Chapter 17: Chapter 17: Some Preparation Required

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Some Preparation Required

---

 

I jotted down the phrase ‘Memento Mori’ in a note and then slipped it into Divah’s journal for later because I didn’t have time to figure out this new mystery right now. I wouldn’t even know where to begin, which was fine, because, as Divah often claimed, “Of the few things that cannot long be hidden, truth is the most insistent of them all, kiddo.”

“When you’re ready to learn the truth, the Norns will guide you, but not before,” Divah had once promised me when I’d asked her about Extra Life. “So, stop fretting, and just practice the damn sword dance already, you little procrastinator!”

Yep, my master was wise beyond her years. But maybe not as ‘beyond’ as Divah would care to admit. She was nearly a hundred now.

Anyway, Faustus’s cryptic phrase would have to wait as I was easily distracted by new developments.

A will o’ wisp arrived in class to inform us that Beginner Professions was canceled today because Master Barad was away on business for the Academy. In a hollow voice, the floating ball of blue fire also asked us to “Wait here for more details on the schedule change.”

Yep, the ghostly flames that traversed the mortal and deathly planes were little more than couriers for the Academy’s masters.

As for missing my first Beginner Professions, I didn’t mind it too much as I had already chosen a support profession for my adventures. Alchemy. Duh. Well, there was one other thing, but I’ll leave that reveal for later on. Still, it would have been nice to see how the other apprentices tackled jobs like blacksmithing and beast taming to see which of them might be worth investing in later on. 

“Is Beginner Professions any good?” I asked Dess.

“Hel yes it is,” she replied enthusiastically. “Baran’s super cool, and every class is a different job so it’s never boring.”

“Wednesday we tried enchanting,” Scaredy Cat chimed in.

He was seated in front of me and Dess. Beside him sat the scrawny infernal boy I’d beaten up in P.E.

“I liked enchanting,” the infernal said in a voice so weak I could barely hear him.

“Monday was Herbalism, and it was so~~o icky,” Tessa the cloud nymph spoke up.

The girl seated next to her, a dwarf with her red hair neatly braided into a crown circling her carrot-top head, guffawed at Tessa’s remark. “A little hard labor might do you some good, princess,” she said in a low, baritone voice.  

“I liked last Friday’s class, remember?” Dess piped up.

“Tattooing.” Brunhilde, who sat at the very front of the class, but had a voice that rang clear across to where I was sitting near the back also added, “I liked it too.”

“As if you could ink someone’s arm with your big, clumsy fingers,” Lohgan mocked.

It would have spelled another fight between the half-giant and the wood elf, but one look at the dökkálfar mistress who just entered the room and everyone shut up instantly. Seats were taken and backs were straightened while all eyes became glued to the front.  

She was tall and lithe, which was typical of dark elves, but her skin was a darker shade of purple than the blue or charcoal gray tones of most dökkálfar.

“Good tidings, Mistress Lorelai,” the novices all said together.

The dökkálfar with long braided silver hair gave the class a curt nod of acknowledgment.

“Wow, when did you guys become so well-behaved,” I teased in Dess’s ear.

She glanced at me with wide eyes and mouthed, ‘Don’t.’

I didn’t understand the warning until I felt the wind pass me by and then saw the tail end of the spear that pierced the floor between my seat and Dess’s.

“Frigid Hel…” My gaze snapped forward and found milky purple irises boring into my eyes while a lopsided smirk played on Mistress Lorelai’s face.

A flash of memory struck me suddenly. A warning Divah had given me before I’d left for the Academy four days ago.

“There’s a dark elf there who’s been in the Academy as long as Dwalinn, and she’s twice as crazy as that drunkard… So, try not to get on Lorelai Lindisfarne’s bad side, kiddo,” Divah had warned.

Ah, crap… I sighed.

“You and I are going to have a lot of fun together. Just like your master and I back in the day,” Mistress Lorelai said, and I could hear the promise of a grueling future in her soft voice.

