The Path of Ascension

PoA: Aster's Adventures Chapter 5

Aster was looking around her new office when she heard a light screaming coming from somewhere nearby. She had only been the student council treasurer for a week, and had just started actually coming in to work officially, so while she wasn’t familiar with everything in the office, this seemed particularly out of place.

She considered that it might be some of the others on the council playing a prank on her, but she felt that was a little beneath them as upperclassmen. They had all seemed very prim and proper when she and Cameron had met them after winning the Treasurer and Secretary positions, respectively.

The two of them ran for titled positions rather than positions as generic council members, which was the normal first step for someone wanting to join the student council for the first time. Instead of acting as liaisons from the student body to the council and paying their dues, they wanted to skip a step.

To that effect, the two of them used their playful rivalry and frenemy status to riff off each other and push their way into the greater student body’s collective consciousness.

While Aster had initially only wanted to join the student council to thumb her nose at Cameron, she had changed her mind when the full story of Katherine’s background came to light in their fourth year.

The fully humanoid woman, despite growing in intelligence as she advanced in cultivation, was still treated like a pet by her bond. She had assumed that getting a fully human form would help her establish herself in the relationship as a full partner, but even that hadn’t worked. In their few interactions over the AI, her human still treated her as a mere subordinate, which was a devastating realization for the bond.

Aster couldn’t imagine Matt doing something like that to her. He treated her like a little sister, and let her get away with things like playful childishness, but he never treated her like an animal or a pet. Seeing that and the damage it did to one of her friends, she looked into what she could do to help, and found that looking out for cases like that was one of the main responsibilities of the student council. Along with the professors, they acted as the first line of mandatory reporters for these kinds of incidents.

Katherine had been helped by the student council when she had first arrived, and had been checked up on regularly until she joined Aster’s growing friend group in their third year. She had only intended to change her Concept as the first step in establishing independence from her bond. And, if nothing changed, she would be breaking said bond. It was an agonizing decision, but she’d resigned herself to it after four years of continued infantilization.

The cat girl was still holding out hope that her bond would wise up and put in the work to treat her like a person, but nobody familiar with the situation found that likely.

That touched something in Aster, and after looking into it more, she wanted to help in whatever way she could.

With Cameron already intending to join the student council, they had put aside their friendly rivalry long enough to plan a joint method of attack so they could get their names out there. It helped that they didn’t actually dislike each other, and Aster would begrudgingly call the otter a friend if pressed. Their relationship was just based on pushing and teasing the other.

Cameron was far too uptight and pushy, insistent on taking everything seriously, even to the detriment of making friends. The otter had sometimes gotten after Aster for using contractions, as though those weren’t a perfectly valid form of communication. Aster, of course, took everything with the exactly right amount of seriousness it deserved, and informal communication just wasn’t that.

Between their public rivalry, Aster’s reputation as an excellent teacher during delves, and Cameron’s meticulously-organized clubs, they’d managed to cause a bit of a stir when they undertook a fairly aggressive joint campaign based on their respective strengths.

To everyone’s surprise, they had won.

Aster ended up as the Student Council Treasurer and Cameron as the Student Council Secretary.

It felt odd to have an office as a fifth-year, but while she was still getting used to the ebb and flow of the council building, she was quite certain that whatever she was hearing wasn’t part of it. Even a bit of magic to enhance her ears couldn’t quite pinpoint what it was or where it was coming from.

The sound grew louder and louder, and Aster stood up and flooded the room with ice and cold as she prepared to defend herself. Then, her ears finally picked up on the joyful scream for what it was. Coupled with the way her room just kept getting warmer despite her best efforts, she realized what was going on just in time for a fiery bird to materialize in her office and dive into a hug.

“Mara! How are you doing? I’m so glad to see you!”

“Aster! How’s my favorite winter fox doing?”

They both stopped, giving the other a chance to speak without talking over each other, and Aster answered first. “I’m doing good! Got a spot on the Student Council, which was… surprising. But you can see that. I’ve made some friends, learned some stuff. It’s been good! I miss Matt and Liz though.”

Mara ruffled her feathers as she settled down on a chair, not returning to human form. “Good, good. I really enjoyed my time here as well. It’s why I made sure to change all the names to something good. Can you believe that they used to call this place the Drakes Academy, and they used scales as the currency? So unoriginal. The Nest is so much better.”

