From above, it was quite apparent that the Imperial Capital was a thoroughly tamed plane. There was no wilderness, no old jungle or forest growths, no wild rivers, and deadly snow-capped mountains. Not as far as Yuriko could see anyway, but from how everything in sight was carefully curated, it was an easy assumption to make of the area.

Even the river beneath them had banks with artful curves, and the water was crystal clear. The river stones formed an undulating wave and the colours seemed carefully arranged such that anyone staring down at it would certainly enjoy the aesthetic arrangement. As the Sky Tram moved and Yuriko looked back at it, she found that the pattern had changed. Interesting.

Each copse of trees was carefully arranged and pruned such that the shadows cast by the moving sun painted distinct patterns on the fields. One such shadow pattern looked much like a stylistic battle scene from a play. The winds rustled the leaves, making fragmentary shadows that moved like droplets of blood.

When she blinked, and her angle of viewing changed, the shadow play changed from war to a soothing pastoral scene. A goat herder looking for a stray. A wolf stalking him in turn then the rest of the goats ganging up on the lone wolf.

The journey was over quickly, however, and soon enough, the Sky Tram docked into a tower.

“Miya, wake up.”

Yuriko nudged her cousin, who snorted, rolled onto her side and continued snoozing. The other girl wasn’t snoring, not loudly anyway. There was a high pitched whine that was as soft as a butterfly’s wingbeat that she could only hear because she was so close. And her Radiant Refinement made her senses more acute.

However, the moment the tram touched down on the landing strip, Miya sat bolt upright, startling Yuriko who jumped against her seat restraints. Miya’s eyes snapped open, then she looked around, nodded sharply and undid her seat buckles.

As she stood, she glanced down at her and said, “Well, let’s go.”

“Uh, yeah.”

Once they got out of the tower and onto the streets, Miya led her to a Circuit Tram station. There was a short line but the tram was already pulling up. About fifty paces down the road, another tram turned around a corner, while fifty paces back, another entered into the road they were on. While another stopped at a different part of the station, where a single person got in.

The station, a strip of the sidewalk that had a roof, and had several walking rails which separated the area into several docks. There were signs hanging from the ceiling, and Miya led to the one that said, “Academy Circuit.”

“The Imperial Academies’ campus is just outside the Palace,” Miya said as they waited for the tram. “It should only take a few minutes once we board.”

The tram came into the dock even as Miya spoke. The tram left after a minute on the dock. About a dozen young men and women boarded the tram after Yuriko and Miya, who took a seat near the back. They nodded to Miya, and eyed Yuriko curiously, with nearly half of them blushing with a start when they realised that they’d stared too long.

Miya had let Yuriko take the window side seat then settled back into a light doze. Yuriko observed the city while the tram accelerated. Its cruising speed was at least three or four times faster than back in Rumiga, but only a gentle breeze ruffled Yuriko’s hair. The edges of the windowsill glowed from powered runescript.

She stared at it for several minutes, studying the runescript lines, which were a basic Field production line, with modifiers that lowered the input energy and kept the repulsion to wind only. It didn’t restrict all of the airflow. Yuriko thought she identified the set lines that varied how much wind was let in, but she couldn’t make sense of the lines that defined which variables to set.

Her attention was diverted when she saw several landmarks that flashed by. The Imperial City didn’t look and feel so much as a city but more of an extended suburban area. As if it were Faron’s Crossing that stretched out for leagues as opposed to something like Rumiga City. Certainly nothing Lucenti City, which clung to the treetops over a marsh.

The tram stopped at three more stations before arriving at the campus. She wasn’t sure how far away it was from the Sky Tram’s tower, just that she knew that Aerule Garden was to the north. Miya said the campus was to the east, just outside the Palace.

Where property lines met the road was often a perimeter wall. Sometimes, it was a hedge made out of bushes, at others, wooden slats. A few were made of stone or bricks. But one and all, each wall was high enough to cover the dwellings within. If Yuriko had not glanced down from the Sky Tram, she wouldn’t have known what houses in the capital city looked like. They were much like the homes in Faron’s Crossing, with flat roofs that served as shooting platforms or avenues of relief, except that here, that area wasn’t bare or focused simply on defence, but also used for other things such as gardens or leisure activities.

The road was quite wide, with enough room for three or more trams in the centre while landcrafters or haulers plied the outer areas.

Miya stirred when they finally arrived at the campus tram station. The other students hurried out of the tram but as soon as Miya stood up, those still on board hastily made room for her.

The campus gates made her pause for a moment. They were practically identical to the campus in Rumiga. And, as they entered, she realised that the layout, the structures, and the building names, were also the same. Miya brought her to Holtzer Hall, where the registrar was.

“I’ll have to leave you here to attend my classes,” Miya said regretfully. “I would have liked to have kept you company but even if I wanted to skive, I wouldn’t be allowed into the testing areas with you anyway.”

“Tests? Ah, Mum mentioned that they have to determine where to place me,” Yuriko muttered. “How long do you think it’ll take?”

“The entire day, maybe.” Miya shrugged. “Who knows. You’ll probably spend the morning in written exams then the afternoon in physical and practicals. Ah, I’ll catch your practicals later in the arena.”

With that, Miya left her to the tender mercies of the officials.

“Yuriko Mishala Davar.”

The registrar, a plump woman with a silver streak along her temples, checked Yuriko’s artefact licence card, the only one that survived her trip across the Chaos Sea, the varied planes, and the Pure Lands. Her school ID card had been in her backpack, no doubt being stared at by blood warriors or that huge creature made out of the heaven-reaching root.

