“And in that infinite Void God created Erets, our world, as a bastion of hope and order in the chaotic nothing that had been the cosmos. Deep under the surface of the earth he created Heaven, a realm protected by a layer of liquid stone that only the souls of the righteous can pass through. And above the land he created the Firmament, like a ceiling, to keep out the demons of the Void. In the sky to light up the day he placed the sun, a circle of liquid stone, and to light up the night he placed the moon, a circle of crystal that reflected the light of the sun. Once all of this was done he created the living creatures of Erets, those who walk, those who swim, and those who fly near the Firmament. And then, when he was satisfied with the world He'd made he created the angels, made of diamonds, to dwell in Heaven with him, and the humans, made of clay, to walk the land.”

“You know it well,” professor Zebedee interrupted, “But you don't speak it with any passion. This class is designed to teach you to be a great speaker, to inspire the troops on the battlefield. If you want to inspire people you have to put...feeling into it.”

“I apologize, professor,” Prince Hadar said. He closed the book in his hands and hung his head, blushing in embarrassment at his apparent failure at the assignment. Hadar stood average height, unusual for someone of royal birth. Members of the royal family were typically much taller than most people. Hadar short, well-groomed blonde hair, parted in the middle. His eyes were a deep shade of blue, and they betrayed his perpetual shyness and lack of confidence in spite of his station. His fidgeting hands and shifting feet gave away just how uneasy he was in front of the classroom full of his peers, reading aloud from the Sacred Scriptures.

“Professor,” came a voice from the classroom. Professor Zebedee and Prince Hadar's eyes were drawn to the third row, in the center of the lecture hall, where sat Milo. Milo was much larger than Hadar, not in the sense of being fat, not by any means. No this was a young man of great strength, who had known hardship from the day he was born, and it showed in his physique. His face, though, was still kind, friendly, and overflowed with confidence. He wore a wry smile on his face and sat with his calloused hands behind his head, resting on his long, black hair. “You called Prince Hadar's reading boring, basically. Are you implying that the Scriptures aren't inspiring enough in and of themselves? Why, that's just blasphemy!”

The students in the class tried to stifle their laughter at Milo's joke. While they enjoyed Milo's quick wit, they weren't too keen on incurring Professor Zebedee's wrath. Not that corporal punishment was allowed at their age, granted, but Zebedee was known to assign overwhelmingly difficult assignments last minute just because he was furious with his students.

“Milo! Hush!” Sarahi said, from the seat next to Milo. Sarahi had long, brown hair, pulled into a braid, bright blue eyes, and a somewhat tan complexion compared to many of the others in the class. She gave Milo's shoulder a light shove and said, “A more tactful way of making Milo's point, professor, would be...if we pick the right passages from the Scriptures shouldn't the words themselves be inspiring enough? The creation story in the Book of Origins is certainly helpful for us to understand where we come from and our relationship to God, a vital piece of the canon, but wouldn't reading the words of some of the prophets and saints be more suited to inspiring large groups of people?”

“An astute observation,” Professor Zebedee said as he adjusted the small, round glasses on the end of his long nose. Why he didn't say something simpler like “good point” was beyond Milo. Seriously, who talked like this other than professors trying to show off their intellect? “It's true, some of the Scriptures are more inspiring than others for different situations since each Scripture is intended for a different purpose. Ergo, I have a new assignment for you all, since many of you undoubtedly failed at this one. You are to choose a passage from the Scriptures that you find to be particularly inspiring, and read it aloud in front of your classmates tomorrow. I know not everyone will be able to deliver their speeches before the allotted time for this class comes to a close, so you will be picked at random. Don't wager on being one of those who doesn't have to speak. Do the assignment and be ready to read aloud before your peers and you'll have nothing to fear.”

The students all sighed and groaned. Some of them gave Milo and Sarahi dirty looks, blaming them for this new assignment. They did not dare cause trouble for those two, however, for they knew they were both close friends of Prince Hadar, the brother of the King of Arx.

They were a strange trio of friends to behold; a second-born prince, a noblewoman from Arx's eastern border, and a boy who'd been born a peasant, who had been accepted to Caelum on a full scholarship, purely because a recruiter from the Academy sensed he'd show much promise.

They left the class together, with Milo walking in the middle. “Zebedee's such a hard-nose,” Milo said. “I thought you did good, Hadar.”

