“Can’t we just have a duel or something?” Elara groaned.

We’d moved to a lower level of what I now recognized as a massive lobby space under a towering, domed ceiling. The ground level held a huge, curved mahogany desk in front of a sprawling marble wall, pinned with hundreds of papers covered in colored ink, signatures, and images. Across from the desk were two sets of closed double doors and walls of thick heavy curtains drawn shut. It should have been fascinating, but I was sitting on a plush chair between two couches, watching Elara throw her head back on the couch like a teenager. Lyra, perched across from her, was scribbling furiously in her notebook.

“No,” Lyra responded in her clipped, logical tone, hardly glancing up.

"Be reasonable, Lyra—let’s hold a Grand Tournament. We could make it last for weeks!" Elara threw out her hands dramatically.

Lyra, unamused, didn't even pause her writing. "I am not a Striker. No trials, no tournaments, no duels. You clearly violated at least three amendments of the Central Agreement. You prevented my chance to make the human—" she glanced up at me with a twitch in her ear, then back at her notes, "—Ben, an offer."

“An offer?” I blurted out and Lyra nodded.

Elara groaned again like she was suffering some kind of injustice.

"Throw me out a window or something, Lyra, please! Just make it quick!"

Lyra stood up from her seat and moved toward me, her small frame somehow carrying an air of authority far larger than her small size. "As the first Arcanist Adept to make contact with a human, I was supposed to offer mentor-ship. But due to a… series of unfortunate events—" her eyes flickered toward Elara, "—I missed that opportunity."

"What about Chas?" I asked, feeling a weird sense of loyalty rise in me. "Isn't he an Adept, too? They called him 'Adept Blackwood.' He was the first one I met." I had also heard Cassie call Felix an Arcanist—like Lyra. Some kind of faction?

Were there factions in this world fighting over me? A guy from Vancouver?

Lyra’s black eyes blinked up at me, then she smiled—an expression I didn’t expect to see on a mouse-like face. "The right of offer does not apply in spirit realms. He may not have even been dealing with the real you. It might not have even been the real Chas Blackwood. The right only applies once you’ve physically arrived here." She smirked, clearly proud of her legal maneuvering. "By the time you reached the Tower, Chas was long gone. I am owed compensation, Elara."

Compensation?

“What about the tests?” I asked Lyra which seemed to make Elara’s eyebrows raise. Why was I saying something? Shut up Ben. “You said you wanted to perform some… what if I…. uh agree to do them? Unless you need to cut me open or… ahem.”

Lyra’s reaction was animated. I had figured out why I found her so endearing. Her face was incredibly expressive. It was like a cartoon. She squinted in another smile.

“I promise, most are painless!” She said like it was a good thing and looked to Elara. “Yes, I’d like to run tests.”

“He’s committed to the Monster Hunters now, Lyra, so he doesn’t belong to any factions until after he’s graduated. There’s no special treatment at the Academy from any of the factions. None. If you wanted to study Ben, you’d have to be a…” She trailed off suddenly thinking.

Lyra looked alarmed and then stabbed her pencil in the air towards Elara accusingly.

“You rushed him through the lobby—conveniently using the Grand Staircase, which forced me to loop back. I find out Chas’ Apprentices are complaining about not having any mana coins for a translocator. Nice touch. Next, you bribe every customs agent in the entryway and orchestrate a ‘Noble dignitary visit,’ locking down the upper floors. Finally, you ‘meet with Marco Graves’ for hours, and conveniently walk Ben straight into the Academy."

She paused, her eye twitching slightly, before continuing with crisp precision. “You bent every rule in the book-somehow. And now, in order to collect what is rightfully mine you’re forcing me to… teach” She threw the word out like it disgusted her.

Really? Even Cassie and Felix were in on it?

"Ha!" Elara laughed. "Do you really think I could pull that off? My mother’s back in the city.”

Lyra froze, her expression turning from frustration to dread.

"No... she didn't… Diana?"

Elara's laughter grew louder and she rubbed her hands over her bald head. "Oh, she did. She’s rigged the whole damned thing. I didn’t even know she was back, let alone setting this all up. Marco didn’t even know why he was summoned to my office. This was all to make you think there was a plot. All of it!"

Lyra sat down on the floor with an audible thump. “Your mother... now I’m stuck teaching at the Academy under Diana if I want to study Ben?”

“I’ll wager you wish we had that duel now,” Elara poked.

Wait a minute. I thought. Diana orchestrated some crazy Rube Goldberg machine of political intrigue just to send me to a Magic School?

“I’m going to an Academy? Like a magic school? Thats… hell yeah!” I exclaimed, my eyes widening.

Elara raised an eyebrow, amused. "Sylvarus Academy. Assuming you pass the entrance exams, of course." She motioned to one of the Hunters around her. I looked up. Oh, when did Cassie and Felix arrive? Someone handed Cassie a small box and she approached Elara with it. Her… Brother?

“Thank you Apprentice,” Elara said dismissing her. She was definitely more formal out here surrounded by… soldiers? Hunters? She opened the box and produced a small disc. It was almost the size of a dime, metallic and orange with a small bolt on the back of a pin.

