Geno Atkins fumed as he marched away to do real work. Rusted legacy appointments! It’s not like everyone didn’t know Headmaster Crottish played with dolls in his office all day.
Two floors down, tucked between Academy Athletics and Magical Misuse and Maintenance, Atkins stepped into Staff and Student Services, his little kingdom, which he ruled with iron ledgers and steel clauses. The headmaster could have his dolls; he had people.
“Betty, I want the dorm housing list with room and resident associate files – Janet, I’ll be personally submitting a new students' metrics into the registry for the ranking spell; get me one of the grad students who can handle the transfer – Miranda, I want a new teacher duty form to fill out, with priority requisition forms.”
How dare the man belittle him for his emergencies? The demographic shift in the kin student population had required notifying the Ricort diplomatic corps. It wasn’t a secret they only left their island for political reasons.
Hosting a traditional Feast of the Thorned Wing without berry wine would have been a grave insult and cost the school one of its largest donors. History didn’t keep the school open; it was wood-pressed hex.
No, all Crottish cared about was his dolls and not how The Academy was actually run. Yet, his word was law. There was at least gratitude in that he didn’t use too many words. That left a lot of room for interpretation.
Logistics and timing were an elegant weapon to use against any opponent, and Atkins knew his papers would cut sharper than knives.
The teacher's duty forms were flexible like a rapier.
Von Trell wanted to teach? He’d get all the joys of the job. An office inconvenient to the point of pain, leaky floors of the Aperture Science still filled with failed experiments that maintenance hadn’t quite been able to completely eliminate. Leaky pipes and a teleporation system designed more for amusement than practicality. Maekus Von Trell needed supplies too. Because of their cost, Kraft decks were never officially banned, despite driving several lower-level professors to madness. The stroke of Atkin’s pen had one delivered.
A pre-dawn class window to limit interactions with students. He could spend the week rushing out a curriculum. There were always students that advisors begged to have other professors take over. Signing off on the transfer of the nine most problematic students would earn him favors and fruit baskets, and Von Trell would get the rural aristocrat Harmony White.
The Poor girl won’t have a proper advisor, but was guilty by association, and none of her information was provided. Her kingdom of origin was left blank, so no support or protection was to be provided from that place. Only Von Trell would have the info for a proper class placement as it was. Her official class rankings will probably limit her options during the first quarter.
The dorm files arrived in time to figure out housing for the girl. The dorm system had been full for months, and yet they were required to provide housing.
The Academy owned a few apartments for graduate students, and one opened up due to a recent death. Throwing the new student into it was an option, but that would have started a whole mess among the graduate students, and no one wanted their morning tea poisoned. But a fourth-year on the cusp of hitting fifty with an application wouldn’t be unheard of going early. “Someone is getting an upgrade.”
After that, it was shuffling people to find the right spot. Hunter dorm had an inquisitor, Becca Bloom; her file was thick, with marks for trespassing, illegal teleportation, and she even spent a week in lock-up after a tavern brawl, but also awards for academics, catching three students working forbidden magics. She competed as an alternate in the school games during her second year. Atkins wrote her a personal note about the situation and moved on to the next pressing matter.
Geno studied the blank sheet of paper that was Harmony White, one pet - delayed. No info even there; what did she have, a wolf? At least, now that she had the dorm room, it would be easier to key it to the incoming student for the ranking spell. To be so young and caught up in this mess, he almost felt a bit of remorse about what he had to do. Average was a funny word. Only the best students and legacy students made it into The Academy. Both the median and average grades were quite high, either due to preparatory inflation, hard work, or the law of large numbers.
There was another way to look at grades. They were submitted on a ten-point scale. With ten being the top, and zero failing. Fives were absolutely average. The number of people with fives on their transcripts who applied to The Academy and got in was counted on one hand, and those people came with rare classes and titles. That is why it pained Atkins to take a pen and write the number 5, not once, not twice, but in every spot that required information to be added for the ranking system.
Completely unfair; it met the technical definition of what Crottish asked for, even if not what he meant.
“It will only be a short stint in the losers' club if you’re any good.” He assured the document that represented Harmony White, but with Von Trell assigned to the early hours and his charge sent to obscurity for a quarter, this would ensure that this potential emergency would go unnoticed and be over quickly.
Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!
Use arrow keys (or A / D) to PREV/NEXT chapter