“This is the dorm building on campus, where all the students live.” Varen motioned towards the double-door entrance. The building was large- Eos wasn’t sure how big it precisely was, but she could count more than fifteen rows of windows, with far too many columns for her to count at a glance. The architectural style reminded her of a cathedral, with a peaked ceiling and gargoyles looming upon the roof. The vine-covered stonework indicated hundreds of years since construction, at least.
“This is called Advent Hall, and it’s the primary dorm building on campus. Every student gets a dorm here- I think your year will be on part of the fourth floor.”
Varen walked towards the hall and the doors opened in front of them. She noticed there was no one opening them, but Varen seemed to not pay any mind. The foyer of the building was a large room with a receptionist desk at the back. Her skin was olive and her hair was an old grayed silver, with two tall cat-like ears sticking out the top of her head. The receptionist seemed to be lost in her thoughts as they approached, but snapped back to reality when she noticed Varen. Eos was taken back for a moment by the receptionist's golden eyes.
“Mr. Firestone!” The receptionist, “We have prepared the room for your special admit! It’ll be room 4031. Do you need any help getting there?”
“Ah, no” Varen replied, switching to Common, “Thank you for your help Tarvie.”
Eos followed Varen closely as they walked down a hallway to a room with a staircase. As soon as they started traveling up the staircase, Varen commented: “Tarvie is the headmaster of the dorm building, and is currently serving as the receptionist while new students come in. Make sure to be very nice to her if you want to have a good time here.”
Eos nodded, “What is she?”
Varen chuckled, “Tarvie is a Beastkin. It means she has a sharp smell, and hearing and is easily roused- perfect qualities for a headmaster overseeing over 400 students. Of course, she’s not alone- she’s just the top dog.”
Tarvie gave Varen an insidious gaze. “Or, top cat.” He chuckled slightly.
“Over 400 students?”
“30 to 40 every year, give or take a little, and 12 years of schooling. I don’t have the exact numbers, but Advent was built to contain up to several thousand students, but it’s always practically empty.”
They carried on up the staircase until they reached the fourth floor. Varen guided her to where her room would be which ended up at the far end of a hallway in the middle of a dead end. Her window overlooked the side of the garden and faced one of the classroom buildings, and she thought she could just make out an amphitheater in the distance. The room was larger than she expected- it felt like a decently large hotel room. She roughly estimated it at 30 square meters, but she didn’t know how she could precisely calculate a meter in this world.
The layout of the room was quite simple though: a twin-sized bed was nestled in one corner of the room, opposite the doorway. In the other corner, a small desk sat, with the window looking out splitting the desk and bed. On the same side as the bed, a medium-sized wardrobe sat, drawing Eos’s attention to her lack of clothing- or really, anything.
Varen seemed unconcerned about it, perhaps not realizing it. “Your classes should start in 10 days; I’ll come to pick you up for the Awoken society meeting this weekend. Until then, try and get acquainted. Make some friends- you won't have a ton of free time after school starts.”
And with that, before Eos fully comprehended what was happening, Varen left the dorm, closing the door behind him. Eos looked around the dorm more intensely, trying to take in every detail. Quickly, she noticed a key on the desk and an appropriate lock on the door which the key fit into quite nicely. The desk was well used, with markings on it indistinguishable from each other due to usage and age. The wardrobe was similarly worn with age, and after opening it, she saw etchings and markings in it, all equally indistinguishable from one another. When she tried to close it again, the door got stuck on the lower lip. After some inspection, she noticed one of the hinges was slightly loose- but she wasn’t even tall enough to reach it.
The bed was well made, if simple. It only had sheets and blankets over the simple mattress, laying on a bed frame covered in scratches. Knowing what little she knew, she didn’t even make an attempt at deciphering the various scratch marks covering different parts of the bed frame.
Golden light poured through the window, as the suns were setting over the rest of the city. She decided that she would deal with the various tasks involving her later, but she realized she had a relatively small task to take care of. Taking the key with her, she locked the door behind her as she headed to the bottom floor.
“Tarvie!” Eos yelled in the parlor, quickly grabbing her attention, “Hi! Is there any way I could…” Eos paused for a moment, “Get a letter to someone?”
“A letter? To whom?” She replied, professionally.
“Meddyg, he’s a doct-”
“Meddyg?!” She replied, “He’s awfully busy; I heard he left town a few days ago, so it’d be a-”
“He’s back in town.” Eos confidently responded, “He’s the one who brought me here- to the capital I mean- before I… uh..” Eos thought carefully about how to say the next part, before deciding to say it simply, “ran away and ended up here.”
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
Tarvie’s lack of reply was telling, and Eos just finished her thought. “So, I was wondering if I could write a letter telling him where I was and that I’m okay.”
“I’ll write a letter and make sure it gets to him,” Tarvie replied, her tone indecipherable by Eos, “but I can already tell you’re gonna be a troublemaker.”
“Ehe~”
Eos, content with how the interaction ended up, ran back up to her room, unlocking the door and setting the key in her ajar wardrobe, before stripping her clothes and going into bed. She fell asleep as the suns retired behind the horizon, and slipped away into the night.
