The Path of Ascension

PoA: Aster's Adventures Chapter 3

Aster looked at herself in the mirror and twisted her head back and forth before dropping the fist full of white hair to her shoulders. An updo just didn't feel right for today, but a completely down style seemed too informal for what she wanted.

Twisting her hair, she created a small crown, but dropped that option as well for being too formal.

It did look good with her fox ears, though.

Pouting, she called Kelly for help. “Kelly, I need help picking my hairstyle!”

The sound of her neighbor's door opening up told Aster that her call for aid had been heard, and her shorter roommate came in, bundled up in a puffy winter coat.

Even after countless times seeing it, Aster still needed to resist the urge to laugh at the girl’s mocha face surrounded by fur.

“Aster, it's stupid cold in here. Can’t we do this in my room?” She pleaded.

Aster ruthlessly crushed that hope. “Your room makes my ice highlights take forever to set. Just help me for five minutes.”

Grumbling, Kelly waddled in deeper to where Aster had her vanity and popped up behind her.

Mittened hands grabbed a handful of her hair, and together, they decided on a half-up and half-relaxed style, with one lock of hair going around her brow, matched by a deep purple ribbon weaved through her tail.

As Aster got the hair set and used a bit of magic to put in some cosmetic icicles, she went to Kelly’s room and helped her do her hair. A much easier task with her feathers, but together, they managed to fluff them out in just the right way to accentuate her face.

With that done they chatted and talked about the latest happenings in the academy until Juan knocked and asked what color shirt he should pair with his skin tone, currently an earthy pink. He changed skin tones like Aster changed hairstyles, and still hadn't found something he really liked. While usually he was happy to just wear whatever today was a big day, after all, and everyone wanted to look their best.

Even Roody was trimming his beard and hair, if the sound of the clippers was to be trusted. Or at least, Aster hoped it was his hair and beard being tended to.

Today would be the first day their AI was unblocked and they were able to send messages to the outside world, and Aster couldn’t wait to talk to Matt and Liz again. So much had happened in the last year, and she needed to share all of it.

After she and Kelly were convinced the juniper-colored shirt matched best, they finished accessorizing Kelly’s feathers before waiting on Roody, who finally came out of his room, where all three of them immediately pulled him back in.

“You put a dent in your beard, you idiot. Why didn’t you ask for help?”

Aster pulled on his ear even as Kelly fluffed his beard back out so they could see the damage.

Juan helpfully held the struggling lion firmly in his chair despite his protests. “It's not a dent. It's an illusion of the light. Really. Nooooooooo! Don’t cut my beard any shorter! I worked hard on it.”

After his beard was symmetrical, though slightly shorter, the four of them exited their room to enter the bustling common room.

Everyone had a frantic energy as they rushed around, preparing for the final assembly before the information embargo was lifted, and none of them could wait.

Aster thought back on the last year and sighed.

Things had been pretty good, but not perfect. Despite how easily she’d picked up switching forms, she had struggled actually modifying her body into human form. She was… barely above average, if she was being honest, and it didn’t feel great.

Beyond that slight blemish, things were great. She had excelled in all of her classes as the undisputed best fox in the realm, but that was only to be expected.

The headmaster’s speech was painfully boring, and the irritation from everyone was palpable. They’d waited so long to get access to the net, and they wanted to hear from their humans, not the stuffy old administrator!

Though Aster had… mostly gotten over her homesickness after a few weeks, she still dearly missed Matt and Liz. No matter how good of friends she had made, they weren’t family.

Within an instant of the headmaster saying his final words- which Aster didn’t even hear- her AI was instantly bombarded by messages from basically everyone she knew. Matt and Liz were the most frequent senders, but Susanne, Melinda, Mathew, Sam, Vinnie, Kyle, Tara, Conor, Emily, Annie, Mara and Leon, all of Liz’s siblings, Dena and Eric, Luna, Kurt, and April had all sent her messages, and she had to use a touch of wind magic to dry her eyes as she started to tear up.

Quickly skimming through the ones Matt and Liz sent, she caught up on their official lives and tried to read between the lines of what Quill and Torch were doing, or rather, how they were faring in the masks almost full time.

Things seemed to be going well for them, but apparently, there was news of a Quill movie on the horizon, and Matt was not happy about it.

Their first movie!

She hoped it would be as bad as the worst Duke Waters movies, and couldn't wait to see it.

Liz, on the other hand, had even found a vault of goods, which seemed frankly unfair. Aster wanted to explore old vaults and loot them. She could really use the adventure after having to spend most of her time in classes.

