Be the change you want to see in the world.
Alternatively, awaken powers none have seen before and change it by force. Either works.
…one might work slightly better than the other.
Note for the scribes; don't you dare redact my name.
- REDACTED
Excerpt from The Beasts of the Dungeon
REPLACE WITH LINE BREAK p^o^q REPLACE WITH LINE BREAK
The Academy. Marcus breathed in deeply, not quite able to hide how eager he was. Elly hadn't been able to join him—her sad pouting had been delicious—which meant he was only joined by his usual guards, but not even the faceless mages could dampen his enthusiasm.
Yonas had waited until after their meeting to let them join, because apparently the man was dramatic like that. But for now he had a healer, divination mage and elementalist dedicated to his personal protection, and none of the three felt weak. The urge to test them himself came and went.
Later.
The Academy was first, and oh boy, was he looking forward to it. The building rose in the distance, fat and round and seemingly built out of a singular enormous block, and it was bustling with activity. He could taste the magic from where he stood, the runic formations and defenses and all the spells of a thousand mages.
Marcus took it all in, wishing to savor the moment. And since he was standing on a rooftop, dragging his six guards with him because he could, there was no one to interrupt him.
He sighed happily. "This. This is why I love magic."
His guards, mundane and magical, did not respond. That was alright. Yonas understood the mind, and silent, faceless guards that never seemed to die added intimidation to their skillset. Marcus liked to think they were silently quoting theatre plays.
He nodded to himself, grasping the small group and teleporting them downwards.
They appeared some two hundred feet from the Academy's main entrance, a large and imposing set of doors, which he immediately started walking towards. It was busy, as it apparently always was, but he never found himself needing to pause.
Part of that came from the two Royal Guards clearing the way, but that implied that there were actual obstacles. Which there weren't, because soon after he'd appeared, the entire road had fallen silent.
That was another thing about making the Royal Guard so recognizable. Anonymity went out the window.
The Academy doors opened wide when he got close, two rows of its guardsmen flanking it. Which was quadruple the number he'd seen before, in turn meaning that someone had snitched. Elly, most likely. She delighted in spoiling his fun.
At least no one heralded him. That was always awkward. No, instead a trio stood just inside the Academy itself, flanked by yet two more guards.
Expect they weren't guards, even if they were currently guarding people. No, those two wore full sets of plate armor, felt like mages, and almost reeked of enchantments.
The Mage Knights.
"Greetings, your Grace," the center most of the three non-armored people greeted, bowing politely. "Welcome to the Academy."
Marcus smiled at the old scribe. "Gratham. How fares my Council of Three? It's clear to see that you've been busy."
"The Council is eager to greet the Archmage," the left figure responded. He glanced at her, Emma's calm eyes staring back at him. His former Court Mage hadn't changed much, apparently. "I trust that you will be pleased with our progress."
He half turned to the right, almost expecting Domnic to pick up. But Elly's warmage didn't, only straightening when Marcus looked at him. He shrugged, turning back to Gratham. "I've read the reports, but those pale in comparison to a first hand account. I would love a tour."
"Of course, of course," the scribe replied, an easy smile on his face. "There was some talk about shutting down the Academy for exactly that purpose, but I convinced my colleagues that you would much rather see a thriving student body. This way, please."
Marcus stepped inside, ignoring the brief and silent struggle between his Royal Guards and the Mage Knights. The former seemed unwilling to let unknown and highly armed strangers near their King, while the latter proved just as unwilling to abandon their task of protecting the Council.
Domnic turned to them, silently glaring at both groups, but while the Mage Knights shrunk back, the Royal Guards cared little. Marcus rolled his eyes. So much for ignoring them. "Play nice, both of you. I trust that the Council did their due diligence in vetting those that protect them."
Or enhance their presence, as it was, but that was impolite to mention. Domnic appeared pleased at the statement, though Emma's face turned a little colder. Not out of anger, he was fairly sure, but because if something did happen, they would be responsible.
Marcus suppressed a groan. His pure, innocent magic, infected by politics. He was going to bitch about that to Elly later, yes he would.
Gratham was already leading the way onward, so Marcus followed. The scribe indicated the large hallway they entered, artificial light making the shadows dance. "As you have no doubt noticed, the first few floors of the Academy come without natural light. The glow torches provide it, and recent innovation means that they only need to be powered once per day."
