Four continents: Begonia, Horacevalgor, Faux Point, and Amalga. Each continent is home to seven tribes that lead the world and the many clans that make up the smaller towns. The tribes of Heartsease, Halo, and Noctua settled in Begonia. Adoptore procured all of Faux Point, and Amalga is home to the tribes of Nemesis, Davar, and Marmor. The fourth continent is not settled in the traditional sense, but Nemesis has staked their claim—the continent housing the prison they built.

  All the tribes work together to govern the people, each having a specialty.

  Heartsease is charitable, Halo is the tribe of healers, Noctua’s people are engineers, Adoptore is artistic, Nemesis maintains justice, Marmor acts as a hired hand, and then there is Davar.

  Davar is by far the most sociable regarding the tribes, for they are the scholars—the record keepers of every written word, holders of artifacts and relics, and adventurers searching for new knowledge. People come to them when wanting to learn, for Davar is also the tribe of teachers—they keep to their tribe’s inscription—“He who is The Word gave us knowledge so that we may pass it on to the world.”

  Davar keeps this wealth of knowledge within The Cornucopia.

  The Cornucopia stands three stories tall, built from bright white stone bricks that shimmer with an otherworldly glow at dawn and dusk. Its floors feature sleek, polished marble laced with silver streaks that reflect the sunlight pouring through numerous windows by day and the flickering flames of lanterns at night. Its entrance is marked by impressive dark wood doors flanked by spewing water fountains shaped like cupped hands pouring out the water. Running underneath the ground of the building, there are six levels. This grand structure houses the treasures of the tribe of Davar and also acts as a school.

  The attending students are the children of the tribes’ leaders and the heads of prominent clans. They come to The Cornucopia at thirteen years old and stay until the graduation age of seventeen. The third floor of the building acts as their home away from home. Their studies consist of history, mathematics, negotiations, written compositions—rhetorics, music, war tactics, weapons, and so on. The students arrive at The Cornucopia with a purpose—to be molded into future leaders. They walk the halls with their chins held high and their posture poised, acting every bit like the young leaders they are supposed to be. Pride wafts from them, and nothing can break their stride… except if it is a Mountain Badger running between their feet.

  “Stop, you giant weasel!” Cian, a boy fifteen years of age, yells. He is running down the hallway—his robes, the color of violet with white and yellow adorning the edges, billowing around him. His hair, waist-length and off-white, would do the same, except that Cian keeps his hair tied back and out of his face. As his chest heaves in and out from the exertion, his almond-shaped eyes, crimson and the color vibrant against his olive skin, narrow dangerously. He ignores the disgruntled looks cast at him as he pushes through the throng of students milling around the hall. His feet pound against the marble flooring as he attempts to hasten his speed. Cian is no more than five feet from the beast, reaching out with his hands to scoop the creature into his arms, but then it takes a sharp left. As agile as Cian is, the sudden change in direction is enough to knock him off his feet. He collides with the floor, and moments later, another body trips over him.

  Keegan—a boy similar in age, dress, and physical appearance—save for his hair, which is braided, and his taller stature. He had been a step behind him and could not catch himself once Cian fell to the floor. Cian let out an oof as one of Keegan’s elbows dug into his side. “What are you doing!” Keegan scowls. “Get up before that thing runs out of sight!”

  Cian grumbles at the lack of sympathy as he rolls from underneath his brother. “Where’d it go?” Keegan asked, getting up and immediately searching around. There comes a sudden shriek from a female student, and Cian scrambles in the direction of the sound. He hops as he runs, hoping for a better view of the runaway badger. Some ways down the hall, Cian spots the badger, and his heart plummets into his stomach when he sees it has entered the lift.

  The Cornucopia has several stairwells to reach the second and third floors, but it only has one lift—a contraption of levers and pulleys that commands a large platform to ascend or descend a vertical shaft. To reach the bottom levels, a person must use the lift—there is no other way. Now, the badger has commandeered it, and what is worse is that someone from one of the bottom levels has called down the lift.

  Cian dives forward, his hand grabbing the lever on the wall next to the lift. He pulls it down, hoping to bring the lift back up, but sticks his head into the shaft when it fails. Below him, the lift continues downward, and he’s unable to see where it stops because his hair is pulled hard enough that he thinks his scalp will come off. “Rule number twelve!” Keegan begins in a repremanding tone. “Don’t put any limb into the shaft! Do you want to be decapitated?”

