Wish upon the Stars chapter 40

We took a skyride to the academy. The air shuttle was overkill, even  given the size of this city. The residential floor actually had a garage  built into it where people could pull out of the building, though I  wondered how they prevented visibility from the street. I hadn't seen  any gaps in the tower from the outside. We all stepped into the skyride,  another limo like Callie's, and the thing pulled smoothly out of the  garage in such a way that I couldn't see how it got out.

Everyone  was in costume, and Callie, Jessie, and I were all sitting on one side  of the limo while Annie sat on the other. Jessie, of course, was the one  who broke the awkward silence. "So, are we going to be starting today?  Is there a registration we need to do? I know starting classes the same  day is unlikely but do we have to do some kind of paperwork to be  considered students?"

Shadowthorn  shook her head. "No paperwork, we submitted it from your signup papers.  There is a registration though. Every student gets one of these." She  fished out a necklace with a bronze coin on it. As she held it up, it  spun in a slow circle. On one side was a spiraling black rose design  that matched the insignia on Shadowthorn's costume, and on the other was  the number forty-two. "You keep them after you graduate, and most  alumni carry theirs on them as a mark of pride, since the Academy is  such an elite institution."

Leaning  in, I stared hard at the slowly rotating coin. "I recognize the symbol  from your costume, but I don't get significance of the number. Some kind  of ranking I take it?" I cursed internally at the symbol itself. I'd  never made my insignia. I just had so much going on I hadn't found the  time. Now I was suppose to put it on a coin. I scrambled to come up with  something suitable in my head before we got there.

Luckily  high focus meant ease of multi tasking, so it was easy enough to pay  attention to Shadowthorn's response. "Exactly. Your coin is rebranded  with your highest ranking every time you move up. If you reach the top  ten you get a silver coin. The top three get a gold. Considering there  are a million students all jockeying for position having a gold coin is  considered a mark of status. Forty two is the highest I ever ranked, and  it's considered decent. Anyone with a gold coin is offered the chance  to move up to a higher branch."

That  snapped me out of my symbol panic. I raised an eyebrow. "I was under  the impression you were from Velan. How did you go to the Academy?" I  knew this was a sore subject, but I was too curious about it not to at  least ask. I knew so little about the situation a few years ago. I knew  Callie had run away at sixteen, and she was eighteen now, and Eric was  two, so the whole move couldn't have been that recent, it seemed odd  that Shadowthorn would have graduated already even if she'd gotten into  the Academy.

She  gave a wry smile. "I was twenty when I moved here, and G rank. I'd just  had Eric, but Vitality means fast recovery, so I was in good shape.  Graduation from the Academy happens at F rank, unless you stay on as  faculty." I blinked. I'd forgotten that. Jessie had told me that same  thing back in Velan but my Focus had been pretty low at the time. Noting  that she was twenty when she had her kid made me hate Callie's dad just  a bit more, I found him quickly climbing up my list of people I wanted  to stab.

The  worst part was that I was going to have to try to be polite when I met  him because he WAS the guild master. The unity was way too good of an  excuse for my rapid growth for me to give up on them because I felt like  mouthing off to an asshole. That said, I would be passive aggressive as  hell. I really hoped he noticed and started something, because he would  be getting a visit from my B rank uncle and the though of Zeke  tormenting him made me smile, even without having met the bastard.

I  put that out of my head and tried my best to get back to coming up with  an insignia while Jessie picked up the lull in the conversation. Thank  the gods for that girl, she'd saved every one of us from awkward silence  more times than I could count. I played with a dozen designs in my  head. I was pretty sure I wanted to use something wish related, follow  the Solomon theme, but King Solomon's actual symbol from the old myths  was pretty well known and it wouldn't be distinctive enough for people  to link it specifically to me.

I  pulled up a search on my scan ring and sifted through thousands of  ancient symbols. I wanted something related to wishes so I could more  easily integrate my Wish power into my legend later without needing to  change it, but if I made it an obvious thing not only would it link me  to the WCP but it would also lose impact because it was a common symbol.  Finally I settled on something obscure but related.

It  was a symbol called "The Well of Wishes". It was a circle bisecting  four horseshoe shapes that faced out in four directions. I'd never heard  of it before and it didn't look like it was in common use by anyone so I  considered myself lucky and mentally selected it. Just to distinguish  it though I put an S in the empty spot in the middle. I even took out  some paper from the center console and sketched it out to make sure it  looked ok. I liked it. It was simple but unique, and it was unusual  enough to be attention grabbing.

