Once Jace cleaned up himself and the apartment as best he could (wiping away some of his blood, shifting around rugs to hide the burns and damaged bits of the floor), he tried to relax and sleep. A warm shower had helped, but as he laid on his back, staring up at the ceiling, he just wasn’t falling asleep.

  There was too much to do. The Generous Hand was still out there, and he didn’t know where or how to find the guy, or what to do about it. They’d been looking for something in the dungeons, and if they’d found it? There was going to be hell to pay.

  And above that, there was the issue of the Enemy Beyond the Wall. Jace was expected to deal with all that?

  Was the Enemy even something he could deal with? He might have been able to kill servants of darkness, like Stenol or Rallemnon, but what about darkness itself? Who was to say the Enemy wasn’t some nameless, formless being?

  He rubbed his forehead, trying to get his brain to shut off, when the hallway outside his apartment creaked, and footsteps softly thudded down the hall.

  Not terribly unusual—it was an average apartment block, and that meant people coming and going at all hours—but the footsteps had a certain cadence to them. Heavier than a Wielder’s, and balanced, like someone had a tail to help them.

  What were the chances it was Lessa?

  Well, Jace wasn’t sleeping anyway. He slipped off the bunk nook inserted into the wall of the bedroom, then pulled on a shirt and rammed his feet into his boots. Tip-toeing out of the bedroom, he snuck toward the door.

  He wasn’t like Kinfild, who could keep himself quiet with every trick in the book. Practice, probably some sort of technique card, maybe some Aes manipulation or fancy cycling pattern. Jace’s boots still thudded on the floorboards with each step.

  When he reached the door, he peered out the eye-hole, and craned his neck to the side. Sure enough, Lessa was walking down the hall. She wore a regular gown, and carried her satchel over her shoulder, with her engraving equipment stowed within (Jace couldn’t see the equipment, but he knew it was there).

  He pressed a button on the control panel beside the door to deactivate the automatic opening function, then pushed it open a crack and leaned outside. “Lessa?”

  She stopped instantly, then turned to face him. Slowly, almost comically slowly.

  “What are you doing?” he whispered.

  She blinked, then scratched the back of her head. Clearly, she wasn’t sleepwalking. Finally, she sighed, “I was going for a walk…” It felt honest.

  “Just a walk? I know it’s well lit up here, and chances are the darklings wouldn’t venture up to the upper city, but…is it safe to go wandering?”

  She shrugged. “Couldn’t sleep. Was just going to the Luna Wrath. I dunno, it’s more…normal in there.”

  “Normal?”

  “These apartments are too fancy. Stuffy. Empty, manufactured.” She shook her head. “I can’t stand it.”

  That sounded slightly less genuine, especially coming from someone who seemed excited to go to a fancy academy. Would it be any different there in the dorms?

  “You couldn’t sleep either?” she asked after a bout of silence.

  Jace nodded. “Yeah. Just a little…hyper from the day’s activities.”

  “I wouldn’t mind if you came along,” she said.

  He nodded, then stepped out the door and pushed it shut behind him. They navigated through the hallways of the apartment block, then took an elevator down to the street level. Or…somewhat street level. They were still a kilometer or two off the ground, but ‘floor seven hundred and thirty-seven’ seemed to be the agreed-upon main street for the upper buildings of Kinath-Aertes’ central administration district.

  The Artanor Hall, lit with hundreds of lights in the night, stood well above the rest of the city, and there were plenty of towers rising on all sides. Windows shone and glimmered, and over the edges of the walkways of the seven hundred and thirty-seventh level, hundreds of neon signs sent a colourful glow up.

  “I suppose darklings are leaving the shadows at night here, too,” Lessa provided.

  “Do you see one?” Jace asked, hand drifting down to the hilt of his whistling blade. There were still lots of people around, and there’d probably be Watchmen somewhere in the city. If he used a light-based ability, they’d notice.

  “Just in general,” Lessa said.

  As she spoke, a police starship broke off from the line of traffic above and descended down between the walkways. Jace hadn’t known what those ships were at first. They were about the size of the Luna Wrath, but with a smooth coating of steel, rigid blue markings, and heavy plasma cannons at the bow. No flashing lights or obvious “police” markings.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  But the more time he’d spent here, the more of them he noticed. Once, he’d seen one descend on a street to apprehend a thief, and another time, it’d appeared in a plaza to deal with a horde of darklings who’d crawled up from the depths of the city and began terrorizing the local crowds of late-night market-hoppers, or just those out for a late-night stroll.

  Up here, and so close to the central city, Jace and Lessa stuck out from the crowds like rusty nails. Instead of frock coats, robes, or dresses, Jace wore a simple collared blue tee-shirt, and Lessa in her sleeveless nightgown (it technically was a summer gown, meant to be worn outside, but it accommodated her tail well enough). Here, it was the summer, and even though it was night, it was more than pleasant enough.

  Still, when they passed a convenience store, the night-shift worker gave them a glare, and Jace picked up the pace.

