Eventually, the door opens again and a Man wearing white robes walks in, he is the first person I’ve seen not wearing the same brown robes as everyone else. He slowly walks up to the podium and stands, he takes a breath.
“Hello I am glad to welcome you to the church ranks, we are incredibly fortunate to have you.”
“ Unfortunately, you are all here too late for this school year so you shall not be able to join us this year as acolytes but instead, you’ll have to wait for the next year of school to start.” at this there are some uneasy murmurs.
“Don’t worry we won’t turn you away you can still stay here and learn, you just can’t do everything a student can, you all will still become acolytes and follow the road to becoming paladins or priests you just need to wait a little longer. Instead of being acolytes this year you will help around the church as stable hands, kitchen apprentices, doorman, and cleaners. I know this is not what you were hoping to hear, but sadly there is nothing I can do.”
“Try to think of this as an opportunity to get ready for next year. Now on to the technicalities of your new position. Each of you will be given a bed in the servant quarters and be assigned a job. You will eat after the students from this year. Breakfast is at 7 and dinner is at 8 you will be given a job and will be required to complete it every day. Once the job is done you are allowed to do a variety of things to help prepare for the school year starting next year.”
As he says those last words 4 different people walk in and walk up to the podium
“These are the men in charge of the stable hands, doorman, cleaners, and Kitchen apprentices .”
‘“They will pick who will work for them and you will go stand behind them and wait, it is their job to teach you your job, and the rules.”
What? Just like that? That's all they did to pick your job for the whole next year? Well judging by name alone the best one seems to be the kitchen apprentices and the worst is probably the stable boy. I sat in silence, hoping to be picked by the chef, not the stable master. The suspense was terrible knowing that my job for the next whole year would be seemingly picked at random.
Then all of a sudden I look up and see a middle-aged man standing there with a finger pointed right at me, I didn’t even notice him walk up to me. He was about 6 ft with a thick forest of brown hair and a medium-length beard, sparkling blue eyes, perfect skin, and jaw, and I Got to see blinding white teeth as he says.
“You get to come with me”
With growing apprehension, I stood up bunched my things into the crook of my elbow, and joined the small group of boys following him around. After every boy in the room was picked we had a group of about 20 that followed him. After all of the boys were assigned a duty we left the room but not before the priest gave us one last word of encouragement.
“I'm sorry if some of you were upset by this turn of events but I hope you can make the most of this pseudo-gap year, to be even better prepared for school next year. good luck!.”
With that, we were dragged away by the man leading us. We walk out of the room just far enough that the noise from the other groups is bleed away and then we stop and he turns to look at us.
“Hello, my name is Markus and I am in charge of the doorman, we help with guests of the church, setting up expeditions and lots of filling work as well as basic, craftsmanship.”
Our group mumbles a half-hearted greeting ”Nice to meet you, sir”
Turning around he leads us down more halls while talking.
“I know everything here looks rather confusing but you should start remembering the routes around, no one will help you if you get lost, they are all too busy with their own tasks.”
I had already been trying to memorize our path until now so this came as no surprise.
“This is your part of the church,” he said while gesturing down a short hall, it was made of stone like the rest of the church, but unlike the rest of the church it had no windows or carvings. One on either side were identical wooden doors ten per side each space about 5 apart.
Walking down the hall Markus opens the first door on the right.
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“All the rooms are the same, come pick one out.”
Glancing into the open door: a tiny room with a small rope bed, and a rough-hewn desk that gave me splinters just looking at it, with a short three-legged stool tucked under the desk, there was a candle stub on the desk and that was everything.
As our group starts spreading down the hall Markus calls out.
“Once you pick a room leave your things in it and stand outside the door.”
Walking down the hall I pick a random door which turns out to be the fourth door on the right. Pushing open the door I toss my bundle of clothes and other items on my bed before stepping back into the hallway and shutting the door behind me. While I wait for the other boys to finish picking their rooms I look around at some of the other boys in my group, I’ll be working with them for the rest of the year.
Most of them have more luggage than me, although I assume that’s because they were planning on coming here. All of them are around my age although some look older while some look younger. None of them have any remarkable traits or appearances they just seem like normal boys of average height and build although there seems to be a large diversity of hair colors, race, and facial structure. It seems that this church school is a more coveted opportunity than I knew.
To my surprise, Markus yells, “Alright let's get going!”
Most of the boys aren’t ready yet, and they make this known.
“Hey we’re not done unpacking” one of the boys still in his room yells
“Don’t care” He yells back” You shouldn’t make your boss wait.” turning around he starts walking. Forcing all of us to follow him, many of them leaving half-unpacked bags strewn across their rooms. We walk through the church inside skilfully carved stone hallways with tall windows leading out onto well-manicured courtyards with crops growing in some and flowers in others. After another confusing route, we end up in a big courtyard that's much less pretty and much more functional than any of the other yards I’ve seen. It has cobblestone paving it with 3 carts lined up to our left. A wide roof overhanging the right wall holds neatly stacked boxes, rolls, and other bobbles. Further down the left wall is a large building shaped vaguely like a barn but shorter with a lower roof. A stable.
Turning around Markus looks at us
“This is where most of you will work, with the carts and the equipment.” vaguely gesturing towards the right wall.”You will be here at 6 every day to check on the equipment and the carts, then you will leave for breakfast. You have 30 minutes. Then you will come back and be given various tasks relating to your job.”
One of the boys raises his hand and asks” You said most of us will be working here?”
“Some of you will have to work as porters bringing more supplies and retrieving replacement parts for the carts, among other things.”
“At the end of the day, you may go eat dinner. For another 30 minutes. And then you will come back and check the equipment until 9. After that, you are free to go.”
Almost as an afterthought, he adds“However, the nuance with being a doorman is that the hours are completely thrown out the window if there is an expedition sent out. You will be here late into the night and early in the morning to make sure that when they get back they have people to help them.”
This made me slightly confused, the priest at the seminar had made it sound like there would be much more time to do the extra activities to help us prepare for the next school year but Markus made it sound like there would be little free time to work towards that.
Luckily another boy had the same thought as me.“How will we make time for the extra activities that will help us in the coming school year.”
“You will be given a job every day, depending on when you finish it you are allowed to wander and do other things, you of course must work to gain my trust before that is allowed, and you may lose it if I find your job not done. But if you have my trust and have finished your job you will be able to go and complete other things.”
That was incredible news, it meant that if I worked hard there would be concrete benefits.
“We don’t have time to go over jobs today so we will head over to dinner and you will be free to go”
Another sequence of turns later we arrive in a large hall with big tables running the course of the room. We file in and head towards the far end of the room which has a window leading to a kitchen, there is a line of cooks there handing out food through the window to people waiting in line. As the line progresses I see a plate with a mix of vegetables, a thick slice of bread, and a bowl of thick stew with mystery chunks floating around in it.
Looks good to me. I eagerly grab a bowl and head to a table at random completely ignoring people as I start to dig in. It’s excellent, you can tell the bread was made today and the stew was slow-cooked allowing the spices to infuse the broth and making the mystery chunks which turned out to be meat tender and succulent. The broth is thick and the mix of different vegetables and meat in the stew makes it filling and not too watery. Mixed with the bread and soft vegetables it's a very good meal, it's just missing one thing… I look up and see that in my haste to get food I missed a different part of the window which is handing out mugs, I get up and half run to the other part of the window where they hand me a mug with some sort of slightly brownish gold colored liquid sloshing inside. Taking a sip it seems to be some sort of spiced tea which is quite excellent, walking back to my spot at the table I dig into my meal. Maybe my time here won’t be so miserable after all