Callie  leaned over to look at it. "Ah, finally made an insignia huh? It's  interesting. Don't see a lot of geometric shapes or symbols. People  usually do images of things. Plants, animals, objects, that kind of  thing. I like it though, it's clean. Sticks in your head." I gave her a  nod of thanks since I was in my mask and my face wasn't visible. Her  lips quirked up wryly. "Cutting it a bit close though, don't you think?"

I was going  to offer a defense, but I was distracted as Shadowthorn cleared her  throat. Ignoring Callie's glare the older woman pointed out the window.  We all turned to look, and got our first view of the Ascendant Academy.  The first thing I noticed was that it was big. Not one huge building  like the tower, but a sprawling complex of admittedly still fairly large  buildings all built in a similar style.

The  person who designed the thing had clearly been going for dark and  elegant. Lots of looming parapets and gabled roofs. Still, the cohesive  effect of so many complimentary buildings was more than even the  considerable sum of it's parts. The Academy was in an enclosed valley  just outside the city apparently, so we must have been close to the  edge, because given the sheer size I doubted the trip to the other side  would have been as fast.

I  was impressed with the layout. It was like it's own miniature city  outside Rajak, just for Ascendants to get stronger. It seemed obvious  they had put a lot of money into this place. Shadowthorn smiled. "It's  not the Unity building, but it's still pretty awe inspiring isn't it?"  The limo set us down in a small field near the entrance to the valley,  some kind of parking area for visitors I assumed, and we all climbed  out.

Shadowthorn  headed down the path from the entrance, heading into the school proper,  and we all followed along behind her. "So we're heading for the student  resources building. They'll get you your coins and register you for the  rankings. You'll start at the bottom, of course. Though it's usually a  pretty quick jump up for the first little while. Anything you do to get  you contribution points pushes you higher, and the people at the bottom  don't have many. Don't worry though, you're only competing with the  younger students. The F rankers have their own rankings among  themselves."

That  was actually good to hear, I'd been worried about trying to climb over  some older student who had been here for years accruing points, but  anyone who managed to get that high in the rankings should have hit F  rank by now anyway. We headed into a large dark building with a wide  open inside and black marble floors. I had to admit the place was  certainly impressive, and Shadowthorn brought us to the counter to get  our coins and register pretty quickly.

The  guy at the counter had bright red hair that was super long on top and  shaved on the sides and wore a monocle. He gave us a dopey grin when we  approached. "Hey there, I'm Rhubarb. What can I do for you today?" He  had that sort of lazy drawl that told you that he wasn't particularly  bright but was very friendly. The kind you saw in old surfer movies and  things like that. I was guessing this guy wasn't invested heavily in  Focus.

Shadowthorn  smiled politely. "I have three students registering. There should be a  note in the system about it? Reynolds is the sponsor." Reynolds was  Callie's last name, and Annie's too probably given who she was married  to. That meant either Annie or Paul, whom she had mentioned at the tower  and who I assumed was Callie's dad, was our sponsor. That actually  annoyed me. I didn't want him getting credit for anything I did, but  sadly I wasn't in a position to bitch about it.

Rhubarb  spun up a screen from a scan box set into the counter. He scrolled for a  while before his face lit up in a happy smile. "Hey, I found it! Two  H's and a G. Welcome. Can I have your names and insignias for your  files? Cape identities are all that's needed. We have everything in the  system anyway, but we don't want the wrong people to end up with the  wrong insignias. That can be a mess." He laughed a bit, seeming  completely unaware and unconcerned that none of us had thought that was  funny.

I  passed over my sketch. "Solomon. That's Agria, and that's Nightstrike."  The girls passed over their symbols. Callie's was a black bolt of  lightning against a black background. There was a white border  differentiating it from the background. It was a symbol I'd seen before  of course. Jessie's however, was new. She passed over a sketch of a  daisy in a ring of thorns. It was an interesting choice. Friendly and  reassuring but also with hidden dangers. It fit Jessie pretty well, and I  gave her a slow nod instead of the smile she couldn't see under my  mask.

Rhubarb  took the sketches and left the counter. He was only gone a few minutes  before he came back with several bronze coins that he handed us. They  were all hanging from chains, and it was strange seeing the symbol I'd  just come up with cast in metal. I ran a finger over the insignia before  turning it over. The number nine hundred ninety nine  thousand nine hundred and ninety nine was engraved on the other side. It  was engraved small. Compared to the big forty two on Shadowthorn's coin  it looked pathetic. I sighed. It wasn't a problem, I'd just earn my way  up. I was sure there was all sorts of tasks I could do to boost my  ranking up. I just had to get started.