Chapter 49: One Month Later
Morning at Pathfinder Academy had its own sound by now.
The bells at the hour.
Crystal Wolves crossing the upper sky on their delivery routes. Five thousand students moving between districts. It sounded different from a city. Everyone was going somewhere. Wyverns landing on the expedition platforms on schedule.
Arthur had learned the schedule.
That had taken longer than he expected.
...
The librarian at the Evolution Archive’s entrance smiled when she saw him.
"Back already?"
"I’m not certain I actually left yesterday."
"You were here when I locked the side entrance at ten."
"That would explain some things."
Athena was already at the table they had started using. She had a specific arrangement of materials in front of her that indicated she had been here for at least an hour and was not going to acknowledge this.
Arthur sat down. "You knew I’d come."
"I predicted it twenty-seven days ago," Athena said, without looking up.
"That was the first week."
"I was confident."
Athy, on the back of Athena’s chair, appeared to agree with this assessment.
...
The first week, Arthur crossed King’s Arena just as a small explosion echoed from inside. Students barely looked up.
Arthur and Melo had watched an Arctic Beast evolve across seventeen minutes of compressed time. The creature went from something small to being almost bigger than their partner. And Melo had watched the final transformation with all three eyes fully open.
Arthur and Athy had experienced a memory from the perspective of a seabird on a crossing that had no land in it for what the memory indicated was several weeks.
The horizon was the same in every direction, and the seabird’s internal certainty about its destination was either navigation or faith.
And Arthur was not certain the bird distinguished between them.
The second week, golden light burst through the Arena’s windows. Someone nearby muttered, "Leon again."
Arthur looked toward the Arena. "I should probably stop being surprised."
Mithra smiled. "You won’t."
"...Probably not."
...
Arthur and Athena had spent two hours inside the same memory.
Which did not prevent them from arguing about it for an additional hour, because the question of whether the extinct species they had watched evolve was responding to environmental pressure or acting on something more like intention.
It was one that the memory itself resolved conclusively in one direction, and Athena was uncertain the conclusion was warranted. Arthur and Mithra had watched a memory between two beasts that spent decades fighting over territory. Halfway through the memory, they realized it was actually a comedy.
The third week, one outer wall was being repaired after another training session.
Arthur and Vedas had found a Goblin memory that had been proceeding normally until it stopped.
Not ended but stopped.
Neither of them had asked the Archive staff about it yet. Through these memories, Vedas jumped to level nine by the end of the month.
Arthur watched a memory of a hawk flying above a castle that was crashing into an ancient city. And a crystal of a lion rushing through a sea of exploding lava with the sky raining lightning.
The fourth week, students gathered outside the Arena every afternoon just to watch whoever was fighting inside.
...
Training with wooden spears was still Arthur’s least reliable hour. Arthur still struggled with wooden spear training.
Today’s loss was his fourth.
"That one’s mine," Vedas said, with the particular satisfaction of a Goblin Commander who had been beaten by the same person for most of his life and was therefore inclined to celebrate the exceptions.
"I know you so well," Arthur said, resetting. "Which means I understand exactly how to make the same mistakes."
Vedas chuckled. They reset.
Arthur looked at him. "Do you ever regret becoming a Goblin?"
Vedas looked at him with the expression he used for questions that surprised him. "Why would I?"
"Some people still look at Vedas and see F-rank material. There are beasts here that were at Silver-rank on arrival. You have to work harder than most of them to cover the same ground."
Vedas was quiet for a moment. He looked across the practice field at the other students moving through their morning routines, at the beasts beside them, at the looks that passed between students when a strong beast performed something impressive.
"If I wasn’t a Goblin," he said, "I never would have met you."
Arthur smiled. "...Good answer."
Vedas blinked. "...Was there a wrong one?"
"I don’t know." Arthur laughed. "I just liked yours."
Vedas laughed before rushing at him.
They crossed spears again.
Vedas stepped left.
Arthur’s wooden spear moved almost automatically, intercepting the strike before it fully formed.
Vedas blinked. "...You read my footwork."
Arthur lowered his spear. "I did?"
"You usually react after I move." Vedas smiled. "...This time you moved first."
Arthur pumped a fist up with a grin before the three notifications appeared in sequence, each one stepping from the last.
[Synchronization: 47% —> 50%]
Arthur stared. "...Half." He couldn’t help smiling. "We’re halfway there."
Then a second notification appeared below the others.
[Additional Evolution Data Unlocked]
[Goblin King Evolution]
[Requirement 2: Conquer the Three Great Goblin Tribes]
Arthur looked at the screen for a long moment, and then he quietly whispered. "...We’re getting closer."
"What?" Vedas said.
"Another mystery," Arthur said.
He folded the information away for later. The morning had more in it.
...
Professor Callum taught Exploration Theory every Tuesday and Thursday.
"One day of food," the professor said. "Two teammates who are injured but mobile. An unknown cave system with no confirmed exit. What do you do?"
Students answered in order.
Most answers were organized around the food: rationing plans, timelines for search parties, signals for rescuers.
Arthur answered when it reached him. "Assess the injuries first. Then map the first hundred meters before committing any direction, and food is the last priority, because food doesn’t change what the cave is doing."
The professor made a note.
Only Arthur’s answer earned a note.
Arthur noticed. "Did I say something wrong?"
The professor smiled. "...Quite the opposite."
