Wearing Power Armor to a Magic School (57/?) WiP 1 (Patreon)

Hey everyone! Here is the Work in Progress for Chapter 57 I hope you guys enjoy! :D

“EVI?”

“Yes Cadet Booker?”

“If a situation comes up where we have to provide a gift to the Academy, just remind me to hand them the cumulative works of M.C. Echer, Salvador Dali, E.D. Park, and Superl337archidev.”

“Purpose of this reminder, Cadet Booker?”

“I think that’s abundantly clear, EVI.” I let out a massive sigh, using my eyes to quietly and discreetly gesture at the non-euclidean surrealist nightmare that was the faculty’s home turf. A series of expanding but shrinking, winding but straightening, orderly but chaotic, perspective-bending paths that led from corridor to corridor in an unending loop of insanity. An amalgamation of magical tricks that spat in the face of physics, and played loose with the rules of mathematics.

A pile of data that the compilers back at home were going to have a field day with once I got the data packaged, condensed, and shipped off.

No doubt relegated to the ‘junk data’ drawer until they can verify the validity of the nonsense I’d be providing them with.

“Affirmative, Cadet Booker. Context-dependant reminder set.”

“Thanks EVI, and sorry about messing with your sensors for the literal upteenth time this week.” I acknowledged with a dry chuckle, prompting the expected silence from the EVI, given that it didn’t come pre-loaded with banter-mode pre-installed like your typical household bot or AR-assistant.

That was, until I heard a beep of acknowledgement, a high-pitched tone that normally only came up in response to minor requests or status updates.

A brief pang of worry hit me, but not for the obvious concern of a potential over improvement of the EVI’s parameters. Rather, I was more worried about the EVI’s stability given the wealth of nonsensical contradictory data it’d been inundated with so far in such a short period of time, courtesy of the Academy and the Library’s reality-bending architecture.

Those concerns were short lived however, as unlike the case when it came to the twenty-minute trek to get to Mal’tory’s office, the trek to the Dean’s office barely took five.

But the differences didn’t end there.

In fact, that was only the start of where things significantly diverged from my experiences with Mal’tory.

Starting right off the bat with the entrance into the room itself.

In the place of the dark and dreary double doors of ashen gray and jet-black wood, were a set of pure-white oaken doors, gilded with gold and adorned with a series of crystals that glowed tastefully in their recessed fixtures.

Opening those doors revealed a room that was completely antithetical to the black-robed professor’s design philosophy. But for vastly different reasons. Their intended effect was still obvious: to instill a sense of shock, awe, and an overwhelming sense of impersonality to those that crossed the threshold into their spaces. It was an extension of what I was quickly understanding to be the Academy’s more ‘subtle’ power plays; a means of demonstrating strength, power, and sophistication through the very architecture that surrounds those which inhabit their spaces.

However, where Mal’tory’s office utilized a mixture of darker colors, an overabundance of ornate furniture, and an eclectic collection of morbid and macabre artifacts that hinted at an outwardly sinister intent, the dean’s office instead projected an overwhelming sense of cold hostility. It was sterile and controlled, despite being as, if not more ornately decorated in engravings, carvings, flourishes and statues that despite being masterfully crafted and meticulously detailed, all felt lifeless and meaningless.

There was no story being told in the masterfully crafted works of art here.

There was no artistic intent or authorial meaning behind any of the grand works.

There was nothing being conveyed, and nothing that could be read, save for the overwhelming sense of conformity in the sameness of the patterns and stylistic choices used in all of these works.

Beyond that, there was nothing.

Nothing but grandeur for grandeur’s sakes.

Yet the starkest difference here from Mal’tory’s office wasn’t in the theming, nor was it the difference in color palette.

It was the fact that there were actually people here.

In fact, the EVI counted at least twenty-seven.

As what we entered wasn’t quite exactly a personal office, as much as it was a vast open hall with varnished desks and white-wood shelves lining the a central path that led towards another set of doors. Most of the desks were empty, but those that were staffed were staffed by elves, many of which were busy with one desk-bound task or another. Some meticulously scrawled on piles upon piles of documents, some combing through books and ledgers, whilst many more walked and dashed about from shelf to shelf, shuffling stacks of paper from one place to another. Yet the state of the room never once reflected this frenzied pace of work. There were no stray pieces of paper sitting around, every stack and pile of documents were all impossibly neat and geometrically aligned, every piece of stationary and every writing implement was uniformly arranged no matter the desk, table, or person using them. Everything just looked too perfectly neat.

This fact was tested when one of the younger looking elves found themselves bumping into me, letting out a solid oomf of pain before falling flat at my feet. And whilst he’d crumpled down into a sore heap, that stack of perfectly aligned papers never once shifted, instead landing neatly, almost cartoonishly so right next to him.

“Ah-ah? S-sorry. I…”

“I apologize on behalf of my new appointees, Cadet Emma Booker. It seems as if quite a few of them are so preoccupied in their thoughts, that they default to navigating-by-stream, supplementing if not replacing their sight, by temporarily relying exclusively on manastreams to navigate. This is, as you may imagine, quite non-conducive to navigating around what is in effect a large, lumbering, mass of mana-less metal; more akin to a non-living construct and thus inevitably absent from the absent-minded ministrations of those relying purely on mana-field sight.” The man managed out in an impressive display of polite belligerence.

I couldn’t help but to be impressed, offended, and then impressed again at the dean’s ability to shift the direction of his words on a dime. From being genuinely apologetic, to disciplinary, to being passive-aggressive in his slights towards me as a mana-less being, and then finally back to disciplinary again. Finally concentrating his polite ire on the elf who’d begun picking himself up and walking off without even batting an eye towards me. The man was able to, in less than ten seconds, attack everyone around him in that polite, patronizing way only a wizened wizard could.