Aster narrowed her eyes. If she didn’t know Mara better, she’d assume the bird was being entirely serious.

A part of her mind wondered what she could call the academy and its currency, but she quickly pushed those thoughts away. Even if she wanted to become the next Queen of the Beast kingdom, that would be twenty thousand years away at a minimum.

In a shower of sparks, Mara fluttered to the couch and returned to her human form, beaming at Aster.

“I like the body. How are you feeling? Really feeling.”

Aster flopped next to her sort of mother-in-law once removed and took the offer of an eager ear.

“Things are pretty good. I’ve spent some time just goofing around and having fun, but as you see, I decided to stop that. I even bought a very nice suit. I’m a professional. Most of my time with Matt and Liz was just spent delving, learning how to fight, or missions, and while I don't regret that, I like doing stuff outside of them and delving, nya?”

Not wanting Mara to think she wasn’t going to return to Matt and Liz’s side, she continued, “It's a nice break and change of scenery, to be honest, but not something I’d like forever. I still want to rejoin Matt and Liz, but I’ll be doing so as a full member of the team and not the little sister.”

“Oh, there seems to be a story there?” Mara’s question cut to the center of the issue, and Aster explained Katherine’s issues and her resolution, to which Mara nodded sadly.

“That's why we do it. I think you figured it out, but that's why we have the academy. Bonds need a little time away. Most of our bonds are amazing, but it's easy to fall into roles and accept things that might not always be for the best. Being a little sister is probably going to be your role because you and Matt enjoy it, but you are correct that shouldn't supersede your position as a fully-fledged member of the team.” Seeing Aster's questioning expression, she explained, “That’s an issue that teams made of mortal families always run into. Protective, usually older siblings, remain overbearing and smother their younger siblings leading to team issues. I mention it because being the younger sister isn't a bad thing, but if you don't have time to break free of that mold, you might struggle to assert yourself in the team dynamic.”

Mara gestured around the room, but Aster was sure she meant the Academy as a whole. “That's mostly how the bond portion of the Academy came to be. We bonds realized that being so close and connected to someone since the moment we were born had drawbacks, and a little separation could do a lot of good and prevent some of the worst cases like with your friend.”

Aster nodded before asking, “So they created the Academy?”

Mara made a noncommittal gesture. “Not quite. The academy proper was already there to ensure those children with bloodlines had a place to learn without any issues. As in the early days, most academies in the Empire didn’t allow those with bloodlines to join their ranks due to the power difference. At that time, most of the hereditary nobility didn’t have bloodlines, of course, but as families once more realized how powerful an inherited powerset could be, they started bringing in those with bloodlines until today, where almost seventy percent of the hereditary nobility have a bloodline of some sort. But before then, those with bloodlines didn’t have anywhere to go. The Academy was set up to cater to them.”

Mara sighed. “When us bonds decided to do something about the status quo, we simply co-opted the existing faculties to make our own little academy. Your wanting to take on greater responsibility is great, Aster, but I think it's important to understand that cases like your friend Katherine's are the easiest cases. I get reports about all cases that might require breaking a bond, even if the possibility is remote. She is one of several, and frankly, she has the least severe case.

“Not all humans wait for a bond to get a human form before they start their sexual pursuit of one of us. Others are physically abused in other ways, or merely exploited for their ability to make money, but it's all awful. I, like every other ruler of the beast kingdom, have gotten pushback about the expenses of monitoring the bonds, but the amounts we see spent on the academy are nothing when compared to the damages and deaths we see when a bond snaps and kills their human. Or when they break their bond after being treated as less than human. Or the therapy costs when someone finally realizes they aren’t happy in their current arrangement. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and the cost of bringing you all here for a decade and letting you run a little wild is far outweighed by the financial cost of just one bond destroying a city as they snap. That's ignoring the other plethora of benefits that even the well-treated bonds get. Now that you're on the Student Council, you're taking part of that weight on your own shoulders.”

Aster widened her eyes. “Is that why you came? To tell me that?”

