Chapter 57 - History of the East.
Morning light poured through the tall panoramic window of Olen's new room, spreading across the white stone walls with their gilded cornices and over the low, wide bed where he lay, slowly opening his eyes. The spacious, bright room held only that bed, a stone wardrobe against the wall, and a writing desk beneath the window, beyond which the domes and spires of Midar stretched into the distance.
Getting up, he went into his own bathroom, where he sleepily pressed the crystal set into the wall, and it glowed to life as water ran from the tap. He washed his face, brushed his teeth, and dried off with a towel, lingering on his reflection, where messy white hair, silver skin, and yellow eyes looked back at him.
Letting out a breath, he returned to the bedroom, pulled on his uniform, and stepped out onto the gallery above the shared lounge on the ground floor, where he spotted Artus below on the couch in a plain white shirt, reading a book.
"Artus? Where's Aren?"
"Already took off for the university."
Olen raised an eyebrow and headed for the spiral staircase.
"You just let him go into the city like that? Alone?"
"Yeah. Something wrong?"
"Weren't you the one worried just yesterday about what this guy might get up to in the Republic? And now you so easily let him wander our streets on his own?"
Artus closed the book and tilted his face up toward the ceiling, resting the back of his head against the couch and exhaling loudly.
"And weren't you the one trying to convince me to relax and leave it all to Lucia?"
Coming down the stairs, Olen stopped for a moment, looking at his friend.
"I was just asking… I'm curious, that's all, about what turned you around on him so suddenly."
Artus turned his head toward him, then fixed his eyes back on the ceiling.
"This morning. This one damn morning… completely changed how I see that guy."
"So what happened?"
Artus smiled, dropping his eyes to his knees, and rose from the couch with a sigh.
"All right, here's how it went…"
Olen listened closely, piecing the morning's events together in his mind.
Artus knocked on Aren's door and waited in silence, but no response came. He knocked again and waited a few more seconds, then reached for the handle, which gave way at once, and there stood Aren, hair sticking out in every direction and his eyes still heavy with sleep.
Artus pinched his nose, turning away and breathing out through his mouth.
"Damn… you just reek… did you even take a shower?"
"Shower?… What's that?"
Artus's eyebrows went up as he stared at Aren, wide-eyed, still holding his nose.
For the next fifteen minutes he showed him the bathroom, explaining how to turn on the tap and start the water in the shower, while Aren examined the hose and fed a little energy into the photocyte, and water came blasting straight into Artus's face. Aren tried in a panic to shut the crystal off, but only kept changing the water temperature, making Artus shout louder and louder before he wrenched the hose away from him.
Then, at the mirror over the sink, he showed him a toothbrush and toothpaste, which Aren turned over in his hands with curiosity, and with a sigh Artus explained how to brush his teeth.
After that he stood outside the bathroom door for nearly an hour, shoulder against the wall and arms crossed over his chest.
"YOU DONE IN THERE YET?! DID YOU DROWN OR SOMETHING?!"
Later, Artus was walking him through the proper way to put the university uniform on, piece by piece.
Artus and Aren came down the spiral staircase to the kitchen, where Artus stepped up to a tall white stone cabinet set into the wall and laid his palm on the smooth photocyte at its edge, and a band of warm light ran along the door's rim as the panel itself slid aside.
A breath of cool air rolled out, and an even golden glow spread across the shelves, picking out the food stored there. On the top shelf lay large fruits of the Radiant Forest, filled with light beneath their thin skin and still warm even in the cold of the cabinet. Below stood a stack of golden light-grain flatbreads, their grains faintly shimmering at the break. Deeper in sat bundles of pale green herbs and a clay pot of thick sunhoney that trailed down the sides in slow threads.
Artus put together his own breakfast, tearing off a piece of flatbread, drizzling it with sunhoney, and setting a cut fruit beside it, while Aren stood almost right at his shoulder, following his every move and craning his neck toward the countertop.
Artus turned, raised an eyebrow, and glanced at Aren's empty hands, saw he hadn't made himself a thing, then rolled his eyes and exhaled through his nose.
For the next five minutes he put together a breakfast for Aren too, pressing a flatbread into his hands and showing him how to tear it, drizzle it with sunhoney, and lay slices of the glowing fruit on top, while Aren copied him slowly and with great focus.
Once they'd eaten and Artus had shown him how to wash his own dishes, he got ready alongside him, and the two of them set off for the university.
"Hey! You said you sent him to the university alone!"
"I wanted to see how seriously you'd take my word. And you really did fall for it, naive as ever… not quite as sharp as you reckoned yourself to be yesterday."
"Ugh, get lost. I just woke up," Olen answered, waving a hand and heading for the kitchen.
"And the walk to the university? Any trouble along the way?" he added a little later.
"Well…"
Artus rubbed his chin, leaning his hip against the back of the couch and staring at the floor.
"He kept looking around the whole time, taking everything in with his eyes bugging out and his mouth hanging open, while passersby stared back at him just as surprised."
"No wonder. He's from Waldruhm, after all… to us he's more of a… savage… I guess…" Olen answered, pulling food from the cabinet.
