Chapter 2

His first day at Brightwall Academy had not, thus far, been to his satisfaction. That damned clerk had given him the wrong class time, of course, and he'd shown up at the Academy a good two hours early. He had passed the time before class browsing the school's extensive library, which much to his disappointment was entirely banal in its subject matter.

After rejecting an entire shelf of dusty old history books (he felt no need to drag his mind through that mucky subject any more than he had to), a few titles from the rare book collection caught his eye. All, however, turned out to be varying degrees of disappointment. How to be a Master Swordsman was most uninformative. The next book he picked up certainly sparked his attention at first, with its vivid descriptions of spilt blood and apocalyptic forces… however, when the death-dealers were revealed to be aquatic birds, Lesley was severely disappointed. It served him right, he supposed, for not reading the cover. He had thought he had a winner with the final book, The Pangs of Sunset, which he had hoped might contain the history of that mysterious mansion he'd heard tell of in Mourningwood. The book was certainly interesting – Lesley had to give it that much – but it was hardly what he had expected, and he came away from it with more knowledge of Reaver's anatomy than he ever dreamed (or hoped) of having.

Class itself had been a tremendous bore. It had consisted, for the most part, of the professor giving an introduction, losing his chalk, forgetting everyone's name, and then spending the next two hours lecturing on the origins of Albion. It was, at best, a ponderously speculative lecture. Lesley had not thought it possible for someone to derive so much to say from the discovery of a few old irrigation tracks and a vase or two.

The only upside was his professor's declaration of intent to spend the coming week lecturing on the rise of the Court. Though Lesley knew very little about the Court, the words 'void', 'evil', and 'mass murder' had all been used by the professor in describing the upcoming topic, the combination whereof nearly put Lesley into a girlish fit of excitement.

The class ended by noon, and since Lesley had not yet decided on an elective, the rest of his day was free. After all the unwanted attention from the night before, he wasn't terribly keen to return to the inn for lunch. Instead, he opted to purchase a pie from a nearby vendor and take his lunch just outside the Academy. Perched on the edge of the fountain at the academy's front entrance, he was treated with a view of the stalls and houses below, and of the people hurrying their way through the streets. Mist off the fountain whispered against his neck; it felt good, on a hot day like today when there wasn't a single cloud in the sky. As much as he hated to admit it, it was pleasant to have a change from the smoggy skies of Bowerstone for once.

"Your power is astounding! Twice you've cheated death!"

At the sound of the strange voice, which was decidedly sinister in the most forced way possible, Lesley raised his head.

"Yet!" the melodramatic voice continued, "Your abilities are trivial compared to the infinite power of the Spire, which will soon be mine!"

He had absolutely no idea what was going on, but this he had to see.

Wrapping up the remains of his pie, Lesley made his way towards the source of the voices, which, from what he could tell, seemed to be the small patch of woods which crept up around the entrance to Brightwall Academy.

"Now," said the voice with an overemphasize crescendo, "sleep."

As he picked his way along what seemed to be a natural trail, Lesley heard a second voice pipe up, "Never!" and music began to play.

"What? What is that?"

The path suddenly opened up into a clearing, and he found himself quite awkwardly standing in the midst of three red-cloaked figures. The nearest, who was wearing a mask over his face, slowly closed the box he was holding and the music stopped. A second young man, who stood at the center of the trio, appeared quite cross.

"Oh, come on now! We're going to have to start over… again!" he snapped, and Lesley recognized his as the melodramatic voice he'd heard earlier. At this second man's feet a third lay, who now raised his head and peered curiously at Lesley.

"Does this mean I can get up now?" he whined.

"Not now, idiot!" growled the second man, giving him a sharp nudge with the toe of his boot.

"I beg your pardon!" Lesley blurted. "I didn't mean to interrupt; I was just curious what you… people… were doing."

"Think nothing of it," said the first man, setting the music box down and extending a hand. "I'm Mark, Madron of a Thousand Faces, and my friends here are Ben – er, Ka-lev, I mean, Lord of the Faeries – and…"

"Jim," snapped the second man. "Now can we get back to our game or should I set out the saucers for tea?"

"You'll have to excuse him; he can get a little testy about gaming."

"We're live-action roleplaying!" the third man, Ben, chirped. Much to Jim's annoyance, he sat up, knitting his hands together and smiling at Lesley. "Right now, we're re-enacting Sparrow's defeat of Lucien!"