After skimming everyone else's messages for anything that needed her direct attention, Aster immediately used a nearby camera booth to take a video of herself in human form to send to Matt and Liz.

She had a speech planned out, and had even practiced it, but all of that went out the window the moment she started speaking. She rambled for close to ten minutes about her life and new friends before catching herself and focusing on the important bits.

“Things are really nice here. I’m very much enjoying myself. I can’t wait to be able to talk to you guys again.”

Turning to her friends, she found all of them still chattering away, and used that time to start watching the videos Matt and Liz had sent her.

She was only able to get through a few of them before her friends came out of their AI fugues and returned to the real world. All of them were brimming with excitement as they agreed to find somewhere a touch more secluded, where they could view the messages they had received and send their own in peace, rather than in a stadium with a few thousand others.

Taking to the air, the four of them went to one of their collective favorite spots, a small meadow a few miles inland, but still well inside the bond side of the academy's ground. There was another team already there, but they easily settled on the other side of the sunny area, and after Aster and Roody set out a nice blanket, they started going over their messages in a more sedate manner.

Aster tried to send another message to Matt and Liz, but was interrupted as Kelly pulled her into her own message to Alexa, which prompted them to grab the boys into their messages. It quickly turned their messages into one big introduction of the pod, which lasted almost fifteen minutes.

Juan even pulled out a number of sandwiches he had grabbed from the dining hall and they had a nice lunch while reviewing a year's worth of messages.

Feeling a ton better, Aster and the others headed back to the academy grounds and started deciding on the classes they would be taking in the coming six months.

Three were mandatory for everyone. ‘Accounting’, ‘Crafting for Beginners’, even if they were already a crafter of some type, and ‘Social Norms and Expectations’. That one was to ensure that they all were able to integrate into the Empire as a whole while not losing their connection to their roots.

Beyond that, they needed to choose two core classes, at least two electives, and join at least one club.

Her electives were easy. ‘Melee Fighting for Mages’ was a group she had already looked into, as they trained their members to fight with melee weapons as a form of entertainment and self expression, rather than as a martially useful pursuit.She had always wanted to learn how to use a weapon, having seen Matt and Liz training with them for so long, and this was a perfect opportunity to learn.

‘Confection and Pastry’ was a class dedicated to all kinds of sweet desserts, and one that Juan joined her in selecting. Aster wanted to bring her dessert game to the next level, even if the majority of her game currently consisted of ice cream. She had come to appreciate other desserts in the past year, and wanted to be able to better help Matt when he cooked those fancy meals.

Her club wasn’t quite as easy, but it wasn’t that hard of a choice either. In the end, she had to decide between the very fun sounding ‘Ice Sculpting’ and ‘Hand Drawing’ clubs. She wanted to take both of them, but they were smaller groups, and met at the same time. In the end, she chose the drawing class, as she wanted to see if she could transfer some of the skills she had learned from her life as Matt’s sister into the real world.

She doubted she’d get her works accepted by a children's channel again, and didn’t even plan to try. But, she had thoroughly enjoyed the creative process in that life, and wanted to see if she had the same knack in the real world now that she had more free time.

Her two extra core classes were the hardest yet. The easy answer would be to take two delving classes and then just coast through their requirements on her years of experience. But while she intended to delve now that the rifts were open to her, she didn’t really need any training the academy offered. The professors were skilled, there was no doubt about that, but they were mostly focused on bringing the weakest of students up to par, so they could survive on their own once they left the academy. Besides, Aster had already noted that they had little to teach her after decades of Luna’s tutelage.

It also went against one of the core motivations for the academy. She had spent her entire life fighting and training to fight. The academy was intended as a way for bonds to branch out from potentially restrictive home environments, and to spend her time here doing even more fighting would be a wasted opportunity.

So while that would be the easy answer, she didn’t entirely like it.

Her first core class was one of the most popular ones, ’Intermediate Body Modification.’ It was an invaluable skill for all facets of life, and she wasn’t satisfied with her current abilities in the field. Luna was no doubt teaching Matt and Liz everything they needed to know about optimizing their bodies for combat, and in the interest of not falling too far behind them, she wanted to grow her meager skills in the field. Plus, there were a whole host of things not directly combat-related, and that was something she just wouldn’t have the time to learn about once she was back with Luna. . Similarly, she chose Advanced Domain Usage for her second core class, both to progress on some abilities she already had, and to learn about the kinds of things she might use her Domain for that Luna hadn’t taught her.

With that settled, she helped Kelly and Roody struggle with picking their final electives. The problem wasn’t that they hadn’t picked out enough classes to fill their schedules; in fact,, they had overfilled them three times over with everything they wanted to try.

