Chapter 55 - New Student.
The Temple of the Sun opened up from the inside into dozens of tiers rising one above another, joined by broad marble staircases and galleries that stretched so far into the distance that the farthest of them faded into the diffuse light beneath the very dome. Aren froze on the threshold, taking in the whole space for the first time.
Along the walls, between rows of white marble columns, rose statues of figures in flowing robes, while small wall fountains murmured quietly in the niches between them, trickling down in thin threads into shallow stone basins.
Attendants in white robes moved unhurriedly through the halls and up and down the stairs, men and women of every age: some talked quietly in small groups, others walked alone, lost in their own thoughts, still others simply crossed the hall without pausing for even a moment.
Off to the side of the main nave, whole sections were given over to bookshelves rising from floor to ceiling and crowded with volumes worn by time, while through the open archways at the far end of the hall a garden could be seen, where sunlight fell completely unobstructed.
Closer to the center, directly beneath the stained-glass window, stood golden altars, their facets catching the many-colored glimmers of light breaking through the glass.
Aren kept slowing his steps, his eyes following the columns rising overhead and the carved vaults, his head tipping back slightly with every new tier that opened up above him.
Aurelius walked a little ahead, glancing back over his shoulder at his companion's tipped-back head and parted lips, a smile hiding at the corners of his own mouth.
Before long, the corridor brought them to open archways, beyond which a garden spread out in terraces around the temple. Tall, wide-crowned trees cast dappled shade over paths paved with pale stone, while hedges of neatly trimmed shrubs framed flowerbeds with blooms Aren had never seen before.
Attendants with copper watering cans moved unhurriedly between the rows of shrubs, watering the ground at the roots and trimming stray branches with small silver shears.
Among the branches fluttered tiny creatures no bigger than a palm, slender figures with four translucent wings on their backs and skin that gave off a soft, diffuse glow, trailing behind them a barely visible wake of golden pollen. One of them hovered briefly right in front of Aren's face, looking him over from head to toe, and he took an involuntary half-step back, blinked, and went still, watching the little creature fly off with a smile.
A short way on, they came to a small corner of the garden where a round table of smooth white marble flecked with gold stood, surrounded by soft armchairs.
When they reached the table, two attendants with watering cans, tending a flowerbed nearby, gave Aurelius a slight bow and left the corner without a word; he answered them with a smile and a light nod.
Then he turned to Aren and gestured for him to sit at the table, and Aren nodded silently and lowered himself into one of the chairs.
Meanwhile, the training grounds of Midar University buzzed with dozens of voices and the flap of wings.
The magister had released the students for independent practice, and they'd scattered across the field with no formation at all.
Some sat in groups right on the sand, laughing and talking while their companions lay beside them, lazily flicking their ears, or sniffed at each other and tussled in the dust. Others, off to one side, ran through the recent exercises again, sending their companions dashing back and forth across the yard in short bursts.
Gray and his friends kept to their own circle nearer the stands, their companions — including Gray's gold-armored Alvazar — sitting behind them with straight backs, motionless and magnificent.
Apart from everyone else, where the shadow of the nearest tower fell across the sun-warmed stone, Eveline sat on a low ledge.
She uncorked her flask and took a few long swallows, feeling the cool water wash away the dryness in her throat after the morning's exercises, then tipped the neck toward Rexy. He immediately grabbed the flask with both paws — Eveline still holding it — and began lapping the water eagerly but carefully in small sips, bracing his hind paws against her knee.
"Training was more intense today than last time..." Ilau said, coming up beside her and shifting his weight from foot to foot.
Eveline didn't look up, still watching Rexy finish off the last of the water in small sips.
"Was it? Felt pretty ordinary to me."
Ilau pressed his lips together slightly, looking at the top of Eveline's head bent over her companion, then shifted his gaze to where the other students were splitting off into groups.
"Everyone's already starting to talk about the competition, and some people are already training for it..."
