The Path of Ascension

PoA: Aster's Adventures Chapter 6

Aster sighed as she waited at the far end of the hall.

The ‘Beginner's Shapeshifting’ class should have been done ten minutes ago, but she needed to follow up on her hunch before anything else. She had a million things on her workload as an eighth year, but some things were just more important than work.

She also felt that she needed to do this one personally due to their mana types' compatibility.

Deep Snow Leopards were a fairly rare bond, and Michael had all the signs that the professors and student council members were taught to look for.

Grooming a bond was fairly hard to notice on its own, but when certain criteria were matched with enough red flags, things became sadly predictable. To complicate things further, there were no rules against a bond pair having a relationship, as that happened almost twenty percent of the time across bonds that matched the other's sexual preference. Not to mention the cases where the bond itself would affect their sexual preferences if they didn’t match. The issue was that Michael was showing signs of being raised to expect a relationship with his human.

Aster hadn’t been aware of him until she overheard him chatting to his podmates about how he and his bond had already designed his human body. Not that making your human form with help was a bad thing; she had picked Matt’s and Liz’s brains before Minkalla a number of times. But working directly with their bond, before they even arrived at the academy, was enough of a flag to warrant a follow-up.

First, she looked at the message board the mandatory reporters had access to. Other professors had noted Michael bore special attention due to some of his previous comments, but there had been nothing concrete until now.

Aster wasn’t sure if Michael just wasn't aware of her presence or didn’t know the student council were also mandatory reporters of bond grooming, but his little slip-up gave her all the information she needed to open an official investigation.

What she found was not ideal.

Michael Lapet was bound to one Charlotte Lapet, and from what information they had available to them, she had gotten his egg as a drop just two days before her own seventieth birthday, which put their birthdays on the same day.

Not a red flag by itself, but the notes said that Charlotte was single, and apparently took the idea that bond eggs ‘drop for their fated partner’ very seriously. Seriously enough that the bond pair who had been friends with Charlotte reported her reaction to getting a bond in such an auspicious way.

That put Charlotte on a watch list, but as far as anyone could tell, she was the ideal bond partner and ensured that Michael had other bond friends and didn’t advance too quickly.

Tiering up rapidly was actually one of the signs that a bond was being groomed, and after seeing that they considered reaching Tier 10 in two hundred years to be rather quick, Aster was sure that she was on another list that she just couldn't see.

It wasn’t until Michael had come to the Red Feather Academy that other signs appeared.

The first was his incredible homesickness that lasted almost a month, and saw him despondent through most of it. Homesickness was normal; everyone experienced it in some way or another. But from what she read, the general logic was that leaving a lover was hard, and that leaving a bond was just as difficult. Leaving someone who held both titles and had their feelings amplified by the intimate connection between each other’s spirits was exponentially worse.

Michael sadly hit all the smaller signs for that situation on the head, and when combined with the observations of his teachers, it was determined that someone needed to have a chat with him.

Aster, being the one who had the most concrete evidence and the one who opened the report, had the right to take the case. But she also wanted to do it, as they shared a mana affinity. Deep Snow Leopards weren’t a winter bloodline, but they had an affinity with both ice and shadow, which was similar.

She hoped that familiarity would help her bridge the gap and form a connection, which she could use to check up on him.

Finally, the classroom opened up and mostly humanoid figures came rushing out of the room while she started walking along the hall.

Catching up to a thin man who hadn’t quite completed the digitigrade to plantigrade transition wasn’t hard with his awkward gait, and when she did, she asked, “Michael Lapet?”

At his confused nod, she stuck out a piece of paper. “My name is Aster, and I’m running an ice mana control course for any bonds with similar capabilities in their first three years. You were recommended for the class. If you want to attend, be there tomorrow after dinner.”

With that, she turned and walked away, hiking the books she carried up before turning the corner in a direction his next class wouldn't take him. Once she was out of sight, she stored the books in her storage ring and sped up to go deliver the last of her paper slips.

