“Have you ever seen this device or something like it?” I asked Julian. I held up a crude drawing that kind of resembled a teapot but with steam spilling out of two openings on a ball, creating a spinning action. It was an aeolipile. I was essentially playing the "How Technologically Advanced are You?" game with Julian. We've done this a couple of times now, though he seemed to think I was just well read and creative.

“Yes actually, it was a gift to the court, a toy that could spin without manpower or magic,” replied Julian. “Scholars from the grand museum presented it,” he explained.

“Ok now what about these two, they’re kind of like waterwheels but they use the wind,” I held up two more crude drawings. The first was of a vertical axis windmill. I had seen enough ancient drawings of it back on earth to recreate it. The second was the horizontal axis type you would see on vacation in the Netherlands.

“Um, no I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like this, especially not this large other than some water wheels,” he replied. “How could the wind even move something like this,” he asked while holding up the horizontal axis windmill.

“Pretty easily, I mean think of the massive trading vessels that come into and out of the city. Most of their trips are powered with nothing but wind hitting their sails,” I replied. I would have to ask Iltani about the vertical axis windmills. Back on Earth, they originated from Persia, and the area of the empire she was from seemed to mimic some of its customs.

The two of us were lounging in the royal library, one of the three major libraries in the capital. One of the few anachronistic inventions of Aurelia was paper and books. They didn’t rely on papyrus or wax tablets, since the paper-making process had been perfected. Though parchment was still used, it was only needed for special books or documents. Thus, it was easy even for a countryside count like our family to have a few books, but libraries as large as the one inside the palace were still hard to come by.

“But won’t the wind just push against the sails on the tower, how will it spin?” Julian asked.

“Yes and no, if you angle the sails correctly, the air will force it to rotate.” I replied before going into a long-winded but woefully incomplete explanation of aerodynamics and air movement. Julian didn’t seem to totally understand, so I began poorly illustrating the principles I just discussed. I was no artist in my past life and that had not changed in this one either.

Julian was the perfect person to bounce ideas off. His studious nature meant we were constantly discussing things and teaching each other. He had extensive knowledge of imperial politics and its history. The more recent history was especially fun to hear about since there was quite a large time gap between the Reclamation novels and Jaimie’s previous works. He also really enjoyed learning new things, which made him the perfect partner to slowly discuss earthly ideas with.

It had been two weeks since the party incident. The victim of Caterina’s water torture turned out to be a girl named Clio, the daughter of some central count. Apparently, Caterina had seen her touch Duke Rollo’s arm while flirting with him at some other party. So, she planned an entire trap to lure the girl away and exact her revenge at Caldus’s party.

After handing off CIio to Julian and Tanit, I made the foolish mistake of running back into the maze without any help. Actually my biggest mistake was probably picking up Clio in the first place. By the time I found my way back to the clearing, there was no one left and no evidence of the scuffle. Even when I got back out and explained what happened, there wasn’t much we could do. Other partygoers had witnessed Caterina leaving earlier that night. Even the Palace guards confirmed this, while there wasn’t any evidence she snuck back in. Not that I really pressed the issue. I wasn’t looking to get her punished, I just needed to get the ring off her finger.

It was comical though, to think she slinked off with her goons while I wasn’t looking like some Saturday morning villain. I chuckled to myself as I drew the schematic and imagined the dignified woman climbing over the palace walls or hiding in the back of a carriage to sneak out.

“Actually, this makes a lot of sense,” said Tanit while peering over my shoulder. She usually wasn’t too interested in our academic discussions, but she had chosen to join us at the mention of sails. The people of Kyrene had two specialties, sailing and trading. Tanit was no exception with her knowledge of both. She had learned the ins and outs of sailing since her young childhood.

“Really?” asked Julian.

“Yeah, even when you’re on a boat, the wind doesn’t have to be hitting directly behind the sails, it can still provide movement for the ship if it’s blowing in from close to perpendicular,” She explained. “And it certainly is strong enough, I once saw a ship pull down a stone tower,” she continued.

In the time since meeting both, we had spent most of our days together. They helped me get accustomed to life in the Capital, as the three of us went on constant excursions through the sprawling city. Tanit’s outgoing personality often shined here the most as she pulled us into shops, introduced us to merchants, and haggled for just about anything we expressed interest in.

