New Life, New Outlook...

Before, Jack would have taken "the quick and easy path" and left with his money, but that's not what a Hero does, and if he was going to live inside one of the world's like his fantasy novels, he was resolved to become the 'protagonist' of his own story, he was done living as a background character.

He followed the rest of the crowd to the tables set up on one side of the Grand Entry Hall, and signed his name on the contract for enrolment in the academy. He of course read the contract first, which stipulated that, should he graduate, he would pay the guild 10% of all his future earnings for the rest of his life: until the day he died for every Lunar he earned he would owe the guild a Groat, for every Solar a Lunar, and for every Crown a Solar. When he asked what they meant by these terms the recruiter looked at him strangely but he just said "I'm not from around here..." Lying only by omission, and the recruiter looked him over and said, "Funny, you don't LOOK like a Virangian or a Kehalsite, if I had to guess I'd have said you were from The seat of Barvonis County, not fifty miles from here;" but shrugged and explained. "These are Jexalian coins. Like every nation on Marcia we converted to decimal currency when Wanganam retired as the god of commerce 100 years ago and his daughter Volmaris was acclaimed to his post by the conclave. It played merry hell with the economy for a few years while everyone changed over and we removed all the old coins from circulation, and the calculations for the worth of archaic coins from old tombs and the like is a nightmare, but even the oldest elves agree that it's a lot easier to make change for a sale these days... Point of fact, almost everyone agrees that the economy runs a lot smoother under Volmaris than it did for the two thousand years her father was in charge..." The recruiter trailed off at Jack's look of non- comprehension. "You DO know about the conclave and the gods, do you not?" She asked suspiciously, but Jack signed hastily, having read the rest and found nothing suspicious once he understood the system of currency.

He didn't see Sylvankashta anywhere, and wished he could ask her some questions. One of the trials was a test of Faith, and how could one have faith in a god or goddess whose teaching, even name, you didn't know?!

Jack was directed to the applicant dormatory and assigned a bed. For all the students on the regular schedule to be run through the trials each year actually took about a month, which around here were 20 days long, there being exactly 20 of them in a year. He took off his shoes and lay down on the bed, he'd been told that while they tried to get the new students through first, it sometimes took up to ten days for them to be run through it all if there was a large matriculating class, as there was this year. He thought he would rest a spell after the grueling half marathon he'd run to get here, an exercise which had pushed him to his limits even though he was now fairly fit. He'd gotten his breath back, it was true, but he was bone tired and footsore, and he fancied that he, might; nap...

Jack was asleep before his head hit the pillow, still dressed, and on top of the covers...