The next morning, after they all got some breakfast, they went to explore the other half of Red Feather Academy, which was located on the other side of the continent. One quick teleport later, the four of them arrived at the main campus of the academy and took in the sight.

Aster had known that Red Feather Academy occupied the entire planet, but knowing that and seeing that first hand were two wildly different things.

The city that supported the main campus was massive, and covered almost three thousand square miles on its own. But it was dwarfed by its neighbor, the main campus itself, which stretched out close to fifty thousand square miles.

It wasn’t just large; it was ginormous.

While they could explore the main campus at their leisure, none of them wanted to actually explore the campus grounds, and were more interested in the city itself.

This was the only place civilians were allowed on The Nest, and that was a rule strictly enforced, meaning this was the only place for the students to have fun outside academy activities.

Except, as they walked around, the four of them came to realize even that wasn’t the full picture.

From what they could see, most of the businesses and stores were all operated by fellow students, though predominantly humans born with a bloodline rather than bonds. That said, there were a few Tier 15s who Aster suspected were bonds like them, but Juan pointed out that they might be the graduate students who were pushing to Tier 20 under the academy’s umbrella.

But it was then that they ran into a problem. While the city was massive and had enough entertainment for them to spend the next decade doing something new without running out of new experiences, they were severely limited due to their absence of funds.

Red Feather City was deeply entwined with the school system, extending to their currency, which Mara had uncreatively renamed as Feathers. Now that they had reached their second year at the academy, they would receive a small stipend of Feathers, and could earn more through various jobs or at a teacher’s discretion. Apparently, it was to prevent bonds from noble families from having too large an influence, but for Aster and everyone she knew, it meant that they were all but dead broke. They had to sell some of their mana just to afford lunch.

The next day, they didn’t bother to return to Red Feather City, knowing they had practically no money to spend, and instead enjoyed a day off for relaxing.

Monday kicked everyone back into high gear as their classes restarted, and Aster was no exception, being quite curious what her new classes had to offer. As she sat down in a seat in the fairly large classroom, she pulled out a brush and ran it through her tail a few times before putting it away and waiting attentively for the class to start.

Before Professor Kilrin entered, someone sat next to her, bringing with them a wave of heat.

Turning, Aster saw a woman with dark gray hair that had a few flecks of yellow near the tips, and eventually faded to a deep orange near the roots, sitting next to her with a smile.

Aster returned the polite smile, even though she wished a fire bloodline would have had the good sense to sit farther away from the Winter Fox. Her poor icicles were going to melt if she lost concentration for even a minute now.

Still, that was no reason to be impolite, so she greeted the woman. “Aster, Winter Fox. How about yourself?”

“Cameron, Magma Otter. Nice to meet you. Are you excited for Intermediate Body Modification? I’m the only member of my pod in it, and I think they’re missing out. Yes, yes, it’s not vital-” She rolled her eyes as she seemingly mimicked the voice of one of her podmates, “-but presentation is important. I’d like to be able to present myself fully and completely, with a touch of fervor, if you’ll excuse the pun.”

Aster perked up at hearing that. “I tooootally get that. Well, we can agree to disagree on the fire part, but I spent so, sooo so long getting my human form just the way I wanted it. And then I go back and forth between feeling ashamed and entirely justified on how much time and money I spend on hair care. I’d love to be able to turn my eyes into ice, or make my fur iridescent.” She was nearly shocked that the magma bond was not only being polite, but even making some good points. Maybe the fire mana hadn’t reached her brain yet, and hadn’t infected her with nightmares of warm fires and hot coffee.

Cameron gave a polite laugh. “That sounds lovely, I hope you can see it through. It’s so great meeting someone who has her priorities in order. No disservice to my pod, they’re good people, but sometimes I feel like I’m living on another planet from them. They’re total combat junkies, can barely go a sentence without talking about loot tables or theoretically optimal equipment loadouts, and sometimes I just want to scream. Delving is important, yes, but I’d much rather pay someone to do it for me while I relax in a hot spring with some smoked tea, getting my nails done. Maybe it’s just the feeling you give off, but do you ever feel the same way?”

Aster was going to agree when Professor Kilrin entered and silenced them with a flick of his tail.

“Good morning, students. I hope you are all doing well.” Professor Kilrin paused for long enough for everyone to reply to his greetings before continuing. “Now, please raise your hand or appropriate appendage if you have a question about the class. Good, everyone has something they want to know? I’m happy to inform you that I can answer all your questions at once in a single sentence: It’s in the syllabus. If you have any questions not answered in the syllabus, I advise you to check the appendix, where you will certainly be satisfied. Any future course questions can be answered during my office hours, which are conveniently listed in the syllabus as well. As a last point of order, if any of you are here for gaining or changing your Rank one bloodline, that’s the room down the hall on the left, and the class for changing your bloodline form is in the next door. This class is for alteration of the malleable form. Now, on to the important things.”

