The headache was visible to Al the next morning. spots of read were all over the place as he stood in line with the other four recruits and awaited for the greeting ceremony to end.

The old master was half asleep, or dead, himself as he went on and on about the honor of their profession. By the time he started talking about breakfast and the assistant that seemed incapable of buttering his bread he was interrupted by the woman from last night.

Said assistant then guided the man off the podium and into a small gateway to the side, before the door closed you could hear the old man say"What? Who are you and why are you pushing me into a dungeon? Somebody help meeeeee!"

The door closed behind them and left the yard with an uncomfortable silence. Era seemed taken aback, and for a quick moment her self control cracked as she looked confused back and forth between the door and the guard next to it who was silently giggling beside it.

Letra tapped on Al's shoulder and the small impact echoed through his head like an earthquake. He must have flinched since Letra withdrew his hand immediately.

"I see the ale has done a number on you. I hope you learned your lesson." Al would have responded but at just that moment Era looked in his direction, and their eyes met. He thought he had met her before, but couldn't quite place where. Her eyes narrowed and the wrinkle between her eyes deepened, Al did not take that as a positive sign.

Her eyes continued their way across the recruits and the veterans behind them. The silence spanned a couple of minutes now and from a distant window a familiar voice echoed. "Where are my clothes! Why is there water in the bucket? Are you trying to drown me traitors?"

Era opened her mouth and began her speech.

"Recruits! You have been chosen by the veteran behind you to join our ranks if you should succeed in completing the basic training." Her voice was cold as a winter breeze. Al was tempted to look back to Letra and ask him what that was all about when her icy voice pierced into his skull again.

"Every failure, every mistake will be on your veteran. They have been tasked to find the brightest and smartest among the rebels and they came up with you." the way she said it made it sound like she did not approve of all the choices that had been made.

"Fail us and the blame will be carried by you and your sponsor to equal parts. Betray us and both your lives will be taken!" the recruits became restless, most of them did not seem to have been told about the blame and killing part of the deal.

"Anyone of you who desires to leave should do so now! There will be no option to quit once the training has begun." her words echoed through the yard, no one spoke. A couple of recruits looked around as to see if anyone was going to quit, Alaric was trying to keep his breakfast down.

A young boy stepped forward and the others took a sharp breath as he walked directly up to Era. He stood about two meters in front of her when he opened his mouth.

"We are all here to do our part in the rebellion. Most of us have been deemed incapable of wielding a sword so we need to train our minds instead. I believe i speak for all of us if I say this. We will not disappoint you or our cause."

behind the boy Al finally lost his battle against his guts and unleashed his stomach's inventory on the ground. after the first wave of unspeakable things on the ground follow two more before he finally regained his composure.

The yard was quiet again for a while before Era spoke. "A bit harsh as a critique to your comrade don't you think? I would have displayed my contempt a bit more subtle."

Still feeling like crap Al spit at the pool of things he had left on the floor.

"I'm sorry about that, but the little speech was the last straw." The young boy tried to cut him in half with his eyes, his glances were only interrupted when he looked at Era for help.

Nobody said a word, until he stepped back in line.

Era looked at Al and did something he did not expect she winked at him as to thank him.

"As much as we can use spirit in this group of ours you should not delude yourself, most of you will spend the entire war in dusty study rooms crunching numbers and writing reports. The amount of actual generals chosen from our ranks is less than one in every ten recruits."

The others in line became uneasy as the news, they most likely had expected to lead large armies into battle before the year ended.

As for Al he had no idea what was expected of him, only that it was the only way he could help his two friends.

A voice sounded from the door. "What happened here? Who shat in the middle of our yard? Have you no decency? No respect for the history that has been written here? We are, after all, in the capital of the free world!" The old master limped towards Al, behind him two panicked guards tried to get a hold of him and dress him. The old man was covered in bubbles, luckily for the people around.

