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Institution

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6/25/2008 21:18:19   
Nex del Vida
Member

INSTITUTION


The comments thread can be found here.

Pro Libri


A boy runs with his father across the grass. They are both laughing, but the older of the two has the air of a man who has experienced horrors. His face is sallow, his cheekbones sunken, his sandy hair lank. This running seems to be his only solace in a world full of troubles.

The son flings a bright green disk to his father, and the man dives for it. He catches it just before landing with a thud on the ground, and a pained expression flashes across his face before he smiles again, pushes himself to his feet, and throws the frisbee back towards his son.

The boy, unlike his father, is devoid of shadows. The simple action of throwing the disk, the carefree laugh that escapes his lips, the smile playing across his features, each of these emanates innocence. The disk flies through the air, greener than the grass below their feet.

The father catches it. His eyes drift to the left sadly, thinking of something in the past. They dart up again, and the façade continues. He throws the disk. The disk spins.
The boy catches it. No façade. Shining eyes, only love for his father. Throws disk. Disk spins.

Father. Dull eyes. Sadness. Love. Throws. Spins.

Boy. Naïve. Tender. Joyful. Throws. Spins.

The disk spins.

< Message edited by Nex del Vida -- 6/29/2008 16:53:23 >
AQ  Post #: 1
6/25/2008 21:19:56   
Nex del Vida
Member

Divortium Unum

As I sit on my hard, thin mattress in my blank, white room, I think back to the days before the Coming, before the institution. I think back to the years when I was a normal child.

I was happy. Nothing was wrong in my eyes, everything was fine, and I was content. My parents were loving if detached—well, they had to be. Surviving in the city wasn’t easy. I had good friends on the street and at school, though I only saw the latter one day a week. We learned in Prehist (short for PreNucleocaustic History) that kids used to have school five days a week for six hours, instead of the modern one day a week for eighteen hours.

So, everything was average. Average, that is, until The Day. That’s how I think about it, with capital letters. The Day of the Coming. It was a chilly day in April, and I was running around with some of my friends looking for food in the trash disposals. I bent down to pick up something that had caught my eye…
And then I had my Coming.

But I can’t tell you about that now. Wait a while. First, let me explain to you the story behind me, behind what I am. They teach this to us on our first day at the institution. The myth (given, of course, as absolute truth) is this:

…Arcos created humans. He bestowed upon them incredible powers to show that they were superior to the animals of the ground, sea, and sky. The humans lived with these powers for centuries, until the Year of Division. In this year, Arcos bequeathed one human with an exceptional ability: he could see souls and corrupt them. This human’s name was Sterling Deor. Deor was a king among men, and was worshiped by many: however, he was also hated by many. Those who supported him loved him so greatly that, eventually, he came to think of himself as a god. So drunk with power was he that he tried to overthrow Arcos by performing forbidden and deeply evil rites. In retaliation, Arcos struck down Deor and Disempowered his followers and their descendants: thus were the Mundane created. Those who did not follow the traitor, however, were left with their powers: thus were the Arcane created.
--Creations 3:5, from The Book of Magi

Of course, I think this is insanity. I like to think of myself as a man of science, and believe fully in the process of natural selection and evolution: After the Nucleocaust, the need arose for more capable humans. What came of this was the Arcane (I only use the word from the myth because no better one has been coined.) I don’t believe in Arcos, the God of the Arcane, at all.

Back to "history," though. Arcane are not born with their abilities. Here is another myth:

Arcos said to the Arcane, “Your children shall be born powerless lest they abuse their abilities. When their minds and bodies have developed satisfactorily, I shall Trigger them with a sensation, be it sight, sound smell, touch, or taste.” Thus were Triggers created.
--Creations 3:6, from The Book of Magi

And that is the Coming: when a maturing Arcane sees, tastes, touches, smells, or hears a certain thing, their ability starts to develop. My Trigger was a shiny coin, so polished that it was almost a mirror...

Now, though… on to The March as the Tutelaries, or teachers, at the institution call it. I’ll transcribe one more piece of disgusting propaganda:

Arcos told the Arcane, “You and your siblings the Mundane shall live in harmony for twenty thousand years; but after this time you shall march on them and claim your god-given position as the rulers of this earth. The Mundane intruders will be evicted from your rightful home, and they shall serve you for eternity.”
--Prophecies 2:4, from The Book of Magi

The Arcane will soon be marching on the Mundane. We will “liberate” the planet from their grasp and assume our positions as rulers. I don’t know how I feel about this… on one hand, it is survival of the fittest, and the Arcane certainly are fitter for this Nucleocaustic world than the Mundane. But on the other… the Tutelaries are planning to kill them. No evicting: they have interpreted the word “evict” from the book of Prophecies as “evict from life,” rather than “evict from place of residence.” And the horrible thing is, it won’t even be a battle: Mundane don’t stand a chance against us. The only reason we haven’t attacked before now is because there haven’t been enough of us, and the few that were there were not well trained. Now, however, there is a 1:1 ratio of them versus us.

They will be crushed like ants. Imagine a war between pre-Nucleocaustic people (say, from the year 2000 AD), with machine guns and biological weapons and bombs, and people from the Middle Ages (say 1000 AD), with arrows and boiling oil. That is the difference between Arcane and Mundane.

The Archmage, as "our" leader is called, has the ability to change atoms from one element to another… he can turn oxygen into iron, for instance. What this means is that he can make a weapon out of anything. Also, if a Mundane were to shoot a gun at him, he could change the bullet into hydrogen.

The reason I put "our" in quotation marks is because I do not support the Archmage or what he is preparing to do.

You see why I am concerned. There is one small mercy, though: the bigger the thing the Archmage wants to change, the longer he has to rest. This is true for some, but by no means all, arcane. To change a car, for instance, he would have to rest for an hour or so. He plans to rest for one full week before the March. Imagine.

For you to fully grasp the world I live in, I have to explain to you about the Nucleocaust, as it has been called for as long as anyone can remember and before. It was an enormous nuclear war, encompassing the Americas, Europe, Africa, and Asia. Scientists and politicians at the time had foreseen this war, and had given shelter to one million people under the ice of the North and South Poles: a tiny number, granted, but they have multiplied over the thousands of years since the Nucleocaust. Now… who knows how many there are?

After the Nucleocaust, the world was a very changed place, according to Prehist. After five years of isolation under the ice of the poles, the scientists deemed it safe for the people to come out of hiding. They emerged to find the world a desolate wasteland. The bombs had been so powerful that they had leveled mountains. All that was left of the formerly majestic peaks of the world were stubby, flat plateaus. There weren’t even the skeletons of buildings left. These poor men and women had to start from scratch. They had to re-invent the lightbulb, car, computer, and countless other things that, before the war, had been taken for granted.

Around one thousand years after the Nucleocaust, the places that the people had chosen to settle had been mostly rebuilt. The population had not grown, as everyone had thought it would: life in the new world was very hard. The people had multiplied, of course, but almost the same amount of people had died. Then, though, strange things began to happen.

Several teenagers had started developing strange powers. Perhaps one could levitate, another could hurt people with her mind, and one could bend metal without using his hands. This was the start of the Arcane, and this was when one man came forward with a book he said he had “found in the wreckage.” Of course, this was TBoM (as The Book of Magi has come to be nicknamed). While the man, whose name has been forgotten, thought it was the work of a god, some (mostly the scientists) thought that it was the process of evolution that had been speeded up incredibly because people had needed to adapt so badly. Of course, there is the possibility that the nuclear fallout had been much longer-lived than expected, and had merely taken a very long time to become active. Nobody knows for sure.

However, the scientists and their group of followers, the sensible ones who believed in evolution, were outnumbered by the charismatic man and the posse that had formed around him. There was a small battle: the scientists versus the religionists, as they then called themselves. While the scientists had more sophisticated weapons, the religionists outnumbered them three to one. The scientists were in the middle of creating an intricate and deadly battle plan when the religionists attacked them in a strategy-less brawl of pure brute force. The scientists tried to retaliate, but their plan was far from finished, and they were forced underground for the second time in a thousand years.

They laid low for a few centuries, sneaking food in from the religionist camps, before attempting to make a comeback. They created a small school, for those who disagreed with the religionists. They spread word of their school via use of spies, and soon had a veritable university going.

That is how I learned all of this. Even now, many thousands of years later, the Scientist’s University is still going. Don't get the University confused with normal school, though-- normal school is legal. The penalty for being caught going to normal school is not death.

The Nucleocaust was so important that it started a new time cycle. According to us it happened in the year 1 AA (for After Apocalypse), but according to the old system of measurement it occurred in 2500 AD. The Arcane calendar reads 19,999 AA this year.

The twenty thousandth year from The Book of Magi, the one that it was prophesied we would March in, is 20,000 AA, one year from now. The Book of Magi was supposedly written during the Nucleocaust. Here at the institution, our real training has begun. No more tactical theories or simulations. The Tutelaries now kidnap people from the Mundane world for us to practice on. They are formed into haphazard groups, given crude weapons, and then our battalions, or Arcane Soldier Units, are sent to exterminate them.

We Arcane are very military. We have rigid procedures and structures, most of which do not make sense. There are two groups of Arcane Soldier Units: one group uses people with similar abilities to increase each other’s powers and the other uses people with different abilities to heighten and enhance one another's powers. ASUs 1-99 use people with related abilities, while ASUs 100-150 use different and complimenting ones. However, new Arcane are often recruited from the institution's nursery. When enough are recruited, a new ASU is formed. The numbers 1-99 and 100-150 are rough approximations, essentially meaningless: there are probably thousands of ASUs now.

Here is an example of one Arcane Soldier Unit’s rank sheet:

ASU 97
Immobilizing Regiment
Members:
Peter Clark (Regiment Leader)
Ability: Bone Twist
Classification: Strong Physical
Ptolemy Yates (First Officer)
Ability: Fear
Classification: Strong Intermediate Psychological
Sheila Baum (Second Officer)
Ability: Drowse
Classification: Weak Intermediate Psychological
Karl Reimann (Private)
Ability: Muscle Paralysis
Classification: Weak Physical
Olivia Triton (Private)
Ability: Earth Envelop
Classification: Weak Physical


In each division there is a Regiment Leader, a First and Second Officer, and two Privates.

This particular Regiment focuses on immobilizing or handicapping the enemy. Their leader, Peter, has the ability to twist bones around, causing a lot of pain and general mayhem: he can manipulate your legs, for instance, so that the soles of your feet touch your back permanently. The First Officer can instill fear in the enemy so they become rooted to the ground in fright, the Second Officer makes them lethargic and tired, the Private Karl can stiffen some muscles in the body enough to impede movement, and the other private Olivia makes the ground rise up to cover their feet or trip them. I am the Second Officer in my Regiment, which focuses on disorientation. Here’s our rank sheet:

ASU 42
Disorientation Regiment
Members:
Louis Emerald (Regiment Leader)
Ability: Sight Shatter
Classification: Strong Psychological
Mikael Rochmononov (First Officer)
Ability: Delve
Classification: Strong Psychological/Visual
Martin Fairweather (Second Officer)
Ability: Reflect
Classification: Strong Intermediate Physical/Visual
Lily Septimus (Private)
Ability: Pupil Dilation
Classification: Weak Physical/Visual
Kramer Tenet (Private)
Ability: Jargon
Classification: Weak Physical/Speech


Some of these abilities may be harder to understand than the Immobilization regiment’s, so I’ll explain them:
Louis can essentially break apart the vision of one or two enemies. Think of your vision as a mirror. Now imagine this mirror being smashed, and each of the pieces rearranging themselves constantly in myriad different combinations, like a kaleidoscope. It’s needless to say why he’s the Leader.

Mikael, the First officer, can delve into a person’s past and bring up anything that he deems useful. He could make the person he is attacking relive their worst memories, or lull them into a false sense of security: make them believe their mother is standing there or something of the sort.

Now we come to me, Martin Fairweather. I can reflect things: myself, if I want to intimidate the enemy, or maybe an obstacle that I want to “place” in front of an attacker. Of course, these things are not substantial, but most people don’t know that, do they? This is, essentially, a lesser version of Louis’ ability, but it is organized, whereas his is chaotic.
Lily can widen or shrink an opponent’s pupils so they are temporarily blinded by sunlight or blinded by darkness.

The other private, Kramer, can mess up one person’s speech patterns into meaningless gibberish: quite useful if a rival general is giving his army a message.

So there you have it—our personal strike force. Our mission: to wipe out thousands of innocent men, women and children.
AQ  Post #: 2
6/25/2008 21:22:37   
Nex del Vida
Member

Divortium Duae
I am knocked out of my reverie by a sharp rap on my door. Without waiting for an answer, it is pushed open. Tutelary Wachsberger barges in, and shouts at me, “Fairweather! What are you doing here? Morning Classes started twenty minutes ago!”

Oh, Deor! I curse to myself. The name of the betrayer from The Book of Magi has become a swear in our society. I must have dozed off…

I jump to my feet, snap off the Arcane Salute (closed right hand on chest, then right arm straight in the air with palm facing forward), and bark, “Yes, Sir, Tutelary! I’ll be right to class, then, Tutelary!”

A note of sarcasm must have entered into my response, for as soon as the words leave my mouth, I am sent crashing to the floor in a huge wave of dizziness and nausea. Tutelary Wachsberger stares down at me, a grim, smug smile on his stubbly face. That is Tutelary Wachsberger’s ability: he can blast people with vertigo or wooziness, and does not hesitate to do so whenever he deems someone impertinent. It may not be the strongest ability, but you don’t become a tutelary because your ability is strong. You become one because you’ve mastered many fighting techniques, and can use the ability you have in the best way possible.

“Don’t Tutelary me, boy,” snarls Wachsberger. “Get up and go to class, or I’ll have the Archmage turn you into gas!” Needless to say, this is a completely empty threat, but it’s one of his favorites: he likes to claim that his family knows the Archmage. While this isn’t impossible, it’s not very likely. The Archmage only communicates with his Advisor-Tutelaries. These are five Tutelaries that our leader has chosen because of their trustworthiness and exceptional power. Wachsberger is not one of these Advisors.

I jump to my feet, salute again, and dash off to class. I run past Wachsberger and into the hall. As I am descending to the Classes Floor from the Dormitory Floor on the white escalator (everything in the institution is white), three more Tutelaries on their way to a lecture stare at me menacingly, as if I’d committed a galling crime—in the institution, being late to class is a fairly high-level infringement. I expect quite a few more punishments akin to the one Wachsberger gave me in my room today.

I see the door to my Morning Class and push it open. Tutelary Andre stares at me menacingly, and motions for me to take my seat. I slink over to my desk, three rows from the front, and slide into my hard-backed Arcsteel chair. I look at the worksheet in front of me. It has two lines of text written on it:

Design a weapon that will enhance your ability in a battle. This weapon must be
feasible to create and not too expensive. You have one hour.


Yes! Finally! I think to myself. I’ve been waiting for this moment—when I get to create my weapon—for a long time. However, I am already twenty-three minutes into the allotted time, so I’ll have to work fast.

I start thinking. My ability is Reflection. I can reflect one object or an area of less than twenty by twenty feet once on my own. However, I can reflect bigger things more if there are mirrors near me. I learned this around a year ago, in the washrooms. I was having a bit of fun, reflecting one of my eyes onto my forehead, in front of a mirror. I ended up having four eyes instead of three—previously, I had never been able to reflect something twice. I experimented. I tried reflecting myself—there were three of me instead of two. So, I had thought to myself, Mirrors help, eh? I can use that.

I start doodling as I think—lots of concentric circles in the margins of my paper, some of them filled in with pencil. Hmm… a mirrored dagger, maybe? A gun with mirrored bullets? No, there’d be too little surface area to reflect anything really useful… I look down at my paper, and see this shape:



My mind sparks with remembrance. The disk spins. A memory is nagging at me, twitching at the corner of my mind… Throw. Spin. Catch. Throw. Where is it from? I can’t think of it… Spin. Spin. Shaking my head, I banish the memory to the far corners of my mind and concentrate again on the shape.. I quickly even out the circles, soften the lines, and draw some highlights in the inner circle:



It was perfect! A circular mirror with a blade around the edge, that could be thrown. I would wear it in a diagonal shoulder-holster—there could be more than one—and whip them out when I need them! I smile to myself.

Then, for the second time today, I am jolted out of a daydream. The loudspeaker crackles, and I can hear it reverberating through the halls outside of my class: “Would Martin Fairweather please report to the Tutelary Floor. He has been requested there.”

I start sweating. Only the worst misdemeanors are reported to the Tutelary Floor, where all of the teachers lived. I was in major trouble. Wachsberger… I think to myself.

Everyone else in the class is staring at me. I glance around, meet the eye of Lily Septimus, the private in my regiment. She’s three years younger than I am. We are quite close friends—we have to be. In our regiment, we’d be run into the ground by Emerald if we didn’t befriend each other. Mikael and Kramer, the other two people in the regiment besides the Leader, are also buddies.

Lily looks a question at me. I shrug, walking out of the classroom and toward the stairs. I can hear my footsteps echoing in the corridor. But… wait… no. Those aren’t mine. I turn around quickly and see a small blip in the air, as if heat from a fire is rippling in the form of a body. Someone’s there, I’m sure of it: one of the people in the Stealth Regiment. I know at least one of them can disappear. I fold my arms and look contemptuously towards the haze: I can afford to be contemptuous because I’m sure it’s a private. Someone who leaves a plainly visible mark in the air when they disappear couldn’t have advanced in the ranks past private.

I say, “I know you’re there. As a Second Officer of the Righteous Army of the Arcane, I order you to reveal yourself.” I smile, knowing that he or she will have to reappear or risk being expelled: contradicting a direct order from a superior officer is another serious infringement, more so than being late for class.

The mirage sighs and fizzles back into sight. It is a boy, no older than fourteen, standing dejectedly in the hallway.

He has lank, black hair and pale blue eyes—so pale they are almost white. As I suspected, he is clad in the uniform of a private: brown cloth with an Arcane Star on the lapel (an Arcane Star is a black four-pointed star with a white oblong in the background). My uniform was a blue slightly darker than his eyes, with two Arcane Stars on the lapel and right sleeve.
“What’s your name, Private?” I ask.

“Aleksander Rochmononov, Officer.” He spoke with a slight Russian accent—not as if he had been born in the country, but as if someone he is close to had been. His last name rings a bell, and I cast around my mind for why…

“Officer, I am the nephew of Mikael Rochmononov. I believe he is the First Officer in your regiment?”

That was it.

“Ah, of course. Why were you following me, Rochmononov?”

The small boy looks at me. Although he has to be at least thirteen (the minimum admittance age for the institution is teenagerhood), he looks as if he is ten. “My… my uncle told me to find you. He said something… something about a resistance. I really don’t know anything, but he said to give you this.”

He takes a piece of paper out of his breast pocket, but I push it away. “No, Private. I have been requested on the Tutelary Floor. I can speak with your uncle in Regiment Strategy Class.” RSC is the one class of the day in which I meet with my whole Regiment. I bunk with Mikael, and Lily is in almost all of my classes, but RSC is the only time I ever see Louis or Kramer. As the name implies, we go over strategy in the class, practicing what maneuvers and tactics we would use.

Aleksander replies nervously, “No, sir. Uncle told me that he arranged you to be called out of class. He wants me to give you this slip of paper… he said it is very important.”
What? I think. Mikael has access to the PA system? But that’s on the Tutelary Floor! No students are ever allowed in there!

Thinking that the boy must be mistaken, but wanting to humor him, I take the paper and open it. Giving it a cursory glance, it looks to me like quite random squiggles and dots. Thinking the boy must be mentally deficient in some way, I smile at him and say, “Thank you, Aleksander. Now be a good boy and—”

But he’s gone. In his place is a slight haze.

Then a voice booms behind me, making me grimace: not only because I hate this voice more than any other, but because as soon it starts speaking I feel sick.

"Fairweather! What are you doing out of class? You're only allowed out if you’ve been called somewhere, and I know for a fact that you haven’t been! All of the Tutelaries are in classes or lectures now, so no one could have used the PA system!”

My eyes widen, stunned. If no Tutelary had been in the PA room… it must have been Mikael, although the voice over the PA hadn't been Russian... he had to have had another Tutelary with him!

“Eh… Tutelary Wachsberger, sir! I… I was… erm…”

“He was helping me get to class, Tutelary,” says Aleksander. Wachsberger starts, a vein in his fat, sweating forehead popping out gruesomely. Apparently he had not been acquainted with Aleks before now, and does not know of his imperfect vanishing ability.

The Private has reappeared, and has gallantly and efficiently extricated me from a very sticky situation. This makes up my mind about him: Aleksander Rochmononov is a trustworthy and, contrary to what I had earlier thought, level-headed boy. Corroborating Aleksander’s story, I add, “Yes, Sir. He has to find his way to…” Thinking quickly, I surmise that the boy must be in Regiment Strategy Class now: he is a first-level Private with no honors, and he has been recruited into a Regiment as I can see from the blue stripe on his left sleeve. That means he is either in RSC or Theoretical Tactics, and he can not be in the latter because I am in it. I am very lucky to know this information, as only the day before I had had the privilege of studying the schedule for everyone in the institution. I had found it on a Tutelary’s desk when I was looking for a practice knife, and spent an hour or two looking it over.

“He has to find his way to Regiment Strategy Class, Sir. He is a first-level Private, and he walked into Theoretical Tactics by accident… I was sent to take him to RSC.”

Wachsberger sniffs, and shoos us down the hall towards the classroom with a flick of his hand. I breathe a sigh of relief and start walking Aleks down the hallway. He has become bolder now, since he saved me from Wachsberger. “That was quick thinking back there, Officer,” he compliments me.

“Martin. My name is Martin. And thank you. Yours wasn’t too shabby either.”

The shorter boy looks up at me and smiles wryly. “You can go back if you want… I know where RSC is.” I start, and then I realize that I don’t actually have to help him. I had forgotten that his forgetfulness had been a ruse.

Clearing my throat, I nod and walk back to class. I am still holding the scrap of paper in my left hand, so I open it. It still looks like random squiggles to me, something like this and I decide I’ll take a look at it later.

Just as my hand reaches out to touch the door, it opens from the inside and students rush out of it to get to their next classes. I succumb to the pull of the mob and walk quickly towards the Main Hallway, off of which all of the Class Halls branch. As I am jogging towards the branch that leads to RSC, I catch sight of Aleksander. He smiles at me and waves two fingers. I smile back, and keep on jogging.

Louis is already sitting at his chair when I get to the room, Lily not far behind. He is a short man with a brown crew-cut and tight muscles. He purses his lips at us, but we’re not late and he can’t do anything. We sit down, and soon Kramer and Mikael enter the room. I attempt to catch Mikael’s eye, but he pointedly stares at Louis.

“Hm. Now that we’re all here,” whines Louis in his high, irritating voice, “We shall begin.” RSC is the only class that doesn’t involve a Tutelary: all of the ASUs split up and work by themselves. A Tutelary leading the class would serve no purpose whatsoever.

“So. Have all of you designed your ideal weapons?” We nod. “Yes? Good. Then let’s go around and tell.”

Lily is first. “I designed a small, thin dagger. It can be lit up using a button on the handle, and the tip will be a weak laser pointer.”

“The purpose of this being?” Louis whines.

“To shine it in an opponent’s eyes after I’ve Dilated his pupils.”

“Good. Perhaps a little pricey, but fine. Kramer?”

