Imperial Academy

By: Wilhelm Kempe.

“Nothing in life is permanent. So fight through the pain and cherish the joy.” Imperial proverb, first era.

Prologue

Morgan Kiath was not gifted in the art of magic, nor was he very proficient with the sword. In fact he could easily be described as rather clumsy and without much talent in either art. Unfortunately he was not even the brightest of children either, as his little sister had shown him time and time again. To top it all off, he did not come from a very illustrious family and was much to his dismay worse at pretty much everything than his siblings.

His brothers, Arthur and Liam had him beaten thoroughly in both magic capacity and swordplay. His sister Lilith was not only far brighter than him but was even catching up to him in swordplay, even with the two year handicap their age provided. Unlike his sister and even to a lesser extent his brothers, Morgan did not have outstanding looks, he was small and plain with slightly curled brown hair that made him entirely forgettable. His brothers’ was both tall and athletic with the same strong features and their father and his sister, his sister was so beautiful that she caused a stir wherever she went. What cast even more clouds over Morgan’s future was Eretar, his father was only the baron of the small domain of Bluevale in the western highlands. Being the third son in this situation left Morgan unable to inherit much of anything from his father and since his family held almost no political influence the prospect of adoption or marriage into a more affluent family was not in the cards for Morgan.

This all troubled Morgan’s father. For he knew that without any inheritance and given how sickly Morgan was his future looked far grimmer than any father would have liked. Eretar had worried about Morgan for quite some time as his two eldest attended the Imperial Academy and this had eventually led him to a somewhat hard to achieve solution. Eretar had used his old connection to arrange a place in the Imperial Academy for his third son. Normally he would be required to pay a very large amount of gold to send a third scion of his house to the Academy. It was a staggering amount that would be impossible by design, for Eretar or any other small house to afford. He had thus called in an old favour to have Morgan admitted into the Imperial Academy without having the money to do so through normal means.

Thus even without having met any of the three requirements from which one could normally be invited to attend the Academy, Morgan was now studying at illustrious institute. Eretar had arranged for all of this in the hope that Morgan would be able to forge a path for himself at the Academy. His fervent hope was that Morgan would not be forced to become a mercenary or gods forbid a Delver, like so many noble children of middling birth often would.

Despite his father’s effort Morgan did not find the Academy terribly useful or fun. The first semester focused mostly on the basic skills required of a noble and those that interacted with them. Having never been very good with physical activities in the first place Morgan had spent a lot of time reading as a child. This along with his noble upbringing meant that he already knew most of the things that the Academy taught these first months, making it all feel rather pointless. Hence Morgan only went to enough classes to get his free meal tickets. What made Morgan feel even more out of place was that he found it difficult to make friends, never mind finding “his path” as his father had told him to.

His status as a noble made it hard for commoners to approach him but his family's mediocre standing and the fact that he was only the third child made other nobles ignore him. The one upside to the academy was that he had quite a bit of free time and access to the greatest library in the empire. Not that this showed him the path his father had hoped for nor did it make him any friends. Luckily there were thousands of students at the Imperial Academy.