Era rolled her eyes and signed for two more guards to help their brethren in their task of clothing and subduing the grand master. It took them another moment before they had him dressed but luckily they were faster than the disappearing bubbles.

Once the old man was under control again and back through the door Era continued like nothing happened.

"The training will begin tomorrow at first light and end with the last light. Candles are expensive and you lot not worth the expenses yet. After you have done your duties you will proceed to clean the barracks and everything the older students tell you to. Food will be served at the twelfth and the sixth bell and is only available for one hour, you miss it you don't eat. Breakfast will be at the exit of the barracks, it's mostly old bread."

The mention of food made Al wretch again but he kept it under control, while the other students looked a bit shocked about the conditions, most of them were probably upper class citizens and not accustomed to stuff like that. The young boy however got big eyes as if he was being told the fountains around here were filled with apple juice, Al guessed he was the opposite of the other three.

Someone who would be living in heaven here.

"At the end of four weeks you will be tested about your knowledge and your progress, the veterans assigned to you will then have to vouch for another four weeks. Do well and after two years you could be having your own little recruit to care for, do badly and you will be chasing the grandmaster around and see to it he does not get into trouble." Era's voice didn't change but Al suspected the last part was a joke, he had no way of proving it though so he kept his chuckling to himself.

The other recruits just looked confused.

"The rest of the day you can spend with your veteran, he will teach you the ropes and show you to your room." With the last words she turned around and left through the same door the grand master had just been carried through.

Letra patted Al on the back and pulled him aside, the other veterans did the same with their recruits.

"Okay Al, don't be frightened." it sounded more like he was talking to himself than to Alaric. "Life is not so bad here, Era is just a tough nutt to crack, with being the grand master's daughter and all." Al's eyes widened and he had control himself as not to yell at Letra when he said "She is what? Why didn't you mention that?" he realised the other four were looking at him so he forced himself to calm down and asked more composed this time

"So she is what? Twenty years old? Will she be running this whole thing in the future or what? And where can i go change... i spilled some of my stomach on my clothes." The last part he had just noticed,

"Well to answer your questions, she is not telling anyone her age, yes she is first in line if the old one dies and the barracks will be prepared at the evening so we got about half a day until you need to get your stuff there." For the first time Letra seemed not on edge and Al started to question if he was actually a he.

For one "he" had very feminine facial features, while his voice was not deep enough to be clearly male but not high enough to be clearly female.

"He" was slender and wearing a spacy robe which made guessing "his" body proportions hard. The hair was cut short and there were nearly absolutely nothing marking "him" was either male or female.

For a short moment Al considered asking, then he felt stupid for considering it, how was that supposed to happen, 'Hey there Letra do you mind telling me if you are a boy or a girl because i totally forgot...'

With any luck the bedrooms were gender coded and Al could just find out by looking at Letra's roommates.

"Al, you are staring at me, what is it?" Alaric blinked a few times, the yard was empty, with the exception of Letra and Era. Both of which were looking at him suspiciously, without thinking he took a step back.

"Ahm sorry about that, I was in thought. By the way where do you sleep Letra?" Before Letra could answer Era stepped between them and took Al by the arm.

"We will need you right now, you are one of the few here that can already read and write is that correct?" Her tone was demanding but something in her eyes seemed desperate.

"We just got word from a scout concerning a larger movement of enemy troops but most of us can just read bits and pieces of it, the handwriting is bad and the piece of leather has been through a lot. We need the two of you to decipher it as quickly and accurately as possible."

And with those words the world started spinning again, he was less than one hour inscribed in the military staff and already a crisis was emerging? If that was not a quick rise to power he did not know what was.

Letra grabbed his arm and dragged him along towards the largest building in the scribes compound.

"What are we doing in the library?" Al asked even more confused as he looked back to Era who was already walking towards another student.

"We are getting the other messages the scout sent us as references, if some of the lines are just barely visible it should take us getting used to his handwriting to decipher it correctly."

Al sighed, reading, one of the things he had always enjoyed, was now being turned into work and tedious work at that.