Chapter 9

Cybernetics are a common sight across Anogwin to one degree or another. The modifications and augments can range from affordable and functional to excessive in price and able to make the most meek of men into a threat. Body augmentation can become an addiction, leading people to discard their body piece by piece to eventually become what is called Cyberfreak.

Day 1, Igniday

I tentatively touched my throbbing right temple. My temple and the base of my skull were an unsettling combination of burning, throbbing pain, and complete numbness that reminded me I was missing flesh and bone in those locations. 

At that moment, I sat in one of the backmost seats of a lecture hall in the main school building known as the Aegis Hall. The massive semicircular room had its curve set to the back wall. Each row of seats was set three stair steps higher than the row ahead of it. The walls of the room were dark stained cherry wood, lined with the occasional wall lamp to give a dim mood lighting just bright enough to not strain the eyes while reading. The ‘desks’ were all a single long table on each tier. At each student’s station was a desk-mounted holo display, a graphic interface on the surface with a stylus connected to the desk by a wire cord to prevent theft, and a space for mundane pens and pencils. The student’s chairs were mounted to the floor with a swivel base and sliding grove to allow the seat to be pushed back. Though all the fanciness of the seats did nothing to make them feel any better than sitting in a tin bucket. 

While waiting for class to start, I had been testing and toying with the graphical interface. I found I had access to a slew of textbooks ranging from mathematics to physics to military tactics on both small and large scales. There were maps of the facilities and school grounds as well. I definitely would have to spend some time in the woods on my Sacredays. There was a cacophonous slam that resounded through the hall. Every other student in the room and I nearly jumped out of our seats, looking up to find a rather surly-looking old Human man stepping into the room from the main door.

The professor was stooped. His walk turned into little more than a shuffle by a hunch that looked like he had spent years carrying load after load of bricks uphill. Atop his head was a pointed cap with a wide brim made of what once was black fabric. The hat was now a limp, floppy thing that was a more charcoal grey color than black. Over his Mystagogue uniform was a musty cloak that matched his hat, save for the slew of ink stains across his sleeves. As for his physical appearance, his snow-white hair was cut close to his scalp; his eyes hid in the shadow of his cap save for a dark gleam. What was plainly visible were his long, hooked nose and his thin, cracked lips frozen in a perpetual sneer buried deep in the archetypal wise man's beard, which also happened to have ink stains. In his left hand was a staff, capped with a blue gem that glowed with a dim inner light. Under his right arm was a massive tome, bound in white leather with black iron bands and clasps.

He shuffled his way to the master’s desk, muttering under his breath the whole way. The only sounds in the room were that of his surly mutterings and the almost angry clacking of his staff striking the stone floor with every step. Once he reached the desk, he dropped the tome as if it were a sack of stones that meant less than nothing to him. He propped his staff against the back wall and turned around to plant both hands on his desk in an authoritarian manner.

“I am High Mystagogue Joseph, and you will refer to me as such or Professor Joseph.” his voice was a whining, growling thing. “I will normally be the instructor of your mathematics classes, as well as geography and politics. But today, I am here to explain what a terrible decision you made in joining this academy.” His voice made me think he didn’t normally speak much without that ever-present note of disdain.

Professor Joseph folded his hands behind his back and shuffled around to the front of the desk, where he continued the lecture. As if on cue, as soon as he started speaking, the desk's holographic display lit up in unison. “You are training to join the Hermetic Order of the Aegis. No doubt you hadn’t heard of the Order until your sponsor recruited you. This is how we like it. We of the Order work from the shadows, only taking the spotlight when needed, and when those times come around, we do not reveal the existence of the Order. Instead, we simply state that we are a part of something greater.” He said this last bit with air quotes.

“As a member of the Order, you will have access to resources like few others. Depending upon your sect, you will have access to hidden knowledge, almost limitless resources for crafting and experimenting, access to a spy network that is unlike any other, and many of you will also be given an adventurer’s license.” This last tidbit had most of the students on the edge of their seats. Every kid dreamed of being an adventurer, despite the fact that the job was, at times, controversial.

“Many of you will never see graduation from this school. The tests throughout the seven years here are difficult, to say the least, and at many times dangerous. Out of the fifty of you in this room, by the end of this year, most likely, ten will fail out, five will drop out, and another five will be dead.” The class met this statement with a cold and brittle silence. “If you fail or drop out, you will have all memory of this place wiped, and you will be gated back to your hometown.” This caused a few murmurs among the students.