"Mm-hm," Eveline said, screwing the cap back on the flask and tucking it into the pouch at her belt, while Rexy carefully shook the last drops off his fuzzy little face with one paw.
"What about you? Thinking about starting to train for the tournament?" Ilau asked.
"What do you think?" Eveline shot back, getting to her feet and straightening the hem of her uniform jacket.
Ilau sighed, rubbing the back of his neck, and just then a short, stocky young man with a very close-cropped haircut and thick eyebrows that nearly met at the bridge of his nose walked up to him.
"Ilau, want to come train with the group? Everyone's meeting up right now," he said, jerking his head toward a small knot of students standing a little way off, already glancing in their direction.
"Oh... y-yeah, sure, Gen... I'll be right there!" Ilau answered hurriedly.
Gen let his eyes rest on Eveline for a moment; she answered with the same flat, expressionless look, after which he gave Ilau an approving nod and turned back toward his own group.
Ilau turned to Eveline. She glanced at him for only a moment before turning away and wandering slowly toward an open patch of the grounds, kicking up fine dust with the toe of her boot.
Ilau opened his mouth and even raised a hand, meaning to call after her, but the words never came. He let his shoulders drop with a sigh and walked off after Gen.
Rexy fluttered up onto a nearby ledge in front of Eveline. She put her hands on her hips and smiled faintly, watching her little companion shake invisible specks of dust from his wings.
"All right, little guy, let's keep going."
But just then, someone else's shadow fell over her from behind, cutting off the midday sun, and a familiar voice followed it.
"Well, well, look at that — even fatty decided to join the others and left the loser to fuss over her bug? Guess he finally got some sense," Gray's voice came from behind her.
Eveline's fingers dug into her own thighs through the fabric of her uniform trousers. She squeezed her eyes shut, drew in a full breath, and let it out slowly through clenched teeth.
"Don't you have anything better to do, Gray?" she said, opening her eyes and staring straight ahead, over the top of Rexy's head.
"Me? Oh, sure... plenty to do... like running a few combinations with Alvazar on the outcast and her flying booger."
Rexy, pressed into her shadow, gave a low growl, baring his tiny teeth, but Eveline, without turning around, shook her head from side to side, and he settled down a little, though still trembling.
"Things must be really bad for you if, out of every opponent your companion's actually matched to fight, you picked Rexy," she shot back, tilting her head slightly to one side.
"Turn around and face me when you're talking to me," Gray said coldly.
"Anything else? Maybe you want me to dance for you while I'm at—" Eveline started, but Gray grabbed her shoulder with a jerk, spun her around by force, shoved her backward, and slammed her into the stone wall behind her.
Rexy shot upward with a furious squeal, slashing at the air with his claws, but one of Gray's friends backhanded the little creature out of the air, sending him rolling across the dusty ground, wings flailing helplessly.
"REXY!" Eveline screamed, and without a second thought she drove her knee up between Gray's legs as he gripped her, making his eyes bulge and his body double over.
Eveline lunged toward Rexy, but Alvazar, Gray's huge winged lion in gilded armor, crashed down onto the sand between them, and the ground shuddered under his weight. The beast began to rise, looming over her with the full bulk of his body and letting out a low, rolling growl from his throat.
Eveline froze in place. The next instant, someone's heel drove into the back of her knee, and her leg buckled on its own, dropping her onto the sand, and she barely had time to turn her head toward the sound before a heavy fist slammed into her jaw, throwing her back and driving her into the ground.
Gray's friends, who'd piled onto her, straightened up and stepped back, while Gray himself was still doubled over, clutching his groin with both hands.
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"You b-bitch... have you completely lost your fucking mind?.." he rasped through gritted teeth, standing sideways to her, staring at the ground, still bent over.
Eveline pressed a palm into the scorching sand with a groan and slowly lifted her head, feeling a warm thread of blood trail down her chin from her split lip. Straining to lift her face, she made out Rexy, struggling to raise his head off the ground, with Alvazar standing motionless behind him.