Lesley raised an eyebrow. "Live-action… what, sorry?

"Live-action roleplaying," Mark offered. "It's where you act out a character."

"The name's a bit of a mouthful," Ben admitted. "Too bad there wasn't a shorter way of saying it… like an anachronism or something."

"That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard," muttered Jim.

Lesley cleared his throat. "Ah. Well, it's been a pleasure, but I really should…"

Just then, a look of dread crossed Mark's face. Lesley, briefly, wondered if there was a Balverine behind him. "Oh, where are my manners! We haven't even asked you for a proper introduction yet, have we?"

Perhaps Balverines would have been a preferable alternative – he wasn't really one for introductions. "Shit," said Lesley, then blushing, added "Oh, no, sorry! I meant to say 'sure'. My name's Lesley. I just arrived here and - ."

At the mention of the name 'Lesley', Jim snickered. Mark shot him a look saturated with murderous intent.

"You're in Old Kingdom History, aren't you?" Ben piped up. "I saw you in class today. I'm in foundation year too, yeah?"

"Well -."

"That's fantastic!" Mark exclaimed. "Oh, a history major – how exciting! You must know the Lucien conflict in-and-out. How about joining us? Ben would be greatly relieved."

Ben gave a knowing nod. "It's hard to do the voices for all three heroes, you see."

A flush crept up along the inside collar of Lesley's shirt. "W-well," he stammered, "I don't care much for history at all, see. The course I wanted was already booked."

The last time Lesley had seen so severe a reaction amongst a crowd had been the day he'd dragged a half-dead Hobbe home through Bowerstone market. In fact, the dismayed horror upon the trio's faces was eerily familiar. Worried he'd done something wrong, he amended himself by adding, "It's just not my cup of tea, really. But this… this Lucien story looks interesting. How does it go again?" (He didn't want them to think he was that ignorant about Albion's history, after all).

Whatever alarm had swept over the gamers instantly disintegrated at the opportunity to out-fact one another. "After the hero, Sparrow, defeats Lucien using the music box," Mark began, "the heroes are freed and Theresa takes control of the spire, granting the hero one wish, which was, um…" He paused and scratched his head. "Does anyone remember what Sparrow wished for?"

"Money!" Jim barked. "And power!"

"Jim!" squeaked Ben, "That's terrible! Poor old Sparrow would never have wished for any of those. He would have wanted his sister and his mum back… then they could have all lived together happily ever after."

"That's stupid!"

Mark shook his head. "No, no, you both have it wrong, see. Sparrow was a hero; he would have sacrificed the good of the few for the needs of the many…"

At that point, Lesley (quite correctly) realized the conversation was no longer centered around him, and so he took his leave before any of the gamers could notice. Besides, he thought as he left the woods and the increasingly heated voices behind him, it wouldn't have been terribly fun to be around when things got ugly and the music box went airborne.

He still had the entire afternoon ahead of him, and while he felt obliged to make a dent in his readings for the next day, Lesley was hardly one for reading while the sun was still up. Books were always best when read by candlelight, after all, so he decided on a nice little walk instead. Maybe he would get out of Brightwall, even, and explore Mistpeak to see what - .

Something slammed into him, causing his thoughts to scramble then vanish. He reeled back, arms spread for balance, only then catching sight of something dark bobbing at the corner of his vision.

"Watch where you're going!"

A waspish, large-eyed young man was sprawled at his feet, papers and books hazardously strewn about the ground in a halo around him. His glossy, dark-brown hair was tied back in a black velvet ribbon. While Lesley was not the best judge of appearances, he remarked to himself that the young man might have been regarded as attractive, were it not for the unfortunately narrow mouth that cut a stern line in his face.

Then his eyes were drawn away from the young man's face and to the books and papers on the ground, and he realized it would be the polite thing to do something about those.

Kneeling, he muttered, "Sorry, so sorry, let me, ah, help with those..."

But before he could be of any assistance, the young man slapped his hand away. "I'm fine," he hissed.

Lesley wasn't able to utter a single word of protest, for the young man quickly scooped up the remains of his belongings and shot to his feet. As he picked himself off the ground, Lesley watched the young man's figure meld into the market crowd.

Well, Lesley thought to himself, that was a bit odd.

As he set out at a slow pace towards Mistpeak Valley, he mentally went over a checklist of sociopathy symptoms, but quickly decided more researchwas in order before he could draw any further conclusions about the mysterious stranger.