  Cian breaks free from Keegan’s grasp and rubs the back of his head. He scowls at the other boy, who in turn scowls right back. “Rule number two. Pets are allowed inside The Cornucopia, but they must be trained and accompanied by their masters at all times. And they’re to remain above ground. You best pray that the badger goes to level one or, at worst, level two. Any deeper, and this time, Grandmaster Edwin will send you home.”

  Cian rolls his head back and sighs. There are many, many rules at The Cornucopia, and Cian does not intentionally disregard them. This instance did not count since the Mountain Badger had been caged—his mistake is that he forgot to lock that cage. Not that Cian is worried.

  The tribe of Davar occupies two settlements on Amalga—The Cornucopia and Rai Sage. The Cornucopia is where the tribe’s patriarch resides, as well as their soldiers, teachers, and other high officials. The rest of their people reside in Rai Sage—one of three large cities on the continent. Since The Cornucopia also acts as a bordering home for the attending students, the first underground level acts as the housing for the Davarnians. Then, after that comes the second level, which is the library. The first and second levels are the largest and are structured to be circular. Following them are levels three to six, their size descending. Level three is for historical artifacts and writings pertaining to each tribe and more notable clans. Level four is for original compositions whose duplicates are in the library and for the first biblical scriptures. Level five is unknown, but Level six is said to be a vault for the evils of the Five Founders.

  The last four levels are inaccessible without permission, and Cian has heard that once you descend to them, the lift cannot be used to come back up. He is unsure how the Davarnians return to the surface from those levels, but he never felt inclined to investigate. This knowledge soothes him—especially when the lift returns with two students, first years by the looks of them. “You exaggerate, Keegan,” Cian says with new optimism. He grabs Keegan by the arm and pulls him onto the lift. He then pulls the lever for the library.

  When the lift stops, it does so in the center of a circular room on level two. The shaft is designed so that three walls close around the lift, leaving an opening where the fourth wall would be. So when Cian and Keegan arrive at level two, they can only look directly ahead of them and cannot see the commotion they hear coming behind them. They quickly leave the lift and dart around the side to see startled-looking students.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  “Was that a dog?” one boy asked, picking up a book he must have dropped.

  “It’s a bear cub! Why is there a cub loose?” another student cries out from somewhere amongst the many bookshelves,

  “I guess we follow the sounds of discord,” Cian said, leading the way through the sea of books. It is easy to follow the trail of the badger, even without the shouts from students, due to the scampering mess the badger left behind. The library is known to be well kept—one of the rules being to put a book back in the same place it was taken from and to discard any rubbish seen. To see any books lying on the ground or papers skewed everywhere meant the badger had come through and surprised a student enough to cause them to drop whatever they were holding. The trail is a long-winded one, but Cian’s perseverance bears fruit.

  Cian and Keegan were running straight down the line between two bookshelves when they neared the end, and something skittered past them. It was a dark-furred quadrupedal creature with a patch of light gray on its back that ran from its blunt snout to its short tail, long sloth-like limbs, and curved claws. Cian almost fell when he turned sharply to the right—the boy managed to catch himself on the side of the nearest bookshelf as he used it to push himself forward. “Come here, you pesky weasel!” Cian shouts at the badger, extending his arms toward it to capture it.

  Four feet.

  Two feet.

  The boy is one foot away from his prize, but then the creature does a peculiar thing—it jumps up, and Cian has little time to comprehend that Keegan is yelling at him to stop. It all makes sense when Cian lifts his head. He trips over himself as he aborts his pursuit, stopping just before barreling into Wukong.

  Davar’s patriarch sired three sons—a set of twins who are the elders at thirty and his younger son at fifteen. Wukong was adorned in white robes with splashes of violet at the bottom and soft yellow along the shoulders. His hair is straight, free-flowing at waist length, off-white in color, and tousled in a way that makes it look effortlessly disheveled—as if he just woke up, which could be the case with Wukong. He is taller than Cian—his posture makes him look like a statue—and his porcelain-colored skin adds to the effect, but the dusting of red on his cheeks maintains he is alive. Wukong was also looking down at him—his eyes, hawk-like in shape and crimson in color, appearing disinterested—and the dark half-crescents under his eyes were as pronounced as they always were.

  “Pets are not allowed within the library,” Wukong said, his voice apathetic and tired. “That is rule two.”

  Cian waited a moment, intending to see if Wukong would offer him a helping hand. Wukong stared at him, adjusting the badger in his arms to a more comfortable position. His aloof attitude does little to dissuade Cian as he gets to his feet, a broad smile taking over his features. “It hadn’t been my intention to bring the badger down here, but now that it is and you’re here too—happy birthday, Wukong!”

