I: The Stranger in the Nothing Place

Cecil stood in front of a trio of middle aged men, all of whom had heavy overcoats and bowler caps on. They had not even bothered to take off their weather garments when they came in, the first of many things that had unsettled him. The second thing that threw Cecil off was the thoroughly unenthused expression that each man wore on his face from the beginning to the end of his lecture. Nevertheless, he tried to remain confident. He took the chalk firmly in his hands and turned back to the black board, upon which he had drawn a map. A series of dashed lines crossed over his poorly drawn interpretation of the Aggrian map, and those were the focus of the lecture. As he gripped the chalk, Cecil raised his other hand to his sternum - under his shirt hung a pyramidal pendant that was made of clear blue crystal. It had been in his family for generations and his father had given it to him for good luck. 

Cecil cleared his throat and said: “So, you see what I’m proposing…”

“No,” the middle man interrupted.

“I – I’m sorry?” Cecil looked around so quickly that his glasses nearly fell off of his nose. He tried to be subtle as he pushed them back up.

“No,” the middle man repeated.

“Mr. Avesti, with all due respect, as a responsible poet I think that this matter should be looked into,” Cecil protested.

“Mr. Knox,” Mr. Avesti said. He leaned forward and folded his hands in front of his face. “There are,” he sighed as he pondered his words, “countless stories about your so-called 'Tree in the Sky'. The lost civilization of Misa is a popular attraction for hopeful youths who want to find the way of answering all of their problems with a magical solution. The problem is that we are an academic institution. We are interested in facts, not lore.” Mr. Avesti finished his statement with a tone so sharp that Cecil flinched back. “I also know that we are the third institution to which you have tried to propose this… expedition. How did you think this would go?”

“But – but – but,” Cecil stammered with mounting frustration. He pulled a newspaper out of his rear pocket and brandished the front page at Mr. Avesti, “sir, the sightings! We can’t ignore those.”

“Those are reports from simple townsfolk – people who, like you, have not understood yet that there is no such thing as a flying tree that can grant wishes. Not a single member of our society has seen this floating island that they claim. When the poets have seen nothing but these random people have? Surely you can’t lend much credence to these rumors.”

“Mr. Avest - Mr. Montgomery, please,” Cecil then turned to the man on the left.

Mr. Montgomery ran his thumb and forefinger over his mustache and seemed to be thinking heavily about the situation. He leaned in toward Mr. Avesti and Cecil grew hopeful. Then he said: “Amos, we’re done here, right?”

Cecil felt like the rug had just been pulled out from under him. Mr. Avesti confirmed: “Yes, you and Horace may go. I’m going to have a word with Cecil.” The two other men stood and buttoned their overcoats closed. When they were gone, Mr. Avesti had stood up and he moved over to the window, from which he watched the ocean glitter with his hands clasped behind his back. “Cecil, you know the policy on loans – we are not going to fund a dead end expedition.”

“But it’s not going to be a dead end!” Cecil pleaded. “Mr. Avesti, you know better than anyone that I’ve been researching the Tree for years. This is my life’s work!”

“Your life’s work?” Amos scoffed, “you call three years of study your life’s work? Cecil you’re eighteen…”

“And more learned on the topic than anyone else in this place,” Cecil replied.

“Enough!” Amos then answered sharply. “I’m not hearing any more about this, and I cannot allow you to indulge this fantasy of yours. It’s not healthy, and such an expedition is nothing short of lunacy! I cannot support this. Imagine what the Head Poets would say if they caught wind of me funding such a journey. They would remove my license! I’m sorry.”

“Mr. Avesti, please. I’ve been working so hard on this.”

“I know you have,” Mr. Avesti sighed. “Which is why this is all the harder.” The man moved across the room to sit behind his desk – a heavy-looking oak made affair that was sparsely decorated at most. “You’re a good poet – better than a lot of the poets under my jurisdiction – and you have a lot of promise. But you’re not ready yet. You’re just too young. You’re naïve, and that has no place in the Noble Poet House. You have to learn when something is deserving of your energy and when it isn’t.”

“Then…” Cecil began again.

“No,” Amos answered the unasked question, “I’m afraid we also can’t accept your application to work with us. At least not yet.”

“Now, see here,” Cecil snapped, beginning to bristle like a threatened dog. He pushed his glasses up again and pointed at Amos. “You yourself said that my recitations were flawless. You told me I was a shoo-in.”

“Then you gave me your presentation,” Amos spoke over Cecil. “And you showed us that you are not ready for the responsibilities of being a true poet.”

“A true poet doesn’t pursue stories?” Cecil asked incredulously.

“No, those are the wandering bards – the madmen. A true poet is a historian. We only accept for fact the stories that have factual, tangible evidence. We once accepted the Tree in the Sky as fact, until we couldn’t find anything. It’s a shut case. You can search for it, but that will never be enough to give a story to tell, which leads to the next thing – you have no stories of your own to tell. Cecil, you haven’t seen enough to contribute to the records of this House. What do you hope to contribute?”

