Chapter 25: The Second Year Begins
Jake’s second year at the Academy started with a new roommate, a new class schedule, and a message from the Weaver.
The roommate was a sentient cloud named Cumulus who communicated through precipitation patterns (happy = light drizzle, angry = hailstorm, embarrassed = fog). The class schedule included Dimensional Ethics (taught by a newly hired professor that the Academy was oddly secretive about) and Advanced Combat Techniques (taught by Lyra, who had been hired as a teaching assistant and was terrifyingly good at it).
The message from the Weaver arrived during breakfast, inscribed in golden light on the surface of Jake’s oatmeal:
The Eraser is close. The Door’s fifth lock is weakening. I need your help. Come to the Spire tonight.
“Well,” Jake said, staring at his now-luminous breakfast, “there goes the quiet semester.”
Null read the message over his shoulder. “The Eraser. I’ve heard of that entity. In void mythology—which is mostly just silence with footnotes—the Eraser is the being that unmakes. Not destroys. Unmakes. Removes things from existence so completely that they were never there.”
“That’s significantly worse than destroying.”
“Yes. Destruction leaves ruins. Erasure leaves nothing.”
Pi chirped nervously and projected a probability analysis that concluded with the mathematical equivalent of “we’re going to need a bigger boat.”
Jake looked at his friends. Null, who had chosen existence over void. Pi, who had grown from a baby into a mathematical prodigy. Lyra, who could sing mountains apart. And beyond them, the Academy full of students and teachers and knowledge—all of it built on dimensional fabric that was slowly, inexorably being erased.
“Tonight,” Jake said. “We meet the Weaver. We learn what we’re dealing with. And then we figure out how to stop it.”
“Together?” Null asked.
“Always together.”
He ate his glowing oatmeal. It tasted like responsibility and the faint, unmistakable flavor of adventure.