Pylon paused for a moment, theatrically drawing in his breath.
Each and every pair of eyes in the auditorium had fixed upon him. Lords and Ladies, Heirs and Heiresses, mundane servants and landed Aristocrats. All locked tight on the man in grey, in unease and tension and awe and apprehension. Despite the Hand’s eccentric antics, no one looked bored, right now. No Franks or Anglicans sneered, no Goths or Slavs rolled their eyes, as if they’d borne witness to this bizarre devilry a dozen times before, though doubtless they had.
Even the Deans maintained a respectful silence.
What was it about the man that commanded such a reverence in those around him?
Was Pylon truly so powerful?
“Welcome,” he said.
His voice, as per usual, seemed to emanate from all points equally, from everywhere at once. Like was right beside you, watching you, whispering in your ear.
Unsettling.
“My dear students, welcome,” he repeated. “Welcome to the Bern Institute of Entropic Arts and Sciences. Welcome one…welcome all.” His eyeless, mouthless chromic helm never once budged, yet I got the distinct feeling that his gaze was passing over us, sweeping the whole youthful assembly arrayed before him.
“It gives me such joy,” he professed, “to see so many young minds come together. To listen, that you might in turn teach others. To learn, that each generation might see themselves wiser than their forebears.”
His words were pretty. Fanciful. And well spoken, to boot. Neatly rehearsed.
But, just as always, I got this distinct sense of hollowness from them. In them. This…vacancy. This sourness. A leitmotif of dark irony underpinning an otherwise heartfelt address.
Like Pylon didn’t really mean the words he spoke, or, even that he meant their very opposite.
“You are all strong,” he went on, regardless. “Each and every one of you. None can deny that. Your presence here is proof enough. Strong of arm. Or, of mind. Or, of influence. You should be proud. Perhaps, you’ve won tourneys. Perhaps, you’ve led armies. Perhaps, you’ve braved the very darkest, and most depraved, of what the Warrior’s children have to offer our kin.
“But…”
I watched a number of Crats and noble heirs around lean in, subtly, as Pylon spoke. Drawn in by his words. It was unsurprising. He was, after all, sole servant and dearest confidante to the greatest mind in all the world. No doubt his words, insincere or not, were well worth their weight in Entropy.
“But, I wonder,” he added, mildly. “I wonder. Just how well will your strength fare you, when the duels are over with, and won? When you’ve slain your rivals, and now their blood are out for yours? When you’ve razed and sacked your enemies, and now you, yourself, must administrate their wartorn lands? When you’ve escaped the Dungeon, or the Zone, precious bounty tight in grasp, and now must survive the monsters who live…outside it.”
He paused again. Performatively.
Playing the crowd.
“Personally,” he nodded, casually tapping a metallic finger upon a metallic chin, “I do find wisdom to be of somewhat greater worth than strength. Strength is of little use, once the battle has been done. Only wisdom will allow you to survive what follows it.
“And wisdom only comes with experience,” he suggested, wiggling a finger dexterously about the air. “Perhaps here you may learn to be wise.”
Then he shrugged.
“Or not,” he nodded, a second time, cheerfully. “It’s up to you, really. Do what you like. I mean, you’re all paying, anyways, am I right?”
Pylon spoke the last phrase sharply, but without the appropriate shift in inflection to imply jocularity, instead letting his words fall flatly to the floor. As such, none in the audience, myself included, knew quite whether or not he’d actually meant it as a jest, instead just staring dumbly at the stage.
The Deans, for their part, didn’t laugh or look confused.
They were, after all, presumably well-used to this.
“NOW!” Pylon exclaimed suddenly, clapping his hands together hard, without warning, to produce yet another of those awful, off-putting CRAKK-s. Despite myself, it made me jump. No matter what I did, short of running Acceleration constantly, I just couldn’t seem to see them coming.
“Now, I know what you’re all thinking, eh?” he said. “Eh? I know. Yes, yes I do.” He wagged a chastising finger out at all of us. “You’re thinking: what happened to Frattol? What happened to Galencia?”
Despite his apparent nonchalance, the Hand’s words provoked an instantaneous response.
