The rest of his css followed in the wake of Professor Mordrane, who was moving like a ossessed, clearly trying to be doh her task quickly so she could return to whatever she was doing before css. Krion followed at the back of the group by himself, but he did not mind. In fact, he mostly ighe students walking in front of him, as he found the sprawling campus of the Imperial Academy far more iing. Still o living here, he was easily distracted by nearly everything he passed as he followed the students in front of him to the Hall of Bonds.
The te m sun cast long shadows over well-worn stohs, and students outside of his own css moved briskly to and from their own csses. All around, the architecture of the Academy loomed — many of them grandiose stone buildings with intricate carvings of Imperial history telling stories across their walls. The sheer scale of it all brought to Krion’s mind what Rome had been like before the war, though here was on a much rger scale.
“This pce is insane,” Krion muttered to himself.
He tirying to take in as much as he could, thinking that it might be useful to have a better uanding of how to navigate campus iure. It was at that point he began to notice it was no longer exclusively first-year ss walking around. Older ss — marked with two or three gold stars on the left side of their chests — strode past with an air of fidehat made Krion feel small in parison. All were apanied by imposing bodyguards who moved with practiced ease, guarding their charges with an unblinking watchfulness.
A pair of older ss, a man and a woman, both human, wandered past the other side of his line of cssmates. Both were wearing the same uniforms as every other s around them, but with three gold stars on their chests. The man had long, dark hair tied ba an eborate knot, and his panion was a striking woman with pale blonde hair, her sharp eyes sing the crowd with a predator’s awareness. But it wasn’t the pair of ss who seized Krion’s attention. It was the bodyguards fnking them.
Behind the man walked a hulking figure dressed in full pte armor, an enormous double-bded axe slung across his back. He was over seveall, his broad shoulders a wall of muscle. Krion couldn’t even tell what race the bodyguard was, as beyond every inch of his body being covered by armor, he also wore a bck iron mask stylized to look like a weeping demon. When that mask shifted in his dire, Krio attention so much more bloodthirsty than when J-65’s mask had examined him just the other day.
At the almost tangible feeling of bloodlust being directed his way, Krion jerked his eyes over to the other bodyguard. Smaller and mile in appearance, she had a vast array of bdes strapped to her leather-armored sides. Green hair framed a face of yellow skin and long, pointed ears. Guessing she was some race of elf, she was stantly sing for threats. When her eyes nded on Krion, he knew what a mouse must feel like when it senses a hawk h over them.
As soon as they arrived, the pair of ss and their intimidating protectors were past and on their way to what looked to be another lecture hall of some sort. Turning his attention back to where he was walking, he was starting to realize just exactly how many bodyguards hovered in the shadows of ss going about their day. No first-years had a, but every s that had been at the Academy lohan one year had them.
They were everywhere.
Some carried obvious ons, others had nothing visible, relying solely on their physical preseo deter potential threats. Some were clearly skilled is of magic, their eyes glowing faintly with are power. ruck fear in him quite so much as the pair that had already passed him, but from what little he could tell, there were more than a few bodyguards around that he wouldn’t want to tah in a fight.
To be fair, however, it wasn’t just the bodyguards that Krion sometimes found intimidating. Some of the students themselves radiated power, as he found out when the line of students before him shifted in a wave to the right before tinuing on after Professor Mordra first, he was not sure why they had shifted as one in that dire.
That was when he saw her.
She stood with a quiet authority, her presence immediately anding attention away from the bodyguard at her back. Her antlers, thid dark, curled back from her head like branches from an aree, each curve a testament to some unique heritage Krion was pletely unfamiliar with. The elegant antlers framed her sharp, angur face, giving her an almal appearance, as if she were a creature of the forest, both beautiful and formidable. Her eyes, a pierg shade of amber, gleamed with a quiet iy, refleg a sharp intelled a hint of something more primal. Her skin was a smooth, dusky bronze, marked with faint symbols that hi strange, perhaps even sacred, rituals. The lines of her body were lithe but strong, her posture unyielding, and the way she carried herself spoke of someone used to being obeyed without question. Her clothing, for all that it was the same uniform Krion himself wore, seemed to atuate her otherworldly appearance, adding to her intimidating presence.
