In the Research Quarter of Sythra, standing proud and gleaming, is the academy known as the Gilded Tower. The name has become a misnomer since its founding. Besides the glorious main structure, built some 700 years prior, there are now dozens of towers, each with their own, unique golden inlays spiraling their walls.
In one of these smaller towers, named The Sylex, strode a bulky man, cinched into a black uniform a half-inch too small for his girth. Students gave deference as he passed, then sniggered behind his back. One pulled her youthful cheeks side to side in imitation of the older man’s jowls. Stifled laughter joins the school’s shuffling foot-traffic.
The man neither acknowledged nor even noticed their reactions. His thick brow was pinched. His lips drooped like a toad’s maw. Everything about his face exuded determination. He had a mission, and he aimed to win.
He stopped before an oaken door, his fleshy bulges jiggling. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He held it a second more than is comfortable, then expelled the air in relief. His cheeks made a wet flapping sound. He frowned a headache away, then knocked.
No answer.
He knocked again.
No answer.
He knocked a…
“Yes, yes!” called a high, raspy voice. “Come in, if you insist.”
The man entered a room laden with books, papers, scrolls, arcane tools, discarded lunch wrappers, and gods know what else. Opposite him was his adversary: a gnomish looking man who was obviously old and yet his face, beneath a prodigious beard and mustache of snowy white, was somehow also ageless.
Reams of paper lay before the elder fellow. A quill wrote notes of its own accord while its master flipped through pages with quick, unexpectedly agile fingers.
“Ah!” exclaimed the gnomish man, not even glancing from his work, “Chairman Praetrix! A pleasure to see you.”
The chairman dug deep to find the will for a polite reply.
“Likewise, I’m sure,” was all Praetrix can manage.
“And what brings our esteemed leader to my humble office?” asked Praetrix’s foe.
Chairman Praetrix took a deep breath, then pulled a leather-bound document from under his sweating armpit.
“Professor Dagson, I have come simply to confirm something regarding a recent incident.”
Dagson sneezed, his beard and mustache splaying erratically, the quill skittering away like a frightened animal. Itching his nose with one hand, Dagson recalled the quill with his other. The writing recommenced.
“An incident!” Dagson exclaimed. “Sounds serious.”
“Perhaps. It depends on what you have to say. I wanted to double check – you have in your Elemental Arcana class a student…”
“Oh yes, many students, in fact,” Dagson interjected.
“… a student named Fitzip?” Praethix continued, pretending to be unperturbed.
“Could be, could be. I’ve lots of students, as I said. Before I was interrupted.”
“Ahem. Lucky you, I have your student roster! And, yes, the name is right here. Fitzip, no last name.”
“Huhn. Then you hardly need’ve asked, did you?”
Praetrix’s right eye twitched.
“Yes, well, I wanted to be sure because just this morning, I happened to be passed along a report from the Redwing Garrison. About a goblin," Praetrix positively spat the word, "A goblin whose name just so happens to be…”
Dagson suddenly spun into the air, his chair cushion rocketing him up to the top of a book shelf behind him.
“Ah! Fitzip! Yes, I do indeed remember. A young goblin girl. Though they are all young, from a certain perspective, those goblins.”
Praetrix cleared his throat, then proceeded.
“Then it is the same creature," he said, his nose scrunching and voice deep frying. "I am quite sorry to pass along, then, that Fitzip was arrested just last night. For, oh let me see… yes. Arson. Multiple counts.”
“Gracious me,” Dagson replied, his voice dripping boredom. “Those goblin parties do get out of hand… But then, that is why they are so fun to attend!”
Dagson’s cushion floated back to its seat and settled. The esteemed professor still had not looked up from his work. Praetrix’s jaw clenched.
“Is this a joke to you, Dagson? If it is, no one is laughing.”
“Oh no? I am.”
“Dagson! Really! This Fitzip here spent the past evening gallivanting across the Emerald District setting fire to… well, if this report is to be believed, she set fire to just about everything!”
“Seems a bit more damage than a single goblin could manage, doesn’t it?” Dagson quipped.
Praetrix rolled his eyes, pacing in front of the small professor’s oversized desk.
“Dagson, please, I am obviously exaggerating for effect.”
“Pfa!” Dagson exclaimed, his trailing mustaches flicking outward, “And here I thought we were expected to speak and write with exacting precision. Or does that obligation extend only to our students?”
“Precision, indeed,” Praetrix sighed, attempting to calm himself. The Chairman dabbed globs of sweart from his brow before continuing. The sweat returned as soon as he opened his mouth again.
“That is why I am here. What exactly was in the syllabus for the class in question?”
“Fire. Obviously,” Dagson said without a hint of irony.
Praetrix let the professor’s answer hang in the air a moment. “You realize this will, of course, come up in your annual review, Professor?”
The quill stopped. A smile spread across Praetrix’s face like a plate of bacon grease. Dagson scrunched his mouth a bit, then the quill returned to work.
“Honestly, Chairman? This is what you think you’ll get me with? Check the syllabus again. We covered all the necessary prerequisites for fireworking: the dangers of elemental handling, arcane ethics, the proper containment of elemental casting, and all the rest of that nonsense.”
