Welcoming Ceremony (III) - Continuing Forth

The world was frozen, rain not registering as falling in Bell's mind. All she heard was her own slow, heavy breathing and her rapid, thumping heartbeat. Time had slowed in her perspective yet flowed as normal at the same time.

'No way.'

Pope Joan's body went limp against the platform, rain starting to patter against him. Vice-Principal Hestia appeared immediately beside the man, pulling him on his back and creating strange symbols with her hands.

Just as Bell was about to see the Vice-Principal do whatever actions she intended to follow through, Principal David pulled something out of thin air. A thick, black veil started being dragged around in the form of a dome. In an instant, it closed itself, obscuring the view from the students in the arena.

After the moment of silence, Bell heard a scream somewhere off in the distance.

'No way. He's not going to die, is he?' Bell thought, mind racing just as fast as her heartbeat.

Time seemed to return to normal as her train of thought rocketed from whatever station it was resting at. 

'He can't die! He's immortal, right?!' Bell instinctively brought her thumb to her mouth, chewing her fingernails in stress.

As her thoughts started to run faster and raster, they inevitably melted into a hodgepodge of different, wild ideas.

'Is the Heart going to fall out of the sky if he dies?'

'Calm down!'

'What about the oceans?'

'The sky?'

'Count to five!'

All the while, more and more students fell to the sheer panic that surrounded them. In her panic, Bell failed to ruminate on the words that the Pope had spoken before falling unconscious.

Before Bell would ever calm herself down, the speakers roared to life.

[Students! I'm so glad you're so worried, but I'm fine.]

It was the voice of Pope Joan. The instant after his announcement finished, the Veil was pulled back by Principal David, who seemed to tuck it into his sleeve.

Pope Joan looked revitalized, much better than he had looked during the entirety of his speech. He chuckled into the microphone before continuing.

[I'm sorry about that little scare, I should have warned you. Another thing, I'll be leaving in a few moments, but will leave one last piece of advice for you: Prepare to be powerless in some scenarios, just like now, there are situations where you can't do anything. Come to terms with that.]

After he said that, he waved around at the stunned crowd who were still processing that he was alive and apparently well.

Then, lightning struck him. After the momentary blindness dissipated from the eyes of the onlookers, Pope Joan was gone.

Strangely enough, with the vanishing of the Pope, the morale of the students came into manageable territory. There were a few who were so terrified that they had an instantaneous mental breakdown, but other than that, everyone was mostly okay.

At least, physically.

Bell didn't know how many people saw Pope Joan as their idol, and she didn't understand what kind of psychic damage that seeing their idol so close to death would deal.

Vice-Principal Hestia seemed to be slightly on-edge after what had just happened, and it took nearly a full minute for anyone to do anything at all.

The first person to move was Principal David, and he walked towards the stand, picking up the microphone left behind. He turned the microphone on and tapped it twice, the feedback from the speakers around the bleachers telling him what he needed to know.

[Well! That was something, wasn't it?]

His hand shook, which must have been considerable, seeing as how Bell was at least a hundred meters away from the principal. It was slightly surprising that there wasn't any feedback or sign of the shaking from the microphone itself.

Principal David's next words were almost as shaky as his hands.

[Alrighty, all first years who came in this morning, report to the main office, all other students, dismissed.]

From the rate at which other students were standing up and heading to the exits, it felt like they were fleeing from some sort of apex predator. Bell was almost influenced by the state of panicked fleeing that the other students were in, but remained calm.

'He's alive, everyone's alive, everything's fine.' Bell thought with a deep breath. 'No need to panic.

Bell stood up and turned to follow the flow of people to the exit; she planned on asking the pathfinder where the main office was when out of the arena. Despite the cold air and cooler rain, Bell felt uncomfortably warm.

A cool sweat found a path down Bell's forehead and down her cheek.

'Great Lady above...' Bell cursed in her mind.

Mona was close behind, with the other four following Mona, they didn't seem too shaken up. Aside from Jude, he looked like he was close to tears. Bell wasn't going to antagonize the boy, though.

After all, Bell had heard that the people from outside of the walls and their communities prayed to and worshipped the same god that Pope Jude did.

Within the next five minutes, the group of six found their ways to the exit, stepping into the rain was an unexpected element after all of the chaos that had just occurred. Bell's mind was still fresh with the image of Pope Joan laying on the ground.

After a moment of breathing in the strangely cool air, Bell tapped on the pathfinder. When the glass pane appeared, Bell spoke aloud, "Where is the main office?"

The glass pane shattered noiselessly, then, a glass arrow pointed to the right. Bell followed, motioning for her friends to follow close.

