Idonea, Mei, and Wulfric were all taken away after the staff of Academy arrived on the scene, but a few hours later they all came back bandaged up and looking sullen… well, except for Wulfric, who was bandaged up and looking pleased.

“Ummm, what happened?” I asked him quietly, looking at the unusually quiet girls across the room from us.

“Oh, they just asked us a bunch of questions, no big deal.” Said Wulfric loudly, causing both Idonea and Mei to start and look over at us (Mei looked worried, and Idonea looked mad).

I was somewhat surprised, but then again from what I recall fights (between kids) or bullying used to be no big deal on Earth too, especially back hundreds of years ago. It’s only in the last fifty or so years that people have even become aware, on a large scale, that ‘bullying’ in schools was a bad thing: It would be pretty foolish of me to assume they cared about it in this society, which was in almost every way much less advanced than where I came from. They were probably told not to do it again, given a good scolding, and that was meant to be the end of it.

Wulfric continued without my having to prompt him, “Fights are a lot more common in The City than they are out here in the Villages.” He said, “My father says that people get along really well in most villages because of the Beast Attacks.” I noticed Mei wince Wulfric said ‘Beast’ – she, like me, had been born out here on the frontier and had been forced to live with Beast Attacks from a young age.

I nodded, hoping that my new roommate would continue, and I smiled when he did.

“Idonea and I both come from The City, so it’s normal that we aren’t as good at getting along with people as you are.” He said, pointing at Mei and me.

That actually struck a bell with me… I remember, even back on earth, that most people from rural communities were a HECK of a lot more amicable than city folk. I was also struck by what Wulfric was saying; for a ten year old boy he seemed to have a startling amount of insight…

I just nodded, trying to look attentive.

“My father says there are hundreds of thousands of people in The City, and the only danger they face is an angry noble. That’s probably why she,” He said, pointing at Idonea, “wants to push people around, because it’s a lot harder to do to someone from The City.” Idonea was scowling fiercely at him now, but he didn’t seem to mind at all.

For a moment I was struck by the absurdity of the situation: Idonea, Mei and Wulfric were all (aside from me) the youngest students in Academy, but they all had the same mutation: Greatly increased size and strength, like Jaws and most of the other blacksmiths working with him. And here I was, just about to turn six years old, by far the smallest person in the entirety of the compound containing Academy and The Garrison. I was pondering how strange that was when Wulfric continued.

“I’ve never seen a Beast Attack, and I bet she hasn’t either. My father told me that after you see a Beast Attack up close you tend to treat everyone else better. We have to work together to survive out here, he told me.” Wulfric seemed to really respect his father. “Nobles never get sent out here though, only us commoners. And most people don’t send their children out to Academy here, they stay at one of the Academies in The City.” He paused looking at me, probably wanting to see if he should continue or stop there.

“So… your parents wanted to send you here?” I asked, somewhat incredulous.

“Well… to be honest my mother was against it, but it’s actually pretty safe. And father went to Academy here. He says it’s a far superior experience to Academy in The City, especially because you can avoid getting caught up in politics between nobles.” Explained Wulfric.

Okay... I was impressed. Wulfric was displaying a startling level of awareness, especially social awareness, for someone his age. “Oh… that makes sense.” I said. “What does your father do?”

Wulfric smiled, “He is a Guard Captain in The City, in the House Flameward Quad, of course. My mother is a Priestess of the Harvest. What about you… Heller, right?” He paused, continuing after I nodded, “What about your parents?”

Priestess? I would have to ask more about that later. But now I understood where his highly developed understanding (well… highly developed for a ten year old) of the socio-political landscape of our civilization came from: If his father was a Guard Captain then the man would need to have a finely tuned understanding of how things actually worked.

