“House sponsorship?” Scorio glanced from one of them to the next. “Like House Hydra, or whatever?”
“Yep.” Leonis settled himself more comfortably on his cushion. “The eighty or so who did the best at the Gauntlet were offered House sponsorship by one of the four Houses. Almost everyone accepted. Comes with access to specialty trainers, more potent pills and elixirs, inside knowledge on what to expect…”
“Remember how those elders spoke with each Great Soul when they went up on stage?” asked Lianshi. “After they touched the Archspire? They were telling them the basics about House sponsorship, making quick pitches which they followed up on later.”
“Huh,” said Scorio. “Lianshi, you did pretty great. Did they offer you anything?”
“House Kraken made me an offer,” she said, suddenly looking uncomfortable. “I turned them down.”
Leonis grinned wolfishly at her. “You make the way you declined sound positively polite.”
“Why?” Scorio frowned at her. “Why say no to their help?”
“I was upset,” she said, still looking off to the side. “They’d just thrown you to your death, and then came in with their offers. Full patronage would depend on my making the top eighty on the final Gauntlet run at the end of the year, but the way they spoke to me, the way they… it all just rubbed me the wrong way. I said no.”
“Along with a few other things,” said Leonis, his grin eased away, and he stared at Scorio gravely. “We were both really upset when they hauled you away. I can’t tell you how glad I am to see you alive and kicking.”
“Agreed,” said Lianshi with a smile. “I wonder if anyone has ever survived the Final Door before.”
“I’d imagine so. That one Great Soul, Radert, he at least had come and gone a few times.”
“If there was,” said Leonis, “you can be sure the Academy’s hushed it up. They take their image very seriously.”
Almost Scorio went to tell his friends about Naomi, how she’d not been reborn like them, how her success defied the Academy’s narrative. But that wasn’t his tale to tell, so he remained quiet.
“So what’s your plan?” asked Leonis at last, leaning forward to snag a bread roll out of a basket. “You can’t come back to the Academy. Are you going to keep training with this Nightmare Lady?”
“That won’t last forever,” said Scorio softly. “I’m exploring options. Perhaps getting out of Bastion, out onto the Rascor Plains where the mana is richer.”
Leonis let out a low whistle. “You sure that’s a good idea? The people that farm the land out there are protected by low-ranking Great Souls for a reason.”
“The ruins aren’t that much safer,” said Scorio with a shrug. “And I don’t want to subsist off Coal mana forever.”
“It’s impressive that you ignited your Heart out there,” said Lianshi quietly. “With only Coal to work with?”
Scorio could hear the unspoken assumption. That his Heart was weak, barely ignited off the weakest mana around.
“Like I said, I took some extreme measures to make sure I wasn’t left too far behind. But one thing I really want to do is get access to my personal locker in the Academy. Didn’t Praximar say that our kind tends to keep journals or records over the centuries and that they’re stored in lockers?”
“Sure,” said Leonis, tearing the bread roll in half slowly. “I’ve already looked in mine. Lianshi has too.”
“Turns out I’ve been a meticulous keeper of journals,” said Lianshi with a self-conscious smile. “It would take a lifetime to just read everything I’ve written. Which apparently occurred to me during my last few reincarnations; I began a project to index my own journals, but died before I could get more than a quarter of the way through.”
“Well there you go,” said Scorio excitedly. “If I could get access to my locker, I might be able to learn about myself. Maybe why I’ve been put on this Red List, and perhaps unlock my deeper motivation to keep growing. Because Naomi really has been emphatic about my needing to develop long-term goals. Just acquiring power for its own sake won’t get me far. I thought reading my own journals might help me figure things out.”
Leonis swirled a stub of bread around the sauce on his plate, not meeting Scorio’s eyes. “The lockers are attuned to your spirit. Nobody else, supposedly, can open them.”
“Though there are obviously ways to get around that,” said Lianshi. “We’ve several friends who opened their lockers only to find them ransacked.”
“I know,” said Scorio. “Naomi told me as much. I was just hoping there might be a way you guys could help sneak me to my locker.”
Again the pair exchanged a glance.
“What?” asked Scorio. “Not feasible? I of course understand if not—”
“It’s possible,” said Lianshi haltingly. “But it would be quite dangerous. The lockers are in the same basilica we awoke in. They’re embedded in the walls and accessed by the balconies.”
“But that room’s heavily guarded,” said Leonis. “You need permission to visit your own locker, and are escorted in and out. Remember those shattered crystals we saw at the foot of the biers we woke up on?”
Scorio nodded.
“Doing that permanently destroys that bier. Nobody alive today remembers how to forge those crystals. Which is why nobody’s allowed in there without permission.”
“Wait, people have permanently destroyed the biers? Why?”
Lianshi shuddered. “Different reasons over the years. A desire to stop our rebirth, obviously.”
Scorio sat back, shaking his head. “That’s…”
“We Great Souls haven’t always been appreciated,” said Leonis, tone heavy. “The penalty for being caught shattering a crystal is to be placed on the Red List if you’re a Great Soul, or execution if not. Like I said: they take it very seriously.”
They sat in silence for a spell, and then Scorio shrugged off his growing resignation. “Can you look into it, at any rate? Just see if something occurs to you? I’d appreciate it.”
“Of course,” said Lianshi, smiling and reaching out to touch his hand. “If there’s a way, we’ll find it.”
Scorio returned her smile. “Thank you. But what of you guys? How has life at the Academy been since I was summarily banished to my death?”
Over the next hour, Lianshi and Leonis took turns regaling him with what it was like to live at the Academy. The luxurious rooms they were given with their own pool inside a picturesque grotto; the four different instructors that they worked with, the larger personalities amongst their peers; the training, the meditation, the grueling workouts, the double knock-out tournament that was about to start up soon, and the overwhelming pressure to form a team with which they could dominate the final Gauntlet run.
“Everything is focused on that last run,” said Lianshi, leaning on one forearm, idly spinning a knife by its point over her wooden plate. “Our first was merely a gauge of our potential, but we’ve been told repeatedly that many that did the worst the first time round used that as motivation to excel, while the best often grew complacent and slipped down the rankings thereafter. Only those who place in the upper half of the cohort will be invited back to do a second year at the Academy, which is motivation enough. You get matched with elite Great Souls, and train one on one as well as go on expeditions into Hell itself.”
“And they won’t stop droning on and on about the Houses,” said Leonis, arms crossed over his chest. “Everybody’s going to get inducted into a House by the end of our training, but those who do best will be promoted to exalted levels, given the greatest opportunities, continue with elite trainers, and so forth. We’re watched at every step by House representatives, and I swear they keep track of how many hours we train, how deep we’re making our Hearts, whether we snore in our sleep—”
“You definitely snore in your sleep,” said Lianshi.