Mistress Lorelai spent another second giving me a wolf-eyed stare that made mine feel like an amateur’s attempt at the real thing, and then her gaze drifted over to the other novices in class. I watched them all flinch away from her eyes like I should have done. Dumb me.

“You novices are lucky. You get an extra hour of Swords and Sorcery today, and you know what that means.” Mistress Lorelai raised her hand forward. A moment later, her spear—the one that was sticking out halfway off the floor dangerously close to me—pulled itself out of the ground and flew back to her waiting hand. “Prepare your gear, apprentices... we’re heading out!”

I expected groans and quivers, but the mood in the class shifted suddenly and everyone got lively again.

“That’s right. It’s time for a pop quiz.” Mistress Lorelai hefted her spear over her shoulder. “We’re going on a dungeon excursion!” 

---

The sun was high in the sky, but the surrounding area was covered in a light fog. The ground was wet from the rain that had died down when the Academy’s rainbow portal dropped our apprentice class onto Earthly soil.

Yep, I was home.

 It had only been a few days since Divah pushed me into another multicolored portal, but I had to admit that I was feeling nostalgic for that polluted breath of not-so-fresh air you could only get in our world. Honestly, Yggdrasil’s environment was a little too clean for my human lungs to fully acclimate to. My non-human fellow novices didn’t share my sentiments though. A few of them had already started to cough.

“Vargr…” Lohgan began chewing on a stalk of breath leaf to calm his lungs down. “How do humans stand this foulness?”

“This is nothing compared to Nidavellir’s smog,” said the red-headed dwarf girl in the blue cloak who hadn’t been around for P.E. earlier today.

Her crown braids sat atop a head that held a cute childish face one might not normally associate with dwarves as even their females usually had the hardened looks of workers built into them. Not this redhead though. Her features were softer; Thin red eyebrows over big doe brown eyes, a stubby nose between prominent apple cheeks, and puffy red lips above a cleft chin. She was also the tallest of the four dwarves in my class, and not as broad-shouldered as her male counterparts.  

“The smog’s so thick in Mythril City that they’ve become sentient pests our Smithguard have to wipe out every few months,” she explained.

“It’s not that bad.” Dess took in a big gulp of air. “This breezy country air’s refreshing.”

“Where are we anyway?” Scaredy Cat asked.

“We are near an abandoned cemetery in the Irish countryside south of Dublin,” Mistress Lorelai answered.

“Oo~~oh, I’ve never been to Earth before,” Dess whispered to me. “What kind of souvenirs should I—”

“Look alive, novices.” Mistress Lorelai nodded to a figure approaching us from the north. “Our guide’s here.”   

Once he’d arrived in front of us, the tiny, pointy-eared, elf-like creature in the crisp green military uniform took off his green bowler hat and then bowed to Mistress Lorelai.

“Lieutenant Doyle of the Lair Endorsement, Procurement, Reconnaissance, and Observational Command Agency,” he said as an introduction. His accent was a thick Irish one too.

“Hey, it’s a lepre—”

Mistress Lorelai sent a pointed glare at Tessa, causing the frightened cloud nymph’s puffy hair to lose a bit of volume.   

You are reading story Adventure Academy at novel35.com

“For those of you who are unaware”—Her milky purple irises glided over our group—“LEPRCON is responsible for the discovery and management of any dungeons that come into existence within the realmsverse. They provide permits and information for dungeon excursions, act as sherpas, and assist adventurers through the operation of basecamps.”

The tiny LEPRCON officer puffed out his chest.

“Agents such as Lieutenant Doyle provide a lifeline inside dungeons that budding adventurers such as yourselves will sorely need for the trials ahead,” Mistress Lorelai emphasized those last words. “So, give him all the courtesy and respect he is due. Yes?”

