Chapter 7


    Eoren strode into the room ready for anything and to his relief, his perception of anything that could happen when one walks into a room was not expanded against his consent. He came through the wall and Pitt was already fumbling an apology to a classroom. It was a rather cramped room, with a little less than twenty people in it surrounding a lecturer. Each of the students had a small, thin metal spike which seemed to tick one way or another erratically. None of them seemed particularly annoyed at the intrusion, and some didn’t seem to realize there was any intrusion at all. Nevertheless, Pitt could very easily have been apologizing for dumping molten copper into their laps, what with the gravity he spoke with.


    The teacher had the sort of expression on his face which betrayed more confusion than annoyance. When he realized Eoren had come in and seemed slightly more level headed he cut through Pitt’s droning.


    “First day, novitiates?”


    “Yessir.” Answered Eoren, a bit more cheerfully than was truly necessary in an effort to draw attention away from Pitt.


    “Congratulations on passing the second test, now please leave through that door.” The Teacher continued, gesturing to a door directly opposite of the way the pair came in.


    “Oh uh thank you, ‘scuse me” responded Eoren, squeezing between two people with Pitt in tow.


    The pair clambered through the classroom and came to a fine wooden door set in the marble. Eoren, despite his anticipation, hesitated just a little before opening it. Sunlight streamed into the portal and the pair took in the courtyard.


    They had come out onto a mostly flat area which made up a little more than half of the total space in the clearing. Around the inside wall similar doors were set anywhere from almost touching to thirty feet apart. In  roughly twenty foot sections which were flanked by columns set into the wall. Ahead of them the other half of the courtyard sloped off and they couldn’t see what was on it. On their right and forward were groups of novitiates listening with varying degrees of intentness to an equally varied cast of lecturers. Most were noble looking, aged people with white togas, but a little less than half were far different. For one, a woman with snake tails in place of both her legs teaching proper archery form. A dragon, twelve feet long and covered in shimmering golden scales about the length and width of a finger, was scratching complex geometric designs on a piece of slate. A little forge had been set up against the left wall close to the drop off and a class pouring bronze and a class distilling something from a yellow fluid shared a large fire. A little more than a quarter of all the lecturers were translucent and pale blue. They didn’t seem bothered by this in the slightest and neither did their students. Further away from where the floor dropped off, a large, rectangular, sandy pit sat. In it a myriad of athletes trained, competed and fought. One of the competitors stood a full five feet above the crowd. Through all the chaos, curiosity sparked. People speaking about every subject Eoren or Pitt could list filled every nook and cranny of the courtyard. It was like an Agora, thought the satyr, with the bartering and stalls taken out. Indeed the space was massive enough that one could easily fit a lesser city''s Agora. Eoren was brought out of his awestruck haze by the sounds of iron clacking on iron beside him.


    The satyr turned and saw Pitt looking deeply nervous and puzzlingly, angry. He had gripped his short sword and was eyeing one of the translucent lectures.


    “They’re shades.” He responded to Eoren’s questioning gaze as if that answered anything. He opened his mouth and was interrupted by one such shade saying;


    “Indeed!”


    The pair turned to face the voice and were both shocked when they had to crane their necks to look up, for a ghostly centaur had more or less snuck up on them.


    He stood a good three feet above the satyr and warrior. His short but wild hair was held in place by a thin band of cloth with a bronze medallion dangled over his right temple. Above his conservative dress, with what must have been at least two mens worth of cloth draped over his chest and hindquarters in a sort of toga, hung a calm smile. Holding together the sheets of ghostly fabric were a collection of wooden pins. Through the riot of smells the Lyceum held, Eoren distinctly smelled cyprus coming from them which smacked of magic.


    “Ah, first centaur or first shade?” asked the half-man calmly and with good humour.


    “Centaur” Replied Pitt.


    “Shade” Replied Eoren.


    “Well I confess, I am not a particularly good example of either. Most shades are not as docile as those found here in the Lyceum and almost all centaurs are more wild than not.”


    “Chiron.” Whispered an awed Eoren.


    “Indeed. And you are the two novitiates I was supposed to show around before I was banished back to Elysium. You have obviously succeeded in the second trial and I’m to show you to the third and answer any questions you might have.”


    The pair looked at each other and back at Chiron.


    “Why are there shades teaching here?” Asked Eoren, which Pittacos nodded vigorously  in agreement with.


    “A common question, though not the least valid for it. Did you think Androdamos, Risen King of Heaven, would limit the tutors in his most perfect school to the ranks of the living?”


    This made sense to the pair, though it still seemed morbid.


    “I can assure you that no shade was torn from its final rest, all who teach here wish to be here. What else can I help you with?”


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    Perhaps a little less morbid but still, it felt unnatural for the dead to walk amongst the living.


    “How uh, h-how do w-we actually get the, uh, god stuff into us?” Quietly said Pitt, which Eoren supported with an inquisitive look at Chiron.


    “A more apt question than you know!” Exclaimed the centaur.  “Walk with me.”


    He turned and began walking towards one of the doors. The pair took a second to fall in behind and beside him in surprise. As Chiron made his way through the crowd, some people bowing in respect and others just nodding and moving, he spoke again.


    “Did the second trial seem a little frustrating for you?”


    Eoren looked at Pitt and shared what they both were thinking more or less.


    “Yes, another trial to prove our worth seemed a little odd after facing down a snake and a uh polyclops?” Said Eoren.


    “Hm, yes, well the original idea was to weed out those hero types who may have faced down a hundred monsters yet have little in the way of knowledge besides. But this doesn’t appear to have worked! Almost all have no problem with it and the rest seldom take a day to figure it out.”


    “Have the staff got something to replace it?” Asked Eoren.


