Chapter 43: The Explorer’s Academy
The woman with the Academy crest led Arthur and Mithra across two courtyards and up a staircase that changed material three times before arriving at a door that looked, as far as Arthur could determine, completely ordinary.
She knocked twice and left without waiting.
The voice from inside said "come in" and Arthur opened the door and stepped through and stopped.
The office was not what he had been expecting.
He had been expecting something formal.
Shelves of records.
Framed credentials.
The particular orderliness of someone who administered a large institution. Instead the room looked as though an expedition had been in the middle of unpacking when the expedition decided to simply stay.
One entire wall was covered in maps, layered over each other and pinned at different angles, some of them drawn on materials that did not look like paper.
A skull that was larger than Arthur’s head and had too many eye sockets sat on a corner shelf beside what appeared to be half a broken sword that had fused with something organic.
Beside the broken sword rested a cracked silver helmet.
A long claw mark ran from one side to the other, as though something unimaginably large had nearly split it in half.
Arthur found himself staring at it.
"What happened to that one?"
Steven glanced toward the helmet.
"The Frozen Abyss."
Arthur waited.
Steven simply smiled.
"...You’ll hear that name again if your lucky."
He didn’t explain anything else.
For some reason...
That made Arthur even more curious.
Then he saw flags from expeditions Arthur couldn’t name hung from the ceiling. A compass the size of a dinner plate sat open on the desk between several notebooks that had been annotated in at least four different colors.
The other surfaces held relics and fragments and items that looked like they had been collected from places that did not have names yet.
Arthur had taken four steps into the room and was already reaching toward the nearest object before he caught himself.
"You can touch them," said the man behind the desk.
Arthur turned. Then his hand moved toward the nearest relic without further deliberation.
The man watched this with amusement. He was older, with the specific quality of someone who had spent a significant portion of their years moving through places that made marks, warm-eyed and with the kind of expression that suggested he found most things at least moderately interesting.
Then he said something to Mithra, a brief greeting, and Arthur’s hand stopped.
He knew that voice.
"Wait," Arthur said.
Mithra glanced at him.
Arthur pointed at the man behind the desk. "I know you."
The man smiled. "You finally placed it."
"The communication crystal,"
He looked at Mithra. "You knew."
"I didn’t? I could have swear I did."
"Your exact words were: I need to make a call with a Communication Crystal to—" Arthur looked at the man. "And then I got interrupted by an instructor-"
"It was Roland."
"Right, the guy who ran away."
"The timing was poor," Mithra said. "And we were busy."
"Ahh, you enjoy staying at my house that badly?" Arthur smiled. "You can stay with me anytime you want Mithra. I’m sure it would be better than that lonely house of yours."
"That house is a mansion-"
"That’s even worse, all that space but no one to have fun with Mithra."
"Oh? Did she have fun?"
"She didn’t tell you? I guess you two really do have problems. My apology for giving her a better place than you."
The man’s lips twitched while Mithra covered her mouth and looked away. He sighed before saying. "I want to hear about what you guys did... But for now, my name is Steven Lucis. And I thank you for giving my daughter a fun two weeks."
"No problem, she needed a place to relax and have fun. I worried she would have gone crazy-"
"I wouldn’t."
"You would."
Before both of them could go at it, Steven laughed in amusement. "You both... are going to be very entertaining."
"It’s the bond we have. I’m sure you sensed it through the crystal?"
"Haha. I did." Steven turned to Mithra. "I like him," he said to Mithra.
"Everyone says that," Mithra said. "It becomes a problem."
"How," Arthur said.
"You’ll see," she said.
Arthur decided to pick up the nearest relic and deal with this later. "What is this?"
Steven looked at it. "Remains of a navigation device from a Pre-Collapse expedition. The material is still partially functional. Don’t press the round section on the right."
Arthur moved his thumb away from the round section. "What does the round section do?" Arthur asked Steven.
"We believe it was a homing function," Steven said. "The device would points toward wherever it was last calibrated. The last expedition to find one of these activated it accidentally and spent three days walking the wrong direction before they understood what was happening."
Arthur looked at the round section.
"Don’t," Mithra said.
"I wasn’t going to," Arthur said.
"You were calculating," she said.
"I was curious."
"You were calculating whether three days in an unknown direction was an acceptable outcome."
"That’s not what I was doing."
"What were you doing?"
Arthur put the relic down. "Nothing," he said.
Mithra smiled at the desktop.