The other private is next in the circle. “A megaphone gun, sir. It would shoot bullets, but at the same time be an amplifier: I could talk into it when I wasn’t shooting, and perhaps scramble an opposing leader’s brain so that he or she hears it as Jargon."

Louis purses his lips again, a favorite gesture of his. “Good enough, although how you combine a microphone and a gun is beyond me.

“Next.”

That’s me. I explain to him about my mirrorblades. Spin. Catch. Throw. Spin. Every time I think about the weapon, something niggles me… it is impossible for me to remember where from, what the memory is. I frown in consternation and turn to Louis to see what his reaction is.

Although Louis doesn’t like me, I can tell he’s impressed. His eyebrows raise a fraction of an inch up on his head, and when I’m done he nods emphatically. “That is… adequate, Martin.” The next, grudgingly, “I’ll… I’ll be sure to report your work to Tutelary Andre for an honor.”

Smiling to myself, I know that this is a first: Louis being gracious. I have only gotten one other honor in my whole career at the institution before. I had performed an exceptional bit of reflection in my second year: by stretching the limits of my power, I had managed to duplicate an entire classroom using only a large hand mirror as an aid. Getting three honors meant getting moved to another class schedule: the Honor Schedule. I am happy at first that I am one step closer to being an Honor Arcane, but then realized that if I get a third honor I will have to leave Lily and my entire ASU: Units 100-150 (or the amount of Units those numbers represent) are made up of only Honor Arcane. They use distinctly different abilities that augment each other rather than similar abilities that do the same. It is known to be harder to work with people who have different abilities, which was why the privilege was reserved for only the best students. I looked at Lily, and she smiled encouragingly at me. I raised my eyebrows, and she shrugged: she didn’t mind.

When I looked back up at the rest of my Unit, I realized that I had almost missed Mikael’s weapon. I wanted to hear this.

“… that would boost my Delving power, making the memories that I call up all the more frightening.”.

Louis responds, “No. Far too complicated, although perhaps sound waves of some kind could be incorporated into it.” Apparently, I had missed Mikael talking about a weapon that emanated frightening sound waves. I think it an interesting idea.

“And now onto mine. I thought of a scintillating blade that changes colors vividly. When I Shattered their vision, the blade’s colors would add to their confusion.

I purse my lips and glance at Lily. She’s laughing behind her hand. Grinning, I look up, hoping that Louis hasn’t noticed. I’m in luck.

“Well, that’s all for today. Unit dismissed.” We filter out the door and back to the Main Hallway.

It’s lunchtime. There are three separate eating rooms: the cafeteria, the café, and the dining room. The former is for normal students, the latter is for Tutelaries, and the middle is for Honor Arcane. I glance longingly at the café, and at the golden Arcane Star badges, backed with silver rather than white, on the shirts of the teenagers inside it. Passing by the doorway on the inside of the café, a tall blond boy meets my eye and stares at me as if to convey a message. What he wants to say I don’t know. I start with recognition: the boy’s name is Oliver Achilles. He used to be the First Officer in my Regiment, before he got his three honors. He had advanced fairly quickly through the ranks, surpassing me in rank just six moths after the Regiment had recruited him. His ability was Light Manipulation. He could brighten or dim an area to a certain extent. I remember how he got his third honor; a week after he had become the First Officer, three months after I had become the Second Officer. He had concentrated a beam of light enough to burn a hole in a wooden table, all the way through three inches of solid hardwood. It had been in RSC, and Louis had smiled at him and sent him to the Tutelary Floor to get his third honor. The next day he had disappeared into the ranks of the Honor Arcane and I had never seen him again until now.

Lily bumps into me from behind and says, “Go! People are staring.”

I look around while my feet carry me towards the cafeteria. She is right. Many people, including one or two Tutelaries, are staring at me and sniggering. I must have stopped while I was thinking. I have to work on that, I think to myself. I always seem to tune out the world around me when I start thinking. It’s gotten me into trouble a lot lately…

Lily and I are in the cafeteria, waiting in line to get to the food counter. When we get there, the server gives me a meaningful look that reminds me of the one Oliver gave me. Shaking my head, I take my tray and walk towards the Officer Table. Lily waves goodbye and walks toward the Private table.

I sit across the table from Mikael, between the Kendra twins, called Jake and Robert. Mikael gives me the same look as both the server and Oliver, and, sensing something strange, I look around the room. Two others catch my eye, a pretty girl at the Leader table I don’t recognize and a boy at the Private table whose face is vaguely familiar but whose name escapes me. My heart speeds up, and I look down at my tray.

My hands bring food to my mouth, but none of it registers on my tongue. I finish my meal. The strangeness of the situation impels me to leave, and I follow my own orders. Getting up from my chair, I dump my paper tray in a disposal and hurry out of the door, seeking asylum from the strange stares in my room. As I walk towards the staircase leading to the Dormitory Floor, my mind jumps to millions of little, irrelevant and ridiculous explanations: maybe they all know that I was late for class and hate me for it, maybe they know I don’t completely follow the Archmage, maybe they are looking to recruit me for a club…

The seemingly interminable hallway leading to my room stretches away before me. My room, unfortunately, is at the end of the hall. Hurrying towards it I think of the paper in my pocket, and realize that I will have to decode it.

I reach my door, open it, and sink onto my thin mattress. I push the door closed with my foot—our bunks are not roomy, to say the least—and slip my hand into my uniform. I bring out the scrap and look at it. Turning it over to see if there is an explanation on the back, I think to myself that it looks like someone has taken normal words and flipped them inside-out, upside-down, and backwards.

Backwards!
Of course! I turn the paper back over and focus on it. I have to Reflect it somehow… but where to start?

I try a few different things, such as simply Reflecting the scribbles below their actual selves on the paper and flipping them upside down, but then I try something slightly more complicated. I cover approximately half of the gibberish with my hand, and reflect the visible part below the covered lines. I take my hand off of the paper, slowly and with great trepidation. I am sure that I am right this time.

The paper now reads: Café. Monday morning. 5:00 AM. Bring no one.

I gasp just as the door flies open and Mikael and my other roommates, two Privates named Tomás and Patrick, come in. I hide the paper quickly in my pocket, and Mikael gives me the stare.

“Finish lunch early then, Martin?” says Patrick in his Cockney accent. It’s quite strange, bunking with three people of different ethnicities and accents: Mikael’s buzzing Russian, Patrick’s rich Cockney, and Tomás’ quick Spanish one.

“Eh… y-yes… how was yours?” My voice shakes tremulously and cracks—I’ve just figured out something that, I can tell, is going to be important. Patrick starts up on one of his famous tirades about how he abhors the food here, and we all tune out. Pat is famed for being extremely long-winded, and having absolutely nothing meaningful to say.

When he’s done, I have recovered sufficiently to talk without suspicious anomalies in my tone. “I completely agree. But we’d better get back to class now, unless we want to be late.” The two Privates get up off of their bunks and walk out of the door, Tomás accidentally kicking me as he hops down off of his bunk, directly above mine. Mikael stands up from his bottom bed across the room. Yet again I try to get him to look me in the eye, but he just walks out of the room after Pat and Tom. I sigh and exit the bunk as well.
AQ  Post #: 3
6/25/2008 21:24:16   
Nex del Vida
Member

Divortium Tria


I am not looking forward to my next class, Arcane History. It is widely agreed to be the most boring class, and the worst part is that the teacher, Tutelary Kerrim, doesn’t even teach us remotely real history. I have mentioned that the only reason I know the real history of the Nucleocaust is because I attended the Scientist’s University, so most people who enter the institution have no means of knowing that everything they teach is false. Tutelary Kerrim essentially teaches that the world after the eradication of the Mundane will be a utopia free of cares and worries. And that may be so… for us. But I doubt it will be carefree and happy for the Mundane, either serving as “our” slaves or being murdered.

Everyone in this place, seemingly excluding myself and only myself, takes everything every Tutelary says as gospel. It sickens me, but of course there’s nothing I can do about it. Face it, I’m not the Archmage. I can’t transmute everyone around me into gas.

I walk for the second time that day down the stairway to the Class Floor, into the Main Hall, and through the branch leading to History. Entering the room, I take my seat and promptly doze off—Tutelary Kerrim has already started droning about the wonders of a purely Arcane society, or Arctopia, as he calls it.

In my half-conscious drowse, I look forward to Monday morning, at 5:00. The words echo in my head: Bring no one. It is fairly obvious that Mikael wants me to come, but the question remains: why?

The spoken word “…rebellion…” enters my subconscious, and I jerk my head up out of my hands. On the blackboard at the front of the room, Kerrim has drawn a complicated network of lines and labels. At the center is the word Arctopia, which does not surprise me—Kerrim’s lessons always centered on his imaginary world.

Branching from the center were lines leading to the words “Mundane,” “TBoM,” as The Book of Magi is abbreviated to, “March,” and “Rebellion.” Apparently he has just added the last of the four to the list, because that is what he is droning about now. I tune back in, and Kerrim’s deep, throaty voice enters my ears.

“In the year 19,876 AA, a small group of Privates and one First Officer attempted to mutiny against Our Righteous Cause. They took offense to the fact that we were taking Mundane, filthy creatures that they are, and using them for Tactics practice. They set up a meeting place and times, and had an encoded messaging system to communicate to each other with. All of their abilities had to do with sound mutation and other ventriloquisms. They would speak to each other in seemingly ordinary terms—‘Dinner was good last night, no?’ or ‘Slept well?’ Things that would not arouse anyone’s attention, and yet were slightly strangely worded. Perhaps they would mix up the wordings of their sentences slightly, saying ‘Soft pillows on this couch’ instead of ‘This couch has soft pillows.’ In these slightly off-sounding sentences would be hidden a secret meaning that only those who the code was meant for could decrypt by utilizing their powers.

“They were really quite ingenious, but our Archmage, in all of his infinite wisdom, found out about it and punished the rebels.” A not-at-all subtle note of admiration comes into his voice whenever he mentions the Archmage, and frankly it is quite annoying, but I keep listening. After all, I am not as fanatically infatuated with the Archmage as everyone else here is, and any chance to hear about others like me is welcome.

“The rebels were Vaporized by Our Glorious Leader, and since then no one has ever tried to rebel against us.

“Do not take this to mean that I do not admire these rebels. I cannot, as a member of Our Righteous Cause, say that I admire the scumbags who would oppose our leader, but I do admit to their intellect. After all, their rebellion continued for three years before it was stopped, gathering almost one hundred members. Of course, their numbers had to be limited because there were not, and still are not, a large number of people with corresponding abilities. That was their main flaw. Without that—ahem.” Kerrim coughed, and added, “Ah. I… I don’t want to be giving any… ahem… future rebels… not, of course, that there are any in this class…don’t want to be giving ideas.” I stiffen and swallow nervously and hopefully not noticeably, but I could swear that his eyes land on me for a fraction of a second longer than on anyone else, and that he squints at me.

I shake my head as the bell rings for the end of class, and as I am getting up I accidentally knock over my chair. Rushing to hoist it back up to my desk, a light hand on my shoulder apprehends me. Glancing up, I see Kerrim standing above me. He is not a short man, and he is made all the more tall-looking by his unnatural thinness. Although I am nearly six feet tall, he towers over me. I start shaking. He clears his throat. “Ahem. Fairweather.”

Trying to keep the anxiety out of my voice, my mouth stumbles over the words. “Yersis? Ah. Hm. Yes, Sir?” I blink repeatedly. Deor! I curse to myself. Since when am I a nervous wreck? Kerrim looks at me strangely, and inquires, “You looked very tired in class today. Are you getting enough sleep? You’re even knocking things over.”

Sighing audibly, I breathe, “Ah! Yes, Sir! Of course, Sir. That’s it. I am overtired. Studying, you know.”

Kerrim smiles. “Ah, yes! You students are just designing your battle outfits, aren’t you? Well, I shall tell your—who is your Regiment Leader? Ah yes, Emerald. I shall tell Emerald not to give you so much homework.”

I am taken aback. This is possibly the first time a Tutelary has been nice to me. Not coldly respectful of a job well done, but outright amiable. I smile, and respond, “Thank you, Sir!”
While it is not true that I am tired, nor that I had been up studying, Emerald has been giving a lot of homework lately. There is a small screen embedded in the underside of the bunk above me—for people in the top bunk it is embedded in the ceiling—that gives assignments at precisely nine o’clock. Curfew is 9:00 and lights-out is at midnight, but if need be there are reading lamps attached to the wall to study with. Every night, at nine o’clock, Louis’s face crackles onto the screen and says, “Arcane Soldier Unit 42. Your assignment:…” and then he reels off a list of tactical exercises to be performed and mastered before the next class. A small ticket edges its way out of a slot in the side of the screen. That ticket is the only way any student could get into the halls after lights-out. Every night, I tear the ticket from the slit and make my way to the Training Room, flashing the ticket at any patrolling Tutelaries along the way. There I would meet up with Lily, Mikael, and Kramer—due to some administrative privilege, Louis is not required to join in our after-curfew training sessions.

I never could fathom why we didn’t train like this in the day, but it was only one of the institutions many seemingly pointless rules.

I realize that I am walking down the hallway towards my next class. Well, that’s one thing solved, I think. At least I don’t stop dead when I’m thinking anymore.
~ ~ ~

I climb into my bed and stare at the screen, thinking about the horrific mess of dinner an hour earlier. Thankfully, the irritating beep of the assignment screen interrupts my nauseating memory. I stare up at it and listen as it and the three others in my bunk crackle into life. I hear Tomàs’s screen saying, “Hello, Arcane Soldier Unit 96. Your have no assignments today. That will be all.”

And then Louis’s face buzzes into view. He purses his lips—I smile—and whines, “Arcane Soldier Unit 42. Come to the Training Room for a special seminar. Be there as soon as possible.” I rip the ticket from the screen and sigh. A seminar… sounds disgustingly boring.

Mikael and I walk down the halls toward the stairs. We descend the stairs, and I become aware of the bizarre silence of the institution at night. In the daytime it is filled with a profusion of sounds, children and adults rushing to get to classes or lectures, talking to friends, finishing assignments, brushing up on training techniques… and now, there is not a single sound in the entire place but our footsteps.

Although I am alone with Mikael, I decide not to question him about the slip of paper. He has quite obviously not been talking to me about anything, so I assume that he wants to explain it to me at the 5:00 meeting in three days.

Turning a corner, Lily comes into view. She resides across the floor from us, in the Girl’s Sector. I accelerate and stride up next to her. She smiles at me, and then rolls her eyes. “What do you think Emerald has in store for us now? A lip-pursing lesson?” Lily cracks this joke almost every time we have a nightly seminar, but I don’t mind. She has several “traditions” that she never fails to enact.

“Do not make fun of Mr. Emerald, please.” Mikael rebukes Lily.

She rolls her eyes a second time, and recites, “Yes, Sir.” That is possibly the most overused phrase in this place… I think. Right in front of ‘Yes, Tutelary’ and ‘Sorry, Tutelary.’ All expressions of servitude. What a wonderful world.

As we pass the entrance to the Main Hall on our way to the stairway leading down to the Training Floor, I see the attractive blond woman from the Leader table gliding serenely past, to some unknown destination someplace else in the institution. She turns her head as she goes past and looks directly at me.

“Taking a fancy to Maybelle, eh, Martin?” Lily chides me. I laugh and look away, but my mind takes up where it left off, thinking about all of the strange stares I got in the cafeteria. Then I have a flash of inspiration. “They’re all working together!” I whisper.

“Hm?” says Lily.

“Ah… nothing, sorry. Just thinking out loud.”

And then we reach the door of our Training Room, marked with the number 42 in big black characters on the small window. I push open the door, and, as always, my breath is taken away by its sheer vastness. A Tutelary, a few thousand years ago, had the ability to conceal very large things in very small things. This came in handy in quite a few situations. He could, for example, conceal a whole regiment of Arcane in a handbag if the need arose. He used this ability to enlarge the training rooms. Before him they were small white cubicles with a few punching bags and pop-up Arcsteel dummies. Now, however, they are forests.

Yes indeed. He managed to make every Training Room a four square mile patch of trees and swamp and brush, complete with insects and even a few birds floating lackadaisically through the air. This was and is very useful in the common practice of using Mundane as hunting game, as previously explained.

While I hate and detest the idea of killing innocent people merely for a tutorial—don’t get me wrong, I hate and detest the idea of killing innocent people for any reason, but this especially—I must admit there is a certain thrill to stalking prey through the growth. I do not like it when I am forced to kill Mundane, but occasionally a machine or two is brought from the Arcsteel Laboratories, on the other side of the world, for us to hunt. I look forward to those times, to being able to hurt and kill the spawn of the great and horrific Arcane empire.

Although… when they run… when they cry in fear… I do get a certain thrill. Perhaps today we’ll get to—

No, Martin! Stop that! Killing helpless people is never entertaining.

Although it greatly disturbs me, occasionally I get flashes of anticipation when I think about having to kill Mundane. I try to suppress these flashes, but they come completely unbidden, and I have never completely mastered keeping them under control.

Today, however, no hunting of any sort will take place. This is a seminar, a desecration of the beauty of the miniature jungles. Louis sits us all down on the fertile ground and lectures us. For an hour at the least. The longest seminar I have ever attended reached four and a half hours, but only because a former member of our Unit was an hour late… that is why he was dismissed.

As soon as I step off of the small elevator platform and into the small grove at its base, Louis instructs me to sit down, although I do not need to be told. There has never been a seminar held while standing up, nor will there ever be one. Louis believes that it is imperative to our learning process that we remain sitting while he talks at us.

Sighing, I flop down on the grass with my back against a tree. At least it’s nice out here. Or… in here… ah well. I never can figure out whether to refer to the Training Rooms as outdoors or indoors. They are certainly not in the institution; leastwise, not a definition of “in” that is used commonly. There is no roof above our heads, or else the roof is painted like a sky, and painted very, very well. There is absolutely nothing to indicate whether it is real or not.

Lily sits down at the base of a tree a few feet away from mine. She flicks her hair over her shoulder, and curses under her breath when it gets caught on the bark of the tree. Her hair is always getting caught in things, as hair as long as that is bound to do. It falls halfway down her back, and she is constantly twirling it and playing with it. As if she is picking up on my thoughts, she takes a lock of hair and starts weaving it through her fingers.

Mikael has already taken a seat against a large boulder, his black hair hanging down in front of his eyes. Looking at him, I can see his resemblance to his nephew. They have the same round face, slender nose, and small mouth, along with wanly pale skin. The only difference between the uncle and nephew is that Mikael has very dark eyes, while Aleks’ are pale blue. Prehist taught that humans have changed drastically over the twenty thousand years since the Nucleocaust. When the scientists let the people come out from under the poles, it took quite a while for them to spread out over the planet again. Transportation devices had to be reinvented, so there were a few hundred years in which the people were only living in the small area of the Arctic and Antarctic. People bred in ways that had been uncommon before the Nucleocaust, since all racial and national boundaries had been broken. Many people became polyglots because their parents came from two different countries. Unfortunately, though, this tendency has been wiped out over the millennia, besides in a few individuals who seek knowledge of languages besides their own.

When ships were created, people crammed themselves onto the vessels and sailed to different continents where they reproduced, resulting in an amalgam of ethnic groups in every country. There is no longer a standard of what people are “supposed” to look like in any given area.

Kramer walks into the clearing from the elevator. He dwarfs everyone in our Regiment and, in fact, almost everyone in the institution. He stands at six feet three inches tall. I have always thought that the private has a dominance issue, because he remains standing whenever possible. I assume that he resents his low rank as private, so he seeks to look down on people in any way he can, be it literal or figurative. He chooses literal, as he always does, and leans against a tree while remaining upright.

Of course, however, he is no match for Louis’s contemptuous stare, which has been perfected over years of being a Regiment Leader. Emerald stares Kramer down to the ground, where he sulks insolently.

Now that everyone is here, Louis begins to speak. “I have called you all here tonight for a seminar.” I shift into a more comfortable position among the roots of the tree. “However, a seminar is not what I will be delivering.” My eyes quirk up and look at Louis of their own accord, and I can feel the eyes of the others in the room doing the same. He smiles strangely. “No. Tonight we will be having a practice session. You will notice the wall to your left, please.” We all turn our heads and look in that direction. There is, just as Louis said, a wall among the trees that could be mistaken for thick vines if one was not looking for it. Louis walks over to the wall and we follow. He touches what appears to be a leaf, and a segment slides open. Inside it, there is an array of objects, seemingly random, bathed in bright white light. Then, however, my eyes adjust to the brilliance and I gasp: I am looking at four disks in a diagonal row, suspended by what are revealed to be magnets as I tug one of the disks off of the wall with some effort. The others have done the same with objects they recognize. I run my hands over the blade-edged, reflective circle I am holding. The disk spins. There it is! The memory! I furiously think back to my childhood, try to remember where it’s from… Spin. Throw. Spin. The disk spins. Innocence. So innocent.

That’s new, I think to myself. Innocence? Strange… these blades aren’t innocent.

Louis is trying to order us to put our weapons back, but we pay no heed. I glance up and see Lily pointing a small dagger at a tree. Suddenly, a minute but extremely bright beam of red light emanates from the tip of the dagger and strikes the tree.

Louis has stopped trying to make us put anything away, and has taken his own weapon from its sheath at his waist, which I had failed to notice when I came into the room. It is a sword to match Louis’s stature—that is to say, short and stocky. He is holding it flat in his palms, but it looks like it could be wielded using only one hand. I notice a small triangle at the base of the blade that looks like a button. Louis touches the triangle, and I realize that I was right in my assumption.

The entire blade lights up with an incredibly vivid shade of turquoise, before shifting to a tawny gold color, and then moving to deep purple. Louis is gazing at the sword, smiling slightly, looking almost dreamy. I too stare in awe at the vivid spectacle.

Remembering something, I turn to Mikael. Louis thought that his idea was too complicated, so I am wondering what, if anything, Mikael took from the rack. At first I see nothing, but then Mikael brings his hand up to his ear. I see that he is holding a small speaker on a wire. At the other end of the wire is a circular earpiece. He fits the piece into his ear and positions the speaker near his mouth. I walk up to him and ask him what the device is. He smiles at me, and responds, “I do not know, as of yet. But I think it must have something to do with thee sound-waves I suggested to Louis. May I have a… practice?”

I look at him. He wouldn’t kill me off just yet—not right before he wanted to meet me at the café. I nod quickly, before I can change my mind.

He smiles. His eyes narrow and I feel him probing at the outer walls of my mind.

Suddenly, my mind’s barriers rupture. I hear a voice whimpering and realize that it must be mine. Mikael is rooting through my memories, pulling them out and throwing them away. But then—

The woman hugs the infant and her husband closer as the chill winds penetrate the thin blanket they use for shelter. The child wails for sustenance, and the woman attempts to nurse it. The long months of cold and hunger have sapped her dry, however, and she has no milk to give her three-month-old baby. He cries louder. The man under the blanket shifts in his uneasy sleep and a frown crosses his face. The baby sobs harder still. His mother begins to weep softly as well, and bends her head down to warm his small one.

A small boy watches a scruffy white dog as it prances next to him on the gray sidewalk. He throws the stick in his hand across the road, and the dog fetches it and brings it back. The boy laughs and races off down the street towards his home. The faithful dog follows. When the boy gets to the dirty gray building he and his parents live in, his mother calls him into the house. The boy knows the rules of the household, so he leaves the dog outside. He notices his father, thin and gaunt from hunger, doing something with the pistol he keeps in a drawer in his bedroom and walking out the door, but the boy takes no notice. He enters the kitchen. His mother talks to him about how times are hard, and desperate measures must be taken, but the boy tunes out midway through—he finds more than enough food in the trash disposals throughout the city. He is wondering what the loud bang he just heard was when his father comes back into the room, and gives his mother a bag filled with something the boy cannot see. Uncaring, the boy walks to his room to play with his toys, dirty stones and a cats-eye marble he had found on the street, his prized possession. A short time later, his mother’s quavering voice calls him to the kitchen. The boy goes down the stairs and sits down at the table for dinner.