Mara widened her own eyes. “What, no? I just got distracted when I saw you here and wanted to make sure you understood the responsibility of the Student Council. I actually came to tell you that you're going to start getting marriage proposals. I told everyone if they sent you a marriage proposal before your fifth year, I would roast them alive until I got tired. Same rules as all the other common-born students. They like to pretend I don't see the offers they sneak through to the younger ones, but I do. I just thought you deserved a fair warning from me in person. You are free to do as you wish regarding them, but feel no worry in rejecting them. If they try to force you, I’ll eat them or something. They know better than to try and force any of the non-noble kids into marriages and the like. In this, I’m treating you like all the other common-born students. They can make their offers, but they can’t apply pressure. If you like someone, feel free to accept the offer or start dating, but don't sign anything without a lawyer present and looking over the contract.”

Aster blinked as she realized what Mara was warning her of and looked at her AI, which was filling up with requests to meet with her.

“You need to save me!”

Mara squawked before she turned into a chicken-shaped phoenix. “I’m a bird. I can't do anything!”

Aster growled and lunged for the beach ball-sized Mara, but the other bond was already gone, and she crashed onto the couch.

Her AI showed that she had a message of Mara blowing her a kiss and telling her to have fun.

Hearing a knock on her door, Aster panicked. How had they arrived already?

Sending her spiritual sense outside the door, she let out a sigh of relief as she saw it was just Cameron.

Opening her door, she grabbed the woman's collar and pulled her inside.

“Hey, ar—” Cameron yelped as she was dragged into the room that Aster firmly closed.

“What is your problem, Ice Pop?”

Aster shushed her. “Quiet! I’m trying to hide.”

Cameron blinked as she looked around the empty room. “I’m very confused. What is going on?”

Aster quickly explained, “Fifth years are apparently eligible to receive marriage contracts from the various noble families from both sides of the Academy.”

Cameron gave her a face that showed she wasn’t following. “Yes? We know that. It was part of the ‘Sexuality and You’ class we had as first years. Did you forget somehow? I told you all that cold is not good for your brain.”

Aster ignored the barb and spat back. “Of course, I remember the class. Do you remember who my bond is?”

“Yeah, some guy named Matt. He is married to… Oh. Yes, I suppose that would be a problem.”

Aster was gratified that Cameron had remembered her bond’s name, but that was beaten back by the hundreds of messages her AI was receiving every second.

Cameron looked around before grabbing Aster and opening the door. “Well, we can’t simply hide in your office forever. If nothing else, that will be the first place everyone will look for you.”

Going down the hall, they passed the Vice President's office, where they popped in to explain the situation. Jullian was a tall snake bond, and took the news with a calm expression. “If anyone comes here chasing you, I’ll send them away, but I agree that it would be best for you to avoid your office for now.”

Aster gave a quick squeak of thanks as Cameron pulled her out of the room.

The messages still hadn’t stopped; if anything, they had sped up. She put a notification block on any IDs that she didn’t recognize, but that wouldn’t help forever.

Even in the scant moments it took them to reach Cameron’s office, the sounds of discussions and arguments were already growing, but thankfully faded as they activated the privacy formation in the room. Aster fell against the door in relief, while Cameron made two cups of coffee. One was already boiling, while Aster took the other and chilled it to just shy of outright freezing it.

Clinking her rim to Cameron’s, she let out a sigh. “Thanks, Cameron.”

The Magma Otter simply nodded.

Aster looked at the fires burning throughout Cameron’s office with a bit of a skeptical eye. She did not have the energy to get into a back-and-forth with the magma otter, but made a note to comment on how tacky they looked. Well, some of them anyway. On the whole, the setup looked well put-together.

“What are you going to do?”

The question was obvious, but that didn’t mean Aster had an answer.

“I don't have a fucking clue. I figured I’d get like five offers when it was mentioned in the class, but never this many.”

“I’ve got half a dozen from various fire and magma based families.” Cameron’s offers didn’t surprise her. That was roughly normal, and what Aster had expected. ‘Sexuality and You’ was one of the first-year classes, scheduled for about the same time most of them were getting their human forms. Part of it was about recognizing and preventing abuse, part of it was helping them tune their sex drives how they’d want. After all, human mating instincts were quite different from that of most animals, and deciding if they’d keep their natural drives, match that of humans, or do something completely different was an important step in finding one’s identity.

Aster had personally chosen to stick with her natural fox instincts of monogamy, as she saw what Matt and Liz had together and wanted that for herself. She had drastically cut down on the degree to which physical factors would play in attraction, as anyone she’d be interested in would be at least Tier 15, and the details of the flesh just didn’t matter at that point.

