Where The Dead Ones Go Book 1 -Magistracy-

Chapter 13

I know I am in a dream.

This is obviously a dream.

There is absolutely no way I could've been in the town plaza wearing my school uniform at this late at night.

Directly in front of me is a beautiful fountain and a familiar boy wearing black boxer shorts and a white tank top with his back facing me as his silky silver hair is dancing in the night breeze.

"Vivet?"

I turn around and saw Morris standing behind me wearing his own school uniform and like me, looking confused as to what in the world are we doing here.

"Morris..."

He nodded as he walked beside me and warily stare at the boy in front of us, "Fancy seeing you in my dreams. Although I have to say, that guy there is awfully familiar, don't you think?"

"Yes. I saw him once in my dreams before, the last time I meet him was during the battle against the sons of Zeus and Poseidon," I answered quietly as I gave him a knowing look, "I doubt this is the first time you ever meet him, right?"

"Indeed, he brought me to the darkest depths of my being where the power of my father is residing. But I have this odd feeling that he is not here because he is visiting the two of us."

I nodded and took a deep breath to calm myself, "I guess I can make an educated guess that he is the reason why we can talk directly in our minds and thoughts."

To our surprise, the boy raised his right hand to the sky as if trying to reach the stars, "I don't know why you two are talking about boring stuff."

"Boring stuff?" my companion asked incredulously.

"Yeah, boring things. Why can't you two look above us and enjoy the beautiful night sky," the boy answered clearly, "Can't you appreciate the night knowing full well that the dawn will come surely after it? That a brand new day will be upon us."

Morris is not having any of the cryptic words, and he took a step forward, "Hold on the poetic ramblings for just a moment. We need answers. Who are you? No, what are you? Why are you in our dreams? What do you want? How did you manage to even bring the two of us here?"

To our surprise, the boy laughed out loud, "Your dreams? More like you two are in mine. I am quietly enjoying the night when you interrupted my quiet musings. Rude because I gave you your futures."

"Gave our futures?" I asked quietly that made me remember his words back then, "Take charge of my future. That is you, right?"

He nodded and spread his arms, "You two seemed so lost at that very moment. I thought a little illumination towards your future is in order. Now, you have taken your first step into the path of your choosing."

"Why are we even here?" Morris asked in desperation as our surroundings began to be covered with impenetrable fog, "I want to ask that question. Why are we here? No, not in this dream, in this, in this, time. I just realized that Vivet and I are not from here. We don't belong here, and we are just relics, an echo from somewhere, somewhen."

The boy just looked down and shake his head, "I don't have the answers. What I do know is that you two are here together to usher a new age and this is but the first step of the journey that you will tread with your friends. I care for you two. We will meet again. And when we do, it will be in a realm where my other self will exist."

"You don't make any sense at all!" I complained as my sight finally became hazy, and everything just faded into nothingness, "But I will hold on to your words. We will meet again."

"We will, Vivet and Morris and always remember. I am with you in the dark..."

-0-

"There are many things and knowledge that are lost in the annals of history," our adviser said in a rather bored voice as she continues with her lesson, "Most of you children think that what you have right now are the "best", the "most advance", "cutting edge" technologies. But if the handful old records of the ages past are to be believed, what we have today is laughable compared to what your ancestors' thousands of years ago. Like an invention of a toddler playing in a sandbox compared to the one made by the scientists and creators of old in their laboratories."

"Are you trying to say Ms Peregrine is that what we have in the present is nothing worth saying compared to the past?" Taurei asked before shoving several gummy worms on his mouth, "That's impossible. Technological breakthroughs are just like that. You have to breakthrough something to discover something new. You can't just be worse or inferior with your previous versions."

Our teacher just shakes her head as she walked near our classmate who is eating without a care in the world during a class.

Again.

"That is why it is "lost", Mr Pavonious," she emphasized that word before seizing the food stash of Taurei and eating it for herself, "What you all can find right now are nothing but relics, destroyed parts of a bigger whole, vague descriptions written in disintegrating scrolls."

The son of Koalemos chuckled as if even he can't comprehend how can that happen, "Well if they are so advance, why are we relying on rotting papers to learn about them? Surely they have something better than scribbling their stories on rocks and notes while our "backward" technologies allow us to save information on a recording device, discs, and cassettes with multiple backups?"

