Cadet at the city of Metropolis' prestigious military academy, Dusk Lancaster on the outside was a man to envy. Yet, behind his uniform, a beast having lost his compass thrived on the thrill of bloody duels, whilst the orphaned shoeshine boy he once...
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February 23rd
549 days to the miracle.
Five to eight o'clock, atop the Rozenkreuz Hill.
Off a distance, his eyes fixated on the car numbered 744, taking her away.
The cab had just dropped him off by the grand stairway leading up the entrance of Rosenkreuz; the all-male prestigious military school, atop the hill.
Unlike the larger part of the metropolis, distinguished by its Art Deco towers, the school was constructed in a Jacobethan style, incorporating more of the Elizabethan architecture at the expense of true Jacobean elements. The Rosenkreuz building, at first glance, was oftentimes and inaccurately, thought of as a Victorian Gothic structure; though yet, the atmosphere surrounding the building was just accurately described as hauntingly mysterious, and enchantingly dark, even under the noontide sun; evocative of the English country house of Mentmore, and to a lesser degree of the Highclere Castle as well as similar manor houses of the era.
As he climbed the steps uphill, third-year cadet Dusk, in his uniform, in his guise, could not be told apart from the rest. Despite that inside, he never had it in him to fit in, he knew and they knew he was a different specimen. Distant with an air of arrogance to him, in the midst of all the rigorously self-disciplined students, exhibiting the usual signs of excessive amour-propre, such was the collective identity shared by those who topped the pecking order-one he essentially was not part of. And so as the school's ring sounded signaling the setoff of morning classes, they walked strutting past the Lamassu monument, alma mater of the esteemed institute, its godmother. Whilst high above the building's entrance was the collegium's stark coat of arms engraved, in essence, a laurel wreath girdling a Prussian blue shield, across which the following motto was enchased, or rather a riddle that read;
There are two sisters: one gives birth unto the other
and she in turn, gives birth to the first.
Who are the sisters?
The privately-owned Rosenkreuz presented itself as a reputable military academy dedicated to a wide range of fields of study with an emphasis on the theoretical and the metaphysics of war.
At-fault perhaps for the drastically low admission rate at the school, was the foundational idea behind the academy, that of an extremely competitive educational institute One whose graduates apart from the mandatory military training, were destined not to be mere soldiers but leaders; leaders in the hands of the Elders, as the Order itself was. And so under the Elders' guidance-those to call Rosenkreuz their alma mater-were to usher in the dawning renaissance of their fellow men, intellectually and physically so to speak; and it was that Elders-devised renaissance they were to shield by force, by the sword.
Quarter to nine, at class.
Out of the muddle of jabber and natter, the professor's voice rose to grunt. "Give me your attention, please! Will you?" his right hand he thrust under the left breast of his cassock. "I advise you to acquaint yourselves with the prints I provided, Carl von Clausewitz' Vom Kriege-On War. Book III: Of Strategy in General, Chapter 15: Geometrical Element."