“Missing since the middle of her internship, in the plane of…” She stared at her crystal screen for a long moment, “Rumiga? That’s a frontier plane, isn’t it? You’re a long way from home…ah, Mishala. Of course. Oh!” She jumped a little at something that must have flashed on her screen. “I see here that you’re to take reassessment and placement exams. Huh, the whole gamut. Very well. Please wait here while I confirm the arrangements.” She gestured towards the bench by the hallway then went through a door on the other end of the hallway.

“Thank you.”

Yuriko sat down and tried to get comfortable. The thought of having to take written exams made her heart race nervously. Surprise exams, urgh.

Soon enough, the woman returned and beckoned at her. Yuriko sighed, got up, and followed. She was led outside of Holtzer Hall where she met a lean man with short, red hair, an instructor from the pins on his lapel. He wore a long grey robe that brushed the top of his ankle high boots.

“Good morning, I am Master Aldan Ruminos. You must be Sadeen Mishala’s daughter.” He gave her a somewhat ingratiating smile. “Well, come with me and we’ll get you sorted out.”

The master was a couple of inches taller than her, had piercing green eyes, and high cheekbones. His nose looked like it had broken once, and set incorrectly, but that didn’t detract from his looks. His robes were open at the front, revealing a loose shirt that exposed some of his chest, and he had the sleeves rolled up.

He gave her a short bow and gestured for her to walk beside him.

“We’ll be going over several subjects, merely to see what you remember from your lessons. Don’t worry, these won’t reflect on your records if you do badly.”

“Alright.”

He glanced at her and grinned. “Don’t be nervous. You’re projecting anxiety,” he laughed. “It's affecting me too! Now I want to bury myself in the ground.”

“Oh, I’m, er, sorry. I don’t know how to control it.”

“Oh, no worries, I’m sure Lady Sadeen will see to your education.”

The walk down Learner’s Pass was quick, and there were dozens of students hurrying along. The familiar sight of the uniforms made Yuriko’s eyes wet and she blinked away tears of bittersweet joy. While this was the Academy, it wasn’t the one in Rumiga. Her friends weren’t here. Instead, she was alone in a sea of strangers. Even her family, her real one, wasn’t here. Strangers with the same bloodline, that’s what it felt like. Well, except for Mum, but she’s just one.

By the time she mastered her emotions, they were already in Sharom’s Song Building. Master Ruminos led her into the faculty office, then into a solitary testing room, where he handed her a packet of papers and an inkwell.

“You are to use your Animus manipulation technique to write with the ink provided. Good luck, finish as much as you can of the test. You have until noon, four hours from now.” He left her in the room after giving her another happy smile.

Yuriko sighed, then got to work. It was as bad as she expected. The subjects ranged from History, Natural Sciences, Social Studies, and worst of all, Arithmetic. She struggled through all of them. She hadn’t even thought of Arithmetic in the year she spent away, and other than coins, what use was it?

There were odd subject labels too. What were Planar Studies, Natural and Chaos Laws, and Physika?

One of the questions was: How do you determine distance from the Equilibrium, from the Abyss, and from the Firmament? Ah, if she remembered correctly, from History, Equilibrium is the level where most planes resided. The ambient Chaos levels were pretty uniform, much like how it was here. The ambient Chaos levels in the Imperial Capital were the same as that in Rumiga, and Bella. Kogasi was about three times heavier, while the Pure Lands were about five times the normal.

The Abyss… Yuriko remembered Aunt Layla mentioned it before. It was the deepest part of the Chaos Sea, wasn’t it? Where the weight of the ambient Chaos would have been enough to physically crush a person into something the size of a penny. What was the Firmament though?

From inference, she supposed it was the opposite of the Abyss? A place with no…Chaos? Impossible. Well, from the context of the question, the answer could only be how dense the ambient Chaos was.

And, of course, the following question was how to determine how far from Equilibrium one was, depending on density. Here, she encountered the term ‘iarvesh’, or the measurement of ambient Chaos density. One iarvesh was the density at Equilibrium. It can go as high as it can, but can never go below zero.

The concept nearly fried her brains. Was there a number below zero? How, why, and what for? Argh!

Still, she spent those torturous four hours answering feverishly, even though she had been beset by nausea ten minutes into the exam. She found that if she focused as hard as she could, then flooded her mind with Radiant energy, she could ignore the dizziness. Up to a point anyway, and as soon as she was done, she ran to the bathroom to throw up. She almost didn’t make it since the hallway had become crowded with students heading out to lunch, but her speed and reflexes won the day. Hooray! She didn’t puke in front of the instructor, or any of the students.

When she came back to the testing room, Master Ruminos hovered around her in concern.

“Are you alright? You looked pale, well, paler than usual.”

“I’m fine.” Yuriko insisted, though her tummy was still a bit queasy.

“Are you sure, well, if you’re not up to it, we can postpone the physical exams.”

“No, I think I’d rather get things done already. What are the exams about?”

Ruminos frowned, then sighed. “Well, sparring, tactical awareness, strategic awareness, as well as knowledge you would have learned from the Reserve Officer Training.” He grunted, “Quite the chore really, and Sharom students are usually inadequate at it. Tomorrow, you’re scheduled for Animus control practicals, though really, they shouldn’t waste time on combat readiness…”

“Ah, I look forward to this, actually.” Yuriko interrupted his ranting. And she was. Nothing like a good battle to rouse her sluggish blood.