A thick drone arose from all around me, an incessant murmur of frenetic, poorly-hushed conversation in the many Crats that made up our audience. Alyss perked up immediately, jerking to attention in her chair. And, on my other side, whilst Bogdan didn’t budge an inch outwardly, I saw the unexpected Immortal’s eyes narrow just a minute measure, and watched his song ripple once or twice, shivering concerningly about the contours of his form.
“Yes, yes,” the Hand acknowledged, nodding as he held up a forestalling palm. “Yes, I’m sympathetic to your concerns. I am. We’ve remained quite mum on the subject, I know. And for good reason, as I’m sure you can appreciate. But, now that…certain details have come to light, we’ve elected our discretion no longer necessary.”
Pylon said just that, and nothing further, but shook and shimmied both his hands about the front of his chest, whipping them back and forth erratically, before using the one of them to tap a lightning-fast pattern onto the wrist of the other. For a brief instant, I saw the tapped glove alight with a surge of considerable Entropy, and suddenly five semi-ethereal screens flared to life.
They floated into the air above the Immortal, forming a semicircular halo atop his head, projected through arcane means from nothing at all and displaying nothing in particular at the moment.
“Both our outposts were attacked,” Pylon said, gesturing casually towards the floating screens, “and destroyed.”
Then the picture on the five screens shifted, and the audience exploded into uproar.
Where once they’d shown nothing more than a hazy, uncertain noise, now were depicted, in no uncertain terms at all, myriad scenes of abject devastation.
The outposts, Frattol, and Galencia, if that was indeed what we currently saw, had been reduced to naught but stony rubble and ashen dust. The ground around them was cracked, and cratered, pockmarked by the echoes of some great conflict. And those walls and winding crenellations that had not collapsed entirely were instead plagued by a series of disturbingly-clean slices and canyons and crevices all carved into their structure.
But what was really strange were the bodies.
Or rather, the lack thereof.
For there wasn’t a single one to be found.
Nothing remained of the legions what had staffed and populated Frattol, and Galencia. Nothing at all. Not a scrap of flesh, not a shard of bone, not a drop of blood. Not even a morsel of fabric, or steel.
The whole place had just been…picked clean.
Who would do such a thing? And why?
The audience, for their part, had no apparent answer for me aside from pure, unbridled rage.
The Franco-Anglicans rose first from their many seats, prim faces purpled with wroth, screaming out in hatred and promised revenge. The Romans followed swiftly in their footsteps, the growing mob’s fury directed principally at the screen…but not only.
It was also directed at their peers.
The wave of Entropic anger and furious song washed over me, angling itself towards the Slavic quarter, who all rose in a grim-grey tide, their somber propriety abandoned in all but an instant, the Goths quickly joining them. So formed, the two camps faced off one another in an abrupt and ravenous war, a sudden call to ruthless violence, and I understood not an iota of it. I could barely think, I could scarcely hear, I had to clench my eyes shut, and my hold my ears tight, as the tide of unbridled song overWHELMED ME–
“Ajunge.”
THOOM.
A shockwave echoed across the quadrangle.
The wave of brutally-accelerated air took my breath away, ripping me back from the brink, knocking the student populace to their knees and lending me a sublime respite from their fervic songs.
And for a moment, there was silence.
“My thanks, Lord Bogatyr,” Pylon said, inclining his head a fraction towards the massive, brawny Slav on stage behind him, who now stood a good deal forward, thick palms pressed against one another. The Dean of War returned his headmaster’s nod, and stepped back apace.
His colleagues, for their collective part, seemed not one bit perturbed by their Headmaster’s speech. Clearly, they’d already known what he planned to say.
“Now,” the Hand began, once more. “I know. I know, these images are disturbing. I know what you’re all thinking. But, before you all let those lovely young minds of yours bespoil themselves by rampant, baseless speculation, allow me to make one thing absolutely clear.”
His voice sharpened.
“This was not a Devoted attack,” he declared.
The pictures on the many screens flickered, and jittered, and they all shifted in place, joining one another to form a single window far larger than each had individually been. Pylon’s outstretched arm jerked upwards, directing itself towards the now novel floating screen.
And the massive, metal man portrayed upon it.
Or, perhaps it wasn’t quite right to call it a man.
