Year 787/ Eldarian Alliance Officer's Academy Elysium Island
Aurelia
As a Princess of the House Pendragon Aurelia aimed to be a shining example of Elven Nobility. To an Elf assuming major roles of responsibility for the protection of their people was a badge of honor and she had volunteered immediately to be a leader in Father's Army. Aurelia was the daughter of the second and current Elven King Elijah Pendragon. Today as she graduated at the top of the very First Officer's Class of Eldaria Academy, she was truly proud of herself. Until three years ago the school had been a free to all college of learning commissioned by their lord and Father several hundred years ago in the time of the First Fae Children, but with the war coming that had to change.
The Academy was converted into a state-of-the-art War Game facility and Magi Tech Research Lab that focused solely on military leadership cultivation and advanced war technology. Father had placed a Dungeon in the waters near the school long ago and it was now set to active military deployment in recreated war zones Father's humans once fought on the lost world. Only the elite who would be commanders were chosen to attend, and a new free early education school was built in her homeland of Avalon for the youths.
Our lord and Father may he forever bless and guide his children. She thought as she stared at him excitedly.
It was a common prayer said within Eldaria and the Fae Alliance. Everyone knew Father's glory well. The Fae in all their centuries never knew any suffering. Humans were just a tale told to children to teach them how not to behave. She had never expected this great evil to be real and return to attack her people. But if the tales she was told were true and fact then their world was indeed in great danger. It is said Father once destroyed that lost world in the Dungeon, killing the entire population of humans before creating Eldaria for the Fae.
It was hard to believe he was capable of such violence. She had noticed some of his stranger behaviors when he thought he was alone. Sometimes he laughs and his face would seem rather sinister to her when he thought about the upcoming war with the humans. Still, she soaked in whatever she could learn from him at any given chance. She had even been practicing in a mirror her versions of his laughs and smiles. She figured they would make sense to her eventually when dealing with humans in the war. Until they did, she would continue to learn them properly.
Aurelia like many Fae girls loved Father deeply and not in the way a daughter loves her father. She was in love with him and had been since she was a young Elven girl playing in the forest and lakes of Avalon. He had often visited with her grandfather who she was close with as a child. It began the day he lifted her upon his shoulders and flew her high up into the sky. She felt like a giant upon his shoulders and listened intently to his tales in admiration. Then as she grew older that admiration slowly took on a new form. If it had not been for her own jealousy flaring up in the Academy, she may have stayed oblivious to the fact for longer. But every time a young girl would confess to Father her heart would flutter, and a sickness would form in the pit of her stomach until he would reject them.
After that Aurelia found her reason to hate that the evil humans for herself. They got to look like Father. She knew she was beautiful even among the Fae who were all beautiful, but she wished for a human body that Father could be in love with. She wondered if Father just didn't find the Fae attractive in that way. So, she often fantasized about living in the lost world with Father and having a family with children of their own. Father had told her once that human custom was to be married to one person for life and take them as a partner. He said they rarely stayed faithful to the idea and why he never took a wife of his own. The Fae didn't get married either, with much longer lives than human she assumed they just had no want or need to possess one another that way. The Fae love freely and when they choose to, but she understood that need. She wanted Father for herself in the same way. For him to marry her as a blushing bride in a white dress in a chapel and be together as a family.
She dreamed big as she watched Father begin to get ready. She was about to be called, the first name on the long list of graduates. An honor she had earned by being the top student out of ten thousand. She had several worthy rivals who helped push her further beyond her limits. She was a little sad she would not get to serve directly with those classmates as they all made the top rankings.
Her name was called, "To start off our valedictorian ranked first in class Aurelia Pendragon."
Father himself was handing out the diplomas she thought it the perfect opportunity to flash him his trademark sinister looking grin she was fond of, to show she was truly among the most advanced of even his elite officers. She took her steps forward as her face flashed a wicked smile and she received her diploma.
*****
Leonidas
As far as state-of-the-art military magi tech goes the DaVinci Company leads the Dwarves in innovation and quality. Leonidas was a grandson of Leon DaVinci the only Dwarf to receive his family name from their lord and Father. He was also the lead engineer on the Golem Armor. His plan was to operate his invention in the field as an Officer of the Fae Alliance so he could further improve his Armor which he considered still just a prototype.
Today he stood tall as the second in his class beat only by the Elven Princess. Her combat prowess outshined even the sturdiest of Dwarves. She was an anomaly, so Leonidas was fine with losing the top spot to her. He also excelled in the weak spot of Dwarves and had far superior mana control compared to other Dwarves.
Leonidas even had his own personally customized Golem Armor that performed on higher specs and mana consumption than the standard model being issued to the other Golem Knights. He considered it a lucky perk for having been the creator. He applied many modifications the top brass refused to allow on the standard models, but they needn't know it.
Leonidas had input extra mana cores into his Golem Armor. One was his prototype of a burst engine. He could use it to supply a short burst of force from a vented panel on his back to increase his speed while running or gain greater distance while jumping. He hoped to eventually use its design and the theory for a larger engine to power Father's war machines. Still, it required too much mana to be useful in that capacity yet. He was the only Dwarf with enough mana to run the extra systems for prolonged periods, so his data was limited thus far.
