Chapter 82: 82: Underhanded Politics

The room that the faculty met us in was an aging lecture hall, the type that a new class in some obscure subject might be given to use. Five rows of threadbare fold down seats and worn wooden desktops led to a raised stage, where a plastic and steel school table had been set up.

Five people sat at the table, three women and two men, all of them with varying degrees of grey in their hair. They wore tired looking formal clothing, suits for four of them, while one of the women wore a simple black dress. They looked very much the part of university administrators, albeit ones that hadn’t been able to get their clothing repaired in six months.

“Jenna, thank you for bringing them here. We were worried that the ACS might have gotten to you,” the central woman said, leaning forward intently.

“Ah… they did,” Jenna said with an awkward cough. “The newcomers… dealt with them. I highly suggest you don’t piss the one with pink hair off… ma’am.”

“Is that so,” the woman replied slowly, her eyes coming down on me like someone was using their watch face to reflect the sun into my eyes. She had one intense stare, dayum. Then her gaze drifted past me to fall on the obrec, eyes going wide, a gasp escaping her thin lips.

“Ah, right…” Troy chuckled, turning to the obrec. “This is an obrec, an alien to be exact, although we’re all technically aliens on this ring.”

There was a lot of staring by the five people at the table, and a long silence to go along with it. Not that I blamed them, meeting another thinking, feeling being that wasn’t human was a pretty big deal.

“Hello, I am pleased to be meeting you,” the ranger said in his awkward version of english, smiling ruefully. “It is long time since I meet others who have not seen obrec.”

“Ah…” the woman with the stare said, her eyes bugging out. “I imagine we will get to an explanation… at some point. Nice to meet you, uh… Mr Obrec.”

“We met his kind during our adventures,” Troy said, saving us from another awkward silence. “Which, speaking of… Scouting team one, here to report in. At long last.”

“My god!” one of the men blurted, tearing his eyes off the obrec ranger and interrupting any further talk about him. He leaned forward and pushed his large glasses up his face, staring in open astonishment. “It really is you, Troy! My goodness boy, we honestly thought you were dead! I couldn’t believe it when we got word you’d just wandered up to a sentry post!”

Troy’s face broke out into a full-faced genuine smile, eyes crinkling at the sides. “Ayup, that’s me. Sorry it took so long Doctor Richards, we got a little… sidetracked, but I think it was worth it.”

Doctor Richards gave a laugh, one of those full bellied ones that you might expect from a mall Santa. I bet this guy used to be a mall Santa. You know, back when there were malls. Getting a hold of himself, Mall Santa smiled again, saying, “Well, hopefully this little debriefing goes well! I’m most interested in hearing of your adventures!”

“Speaking of that debriefing,” the central woman said with a pointed look in Santa’s direction. She was a little younger than the rest, although that still put her in her fifties or more. She was one of those older women who looked simultaneously in-shape and a little gaunt, the whip-smart english professor vibe.

“Ah, yes… my apologies, please continue,” the older man said, motioning with his hand to her.

Turning to us, the severe woman smiled, or at least attempted to… maybe she was Troy’s mum? “Hello, we are here to represent the faculty council. I am Dr Wilcott, head of the college of law. Dr Richards here is the head of the college of natural sciences.” She then pointed to the other man, a small but spritely old guy with a keen eye, before continuing her introductions down the line. “This is Dr Ruthven, then Dr Ross and Dr Leslie, heads of economics, political science and arts, respectively.”

Troy made eye contact with each as they were introduced, waiting until we were all seated in the front row before sitting down himself. “Good to see you all again. Glad it’s only the five of you and not… well, the rest.”

What did that mean? Was he talking about the CEO and her stooges or the other faculty heads?

“Likewise, Troy,” Dr Wilcott said with a slight smile. “I honestly did not expect to see you again when we sent you out. What little we knew of the outside world at the time was foreboding, and what we have learned since is downright worrisome.”

“It is that, yeah,” he said evenly, leaning back into his chair.

There was a rustle and I heard boots ascending back up the stairs of the lecture hall. Dr Wilcott’s stare turned up to skewer our militia escort. “Jenna, William, please sit as well, if you would,” she said as the two sentries froze where they were. “I’d like you here, thank you.”

