“Welcome to what you probably think will be your most boring course this semester,” says E.J. once everyone’s arrived. A few of the students chuckle. It’s a big class this time. Beatrice and all three of the other Reapers are in it, but thankfully, Lore isn’t.
“You all already know who I am, by now, so let’s get right into it.” She turns from us, and, snatching up a marker, sketches out a simple, glyphic serpent wrapped around a globe on a field of stars. The crest of the Oros Empire.
Every time she moves, her scent grows stronger, making me wish I’d eaten some of those strawberries this morning. Making me wish a lot of things. Her eyes flick briefly to the windows at either side of her. Having similar issues, perhaps?
“As Umbrans, we’re no strangers to mystery. We don’t truly know where our history begins. We don’t entirely know how or why we are what we are. But we share this with many peoples whose cultures and histories were swallowed by Oros,” she jabs at the whiteboard with the tip of the marker, leaving a blotchy mark across the face of the serpent. “And so, for us as with many others, history is not just a thing which we learn from books, and then we know it. It’s something precious, something which we must fight continually to reclaim if we care for it at all. And we should.” She takes a deep breath, clears her throat and glances over at her servitor.
“Somi, could you ping Edric and have him send coffee?”
“Of course, Professor.”
“Anyway,” she says, stepping back over her desk and sitting on it. “I’m hoping today will give you a good idea of what to expect going forward this semester. Enjoy the view up here while you can, because once my coffee’s finished, we’re going for an excursion, and we won’t be back for the rest of the class. If anyone’s not wearing decent walking shoes, now’s the time to remedy that.”
About half an hour later, we’re outside, following E.J. as she leads us along one of the branching side-paths that trails down the forested slope surrounding the Lodge. On this side of the hill, the canopy is dense enough to shield us from the light rain, the foliage dark and damp—hardly a surface left untouched by moss. Birds and other creatures whoop and trill from amongst the branches and fronds. I breathe deep of the fresh, rich air, savoring the scents of wet earth and growing things as I wonder where E.J’s taking us.
“Aren’t there large wild animals out here in the woods?” asks one of the Crimsons, a slight and normally quiet man who favors neutral tones.
“Nothing more dangerous than an entire pack of Umbrans,” throws back E.J, brushing aside a particularly large spray of tiger palm fronds and gesturing for us to move past her as she holds them back for us.
When the people ahead of me come to a stop at the base of a rocky outcropping, I strain my neck to see past them. The path ends at a cave entrance a little larger than an average door, with eroded carvings of shifters lining its edges. As E.J. steps into the cave’s cool shadows, Somi projects an even light in all directions.
The stone on the ground inside is worn smooth, the carvings extending inside and along the walls as though a parade of shifters is accompanying us through the natural corridor—growing more beastial the further in we get. Then we begin to pass branching tunnels, but E.J. pays them no mind. Somi’s light glimmers off something purple, and I notice a small cluster of crystal similar to ametheyst, but more saturated, with veins of blue streaked through the violet.
Eventually the shifter carvings vanish, subsumed entirely by crystal clusters. The others begin to whisper and chatter, some of them pulling out companions or asking their servitors to take pictures, but Somi puts a stop to that.
“No pictures here, please,” she cuts in.
“It’s unfortunate that we haven’t had a recent Umbra storm, though we wouldn’t be able to stay for long if we had” says E.J. as the cave tunnel opens into a huge cavern. “You probably recognize the crystal by now, it’s in almost every piece of tech you use. And if you think it’s beautiful in here right now, just wait until all of this is glowing.”
And it is beautiful. Very beautiful. As we cross a stone bridge into the cavern’s central space, I look down into the trench encircling it expecting water—but instead, it’s full of bones. And at the heart of that circular space, some four times my height at least, stands a stone-and-crystal sculpture of a dragon stag.
“Down the tunnels we passed, there are all sorts of rooms. Some resemble stables or cages, some have skylights, and all throughout there’s even more Umbracrys. When Umbral lightning strikes close enough, the crystal soaks it up, stores it. You’ve all had the brief run-down of the archipelago’s history from your acceptance materials. So what do you imagine the people of this place might have used these caverns for?”
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Strangely, quiet beige-man is the first to raise a tentative hand.
“Rituals?”
A few people in the group scoff.
E.J’s smile is weak, but genuine. “What kinds of rituals do you imagine they would have done here?”
Beige-man frowns. “Well, the crystal would sustain the transformed state of any shifter in here while it’s charged, wouldn’t it?”