“Did you now?” Hadar said. “Because I actually agree with him, I had no...passion reading that passage. It's just not moving.”

“Not like being a paladin's all about giving speeches, anyway,” Milo said, “It's about protecting people, and fighting demons and those who serve them. You'll probably never have to worry about the way you speak, inspiring believers and all that business.”

“There's still something to be said for being able to get your point across,” Sarahi chimed in, elbowing Milo lightly. “And talking about how irrelevant the lessons of a class are doesn't help you to get a passing grade, Milo.”

“Nag nag nag,” Milo said with a laugh. “I'm not worried about passing, though. It's never been that hard to pretend to really care about what I was talking about.”

“Milo!” Sarahi said. “Are you saying you don't care about the Scriptures?”

“No!” Milo shook his head, realizing how bad his phrasing sounded. “Definitely not saying that! What I'm saying is...that...well,” Milo struggled with the words. “It shouldn't be too hard to play up my interest, go a bit over the top.”

“If Zebedee knows you're exaggerating that might hurt your grade,” Hadar said.

“Pshaw! Not if I can deliver the speech in such a way that the whole class is in awe. If I can blow everyone away with my speech then I think I've earned a good grade for this assignment. We're not taking this class to learn to impress Zebedee, we're taking it to learn to impress the masses.”

“True...”

“Don't fret, Hadar! You'll do fine! You just have to find a passage worth getting excited over in front of a crowd,” Sarahi reassured him.

“For now let's just focus on our next class,” Hadar said. “Combat training. Always save the physical education for the end of the day.”

“Better than having us totally exhausted and falling asleep in class,” Sarahi said.

Milo looked over at her, “Oh, no one else does that? ” Sarahi rolled her eyes at him and Hadar chuckled.

Sarahi separated from the other two once they reached the armories. There were twice as many young men at the academy as young ladies, but even so there were enough young ladies attending Caelum to warrant two different armories for them to change in. As usual, when Hadar changed, even though only other men were in the armory, he found a place to hide himself behind wracks of armor. Milo had told him time and time again that it should be alright for him to change in front of other men, it wasn't like his body was so different from their own anyway, but Hadar always refused. He never offered a logical argument, just said that he was embarrassed. Milo thought that perhaps Hadar had scars or deformities on his body that he didn't want the other young men to see. In spite of his curiosity, Milo always gave Hadar his privacy. Never once did he check to see what his friend was so Void-bent on hiding.

While the armor they wore was made of steel, the weapons they wielded were made of diamond, transformed from coal by geomancers, wizards who could manipulate stone. It was important that a paladin's weapon be made of diamond because diamonds were sacred. A few powerful spells made them indestructible, except by other diamonds, and something about the very nature of them would slay demons and ward off evil. Of course, such weapons were often far heavier than steel or iron weapons would be, so the priests also placed special enchantments upon them to make them lighter in the hands of trained and righteous paladins.

Milo usually chose a two-handed diamond sword that was so large that were it not for said enchantments not even the strongest of men would be able to even lift it, let alone use it as a weapon on the battlefield. Hadar's weapon was much more modest, a long-sword coupled with a shield covered in holy symbols. Sarahi usually used either a spear or a war-hammer.

They emerged from the armories into the mock battlefield that had been built for them. Every day the terrain for the mock battlefield was slightly different; sometimes jutting spikes of granite, sometimes fields of sand, and other times rocky cliffs. Priests and geomancers used their magic to rearrange the rock formations. Hiding amongst the large stones in the mock battlefield were golems, statues animated by magic. These golems in particular were shaped like demons, and had been enchanted to act like demons as well, even down to them reacting to holy spells the way demons would, or crumbling when attacked with diamond weapons. Normally golems were shaped like people, sometimes only vaguely so, and sometimes they were masterfully crafted statues, made in the perfect likeness of a particular person.

Typically the students were encouraged to treat all of the other students as their “team” and cooperate closely with everyone against the golems. However, these were adolescents and young adults in this class, therefore smaller teams would form between friends Some would refuse to work with one another because they had some personal conflicts or prejudices. The professors discouraged such prejudices, but there was only so much the professors could even do. Few students wanted to work with Milo, given that he was a commoner in an academy where most of the students were nobility. Hadar and Sarahi stuck close to their friend, and they'd worked out all sorts of interesting tactics together.