“I’m going to be late, I’m gonna be late!” Eos heard from outside her window, shocking her awake. The room was shrouded in darkness, and Eos noticed it was barely even dawn. She got up anyway and looked out her window. She saw no one running around outside, so she opened the window and craned her neck to see right next to the dorm building, only noticing a medium-sized hole in the ground.
Suddenly, Eos felt a pebble hit the top of her head and looked up. She saw a chunk of earth, floating in the air but slowly descending. On top of the levitating earthen glob was a girl. All Eos could make out was her skirt flowing around the earth, the runic signs she was making in the air, the magic taking an orange-yellow color, and moving with the same unpredictable pattern as the magic she saw before.
Another pebble hit Eos’s head, directly between her eyes, before she was shaken out of her stupor and realized that maybe she should move her head into the room before the swiftly descending rock replaced it.
“Sorry!” the girl yelled quickly. Eos stuck her neck back out and saw a clearer look at the girl. Her hair was light brown and she had a pair of large wolf ears on top of her head, and a tail extending from her rear. She landed directly in the hole, the earthen clump making the ground seamless again, before looking back up at Eos. “Sorry! I’d make it up to you, but I’m gonna be late!” She yelled, before running off, zig-zagging through a courtyard and into a nearby building.
Eos broke out of her stupor in a moment. She was mystified, stunned by the interaction she just had. She could tell that the girl was older than her, by ten or so years she estimated. And her magic! Eos thought, She was basically flying? Falling with grace? Running late… Her dorm must be some amount higher than mine.
Still, without leaving her window, Eos heard a knock at her door. At this time of day? She wondered, opening it up to see a formal-looking man, holding a collection of clothes with a slip of paper on top. He handed them to her without a word, before spinning and disappearing down the hallway. The only sound he made was the knocking, and Eos couldn’t remember any particular details about him immediately after he left her sight.
Eos closed the door and placed the folded clothes on her desk, and lifted a written note off of them. “School-appropriate clothes, courtesy of Varen” it read simply.
“What is this place…” Eos mused aloud, before changing into a pair of the clothes, and putting the rest into her wardrobe. She wondered when she’d be growing out of these, and if Varen would get her more when that time came.
Despite her exhaustion, Eos decided that now would be a good time to explore the school, and began to wander out of the dorm building and into the gardens. By noon, she had a vague idea of where many classes would be in the school and the overall layout: she’d found many, many classrooms, though which subject was focused on in each eluded her; a few greenhouses, with vaulted glass ceilings and a myriad of plants, including both familiar and unfamiliar ones; A many meters-wide unknown pit covered by a medium sized building, additionally containing students in lecture, several of them harrowingly close to the pit; a smithy with both a forge and smiths, all actively working; The Amphitheater, which was bigger than it seemed from her dorm building, fitting over ten thousand by rough estimation, and around which seemed to be more classrooms and bandhalls; several locked rooms that she couldn't nor didn't want to get into, at least not yet. Finally, she stumbled upon a building of offices and began to just read the names and titles of faculty members. She looked around until one caught her eye.
A small, empty office. The name card simply read “Ectf, Head Librarian”. And suddenly, Eos knew where she was headed next. That was until Rhawn noticed her outside of his office.
“Eos Apepi,” he said, halting her movements immediately, “What are you doing?”
“Leaving!” She replied, before trying to sprint out of sight. Suddenly, a blast of wind from the hallway blew her back, and she landed on her back right in front of Rhawn’s office door. “So, again, what are you trying to do?”
“Well,” She began trying to sit up. The moment she did, she heard muttering from Rhawn and a whitish light emanated from his fingers, causing a gust to pin her to the ground. “I was trying, to find, the, library.” She struggled out. She couldn’t even bend her head to look at him.
“You’ve managed to come to a restricted part of the school for students unless they have express reason to come. And the first day of school hasn’t even started.”
Eos decided the best idea was to stay silent as Rhawn continued on.
“As an amicable punishment, because of your youth and clear lack of restraint,” He said, before whispering under his breath “as would be expected from an Apepi.” before continuing, “I see it's only fitting to have a low-level of punishment for you; I’ll have you escorted to your room, and you are not to leave it for the rest of the day. Additionally, I’ll make sure to put this as a mark for you. That might be the earliest any student has got a mark, impressive really.”
Eos remained silent, and Rhawn swiftly began sifting through papers again. After some time, the wind around her let up, and she stood up. “Tarvie is expecting you, please make haste.” Rhawn said, and Eos sheepishly began walking back to the dorms. She didn’t feel particularly courageous in challenging this decree; she knew from past knowledge that usually didn’t end particularly well.
As she passed into the foyer with Tarvie in it, she didn’t even bring her eyes off the floor. Gloomily, she went past the foyer and into the staircase, going into her room. She noticed other people on her floor and could hear voices coming out of various doorways, yet she glumly ignored it all. She swiftly made her way into her room, locking it behind her and lying down on the now-chilly bed. I wonder what that escort was… She thought for a moment.
She didn’t know whether to cry or feel empty inside and eventually, she resorted to the latter, the former becoming less and less productive. The suns wasn’t quite visible from her window, but before she knew it, the bed was warm and the suns’ light radiated into her room. With little else to do, and feeling empty, she slipped into sleep.