The boy is laughing. The disk spins. His father is--

“Stop!” I scream. I realize that Mikael’s headset is emitting an eerie noise, a sort of purr and moan combined, but I am too horrified at what Mikael has done to think about that. I find that I am curled up in a ball and am shivering. I climb cautiously to my feet, steadying myself on a low tree branch. Mikael’s eyes are sympathetic and joyful at the same time. At first I attribute the joy to sadism—I should never have trusted him—but then I realize that his weapon must work extremely well, despite not actually being a weapon, and he is happy about that. Deor! No wonder he’s the First Officer. He is… so powerful. He puts his hand on my shoulder.

“Martin. I am so sorry. I did not realize how potent this little device was. If there is anything I can do for you, just let me know.” The joy is gone now, and I can see that he is realizing what he put me through. I swallow the bile that has risen in my throat and push his hand off of me.

“It-it’s fine. Thank you.” I manage to whisper. My voice comes out harsh and gravelly. I turn around and see that everyone in the clearing is staring at me. Lily runs up and gives Mikael a nasty look. She takes my arm and leads me to her tree. Louis is advancing on Mikael, obviously about to lecture—no, rant—at him, but I can see that Emerald is also impressed with the effectiveness of this contraption.

I lean against Lily and close my eyes. Of course I hadn’t remembered the first vision Mikael had conjured up, but I have always known that my parents were extremely poor for a short while after I was born. I do, however, remember the incident with the dog. I still try to tell myself that it was not the dog I ate, that he ran away, that my father was shooting birds… I even managed to partially convince myself of these excuses for memories. But now Mikael has brought it all rushing back.

Should I go to the café? Now that Mikael has violated me so horribly, I do not know if I trust him enough to accept his invitation.

But I think about the emotion on his face, the one that was crowded out by the temporary joy. He really was sorry. I will go.
AQ  Post #: 4
6/25/2008 21:28:44   
Nex del Vida
Member

Divortium Quattuor


Louis asks me if I can continue the training session or if I would like to go to bed. I need a rest, and I tell him so. He nods and motions towards the elevator, and my heavy feet carry me to the platform. Lily looks after me concernedly, but I keep walking. I need to lie down.

The elevator carries me to the door, and I walk down the perpetually echoing hallways. I must have dozed off on my feet, because my head jerks up when my hand meets the cold metal of the doorknob. Opening the door, I collapse onto my bed and fall asleep immediately, without even bothering to take off my shoes.

~ ~ ~


The next morning I am woken up by Patrick, who taps me on the shoulder and says, “Wake up, sleepy. Today’s Saturday! We have a free period until lunch.”

I nod and sit up, waiting for him to leave. He does so shortly. I hunch my back and rest my head in my hands, brooding over the events of the night before. How will I face Mikael today? I have RSC two periods after lunch… As if my thoughts are a beacon, my Regiment’s First Officer opens the door hesitantly and walks into the room. I stare at him reproachfully, letting the full force of my horrific childhood memories assail him. He bows his head and sits down on the bunk across from mine.

“I am—” he starts, then sighs and opens his mouth again. “I cannot express the depths of my sorrow for the inexcusable crime I have committed.” I nod brusquely, acknowledging but not accepting his apology. “I… I do not ask forgiveness. I merely ask that you realize that I did not know the power of my device. I hope that you can find it in you to trust me—” and here he gives me a significant look, “—and not think of me as an enemy.”

“Mikael,” I reply, “I do not think that I can ever recover fully from what you did to me last night. However, I do realize that you made a mistake, and I hold it against your earpiece, not you. But I do hope you know that I can never trust you completely again.” I struggle valiantly to keep my voice from breaking, and succeed with difficulty.

He inclines his head for a long moment. Not waiting for him to look up again, I leave the room and hurry towards the Main Hall. Today, as Patrick said, is Saturday, and all of the members of the institution are allowed outside for four hours of the day before resuming classes as normal. I consider going back up to the bunk to change into a new uniform, but I do not want to go back in there with Mikael. I find that everyone else has already exited the enormous building, and walk the well-known route to the door.

A Tutelary appointed as a sentinel is guarding the door, making sure nobody sneaks back into the building. I salute him and fire off the words, “Sir! Official Regiment business, sir. I apologize for my tardiness.” Well, it’s not strictly untrue… I was conversing with my First Officer.

“Yes… go ahead,” responds the Tutelary in a nasally, haughty voice. I step out of the door and into the bright sunlight.

Training Rooms, with their forested appearance, are well and good most of the time, but people need to have real fresh air and real sunlight, not the strange indoor-outdoor stuff of the Rooms. The vast majority of the planet today is covered with buildings, but the institution has a twenty-acre area of fields, rolling hills, and small woods, which the students and Tutelaries are free to roam about in on Saturday mornings.

It is autumn. The fields are a golden shade and the trees are just turning auburn and orange, presenting a truly beautiful sight. There are so few wonderful moments in the institution, but this is one of them. With the cattle and sheep grazing in the fields, the bright conflagration of leaves, and the rippling of the grain in the meadows, I feel that this is apt compensation for the horror of the night before.

I look for Lily, but she is nowhere to be found, and I am not surprised. Twenty acres is not a small region.

I run down the slope towards one of the cow fields to try to find one of my favorite animals. As I get nearer to the grazing beasts, the pungent and glorious smell of their feces enters my nostrils, a welcome relief after the cold sterility of the institution. I see a group of Privates laughing and pushing each other over in a neighboring copse, and can’t stop myself from smiling. It is an unwritten rule that, while in the fields, nobody is anybody else’s superior. Those Privates have as much authority as I do while we are outside.

I spot the distinctive markings of my cow, who I call Sally. She has an entirely black face and body with the exception of a white splotch on her side, and I walk up to her and put my hand on her nose. She nuzzles me, and as I am bending over to rest my head on hers I feel a tap on the back. Turning around, I see Maybelle standing in front of me, her long blond hair braided and hanging over her shoulder. A short, red-haired boy walks towards us, stops a few tens of feet away, and just stands there. Strange, I think.

“Martin,” she addresses me, her voice lilting softly, “Are you coming?”

I look at her sharply. “To what?”

“Don’t play stupid with me. I know he sent you a coded note as well.”

“You… you got one too?”

“Of course I did. You, me, David over there--” here she points to the red-haired boy—“and a few others I don’t know about. Mikael has been extremely close-mouthed about this, as he should be."

I reel at the openness with which she talks about the note, having thought previously that Mikael wanted us to keep it a secret. I tell her this, and she responds, “There are ears everywhere in the building. Out here, no one listens. Oh, plus we have some help from David.” She indicates the boy, still standing in the same place. She offers no explanation as to what she means.

Frowning, I reply, “How many of—us—are there?”

“There are others,” she responds simply. “Again. Are you coming? I heard about what Mikael did to you.”

I lean heavily against the cow behind me and rub my forehead with my fingers. “I’m going to need some explanation here.”

She sighs. “We know of your distrust of the Arcane Empire. Mikael, being in your Regiment, has observed this over many months. I, too, disagree with the bloody rituals suggested by the Archmage, and hope to at least warn the Mundane population of what is to befall them.”

I gape at her. I have always known that I disagree with the Archmage, but this… this is full-scale rebellion. “We could be killed.”

“That’s why he chose us in particular. We all have a powerful ability that can be used either to defend us in the event of discovery or to deceive the eyes or confuse the mind, to prevent us from being discovered. You will learn more at the meeting on Monday.” Maybelle turns and starts walking away. I grab her arm.

“Wait! How did you know about me if you don’t know any of the others?”

“I am in your Arcane History class,” she says. “I saw you perk up when Tutelary Kerrim said ‘Rebellion,’ and I hazarded a guess. If I had been wrong and you had told someone it’d by my word against yours, and to be honest… well, let’s just say I can persuade most of the Tutelaries to believe me.” She smiles coyly, and lets her hand drift up to the first button of her uniform. She toys with the button with her first two fingers before turning again and walking away.

I stare at her numbly for a few seconds before turning back to Sally, my mind fiddling with unimportant thoughts like Why do the Tutelaries need grain and cows for food? I’m sure one must have the ability to conjure food. Then I actually get engrossed in that question and think about it until the alarm sounds for us to go back inside.

~ ~ ~


The next few days pass in a blur. I do not remember talking to anyone or doing anything. I was a shell, going through the motions of normal life, waiting. My entire existence was pinned on those words: five o’clock. Monday morning.

~ ~ ~


Finally it came. Mikael touches my shoulder to wake me up, and we both walk silently out of the room towards the Café. We enter, finding no one else there. We wait. Maybelle arrives, followed shortly by Aleksander and the boy I hadn’t recognized in the Cafeteria on the day when everyone had given me the looks. A few minutes later, a short man enters. Mikael gestures for everyone to sit down, and we do so.

“David. Would you?” asks Mikael out of nowhere. The boy nods, stands up, and closes his eyes for a moment. I realize that he was the one in the field, the one Maybelle had told me we had “help” from.

The room, while not having changed at all, now has an air of quiet, as if a bomb could go off outside it and we would not hear.

“Thank you,” nods Mikael to David. He addresses the group, “David’s ability is Silencing. He can make a small area around him completely soundproof, as you have observed.” So that’s how he helped us. David sits down. “Now,” says Mikael, looking around the circle of chairs, “We must introduce ourselves. I, as you all know, am Mikael Rochmononov, First Officer in Arcane Soldier Unit forty-two. My ability is Delving, whereby I call forth an opponent’s most painful memories.” He shoots a glance at me. I look away silently.

Maybelle speaks up. “My name is Maybelle Abfuren. I serve as the Leader for ASU 55. I am a Pyromance.” I am taken aback—Pyromances, or fire-controllers, are very rare. Tutelary Kerrim once dedicated an entire lesson to the rarest and most powerful abilities ever encountered in the institution, and Pyromancy had been one of the first ones he mentioned.

David, the Silencer seated next to Maybelle, is next. He says in a quiet voice, “I am called David Wallace. I am a Private in Unit 55, working under Maybelle. You know my ability.” As he sits down, his medium-length red hair falls in front of his eyes. He leaves it there. I get the impression that he is extremely shy.

Next is the short, pudgy man who had served me in the Cafeteria a few days ago. He coughs wetly into his hand, wipes it on his uniform, and pats his stomach. He is a rather disgusting man, barely five feet tall, and even fatter than Tutelary Wachsberger. He is pale, though, in contrast with Wachsberger’s ruddy complexion.

“I,” he wheezes phlegmily, “am Tutelary Ruben. I can Excrete a sticky substance from my hands that can camouflage an area.” He sees the confused looks on the faces of some of the members of the circle, including myself, and sighs. “I’ll show you.”

He reaches out his hand. An oozing, pus-like liquid drips from his fingertips and forms a small wall on the floor about an inch high. He concentrates on his hand and the drips turn into a torrent. The wall builds higher and higher until it is at a level with his head. I’m still confused as to what he means by camouflage: all he has done is made a four-foot tall wall of revolting yellow gunk. Then, almost instantly, the entire wall turns transparent—and Tutelary Ruben is not there anymore. I concentrate on the spot where he used to be seated, but my eyes slide around it and I can’t focus on it.

“You see?” comes a voice from behind the wall. “The ooze camouflages me.” The wall turns yellow again, and then evaporates. I grimace involuntarily.

Seated beside Ruben is Aleksander. He stands up, smiles nervously, and says in a quavering voice, “I am Aleksander Rochmononov, Mikael’s nephew. I am a Private in Unit 71. I can disappear. Well… erm… I can slightly disappear.” He does so, leaving the shimmering haze I had been witness to earlier. Reappearing, he sits back down and folds his long, thin hands on his lap.

Everyone in the circle turns to me. I clear my throat. “My name is Martin Fairweather. I am the Second Officer of Arcane Soldier Unit 42. I serve under Mikael, and I can Reflect things.” I flick my hand, concentrating on David. Suddenly there are two of him. Both of him look up in alarm. Smiling, I dismiss the apparition.

Mikael is speaking again. “All of you have been called here for your disloyalty to the Righteous Army of the Arcane.” He says “righteous” with a contemptuous sneer.

“Now to business. First, we must—”

At that moment, something occurs to me. “What about Oliver?” I ask. Mikael frowns at me.

“Who?”

“Oliver. I remember a few days ago, when I was eating. Everyone here gave me a look, as if they were trying to say something to me. Do you all remember that?” They nod. “Well, before I got into the Cafeteria, Oliver Achilles—Mikael, he was our First Officer before you—gave me the same look.”

Mikael furrows his eyebrows. “I know of him, although I have never met him… I did not invite him here, though.”

Maybelle laughs. “Him? Ha! I’ve seen him sucking up to the Tutelaries in the halls. He would never betray the Archmage. Also, isn’t he an Honor Arcane? You have to be pretty loyal to the institution to get there.” I feel my stomach tighten—I’m two thirds of the way there myself.

“So… why was he looking at me?” I look around the circle perplexedly.

Mikael sighs. “I don’t know, Martin. Perhaps he recognized you.” I don’t believe this for a second—the look he gave me wasn’t just a glance of recognition. Mikael looks at me and says, “May I continue?” Embarrassed, I nod.

“Well, then. Our first order of business is to confirm whether or not everyone here will be loyal to us. I have observed all of you and am fairly sure that you do not follow the Archmage, but we must be sure. The only way to do this… is to use my ability.” I jump out of my seat, panicked.

“No! I will not be—”

“Relax, Martin. I will spare you. You all know of what happened to Martin a few nights ago? Yes? Good. I saw that you were disloyal to the cause, Martin. When I was in your head. You do not have to go through the process.”

After a delay in which Mikael is asked a series of questions to determine exactly what he will do, he goes around the circle of chairs and Delves into everyone’s minds. I see that he is not wearing his device, which comforts me: nobody else will have to go through what I did.

When Mikael is done Delving, he straightens up and says, “Nobody here will betray us. I am satisfied.”

"Next, we must establish the rules of engagement for our little group. One, we must never speak of this without protection from David. Two, we should have as much protection as we can at any one time. I will explain this more thoroughly later. Three, we are not to exchange any information, nor are we to interact more than would normally be expected of us.”

“So, what about the ‘extra protection’?” Maybelle is looking questioningly at Mikael.

“Ah, of course. You see, most of the abilities here can be used to protect us. Martin can reflect things in front of us, so that it looks like there’s a wall in our place, or something else of use. David, of course, can soundproof an area. Aleksander can disappear—not the most useful ability for the group, granted, but very practical if he needs to move unnoticed. Tutelary Ruben can… well, I don’t exactly know how to describe it, but you’ve all seen.”

“What about you and me?” Maybelle asks. “Our abilities aren’t exactly defensive.”

“I realize this. Our abilities are for… last resorts.”

“You mean if we have to kill anyone to stop them from talking.” Her voice is utterly calm, which disturbs me slightly.

“Yes. That is what I mean.” Mikael voice is grave, which, strangely, comforts me—at least it’s better than Maybelle’s dry uncaringness. “Are there any other questions before we go on?”

Tutelary Ruben raises a thick, pudgy hand. “Shouldn’t we protect ourselves to the maximum… erm… now?”

Mikael nods and responds, “Of course, Tutelary. It will serve as a sort of practice session for later meetings. David has already gone, so why don’t you go next, Sir?”
Ruben stands up and waddles to the door, his uniform stretched tight under the pressure of his expansive back. Raising both of his arms, he conjures a wall of puslike ooze that quickly fills the doorframe. It turns perfectly clear, leaving the door apparently obstruction-free. Turning back to us he rasps, “If anyone were to—ahem—open the door, they’d see an empty room.” He lumbers back to his seat.

“Martin. You next.” Mikael indicates me. I think for a few seconds, wondering what to Reflect, and then look over to another portion of the cafeteria. The chairs are still set up around the tables. My mind sparks.

Since I realized that mirrors improve my ability, I have taken to carrying a small hand mirror around with me. Taking it out, I aim it at the vacant area. Using my ability and the mirror together, I Reflect the empty area through where we are seated. The result is quite strange. Whenever I look at something within our circle of chairs out of the corner of my eye, it begins to morph and merge with the area I Reflected, but if I look straight at the same thing I see it normally. I step out of the circle and see, to my pleasure, an empty area of seats. Stepping back into the circle, everyone reappears. “It works,” I say.

Mikael looks at me in surprise. “Very good work, Martin. If I were a Tutelary, I’d give you an honor.”

Ruben looks at me. “I, however, am a Tutelary. What would you say if I gave you one?” My eyes widen.

“But… that would mean I wouldn’t have class with Mikael… I wouldn’t have any reason to communicate to any of you. Wouldn’t it be suspicious if I tried to talk to one of you? And also, where would I say I’d gotten the honor? They do ask, you know. I couldn’t tell them ‘Oh, Tutelary Ruben gave me one while we were convening in the Café during a secret midnight meeting organized by Mikael to overthrow the Archmage,’ could I?”

“Hmm… I suppose you couldn’t.” Mikael is looking thoughtful. “But it would be quite useful to have a spy among the Honor Arcane. Martin, you do have two honors, don’t you?”

I cringe and look around the circle. Maybelle is trying—and failing—to hide her disgust at the fact that I’m almost an Honor Arcane, having made her hate for them clear a few minutes earlier.

Ruben speaks up again. “Wait! I have an idea. Suppose you do this same piece of Reflection—or something like it—tomorrow, say in the halls, when I’m near. Then I can see you ‘legitimately,’ and I can give you a third honor.” I’m impressed at how quickly the fat man came up with the justification for me getting a third honor: he speaks so thickly and so little that I had previously assumed he must be mentally deficient. But my first impression was wrong, just as it was with Aleksander.

“I—I suppose I could do that.”

Mikael inclines his head. “Alright. As for the problems with communication… I have seen Honor Arcane keep ties with non-honor friends. That would not be an obstacle. Are there any other questions? No? Good. To the third item on our agenda.”

Mikael stands up, folds his hands in front of him, and starts pacing back and forth behind his chair. “I am sure many if not all of you are wondering what our main purpose here is. I cannot directly answer that question, however, because I do not know the answer myself. That is what we are here tonight to decide. Should our goal be to kill the Archmage? To destroy the institution? To warn the Mundane? To—”

Ruben again speaks up. “To sabotage the brainwashing.”

Every eye in the circle snaps directly to him. He clears his throat, blinks, clears his throat again, and says, “Yes. The brainwashing. You had to have noticed that the vast majority of the people in this institution are all too ready to kill innocents? To torture helpless people, to enslave or murder countless oblivious, harmless individuals? Why do we not have this same readiness?”

Maybelle frowns. “We just have… better morals?”

“And why doesn’t everyone else have ‘better morals?’ What makes them different from us? What allows them to kill remorselessly, to talk of ‘evicting’ the Mundane without even a quirk of an eyebrow, without a change in facial expression, without caring? Maybelle, you may be able to talk of killing your fellow Arcane without regret, and while that does not indicate the most superior moral values, it is understandable to want to get back at the people who capture unknowing Mundane civilians and hunt them!” Ruben is practically shouting now, and has risen out of his chair. I realize that I have done the same. Despite his rather disgusting appearance, this man is extremely charismatic. Looking around, I see that Maybelle and David as well as Aleksander are also on their feet. Mikael, who was already standing, is leaning against his chair, staring mesmerized at Ruben.

“I will tell you what lets them.” The Tutelary’s lips are curled in a disgusted grimace. “At birth. Directly after birth. They take every single infant and put them in a room. I have seen this room. It is large and white, and there is a screen in the ceiling. The children are forced to stare at this screen. It plays twenty-four hours a day, images of Mundane killing, raping, torturing. I do not know how, but they make it very clear in these images that it is Mundane, not Arcane, that are doing these things. For the first six months of life, the infants are fed, given water, and taken care of—never leaving the white room for a second. After six months, they are released into the Nurturing Wing. They grow up and become murderous, conscienceless monsters.”

The room becomes very, very quiet. After a full thirty seconds of silence, Aleksander’s voice pushes up out of the stillness. “Why are we different?”

Ruben looks at him incredulously. “Don’t you know? Haven’t you figured it out?”

We shake our heads.

Ruben sighs. He sits down and leans back. “None of us were born here.”
AQ  Post #: 5
6/25/2008 22:40:37   
Nex del Vida
Member

Divortium Quinque

“I can’t believe none of you have picked up on that,” Tutelary Ruben continues. “Haven’t you heard any of your friends telling stories of their childhoods here? And haven’t you ever wondered why you can’t tell the same stories? Martin, I’m especially surprised that you didn’t have—shall we say—an epiphany when Mikael made your memories resurface. Of course I don’t know exactly what memories did come back, but I assume some of them had to have been in your pre-institutionalized life.

“As I’m sure you all know, Arcanism is hereditary. However, in extremely rare cases there are Arcane babies born to Mundane families. Before a few centuries ago, Arcane children were left with their Mundane families simply because there was no way of knowing that these children even existed. The children were left, and usually killed when they had their Coming.

“However, some years ago an Arcane was seen practicing his ability by a scout from the institution who had been sent to capture Mundane for hunting. This boy must have kept his ability a secret from everyone else because... well, because he was not dead. The scout returned as quickly as he could and explained the situation.

“A meeting was held. The Archmage at the time thought that it was vital to get as many people as possible into the institution in preparation for the March. It was decided that a large group of Tutelaries would be sent out of the institution to search for any stray Arcane. Whenever they were found, the Watch-Tutelaries would bring them back to the institution and then return to the outside world to search for more. Usually these Watchers had abilities that could be used for restraining or, sometimes, convincing.

“When the strays were brought back, they would be put into the same room as the infants and forced to watch the same propaganda. They, too, were made to lie for six months in the white room, seeing the same images. After their time was up they were assessed and put into regular classes.”

We are all still standing. He is an incredible speaker, I think. I’m willing to bet he teaches an incredible lecture class.

Then my mind kicks in, and I ask, “Why don’t I remember being brought here? I remember being with my parents, and then… the next day I was here.” I see everyone around the circle nod in agreement. They don’t remember either.

Ruben responds, “They drugged you. Just a small paralyzation serum in your food. They were most likely masquerading as food vendors offering very cheap food. When your parents came along, they gave them the poisoned stuff.”

“But what about when they woke up? Wouldn’t they….” and then the stupidity of my question hits me. Of course they wouldn’t tell anyone… who would believe them?

As if he reads my thoughts, Ruben says, “That would be the main factor in their not telling anybody, but the institution has to be safe. If your parents actually managed to convince their fellows and, somehow, they found the institution… well, that couldn’t be allowed to happen. The answer, of course, was and is to find an Arcane with the ability to replace memories. Doubtless your parents don’t remember ever having had a son, and neither does anyone else you had contact with.”

This information forces me into my seat. Nobody remembers me?

Everyone else in the circle is also stunned. Mikael recovers first. “So… if they brainwashed us as well, why aren’t we like everyone else?”

David speaks up for the first time since giving us his name. “Well, that’s simple. That screen wouldn’t work nearly as well on, say, a twelve-year-old as it would on an infant.”

