[Severed Divinity] 56. Nascent Soul

The class schedule had simply stated that they met an hour after first bell. Isen was up well before then. He washed up, dressed, and polished the Shard of Erasmus. Isen held his fingers up to the shiny, pearlescent surface. Side by side, he more clearly saw the sheen over his nails that made them sharp. Tempered.

He walked to the mirror in his small bathroom corner and cycled, eyes open. He looked normal—no glowing eye.

He was too jittery to properly cultivate, so he grabbed the books he’d borrowed from the library and went over the elven writing system. He had a feeling he might be using it today.

When the bell finally tolled, Isen left his room and checked for Freyan and Arthum; they were absent. Alone, he walked to the dining facility for breakfast. The sect was waking up, and many clansmen were walking about. For the first time, he noticed the clan’s pure elves—the mages. Three of them strode in front of him, men dressed in different garments than the cultivators, black robes that hung to their shins with wide sleeves. Silvery wave-like patterns extended from the sleeves over the shoulders.

There was a short line to enter the dining hall. It felt like everyone around him was talking with a companion, and then there was just him, out of place. He adjusted his collar and the sash around his ears as the line moved forward.

The hall was practically overflowing. Isen froze, unsure where he was supposed to go. Freyan and Arthum weren’t there.

He settled for getting food first. He wasn’t very hungry, so a filled bread knot was enough. He debated leaving the hall altogether and just eating back in his room.

“Hey,” a baritone voice called out. Isen turned, beholding a tall, teenaged half elf with bright orange eyes. He almost looked like a pure elf, but his ears were a bit too short, and his eyes lacked the subtle elven glow. “You seem lost.”

Isen felt the tips of his ears redden. At least they were covered. “A bit.”

“You must be the new kid in fourth clade,” the boy said. “That makes you my underclassman. C’mon.”

Isen followed him through the crush of bodies until he reached a table with every seat but one occupied by other teens. The older boy set his bowl down at the empty seat and grabbed an unoccupied chair from a nearby table, jamming it in between the others.

Isen felt the weight of everyone’s stares as he slid into the inserted chair.

“Everyone, this is…”

“Isen.”

“Isen, newest addition to clade four.”

The teens offered various words of welcome.

“I’m Tomnas, by the way,” the teen who’d dragged him over said, kicking off a round of short introductions. It seemed that everyone in what Isen learned was the sixth clade was present—nine elves in the final stretch of their education before they were welcomed into the clan as adults.

Isen mostly listened as the group chattered. Unlike fourth clade, they were more laid back, and they seemed close, almost like siblings. Isen suddenly felt the ache of what he’d lost after Lady Jin, a bittersweet melancholy. He tried not to let it ruin the moment.

The group took forever to eat. They picked at their food slowly, went back for seconds, and sometimes went minutes between bites. It became clear that this was mostly a social activity for the sixth clade and that food was secondary. Their informal, quick chatter was hard to understand, especially in the loud dining hall, but Isen considered it good practice.

When the quarter bell sounded out, marking fifteen minutes until classes began, the sixth clade made their way from their seats and cleaned up. As they all walked toward the exit, the young cultivators exchanged a final round of well wishes to Isen before walking off to their own classes. The sixth clade’s lesson wasn’t taking place in the same school building as the younger clades.

Tomnas lingered behind. “Do you know where you need to go?”

Isen nodded. “Arthum and Freyan showed me yesterday.”

“Oh. Good.” He paused. “You’re not from Eldrassin.”

“I’m not,” Isen confirmed.

“Me neither,” Tomnas said. “Where’re you from?”

“The west,” Isen said. “Beyond even Shor Mei.”

Tomnas blinked. “Really far, then. Farther than me. I grew up in the jungles north of Mount Barrier.”

Isen vaguely knew where that was, now that he’d seen a proper map. It was an untamed area beneath the Highlands of Erakai. Isen could draw a triangle with equal sides on the map and have vertices at Shor Mei, Eldrassin, and the southern jungle.

“I heard that area’s dangerous,” Isen said.

Tomnas’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Very.” He placed a hand on Isen’s shoulder. “If you ever need anything, come and find me in C10.”

C sounded high, given Tomnas’s age. That made him one of the more powerful tier twos in the entire clan. He’d be able to use the cultivation chamber that had seemed suffocating with ease.

But there was something else in Tomnas’s words that stuck out to Isen. He looked down at his feet, thumbing the hilt of the Shard of Erasmus on his belt. There had been a poignant sadness in the teen’s words.

Maybe Isen wasn’t the only one with a difficult past. It was so easy to look at Clan Femera and assume everyone enjoyed a comfortable, stress-free life. The reality was never so easy.