Students who noticed began paying closer attention.
...
The convoy students had located Arthur by the end of the first week.
They appeared at intervals, usually during the midday movement between lessons, and the exchanges were brief and comfortable in the way that things were comfortable when both parties were clear on what had happened and what it meant.
"Arthur!" One of the runners from the original convoy held up a bag. "I bought too much lunch again."
"Again?" Arthur said.
"I overestimate every time." The student extended a wrapped bundle. "Take it."
"You don’t have to."
"You got us out of those carriages." He said it simply, without ceremony. "Take the food."
Arthur took the food.
A different student, one he hadn’t spoken to before, approached as he was eating. "Can I ask something? During the crash, when everyone was frozen. How were you calm?"
Arthur considered this. "I don’t think I was calm, exactly. I was thinking about the pattern of the lightning more than the lightning itself, so there wasn’t space to be afraid of it yet."
Three students who had been passing nearby slowed. Two of them stopped.
Arthur explained what he had seen, and by the time he finished.
Seven students were listening.
One of the students smiled. "Thanks, Arthur."
Arthur scratched his cheek. "I’m just sharing what I know."
The students waved before leaving.
Mithra watched them disappear.
She looked at Arthur for a quiet moment. "...You’re starting to remind me of someone."
"...Steven?"
"No."
"Leon?"
"No."
"...Melo?"
Melo looked offended.
Mithra laughed. "...Definitely not."
...
The group near the Crystal Garden was doing nothing wrong. They were standing between lessons with their beasts and their opinions, both of which were present in significant quantity.
"That’s the Goblin guy?"
"That’s an F-rank Goblin. My Silver Griffin would end that fight in ten seconds."
The Silver Griffin in question was genuinely beautiful. Long silver feathers that caught the light at angles that suggested they had evolved specifically for looking good, and a wingspan that was impressive even folded.
Arthur walked over.
The students looked at him with the expressions of people who had been speaking at a volume designed to carry and were now accounting for the possibility that it had.
Arthur looked at the Silver Griffin.
"It’s beautiful," he said, with complete sincerity.
The owner’s posture changed toward pride.
Arthur nodded. "Genuinely impressive. I hope it grows strong enough to take good care of you one day."
He walked away.
"Was that," one of them said slowly, "a compliment?"
"I don’t know," said another.
"He said he hoped it grows strong enough."
"That sounds like a compliment."
"Does it?"
Mithra, who had been two steps behind Arthur throughout, appeared beside him and kept pace without comment for a few seconds.
"You did that on purpose," she said.
"I complimented his beast."
"You suggested it wasn’t strong enough yet."
"I said I hoped it would be."
"Arthur."
"I meant it kindly."
Mithra looked at him and then looked at the group still standing behind them, working through the same conversation, and she smiled at whatever was ahead of them rather than at Arthur.
...
He wrote the letter during the early evening when the Archive’s floating lights shifted to their warmer configuration.
Mom,
I don’t get lost quite as often anymore. The food here is remarkable. Vedas keeps winning our training sessions. I think you would like everyone here — they’re good people.
Love, Arthur
He thought for a second and then added one more sentence.
P.S. I can’t wait to return and tell you about the things I have seen. It will blow your mind, but you aren’t allowed to get angry!
He reread it, decided it was good enough, and sent it.
...
He was crossing the plaza near King’s Arena when the building produced the sound that buildings only produced when something significant was happening inside them.
A pulse of golden light moved through the windows.
Several students on the plaza stopped to watch. Then another pulse, wider this time, and the stone beneath them vibrated with something that was not quite sound.
Leon walked out of the Arena side entrance with the calm of someone who had been inside and was finished now. Several students followed at a careful distance, most of them reassessing their afternoon in some visible way.
Arthur and Leon saw each other at approximately the same distance.
They smiled.
Leon walked on.
Arthur walked on.
...
A first-year was standing at the corner of the northern bridge looking at his Academy map with the expression Arthur recognized from his first week.
"Excuse me," the first-year said. "Do you know where the Evolution Archive branch is?"
"Cross the second bridge," Arthur said, "then follow the blue lights until you see the Archive’s entrance. It takes about eight minutes."
The first-year thanked him and ran.
Arthur walked two steps and then stopped.
Mithra watched him.
"I actually knew that," Arthur said.
"You’ve been telling people how to get there for three weeks."
"I know, but—" He stopped again. "I knew it without checking the map."
"Yes."
He looked around the plaza.
The Crystal Wolves on their delivery routes. The expedition platforms where students were checking kits for tomorrow’s supervised trips. The green lights of the Beast Courtyard Chambers visible above the tree line.
The Evolution Archive’s tower rising against the late-afternoon sky.
"I think this place feels like home," Arthur said.
Arthur looked toward the Evolution Archive.
Then toward King’s Arena.
Then toward the Crystal Wolves crossing the sky. A month ago, everything here had felt impossibly large.
Now, he knew where he was going.
Mithra smiled.
Then the bell rang.
Every district simultaneously.
Steven’s voice came through the announcement system. "Attention, Pathfinder Academy. Registration for this year’s King Maker Tournament is now open."
The entire Academy seemed to come alive. Students started running. Professors stopped conversations. Even the Crystal Wolves overhead scattered as whistles echoed across the districts.
Arthur looked at Mithra. "Let’s go," he said.
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