“It would and it does. It also enhances the power of any Umbran within range when charged, but there’s a downside...and a reason your average Umbran doesn’t just haul charged, uncased Umbracrys around with them. Anyone care to tell us what that reason is?”
“It drives you mad,” says the same Petran man with the glossy dark hair who spoke up in Sigil class yesterday. “Strengthens your cravings by...I don’t know how much. A lot.”
“By quite a lot indeed. This is also true. And it doesn’t take long to soak up as much power as possible from the place. So why do you think it is they seemingly spent so much time here? Why leave so many dead here?”
He shrugs. “Could be a lot of reasons. Other than coming here for power—if this is a sacred place for them, it makes sense they’d have all kinds of rituals and bury people here—even if it wasn’t easy.”
“That makes sense, yes. But it’s not all that does. Living quarters, open space. A mess of bones with no apparent effort to mark or differentiate them. When I look at this place, I see something more than a ritual site. I see a school.”
At our bemused silence, she goes on. “The bones could be the remains of bodies of the dead donated to shifters for feeding. Many of them have bite marks. They could be practice subjects or a weapons cache for Reapers. They could be all of those things, or many others. This broad, open cavern would make an excellent training space, and there are plenty of enclosed chambers to contain those who haven’t mastered control of themselves yet.” She turns from us as she steps deeper into the cavern, towards the statue at its center—the statue which has the spark of something like life within it.
I trail closer to it myself without realizing it, trying to make sense of what I’m feeling from it.
But before I can work it out, E.J. goes on. “Here, they’d be separated from the rest of their society and faced with their worst instincts and the greatest extent of their power during storms—all at once. It would have been brutal, but who knows? Perhaps it was effective.” She pauses, flashing a canine. “Don’t worry, we have no plans to model their curriculum at U.N.I.”
The others are already beginning to fan out, drawn in by the beauty and mystery of the place.
“For the next hour, I’d like you to explore within the reaches of this one cavern and, based on what you see—tell me about what you think happened here. Next class, we’ll do a more standard lecture, but for today and at least once a week, we’ll be getting our hands dirty. My intent with this course isn’t just to teach you our history, but to uncover it. Together.”
The coffee seems to have helped, or perhaps its her apparent passion for teaching that’s energized her. But as much as I love it when she gets really into anything she’s doing, it comes with a bolt of pain.
She’s the most gorgeous, most amazing, goddess of a nerd in the entire world. Someone should give her a pair of glasses so she can push them up her nose when she’s making a really good point.
As the others spread out, she starts rattling off notes to Somi, a hand on her hip while the other gestures along with her words. Forcing myself to turn away from her before she can catch me staring, I go off in search of things to make intelligent, insightful comments about. Pausing for half a heartbeat, I cast a final appreciative glance her way. Her laziest outfits somehow always suit her the best. Today’s look, a partly-unbuttoned light gray shirt, black pants, and worn leather suspenders—has no business accentuating her form that well.
When will things just be right with us, already?
My thoughts wander as I meander around the outer edges of the cavern, peering down into the bones and resisting the temptation to animate them as I wait for the people crowded around the dragon-stag to clear away. When at last they do and I’m able to approach, I reach out to place my hands lightly against the stone and shut my eyes. The spark of energy within comes to the forefront of my focus—and still I can’t tell exactly what sort it is. Only that it calls to me. I push my power instinctively into it, the way I would a skeleton or any other dead thing. My perspective shifts along with it, and in the next instant, the world turns upside down.
It takes a moment for my senses to reorient themselves, but once they do the feeling of inversion clears away. I’m looking out from a vantage point much higher than my own, and though the statue I occupy is entirely rigid and incapable of turning its head, I can see everything around me.
My true body seems strangely distant, but I can still feel the hairs on the back of my neck raising on-end as I realize what I’m looking at.
The cavern around me is strikingly similar to the one I’d just been in. But there are no crystals studding the walls or ceilings. Heaps of supplies are stacked against the outer walls on the side of the cavern opposite the main entrance, including what looks like a whole lot of weapons. Primitive ones, like pole-arms, swords, and spears. And they too, have a trench full of bones. Several Umbrans lounge around the space, others standing or leaning near the supplies—guarding them, probably.
But the thing that chills my blood is that I recognize most of these people.
They’re my mother’s followers.
Just as the panic begins to rise, one of the lounging Umbrans looks sharply upward, at me—or at least, at the top of the statue I seem to have possessed. His eyes go wide.
“Get Lady Gwendolyn. Quickly,” he barks. “The Dragon-Stag has chosen.”