Chapter 21 - Anima and the Lost Prospect (Training arc)

　　The scholar`s hall was nothing like the term implied—it was barely a hall, this dimly lit alcove, the same ghostly shade of green pervading. And no scholars either, none worthy of the name. Only goblins.

　　Of course, there was nothing else the prince had envisioned.

　　Still, he was disappointed.

　　"Sit that green butt down, latecomer," said the stern-eyed schoolteacher to the prince, sliding the lattice-panelled door back shut behind him. The errand-boy lorekeeper gave a deep bow, pushed the prince on the shoulder, shoving him slightly aside so that even in submission his arrogance shone through—commanding the attention of all in attendance.

　　It was so sad a sight that despite the slight, Cedric could not summon strong sentiments... save perhaps for a second-hand shame at the man`s abasement. Ah, but there it was, his contempt deepening further still—the prince did not like to receive his feelings pre-owned.

　　The prince took his seat beside the others, a dozen or so in total sitting in single pew formation—small-framed scholars mostly, starters like him or older. But rookies still. Then two or three who looked more like the lorekeeper—slender and somehow shrivelled, green skin and bone... atrophied almost, like their muscle had gone from mental rigour.

　　"Six," said the teacher in a firm voice, and a meek little figure to Cedric`s side drew himself up, sat suddenly straight though his posture did not exude confidence. "Start reading where seven left off," the teacher added, swivelling a long pointing stick toward the wooden letterboard at the front of the class.

　　"The mon... is nejit..." six uttered in jarringly broken goblinspeak.

　　The teacher sighed. "Hands on your knees—I swear your wits dwindle more and more by the day... impressive almost." With a swift, resounding snap, the stick came cracking down, whipping a deeper mark still on six` blood-torn hands—the latter having tearfully obliged to rest them on his quaking knees.

　　"Latecomer," said the teacher then, turning his wilted worn self toward the prince—the man looked like the captain so old, lines of a goblin-grown strain showing hard on the thinning green of him, his skin grown a dry shade of yellow. Still, he was a second-grade someone, Cedric reckoned—the long flowing robe draped drowning around him, so still-faced his countenance with only the eyes, the harmful hurt eyes speaking. "Continue. Show us the kind of Blackrose you are."

　　Staring straight at the swirling mess of text, the prince knew nothing at all familiar in this cold and crass writing—what horrid foreign tongue would they have him study?

　　The lorekeeper gave a snicker at Cedric`s silence, a long-stretched void that saw the teacher ready his stick for striking...

　　But then the whirls flowed on into words and it was worse than silence. Here was the olden script laid out before him—the soft soothing sounds he had learned as a boy. Where had it gone, his love for Lothrian, the frills and curls of so noble a script. It was hideous to him now, the language of his land. Distant like his own forgotten heart.

　　"The moon is of night," intoned the prince then, though the words rang dead and hollow, "as the sun is of day, a ceaseless cycle, guiding yet indifferent." They were the words of Calidor II, hightower archmage from the time before, when wildkin magi roamed and the land was not yet Lothrian but Lothunc and Rhianmere—the two-hearted nation torn iron-clast into division, broken and fragmented. Until Rodrich made the world seem whole.

　　All whipped their heads in cold hard fear or consternation—this newcomer here had just outdone them, flawless and fluent, in deduction, in his diction.

　　"Not as dumb as I predicted," said the teacher...

　　But Cedric was not done, enamoured now by the awe-struck expressions that fuelled something soulful inside, his princely core that was not a heart nor strictly soul but more central still—that deep-seated part of him; it revelled in standing and superiority.

　　"The moon is of night as the sun is of day," the prince repeated, "a ceaseless cycle, guiding yet indifferent..." Then the interlude, eyeing the errand-boy lorekeeper who had vexed him so—it was a childlike tour de force the prince was flaunting; this he knew, and it changed nothing. The knowing. "In its cold luminescence," the prince went on, "I see the ebb of magic, a tide receding from the shores of the known. So celestial its indifference, canvas to our fleeting wins, our endless woes. Eternal and inevitable—these brash intimations of the divine, immutable in essence. The fault in mortal struggles."

　　The prince had read it all—the opening address of Calidor II`s encyclical called Sapiens Mystica - Wisdom from the Archmage`.

