Chapter 4
An hour of chatting saw Levi well fed, but only slightly less confused. As a conversationalist, Tawny was delightful. She insisted that he just call her Tawny, claiming she hated the title and formality that some of the other house mistresses demanded. She was also an outrageous flirt, but Levi couldn’t tell if that was just her nature or actual interest. As they spoke, he learned that the Academy had students with a huge variety of different magics, and most of them fell into a few common classifications. Evocations were spells that projected energy, conjurations summoned things, transmutations changed them, divination gained information, and then there was a cluster of miscellaneous types that were harder to classify. Necromancy was forbidden because it was believed to be a gateway to allow Horrors into the dimension, and conjurers were closely monitored for the same reason.
None of that brief lesson helped him learn what his magic was. Levi was still on the fence about believing he wasn’t completely insane, but Tawny did her best to teach him a meditation technique that was supposed to help him connect to his internal energy stores. He felt like a fool sitting cross-legged on the couch with his palms together, breathing in and out like he was a mountain guru or something. Fool or not though, he did feel something. It was a chilly, nebulous sensation in the middle of his chest. Every time he tried to really pay attention to it, however, the awareness just faded. It was frustrating, like trying to catch fog in a colander. He gave up after about twenty minutes, and she told him to get some rest in his room. Apparently, he’d be getting some kind of class schedule in the morning.
I can’t believe I died yet still have to keep going to college, he thought as he lay on his bed. Levi lay on his back with his hands on his chest as he stared up at the ceiling of his room. He decided to spend some time going over the details of his experiences: to try and logic out whether he had actually died, or was just completely insane. The pain of getting his tattoo had been intense—he had definitely felt that. Reviewing his memories of the truck coming at him in the rain, he had a hard time figuring out how it had missed him. He had literally seen his face reflected at him in the chrome grill. Does it matter if all this is some kind of coma hallucination caused by the doctors treating me if I did survive? he mused to himself. If the truck had damaged his brain and this was all some kind of elaborate coma, it was still the world he was experiencing. If he was insane, it was still all around him. Was there any benefit to trying to pretend it wasn’t happening to him? He debated that, because if he was hospitalized or wandering the street, there was still the need to keep himself fed, clean… how detached could he be from the world before he wasted away? The best he could do was hope his delusions and reality lined up, which meant eating the food he was offered and taking a shower when he had the chance, right? He had to try and keep living.
Fuck it, no point in agonizing over the state of existence. I might as well just roll with it and hope for the best… right?
As he pondered, there was a knock on the door. “One second!” he called as he swung to his feet. The room wasn’t huge—two steps and he had the doorknob in hand and was pulling it open. The person on the other side of the door was… odd. For one thing, he was only four feet tall—for another, he was green. Really green, like chlorophyll green. A pair of ears stood out either side of his head like bat wings, and he had two black horns over each eye. Those blue eyes were the dominant feature of his face, framing a snub nose and a wide, creepy mouth full of sharp teeth.
“Hey! I thought you might be hungry, new guy. Want to hit the cafeteria?” the strange, small figure asked. Levi took in the immaculate uniform and the engraved, silver goggles that rested on the figure’s forehead. Then he realized he was staring.
“Oh, um, I just ate with Taw—house mistress Goldenrod,” he said, correcting himself. He wasn’t sure about the rules and didn’t want to have someone give him shit over disrespect.
The little green man let out a snort and shook his head. “We call her Tawny—she’s the best house mistress, she even gets us booze on special occasions. I’m Glint Scrim,” he said, then added, “I’m a swamp imp, before you ask. Not a goblin, not a gremlin, nor anything else you might be thinking. Don’t know what world you’re from, or if it even has swamp imps, but I’m definitely not one of those feral, stupid, bad-smelling creatures that try to set everything on fire.”
