a less violent resolution than what they had begun with. It was a bit of a dice toss – constant loss and death both made the results of violence all the more stark but also created a strange sense of detachment about death; a devil may care attitude to existence for oneself and others.

Commotion behind had me turning to see what the raised voices were about. I caught sight of another group of excited – and trepidatious – family members and friends clustered around another hopeful. The group was well dressed, in linen and satin; their clothing newer and less worn the majority. The hopeful is looking rather uncomfortable of the attention, resolutely looking ahead and ignoring the crowd around her, and in so doing spotted me staring. The redhead’s scowl made me turn away, though not before a pang of loneliness struck.

After all, everyone I had once loved was dead or lost to me over the unimaginable distances of dimensional travel.

Though Eamond – former boss, former landlord, current friend – and his wife did his best, he was not family. He was not the children and grandchildren I had left behind. All of it because of ~pain~. 

Blinding, teeth clenching, enough to make me hiss and draw in a deep breath. I can’t think around the pain – not even after trying for two years, every day – but I still run into that lost memory, that wall of imposed forgetfulness. Every time, it feels like the block is growing weaker. Sort of the same way if you kept smashing your fist into a metal wall, it would give way. Eventually. Probably.

“You okay, old timer?” The male voice, young and cocky brought my attention to the present and I gingerly pulled away from the blockage and the speaker who has approached, a hand out but yet to touch me.

Young, smaller than me by a couple of inches which put him at six feet or so. Let me tell you, adding nearly three quarters of a foot in my rebirth had been – interesting. I knew it affected me, my fighting style, the alteration still throwing me off. At least my race, my face was the same; though what races meant in this world had its own baggage.

A thought for another time, as brown eyes over an aquiline nose regarded me. He was wiry rather than skinny, dressed in light leather, unhardened so it looks more like biker leathers than the leather armour most others sport. He wore woolen pants and had a pair of long knives on his belt, another strapped to his left wrist and a fourth in his left boot. There’s a look of wary respect as he spotted me scanning him over for weapons and he leaned back, just a little, adding to space between the pair of us.

“Just… yeah.” I decided against explaining the pain, the divine – or demonic– block within my mind. Before the kid could follow up, I gestured with my left hand to the crowd and his own surroundings. “You alone too?”

“Told the brats to stay asleep,” the boy said, running a hand through floppy and straggly hair. Doing so highlights a bit of dirt at his hairline and I noted the slight smell of muskiness emanating from his surroundings. 

“Brothers? Parents?” I asked.

“Three.” He grunted. “Father, if you’d call him that. You?”

“Friends saw me off last night.” I touch the riveted, heavy leather gloves that are tucked into my belt, a small parting gift that still left a warmth in my heart. The people at the Upturned Stove were the closest thing I had to family in this world and I was grateful for everything they’d done for me – not least of all, taking in a stranger who didn’t speak the language and giving him a job in the one transferable skill that I had.

The boy gave me a curt nod, falling silent. He glanced around, looking at the groups of families and friends who had taken time off for their loved ones, and I sensed the quiet longing within. Rather than let him stew on it, I kept talking.

“You’re a little young, aren’t you?” I jerked my head to the academy doors to indicate what I mean, though I doubt he’d miss it. Then, after a moment, I added. “I’m Lin.”

“Brand, eight ring ward. And I turned sixteen four months ago.” Unconsciously, he straightened. “Old enough, old man.”

No wonder he looked like a kid to me. Even if I’d been given a younger body, I still kept my memories of my past life, all seventy eight years of them. Add the couple of years here, and Brand had been more right than he’d suspected. 

Still…

“Sorry.” I held my hands up, showing I meant no harm. Grateful, a little that whoever ~once more, that slight frisson of pain as I neared that secret~ had given me my body had stuck me in something a little older. Mid-twenties when I arrived, which put me at the upper edge of the applicants here.

Not to say that there weren’t others older than I was, especially farther back in line; but I was old for your average aspirant. The general mix of initiate Adventurers was late teens edging towards the early twenties. Young enough to be stupid enough to risk ones lives, old enough that their body had done the majority of the growing that could be expected. 

Aeres had a wider mixture of ages and sexes, but then again, Aeres wasn’t your average dungeon academy either. They would take anyone, so long as you managed to pass their exam.

Not that I had time to ask about it, as the doors finally swung open. A wave of excitement ran through the crowd silenced everyone, tensions that had been bubbling under the layer of false camaraderie exploded forth in sharply indrawn breaths, tensed shoulders and a spike in whispered prayers.

Was it a surprise that someone 

Even so, it only took a few moments before the first person – strutting forward, shield on his arm, polished black armour on his body and helmet tucked under his arm so as not to hide cross-cropped dark hair – entered. 