　　Silence reigned, a sense of stupefaction dawning on those witness-made to the precocious powers of this hatchling prince—a Blackrose who had shown true to his heritage, the primus inter pares. Elite amongst elites.

　　The lorekeeper stirred... there is always the one, in the face of rightness, an avowed unbeliever. "Is that all correct, master Grok?"

　　And the teacher, this master Grok, stammered a choice few nothings... but his eyes, they spoke true—there was the hint of reverence shining out now from his look, the upward arch of his brows, yielding to wonder; thin pupils dilating as though in physical surrender—the boy is the master now... the Blackrose bastard who was born in life and in death with everything in favour.

　　"I... don`t know—the third line on and it gets hazy," said master Grok, and it did not seem to harm him to admit; to be bested is a blow only to those mired in self-admiration—take the lorekeeper, the ego bloat on that one... he will seek flaw or fault, and failing that, it`s foul play, so he will say, adducing such from infallible logic, his frail imperfect mind.

　　Grok dashed back to his desk, delving deeply through the drawers... and produced then a timeworn scroll, frilled and frayed at the edges, a red wax seal dangling off it. Like an afterthought. It was the royal red of Rodrich. The first true Blackrose.If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it`s taken without permission from the author. Report it.

　　"There are... elements," said Grok in staggered breath, "that remain to us unclear—the best of our Scriptores have failed to find footing." Fumbling with age or from faltered nerves, he unrolled the scroll, showed it to Cedric. "Can you..." started Grok, but stopped when the prince gave a nod, curt and candid. Yes, he could.

　　It was the Edict of the Crown, founding document of Lothrian—a constitution by proxy, as the elected parliaments of Lothunc and Rhianmere were swiftly dissolved. Rodrich, King of the Blackrose did not need the people`s input; a true sovereign does not rule by shady consensus. But only by his iron will.

　　Shooing six aside, Grok hastily supplied the prince with the proper tools for the job—a fresh sheet of parchment and a feathered quill.

　　"It is most rare..." said Grok, urging the prince on... then pleading when the latter made no vital effort—the teacher standing with palms pressed humbly together, imploring his pupil to take to this fated task. "Lothriana-Goblinica is a hard-wrought path for even the most ardent of scholars to tread. And for a hatchling to retain his insight... that is beyond remarkable, near unprecedented!"

　　The prince took it all in, holding the quill and his thoughts. Not yet committing. Why would he write the words of his noble forebear for these beasts to ponder—had they the right to read them? And had he? No, perhaps not. Not any longer.

　　But what did rights mean to the vicious, or to anyone at all in this brutal cold world?

　　We have what we get and what we take. Rage against the heavens. Where are they now when the light has died?

　　Cedric started writing, thinking with each scratch and stroke of the quill—Gendrin, Gendrin, Gendrin. All of his own breath so that damn rat would not draw another. Be dutiful or play the part; then rise up the ranks and ruin him. Gendrin, Gendrin, Gendrin.

　　The Edict was just as he remembered—a treasure of the heartland, even in so pale a copy; the scroll was tattered, the calligraphy second-hand. Like the shame seeping off the lorekeeper and in his own mind. Broken pride, so fell a fragrance.

　　The room went silent and all the long while the teacher stood over him, staring at the prince and at the writing.

　　He had known it all by heart—and now his heart had gone and he knew it still. Rodrich`s legacy was one of the sword, a kingdom forged with the force of iron, the taint of blood. A conquering will found in absolutes alone—it is said the man dined on nothing but plums in summer, horsemeat in winter; the first gave him vigour to withstand, the latter something greater still. It left him hungry, always on the wrong edge of satiety, lusting, drifting for more and ever more. One land was not enough, and so the man took two. And still the great king cared for his people, those he let live, those he let die. So royal a monarch, he strung the noose and not the hangman; all the hard honours Rodrich took to himself, and in so doing, kept his hands clean.

　　The Crown heretofore and henceforth disclaims and attaints the following: ...

　　All the names of the nobles who had wronged him somehow. Three finely penned page-lengths.