"R-Rex...y..." she rasped, and at that moment footsteps thudded behind her, and the next instant someone's fingers tangled into her hair and hauled her up off the ground, forcing her upright, making her cry out and grab the hand holding her with both hands.
Looking up, she saw Gray above her. He had her hair gripped in his left hand, his right already balled into a fist and drawn back over his shoulder.
"I'm going to disfigure you beyond recognition, you scum... so you'll finally understand, bitch, where you belong!" Gray hissed, but his friend caught his raised arm by the forearm at once.
"What the hell are you doing?!" Gray snarled, a vein bulging at his temple. His friend jerked his chin silently toward something — Gray followed his gaze and saw the magister standing some distance away, hands clasped behind his back, watching the scene coldly.
Gray froze mid-motion. His fingers loosened, and Eveline slumped limply to the ground; he let out a heavy breath, stepped back, turned, and walked off, taking his friends with him, Alvazar rising obediently into the air behind him.
Eveline, sprawled on the ground, struggled to lift her head. Some distance away, the other students stood clustered in little groups, their faces twisted into awkward, meaningless smiles that slid away every time she tried to meet their eyes.
Then her eyes found the magister. He was still standing there straight, hands clasped behind his back, watching her with that same flat, expressionless look, after which he turned without a word and left the grounds.
Rexy, dragging his paws heavily, crawled closer to her and peered into her face with his big dark eyes. Eveline touched her split lip with trembling fingers, and looking down, saw a thin streak of blood on her fingertip.
In the garden of the Temple of the Sun, Aren and Aurelius still sat at the marble table, and their conversation had long since moved past the Archon's first questions.
Aren told him about first waking up in Waldruhm, gave a brief account of his life in Golden Flow with the Greenfield family, and described what had happened in Ockhaven and the Great Forest. About defeating Ursus, though, and about meeting the titan Bjorg-Var, he said nothing, remembering Edith's and Magister Kyle's words.
"Watch your words, Aren. Better not to talk about the details of what happened in the Great Forest. The mentality and culture of Helios's people are built on faith and the purity of energy, so your story might end up striking them as... let's say... unfavorable, and possibly even dangerous," Kyle had said once.
Aren lowered his eyes to the golden veins running through the table's white marble, as the Archon of Light's voice reached him.
"Remarkable story," Aurelius said, and Aren raised his eyes.
"I've never met anyone who lost their memory before. And it's remarkable, besides, that you, with power enough to kill beast-gods, were unknown to anyone at all..." he went on, watching Aren closely as he looked away.
"But I imagine it's exactly these questions that brought you here. Still, I can see you've come with an important personal purpose of your own, one that, fortunately, doesn't threaten our republic's interests or its safety," he added with a smile, leaning back in his chair.
"The Archon of War wouldn't agree with you," Aren answered.
Aurelius laughed quietly, glancing toward the garden, where a pair of small golden moths flitted past among the trimmed shrubs.
"Don't hold it against her. Lucia... is a person with a difficult character and temperament, but she's far from stupid. She's loyal to the republic and loves her people deeply, but at the same time, she rejects the outside world entirely. And you can understand her, really — there have been moments in our history... that made her attitude toward other nations worse. And in our culture, besides, the people of Helios are used to seeing themselves as above and purer than everyone else."
"You talk as if you're not one of them," Aren answered.
Aurelius smirked, glancing down at his own hand, whose skin wasn't silver like every other Heliosian's, but a pale beige.
"As you may have noticed, most people of Helios share roughly the same physiological traits: silver skin, snow-white hair, yellow irises. But there are also those with beige skin. Usually, that's a distinguishing mark of Nulls, born without a Pandorum."
Aren raised his eyebrows slightly, looking the Archon of Light over and noticing how his eyes had settled thoughtfully on his own palm.
"But you..." Aren began.