'Aramine, Magnus, and Wren were on our train, right?' Bell wondered. 'If they weren't, they probably wouldn't follow us, right?'

Mona was walking beside Bell, closely following each movement Bell made with her eyes. 

'What a weirdo.' Bell simply thought to herself, careful to now show her state of being weirded out.

The seven continued walking, and Bell was allowed the chance to think for a moment.

'Actually, isn't everyone here weird?' Bell remembered the strangeness of the Eriksons, as well as the Solace's strange personalities. 'I wonder what kind of lives they've lived to become like that?'

Bell then remembered her own history, with a grimace, she thought, 'Well, my life was relatively normal, and I turned out pretty okay. If you ignore the murder and the fact that I'm in a military school to fight demons and stuff from other worlds.'

After a few more minutes of walking around, taking turns and walking even further, the group finally made it to the main office. It was made of the same marble and had the same type of tiled ceiling as the rest of the buildings. However, the architecture was just a tad more regal than the rest of the buildings around itself.

'Definitely an office, yeah.' Bell scoffed. 'How fancy is this place? Surely we don't need 

Mona turned to look at Bell with a confused expression, but quickly shook he head and continued to mind her own business. Upon opening the doors, Bell found that the building was quite packed.

There were at about twenty students already sitting in the lounge while at least fifteen others were sitting at desks speaking with some staff members. Standing behind the students sitting down were others waiting to have a turn.

Bell quickly understood that they were in for quite the wait. She found the shortest line to stand in and began to patiently wait for her turn to do whatever Principal David wanted them to do. 

From a little bit of eavesdropping, Bell was able to understand that the wait was for choosing classes as well as a general class. It looked like there were four classes in a school day, with each class being two hours. 

There were two in the morning, and two in the afternoon with an hour-long lunch break between the two periods of day. The earliest class of the day was the general class, students could choose what homeroom teacher they wanted for the general class, and they would stick with that teacher until the First Domain was cleared. That, or they could fill out a transfer form that both the student and teachers had to sign.

Outside of that, Bell wasn't able to hear and understand much else. 

'Whatever, it's my turn anyway.' Bell thought, sitting down after being called.

"Name?" The clerk asked, he was a taller, slightly lanky guy with a stubble, wavy, unruly hair, and a pair of rimless glasses. 

Bell answered without much haste, "Bellona Finley, sir."

The clerk then paused for a moment before tapped into a computer and saying, "Please don't call me sir."

Slightly confused, Bell replied, "Then what should I call you?"

"Abraham." He said matter-of-factly without looking up from his screen. "Anyway, you're Bellona Finley, aged 16 as of July 16th, right?" 

Bell nodded wordlessly.

"Alrighty, do you need me to explain anything?" Abraham asked.

Bell shook her head, saying, "I don't think so. There's four classes, I choose three, then a homeroom teacher." She then folded her arms smugly. "That sound about right?"

Abraham cleared his throat into a closed fist, "Yeah. I'll pull up the class list right now."

After the man clicked the trackpad on his computer a few times, he started to list the classes.

"We have Survival Skills, Lunaris Exploration, Cartography, Hunting, Combat Basics, Forging, Linguistics, and History."

Bell nodded before going deep into thought.

'There's only eight classes?' She put her chin into her right hand. 'Well, I need to get food, right? Hunting sounds perfect for that... no, wait. What about Lunaris Exploration? If I learn how to explore, I'll probably learn how to eat plants, too!'

Bell then looked up to Abraham and asked, "What's the difference between Exploration and Hunting?"

"Lunaris Exploration focuses on the types of monsters and the types of terrain that you'll be facing in the Domain." He faced Bell and looked her in the eyes as he spoke. "Hunting, on the other hand will teach you the types of meat, mushroom, and plant that you'll be able to eat on the other side."

Abraham then further explained, "You choose three classes this month, and a new set of three next month. If you choose one class twice in a row, you'll be sent to a higher-level class."

Bell then understood why there were only eight classes.

'Ooooh. Alright. I'll choose Hunting, gotta get food... probably Combat, too, more knowledge on swords can't hurt... and probably Forging, that's only going to help me use Creation, right?'

Bell then rationalized why she would choose those three over the rest of the other five classes.

'I mean, I'll learn Survival Skills next month, or the month after that. I don't need cartography, I'll just learn how to read a map sometime in the future. I don't think I'll need the History or Linguistics of the other world. Hunting will just take over what I expected to gain from Lunaris Exploration anyway.' 

Bell then broke her chain of thought and told her choices to Abraham, "I'm going to choose Hunting, Combat, and Forging."