“Ma’am,” Lieutenant Doyle winked at Lorelai, “you forgot to mention the—”

“Ah, yes.” Mistress Lorelai turned her gaze back on us. “Any of you interested in LEPRCON’s Future Explorers Retreat?”

More than a few hands went up. Dess included. Lieutenant Doyle began counting these hands. He smiled once that number had gone past ten.

I didn’t know what a future explorer’s retreat was about but it did have the word ‘explorer’ in it and that was enough for me to raise my hand too. Like Divah often says, “Never fail to heed the call of adventure when it passes you by.”

“Don’t forget to sign up with Lieutenant Doyle at the end of the excursion or you’ll miss out on a week-long trip away from campus,” Mistress Lorelai instructed. She let us cheer over this piece of interesting news before urging us onward. “Now, shall we move on?”

Lieutenant Doyle led our group on a short walk along a vibrant field of grass and straight into a miasma-ridden portion of the area that was like walking out of a sunny family sitcom and into a freaking horror movie.

The contrast of the verdant scenery behind us with the dead earth in front of us wasn’t lost on me, and the nervous whispers around me were proof enough that I wasn’t alone in sensing the strange shift into creepy land.

We walked onward; through dead earth and cracked stones until we arrived at the base camp that LEPRCON had set up in advance.

Inside a hastily constructed iron fence were a group of matching white tents. Banners sporting the colors and symbols of the Academy’s three schools—the blue raven, green wolf, and red bear—soared above the tents while a makeshift forge and alchemy station could be found to the right of the camp’s entrance. Adult adventurers not affiliated with the Academy and other LEPRCON officers milled about, filling camp with a lively presence that helped to beat back the gloom of the surroundings beyond the camp’s fence.

“Vargr! Why are they here?” Lohgan complained.

“To show us up again, naturally,” the satyr sighed.

Gathered around a nearby campfire were other novices of the Academy. Among them were people I recognized; Zen, the brothers Grimm, and Liara Lockwood. I had been wondering what Liara was up to today, and it turned out she’d been preparing for the same dungeon excursion we got roped into. What a small world.

“We’ll be joined by a journeyman class for this excursion, which should give you an inkling of how important this quest will be for your grades,” Mistress Lorelai explained.

“Um, you haven’t given us any quest details yet, ma’am,” Scaredy Cat piped up.

“You’ll receive instructions after you’ve prepared, Bartholomew Rosé.” Mistress Lorelai jerked a thumb at the line of tents. “Go gear up, apprentices. We’re burning daylight here.”

“Fancy seeing you here,” I said as I walked over to Liara and my other tower mates.

What I didn’t realize until now was how little the apprentice and journeyman novices interacted, because not only did I get annoyed looks from the group of journeymen around Liara, but even my fellow apprentices who passed me by seemed irked by my overt friendliness with the she-elf.

“Ass kisser,” I heard Lohgan whisper as he bumped his shoulder against mine. The satyr had a less confrontational reaction, but his words were no less as harsh. “Veslingr.”

I would have growled back at them for calling me names but one of Liara’s journeyman classmates, the elf I’d met on my first day on campus—I think his name was Anal—came right up to my face and told me to, “Get lost, human. We don’t want your breed polluting our air.”

I would have loved to counter this fool with a fact check, but Liara beat me to it. “You’re on Earth, Einarr,” she pointed out. “They’re all humans here.”

“So that’s why it stinks so badly,” Einarr replied derisively, earning him chuckles from some of the non-humans in his group, while the few humans among the journeyman novices glared daggers at Einarr’s back. Not that he cared. His focus was fixed on Liara now. “This is your mother’s home as well, isn’t it, half-breed?”

Liara’s eyes narrowed, but she said nothing.

“I can smell her stink on you too, you know.” Einarr’s nose wrinkled in disgust. “Perhaps you should take another shower. Not that the taint will ever go away no matter how hard you try to scrub it off.”

“You pompous vámr!” Liara snapped.

She would have socked the loathsome bright elf on the jaw with her fist if I hadn’t grabbed her arm and pulled Liara away right then.