"Interesting," Marcus murmured, looking at one with his magical senses. It felt like a basic energy storage formation linked to a light rune, which wasn't so revolutionary, but the energy storage felt basic. Basic enough that even an untrained mage should be able to fill it, provided someone showed them how. "How many do you have?"
The scribe shrugged. "Thousands. Providing power is one of the chores assigned to the recruits. The first floor, in that regard, is mostly used to train people in the basics of magic. It also houses lessons on literacy, history, basic mathematics, self defense and law. The latter of which is more important than some people realize, regardless of the grumbling of our students."
Marcus snorted. Emma pointed upwards, a perfectly polite expression on her face.
"The second, third and fourth floors are reserved for graduation classes. The number of students per teacher dwindles to six, compared to the thirty on the first floor, and more rooms are needed for practical skills. Advanced self defense both magical and mundane, enchanting, healing, summoning, and every other discipline we teach. Upon graduation, each student decides upon their career, assuming that they have the relevant qualifications. Further studies, usually conducted as an apprenticeship, are tailored more to the individual."
Gratham took over smoothly, slowly leading them to the stairs. "The fifth through tenth floors are student housing. Eleven and twelve are the same but for faculty and guests. Thirteen holds dedicated summoning and experimentation chambers, which are more heavily warded than those on the lower floors. We have found that failure, while more frequent with beginners, is often more destructive at the higher tiers of magic. The floor also holds a number of potion labs. Fourteen is for martial practice, with sparring rings, a healing station and armories. The last floor is yours, as agreed upon. The roof is several feet thick, and as with every other outer wall, heavily inscribed with basic but frequent strengthening formations."
"Pardon?" Marcus asked, surprised. "My floor?"
The scribe nodded amiably. "Of course. Half of its space has been left empty so that you can fill it with whatever you require, but it holds extensive facilities. Bedrooms, a small kitchen, storage, sparring chambers, summoning chambers, a potions lab, exercise equipment, horse friendly pathways and more."
"I never requested a personal floor, Gratham."
The old man didn't seem particularly bothered. "Did you not? It was on the official blueprint you yourself signed."
And while there was only one person who could get away with that without getting hanged, the man didn't say who. Neither did he need to. Marcus sighed. Vess had been meddling. Or Elly, but Elly didn't alter blueprints for fun.
"You three better haven't been authorizing large sums of Academy funding on a floor that has been sitting empty for Silent Gods know how many months."
Emma lightly tilted her head. "Of course not, your Grace. A competition was organized by the construction crews, and the winning team volunteered their own time and materials to construct it. I believe it was a part talent contest, part vote based system. The students had great fun observing it, I've been told."
Fucking Hells.
Marcus glanced into one of the passing classrooms to distract himself, finding an older woman lecturing a group of twenty. She held a quarterstaff in hand, a bright dome of power around her body. Whatever she was talking about, the students paid rapt attention.
The next was filled with students taking notes while a man gestured to a board, the next a group of six stood talking with a placid demon, and on and on it went. Marcus stopped paying attention, the scope of things slowly coming into perspective.
He'd ordered them to build an Academy to rival that of the Empire, and while he knew little of the modern institution, this rivalled what he had seen in the School of Life. Mostly in quality, but doubly so in scale.
Of course, he didn't have an entire Empire to draw recruits from. But on the other hand, there wasn't any competition for those recruits either. With him owning—and hadn't that been a poor choice of words?—Duchess Soema, the Loyalists being as loyal as ever, and the Moderates under control thanks to Mitzi, no one else would try to interfere.
Marcus shook his head, seeing that they'd arrived at the stairs. Or more like a stairway, because the thing was massive. Easily big enough for ten people to walk up and down side by side, which was the exact opposite of what one would want in a regular castle.
It was also, he noticed, cramped. "How is the Academy doing on available space?"
"There have been concerns," Emma admitted. "Adding more floors is a possibility, but the cost grows with each addition. Housing especially is at three hundred percent capacity, with many rooms having far more than the intended number of people. We didn't want to presume, but…"
"But I'm the Archmage of Space. I'll see what I can do."
The woman nodded, a brief flash of stress coming and going. She had a talent for administration, he recalled, so he imagined it was part of her duties. "Thank you, your Grace."
