The Academy [BOOK ONE COMPLETE]

“Good morning,” Grit called. “We’re gonna go and have breakfast!”

“Whut?” I mumbled.

She shut the door and I almost fell asleep again. I was so warm.

“Breakfast,” Minnelil muttered and nuzzled closer, nose brushing the back of my neck.

“Oh,” I said. Her body was hot behind me. How did we fit in the same bed? She had to be really small. I wondered if I could get a bigger bed somehow?

“What are you thinking?” she asked in a sleepy voice.

“Um, nothing!” I said. “Morning.”

“Good morning, Lina,” she said. “Elves need less sleep, but sleep soundly once we do. And after we wake up, we need breakfast.”

“I’ll let you get up,” I said, keeping my eyes on the wall.

Her hand slipped over my stomach and she pulled me closer against herself. Seemed I had fallen asleep with my shirt still on, and I had never been sorry for the habit before now. “We can get up together. Turn around.”

I did, and her eyes were right in front of my face. She smiled and their corners crinkled. She closed them, leaning even closer.

I closed mine as well, and kissed her, running my hands down her side and feeling the curve of her waist.

“But I do need that breakfast,” she murmured.

---

“Oh, you made it!” Grit shouted, waving at Minnelil and me. “We pried off some breakfast for you from the skeletons. It might not be warm anymore, though.”

“Thank you,” Minnelil said. “I really must have been tired.”

“Well, you had a busy night!” Fek said.

I groaned, sitting down. “We went to the library.”

“Yeah, you were pretty busy in the library earlier,” Grit said.

“Enough snickering, you two,” Minnelil said. “I thought you’d have eaten already?”

“And why is everyone else in here too?” I asked, looking around the Breakfast Hall. It was full, students chatting, almost all having already finished eating. The skeletons wove between the tables collecting plates and cutlery. Frederik and Fahn sat at a smaller table near to the door. Frederik had seen me, a flash of worry crossing his face. He had started to tell some joke in a loud voice, and I had slunk past quickly while Fahn was distracted.

“The workshops are done for now,” Grit said. “They asked us to wait for the announcement on what’s going to happen next.”

“Yeah, and they’re already late,” Fek said, raising in his chair to look over my shoulder.

I did too, craning my neck back. “Last time Falar appeared behind us.”

“Yeah, that’s why I checked,” Fek said. “How do you think he even did it?”

“Who knows?” I said. “Though it is weird. I don’t let people creep up on me.”

“It’s not particularly easy to get behind me either,” Minnelil said, cutting off a piece of the omelette. “Teleportation is out of the question, obviously.”

“Why obviously?” I asked.

“The Etherthorne Weave,” Falar said from behind me.

Grit and Fek startled on the other side of the table, and I twitched as well. “Oh come on!” I shouted.

“I’ll send you a book about using the Null for subterfuge,” Falar said.

“Stop showing off to the students, Lecturer!” Jextor shouted from the middle of the hall. His voice made students jump in their seats, bumping into skeletons and causing multiple plates, mugs and trays to crash to the floor. Skeletons gathered around him in a circle, falling on one knee. His robes fluttered and snapped like a great wind was blowing through the hall.

“I was merely passing by,” Falar muttered. “The opportunity was irresistible.”

Minnelil rubbed the bridge of her nose as Falar turned around. “People always claim necromancers love drama. Sometimes I wish they weren’t so right.”

I let my head hang back, mouth loose and eyes staring at the ceiling. “Why does he have to keep picking on us? And why are the skeletons kneeling around Jextor?”

“Well, it does look pretty impressive,” Fek said.

“No it doesn’t. It’s just dumb,” I groaned, then pulled my head straight. “And I’m not letting anyone leave until someone explains to me what the Etherthorne Weave is.”

“Hear, all!” Jextor shouted. “I bring important news for each and everyone!”

The whooping and the discussions died down. A skeleton was gathering the shattered pieces of a fallen plate, but froze as Falar glared down at it. Its knee hovered slightly above the floor as the skeleton stopped mid-motion, hand reached out toward a shard.

“Thank you for participating in the reanimation effort!” Jextor shouted. “The winter has besieged us. To secure what we require, the Academy will send out all your creations to the world!”

“Finally!” a student yelled. “World domination!”

“Ahm, erm?” Jextor said. “I mean, the plan is—”

“Darkness shall envelope Velonea!” another student shouted, bouncing to stand with a fist raised to the air. “Our undying armies will scour the continent!”

“Yes, for the best deals on supplies!” Jextor said, but even his voice was drowned by the clamoring that started.

Some students looked excited, some horrified. “But I don’t want to watch the world burn!” one shouted.

“Silence!” Falar roared, voice like an explosion. The silence that followed was broken only by his groaning as he rubbed at his face with both hands. The groan lasted for a long while, before he finally let his hands fall and raised his face toward the ceiling, eyes closed. “Please continue, Chancellor,” he said very quietly.

“Thank you, Lecturer,” Jextor said, licking his lips. “The skeletons will be acting as our supply line, purchasing what we need and bringing it back to us. Now! This will affect the running of the school. We will be left with no skeleton crew to handle the maintenance. Hmm, there’s a pun in there somewhere, I wager.”

“Focus, Chancellor,” Falar muttered.

“Right! Therefore all students will be expected to take part in some extra-curricular work. Your efforts will naturally be rewarded.”