"Yeah… I can just imagine how he'll do at the university…"
Since early morning the university's main square had been filling with hundreds of students, whispering, their eyes trailing the black-haired outsider Artus had left at the gates as he walked through it alone.
Aren heard their whispers and felt their eyes on him, and he stopped in front of the nearest group of students, raised a hand, and smiled a little.
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
"Hey… hi!"
The students raised their brows and, holding back laughter, turned to one another and went on whispering. Aren lowered his hand and gripped his bag strap tighter as the smile faded from his face.
"Don't pay them any mind," came a voice from behind.
Aren turned and saw Eveline before him, her bag over one shoulder, while on the other perched Rexy, a small bluish creature with fluffy fur and shimmering translucent wings.
"You're… I think… Elvin?…" Aren said, raising a hand a little, index finger pointed.
"Eveline. Elvin is a man's name, actually. Do I look like a man to you?" Eveline answered, raising one eyebrow and shifting her weight onto one leg so that her hip cocked out to the side.
Aren knit his brows and smiled, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly, while Eveline smirked.
"Relax, I'm joking," she said, and looked over at the group of students who'd just ignored Aren.
"This kind of attitude toward foreigners is, sadly, considered normal here… same as toward anyone who looks different," she added, while Aren lowered his hand and, taking a closer look, noticed that her skin, unlike everyone else's, was beige.
"Oh, right… you've got—"
"Yep. Just like you," she cut in, looking him in the eye.
Aren froze, then breathed out with a smile, while Eveline moved on past him.
"Anyway, you'll get used to it soon, same as me. Just don't pay attention and get on with whatever you came here for."
Rexy kept his eyes on Aren, turning back as Eveline walked ahead, while Gray and his friends watched in silence off to the side, arms crossed over their chests.
In the lecture hall Eveline now sat right behind Aren, one row up, glancing every so often at the back of his head, while Aren himself listened closely to the History of Prime lecture.
"And so, when the Shogun of Mizu uncovered the Aisengardians' covert operation on the archipelago and ordered its participants taken into custody… who can tell me what consequences these events brought about?… Go ahead, Kivara."
"The Incident of eighteen thirty-two," Kivara answered.
"And what is that incident?"
"The Shogun personally arrived in Aisengard, single-handedly neutralized a border garrison, and then forced the Syndicate to sign the Declaration of Confidentiality," Kivara answered.
"Correct. The Shogun, alone, flew across the sea, fell upon the eastern border, and smashed an entire garrison, then broke into the Syndicate tower and, under threat of destruction, forced the Syndicate of Seven to sign the Declaration. And after that the Shogunate resolved to seal itself off from the rest of the world entirely, creating an impassable barrier that protects the state to this day."
Aren was listening, his eyes fixed on the lecturer, when the main bell rang, announcing the end of the lecture. The students began gathering their things and filing out of the hall, while Aren sat motionless. Eveline had started down but stopped and came back to stand beside Aren, still seated, staring thoughtfully at the empty board.
"Are you all right?" she asked.
Aren flinched slightly, coming out of his thoughts, and glanced at Eveline.
"Y-yeah, it's just… it's all so… fascinating…"
"What? The Aisengard Incident?"
"Aisengard?… Isn't it—"
"Yeah, yeah, the 'Incident of eighteen thirty-two,' but nobody calls it that. Only the ones who want to show off for the lecturer, who's pretty particular about names, by the way. Everywhere, even in the Trade League, people just say 'the Aisengard Incident.'"
"Oh… I see…" Aren answered, dropping his eyes back to the desk.
Eveline tilted her head slightly, taking in Aren's parted lips and frozen expression, her own eyes slowly widening and her mouth coming open.
"Listen… want to come to the library with me? You can learn a whole lot more there, and it's far more interesting than these lectures."
Aren looked at Eveline again and raised his brows.
"Really?… I've heard of libraries… those are places where hundreds of books are kept, right?"
Eveline smirked, straightening up and fixing her hair.
"Yeah, except the main Midar library doesn't have hundreds, it has hundreds of thousands of books."
Aren's mouth fell open and he leaned his head forward a little.
"Hundreds… of thousands?!"
Eveline laughed quietly at the look on Aren's face, then turned and started down the amphitheater steps, heading for the exit and glancing back at him over her shoulder.
"Come on already, and you'll see for yourself."
Aren froze for a few seconds, then hurriedly began stuffing his pen and notebook into his bag, bolted from his seat, and tripped on one of the steps.
Midar's main library opened before them into a colossal hall, where the walls rose in solid tiers of bookshelves that climbed dozens of meters toward a distant vault, through whose turquoise glass diffuse light fell and gilded the countless spines.
Aren froze in the doorway, tipping his head back and parting his lips, as his gaze crept higher and higher up the levels of galleries linked by narrow marble footbridges and spiral staircases that wound around the columns. White stone statues rose between the tiers, and the warm light of photocytes flowed along the railings, picking out the endless rows of spines. The air stood still and cool, steeped in the smell of old paper, and a few rare specks of dust drifted slowly through it.