No, I wasn’t scared of ‘Anal’ or those non-humans rising from their seats to back him up. But, from the corner of my eye, I noticed Mistress Lorelai’s gaze turned on us, and I had a feeling she would somehow blame me for any fight that broke out before the excursion began. She wouldn’t be wrong too. So, to avoid being impaled by that crazy dökkálfar’s spear, I chose to extricate myself and Liara away from trouble, which I liked to think meant I was growing as a person.

“Yeah, go run away with your little human friend!” Einarr yelled after us. “Fleeing’s all you’re good for, half-breed!”

A spear struck the ground mere inches from Einarr’s feet, causing him to let out a high-pitched screech that made him the butt of his class’s laughter, and it was quite cathartic to watch the arrogant bright elf get knocked down a peg.

“Saw that coming a mile away,” I chuckled.

Liara said nothing, but the smirk growing on her lips was enough of a response.

Meanwhile, Zen, who’d been glaring daggers at Einarr during his show of narrow-mindedness, gave me a grateful nod as Liara and I passed him and the others on our way into one of the camp’s empty tents.

“Go get dressed. I’ll wait out here,” she said as we arrived outside a free tent; a weathered-looking one with a single flap opening.

“It’s nothing you haven’t seen before,” I reasoned.

Liara blushed. “Get going, idiot.”

With a chuckle, I walked into the tent that was about the size of a cubicle. It’s where I flipped open my trusty journal and reread the first of Divah’s teachings on dungeon exploration.

‘Years of experience and study have ingrained a simple truth into my mind; having the right gear will save lives.’

I dropped the heavy satchel and instrument bag I’d brought with me from the tower on the table and began sifting through their contents.

“Wish Divah got me a bag of holding for my send-off. It’d be easier than lugging all this gear around all the time,” I sighed.

I was quick to replace my apprentice robes for my Under Armory lightweight scale mail. Its vest may not have been as stretchy as the robes, but it provided better protection, and it was a better fit underneath my blue aviator jacket too. I also put on breathable brown slacks—chaffing resistant and sweat-absorbent—and then traded in the apprentice boots for my white sneaks—style, comfort, and buffs in one sleek package. My leather utility belt came next, and then I put on my blue cloak even though I knew it might not mesh with my fighting style. The cloak was an Academy requirement, however, so I would just have to make due.

“What else do I need?” I asked myself. “Oh, yeah, these should do!”

Mages didn’t wear a lot of armor because a variety of leather and metal could adversely affect one’s spells, but I wasn’t just a mage and I needed my scale mail for those close-up fights. Still, as an added protection, I also put on two bronze wristbands imbued with my preferred combination of protection spells; low-yield arcane shields supplemented by the ‘Algiz’ rune.

I was making sure my satchel was full of things I might need, like my alchemy kit and spare flashlight, when the flap to the tent opened and Liara walked through it.

She was dressed in the same sleeveless, light brown leather vest and pants she wore when we first met, but her boots were the new brown high-cut ‘Nyke Explorers V’ I’d seen in recent Amazonian ads. A fanny pack and scroll holster hung from the thick leather belt around her waist but her sword and scabbard were nowhere in sight. I assumed she’d kept them in the instrument bag she had slung over her shoulders with her satchel.

“Those boots look groovy,” I whistled.

“Groovy isn’t the word I would use to describe these babies,” Liara grinned as she clicked her heels together. Then her eyes fell on the two bags on the table. “Aren’t you ready yet?”

“Almost.” I glanced at the top of her head and noticed that something was missing. “Where’s your grimoire?”

Liara tapped at her brow and disrupted the ‘chameleon’ enchantment she’d placed on her Ice Crown. “I’m not ready to show it off in public yet. You?”

“Same.” I patted the collar of my vest before I slung my satchel and instrument bag over my shoulders. “Alright, I’m ready. Let’s go explore a dungeon.”