“A key component of being a member is right there in the name, ‘Hermetic’. That means we are not a government organization or some band of well-off adventurers. We are a religious group following The Shattered Goddess. As Slates, your study of the Order’s beliefs and rituals will be purely academic. When you become a Tier One trainee, you will be indoctrinated and take part in your sect’s culture.” He shuffled his way around the desk as he spoke, stopping before the class as he continued.

“No doubt you have never heard of our Fractured Goddess, and there is a reason for that. In an era lost to time, before the birth of the Elves or the rise of the dragons, a great evil rose from the nothingness of the void. This entity was so terrible and unnatural not even the Eternals, who forged reality, dared face it. But where the powers that forged the realms would not stand, a simple goddess did. She stood up to this terrible entity and somehow locked it away, but she fell in the process, broken. Our earliest members were priests and priestesses to this goddess. These forefathers of ours knew that even to remember the entity’s name was to give it power but to forget its name, the people needed to forget its existence, which meant to forget the very name of the goddess they followed. She became known as the Shattered Goddess and was only to be remembered by those that acted on her behalf.” Professor Joseph stopped there, letting the silence linger and deepen.

 When the hollowness of the moment was almost unbearable, and I noticed several students about to raise their hands, the instructor crooked a wicked grin and continued.

“Now you must be wondering why we still worship her if she fell. What blessings could a dead goddess give? What is the point of having faith in a power that has been snuffed out? Well, when she fell, she shattered. Hence the name. She broke into five shards. Each shared a distilled, pure fragment of who she was.” The holo-displays at the tables showed diagram images to follow along with his story. A female outline wielding a blade against an entity of smoke, the female figure falling head first and breaking apart into what looked to be five fragments of crystal. 

“Many think that before she fell, she was a goddess that covered a wide range of domains because of a number of titles that have been saved to records. Titles such as The First Mother and The Final Guide, among others. Making many think that she had domains over life, fertility, death, and passing into the next life. But her fragments and their choices of domains raise many questions. Each fragment is powerful enough to be a goddess in their own right.” At this point, Professor Joseph began pacing the length of the stage, gesturing wildly with his hands as he continued to explain, plainly ignoring the raised hands of questioning students.

The holo display zoomed in on a crystal, showing the symbol of a blade crossed over an eye with a slash crossing in the opposite direction.“The first of the five is Her Fragment of the Warrior’s Eye. She rules over strategy, war, wisdom, courage, and honor.”

Next, the display showed a fragment with the symbol of a crown with a central gem, a crack splitting both metal and stone. “Then came Her Fragment of the Fallen Lineage. This fragment presides over magic, intelligence, wisdom, and sovereignty.”

The display moved to the next fragment, showing the symbol of a flaming mechanical fist holding a raised hammer as if to strike an anvil. “Next is Her Fragment of the Birthing Forge. She is a goddess of craftsmanship. Her domains are intelligence, innovation, architecture, and engineering.”

The display shifted to the next fragment. The symbol this time was a set of blank eyes, clearly blind, crowned with seven stars and with what looked like swirling wisps of mist flanking them. “Then there was Her Fragment of the Whispering Phantom. A goddess of spy craft and information acquisition. Her domains are intelligence, theft, secrets, lies, and truth.”

“Lastly is Her Fragment of the Beating Stillness. She presides over assassins, the domains of justice, vengeance, life, death, love, and hate.” The display shifted to the last shard. This symbol was of an anatomically correct heart pierced by a dagger and leaking blood.

The lecture continued on; the Mystagogue went over the history of the Order and its transformation from an organization of priests into what it was in the current era. As the lecture ended, we were briskly told to get out and take our lunch and that Mystagogue Kellennar would collect us after. We all hurried out of the study hall and made our way to the mess hall. I walked at a slightly slower pace than everyone else so that I could fall to the rear of the pack without looking suspicious.

Now I won’t lie. Anyone who has been bullied will have trouble with this next part, and I know plenty that will be upset with how I handled it. But you need to remember that the Iver back then was a timid and sensitive boy and not the Iver telling the story who would crack skulls if the need arose. But if you are willing to push through, I promise that things will get a lot more interesting.

The mess hall, commissary, DFAC, or whatever you wanted to call it, was a single-story structure with no windows. I passed through the front doors into a massive room filled with evenly spaced round tables in an asymmetric pattern. Along the right wall was a serving area, with a variety of food being dispensed by cooks. The walls around the dining room were painted with murals dedicated to each of the five sects. Between each painting were mounted monster heads, manticore, hydra, roc, chimera, and tomb crawler spider. 