“If you’d just let me go on this journey, then I would have something more to contribute!” Cecil stammered, growing more flustered by the moment.

“The answer is no! By the Yelrin will you let it go?” Amos snarled. Silence fell and the two looked at each other. Amos looked frustrated, and Cecil glowered mutinously up at him. “The reason that not a single poet here is younger than thirty lies on you – you’re still too young and foolish and unlearned to let things go when they are hopeless!”

This said, Cecil slumped back in the chair. He was suddenly exhausted and he wanted to look anywhere except at the merciless man before him. The floor had long fallen away so he settled with staring at his knees and listening to his stomach sink from the weight of this new reality brought on by broken hope. “And what do you expect me to do? I’ve devoted my life the past three years to this one trade. How do you expect me to accept this?” he asked.

"Don't expect me to have an answer for you, Cecil," Mr. Avesti answered sharply. "I am not you."

"Well, you have just put me in a rather unpleasant situation," Cecil said. "I have nothing if I can't be a poet."

"Then maybe, just maybe, you should figure out what you are," Mr. Avesti grunted back at the poor poet. The pair of men sat in their respective chairs, oddly out of breath and energy.

Just then, a man poked his head into the room and he said, "Amos, we have an issue down in archiving. Daniels has lost track of the Lobodrune Stories."

"Oh, great," Amos grunted. He stood up a second later and began to rush out the door. "Look, Cecil, I'm very sorry that I cannot give you better news, but this is how it is."

"Yes, I know."

There was a second's pause where Mr. Avesti looked at Cecil with something like pity. "Look, you are still a student at the academy. You can continued to study with us - I have not expelled you from the institution."

"Yes, I know," Cecil repeated, his voice hollow.

"Then..." Mr. Avesti paused again. Pity and apology mixed on his face. "I must run now. I will let you see yourself out."

"Okay."

Then Cecil was alone. He stood at the window, where Amos had stood only a minute or two before. He felt his extremities go numb as the horrible news set in. He looked over at the blackboard, where he had taken all of that time to draw up the map of Aggros. He could have done it - he should have been allowed to make an expedition to search for the elusive Tree in the Sky. "I mean, for Yelrins' sake, it's a wish granting tree!" he snapped to no one. The snarl fell flat on the air of the office. Cecil sighed and slumped sadly beside the window, letting his gaze flutter across the rolling hills of outer Tyranele. He saw the ocean in the distance and tried to figure out if he wanted to go there.

Finally, Cecil could wait no longer to leave, and so he marched across the room and yanked the heavy cherry door open. Beyond the threshold, there waited a long marble hallway, with archways lining each side, before a multitude of doorways, all of which led to different spaces in the House of Poets. There was the Pantheon of the Stars where they studied astronomy. That room was off to the left, and was where the first portion of Cecil's exam had taken place. He had sat in the middle of the room, where the sun poured through the large hole in the ceiling's center in order to cast him in a spotlight. It had been nerve wracking, but Cecil had not let it stop him from his near perfect recitation of Lobodrune the Green and Her Flying Web.

Cecil looked only for a second into this room. He could just barely see another student sweating and stammering under the light of the midday sun. It was not a hot day, but nerves could make even the most frigid of winter nights seem like the hottest summer days. Cecil prayed for the sake of that nervous applicant.

He marched down the main hall, making effort to remain stoic. At the other end there waited an open archway that faced out to the emerald farmlands beyond. Cecil longed dearly to get there, so he picked up his pace until, halfway down the vaulted hallway, he was nearly running.
Tyranele City, Cecil's current home, lay in the middle of the plains of East Aggros, miles away from everything, except for the ocean - its easternmost boundaries actually threatened to fall into the ocean with the rate of erosion that occurred there. Its west and southern borders were lined with rolling hills that blocked off any view of anything worthwhile. Just past those hills lay a small forest called Tyranele Woods, which could be seen at the top of the hills. In short, Tyranele, for its shockingly high population and attraction to tourists and poets, was more or less a nothing place. The nearest town, Denmoor, was two days away on horseback when traveling quickly. Really, horseback travel was the only viable means of transportation around Tyranele City.

So, one could imagine the surprise of the Tyranelians when, while Cecil watched his dreams fade from his very sight, another man who had never been seen in any part of Aggros East or West sauntered in through the main gates of the city. Apart from some smudges on his face and dirt on his tunic and vest, he looked unharmed and untired. With complete serenity, he observed the town around him, nodded as though it had passed some sort of unspoken test, and continued on his merry way. What made his walking into the city even more confusing was the fact that, in his left hand, he clutched an exquisite sword with a gold inlaid hilt and a crystal embedded in the pommel - it was an ornate weapon that simply did not match his commoner's attire. People stopped to stare at this odd fellow, but before long they moved on to their daily tasks. What the citizens of Tyranele City failed to recognize was that this man's appearance in their city would forever change the course of fate for every single man, woman and child who lived there. Most notably, this mysterious man was destined to drive Cecil Knox's life in a direction the young poet could not, at the present moment, even imagine.