[…] acquisition of basic education in the subjects of Language, Numbers, Nature Studies, and Society is free and compulsory for all children who attained eight years of age at the start of the school year, signifying the first of Enliven of a given year, for a period of four years or until their Day of Appraisal. In all matters, the empire must endeavour to uphold and safeguard this inalienable right, as such is the unerring path to the continuous uplift of humanity’s great civilisation.
—Imperial Prosperity Laws, article 7, section 1, as ratified by Emperor Kayden Nezir in 2 AK.
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Rest 30, 2497 AK, Radiant Empire, Cleft Isles, Greyport, Northern Sanctuary of the Faith.
“Today, my children, as we bask in the Twelve’s glory on the eve of the Founder’s Festival, let us remind ourselves of the illustrious figure we celebrate this fortnight, our glorious First Emperor, Kayden the Bright.”
Rows upon rows of wooden benches and tables stretched across the length of the classroom, intended to accommodate up to fifty children comfortably. However, this last morning of the month of Rest saw at least twice that number crammed inside. All nine to ten-year-olds in their second year of schooling, who would typically be distributed across multiple classes, were brought together, not for a regular lesson, but for a sermon before the festival school break. Similar lectures were happening in three other rooms within Greyport North’s Sanctuary of the Faith, each addressing a different year group.
“Two and a half millennia ago, our Radiant Empire was but a dream in the mind of the noble Kayden, Knight General of the Radiance Kingdom. It was a dark era, full of sadness, war, misfortune, and despair. From all that wickedness emerged Zeipheron, the Dragon Demon King, the Son of the Void—a malevolent entity embodying pure Evil and Destruction. With hate for all of Creation in his blackened heart, Zeipheron sought to shatter the divine works of the Twelve, to unleash slaughter upon humanity, and to burn our world to the ground with his sinister flames! A dire fate loomed large, threatening to plunge all into the Abyss!”
The booming voice of the lector priest, one Basil Burtin, echoed through the classroom from his raised platform at the head of it. The corpulent man was working himself into a fervour, the sun pendant around his girthy throat bouncing back and forth atop his rotund belly with every impassionate sweep of his arms.
“However! Amidst the despair, a beacon of hope appeared: the great First Emperor! In the face of overwhelming Evil, Kayden stood tall, a paragon of courage, chosen by gods and destiny to become the saviour of humanity! With valour in his heart, he united the scattered realms, forging our Radiant Empire under the benevolent light of his rule. And with the combined might of humankind at his back, the blessing of the Twelve, and his sword in hand, Kayden faced the Dragon Demon King head-on, leading our courageous armies with unwavering resolve!”
Transported by his own words, Lector Burtin leaned heavily on his lectern, clutching the edges of it, his knuckles turning white. His belly pressed painfully into the creaking wood, and perspiration glistened across his bald head. Devout ardour shook his shouted words, showering in spittle the kids of the first row who listened with rapt attention.
“Picture with me, children! The clash of swords and magic, the armies of Good marching down on the demonic swarms to save us all, as our valiant First Emperor struck down the Enemy, banishing this Great Evil from our lands! That is why! Every year! We seek to rekindle that righteous fervour by gathering in joyous celebration to honour Kayden’s radiant victory and the founding of humanity’s greatest civilisa–”
A loud yawn cut through the lector’s speech. Burtin choked on his preaching as all heads turned to the back of the packed classroom. Despite the number of students, an open space had formed around an isolated desk against the rear wall and its occupant.
Kaydence stuck out like a sore thumb in the crowd of pre-teens, with her tall height, abnormal morphology, and unique dark skin colour. She sat on a chair precariously balanced on two legs, her head dipped backwards over the backrest, and her eyes closed. As if unaware the whole room’s attention had shifted to her, she let loose another loud, jaw-dislocating yawn.
Kaydence had spent the last night running around the city, avoiding the guards while looking for clues about that prostitute’s death—frustratingly, in vain. With morning nearing, she had rushed back to the One-Eyed Bear to secretly shadow Annette, whom Bernt escorted home. She had had to climb down the Split’s cliff to overtake the pair and sneak inside her dwelling to pretend to be asleep. All in all, she had slept less than an hour between her mother’s return and being woken up by nightmares, too close to dawn to bother going back to bed.