And the final part of the class was to prepare them for exactly this. As first-generation beasts, their bloodlines were some of the purest around, and could be used to reinforce a bloodline that was growing weak in a lineage. There was a good chance they would be contacted by noble families who wanted to offer them contracts to marry into their family, or at least have a child with one of their heirs.

Aster had been ok with that. She had no intention to accept, but she could deal with a dozen or so rejections.

There were even a few senior students with winter wolf bloodlines who had introduced themselves to her upon seeing her bloodline, but they had simply been interested in bringing her into the fold. They hadn’t even known she was Mara’s son-in-law's bond, they had simply been interested in her bloodline.

Aster had felt that was a little shallow at the time, but now she knew what shallow really was. Shallow was every noble in the Empire sending her a marriage offer so they could get even a little closer to two of the Empire’s royals.

Aster wasn’t even interested in dating, but now she had half the Empire crawling up one leg to get close to Mara, and the other half crawling up the other leg to get close to Leon.

That was unacceptably shallow.

Part of her wanted to just reject all of them en masse, but she knew that wasn’t the smart move. No, it would be far smarter to ignore all of the requisitions for meetings for a few days so the fervor could die down a little. Then, and only then, she would give each message a semi-personalized but polite rejection to show she wasn’t interested in marriage at this time, and simply wanted to finish her time at the Academy.

Once she finished her ten years here, she would be rejoining Matt and Liz, delving into finishing the path, and could effectively vanish until they revealed themselves at Tier 25. Becoming an Ascender would stop some people, and possibly attract far greater swarms, but at least then she could probably get a secretary to screen her messages.

The very thought of having kids and then leaving them to be raised by the noble family felt far too cold and clinical for Aster. She had been raised by Matt, and that upbringing had been filled with love. So had the one she experienced in Minkalla with their parents. That was how she wanted to raise a family, with love and affection.

That answered at least one of her questions, as she did like the idea of having children, but she was far too young to make that decision.

Sipping at her coffee, she let out a deep sigh, which Cameron copied.

Looking at her partner in crime, she raised an eyebrow.

“Once you did not respond, I started getting more and more messages. I am up to eighty-seven currently. You might want to message the rest of your friends, as I feel this is not unique to me.”

Cameron was right. After Aster proved unreachable, everyone she spent even a little time with was contacted and bombarded with messages and requests for marriage.

Letting her head hit the door behind her, she groaned.

“This is awful.”

“Yeah.”

“I don't know what to do.”

Cameron snorted. “Yes, you do.”

“Yeah. I do. I just don't want to do it.”

They sat in silence for a long minute before Cameron shoved her, almost spilling her coffee.

“What was that for?”

“I just noticed what you are wearing! We went shopping for me! How dare you get the same suit I wanted!? I even said I liked it. You backstabbing icey fox.”

Aster internally smiled, having brought the suit for this exact reaction, but let exaggerated outrage play out across her face.

“You said you couldn’t pay for it, and therefore lost all dibs on the outfit.”

Cameron spluttered as she tried to react, but the heating up of her hair told Aster her little prank had worked. “I can’t believe you. I should shove you out of my office and let you get eaten by the sharks out there.”

“You know what? Might almost be worth it. Then I wouldn’t have to deal with all of these tacky braziers all over the place. I’ll grant you the one on your desk, the volcano is cool, but this is just overkill.”

Bickering with Cameron served as an excellent distraction, and it was nice of her to not kick her out of the office in the hopes it would make the incoming messages lessen slightly.

Still, not everything was easy.

While all of her acquaintances had been bombarded, most of them pulled away from her after a few days, sending her messages that they needed some space so they would stop being harassed. She understood it, but it still stung. Her core friends had also been harassed, but they instead pulled in together and spent most of their free time hiding out with her in their clubs. Clubs that had to close to new admissions for the foreseeable future.

Aster’s ice cream club had grown to fifteen people in the last few years, but it couldn't handle the full two thousand who tried to join. The same thing happened to Kelly’s film club, and the bird girl had to shout from the closed door that no one else was allowed inside the first time they met after the start of the new year.

Katherine took the added attention the hardest, but when Aster told her she would understand if she needed to distance herself, Katherine simply shook her head. “You helped me when I was trying to get my feet under me. I won’t run away just because of a little harassment. It should hopefully end soon anyway.”

