The rays of early morning light broke through the dreary clouds along the horizon, chasing away the nocturnal spirits that fly low to hunt prey. The streets of the city were wide and well looked after, with buildings made of solid stone ordered beside each other. The windows of the shops and houses were shuttered, with the only exceptions being the numerous taverns scattered around the city and the few guild halls along with them.
A small chilled breeze rushed down the street, forcing its way through the small cracks in the door and windows of the tavern, making the people near them shiver in their sleep. Wooden mugs were strewn across tabletops, and the lids of barrels which had been cracked open lay in pieces on the floor. The smell of alcohol hung in the air like a blanket, smothering everything else but acting as a small comfort to those waking up at that moment.
The first to wake was, of course, the barman, closely followed by the men with strong stomachs and even stronger livers. One by one, the people in the bar eventually woke up to leave, and by the time the second to last person had left, the streets outside had grown alive with the sounds of merchants setting up their tents and the dulled-down road of the baker's fire next door.
The last person to wake up was a young girl wearing a once-white woollen tunic which had been stained a light brown with all sorts of alcoholic beverages. Despite having drunk very little, she was definitely hungover.
The girl groaned, peeling her cheek off the sticky wood of the table. The ambient glow from her bracelet had shifted from the deep, sterile blue of the Indigo Rise to the energetic pale green of the Veridian Climb. To anyone else, the shift signalled the start of the workday, a time for vitality and movement; to her, it felt like a hammer striking an anvil inside her skull.
She sat up, wincing as the sunlight that streamed through the windows assaulted her sensitive eyes. Her name was Lyra, and she had definitely not drunk enough to warrant this level of misery—unless the ale had been imported from the dwarven lands.
"You're finally up," the barman grunted, sweeping a rag across a nearby table. He didn't look up, but his hand extended expectantly. "That'll be twelve Sparks for the night. You broke a mug."
Lyra fumbled with the sash of her stained woollen tunic, her fingers trembling slightly. She dug into her pouch, praying she hadn't spent everything during the hazy blur of the Indigo hours. Her fingers brushed against cool, smooth surfaces. She pulled out two thin, jagged slivers of pale blue glass—a Splinter.
"Keep the change," she rasped, her voice dry. She placed the Splinter on the counter.
The barman paused, picking up the glass sliver. He held it up to the shadows beneath the bar counter, cupping his hands around it. It pulsed with a faint, steady blue rhythm, like a heartbeat. Satisfied it wasn't a dud made of mundane windowpane, he nodded and slid it into his apron.
"Keeping your Sparks bright, girl," he muttered, though his tone suggested he didn't care if she burnt out before noon.
Lyra stumbled out of the tavern and into the street. The transition was jarring. The city of Oros was awake, and the Veridian Climb was in full swing. The already blinding sunlight reflected off the whitewashed stone buildings, giving the entire avenue an unnecessary level of brightness.
Merchants were already shouting prices, their stalls laden with wares. A baker was exchanging a warm loaf for a single, pea-sized bead of clear glass from a customer. The air smelt of fresh fruits and baking dough.
Lyra shielded her eyes and looked toward the centre of the district. Rising above the slate roofs was the Town Prism, a massive crystal spire mounted on the distinct clocktower, now glowing a bright, vibrant green.
"Veridian," she cursed under her breath. "Shit, I'm late."
She began to run, her headache protesting with every step. For the last eight years she had been training as a junior hunter, and she knew that if she didn't get to the Guild Hall in the next fifteen minutes, she would be back to scrubbing cobbles in the butchery down in the basement like she had been doing for the last few days.
Sprinting through the streets was almost impossible due to them being absolutely packed with traders. Turning down a side road with fewer people, she ran directly into an oddly dressed man, wearing a cloak as black as the blackest night and a strange mottled green set of clothes underneath. The cloak had been thrown askew from the collision, and a medium-sized patch could clearly be seen. It had red and white stripes for most of the pattern, with a blue rectangle in the top left corner with an array of white dots on it. The man quickly fixed his cloak and, with his companion, quickly stepped aside and carried on walking. Lyra quickly snapped out of her confused trance, apologised and carried on running, pushing the interaction to the corner of her mind.
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The clerk at the front desk of the guild hall stared at her bracelet, watching it slowly turn from a pale green to a more yellow tint as the Veridian Climb bled into the Gilded Zenith. Just before the bracelet turned completely gold, the door slammed open and a familiar figure hobbled over to the front desk.
"Good morning, Lyra." Said the clerk sarcastically. "You're lucky today. Might just be on time for your meeting with the guild master."
"Great." Came the half-dead reply.
"Hurry on upstairs." Said the clerk more caringly this time. "Sort yourself out too." Motioning at coming her hair.
Lyra touched her hair, turned towards the clerk, and was greeted with a comb in the face. Fumbling with the comb to fix her hair to be somewhat presentable, she rushed up the stairs, pocketed the comb, then knocked and entered the second door on the left.
The heavy oak door swung open with a groan that seemed to echo the pounding in Lyra's head. She stepped inside, squinting against the dimness. Unlike the rest of the city, which was currently being roasted by the blinding light of the Gilded Zenith, this office was kept in a perpetual, calculated shadow. Heavy velvet drapes blocked out the Spire's punishing glare, leaving the room illuminated only by the soft, steady glow of several high-grade Shard lamps positioned on the walls.
