Chapter 1: PROLOGUE: A waddling cart
Under the gentle and warm mid-spring sun, the thaumic engines gave off a soft hum as the carriage slowly waddled along the path. Despite being a mecamagic construct and having been immaculately cared for, it showed its age in its out-of-fashion style and it's boring burgundy paint. Baron Brassram's coat of arms on the side, with it's brazen golden ram head over a flat blue kite shield didn't help.
The driver, a very stiff, gaunt and thin old man with a pencil moustache wore a black, reasonably elegant-yet-practical suit; cut in an out-of-fashion style that matched the carriage perfectly, as if he was naught but an extension of the machine. His perpetually neutral expression lent itself quite naturally to complete such illusion.
Inside the cabin, above which a couple old and worn leather luggage chests rested lazily, a bored young man lazed about on the cushioned seat in the very same manner. His hair was neither long nor short, but messy and dark all the same. His build, lanky but not overly so; his skin, pale yet more sickly than ethereal; and his height neither shot enough to care, nor tall enough to matter.
His attire, messy as it was from his terrible sleeping posture, amounted to a worn-out used-to-be-blue noble cassock over a white-silk blouse with the same Brassram coat of arms emblazoned on the chest, dark grey cotton and linen pants; and black, second-hand leather boots.
His face, were it not to be covered by the book under which he half-snored, would be entirely unremarkable -neither handsome nor hideous- if not for his piercing, bright golden eyes, which were currently closed as he took an oniric stroll.
"More mashed potatoes ..." He mumbled in his sleep. "Otherwise the chair won't slurp..."
As the carriage travelled the fields of the Valian Empire and among the Vals themselves, its driver kept his unperturbed face and its passenger mumbled perturbing musings from his dreams, the shape of the Academy Town slowly extruded itself from the horizon; as if this young man's future loomed over him like a hungry wolf over a sleeping, unsuspecting sheep.