After waiting for my turn, I picked up a tray and utensils. I was served a mess of runny mashed potatoes with thin gravy, a sad excuse for a biscuit, and a slab of some kind of meat by a Bear Primal. I gathered a glass of water and made my way to the furthest vacant table from another living soul. I found a vacant table off in a corner, away from most people. I took a seat and was ready to dig into the less-than-appealing meal when I found several figures looming over me. The Brightling and his crew from the waiting room stood over me, all with smirks. Before I could respond, my tray was flipped into my face, covering me with potatoes and gravy. 

“How’s your meal Freakshow? I hope it feels nice.” mocked the Brightling. The others laughed at his curd joke, and I just lowered my head.

“Nice one, Mallrimor,” Came the Dracose.

“I d-didn’t do anything to you. Why single me out?” I asked.

Mallrimor, the Brightling, flashed me a wicked grin. “It is my duty as a son of the light to punish creatures like you.”

“B-but I-I’m not a creature. I’m not even evil. I just want to be left in peace.” I frantically stammered.

“Peace? You? Everyone knows that Darklings are the spawn of evil. If you don’t start trying to ruin people’s lives now, then you will later. So I think it’s best to put you in your place now. You are not better than me, and you never will be.“

“I don’t want to be better. I just want to graduate and move on.” I wasn’t about to tell them about my father’s killer and the black box.

“Well, we are going to make sure you don’t graduate, and if I have my say, you will have a few accidents along the way.” Mallrimor proclaimed.

I stood up with a jolt and tried to press my way out of the semi-circle. The Orc and High Elf refused to let me pass. Then, after a moment, the Elf stepped aside, stuck out his foot, and shoved me. I tripped and sprawled across the ground. Tears rose up in my eyes as the others laughed with cruelty. “Nice move there, Gellar.” encouraged Mallrimor.

Gellar, the Elf, shifted his chuckle of amusement to a mirthful cackle. I scrambled to my feet and half-ran toward the restroom signs. I slipped into the bathroom and did my best to clean myself off while ignoring the tears running down my cheeks. I washed my shirt, I dried off my cheeks, and wiped the snot from my nose. By the time I was done, lunch had just ended, and Mystagogue Kellennar was calling for the Slates to form up.

I got into formation and did my best to ignore the snickering behind and beside me. Mallrimor stood right behind me in formation, and Gellar was just to my right. I already loathed my position in the formation and knew it was only going to get worse as the year went on.

In formation, we marched around the Aegis Hall toward a slightly smaller building that was emblazoned with the title Foundry above the front doors. The Foundry was a circular three-story structure with a conical top, its summit billowing thick smoke of various churning shades of grey, black, and brown.

As we came to a halt, Kellennar told us that we would enter one column at a time and would receive our needed equipment and instruction on how to operate some of the more critical devices.

As at the medical facility, we filed in one column at a time. When my turn came, I followed S18 as I had last time. As I passed into the Foundry, I knew that I had found somewhere where I’d be spending much of my free time. The inner walls were made of cinder blocks and concrete, each displaying broken weapons above a plaque with the weapon’s name, owner’s name, date of the break, what broke it, and whether the owner lived or died because of the weapon. 

I stepped into a circular central chamber that accessed every other chamber with a spiraling staircase winding around the outer edge of the room to access other platforms for each of the three floors. I was quickly ushered into a ground-floor room titled Cauldron 3. The room was shaped like a cake slice, with the entrance at the narrowest point. Lining the room were a slew of racks and display boards holding dozens of different items. A Dracose girl, a tier one student from the looks of her, stepped up to me and, without a second’s greeting, met me at the door and, without preamble, tossed a grey rucksack at my face. I scrambled to catch the sack. Only after the fumbling failure did I try to flash her an awkward smile. Her Draconic features were hard to read, but she was one of the smaller breeds of her race, which meant that she was less likely to rip my head off, not that it gave me any safety if she wanted to melt me into slag. 

Her scales faded from a deep royal purple to a dark scarlet ruby around her chest and neck. Where her hair would have been, there grew thick stocks of tendrils. The tendrils faded from the same purple as her body to the same scarlet. The organic ropes were woven together and painted sapphire-cobalt color at the tips. 

