The academy is a weird choice of words.
To be honest, at first, I wanted to call it a prison.
Why? Well, because of the barriers around the building. They look straight up evil, it's a wiiiiiide fence, made of metal? I think, it's pretty weird to see a fence like this to be honest.
I'm used to the wooden buildings.
But apparently the academy doesn't agree with me.
Because this giant prison fence, -yes, it looks like a prison fence- corners EEEEEVEEEERY fucking side of the academy.
It's...kind of crazy to be honest. The giant fence fully surround every inch of the academy, worse is, on the top of the fence, there's spikes.
Genuine spikes, I'm not joking here. Anyone that tries to climb above the fence will find themselves impaled.
You see why I thought this was a prison?
Not yet?
Well, let me tell you the second reason why I thought this was a prison, for a first, the academy isn't really IN the city.
From my bird view on the hill, I can see everything pretty clearly, there's the big village, the middle part where I live, extending to the north. The baby walls around. The fields that are OUTSIDE the baby walls for some reason.
And to the south of where I live, to the south of the city, not in the poor district, but OUTSIDE the village, here it lays.
The academy.
Outside the baby walls, the ones in the south.
Which is weird because I just told you the entire city, apart from the rich district where I live, is filled with poor and desperate people.
Shouldn't they try to like...steal the free wood or something?
And you're right, most of the walls they've been trying to put in the poorer part of the village have been raided by desperate people.
Of course, free wood, who could pass up on that when your house is crumbling day by day?
But, don't you notice something weird in what I said?
The baby walls. They're still standing, they're still here, around the village. And they still stand strong, they're still being worked on at this very moment.
Why?
Well, the reason for this is simple. First there is the adult workers defending the resources, but most importantly.
The academy is smart.
They're using their own students as a way to cull any potential attack, all while training them!
Smart. I know, I know.
And those students, is the reason why I figured out that the word I was searching for wasn't prison, but academy.
Well, maybe school could fit too.
Still, it was pretty hard to figure out that it was something like that and not a death camp or something. Because it genuinely looks like it.
There's only one big gate in all the fences, and it's constantly being monitored by four guys with two swords, an axe, and another guy with no visible weapons.
Maybe he has a knife or something.
Still.
That looks bad.
Inside the gate, and inside the fence the academy is pretty big. The buildings inside are big at least.
There's two big wooden buildings that are almost sticked on the left fence, and right fence, respectively. The buildings are mighty huge, and look more like barns than anything.
I can't see much more from such a distance, but I do see the trickle of people coming out from the barns-like building.
Looks like dormitories.
Weird dormitories but dormitories nontheless.
In the middle of the fenced area, between the dormitories, there's a bigger building.
This is the biggest building I've ever seen in this life.
It's made of wood too, again.
In front of said building, on the grass, because yes, the prison/academy is built in the plain outside the city. In front of such building, right now, there's a class going on.
I think that's a class?
There's a lot kids moving around there, like a lot.
Like...a hundred+ kids, and there's still some kids that are inside the big building in the middle, and more entering or leaving the dormitories on the left and the right.
Most of the kids I can see are...old.
Older than me.
From what I'm seeing, pretty much everyone is older than me. If I went in there, I would be the youngest by far.
The youngest in the academy should probably be Kiko, or maybe someone around her age.
She's probably six or five right now.
So yeah.
They have an army of kids.
And most of them hold weapons.
...what the fuck is happening?
I get why some people are talking about this like it's the boogeyman itself, what is worse though, is that from what I've seen, most people in my area of the town. Don't mind this.
How can you be for this!?
What the fuck is happening!?
What is my grandfather doing? Because of course, the boss of the school is my grandfather, of course, wouldn't be funny otherwise.
The man who destroyed my family and have been talking about bla bla bla the economy is horrible, is chilling, in his made up school/castle and he have his own army of childrens!
The fuck!?
Well, some of them are teenagers. But most of what I'm seeing is around ten years old.
Older than me, by far. But still way too young.
And me who wondered why me and kiko were the youngest people in the entire village, would make sense that people stopped making babies if the second they make some they're getting swallowed by the machine my grandfather created.
Why is he even doing that? Trying to build an army?
I lick the last pieces of syrup off my fingers and squint my eyes to look at the class that's going on in the middle of the complex.
Most of the kids around are...unruly? Kind of, there's some adults around, and most of them are taking care of big groups of childrens, organizing them in their own way.
I can also see teenagers around, girls, or boys, taking care of groups of childrens too.
They're trying to rally them for something?
For what though?
I wait for a while as the crowd of children slowly calms down, soon enough, there's only one clear figure in the middle of the crowd.
A sword at his hip.
I squint and rememeber the face.
...that's my grandfather.
He claps his hands and starts a speech, a speech I can't hear from afar of course.
But he does walk around, pacing left and right while doing exaggerated gestures for my benefit, because this help me understand... Absolutely nothing.
He keeps going for twenty good seconds and I get bored, so instead, I look down at the only open gate.
There's kids coming out, usually with one teenager, but sometimes just a group of ten years old. Some have weapons, some don't.
But all of them passes the baby wooden wall unobstructed, and go in the poor district to....fight homeless people, again.
Yeah this shit is fucking crazy, I think my grandpa is single handedly trying to eradicate homelessness or something.
And he's going the fascist way.
Looking up at my grandpa speech again one last time. Nothing more interesting happens
And it's starting to get dark. I should probably get back home soon if I want that dinner my mom promised me, been a while since she made me food.
Well, time to leave.
I get up from my sitting position, stretching my legs and giving one last glance at the speech.
My grandfather pulls out his sword, point it at a log that's resting on his left. And without any warning.
He teleports.
His body moves so fast I can only follow a blur, a blur that reappears behind the log, log cutted in half as he slides his sword back in his scabbard.
For twenty seconds I stare at the void.
When I break out of whatever spell affected me, I speak out loud.
"What the fuck?"