“Uh… sure, ma’am,” Jenna replied, sitting uneasily down in a chair beside the male sentry whose name was apparently William.

“Well, I guess we’ll get straight to it then, you must be impatient to get to a good bath and some food?” she asked, her tone rising into a question as she raised an eyebrow.

“Actually ma’am, I expect we’ve had access to nicer facilities than are here at Avonside,” Troy said, giving me a grateful smile.

Dr Wilcott’s eyebrows rose at that, and she leaned forward. “Interesting. I notice that two members of your party are missing… and you have gained two more. Please, give us an overview of your travels. I’d like a full written report later, but lets not waste time on excessive spoken word, the details of which will likely be forgotten.”

“Agreed,” Dr Richards said with an emphatic nod. “I expect if we asked for the whole story, by the time you were done, our faculties would need to find replacement heads!” he finished with another one of his Santa laughs that had me smiling almost involuntarily. Damn infectious laughter.

Dr Leslie, the woman in the dress on the end rolled her eyes and placed a hand to her forehead in exasperation, even as she fought a smile. “I can’t believe I married you. At least I kept my last name.”

“You love it dear,” he grinned in reply, sending a wink down the table at her.

I don’t know what I expected when we finally got to this point, but old person banter and flirting was not it. The silly talk was putting me at ease though. Maybe this would be easier than I’d feared?

“This is why I separated the both of you to opposite ends of the desk,” Dr Wilcott groaned, covering her face with both hands for a moment. Moving before anyone could reply, she slapped them down on the table and gave Troy a look. “Please, a brief version of your travels, if you would, Troy.”

“Well, uh… alright. Here goes. It took us a few weeks to get out of the mountains to start off with, and I had us moving cautiously in case we ran into danger. We didn’t find anything but a bear, which ran off when it saw us. Leaving the mountains had us stumbling into a small town. Avonside is apparently situated within a section of mountain range that is claimed by a nation called the Empire of Ghraiga,” he explained slowly, his eyes moving randomly across the floor as he gathered his thoughts.

“Empire?” Dr Richards asked, his joviality replaced with concern, which was mirrored by a nod from the head of political science.

“Yeah,” Troy agreed. “They have a strange mix of medieval level technology and ah… magical technology.”

“Say that again?” Richards blinked, leaning forward as far as his large stomach would allow.

“We’ll get to that part later, trust me,” the younger man smiled, already looking weary. There was so much to explain, so much that these five people needed to know.

“Let him speak,” Dr Wilcott said quietly.

Troy continued with his explanation after exhaling a long breath, “Okay so, we sold some of the goods we brought from Avonside to get local coin, then bought passage on a barge down a large river. We travelled this way for many weeks, stopping off in various towns in a few different nations and staying to look around for a few days. We had limited success in learning the dominant local language, anve.”

Turning to me, he gave me an almost parental smile, “Then we found Ryn, or rather, we found each other. We were in a city like many others we had visited when Grace spotted someone with a ring she recognised. She and her group of friends apparently all share a ring like this, and she urged us to follow this person and investigate.”

Grace, Adam and I all helpfully raised our hands to show off the rings in question, and the faculty representatives looked on curiously. We were incredibly lucky that Bray had made these things. I shuddered to think of what might have happened without them.

“The woman we followed turned out to be Ryn here, formerly known as the student who disappeared, Elias Belrose,” Troy said, gesturing to me again.

“And just how exactly is that possible?” Dr Wilcott asked, and her skeptical look was shared by her colleagues. Their reaction should have sent my stomach plunging and my heart racing, but it didn’t. Instead, I got excited.

“Magic,” I said, trying not to grin like an idiot. I was going to have so much fun revealing the existence of magic to everyone. “You all know how I disappeared, right? Sucked into a weird fruit in the middle of a bunch of alien looking plants, with a humanoid plant-like alien among them?”

