The feel of the seminary was a welcomed one. Ezril and his brothers had given up their cloaks for white cassocks. Unlike those of the official cassocks of the priests, theirs was without capes. Another change was that they resided in a tower situated to the west of the compound, beyond the smithy. Despite the heights of the towers they now lived in, the ones they had lived in for so long in the past dwarfed them considerably.
There was a new addition to their training. It encompassed the first half of their days, and left everything else to be done after high noon.
After the morning mass which they now participated in quite actively, serving alongside the priests and a second Mother none of them had met during the years before their spiritual work in the churches, they would move to a big building, fashioned from brick and painted in white. There, all of them would sit in a hall. The towers, it turned out, were the only buildings fashioned from stone in these parts of the seminary.
In the hall they sat on chairs of wood and wrote in books upon wooden tables under the instructions of Father Thane. Father Thane was an aging priest who, unlike the other priests, preferred a cassock of pure white, one they never saw dirtied.
Thane’s complexion was an odd brown that was likely a type of skin condition Ezril could not quite put his finger on. Actually, none of them could. Thane walked with the strides unbecoming of his age, his skin, though wrinkled, was taut enough that it seemed unto itself a scaly thing rather than a something wrought with age. And he stood shorter than most of the boys. Thane taught them the theology of the church and the rules of the priesthood, requiring they write down all their notes in Vrail. He called the building a class upon his introduction, drawing memories of Sister Alanna within Ezril’s mind. It was a word she had used but once, a word the seminary had never used. It was a word it used now, and quite often.
Thane never used the cane on them. He offered no punishments for their mistakes and no reward for their accomplishments. Despite his absence of motivation, he taught with a collected calmness, and an understanding of his lessons. He displayed both a patience for them when they proved slow at understanding, and an understanding of their individual strengths and weaknesses in the lesson.
“Ezril Vi Antari, or is it Ezril Antari?” Father Thane asked during one of their classes. “It has been seven years, has it not? You are now old enough to discard of your title of adoption. So which do you prefer?”
“Ezril Vi Antari, Father,” Ezril answered.
“Ezril Vi Antari, it is,” Thane agreed with a smile. “I knew your father; he was my best student. Always had the answers, and was never tardy. It was a difficult thing letting him go.” His smile faltered. “Well, suffice to say, I expect great things from you.”
What followed was a lesson on the priesthood. Thane informed them that they would be required to choose a class in the priesthood, and taught them of the various classes of priests.
The class of Evangelist was the least commonly chosen and was chosen by priests who would travel the realms, carrying the Credo to all expanses of Vayla and helping those who required it. Ezril had no doubt there was more to it than that but he knew if the priest sought to conceal it in the cacophony of a vague description that the man would not answer a direct question on it.
The class of Advocate was the most commonly chosen class, most of whom served at the walls of the seminary, the cathedral and house of the Archbishop. They were the priest that would serve as protectors. The army of the seminary, housed mainly within the cathedral.
The class of Exorcist was a bit of a focus on what the priesthood was believed to be by most people. The Exorcists had the sole purpose of finding the touched and the dissidents and bringing Truth’s wrath on those acting against the teachings of the Credo. They were the priests mostly confined to parishes.
Father Thane was a polymath—a class of priests dedicated to studying and understanding the Credo and the realm. They were the scholars of the seminary. The brains behind which the seminary’s Credo never wavered in all the years since its inception. They were also the reason the seminary hadn’t been swallowed whole by the encompassing Credo of the church.
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The class of Reverend, however, was different from all other classes in the sense that it wasn’t truly a class but a state of hierarchy. It was awarded for the quality of leadership to a priest who would command his own company no matter his class. Apparently, priests with true ambitions strived to hold the position at some point in their priesthood.
Two months without their Sunders had them missing the familiar weight of it on their backs, leaving them more than eager for their return. However, Father Talod’s presentation of their weapons left room for new knowledge. Very new knowledge.
