Chapter 16: Summons

Chapter 16: Summons

“Six mistakes mankind keeps making century after century:

Believing that personal gain is made by crushing others;

Worrying about things that cannot be changed or corrected;

Insisting that a thing is impossible because we cannot accomplish it;

Refusing to set aside trivial preferences;

Neglecting development and refinement of the mind;

Attempting to compel others to believe and live as we do.”

- Marcus Tullius Cicero, (Unknown, 1st Era)

Erec dreamt of a sea of ruby red eyes. Every single one of them stared at him as their sheer weight suffocated him. His fingers clawed at the lens, finding no purchase as they slipped on tears. Inch by inch, he sunk further into the depths, dragged under as they slid aside, and made way for him to fall deeper in their embrace.

Hammering at the door woke him up with a start. Erec’s head slammed up as the wooden doors shook—his heart racing, and a pool of sweat coated his bed sheets.

[Ah. You’re awake at long last.]

There was a pause at the door, followed by a muffled command on the opposite side.

[You’ve had eleven hours of rest. Typical for an Intern. I take it you’re ready and willing to take the day into your hand and pursue further personal development?]

The knocking began again. Erec groaned and pulled himself out of bed, doing his best to regain composure from the nightmare. He tossed on a beige linen shirt and stalked toward the door. “Stay in your bag, alright?”

[Of course, I wouldn’t dream of revealing myself. Observation yields better data.]

Erec cracked the door open to reveal a squished face of a man armored by mail. He wore a tabard displaying the black silhouette of a hippogriff with its hooves reared. House Nitidus. In truth, he’d expected something like this. As the house guard took his stock, Erec raised his hands up in a sign of peace. “I’ll go get Colin’s helmet; you can have it. I didn’t intend to keep it.”

“Aye, then you’re Erec?” the man asked.

— - ☢ - — - ☼ - — - ☢ - —

As ordered, Erec readied himself for his mandated audience at the Duchy of Nitidus. He put on the best formals he could—sharp slacks. He wore a clean dress shirt with a collar, with one of the heavily buttoned jackets that fell out of style in the kingdom about ten years ago. If he understood it right, the jacket belonged to his father, then his brother, and now it was his.

Ironic that this same jacket was likely worn on the day his mother was officially exiled.

He took the shaft elevator; it felt like ages for the ancient thing to crawl its way up to the second layer of caverns.

Once he reached the second layer, he saw a massive gate. Armed guards checked him over for weapons and purpose—this was the layer where the wealthy and higher nobility made their homes. Even if he was nobility, they had to ensure his paperwork and check for unallowed weapons.

After they discovered that no, he didn’t have a damned sword, he managed to hand them his summons, their affable mood banished. The checkpoint guard called for an escort to send Erec on his way.

The road was long and left him with conflicted feelings. On the one hand, the beauty around him made for a visual of a long-forgotten earth scene. The curated bio-cavern provided great insight into the people who got to live out their lives on this layer.

First to start with was the excessive size. The cavern roof extended high into the sky, yet not a single building likely extended over four stories. Yet it stretched far enough for ten. The cavern ceiling was unique to the second floor, inlaid with stacking enhancements and spell-work that transformed the rocks above into a replica of the sky outside.

At the middle and ceiling of the cavern was a glowing orb—almost as strong as a sun. It provided enough light for plant life to flourish, much like a regular biocavern.

But the plant life here was utterly ornamental. Mostly wasteful varieties of grass were meticulously cut on square-like yards of lawn that stretched as far as the eye could see.

Erec held a particular grudge against the insane value nobles put in grass. With the resources it took to grow spent on sunlight and water, they could’ve just as easily grown more beneficial plant life: fruits, vegetables, and any root plant to supplement the kingdom’s supplies.

But no. This layer contained only flowers and grass—though, at least, they did allow natural pollinators.

Aside from his grudge over their choice in biodiversity, or lack thereof, he had to admit the pristine architecture and sculptures were breathtaking. He took a long look at a silver depiction of the First King. The man shattered the uneasy treatise of the ancient layers and forced them together. At the time they claimed he was a conquerer; a warmonger. But two hundred years later the consolidation of humanity’s resources showed their fruit, and people proclaimed him a great king.

Would their ancestors have pictured living on the surface once more?

The escort gradually led Erec deeper into the layer. The cavern stretched out just as large as the city above, providing vast swaths of space to noble holdings and estates. Within some of those holdings would be small villages. Populated by specialized artisans and servants attending to the noble family who owned the lands.

As much as the nobles treated this as the center of the Kingdom, they were wrong. Fifty percent of their population lived on the third and fourth layers. Both layers connected a bustling city triple the size of this curated space. A maze of confusing corridors and smaller caverns that defined the Kingdom in a way a place like this never would.

At the end of their stroll, they approached what looked to be a small castle—complete with stone walls. Was it a measure of status or privilege that had allowed the Nitidus family to defend themselves from the rest of the Kingdom openly? Or was it remains of a time before the Kingdom? Erec couldn’t say; his grasp of history regarding the nobility was painfully limited. Ironically, the Academy didn’t place much importance on it either, despite its primary composition of the nobility. Aside from the Silver Flames.

At the gates, the house guards of the Duchy took over supervision of Erec, so he followed them to his fate, sky-blue helmet held in hand.