The professor conjured an illusion of a whiteboard and marker, rapidly writing out diagrams and equations that presumably Aster would have to learn in the coming days. Cameron was writing down everything at a fiery pace, but Aster focused mostly on the professor’s narration. “We will begin the course as you did your own transformations, on the topic of size, but first, some theory. Essence is utilized to supplement or replace many aspects of biology, but the act of said replacement always has a singular cost: attention. While forgoing breathing may only require a tiny sliver of your mind and essence production to maintain, making a body that is fundamentally not possible through biological rules requires constant, perfect maintenance of the self, and may result in severe injury or even death if said maintenance is not upheld. I don’t want to see any of you die because you didn’t follow this advice. Knowledge of anatomy and biology may allow one to stretch what can be done, but always stay within the limits we will set down in this class.”

Twisting, he gestured to the class. “Naturally, not all biologically unstable forms are equally dangerous. If you require essence to breathe, you will be capable of surviving for days before you must regain control of your essence. If your brain is only sustained through essence, you will have minutes at best, during which time you must regain control of your essence without using your brain. Perhaps this does not frighten you overmuch, and for those of you uninterested in delving or other forms of combat, perhaps this is manageable. However, now imagine what may happen if your spirit is suppressed by a rift boss, or if you overextend your domain, and lose control of your essence for even a few moments mid-combat. Should your muscles suddenly cease functioning, you would almost certainly not survive long enough to regain control of your essence.”

“Circling back around to size, making your body too large or small introduces numerous problems that an inexperienced individual may not be prepared to deal with. Essence of the physical core may bolster your physicality, making you stronger as you increase your muscle mass, but not as quickly as the increased mass slows you down. This is one of many reasons why most humanoid malleable forms stay approximately human-sized. If you do harbor dreams of eating planets someday, I advise altering your bloodline and bloodline form instead. Increasing its size is substantially easier for a multitude of reasons we will address later in the class, particularly for creatures such as dragons, leviathans, and elephants whose bloodline form is already large.”

The professor seemed like he intended to utilize every second of their allotted time for the class filling them in on the proper fundamentals of body modification, which earned him a measure of admiration in Aster’s mind. Cameron was still sitting beside her, writing up a storm, as Aster worked solely on absorbing the information the professor was teaching.

Aster was then shocked that Cameron was able to answer the first of the professor’s questions to the class about altering the malleable form while in the bloodline form, while still writing, and earned herself a tenth of a Feather for the correct answer. The girl had never even looked up while she raised her hand, which felt like cheating to Aster.

When the second question came around, asking about the differences between sapient and monster biology, Aster thought she was about to earn her own portion of a Feather, but Cameron was somehow even faster, answering the question in half the words Aster had planned.

Promising herself she would be faster than her deskmate on the next question, she paid rapt attention to Professor Kilrin’s lecture, but was still too slow to get her hand up in time to answer any of the questions. As a result, she didn’t earn even a fraction of a Feather. While not every question was answered by Cameron, the majority were, and that irritated Aster as she was being defeated by a heat-based bloodline. That simply could not be allowed.

Ice was better than fire, and therefore, she needed to be better than all the fire users to prove that point.

Was it a slightly childish desire? Yes.

But it was also a fun little internal motivator that kept her competitive and added some variety to her classes.

When the lecture ended, Cameron waved goodbye as they went their separate ways, not knowing Aster had already decided to bury the women in a metaphorical hunk of snow.

‘Crafting for Beginners’ was actually a lot of fun, as instead of being told to do one type of crafting for the day, they were given free rein inside a giant room that contained every kind of crafting imaginable and was staffed by a few of the professors or their clones. The formal classes would apparently start in a few days, when everyone had at least one class they were willing to sit through for six months.

Aster, like most others, bounced around from one craft to another, trying to see if she resonated with any of them. Smithing was too hot and repetitive, while leather making felt more like busy work than something she’d enjoy; enchanting and alchemy both were discarded, as she had seen Matt and Liz do those respectively, and neither looked appealing.

Eventually, she found and settled on pottery.

It was fun seeing things take the shape she desired, and it was artistic enough that she rather enjoyed it. Sure, the professor behind the desk talked about how it could be mixed with enchantments and alchemy to further refine the craft into something more profitable, but Aster was happy to just squish her fingers in the soft clay.