It was humanoid, certainly. Humanoid enough. It was tall and thin, possessed of a lithe, near-anemic frame. It had two legs, two arms, and was covered, tip to toe, in a strange, cobalt-blue alloy. Almost like an oversize golem. But, unlike any golems I’d ever seen, this one had four spider-y limbs attached to its back, each tipped in three long, metallic fingers. Around and about and orbiting its gangly, gargantuan frame were a myriad of breathtaking, dazzling orbs of just about every color and texture imaginable.
But its face was invisible. Cut out of frame by the top of the floating picture.
Then the image flickered once more, and another new photo was released. This one was far blurrier, and boasted a considerably lower fidelity than its forebear, so much so that I could scarcely even make out what it was intended to represent. All that I could see through the grainy splotches was a…well, a void.
A roughly-diamond, purplish…hole. In reality.
A tear in space and time, sat in the middle of a field, surrounded only by what appeared to be a sea of grey-green grass. And, if I squinted my eyes fiercely, and pushed the song into them, I could just barely make out a thin, clawed hand emerging from it.
I didn’t really know what it was. Obviously, I’d never seen anything like it before. And, certainly, it wasn’t frightening. It was barely even discernable. And, yet…
Something about it unsettled me like nothing ever had before.
Not the Dungeon.
Not DRAGON.
Not even my trigger vision.
“The Maker has completed his latest work in the REZ,” Pylon intoned, gravely. “Unfortunately for us, it was accompanied by the opening of a novel rift. Slavic Scavs have labeled it, ‘The Wound.’ Category, Legendary. Or, at least, we presume it to be Legendary. We don’t actually know for sure.”
He paused.
“Because so far, not a single team we’ve dispatched towards this rift has managed to return alive.”
An unearthly chill fell across the assembly.
“We believe it to be the source of the attacks,” he went on. “We’ve found fiends’ corpses all over Frattol, and Galencia. We don’t know how they managed to escape the Zone.”
From afar, I saw the Dean of War, Lord Bogatyr, rankle slightly.
“Nevertheless,” Pylon went on, “We must, all of us, remain vigilant. Even in Bern. Clearly, this enemy is unperturbed by borders.” He directed a piercing glare towards the student populace.
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“Now is not the time to fight amongst ourselves,” he scowled.
Or at least, I imagined him scowling. I couldn’t actually see his face, if even he had one. But, it sure sounded like he was scowling.
Pylon waved his grey-gloved palm dismissively, and the floating screens dissolved into ethereal wind, and the heavy mood vanished right along with them. Just like that.
Just like that, the subtle buzz of student conversation re-emerged, but far more casually this time. Some of those around me stood up, stretching their limbs, chatting with friends. On the splendid wooded platform, I saw the many Deans relax, saw Professors Circade and Degrasi nod at one another, and begin to make their way back to center stage in a practiced manner. Pylon’s speech, apparently, was over.
But my eyes were still fixed upon him.
Because I saw it.
I’d seen it before. Seen it many times, by now. Seen it enough to recognize it. To recognize the signs. The subtle shifts in posture, in stature. The way the knees buckled slightly, the way the shoulders angled back. The way the muscles, all across his body, relaxed as one, and the Hand stood just a millimeter straighter. Prouder. Truer.
This was no simulacrum. No poor copy. No eccentric clone. Not now, not anymore.
The real Pylon had just taken the stage.
“May I have your attention, please?”
There was no clap, this time, but still the renewed buzz of conversation strangled to death.
Circade and Degrasi jerked to a halt. Each and every one of the many Deans’ eyes widened, locking suddenly and immediately upon the figure standing in center stage. My spine straightened. My spare hand smacked Alyss on the shoulder, alerting her attention.
I got the distinct feeling that, unlike before, none of the Professors had been briefed on this.
Pylon chuckled.
“Normally,” he said, conversationally, “this is the point where I’d hand things over. To my,” he gestured distractedly behind him. “To my distinguished Chair of the Sciences, over there.”
Circade and Degrasi stared at him in shock.
“So they can, you know,” he waved a hand, dismissively. “Introduce the curriculum. The Institute. Hours, and classes. TA’s. You know. You get the picture.