"Yes. I'm a Conductor. I don't think I'd be the Archon of Light without that," Aurelius answered, then laughed, making Aren smile too.
"You see, my friend, Prime is a remarkable world. For all its precise, well-defined laws, you can often find exceptions in it — ones some call a 'flaw,' others an 'anomaly,' and some a 'miracle.' And that same quirk of perspective applies to the people of Helios... though, then again... maybe to every other people as well..." the Archon went on.
Aren lowered his eyes to the table, then shifted them toward the garden, to where winged magical creatures circled the flowerbeds.
"There are things you can't change in a single generation. Especially anything tied to a people's politics, mentality, and culture. Heliosians often see in outsiders and other nations a lack of purity, blasphemy, filth, and chaos. I, however, to be honest, have always seen in them not a flaw, but a feature. To me, what sets them apart is what makes this world more colorful, more varied, more interesting, even where it lacks the order our republic has established," Aurelius added.
"Tell me, how did you come to think this way? You're the one in charge here, after all, and I don't understand why the people... Lucia... why none of them arrived at the same place you did?" Aren asked.
The Archon smiled faintly, then let out a deep breath.
"Good question... and, to tell you the truth, I didn't arrive at these thoughts on my own."
Aren's brows drew together, and he tilted his head slightly to one side.
"I was still quite young at the time... had only just taken up my new post... and it was a hard time, given the problems all of Helios and I had to face. But it was exactly then... by God's will... that Helios met her for the first time," Aurelius said, lifting his gaze to the sky and lowering his eyelids slightly.
"She was someone not from our lands. Someone who came with a great purpose that the people of Helios and the other Archons would never have accepted, then or now. But she... somehow, she... managed, over the years, to change what generations of rulers hadn't been able to change... She was the only one Lucia ever accepted, the only one she ever trusted completely."
Aren's lips parted slightly, while the wind lifted fallen leaves off the ground, stirring the black strands of Aren's hair and Aurelius's golden curls.
"Why... does this description feel familiar... or this feeling... like someone once told me about a person with that same face, that same feeling..." Aren thought.
"What... was her name?" he asked.
Aurelius lifted his head, smiling up at the scattered clouds while the wind went on playing with his long hair.
"Maria... Maria Deicoin."
Aren's eyes widened, his lips still parted. It was the very name Magister Kyle had told him about.
"The Princess... of the Dawn..." Aren said quietly.
Aurelius's eyes flew wide open as he turned to Aren.
"Well, now... you know about her?.. Hardly anyone can recall that nickname these days, though plenty knew it once," Aurelius answered, turning his gaze back to the garden.
"Magister Kyle told me about her. He admired her just as much as you do."
"Not surprising. I think everyone who ever knew her admired her."
The corner where Aren and Aurelius sat settled into a thoughtful silence, while off to the side, the temple attendants finished watering the plants and quietly carried the copper watering cans to their designated spot by the outdoor fountain.
"Well then, I think I've learned enough to make a decision, Aren," Aurelius said, turning to him.
Aren straightened, watching the Archon of Light's smile closely.
"Since you came here for knowledge and want to learn, the best choice for you will be Midar University."
Aren raised his eyebrows, then rubbed the back of his neck with an awkward smile.
"What... is a university?" he asked.
Aurelius froze for a moment, looking at Aren, then lowered his face, trying to hold back a laugh.
The next morning…
The sky in the east paled into a cold blue, while the sun's first rays had not yet risen above Midar's rooftops, leaving the city in the dim chill of early morning.
Little by little the horizon filled with pale gold, and thin bands of cloud along the very edge of the sky began to glimmer with a rosy light, while the city itself still slept in a silence broken only by the occasional creak of shutters and the distant bark of some animal.
Eveline crept quietly on tiptoe to the entryway, passing her father's half-open bedroom door, while Rexy sat on her shoulder, trying not to make any sudden movements.