  “My birthday was three months ago.”

  Before Cian can respond, an arm comes around him, and a hand clamps over his mouth. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell my cousin. It defeats the purpose of giving a gift when it’s late,” Keegan says. Cian lets out an offended noise behind Keegan’s hand, resenting the relation he used. Although not brothers by birth, they were raised together since infancy and have become the essence of siblings. Keegan will only call Cian his cousin whenever Cian does something unfavorable. It is as if calling Cian his cousin helped separate them and keep Keegan’s more respectable reputation from being tainted—a futile endeavor as Keegan allows himself to follow Cian anyway. “But you have the gift now, and the badger appears to like you. We’ll be on our way so you two can get better acquainted.”

  Keegan starts to pull Cian away with him, but Cian struggles. He is unappreciative of how the whole situation has portrayed him. As much as he and Wukong appeared to be rivals, Cian saw him as his closest friend, even if Wukong would denounce such a proclamation. The badger had been planned as a gift months before Wukong’s birthday. The issue was how long a kit took to wean off its mother’s milk. This kit was not ready until the week prior, and then Cian had to wait today for the breeder to meet with him in Rai Sage.

  To stop his brother from moving them further, Cian does the only thing that comes to mind—licking Keegan’s palm. Keegan shoves him away in genuine outrage and desperately wipes his hand on his robes. “This is why the grandmaster thinks you’re childish!”

  “I would not say childish, as even a toddler behaves better.”

  Cian whips around at the familiar voice and the absolute last voice he wants to hear. Standing behind Keegan is a man with similar features to Wukong and clothed similarly, although his robes are more form-fitting with a starched collar and authoritative make to them. Grandmaster Edwin’s ashen gray, waist-length hair is tied into a bun at the top, the excess hair cascading behind him. A golden metal band, in the shape of a flower and stem, sits at his hairline to catch loose strands that would threaten to cover his face. At the moment, his face is set into a stern expression, his jaw tight and his crimson eyes flashing something dangerous. Both arms are behind his back, and it is purposeful that he is standing tall, towering over Cian and Keegan.

  “I had been told two students were witnessed chasing after a loose animal in the hallways of The Cornucopia and that the animal found its way onto the lift,” Edwin said. “I did not need to ask the students' names because I already knew it was you, Cian, and if you are involved, then Keegan is not far behind.”

  Keegan hunched into himself at the accusatory words from the grandmaster, and he glowered at Cian. His display is not a new one, so Cian dismisses it. He had repeatedly told Keegan that he never had to join him in his escapades. The fact that he does says more about him, in Cian’s opinion.

  “I imagine that is the animal in question. I thank you, young nephew, for capturing it.” Edwin said, nodding his head at Wukong.

  “Not to contradict you, Grandmaster, but Wukong hadn’t captured the badger—he accepted it,” Cian attempted to explain. He ignored Keegan's pleading look and continued. “The badger is a birthday present from myself and Keegan.”

  “His birthday had already passed,” Edwin says, raising an eyebrow.

  Cian had to hold back a sigh. He could not understand why the two Davarnians kept focusing on the more trivial facts. “That doesn’t make it any less of a present.”

  “You are a fool,” Wukong spoke offhandedly. Cian looked behind him and noted how the other was stroking the top of the badger's head. “If you don’t like your birthday present, I’m fine with finding it a new home.”

  As Cian thought, Wukong narrowed his eyes at him, holding the badger closer against his chest—the badger grumbling happily. “See?” Cian said, turning his attention back to Grandmaster Edwin. “We were merely transporting the badger to Wukong. Our methods were just unorthodox and terrible. I’d consider this a great learning experience, and I can tell you we won’t have this happen again.”

  In a relatively confident, albeit daft move, Cian linked his left arm with Keegan’s and went to walk around the grandmaster. Too many times, he has been involved in these kinds of situations and knows the best course of action is to scamper away as fast as he can. The quicker they were out of the grandmaster’s line of sight—the better their odds were of not getting punished—his plan crumbles when Grandmaster Edwin puts out an arm to stop them from escaping.

  “You are to write a five-thousand-word essay on the one who established the rules of The Cornucopia—Mistress Avery, and I expect you to include a section explaining the importance of the rules.”

  Cian gives the grandmaster a strained smile as his good mood deflates. “Of course, Grandmaster…”