“Well, I’m not going to do that, right now,” he intoned, slowly. “Not just yet.”
Yes. Absolutely.
I was absolutely certain of it.
We were speaking to the real Pylon, right now. I leaned forward, narrowing my eyes, yet slipping only halfway into the song, that the presence of so many potent Shards here might not blind me.
“First, I’d like to share something with you,” Pylon spoke, still slow. “With…all of you.”
Ponderously, gradually, and with a gravitas that seemed so profoundly out of place on him, the Coterie’s Hand spread his arms out wide.
“You are our future,” he said, simply. “The sons and daughters of divinity. The morrow’s generation.”
The whole quadrangle was silent.
“One day, it’ll fall to you. One day, it’ll all fall to you. All of it. Our future, in your hands. Our choices, will be yours. Our glories, yours to enjoy.”
Pylon paused a moment. I thought I saw his shoulders tremble, and his faceless helm angle towards the ground.
“Our failures…yours to suffer.”
He was quiet, again, but not for a moment. For a while. None of us said anything. None of us dared. If the Immortal Deans dared not speak, how could we? I looked around the student body, and noticed Prince William’s face expectedly pale, but then saw that Niko’s was, too.
The Professors frowned at one another, their demeanor increasingly anxious, but still none interrupted, nor questioned, the Hand.
Finally, Pylon drew himself back up.
His gaze, though just as inscrutable as ever, seemed to me to harden.
“For some time now,” the Hand began, “we have enjoyed a peace in Europe. A tentative peace. A cold peace. A peace born on the backs of long-dead Immortals and wars remembered only by a wretched few.”
From behind him, I saw the stalwart, mighty Lord Bogatyr blanch.
“But still, a peace. And, peace is peace,” Pylon declared, with all the certainty in all the world. As if he described the daily rhythms of the sun, or the mathematical solution to one plus one.
“No matter how it’s bought. No matter what it costs. The dead remember nothing. Peace is still peace,” he insisted.
“It is always preferable to the alternative.”
Every eye was on Pylon, now. Every eye remained on him. From Deans to students, Blessed to Immortals, mundanes to Aristocrats. All were watching. Maybe they thought that right now, Sibyl was speaking through him.
And maybe she really was.
“Perhaps, there are those of you who disagree,” he offered, with a dangerous calm.
“Little…fair-weather lords, and summer ladies. Those who choose to duel where they wish, with whom they wish, against favorable odds, and imagine themselves valourous. Those who choose to wage war upon the weak, the cowardly, the mundane, or the insubstantial, and fancy themselves great leaders of men. Those choose to delve only just so far as they please, and not one step further, and think themselves resilient.”
His faceless helm passed over the student body coldly, mercilessly, in blank judgment. Many a head bowed underneath its eyeless gaze.
“Or, perhaps,” Pylon suggested, “there are those of you who’ve tasted the bitter iron of true combat. True fear. Perhaps, you’ve spent a year, or two, in Errantry, making pretty war with the Empire all up and down our borders. Perhaps, you’ve even stepped foot into the REZ, and slain a fiend or two, and emerged exultant. And now, perhaps, you think to yourself that there are things more valuable than peace. Land, perhaps. Or riches. Or your own pride.”
Pylon’s voice grew louder and louder, more and more biting with each syllable that snapped past his nonexistent lips. He directed a damning finger outwards.
“And so you see the reports of our outposts falling, and you jeer. And you rile. And you rage. And you promise swift, and terrible revenge.
“But I see your eyes,” he accused, venomously. “I see your hunger. I see your thirst. You feign anger, but I know you tire of tourney. Of pretty duels. You long for something of meaning, of significance, of lasting consequence. You spoil to make your names known far and wide.
“I see it in your eyes,” he repeated, in a rising inferno. “I see the flames of war.”
My jaw had dropped slightly.
I was staring at the Godkin in abject awe.
I’d never seen him like this before. Not once. Not ever. He was so…so passionate. So emotional. So real, in a way he never, ever was.
“But you’re wrong,” Pylon said, quietly. “You’re all wrong. You have no idea how priceless peace is. You have no idea how much work is necessary to secure it. There is nothing more valuable, more precious, than peace. But you’ll not know it. No, never.”