I got a round of hesitant nods from the faculty heads, so I continued. “The fruit was… well, essentially, a reproductive device…”

I went on to give a brief explanation of magic and how it worked, what a mage was and all that stuff. As I spoke, each set of eyebrows opposite me rose and rose, until I thought they were all going to fly off like moths or something.

“This is… quite the tale. I mean, really… part human, part plant?” Dr Richards said finally, clearly not believing me. Of course the sciences guy wouldn’t take me at my word. “It’s preposterous. We already determined that—“

“Do I have your permission for a demonstration?” I asked ignoring him and turning to the woman in charge, excitement rolling through me like thunder.

“Go ahead,” Wilcott said simply, clearly interested now. It was kinda weird how the head of the law college was the most interested in my magic.

With her go ahead, I allowed my plant half to come to the fore. My pale skin turned green and purple, soft and leafy, my hair had vines threaded through it, each one bearing flowers of bright magenta. A few green vines sprouted out of my arms, then wrapped around them, forcing me to take my big coat off in order to let them free. Wish I had control over that.

“Well, here’s the plant part,” I said simply, and with a twist of my wrist I summoned my dark magenta blades. “And here’s magic. These are blades made of solid energy, controlled by my mind. Here…”

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I drifted one to each of the faculty heads, allowing them to drop to the table. “Careful, they’re sharp, but you can pick them up.”

They did so, tenderly of course. Dr Richards had a deep frown on his face, while his wife was smiling, her expression close to joy.

“They’re beautiful,” the head of the arts said, turning the blade over with delicate fingers. “You say this magic is versatile?”

“Very,” I agreed with a smile to match hers. “Here, look.”

With another gesture that I didn’t actually need to do, I used the flower petal spell. Tiny specks of bright energy flickered into existence above them, spinning quickly into delicate blue rose petals that rained down upon the five representatives of the faculty like winter’s first snow.

“Oh my word!” Dr Richards said, a smile breaking through his frown. He wasn’t smiling for the petals though, I could see him staring intently at the formation process, where my spell turned energy into matter, however temporary. What a nerd.

“Ma’am, if I may?” Jenna said, speaking up for the first time since she’d sat down. When she got a nod from her superior, the sentry continued, “She is more than just pretty spells… When we came through the gates, a group of ACS intercepted us with the intention of diverting the scouting team to the CEO. They became belligerent very quickly, but Ryn ah… lifted them into the air with magic and then slammed them into the ground. With them there, she secured them to the ground with what appeared to be vines that she magically grew for the purpose.”

“Yeah…” I nodded awkwardly, feeling my stomach clench up a little with anxiety. Here’s the part that would make them a little less happy about me. “I am essentially a one woman army… it’s honestly a little scary how much power I wield,” I told them truthfully.

“A one woman army with a shield of magic that is near unbreakable,” Troy added pointedly, giving the faculty a long stare.

“I see,” Wilcott, murmured, eyes boring into me with an unreadable expression. “Let us then take a moment to speak about your identity then. Why, exactly, are you a woman now, and how can we be sure that you are Elias Belrose?”

I winced, and I felt Grace’s fingers weave through mine. We shared a look, her eyes full of love and encouragement. Alright, I could do this. I could explain it.

Bolstered, I turned back to the five greying heads that awaited my answer. “I’m a woman because I am transgender. I should never have been a ‘man’” I told them, using air quotes when I said the word that had haunted me for most of my life.

“My mentor suspects that the fruit uh, optimised me, so to speak. When I was being converted into a mage, it must have realised my nature somehow and reconstructed my body to better suit my mind, soul or whatever. As for my identity… I don’t really know how to prove that absolutely. I have the ring, I know all my details that are probably in the system… all that stuff,” I shrugged, sort of helplessly. “I proved it to Grace by using an inside joke that we’d had… and just being me.”

“It’s true,” my girlfriend said from beside me, still holding my hand. “I only knew her for a short time before she was taken, but we were close. She isn’t exactly the same though, she’s happier and more confident now. A lot has happened, but I’ll vouch for her until the end of time and back.”

We waited for long moments after her speech, and my stomach did its best to bury itself in the floor. They had to believe us, they had to!