Ruben nods appreciatively. “That’s right, David. Has anyone here ever been afflicted by a sudden urge to hurt Mundane?” I think back to the night of the Seminar, when I got my mirrorblades. That had been one of my most vivid flashes, and although they do not come often, I definitely know what Ruben is talking about. I nod.

“So…” I say, “The same Watchman who made our parents forget about us made us forget about the brainwashing, I assume?”

“Well, perhaps not the same person, but someone with a similar ability, yes.”

The circle falls silent for a few seconds before Mikael coughs. “Thank you, Tutelary. I think we have established our purpose. I do not know that there is anything left for tonight, so you may all go back to your bunks.”

Aleksander pipes up, “Shouldn’t we have a name?”

His uncle laughs. “A name? Why on Earth would we want a name?”

“I don’t know… we could use it to communicate.”

Mikael is about to discredit Aleks' idea once more when Maybelle stops him. “I think it’s a good idea, Mikael. If nothing else it’ll be fun, and Arcos knows we need some fun around here. In a matter of months we’re going to be massacring gigantic numbers of defenseless people who know nothing of…”

“Fine! I get it. Does everyone else here want to give our little group a name? Yes? All right, then.” He sits down, crosses his arms, and looks expectantly at Aleksander. “I assume you had an idea?”

“Well, yes, as a matter of fact, I did. I thought we could be called the ‘Arcane Rebellion…’ simple and self-explanatory.”

“Well, sure, but we couldn’t go up to one another in the halls and say, ‘Hey, the Arcane Rebellion is meeting tonight,’ could we?” asks Maybelle.

“How about the Dishonor Arcane?” I ask.

“Same problem, really… they’d think we were talking about a gang or something. Oh, wait! What about ASU 0?”

Tutelary Ruben looks at Maybelle and smiles. “That’s perfect. Arcane Soldier Unit Zero. If anyone overhears, they’ll think they heard wrong or we misspoke.”

Mikael nods. “ASU 0 it is, then. Congratulations, my friends. We are now officially traitors to the Righteous Cause of the Arcane. If anyone finds us, we will be executed.”

~ ~ ~


It is hard for me to disguise my alliance with the rest of the members of ASU 0 over the next few days. Although I can talk freely to Mikael, since he’s my First Officer, I can’t be as friendly as I like with him. Worse, though, is the fact that I can’t interact at all with any of the others. How am I going to get that honor from Tutelary Ruben without being conspicuous? I’ve been thinking about this same question ever since the meeting got out. I can’t just say, “Tutelary, look what I can do!” That’d be just stupid. This same train of thought has stumbled through my head many times, but it never leads to anything.

I am walking towards Regiment Strategy Class with Lily when Tutelary Ruben walks by. Seizing the opportunity, he taps me on the shoulder and says, “Fairweather! I heard from one of your friends that you used your ability quite impressively the other day. May I see how you do it?”

I try not to give any sign of recognition. “Um… sure, Tutelary…”

“My name is Tutelary Ruben.”

“Ah, of course. One second, Tutelary.” I reach into my pocket and take out the hand mirror. Looking around for something to Reflect, I see a group of giggling Privates, apparently just out of the Nursery wing. I focus on the area around them, point the mirror at them, and Reflect them through where we are standing. “You see, Tutelary, that if you look at anything within a ten or so foot radius, the object you look at will begin to merge with an object from the area I Reflected. If you step out of the range of the illusion--” I do so myself— “It appears as if there are several girls giggling with each other.” I step back into the Reflection before letting the faux-area dissipate.

“Fairweather, this is… wait, I assume that the bigger of a mirror you have the bigger of an area you can Reflect?”

“Yes, Sir.” I nod. Ruben not only gives great speeches, he’s an incredible actor. I suppose it’s overcompensating for his physique…

“Well then, Fairweather… this could be used to camouflage entire Corps! Even, with a big enough mirror, our Righteous Army! I will be sure to recommend you for an Honor.”

“Really, Sir? Thank you! I… I never expected this!” Ruben smiles and gestures me onward to class.

Lily stares wide-eyed at me. “Martin, isn’t that your third Honor?” Nodding, I continue to walk. “That’s great! I guess we won’t see much of each other, but… you have to promise to tell me what it’s like, okay?”

I nod again. Lily is one of my best friends at the institution, but lately she’s been a little bit clingy. I think she may be more interested in me than as just a friend, which is ridiculous. She’s three years younger than me, and besides, the institution doesn’t allow romance. The only “love” there is here is what happens in the mating program, another perverse and disgusting invention of the Arcane. Men and women, usually Leaders or Tutelaries, are taken for a "vacation" once a year. The rumors say they are taken to a sort of fertility clinic, where they are paired up at random and locked in a small room until they…

I shake my head. Stop it. Don’t think about that. Focus on the good things in this place… not many of them, granted, but… the fields. That’s one. The fields when we get to go outside in autumn… the Training Rooms when we get to hunt—NO, Martin. Stop thinking. Stop thinking at all. I clear my mind, make it into a mirror reflecting water… and then we arrive at the classroom door. We enter.

Louis is standing behind a table with all of our weapons laid out on it. His arms are crossed and his lips are pursed, as per usual. We are the last ones in. Before he can start to berate us, I explain, “Tutelary Ruben stopped me in the hall… he gave me a third Honor.” Louis’ eyes widen.

“Really. Well then, Martin. You’ll be leaving us soon.” His voice is filled with mixed regret and anticipation. “Well, you’re not an Honor Arcane yet, Fairweather. Sit down.” I take my seat along with Lily.

“Today we will have our first official practice session with the items we designed. One at a time you will come up to the table, take your weapons, and proceed into the Drill Room behind me.” He points to a small door behind and to the left of the table. “We will go alphabetically, first names. Kramer, you first." The private stands, takes his megaphone-like weapon, and walks into the Drill Room. I have only been in a Drill Room once before, on my orientation day, the day I “got” to the institution. Although… now that I think of it… it’s probably six months and a day after I got here, counting the brainwashing.

My name is called. I walk up, take my four mirrorblades—I notice they have been fitted with a belt so I can carry them easily—and walk into the Room. As soon as the shiny metal of the disks touches my fingers, I get yet another flash. This time it’s much more vivid, so real that I can actually see it.

A boy running. He throws a disk. A sad man, his father, catches it. The boy is so… so innocent. Incorruptible innocence. Spin. Catch. Throw.

Suddenly, incredibly, I know that the boy is me, but much younger… how, though? How—and why—is an eight-year-old me carrying a mirrorblade?

Thinking back to the flash, I realize that the disk is not a mirrorblade, but a dull, colorful object. Spin. Innocence. My head clears of its own accord and I try to forget about the strange hallucination.

The room is only different from the last time I was in it in that there are now dummies arranged in rows across its length. Louis tells us to stand against the back wall, this time according to rank order—Kramer and Lily on the far left, Louis on the far right. He flicks on the lights, and I shield my eyes as six fluorescent bars buzz into life on the ceiling, reflecting off the mirror at the far end of the room. Lowering my hand, I see that the metal dummies have apparently come to life. Metal spikes, each around a foot long, suddenly shoot out of the ends of their arms. The spikes scythe forward to make nasty-looking hooks. The dummies’ arms are raised in front of their torsos defensively. With the hooks protruding into the air, the room looks like a forest of weaponry.

“Now. The dummies you see before you are the newest model from the Arcsteel Laboratories. They have been programmed with basic artificial intelligence, so they can fight back. Observe.” Louis whips out the scintillating shortsword he designed and slashes at the nearest dummy’s head. One of the metallic arms comes up and, with a flurry of sparks and a loud clang, deflects Louis’s blade. Too quickly for the eye to see, the other arm flashes up and catches the sword, the blade now pinned between the two spikes. The dummy is about to wrench the sword out of Louis’s hands when he presses a button on a small remote control that he has taken out of his uniform. The robot immediately lets go of the sword and snaps back to it’s defensive position.

Louis steps back. “These are not your normal punching bags. You will have to use your abilities to subdue the dummies and then attack them.”

Lily asks, “But they’re machines. How can I dilate their pupils?”

“Ah, of course. I’m sorry.” Louis presses another button on the remote control. A part of the ceiling between two of the lights flips upward. A large, multifaceted projector emerges slowly from the hole before buzzing softly and turning on. I blink. When I open my eyes again, I jump so far backward that my head knocks against the wall. Standing in front of me are twenty rugged-looking men holding what look to be farmer’s scythes and pitchforks. “This as well is cutting-edge technology from Labs. It projects an image of typical Mundane farmers onto the dummies… but, of course, the dummies have much more ‘expertise’ in fighting than the farmers would. Put it this way… if you learn to fight seasoned soldiers, how hard could unwitting farmers be? In answer to your question, Lily, they respond as humans would to almost any stimuli. I suppose I under-exaggerated a bit when I said basic AI…”

Kramer steps forward. “Can we get this over with?” Louis nods, annoyed. Kramer concentrates on the dummy in front of him and whispers something into the megaphone. The dummy tilts its head confusedly, looking at Kramer. Nonplussed, it lunges forward with both hooks, attempting to slash his stomach. Kramer jumps back, his uniform a blur of light blue. He rushes to the side and tries to grab the dummy’s arm. It rotates so it is facing him again and thrusts its fist forward and down, cutting through his thin uniform pants and slicing his leg. Yelping in pain, he lashes out at the dummy with his foot and catches one of the hooks with his foot. Taken off-guard, the robot jerks spastically, flipping Kramer into the air. He crashes down, face first, into the floor and lies there groaning.

“That’ll be enough for now,” sighs Louis. “Go to the infirmary and get that cut treated… you’ll have to work on this more later. Septimus, you’re up.”

Lily steps forward. This time the dummy reacts first, cutting at her with its scythe and following up with a stab to her midsection with its pitchfork. Lily deftly steps aside. The blade misses her by at least a foot. She kicks the dummy’s outstretched arm and its pitchfork clatters to the floor. The arm whips up weaponless and hits her squarely in the head. She falls to the floor, and it raises its scythe. She tries to scramble out of the way, but she trips on the pitchfork. The hook descends and I try to run forward and help her, but Louis stops me. “If this were a real battle, you’d also be fighting someone. You wouldn’t have time to help her. She has to get out of this herself.”

Lily rolls out of the way at the last second and springs onto her feet. She presses the button in the handle of her dagger and closes her eyes for a second. I can see the eyes of the dummy grow blacker and blacker as its pupils expand, its head and hands flailing wildly… and then the beam from the dagger finds an eye. The dummy gives a shrill scream and starts to smoke. It slumps forward, held up only by the metal pipe welded to its back.

Lily steps back into line next to me. I smile and nod at her. “Good job!” She thanks me.

It’s my turn now. I sling the belt over my shoulder. It’s a diagonal strip of tough material, like cloth combined with wood. The mirrorblades fit in holsters spaced so that I can easily reach any of them with either hand. I have to give it to them… the people at Arcsteel Labs are geniuses. Also the fact that they made and delivered our weapons from halfway across the world in a day is impressive, to say the very least. Stepping forward, I take out my Mirrorblade. I hope I can use my weapons as intuitively as they did theirs…

The farmer in front of me seems to be pleading with me. Don’t kill me! I haven’t done anything to you! Why are you doing this? I block out the thought. It’s just a dummy, I comfort myself. Just a hunk of metal.

I take out one of the disks. Hurling it at one of the dummies, I concentrate with all my might on the disk while it is in the air, spin, throw, innocence, catch, innocence… and two more appear, one above and one below it. The dummy’s eyes widen, and it has time to raise an arm before the real blade crashes into its torso. It leaves a sizeable dent, but the dummy just lunges at me with its pitchfork. Grabbing another two of the disks, I slice down on the outstretched arm with one of them and throw the other. The dummy is too busy shrieking to dodge it at all this time, and it slams into the robot’s head. It weakly pushes one arm forward, halfheartedly cutting at me before dropping its head and sagging forward. I step back into the line, smiling grimly: I didn’t kill anyone… nothing alive.


Mikael draws forward. He loos at Emerald questioningly. “I assume these dummies don’t have memories? How will I fight them?”

Louis smiles tightly. “We made… special arrangements, shall we say, for you.” He touches a third button on the remote. After a few seconds of silence, a bulky Tutelary comes in with a struggling man, about forty, with rough stubble and a torn, faded brown shirt. The man looks tough but weak, as if he has not been fed recently. He is struggling hopelessly against his captor’s hold, but the Tutelary is hugely muscular, and his efforts are in vain. I grind my molars, trying not to show any emotion. The slightest hint of pity could give me away.

Mikael, acting the perfect, murderous Arcane, nods and smiles viciously. The burly man lets the farmer go and shoves a small sword into his hand. The man looks bewildered and frightened, but Mikael just advances towards him. The man raises the sword and whimpers, then says, “What are you? Why are you—” but Mikael activates his device. I can almost see the waves of energy going from the earpiece through Mikael’s eyes and into the farmers’. He stares blankly at Mikael. Then he crumples, just as I remember doing. I turn my head away—the sight of someone else undergoing the same torture I had to is almost unbearable. I hear the man making small noises—gurgling, yelping, moaning—and then he lets out an enormous, lung-wracking scream and goes limp. Mikael walks towards him uncaringly and shakes him with his foot. Louis says, “Finish it. We need to eliminate witnesses.”

Mikael replies, “I think he’s already dead, Louis. I brought powerful memories back, and I think he died of shock.” Louis shakes his head.

“You need to make sure. Just crush his windpipe.” Mikael swallows, then stamps on the farmer’s neck as hard as he can. I hear something snap and the man jerks once before coming to a rest, his head twisted one hundred eighty degrees, his nose pressed into the concrete floor of the room.
AQ  Post #: 6
6/26/2008 21:29:54   
Nex del Vida
Member

Divortium Sex


As I hear the shattering of the man’s spine, I barely manage to stifle a gasp of horror. I turn it into a dry laugh, disgusting myself. Louis, however, looks at me and smiles. “You’re going to be an enormous asset to the Army, Fairweather,” he simpers. I wish I had been a better student earlier… he’s only nice to the ones that show promise.

Mikael steps back into line, his smile sepulchral. Nobody else seems to notice but me, however, and Louis addresses us all. “You see? That was an average Mundane farmer. You will note that Rochmononov defeated—and killed—him almost instantly, as opposed to the battle-programmed dummies. I have informed the Tutelaries that we need a better system for training you, Rochmononov, and they will contact Arcsteel Labs. For now, we’ll have to make do with real people.” He toes the limp body with contempt. “And now it’s time for me.” With no warning whatsoever, he lashes out his sword and waves it in a complicated gesture a few inches away from the nearest automaton’s face. It lights up all of a sudden, changing vivid colors, and the dummy’s eyes squint at it as if in thought. Louis smiles and blinks.

The dummy’s eyes nearly fall out of its head. Its pupils are dilating and contracting, irises close to spinning. It looks every which way, flapping its hands in the air in panic. Louis grabs its left wrist and rends the weapon out of it. He uses the curved scythe to hack at the dummy’s head while swinging the sword at its midsection, but it recovers and, puzzlingly, drops its other weapon. Both hands come up around Louis’ unprotected neck and start squeezing. I see the veins in his forehead start to throb. He gasps for air, his eyes bulging, his face turning purple. Then, just as I think Louis is going to collapse, the scythe connects with one of the dummy’s eyes. It moans incomprehensibly… and squeezes harder. Louis chokes out something, his throat being crushed, but I can't hear what he means. Lily, apparently, can. She darts forward, but Mikael stops her with his arm. “No. Obey Louis’ own rules. You wouldn’t be able to help him if you were in battle.” Louis glares helplessly over his shoulder at Mikael, his bulging eyes filled with resentment. He gurgles once more, and, with a last thrust of his sword, manages to stun the dummy severely enough to pull himself away.

He pushes the dummy’s hands away and falls to the floor, gasping for air. He motions for us to leave the room, and collapses onto his back, chest heaving. I walk out with Mikael and Lily.

“What did you do?” Lily’s whisper is sharp as she interrogates the Russian. “He’s going to kill you!”

“No. He most definitely will not kill me. If he did anything, anything at all, to antagonize me for what I did in there, he would have to admit that what he said to Martin was wrong. And if I know Emerald—and I think I do—he would rather be suffocated to death by a metal farmer than break his own rule.” Lily sniggers and nods.

Smiling, I break off towards my bunk, hoping Mikael will take the hint and follow. It’s lunchtime, which is not mandatory, so I have an hour to discuss what just happened with Mikael. I remember, however, that he won’t allow us to talk without David’s protection, so I change direction immediately and head to the lunchroom.

As I’m turning around, I see a flash of short blond hair ducking into an adjacent hallway. Frowning, I continue walking… something was wrong with what I just saw, but I can’t figure out what it was. Spinning around once again, I think I see something, but the hazy darkness of the hallway prevents me from pinpointing anything. I spin around once more and ask Lily, “Can you see anything in the hallway behind us?”

“Martin, what’s this about? Why are you spazzing?”

“Just turn around and look.”

“Fine.” She turns her head halfheartedly, then peers into the corridor behind us with real interest. “It’s too dark. Mikael, what do you see in this hall?”

He, too, turns around, and he, too, peers. “I see… nothing. Probably just a lighting problem.”

Ah… that would… explain it… I try to convince myself that this is true, but can’t quite manage it. Mikael has turned around and continued to walk, but Lily and I are still wondering. “Nah, he’s right. Let’s go.” I put my hand on her shoulder and she stares dreamily into the hall for a few seconds. I let my hand fall to my side. “Lily...” She nods and strolls towards the Cafeteria.

When we get there, I find that Ruben is serving again. He makes no eye contact with me.

While I am pawing through the glop on the tray with my spoon, trying to find something edible, I see a scrap of paper. I snatch it up before anyone notices and put it in my pocket, hoping that it is what I think it is. I’ll look at it when I’m alone.


The tall boy enters the room. He kneels before the throne, staring at his feet. The man in the ornate chair says, his voice rich and cultured, “Achilles. News of the boy?”

Achilles responds, “No, Sir. Nothing yet. He and his friends are too observant… I will have to be subtler.”

“Yes. You most absolutely will.” The man called Sir smiles sadistically, though Achilles cannot see it: he is still focused intently on the floor. Sir blinks slowly and calmly, and Achilles begins to look up. He catches himself at the last moment, however, and his neck muscles tense as he wills himself not to. His mouth opens slightly and a rasping moan escapes him, stopping as soon as it starts. He raises his hand to his face and watches as it evaporates, turning to a sulfurous smog that hovers around his head.

“Please… Sir… I can’t do my job with… with no hand…”

The man smiles again and responds, “No. I suppose you can’t.”

This time the boy makes no attempt to muffle his scream as the mist surrounding him coalesces back into his hand. The roar of agony rips through him, and when it is over he clutches his wrist and crumples, lying prostrate on the floor. He whimpers pathetically.

“Get up,” spits the elegant figure sitting on the throne.

The boy nods weakly and pushes himself to his feet. “As you command… Archmage.”


It is almost lights-out, and for once Louis has not assigned anything. He must be recovering from his fight with the dummy. I tell my bunkmates that I have to go to the bathroom, and walk across the hall to the large, communal washroom. Going into one of the toilet stalls, I pull out the note and position my body so that, if anyone wanted to see the paper in my hand, they would have to be in the stall with me. It is another coded piece: .

Employing the same technique as with the other note, it reveals itself to be the words “Training Room 39. 1:00 AM, in three days.”

The last part is needed because classes get out at five o’clock, so just getting up and going to Training Room 39 would be a major problem.

Dropping the paper in the toilet, I flush it and walk out of the stall.

As I’m opening the door, I could swear I see the flash of a golden Arcane Star badge disappear around a corner. That’ll be me soon, I think. I just have to wait for the Announcement period…

Then I realize that the Announcement period is tomorrow. A smile creeps onto my face. I am going to be an Honor Arcane! I realize for the umpteenth time that I will be leaving all of my non-Honor friends behind, and I grapple with the notion of whether or not I will be able to talk to them once they promote me.

There is also the possibility that, when they inaugurate me into the ranks of the Honor Arcane, they will test my loyalty to the ignoble Righteous Cause…

It is only now that I realize… What is an Honor Arcane doing in the non-Honor dormitories? Honor Arcane have their own quarters, three floors above ours. It is said that their rooms are much more comfortable… so why was that one here? Maybe he was checking up on his soon-to-be Honor Arcane compatriot. I know I’m just pointlessly flattering myself, but I feel I deserve it… I am about to enter into the top ranks of students at the institution, reserved for only the most talented and loyal. And I hate them all. At least I appreciate the irony of the situation.

I cross the hall and enter the room just as the lights flick off. Making my way to my bed in the darkness, I think about Kerrim’s lecture on the rebellion in… what year was it? Nineteen thousand, eight hundred and… something. Ah well. I’ve never been good at the paper-and-pen classes.

I wonder if my predecessors, the ones who incited the rebellion, ever had someone in the Honor Arcane. I decide to try to weasel some more information out of Tutelary Kerrim tomorrow.

~ ~ ~


Waking up before the others, I decide to talk to Kerrim early, while he’s still tired. I hope he’s not a morning person.

Walking out of my bunk, I think about the flash of gold I saw last night. That brings me to the realization that I have—I look at one of the clocks set into the wall—five hours left of being a non-Honor student. That puts a smile on my face, and my step gets a spring in it. The spring quickly goes flat as I wonder if I will be able to keep up the guise of a loyal, homicidal Arcane while secretly attending Mikael’s meetings. I sigh.

And then I realize that I am at Kerrim’s door. Knocking on it, I think about what I will ask him… and then he opens the door. I have to physically prevent myself from raising my arms defensively: Kerrim looks horrible. His wispy hair is frizzed all around his egg-shaped head, his glasses are skewed on his nose, and he looks as if he hasn’t shaved yet. He looks at me through bleary, pinkish eyes, crusty at the edges, and asks, “Martin… wha… di…” Wow, he is really not a morning person… I think. Well, all the better.

“Yes, Ke—erm, Tutelary Kerrim, I’ve been thinking a lot about the lesson you gave the other day. The one about the… scumbags, you called them? Because, you see, it’s my last day in your class, so I wanted to clear some things up.” I don’t want to actually say the word rebellion, for fear something in my face will give me away.

“Scumbags… scumbags… eh…” He clears his throat. “Fairweather… step into my office. It’s… there… you know where it is.” He waves his hand noncommittally to his left.

I nod and walk into the office. I have never been here before, and it is the messiest room I have ever laid eyes on. There are papers piled on every surface available, including some stuck onto the ceiling and walls. The Tutelary walks in, still slightly disheveled. “Oh… sorry about the mess. I don’t need organization, you see… my ability.”

What is his ability… and why don’t I know this? Most Tutelaries use their abilities frequently in class, and I happen to know that Wachsberger uses his Nauseating whenever he is corrected by a student in class... I bet that's not too rare.

Smirking, I focus on the task at hand and ask Kerrim, “Sir, what is your ability? I don’t believe I’ve ever seen it in action.”

He tells me that I most definitely have, and says, “My ability is Memory, you see. That’s why I make such a good Arc-Hist teacher… I remember everything I’ve ever read, said or done. So I can pull any paper out of this office if you tell me to. Just push something onto the floor… I’ll be able to find it.” He sees me hesitating and walks over to me. “No, honestly. Watch.” He reaches down to one of the chairs in front of his desk and roughly pushes the two-foot pile of papers to the floor. I flinch as the sheaf comes apart, the pages fluttering to separate locations across the room.