Aster liked the downtime of a non combat hobby, and happily put her name down for the pottery lessons.

Her final class of the day almost seemed like a good one. ‘Social Norms and Expectations’ seemed like an interesting look into beast and human behavior, but the presence of a smiling Magma Otter proved to test her patience.

Cameron, as in Intermediate Body Modification, was ruthless in accumulating all the Feathers she possibly could, but this time, it wasn’t such a one-sided fight, with Aster earning two-tenths of a Feather more than the otter by the end of the class.

Her life in Minkalla helped a ton, as it gave her close to six thousand more years of experience than the otter, but that had the side effect of setting their rivalry in stone.

Cameron, it seemed, had a backbone, and was perfectly willing to throw down with Aster in their battle of knowledge. It led to them having a titanic battle of wits while Professor Peach served as their pseudo referee, giving Feathers to the winner of each bout.

Parting once more, Aster went to her first elective, ‘Confection and Pastry’, with Juan, who joined her in their class's first attempt on making a fluffy pastry. Theirs were only slightly better than the others, not burnt or having collapsed in on itself, but they still had fun in making and then sharing the delectable treat, which made the entire class worth it.

Getting to eat your experiments was the best reward, even if they weren’t perfect.

‘Melee Fighting for Mages’ was another surprisingly fun class, as all of them were Tier 15, and when using blunted Tier 13 weapons, they were unable to truly get hurt. The class eventually devolved into everyone trying out the moves they had seen their humans do, or ones seen in movies.

Some of them even pulled off some impressive stunts until the professor called everyone to order.

After that, Professor Latar had them go through each weapon to see what felt best for them, as that would be their main weapon going forward, barring any last second desired changes.

Aster first went for a longsword, like Matt, but quickly found that despite making herself tall and graceful, she didn’t really like swinging around that large of a sword. Next, she tried a spear, but also found it not to her taste, then proceeded to go through almost every other weapon in the armory until she settled on a cutlass.

A slightly shorter and curved weapon, she found the sweeping patterns that it took to properly use the blade both enticing and enchanting. It was almost like the blade made its own illusion, and she found that an irresistible idea.

While Professor Latar gave each weapon type their own little exercises to get used to the weapon they had chosen, Aster paid attention properly, and carefully made the correct gestures, knowing how important repetition and becoming natural with a blade was from being around Matt for so long.

She didn't end the class as a master swordswoman, but she did end the class using some of her Feathers to purchase a customized cutlass for herself going forward, on the recommendation of Professor Latar.

After having dinner with her friends and shooting a glare at Cameron, who was in the objective worst house, the bathtub house, Aster went to her club, ‘Hand Drawing’.

It being an official club, there was still a professor, but they were more relaxed, and most of the actual work was handled by the older students who were also part of the club. Those same students took Aster’s and others' pestering questions in a good-natured manner at least, and even managed to answer most of them.

One of which stood out to Aster.

“Nononono, the best job is to be a janitor, nya? See, most of ‘em, they trick you into enjoying just sitting at a desk for a few hours or whatever, but being a janitor is so much better, nya. Your job is just to keep a certain section clean, nya, and after a week or two you’ll be good enough that it’ll take ya like twenty minutes to get the whole thing done, and then you’re just done! So much better than… sitting in the library for hours, nya…” the girl’s white cat ears fell flat against her head towards the end, but they sprang back up again as the conversation moved on.

Aster wouldn’t have thought cleaning would be a coveted task, but put it on her list of possible jobs, alongside delver chaperone, mage private lesson coach, and ice trainer. The latter three were recommended by the Coaches due to her exceptional combat prowess. While she wasn't as good of a trainer as Luna or Kurt, she was still pretty good at passing on to others the trips and tricks she had learned over the decades under their tutelage. And they paid well.

Returning to her dorm’s common room, Aster flopped onto the couch, laying across Roody and Kelly, who were already there, just to be shoved to the floor by both of them.

“Go shower first, smelly pants.” Kelly was not nice with her words, and Aster pouted as she went to her room's bathroom.

She didn’t even work up a sweat today. She was sure of that. In fact, it was almost impossible to work up a sweat being a Winter Fox. She was perpetually cold, so clearly Kelly was just being mean.

Seeing Juan exiting the room, she asked him if she smelled, to which he shook his head, proving they were just being jerks.

Still, a shower felt nice, and with her ice cold feet jammed into Kelly’s side, she settled in with a bag of treats as a large portion of the Roc house settled in to watch a recording of a play she hadn’t seen before.

Things were looking up.