This was only the latest in a series of sleepless nights. In theory, Kaydence’s boundless Life magic could allow her body to function indefinitely at peak efficiency without ever needing to rest. Such was the point of the undead, after all. However, unlike revived corpses, a living human mind could only stay active for so long before it started to wear down. Even the body required sleep to conduct hormonal regulation, detoxification, and many essential biological processes that Kaydence was instead consciously managing, adding to her mental burden.
A third uncontrollable yawn crawled out from the depths of her throat.
“You little pest!” A vein bulged on Lector Burtin’s humid forehead. “Is the founding tale of our glorious empire boring you, Student Templeton?”
Kaydence did not react right away. People so rarely used her surname that she often forgot about it. In Seifer’s days, only nobles carried ancestral names, but sometime in the past two millennia, the imperial bureaucracy decided for the sanity of its administrators to assign surnames to everyone. Still, it was a concern for tax collectors more than common folk, and everyday usage was scarce, even in school. Burtin simply could not stomach speaking Kaydence’s given name, calling it blasphemous on several occasions.
“Oh, me?” Kaydence raised her head and picked at her teeth with a sharp nail. “Yeah. No, not bored at all.” She yawned conspicuously. “Just wondering why the First Emperor was such a coward that he had to have all of mankind and a dozen gods backing him up before he dared to have a go at this Zeipheron guy.”
Burtin’s apoplectic sputters rained more spittle on the first-row students. “How dare you desecra–”
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
“Ah, but wait,” Kaydence interrupted, inspecting a piece of vegetable she had extracted from between her teeth. “Didn’t Kayden become king of Radiance and start the empire after he defeated the D.D.K.? So maybe he wasn’t a coward after all, and you’re just a shit History teacher. You might want to revise your basics, Reverend. I’m sure you wouldn’t want to sound unpatriotic or blasphemous… I heard there’s no worse things you could be.”
“Get out.” Burtin’s double chins were trembling in contained rage.
“You said it. Not me.” Kaydence let her chair fall on its feet, stood, and headed straight for the door to the courtyard. Students parted in her way, squeezing themselves between the desks.
“No. Not that way.” The lector called her back. He pointed at a door in the front corner of the room. “Go sit in the temple and reflect on your blasphemous insults against the holy man who, in his mercy, allowed even foul demons such as you to receive an education that the barbarians of old reserved for only their rulers.”
“Ah, yes. I’m sure every child in here is very grateful for that.” She rolled her eyes but complied, making her way back across the room. “And wasn’t your precious First Emperor one of those ‘barbarians of old’?”
“GET OUT!!”
“Alright, alright. No need to give yourself an aneurysm. I’m leaving.”
Privately, she did hope those brats were grateful for the opportunity to learn as they did. She found it endlessly frustrating that many intelligent soldiers she had encountered in the military in her past life could have become scholars and contributed to the kingdom’s progress if they only had had access to a better education. Instead, they died pointless deaths in senseless conflicts, not even able to write letters to their loved ones, who would have been unable to read them anyway.
Kayden and she used to endlessly debate this subject, and others, often arguing for different solutions. He and Seifer rarely saw eye to eye, but Seifer had cherished those moments when his brother actually seemed to listen to him.
Kaydence’s throat tightened as she exited the room. Stupid. Her teeth grinded together. She slammed the door harder than she intended, cutting off Burtin’s retort. What’s even the point of reminiscing about the good old days? They weren’t even that good to begin with.
The silent temple greeted her. Access to the classrooms was through a shaded alcove in the eastern aisle. Kaydence wandered to the nave, her steps echoing loudly in the empty temple, as they tended to do in such places.
Morning sunlight streamed in oblique beams from high windows near the vaulted ceiling. The Sanctuary of the Faith was the vastest complex in old Greyport, and the main temple was the tallest structure on this side of the chasm. Kaydence’s eyes fleeted without seeing over the mosaic floors, the rows of pews, and the tall collonades carved in representation of each of the twelve high gods of the imperial orthodoxy. Small offerings of incense were burning at the foot of each statue, filling the air with a pungent, spicy-sweet fragrance.
Kaydence disliked the scent. Being in here always made her uneasy, unwelcome. She imagined the impassive stone deities glaring down at her when she was not looking. Their gazes would be judgemental and reproachful. They would ask, “How dare you stand before us?” in resounding voices made of storm and thunder, full of anger and contempt. They had the right to judge her guilty. Although, Kaydence too had quite a few complaints to levy towards them.