Taurei laughed together with Vaski and Asher when we heard what Syden said.

However, Estelle is not having any of it, "I learned from the ancient archives of the magistracy that the old civilization just went up and vanished from the records so fast, it is not farfetched to say that someone or something just wiped them out from the face of Gearth so thoroughly, only scant few remains of their civilization remained for our archeologists to discover."

The boys stopped laughing as Zenith nodded, "True. If its recording and keeping paperwork for future reference, you will not find any country that keeps written records of their past more than ours. I've read somewhere that Pagos and the rest of the existing nations today are part of a single country and it's the magistracy's duty to handle bureaucracy for it. We can only go so far back into the records and when we reached the supposed period of our ancestors, we came out blank."

"Blank?" the emirati heir asked the son of Zeus that nodded seriously.

"Yes. It just stopped shortly after the founding of our country as a single entity. What happened before that are written in pieces of old papers and notes about a supposedly prosperous and peaceful nation of old."

Ms Peregrine took a deep breath as she finished eating all the foods that Taurei hid in his bag before looking at the daughter of Athena who is quietly listening to the exchange, "Why don't we ask our Gala here for more input regarding this topic?"

"What happened back then is a forbidden knowledge to share among us mortals," she answered ominously that made us uncomfortable because she delivered it in almost hush tones, "What I can say is what our mother told us, it truly was a golden age of mankind."

"Golden age..."

We all looked at Morris who repeated those words as if his life depends on it.

I saw inside his thoughts again his fantastical memories that seemed to become clearer and clearer as the days passed by.

Giant metal birds flying through the skies into the stars. Huge iron fishes with mortals on them riding the waves into the vast ocean expanse. Seemingly endless levitating steel snakes that carry people in their bodies from places to places around the continent in such high-speed that make our train look like it is crawling. Iron tigers that breathe fire and destruction as the rollover the burning cities.

People tapping on their handheld gizmos, talking to someone that wasn't there. Elemental magic and spells weaved with technology to produce impossible feats incomprehensible even by today's standards.

"Yes, Mr Mortheo. Golden age. The apex of mankind eons ago," Ms Peregrine answered him meaningfully before looking at me, "But it's not just the technology that made that period incredible. Their mastery of the elements is nothing short of awe-inspiring. Controlling not just the earth, soil, or rocks. They can even pull out giant slabs of granite from the ground easily. Create magnificent walls of bedrock and crash them on their enemies. Cross vast expanse by building a bridge in the skies. Summoning searing and beautiful white flames, using fire as reinforcement to a barrier and means to counter an attack with ease. Making a raging flame dance around them and flow smoothly through the air. Those are only a few of what your ancestors can do with simple incantations that can even overwhelm Olympic powers without so much as batting an eyelash."

Vaski nodded and look at my companion suspiciously, "Not even members of the emirati royal family can accomplish such feats, Morris. Constructing statues made of processed terracotta by the hundreds, slabs of the earth as tall as skyscrapers and cleaving a path deep enough to cut a forest in half. Just who are you?"

"I tried asking my mother about Vivet's flames and she just flat out said that it wasn't supposed to exist in this day and age," Eonia said seriously as she nodded in my direction, "The union only have oral records that were passed down on our oldest families that were thought to be nothing but a part of children's bedtime stories. Yet here you are, manipulating white fire and making them dance and fly through the skies gracefully. Are you sure you are an Auralian?"

I just heaved a sigh and shrugged my soldiers, "I am found here. But who knows what secrets my murky past hides?"

"I woke up and everything that I remember was treated as nothing but a fantasy. The Scythians just looked at me as if I am insane when I asked things that they thought were just a myth," Morris said sadly as he smiled at me a little, "I envy you, Vivet. I'd prefer not to have any memory at all than have what I only know be invalidated as delusions."

To our surprise, it's Asher who spoke out loud, "There's no doubt that you will find what you have lost. But the real question here, Vivet and Morris, are you ready to be found? Mother always said that we can always remember what we have forgotten one way or another. But do you think you two are better off not knowing anything at all? Do you even need to remember what is hidden?"

Rebie nodded in agreement, "Some things are better off not said. Some things are better off not remembered," then she looked at Narcine fondly, "After all, ignorance is bliss."

