Raising my head, I gazed up at the cloudless blue sky, the salty smell of the ocean air filling my lungs.
A gust of wind suddenly blowing into my face, I squinted my eyes and continued to stare at the faraway coastline of Thaloria that our boat followed.
My hair going into her mouth, Lunia sputtered, leaning and spitting out over the ship’s wooden railing.
Indignant, she made a face at me.
“How much longer?” she asked.
“Probably an hour or so,” I apathetically answered, “Thalric said we’d probably get there a bit after noon if the weather is still good and the winds keep blowing West.”
Nodding in response, Lunia cradled her head, and stared down at the surface of the ocean in an attempt to mitigate the growing nausea from the swaying ship and the sickening scent of brine.
Forced to wake up at the crack of dawn, every prospective Celestia student present for the previous night’s dinner was unceremoniously thrown onto a wooden boat half the length of the airship we took from Frosthelm, though unlike the airship, gargantuan, turning paddle wheels were stuck onto the back of the hull, through which we were able to be propelled forward. Going down the river behind Thaloria city, our final destination was the entrance to the Golden Sea.
The water, imbued with a slight greenish tinge that transformed into an increasingly intense dark blue the further away one traveled from Thaloria, contained a myriad of strangely shaped, brightly colored rocks that could be seen in the shallows, though the depth of the water where we currently sailed made it impossible to see anything underneath the surface of the water.
As we continued to travel West, the previous night’s exchange between Lunia and that noble girl, Anne, kept repeating in my mind.
Lunia was Lunia Elef.
He who had driven me to that winter hellscape, made me less than a person, forced me to abandon what little solace I found in the Old Codex. She was his daughter.
Over a year had passed, yet I still remembered that cave where life couldn’t live, yet death couldn’t die. It was limbo, a veritable purgatory.
I’d have preferred to have actually been dead. At least as a corpse, I wouldn’t feel hunger.
The pain of starvation, the pain of an empty stomach, the pain of my body devouring itself in order to survive, I could still feel it all, like a fresh wound. Father once told me of how once, when his own parents were out working, a family of rats had gotten into their grain cellar. He was without food for 2 weeks, but by the 10th day, he no longer felt the pang of hunger, rather, he felt like he was born anew.
But he had lied. It hurt worse on the 3rd day than it did the 1st, it hurt worse on the 7th day than it did the 5th, and it hurt worse on the 15th day than it did the 14th.
Even then, even when I became nothing but skin and bone, my fur armor no longer fitting my body, my muscles wasting away from disuse, I still hungered.
I fought it for as long as I could.
I tried everything I could think of to distract myself.
Biting down on my dry, cracked lips, exposing my bloody skin to the cold air, scratching my broken fingernails against the jagged rock floor all the way to the bed, scraping my scalp against the ground until my scalp went bloody and the lieutenant forced my head to still.
I could only delay the inevitable, never stop it in its entirety.
Maybe it would’ve been better for me to just give up, to die as a human being.
Gnawing, flesh ripping, my gums receding, the red bleeding already coagulated, my teeth loose from desire almost falling out from the sudden use.
But I didn’t want to go. I wasn’t ready yet.
I leaned over the ship’s railing, my breath shaky, my body shivering despite the sun shining down in full force.
There were others too, who had chosen to go down the same path as me. Yet not even a month later, I was the only one left, the rest having cut off their wrists, hung themselves by the neck, quietly wandered off in the night to die a lonely death surrounded by the green needle trees.
When I found the last one, a boy, 5 or so years my elder, hunched over in the outhouse and with his sword still sticking out of his guts, a thought ran through my mind.
Why did he make it so that he couldn’t even be considered a human being if he was going to die by his own hand in the end anyway?
***
As the boat continued to sail West, Lunia, along with the others who bathed in the sunlight, decided to retreat below deck, though I elected not to.
I felt as if I would drive myself mad without the swaying of the waves to distract myself.
Finally, only when the sun had reached its zenith, we stopped, finally reaching Celestia after 6 hours of sailing.
Situated on an island that was a bit past where the Golden Sea and Thalorian River met, I could just barely make out Celestia standing on the deck of the ship. Located at the center of the large, mountainous landmass, 5 behemoths constructed from stone and glass, each dozens of stories tall, were lined up, looming in the background.
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Disembarking, we stepped foot on the island, the boat leaving soon after, with a scarred, one eyed woman with fiery red hair yelling immediately to follow her. As we entered the forest, the cacophonous noise of cicadas, grasshoppers, and a hundred other species of insects sounded in the air.
Towering dozens of feet in the air, the tops of the trees blotted out the sunlight, fortunately allowing us to walk in the shade. I thanked the goddess for that, as the forest was not only hot, it was humid as well, my shirt becoming completely drenched in sweat not even 10 minutes into the trek.
My shirt fully soaked through, my leather rucksack beginning to chafe my arm, and already feeling a cluster headache coming on, I turned to Thalric, about to ask him how long it would take to get to the center of the island, when he suddenly turned to me, abandoning his conversation with another recruiter,
“Don’t panic,” Thalric suddenly instructed, smirking to himself.
Internally cursing him in my mind for smiling while I was in such immense pain, the ground suddenly began to shake, terrifying the birds previously unseen in the trees into taking flight.