Though her expression remained mostly ral, there was something in the way she shifted in pce — graceful, but with a sense of restrained power — that gave off the impression that she could easily dominate any room with a single word. The students walking before him took pains to look anywhere else but at her, almost as if trying to avoid the gaze of something far older, and more dangerous, than any mere s. Curious despite himself, Krion’s eyes went back to her face as he moved past her.
Her amber eyes were fixed on him.
As he followed in the wake of his css, a voice reached him. Like a soft breeze, it carried with it ahereal quality that seemed to float on the air. It was lilting, melodic, almost like a song carried from some fey nds.
“My, aren’t you a fasating one… Krion.”
Krion froze in the wake of that soft voice sending a chill through him. He spun back around, heedless of how foolish he looked, heart rag. He expected to see her standing where she had been but a moment before, but she and her bodyguard had vanished. It was as if the wind itself had swallowed them, leaving only her voi its wake.
He ched his fists, his mind a storm of frustration and uhis was the sed time this had happened in as many days. Random strangers — people he had never met — knew his name. Hector, he uood. His fellow first-year had bee at the same time in the Amphitheater of Indu, after all. But how did this strange woman know his hin moments of ying eyes on him? The worst part was, he couldn’t even think of a way to get any answers. Even if he could find someone who might be able to help, the atmosphere of intrigue that permeated this campus meant he would be uo trust them or the ahey might give him. That, bined with the tinual cryptic words and knowing looks from other first-years, only deepened his irritation. He wasn’t someone who enjoyed being toyed with, and the lo went on, the more his anger simmered. He just had not realized that until this moment.
The rest of his css, not notig anything about how he had whirled back around to front a s no lohere, simply kept following behind Professor Mordraoward a building that loomed ahead. Trying his best to put the strange experie of his mind, and with it the anger he knew he would have to address at some point, Krion rushed to catch up as his cssmates began making their way into the building that arently the Hall of Bonds.
Stone ns framed the entrance, again decorated with carvings of figures from the Empire’s history. Where other buildings dispyed battles reat figures from the past, however, these ns dispyed something different. Rather than triumphant figures bedecked in armor, or strange creatures fag off with Imperial forces, there were lines of figures wearing uniforms much like the one Krion now wore. Behind and all around them marched a menagerie of beings both humanoid and monstrous. As he drew closer to the open doors of the building, the st student to go inside, he saw that the stances of the figures were clearly protective. Horopriate for the building where his css would be pig out bodyguards.
The interior nearly took his breath away. The Hall of Bonds stretched wide and tall, the walls made of the same polished marble that adorned so many buildings around campus. They glimmered in the light filtering through the high-arched windows. The floors themselves, rather thaone he had expected, were made of dark, glossy wood, their surface refleg beams of light scattered across the floor by elegant, hanging crystal deliers. And then he saw the people, his cssmates, and professor among them.
The atmosphere felt busy, yet trolled. To his right, a long row of cubicles seemed to be set up for ss and bodyguards to speak with attendants or to plete paperwork. They were eerily simir to those held by office buildings ba Earth, but uhose, these cubicles seemed to have a translut gss that could be made opaque for privacy should a s request it. One flicked solid as he was looking at it in fact. Beyond those sitting itendants dressed in dark, formal robes, moved quickly about, their expressions impassive as they dealt with whatever business was assigo them. Sentinels stood motionless along the walls, likely present to dissuade any spats between rival ss.
Krion’s eyes flitted nervously over the area, but before he could take in more details, he heard a k of gsses, and his gaze shifted toward the far side of the hall. There, in the ter, stood a well-appointed bar — glimmering gold and silver fixtures adding a touch of opulent luxury to its already refined aura. Even this early in the day, there were a few ss loungihe bar, their versations filled with ughter and easy camaraderie. They were clearly upper-cssmen, seasoned ss who had been in the Academy for years, and their smug expressions veyed they belohe booths surrounding the bar, soft and plush from what Krion could see, were arranged for fort. Some few of them had ss lounging, idly looking in the dire of the new first-years ing into the Hall of Bonds for the first time. A less charitable part of Krion would say they were sizing up the petition. But then again, based on what he was increasingly learning about the Academy, that robably exactly what they were doing.