That touched Aster, as the girl was still painfully shy most of the time and didn’t like large, boisterous crowds. But she still put up with it for Aster's sake, which meant a lot.

Meanwhile, the lioness twins, Leia and Lauren, had a blast pitting the families who tried to court them against each other. They’d made it a personal goal to milk every concession they could from them before firmly rejecting them. If the families weren’t so annoying in their numbers, Aster might have felt they were cruel, but their games were some of the only entertainment they got out of the situation, which made it better.

Roody simply shrugged it off, even reveling in the attempts of people attempting to court him.

Kelly was overwhelmed almost instantly by the bombardment as Aster’s closest friend, and Aster had needed to petition the student council to reprimand the families who insisted on contacting her friend after the rejections.

That was when she learned that Mara wasn’t joking. With sufficient evidence, even the Student Council had the authority to banish any egregiously annoying families from the Nest for a full decade.

Juan, on the other hand, got screwed by the whole situation in a way Aster hadn’t even considered.

He had actually intended to vet some of the offers from noble families, but that idea was crushed as he couldn't be sure which, if any, of the offers were genuine, and which were just using him to get closer to Aster. He hadn’t entirely decided if he wanted to go through with it, but having the opportunity poisoned from the outset was a blow to him. That pissed Aster off and further ruined her mood, which was why her return messages were a little more clipped than she had first planned.

Compounding the problem was that her classes and jobs hadn’t paused just because she was fending off hundreds of advances a day. She had expected that her duties as Treasurer would be difficult and would involve a lot of math, but she hadn't expected the job to be so hard on her emotions. The Treasurer position needed her to balance the budget for the Student Council itself, which was surprisingly large on its own, to cover their operating costs. But she also needed to allocate funds to each of the clubs that were run by the students and staff.

The official stance was to prioritize the largest and most popular clubs, but in practice, if she simply gave those clubs the budget they requested, there wouldn't be smaller clubs like her ice cream club and Kelly’s movie club. That forced her to make hard decisions on who got what and how much of what they wanted.

Almost none of the clubs got their full requested budgets, but a few surprising ones did. Not because she was biased, but because they only asked for such small amounts of Feathers that she was able to fulfill those requests without much thought. The two thousand-person chess club didn’t need new boards for everyone, no matter how much they insisted they did. If she were to grant that request, she’d single handedly blow through a third of her total budget, which was impossible. That said, with so many people and so much use to the equipment, they still needed new stuff, so allocating them nothing was impossible. She knew she’d be making a surprise inspection of their inventory in the coming days to see just what they really needed.

On the other hand, the seven-person topiary club simply requested a plot of unused land and a few dozen Feathers to buy timed watering equipment and fertilizer, which was a much easier acceptance.

Despite trying to be conservative, she still didn’t have enough Feathers to go around, and was left with two dozen clubs who would be getting no budget, and another two dozen who were going to be getting next to nothing. Hers and Kelly’s clubs were in the former categories, as she couldn’t put them ahead of others simply due to favoritism.

After spending two days pulling out her hair, she finally decided to cut everyone's budgets a little further, and then use most of her own funds to cover the difference needed. She wasn’t bankrupting herself, as her job as a delve leader paid exceptionally well, but she wouldn’t be able to be as frivolous with her spending as she usually was, which would hurt.

Still, with that sacrifice, she was able to ensure all the clubs got most of what they needed.

When she turned her proposed budget to the Student Council, she saw a number of shocked faces before she asked what was wrong.

Vice President Jullian looked at her with his slitted eyes. “We are just surprised that you aren’t requesting extra funds. Usually, we need to give the club's budget at least one extension.”

Aster was at a loss for words as she realized she didn’t have to spend her own money.

Weakly, she asked, “Can I see that real quick?”

Jullian shook his head as the President, Wexter, stamped the budget accepted before she could remove her own additions.

Cursing their heartlessness and her own soft-heartedness, Aster glared at Cameron, who chuckled even as she took minutes of the meeting with one hand typing at a pad.

That just wasn’t fair.

A lesson learned on her part. She should have been less focused on making everyone happy, and instead, she should have asked if she could get more funds.

She suddenly understood how Mara and Leon felt when they said all their delving rewards went straight into the Empire's coffers.

Taxes sucked.

Self-imposed taxes sucked even more.