To Live Or Die At Lorelight Academy, page 1
To Live Or Die
AT LORELIGHT ACADEMY
PHILLIP GREEN
Contents
Part I
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Part II
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Part III
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Part IV
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Part V
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
INTERLUDE: LULANA YIN-GATA
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Part VI
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
The End
But Wait—There’s More.
Part One
Chapter
One
It’s our last family dinner before I leave for Lorelight in the morning, and we’re all very emotional.
There are three of us.
Just three of us.
There’s me, William Seong III. There’s my grandfather. He’s not William the first—he’s my grandfather on my mother’s side. Then there’s Burta, a Ternian caretaker and former lifting athlete.
Burta is in her forties, and I’ve known her for years.
I hired her to help me take care of my grandfather after my parents died.
I was too young to lift him up, help him go to bed. Go to the bathroom. Stuff like that.
I interviewed her—eleven years old, and I interviewed her. I was pretty sleep-deprived at the time, and the reality was she was kind and could lift my grandfather, and that should have been qualification enough.
But eleven-year-old me insisted on an interview.
Dumb thing for a little kid to do, but Burta agreed to the interview, and I hired her to help with my grandfather.
My parents died six years ago.
Lost at sea.
I picture them drowning in the cold ocean. I wasn’t there to see it or anything. But when I picture it, it feels so exact. I see details—my mother’s coat, my father’s soaked jet-black hair. Details beyond what conjecture should bring.
I had nightmares about it, and I hadn’t realized it when I first hired Burta.
She found out by rushing to my room her first night staying with us, upon hearing the screams.
A troubled kid with nightmarish dreams and a morbid imagination is the sort of thing no caretaker wants to burden themselves with, on top of their other duties.
And I must have been quite the eleven-year-old—a somber, eerily mature, quiet child, who smiled sadly and didn’t speak much and then screamed in his sleep.
Yet Burta has been something between an older sister and a protective aunt for me ever since.
My grandfather’s health began declining even further in the last few years, and so Burta and I have gotten much closer, taking care of him together.
It was Burta who convinced me to apply to Lorelight, because I “read so much book” as she puts it in her thick Ternian accent.
It was Burta who decided we should stay up late into the night to celebrate me the day we found out I was accepted at Lorelight Arcane Academy. Although it was also her idea to “drink now so you know what it is like” with my grandfather’s gin. That was…a good idea and a bad idea.
It’s another late night, another celebration.
This time, we’re not celebrating my acceptance.
We’re spending our last night together before I set out for the Academy tomorrow.
It’s a big, empty, expensive dining table, fielded only our odd trio.
Only Burta and I truly comprehend what’s going on—just what exactly is happening tomorrow.
“Going…where?” my grandfather asks, not for the first time this evening.
My heart breaks a little.
We clump up near the head of the table.
It seats up to twenty. Isn’t that crazy? Who has twenty people over but makes them sit at one long table?
My parents, apparently.
The table seats twenty.
The bedrooms number in the dozens.
The grounds are sprawling.
And here we are, we three.
And only Burta really understands.
I open my mouth to reply, but find I don’t quite have the words. I find I can’t quite look at my grandfather. He looks so hurt, so confused, but painfully aware of how confused he is. That’s a curse, it is. And if I learn anything at Lorelight—if I join the Archscholars and change the world, if I do any one thing—I will find a way to get rid of dementia.
I know it’s not finding lost scrolls, or learning ancient talents—all of that glorious magic stuff. I want to do all that, too.
I want to be the Mage and Scholar I picture in my head.
I want fireballs shooting out of my hands.
I want a staff with a dragon coiled around it.
I want ethereal lights hovering over my head.
I want to ponder the orb.
I want a lot of things when it comes to my future, and they all start at Lorelight.
But in addition to all that, I want to find a way to fix this horrible thing that happens to so many.
And if I can’t find it in time for my grandfather, I’ll find it in time for someone else’s.
“Going to Lorelight,” Burta says, putting her hand on my grandfather’s. “Remember?”
“Lorelight?” he breathes in an amazed whisper.
Burta and I exchange an excited glance.
This is the most receptive he’s been so far this evening.
“You got into Lorelight, William? You were accepted? I remember you applied…that’s…phenomenal!”
