The higher class of second-year are out in the public!
The news spread fast.
—I saw that Silas Fulgur in casino. He was calling his game pre-determined—
—Did you check out that temporary vendor opened by the youngest daughter of House Terra? Regardless of the quality, it's a souvenir worth keeping—
News spread from mouth to mouth, throughout the Free Ground of the capital. Some who are more familiar with the curriculum of the higher class simply laughed, thinking that it's already that time of the year. Others, more interested, vowed to check out these intriguing surprises before they were gone.
And above all,
—Isaac Nameless, formerly Valerius—
—F-rank: [Condensation]—
—The one who won against Silas Fulgur, in the central park—
Isaac was the most heated topic of the day. He wasn't someone whom the people considered the most talented, prestigious, or powerful, but he was, for sure, the most interesting, the most unique student among all sixteen of the higher class.
"Apparently, he can mimic [Camouflage] and [Bubble Formation] with [Condensation] of all things."
One young boy, dejected and down in the corner, overheard a talk that went by. He overheard the conversation and perked up in curiosity.
He was eight years old, and he knew this because the woman at the shelter on Caldwell Street had told him so—she had looked at his teeth and his height and said eight, probably eight, and that had been enough. He had no one to confirm it against.
His right arm was held against his chest. He had been holding it this way for three days, since the cart's wheel had gone over it in the lower market. The woman at the shelter had wrapped it in cloth and said she was sorry and that the healer capable of healing him—C-rank: [Healing Touch]—in Order of Acacia charged two silver minimum and she didn't have two copper.
He had five iron.
He had spent one on a piece of bread of lowest quality.
He looked at the direction the conversation had gone, toward the central park area that even the shelter's children knew better than to approach on ordinary days because it belonged to people who had things and he didn't.
An F-rank skill.
He thought about that. He didn't know much about skills except that everyone gains one at the age of eighteen, that they were how people got to be better than other people, that F-rank was the worst one, and that somehow the person with it had beaten the person with the best one.
He stood up.
His arm hurt when he moved but he had learned in three days to move in a way that hurt less—a specific tilt of the shoulder, the right angle of the elbow held against the ribs. He walked toward the central park.
…
By the fourth day, the crowd had experienced what they came for. They thinned somewhat by mid-afternoon.
The performance had been running for hours and the people who had morning errands had eventually remembered their morning errands. What remained was a core of watchers who had decided this was worth their afternoon—a mix of citizens, a handful of merchants who had left their stalls in the hands of apprentices, and a cluster of children who had been standing at the front of every crowd configuration since the first bubble appeared.
Isaac noted the thinning. Noted the children at the front. Noted the demographic of people who were still present, the ones for whom two hours of standing in the same place was a worthwhile expenditure of time, which was its own kind of information about who found the performance worth having.
He was cycling between the mirage and the bubbles, alternating registers to prevent the repetition that diminished returns. The mirage drew the people who wanted to understand something. The bubbles drew the people who wanted to feel something. The gap between those two audiences was smaller than it looked from the outside.
He was forming the fourth bubble of the current cycle when he noticed one boy.
A child at the crowd's edge, slightly separated from the cluster of children at the front, standing with the careful posture of someone who had learned to take up a minimum of space. Right arm held against the chest at an angle that wasn't comfort.
[The Prism] registered it the way it registered everything—fully, without editorial.
Isaac held the fourth bubble for a moment longer than necessary. Let it drift. Watched it clear the crowd's heads and continue upward.
He looked at the boy. He couldn't draw his eyes away.
The way the boy was looking at the bubbles… for some reason, it reminded of himself in the long past, just as lost and broken.
Suddenly, the scene didn't feel right.
People were spectating him in awe and happiness. The boy looked drawn to the bubbles, but his eyes didn't hold that same quality. It held the look of someone who simply came to confirm the information that they had overheard.
Why was the Aetherion Academy training students into soldiers? Why was the Kingdom in a war? It was all to protect its vulnerable citizens under its protection, no?
So why?
For the first time, Isaac questioned.
Why must this boy…
He paused. He realized that he wasn't really talking about the boy, but the way his past self has been treated.
His eyes hovered over the boy's arm. The crowd wondered in confusion, of why he stopped the performance.
He looked at the pile of coins which he collected over days. It was no longer under a handkerchief, but in a large basket of its own.
He made a decision.
Forming a bubble, he released it to the air. Between the bubble's release and the crowd's collective tracking of it upward, when everyone's eyes had followed the bubble and nobody was watching him, he stepped through it.
The boy heard his approach and looked up. His expression moved through surprise and into the specific wariness of someone who had learned that adult attention had variable outcomes.
Isaac crouched. The bird on his shoulder adjusted its footing without complaint.
"What happened to your arm?" he said.
The boy looked at his arm. Then at Isaac. "Cart," he said.
"For how long?"
The boy blinked. Reluctantly, he answered, "Three days."
"You've seemed to have found the position that hurts least, but that isn't enough." Isaac looked at the angle of the elbow, the tilt of the shoulder. "A healer should look at it."
"Two silver," the boy said. The flat delivery of someone who had already done the arithmetic and arrived at an answer they couldn't change. "I only have three iron left. A thousand iron is worth one copper, and a thousand copper is worth one silver."
Isaac had to resist an urge to frown. He was furious upon hearing the boy.
Two silver?
It was a ridiculous price. From his knowledge, treatment of this degree shouldn't be more than three copper at maximum. Clearly, the healer had no interest in treating the boy.