“Sit down. I’ll grab the class material and wash up…” He strides out of the classroom, his long legs carrying him fast through the small room. Thank Arcos… I don’t think I could stand looking at that face for much longer.

I hesitantly sit down on the chair, wondering if it will hold me—all the chairs in Kerrim’s office look as if they have been weighed down with these papers for years. Nobody but him seems to have been in the office for a very long time, judging from the already-cleared spot on the chair behind the desk.

Kerrim, having shaved, washed, and found the paper, sits down in his chair. He clears another space, this one on his desk, by sweeping the piles of paper off of it and onto the floor. I get the impression that he does this kind of “reorganization” a lot.

He looks up from the papers at me. His height is impressive even when he is sitting down. “I thought you might want to look at these,” he rumbles. I start reading the paper. Kerrim, seemingly from memory, recites the words on it as I read them.

Arcane History File 220669. To be delivered midway through class section 3. Title: Arcane Rebellion. Classification: Tutelary.
Already mystified, I ask Kerrim what the numbers and classification mean. He responds, “The numbers are quite meaningless… or, the first one is. It indicates what position its origin file occupies in the Archive, down below the institution. It is in the Arcane History section, of course. There are several other sections: Rules, Tactics, Student Files, etc. The first of the three is fairly small… there are only a few hundred files there. The Tactics section is almost as enormous as the Arc-Hist section… it files every strategy ever discussed in a Theoretical Tactics or Regiment Strategy Class. The TT teacher and your Regiment leader record every class, and send the recordings to the Tactics section where they are stored. It’s all audio, no paper.

“The Student Files section… it is by far the most titanic of the Archive’s sections. It chronicles every single student ever to be born into this wonderful—” I struggle to keep my mouth from twitching—“place. Almost twenty thousand years’ worth… I’ve never been there, but it is said by the Chroniclers, the ones who scribe the Student Files, that it seems as if the entire world is made of files when you’re down there. Miles and miles and miles of drawers, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of files… I hope to visit one day, to see what it’s like.”

He coughs throatily. “So, you see, this file was number 220,669 in the Arc-Hist section, out of… oh, I’d say around five hundred thousand. I’ve only actually been down there once, on the day I was named a Tutelary… it was… large.” He smiles and looks at the clock on his desk. “Oh, but we don’t have much time, do we? I heard you’re being named an Honor Arcane today! Three hours till the Announcement Period! We’d better get started. Just one more important thing—the Classification bit means that this was meant for Tutelary’s eyes only, it contains more information than the version I tell you, but… well, you seem so eager to learn that I had to divulge, shall we say.” He smiles and starts reading from his memory, the words matching exactly the ones on the paper.

In the Year of Arcos 19,876, a group of four Arcane decided that our rightful and vigilant Archmage was immoral. These psychotic betrayers spread their hateful propaganda through the institution, convincing several other unstable individuals that the Archmage was in the wrong.


I stop reading. Kerrim notices my head coming up, and asks, “What’s wrong, Martin? Is it confusing you? I can always give you the student copy…”

Slightly insulted by his insinuation that I am stupid, I shake my head. “No, Sir. It’s just that…” I think my words over carefully, making sure they will not give my allegiance away, “Isn’t this information a little… biased?”

The Tutelary looks confused. “Why would it be biased? Some mentally deficient Arcane had a breakdown and went around telling everyone that the Archmage was wrong.” I know that this is an exaggeration—if they had told everyone they would have been killed off instantly.

“Ah… alright… I suppose that’s fine, then.” I shake my head and keep reading. Of course it’s going to be biased… whoever wrote this is fanatically obsessed with the Archmage, just like almost everyone else.

The reading continues.

The group of traitors developed a code to communicate. The code involved slight variations in sound and speech, so that they could appear to be talking normally but in fact they were broadcasting encoded messages. Almost every person in this very small group had abilities having to do with sound. One of them, in the presence of another, would say “I like the food for today,” and the other would hear it as “We will meet tomorrow at three AM.” See appendix one for details.


I look up again. “What’s in appendix one?”

Kerrim answers huffily, “It explains how they communicated like this. We can skip to it if you want.” I feel that he is getting annoyed with my interruptions. I nod, however, wanting to see how they communicated. This is what he didn’t tell us in class.

“If you’ll turn to the third-to-last page, then,” Kerrim instructs me. I do so.

I see a page of what looks like medical or scientific text, filled with names in an archaic language that I don’t understand. Kerrim simplifies it for me. “The traitors were brought before the Archmage, and he Vaporized all but one of them. The last one was taken to our biology lab and vivisected.” I shudder and try to cover it with a cough, but Kerrim notices. “It may seem horrible at first, but when you remember how evil the traitors were you realize that they deserved it. Anyway, they found a small sac buried in the man’s vocal chords. He was, of course, screaming as they were cutting him open,” here Kerrim laughs merrily, “so the sac was vibrating. They found that it transmitted alternate vibrations, much less noticeable ones: one of the scientists noticed that the seismographs were quivering as the man was screaming. As soon as he died, they stopped. Their hypothesis was that anyone with the sac could, by altering what they spoke out loud, change the frequency of the vibrations from the sac. They later opened his ears and found an extra organ, what looked like an alternate receiver. That is what they must have used to hear the sacs’ vibrations. Nowadays, modified seismographs—called ionugraphs—are placed near infants when they are born. If the ionugraph indicates vibrations, the baby is killed on the spot without even being taken off of the umbilical cord. For some reason every single Arcane born with that ability became a rebel… it wasn’t incredibly common, but many people had it. Nobody ever figured out why...”

I have gotten the information I need. I thank the Tutelary, hand him his papers, and walk out. It is one hour until Announcement Period, and I realize that I am missing biology. Deor… I don’t want to see the labs after that story… stalling for time, I walk slowly back to Kerrim’s office and ask for a note to show my bio teacher, Tutelary Shaw. Kerrim agrees, writes something on a slip of paper, and sends me on my way. Sighing, I trudge to one of the escalators—the bio labs are a long way underground.
AQ  Post #: 7
6/26/2008 21:30:58   
Nex del Vida
Member

Divortium Septem

Several minutes later, after switching from the first escalator to a second, faster one, I step off of the moving strip and walk towards the bio lab. In the laboratory, everything is even whiter than the other parts of the institution, possibly because everything and everyone that enters has to be fully sanitized and sterilized. The glaring blankness is also slightly intimidating, which may have been the aim of the builders.

After I strip down and stand in the sterilization chamber a small panel opens up and a lab coat and pants slide out of the wall and onto the floor of the chamber. I slip them on and walk through the airlock to the lab. I have always thought this procedure was extravagant, but the one time someone skipped a step she was demoted and sent into three weeks of retraining. Ever since then, I’ve been very careful to do everything the biology Tutelary, a woman by the name of Shaw, says.

As I approach the table, everyone looks up at me. Tutelary Shaw opens her mouth to yell, but I take the note out of my lab pocket (I made sure to sanitize it separately in the chamber) and hand it to Shaw. She takes it and closes her mouth.

And then I see the lab table. I violently jump backwards at what is on it, smashing into the Arcsteel-reinforced glass wall. Falling to the floor, I cradle my head in my hands, my fingers coming away a bloody mess. There’s no pain yet, only a throbbing dullness. I look up and back at the wall, and see a bloody smear where I must have hit… it centers around one of the studs that fastens the Arcsteel bands to the glass, the scarlet stain a sharp contrast from the bright white of the wall…

And now the pain sets in. I curl onto the floor, oblivious to the hands that are pulling at me. The pain, though not the worst I’ve ever experienced, is made more acute by the fact that I can see the bloody body of the Mundane man lying on the table from this vantage point.

My eyes blur.

I see a park. A father and his son are running across it, hurling the disk. Innocence and concealed misery mingle in the air. The disk spins.

An alarm buzzes. The father jerks, his temporary happiness gone. He halfheartedly drapes his arm over his son’s shoulder, and the son hugs the older man’s waist tightly and smiles up at him. Together, slowly, they walk towards the imposing grey gate. The bell signaled its opening, and the boy can hear the grinding of the gears as the heavy wall ascends. Along with several other families, Fairweather! they enter the dark Get up, Fairweather! passageway. Fairweather! Get off of the floor! So familiar…

My eyes clear and I see Tutelary Shaw’s delicate yet menacing face a few inches from mine. Her lips are moving, and after a few seconds I realize that it was her voice intruding into my dream. “Fairweather! Get the hell out of my lab! If you can’t stand a cadaver, you tell me! You don’t go smashing into walls and leaving your blood everywhere! Go! Out!”

Still gripping my bleeding head, I stagger out of the room. As I’m leaving I glance back at the table, and the corpse that is shackled to it. My eyes slide nauseatingly over his naked body, the incisions in his stomach, up to his head, and then to his face. My foot finds the exit just as I see his eyes. They are rolling in his head… and he is very much alive.

I slide to the ground as the door slides shut behind me.

~ ~ ~


I wake up what must have only been minutes later, since the sanitization fog is still seeping in through the grates in the ceiling. Climbing slowly to my feet, I gingerly probe my head. As soon as my fingers touch the wound, pain spiderwebs over my scalp. Flinching, I drop my hand to my side and exit the chamber.

Not bothering to change into my regular clothes, I stumble to the infirmary. The Healer-Tutelary who is working there today gets up as soon as she sees me and asks what happened.

“I… Mundane. Biology lab cadaver... Wall…” my words are slurred, and although I know I didn’t make sense, she seems to understand me.

“Go lie down. I’ll be over in a second.” I stagger through the door in the back of the infirmary and collapse onto the nearest empty bed. Only a few are taken in the vast illness ward, and I am too tired to identify anyone. I fall asleep.

The Healer wakes me up I don’t know how much time later. “Fairweather.” As soon as I open my eyes, a bright light flashes in them. I try to squeeze them shut, but her fingers are pulling on my eyelids. The pinpoint of light darts from one eye to the other, and just when I think I will go blind, it stops.

“Pupil dilation is slightly off. Fairweather, you have a concussion. Exactly what happened?”

I still feel a little weird, but on the whole better. I open my mouth and try to speak again. “I was… in the bio lab. There was a cadaver on the table… a Mundane man, it must have been…” The Healer smiles, and then frowns.

“You didn’t like the sight of a dead Mundane?” I shake my head.

“He was… alive. I saw his eyes move.” She looks slightly more sympathetic, but still seems like she wants to run to the lab and see it for herself.

“I understand vivisections can be disturbing, even for the most seasoned of Arcane. Well, I’m going to keep you here for a while, until you get better.”

I look at the clock on the wall. It marks half an hour till Announcements.

Fumbling with my own feet, I try to get out of bed. The Healer pushes me back down. “I have to get to… Announcements. Honor.”

“Oh, you’re becoming an Honor Arcane? Congratulations. However, I can’t let you go in your current condition…”

“Can’t you just… wrap a bandage around my head? Or give me a drug?”

She sighs. “I suppose I could give you a drug to stop the pain, and disinfect the wound…”

“That won’t be necessary. I hit it against the wall in the bio lab. You know how picky Tutelary Shaw is.”

“Still, though. It’s required.” She walks back to her office, gets some bottles, and stands behind me. I wince as she cleans the wound, and wonder how ridiculous I must look with the bandage wrapped around my head. She tries to give me a pill, but I brush it aside.

“I’ll be fine. Thanks, Tutelary…” I look down at her nametag… “Creed.”

Rushing out of the infirmary, I again test the spot on my head. The thick bandages protect it, and Creed must have put a numbing agent as well as a disinfectant in it because I can’t feel my poking fingers at all.

The announcement hall is quite close to the infirmary, so I arrive there twenty minutes early. The enormous room is nearly empty, with only five seats occupied at the very front. The room is so big, however, that its shadows make them almost invisible.

Stepping onto the conveyor belt that runs in the aisles, I swivel my head around. The preeminent quality of the hall, besides its vastness, is that it is made up of four tiers. They are stacked up above each other like a cake, and each layer is reserved for different people: the bottom is reserved for Tutelaries, the second for the staff of the institution (Healer-Tutelaries, Server-Tutelaries, and the like), the third for Honor Arcane, and the highest for regular students. Each level is made up of several hundred seats. The stage lies on the floor of the hall, so the Tutelaries can look directly at it. In front of each of the other balconies is a screen connected to several cameras on the stage, and the cameras broadcast the events onstage to the screens above. This way, everyone can watch the goings-on simultaneously, with no need to peer uncomfortably down at the stage.

I step off of the moving walkway and take my seat next to the others. I know that many, many more will arrive once the time draws nearer—the institution has titanic numbers of students, after alliso I don’t try to introduce myself. I don’t know any of them.

Leaning back in the chair, I think about all of the changes that will soon come my way. I won’t have to put up with Emerald any more…I’ll have a whole new set of teachers! It’ll be strange not doing those annoying assignments in Theoretical Tactics, not being put to sleep in Arcane History, not having—

And then the others start to flow in. At least twenty of them. I look to see if anyone is familiar… but every single one of them is a stranger, and they are all staring at me—I realize that I must look strange with the bandage wrapped around my head.

After they have all taken their seats, a small, vivacious-looking man walks out from behind a curtain in the side of the hall. He has a spring in his step, and I imagine that the smile on his face must be permanent.

“Ah… you must be the fresh blood!” He smiles blithely at us, and a few of the browner-nosed students laugh. The others stare at him apathetically.

“Yes… well, then!” His English-accented voice is high and squeaky, though not annoying. “We have ten or so minutes before the Announcements begin. In that time we will run through our schedule.” He motions to us, and we climb up onto the stage. “If you would line up alphabetically, according to last name, please.” After a slight skirmish and some debating, we line up. I am third in line.

“Very good.” I find myself smiling at him—the man is extremely likeable in person. Previously I had only seen him from a distance and on a screen, in my seat at the very top of the hall. “I will run through my little rigmarole and then say your names, starting with the first. I have a list of you here somewhere…” he pulls out a sheet of paper, “… ah, here we are. Maryanne Briggs is the first. When your name is called, you will kindly step forward, bow, and accept your uniform and badge.” He shows us a pile of neatly folded uniforms, a stack of golden Arcane Star badges tottering on the top. “Then you will step back into line, salute, and hold your parcel in front of you like so.”

He snatches up a uniform and badge and balances them on his forearms, which are stuck straight out in front of him. “When all twenty… three of you are called, you will set your parcels down on the floor, bow again, pick them up, and leave to the left in a single-file line.”

I imagine that none of us need this spiel: we have all been present at countless Announcement periods. It is a monthly occurrence.

Everyone in the line nods, and the little Announcer-Tutelary does as well. “Very good. We have seven minutes. How about a practice session?”

Without waiting for an answer, he positions himself next to the pile of uniforms. He clears his throat.

I smile in anticipation. The Announcer has not picked up a microphone of any kind, but…

~ ~ ~


The hall is full. It is quite an imposing sight from this angle… I have only ever seen my balcony, never having been allowed to be anywhere else. The thousands of faces of Arcane stare at me, the tumult of their voices buzzing in my ears. I see Wachsberger, taking up two seats near the back. His bulk is usually hard to miss. Looking out among the unfamiliar Tutelaries’ faces, I wonder which will teach me.

The lights dim. Everyone falls silent. The Announcer-Tutelary steps onto the stage. Smiling in anticipation, I wait for him to speak…

“Ladies and Gentleman, Tutelaries, Staff-Tutelaries, Honor Arcane and Arcane—I present to you these twenty-three young men and women, the newest addition to our star pupils, the most loyal and hardworking students in the institution—these, my friends, are our new Honor Arcane!”

As always, I am astounded at the voice that can come out of the tiny man. His ability makes him able to speak incredibly loudly.

He starts speaking our names. “Maryanne Briggs! Arthur Blekinsop! Martin Fairweather!” As each name is called, the corresponding person steps forward. When I am called, I do the same and follow the instructions I was given. The uniform, a much darker blue than mine, contrasts nicely with the shining gold of the badge.

Eventually, everyone has gotten their promotion. We bow and exit as told. As one, we rush to the changing rooms to put on the uniforms and badges. Needless to say, we are all excited.

After changing and disposing of my old uniform, I Reflect myself and walk around the Reflection. I look taller in the darker color, and more dignified. The golden badge sparkles enticingly. Smiling, I walk out of the bathroom and to my new quarters—the quarters of the Honor Arcane.



AQ  Post #: 8
6/26/2008 21:32:05   
Nex del Vida
Member

Divortium Octo


I am scarcely able to stop myself from sprinting to the Honor Sector, on the fifth level of the institution. Halfway there, however, I realize—I don’t know where I’m sleeping, what class I have next, or, really, anything else. Sighing, I walk back down to ask the Announcer-Tutelary these questions. Apparently, however, I’m not the only one who forgot to ask—there’s a line forming in front of the small man.

I’m in too much of a hurry for this! Where else can I find my bunk assignment? Thinking frantically, I turn around and practically run into a man walking towards me. I knock the papers out of his hands, and he gives me a nasty look, his thick eyebrows coming down over big, brown eyes. His high cheekbones give him a very haughty appearance, and he growls, “Pick those up.” Nodding quickly, I kneel and gather the sheets, the giggles of the other new Honor Arcane ringing in my ears. Standing up quickly when I finish, the sleek-haired man snatches the sheaf out of my hand and promptly throws it in a disposal three feet away from him.

Smiling nastily at me, his perfect teeth glinting, he purrs, “Oh, we are going to have so much fun together.” Looking at the floor, I shuffle to the back of the line. Oh, no… he’s like Wachsberger all over again…

“My name is Tutelary Rose. I am here to assign you your sleeping quarters and tell you where to go for your assessment.” A few people begin to ask questions, but Rose raises his hand and smiles yet again. “Your assessment is where we decide how useful you are to the Righteous Cause.”

I feel a burn of love in my chest— What? Where did that come from?

“After the assessment, we assign you to an Honor Regiment. Now, however, I will tell you where you will all be sleeping. Maryanne Briggs—Room 344.”

As the names are recited, I realize my deep, unending, devoted love for the man reading them off. Martin! What is wrong with you? He made a fool of you in front of everyone! But Arcos, he’s amazing…

Shaking my head, I realize that everyone in line is crowding forward, trying to get as close to Rose as they can. “Martin Fairweather—Room 956. Oh, it’s you.” He sees who the name belongs to as I step out of the line and walk again towards the escalators. “Fairweather, eh? I will be remembering that name.” Oh, good! He will remember me. Why do I care? I shouldn’t care at all! He’s awful to me! I am so confused that I nearly trip while walking up the stairs. Rose chides, “I see you’re always clumsy, eh, Fairweather?” This draws an adoring laugh from the line of new recruits behind me.

Bowing my head, I sprint up the rest of the stairs until I get to the Honor Sector. Passing through the bunks, I almost miss mine—number nine fifty-six—because I am so confused. I am almost at the door when a hand reaches out to stop me.

I hope and fear that it is Rose. I love and hate him so much… but I turn, and see, to my surprise, Oliver Achilles. He has grown much taller since he was in my regiment, so that I can now look him in the eye.

“Martin! It’s good to see you again.” Forcing a smile onto my face, I nod. “How have you been faring since I left?”

Making a noncommittal noise in my throat, I attempt to open the door again. Oliver grabs my arm. “Oh, come on, Martin. Let’s talk for a while. We can go to my bunk! I’ll get us drinks.” He sees the question in my face and laughs. “But of course. You haven’t seen the Honor Bunks yet. Well then, I suppose I can let you into yours for a while.” He releases me.

I enter the room and gasp. My old bunk, ten by ten feet and furnished with only a bare white sink and two bunk beds, is nothing compared to this room. Which it is—it’s actually a room, not a bunk. There is a single bed, a desk with a chair, a small black box of which I don’t yet know the purpose, an armchair, and a lamp. I turn to Oliver, frowning.

“There must have been a mistake… this is a Tutelary’s room.”

Laughing heartily, Oliver shakes his head. “No, my friend. This is your room. Being a good student pays off, no?” Still astounded, I sink onto the bed. The depth of the mattress is alien, since I’m so used to sinking into my thin one and hitting Arcsteel an inch below the surface. I sense—and further inspection confirms—that this bed is made out of actual wood. I run my fingers over the rough grain of the frame in wonderment, amazed by the warmth and soft firmness of it, so different from the always-cold bite of Arcsteel.

Turning to Oliver, beaming at me in the doorway, I stand up. “Let’s go to your bunk.”

“Impressive, isn’t it?” Oliver inquires as we make our way to his room, number 131. “They really reward us for doing well. How’d you get your third honor?”

I tell him the story just as we reach his door. He nods and lets us in, indicating the armchair. He walks to the black box and opens it. “What would you like to drink?”
Peering inside the contraption, I don’t see anything. “You look like you’re out… should we go back to my…”

He laughs. “Oh, no.” Indicating a keypad inside the cube, he continues, “I just input the code here and the kitchen sends up whatever I want. There’s a menu of sorts on the other side.” Looking where he points, I see a list of words with corresponding numbers. Oliver reads the list.

“There’s water, fruit juices from the trees in the fields outside, and two things I doubt you’ll have heard of—coffee and soda.” At the mention of the last one, my eyes widen. Oliver asks quizzically, “You have heard of soda? How? To my knowledge, regular Arcane never get it…”

The reason I know of the delicious beverage is indeed not from experience within the institution. When I was a child, there were rare occasions, usually birthdays, in which my parents managed to scrounge up enough money to buy something special. Once, on my tenth birthday, they came home with a brightly colored metal canister. When a tab was pulled, a hole in the top opened. Inside there was a seemingly magical bubbling liquid, as brown as mud, but almost translucent. I remember my parents carefully pouring the soda into one of our three glasses—the actual glass ones—and handing it to me.

The sweetness of that soda was unparalleled by anything I have tasted before or since. Of course, I can’t let Oliver know that I wasn’t born in the institution. Why I can’t tell him this I can’t say—it would just feel wrong.

“I… ah… heard about it from an Honor Arcane. It’s supposed to be very sweet?”

“Incredibly so. I’ll get you one now. What kind do you want? There are several—apple, orange, and something they just call ‘cola.’”

Remembering the name on the side of the canister, I tell him to order the latter. He instructs me on how to operate the machine, first touching the digits of the drink, then the star key, and then the number of drinks desired. Oliver explains that Honor Arcane are allowed to have up to six guests in their rooms. Of course, regular Arcane are never allowed to have people besides the three others in their bunk visit.

“The Cook-Tutelaries take a while to send the drinks up, so let’s talk. You met Tutelary Rose yet?” I nod, a dreamy look crossing my face. Then I realize what my face is doing, and force it into submission. Oliver chuckles. “I know what you mean. You see, Tutelary Rose’s ability lets him play with your emotions… quite literally. He can make you love him or hate him. So nobody really talks about him… opinions differ so vastly—usually by his design—that fights have been known to break out. Some actually think he is Deor’s heir: they compare emotions to souls. I think it’s ridiculous, but he’s made me like him a lot, so I can’t really say.”

I shake my head. “He is amazing… but I don’t like the fact that I like him. He was awful to me, and now he is apparently making me love him… it’s confusing.”

“Well, that would be the point. He is an Advisor-Tutelary, after all. It’s a sign of his power that he can keep track of every single Honor Arcane and how they feel about him, isn’t it?”

My mouth falls open. “He’s an Advisor-Tutelary? He has contact with the Archmage?!” Oliver blinks and stares at his hand for a second, his head apparently in the clouds, before looking up at me.

