With anatomy class finished, I walked out of the classroom and wandered aimlessly. I had a good chunk of time left before my next class, Swordsmanship, so I took a bit of a break. As I was walking though the second tier of the Citadel, I noticed a white and brown cat with grey eyes staring at me as it licked its paw. It wandered over to me.

“Hello there, little one.” I said, patting its head.

It walked away from me before turning its head over its shoulder to stare at me. Then it walked back to me and meowed and then walked away from me again. It repeated this a few times before I realized that it wanted me to follow it. Odd. Perhaps it had been genetically engineered to be smarter than the average feline. Or maybe I was just underestimating the intelligence of the common cat.

The white and brown cat led me through alleyways and side streets of the second tier, moving inwards and inwards towards the walls and foundations of the third tier that rested in the center of the second tier, and which carried the fourth, final, and ultimate tier nestled within itself. There were fewer and fewer people around me as I went further in, the higher ranked Paths like Militares and Venators and Imperators dwindling as I went on. Soon there were only Copper Servi going about their day and then as I had almost reached the wall of the next tier, I was suddenly left alone in the back alleys.

I sharpened my hearing, dimming the comforting sounds of thunder and rain that my mind hallucinated as a meditative trick to obscure noise and avoid sensory overstimulation. I heard a single heartbeat in front of me, beating steadily. Tracking that drumming sound, I soon located the person. The white and brown cat was leading me this way anyways. It was an Imperator, more a young man than a boy, wearing a black uniform with a dark scarlet tie like blood. A third year. He was standing in front of the side of a building and placed his hand against the white surface.

Traceries of azure psychic fire spread from his fingertips, the first use I had seen of the blue flame since Antonias had burned down that theater after I had resuscitated him and he had freaked out, thinking I was an attacker. It was apparently rare that Imperators used psychic fire against one another with skinshields taught from a young age, and even rarer for Bronzes like me and the other students to use it because even without the anti-psychic forcefields our regeneration and heat resistance and durability made the blue fire practically useless. We would mostly be using it as a measure against low Ranked lesser Paths in a riot situation if we were going to use it at all.

I could see that the third year student was not trying to burn the building down or cause major property damage, but was instead using his psychic powers to sear and brand an image into the white stone, blackening and burning the very surface layer of the stone. His subtle, delicate touch with the blue fire was leaving behind a well crafted and defined piece of art, the fire intensifying in certain places to darken further and easing up in others to leave a light grey residue. In some areas, the Imperator was burning deeper into the stone to create depth and definition. Soon, it had taken its full form and I saw that for all the young man’s artistic talent, it was a crude and vulgar caricature of Governor Claudion doing… things with the Regent.

“Hey!” I called out to the third year, offended more for my grandfather’s sake than for the governor’s. “What do you think you’re doing?”

Without bothering to look at me, the third year in black and red pointed a finger at me and a bolt of green lightning shot out and struck me. I suspected it was a new example of the psychic arts that I had not witnessed so far. It shocked me with more energy and vigor than an ordinary thunderstrike or jolt of electricity and caused my muscles to seize up. It carried with it a thought from the other Imperator, Shut up, Firstie, mind your own business. The emerald lightning surged in me, self-sustaining in its coursing path through my body, and the psychic electric flow forced my muscles to shut my mouth to prevent me from saying anything more and compelled my legs to turn and walk away.

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I reclaimed control over my body and stopped, hot anger rising in me. I turned back to start a confrontation with the third year, but he was gone like he had never been there. I focused and enhanced my hearing, but I could not sense any retreating footsteps or sounds of his escape. It was like he had disappeared into thin air. If he had been a Silver Imperator it would have made sense, I would have known he had teleported away in a flash using our Path’s Third Rank special ability, but he had been a Bronze like me.

The cat meowed to get my attention and then stalked off. I followed and it brought me to the wall of the third tier. Marked on this section of the smooth carved stone was the letters ATNA. The cat looked at me and meowed again, and then to my shock it walked through the wall like the rock was not even there. I rested my hand against the cool material of the wall. It sure felt solid. But still, somehow the feline animal had gone through like it was air. I pressed harder and my hand sunk in. I checked the time on my wrist communicator. 10:20. I had time, probably, so long as this diversion did not take too long. Gathering my nerve and hoping I was not about to get halfway phased through the wall and then stuck in the rock, I pushed my whole body through. There was a little resistance, a kind of surface tension, at the beginning of my contact with the stone, but after that I slid through easy enough.

I emerged in a courtyard, there was a sky overhead, but it was not the false painted ceiling of the Scholarium. No, those were real stars above me. Had I been teleported somewhere? There had not been the doorway of mercury of Janusian teleporters like the ones we had used to get to the officers’ school nor had there been the dissolution of my body into the light/lightning hybrid of traditional teleportation stations, but I did not pretend to know all of the Dominium’s secrets and technologies.

The cat that had guided me here was nowhere to be seen and the only other thing in the courtyard was a tree that had been partially shaped and pruned and carved into a woman warrior carrying a shield marked with a gorgon’s head. Every time I blinked the snakes in the gorgon’s hair moved to slightly different positions. The woman’s eyes were the only part of her that was not wood, her sclera was white Jovium and her irises were purest gold.

I recognized her, of course.

“Athena.” I said, daring to speak the goddess’s name. “The Grey Eyed One. The Strategist. Patroness of the Path of the Magisters, the Scholar subspecies.”

Was it just me or had the wooden idol itself moved, tilting its head at me? Her gaze was piercing and disconcerting and I unconsciously avoided it, choosing instead to stare up at the alien sky above. I did not recognize the stars. Wherever I was, it was not on Lavinius or Iulius, that was clear enough.

I spent a while in the courtyard, lost in my thoughts, before I realized I was going to be late for Swordsmanship and found where I had entered the hidden area and pushed back through, sighing with relief when it worked.

I checked my wristwatch, hoping I was not absolutely screwed.

10:20.

I stared at it, tapping the screen in disbelief. That was impossible, that was the time I had entered the courtyard after the cat, and it had surely been half an hour that I had spent inside. I looked back to where the wall had been previously marked ATNA, which I now realized stood for the Grey Eyed One’s name as the statue of the Earthshaker outside the Undersea Bohemian had been inscribed with PSDN, but the letters were gone now, and the white wall was smooth and unmarked. I pushed against the wall where I had went in the first time, but the stone did not phase me through.

“Strange.” I said. Maybe I was crazy, had finally gone mad.

I shook my head and set off for Swordsmanship class. I would figure it out later.