  A few streets over, they reached a stairway. It led down between a few buildings, then arrived at a chain-link fence to the landing platform. A private security officer in a dark red coat and peaked cap stood guard outside. He was a human, about fifty, with a mustache and a hololantern under his arm. A plasma rifle hung off his other shoulder.

  A mortal, [Level 10 Security Guard], but Jace didn’t need to cause a scene. He nodded his head and approached the gate, and Lessa showed him their identification and ticket—which signified that their starship was parked on the platform beyond.

  Still, the guard held out his arm and narrowed his eyes. “You, young man. You’re in especially prime condition, and you’re the right age. Lemme see your draft exemption papers. Can’t have anyone freeloading on the sacrifice of other Realm men, now, can we?” He motioned behind him at a sheet of paper pinned to the fence behind.

  There were words scrawled across it in the galactic standard script, requesting that young men aged eighteen to twenty report to an enlistment office, with some poorly-detailed prints of Starrealm yellowcoats. On the other side of the fence, a holographic notice blazed, providing an edict from the parliament that declared the same age bracket now eligible for the draft.

  Jace sighed, then reached into his pocket and retrieved the notice of exemption that Lady Fairynor had provided him upon arriving here. He showed it to the guard. “Eldest son in my family, sir, and we’re welders. An essential trade. I’m exempt.”

  The guard grumbled something, then stepped aside and let them pass.

  Jace and Lessa walked into an empty open plaza with starships parked all across it. Most were some form of freighter, just staying the night in the administration district (the really important and fancy people had private landing pads, but if they were importing foreign goods, or better yet, meeting with their upper-middle-class underlings, those needed a place to land.

  Jace and Lessa prowled across the platform. Most of the starships, if they were resting for the night, had tucked up their boarding ramps, and only wisps of starcoal smoke poured out the smokestacks.

  A group of Starrealm soldiers sat out front a dropship, smoking cigarettes, but they were talking amongst themselves and made no move toward Jace or Lessa. At first, it was hard to pinpoint them. Instead of yellow coats, their uniforms had changed drastically over the past half year. Heavy beige field coats, neutral gray plastoid armour, and helmets with a brim and an undone chin strap. The plastoid didn’t do much against plasma, but if they left the chin strap off, a glancing blow would knock off their helmet and save their lives.

  When Jace and Lessa reached the Luna Wrath, Lessa knocked on the hull, then called out softly. The boarding ramp unfolded, and Err-Seventeen waited at the top of the ramp, a broom in one of his spindly hands. He chittered softly, then spun and rolled away.

  “Good evening, bud,” Jace said, then stepped up the ramp. He glanced back at Lessa. “It is nicer in here, isn’t it? Feels more like a home.”

  “Yeah,” she replied. “What was keeping you up?”

  “Just…” He leaned back against the wall of the cargo hold, then sat down on the bottom bunk embedded in the wall. “I guess just thinking about the future.” He folded his hands in his lap. “I guess we just need to know more about the Generous Hand.”

  “That’s why we’re going to the academy, isn’t it?”

  He nodded. “Hopefully, we’ll find some answers there. Sidle up to the right sorts of people, see if we hear any whispers.” He tightened his fists. “I know what I’ve got to do, even if it doesn’t make the anxieties go away.”

  Lessa plunked down on the bunk beside him. “I think you can do it. Really, you haven’t let any of us down so far.”

  He nodded. “What about you, then? What’s got you stuck awake?”

  She hung her head. “Alright, well…” She gulped. “Look, I’m not sure if I’m actually excited to go to the academy. I can’t compete with Wielders for a long term.”

  “Well, we haven’t really tested your exo-suit on a long timeline.”

  She chuckled. “Alright, but the point remains the same.” She leaned back. “I’m worried I’ll be disappointed. I’ve read so much about academies, but this one is probably going to suck, isn’t it?”

  “Dunno. I’ll admit, I’ve only ever been to high school. It was…well, it wasn’t really an academy.” He reached up and scratched the back of his head. “But hey, even if it does, we won’t be there long. Just enough to crack some heads, find out what we need to know, then hopefully hunt down this Generous Hand and take him out.”

  Lessa shifted closer. “Yeah.”

  He leaned back, almost touching his head to the wall behind, but he stopped. The wall behind was shaking and vibrating, thrumming with energy. Almost like there was something inside that wanted to get out. He narrowed his eyes. “Do you hear that?”

  After a few seconds, Lessa said, “Yeah.”

  Pushing up from the bunk, Jace turned around to look. A faint blue glow shone up between the crack in the bunk and the wall behind it.

  Was that…?

  Jace pulled open the drawers beneath the bunk, revealing the Halcyon Spear.

  It was glowing and shuddering, and it’d carved glowing gashes into the end of the drawer from its microscale seizures.

  “What’s wrong with it?” Lessa asked.

  Jace leaned closer. “No idea…” But there was something different about the spear today. He just couldn’t put his finger on what. “You wanna see if we can figure it out? We can’t just let an ancient relic sit here, can we?”

  “No, no we cannot.”

  Jace bent down and picked it up.