“Mostly by the heating staying on and the water from the showers not turning into icicles shot out at high speeds,” Falar said. “Normal lectures will start again, with some modifications. You are expected to attend to your studies as per normal, or more preferably, with renewed concentration and enthusiasm.”

“You expect us to work?” Fahn called out. He was sitting at the other end of the hall, at a small table. Frederik was sitting there as well, the bright blond hair recognizable from far. “We’ve paid for our tuition!”

“You will work and you will like it,” Falar said. “You have a chance to plunge into the depths of this institution, witness secrets the fools in Tenorsbridge would die a thousand deaths to only glimpse, and be driven mad for doing so.”

“Oh,” Fahn said. “Wait, is that a good thing?”

“What our lecturer means is that it’s an exciting opportunity to broaden your education!” Jextor shouted, swinging his arms around like trying to shoo away Falar’s words. “The reworked schedules will be sent to your dorms by the end of the day. That is all!”

The shouting started a second later. Students rushed toward Jextor, black robes fluttering and chairs scraping the floor. I looked for Falar, but he had disappeared. I kept looking, anyway. There was a slight push from one side of the room, the pressure feeling like a ghost of a headache. I followed it and saw the door open and shut, even when my eyes tried to turn away and ignore that something was happening.

“Weird,” I said.

“Oof, someone tripped on one of the kneeling skeletons. Quite a fall,” Grit said, grimacing. “Jextor should tell them to get up and go away.”

“Oh no, what are you planning?” Minnelil said.

I followed her gaze and saw Fek grinning on the other side of the table.

“I have an idea,” he said, standing up. “Come on!”

---

“This… might actually be a good idea,” I said.

“But it’s Fek’s idea?” Grit said.

“What do you all mean? It’s genius!” Fek said. He raised his hand to knock on the door again, rapping it with his knuckles. “Oi, Hector! You in?”

The janitor opened the door. He wasn’t wearing his blue overalls, but grey pants and a dark red shirt, looking like a normal person. “Sure, sure. What’s up?”

“Did you hear about the plan to make all the students work?” Fek said. “Have anything good for us to handle? Something that isn’t boring.”

“I hope I still get to be a research assistant even with all this,” Grit said. “But if not, nothing too nasty, please?”

“Or dangerous,” Minnelil added.

“All four of you?” Hector said, peering out from the door. “It’s true that with all the undead gone, there’s going to be a lot to do.”

“Yeah! And we figured that maybe you could help us land some good gig. I don’t want to be sorting zombie eyeballs or something,” Fek said.

“Oh, don’t worry. I made the skeletons do that the moment I heard they’re being sent away,” Hector said. He opened the door and stepped outside, shutting it behind himself. “But I guess I could try to suggest something to the higher-ups. Finding people with a good head on their shoulders isn’t that easy. Between the four of you, you have at least two and a half.”

“I bet Jextor would make some joke about having a lot of good heads,” I said. “But thanks. We’re not asking for you to let us off without doing anything. We’ll work.”

“I wouldn’t mind being let off—“ Fek said, but Grit nudged him quiet.

“Yeah, couldn’t be seen playing favorites,” the janitor said. He patted the front of his shirt, and glanced at it with a furrowed brow when he didn’t find anything there. “Being outside always makes me feel like smoking.”

“Maybe it’s the Null,” I said, as the thought hit me. “It’s everywhere out here, so maybe for some reason it makes you want to fill your lungs with smoke in addition to making food taste like cardboard?”

“You’ve gone too academic for me,” Hector said. He patted his chest again and sighed. “There’s the skeleton. I think it’s the one coming to fetch me to help with the planning. You caught me just in time. I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thank you, Janitor,” Minnelil said, bowing to him.

He scoffed, rubbing the back of his neck and looking away from Minnelil. “Anyway, later, students.”

The skeleton stopped at the bottom of the stairs and bowed to Hector. He nodded at us and started walking up the stairs, hands in his pockets.

“Nice,” Fek said. “I hope this was a good idea.”

“You said it was a genius idea!” Grit said.

“We’ll see,” Minnelil said. “Let’s go to the dorm. Nothing to it except to wait.”

“Aa!” I shouted.

All three of them twitched, Fek crouching and covering his head with his hands.

“You almost made me forget it!” I said, pointing my finger at them. “What the hell is the Etherthorne Weave?”

“Oh, that,” Fek said, standing back up. “It’s just a thicket of impenetrable thorns seeded across the whole ether, turning anything trying to teleport into mincemeat.”

“What?”

“That’s pretty close to the textbook answer,” Minnelil said, shrugging. “It happened… it happened during the war.” She stopped, watching me for my reaction. I didn’t say anything, but nodded at her, trying to keep my teeth from grinding against each other. “It was created during the first night to stop the Kertharians from attacking all of Velonea. Tenorsbridge had no defences against teleportation attacks. They were a nation of magic and many powerful mages,” she continued.

“Falar said the loss of the Kertharian schools was a tragedy,” I muttered quietly.

“That does sound like him,” Minnelil said. “The man is not sentimental, that at least can be said about him.”

“What do you mean?” Grit asked, pushing closer to Minnelil, eyes gleaming. “Why would he be sentimental about that?”

Minnelil slipped behind me, escaping as Grit made a grab at her. “Right, none of you were here when it happened. Falar fought in the war. One of the only wizards of Velonea to do so.”