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Academy
Imperial law is cruel. I knew this, always. My father raised me never to forget it.
In spite of this, I never suspected that they would mandate such atrocities after my father turned over his titles and kingdom to them. After all, he did this to avoid war, and his inevitable loss in said war.
I watch the executions from the balcony overlooking the courtyard.
Behind me, inside the library, a bald and acid-scarred Imperial goes over the paperwork with our fallen king. Beside him hovers a Negotiator. The way its frilled tentacles sway so slowly and gently in mid-air reminds me of plant life beneath the oceans. In this case, sentient, mind controlling, and poisonous plant life. These are plants that feed on human flesh, if such a thing even exists.
I watch the castle servants being tortured and burned in ritual succession below. I listen to my father and the Imperial discuss their negotiations.
My father is trying to be strong and protective, but whatever the Imperials want, they are going to take.
13% of the population are to be transferred to the front lines of the galaxy. They will be used as food for those war torn planets whose citizens are starving. All of my father’s officers, officials, and personal servants are to be executed.
The bloodline will be spared from death, but the royal family will be separated. Women will be sent to Star Atlas for remarriage. Men will be sent to Planar Academy for militarization. The king himself will remain behind to serve as a carefully engineered face for the Imperials. His visage will stay on all of the kingdom’s localized coin.
I look away from the horrors unfolding below and turn to look inside the library. My father is signing the documents as they are being presented to him.
I lose my composure and shout.
“I’d rather die! Father you’ve betrayed us all!”
I run before the Negotiator can stun me. I vault the lip of the balcony and run through the carnage towards the courtyard gates.
It hits me anyway. I don’t even clear the courtyard when it nerve strikes me from the balcony. This feels the equivalent of high-voltage electricity without my flesh burning from my bones.
I pass out and do not wake again until I have arrived at Planar Academy.
One thing I am certain my father does not know about the Academy is that only one cadet can graduate in his final year. He graduates alone because he has slain all the rest in various combat trials throughout the year. This is how the Imperials maintain loyalty across their holdings. It is a death sentence of a different nature.
I do my best. I’m already athletic, but the Academy teaches cruelty. I learn it quickly, but I never learn to enjoy it. I spend many nights awake and wondering if I’ll ever acquire a taste for death. I have many idle hours to meditate upon it, and I ultimately reject any passion for murder.
On nights that I do manage to sleep, I have equally numerous hours to dream similar thoughts. Asleep, I dream in images rather than sentence strings, and many of these images come in the form of my lost family and my lost home.
This is the only way I keep from losing all hope, I am sure of it. These dream images are the things that keep me from enjoying the bloodshed.
And before I know it, I’m in my final year. The dorm I have once shared with twenty-four boys now houses only two of us.
Dominic de Montfort is a pure blood Imperial. So pure that he did not arrive at the Academy from any of the colonies. He is from the capital planet, and likely only five or six assassinations away from the Emperor’s throne if he chose it.
He is bigger and stronger than I am, smarter and faster too. He not only shares the trait of cruelty, but he has an actual taste for killing. He has enjoyed his time here behind the Academy walls, and as our final exam approaches he begins to stare at me as if I am some sort of trophy. To him, I am just another pre-packaged kill. I am something to look forward too.
The exam itself is a mystery to both of us. In past tests, the nature of combat was revealed so that we could train and prepare for them. This is the ultimate test, however. It relies on instinct and overall superiority above all else.
And as the days towards this test narrow down, I realize that I’m not going to be able to beat de Montford. He is better than me at everything. There is nothing for me to train towards. There is no way to win the fight.
Unless I cheat.
An idea forms inside my head: I could sneak into the exam chamber in the days prior to the combat to see what weapons we will be using. That way, I could practice and gain the upper hand. That way, I could win the final exam.
I wait until night and until I am sure Dominic is asleep. Then I get up and sneak into the hallways.
But when I open the exam chamber door, a jolt of electricity runs through my system. The sensation is identical to the one administered by the Negotiator all those years ago.
Or minutes ago.
Because as the sensation subsides, I find myself lying on familiar courtyard stone.
The neurotoxins of the Negotiator have tricked my mind. It has manufactured a prefabricated dream inside my head and then scanned my thoughts to test me - to test my loyalty. To ensure I would never try and cheat the Imperials out of their empire.
My father stands meek and blank behind the acid-scarred diplomat. The punishment for treason is death. No amount of signed documentation can protect me.
I am dragged off and burned with the servants.
Michael R. Colangelo
Email: Michael R. Colangelo
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