This was actually the second year she had run such a class, and adding Michael was both easy and recommended by the Coaches. He apparently was quite skilled when using his ice-shadow combo, and had indicated that he wanted to get better at fighting.

While she didn’t invite all the ice types to her classes, she generally did get most of the combat-inclined bonds, and the classes had turned into a networking hangout for any cold mana combat types by the middle of the year.

The rarer mana types tended to stick together at least a little, and as the undoubtedly strongest cold mana user at the academy, she needed to corral the rest of them.

She was happily planning her next meeting when Frank rounded the corner, and she resisted the urge to headbutt the nearest wall.

Frank was… frankly annoying.

As one of the few Winter Wolf bonds, he had been told by the pack's leadership to try and win Aster over. His initial attempt had been just like everyone else’s, and he immediately tried to propose to her. But unlike the others, who had backed off thanks to Mara’s warning, Frank had taken a different approach.

He joined the Student Council and then tried to impress her with how well the Winter Wolf pack treated their members, and how they could offer her opportunities to enhance her bloodline. The initial offer had included the stipulation of Aster converting her bloodline to that of a Winter Wolf proper, and when he tried to insist that a wolf was better than a fox, she had frozen him into a block of ice.

She might or might not have then carried his block of ice around for a week so he couldn’t free himself, and the professors might or might not have had to intervene when she declared she’d keep him on ice until they graduated.

That was at least the last time he had even suggested becoming anything other than a fox.

It hadn’t stopped his other advances.

He kept trying to get her to date him, get her to stay with Winter mana instead of changing to Aurora, or just get her to agree to join the Winter Wolf counsel. He had learned his lesson about being pushy and was at least respectful now, but that didn’t make her like-like him any more.

If he wasn’t actually a fun person to be around when he wasn’t pushing his pack's agenda, she would have taken steps to remove him from her presence last year.

“Hello, Aster. How are you doing this fine morning?”

Aster rolled her eyes. “Since when is six PM, the morning?”

He grinned. “My day only really starts when I see you.”

Aster rolled her eyes again. “Now that was just bad. Do you have the paperwork ready?”

Getting more serious, he nodded. “Got it. Do you think this is going to work? I really can't see the main school agreeing to a thousand-year lease to half of the Fuxy mountain range.”

Aster pulled out her own binder and tapped it. “They can either agree to the lease or pay for the damages to fix our mountain range. I don't care which. We did the projections and the price is fair either way.”

As student council Vice President, it was her job to get this pushed through, and she had to… or else. Cameron and she had run as a pair for president and vice president, and were the lowest-year students duo in each position for close to four hundred years. The Otter took the job very seriously.

Aster was more than willing to simply make it a student project to fix the Alkor mountain range, and just get the massive crater and hole in the mountain filled in slowly over time. But Cameron said anything less would make their side of the school look weak, and they couldn't allow that.

She didn’t agree with that statement, but she also couldn’t prove it wrong either, so she went along with the plan.

They went to the teleport platform to find Cameron already waiting for them, foot tapping a rhythm of impatience, but when the otter tried to glare at Aster, she just put up her hands.

“The kid's class got out late. This isn't on me.”

Cameron knew well what she was talking about, and so did Frank, but the others waiting to use the platform didn’t need to know about Michael’s situation.

Frank gestured for both of them to go first as he gave the operator the nonstandard destination ticket.

It took a few seconds, but when the teleporter cycled they weren't at the main city, but were instead inside a massive garden that spanned a mile on all sides.

Aster rolled her eyes at the sight.

That was pretentious. No, it wasn’t just pretentious. It was an obnoxious attempt to awe them and put them on their heels, even before the negotiations began. They had been sent to the front door so they would experience the long walk through majestic halls and opulence.

Cameron was about to start walking when Aster grabbed her arm. “Nope, we aren’t going to play their game.”

The otter turned to her and raised an eyebrow, and Aster walked back to the teleporter and synched her AI into the automation function.

