Chapter 45: Temple of Doomsday
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CHAPTER FOUR

Temple of Doomsday


 

“Geez, Will, how did you get here before us?” Dess asked. She quickly followed this first question up with more questions. “Why were you fighting with Grendel?” and, “Are you soloing Grendel’s Grotto?” and finally, “What happened to your glaive?”

It should be noted that she’d asked all these questions in rapid-fire succession, which was kind of dizzying for me. Also, Dess may have been friendly with me, but the crowd of red cloaks now encircling me looked anything but friendly.

“I probably entered the dungeon before you guys,” I lied.

“Minotaur-shit,” a brown-skinned kid with deer antlers on his head spat. “If you entered the dungeon before us then we would have seen your name on the list.”

I assumed this ‘list’ was that signboard I’d seen hanging on the pole outside the dungeon’s main entrance. I did remember seeing Warrior-One’s name on that signboard, but this kid who was going all aggro on me wasn’t one of the Warrior-One apprentices. I pointed this out while alluding to the fact that at least ten of the gathered red cloaks weren’t part of my class.

“Warrior-One didn’t have enough members so they asked for Warrior-Two’s help,” antlers-boy replied, while also managing to sound as if he and his pals were doing Warrior-One a favor.

“There you have it. Just like how the list didn’t register you guys, it must have forgotten to register me too. Maybe it’s a bug in the system,” I lied. Gods, I’d make a good lawyer someday.

“How did you get Grendel to chase you up to the third floor?” the long, curly-haired human leader asked, but in a haughtier way than Dess did.

Finally, the one thing I didn’t need to lie about. “I don’t know. It came up here all on its own.”

A lot of skepticism floated my way. Not that I cared much as skepticism usually followed me around until I socked it good in the jaw.

“So~~o, if we’re done with the interrogation—”

Curly hair stepped forward, leaving his encirclement. I think he called himself something-something Joe.

“You know me?” he asked.

“Um”—I had to raise an eyebrow here—“should I?”

“He’s Joe!” The antler-boy pointed to curly hair. “The Ironborn Joe.”

“O~~okay.” The dude had a herald. That was interesting. I wanted a herald too. “Did you make that name up yourself?”

I wasn’t being a jerk. I was genuinely curious about how Academy nicknames worked as I one day hoped to be remembered as the ‘Maverick’, like that cool fighter jet pilot from the last movie Divah and I had seen together. But it turned out Ironborn Joe didn’t like his nickname being questioned, which is probably why he brazenly invaded my personal space.

“Oi.” He leaned down so we were eye-level. “Are you picking a fight with me, punk?”

Truthfully, I’d been excited to meet my first bullies in Draken and his two lackeys, but that feeling of wanting to experience this particular high school trope was beginning to wear thin on me. I might even have stepped willingly into his obvious provocation if not for Dess pulling me away while the rest of Warrior-One moved to get between me and the apprentices of Warrior-Two.

“W-Will’s not a bad guy, Mr. I-Ironborn, sir. He’s just new to the Academy,” Morph said in his soft-spoken voice.

Seriously, I understood why Morph might have my back, but I was surprised that the rest of Warrior-One also seemed to be looking out for me here.

“Come on,” Dess whispered.

While her team kept the Warrior-Two jerks occupied, Dess was quick to drag me back into the tunnel and out of sight.

“Who was that buttface?” I asked.

“Joe Sterling, human, sixteen, five-foot-ten, one-hundred-and-ninety-pounds, single…” Dess’s face turned contemplative for a second. “…he’s also one of the few apprentices to make it into the novice rankings and is currently ranked one hundred and ninety.”

One of my eyebrows hitched upward. “You knew all that from the top of your head?”

“I know the basic info of every potential rival among the apprentices,” Dess replied proudly.

I knew there was a reason I liked this fairy girl. She had the scent of a competitor too.

“You’re included in that list by the way.” She eyed me up and down. “William Wisdom, human, fifteen, five—”

“So”—I quickly cut her off—“too bad we couldn’t push through with shopping day, huh?”

“You’re the one who asked to push it to next weekend,” Dess reminded me. “You said you weren’t feeling well last night.”