Steven was watching this exchange with his hands folded and the expression of a man who had been told something about Arthur Cornwall and was now watching the report confirm itself in real time.
"The round section is on the left, actually," Steven said.
Arthur looked at the relic.
Mithra looked at her father.
"The one you were about to press," Steven said, "would have been fine."
"So there’s no dangerous section," Arthur said.
"There might be," Steven said. "I haven’t found it yet. I advise caution until I do."
Arthur picked the relic back up and looked at it more carefully.
Mithra shook her head."You told him it might be fine," she said to her father.
"Might," Steven said.
"That’s the same as yes for him."
"I know," Steven said.
She looked at her father with a deadpan look. "You’re going to be terrible together," she said.
Both Arthur and Steven looked at her.
Then at each other.
"I agree with her," Steven said.
"Same," Arthur said.
Mithra sat down and decided to let this happen.
"We don’t teach Beast Tamers," Steven said.
Arthur waited.
"We teach explorers."
"Isn’t that the same thing?" Arthur said.
"No," Steven said. "Most Beast Tamer academies teach their students how to get stronger. How to evolve their beasts. How to clear gates efficiently and advance their rank and build a career inside a system that someone else already made." He looked at Arthur. "That’s useful. The world needs people who are good at that."
"But," Arthur said.
"But the world also needs people who find the gate nobody has entered yet," Steven said.
"Who walk into the Secret Realm that isn’t on any map. Who ask what’s past the border that everyone else treats as the edge of the world." He spread one hand toward the room around them. "Everything in this office came from somewhere that was called impassable until someone passed it. Every map on that wall has a route that someone walked before there was a route."
Arthur looked at the maps.
At the skull with too many eye sockets.
At the half-sword that had fused with something the expedition couldn’t identify.
At the expedition flags from places that didn’t have names that he knew.
"The people who found those things," he said. "They were students here?"
"Some of them," Steven said. "Some of them came here because they were already the kind of person who walks toward the thing everyone else is walking away from, and they needed somewhere that understood that." He looked at Arthur steadily. "And some of them walked into my office on their first day and immediately reached for an artifact that might or might not be dangerous."
Arthur looked at the relic in his hand. Mithra said, very quietly: "He means you."
"I know he means me," Arthur said.
"Good," Steven said. "Then we’re starting in the right place."
"So," Arthur said, setting it down carefully. "What does Pathfinder Academy actually teach?"
Steven leaned back. "We don’t teach Beast Tamers."
Arthur waited.
"We teach explorers."
Arthur looked at him. "I thought this was a school."
"Oh?" Steven glanced at Mithra. "She didn’t explain?"
"It would have been better for him to understand it in person," Mithra said. "And to hear it from you."
Steven tilted his head toward Arthur with the expression of someone appreciating the setup. "And what do you think so far?"
Arthur looked at the maps. At the skull. At the half-sword on the shelf and the expedition flags above and the enormous compass between them. "I think," he said, "that everything I’ve seen since we landed has been incredible."
Steven stood and walked toward the wall.
The map that covered most of it was larger than anything Arthur had seen in a cartography context. Not one region. Dozens. Expedition routes in red and blue, with notations at every significant point. Areas marked with symbols that didn’t correspond to anything in standard Beast Tamer geography. Regions without names but with detailed internal markings.
"Strength is useful," Steven said, running one finger along an expedition route that went somewhere a long way from anywhere currently inhabited. "Every good Beast Tamer knows that. But strength is only useful if you’re willing to walk somewhere nobody else will."
Arthur looked at the map.
"That’s what Pathfinder is," Steven said. "Not a school that produces strong graduates. A school that produces people willing to go first."
Arthur thought about the convoy. About the moment he had stood up while everyone else was frozen. About Greenleaf and the baker and the blacksmith and the old woman and the fact that they had all known who he was before he became anything in particular.
He thought maybe he understood.
"When can first-years visit Secret Realms?" he said.
Mithra made a quiet sound. Steven looked at him.
"You didn’t ask about dorms," Steven said.
"What about them?"
"Most students ask about dorms."
"The Realms," Arthur said.
Steven settled back into his chair. "First-years normally can’t access them independently. Student Council members have that access because they’ve demonstrated they understand when to advance and when to withdraw. That judgment doesn’t come automatically with talent." He looked at Arthur. "I imagine you already knew that first-years couldn’t go."
"They told me. She also mentioned the King Maker Tournament."
Steven’s eyes moved to Mithra. "I thought you said no spoilers."