They found their own clearing amongst the stones on the mock battlefield and circled around. Sarahi and Milo stood on either side of Hadar, Milo with his two-handed sword out and at the ready and Sarahi with her spear. If any golems approached them they'd be in easy striking distance.

Sarahi began to chant, “Oh great Creator who dwells below us, consecrate this ground to protect it against the enemies from the void.” As she spoke the ground became covered in tiny shards of crystal in a circle around them.

A golem shaped like a three-headed leopard with wings like a bat and horns like a ram came around one of the nearby boulders, snarling at them. Milo kept the point of his sword aimed at the golem and waited for it to pounce. As soon as the golem sprung into action Milo thrust forward into it. His sword split the golem in half and caused it to crumble into dust.

The three of them turned their heads to the sound of loud footsteps and from around another boulder they could see a golem that towered at ten feet tall and was shaped like a very thin man with six, long arms, horns on his brow, and no face. The golem approached and reached out at them with his long arms. Sarahi swung her spear around to bat away the golem's arms to make sure none of them reached her or her companions as Hadar chanted, “I call upon ye, the Spear of Heaven, to undo the wicked!”

Sarahi jumped back just in time as a spike of granite erupted from the ground and impaled the golem, sending broken shards of stone through the air. Instantly both the spike and the golem disintegrated into dust. This spell was one that would only even work if it targeted an actual demon, or a golem meant to mimic one. Since the spell was really more of a prayer, the God the paladins of Caelum followed rarely took steps to actually harm human beings on command. He would not be ordered to kill men on behalf of other men. Men had the strength of their own arms for that.

And so the mock battle went on, with the three of them using this defensive strategy. With themselves as the bait they could lure in the golems one at a time and not risk injury. Granted, the golems were enchanted to stop short of causing any serious injuries to the students, so the danger was very little, but the rules of the exercise were that if you were injured at all during the mock battle it was treated as if you would have died, and unless this “death” was a self-sacrifice to save at least two other students this earned a failing grade for the day.

Once the mock battle was over, all of the students were called in front of Professor Zuriel, and they all lined up before him, standing at attention. To those students who had fallen or been defeated during the mock battle Professor Zuriel said nothing. They knew what they'd done wrong and what they needed to improve on. Eventually he came upon Hadar, Sarahi, and Milo.

“You three have a great defensive strategy, congratulations. I have noticed a few flaws in your strategy, however. First of all, you really should try to get a few other students to stand with you. If you were to be attacked by a larger number of enemies than you've faced here you wouldn't be able to hold your ground forever. And second of all, while a defensive strategy is great you won't defeat many demons that way. True demons are more intelligent than the golems you face, and when they see you standing together like that they'll find other ways to get you. Perhaps they'll take hostages, or attack innocents to force you to come after them. Or perhaps they'll surround you in great numbers and wait for you to tire. Or perhaps you won't even be their target, and they'll choose to turn their attentions elsewhere.”

“That all seems possible,” Milo said. “But our strategy is still the most helpful overall. Chances are if war breaks out between Arx and Nihilus it'll be the Nihilites attacking us. Arx means 'fortress' in old-speak, and for good reason. With all the mountains and hills and cliffs around here...our landscape is truly like some kind of castle. I'm sometimes surprised God didn't just give us a natural drawbridge in each mountain pass. Wouldn't it make sense to use that to our advantage?”

“That's all well and good for a knight, or even for a conscripted peasant soldier. A phalanx in an enclosed space is great for holding out mere men, but demons are far too cunning for that. In the Void they travel freely, flying about wherever they want, for there is not always ground beneath their feet. When summoned here they can do the same, so it's best to have a strategy that takes the fight to them.” Professor Zuriel puffed his pipe, waiting to see if Milo would attempt to sound like he knew more than Zuriel himself did again or if that answer was satisfactory. When he saw that Milo had no arguments he said, “Still, good job surviving this many battles in a row. I don't think you've lost a battle all year.”

“We haven't,” Sarahi said, proudly.

“Good. But next time I'd like to see you employ a much more aggressive strategy. I'll give you all a far better grade if you do. Even more points if you can get some of the other students to fight with you.”

“Yes, sir!” the three of them said in unison.