2
When he’d been asked if he knew how to sweep a broom, Milo had thought it was a joke.
Now, standing in a hallway deep within the ancient Dwarven Keep being used as the Mage Academy, he glared at the broom in his hand and could think only about how much he wanted to smash it to bits.
The tall mage who’d tested him had said Milo’s mana was low.
But it turned out it was so low that it was practically insignificant. Out of a possible ten grades, Milo was graded One. And that was because they couldn’t technically grade him zero.
Unable to cast even a simple spell, Milo had been pushed aside by his classmates and dismissed by his teachers.
To make things worse, lessons in the Academy were practical. They involved exploring magically-conjured scenarios, called dungeons, as part of a team. Without a team, Milo couldn’t enter a dungeon.
And no one wanted him on their team.
He didn’t really blame them. What use was he to them? He was just dead weight.
And he didn’t want to be here anyway.
It had only been seven days. Seven and a half to be precise. Seven and a half days where most of it had been spent exploring the lower halls with a broom.
“That’s what mages with low mana do, kid,” Ket had told him. Ket was the Hall Monitor. In charge of all the newbies. “They sweep. Haven’t had a sweeper in years, though. About time we got one. It’s real dusty down there, so you’ll be plenty busy!”
She’d thrust the broom in his hand, tossed her short blue hair, and then shooed him away.
“And don’t forget,” she called after him. “Don’t try opening any strange doors!”
“Yeah, yeah.”
That was one of the first things they’d drilled into everyone.
Don’t open any weird dwarven doors in the lower levels.
While rumors persisted that there were mythic machine cores hidden in the lower halls, those doors only led to traps and death. Every year, more than a few students disappeared while exploring.
Milo plodded deeper down through the levels. He wasn’t interested in sweeping, but he was interested in the architecture. About the only good thing to come of all this was being able to be here.
Surrounded by something built by the dwarves!
Their cyclopean stone work was mesmerizing. How such massive blocks could be positioned so precisely was something the clocker brain of his was excited by. He couldn’t imagine the machines needed to achieve all this.
Each block was made of solid granite. The heavy tiles under his feet were also granite. There was a weight to them that made his mind reel.
And, despite the materials and size of the blocks, it wasn’t morbidly brutal in structure.
Elegant archways and spiraling columns were everywhere, breaking up the hard square shape of everything. The walls were also beautifully carved in places, decorated with depictions of strange events only the lost race could explain.
It was hard to tell, for example, if the massive leering faces which lined one gallery were there to frighten or amuse.
Each face was almost six feet high.
Empty sockets in their eyes showed where machine cores had once rested.
Milo often wondered if the cores had given the faces a purpose. He knew the dwarves had made the cores to power their machines.
But mages had no use for mysterious dwarven constructs, so ignored the intended purpose of the cores.
They preferred to plunder them for their alternate use.
Each core could exponentially increase a mage’s mana. Which increased their power.
When he’d first heard that, he’d felt a little hope that he might be able to cast a spell one day. But the key word was exponentially. Meaning, the core often doubled the mage’s mana storage.
And double the meagre amount stored in Milo’s blood was still an insignificant trickle.
There was no hope for him as a mage. Even if he could afford the ridiculous costs of even a simple machine core.
This hopelessness made it more frustrating as he plodded through the halls. Why couldn’t they just let him go back to being an artificer?
Why force him into a life of humiliating drudgery?
He was confident in his skill as a clocker.
More than confident. Master Sunderland had often praised him, saying he thought Milo would eclipse his skills one day.
So, wouldn’t it be better for everyone if he just went back to that life?
The worst part was that Milo had spent his whole life dreaming of being in a place like this. Surrounded by dwarven works. With the time to really look at them.
He’d even spent a few hours trying to understand how the doors to his cubicle worked. Hidden gears in the stone made the heavy doors open with just a touch of his hand to a small crystal by the door.
How monstrous must those gears be?
Touching the stone, he could feel the heaviness of the system as the walls vibrated under his fingertips.
His mind had raced with thoughts of how they must be, but then one of the other students had noticed him playing with his door and called him a bumpkin.
“Haven’t you ever seen a dwarven door before?” Fergus Paddstone had sneered. “I can’t believe they let dolts like this into the Academy.”
Everyone nearby had laughed as though it was the greatest joke Fergus had ever told. Their mocking laughter had almost taken all the excitement out of Milo.
Almost.
Because even the tiny little cubicle he’d been assigned to was fascinating. It had a window with real dwarven glass in it. Unbreakable, the glass could be turned in its seat to let the air in or block it completely.
Dwarven glass was a rarity. In his whole life, he’d only ever seen it in the museum. And there he wasn’t allowed to touch it.
Here, he dragged his fingers along the smooth surface, marveling at how it defied his fingerprints. It was so unlike real glass. It felt more like a metal. And it wasn’t quite transparent. There was a slight green tinge to it that made it a little smokey to look through.
Amazingly, this glass was in every window.
There were even some walls in the lower halls made of it. They glittered as the little mana lights ensconced along the walls spread their pale light across the surface.
He wondered why the walls had been made with glass.
It wasn’t the only one.
They seemed to be used to divide the room in two. But why? What possible reason was there to erect a near-transparent wall in the middle of a room?
The place was filled with such oddities.
Oddities he really wanted to study.
Milo gave his broom a sullen swing as he looked around the large room he was standing in. Who would even know if he swept it or not?
He doubted Ket even cared.
And whether he went to classes didn’t seem to matter. The tutors didn’t seem to even notice his existence. Or they ignored him. His mana was too low for anything they taught to be useful.
Then the students either pretended he didn’t exist or, like Fergus, tried to bully him.
None of them had shown any interest in him.
If he kept to himself, then he could, in theory, just spend his days exploring.
It’d be dangerous.
The warnings about strange doors and rooms weren’t to be taken lightly.
But he didn’t need to go into any of those. He could avoid them. Maybe just map them out. Besides, there were so many interesting things in the Keep to see and try to understand.
Like, in this room, dwarven runes skittered along the top of the wall. They glowed softly like all runes did as the mana swirled through them.
What did they mean?
What was their purpose?
No one really knew.
What if he could do something no one else had ever been able to do? What if he could translate them?
He licked his lips and tucked a thumb into his pants as he lifted his gaze to peer at the runes.
Yes, that was a noble goal.
He couldn’t be a mage. He didn’t have the ability. And he couldn’t be a clocker. They wouldn’t let him.
So, maybe he could be an explorer.
An explorer within the Keep.
The more he thought about it, the more exciting it sounded. First, he would need a map. He could go to the Mage Library and see if they had one. If they didn’t, he could make his own.
Then maybe he could pick up some supplies. Spend a few days just exploring. Looking at everything. Marking down what he thought was worth studying first.
The clocker in him was used to pulling things apart and putting them back together again. If he could find a door no one was using, maybe with a bit of leverage and some hard work, he could begin to decipher the secrets of the Keep.
Grinning, he spun the broom in his hand as his newfound purpose ignited a fire in his belly which he’d thought had been extinguished.
Imagine how shocked these stupid mages would be when he revealed to them the meaning of the runes?
He could imagine their dumb faces already.
Yes. This was what he wanted to do!
How hard could it be?