Gilded Ashes-Chapter 42: Bad Decisions

Esen blinked, then laughed, too loud at first. "Point... Well taken."

Kori plucked the pin from the dummy and returned the badge to his palm - almost too casually. "Wear it lower if you plan to gesture at people. I like your face still attached to your head."

She didn’t dwell on it. She was already moving, and everyone recovered their breaths.

"Next" she called. "Spar hall. Try to keep up. If you get lost, follow the trail of chaos."

Feris fell into step with Raizen, eyes bright like she’d just learned something she planned to store for later. "She’s so fast!"

"Yeah... She really is" Raizen said, trying not to remember the time in the rust room when she moved so fast she appeared behind him without him even noticing.

"Faster than you?" Feris let out a cheeky grin.

"I don’t even come close. But someday I’ll be able to respond to that question with: "Nah, no way"... I hope." Raizen said confidently.

Feris hummed an off-key song, satisfied with the kind of answer that left the future wide open. That was her kind of thing. Fate.

The spar hall turned out to be a room filled with mirrors and light. The floor was polished to a shine that made it feel like you were always about to slip. Rings were marked in pale gold on the ground, but the floor tiles could slide, join, separate, shrink, expand at the touch of a control on the wall. This floor was complex. More complex than Raizen has seen, even than the one in the Rust Room. And the tiles weren’t even square. They had shapes that perfectly connected with each other, like an everchanging puzzle you could step on.

Two students tested a paired routine in the far corner - you could hear the clack and slide of their shiny practice weapons. An old man in a robe corrected their sloppy movements with a stick.

"Public spar" Kori said. "Don’t weep on the mirrors. The custodians will weep as well, and then I’ll have to buy them pastries again. And I’m trying to look like I have self control."

"When it comes to pastries, you don’t." Arashi told her, dead in the face.

"I have focused control, alright?" Kori said. "I control the act of buying four pastries, giving two away and then eating three. Isn’t that obvious?"

"No, and that’s five pastries" Hikari said, frowning.

"However you say. I always buy one extra" Kori said, delighted.

They crossed a glass bridge over a building with another glass roof below. The sunlight found the red banners and made them look as if they were burning.

Raizen glanced down and saw a classroom through the glass - very long desks, brass lamps, walls painted florals and patterns, or useful formulas, a trio of clocks that told three different times. He wondered what it meant to hold three times in your head at once.

He wondered if that was what Eon was - time agreeing to be more than one thing.

"Eon..." Kori said, as if she had guessed the thought from his expression. "You won’t touch it for a while. You’ll want to, obviously. The very energy that flows through living bodies and Luminite. The unfair advantage this academy offers. You’ll try to sneak into the lab and a very small, very old woman will appear behind you and say no.

"And what’s she gonna do?" Esen grinned.

"Last time when I tried, 2 glass tubes were broken on my head. Zero out of ten experience, do not recommend. But don’t worry! When it’s time, you will know. Until then, you learn not to be stupid with the most basic of things. Then, you can worry about stupid things, too."

"Is there a class on that?" Keahi asked.

"On things that love to be stupid? There’s a whole lifestyle on that" Kori answered.

They paused at a balcony that hung over a secondary courtyard. Icicle-clear water spilled into an octagonal pool that had been lined with really dark blue tiles. The red banners sewn with the lotus crown rippled overhead. At one end, what had to be upper-class Royal Scholars stood in a circle around a tall man who spoke like he expected obedience and always got it.

Arashi’s gaze sharpened. "The older brats."

"Mhm" Kori said. "You won’t be in their pockets, though! They’ve got their own work. And after all, we all just lost an entire division to... Who knows what." She said it like the most usual thing, but Raizen felt the warmth in his spine drop a degree anyway. The first division.

"What’s the deal with them?" Esen asked, like he was actually interested.

"You’ll meet them when it’s useful for you. Don’t want scandals, alright?"

They reached a straight avenue of stone that led to a set of heavy doors. The lotus crown emblem had been set into those doors in hammered iron.

Inside was what picky students would call the Hall of Petals. High arched ceiling, stunning chandeliers, the floor a mosaic of petals arranged in a spiral that made you feel like you were walking down the heart of a flower. Rooms branched off like chambers. Students flowed in every direction. The noise hit like a turbulent sea.

Raizen stopped.

"Why are there so many students...?" he asked, low voice, talking only to the group. "Wasn’t it just the top ten?"

Lynea’s eyebrows made a very small, very judgmental movement. "Huh? There are always more than ten."

"Standard entrance" Ichiro said, which was the most Ichiro had said in an hour.

Hikari blinked. "Standard what now?"

Kori made a show of checking her nail. "Ohh, right! I forgot to mention. You didn’t take the standard exam."

"What did we take, then?" Raizen asked slowly.

"You took the Elite exam!" Kori explained. She said it like she was telling them the flavor of the day at her favorite bakery. "You signed up for the class where homework throws things back at you."

There was a hitch in the sound of the hall, like the building itself had snorted at their faces. Raizen became aware of his mouth being open in awe and closed it before it got more embarrassing.

"Wait" Keahi said. "So... they-" she gestured at the sea of slate uniforms "...took a different test...?"

"Written stage, then physical stage. Simple. Not easy – not easy at all, but simple. They didn’t have anything to do with Nyxes" Kori explained.

"So they’re inferior? Esen tried again.

"No. They’re good in things you’re probably cheeks at. They’ll go into research, support, operations, all the spines the world sits on. You eight and the others ahead of you took the exam for people who get to be shiny and miserable at the same time. Royal Scholars are on the Vanguard track by default. Doesn’t mean you’ll make it, of course. Does mean the most important people decided to pay too much attention to you? Most definitely"

Feris’s jaw had indeed dropped. She flapped it shut like Raizen, then tried to look like she had known all along. "Of course."

"Obviously" Kori agreed, with a pleased expression. 𝒇𝓻𝓮𝓮𝙬𝙚𝒃𝒏𝓸𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝓬𝓸𝒎

A first year skidded to a stop near them, breathless. He looked at Raizen with the expression of someone who had just seen an animal that shouldn’t exist. "You’re the one who did the... The flash!"

Raizen winced. "Please don’t call it that."

"What should I call it?"

"Bad decisions." Raizen smiled.

The boy beamed. "I’m going to try a bad decision too!"

"No, no, no-" Lynea started but never finished. Instead she threw an ugly look at Raizen, to which he responded with raising his arms in complete surrender. With that look, he was basically saying "Hey, look, it wasn’t my fault I needed to do it!"

Kori patted the boy on the shoulder. "Library for you. Seventh stack, third row, the ninety-five, I think. A book that scares you and make it your friend. If you still want to be like Raizen after lunch, come back and we’ll talk about your ankles."

The boy ran off, thrilled to have been dismissed.

Kori turned to the eight as if she had just remembered they were there. "Right. Expectations. Because Vanguard 1 got completely wiped out, the timeline moved. Usually the Royal Scholars get a year to pretend they’re students, and before they’re sent on the most basic of missisons."

"...but?" Lynea raised her brow again.

"But you’ll get less. Half a year, if you’re lucky. That’s not because we want to kill you or anything! It’s just because the world keeps calling at bad hours. Obviously, you’ll train up here with everyone else. You’ll study until your eyes hate you. You’ll be kind to first years. You’ll wear your badges without pride, because you’ve never actually did something to deserve them. And when the time comes, you’ll go downstairs and learn why I keep telling you not to trip."

"Downstairs?" Raizen echoed.

...But Kori had already pivoted, moving forward