4 A Leaf is Born (1/2)
Remember Chronicler, after that moment I had to wait for years before obtaining my memories again. Moreover, some of the details that I will tell you about concerning people I met, families and places I visited were obscure to me for quite some time so to make the story clearer it is expedient that I tell you of some of these thing the moment we meet them so as to have a clearer picture. It will be hard to not see those memories in an unbiased way ignoring what I know now after a millennia but I will try my best to convey the feelings of those days and of that child born in the House of Akmar.
I was born in the capital, Abkar. My father was the dean of the academy of magic and my mother a noblewoman whose lineage went back to the imperial family of back then. I was the fourth child of Elegon Akmar and Rima Rothdra. My brothers in order of seniority were Alar, Shimun and Elemir Akmar. I don't remember -like most children - my earliest days of life so I will tell you of my earliest memories.
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”Hey Leaf! Come play catch with us” said Elemir.
-”But...I'm scared...you're all so fast and I don't want to run to catch you in the academia's underground again” said the flame haired Leaf.
”Told you he's only a crybaby” laughed out Shimun ”he only knows how to cling to our mother...oh mum where are you?”
”Enough you two, let him be” said Alar.
The role of dean of the school of magic was a role chosen by the very emperor and it was custom that the role of dean was passed down in the dean's family. In that sense, our family was very tied to the emperor's. As the firstborn, Alar was going to be the next dean while the rest of us sons of Elegon would have to either become a knight, a magician or a government official. The most useless of the family were usually married off to some noble family who in exchange of relations to the dean's family would offer the Akmar child a duchy and basically something to do.
”Go to mother Leaf, it's ok” said Alar while caressing the fiery head of the little Leaf. Leaf's green eyes sparked with joy at the gentless of his brother.
”Yes! Oh and I'm going to tell mother about you two!” said Leaf sticking his tongue out.
”Yeah, whatever...” said Shimun and Elemir mockingly. The two brothers were not really evil, they simply liked to tease their little brother but deep down they cared for him and Leaf knew it. As for Alar, Leaf only knew care from him and he was a role model to him, he wanted to be like him in all ways.
So, I started going through the beautiful inner courtyards of the academia. The academia acted both as a school for new students and as an academia for bureaucratic and military senior students. Access to the school was extremely hard and apart from the high tuition you needed lineage and great talent. A for the lineage of Akmar, if the son was not completely useless, they would automatically have access to the lessons, the library and all the material, under the supervision of their father, the dean. Moreover, outer students could only access either the bureaucratic or military carreer, while us sons of Akmar could access both freely. For the Akmar's firstborn there was no choice, he or she had to excel in both classes. As I was running through the beautiful marble corridors and taking shortcuts through the inner courtyards to go to my mother's quarters I passed through the core of the school, the dean's office. The school had the structure of a pentagon with each point of the structure home to a specialized course. Each point then was divided in two, one for the bureaucratic studies and the other for the military studies. The five specializations were: fighting and self-defense; history and archeology; alchemy; magic. For each of these areas there was a more civil focus, which was related to the bureaucratic classes and a military focus for the military classes. So, a student who would graduate as a bureaucrat had to specialize in military strategies and intelligence; the history and politics of the Rothdra empire; alchemy and related fields such as medicine; and theory of magic. A knight would focus on the same areas but from a more practical side. You should also know that at the time, people who knew how to use magic would be almost automatically sent to the military classes, if the candidate was eligible according to all criteria.