I wasn’t exactly sure what mom had done before I was born. I know that most women had a job in the village, often having to take their children with them or come up with other arrangements. In a working village there wasn’t much room to just have an adult stay at home and be non-productive, especially when the overhead for the guards and soldiers needed to protect us from Beast Attacks must be so high. Maybe it was because mom used to be a noble… It’s very possible she grew up without any useful ‘village’ skills.

“My father is the Head Smith in North Stone Village, where I grew up.” I answered with a grin. “I’m really glad you are my new roommate… Wulfric?” I waited for his confirmation before giving him a greeting salute.

Idonea was now pointedly acting like she was ignoring us, while clearly listening in on everything we said. Thing’s must be pretty different in The City, but I supposed that made sense – things were always different when you had that many people living in close proximity.

But one thing did catch my attention… Wulfric had said that nobles never came to Academy out here… but according to Master Jaduk that was false: Kodan was a noble, apparently, and yet here he was.

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Wulfric wasn’t going to be joining in any actual classes until after next Freeday, exactly the same as what had happened to me when I first came to Academy. He spent the next few days becoming familiar with the grounds and greeting the other students – something that I had neglected to do when I joined, mostly due to having just fought Alder and wanting to keep a low profile.

He wasn’t exactly friendly with everyone he met, but he seemed well socialized, and he was obviously very clever for his age. That, in addition to the fact that he was almost the size of a fully grown adult, even though he was ten years old, helped him fit in surprisingly fast. Whenever I was free I would wander the grounds with him, showing him the various training facilities, including the specialized rooms used by my fellow warrior trainees to practice strategy games and tactics.

We ate meals together and I suddenly no longer had to clean up my roommates plates afterwards. I smiled at Idonea when I caught her glaring at me, and a few of the other students chuckled – everybody was aware of the fight in my room (half the people here were in the hallway watching), and how it had turned out. I wondered if Kodan would have stepped in to stop the fight if he had been there… he seemed like the type.

Evenings were a lot more relaxed now that he was here as well. We would chat for a brief time, and then maybe play one of the various strategy games we could borrow from Academy storerooms, but I was usually too tired to stay awake for too long. Trying to keep up with everyone was quite a chore when you were roughly half their size.

The most popular game amongst warriors and soldiers was called Fortress. It was somewhat like a cross between chess and go, and I found that I enjoyed it quite a lot after Wulfric finished explaining the rules to me (he had been playing it with his father for years).

There were a variety of different pieces and, just like chess, each of them had slightly different roles and rules for how they operated. The highest piece was the Noble, and one of the basic ideas of the game was to keep your Noble in play – if you lost that piece you lost the game. The second most important, and by far the most useful, was the Soldier (also nicknamed the ‘Cultivator’), which was the main offensive piece on the board. After that was the Guard, which had a defensive role, and then finally the Pawn (in our language it was a word which roughly meant ‘normal person who cannot fight well’).

The other player was in charge of an army of beasts of various descriptions, so instead of the Earth game of Humans vs Humans (chess) it was People vs Beasts. I thought it was quite fitting, considering our culture and the difficulties we faced.

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The next week went by quickly. I was only able to visit Tetra once more before Freeday, and we had a short but pleasant chat about what it would be like once she officially joined Academy. She had been at the Garrison as a servant for Lord Runax for years, but had only been able to see certain parts of Academy and had never been able to watch an actual class in action.

I had another… debrief… with Master Jaduk a few days before I was to go home again, and he mostly went over the changes that had taken place with my new roommate, and the changes that would start next tenday when the rooms were all changed. Due to their policy of always having four people per room, when possible, there was a shifting every year and roommates rarely stayed exactly the same – it all depended on how many students were graduating that year.

When Freeday finally came it seemed to drag on forever as my anticipation for the coming term built up. It had been years since I had interacted with people I could consider friends, discounting Wolfram, and both Tetra and Wulfric seemed to be unusually intelligent for their ages. Interacting with them felt more like speaking with bright teenagers than with children – while there was still a cognitive gap, it wasn’t so large that I couldn’t bridge it with some effort.