He made his way to the school building, a tent near the back of the clan, close to the entrance. Like the magister’s tower, it also had windows where the fabric had been peeled back. Lots of other young half elves were outside, chatting with friends. Isen didn’t recognize any of them.

Isen walked through the front archway and found himself in a hallway that extended left and right. He checked the numbers on the top of the doors and headed right, following the increasing values.

He stopped at the third room. Looking inside, he saw Freyan and Arthum sitting at the front on floor cushions, the rest of the row empty. Behind them, other elves sat. The room was almost silent aside from quiet whispering in the back.

Everyone’s eyes locked onto him when he appeared in the doorway.

Arthum and Freyan waved, while the others just looked at him with appraising gazes. Disconcerted, Isen sat down to Arthum’s right.

It’s not like before, he told himself. It’s elven school. Elven classes. It’s nothing like before.

When the bell rang to mark the new hour, a youthful looking half elven man entered the room, his hands clasped behind his back. “Good morning, fourth clade.”

“Good morning, Teacher Conrin.”

***

Conrin Femera surveyed fourth clade and hid his disappointment. The clade had always been hypercompetitive. Fourth clade always spanned that awkward period where the strongest cultivators pulled ahead in a more concrete way, crossing the tier gap. Some clades, like the current sixth clade, maintained a positive atmosphere of encouragement during the transition.

This fourth clade… was not like that.

It wasn’t the ideal environment in which to place a new student, but there was nothing to be done about it.

He’d received Isen’s information yesterday. The boy was on the younger side, but his cultivation was quite high, surpassing both Arthum and Freyan. It was almost unheard of to see a thirteen-year-old in the hollow ring stage, especially one without previous formal instruction.

Still, Conrin knew speed wasn’t everything. Some of the fastest bloomers stalled out at the middle of the second tier. What really interested him was that Isen was human, and that he’d been brought in by the patriarch himself. Welco Femera rarely sponsored people into the clan, and when he did, it was almost always a young mage.

There was a story, there.

“You might have all noticed, but we have a new addition. Isen, can you introduce yourself to the class?”

The boy stood stiffly. “Hello.” The word was said quickly, softly—easily missed. “I’m Isen.” He looked at Conrin questioningly.

“Where are you from?” Conrin asked.

“Dawnbreak,” Isen said. “It’s on the western continent.”

That seemed to get the other kids’ attention.

“That is very far,” Conrin acknowledged. That the patriarch recruited a second tier human from the west was... very odd. “How long have you been in the Kingdom of Eldrassin?”

“Less than a month,” he answered.

The bizarreness of the situation only increased. “Then welcome,” Conrin said warmly. “You can sit down.” He turned back to the full class. “Alright everyone. Today we’re starting off with a story. Who knows the story of Tsuna and the butterfly?”

Most of the class raised their hands.

Conrin grabbed his thought projector from his belt and flipped it on. He cycled and sent energy into the apparatus. It was the work of a dream mage workshop, one of the rarer varieties of mage. A single thought projector could go for a hundred platinum—they were incredibly expensive. But Clan Femera found them indispensable teaching aids, worth the investment.

Conrin walked to the side of the room, making room for the projection of a woman with raven black hair and eyes like burning coals. She reposed by a window in a nightgown, looking over a tranquil forest. Tsuna the Wise.

“On a night like any other, Tsuna prepared to sleep.”

Tsuna stood and lay down in a simple bed, similar to the ones used by the clansmen. She closed her eyes, and the world dissolved. Suddenly, there was only a vast, beautiful butterfly. Its wings stirred the wind like vast oars, and its eyes refracted the sunlight like stained glass.

“Tsuna dreamed of being a butterfly, a powerful transcendent beast. She cared for nothing but flying and sipping the nectar of the largest trees. It was a simple, carefree existence. Time flowed like water, entire lifetimes passing in the blink of an eye. In that vivid dream, Tsuna still retained a fragmented sense of self. She remembered Tsuna the elf, as though a past life, or a half-forgotten dream.”

Suddenly, the dream popped like a soap bubble. Tsuna sat up in bed, cradling her head.

“When the dream ended, Tsuna wondered if one was really more real than the other—Tsuna the butterfly, and Tsuna the elf. How could she ever know?”

Tsuna stood and returned to the window. Silver tears streamed down her cheeks in the moonlight.

“She proclaimed that all of existence was a dream, and broke through to the fifth tier, forming her nascent soul and becoming a true god.”

A pair of beautiful butterfly wings manifested behind Tsuna, filling the room. She stood on the window and dove off the ledge.

Conrin deactivated the projector and the scene faded. “Alright, everyone. Discuss amongst your neighbors for a few minutes, then we’ll discuss as a class.”