He presented it to them on a table on the first day of the sword; all five pairs of Sunders. While the others were distinguishable only by their hilts and scabbards, Ezril’s stood out in both shape and size. They had found it strange even before they picked their Sunders. Its weight, now possibly tripled upon itself, left Ezril’s hand feeling heavier than they ever had. How the seminary expected them to fight bearing such weights was unreasonable. Still, Father Talod had them relearn command of it.
“Before your spiritual work, we trained you as boys intended to be blessed,” he told them. “Now we will train you as Hallowed to become priests. The cassock is the garment of the priest, and thus, you will learn to fight in it.”
What followed was a grueling execution of the required stances and movements under the weight of their Sunders and the discomfort of their cassocks. When they failed, Talod did not whip them with the cane as he had always done. Instead, he struck them with the flat of his Sunders which he now carried. It was a large broadsword that a man his size should not have been capable of waving around, especially with the ease the priest employed in doing so. And each time he would scold and command and bark and spit.
“Pick up the slack, Antari! … Of what use is a priest who cannot pick up his veil to the seminary, Nilfinu?!... Why are your hands shaking, Thrysis?!”
They took their Sunders with them at all times, as Ezril had done with his bow since the beginning, strapping it correctly to their backs within their cassock with sore hands, as Father Talod had shown them, the hilts protruding from two openings in the vestment. According to him, in time they would find the comfort of how best they would choose to strap it. But the best part of it all for Ezril was having his bow back in his hand. Learning to fight with the new weight of the Sunders and the discomfort of his cassock, muddled with the bow on his back made the ordeal far worse than he believed it should have been, but he understood the necessity of it.
They were seated in the hall wearing their cassocks along with the students from the other towers when Father Thane deviated from his lesson of the church’s account of the birth of Truth. According to the Credo he had willed himself into existence, fashioning a body of flesh and blood for himself from the sands of Vayla. Such deviations were the norm with him whenever he taught, deeming it necessary to impact knowledge on them.
Today Thane spoke of vanity.
“The Credo requires we live our lives in the path Truth has set for us; free of transgression. It requires the Mothers of the church be better than the priest, and the priests be better than the others,” he told them. “But I assure you we are only humans, and contrary to what the church would have you believe, we are fallible, and will therefore, always fail.”
“We are Hallowed by Truth,” he continued. “But let us not forget that we are also children of Vayla, bearing within us her gifts, as Truth fashioned us from her. It is from these gifts that we give rise to emotions, and it is these emotions that make us sin.” He paused, his finger tapping against the top of his table. “So how do we help ourselves? It is simple. All sins are vanity born from our inability to truly understand Vayla’s gifts, leading us to misuse them. However,” he walked around to lean on his table, “everyone has their vices. And I tell this to every child that graces this hall: focus on one of your vices and give no heed to the others. So that if you ever fall short of Truth’s grace, and fall into sin, it will be one you know very well. One that you have a certain level of control over.”
Amidst it all there was a topic Thane had made certain to address but once. However, after addressing it, he gave no explanation on it, and he answered no question. For, according to him, it was the most controversial subject of the seminary’s foundation—a controversy existent even amongst the most experienced of the seminary’s polymaths. It was the prophecy of the chosen one’s return, and it had done more than enough havoc in the minds of the collective mature polymaths. Debating it would do nothing good in the minds of the young. The prophecy of Tamaron Duret simply claimed that Brandis would return to lead the blessed was too much controversy with the Credo for young minds.
When the lessons ended, Ezril and his brothers made their way to the stables. They no longer practiced the use of the staff and the pole axe, but they spent its day at the stables, learning from Father Munidu the commandments, and building a relationship with their horses.
The morning after their return from their spiritual work they had packed their sacks to the West of the compound under the instruction of Father Talod. The first place they had gone after settling into their new quarters were the stables.
Ezril had hated it the moment he had seen Apparit.