“I did,” I say, and smile. It’s sad that he doesn’t remember, but gods, getting in just made me so happy.
“We’ll need to celebrate!” he says.
“Well,” I start to say. “It’s not just that I got in, I’m actually lea—”
“Your grandfather is right!” Burta says, cutting me off. “We do need to celebrate. Accepted to Lorelight! What future ahead of him, William has, yes?”
My grandfather’s eyes sparkle as he looks at me directly. “Oh, yes. I’m sure.”
I smile sheepishly and fall back in my chair.
“I’m sad I won’t see it,” my grandfather begins.
“Grandpa, you—”
He shakes his head, and a small tear wells up at the corner of his eye. “But fortunately, I don’t need to be around to see it to see it. In a way…in a way, I see it now.”
I’m not good with compliments.
Never have been.
Burta says I haven’t been properly “socialized,” whatever that means.
And I’ve never gotten such a compliment before.
“Thank you,” I choke out.
That’s what we’ve practiced, Burta and I.
I’m no longer allowed to respond to every compliment with what Burta calls my “sad laugh” and refute the compliment.
She makes me chop wood in the back yard to build muscle every time I do.
It hasn’t worked so far. I’m still a string bean who squirms at the slightest bit of praise.
Dinner carries on, and we celebrate a bit more.
My grandfather comes to and fro from his senses like a dinghy tied to port as it bangs into the dock and drifts away again.
Burta handles it every time, and tells him we’re celebrating me getting into Lorelight, rather than the truth—that I leave tomorrow.
“When does the semester start?” he asks with a yawn after a long night of talking in the library by the fire.
“Soon,” I say.
He smiles.
“I hope not too soon! Lorelight can be a hard place. We need to make sure you get a bit more life experience before you go.”
My grandfather is a kind soul.
He’s a kind soul who was kind to his children, and his child’s child.
He’s the kind of person who’s so kind to children because, as a child, he did not experience such in turn.
There’s a hardness to him, though.
He’s tough.
Sometimes the hardness shows up in unexpected ways.
“Life experience, huh? Well, hopefully I figure something out!” I say.
“You don’t figure out life, William,” my grandfather says, smiling. “You just live it.”
“William is fast learner,” Burta says. “He’ll get all the experience he needs.”
“True,” my grandfather says, nodding.
Then he taps his chin in thought.
Wow.
That chin tap.
He taps it a
His legs are crossed in the comfortable library chair. Even though we’ve crossed his legs for him, it looks natural. And for one brief moment, there in the large leather chair, lit by a warm fire and framed by books and books and books, with his legs folded, his eyes sparkling and discerning as he taps his chin—not confused, not bewildered, just a smart old man wryly thinking about a problem—that’s when I take a snapshot.
That’s when I take a still.
A memory.
I feel it melt into my brain exactly how it is. An afterimage, to be changed perhaps slightly as time goes on, but never fundamentally. A piece of life, taken right there. A piece I’ll always have.
“I love you, Grandpa.”
“I love you too,” he tells me, stirred out of his consideration with a smile.
Then he yawns.
“I’ve got to head to bed,” he says.
We move to help him up and he waves us away.
Burta is—and I mean this as no slight to my mother, who I truly do love and miss—the most amazing woman I’ve ever met.
She refers to herself as my grandfather’s “caretaker,” but she’s my older sister.
She really is.
And I couldn’t be more honored to have her as such.
She does this thing when my grandfather is lucid enough to be tricked into thinking he’s able. She gets close to him as if telling a joke, and throws her arm around him.
She sways a little, like she’s had too much to drink.
“What a night!” she says, exasperated and exhausted. “We old bears have to get to sleep. Oh, to have William’s young blood!”
“Too true!” my grandfather proclaims.
“I can’t find my damn way around this mansion,” Burta complains.
“Come, come, we’ll get you back,” my grandfather says, putting his arm around Burta like he’s going to be the one supporting the towering Ternian, and not the other way around.
And I love him for that, too—he honestly believes he’ll do it.
“Goodnight,” I say, lingering in the library.
“Tomorrow we have talk before you leave,” Burta calls to me.
Then the two pass down a hall lined with oil relief paintings of relatives I’ve never met, and dip out of view.