She was technically hacking the device, but it was at such a rudimentary level that it wasn’t even real hacking. She wasn’t nearly good enough for something like that. Instead of doing anything crazy, she simply found the office teleporter code in the directory and started spamming request pings by bypassing the normal cooldown.

Now, no one would be able to use the teleporter to go to that location until she stopped. If the Red Feather Academy Student Council hadn’t all arrived by now, they had no possibility of doing so using the teleporter. And if they were trying to play power games, there was no way they would walk, just as they were trying to make Aster and her companions do.

The fact that this exact exploit wasn’t patched had surprised her, but looking into things, the first level of security of nearly every system at Red Feather Academy was incredibly lax, as if they wanted the students to dig into it.

Aster had simply found a few easy and common exploits and never looked further like most students.

Really, the week's meal plan shouldn’t be hidden.

Aster tapped her foot as she waited. And waited.

After almost five minutes, a request for their pad to teleport to the Student Council inner teleporter appeared, and she happily accepted the transfer after checking that they hadn’t spoofed the location identification number.

When they appeared the second time, they were inside a grand marble hall with a vaulted ceiling that let the light in carefully planned locations.

A familiar woman was standing there, and upon seeing her, Aster cocked her head as she tried to remember just who she was. In the end, she had to resort to her AI, who matched her picture to her recorded memories. After reviewing her pre-sapient memories for a quick update, she knew who this was.

The Rainbow Peafowl, Alyssa, from the Seven Suns vassal state.

Alyssa clearly didn’t recognize her as she rolled her eyes. “Spamming the ping function? How childish.”

Aster swished her tail as Cameron heated up. “I was simply ensuring you were aware you accidentally sent us to the wrong teleporter.”

Alyssa shrugged. “We simply wanted to let you take in the grandeur of this side of the Academy.”

Aster nodded along as if she agreed. “Quite fancy it is. Really it's a little too fancy, don't you think, Frankie?”

Frank ignored her name-calling and simply nodded, following along. As the newest treasurer of the bond student council, he knew what she meant. “I wonder how they afford something like that. I know I’d need to embezzle a load of money to get something this grand. Maybe it's fake?”

Aster grinned at Alyssa’s frown. That was why she put up with Frank; he always picked up on little things like that, and he hit the peahen right where it hurt.

Alyssa was still Tier 13, not yet immortal, without a beast form, and unable to change her human form away from its plain appearance. Brown hair, brown eyes, lightly tanned skin, all perfectly emblematic of her bloodline.

Perfectly average.

She was still quite attractive, she just was missing the vibrant colors the males of her bloodline displayed. And from what Aster knew of her, it was a point of personal irritation just how muted her color palette was.

Calling the building a facade of beauty hit Alyssa a little too close to home, if the grinding of her teeth was any indicator.

“Follow me, and I can direct you to see the Council President.”

Aster raised an eyebrow at the omitted word in that title, which all three of them caught.

Interesting.

Wanting to get some extra information, Aster sidled up and asked Alyssa, “So what is your role here? Hired help? Maid? Concubine?” When the peahen didn’t deign to answer her, Aster brought out her trump card. “What, you can take a drunk girl to bed but can't bear to look at her in the morning?”

Alyssa tried to twist to look at Aster's shock written on her face, but she was so flustered, her foot caught her heel, and she slammed into the ground.

Aster had to resist smiling at the discombobulated look on Alyssa's face as she tried to place her.

Wanting to push a little harder, Aster asked, “So you do this so much you don’t even remember me?”

Alyssa flushed a delightful shade of red, and Aster wiggled her fox tail and ears, drawing attention to them.

She watched as realization dawned on Alyssa’s face. Standing up with the flush deepening, Alyssa straightened her jacket and raised her chin.

“Aster. How lovely to see you. You know you could have said hello normally. How are Matt and Liz?”

Seeing Alyssa was out of the loop, she sent her a picture with the married couple, with her in their arms looking fabulous, flanked by all the Empire's nobility.

“Pretty good. They got married, but who didn’t see that coming?”

