Alpha Academy: Misfit's Rise

Chapter Twenty-One: The Soul

Lucian didn't bring up the Prophecy again, and the few times I tried he completely shut me down. By the next day, I had given up.

"Today is the day of the what?" I asked as we weaved our way once again through the crowded streets. We always seemed to be going against the flow of traffic no matter what we were doing.

"The soul."

I blinked. "I thought yesterday was the day of the soul."

"No. Yesterday was the day of the spirit."

I raised my eyebrows, and he sighed. "On the day of the spirit, we honor those who have passed beyond this world. On the day of the soul, we honor our ability to do the same."

That's not morbid, I wanted to say, but Lucian had already taken off down another hidden alleyway. I had to jog to catch up.

"Where are we ... going again?" I heaved.

"The city archive building. There's something I want to show you." He finally stopped in front of a gray, crumbling structure that stood out among the pristine Alexandrian buildings. It clearly hadn't been used in a while; he had to brush away a few cobwebs to open the door.

The temperature dropped once I stepped inside, making me shiver, and the mustiness made me choke.

"You sure we're in the right place?" I asked through chattering teeth, but he didn't respond as he marched down the hallway. Grumbling, I stumbled after him, trying to focus on the movement of his shoulder blades to keep me distracted from the cold.

Finally, mercifully, we emerged into a slightly warmer room. Lucian lifted his hand, and a glowing orb appeared in his palm, allowing us to see.

The room was circular with high ceilings. The walls were lined with shelves of scrolls in various stages of disrepair. And scattered around the room were several footlockers and a few crumbling artifacts.

"What is this place?" I asked, walking towards the nearest shelf of scrolls. It was hard to figure out why Lucian had been so excited about ... this.

"Alexandria is built upon the ruins of a Sorcerer city called Sahmara. When the Union decided to build Alexandria, we excavated the ruins and moved anything we could salvage here. What you see is what remains of the Sorcerer legacy."

I picked up a scroll and blew on it. Dust billowed into my eyes. My eyes watered as I brushed off the dust and opened the scroll as slowly as I could, afraid it would crumble in my hands. Inside was a simple map of the Realm.

"That was from the first expedition," Lucian said, coming up behind me.

"You mean the one where the Sorcerers tricked the others into forgetting about the Realm?"

He sighed. "We tell the story a little differently."

"How so?"

"According to Lyra Gotham's journals, she and the two other Sorcerers overheard their fellow expedition members plotting to exclude the Sorcerers from the Realm. They took the necessary steps to ensure that didn't happen."

That was so unlike the story the Union and the Wizards like to tell. Guess it always depended on which side was talking.

"They couldn't feel it," he said so suddenly I didn't know what he was talking about. But he didn't even seem to be saying it to me, more just saying it out loud. "The energy. The other races just saw it as a pretty underworld, but we could feel it for what it really was. A bridge between worlds. A place where life and death could coexist, where the forces of the universe and forces of heaven could exist together, in harmony. A place where spirits could bestow their goodness." He sighed, then glanced at me, like he finally realized I was there.