Praetrix raised an eyebrow. “Nonsense? And how did Fitzip manage, this… nonsense? I assume she must have passed if she began the practical class?”
“Again with this old dance. You have the records right there, don’t you? You’ve read it already. Fitzip…”
“Failed.” Praetrix's voice cut callous across the room. “Miserably. And yet you went on anyhow, didn’t you?”
“Chairman, if we were seriously concerned about the theoretical side of Elemental Arcana, we would be a liberal arts school like The Scriptorious. Let those stuffy dweebs hash out the niceties of ‘proper’ Elemental usage! We’ve got more important things to do! It is hardly my responsibility to keep track of what each and every one of my students does outside of class!”
Irritation had finally crept into Dagson’s voice. The high pitch rose a step, and he began talking faster. Praetrix, sensing weakness, leaned in.
“Professor,” he said, garnishing his delivery with a slice of sarcasm, “but Professor - if it is not your responsibility to educate our students in the proper usage of Elemental Arcana, then what is?”
Dagson’s beard went rigid. Praetrix felt victory close. There was no way Dagson could wiggle out of this one in front of the board, and once he was gone, well… Praetrix had some favors to return. Sensing his upper hand, the chairman relaxed, several strands of his rope belt snapping as his gut expanded.
“The proper training of students, is it?” Dagson said with ominous calm. “I hope I am mistaken, but it seems an important detail has slipped our esteemed Chairman’s memory.”
Praetrix frowned. He did not like this change in Dagson’s voice, a change with which Praetrix was too well familiar. The chairman wiped his brow, an unpleasant tingling scurrying about his head.
Dagson ducked behind his desk. Papers shuffled about. When Dagson popped back up, a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles dangled on his nose, his eyes comically enlarged by its lenses as he skimmed tiny print on a long parchment.
“The Sylex, as we all know, was founded 327 years prior, its charter written by the Venerable Diothenax,” Dagson said in droning imitation of Praetrix’s lecturing voice, “You will find the relevant quote here in our charter’s preamble: ‘Section 1.5: That The School for the Study of the Practical Application of Elemental Arcana (henceforth called The Sylex) will guarantee the tutoring of all Imperial subjects born with connection to the Elemental Flow, for the betterment and safekeeping of the Empire, its citizens, and,” here, Dagson added weight to his speech, “‘and for all individuals of Arcane talent.’”
Dagson flicked the glasses off his face, throwing them past a still and, apparently, attentively listening quill. Passion swept the lecture-speak from his delivery as he continued.
“Now you will excuse me, for my eyesight is poor and this document abominably dense, but I cannot for the life of me find a clause in our glorious charter that says anywhere, ‘Except for goblins.’ I sensed a connection between Fitzip and the Elemental Flow the instant she walked into our doors. Five floors down from me, no less! Rejecting her would have been a gross dereliction of my duty as a professor.
"I will, for the moment, overlook the grievous possibility that you underestimate my young pupil for prejudicial reasons; but I find it hard to believe that a learned man, taught in these very halls, has forgotten what happens if those born to the Flow do not find an outlet for its power.
"If you had taken even a moment to meet Fitzip, you would instantly understand that an unrestrained Arcane Flux of her capacity would have destroyed quite more than the ‘everything’ you and the Redwing Garrison claim she burned. The last Flux of her caliber took out half of Thrael.
"Responsible for the proper training of students? Pfa! Responsible for the saving of thousands of Sythran lives, more like. So tell me again, Chairman: what, exactly, are you bringing to the table for my annual review?”
Praetrix’s mouth gaped, a salmon gasping for air in a bear’s claws. No response forthcoming, Dagson finally looked up to meet his opponent’s gaze. The mouth of the professor, too, dropped as he took in the sight not of the fastidiously dressed, barrel-chested man he knew as Chairman Praetrix, but a fleshy, bulbous caricature of his superior whose hair, second by second, sprouted into pink flowers.
A glance behind Praetrix revealed the office door ajar, a gaggle of students giggling. The gnomely professor detected the faint traces of sylvan power dusting between one student and the chairman’s floral crown. The corpulent size, too, was quickly diagnosed as another prank, one Praetrix had not the resources, currently, to rectify.
A small boy, an orphan Dagson knew to be of great talent and promise, put a finger to his lips and pantomimed a “Shh!” Dagson screwed his mouth tight to keep his laughter in, mirth escaping the corners of his eyes.
Luckily, he needn’t hold it long. Chairman Praetrix spun on his heel and stormed out the office, the students dispersing like dandelions on the wind. Left alone, Dagson barked a guffaw as he remembered, once more, why he loved his job.
The quill tapped impatiently. Dagson looked at the entry it pointed to – Fitzip’s final grade. The professor smiled broadly and proudly as the quill entered: “Superior marks. Recommended with enthusiasm for Advanced Pyrotechnics with Professor Hodge.”
Dagson then pulled a clean parchment from his desk, and spent the rest of his day writing a proposal to increase next year’s budget for fire safety equipment.
