Chapter 24: Rejected

"The... the fountain! The sword! There’s smoke coming off the flagstones!"

"A geological seismic event," Lucien lied without a single tremor in his voice. "A tragic failure of the academy’s subterranean drainage infrastructure. The foundations of Astraea are very old, Rowan. Maintenance is terribly neglected. A tragic accident."

Rowan opened his mouth.

He closed it.

He looked at Lucien’s serene, dashing, entirely unbothered face.

Then, the boy let out a tiny, whimpering squeak, grabbed Lucien’s coat sleeve with both hands, and glued himself directly to Lucien’s left elbow.

"I’m never leaving your side," Rowan declared with fierce, tearful, manic devotion. "I don’t care if you become an accountant, an undertaker, or a cabbage farmer. Wherever you go, I go. If the ground explodes like that around you, you’re the only person who can survive it!"

"Rowan, please detach yourself from my sleeve. You are restricting my range of motion."

"No! I am your personal shield! A very small, very soft shield that will cry loudly if struck!"

Lucien let out an exhausted, resigned sigh, dragging the clinging, terrified noble boy down the sunlit boulevard toward the Registrar’s Office.

High above them, perched gracefully upon the arched marble balustrade of the Imperial Library tower, a pair of sharp, luminous purple eyes pulled back from an ornate brass viewing lens.

Lyra Veyne leaned back against the stone spire, her wildly untamed violet hair whipping in the mountain wind.

In her left hand, her small carnivorous potted plant was happily chewing on a strip of dried drake jerky. I

n her right hand, she held a glowing crystalline monitoring stylus that was currently frantically scribbling erratic purple lines across an enchanted roll of parchment.

"Kinetic displacement without mana expenditure..." Lyra cackled softly, her voice filled with pure, ecstatic scientific madness. "A physical strike that shattered volcanic silver and dispersed an A-Rank flame spell... through pure spiritual density."

She pressed the monitoring stylus to her lips, her grin stretching wide enough to show her sharp, white teeth.

"Oh, Lucien Everhart... you delicious, lying, beautiful little anomaly."

She snapped the parchment shut, shoved it into her enchanted satchel, and hopped off the balustrade, her boots clicking softly against the marble tiles as she sprinted toward the Astra Party’s private training sanctuary.

"CASSIAN!" her voice echoed joyously down the spiral stairwell. "CASSIAN, GUESS WHAT YOUR TRAGIC LITTLE BOYFRIEND JUST DID IN THE LOWER COURTYARD?!"

Three miles away, completely unaware that his peaceful retirement had just been officially, permanently assassinated for the third time this week, Lucien Alaric Everhart finally pushed open the heavy brass doors of the Registrar’s Office, took a deep breath of dusty paper and administrative bureaucracy, and allowed himself a small, triumphant smile.

"Hello," Lucien said to the elderly clerk behind the counter, sliding his formal paperwork across the mahogany desk. "I would like to register for Introduction to Turnip Crop Rotation and The Philosophical History of Quiet Afternoon Naps, please."

Behind him, Rowan sneezed.

And deep within the dark, dormant chambers of Lucien’s soul, the core gave a slow, deep, seismic shudder, quietly counting down the seconds until the Imperial Awakening Ceremony on Friday.

***

The grand administrative counter of the Imperial Academy’s Registrar Office was guarded by a creature far more terrifying than an Abyssal Crawler.

It was an elderly bureaucrat named Clerk Osbert, whose skin had the texture of dried parchment left out in an attic since the reign of the first emperor.

He peered down at Lucien over the rim of half-moon spectacles so thick they turned his pupils into watery, magnified spheres of pure apathy.

Lucien leaned gracefully over the mahogany partition, offering his most charming, reasonable, perfectly calculated aristocratic smile.

"I assure you, Clerk Osbert, my request is a triumph of efficiency," Lucien said, his tone smooth as melted honey.

"The medical board has already determined that my mana channels resemble shattered porcelain. Allowing me to register early for Introduction to Turnip Crop Rotation and The Philosophical History of Quiet Afternoon Naps merely expedites the paperwork. It frees up a seat in the practical combat divisions and saves the academy three hundred gold sovereigns in insurance premiums should an errant spell headbutt me in the throat. A win-win for everyone involved."

Clerk Osbert did not blink.

A dead man floating down the river had more expressive vitality.

He picked up Lucien’s pristine, beautifully notarized transfer forms with two ink-stained fingers, rotated them forty-five degrees, rotated them back, and then stamped a scarlet seal directly across the front page with a sound like a guillotine blade dropping on a melon.

[REJECTED: PENDING IMPERIAL CEREMONY]

"Regulation Subsection 12, Paragraph C," Clerk Osbert rasped, his voice sounding like two dry roof slates rubbing together in a drought.

"No student bearing a pending aristocratic registry may alter their academic discipline in the ungodly mid-cycle prior to the Grand Awakening Ceremony. I do not care if your core is shattered. I do not care if your mana channels are currently leaking clam chowder. You remain registered as an Auxiliary Vanguard Combatant until the Grand Astral Orb officially declares you a civilian cabbage."

"Clerk Osbert," Lucien said, his left eyelid beginning that familiar, ominous flutter. "The ceremony is in five days. I am merely asking to pre-populate the database. A forward-looking administrative migration, if you will."

"The Imperial seal does not pre-populate," the clerk croaked, shoving the blood-red stamped paper back across the counter with supreme disinterest.

"Come back Friday after the orb turns grey, Lord Everhart. Next time, if you are not holding a certified scroll of lineage transfer, vacate the premises before I summon the disciplinary golems."

Behind Lucien, Rowan let out a tiny, whimpering gasp and immediately hid his entire face inside the hood of Lucien’s wool coat. "Lucien... he mentioned the golems. The iron ones have spikes on their elbows. Let’s run. Let’s run before he files a grievance against our souls."

Lucien stared at the stamped rejection.

He took a slow, deep breath, mentally cataloging eighteen different ways to exploit the office’s antiquated double-entry ledger system.