Hector came up beside him and poio a hallway on the far side of the wall. “This way. There will be less of a line,” he said, then made his way through the bustling room.
Krion followed, trying not to feel too much like a fish out of water around so many other ss arently knew what they were doing. He could hear fragments of versation as he followed Hector. Ss haggling over tracts, some ughing, others deep iiatioor seemed entirely ued by the air of high society and business around them, a fact that was not lost on him.
They soon passed through an archway and into a smaller, less ornate hallway off the main hall. The mood here was noticeably different — more serious, more intense. Krion saw several groups of third-year ss clustered together along the walls, their faces drawn in tration as they discussed in low tones. What little he had heard befres from a nearby table made him pick up his pace made his blood go cold.
Krion stopped in his tracks as they entered another room. He blinked, processing the sight before him. Several tables were scattered around the lesser hall, each with a group of ss sitting behind them, going over dots with the assistance of attendants. bined with what he had overheard ing into the room, it only took him seds to uand what was happening around him. These ss were bidding on other individuals. It wasn’t just about buying their services either. In a fsh of insight, Krion saw eaegotiation as a s attempting to secure future power, t individuals or whole groups of people uheir trol to do so.
“Are they… bidding on people?” he asked Hector quietly, already knowing the answer.
Hector turo look at him, his expression unreadable. “Yes, they are. It’s ly the most fortable thing to watch, but it’s how it works here.”
Krion swallowed his anger, gng over at a table in disbelief and disgust as a fat s was chug with happiness at a cheap deal for a family of some kind of craftsmen. “How they… How they sell people?”
“It’s not as bad as it sounds,” Hector said, his expression still guarded. “Sometimes it’s just debts that o be paid. Many more of the people who are sold here are willing partits — they’ve sold themselves or their families to gain access to resources, es, or power. For many, that’s how it works when you’re trying to climb the dder of power in the Empire.”
Krion nodded slowly to Hector, but his stomach twisted. He wasn’t sure what he had expected from this pce, but it certainly wasn’t to see the Imperial version of the sve aus he had learned about ba high school oh.
“These people around us are other ss?”
“The vast majority yes, though my cousiiohere are occasional VIPs for more exotic… prizes,” Hector firmed. “The Hall of Bonds was built to ence things like this. But it’s mostly the older students — uppercssmen who’ve been here for several years and have collected enough s and resources to trade them for servants and followers for their pns after graduation. Though some first-years who are especially diligent in their efforts might be able to engage in something like this too.”
Krion was still grappling with the reality of what he was seeing. This pce, one of unimaginable wealth and power, still remained one of deep, entrenched inequalities. The fact that he by ce found himself he top of the pile did not ge his sensitivity to what he was witnessing.
“Let’s move on,” Hectgested after Krion said nothing else. “This part’s not really our yet.”
Passing through the lesser hall brought them to another area. Larger and more imposing than the previous room, the walls were lined with rge, heavy doors that had various numbers on them. Fewer attendants were around, which made sense when Krion saw o the far end open one of the doors to lead what looked to be another first-year ihe door closed behind them.
“From what the attendant I spoke to said, these are the doors to the various Training Halls where we will be given opportuo meet potential bodyguards.” Hectestured towards the doors. “From what they said, we will see some real power being wielded here. This is where ss e to form bonds with those who bee their bodyguards. ”
Krion hough he was still trying to uand. His nerves were still on edge from the previous room they had been in, and the sight of these rooms only intensified that feeling. The idea of walking into one of the rooms was suddenly daunting, and Krion agai a cold sense of realization. This was it. The pce where someone, a plete stranger, would be bound to him as a bodyguard.
“So, what do I do now?” Krion asked, trying to keep his expression even.
“You choose,” Hector shrugged, then began making his way to the door. He called over his shoulder, “Just remember the advice I gave you, and you will do better than many ss seleg their first bodyguard. I will see you ter, or failing that, I will see you in css. Good luck.”
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