“Amazing, isn’t it? Think of what he could do… make entire platoons of enemy soldiers fight amongst each other.” There is a muffled ‘chunk’ from the black box in the corner, and Oliver hops up and grabs the two canisters of soda from the compartment. Handing one to me, he tells me how to open it. Of course I already know this, but I can’t let Oliver know that I know.

As soon as the cold metal touches my hand, The boy and his father are walking towards the titanic gray tunnel. The buzzing alarm is still ringing. The boy, his smile dimmed, tugs on the elder man’s sleeve. “Daddy, can’t we throw just once more?” The man shakes his head.

“No. If we don’t go, they’ll take us away. We won’t be able to see Mommy again. You want to see Mommy, don’t you, Martin?”

His son nods downheartedly. “Who will take us away?”

“The police. We can only have so much time in the fields, and if we get more other families will want more.” They enter the tunnel, along with several others, and the gates begin to close. The boy looks longingly back at the last glimpses of the green grass, the trees, before exiting the long corridor and stepping back onto the pockmarked pavement.

“Martin! Are you alright? Here, drink…” Oliver pushes the open can of soda to my lips. Taking it from his hand, I sit up. Then I wonder why I was lying down.

“What happened?” I am sitting with my back against the frame of the bed.

“You collapsed… and then you were muttering. About a gate and a field.”

I warily put the soda down on the floor, not wanting to risk another flash of memory. “I… I’m sorry. Not enough sleep.” A blatant lie, but it could be true. “I think I should go back to my bunk… what class do I have next?”

“None. You get the rest of the day off.”

Walking back to my room, I marvel at the amazing treatment we Honor Arcane get. I figure that I will stay in my room for an hour or so—to pretend I’m sleeping—and then ask Oliver for a tour of the Honor Sector.


Again the room is entered. Again the boy drops to one knee and stares at the ground. Again the words are spoken, “Achilles. What news?”

The boy smiles, his face still turned downward. “I have information now, Your Righteousness. As you doubtless know, in your infinite wisdom, Fairweather has been promoted to Honor Arcane. Today he collapsed. In his unconsciousness he was muttering things, about a gate and grass.”

“Exactly how is this supposed to prove his disobedience?”

“Well… from the way he talked, it seemed as if this dream he was having was of something other than the institution.”

“Fool! I know he has been out of these walls! That is why we are following him, Achilles. He was born in the Mundane world.”

“Please, Sir… I did all I could…”

The man nods, and stands up from his throne. “Yes. You have done well, Achilles.”

He walks to a rack on the wall, a rack obviously meant for weapons. However, the wooden holder is empty. He reaches his hand out in front of him and catches the handle of a falling sword, using its momentum to swing it in a graceful arc in front of him. The metal sings in the air, the edge gleaming, and the boy ventures a glance up at the man. He knows he has just seen a rare event, one that very few at the institution ever have the pleasure of viewing: a Materialization. The Archmage has created something out of thin air.

He smiles, knowing that this is his reward for doing his job well, and knowing also that many more rewards are on their way if he gathers more information.

“Go, Achilles. You don’t want to miss Fairweather.”

The boy nods. “Yes, Sir. Of course. Thank you.” He steps out of the chamber.


After thoroughly inspecting my room while killing time, I find several other items of interest. A small library in the back of the closet yields only books containing pages of Archmage-worship, but I decide to read up on them—perhaps I’ll pick up some tips on “How to be a Better Arcane,” one of the titles present on the shelves.

Another wonder is a panel that slides free of the wall when touched. Beneath it is a screen with several labeled pictures lined up on one side: a question mark with the words “Help Center—READ ME,” a picture of several faces connected by lines captioned “Talk Center,” a pen saying “Writing Center,” and a picture of a pair of dark glasses reading “Virtual Training.”

I touch the question mark, and the screen turns white. Text starts scrolling across it.

Hello, Honor Arcane. Welcome to the Honor Help Center. This is a briefing detailing the use of your in-room study screen. This tutorial is assuming that you are new to the ranks of the Honor Arcane; however if you ever need to access it again simply press the question mark and then the word “Tutorial.”

A smaller image of the original screen appears, complete with question mark, faces, pen, and glasses. Numbers appear next to each icon, and numbered descriptions appear at the bottom of the screen.

[font=”Courier New"]
1. This is the help center, which you are currently using. At any time after this tutorial, if you are in need of help with your screen, touch this.
2. The talk center is for socialization, and is only open from 9:30 PM (your curfew has been extended half an hour!) to 12:30 AM (as has lights-out.)It is also open on days in which there are no classes.
3. The Writing Center is used for any written homework. It is always open for use.
4. Virtual Training is for homework. You will start getting assignments that require you to practice fighting skills on your own. This is for those assignments.
I touch the finish button and then “Talk Center.” Another panel opens and a small microphone extends out of the wall. It is too low for me, so I drag the armchair closer to the wall and sit down. A camera has also come out of a slot above the screen.

A line of text now reads, “Input room numbers.” A keyboard appears, with letters and numbers present. I have no idea what to do, so I type in my own room number, 956. An image of me appears on the screen. I wave my hand at it and the image on the screen waves back.

I touch the “cancel” button. Back at the main menu, I try the “Writing Center.”

The screen flips out of the wall. A panel below it, just above my knees, extends. The rectangle lands neatly on the now-extended block, and a stylus pops out of the side. The screen is now a blank white, and I pick up the stylus. Writing on the screen is just as easy as writing on paper, I discover—except you don’t need multiple sheets. When my scribbling fills a page—I’m just randomly drawing—it appears to flip off of the screen and numbers appear at the bottom, 1 and 2. Touching 1, my initial page appears. I smile happily.

Then I get an idea. I go back to the menu. The screen flips back into the wall, and I touch “Talk Center.” In the bar labeled “Input Room Numbers,” I type the digits of my old bunk, “E-20.” Non-Honor bunks are denominated by letters and numbers, from A-1 to Z-26 (and possibly beyond.)

An image appears. Looking down at it, I see my old bunk. Patrick and Tomàs are talking to each other in their bunks—non-Honors get one free period after Announcements. I can hear them.

“I wonder who’ll take Martin’s bed?”

“I dunno. A Private, probably. I doubt he’ll be as quiet as Fairweather, though…”

Is that how they think of me? Quiet? I suppose I am, aren’t I?

I talk into the microphone. “Hey, guys! It’s me.” They don’t appear to hear me.

Then the realization hits me. The cameras in the non-Honor bunks aren’t for talking to the normal Arcane. They’re for spying on them.

I wonder how many Honor Arcane spied on me.
AQ  Post #: 9
6/27/2008 15:31:26   
Nex del Vida
Member

Divortium Novem


This Chapter is dedicated to jerenda. She's helped me quite a bit with decided what people's abilities are--thank her for Eli, Beth and Tutelary Rose.

Once I think I have passed enough time for Oliver to believe that I was asleep, I exit the room. As I walk towards Oliver’s area, I marvel at the ingenuity of the study screen. I wonder if my accession has brought me privacy, or if I am being monitored by Tutelaries just as the regular Arcane are being monitored by us. Us? I’m already thinking of myself as an Honor Arcane? I wonder again at the paradox of my promotion—I have become one of the most loyal Arcane while being one of the least loyal.

I reach Oliver’s room and open the door. He is sitting on his armchair, as I sat on mine, laughing and looking at his study screen. It is split into four parts, each segment showing a different face. He looks up at me and smiles jocularly. “Noah, Eli, Beth, Rachel, this is Martin. He’s one of the newbies.” The four figures on the screen wave to me, and I hear their welcoming voices coming from the speakers in the walls. “I have to go give Martin a tour of our Sector, but I’ll see you in the lunchroom.” He waves and presses a button. The screen goes dark.

“Were you talking to four people at once?”

“Yeah… do you know about the study screens?”

“I found it before I went to sleep and poked around a bit… how many can you talk to at once?”

He thinks for a moment, then responds, “I don’t completely know. I can tell you it’s at least five, but I’ve never tried above that.” I nod. “Well then, let’s get going.” He walks over to the wall and touches a square, one that stands out from the rest of the white panels. This rectangle is black, and as soon as it is touched it lights up. Oliver leans down to it and says, “Full Honor Sector tour.” Immediately, a green arrow starts flashing intermittently on the screen. I see that the arrow is pointing to another screen, which in turn is pointing to another, and another.

“These are the Honor Navigators. The Honor Sector is quite large, and sometimes even experienced Honor Arcane get lost in it. If you ever get lost, just lean down to one of these and tell it your destination.” Another arrow, blue this time, begins flashing below the green one on the screen. It is pointing in another direction. “Ah, someone else has probably asked for directions somewhere as well. The screens can guide multiple people at once, I don’t know how many.”

Oliver starts walking along the hallway, following the arrows. At a corner, I see the arrow curving, pointing us to another corridor. We follow it until we see a door that’s different from the rest—it is made of darker metal, and has a sign saying “Honor Tutelaries.”

A tinny female voice begins to speak. I look around for a second before realizing that the voice comes from the screens. “These are the offices of the Honor Tutelaries. Students are not permitted to enter except in the case of an emergency or on special permission from said Tutelaries.”

The arrows suddenly change direction. Oliver tells me, “The screens are essentially taking you on a tour of the entire Sector. They will explain everything as you come to it. I was in the middle of a Talk Center meeting with some friends, as you saw… can I go back?” I nod, thinking that I’ll be able to follow the screens well enough. Oliver nods back. “Great. See you later, then.” He jogs off.

Apparently, the screens have become impatient at my hesitation, and the voice echoes from the walls. “Follow the arrows, please.” Creepy, I think. They can tell where I am. I begin to follow the arrows again.

After a few minutes, I am led to a passage. I see many hallways leading into this, so I assume that it is accessible from all passages. Walking along it, a door comes into sight, and the screens say “Male-Female divider. Genders are allowed on each others side with permission from the respective sex.” I gasp. Boys and girls are allowed to visit each other’s rooms? “All gender-mixing activities will be monitored.” Ah. That explains it.

I walk some more, following the blinking green arrows. Several times during the tour different-colored arrows start blinking on the screens, leading other people to their destinations, and once or twice I pass another Honor Arcane. Finally I find a staircase, and the screens inform me that it is the stairway to the Honor Classes. I climb it.

At the end of the long ascension, my jaw drops. Fanning out from the top of the stairs like a coliseum is an enormous double ring of classes. There are two circles, one on top of the other, each with doors spaced out among them. The top of the huge room—though I hesitate to call it that, seeing as my apartment building from when I lived in the Mundane world could have fit in this several dozen times—is one huge fluorescent light, making the whiteness of the room even more blinding than usual. A single screen next to me says, the voice echoing slightly in the cavernous chamber, “Honor Classes. Closed for the day. You will be guided to your class on the next class day.”

The arrow reverses itself, but I don’t notice until the voice from the screen impatiently reminds me to get going. I have been staring in awe at what must be hundreds of classrooms, all in one space. Turning quickly, I follow the arrows.

~ ~ ~


I sink onto my bed. The tour was lengthy, showing me to the Honor Training Rooms (much bigger than the non-Honor ones), Regiment Strategy Rooms (likewise), and study rooms. The Honors get entire rooms, just to study with friends. The tables in these rooms are equipped with study screens, all linked to the institution’s Archives. Any information needed for homework can be found through those screens.

I wonder what to do, and then remember Oliver talking with his friends. Since I haven’t made any friends besides Oliver, I decide to talk to him. Pulling the chair up to the wall, I touch “Talk Center” and type in Oliver’s room number. A little circle starts rotating on the screen, the words “requesting… requesting…” flashing over and over. After a few seconds of this, Oliver’s face pops onto the screen, smiling as always.

“Martin! It’s nice to see you. How was your tour?”

I smile back. “Great—I can’t believe the size of the classroom chamber!” He laughs.

“Yes, many new inaugurates are surprised by that. Well, your first class is tomorrow, and speaking of classes... I won’t be in every one of yours, so you’ll need some friends to help you through them. Here, let me introduce you to some of mine.”

I see his hand reach out and touch something. Two bars appear on my screen, with the word “Multiple Talk Session Invitation from Room 131.” The two bars below the word say “Accept” and “Deny,” so I touch the green bar that says “Accept.”

The screen divides itself into five parts. I recognize the faces of Oliver’s friends, the one I saw when I went into his room room, and they all smile. One is a pudgy boy with ruddy cheeks and sandy blond hair, his small eyes a bright, deep blue. He waves at me and introduces himelf. “I’m Eli.” His voice is thick, but he sounds quite intelligent. “It’s always wonderful to have more Honors! Welcome, Martin.”

Next is a dark-haired girl with brown eyes and a fine-boned face, very pretty. Her curly hair reaches past her shoulders. “Hello, Martin. I’m Rachel.” She smiles, her teeth gleaming, and waves. I nod.

A pudgy girl with tan hair and identical skin tells me that her name is Beth.Oliver grins and says, “Ah, Beth, come on. You don’t always have to be shy.” He directs his next words at me. “Martin, Beth is a terminal wallflower. I doubt I’d have gotten to know her if she weren’t Noah’s sister, but she’s great when she’s not shy. Beth, you’ll get used to Martin. He’s the quiet type too.” There it is again, people calling me quiet. I’ll have to fix that.

The boy who must be Noah quirks his mouth, the left side twitching up. I don’t understand what he’s doing for a few seconds, but then I realize he’s smiling at me.

“I’m Noah, Beth’s sister. I, unlike my sister, enjoy socializing with other humans.” I can definitely tell that they are related: though Beth’s nose is a little bigger than Noah’s and she is a bit heavier, they have the same tan hair and round faces, their eyes grayish blue. They could be twins, I think.

“Well, Martin? Are you going to say anything?” Oliver inquires. I realize I’ve been sitting silently while they all introduce themselves, and I jump a little.

“Ah… heh. Sorry. Um… you all know me, I suppose… I’m Martin Fairweather. Do you have any… tips for me before I start classes?”

Rachel and Noah say together, “Don’t cross Tutelary Rose.” I laugh and nod.

“Yeah, I know… I’ve met him already. Great man… ah… Arcos.” The others must have seen my hesitation, because they raise their eyebrows. I explain my strange love-hate situation to them, and they laugh.

“Must be tough… I, personally, hate the man.” Eli flourishes one of his hands in the air, his lips pinched.

“Ah ah ah, let’s not get into Rose-debates,” Oliver cautions. I get the impression that he is the mediator in this group. “Anyway, Martin, I suppose I should tell you a little more about these dear Arcane. Or, rather, have them tell you themselves.” His eyes shift the slightest bit, apparently looking at one of the other segments of the screen, and Beth nods slightly.

“I… I’m Beth,” she says in a quiet voice. “I can read inanimate objects’ minds.”

Furrowing my brow at the obvious contradiction, I wait for her to explain. When nothing is forthcoming, Oliver explains it more clearly.

“Bethy here can talk to things. For instance, walls. If I were to go into a room and say a word, Beth could come into the same room later and sift through the wall’s ‘memories’ until she found me in them. The wall will ‘tell’ her where I was and what I said.”

“It’s quite useful for… tracking…” says Beth, apparently catching herself talking in the middle of the sentence and trying to stop. I sigh mentally. I have to get this girl to trust me... if only because her nervousness is irritating.

“Right! I’m Noah, Beth’s brother. I can see any and all things an opponent can do in battle so I can avoid them, and also see what the best course of action for me would be. I’ve been called the ultimate strategist.”

Rachel snorts. “You’ve called yourself that…”

“What’s that, Rachel dear?”

“I said, ‘I hate your guts, you stupid freak.’”

“That’s what I thought.”

I find myself smiling. These two are obviously great friends. Rachel, smiling as well, turns her eyes towards me. “You may be familiar with the fact that there are a few Arcane who can manipulate physical objects? For instance, telepaths can levitate things, and I know we have at least one Pyromance in this lovely school.”

I nod. “I actually know one from…” Ah! Of course I can’t tell her where I know Maybelle from! “Around.”

“Ah, interesting. Anyway, I’m another one of these… I control water.” She reaches down below the level of the screen. Her hand comes up clasping a glass of water. She flicks two fingers of her other hand into the air, and the water in the cup shoots upward and forms into a ball. Putting down the cup, Rachel spreads both of her hands, and the large sphere splits into fifteen or twenty smaller beads, which one by one soar into her open mouth. She swallows.

“Hmph. Showoff.” Noah’s arms are crossed in mock anger.

Eli, the last person left besides Oliver, sighs. “They never cease their dramatics.” I frown a little at the strange tone of his voice, recognizing it as… Superiority? Does he think he’s better than me?

“I myself, dear boy, can make someone hate something. Quite an assistive ability, if I do say so myself.”

“I… I don’t quite understand,” I say.

He sighs pompously. “Ah, I should have… ahem. For instance, I could make you hate your bed, so you could never sleep on it. Or I could force you to detest the cup of water in front of you. It could be quite useful if a platoon of Mundanes needs killing--I could make all the soldiers hate their food.” He smiles sadistically, and the others give an appreciative laugh.

I force myself to chuckle outwardly, but inside I am disappointed. Had I actually thought I could be friends with them? That’s ridiculous! They’re loyal, unabashed killers!

“Well, Martin? Explain what you do. I think you already know my power…?” Oliver asks.

“Yes, I know yours.” I address the others. “I can Reflect things. Ah… here.” I stand up and back away from the screen, making sure they can still see me. I Reflect myself and begin to curve and loop around the Reflection, it perfectly mimicking me, until I am sure they are thoroughly mixed up. I say, “Which one of me is real?”

A jumbled answer comes from the study screen, some saying “Left!” and the others the opposite. I smile, and banish the Reflection, revealing myself to be on the left side.

“Interesting ability, Martin… no offense meant, but how exactly did you get into the Honor Arcane?”

I demonstrate my Reflecting-through-something tactic. “Also,” I explain, “I can Reflect more things using mirrors. The bigger the mirror the bigger the thing I reflect, and the more mirrors there are the more things I can reflect.”

They nod, still looking a bit confused. Ah… I guess my Honor from Tutelary Ruben wasn’t quite legitimate…

Oliver shrugs. “Ah well… the important thing is that Martin is one of us now.” He sighs and leans back in his chair. “What shall we do? Ohh, maybe the Virtual Training center is open! We can run a drill.”

The others nod. Oliver blinks off of the screen for a few seconds before coming back. “Yep, it’s open! Everyone, meet me in… ah… how about the desert?” They nod again, and all flick off. I touch the “exit” bar, and then the Virtual Training option, with the dark glasses above it. Yet another panel in the wall opens. How many of these panels are hollow?

A sort of visor slides out of the wall. It looks like a pair of glasses, except the lenses are black and extend directly across the middle, with no break where the nosepads on glasses would be. I take them out of the wall, seeing that they are connected to a wire, and slip them on. The visor goes clear. A voice sounds directly in my ear. “Please clear all obstructions from a twenty-foot radius around you.”

I move the armchair out of the way, and stand well back in the room. A green circle appears around my feet, extending in a twenty-foot radius. A small part of it is red, the circle connecting with the corner of my bed. I step to the right to make the circle green. “Very good. Initiating Virtual Training.” The visor goes dark for a second, and then I find myself floating in space.

Infinite blackness surrounds me, the void pulling me into its everlasting and infinite breast. The unceasing darkness calls to me, and I begin to float away…

Before I realize that my feet are still firmly planted on the ground. My mind reels, snapping back to reality from the peaceful eternity. I feel like I have woken up from a good dream. My vision is still black, but now there are little white lines forming, shaping boxes and words. Eventually, a sort of chart has been formed against the blackness.

The chart has ten or twenty names of locations in it. Oliver said desert, right? I look for that word, and find it next to smaller box that says “Occupancy: 5.” I touch it, realizing that I can see my own body, even with the dark glasses on. Suddenly I am flying through the air, wind rushing against my body. How is that possible? I begin to descend, gently, before landing in a sand dune. My legs buckle. What the… I’m only wearing glasses! How can my whole body be feeling these things?

I see a group of people standing thirty feet away, waving to me. I begin walking towards them. How am I going to get to them? I only have a few feet before I hit the wall… Despite the seeming obstacle, I reach the group fine. Just as I thought, I see Beth, Noah, Rachel, Eli, and Oliver standing there. I ask the question that’s been nagging me.

“Why can I feel the sand, and why can I move this far? I only have an area of twenty feet clear in my room…”

“Ah, yes. It’s quite amazing, isn’t it?” Eli smiles his pompous little smile. “You see, the goggles actually send information right into your brain. You are walking in real life, but walking in place. The twenty-foot radius rule is to prevent accidental mishaps: when you, say, swing your fist, you arm actually swings.”

I nod. “Interesting… so, what do we do here?”

“We have a few options. Either we can battle each other, or have the system send out virtual Mundanes for us to fight. Which are you all in the mood for today?”

Rachel shrugs. “I haven’t practiced with my weapon much.”

“Okay, that it is. We’ll battle each other. Martin, in this case the system will supply us with our weapons, like so.” He reaches up his hand and says, “Battle options.” Another network of lines appear, floating in the air, and Oliver touches “Friend Tournament.”

“Last one standing wins,” says Noah. I look at him and see that he has a huge broadsword in his hands. He swings it at me, the enormous blade glinting in the sun...
AQ  Post #: 10
6/27/2008 15:32:39   
Nex del Vida
Member

Divortium Decem

The broadsword flings itself at my neck. Just as it’s razor edge is about to pierce my skin… the world goes black.

After a few seconds of floating, I return to my room again. Someone must have disconnected me from the Virtual Training arena… The goggles are sharply ripped off my face, and I see the grinning visage of Oliver Achilles. His messy blond hair accentuates his gleaming blue eyes and demonic smile. “We’ve caught you, Fairweather.”

Blood rushes to my face. “W—what are you talking about?” I try to keep my voice still, but it quavers. NO! They can’t have found out about ASU 0!

“You little imbecile. Did you honestly think you could trick the most powerful man who has ever existed?” He slaps me across the face, hard. My head snaps to the side and I feel a warm trickle of blood down my cheek.

“I do admire your ability to get into the Honor Arcane… oh, but he will punish you all the more for that.” Faster than I can follow, he brings his knee up and winds me. Gasping for air, I have no choice but to let him drag me roughly out of my room. He takes me up what feel like hundreds of flights of stairs, faces leering at me from every angle, pointing and laughing, the boy and his father walk towards their home. As they reach the gray building—N… no! That’s what brought you… into this mess…

Finally, finally we reach the top. Oliver hurls me to the floor, my nose smashing into the hard tiles. I feel it crunch. He kicks me. “Get up.” I cough, blood spattering the white floor. “I said, get up.” His voice has taken on a tone of menacing smoothness. I shakily get to my knees, but fall back to the ground—I am simply too weak. Oliver leans down and spits in my face, his saliva mixing with my blood and tears. “Get up, Martin, or I’ll make it so you can’t.” He tears off my shoes and socks and carefully takes one of my toes in his fingers, bending it back, back, back—

I scream and leap to my feet. “Hmm… I was hoping I’d be able to break one of your Mundane-born toes… ah well, any Mundane blood spilled is good Mundane blood spilled. Well, I have more important things to do that wait around for a pathetic excuse for a rebel to die, so your escort will be here shortly. Stay.” He pushes me back to the floor and exits the stairwell, locking it behind him.

How… did he… how… what… did he do… how did…even my thoughts are muddled. I… I mustn’t give up the others…

I lapse into a pain-filled red sleep. What may have been days later, the door cracks open again. I see the familiar brown hair and eyes of Lily Septimus. “Oh… thank Arcos, Lily…” She leans down to me and reaches for my face, hers closing in. I realize… she’s the only true friend I have… her lips brush mine…

She bites down savagely on my lip. I scream and jerk away, my head hitting the wall where my old wound has not yet healed. Groaning in agony, I slump to the floor, seeing her contemptuous face over me.