"I'm both invested in and will benefit from its success, so no thanks needed," he replied. "The additional space, however much it will turn out to be, will be empty, of course."
"The construction crews will be eager to work."
Marcus hummed, not bothering to challenge that sweeping and probably inaccurate statement. Up the stairs they went, which somehow cleared so quickly his guards didn't even need to do anything, and he ignored the stares with skill born from long practice.
Up and up they went, past kitchen-like rooms filled with smoke and grunting students hitting each other in padded chambers. The latter drew his attention more than the former, since the pair that was fighting was a rather odd sight.
He honestly couldn't remember if he'd ever seen a teenage girl hit an elderly gentleman with a wooden axe, nor the old man warding the attack off with a brief but well-crafted magical shield.
After the first four floors, however, the excitement ended. Neither he nor the Council were all too interested in seeing dormitories, and though the runes embedded into the dedicated summoning chambers were interesting, it wasn't that interesting either.
Just containment runes to keep beings on this plane of existence, paired with concentrated strengthening runes inscribed in a metal cage. A little archaic, but effective. The massive lecturing hall on the fourth floor had been more visually impressive, anyway, seeing as it could sit nearly two hundred souls.
Up they continued, until they got to the fourteenth floor. Which didn't have a way to the fifteenth, at least not like the previous floors. A hundred Academy guards watched them pass, eating and sparring and cleaning armor, until they disappeared into a side hallway.
It looked like it would go nowhere, at least until the passage opened up a bit. Another stairway was there, far smaller than the others, with two guards at the bottom. At the top he spied a door, which appeared to be made out of solid metal. And almost glowed with magic.
Gratham opened it with a nod to the guards, because apparently, it wasn't locked. Not from the outside, at least. Once he was past the threshold he saw that it could be barred from inside, though he honestly wasn't sure what kind of threat could fight all the way up through the entire Academy, but then be powerless against a door.
Because, you know, while the floor of his quarters were enchanted, they weren't enchanted like that.
The space, however, was exactly as advertised. And while it was a huge waste of time, money and more, it was also nice to have an area for just him. And maybe Elly, if she hadn't been especially horrific that specific day.
"Bring me the Academy's schematics," he said, waving to the large table in a side room. "And a list of all the runic enchanters we have, ordered by level of skill and experience. Someone call my apprentices, too, and have them bring plenty of paper. Enlarging a space this expansive will require math. Lots of math."
Ideas were coming now, flooding in as he honed his senses on the building, and he barely noticed his Council of Three quietly doing as he'd requested. Neither did he notice Gratham's almost fond smile, or Emma's pleased grin.
Instead he was far too busy starting a rough sketch of the runes he'd need, especially the additional safeties that would need to be added for a building full of, well, things. Not people, not when it came time to power this formation, but neither did he want to break everything in sight.
His apprentices arrived some time later, though he honestly couldn't say how much, and they brought a list of the Academy's employees with them. He promptly reserved two dozen of the better enchanters. He could have used more to speed up the progress of carving the runes, but he'd need to check everything anyway.
Then, surprisingly, Barcus actually initiated a conversation. "I saw the Mage Knights."
"I did too," Marcus confirmed. So maybe the word 'conversation' was generous. Still. "What do you think of them?"
"Dangerous. Well trained, well equipped, and with something to prove. If their order survives proper combat, which they might not, they will be a great boon."
Always the soldier, even if the man hadn't been that for a while. Marcus hummed. "I agree. I'm sure Elly will know how to best deploy them."
"The Queen knows best."
Marcus nodded lightly, almost seeing the interest on the topic die in the man's eyes. Donna, on the other hand, was almost vibrating with excitement. "I think they're cool. Heralds of battle and war, like in the old stories."
"War is nothing like in the stories," Barcus replied.
Donna rolled her eyes, and Marcus turned back to his papers. Let them bicker. "I know that, thank you very much. I'm just saying that distinctive symbols can rouse morale. And they're mages, too! I wonder how they blend magic and swords? Their armor looks heavy, though. It would be way too annoying to carry around."
Barcus grunted in either agreement or irritation, Marcus wasn't sure. Donna seemed to take it as the former, but he tuned them out. Their work didn't suffer while they talked, not at this stage, and he finally got them to a point of relaxed casualness that he loathed to break.