　　The prince wrote them all down—from Crisant Abrindeel to Mavis L. Hawle... the bottom of the first page. He knew them all or at least their houses. The ruins that now remained, their side-branches like thistles; you can cut them out but the roots are restless. The old blood never dies.

　　Then the second page, a longhand script to match his own—when did he learn to write goblin?—the fingers of his beastlike hand moving like a memory... no. A forgery.

　　Jerilin Mandrake—that was a name that did not belong. Their line was a young one, taking roost from matriarchal descent, first Marigon then Bellenis... only then came Jerilin, and she had hair as blonde as Gael`s was, young as well and her heart still beating.

　　The scroll was a fake and of recent making.

　　But the prince did not pause—he wrote the name down and then a note to himself, in his mind alone. Why rouse suspicion; let sleeping dogs lie.

　　The prince would find out the greater meaning, the why and why it mattered.

　　He wrote on and the time blurred before him, and... Janil IV Redlent.

　　Another name that did not fit.

　　There was a Janil I and II, but not a III. And certainly not a IV.

　　But the prince carried on.

　　Nothing more struck him as out of place...

　　And for the son the same as the father—Baldirk, son of Feldirk (the latter vaingloriously espoused as the lost king... the former as The Lost Prospect)—will be hanged and buried in two parts, a box for the mind and a box for the body.

　　It caught him hard like hell raining down—the two things sorely out of place.

　　The first:

　　The Lost Prospect—this was not the proper title given to Baldirk the broken. No. The lost hope is what his people called him, those of Lothunc before Lothrian, their faith as misplaced as their tongue. Speravind was the one word in their long-dead lexicon. But with two translations. Hope. Prospect. A dead-on deliberate misinterpretation. Prospect. The thirteenth class for a goblin starter.

　　The second:

　　Baldirk was buried in two parts; this the prince knew. But the additions—a box for the mind and a box for the body—that was not recorded at the official reading of the Edict; the prince had studied the transcripts in his beautiful summer as a scholar proper... the transcripts of at least seven scribes, all verified Doctores of rank and reputation. But with all the talk of boxes, the rookie games, and the arena captain confirming—there is a mind box... surely, the mention here is more than filler. And for the word body`, again the old Lothunc word came to mind. Anima. Again, two translations. Body. Soul.

　　The prince let his mind work as well as his fingers, writing ever on and without blinking, straight until the valediction. And so it is we do declare, by the grace of the forged gods, King Rodrich of the Blackrose.

　　When the work was done he did not ask for permission; the prince simply stood up, walked out. No one dared to breathe, let alone stop him. Grok cradled the new transcript like a mother her babe.

　　Stepping out, the prince tossed his arena plaque—thirty-first would not do.

　　He felt light, not his mind but his body...

　　The buckler. The damn magestone buckler. He had left it in the arena.

　　Hurrying over, he... hesitated. Near the entrance now, the prince heard war—the gridlock-hard clang of metal scraping metal, the grunts and cries. Here was a skirmish or battle, for true and real, weapons meant to maim and not merely mock.

　　The wood and paint that had so disgraced him... could he not now get a true blade for his own? A blade for a prince? It was an afterthought—the buckler came first.

　　His body still safely outside, the prince leaned in and peered in... and straightaway spotted his buckler—thank Godric for that.

　　And he spotted six lean hard second-grade raiders, all fully adult-sized goblins.

　　Though the prince often fancied himself stealthier than a shadow... he must admit that facts do differ. The men—and these were proper tribe-level warrior men—had seen him as well as he had them.

　　"Come, come, rookie," shouted one, the biggest one. He stood over four feet tall, a tower of flesh and bone, wielding—in a one-handed display of boastful force—a bonecrusher-style battleaxe. Not the prince and Artisan and Linaria put together could lift that thing; not as they were.

　　"You want your toy back!" shouted another, a shorter and more compact one—the man seemed like one big overstretched muscle; it did not make sense. He was eyeing the buckler.

　　"Yes, yes, come get eeeeet bahabajaja."

　　And the prince... what does a prince? Would Rodrich have stepped meekly away, vacating his possessions for a stronger man to now own?

　　Or would he rage and rise and TAKE what was OWED.

　　Begone, heavens, we have no need for your pale prayers and final judgment.

　　I answer only to violence.

　　That is what the prince thought, stepping into the arena.