Abraham nodded before typing into his computer for a few seconds.

"And your preferred homeroom teacher?" Abraham then asked.

Bell didn't need to think twice.

"Teacher Brutus." Bell stated plainly.

After Abraham typed on his computer for a bit longer, he looked up and said, "You're good to go now, Bellona."

"Alrighty, have a great day." Bell said, standing up and heading towards the lounge.

Abraham replied, "You too." Before yelling, "Next!"

Bell entered the lounge area and sat down in a rather large couch. 

'I should wait for the others here, they're gonna have to show up one day or another.' Bell thought with a sarcastic tone to her internal voice. 'Oh, it looks like Mona's already done.'

Mona was heading over to the lounge as well, sitting down in a seat opposite of Bell. 

"What'd you choose?" Mona asked.

Bell sat up from her slightly lazy pose in the couch, "Hello to you too, Mona. I got Hunting, Combat, and Forging. You?"

Mona's cheeks flushed red for a moment before she smiled and replied with, "I chose Linguistics, Combat, and Cartography!"

Bell looked at Mona, mouth agape and eyes wide.

'Linguistics?! We don't need that stuff right now!' Bell adamantly insisted within her mind.

"Are you crazy?" Bell asked.

Just as Bell spoke, Torm and Aramine appeared.

Torm's clothes looked wet and his demeanor was slightly stressed out, but looked to be in the process of calming down. Aramine was no different from five minutes ago, when Bell last saw her.

"Well, is she?" Torm asked.

Bell nodded and replied, "Yeah, she took Cartography, it's the first month!"

Torm looked a bit meek at Bell's statement. "I took Cartography..."

Bell simply said, "Oh." In response. He looked to slightly shrink backwards, his hulking form somehow feeling small. 

Aramine then joined the conversation, "Well, what classes did you take, Bell?"

Bell replied with a grin, "I'm going to take Hunting, Combat, and Forging. What about you?"

Aramine's eyes lit up in excitement. "That's awesome, because I'm taking those three classes, too! What homeroom teacher did you all choose?"

Torm, Bell, and Mona all spoke in unison.

"Teacher Brutus."

Aramine nodded and then said, "I chose Teacher Sofia, she's pretty cool."

Torm then asked the other three, "How are you all holding up?"

All three gave an answer along the lines of, "I'm good."

Mona then asked Torm, "What other classes are you taking?"

Torm simply listed the rest of his classes, "Combat and Survival Skills. You?"

Mona nodded and replied with her other two classes, "I'm taking Combat and Linguistics."

Before Torm told the group of the rest of his classes, Jude and Mangus appeared.

Jude looked like he had just gotten out of a horrible nightmare. His eyes were slightly bloodshot, and he was wiry, as if he drank half as much caffeine as Pyralis.

Magnus, on the other hand, looked perfectly fine, in fact, he looked slightly relaxed.

"Hello, Bellona." Jude greeted in a slight melancholic tone.

"Hi Jude!" Bell replied with in a cheerful tone. "You look rough... Are you okay?"

Jude nodded, but it was nowhere near convincing enough for Bell to buy it. However, she didn't want to make a scene as they waiting for the others, so she didn't say anything.

Then, as the minutes pass by, the Eriksons show up one by one, and Mona introduced them to Aramine and Magnus gradually. Before long, Magnus's sister, Wren, showed up as well, she politely waved to the group in greeting before Magnus spoke.

"Guys, this is my sister, Wren." He then looked to Wren before saying. "Wren, these are Bell, Mona, Torm, and Jude, you know them already." Magnus then waved his hand towards the Eriksons. "These are Michael, Pyralis, Hilia, and Strella."

Wren tapped into her pathfinder and on a larger window, said:

[Hello everyone!]

Soon after, Wren joined a conversation with Michael and Magnus about some sort of television series airing now. Then, they started sharing contact information with one another.

Within the next few minutes, everyone was in a large group chat, they then decided to grab dinner together.

As Bell stepped outside of the building, she saw that there was still quite a line, despite so much time having passed. Most of the students standing outsider were without umbrellas, some shivered while others looked simply tired.

'Sucks to be those guys.' She thought under the cover of her umbrella. 

"Hey, where were you all at breakfast, by the way?" Bell asked the Eriksons.

"We were at the forge, Teacher Brutus wondered where you were." Pyralis looked down at Bell and answered plainly. "Actually, Wren was there, too." He added like an afterthought.

Bell flushed a bit in embarrassment. 

'Oh, I forgot.'

The eleven then ascended the steps toward the cafeteria.