Alyssa almost tripped a second time but managed to catch herself. So she had noticed who the others were.

This was fun!

Alyssa managed to stutter out, “How interesting.” A few more words tried to get out of her mouth, but in the end, she shook her head and asked, “What were you here for again?”

Cameron stepped in and rescued the poor girl. “About the Fuxy mountain incident.”

Alyssa shook herself free of wherever her mind had taken her with the reminder and nodded. “Yes, sorry. Right this way.”

Once they reached the room, they met up with President David. The man was a Tier 15 and seemed to ooze a suave air that Aster couldn’t help but wrinkle her nose at.

As it turned out, Alyssa was there to take minutes of the official meeting, and sat in the corner while the three of them argued with David about the destruction caused by one of the Academy's graduate students to a mountain on their continent.

No, getting drunk and falling there was not an acceptable excuse. Neither was waking up in a hole and destroying an entire mountain to get out of said hole.

David tried to waffle, but when they brought out the estimated cost projections, he agreed to allow their side of the academy's students to use the Fuxy mountain until theirs was rebuilt. He was less happy when Cameron closed the trap down around his feet when she then explained that they needed to vacate the entire mountain, as per the rules of the Bond Academy, first-year students couldn’t interact with the normal academy students. To keep in compliance, they would need to vacate the entire mountain range and keep guard along the foothills.

After all, this was their fault.

David tried to push back on that and was successful, at least in part. Instead of their students having to stand guard, they agreed to set up an automated warning system for any students who tried to enter the mountain.

He also wiggled out of paying for the actual restoration of the mountain. Cameron fought hard for that, but he dug his heels in and said they either got to use the Fuxy range or get their mountain rebuilt. And they wanted the mountain range, as it had a number of rifts they could use.

Cameron even brought up the opulence of the building they were in, which was when they learned that it was donated to the academy by an alumni. Aster felt it was a little unfair that they had to work out of an office building while the other student council got a friggin castle, but said nothing.

She did get a chance to chat with Alyssa, who had recovered and was surprisingly willing to talk to her. They walked the long way out to the front teleporter pad and actually took in the scenery now that it wasn’t a power play, and Aster had to admit that it was grand.

Alyssa even talked about her time at the academy and bragged about how well she had done for herself. Advancement in the Academy proper had to be earned, with rift slots costing Feathers, and you also needed to pay to advance through the grades, which correspond to their Tiers. It seemed very different from the bond side of things, where things seemed way more relaxed. They’d even had an entire class on not taking all their classes seriously. That one had been annoying.

Alyssa almost choked when Aster told her that she was hosting classes of her own, and for free. That students could pick any class they wanted on that side of the planet was met by even more surprise on Alyssa’s part.

They agreed to keep in contact with each other going forward and planned a little shopping trip to the city in a couple weeks to catch up properly. Alyssa had very little free time with her job on the student council, even if she was just a scribe. Apparently, Alyssa was running a scheme and was willing to cut Aster in on it for a little help. Being more than a little bored, Aster was willing to at least hear her out.

Returning to their side of the academy, Aster had to explain her connection to the woman to the two nosey bonds following her, but they found it just as funny as she did that Alyssa had foxnapped her when they were both drunk.

Her teaching lesson at the end of the day was less pleasant than catching up with old friends.

Michael must have felt like he was in a safe environment, because he constantly talked about his bond and how great she was to anyone who stayed close to him for more than five minutes.

That inevitably pushed others away, but he wasn’t dumb, just enthusiastic, and toned it down quite a bit after the first hour. Finally, he started making a few friends, and Aster made sure not to hover, but she did chat with him for a few minutes.

Eventually, over the next few months, she would try and gain his trust before talking to him about his bond in a frank manner, but it wasn’t an issue that could be solved overnight.

At least Katherine was doing better. After seven long years of trying to get her bond to treat her like a human, telling him she was going to break the bond finally woke him up. He still had a long way to go to earn her forgiveness, but things were at least moving in the right direction.