"This will mark you as an Acolyte, a High Initiate recruited by the Monster Hunters," she said, pinning it onto my vest lapel. “It provides limited resources, but enough to get you started. Fail the exams, and you’ll have to fend for yourself.”

“Damn,” Cassie muttered, eying the pin. “It must be good to be an Outworlder.”

Elara ignored her, smiling slyly. "You’re not being forced to join us, Ben. We are asking you to make Ark your home. This pin is valuable. You could sell it, trade it. But..." she glanced at Lyra, "something tells me Lyra here would lose interest if you did that."

Even Lyra seemed shocked at the pin but snapped out of it quickly. She seemed to look at Elara with admiration more than confusion.

“How is that not special treatment?” I asked. Shut up, Ben. “You said there’s no special treatment for students. I mean I appreciate it, I think. But Felix and Cassie made it seem like the exam was expensive.”

Lyra’s voice was quick and precise, each word clipped with efficiency. “This is the absolute limit of scholarship funding the Monster Hunters can provide without breaching any treaties.” She paused, letting the weight of it sink in. “It’s… costly.” Her tiny shoulders rose with an exaggerated sigh, her goggles slipped as she adjusted them back over her eyes. “Well then, time to start convincing Diana that I don’t think Sylvarus is a festering sinkhole of incompetence and filth.”

The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Elara laughed, and with a wave of her hand several Hunters started drawing the curtains back. I stared, dumbfounded, my brain struggling to catch up. I’d been climbing a tower in a jungle all day. I expected to see a sprawling jungle. But there it was—an entire port-city sprawling out beneath us. The sunlight reflected off the ocean’s surface, and I could just make out the shapes of boats bobbing along the coast. The city itself was just as big as any I had been to. Huge spires rose up into the sky connected by impossibly high bridges, like something out of a dream. A distant hum of life and the familiar scent of sea air drifted into the room. It was the kind of thing you might see in a high-budget movie.

“Welcome to La-Roc, Ben.” Elara’s voice broke through my reverie. She stepped closer, the light casting her features in sharp relief, her earlier weariness replaced with a genuine smile. “Apologies for the dramatic reveal. We kept it hidden on your way in—too many Outworlders coming through find the view a bit overwhelming.

She gestured out toward the view, and I could feel the weight of her words settling in.

“This is our home. And hopefully yours too.”

I glanced at her, still processing everything. My new home? That didn’t feel real. But standing here, with the city laid out before me, I realized that I was actually here. There was no going back. Sadness seemed to be brewing inside me at the thought.

Lyra, who had been scribbling furiously in her notebook, snapped it shut with a finality that almost startled me. She straightened her goggles, adjusting them over her eyes. "Don't fail the exam, Ben," she said in that clipped, precise voice of hers. Her gaze met mine, magnified and intense through her lenses. "So much to learn. So much potential." With a nod to Elara, she turned on her heel and strutted toward the doors, disappearing through them without another word.

The room seemed quieter in her absence, the bustle of this room filtering back in as people moved around us. I stood there, the enormity of it all still sinking in.

Elara let out a sigh, pulling my attention back to her. "Lyra might be blunt, but she's not wrong." She stepped closer to the open windows, her gaze softening as she looked out at the city. "Everyone finds a place here. You’ll just need to prove yourself first."

I nodded, though I wasn’t sure what I was agreeing to. Proving myself? To whom? Everyone here seemed so far ahead, so much more capable than I could ever hope to be.

"Come on," she said, breaking the silence. "Let’s get you settled. I’ll walk you to a public house nearby. Felix will join us.” She shifted and pulled at her uniform. “At least something good can come from this ridiculous outfit.”

At the mention of Felix, I turned to see him already waiting by the entrance, a slight grin on his face. He gave a small wave, as if to say he hadn’t been listening to the entire damn exchange.

Cassie, however, didn’t follow us. She rushed up to the large desk instead, her expression focused. I could hear her muttering something about orders and paperwork, already lost in her own world of tasks. She caught Elara’s eye for a moment, who gave her a meaningful look.

“Cassandra,” Elara called, her voice softening. “Before you dive too deep, your mother’s been leaving letters while you were gone. You need to reach out to her. We don’t need Lady Winters showing up here going into a tirade.”

Cassie froze mid-motion, the color draining slightly from her face. "Right... I’ll handle it. Don’t worry." Her voice was strained, and she hurriedly gathered her things, clearly not wanting to deal with whatever fallout was coming her way.

"She will come here if you don't." Elara warned gently. “There will be a fight,” Cassie sighed and hurried off toward the large desk, already muttering under her breath. “Nothing says ‘I love you’ like tearing a fucking city apart…”

A fight? Like a duel? Is that how people solved problems here?

Elara turned back to me, offering a slight shrug. “Family. Even in a world this big, family is important to keep close. You’ve been here for a day and have already met mine.”

I nodded, not entirely sure how to respond, but grateful for the casual tone. Everything felt enormous—La-Roc, the Academy, the idea of what was coming next. But what was even more was that I wasn’t alone. Sure this could all be some giant mistake. But given the choice to live in a gorgeous coastal city or some unknown hell-scape in an infinite multiverse? I know which one I’d pick.