His shoulders sagged.
“Not until you’ve tasted war.”
A light blinked thrice, slow and steady, one the left side of Pylon’s helm, and he jerked to an abrupt attention.
“So I suggest you prepare for it,” Pylon muttered, pressing a palm to the blinking spot on his helm, before nodding once, snapping his fingers, and summarily vanishing in a pop of displaced air.
For a moment, there was silence.
Bolemir looked shocked, downright aghast, as did Professors Circade and Degrasi. Gotsche and Kostyana appeared frightened. Colette seemed positively outraged. Nasir, the historian,’s brow was contorted into many wrinkles of concern, and Piers’s had furrowed into an intense, profound consternation. That vile Dr. Angstrom mirrored the Anglican Master’s expression, though to an admittedly lesser extent. Indeed, only one of their ilk seemed inoculated to the Hand’s words.
The man from the Faith, Felix Astore, had remained completely expressionless throughout the whole tirade.
Then noise veritably exploded from the audience. The noble Professors, once their shocked silence evaporated, scrambled rather unsuccessfully to quell the sudden furor.
I turned to Alyss beside me, and muttered.
“Was…was that…normal?”
When she just shook her head at me in response, I turned the other way, towards the strange incognito Immortal, in the likely vain hope that he might know, instead. Or, at the very least, that I might glean something useful from his song.
But his seat was empty.
Bogdan was nowhere to be found.
And a ripple of unwelcome unease roiled about my gut as I realized that, even with Sensory Perception active, I’d never noticed him depart.
The rest of the assembly passed with considerably less drama, though that wasn’t saying much.
Professors Circade and Degrasi at last managed to take the reins following the Headmaster’s impromptu departure, and presented a rather perfunctory set of congratulations to all present Heirs on securing places in the Institute, as well as a very rough overview of the campus layout. The whole ordeal had a rather loose, unprofessional feel to it, and I couldn’t help but wonder just how much the Hand’s words had unsettled those who served him.
And, even more than that, wonder why, in the High Priest’s holy name, had he chosen to speak them?
Needless to say, the twin Professors offered little of use to my internal inquisition, and in short order, set us loose to explore.
And to choose our classes.
Because, apparently, that’s what this first week was for. We were all meant to traipse about from one lecture to the next for a period of seven days, joining whatsoever caught our fancy, until the end of the week when we’d have to set our semester’s selections in proverbial stone. We were welcome to select as many classes as we so desired, as few as we were interested by, or as many as we could physically (and mentally) stomach.
And what a selection there was.
I saw names like Entropic Metallurgy 247, Introductory Biochemistry 101, Imperial History Post-Blooding 213, Ancient History (Theory and Practice) 431, and Crystalline Capture and Exploitation 551.
There were so many names, and so many classes, that it would’ve taken me hours to peruse them all, and still the actual meaning of the vast majority would’ve well eluded me.
They’d all been erected upon a great and whopping board in the Institute’s main hall, the huge, high-spired building just north of the Quad, where the impromptu stage had been erected. There were columns and columns and columns of them, all written in chalk, and names had already begun to appear underneath some.
And so had the battle already begun.
Because apparently this chalk, and the whiteboard itself, had both been enchanted. As such, any scripture writ upon it could not be erased, except through some esoteric means unavailable to students, and so whosoever chose first secured their place in class indefinitely.
As some classes sported only a select few slots, and some were clearly more desirable than others, a number of disconcertingly-violent brawls had already broken out.
“So what’re you gonna pick?” I asked my sorceress companion. The two of us had taken places near the back wall of the auditorium, far from the fighting and the main bulk of the crowd. Still, the massive, echoing clamour produced by our classmates in the hall forced me to nearly shout my words.
“What’re you gonna pick?” She returned, gazing with trepidation at the massive list of options.
“Hmmm,” I mused. “A couple runic workshops couldn’t hurt, I guess. Intro to Ciphic Computation 103, with Gotsche,” I murmured. “Alchemistry 101, with Kostyana. Maybe Parallel Scriptures 214, too.”