Ah, yes, it did seem like the fairy had caught me in a lie. Sick people weren’t prone to solo dungeons after all. But it wasn’t like I could tell them the reason for me canceling was because of last night’s, um, difficulties, and I wasn’t in the mood for socializing today. Funny how things turned out though.

“Yeah, I felt much better when I woke up and decided I didn’t want to waste the day,” I lied again. “By the way, are you free after this?”

Yep, best to shift the conversation elsewhere.

“We were only planning on hunting up to the dungeon’s third floor, so I should be free after we inspect the cavern for loot.” Dess pointed a thumb back to where we’d come from. “Why, what’s up?”

Well, as fun as this side adventure was, I didn’t want to get lost around campus again. I needed a new guide to take me to the ‘Eyrie’ and then to the ‘Training Pavilion’ afterward.

“Oo~oh,” Dess cooed, “are you getting your stats updated?”

I nodded.

“Sure, I’ll take you,” she said. “I need an update myself.”

Dess offered to bring me with them when their party went back up to the surface, but I said there was something else I needed to do first. Moreover, I didn’t think their reinforcements liked me much. So, after promising to meet at the dungeon entrance, Dess went back to rejoin her fellow red cloaks while I began my mad dash back to that hamingem cave. Luckily, Dess’s party slew most of the goblins patrolling the floor, and after avoiding the fork in the road she’d warned me led to the goblins’ breeding ground, I found my way back to that first corridor where I thought the hamingem cave might be in. I almost missed the cave door though because the dwarven masons who built it made it nearly indiscernible from the wall, and I only noticed that barely imperceptible groove at the far end of the right-side wall because I knew it would be there.

Once inside the hamingem cave, I spared some time to replace the blue gem I used up in my fight against the Grendel and then made my way out of the dungeon via the crack at the far end of the cave which led me back to the narrow ledge along the cliffside.

I quickly scaled the ledge and found my way back to the rope I nailed to the cliff wall. This time, I didn’t have to swing over the air. I just needed to climb upward, using the cliff face’s craggy surface to make my way back up to the ledge about twenty feet above me. I managed this part just fine as climbing was a skill I’d cultivated properly back when I lived with Divah in our cabin near the summit of the Catskills mountains.

Funny how a few people screamed when they saw me appear over the ledge. This was quickly replaced by the usual gazes of suspicion though. Seriously, I was pulling aggro from everywhere since Saturday’s raid.

Dess and the rest of Warrior-One walked out of the cave entrance just as I finished stowing my rope back into my bag.

“What happened to Warrior-Two?” I asked.

“We parted ways because they didn’t like that we stuck up for a blue cloak,” the yeti red cloak answered.

I think his name was Daiji. He was about a head smaller than Zen, and his fur was more of a cream white compared to Zen’s light gray.

“Most of the apprentices who weren’t part of the raid don’t like you,” a pink-haired dragonkin girl chimed in. “They think you stand out too much.”

“Like a nail that’s just begging to be hammered,” added a third, dumpy kid with brown feathers for hair and golden eyes that seemed as sharp as a hawk’s.

From the pair of bird’s wings sprouting from his back, I assumed he was one of those noble griffins mentioned in the realms race compendium of Divah’s guide.

“But we like you, Will,” Morph assured me. “You’re the reason most of us are alive today.”

Most of us—well, that brought some of the guilt I’d been feeling since Saturday back to the surface of my mind, making me eager to escape the eager looks and feelings being poured onto me as I had no clue how to deal with that stuff. Thankfully, Dess was quick to notice my mood shift, and, after asking her team to take care of her share of the spoils, the fairy with the blue gossamer wings led me up the narrow steps that scaled the cliffside and back to campus.

***

With Dess’s help, I managed to find the Academy’s eyrie pretty easily this time. It was this ten-story wooden watchtower with balconies on each floor situated at the far north end of the campus and was also just a stone’s throw away from the Academy’s front gates.

“Wow...” Dess exclaimed in an almost sarcastic tone. “I didn’t know people still used ravens to send messages?”

I was rolling up a short—meaning extra-long—coded message to Divah about everything that’s happened to me since we parted ways at the New York portal.

“Why wouldn’t people use ravens anymore?” I wondered aloud. “They’re reliable.”

