章 32: Testing Troubles - Page 2
The staring contest between Kir and the test proctor ended when his moms arrived.
"Come on, Faranor, lay off the kid," Darlae said.
"Wait until you see what he's got," Brigit said in a more conciliatory tone.
"I've already seen him almost start a fight, and his mere presence seems enough to disrupt the other students," Faranor said coldly.
Kir wasn't about to stand by and let his moms do all the fighting for him.
"Professor, if I'm not wanted by the academy, then I'll just leave," he said, crossing his arms. "But that's a judgment I plan on making for myself." He crossed his arms. He was not about to be a helpless victim.
"Decide quickly then. We as teachers have a duty to protect our students."
"And what are you protecting them from?" Kir asked, "People who look different than them? If you have some issue with me, I'd rather you say it out loud instead of hiding behind your position."
Faranor bristled, her lips going thin. "My issue is-"
"Faranor! Enough!" Another woman's voice spoke up, and Kir saw a woman of short stature step out from behind the table where the professors were grading.
She had chocolate brown skin and snow-white hair braided into a tight bun. Most strikingly, her eyes were emerald green and she carried herself with an air of authority.
"Chancellor Lumis, I didn't know you'd stayed..." Faranor said, paling a little.
"Set aside your old grievances, Fara, I'm only going to tell you once," the little woman replied, before stepping up to Kir.
"So, you're Bri and Dar's boy. I've been told to expect a lot of you," the Chancellor said. "Your mother left out the particulars of your heritage in her letters to me. A shame, since I thought they would have known better of me than to suspect I'd pass over a student just because of a little demon blood." She looked at Kir's parents with a stare that made them wither a little, before turning back to Kir.
"Your parents have told me something of their quest... and yours. If you can impress me during the practical exam, I can overlook your abysmal history score and perhaps bring you in at a level commensurate with the... overly rigorous methods Brigit says she has taught you."
"I'm sorry, I don't..." Kir started to say before he was interrupted.
"I'm talking about letting you skip a grade," Chancellor Lumis said. "But for that, I need to see competence and an original spell."
Kir looked at his moms. They were looking at him with such hope in their eyes, he didn't want to disappoint them.
He almost laughed to himself as he realized that if he went along with the Chancellor's generous plan, he'd have no choice but to stand out... but it would buy him a year of time to find his biological mother, and finally get his father off his back. After that... maybe he'd figure out what he would do with himself.
"We have a deal then," Kir said, internally cringing as he realized just how much he sounded like his father right then.
"Chancellor, this is unprecedented," Faranor protested.
"Unprecedented? As I recall, the most recent person to skip a grade was Yomiko the Dragon Queller, about a hundred years ago," Chancellor Lumis looked up at Faranor. "You should be happy about this, Faranor. He'll be skipping most of your classes, after all. There will be no, 'disruptions' to keep you from raising your students to the level Brigit has with her son... If you can, that is." Lumis chuckled.
Kir found himself very interested in the person Lumis had mentioned, but instead, he was told to wait patiently for at least nine more students to finish their tests. Faranor was sent to inform the second-years to collect tests from anyone completing theirs early, passing out the next uncompleted test as appropriate.
Kir was quickly joined by a pair of elven twins who kept their distance from him, Ann from the same row he'd sat in, a girl with bird-like features who eyed his wings for a long time, Claud, much to his annoyance, another pair of twins, this time of short stature like Chancellor Lumis, and what Kir could only think of as a regal-looking woman with an intense bearing, attended by a woman who was dressed as a maid.
"Alright, that's ten," one of the other professors who had just been sitting around said. He was a brown-haired human man with a five o'clock shadow and glasses that seemed to do more to hide his eyes than help him see. Kir was told to march the group out of the Steam Gate, where they would be tested on the bridge.
Chancellor Lumis followed, humming as she walked with her hands behind her back. The line of students quickly became a gaggle as the door to the bridge opened, and people either went forward to gaze out over the land far below or shrank back.
Kir was of the former persuasion, although he kept a steady pace instead of stopping. The regal-looking girl and her maid kept up with him.
They both looked to be about the same age, though the regal girl was dressed in what looked like a military uniform, albeit one with a thigh-high skirt and knee socks. She had long, black hair and golden-brown eyes that were cat-slitted in the middle. Otherwise, she looked human.
Her maid seemed to be entirely human, and so nondescript that Kir suspected she was intentionally making herself look bland. Brown hair and brown eyes, a face that seemed average without makeup, and a stern disposition were what he noticed in her.
"You are demonkin," the regal girl noted. "I was unaware one of your kind applied to this Academy."
Kir smirked. "Everyone seems very keen to remind me of what I am, so you're not being very original there, Princess."
A sudden movement drew him into turning. The maid had stepped between him and the girl and was brandishing a set of knives upwards and at his throat, their handles wedged between each of her fingers like claws.
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