Glint seemed pretty firm on the subject and Levi sensed a bit of frustration on the… swamp imp’s part. He held out his hand to shake. “I’m Levi Walker. I was human, though now I guess I’m a homo draconic, whatever that is,” he said, then shrugged because he had no idea. Glint just laughed, and when they shook, Levi realized that Glint had an extra knuckle in each finger, and that the small figure’s hand was as big as his. His feet were huge too, and lacked shoes. “You know what? I’ll go get food with you. I might not eat much, but I’d like to see more of the place.”
“That’s the spirit! Let’s wander around and see what kind of trouble we can get you into. Do you know what kind of magic you have?” Glint asked cheerfully as he waved an oversized hand to lead Levi out the hall and through the main room. Levi was pleased to discover the stairs down were much shorter than the ones he had climbed to reach the tower, and he wondered how Tawny had messed with him: spatial distortion, illusion, mind control? He didn’t have time to think it over, however, because Glitch started talking. “My own magic is evocation; I can direct mana, and I am pretty good at judging the stress tolerances of the materials we use to build vapor engines. I’m studying to become an engineer, figure I can get a job on an airship at some point. They’re always looking for people who can improve their engines and make repairs in flight, and if I can throw fireballs too, well, who doesn’t like fireballs?” the imp said with a laugh as he walked, then looked over his shoulder at Levi.
Levi had to admit, airships sounded cool. He was still a little doubtful on the idea that they used something like a steam engine to power magic, but he figured he’d see it sooner or later. “Okay, so what the heck does an airship even do?” Levi finally asked. He couldn’t help being infected with the enthusiasm that Glint showed on the subject.
It turned out that Taryl was a rather hostile world. The wildlife was fierce, the terrain was beautiful but deadly, and most cargo had to travel by airship to avoid the animals. Glint’s description had him picturing something that was half pirate ship, half blimp, but with some kind of magic cannon system. That led to another question: “If the airships avoid most of the animals, what do they need cannons for, pirates?”
“What? No, no pirates on Taryl. Other worlds definitely,” Glint said, shaking his head in denial. “No, we have the cannons because of the dragons,” he concluded, sounding like it was the most sensible answer in the world.
Levi paused on the bottom step. Despite being called homo draconic by Tawny, it hadn’t actually occurred to him that there were dragons flying around the world. He had even seen the pictures done in stained glass. He shook his head slowly. “You know, now that you say it, I don’t know why I even asked? How could it be anything else.”
Fox House had an excess amount of red in their trim, and Levi saw a lot more people as they made their way through the halls. He spotted someone that had to be a minotaur, several elves, and two women with leaves in their hair. Glint informed him they were dryads. The imp had waggled his eyebrows as he praised the dryads, and Levi couldn’t help but let out a snort. “Anything I should know about the other Houses?” he asked the imp.
“Well, Bear House is one of the biggest, and they tend to have huge egos. Most of them have magic that revolves around enhancing their bodies. Fox House focuses on fighting the Horrors, but Bear House fights the beasts. If you listen to them, you’d think they single-handedly maintain the structure of civilization and they’re more than willing to brag about it,” Glint said. The small figure’s tone was clearly annoyed, and he let out a grunt. “Other than that, most people are all just trying to get along, learn what they can to help the people around them.”
Levi paused as they hit the dark-gray stone corridors of the main building, turning to look at Glint for a second. “Hey, this might be a stupid question, but how many people have actual magic? Like, is everyone some kind of wizard or something?” He felt foolish asking, but he knew nothing of the world outside the walls of this building. He barely knew anything about the space within these walls. Levi reached up to scratch the back of his head, and then he adjusted his glasses. He hated feeling clueless. He was going to have to learn as much as he could if he was going to deal with whatever kind of reality he was stuck in.
“Not even a little. Truth is, most dimensions have some kind of magic user, but they’re weak. On my world only one in a hundred could access their magic, and out of those, only one in a thousand have the gift strong enough to qualify for the academy. As far as I know, my world is pretty normal in that regard. Candidates are so rare that the dimensions worked together to build the Reincarnation Network to make sure they could help souls find their way here,” Glint explained.