I also added a postscript asking Divah for advice about how to deal with the Liara situation because I seriously didn’t know what to do about it myself. This was risky though as Divah tended to berate me over stuff I should know to do myself, but I thought fixing my budding partnership with Liara was worth the risk. I also didn’t want to give up the first real connection I’d made among kids my age. But the alternative—letting go of my deep-seethed anger to help her find someone I was planning to murder anyway—was just too much of an ask, and I needed Divah’s sage advice to navigate this social challenge.

“You know you could just BM the person you’re trying to reach, right?” Dess chimed in, pushing me out of my musings.

I frowned. “BM?”

“Bar Messaging,” Dess reminded me. “It’s the fastest way to send a message across the known realms, and also way more secure than ravens.”

“Oh, yeah, my, um, pen pal isn’t tech savvy so I doubt she has a status bar of her own.” I placed my scroll into the case attached to the raven’s right foot. “If she does, then I’ve never seen it…”

“Your pen pal sounds sketchy. Like a hermit in the mountains or a sage at a secluded temple.”

“She is kind of like both those things.”

“What sort of insight are you looking to get from someone like that?”

“The kind that’ll make the impossible possible,” I said confidently. “Okay, all done.”

We watched the raven fly out the open window and off into the horizon before we climbed down the spiral staircase of the eyrie. At the bottom, I handed the raven whisperer a sceat for the delivery and then followed Dess out of the tower.

“You’ve never been to the Temple of Doomsday, have you?” she asked.

“Temple of Doomsday…” I frowned. “Master Doomsday has a temple named after him?”

Dess laughed. It was the typical kind of high-pitched fairy giggle that was like a bunch of bells chiming together.

“You could say that.” She reached out and grabbed my arm. “Come on. I’ll lead the way.”

The Temple of Doomsday wasn’t actually a place of worship dedicated to that half-giant, but the name the novices had given the Academy’s Training Pavilion because it was where Master Doomsday held court.

“Doomsday manages the visiting trainers and masters who come to the Academy every month for skill share lessons. He also gives novices advice on stats enlightenment stuff,” Dess explained.

“Isn’t Doomsday a pure warrior though?”

“You’d think that since you’ve fought him before, but I hear he’s more of an all-rounder like you, Will.”

Now, while the Great Library was like an upscaled replica of a Norse stave church, the Training Pavilion was a grand building not unlike the large longhouses where the regular classes were held, but with a steep gable roof instead of the typical boat-shaped roof of a longhouse. Wide, sweeping wooden steps climbed up the front side of the building to reach a second-floor landing that led to the pavilion’s intricately-carved wooden front doors. Banners of the three schools hung from the roof between large stained-glass windows one might normally see in a church.

“Dess”—as we neared the pavilion’s bottom step, I couldn’t help noticing the many flags floating in the breeze—“why are the banners of other guilds allowed here?”

A myriad of colorful banners soared over wooden flag poles rising from the ground at intervals between the pavilion’s bottom steps, giving it the kind of vibe that I imagined a martial arts academy might have.

“These banners belong to guilds affiliated with the Academy who’ve got representatives in the pavilion that teach us stuff our regular courses don’t normally teach,” she explained.

“Like what?” I asked as we began climbing the steps.

“Skills like sword arts and arcane arts exclusive to guilds, the intel you can’t find in books like dungeon guides, guild-exclusive tips and tricks to leveling up, specialty classes, and sometimes they give gifts like elixirs and stuff out for free,” she enumerated.

“Why would guilds share their secrets with novices of the Academy?”

“It helps foster relationships between the affiliated guilds and their future draft picks.”

I assumed that meant that the affiliated guilds would get the first shot at recruiting promising Academy novices who could help secure the guild’s future. Us novices were bound to benefit from a guild’s attention too.

“What does the Academy get out of it?” I asked.

“They get added security for the campus and also a place where the expert and master novices can go for internships,” Dess explained. “I’m sure there’s more to it, but only the faculty would know what’s what.”

It did sound like a good deal for the Academy too, but I wondered how—

At this point, Dess and I had reached the top step, and that’s where I froze after I noticed the person coming out of the pavilion’s front doors. It was Liara.

 

Glad tidings, fellow novices!

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