Rexy flew in after them, shooting up to the first tiers and scattering blue sparks before returning to Eveline's shoulder.
Aren moved forward, turning in a circle as he went and taking in the shelves, the statues, and the galleries climbing overhead, not noticing the students and other Heliosians trading glances, their eyes lingering on the outsider who had wandered into their library.
"Damn… Leo… I wish you could see this…" Aren muttered.
"Hm? Did you say something?" Eveline asked, turning to him and leaning in slightly, hands tucked behind her back.
"Uh… n-no, just thinking out loud."
"Ah… all right… this way."
They walked between the library's tiers, where Aren saw both ordinary visitors and staff loading books onto carts.
Eveline sat down in a modest corner and patted the seat beside her, while Rexy landed on the table. Aren slowly settled down beside her as she took two books out of her bag.
"Oh, I forgot," she said, standing and rounding the table to the other side, then hurried over to one of the bookshelves, her eyes running along it, index finger pressed to her lip.
"So… where are you… found it."
She pulled one of the books from the shelf and came back to her place, setting it down beside the others.
"All right, Aren. Tell me, what interests you most about our world?"
"Hmm… Everything."
Eveline went still for a moment, looking at the books on the table, and then over at Aren, who was gazing at the closed covers with an innocent smile, sliding a sidelong look at her for an instant and going right back to the books.
"Yeah… this is going to be interesting," she murmured, opening the first book, while Rexy sat at the other edge of the table and studied Aren before yawning and curling into a ball.
More than half an hour had passed since Eveline began recounting to Aren what she herself had learned from the books, turning the pages as she went.
"So… the prisoners managed to escape from the Shogunate?…" Aren asked.
"Yeah. On top of that, by unofficial accounts, they did manage to steal some runes, including the teleportation rune. Though that's just rumor."
Aren narrowed his eyes a little, looking at the notes in the book and remembering his recent clash with Lieutenant Schtance and Vector Fray, who had, in fact, escaped thanks to a rune like that.
"But what's really true is that the Shogun is one of the few who ever made those cold-blooded types feel fear for the first time," Eveline added.
"Because he wiped out a whole garrison on his own?"
"Yep. And they say there wasn't a scratch on him. That's what earned him the nickname everyone knows him by, 'One man army.'"
Eveline looked over at Aren, his eyes wide and his mouth open as he listened.
"Well… or almost everyone…"
"So there's really no way in there now?" Aren asked.
"Unfortunately, plenty have tried. But the wall of mist, which no one who entered ever came back out of, is very good at scaring off intruders and keeps anyone from so much as seeing the Archipelago, let alone reaching it."
Aren dropped his eyes to the book in thought, pressing his lips together and squinting.
Later, once the sun had passed its zenith, they came out of the library and headed across the front plaza toward the gates of the grounds.
"So much knowledge… gathered in one place…" Aren said, and Eveline smirked.
"And just imagine how many more libraries like this there are in other countries! I've always wanted to know what books they have in the libraries of the Trade League…"
"Oh yeah? Then why don't you clear off there?" Gray's voice rang out as he stepped into their path.
"Damn it," Eveline whispered, lowering her face slightly and looking at the group of students, Gray standing at their head with a smile, hands in his pockets.
Aren shifted his eyes from Gray to Eveline and saw her grip her bag strap, while Rexy growled.
"Well, would you look at that… Just what you'd expect…" Gray went on, stepping forward.
"The outsider's barely shown up at our university, and dear old Eveline, everybody's favorite, has already latched right on…"
"Have you lost your mind, Gray?… Forgotten who he arrived with on his first day?" Eveline answered.
"So what?… Is that why you tagged along after him? Figured that since he showed up here with the Archon himself, being next to him would make you special too?… Ha!"
"I've learned enough… and I've learned that our… new… 'exchange student' isn't the first. And I couldn't give less of a damn about whatever plans the current Archon has, letting all sorts of riffraff into our pure republic… into our university, especially," Gray went on, turning to his friends as he finished.
"Remember? I said from the start that my father should have been Archon. And had it gone that way, something like this…" he said, turning to Aren.
"…he'd never have allowed."
Aren stood upright, eyes narrowed and fixed on Gray.
"What are you looking at me like that for?" Gray asked.
"The Archon of Light… he isn't silver-skinned either… So how is he any different from Eveline?" Aren asked, and Eveline's eyes went wide as she turned to him.
"Haha… good question… and the answer's simple… our Archon is a damn lucky bastard. He got his title only because he was born a Level IV Conductor and talked the last Archon's ear off with his silver tongue," Gray answered, lowering his voice.
"You're just jealous that it's not your father in his place. Who's probably no less jealous himself," Eveline answered.
"Shut your mouth, dirt-skin. As if you of all people don't know what it's like to be jealous," Gray answered, a smile crossing his face as he finished, while his friends behind him held back their laughter.
"Aren, let's go," Eveline said, grabbing Aren's sleeve and pulling him after her, while he held his gaze on the smirking Gray for a moment before following her.