I let out a soft breath.
My grandfather sleeps in. Sleeps deep into the morning, past when my carriage will come to take me to the school.
I’ll be gone.
So…that was goodbye.
I breathe in again, and this time the exhalation is heavy.
Monumental.
It feels like a big moment—there in the library.
That image of my grandfather.
It feels…it feels like the last one. And I feel so sad about that, but also strangely okay, because…wow.
What an image to have.
The old man just never looked so good.
I wipe a tear away and tap my way along the bookshelves.
I’ve read most of these books.
There is a mathematics equation one could do: They could take my age, the books in this library, and how many I’ve read, and derive the proportion of my life spent reading.
The equation does not speak well of my social life.
I do regret it, actually.
Just a little.
It’s hard to regret the time spent reading, especially for a reader like me.
But all the reading came at a cost. I never got out of here.
Never got out into the world.
Just stayed in here, reading about it from the library.
I smile to myself.
I’m supposed to regret it more than I actually do, I think.
I love reading.
I love reading, I love learning, I love thinking.
If I’m being honest, I love when Burta makes me chop wood, because I can just let my mind wander and spend the time thinking anyway.
And I’m so excited for tomorrow. For the future.
The amount of reading I’ll have to do will only increase.
But this is Lorelight.
Only the best of the best go there to learn magic.
I’ll be sleeping in a dormitory with others my age. I’ll be surrounded by people.
I might even make friends.
There will be excursions and expeditions, lab work, research, and even a bit of excitement via the duels of combat magic made ubiquitous even for the studious like me.
Magic draws the curious and intellectual.
But it also draws the brave.
See, there are external threats, at least according to the Regency, that all who want to study magic need to prepare to fight. That means anyone with the capability to learn magic has to learn combat magic too. The world just can’t waste the resources these days. According to the Regency, at least.
I’m not a big fan of conflict, but I will admit a sneaky part of me is excited about the idea of learning combat magic. After all—the threat apparent hasn’t ever quite shown up. It means most combat magic is done for sport and achievement. Who knows? Maybe competition might be my thing if it’s a competition I can actually win.
I’m done with the library, for now.
For a while.
Seventeen years in this mansion.
Seventeen years of one kind of life.
Now it’s time for another kind of life, and I couldn’t be more excited.
It’s time for Lorelight.
Chapter
Two
I ultimately wake my grandfather up for a brief goodbye. He is slightly out of it—more tired than anything—but I smile and tell him I love him, and he says the same back.
Then I close the door behind me and that’s it.
Lorelight often sends escorts to bring their new students from across the country to the school, but they encourage those who can to hire private escorts.
I have more money than I know what to do with, so I hired my own. They’ll be here soon.
I go downstairs to find Burta waiting by the door.
Her eyes are red from crying all night.
“Oh, Burta,” I say, tearing up.
“No,” she says, holding up a big meaty hand to stop me. “No more cry—I cannot. I must be strong—”
“Like bear,” I say at the same time she says it.
It’s a phrase she says a lot.
Strong like bear.
To her credit, if anyone is strong like bear, it’s Burta.
“We need to have talk.”
She leads me to a small area near the front door, with a round table and a shelf with coffee and tea. Yes, we have a coffee and tea room. A coffee and tea parlour, technically. I haven’t stepped inside it in three months.
Burta pulls her chair opposite mine and sits in it reverse, frowning down.
“Your parents die,” she begins.
“Vaguely remember that happening.”
She nods.
“Esteban is wonderful grandfather, but you take care of him more than he take care of you.”
“Ha! I don’t know about that.”
“You don’t have time to chop wood, no sad self-deprecation laugh,” she scolds me.
“Sorry.”
She takes in a deep breath. “There are things your parents might have taught you that you may not know.”
“…okay…”
“William…”
Burta is struggling.
Struggling like I’ve never seen her struggle.
She’s struggling with me leaving, struggling with her non-native tongue, and maybe even struggling with what exactly she wants to say.
Is my grandfather dying sooner than I thought?
Does she have some note, some piece of knowledge about my parents? About the estate?
Is something wrong?
Finally it comes out, and Burta speaks.
“…You know how boy girl make love?”