Katherine hadn’t taken on any animal features, but she had talked about growing a tail out, which their friend group had encouraged. She wanted to merge some of her features, but was just afraid it would cause a backslide with her bond.

Aster personally thought that was inevitable regardless, but after ensuring that Katherine wasn’t going to go back running to him, she let it go. People could change, but when they only did so after the threat of a complete break, she was leery at best. Katherine at least was fully aware of it and wasn’t planning on returning to her bond immediately after they graduated either way so Aster wasn’t too worried about her friend.

Maybe the threat truly was the wake-up call he needed, but she doubted it.

Michael was in a less pleasant situation.

When his bond had come up in one of their conversations, he’d happily talked her ear off about how she was the most perfect person ever and how he absolutely was working towards becoming the perfect lover for her.

Aster expressed wariness at the idea, trying not to push on him too hard to the point where he’d get defensive, but her concerns just slid off the leopard like water off a duck. Still, she passed along the information to her superiors, and was shortly thereafter contacted by one Professor Adams.

Professor Adams was a dour man most of the time, but she had learned long ago that he had a sharp touch backed up by his down right evil sense of humor.

Anyone who took one of his classes very quickly learned to choose their words carefully, or find themselves doing something they hadn’t intended when he held them to their literal word.

He explained he’d been in a similar situation, that his bond had been a romance novelist who’d bought a bond to raise into a perfect little muse for her future works. He’d even pined for her for the first few years of the academy. But, thanks to help he received while there and what he saw of other beasts interacting with their bonds, he managed to break free.

As Aster finished explaining all of what she’d observed with Micheal, the professor clapped her on the shoulder, “You’ve done good. Don’t feel discouraged that he didn’t suddenly flip his plans just because you expressed discontentment with them. This sort of thing takes time, and oftentimes therapy. I’ll take over from here, and we’ll get the boy some help, okay?”

“Think it will work, Professor Adams?”

He nodded, “His is a fairly straightforward case. From what I can tell, it doesn’t seem like his bond specifically prepared anything to counteract therapy, which we see sometimes, and we’ve dealt with far worse even just in the past couple of years. But you don’t need to worry about that, you can befriend him or never speak with him again, whichever you prefer. We’ve got the help he needs ready for him, and that’s all there is to it.”

Thankfully, after that, her schedule settled down, and for the whole next month, nothing unexpected happened.

No new incidents, no new trauma causes for her to look out for, no new house-wide brawls she needed to stop, no new anything. Things were nice and simple.

Until they weren’t.

Aster was leading a new group through a delve when things went wrong. They were supposed to enter a blaze ape rift, but instead of the seven-foot-tall monsters, her group was almost killed when an ape the size of a building crashed down from the canopy that was a dozen times larger than normal.

A rift challenge.

Casting [Winter's Harvest], she immediately followed it up with [Headwind], causing the monster’s attack to slow down considerably.

Still, her inexperienced team was too slow on the uptake, and were attacking instead of running away like they should have been.

Needing to save them, she cast [Snowpack] to summon a large wall of ice to delay the ape for a handful of seconds. That stopped the first swing of the ape's fist, but she still needed to cast [Lifeline] on Amber, who was too slow to dodge a beam attack that the monster spat out.

A rift challenge increased the difficulty of a rift by at least one Tier, if not two. But from the initial attacks, she pegged this monster as a fresh Tier 17. She could normally handle a Tier 17 rift solo, but if she was to protect the team, she needed to kill this monster as quickly as possible.

[Cutting Hurricane] served to distract the monster even as she started sending mana into [Glacial Spear], which created a massive ice projectile, and [Glacial Strike], which was a support skill that helped the skill it was paired with stick to the target like a mouse trap.

The spike punched through the ape's abdomen, and when it went to rip the projectile out, it learned that the ice was sticking to its guts and hand.

Seeing the time was right, Aster cast her upgraded [Cracked Shatter]. She put a good portion of her mana pool into the spell, and the explosion leveled an area fifty feet wide. It would have done far more damage, but she was using her Innate [Ice Manipulation] to contain it.

