Cordyceps Nine
Cordyceps Nine
I kept my step lively to keep up with the other first years heading to... somewhere. The entire early orientation was a bit of a mystery to me, actually. We left the main school building’s courtyard through a side gate, then along a gravel path towards a rather imposing building.
The academy took up a massive amount of space atop the plateau it was situated on, with wide greens and lots of open space. In a city as compact as City Nineteen, this was a massive show of opulence, though I doubted many of the kids around me noticed.
There were nineteen kids here, counting myself, all staring around wide-eyed or trying hard to look proper and dignified as they followed the staff member who had called out our names.
Mister Drake, if I recall correctly, seemed to walk as if his spine was locked in place by a straight rod and looked like he was trying to gain a few inches of height by poking his nose into the air.
He stopped in front of the building we were clearly heading towards and did an about-face. The gaggle of first years came to a stumbling stop. “We are the house of the Dragon,” he said with a gesture to the building behind him. It was clearly some sort of dormitory building, with a large statue of a dragon at the front spitting water from its mouth into a fountain. “We are the house of nobles and the peerage, each of you is either a young man with good blood in his veins, or a lucky winner of a scholarship.” He sneered a little at the last, and I noticed his eyes sweeping the group and picking out one or two others.
He missed me, but I had my [Unnoticeable] skill on at the moment. I didn’t need this guy’s ire.
“We, unlike the Troll house, are charged with holding ourselves to a standard befitting our class and station, and so I expect each and every one of you lads to do just so. There will be no infighting, no sniping, no backstabbing. If you learn only one thing during your stay at the Eden-Powell Academy, then I want it to be this: Nobility is power, and power is an illusion.”
A number of confused frowns crossed the faces of the kids around me, but I think I saw where he was going with this.
“There will be mandatory etiquette classes, with me, for any of you who fail to discern this important lesson.” He nodded, mostly to himself, then gestured back to the dormitory. “First years stay on the first floor. As your year rises, so will you. Do not bother the older students, though some may volunteer their time to assist you in your classes and lessons. If you need assistance, my office is next to the first floor foyer. You will find in your rooms a list of rules and regulations for the dormitory. This you will memorise. You will also find the school’s charter and regulations, which, I fear, are too complex for you to inscribe to memory, but you will familiarise yourselves with them nonetheless. Am I understood?”
There were some mumbled ‘yeses’ and I nodded.
Mister Drake cleared his throat and looked at the lot of us as if we were something a dog dragged over. “First lesson, then. When a teacher asks an open, rhetorical question to a group, your response, if you understand, is ‘Yes,’ followed by the teacher’s name. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Mister Drake,” I said along with a few others. It was clear that some had forgotten.
And then this tall kid standing right next to me raised his hand and I gave him a look . Did he really want this asshole’s attention?
“Yes, Mister Wendell?” Mister Drake asked.
“What if we don’t know the teacher’s name yet?”
“Then substitute ‘Sir’ in place of their name or in the rare case that the teacher is a lady, ‘ma’am’ is an acceptable substitute. Also, you have demonstrated well what a student of this prestigious academy must do when they fail to understand. Raise your hand, ask for clarification. Do not abuse this privilege, but you will find that many teachers would rather you make your lack of knowledge clear rather than see you wallow in ignorance.”
He took a deep breath, then pointedly ignored a few more raised hands.
“Now, do find your rooms. They’re in the south wing of the building. You will find your names next to the doors. You will look after your individual living spaces. The rest of the floor is to be shared among your yearmates. No other year’s students may enter, with the exception of prefects who are sixth and seventh years. If you wish to work with an upper yearman, then you may use the common rooms, the dorm’s library, or one of the study rooms.” He nodded. “Go on. The others will be arriving soon.”
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With that said we were let loose. I was half expecting the kids to run, but a few more dignified examples in our group walked sedately and so we moved as a small pack into the dorm.
The place was... nice was the wrong term for it. There was a grand staircase at the back of a large room with several paintings on the walls and a chandelier hanging above. A few plush seats waited on the sides and there was a room for coats and shoes.
I looked around, but didn’t have much time to explore if I wanted to keep with the group.
We slipped into a large room with more seating and some desks, as well as four separate washrooms. The sides of the space were filled with small rooms, each about the size of my home in the slums.
“That’s my room?” one of the kids asked. “It’s smaller than my mum’s closet!”
I decided not to poke at that and focused instead on finding my room. G. Kilue, said a plaque next to an opened door, and I stepped into the room. It was cosy. A bed, a small writing desk with its surface at an incline, a tiny empty bookshelf, the aforementioned rulebooks were on the bed, and I had a small rug and some curtains over the windows.
The walls were all dark wooden panelling, and the sole light in the room had clearly once been a lamp with some sort of fanciful gas-powered system more recently replaced by a glass bulb.
I could live comfortably here, I decided. Not much room for hiding mushrooms though.
My bag was sitting on the floor next to the door, and I felt a jolt upon noticing them. Who had brought them here already? For that matter, how? The lectures we received hadn’t been all that long, and my bag wasn’t labelled.
I shut the door, dropped to my knees, then opened the bags. Then I was flung back as a miffed Sir Nibbles came flying out of the bag, little teeth snapping at me.
“H-hey, stop that! Stop! Hey!” I hissed. “People will hear you!”
He stopped, but his eyes were still narrowed in suspicion even as I touched my finger to my lips.
“Quiet. We don’t know how people will react to you yet. Better to keep the cat in the bag, uh, so to speak.”
He bit me again, and I winced to hold back a scream.
“Okay, okay, fine, no more bags. You can hide under the bed? Just for now. I’ll get you snacks, I promise.”
Sir Nibbles didn’t seem satisfied with that.
“They have good food here, I bet,” I said. “Better than the stuff we usually eat. Something that isn’t mushrooms even... maybe meat?”
That won him over.
I rubbed him between the ears, the spot he liked most, then pushed him towards the bed. “Go hide, I’m going to socialise.”
Sir Nibbles sniffed, but he did as I asked and slipped into the shadows under my new bed. With the panbadger hidden, I tugged my uniform straight, then fixed my hair before leaving the room.
The cliques that had broken up before were all back.
There was that pair of friends with the short kid and the redhead and... and one recognizable guy standing off to one side all on his own. The kid who’d raised his hand to ask Mister Drake a question.
I walked over to him, turned off any of my skills that made me less noticeable, then smiled when he noticed me approaching. “Hey. Thanks for asking that question. I, ah, wanted to know too.”
“Oh, no problem,” he said. “Uh, I’m Wendell. Montgomery Wendell.” He extended a hand to shake.
I grinned. “Gunther Kilue. Pleased to meet you, Montgomery.” I grabbed his hand and returned the shake. “So, are you as hungry as I am?”
He laughed. “I’m starving! They had us standing there for what felt like hours.”
Sometimes it was too easy.
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