Mithra looked somewhere else. "It came up at a moment when I wasn’t focused."
"She was watching dancing goblins," Arthur said.
Steven blinked. "What dancing—"
"What’s the King Maker Tournament?" Arthur said.
"I think the dancing goblins is the more interesting—"
"It absolutely isn’t."
"Explain it already, dad."
Steven looked at Arthur and saw him grinning while Mithra’s had an amused look. Steven chuckled, put both hands on the desk, and explained.
"The King Maker Tournament isn’t decided by strength alone," Steven said as Arthur leaned forward. "It decides who can lead an expedition."
He folded his hands together.
"Four-person teams done through Exploration simulations." Steven tilted his head. "What is challenged is."
"Leadership."
"Combat."
"Problem solving."
"Adaptability."
Arthur blinked. "Simulation?"
Steven nodded. "Every challenge is based on an actual expedition."
Arthur’s eyes widened. "...Real expeditions?"
"Real disasters."
The room became quiet.
Steven continued. "Sometimes you’ll be dropped into unfamiliar terrain with incomplete maps. Sometimes your supplies won’t be enough for every choice. Sometimes your enemy won’t be a beast."
Arthur tilted his head. "What else could it be?"
Steven smiled. "Hunger."
He let the word hang in the air.
"Fear."
"Exhaustion."
He chuckled. "A teammate making the wrong decision. The tournament doesn’t ask who is strongest. It asks who can bring everyone home."
Arthur thought about the convoy. About the frightened students and Vedas shouting commands while the wyverns obeyed. Without realizing it...
He smiled. "...That actually sounds fun."
Mithra smiled even more while Steven’s expression softened.
"Student Council members aren’t student leaders," Steven continued. "They’re expedition leaders. The tournament selects for that."
Arthur understood immediately. It was not an athletic competition. It was an entrance qualification for something else, and something else was access to exactly the kind of work he had come to the Academy to do.
"I’m entering," Arthur said.
Mithra smiled.
Steven smiled too, with the smile of someone who had expected a particular answer and was satisfied to have received it. "I expected that."
He opened the top drawer of his desk and placed something on the surface between them.
It was a map. Not the Academy map on the wall. Something older, the material slightly stiff in the way that things became stiff when they had been handled and stored and handled again over many decades. He unfolded it across the desk and Arthur leaned forward.
The map covered a region that Arthur did not recognize. Ruins marked at intervals. Expedition routes in faded ink. One location near the center of the map had a name written in a script that was slightly different from the rest.
Ruins of Evolution.
Arthur’s hands went still on the edge of the desk.
"You know this place?" he said, and tried to say it in the same tone he used for questions that didn’t mean anything in particular.
Steven studied him.
"Why do you ask?" Steven said.
"No reason," Arthur said. "I just noticed it."
Neither of them said anything for a moment. Steven folded the map and returned it to the drawer without comment. But the look he had given Arthur before he did stayed where it had landed.
Steven knew more than he had said. Arthur was fairly certain about that now.
Steven opened a different drawer and produced a different map, this one recent and clearly printed for student distribution. He unfolded it and pushed it across the desk.
Arthur took it.
The Academy was not one building, or even several buildings. It was a city of districts, each one labeled and bordered. Evolution Archive District. Iron District. Expedition District. Beast Bonding District. Arena District. Research District. He turned the map. Then turned it again.
"Where do I even start?" he said.
"Most students ask where their dormitory is," Steven said.
Arthur looked at the districts.
"That seems like it can wait," he said.
Mithra sighed in the tone of someone whose prediction had been confirmed.
Steven pointed to a location on the map. "If I were starting fresh, I’d start there."
The Evolution Archive District.
Arthur folded the map, stood, and was halfway before pausing. Arthur notices the cracked helmet again before leaving.
He reaches toward the claw mark.
Just before touching it...
Steven calmly says, "That one’s still cold."
Arthur pauses. "...Cold?"
Steven nods. "It has been for thirty-two years."
Silence.
Arthur slowly pulls his hand back and grabs Mithra before heading towards the door.
"Before you go," Steven said.
Arthur stopped in the doorway.
"The Academy motto."
Arthur turned back. "I hope it’s not boring. I’ve seen too many of them."
Mithra opened her mouth.
Steven spoke before she could. "Pathfinder Academy has never lacked talented students." He paused. "It has always lacked students willing to discover something truly new."
The doorway was quiet for a moment.
Arthur smiled while Mithra own smile had grown to match it.
Comments