The latter was an advanced class, I knew, intended primarily for second years, but I’d something of a hunch about it. Thus far I’d rather neglected the Tinkering aspect of my Blessing, but anything to do with the mechanics of Shards or the song seemed right up my ally. Now that I had the opportunity to really give runic engineering a proper shot, I’d be a fool not to at least try.
“And the Circade lecture, can’t miss that,” I exclaimed, pointing at it, excited if only to get further glimpses into the machinations of the twin professors’ incomprehensible Blessing.
“Oh, and BMM, for sure,” I added, lastly, pointing at its place on the board. Lord Bolemir’s Basic Melee Maneuvers already sported a considerable list of names dangling below it, but I wasn’t in any rush to write my own. There didn’t appear to be a limit on the number of applicants for his lecture, anyway.
“Wanna join me?” I grinned at my companion, waggling my eyebrows her way. “Knock a few Crats down a few pegs, together?”
But she just frowned.
“I don’t think so, Taiven,” she muttered, pursing her lips as she examined the board. “From what I gather, it’s a first year lecture. Giant. Almost everyone’s going to attend. All the new students, obviously, and from what Niko said, plenty of upperclassmen, too.”
I shrugged.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “So?”
“So?” She echoed, dryly. “So, I don’t want everyone knowing what I can do.”
“Oh,” I realized, lamely. “Well, then. I guess I probably shouldn’t, eit–”
“No, you should still join,” she interrupted, shaking her head. “It’s good for us, actually. Good for you. Show off your…your powers.” She locked eyes with me, meaningfully.
Ah, I thought. I see.
“Make sure everyone knows what you can do…” she began.
…and, more importantly, what you can’t, she needed not finish.
“Right,” I said. “I get it.”
“Good,” she nodded, her eyes returning to scan across the list. “I’ll take Peirs’s class, I think. For starters,” she decided. “Influential Warfare 211. The Master class. Maybe Ancient History, as well? That’s Nasir’s, right? He’s the one this ‘Mentat’ of yours recommended, I assume?”
I nodded.
“Well, I’ll try to get to know him,” she hummed. “You know, feel him out. If he seems…above-board, then, I’ll see if I can get us some time alone. Impress him, maybe.”
Then a biting smirk spread its way across her face, and she quirked it towards me.
“I mean, it’s not exactly like you could,” she sang, more than a little vindictively. “Remind me, Taiven, who were the first Frankish Kings?”
I frowned at her, unamused.
“Gods, you–honestly,” she giggled, her normally pale face turning bright pinkish-red, “honestly, if you coul–if you could even name the five European countries, I’d be impressed. How about Intro to Geography 101, hmmm?”
“That’s mean,” I pouted. “That’s not even a real class.”
“Well. I am a Nycta,” she replied, still smirking cruelly at me. “Should’ve paid attention to me, Hero,” she sang.
“I did my best,” I argued.
“You did not,” she scoffed, scowling at me. “How can you say that, even in jest? You were playing with those fucking cream puffs half the time.”
She was right, unfortunately.
For my ignorance, I’d no one to blame but myself.
“Okay, you’re right,” I capitulated, magnanimously. “It’s just–history is so boring, Alyss, oh my gods,” I moaned, the mere recollection of it making me shudder.
“I pity the poor subjects you’ll one day rule,” she muttered back, shaking her head and returning her gaze to the board. She snapped her fingers at it.
“There!” She exclaimed. “Exotic Armaments, 202!”
I followed her outstretched digit.
“Exotic Armaments, 202,” I echoed, woodenly. “That’s what it says. So, what?”
“So, that’s a Breaker lecture, Taiven,” she ground out, slowly. “Perfect for you, Mr. Breaker.
“And it’s with Kauff,” she added, offhandedly and far less condescendingly. “He’s unaffiliated. Could be good. Could be interesting. Could be useful.”
“Could be,” I replied, noncommittally. “He was a weird one, wasn’t he?”
“Aren’t they all?” Alyss sighed, turning about and starting to walk away.
“Wait, where're you going?” I asked, confused.
“You said you wanted to try the Circade lecture, didn’t you?” she called over her shoulder. “Well, so do I. It starts in fifteen, so we’d better get a move on.”
Wordlessly, I followed after her.