    “Not as such, but there are a few ideas, though more than a few of those gifted with prophecy have advised us to keep it, so it could stay or go really. But you are not here to make the Lyceum better, you are here to be bettered by the Lyceum! Forgive an old horse for his curiosity.”


    The pair had far more on their minds, what with godhood being dangled in front of them, to respond with more than polite nods. A bit to the right of Chiron, a shirtless woman with a snake around her shoulders held a man''s arm aloft like it was a great trophy. Eoren recognized the woman as a Maenad, which did little to slake his alarm.


    “Should-should someone help him? Or stop her?” Quietly asked Pitt.


    “Certainly, someone should be along to heal him shortly, and Anteia should calm down soon enough and ah! There it is.” Replied Chiron.


    Before he finished speaking a beleaguered man clutching a staff with articulated wooden serpents dangling from it, rushed to Anetia and gave her a stern look. After a bit of a stand off, Anteia relented and gave the man his arm back, or better put, dropped it on him. As the healer went to work and Anteia melted into the crowd, she cast a stuck out tongue at both the men.


    “Is that… common here?” Ventured Eoren.


    “Extremely!” Chirped Chiron.


    “Though we haven’t had more than a handful of fatalities for the whole twenty years we’ve operated.” He added quickly after seeing the pair pale.


    By this point they had reached the door that Chiron had been walking towards. While politely making excuses as to why he couldn’t sample the apparently delicious meat jelly struck through with what looked like hair, offered by a tall and round woman, Eoren noted the peculiarities of the door.


    It was bound in bronze and made of cedar wood, which was like the other doors lining the inside of the courtyard. What was unlike the other doors however, was a hideously complicated mechanism in the centre of the door. While it was bronze, it wasn’t shining gold bronze, like any Graek would be used to. No, this was a verdigris green bronze, ancient and wizened.


    Chiron, either guessing at their silence or well accustomed to those that spring from seeing such an odd object, interjected.


    “Interesting isn’t it? What is beyond this door is most precious. More precious than food to the starving or linen to the cold. The lock, that clockwork of bronze you see, is an old piece of hephaestus’s work. The students of the Lyceum roam far and wide. All sorts of oddities and bits of treasure end up here. Well, shall we?” The centaur finished by putting his hand on a tiny lever sticking out of the lock.


    The pair said nothing but the clenching of jaws and the squaring of shoulders said all the centaur needed to know. The centaur turned back to the door and went about working on the lock. He flicked levels the size of ant wings, twisted knobs as thin as hair and timed all his movement to an odd ticking. Eoren, with satyr hearing sharpened by a childhood in the woodlands, could easily say he had never heard quite a sound like it. It sounded perhaps a little organic, like the thrum of the cicada, but it possessed a resonance in a way truly beyond what natural laws should allow. Of course the inquisitive satyr attempted to snoop in on the order that opened the lock, but the hellish complexity aside, he felt his memories of said code filter out of his mind like water flowing from a mountain lake. Perhaps, he thought, it could have simply been his brain checking out before even trying, but that felt charged somehow, like a finger was pressed on the scales of chance.


    Before very long, the lock gave a far more familiar sort of click and two bars of green bronze slid back into its mass, unbarring the door. Chiron pulled the door outward and stepped in, the pair following. They were at the top of a staircase, leading down into the earth. The stones here were no longer beautiful marble, rather it was a harder, meaner stone that the pair couldn’t recognize. While it wasn’t dark here, thanks to a couple copper lanterns hanging from the ceiling, their wider spacing lent a far less welcoming cast to the passageway.  The almost deafening sound of life and learning was shut out behind them as the door closed. Chiron ducked around a lantern and walked deeper down the stairs. They had a slight spiral to the right, meaning that neither Eoren or Pitt could tell how far down it went.


    “Bet a drachma that it goes way further than’s reasonable.” Muttered Eoren to Pitt.


    “I was in the same hallway as you, goat, that''s a sucker''s bet.” Muttered Pitt back.


    Indeed, they walked and walked. Down and down, further than any mortal could dig through the bones of the earth in a mere twenty years. This place, this stairwell felt holy. It could have been the unusual bareness of the walls or the placement of the lanterns letting ample shadows dance, but this place invited introspection. After a long distance, the pair’s ears had adjusted to the silence. The shade made no sound ahead of them and the pair began to hear naught but their heartbeats. Thump-thump thump-thump, like the sound of a drum, beat in their rib cages. In a way it felt like their soul making itself known.


    There was a gap in the placement of the lantern. The corridor in front of them lay dark and unlit. While the shade didn’t halt his stride, the satyr and warrior hesitated before plunging into the gloom. In complete darkness now, with only the muscle memory of so many steps keeping them from tripping, they pressed on. Thump-thump thump-thump. Neither knew how long they walked in the dark. Both felt a deeper feeling well up as they went deeper and deeper. This place no longer felt holy, it felt old and watchful. Like the world was paying more attention here. Taken from their senses aside from hearing, the pair felt exposed to the eyes of the universe. They felt like little embers in a storm. They felt fleeting compared to the ageless stone.


    Ahead of them a twinkle of light sprang into being. Almost blinding after so long in the dark, a golden spark tapped its way up the stairs. It looked like a fragment of the sun, unshackled from its celestial prison. It danced and danced, beautiful to behold and then died. Just as sudden as it came it was gone. The blackness came back.


    Ever deeper the pair went. Once again light threaded up the stairwell, but this was no spark. Calm, heavenly light filled the passage. The shade seemed more hale, more here than he did before. He was less translucent sure, but his cheeks were less drawn, his shoulders more broad. The novitiates stepped into the light and did not blink away the pain that usually comes with one''s eyes adjusting to brightness. This light would never harm anyone, and it certainly wouldn’t let any detail be missed in such an important room.


    They had made it to the bottom.