My friends treated these outings as mere fun and they often were, but I had other motives as well. I needed to get my bearings in the city. The place was massive and hid more than a few secrets that with my knowledge from Earth, I would be able to uncover. This was easier said than done though. Just because I knew of things, didn’t mean I knew how to find them or their locations. Trying to find something based on a few lines from a novel or a few words from a wiki page was essentially proving impossible. For example, there’s an underground auction house within the city that moves all manner of black-market items. The market was described as being hidden underneath an old inn inside one of the cities many courtyards and directly faces a fountain. Well from that description it could take months to find the damn place.

“Why would they pull down a tower?” asked Julian.

“I can’t remember, it was either a prank or a demonstration.”

“Someone pulled a tower down as a prank?” cried Julian.

“You just don’t understand Kyrene’s sense of humor,” she replied. A loud clang rang out from the candle clock to our right, signally it was time for my training session with Larissa.

“Well, I would love to hear more about Kyrene pranks, but we won’t have time. Are you sure you don’t want to join us, Julian?” I announced. Julian was a natural-born mage. I got a good glimpse of this power the first week we had been together when I got him to demonstrate his magics. One massive burst of flames from his hand and a disintegrated training dummy later led me to be fully convinced he was a prodigy. In the novels, the imperial family is described as being blessed mages and prodigies and Julian, despite his bookish nature, was no different there.

Where he did differ from the others in his family was his athletic prowess. That same day we confirmed that he couldn't perform a pullup despite his light figure. And even light jogging for a short period left him winded. Since then he usually declined to come along with us to the palestra.

“No, I was planning on reading a few more treatises when you leave,” he replied. So Tanit and I bid our farewells.

Tanit on the other hand often chose to train around the same time and amount as me. She was already a gifted mage, though she couldn’t hold a candle to Julian. Her family, like most families with heavy ties to the military, had trained the girl with weaponry from childhood. She used a pelte, a kind of crescent-shaped shield, small javelins, and a thin spatha. From what I understood these were the favored loadouts of people from Kyrene. I could tell she was a formidable opponent from her bouts with the other trainees at the palace grounds since she rarely lost any sparing matches. She was also able to use her magic in tandem with her attacks, something that was apparently hard to learn. For example, her javelin throws were assisted by her wind magic, allowing them to go farther and faster than just her own arm would allow. Or, she often pumped mana into her sword making it sharper and stronger than it would be otherwise.

The fight at the party led me to test my strength in various ways. It seemed absurd that it only took a few hits from me to momentarily incapacitate two adult men, but since then I have confirmed that it wasn’t a fluke. My current thirteen-year-old body was a little stronger than a world-class adult fighter from back on earth. I could lift and/or break things with my bare hands that I never would have dreamed of trying back on earth.

Soon I would be able to fully confirm just how strong I was since one of the first inventions Julian and I discussed was the barbell and circular weights. The empire used the same imperial system of measurement that I learned back on Earth, which made the whole process smoother. With Julian’s help, I even managed to get funding to make them from the captain of the Palatini. It didn’t hurt that the guy was obsessed with physical strength and training.

It was kind of unfair. I lived in a world of magic, surrounded by powerful mages, and I was restricted to being strong. In the future, I’ll get stronger, but I will never be able to summon a storm of flames or bring down a lightning bolt from the heavens. I mean come on, this is a fantasy world, and I rolled a tank archetype.

The palace training grounds, like everything inside the massive complex, were needlessly ornate and large. It was built to mimic the arenas that just about every city in the empire had. Thus, an oval of seating rows encased the soft dirt training floors. Apparently, the place often hosted private games, though the emperor in his old age hadn’t thrown nearly as many as he used to.

I spotted Larrissa in a far-off corner, so Tanit and I parted ways once inside. Her back was to me as she swung her massive training sword at some dummies on the wall.

“Any news from father?” I yelled to her as I got closer. She turned and wiped the sweat from her brow before responding.

“His men are in Urek, gathering supplies and information before they head into the jungle,” she replied.

As if bumbling into Caterina’s over-the-top scheme wasn’t enough of a shock, Larissa and I had been woken from our sleep in the middle of the night after the party. It was our father, who had come to inform us that the emperor had asked him to either recover his son or find proof of his death. Thus, he was leaving the city that night with a few other knights to Alezon.

“Are you worried?” I asked. It was weird. I was worried about that beast of a man; probably not so much for his own sake since I barely knew him. But he was an important person to those I did have time to bond with. For example, Larissa had fought back tears the entire night after he left, leaving me with a pit in my stomach as I tried to comfort her.

“Worried about Father? I learned to stop worrying years ago,” she said without meeting my eyes, clearly lying.

“Um, what about the practical magic class?” I asked, changing the subject. Caldus accompanied her to the academy this morning to straighten out any misunderstandings.