Finally, and unexpectedly, Dr Wilcott gave us a wry smile, steepling her fingers and leaning back, “That won’t be necessary. I am still being showered in blue flower petals after all. Magic is rather obviously, if confoundingly, real. I expect Dr Richards and his college will have a lot of work ahead of them.”

“Indeed,” Science Santa chuckled, giving me a mock scowl. “You’ve given me quite the headache already.”

“You… believe me?” I blinked, more than a little surprised.

“We do, and I’m sure you’ll continue to prove yourself,” Dr Wilcott said kindly. Her expression changed to one of wry amusement as though a thought had just occurred to her. “From what we have seen and heard of you, the fact that you did not march in and assert control over the whole campus through overwhelming force speaks volumes as to your character, at the very least.”

“Ah… yeah,” I said sheepishly. I felt so strange about having the power of a minor goddess, at least compared to the mere mortals in front of me, people that had once held so much power over me. I didn’t need them at all now. I could leave Avonside and live my life however I wanted, then die of old age in the distant future. I was here because I wanted to help, and because I had friends here.

“Thank you Ryn. We’ll shelve the discussion of you and magic for now, in favour of getting to the end of this report some time before the end of the day,” she said, concluding my role in things and turning to Troy with a gesture that he keep going.

He nodded thanks and began where he left off, which was Fennimore capturing James and the following interaction we’d had with him. Recounting what the awful man had said about his future aspirations and intentions had grey heads huddling and whispering furiously.

There were a lot of questions after that, and both Troy and myself gave them as many details as we could about Fennimore and his cohort of evil. We went over his rise to power, his vicious strike on the obrec and his extermination of rival mage covens. They were particularly horrified when I mentioned his war crimes.

Eventually we moved on from Fennimore, and Troy told them about how we’d decided to travel to Millowhall, which prompted a brief explanation of magitech and then warlocks. When we got to the confrontation with the steel one, Dr Richards grew excited, asking a lot of questions about how it had moved, behaved and looked, before the leader lady cut him off.

Santa’s silence lasted until Troy told them of the ring builder ruin, the old man practically jumping out of his seat with excitement when we mentioned the Umare tech we’d brought with us. He of course went pale and quiet when we described the fate of the Umare, how they had committed mass suicide rather than face some terrible catastrophe. I tried not to react when Troy failed to mention the red nightmare and just how horrifying that catastrophe must have been.

He did talk about what had happened to Grace though, and the problems that had arisen because of that as well as the eventual solution we found with Ollinfer. He also told of the escape from Fennimore’s goons and then our reunion at the inn in Millowhall.

The whole Millowhall saga had them excited, and in the economic’s guy’s case, quiet amusement when I described the chaos I’d caused in the wood market there. Dr Wilcott was the one to interrupt and move things forward again. “You have metals? How much?”

“So much, ma’am,” I grinned. Seeing these old people getting excited at my hard work was a fulfilling thing. Each of us in the order had gone through so much to deliver this news, these sorely needed materials. Seeing it appreciated had me so happy. “Want me to go and get some?”

“Ah… that won’t be—“ I didn’t wait for her to finish, popping into my grove in a flash and rushing for the happy tree. I quickly grabbed a few ingots of various metals with my telekinesis, then teleported back into the lecture hall. “Here!” I said breathlessly, dumping the heavy lumps of metal onto their table with a series of loud thumps.

“Well, isn’t that handy,” Dr Leslie laughed, picking one of them up and promptly dropping it again with a surprised groan when she realised how heavy it was.

Troy had an actual list of what we had, as well as a list of what I could grow, which he produced for them. Watching their eyes widen and widen as they realised just how much we could do for Avonside had me grinning unashamedly. Like, we could give them everything from metal and other raw materials, to coffee and chocolate. Even Jenna was looking excited when I mentioned the coffee thing. It was also about now that I realised how much work I was going to be doing in the near future.

After the excitement died down, Troy continued his report with the Stonechasers and their merchant caravan, camped out in the woods and waiting for word that they could continue. The prospect of allies had the faculty heads breathing easy, and the prospect of an outside trade partner had them excited. Especially the economics guy, who was a little disappointed when we couldn’t immediately start talking numbers and other businessy merchant shit with him. I told him not to worry, Jerril would happily go on and on about it in detail.

