The start of the trip to the Stent Military Academy was uneventful. The woman who’d been put in charge of him had little interest in dealing with him beyond making sure that he stayed alive until they reached their destination. She didn’t have much time for the other recruits either, though he noticed a distinct change in her tone and manner depending on which of them she was talking to. He wasn’t moved from the small bassinet he’d been placed in except for trips into the woods to use the bathroom and at mealtime.
During those times on the first day he tried to glean as much as he could. The road they were on was dirt, but packed solid and well cleared on all sides. The trees and foliage looked much like what he was used to on Earth, though he occasionally glimpsed a patch of flowers that looked unlike anything he’d seen before, or a bird with what looked like scaled wings, but he never got as good of a look as he’d like, and for all he knew those unique things were on Earth too, he’d just never seen them.
The first night, when he was briefly outside the wagon for mealtime, he looked up at the night sky of the new world for the first time. The stars were unfamiliar, but beautiful, and with the lack of light pollution he could see thousands of them dotting the sky. Among them he saw not one moon, but three. One was green, one silver, and one gold. The silver and gold were near one another, but the green moon was farther from them and seemed larger in the sky than they were.
By the second day he was no longer fed milk, only the alchemical mixture that was causing his rapid growth. He was also finally able to walk, though wasn’t often given the opportunity to do so. He had his first solid meal since arriving on that day, a simple stew with a mixture of meat and finely diced vegetables. He ate each bite carefully, trying to determine exactly what the contents of it were, but found that he couldn’t. His taste buds were completely different from what they were, and stews weren’t exactly the easiest thing to determine the contents of in the first place. Overall, it was good, and he was happy to have a little bit more of an ability to feed and care for himself. He hadn’t really been able to do so for quite some time even before arriving in Stent.
The other recruits had sat at a distance from him when they ate and during travel, but that wasn’t terribly surprising. He imagined that every single aspect of his existence was off putting to them. A man in the body of a two year old that had been marked as murderer. He couldn’t say he wouldn’t act exactly the same as they did at their age. He was just grateful that they had the expected volume control of excited teenagers. Listening to them talk was a good way to expand his vocabulary. He found that just as the early language training he’d been given had been easy with his currently young brain, his ability to absorb what other people were saying was equally improved.
Through his eavesdropping he also managed to gain more insight into the world, or at least Stent. Most of the other recruits were from well respected military families that had been attending the Academy for generations, but there were several exceptions. Some of them had parents that had distinguished themselves as grunts and earned a spot for their children, and others had shown indications of strong magical talent. The few girls that were there were there because of that magical talent, it was a waste to keep them away from war because of their gender. He also gleaned that Stent was currently at war with a kingdom to the north called Tusinia, and while there had been a lull in the fighting due to heavy snows that winter, with the thaw the fighting was expected to restart in earnest soon. Talk of Tusinia was in terse and harsh tones. They spoke of them as slavers, rapists, and thieves who would torture the men and women they captured before feeding them to their dogs. A few of them even mentioned they lost their parents on the Tusinian front. It sounded like wartime propaganda to him, but for all he knew it was true. The most important thing he learned from all this eavesdropping was that these children were excited for war. That told him a lot about the world he was in.
On the third day they had to have a long stop because a wagon wheel was busted and needed to be repaired before they could move. They had come to a stop in the middle of a large open field and those not working on the wagon were roaming about it freely. Michael had eyes on him, but could tell that they could care less if he wandered off. They were another day's ride to the military academy and he was only starting to be able to walk, if he left them he was a dead man.
He wandered a short ways, but not too far from the carriage, most of the children avoiding him, though a few spat in his direction as he passed or called him words he didn’t recognize, but could guess at the meaning based on tone. There was something funny from his perspective. He imagined himself looking at the scene from above and seeing a bunch of teenagers flipping off a toddler and calling him a fucker. It made him chuckle a bit as he got a bit further from the group. He took a deep breath. The new world smelled similar to the old one at least. He could smell the greenery around him, the horses behind him, and even a few flowers growing upwind.
He looked up and saw a bird circling above. He squinted, trying to get a better look at it against the sun, but he couldn’t make any details. It circled a little farther, and then he realized it was getting closer. Did it see a mouse in the field? The shadow of it got larger. A rabbit in the field? It grew larger still and he was starting to make out what looked like claws at the end of four legs rather than talons. A Michael in the field? He started running, moving as quickly as his little legs could take him toward the rest of the caravan. The griffin closed in incredibly quickly, and he could hear that it let out a screech at what seemed like less than ten feet from him. Realizing that he wasn’t going to make it to the caravan, he did a swift turn and dove forward under the beast’s claws. It missed him, and in an attempt to turn quickly at the last moment it instead landed hard on its side and rolled across the field, flattening a long trail of grass toward the caravan.
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“Griffin!” yelled one of the regular recruits moving toward the caravan.
The beast was turning around to look at Michael again, but a number of soldiers in the caravan were moving quickly behind it.
It made the snap decision to go for him, and he started to run again as it moved, but a spear very suddenly embedded itself in the beast’s side. It let out a wailing roar and started to run away, in a direction other than toward Michael. A few more spears were thrown toward it, but none reached it, and soon it was back in the sky, flying awkwardly with the spear still protruding from it.