“Surprisingly easy,” she replied. “We will still have to take the class, but the practical exams will be modified for us.”

“Why was it so easy?”

“Well, we were the first Lysians to attend in a generation or two, so no one knew what to do immediately, but this was what happened last time according to the records.”

“Why can’t we just skip it altogether?” I asked.

“People can test out of it and often do, but the professor thinks we should still learn about the theories on magic,” she explained.

“I guess that makes sense,” I replied. “Shall we begin?” I asked, after raising my own oversized training sword.

The summer passed in mostly that fashion until it was time for the Academy to open its doors. We didn’t see any more of Caterina for the rest of the summer. We also received one last message from our father before he entered Alezon proper about three weeks prior to the semester starting.

In that time, I made little headway with my search for the black market. It would probably be easier to ask for help, but that’s kind of the issue. The whole point of the place is that it was hidden from officials and the location was on a need-to-know basis. The royal family would have no idea where to find it nor would their loyal underlings. Furthermore, no actual member of the market would spill the details to a thirteen-year-old boy without having a proper reason to do so.

Invention-wise, the barbel was a half success, though it was a good steppingstone to better ideas. The problem we faced with it, is that it just wasn’t monetarily feasible to use such an expensive steel bar for training most soldiers. Thus, Captain Ventidius, the muscle-obsessed instructor for the Palatini, and I enlisted some craftsmen to create a similar system using wooden logs with handles. I got the idea from watching the strongman competitions back on earth that would come on every new year. Using the weights, my suspicions about my strength were confirmed though. I was putting up incredible numbers that would be the envy of Olympic athletes in a few different exercises. Though this paled in comparison to Larissa who was essentially putting up superhuman amounts of weight. If I could break a bone with a punch, I earnestly wondered what her full force fist could do.

We moved into the Academy dorms only the day before the first classes began. The school was a massive complex of buildings much like any major university in the modern world. It had dorms, labs, classrooms, and training grounds. The only difference is that the place was walled and fortified like a castle, this was probably due to its position on the southern outskirts of the city. A colossal statue of Hieronymus the scholar, the founder, welcomed the students at the gates of the academy. It looked like any Greek scholar from history, a bald, bearded man dressed in flowing robes.

Hieronymus was the husband and emperor-consort of Empress Octavia the Reformer. The two founded many of the empire’s lasting institutions together, including the four major places of learning.

The Academy’s dorms were nothing special. Each room was clean, well furnished, and built for two. Technically roommates were assigned via lottery, but the fact that Julian ended up being mine meant the system was probably gameable with a little leverage. After moving in, we spent the rest of the day exploring the campus and finding our classrooms. It was probably fun and relaxing time for my companions, but I was constantly on edge hoping that we didn’t run into Caterina. I was pretty sure she wouldn’t know who I was without seeing me again. For starters, I did not look like my normal self that day, though my green eyes were rare enough to set me apart from most. We had also just arrived and hadn’t made any connections in the city either. Meaning few people could have actually placed me at the party if she investigated.

Regardless, the girl was described as being observant and intelligent in the books, so if she got a good look at me, I doubt she wouldn’t be able to figure it out. So, I spent the first day there looking over my shoulder and peering around cornes. I eventually needed to make actual contact with her, if I was going to remove the ring, but it would prove much harder if she thought of me as an enemy. The school provided staff for the dorms, but students were allowed to bring their own attendants. In the novel, Caterina made extensive use of this privilege by keep a guard of loyal and well trained servants who were more than willing to do her dirty work.

I had planned on not having any attendants myself, but with Julian as my roommate, I was essentially made their secondary boss and just as before I rarely found myself doing any menial chores.

Practical Magic was the first class of my first day. Larissa and I met up on the way to breakfast. We exchanged our first impressions of the place with each other. She thought the whole academy was a little soft. Her reaction made sense since the Officer’s field academy was literally taught on the frontiers where most of the legions were stationed.

There were two practical magics classes taught each semester, and luck would have it that we didn’t get placed into the same one. Neither Julian nor Tanit had to take it as they easily tested out of the class. Prodigies make me sick. From what I understood, the class was essentially reserved for poorer houses who couldn't hire magical tutors and untalented mages. It was kind of like a remedial class meant to bring students up to the school’s standards. This notion kind of hurt, since there really wasn't anything I could do to become a mage anyways.

Sadly, I never made the connection from the books that Caterina was the most untalented of the academy’s untalented mages. I almost jumped out of my skin when I bumped into her as I entered the classroom.