Her steps halted before the altar, a rectangular block of solid sunstone, the pale sandy rock emitting a feeble natural luminescence. The throne of the king of Radiance had been made of that same material. Kaydence remembered well. She had knelt many times before that throne.
She had shattered it.
Beyond the altar, at the back of the circular apse, a large symbol adorned the wall between two tall burning braziers: thick golden threads interlaced in concentric circles set with twelve coloured gemstones. At the centre, a thirteenth stood for Arakhan, the Sea of Possibilities, the Original Being, Antithesis of the Void, and Source of Everything, from which even the first gods emerged. Unlike the others, Arakhan’s stone was a managem, created from the crystallisation of aether, and it glowed faintly with the power it contained.
The Hierogram of the Dodecatheon was the most holy symbol of the Imperial Orthodox Faith. It represented at once the hierarchy of the Twelve Heavenly Gods and the interconnection of the twelve primary magical affinities as humans understood them—two sides of the same coin. A ray of sunlight shone straight on the symbol, as if the world acknowledged its holiness, although it was more likely the cleverness of the architects.
Hierogram of the Dodecatheon [https://i.imgur.com/QttcoeP.png]
Kaydence’s gaze inexorably drifted upwards from the hierogram to the painted domed ceiling of the apse.
On the far side, facing the congregation, was a depiction of Kayden the Hero, Kayden the Chosen, Kayden the Bright, immaculate in his full armoured regalia and enclosed in a halo of radiant light. His blue eyes, vivid and detailed, stared straight at the pews, so that anyone attending mass could only meet his implacable gaze. In his hand, he brandished the holy sword, Mercy, towards the painted hierogram at the dome’s apex and, by extension, towards the creature across the fresco.
Six people flanked the hero, painted in fanned-out valiant profiles as if jumping out into battle to defend their leader: a tanned woman with burning hair, a robed man holding a staff, a dwarf wielding a gilded war hammer, a dove-winged Celestial brandishing a spear, a white-haired man cradling a wooden marionette, and a brawny elf pulling back the string of his bow. From behind these hallowed figures rushed the armies of the humans, the elves, and the dwarves, with Celestials and phoenixes occupying the skies, facing off at the fresco’s halfway point against an opposing tide of vampires, werewolves, dark elves, corrupted dwarves, orcs, and all matters of the undead and abominations of the flesh.
Commanding the enemy hordes from across the vaulted ceiling were six other sideway figures, but painted with a far more ominous intent: a deathly pale woman with sharp teeth dripping streams of blood, a hideous wolf-man holding a human corpse in his maw, a red-robed skeleton casting black lightning from its phalanxes, a dark elf clad in a patchwork of human skins, a massive green orc wielding gory battle axes, and a grinning woman holding a giant scythe and pointing imperiously at the forces of the Radiant Alliance.
The last character of the scene stood between these six, depicted where it would loom over the audience during celebrations. It was a humanoid creature, covered in obsidian scales, exuding a threatening red aura. Misshapen black wings sprouted from his back, stretching across the battlefield as if to smother it. Mangled bodies overflowed from its clawed grasp. Twisted horns protruded from its reptilian head; a too-small crown hung askew from one of them as if in mockery. Its mouth was a serrated hole, spewing flames and inhaling souls, looking like a hellish gateway. Its ruby eyes seemed to gleam with hateful malevolence even in painting.
Kaydence had to compliment the talent of the artist.
Giving Mirage a scythe was an interesting creative license. Such an impractical weapon would have suited the unpredictable woman, if only just for show. In reality, she had never wielded anything bigger than a dagger and always stayed as far from the frontlines as possible. Even though, as Seifer’s chief strategist, she had likely caused more indirect death among the common soldiery than any of his other lieutenants. So perhaps making her a reaper of lives was more inspired than Kaydence initially gave it credit for.
The girl did not linger inside much longer. Too much in here unsettled her, and she was glad Annette was such an unorthodox woman that their family never attended any of the celebrations that formed the pattern of Greyport’s social life.
Not that they would have been welcome there.
Kaydence turned her back to the altar, the symbol, and the painting and hurried down the central aisle. A sweeper she had not noticed gave her a disgusted look as she passed by him. She replied by growling and showing her teeth menacingly, causing the man to retreat in fright. She paused, shook her head, and walked away, her hand briefly clutching her stomach.
At the temple’s main door, she shot a last glance backwards at the fresco, briefly meeting the unwavering stare of Kayden the Bright.
What good old days?
The door slammed behind her harder than she intended.
* * * * *