I watched in awe, as slowly, the island began to ascend into the sky. Unable to even speak, I turned to Thalric, my mouth agape. Shaking his head in mild amusement, Thalric continued walking, his fellow recruiter doing so as well soon after.
Turning my head, most everyone around me, including Lunia, stared at the sky, eyes wide, while a small minority even hugged the ground, holding on for dear life. Seeing their reactions, I slapped my cheeks, forcing myself out of my shock.
With the island now a mile up in the sky, the temperature noticeably cooled, to the point where my body began to shudder as my sweat evaporated, my skin getting exposed to the cold air.
As I continued to walk forward, Lunia suddenly ran up to me, hanging her body off my shoulder, “Do you know if we’ll get dinner? We haven’t eaten since 6.”
Pushing her off of me, I shook my head no.
With the sun beginning to set, and the cold air having grown more frigid, we finally reached Celestia Academy.
Previously only able to get a vague glimpse, in reality, the 5 behemoths were each shaped and sized differently, the largest one in the shape of a U, the rest just as tall, but shaped like rectangular prisms. Around the 5 buildings was a sprawling complex of 3 story tall boxes, each one uniform in appearafnce and constructed from the same smooth stone and glass, the only different building a grand cathedral created from a mixture of black wood, and metal.
“LISTEN UP,” the woman who had previously instructed us to enter the forest yelled, “Follow your recruiter’s instructions, they’ll take you to be checked out. After that, you’ll spend your first night in the guest dorms, but don’t get too comfortable. You’re the last of this year’s batch, so tomorrow you are going to spend your time bleeding,” she emphasized the bleeding especially.
“Let’s go,” Thalric languidly ordered, “Only a bit further to go.”
***
Following Thalric and the rest of the recruiters, Lunia and I, along with the rest, were separated into boys and girls, before being sent into 2 of the gray box shaped buildings, the only thing differentiating them a blue water drop symbol above the entrances.
“Strip,” a voice suddenly ordered, as the twin doors from which we entered closed.
Colored a pristine white, the room was incredibly spacious, to the point where even if all 500 of us were to stand with our arms spread out and turn a full 360 degrees, we still wouldn’t be able to touch fingers with each other.
Kneeling down, I poked the tiles that made up the gridded floor.
They were hard, yet still had some give. Like the inner flesh of a tree.
The other childrens’ heads turned side to side, evidently confused at the disembodied voice’s command and reaching a general consensus that they wouldn’t proceed without more information, save for one person.
He had hair colored a dull gray, and with incredibly pale, pallor skin, he likely hailed from the North. A tribesman I’d wager, judging from the myriad of scars running across his naked body, his muscles visibly swelling with power.
“Did you not hear me?” the voice asked, “Strip.”
At the voice’s repeated command, I began to do as it asked, first taking off my boots and my soaked with sweat socks, then my loose tunic, before stopping.
After their first order was met with a near unanimous silence, the voice immediately repeated their command, which meant one of two things. Either they had preloaded that voice to say that line, predicting that most of us would stay still, or they had some mechanism by which they were able to view us.
I would wager on the latter, and if they could see us, they could also most likely hear us as well.
Raising my head,
“Including our undergarments?” I yelled, taking into account the already nude gray haired tribesman.
Being met with silence, I began to take off my trousers, when the voice finally answered,
“...No.”
I sighed in relief.
Neatly making a pile of my clothes, I inspected my bare body.
Having been granted the blessing of living with Aurelia in relative peace for a year, I was able to eat 3 meals every single day, and as a result, I had gained weight, though not to the point of being so fat I had difficulty moving.
But my biggest concern wasn’t my weight, it was the scars that covered every square inch of my skin, the largest one running across my entire stomach.
A parting gift from a border soldier I had run through with my spear.
The angry marks had slightly faded with the passage of time, but they were still there.
As those around me finally fully stripped, the tiles of the room began to glow, a large, magic circle forming on the ceiling and the floor.
Growing increasingly bright with the passage of time, the room filled with the anxious murmurs of 500 young boys, when finally, the circle activated.
Suddenly, a great burst of mist escaped the two magic circles, drenching not only our discarded clothes, but every corner of the room as well.
Magic circles finally stopping after a minute, I licked my lips, a refreshing, cold sensation entering my mouth.
My dried up sweat had seemingly melted away with the appearance of the mist.
Immediately after the magic circles activated, a group of tiles across from the front door we entered slid back, exposing a similarly colored, pristine white room.
Taking my wet clothes with me, I immediately waded through the surrounding crowd, and entered the room, being met with 10 closed doors as I did so.
One of the doors opened suddenly, and a person wearing a white robe and a leather mask shaped like the head of a bird beckoned me.
Apprehensive at his suspicious appearance, I forced myself anyway.
Entering the subroom, I was made to sit on a chair, where the bird headed man proceeded to draw blood from me, and measure my body.
Overall taking less than 10 minutes, before I knew it, I was in a fresh change of clothes, being led to a back entrance, and outside.
“Done?” Thalric asked, walking up to me.
Hearing me say yes, he nodded,
“Let’s go get Lunia. Dinner, then straight to bed.”