“Martin! I never would have expected you to be a betrayer… Ah well. Mundane sympathizers must be eradicated.” I black out.

~ ~ ~


When I come to, I am sitting in a chair. My arms and legs are bound. In the very corner of my vision, something glints… I try to twist my head to get a better look at it, but to no avail. My head is bound as well, and I can’t turn my eyes far enough to see what is causing the light. After a few seconds, I realize that my head has cleared. I touch my upper lip with my tongue, feeling for blood, but none is there.

“Martin Fairweather.” A tall man strides into my view. He is wearing a sharp suit, black pants creased like knives. Sitting on his brown-haired head is a small golden circlet, obscured in some places by his rich brown hair. He gazes at me with colorless eyes, a slender nose and mouth accentuating the curved smoothness of his forehead and cheeks. He extends a long hand to brush away the hair in my eyes.

“I understand that you were part of a resistance.” I stare at him, refusing to move a muscle. He smiles. “At risk of sounding cliché, we can do this the easy way or the hard way.”

“I’ve already been beaten up fairly badly today… what are you going to do to me? And… who are you?”

The man laughs, a charismatic chuckle. “Martin, my boy. Do you know nothing? I am the Archmage.”

I jerk at the absurd proclamation. Nobody besides the Advisor-Tutelaries ever sees the Archmage… and we don’t even know if they do!

“Yes, quite. I expect this is quite a surprise for you, isn’t it? Anyway, I am going to kill you. I can do it fast and painlessly—alive one moment, dead the next, nothing in between—or I can torture you so painfully that, if given the option, you will gladly hang yourself with your own intestines.”

He moves to my left, over to where the gleam was. He wheels out a metal tray. “You will notice that there are no tools on this table. That is because the tools I will be using do not exist yet.” He lets me ponder this horrible statement for a while. My mind is rushing. What am I going to do? Oh Arcos, Arcos, no no no no no… please… Arcos… help… how will I…
“I will spare you the utterly indescribable agony you are about to face if you tell me who else is participating in your little rebellion. Of course, there’s a chance that I already have every single one of them captured, and I’m just testing your loyalties.”

What can I do… oh Arcos… Deor… what…

The Archmage shrugs. “If you insist.” He extends his hands, taking one of mine. Looking at it as if studying my palm lines, he flicks his wrist.

My hand explodes. I scream, I scream, I scream, I scream, I scream. My throat is bleeding, I am sure of it. I scream. He forces my eyes open. I do not know if I am blind. He pushes my head down, makes me look at the cauterized stump where my hand used to be. He shows me a ball of green gas.

I believe he is speaking. What is it like to not be in pain? A cool liquid is poured onto my wrist.

The pain stops. My chest heaves, my heart begins to pulsate wildly in my chest.

His voice pierces my ears. “Watch.” Glued in morbid fascination, my eyes stay rooted on the ball of green gas. It transmutes itself into a silvery object, forming, finally, into a knife. “I have just created a weapon out of your hand. How much more painful do you think torture is when you know you are hurting yourself?”

He moves the blade toward me, the harsh light glinting off of the silver surface. I swear I can see my fingers in the blade—

It pierces my skin. I do not scream. The pain is beyond screaming. Synapses snap, nerves collapse, my brain turns into a pile of gibbering mush. I know the pain is psychological, but it does not help me. Anything for the pain to stop, anything… BETRAY THEM. My brain is forcing my mouth open…

The knife recedes. Staring down at my arm, I see a long, open gash extending from elbow to wrist, severing tendons. “Do you have something to tell me?” The Archmage tilts his head slightly, eyes narrowed. Whether in curiosity or pleasure I cannot tell.

“Tu…Tutelary Ruben.”

He nods.

“Maybelle Abfuren.”

Another nod.

“Mikael Rochmononov.

Nod.

“Aleksander Rochmononov.”

Nod.

“David Wallace.”

“Is that all?”

“Yes.”

The Archmage smiles and forces my face up. I stare directly into his eyes, no longer able to conjure up hate. My pain has made me lucid, oh so lucid, as the knife slams into my neck.
AQ  Post #: 11
6/27/2008 15:36:07   
Nex del Vida
Member

The end of Part One. The rest of the story will be told from the point of view of Oliver Achilles.
AQ  Post #: 12
6/27/2008 15:38:04   
Nex del Vida
Member

The previous two posts were in honor of April Fools' Day. They are fallacious. Normal chapters will resume shortly.
AQ  Post #: 13
6/27/2008 15:39:41   
Nex del Vida
Member

Divortium Decem


The wicked-looking blade slices towards me. I fling up a mirrorblade just in time to block it, and the sword screeches to a halt. What the…? Where did my mirrorblades come from? Not waiting for myself to answer the question, I hurl another disk at Noah. The boy and his father walk silently along the gray sidewalks—No, Martin! Concentrate! Angling the mirrorblade in my hands at the one in the air, I Reflect it four times. All five spinning blades whirl towards the boy, and his eyes start moving incredibly fast. He dodges between every Reflection, not a single one touching him, and again swings the broadsword. I whip out another mirrorblade and slam the mirrored side of it into the flat edge of his weapon. The sword begins to crack apart. What? It’s that weak?

The blade splits into ten or fifteen others. Each miniature sword begins slicing and twirling around, tiny joints giving them extreme freedom of motion. Three blades grab mine and rip it out of my hands, cutting my finger in the process. I suck it, wondering why no blood is coming out and frantically thinking what I can do next... and my mind sparks. Quickly sliding another mirrorblade from its holster I hold each one to either side of me. I make sure the mirrored sides are reflecting each other, seeing the infinite hallway of duplicate mirrorblades.

I Reflect myself.

Suddenly there are several hundred of me standing in the desert, each with two mirrorblades extended. Noah’s eyes widen. I smile, my Reflections doing the same, and quickly mix myself up in the confusion. I look around, seeing several other battles taking place and then stare back at Noah. He obviously has no idea which is me. I say, each of my Reflections echoing me in an eerie soundscape, “Good luck getting to me.” I begin walking forward, starting to slice my mirrorblades in front of me.

Noah frowns and slashes at one of the Reflections in the front with his sword. The sword passes through it. Again I mix up the Reflections: he can’t tell which one he cut now. Ha! He doesn’t know I can’t hurt him with the Reflections! Again I advance, cutting tantalizingly close to him with the Reflections. I myself am near the back, but I make my way forward, scrambling the rest of the clones as well. As soon as I get near enough to him I start cutting—Wait! Am I actually going to hurt a new friend? Noah sees my hesitation and randomly cuts at one of me. By an extremely lucky chance he manages to clip my leg, and I curse.

“Deor! Wait, Noah!” He has zeroed in on me and is advancing. I try to scramble the Reflections but he follows the real me carefully this time. “What if one of us accidentally kills the other?” He scoffs.

“You don’t actually believe the institution would let valuable Arcane kill each other?” He slashes dangerously close to me. “No, no. You will feel a fraction of the pain you would if this happened to you in real life, but you won’t really get hurt. When you are wounded so much that you should be dead, you will be removed from the tournament.” I duck under a swing. Hurling a mirrorblade at his shins I leap up and fling the other at his head. As soon as I hit the ground Noah ducks, not having seen the lower blade. At the last second, though, his eyes flick down, and with superhuman reflexes he hops onto the disk and forces it to the ground.

“Alright, Martin. No more playing nice.” Again his eyes begin to move with incredible speed, but this time they don’t stop. He advances, slashing randomly at Reflections and ducking every single cut from one, directed by me. He still doesn’t know they can’t hurt him, but not a single one has touched him! He continues ducking and weaving, his vibrating eyes staring straight at me. I decide to go on the defensive.

I look randomly into the desert and choose a patch of sand, Reflecting it through myself. Noah stops. “You—ah, you showed this trick to us!” He chuckles. “Very clever, Martin. But you have to come out some time…” I begin to circle around him, carefully keeping myself in the middle of the illusion until I am behind him. I carefully, oh so carefully, draw a mirrorblade…

Noah yells and slashes his broadsword behind him, splitting it apart as he does so. Two of the blades catch my left shin, flipping me to the ground and gashing my calf deeply. Another one angles itself downward and pierces my stomach, pinning me to the ground. I scream in what I think is agony before realizing it’s really just a slight twinge in my leg and belly. Noah pulls the blade out, reforming it as he does so, and I take a glance at my cuts. As with the nick in my finger, neither of the serious injuries are bleeding. In fact there is no evidence whatsoever that just second ago there had been a blade protruding from my stomach.

Noah smiles. “Don’t worry, Martin. You’ll get better at this.”

I laugh shakily. “Ha ha… I guess you’re right. One question: how did you know where I was?”

“Your little sand camouflage moved, so I figured that you were behind it… you Reflected a particularly visible dune.” He winks and runs off to engage others in fights. Looking around, I realize that my body is covered in a thin blue film. I assume that it signifies my disqualification, and lo and behold I see Beth fall to the floor with a large spike of what appears to be glass protruding from her neck. Immediately she becomes translucent and turquoise with the same filament that is covering my body. I jog over to her.

Beth sits up as I approach and motions to Rachel, who apparently was the one to fell her. The slim girl nods and the glass spike melts away, leaving the sand damp. Rachel glances wryly at me. “That was quick… we’ve never had someone lose faster than Beth.” The girl in question smiles shyly.

“My ability isn’t exactly offensive. Ah well, soon you’ll be beating me too…” She looks down as if surprised by her burst of friendliness. Rachel snorts.

“Beth, when in Arcos’ name are you going to get less shy? You can’t afford to be a pushover when a Mundane farmer is trying to give you tetanus with a rusty scythe… anyway, I’ll leave you two here. Beth, why don’t you explain the basics of VT to Martin?” She dashes off.

Beth looks down at the sand, obviously uncomfortable while not in a friend’s presence. “I have a lot of homework… I should go… it looks like Eli’s down too.” Her body becomes another network of white lines and then disappears.

Sighing, I jog over to Eli. He stares distastefully at the blue skin that has enveloped him and tries to pull it off. It stretches but doesn’t break. “Indestructible as always… why hello, Martin. What brings you over to this corner of the arena?”

“I was hoping you could explain VT to me… that stands for Virtual Training, right?”

He nods while checking his cuticles. “The rules aren’t particularly complicated. As you know, a virtual simulation of your weapons is transferred to you at the start of the match. Oh, you’ll get a weapons upgrade, I forgot about that—Honor Arcane get a larger budget, so you can get better disk…things. Anyway, you also probably know that you will only feel a fraction of the pain that you would normally experience if these things were to happen to you in real life. A mortal wound will, in VT, feel like a light slap. When you “die,” this film covers you. It prevents others from thinking that you’re still in, quite useful if there are more people in the arena. It is also impervious to weapons.”

As if to demonstrate, Eli picks up a sharp rock and drives it into his eye. I gasp, but the stone bounces back. Eli blinks. “You see? It won’t hurt at all. You can have a lot of fun when you’re out, because things like falling on the ground won’t hurt at all. Oh, also you can fly. Only when you’re out, of course.” He jumps into the air and hovers there, looking bored. “And one more thing. If you get hurt while still in combat, the wound will turn blue rather than bleed, but it won’t be impervious to weapons. If a part of you gets hurt so much that it wouldn’t be able to function anymore—like, say, your hand was ‘cut off’—that part of you will disappear until you are out. Also, if you have a large wound for a long period of time, you will ‘bleed to death’ and be disqualified.”

“Ah. Erm… thanks, Eli.” He nods uninterestedly and sinks back to the ground. I wander off to observe more fights.

Noah, Rachel and Oliver are still fighting. It appears as if Oliver and Rachel have ganged up against Noah. All three of them have blue marks on their bodies, none very large. I already know of Noah’s weapon, but not Rachel or Oliver’s, so I take the opportunity to study them.

Rachel has ten gleaming spikes protruding from her hands, each about a foot long. She dashes forward and stabs at Noah, but he splits apart his blade and shoves it forward. The whirling swords catch onto her hands and snap the spikes, each one shattering into gleaming pieces before melting into the sand. They must be ice! Looking closer at Rachel, I see barely visible tubes running from her fingers up her arms. I resolve to ask her what they are for later.

She flexes her fingers and water shoots from the tubes. Clenching and unclenching her fists rapidly, she fires several small gobbets of water into the air before hurling them at Noah. He raises his multi-bladed sword in defense, but the droplets weave their way through the razor labyrinth and strike him, each one solidifying into ice just as it nears his face. He yells, and I see that one of his eyes is shaded over with blue.

Oliver then goes on the offensive. I see that his weapons are very similar to mine. He is hurling tiny, transparent disks at Noah, the edges of which I assume are bladed. Rachel closes her eyes as if on cue.

Light explodes from the sky, bright beams angling for each of the flying disks. The shafts reach the flying circles and pass through them. Suddenly I realize that they are magnifying lenses.

I can almost hear Noah’s flesh sizzling as six blindingly brilliant rays of light hit his body. Then the disks connect, each one slicing into his skin. He falls to the floor and I see the blue membrane close around him. Noah curses.

“Deor! You two… hmph. Oliver, beat her fast for me.” Oliver laughs.

“I’ll try, my friend. Aquamances can be tricky, you know…” Rachel grins and crooks her index finger, a long shaft of water shooting from the related tube. Before it falls to the sand she freezes it. This one is much longer than the others, at least five feet in length. She begins waving it threateningly at Oliver. No normal ice could be that strong and that thin… she must be influencing it. Oliver bends down and picks up his magnifying disks, shoving them into pockets in his sleeves. “Let us begin.” He motions with his hand, almost as if patting the air, and the brightness he had previously created dims. He moves his hand farther towards the ground, and the arena grows even darker. I can barely see the two combatants now.

“I’ve trained in darkness like this, Rachel,” he says, and I can hear the smile in his voice. “I’d like to see you dodge anything now.” She scoffs. The eye-roll accompanying the noise is almost visible.

I hear scuffling noises and think that they must be fighting each other. However, I can’t see anything. So much for watching, I think. I suppose I’ll just have to wait until they’re finished.

I am startled by a tap on my shoulder. I turn and am able to make out Eli’s round face. He tells me, “Beth, Noah and I are returning to our rooms. It’s not exactly fun watching a fight when Oliver pulls this trick. If you want to get out of here just say ‘exit.’ A menu will appear. You’ll know what to do after that.”

I nod before realizing he can’t see me and say, “Thanks. I’ll see you later.” I hear him murmuring, and another network of white lines begins forming in the air. I myself mutter “Exit,” and then touch “Yes” when asked if I really want to leave. The darkness dissolves and I find myself in my room again. Pulling off the goggles, I stick them back in their slot in the wall.

Deciding that there is nothing else to do, I flop down on my wondrously soft bed and fall asleep almost instantly, wondering what other surprises await me. Me… an Honor Arcane.
AQ  Post #: 14
6/29/2008 16:45:22   
Nex del Vida
Member

Divortium Undecim


A gentle ringing wakes me up. The tones alter from high to low, fluctuating pleasantly. It is infinitely different—and better—than the harsh buzzer that slaps wakefulness into the non-Honors.

I get up and look at the clock in the wall. It says seven thirty and I panic, flinging on my uniform and splashing cold water on my face. I’m an hour and a half late! Why didn’t the alarm ring sooner? Why didn’t Oliver come to wake me up? A million little questions rush through my mind before I yank open my door and run out of it—to see a large group of Honor Arcane walking calmly down the hall. I see Oliver’s blond head and rush to him, meriting stares from many of the people in the group. “Why aren’t they all rushing? We’re late! The alarm rang two and a half hours after it should have!”

Oliver looks at me strangely before smiling in comprehension. “Heh. No, we get to sleep later than you used to… we wake up at seven thirty rather than six.” I shake my head.
“Are there any other differences I should know about? Do we get to call the Tutelaries by their first names?” I ask sarcastically.

“Not quite,” says Oliver with a laugh, “but we do get much better food, better classes, and better things to fight.” I wait for an explanation, but he does not give one.

“Anyway, Martin, your first class will be… let’s see…” he walks over to one of the guide screens in the wall and says, “Schedule for Martin Fairweather.” The screen blips obligingly and a slot near the bottom of it opens up, a large sheet of paper sliding out. He rips it free and hands it to me, glancing at it as he does so. “It looks like you have Mundane Studies now. Ah… that’s fun.” He is obviously being sarcastic.

“What exactly do you do there?” It sounds like the kind of class I am going to like, one that is perhaps not as brutal to Mundane as the others, but I will have to keep that to myself.

“You essentially discuss Mundane psychology, and what they are likely to do in a battle. It’s really… really… boring.”

I sigh theatrically. “Ah well, I’ll live. Thanks!” He nods and walks off. Leaning down to the guide screen, I say “Honor Classes.” A green arrow begins to flash. I follow it.

~ ~ ~


Arriving in the amphitheater-like Classroom chamber, I look around. The circular levels of classrooms are alive with students, their voices echoing discordantly in the enormous room. The screen beeps impatiently, and I follow the arrow on it. There is only one screen in this entire chamber, and I realize that I will have to ask someone where Mundane Studies is.

Traversing the huge floor of the amphitheater, I wonder at how enormous the institution must really be. Of course, this area could just be another large-areas-in-small-spaces trick, like the Training Rooms, but nevertheless it is a humongous building. Thinking back to the last time I was outside, I realize that the clouds obscured the zenith of the building. I suppose its size makes sense, though, considering it has to hold… how many people? Even I don’t know. I’ll have to visit the Archives some time.

Though that particular piece of knowledge evades my grasp for now, I hope to slake my thirst for knowledge of the Mundane in this class. Finally reaching a staircase, I ascend it to the first level. Approaching the first student I see, I ask, “Um… do you happen to know where Mundane Studies is?”

She smiles and points me to a door a few hundred feet away. I thank her. Honor Arcane are also a lot more civil than the normal ones… if I had gone up to a random non-Honor and asked where something was they would have laughed and walked away.

Shrugging, I walk to the classroom. Opening the door, I see that the room resembles my old Arcane History classroom, but bigger and with goggles that look like the VT ones sitting on each of the desks. I realize that I am early and exit the room, intending to look for one of the Honor Arcane that I already know. I spot Eli’s bright blond hair and round body and look around for anyone else to talk to—I dislike Eli already—but see nobody. Sighing, I jog up to him. He is conversing with a group of stuck-up looking boys, and they look at me condescendingly. They doubtless remember me from the Announcement Period.

“Eli, when do classes start?”

Showing his usual indolence, he turns to me slowly. I can see his eyes returning to their normal positions, most probably from when he rolled them in response to my appearance half a second earlier. He sighs. “They start in ten minutes… why don’t you go talk to someone until then?”

Not bothering to point out that I am already talking to someone—namely him—I wander off in another direction, looking for someone else to talk to. Five or six people, down on the ground level, seem to be practicing with their weapons. I jog down to them to watch.

One man, who looks to be about twenty, is dexterously twirling some kind of baton. His green eyes are squinting at the rod in concentration. Faster than I can see, he leaps forward and touches the baton to one of his friend’s heads. When it stops I see that its tip is bladed. The rest of the group claps and he bows low, his dreadlocks dropping down in front of his face and obscuring his hooked nose. One of them calls out, “Very nice, Jackson, but we’ve seen enough Speed. Try something else for once.” The man sighs and slots the baton into a pocket in his uniform.

“I don’t have my Strength weapon today; I left it in my room. Hmm…” He pats the rest of his uniform. “I have Endurance and Intimidation prepared, but you guys know I don’t use weapons for those. I have Balance… oh! I have a tiny bit of Control stored up. You want me to show you Control and Intimidation?” They nod. “Alright, who wants to volunteer?” None of them step forward. He sighs. “Fine, I’ll have to call on you. Andrew, get over here.” Nobody moves. He smiles. “Ah well, I suppose I can use Control now.”

One of the younger boys wavers a little bit, then begins to walk forward to Jackson. He smiles again. “And now for Intimidation…”

Suddenly he is horrifying. His eyes seem to glow, and his uniform flows in a nonexistent wind. He towers over everyone in the room, though his height has not changed, and the boy in front of him cowers. “Andrew.” His voice is clear and cold. “Go—” and then he returns to normal. Andrew glares at him and purses his lips, then turns and walks angrily to a class. Jackson sighs. “Thing about Intimidation is it uses itself up quickly.” He is back to his normal size again and his eyes no longer shine. “Ah well, time for class now.” He turns and sees me. “Oh, you’re one of the new initiates. A word of advice—never watch me while I’m practicing, lest you end up like poor Andrew…” Laughing, he and his friends walk away. As if it was waiting for him, a bell rings and all of the students siphon into their classes. I run up the staircase again and into the door that had been pointed out before.

Taking one of the empty desks, I wait for a Tutelary to arrive. After a few minutes a gray haze floats through the door, coming to a halt behind the desk at the front. It coalesces into a tall, thin woman. Her spectacles make her eyes look smaller than normal.

“Hello, everyone.” Her voice is old and creaky. “Do we have any initiates in our class today?” She squints at us and then at a piece of paper on her desk. “Ah yes… Mr. Fairweather, please report to the Assessment Room for… ahem… assessment. Mr. Kenton, please escort Mr. Fairweather, if you please.” A black-haired boy stands up and walks out of the room. I follow.

Catching up to him, I ask what is going to happen. He says, “They’re just gonna ask you to do stuff. They’ll place you in an Honor Regiment depending on how well you do.”

“Are the ranks here the same as in the non-Honor Regiments? You know, two Privates, two Officers, and a Leader?”

“Ah… no, not quite. Actually, not at all. You probably know that Honor Regiments don’t pair up people with similar abilities?” I nod. “Well, each Regiment here consists of three people rather than five. There’s the Bomber, the Techie, and the Shade—of course those are the slang names; we don’t bother with the real ones. The Bomber is the one with the big weapons, who goes in and kills everything. The Tactician is used for more delicate operations… he or she usually infiltrates the enemy or figures out how to win a tactical battle. Also they do assassinations. Then there’s the Shade. He or she is responsible for hiding the team and stealth, so that if you are approaching someone you will not be seen.”

I nod, then shake my head. “Wait… these roles seem really thought-out and specific. How do you use them if you’re just drilling?”

Kenton looks back at me and frowns. “Drills? Why would we be drilling? No no, we go out into the Mundane world to kill them. We’re lessening their numbers before the March.” As he says these words, his back straightens and he lifts his chin. He is incredibly proud of this fact.

What? They raid the Mundane? Oh Deor… I’m going to have to kill them… I swallow nervously and force a smile onto my face. “Sounds… sounds like fun.”

~ ~ ~


We enter a large room, with fifty or so desks placed around its perimeter. This chamber confuses me, mainly because it is so different from the rest of the rooms in the institution. The walls are brown rather than white, and it is badly lighted.

Several of the desks are occupied, and about half of those have students in front of them. I recognize them as the other new Honor Arcane. Kenton points to a desk with no student in front of it and then vanishes from the room.

I walk towards the desk, and the little woman sitting behind it. She looks up at me.

“Name?”

I give her mine. She peers down at a sheet of paper and scribbles something, presumably what I have just told her. She asks, “I will explain how the Honor Ranks work. Then I will assess you and assign you to an Honor Regiment. There are three types of Honor Arcane students. They are called Offensives, Intellectuals and Enshrouders. The first attacks blatantly and in the front, the second attacks quietly from behind enemy lines, and the third conceals the party in the event of would-be discovery as well as sneaking into enemy camps and performing covert extermination procedures.”