Michael ran back toward the main caravan, panting hard, his little legs aching. He’d seen a griffin. He was surprised to realize he was more excited by the encounter than afraid. He looked at Evra, who was missing her spear.
“Thank you,” he managed, realizing it was her spear that had saved him.
She smacked him, knocking him from his feet.
“You cost me a spear. Stay in the wagon for the rest of the trip.”
He felt his adult instincts rise to tell her to go to hell, but remembered his situation and instead picked himself up, and walked toward the rear wagon. The blow had hurt, but he was fairly certain he could’ve been killed with a single strike had that been what she wanted.
…
By the time they arrived at the Academy Michael was feeling, he guessed, around age three physically. He could talk without too much difficulty, and his movements were growing more sure. It felt very strange to be so small. Now that he could move and manipulate the world around himself a little better he oddly felt a bit more vulnerable than he had when he was an infant only two weeks prior.
He hadn’t been able to see the academy gates on approach like the other recruits since he was trapped within his bassinet in the back of the last wagon, but from their excitement he guessed they were quite impressive. He only got to see it when the wagons grew still and Evra entered the wagon to remove him. He followed behind her as they exited, practically running to keep up with her strides. He wasn’t sure if her pace was out of malice or apathy, but he guessed it was both.
He placed a hand over his eyes to block the noontime sun from his face. They were in a wide field near stables and what looked to be a warehouse of some kind. He could hear what sounded like metal clashing with metal in the distance, as well as the barking of orders carrying very crisply through the still air. There were five men there to meet them, all wearing the gray uniforms he’d grown used to seeing. One of them had a blank black shoulder, two had a single silver stripe, and two had two stripes making them the same rank that Vance had been.
The one with the black shoulder stepped forward.
“Line up!” he yelled with practiced authority.
The recruits all ran to place themselves in an orderly line and due to their speed Michael was forced to take his place on the far end, meaning he had to walk much farther on shorter legs and was the last to arrive. He didn’t run, there wasn’t much of a point, it wasn’t as if he could avoid making a spectacle of himself.
The man who’d yelled then walked along the row of recruits, staring at each of them in the face for at least a full second before moving onto the next one. Michael could feel the anxiety from the recruits, not that it was hard to see in the faces of young teenagers. When the man reached him, he could tell that he had to keep himself from spitting on his face, but he resisted and returned to stand next to the other men that were greeting them, nodding to one of them with two stripes and then nodding at the other and pointing at Michael.
The other man smiled and spoke just loud enough for Michael to hear.
“Yes. I’d assumed he was the one.”
The black shouldered soldier seemed to blush a bit, and the one with two stripes he’d been talking to walked over to Michael.
He was a tall man, as hard as that was for him to judge from his current height, and he filled out his uniform well. He had to be roughly forty, with thinning white hair, and while his movements were sharp and formal, his expression was relaxed, but odd. His gray eyes looked over everything like a lion lazily regarding his pride, a predator who was ready to strike, but currently saw no need to.
“You follow me.”
“Okay.”
The man raised an eyebrow. “Picked up some casual language Penitent?” he asked as he started walking. “You were only supposed to be taught, ‘yes’ or ‘yes sir’.”
“I heard a recruit use it when talking to Evra.”
The man shook his head. “Probably someone whose parents Evra wants to like her. Stick to what’s formal while you’re here. It’ll save you a lot of pain later.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Feels odd, I bet, saying ‘yes sir’ to me. For all I know you’re twice my age.”
“Probably not twice your age, sir.”
The man chuckled without warmth and continued walking.
As they moved Michael could see hundreds of recruits out across the different fields. He saw some practicing archery, some on horseback, others performing marching drills, and a few having some kind of combat practice with what he assumed were blunted swords. They all wore the grey he’d come to expect, and they were all being worked hard.
The man opened the door to a two story cement building and gestured for him to go inside. He did, and he found himself standing in a long gray room with rows of beds on either side against the wall. He could see a number of people seemingly his own age talking to one another in small groups, all wearing the same strange gowns. For a moment he felt like he’d walked into the most depressing daycare of all time, one for children with cancer based on the gowns they wore, but he knew that the other men there were likely ‘lifetakers’ such as himself. Recruited to be ‘Penitents’. He could hear one of them crying in a corner, but couldn’t tell which.
They all turned to look at him and the man that had brought him there, but the man ignored them to look at Michael.
“You are going to be locked in here with the other lifetakers until tomorrow. There are bathrooms and showers toward the back. The upstairs is sealed. When the lights go out, go to sleep. I’m assuming you, like everyone here, have a number of questions. Save them, I allow an hour of open questioning every day of training as long as everyone does as I ask.”
Michael nodded.
“Good. Please don’t try to escape. It’s very annoying to tie nooses small enough to fit you.”
He gestured to a soldier who had entered with him, and that soldier handed Michael a large bundle. He could tell there was a towel and a few more things mixed together. It was a far cry from what he’d started his last life with, but he supposed he needed to start somewhere.