Signal enough for the rush, as the crowd of hopefuls moved.

“Nyx’s luck on you, old man.” Brand muttered, as we both walked through the doors, his voice a little tighter and more subdued, his entire body hunching in on itself. He was not the only one whose intimidated by the massive entrance hallway, gloomy and shadowed as it was as light streamed through high windows and insufficient shard lamps. With the grey-black of dungeon stone all around, the shadows highlighted the bored attendants waiting by their desk to take our information.

“No luck needed, unlike you. Kid.” At the glare Brand shot me, I continued. “Bet I do better than you..”

Defiance sparks, and he straightened. “Dream on, old man. You couldn’t even stand waiting without fainting..”

“Bet?”

“A boss.” A large coin, equivalent of a night’s boarding in a decent inn. 

“Done.”

Then there was no more time, as we split apart to meet our own attendant.

***

“Bai Lin, personal name, Lin.” The attendant wrote my name down in their script after getting me to spell it, and then underlined the Lin, such that others would know what to call me. Most people in Haeros don’t bother with anything but a first name, tacking on their ward or street if necessary. 

So, for example, Brand of the eight ring ward was likely the only Brand in the eight ward within the inner ring of Haeros. No real point getting more specific than that, because even if the city is huge, most people don’t crossover enough. If there was another Brand, he of the outer ring – well, that was good enough for government work. Or lack of government, as it stood. The use of residences also often gave information about the degree of wealth and the occupations of those within, since wards often concentrated around specific trades. 

On top of that, there were the usual class distinctions. Single digit wards were where the very poor and Adventurers lived as wards were built and numbered based off their proximity – in a concentric circle – around the dungeon exit.

That giant gaping hole in the world where monsters crawled up on the regular, where the Haeros guard watched over with eagle-eyes and adventurers and delvers journeyed to extract resources, farm the expansive lands below and kill the monsters below. Most of all, though, it was where monster cores and shards were found, the currency and driver of this world.

Just like oil; shards, cores and crystals – collectively known as mana reservoirs – were the oil of this world. It was what powered everything, from the – few – mechanical cars and bicycles to the forges, mills and manufactures. It empowered the textile industry, helped wash and break and make the very clothing we wore such that there was enough for everyone – though not to the insane abundance of fast fashion – and, of course, it ran everything from the restaurant’s stove to reinforcing the structural integrity of buildings. 

Orbs – refined and enchanted cores – were the basic building blocks of civilisation, the processing, breakdown and amplification they offered to individuals and buildings a cornerstone. Without the dungeon, without the cores that were extracted, this world would end.

“Alright, you have any skills?”

“Yes.”

A long, hard pause where the pen – powered by a monster shard or perhaps a mana cystal chip – hovered over the application document. When he realized I was keeping my silence, the attendant let out a long, heavy sigh and wrote ‘skilled’ next to my name. His voice shifted, taking on a rote quality as he repeated the next words.

“Once you make your mark, you acknowledge that you understand the high and likely risk of dying while in Aeres academy as a temporary academy member. At the end of the day, if you are unable to acquire the necessary payment from delving the Aeres fault, all mana reservoirs will be confiscated as payment of your fees as a temporary academy member and you will no longer be designated as such. In addition, you also agree and confirm that this is not your fourth attempt at joining the academy.”

Three tries. That was the limit. Even for an academy like Aeres, they could not – would not – continue to allow failures to attempt the impossible over and over again. There was a cost to the academy, one that many believed was not sufficiently covered by whatever was confiscated.

End of the day though, it mattered little to me. This was my first, and likely only, attempt.

“If you agree, make your mark.”

I kept my eye from twitching, knowing how little paperwork there really was in this world. Even if it was industrializing, it was still far from the bureaucratic hellhole that had been Earth. Life was cheap here, and the minimal amount of insurance in this waiver was more than some of the other academies offered.

Bending, I picked up the quill on this side, dipped it in the ink pot, wiped it against the pot’s top to make sure there were no untoward droplets hanging over and made my mark. And you did not want to know how much practice I had to do to figure all that out and to write with some degree of assurance my name in their language. 

“You’re done. Down the hall, through the doors in the center. Someone will show you the rest of the way.”

“Thank you,” I muttered automatically, getting a strange look. Another thing they are not used to here, casual politeness. In fact, it has gotten me into trouble as suspicion was arouse, as your casual Haeros citizen searched for my angle. 

Amusing, but unimportant.

What was important was what came next, as I stride down the hall, adjusted my backpack and light leather armour for the next step. I idly noted that Brand and a number of others had streamed ahead, and I cursed myself for stopping earlier in the day. That delay could cost me, because the next portion would take time and could only be done at a rate set forth by the Academy.

No good deed goes unpunished.

I should know, I’m here, aren’t I?