I can see why they don’t use the real names… Bomber, Techie and Shade are much better.

“Initially, I am required to ask which role you think would fit you best.”

Hmm. I’m not a Techie, that’s for sure—my ability wouldn’t help me with that job. I could be a Bomber, but even with Reflections I’m only one person. That leaves… Shade. Yes, that’s perfect! I could shield the Regiment and distract enemies with Reflections.

Wait. Should I really be applying for the job I think I’d do the best? What if I could save Mundane lives by doing the wrong thing? Yes, that’s it. I’ll tell her I should be a Techie.

The woman raises her sharp eyebrows and taps her pen. “I’m waiting.”

Looking up at her, I say, “I think I should be a Tech—erm, I mean, I believe that the job of Intellectual would suit me best.” She stares at me disapprovingly, obviously not liking my almost-use of the slang term.

She scribbles something else on her page. “You do realize that you didn’t have to take that long, don’t you? That was just a formality. It will make no difference in where you are placed. For some reason, we have to ask that.”

Ah well… I tried. Maybe I can fool her into thinking I’d be a good Techie…

“Now, I would like you to demonstrate your ability. What is it?” I tell her. “Fine. Follow.” She leads me through a door behind her desk. Through it lies a room not dissimilar to the one filled with dummies, where Louis almost got killed. This one, however, has at least four times as many steel puppets in it, and none of them are attached to the floor. These ones have legs.

A projector slides out of the ceiling and clicks on. Again the dummies transform, becoming a ragged assembly of men in straw hats and overalls. They stand where they are, looking confusedly at one another.

“Where are their weapons?” I ask. The ones I had fought before were equipped with scythes and pitchforks, so I assume these will have more advanced weaponry.

“Yes.” She smiles, and I become apprehensive. This is not the type of woman who smiles at things that other people will like. “They are already equipped. I will retrieve your weapons.”

Already equipped…? I can’t see any weapons. She walks over to a keypad in the wall and types something in. After fifteen or so seconds, there is a whooshing noise. The walls slide apart into two halves and she reaches into the cavity they have left, pulling out my shoulder belt and mirrorblades. I take them from her and strap them on, the heavy belt comfortable on my shoulder.

She purses her lips and blinks. “Those don’t look like the weapons of an Intellectual… usually they have a type of sword or dart. Regardless,” she sniffs, “you will be attacking the automatons with the techniques of each of the three ranks. Whichever you perform best in will be the one you are assigned to. First, an Offensive. Attack with all force necessary.”

I nod. Reaching for two mirrorblades, I lower my head and Foul, foul creatures. I must kill them. They must be eradicated. Slice. Eradicate. Cut. Death. I am blindly swinging, cutting them down one after another. This is what I am. I am invin—something slams into my side and I fall to the ground, gasping for breath. What just happened? Looking at my stomach, I feel the tender spot on my ribs. A small tan pellet is lying on the ground a few feet away from me.

Glancing upwards, I see a circle of Mundane-robots around me. One of them is holding… Is that a gun?! He pulls the trigger.

My head bursts into pain and slams against the ground. I curl into a protective ball and grasp my head in my hands, feeling for the fracture that I know must be there. It isn’t.
I hear a disapproving cluck. Getting shakily to my feet, I see that the robots have returned to their uneasy shifting as if nothing has happened. The one with the gun has put it away; I can no longer tell which one it is.

“Only two dead. Pathetic. You’re not an Offensive.”

“Do… do they have guns?” I ask, my head still spinning. But isn’t a gunshot to the head supposed to kill you? The only reason I know how damaging guns are is because of Prehist, where they sometimes taught about the weapons in the past.

“Yes. Rubber bullets. You would be dead now if they were metal.”

Ah, rubber. That explains it. But… hold on, it doesn’t explain everything. Why was I suddenly so zealous about killing them? She gives a deep sigh. “And now your professed specialty, Intellectual. In this scenario they have captured one of your Regiment-mates. You must negotiate him out of their hands.”

At least I don’t have to kill them.

“And when he is free you will kill as many of them as you can.”

Ah well.

I walk forward, my hands in the air, towards the Mundane. Slipping the belt over my head, I drop it on the ground. Kill! I reach down and grab a mirrorblade before remembering—No, I’m supposed to be saving someone!

But kill! Kill them! Foul foul foul!

A bullet smashes into my chest, another into my leg. I fall to the floor groaning. I hear the woman behind me actually laughing. “You’re going to have to resist your Thirst better than that.” She giggles—a strange sound, coming from her—then quiets.

“Thirst?” I have never heard of this before, though I think I know what it is.

“You’ve never heard of the Thirst… of course not. They teach you nothing down there. When you come in contact with a Mundane, you will feel an intense hatred of sorts. I suppose I should let your Arcphys Tutelary teach you that, but the gist is that these robots have Mundane pheromones in them. They are also conditioned to react like real Mundane to you—that is, they have a sort of robotic Thirst.” I don’t dwell for very long on where these pheromones could have come from. “They are the chemicals that make any brain with Arcane capabilities experience intense hatred. The Mundane have something almost the same, but opposite: they hate the pheromones we create.”

“But… that doesn’t make sense. I’ve seen a Mundane man before, and I didn’t—” I realize my error just too late—“hate him… this much. Not… more than… um…”

“Yes yes, I know what you mean. I assume it was a special request for someone or other. In all probability that man had been sprayed with Arcane pheromones beforehand, to eliminate the Thirst. At least, for you.” I remember his weak struggling to attack his captor. “Well, you’re obviously not an Intellectual. I’ve always thought that Offensive was the easiest job—you just let the Thirst take you over.” She smiles dreamily and wickedly at the same time. I find that she has almost become friendlier by explaining to me that our entire race is hardwired to hate each other to death.

“Now, try to control yourself better. You’ll be trying for Enshrouder now.” Oh no… this was the job I thought I’d be best at. I hope I’m horrible at it… I don’t want to be good at killing…

“You will sneak into the middle of the Mundane camp without being seen. You will kill as many of them as possible.”

Steeling myself, I walk forward. The Thirst grabs hold of me, and I try to resist it. I stand where I am for two or three seconds, held in place by the struggle between killing and doing my job.

I must kill. Must kill. Must. Run and kill. But… no. I can kill more if I use my ability… sneaking through them… yes. I will kill.

I Reflect one of the Mundane men through myself. No—if I walk forward there will be a Mundane man moving without using his legs… I concentrate. I stare at the real Mundane man’s legs, and imagine them moving. I close my eyes, thinking of nothing but his legs moving… one after the other… muscles tightening, loosening, feet hitting the ground. I sense rather than feel that the illusion has obeyed my thoughts. I walk forward, entirely confident of my success. I hear a little gasp from the matronly woman behind me. As I walk to the center of their camp, I see them draw their weapons confusedly.

They must be Thirsting… but they don’t know what they’re reacting to! I concentrate again, forcing my illusion to draw its weapon as well. It looks shiftily around, as if trying to pinpoint something.

I reach the center of the camp. Kill now. Blades kill. Kill them. I Reflect the real me, not the illusion, and place the Reflection behind all of the Mundane. Concentrating again, I force it to draw its mirrorblades.

“There!” I yell, making my voice gruff to match the body they think is mine. The robots—it’s very hard to think of them as robots, since they are so realistic—all turn around and see my copy. Now that they think they know what their sudden hatred is directed at, they begin shouting and firing their weapons at “me.” Of course, the bullets pass through. Dropping the visage of the Mundane man, I move to what is now the back of the crowd and make the Reflection of me advance towards them.

They seem to be panicking, but rather than turning around and running they continue shooting madly at the apparition. I smile grimly. Time to kill.

Quietly I unsheathe a mirrorblade, then another. Quietly I move towards the Mundane at the back of the crowd, and begin quietly cutting them down, through the neck so they make no noise as they fall. The Thirst still holds me, but I am twisting it, shaping it to my will, controlling rather than being controlled. I make my way almost halfway through the ranks before one of them notices me, turns, and shoots me. The pain bursts into my head, then my arm, then my chest, and I fall to the ground. I am smiling. So many killed.

I hear a noise and realize that the robots have been switched off. The projector hums again and slides back into the ceiling, and I turn to see the thin woman smiling at me.

“Well, well, well. I do believe we have an Enshrouder. If you would be so kind as to follow me.” She turns and leaves the room.

I walk after her. We reenter the badly-lit room with the desks, and she scribbles a number and two words on the piece of paper. “Enshrouder—30 kills.”

Th…thirty? I killed thirty Mundane? I gulp and thank her, then rush out of the room and back to my class. Thirty people. Thirty. I… I am a murderer.

< Message edited by Nex del Vida -- 11/30/2008 21:13:45 >
AQ  Post #: 15
11/30/2008 19:46:08   
Nex del Vida
Member

Divortium Duodecim
The woman looks up from her paperwork. “Congratulations, thirty is quite a respectable number. You should get your Honor Regiment assignment later this week—I’ll send this to the assessment room, where they’ll pair your powers with others. You may go back to class.”

As I retrace my steps on the way back to Mundane Studies, I attempt to convince myself of my own innocence. They were only robots… mindless automatons. They never had families or loved ones… they had no emotions… and then I realize that I shouldn’t be rationalizing this to myself. If I think it’s okay to kill Mundane people, it will be okay. What I did in there was evil. And, unfortunately, it is very possible that I will have to do much more of it in the near future. I look at my feet, trudging back to the classroom. There’s a meeting of ASU 0 tonight…

Then it hits me. I won’t be able to go! There will be no reason for me to be hanging around the regular Training Rooms, and the Navigation Screens can see where I’m going. I can’t sneak around anymore. I realize that I have to talk to Mikael sometime today—I’ll do it at lunch.

I reach the classroom and enter, taking my place next to Kenton. He leans over and whispers, “What position are you?”

Looking warily at the Tutelary, who is scribbling something on the board, I whisper back, “Shade. You?”

“I’m a Bomber. How many kills’d you get? I had forty-seven, I think, but I doubt you’ll have that many.” His whispered statement is matter-of-fact, not at all pretentious. “Bombers tend to kill more people outright than the other stations… but we’re pretty much useless at anything else.” He grins at me, flipping his spiky bangs out of his eyes. “Well? How many?”

“Thirty,” I say. I try almost successfully to keep the tremor out of my voice.

He nods, obviously impressed. “Thirty… that’s pretty good for a Shade. I think the best I ever saw was thirty-eight, and the best ever was supposedly fifty… but that was an Advisor-Tutelary, in the… fourteen hundreds, I think. We learn things like that in Arcane History.”

Things like that? It seems more like Arcane Trivia than Arcane History. They must learn more than that.

The tall, gray-haired woman at the board turns around and looks at Kenton. “Mr. Kenton, I realize that you think it is your responsibility to educate Mr. Fairweather here, but I assure you that we Tutelaries are more than capable of that. Perhaps you aspire to be an Arcane History Tutelary? I’m sure we can have that arranged.” I look interestedly at Kenton, thinking that the Tutelary has just given him a great opportunity, but he grins sheepishly.

“No thank you, Tutelary… my apologies.” The Tutelary purses her lips and turns to write one last thing on the blackboard. I focus my attention on the blackboard, hoping to learn more about the Mundane.

“Now that Mr. Kenton is clear about my proficiency as a Tutelary, let us continue with the lesson.” I sit up straighter. “As most of you should know by now, the Mundane strictly regiment their lives, although not at all precisely. This may seem oxymoronic, but let me give you an example.”

She steps to the left, letting us see what she has been writing on the blackboard. It is a schedule, starting with the number 6:30 and ending at 11:00.

“From six thirty to six thirty five the Mundane are awoken by sirens that sound throughout their cities.” I am reminded vaguely of a loud, harsh noise, waking me from sleep early in the morning.

“They eat breakfast from six thirty-five to seven thirty-five. It is widely believed by the Mundane that their government assigns far too much time to almost every activity.”

With every increment of time and event of Mundane life that leaves the Tutelary’s lips I am reminded more of my childhood. “From one o’clock to two they have time in their enclosed fields.” The disk spins. I am used to these mental flashes now, and consciously remember the time I spent with my father throwing that disk, the embodiment of innocence. Even those fields, though—the ones I remember as being beautiful—I now know were just simulations, created to keep the population happy. “From five to seven o’clock in the evening they eat dinner.” I cover my mouth with my hand and breathe deep breaths, the taste of my dog filling my mouth.

“Here you can see that the Mundane government does indeed schedule every minute of time. However, these schedules are just guidelines: the Mundane live sloppily to say the least. The dinner period is two hours long, so many families will eat for half an hour and then disperse to their separate activities.” She touched a screen in the wall next to the blackboard, showing a picture of a Mundane house. The few dingy pieces of furniture that stood around the room were placed at odd angles, and a filthy child was playing on the floor. No doubt that child was dead a second after the picture was taken, I think. I’m surprised the photographer could hold in his Thirst that long.

The lesson continues until an entire Mundane day has been outlined. “And now,” says the Tutelary, “On to the Mundane government. As you all know—except Mr. Fairweather—before now we have been studying Mundane habits and lifestyles. However, I recently received a memo detailing that we must begin teaching you of Mundane beliefs and procedures. Normally I would not take advice from anyone—especially you, Mr. Kenton—about my subject, but as this memo was from Advisor-Tutelary Selenar. I can’t exactly deny her wishes.” I make a note to myself to find out what Selenar’s ability is.

“So, today we start with the Mundane government. Their system of power calls itself the Supervisionists, but the Mundane themselves call the members of the government ‘Monks,’ not because they operate on religious codes but because they have essentially taken a vow of silence against the people. They have published some documents, none of which were very helpful or informative.”

A middle-aged woman spreads a blanket on the grass and takes a worn book out of a satchel. Her daughter curls up in her arms and promptly falls asleep. The woman’s voice is monotonous, and the words she reads are tedious, but she and her sleeping child seem content. Others run around them in the grass, including the woman’s husband and son.

I do not know who this woman was, but from the fact that I remember her so clearly I can infer that she is my mother, and therefore that the girl in her arms is my sister. I have a sister! Or had… who knows if they are still alive?

The tall woman has been speaking through my daydream, and she is still talking about the Supervisionists.

“They never appear to the general Mundane public. When they give announcements, it is over the PA systems that are spread throughout the cities. It is the same voice every time, an androgynous, completely neutral tone that gives no hint of emotion or differentiation of any kind.”

She drew a large hexagon on the board, with two smaller hexagons on each of its sides. “On the topic of cities, the government has a very interesting way of dividing up the Mundane populace. Each city is referred to as an Area of the People, abbreviated to AP. There are multiple thousands of APs, each with several thousand Mundane inhabitants. The Supervisionists know that if they cram all of the Mundane from one AP into a single field, the population will not be happy, and so there are twelve fields per city, two on each side.” She indicates the relevant sections of the drawing.

“We researched this next point for years, and always got to the same conclusion: the Mundane never leave the cities they are born in. Families stay in the same city for… well, forever. Such a closed community can lead to inbreeding, and this is where we get the occasional Mundane-born Arcane. These are assimilated into our society, and they never learn of their heritage.” Speak for yourself. “Some of you could be Mundane-born, for all you know.” There is a general disgusted shifting in the room.

Kenton glances at me and whispers, “I don’t believe that for a second. We’d be able to tell if we were part Mundane… we’d be Thirsting for ourselves, or something.” I nod.

The lesson continues, the Tutelary telling us things I half-know already. When it finally lets out, I have had more flashbacks than ever before in such a short time. Kenton jogs up to me as we leave. “I’m Kenton, as you heard from Tutelary Swayne. My first name is George... but everyone calls me Kenton. Or Kent. Tutelary Swayne said your name was Fairweather. What should I call you?”

“Martin. I’m Martin.”

“Alrighty, then. What d’you have next?” He is a springy person, constantly flipping his hair out of his eyes and smiling. Good, a new friend. I made one good friend in four or five years down in the Regular sections… and here, I’ve already made five in a day. Morale is higher here.

“I have… um…” I dig my schedule out of a pocket in my uniform, the soft material coming as a shock after years of scratchy paper-like garb. The schedule is a mass of colored blocks with tiny text in them. I squint at it, then hand it sheepishly to Kenton. “I can’t read it.”

He chortles and looks at the paper. “You have Honor Regiment now. D’you know what Regiment you’re in yet?”

“No. The lady told me I’d get my assignment in a few days.”

“Ah. I’d forgotten how slow they were. Well, I guess you can do whatever you want now. The only people out of class will be the new recruits, and there aren’t many of those. You could play around with the study screen.”

“Could I talk to a friend of mine? He’s a regular… is that allowed?”

“Sure it is. Just… don’t do it too often. See you.” As he walks off to his next class, I remember something. I call him, and walk a few steps toward him. He turns.

“Who’s Advisor-Tutelary Selenar? I thought Advisor-Tutelary Rose was in charge of the Honor Arcane.” Kenton smiles.

“You regulars don’t have much experience with Advisor-Tutelaries, do you? I guess you wouldn’t. Each Advisor has a rank. As you know, there are five of them. Advisor-Tutelary Rose is the ranked fifth, meaning he is the least powerful of them. He is in charge of the organization and indoctrination of newborn Arcane, as well as any Mundane-born that are found. He also supervises the acceptance of Honor Arcane.” I frown at his neutral description of Rose—everyone else I’ve talked to has either loved or hated the man. He sees my look and smiles. “I had an Honor friend who told me to stay clear of him. I managed to avoid inciting him.”

“Ah. So, what about Selenar?”

“Advisor-Tutelary Hyacinth Selenar is rank four of the Advisors. She is in charge of the education of Arcane.”

“And what’s her ability?” Kenton winces.

“I guess this wasn’t the custom down there, but up here it’s considered very impolite to ask someone else’s ability, or tell someone who has asked. Asking the person in question themselves is fine.”

“Oh… sorry.”

“No, I’m actually glad you found out about it from me rather than from anyone else. It could have been serious if you had asked a Tutelary.” He smiles and begins walking away again. “Oh, what’s your room number? I’ll invite you with the Talk Center.” I tell him, and he thanks me and walks away.

I make my way to my room. I won’t go directly to Mikael… I have to think about what to say first. I doubt he’ll be with David. Pushing through the door, I sit on the bed—So soft—and begin to think.

I could try to catch him at lunch. I know we have that together, because of all of the times I walked past the Café. But I couldn’t just walk in and ask him to talk in private—there’s no reason for that. I put my head in my hands and close my eyes before getting an idea.

I walk out of my room and to the nearest Honor Navigator. I remember Oliver asking the screen for my schedule, and say, “Schedule for Mikael Rochmononov.” A sheet of paper slides out of the same slit as before. It has another arrangement of colored blocks and small black text, inscrutable to my untrained eye. I walk back into my room to try and decipher it. I sit at the wooden desk—such a luxury, wood—and spread the paper in front of me. I still can’t read anything. Wait! I go back outside to the Navigator and say, “Schedule for David Wallace.” The paper slides out and I bring it back into my room. I carefully lay it on top of Mikael’s schedule, making sure the edges are exactly equal. I hold it up to the light in the ceiling. The paper is thin enough so that I can see through both sheets, and most of the squares are different colors, making the square a jumbled mass of color. One inch-square segment, however, is the same shade of light blue. The text reads, “Ability Utilization.” That was one of my favorite classes in the regular sectors—we would all enter a large room and display the most effective way we knew to use our ability. The Tutelary in charge, called Rogers, would then tell us what we could do better, if anything. Then we would each get a dummy and practice on it for the rest of the period.

There are several diagonal lines extending from the blue box. I separate the sheets and look at them. One of the lines leads to the word, “Practice Room L-91,” which must be the location of their class. Another leads to “Tutelary Sanderson,” the Tutelary who teaches it. The third leads to “10:15-11:15,” the time the class starts and ends, and the fourth to “Monday, Wednesday, Sunday,” the days it occurs. Today is Wednesday. I look at the clock in the study screen, and it reads 9:30. How long are classes here? I woke up at seven thirty, got to the class at around seven forty-five… and it took ten minutes or so to get here. I do the math. Each class is an hour and thirty-five minutes long, so my next class starts at around 11:05. Good.

During all of this investigation, I have forgotten why I needed the two of them—Mikael and David—together. I think for a few seconds. Ahh yes. Of course. I smile, flop down on the bed, and wait for ten fifteen.

~ ~ ~


This will be hard. I begin concentrating. I will have to keep up two Reflections at the same time… one constantly changing. I Reflect a six foot square patch of air through my body, rendering me invisible. Okay, now for the hard part. Taking out a mirror, I Reflect my body onto the bed, using the trick I created earlier today to pose its limbs. I close its eyelids. Now anyone walking into the room will see me sleeping. Hopefully they won’t disturb me. I take a deep, slow breath, feeling how my chest and stomach expand, then attempt to recreate the movement on the Reflection. Its chest distends horribly, and I drop the Reflection. Okay, I guess this’ll need practice. I Reflect the body onto the bed once more, and try making it breath again. A slightly more controlled bulge appears.

After four or five more tries, I get the illusion breathing fairly regularly and naturally. Smiling, I open the door and walk out.

~ ~ ~


I reach the regular sectors with no trouble at around 10:40. The room number on the schedule read L-91. I make my way towards it, remembering the regular sector layout from my years here.

I reach the door. This’ll be tricky. I have to enter without anyone noticing. Slipping the mirror out of my pocket again, I Reflect the door and the surrounding air onto itself. Nothing changes. I walk invisibly into the Reflection, and open the door. To passersby, the door will still appear closed. Someone rounds a corner and I hold my breath, but they walk by without giving the door a second glance. I slip inside the room, letting the door illusion drop.

In the large room are thirty or so Arcane, each in front of a dummy. Mikael is sitting in a corner. His ability doesn’t work on dummies, I remember, and they can’t get a real Mundane every time he has this class. I scan the room and see David sitting in another corner. I guess he can’t do much either, I think. Typical of the Tutelaries here to schedule these two in a class that is useless to them. I walk over to David, still invisible, and whisper in his ear, “It’s Martin. Don’t look around.”

He starts, but does not look at me. I whisper, “Walk over to Mikael and make a small sound barrier. I need to talk to him, but I can’t without you.” He hesitates, then gets up and crosses the room to Mikael, sitting down next to him. I follow, and hear—or don’t hear—the silence that indicates his sound barrier has been created. Mikael is looking at David questioningly when I say, “Mikael, it’s Martin. Don’t look at me, I’m invisible. I just wanted you to know that I can’t come to the ASU 0 meeting tonight—I have no excuse to leave my room. I considered using the method I’m using now to come to the meeting, but Reflecting things in the dark doesn’t work nearly as well—people would see through the illusions.” I did indeed consider using this same method, but the memory of an experience a few years ago put a stop to that—I had been playing hide-and-seek with my friends, and had Reflected my shoe into a corner, hoping they’d miss the adjacent corner I was actually hiding in, but my plan had failed. When I later asked them about the shoe, they had said they couldn’t see it. Trivial, but I’m glad I remembered it—this could have gotten me caught.

Mikael nods his head a tiny bit. “Fine,” he says. “Can you come to the cafeteria at lunch? I will have a note for you with the next meeting time on it… I will have to change the arranged time.” I nod before remembering he can’t see me.

“That’s fine. Goodbye.”



< Message edited by Nex del Vida -- 12/7/2008 0:19:51 >
AQ  Post #: 16
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