Elara had that mischievous look on her face again as I joined her and Felix at the doors. We stood somewhat high up, a wide and steep set of stairs leading down into the city proper. Maybe a few hundred meters? But the shining city stretched out so far in the clear air that it was more mesmerizing than the questionable stairs.

A crescent-shaped harbor gleamed in the midday sun, sapphire waters filled with elegant sailing ships. The rooftops of countless buildings and spires stretched across the hillside, terracotta tiles glowing with warmth under the bright sky. From this height, the city seemed alive—its streets twisting and winding like rivers of stone, filled with people, merchants, and scholars going about their day.

“Holy shit,” I said. “I’ve said that a lot lately, but this city is… amazing.”

“You get used to it,” Felix said.

As we walked down I turned suddenly to look at the building we had come from to see the tower. I was greeted with an imposing building with a centralized dome made from dark stone and metal. There was no tower and it wasn’t nearly large enough for that jungle we walked through. Plus I had been going up stairs almost all day.

It had to be underground. They had an underground jungle.

I turned around to catch up to Felix and Elara who were giving me some space to look around. The city ahead of us was loaded with green space. Almost like a forest grew wherever it could - in between houses, and in several large parks I could see between us at the water.

The stairs ended in a wide stone courtyard filled with people and several street vendors. A large stone statue of a man with a spear and shield stood in the center. Vendor carts were spread around the courtyard, children raced through the crowd with treats.

The smell of roasting meats and something sweet hit me first, mixed with the salt of the ocean air. People were shouting—no, bartering—at stands set up in tight formations. One guy had a stack of what looked like glowing fish, their scales flickering with light.

“Headmistress Elara! Good to see you,” A smooth male voice called from my left. One of the vendors was that insect species… a Sentarian? It was almost humanoid but not quite. Tall, sleek, insect-like with a pale exoskeleton that shined in the daylight. Loose robes hung around it as it handed out paper bags of roasted nuts with long segmented arms—it had five fingers at least. The way its jaw opened like mandibles was otherworldly but there was something intelligent and non-threatening about how it moved. It—He handed a paper bag to Elara. “No charge. As always.” He said. His accent was strangely sultry.

“I keep telling you I don’t need handouts, Jorrick.” She flourished, produced a small blue coin with a grin, and popped a nut into her mouth. “I’m not saying no, though.”

Turning back to Felix I saw him with two small Gaian children. One was holding what looked like a little fox-like creature.

“Thanks for saving Reginald, Felix,” The older girl, maybe seven, said. She had tangled brown hair and bare feet.

Beside her, a younger boy with vibrant blond hair toddled forward.

“Thanks,” he said.

The little fox, sensing the boy's nervousness, flicked its tail and nuzzled against his cheek, drawing a laugh from him.

“It was really nothing,” Felix said with a laugh.

“What was nothing?” Elara asked with a mock motherly tone.

“The construction over near the old merchant hall. Something fell and nearly hit the Vulpes. It translocated itself up one of the abandoned spires and couldn’t get down. I was nearby so I went up and got it.” Felix shrugged. “It was only about fifty or so meters up. And most of the ladders inside were intact.”

Fifty meters… Fifteen stories of ladders? No thanks.

Elara smiled knowingly. “It seems like Cassie is having a positive influence. Good.”

We continued along through the courtyard and into the actual city along a sprawling mosaic stone road. It felt like marble or maybe granite, almost slippery if you didn’t watch your step. Elara and Felix didn’t try to start a conversation, seemingly content in watching me take in the city and process what I was seeing.

People here just... lived. Kids running barefoot through the streets, vendors and buyers arguing over prices. I felt like a damned tourist.

Huge red and tan brick buildings, almost Gothic in nature were subdivided into many different stores and dwellings along the road. Windows in the walls and steepled ceilings indicated that people probably lived there.

It was so… Normal. Sure maybe a Western European normal, but it was gorgeous and familiar. The city looked nothing like the tower at all. It was like someone had mashed together Lisbon, Paris, London, and some kind of dreamscape, while dropping the whole thing onto the ocean. From the street-level the city felt far less alien. I mean, the guy walking past with a lizard the size of a dog was pretty alien, but the architecture was brilliant.

We soon turned down a side road which curved downwards with walls of buildings following it. Several more people had stopped Felix to thank him for some act of kindness or for doing work for them.

“You’re not royalty,” I eventually said as we walked and Elara guffawed. “But you don’t seem like you’re military either,” I continued.

“We like to leave armies to the royalty,” Elara replied, slowing down to meet me. “They do love their games.”

That tracked. So they were police? I mean police fight monsters and help people, Sure. Then I had a thought.

“Hey Felix, you wouldn’t happen to have put out any big fires recently?” I called to him.

“Huh? Not recently. Its usually full Hunters that handle that,” He replied. “Why?”

“Just wondering,” I said.

They fought monsters and saved cats stuck in trees. Well a fox in a tower but I got the idea.

They were heroes.