Levi grimaced, and then frowned. His eyes narrowed as he asked, “Okay, so nobody finds it a bit weird that people are being pulled here after they die, and made into students?” His tone was sharper than he’d intended, but the idea bugged him. For all he knew, he should be in heaven right now.
Glint looked up at him and the other man’s bat-like ears flexed up, then drooped back down. He blinked his over-large eyes for a moment and coughed in discomfort at the vehemence in Levi’s voice. “Reincarnation is a… tricky… thing. I’m not really a scholar on that stuff, but I was told that before the Network, people would be reborn on certain worlds at random. They’d pop into existence, or be born as babies with their old memories. It doesn’t happen to everyone; in fact, it is really rare. The ancients claimed that this caused all sorts of chaos. The Network is supposed to focus all powerful souls into a single area to reduce that.”
Levi chewed on his lower lip for a moment. He blinked once. “Wait… are you saying the reincarnated turn into heroes or villains?” he asked, confused. Is he saying that all those isekai animes are real? he asked himself. He couldn’t quite believe that. Glint, however, nodded seriously.
“Yeah, that is what I was told. Apparently the last one who reincarnated before the Network came online became known as the Demon Lord of Blazes and spread across seven different dimensions before they were stopped. Some even claim that the Demon Lord is the one who weakened the fabric of the dimensions to the point where the Horrors could enter our world. Supposedly, the Network keeps that from happening again,” Glint concluded. They had reached a large pair of wooden double doors, and when they stepped through Levi saw a series of long tables with brass candelabras set on them. One side of the room was dominated by buffet tables and steaming food in silver dishes. Levi was starting to think he’d get sick of silver-colored metal real fast, and he looked at Glint to see what the rules were. He would have sworn he wasn’t hungry when they’d set out, but now his stomach let out a deep, angry gurgle.
Glint laughed and his eyes twinkled. His cerulean eyes turned as he raised a hand and pointed to the buffet. “I personally think they have the cafeteria enchanted to make sure that everyone who comes in eats a solid meal. I’ve never met anyone who could just walk in, smell the food, and leave without eating something,” the imp snorted as he walked over to the end with all the plates and trays stacked up.
Levi found a huge variety of food, some he recognized: roasted fowl, grilled steaks, sandwiches, and soups of all sorts. He also saw salads and fruit displays… and he saw what looked like a tray of blue cubes that jiggled and had tiny specks floating inside. Glint filled his tray with those, but Levi decided he wasn’t that brave. He snagged a steak, though he wasn’t sure what animal it had come from. Levi figured he could risk the fruit and took some bright-orange apples, one of which had neon-green spots. He selected a brown bottle that was fizzing softly and smelled like whiskey. He shrugged. Better than nothing.
Once they were seated, he did his best not to watch Glint popping those blue cubes into his mouth. The imp had a lot of teeth. He hadn’t expected the jiggling cubes to crunch, but apparently they did. As he cut and sampled his meat, Levi was thrilled to find it tasted amazing. The drink did taste like whiskey, but there was no burn to it. Levi wasn’t even sure it was alcoholic. I feel like I’m living in that Atlas Kane book; Who let the Demon Lord into the Mage Tower? I think that was it. Maybe I am going nuts… oh well, can’t think about that right now.
“Should I be worried I’m going to get drunk off this?” Levi asked, holding the bottle up for Glint to see. The imp smiled wide and his bright eyes narrowed as he squinted.
“Nope, well, if you weren’t you, you might have to. Far as I know, homo draconic have a really high tolerance for alcohol of any kind. Truth is, your species is kind of famous. Long lives, huge energy reserves, and all sorts of resistances. I don’t know the specifics, but yeah, as far as I know even if you drank most of the liquor in here, you’d be fine.”
Levi’s grin widened. “Okay, well, that might be the second-best thing I’ve heard since I died,” he replied.
Then he settled into his meal.
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