Behind a massive desk made of dark ironwood sat the Arch-Stalker, Kaelen.
He didn't look up as she entered. He was preoccupied with sharpening his prized serrated dagger with a whetstone, the rhythmic grating sound filling the silence. Kaelen was a mountain of a man, his skin mapped with scars from a lifetime of hunting in all sorts of environments, and his eyes were as cold and sharp as the steel in his hands.
"You're thirty seconds late." Kaelen rumbled, finally pausing his work to look at her.
Lyra straightened her posture, her eyes locked on to a suddenly very interesting part of the wooden floor. "Sorry."
"You're not sorry," Kaelen corrected, placing the dagger on the desk. "Every time you say that, it almost always happens again."
Lyra remained silent. There was no point arguing with the man who had pulled her out of the gutter when she was a child and raised her when no one else would. Kaelen wasn't just the Guild Master; he was the closest thing to a father she had, though he ran his household with the same military discipline he ran the Guild.
He gestured to the empty chair opposite him. "Sit. We need to talk about your future."
Lyra sank into the chair, the leather creaking beneath her. "I know my future. I'm a Stalker. I'm ready to take on the commission board."
Kaelen leaned back, the shadows casting his face in relief. He reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a heavy parchment envelope, sliding it across the desk toward her. It was sealed with a few simple tabs of the same light brown colour and emanated a type of magic completely foreign to Lyra, sending shivers down her spine. She stared at it as if it were a venomous snake, drawing back slightly to avoid it at all costs. "What is this?"
"Your enrolment papers," Kaelen said calmly. "You've been accepted into an academy. Classes start in three days."
Lyra laughed, a dry, incredulous sound. "You're joking. You want me to go sit in a lecture hall with a bunch of soft-handed merchants' sons and learn... what? Exactly?" She pushed the envelope back. "I'm a hunter, Kaelen. You trained me to hunt beasts, not read about them."
"I trained you to survive," Kaelen snapped, his voice dropping an octave. "And the world is changing, Lyra. You, of all people, as a mage, must have felt something disappear recently. Do you want to know why that is?" Asked Kaelen, pulling out a map of the mountains and spreading it across his desk. "It's because south of Oros, in the very core of Mount Emberheart, lives a Draco Montanus."
"Or in a language actually spoken, a Mountain-Ripper." Cut in Lyra, clearly uninterested in the topic. "What's the point? I mean, everybody knows about the Mountain-Rippers. They're one of the stronger land-aerial hybrid dragons, right?"
"How many times do I have to tell you to just listen?" Sighed Kaelen. "The point is that the Mountain-Ripper is dead, and I don't know how."
Lyra's head snapped up to attention as she processed this shocking piece of information. Mountain-Rippers were freaks of nature that were virtually immortal and impossible to harm. The only things that could bring a Mountain-Ripper to its knees were a god or the slow inevitable march of time.
"The local environment is changing; it's unstable even," Kaelen continued, his voice grave. "The beasts out in the wilds... they are changing too. They are getting smarter, more aggressive and stronger too. Swinging a sword and casting some spells isn't going to be enough anymore. You need to understand the mechanics of the world. You need to understand how the world changes when it does so that you can adapt to it."
"I can adapt to it in the field," Lyra argued, though her voice lacked its usual fire. "I don't need a degree to do any of the stuff that you've taught me."
"No," Kaelen agreed. "But you need a degree for all of the countless things that I haven't or can't teach you."
He stood up and walked to the window, pulling back the drape just an inch. A slice of blinding golden light cut across the room, illuminating dust motes dancing in the air.
"I have taken many people before you under my wing, and every single one of them fell to the same flaw," Kaelen said softly, his back to her. "Arrogance and pride got them killed, and I wasn't in a position to be able to stop them. But when I found you abandoned in the forest, I promised myself that I would make sure that you live a long and happy life, whatever the cost may be." Kaelen traced down his left arm instinctively before quickly passing it off as simply rubbing it.
"I have paid the tuition." He snapped with renewed sternness. "It cost me a thousand Prisms."
Lyra's jaw dropped. One thousand Prisms. That was enough wealth to buy several large estates across the kingdom. The sheer weight of the investment crashed down onto her shoulders, making it harder to breathe with every passing moment.
"You... you spent... a thousand... Prisms?" she stammered. "What academy has a tuition fee of a thousand Prisms?"
Kaelen turned back, the light framing his silhouette. "Aurelion." He declared, walking back to the desk and resting his knuckles on the wood, leaning in close. "You're going. And that's the end of it."
Lyra looked at the envelope again, her mind clouded from struggling to process the fact that Kaelen had spent a thousand Prisms to send her to Aurelion.
She sighed, a long, defeated exhale, and reached out to take the envelope.
"Fine," she muttered, tucking the parchment into her tunic. "I'll go. But if I die of boredom, I'm haunting you. Some shit adventure this'll turn out to be."
Kaelen's face didn't change, but the tension in his shoulders began to slowly evaporate. "You can try."
He sat back down and picked up his dagger and whetstone, resuming the rhythmic grating of metal on stone.
"Get out of my office," he grunted, though his tone was lighter now. "And go drink some water; sober yourself up."