"Well, ignorance is bliss on some matters but certainly not in this school," our adviser said before moving along, "But that is a glimpse of your ancestor's lives many eons ago. Where the immortals and mortals live together in harmony and prosperity beyond your wildest imaginations. People wielding powers beyond belief and reaching for the stars literally. A place and time where there are no secrets the humans cannot and will not know and studied. A moment in time when everything is within mankind's grasp."

We just look at Ms Peregrine whose eyes looked outside the windows to the skies above as if she is reminiscing and imagining what life was back then.

"Yes, the powers Vivet and Morris wields are from the golden age of man. Such magnificence and power, there is no one alive now that can command such power from the lost age. Yet here you are with us," she said as she looked at the two of us knowingly, "Who are you? Where are you from and where are you going? Wielders of forgotten incantations. Ancients."

"Ancients..."

Morris whispered in my mind as we both remembered what the boy in our dreams called us.

He called us in the same name.

"Ancients..."

Our teacher shrugged off her thoughts and laughed a little as she heard me repeat her word, "Then again, unlike your ancestors, there are a lot of things you don't know in your world today. You two might just be from secluded clans or groups of people from outside the urban areas in the mountains or deep inside the forests that were survivors of the last golden age and kept their traditions and powers with them."

"I don't buy it, Vivet," Morris announced in my head as he took a deep breath, "I literally woke up in a cave and you woke up in the middle of the street. What she said first was right. We're not from here, that's for sure."

My heart almost skipped a beat when he said that. I know it's the truth even if I don't remember it.

"For your homework, I want you all to submit a three-page report on the daily lives of your ancestors to be submitted next week. You can use our libraries for your research though I doubt you will find anything substantial. Might as well ask your connections placed on high levels of your respective countries' governments for information. I bet they know a thing or two."

Syden raised his hand energetically and our adviser acknowledged him.

"How about our immersion, Ms Peregrine?" the son of the god of stupidity asked innocently that made our teacher sigh, "The other classes are already finished a month or so ago, but we still don't know if Auxiliary Class will have one."

"About that, well, I managed to secure a place for your immersion just before this class," she said nonchalantly as we all shouted in excitement, "Calm down, people. Calm down. You must all remember to behave and always control yourself. I beg you, don't make a mess of yourselves out there. Please, I already got enough flak when Zenith here tried to murder Taurei on the first day of class."

Taurei just grunted behind me as Zenith bowed his head in embarrassment.

"Anyways, if you all bring more problems, I might get fired for not handling you all well. Believe me, no teachers want to take care of you," Ms Peregrine said truthfully, "Honestly, if not for the threat of my mother and the Deputy Headmaster, I wouldn't even get out of my peaceful retirement to be here."

Narcine cleared her throat as she looked at our teacher, "Uhm, Ms Peregrine, you are awfully young to retire, don't you think?"

Rebie and Taurei looked awfully interested by the question of their close friend that obviously rattled our usually prim and serious adviser.

"Well, uhm, I like to avail the early retirement they offered years ago," she answered dodgily as she tried to change the topic, "Forget about me, what we are talking about here is your immersion. I know I already made it clear on our first day that I am strictly teaching you from a purely business perspective. I don't care in the slightest what you do out there just don't drag me into your problems, got it?"

Taurei faked a cough and just look at our teacher disdainfully, "You could've said that without rubbing it in that you don't care for us in the slightest."

"It is what it is, Mr Pavonious," Ms Peregrine said bluntly as she opened her class record, "Unlike other teachers who fake their concern for the students they hate teaching or taking care of, I prefer if mine knows what is really the deal. I care for you enough so that you won't leave any tarnish on my pristine teaching history and in turn, I will make sure all of you will receive nothing but the best I can give. As long as we are clear on that then we don't have any problems moving forward in our teacher-student relationship. Capiche?"

"Capiche," we all answered in agreement as she nodded and smiled at us.

"Then all of you are dismissed. Gala, Eonia, please stay behind. Also you, Zenith. We need to plan for your immersion. These three will inform you of the specifics later. Prepare for departure five in the morning sharp tomorrow. The destination is a surprise."

"Looks like this will be interesting, eh, Morris?" I thought in my mind that made him agree completely.

"Indeed. But I think the surprise is a little bit of understatement if you ask me. I've got a feeling that this will be shocking, to say the least," he replied confidently.

Welp, we better get ready then because I do suspect this will be a heck of an immersion...