She gestured for me to join her beside the first table that was covered in boxed kits. She picked up a plastic case, clicked it open, and turned to display the supplies inside. A pipe cleaner, various strengths of solvents, grease cloth, buffer clothes, grease, wax, gun oil, application tools, leather cleaner, sharpening oil, wet stone, wire brush, and a small set of screwdrivers and wrenches were all things I made a note of when she displayed the box’s contents.

 “This is your weapons maintenance kit. Do not lose it. You lose it, and you die.” She spoke with a thick and heavy accent that revealed her origin in the nation of Steel Cast. She closed the kit’s lid and shoved it to the bottom of the rucksack. Taking a closer look at the sack in my hands, I noticed that the thing must have been six feet tall and lined on three sides with smaller pockets, each seemingly with its own purpose. I followed the stern student to the next station.

She shifted from one table to the next, this time picking up a clear plastic box with individual cubbies for each item. A hands-free toothbrush and accompanying toothpaste, body soap, hair products, razor, accompanying shaving cream, and grooming scissors were all in the case. She shoved this kit atop the last. “Your hygiene supplies are to be replaced every five days at the dining hall.”

She moved on. This table was laden with massive sword kits. Just from a glance at the kit, I could see a variety of hilts in varying sizes and designs and five times as many blades and guards to go with the hilts. It looked like the kit was designed so that you could customize the weapon through a puzzle-like connection system. The larger blade sizes had cut-out designs to slip in a smaller-sized blade. A series of high-powered magnets firmly attached the blade extensions, counter masses, and weighted blade modifications. The magnets looked to be activated by a sensor on each hilt. My best guess was that the hilts would be coded to my palm and would only switch on or off it at my command. 

This massive kit, my guide, slipped into a single long and wide pouch inside the sack that was clearly made for the box it then held. “This is your bladed weapons kit. If you break it, bring it back here. If you lose it, you die.”

And so on it went. She would move to a table, pick up and display the item, give a few lines of explanation, and occasionally end it with a threatening “lose this, and you die.”

I was given a pistol and rifle for basic ranged kinetic weapons along with an elemental handgun, commonly called a snuffer, and a lance rifle for ranged myst combat. I was also given a soldering iron, myst-welder, myst measuring tools, a book of runes for enchanting, a survival kit, an engraver kit, a thieves kit, an armor care kit, a bludgeoning weapons kit, and a taxidermy kit for some odd reason.

When I was loaded up, bag around my shoulders, I turned around to find another tier one student staring at me. A Primal girl was at the beginning of the line with her own student. She was a Primal of the tiger breed. This just meant that she looked like an anthropomorphic tiger with a young girl’s figure. Only her colors weren’t that of a normal tiger. Most of her fur was silk-black, while her stripes and long flowing hair were a fiery copper color. Her just as fiery yellow eyes shone with interest. Those eyes seemed... curious.

I was so focused on the Primal girl that I failed to notice a grip around my tail. What I did notice was a strong yank on said tail as I kept walking. Without time to react, my feet slipped out from under me as I tripped and fell flat on my face, the rucksack flattening me under its gargantuan weight atop my slender frame. I heard a chortle from behind me. I was growing to know that mirthful cackle very well, the Brightling, Mallrimor. 

I tried to push myself up onto my hands and knees; the bag mounted to my back made me more than a little top-heavy. With a bit of slipping on the stone floor, I managed to prop myself up on all fours, only to feel a hard kick of a boot slamming against my ass, sending me sprawling again. Mallrimor’s amused chuckle bubbled up as he circled around me to head out the door and no doubt back into formation chuckles trailing in echoes behind him. I pulled myself to my feet and quickly made my way back, not looking past my feet as I tried and failed to hold back tears yet again. 

The rest of the day was just stressful. I got my therra-node and was instructed on how to use it. I was given basic instructions on weapon maintenance and commanded to make it a daily routine. I got back to my room around five o’clock after a half-hearted dinner of limp veggies and dry meatloaf. By the time I made it back to my room, I felt like I had a permanent hunch from the rucksack. I shambled up to my door and swiped my still-tender wrist over the scanner of the door. I was so thankful to have these Bio Identification Chips (B.I.C) in my wrists. The door slid open with a clean whoosh as I continued my shamble beyond the door. I dumped the bag onto the floor and pulled a small, thin case out of my breast pocket. I held the small black tin case between both hands and opened it as gingerly as I could. I looked on at the device within with reverence. I had wanted one of these since I was seven years old. I gazed upon the majesty of a small triangular device with slightly rounded sides and a single triangular light in the center. A therra-node, model V, Valiant class.

