Students of the Heavenly School of the Azai were kept to a strict regimen. An hour before dawn, a bell would be rung in each of the branches to send the students to their respective meditation chambers. Each branch had its own gymnasium dedicated to the practice of individual Path meditations. While most of the students channeled in a fixed position, either sitting or standing, there was also room for those who preferred to draw mana into themselves through prescribed katas or dances, so these sessions often had the air of a choreographed show even though it was actually a group of individuals each pursuing their own ends.
At the center of each of these rooms was a treasure designed to create a local field of concentrated mana. The treasures were all keyed to a single color, which was one of the main reasons why the student body was divided around lines of color affinity. The treasure in the gym for Sunwhisper’s branch was, predictably, a construct of forged gold. A sphere of precious metal within a gyroscopic cage, when it was activated in the mornings, it spun at high speeds, maintaining a high-magic field until the meditation period was over.
Channeling wasn’t as effective there as it had been in the Hidden Valley, but Sunwhisper gauged that he could process about twice as much mana from the environment while in that room as he could have otherwise. In addition to being given access to the benefits of the branch treasure, every student was provided with a damping ring to use during meditations to increase the difficulty and strain on their meridians.
Sunswhisper still had Makoto’s ring, and he found that when he wore a second ring on his other hand the intensity of the effect increased, though it was not doubled.
While no one with a mana body technically needed to eat, it was generally considered a waste of mana to use it on daily sustenance when food was freely available. After the morning meditation, the entire student body was summoned by a different series of bells to breakfast in the main atrium where Master Furui had given his speech about the nature of the world.
They were served rice and pickled vegetables, along with a very weak wine called Shoji. It was spiced with mana, but so lightly that it hardly counted as a spirit drink. Its bitterness was considered good for the constitution of an initiate. The newest students took turns cooking and serving the meals for the entire community under the supervision of one of the instructors.
PikuPiku was a thoroughly unpleasant man with a face like a dog. Impossible to please, he spent evenings and early mornings with students ensuring the consistency and quality of the meals by means of invective and sudden curses. Sunwhisper largely managed to avoid his ire. PikuPiku required precision in his ingredients as well as the actual cooking process, down to single grains of rice, and Sunwhisper had no trouble memorizing the long lists of instructions and adhering to them meticulously.
Janna’s experience helping her mother prepare tinctures in Fringe Town meant she was not the most hopeless of the new chefs, but she nevertheless suffered daily harangues from their insufferable overseer.
“A pinch of ground Dalla root, girl. A pinch! Two hundred and fifty six grains. Did your father conceive you with a goat? Where is your beard, goat-girl? No wonder you can’t keep the portions straight, when you have to pick up everything with those hooves.”
He said far worse to Empiti, who, as the favored son of the Hako family, had never so much as skinned a potato, let alone prepared an entire meal. He was the youngest artist of their group, but he maintained admirable control over his emotions, refusing to rise to PikuPIku’s insults even as he grew red in the face.
His brothers were less forgiving. On their second early morning shift, before the branch meditations, Baksu had thrown a ladle at the instructor for calling Empiti a “sniveling mudworm.” He had been on his back a moment later, with PikuPiku’s hand around his throat.
“You want to challenge me, brat?” The instructors wore robes of every color, like Master Furui, so his affinity was not immediately obvious. His long, curly hair, however, was lifted as if by a breeze. An air artist, Sunwhisper surmised.
Baksu hadn’t offered much resistance after he was put on the ground, and he had been rewarded for his outburst with a three day detention in the dungeons beneath the academy. The cells below the school were said to be constructed in such a way as to cut off a prisoner from the world soul, forcing him to subsist on the mana he carried with him in his core. The result was three days without the benefit of the branch meditation chambers, classes, or other exercises. In the Heavenly School, punishment meant being put behind the rest of the class. He would have to work hard to make up for the lost time or be forever at a disadvantage.
Three days was not so much of a loss, but repeat offenses could quickly escalate into a real deficit, putting a student so far behind that they would be unable to pass the annual exams and ultimately be expelled from the school.
“I’m sorry about your brother,” Janna told Empiti once the kitchen had quieted down and PikuPiku was busy harassing someone else.
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“He was a fool,” Empiti said. “His punishment is deserved.”
“Still,” Janna gave a sidelong smile, “a rabbit does not mind seeing a hawk struck from the sky.”
Empiti stood a little closer to her after that.
“I suppose not.”
Janna was quick to forge bonds with several of the others in their class, and Sunwhisper was pleased to see her coming into her own. While they slept, ate, and meditated with their branch, the twelve new students shared kitchen duties as well as their classes, at least until one or more of them showed sufficient aptitude to be advanced beyond the others. Aside from Baksu, there was only one troublemaker. Nana Ken, a relative of Ryu Ken, the man Sunwhisper had defeated to earn his stars, shared his cousin’s need to prove himself.