She quietly grabbed her bag and slipped outside, where the morning chill touched her skin at once, then unfolded her surfboard and set off toward the University.
Meanwhile, in Lucia's study, where she stood before her combat armor on the wall, hands clasped behind her back, a knock sounded at the door.
"Come in," she ordered.
Admiral Vern walked into the study, holding a letter on a silver sheet that had just come in over the Heliograph.
Eveline, having arrived at the University's front square, folded up her magical surfboard and put it away in her bag, then lightly touched her lip to check the small gold patch on it.
The square in front of the University buzzed, as it did every other morning, with dozens of voices and the click of heels on the pale stone.
Some students clustered in tight groups, talking and laughing, while others hurried toward the tall arched gates of the main entrance, straightening their uniform jackets as they went.
Their companions huddled close by or wandered a little way off, sniffing at the cobblestones and at each other, while the sky above the square was cut again and again by the winged silhouettes of newly arriving students descending onto the square one after another.
Ilau, standing in a group with Gen and the other students, spotted Eveline.
"Hang on, I'll be right back," Ilau told the group, then jogged over to Eveline as she walked.
Gen watched him go, then shifted his gaze to Eveline.
"Evi! How are you? I heard about what happened yester—" he started, then stopped short, seeing the patch on her lip and how tired she looked.
"Evi..." he said, raising his hand slightly, then holding it back.
"Not now, Ilau," she answered, turning away and heading toward the University entrance, while off to the side stood Gray, hands in his pockets, wearing a satisfied smirk, with his friends beside him.
Eveline walked quickly, head down and shoulders hunched, but the gasps and whispers picking up around her made her lift her head, thinking everyone was staring at her.
Instead, she saw everyone frozen, staring past her, and then a powerful gust of wind rose up behind her, whipping her hair and sending Rexy fluttering off her shoulder into the air, glancing back behind him.
Eveline turned and saw a huge white whale descending from the sky onto the square, with Artus's and Olen's flyers coming in to land on either side of it.
Every student froze, heads snapping up, as the recent top graduates dropped from their flyers and stepped onto the square, and with them, the Archon of Light himself.
"That's Artus and Olen!" "But what are they doing here?" "Look! It's the Archon of Light!" "Holy shit!" "What's going on?"
Students' voices carried on all sides while Aurelius stood with a cadet on either side of him, smiling and looking over the students in the square.
Eveline stood frozen, gripping the strap of her bag on her shoulder, staring at the three figures with their huge companions behind them.
Then the Archon turned toward his whale, on whose back a figure appeared, dropping down onto the square and straightening to his full height.
The voices around them fell silent, and every student's eyes went wide the same way, their mouths falling open.
Aren moved forward unhurriedly, and with every step he took across the pale stone of the square, the University's white-and-gold uniform clung close over his shoulders and chest, flaring at the bottom into the long tails of a coat trimmed with a twisting gold pattern. A high stand collar left his neck bare, where dark lines of runic tattoos wound along his beige-toned skin, while his black hair swayed gently with every step, falling across his forehead again and again. His black eyes stayed fixed ahead, never once wavering under the stares aimed at him.
Aren stopped beside the Archon, who turned his gaze to the students, still frozen in the same poses with the same expressions on their faces.
Eveline's fingers loosened on the strap of her bag as she, like everyone around her, found she couldn't tear her eyes off Aren, unable to understand what was happening.
Meanwhile, in her study, the silver sheet of Aurelius's letter crumpled at the edges in Lucia's clenched fingers as she gritted her teeth, her eyes flying wide open.
"Is he... fucking... serious?.. UNIVERSITY?!.." she snarled.
Admiral Vern smiled, his brows drawing together, hands resting at his belt.
Aren, meanwhile, looked over the square and the students around him, then raised his eyes to Midar University, its white spires and gilded domes stretching upward, catching the first rays of the morning sun, and drew a deep breath in and out with a faint smirk.