After a long moment of admiration, I set the case on the table beside me, and tentatively moved the small node to my right temple. When the device was almost touching the minor, circular plate at my temple, magnets took hold, and the therra-node flew from my fingers. The moment the device mounted, there was an audible click and a feeling like a static shock at the point of connection. Shortly after, a series of holograms popped into my field of view. A loading bar quickly filled and vanished, to be replaced by a diagram of my body filling in layer by layer, stat by stat. 

Skeletal structure: 

Bone density: 94%

Checking for skeletal damage… None Found

Circulatory system:

Blood Pressure: 100/85

White Blood Cell Level: Normal

Platelet Count: Normal

Checking for ruptures...None Found

Musculature:

Muscle density: Below Average

Muscle tensile strength: Below Average

Nervous System:

Reflex reaction time: Normal

Synaptic Elasticity: Above Average

Neuron Flash Time: Above Average

Checking System for damage… None Found

Endocrine System:

Hormone Levels: Abnormal

Chemical Levels: Abnormal

Mystwell:

Mystwell Reservoir Capacity: (13) Below Average

Myst Absorption Rate: 2 vp/min, Above Average

Myst Channel Flow Rate: ERROR

I was rather confused by some of the readings, so I tapped on them in order, with a single finger. The lack of muscle was no shock. I had always been a thin boy, and my time as an orphan only served to shrink my stomach and tighten my frame. Next came my nervous system, but I could already guess that these were the physical reasons why I was overthinking so much, so I ignored that and moved to the more nerve-racking readings of my endocrine. Digging deeper, all that the holo pages told me was that I was suffering from moderate depression, severe anxiety, and what was simply labeled as Unknown. Neither of the first two were really shocking to me. I could have told you that I was dealing with both from the beginning. But that ‘unknown’ condition had me worried. I would have to get that looked at some point. 

Next, I moved to the oddest readings of the bunch, my Mystwell. The below-average capacity wasn’t surprising. They had tested me when I was younger and told me that I had no magic talent, a dream of every child, destroyed. The next stat, Myst Absorption Rate, had me confused. How could I have an above-average rate if I didn’t even have an open channel? I would have to ask a magic instructor about that later as well. But the last stat, the fact that my flow rate read was an error, could only have been because I didn’t have an open channel, but that fact that it read ‘error’ instead of ‘N/A’, ‘0’, or something along those lines gave me a reason for excessive worry. 

Was I damaged somehow? Could I maybe become a caster if I could fix this bit of me? Could I fix this broken part of me with mystech? Maybe a node of some type? I had no idea what cybernetic body augment would fix this flaw, but I would have to do some digging. 

I tried to do some studying by surfing the LSN (Live Sigil Network), but I got a block notification explaining that I would only be allowed access to the full web during class hours and only when granted by instructors. I did, however, have access to a large series of introductory text documents, diagrams, and training videos. I would apparently gain increased access with each year I graduated.

I pulled up a few basic diagrams and set them into the corner of my vision, and made my way to my bed. The bed was still an absolute disaster from that morning. I balled up the sheets and threw them onto my bed before I began systematically unpacking my bag and putting everything in its needed place. The weapons went up piece by piece onto the Black Rack. I leaned the rifle cases against the wall beside the rack and mounted the pistols in the rack. 

Once all was put away, I curled up on my bed, gingerly fingering my new R.A.T tail. I brushed my fingers along the perimeter Rear Access Terminal, slowly wrapping my fingers around the ‘tail’, a retractable cable for interaction with more complex interfaces. I gingerly pulled the cable, feeling a slow rhythm of clicks as the cord extended from one locking position to the next. We were all told the tail could stretch as far as nine feet, but I was not about to test that anytime soon. I plugged the tail into a slot in the overhead above my bed. I lost all sight, and a strange sensation of falling in place took hold. 

A new world came into existence with a flash. A world of blue and yellow lines forming strange shapes, what I figured to be programs. I floated in the air, gazing into the vast expanse of darkness occupied by these shapes and paths of light. I looked down at my hands to find that my body appeared to be made of the same lines, only these were green. The array of my body throbbed with sparks of light that trailed through the lines. Unsure of what to do, I looked around, trying to puzzle out what I could do in the space and how. All the shapes seemed to be made up of sharp angles in varying complexities. Just as I was about to try moving, a cube of blue lines appeared in front of me with an audible pop. The cube had script on its forward face. Yellow lines formed a single blocky word, “Tutorial”.