Hours of good, solid progress passed. Donna interviewed the enchanters, making sure they knew what they were talking about, while Barcus helped Marcus with the calculations. It was nice, relaxing preparation work, made easier by having them around. The exact reason why he took apprentices, that.
But all good things had to end eventually, and he waved them both away to rest. After he did, Marcus turned to a different project, one he didn't quite want anyone knowing about yet. Something… special.
It was a miniaturized Gate. He wasn't sure why he was being secretive about that. Point being, without Vistus it took a long while to build the things, far too long to be usable in the field. And some mental math had told him that the solution was to scale it down, though that only solved the issue of material.
In reality he was stripping away everything but the connection and failsafe layers, which was the most that would fit on its six by four feet frame. And it was a rectangle, this time, because he was feeling adventurous. It would also be unusable by anyone that wasn't him, since the connection had to be maintained by his own mind.
Things would be so, so much easier if he could just do that in spell form. Alas, even the most basic version he'd theorized required nine matrices, four of those being for the connection node.
Regardless, the blueprint for the smaller Gate was much, much simpler than spatially enlarging the Academy, and finished in less than an hour. The stone he requested was delivered promptly, which was good, because it felt rude to take chunks out of the wall.
Imprinting the runes went smoothly too. Smoothness all around.
That last part was mostly thanks to Vistus and his teachings, but hey, the sun had only been down for a few hours when he finished. Marcus hummed and levitated the stones into place, double checking that the formations linked up correctly. He also fused the material together, at least at the edges. It would be rather embarrassing if someone accidentally knocked the whole thing over.
He'd have to build another one to actually use out in the field, of course. But hey, now he would always have access to his room and the Academy as a whole. Them and all the resources, manpower and military might he might ever need.
And if someone wants to use it to invade the place, I wish them luck. These are mine, and nobody—
A knock resounded through the room, making him blink. "Come in."
Marcus turned while they did, finding it to be a sheepish Elly and four Academy guards. She waved.
"They caught me trying to sneak in," she admitted. "Paranoid bunch, they are. I only made it to the eighth floor before they caught me. The cloak really, really helps, though. Did I thank you for making it yet? I should be doing that daily, really. It's awesome."
The leftmost guard cleared her throat, tone cautiously flat. "The Queen is permitted within all areas of the Academy, and 'requested' that we escort her to you, your Grace."
"Stop spoiling my fun," Elly complained, waving them away. The guards fled, doing an admirable job at pretending they weren't. She turned to him and huffed. "Your people need to grow a funny bone. Actually, I'm sure your House of Horrors—"
"The Academy."
"—has a department for that," she finished, glaring at his interruption. "First I need to be dignified around my own soldiers, and now your people are betraying me too. Soon I'll be trapped behind my 'officer Elly' mask for good, and then you'll be sorry."
Marcus petted her on the head. "There there. Come, I made a shiny for you to be distracted by."
She slapped his hand away, and he chose not to comment on the fact that she could have stopped him from ever completing the gesture in the first place. He turned to the door-sized Gate, currently little more than a frame of stacked stones.
"I call it the Mini Gate."
"Lame," she judged. "Not the smoll Gate, to be clear, but the name. How about 'The door through which Marcus can flee like a frightened rabbit'"?
He sighed. "Does someone wish to go flying?"
"You have drugs?" she asked, perking up. "No, wait, of course you do, I saw them making the things downstairs. Is that what this whole 'Academy' thing is about? You're using it to disguise the fact that you're building a drug lab?"
"A what? You mean the potion labs?"
Elly wiggled her hand, like that was supposed to clear things up. "No, a drug lab. You know, a place where a group of people, usually outlaws, make drugs to then sell? You don't have those here?"
"I— I don't think so?"
"Huh. It was a real problem back in Caldir."
Caldir. Not 'home'. Marcus smiled involuntarily, gesturing to the small Gate. "Want me to activate it so you can scare hapless Imperials? I'm pretty sure I can link it to any of the Gates that I've built."
"Oooooh, fuck yes," she replied, grinning. It froze, her eyes narrowing. "Wait, you're happy. Why? What did I say?"
Marcus shrugged, mentally reaching out to his latest creation. "Nothing. Nothing at all."
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