We also went into more detail about the obrec, their culture and some of the other races we’d seen during our visit to Millowhall. I was fond of the small fuzzy people, personally… but that was probably just me. They were cute, okay?

Dr Wilcott finally called an end to things when it became clear this was not going to be a one-meeting kinda deal.

“It appears that your mission was a resounding success Troy, well done,” she told him happily. “Is there anything else we should know before we end? We have matters of your safety within the campus to consider, obviously. The ACS will be trying their thuggery again soon, I imagine.”

“There is the matter of Kit, one of the members of the original team,” Troy said, motioning to the small girl. “She was also transformed into a mage, and similarly to Ryn, is transgender, hence the radically different new look. She is new to magic and will be studying with their mentor for a long while, but I don’t expect it will be long before she is a competent mage in her own right.”

“Understood,” the older woman smiled, and turning her attention to Kit, she said, “Congratulations on your… transition, that’s the right word isn’t it?” pausing she glanced over at me as well, “Both of you, actually.”

“Oh, um… thank you,” Kit mumbled, smiling down at Dr Wilcott’s feet. Goodness, the girl was so adorable. Really needed to work on that confidence with her though. “Yes it is. The right word, I mean… transition...”

“Good, good, and just so we’re clear, the university’s policies on LGBT students and staff still apply, you are welcome and protected here. The punishments for those that infringe on your rights might have changed a little, but rest assured that if you find yourselves the target of discrimination, please take it up with student services,” she said, glancing between both Kit and I, then hesitantly to Grace.

Ah, she’d picked up in us had she? Guess the hand holding had been a giveaway. Hadn’t caught on to the master of stealth himself though. “Thank you,” I told her gratefully, speaking for all of us.

“There is one other… matter,” Troy said hesitantly, taking a deep breath.

“Oh?” the steel eyed law professor asked, raising an eyebrow.

“While we were out there, we named ourselves the Order of Eleos and did our best to spread good words about ourselves and Avonside,” Troy began, making eye contact with each faculty head. “Going forward, I intend to grow this order with people from Avonside, as well as others. My goal is to create a strong independent military, diplomatic and humanitarian aid force that would help further the interests of Avonside, as well as general compassion on the ring. There is a lot of hardship out there, and I’d like to try and do something to help with that.”

“Interesting,” Dr Wilcott mused, stroking her chin thoughtfully as she gazed at us. “You’d continue as you have, I assume? But with more teams, better gear and training? Where would you be based? I’m not personally opposed to the idea, I can see how you would act as a check against the ACS, especially with magic at your side.”

“Exactly,” he said, and for once I could see a little nervousness from him. “We would of course use our own funds to maintain the order, I have no desire to take much needed resources from Avonside. As for the ACS… I feel as though they might be a little… outdated, if you take my meaning.”

“That, is the understatement of the century,” Jenna grumbled from her seat, earning muttered agreement from the other faculty heads. I couldn’t help a smile. These five were a hell of a lot cooler than I’d been expecting, if I was honest. Something told me that the rest of their colleagues wouldn’t be so cool.

Wilcott acknowledged Jenna’s words with a slight smile before speaking again, “I won’t lie to you Troy, you’ll have to fight for recognition from the full council, if you even plan to wait for approval. The five of us here are those I could gather on short notice and that I thought would be the most receptive to you and your group. I am playing political games here, holding this meeting before they can get word of your return. The council as a whole is as fractured and argumentative as ever, barely any more use than the CEO. Which, of course, there’s a very good chance you may have to physically fight the ACS if the CEO takes issue with you.”

“We’re well aware of that,” Troy chuckled darkly. “Thank you ma’am, you’ve been far more receptive than I had dared hope. To everything, really.”

“Like I said, others won’t be,” she warned. “The university is divided in many different ways. I’m hoping that you will shake up the tense status quo, preferably in our favour,” she told us, gesturing to her four colleagues. “I know an opportunity for progress and change when I see one Troy, and you and your proposed order are it.”

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