The first lesson after breakfast was with Elder Raibu, and Sunwhisper was about to climb the stairs to his classroom when Nana Ken stepped in front of him.
“I know who you are,” he said abruptly. His face was as sharp edged as his swords. He carried two on each hip, two crossed on his back, and one more, barely longer than a dagger, strapped to his lower leg. There were no strict limits on students keeping weapons. Sunwhisper had a pair of spears with him, though when they weren’t extended they merely appeared to be steel rods about a foot in length, and he had given a third spear to Janna to keep with her. It wasn’t even forbidden for students to fight, though they were supposed to move their squabbles to designated dueling stations before they became physical.
The academy was more concerned about potential damage to the castle than to its wards. Still, Sunwhisper had no desire to engage with Nana Ken through violence.
“I am Jin Sunwa,” he responded mildly. “I believe we have met.”
“You think you are a genius, don’t you?” he sneered.
“Not in the sense that you would use the word, no.” Sunwhisper made to step around him, but the man with seven swords shifted his stance so that they were chest to chest. Aside from weapons, students were allowed to keep sacred beasts with them as long as they didn’t obstruct their lessons or chores. Ogumo followed Sunwhisper wherever he went, and he particularly enjoyed climbing along the ceiling just behind him, keeping himself out from underfoot as well as in the perfect position to pounce on someone if he was ever given permission to do so.
Ogumo was the reason Sunwhisper and Ken Nana were alone on the stair. Sunwhisper stayed behind after meals to feed his spider scraps and fish from the kitchen. He was never late, but he was consistently behind, and therefore easy to corner.
Karasu was with Janna. It gave her another ally, and gave Sunwhisper another pair of eyes and ears in the silver branch. None of the other students had more than one animal companion, with the exception of a few nearly graduated artists Sunwhisper had only seen at a distance around the lake. Even a beast master only actually bonded with one beast, and given that he was already continuously linked to Ogumo through Hand of the Gentle Sage, he felt he must be closer to that achievement with the spider than the raven.
“You make a good cook,” Nana Ken said, his face inches from Sunwhisper. “Why don’t you stay in the kitchen?”
As they were on a clock, Sunwhisper erred on the side of getting to the point. “Do you dislike me because I embarrassed your cousin, or because of my skill with a rice pot?”
Nana Ken’s nostrils flared. “I don’t dislike you,” he said. “I just know who you are. Soga clan, Azai? You and your sister are barely worth what I clean off of my slippers when I’ve had a walk in the kennel. I don’t know how you ended up just behind me in the well trial, and I don’t know how you got past my cousin on your first attempt. You don’t belong here. The tree that stands too tall gets knocked down.”
Sunwhisper preferred not to be late for class. He leaned forward, touching his forehead to Nana Ken’s for a split second before the other cultivator slapped him. The sting on his cheek was nothing, but that brief contact had been enough for him to use Hand of the Gentle Sage, as well as to absorb a genetic sample. He had no idea what to expect, as whatever the man with seven swords suffered from, it wasn’t a physical ailment. But Sunwhisper shared Master Furui’s perspective far enough to agree at least that for most people in this world, life was pain, at least to the extent that some kind of pain acted as a central motivation for them.
“All right,” Sunwhisper said, as Nana Ken blinked at him in confusion. “I’d like for us both to go to class now.”
The other cultivator stepped back, lowering the hand he had used to strike Sunwhisper. The confusion on his face was quickly replaced by anger, but that harshness broke as quickly as it came. Something inside of him had shifted, and his lack of understanding as to what it was made fertile ground for seeds of fear to root and grow.
“We’ll finish this later,” he said, but the words were perfunctory. He hurried up the steps as if being with Sunwhisper for one more moment was more than he could bear.
Sunwhisper waited a few moments to give Nana Ken a lead. His internal clock told him there were still two minutes before the bells would ring again and he could be punished for tardiness. One minute was more than enough time to sprint up a hundred steps or so, and he needed to adjust to what he had just taken into himself before he could focus on Elder Raibu’s lesson.
Nana Ken’s pain was different from what he had experienced before. It was a kind of tenderness, in a way, and Sunwhisper had no context to explain it. All he knew was that a part of himself, one he quickly partitioned off, felt that it was the smallest, most worthless thing in the world, and it would rather die than let anyone know exactly how small and worthless it was. He would explore that emotion when he had the time, but for now, he put it away in a box in his mind beside Ogumo’s hunger. Feelings were wonderful, beautiful things, even the negative ones, but he was a long way from having to live as if feelings defined who he was.
As high as his Ego and EQ were, he could handle a lot more than Nana Ken had had inside of him before it caused any real strain. He was much more interested in Elder Raibu’s upcoming lesson regarding the elemental compass.