Isaac looked at him for a moment.
His first thought was Elara.
She was a healer. B-rank: [Healing Bloom]—the result that had opened institutional doors, that half the combat class was currently trying to orbit. She would look at the arm and know what to do and she would do it without being asked twice because that was who she was.
He looked at the boy. At the arm held against the chest.
Connections, Maren had said. Friends are connections.
He didn't know what the repercussion of violating the rule looked like. Disqualification, possibly. A failing mark on an assessment that had a prize attached. He didn't know the specific weight of the consequence and he wasn't going to find out by testing it.
He thought for another moment.
Must I come "first" in this assignment?
The answer was no. Isaac had a calculated deduction that the "priority selection" mentioned by Maren wasn't that significant; that the true reward of this assignment was the authorized possession of the money that students accumulated throughout the week.
Then he looked toward the Order of Acacia's temple, visible from the central park's eastern edge—the white stone of the World Tree's institutional presence in the capital, the organization that had sided with the First King before the revolution concluded and had been the kingdom's theological authority since.
They had healers.
Every temple of the Order had healers, because the World Tree's measurement system assigned skill ranks and the Order interpreted what those ranks meant, which included the healing skills that the institution had always attracted practitioners of.
He looked at the boy. "Can you walk?"
The boy nodded, warily.
"Come with me."
…
The Order of Acacia's temple on the Free Ground's eastern edge was a different register from the Academy.
Frankly, it looked older than anything in the capital, but at the same time had a classy, sophisticated touch to its design.
The entrance hall carried incense and the ambient quality of a space that had been used for ceremony long enough that the ceremony had become part of the air.
The healer who received them in the anteroom was a man of middle age with the composed bearing of someone who had been in institutional service long enough to have developed opinions about who deserved to be in front of him.
His eyes moved across Isaac—the Academy uniform, the higher class designation visible in the cut of it, the mana-bird still on his shoulder—and then to the boy beside him with the arm held against his chest and the overall appearance of someone who had not eaten well in several days.
The healer's expression turned cold upon the registration of the nature of his visitors.
"The temple provides healing services to registered citizens," he said, stoically. "Standard assessment fee is one copper. Additional treatment costs are determined after examination."
"I'm aware," Isaac said.
He reached into his pocket and took out the pouch. Set it on the anteroom's intake counter with both hands.
"There are approximately two silver here," he said. "The accumulated earnings of the past four days. I am paying in full, in advance, for whatever treatment this child requires."
The healer looked at the pouch. At Isaac. At the boy. Then, at the mana-bird on Isaac's shoulder, which was recording all of it with the patient attention of its function.
Master Andrias. A-rank: [Mana Mimicry].
He looked at the pouch again.
Two silver in advance, placed publicly, in front of the recording construct of the Academy's assessment infrastructure, by the student whose name had been on every broadcast in the capital two weeks ago. The student who had beaten Silas Fulgur.
The healer's contempt was real. Isaac could read it in the set of his jaw, the specific quality of someone who had organized his understanding of the world around categories of worth and was being asked to apply his skill to someone who didn't fit the category he reserved it for. It was present and genuine.
"…"
It was also, in front of two silver and a mana-bird and a name the capital still recognized, insufficient to act on.
The healer picked up the pouch, rather reluctantly.
"Follow me," he finally said.
…
The treatment took less than an hour. C-rank: [Healing Touch]—a grade lower than Elara's B-rank: [Healing Bloom]—addressed the fracture with the focused efficiency of someone performing a function they had performed many times and did not particularly enjoy performing on this specific patient.
The boy sat on the treatment table with the stillness of someone who had been told to hold still and had decided that holding still was within his available options. He watched the healer's hands with the specific attention of someone encountering something they had never had occasion to encounter before.
When it was done, the healer left without speaking to either of them.
Isaac looked at the boy's arm, which no longer had the sickly, abnormal quality it had just before.
"Does it hurt?" Isaac asked.
The boy moved the arm. Carefully. Then with more confidence. "No," he said, as if the absence of pain was information he needed a moment to verify.
He looked at his arm. Then at Isaac.
"I'm Axen," he said.
The way he said it had the specific quality of someone offering the only thing they had available to offer—the name, because the name was all that was left after the pouch had been placed on the counter and the treatment had been completed and the debt had been settled in a currency Axen had no way to match.
Isaac looked at him.
"Isaac," he said.
"…Why?"
Axen looked at him with the expression of someone who genuinely couldn't understand.
"Because I wanted to."
The four days of progression was gone. He could continue on with the performance in the central park, and probably will, but the amount he spent in this occasion won't be restored.
He didn't care. It hadn't bothered him from the moment the decision was made. The life of this child was infinite times more important than whatever the assignment was. The fact that he won't be disqualified was all that he needed.
"And here." Reaching his pocket, Isaac revealed another silver coin—one that he kept it hidden from the healer. Placed it on Axen's palm. "Use it wisely."
"This is… but…"
Axen looked at him.
"I wish I could have done more for you," Said Isaac, truthfully, "I am sorry that this is all that I can do. But still—"
I believe in you, Isaac.
"Don't give up. Survive. To ones like us… the only available option is to keep trying until you make a breakthrough."
Isaac had his mother. This boy named Axen had none.
He knew that hope was cruel. It was the factor that still made him try his hardest to survive in the Academy, without a clear purpose in his mind.
He wasn't a good person. He was doing this out of his own selfishness. He wanted to give Axen the same hope that he received from his mother.
He hoped his message reached Axen.