Masters

Chapter 5

Why am I always picked to do this?

The Master sighed and looked at the applicant. His tusked mouth was wide open with the tongue hanging out. His snout was dripping snot and panting warm air in the hunter's purple and freckled face, messing up her curly blue hair and revealing her pointed ears. His fur was greasy, messy, and his bristly mohawk stuck straight up. His only clothing was a leather scale skirt, a pair of hide pauldrons on his shoulders, a pair of thick hide boots, and leather lamellar guards covering the outside of his forearms.

"Take it easy! I just asked for your name, not your life's story!" The applicant raised his fists and snout into the air and shouted "Yes! I am Hog! Son of Swine! Daughter of Bull! I am here to become a Master and do what no beastman has ever done before to bring great honor to my family because I am Hog! Son of Swine! Daughter of Bull!" The Master considered telling him that there have been millions of beastman Masters across the academy's history, but she didn't want to break his dreams.

The Master sighed again and looked around. It was a beautiful sunny day. The sun was shining, the wind was blowing, the birds in the trees were chirping, she would much rather be inside eavesdropping on other people's conversations. But now she was in front of the big domed meeting hall sitting at one of the hundred foldable tables lying a few feet beyond the stairs leading up to the open gated entrance. In the rectangular plaza, there were dozens of large ships within the walls with applicants still streaming out and forming into lines to meet at the application tables. The plaza had a bright green layer of grass on the ground with trees sticking out at random spots. Sometimes there were patches of flowering plants between the trees each surrounded by a chain of rocks to deter people from stepping on them. Along the walls were a series of large arches that lead into different parts of Helgram with the single largest being in the wall at the other end of the plaza. Lining the top half of the horizontal walls were stained glass windows. Along the top of each wall was a walkway with a small turret for an entrance that appeared between every third arch.

"You're shouting is impressive enough, and I've already got your name down, so just go on up the stairs behind me so I can get the guy behind you." "I am Hog!" Shouted Hog before jumping onto all fours and racing up the stairs behind her.

The Master closed her eyes, sighed, and said "Next." Before opening them once more. At least this one's handsome, or at the very least clean. "Name please." "Nicholas Xed."

Suddenly, it was like thunder roared inside the hunter's head. Whowhatwhenwherewhy? Was only one of the hundreds of abstract questions that flooded her mind in the split second after hearing the last sound of this new applicant's name. She started imagining thousands of simulations, two after another, to arrive at a reasonable explanation as to why someone with that particular name would arrive at the Master's academy at this table, on this day, and at this time. After one-twelfth of a second, she arrived at a simple, undeniable, and plausible answer: I guess it has been eighteen years.

She wrote down his name in the registry and flatly said, "Go ahead." "Thanks!" Replied Thomas Xed's son before walking to the yearly orientation. This is going to be so fun! Thought the Mystery Master. After all, the only thing more fun than solving old mysteries is making new ones for others to solve.

***

Not as uncomfortable as I thought it would be! Thought Nicholas Xed as he drifted between people in the crowd within the meeting hall.

The floor was polished slate stone that didn't scuff or smear no matter how many people with filthy feet or footwear tread on it. A wide window at the back secured by wrought metal grating with a design of seemingly infinitesimal intricacy illuminated the hall. At the far end of the hall was a raised platform with two sets of marble stairs curving around the edge of the building as pathways leading to it. At the top of the domed ceiling hung a chandelier with hundreds of trumpeted ends curving upward where he assumed luminorbs, a soap-like substance that glows after its innate surface tension activated, sit at night. But what captured his attention most was the portraits covering every part of the wall. Each was an image of an impressive-looking individual captured in a completely unique art style. He wondered if someday his image would hang along this wall. The inside of this new place enamored him so much that he didn't notice someone just as enamored right in front of him until he accidentally bumped into and knocked them down.