She still needed to protect the others.

Her charges were looking at her like she had grown a second head, and Aster laughed. “Hey, you guys got your first rift challenge. That means the rift is a little low on mana, and thought we were an easy team to bully if it just put in a little more work.” Seeing that she hadn’t reassured them in the least, she continued to speak as she led them to the rift entrance. “You know, this is how I was found. A rift challenge. My bond soloed one! It was only a Tier 1 rift, but that's still really impressive.”

When she was about to kick the kids out, the nominal leader asked, “Aren’t you coming out?”

Aster cocked her head in confusion before laughing. “No way! I want to solo this baby. Think of the rewards. Don’t worry. I'll take it slow, so tell the coaches not to worry. Also, tell Cameron she can do all my paperwork while I’m busy.”

Seeing a confused look still on his face, Aster gave him a good shove and sent him out of the rift.

In theory, the coaches could still disrupt her delve by destroying the rift so she’d be forced out, but she really doubted they would do something so drastic. She was known to be a very strong Pather bond.

Pulling out a number of mana stones and her rapid mana converter, Aster grinned as she got ready to let loose for the first time in a while.

She imagined a grumpy black cat sitting over her shoulder and critiquing every move she made and let that guide her.

“You shouldn't need two debuffing skills on a single Tier 17 monster Aster! I’m a stinky cat! You need to read the battle and predict the best place to be. I’m a grumpy cat! You need to land each spell, or you are wasting mana. I want my belly rubbed, but I'm too proud to ask for it! Don’t let yourself get surrounded or backed into a corner; always have a path of retreat available.”

Aster could admit that she had gotten a little rusty in the eight years she was away with no challenging delves, but she had grown in that same time, and just needed to relearn how to integrate those skills into her fighting style.

Her main improvement was in her time spent honing her manipulation skills.

She felt like a new fox when she cast her ice skills, with each one seeming to respond to her very thoughts. Even her wind spells felt easier to manage, proving that she had deepened her bloodline. She wasn’t remotely close to changing her bloodline into a Level 4 mana type with Aurora, but she was getting closer to finishing the step of building out her first Winter bloodline.

Only once she had squeezed every possible ounce of power out of her current bloodline would she switch.

The cat in her head might only be a phantom of her playful side, but it was still spouting good advice.

When she finally killed the mountain-sized ape boss, she dispelled the distortion to find the reward.

Seeing it, she froze.

A crown seemingly made of the clearest ice.

It wasn’t an item. She could feel that immediately.

It was some kind of consumable that neither she nor her AI recognized, but she could feel it was useful to her.

Picking it up, she walked out of the rift to see two of the coaches and a healer waiting for her.

“Fancy seeing you three here! Anything I can help you with?”

After they scanned her up and down twice, the three instructors seemed to let out a sigh and started lecturing her.

Yes, she was very sorry for making everyone worry.

Yes, she was very sorry for not leaving immediately.

Yes, yes, yes.

Aster was pretty sure she was apologizing for things she hadn’t done by the end of the lecture, but she really didn’t mind.

Once they finished, she pulled out the crown and asked them what it was.

None of them recognized it, nor did the apprentice appraiser they took it to next, but the senior appraiser mentoring the dragon took a few measurements and said that while he didn’t know if it had a name, it was functionally a natural treasure that better connected a Domain to reality, making Concept manifestations easier to produce, and paved the way for obtaining an Anchor.

Hearing that, Aster happily plopped the crown on her head, where it seemed to melt into her and produced a wonderful chilly feeling. She felt it settle into her spirit easily, and with a mental shove she formed a staff of ice and willpower in her hand.

It nearly fell apart under its own weight as she held it, but it was incredible for a first attempt. Trying to cast a spell through it broke it entirely, though she had a sneaking suspicion that Luna could help her train the ability.

Tail shaking with excitement, she hurried back to her room so she could message Matt and Liz about her new loot and brag about her delve.