Even without his extra upgrades the Golem Armor was his greatest creation. Its lightweight yet sturdy layered Mythril plates were fixed to mana powered circuits and gears which allowed it to move with ease. It made one a walking sort of tank similar to what Father had asked him for. He wasn't willing to let it have the title since in his opinion a tank was a mobile vessel not armor, but when Father had compared it to the human's uranium core powered armor, he accepted that classification. He wondered why humans would use something so dangerous to themselves to operate. Unlike his Mana Core which in itself was completely harmless the uranium cores slowly poisoned the operator. Humans apparently had harnessed its power in any form they could to continue their ongoing wars. From what Father said humans made bombs with it and blew each other up with it laying waste to the land and desolating it afterwards. Humans didn't sound very smart to Leonidas he found it hard to believe the Lost Knowledge once belong to them.
He watched the Elven Princess as her name was called and she contorted her expression into Father's trademark smile he always had when he was thinking of humans and thought he was alone. By the time his name was called next he had burst out into a laugh that was also heavily influenced by Father.
"Ranked second in class Leonidas DaVinci," Father motioned him forward with a visibly concerned look on his face.
Leonidas never broke stride and continued laughing as he took his diploma, "Thanks Father I'll apply everything you've taught me."
Leonidas just assumed the look was pride, so he simply strutted off with his head held high.
*****
Julian
Julian was only average in his opinion, especially when compared next to a Pendragon or a DaVinci. However, he did excel at one thing and that was survival. In all his Dungeon battles he managed to keep every participating soldier in his platoon alive against all odds. He couldn't fight like the Pendragon Princess or create crazy magi tech like a DaVinci's, but he knew how to get people through the mission alive with the available resources.
Death wasn't permanent in a Dungeon, so most Fae didn't worry about being killed and losing against a floor. Many would go out of their way to act recklessly simply because they could. This was all still a game to them. Julian found this highly impractical since the Dungeons were meant to teach them how to stay alive in the upcoming war.
Father wouldn't have them do it otherwise, he always thought.
Still for hundreds of years the Dungeons were just games for the Fae, so he did understand the disconnect. Instead, Julian had taken it upon himself to train in the difficult Golem Armor of the Dwarves. He had tried to get other Elves to do the same. However, only The Pendragon Princess was really able to function with it on and even she preferred her natural speed over the strength and protection it offered.
He assumed that was why Father wasn't promoting any of the Old Guard to officer positions. Fae, but particularly Old Fae, can be stuck in their ways so anyone not of the current graduating class would end up serving under one of the one hundred graduating students here today in the future war.
The war will be starting soon or so he'd heard while passing Father's war room earlier but after graduation came the part he wasn't looking forward to.
"Schools out and it's time to get your hands dirty," he had heard Father say with his sinister grin and laugh.
Father called it basic training and it was happening out in Avalon Forests. He'd never been to Avalon, but it was apparently different than Shangri-la. Julian was a Shangri-la Jungle Elf from his noticeably darker skin and golden hair where in Avalon they were called Forest Elves with their whiter skin and silver hair like the Pendragons. They say all Elves once looked like the Forest Elves but the ones who built their homes and families near the mana tree in the jungle changed over time much like the Mountain and Desert Dwarves who settled in El Dorado and Erebus respectively.
However, he knew most of the Fae had never fought outside the Dungeons and this training was meant to remedy that. Some had chosen to walk the sacred warrior path and challenge Father's pets. It was dangerous so most chose not to.
Who would want to fight those insane animals? He thought to himself as he checked his place in line.
He wondered what basic training would be like. It was supposedly a harsh human training technique, but Father had hidden all the details, so he wasn't able to find anything on in it the Records of Knowledge. There was never any military knowledge there though he had checked several times and requested it, Father never would make them available beyond statistics and date. Everything he knew of war was numbers.
Father often had them fight against human soldiers called Nazis under the command of the human Adolf Hitler. Every mission was always to save Fae from them or stop Nazi soldiers from accomplishing their objective. He once asked Father why it was always them.
"Because even humans thought the Nazi party sucked," he would say with a laugh, "Humans often romanticized war and looked back on it favorably in history but Hitler and the Nazi party committed such undeniable evil even human history hated them."
Father claimed the death count to be almost a hundred million human lives lost over four years. He said the ones who died fighting had the best deaths and the people imprisoned received a fate much worse. He would never elaborate further than that.
Julian noticed it was almost his turn to be called. He saw how most of the Fae had given Father their own version of his trademark smile as they received their diplomas. He would do the same.
"Ranked fifteenth in class Julian" Father called.
Julian took a deep breath before flash the smile and taking the diploma as he said, "Thank you Father."
*****
Iris
Thirty Fourth in her class the Desert Dwarf Iris waited for her turn in line to graduate. The Academy had been a strange experience to her. She had grown up in Erebus riding the giant scorpions across the sand dunes. Mythril only formed in the desert mines, so many years ago Dwarves settled there, as it was needed for many developments even before the mana powered Golem Armor.
She knew Golem Armor would be standard issue for most Dwarven soldiers. She had helped some with its development, but she believed Leonidas deserved almost sole credit. She admired how quickly he brought his proposal from concept to reality. It always amused her to watch him argue with the Dwarven Old Guard about safety issues. The DaVinci's always seemed to dream bigger than most Dwarves always blazing forward with their next new innovation. She figured soon they'd forget their silly Armor in pursuit of ships that could sail through the sky or some similar strange dream.
Some of the Elven boys had tried to use the Golem Armor. She remembered fondly as they borrowed the suits and struggled to move them.
Poor Julian... She thought to herself.
Mythril may be the lightest and strongest metal in the world but even with the help of their mana operating system it still required a great deal of strength to use it practically. It was an issue the Elves and their mighty mana reserves weren't able to solve as usual. She thought they often too much relied on their mana to solve problems. Dwarves have much smaller mana reserves, so it was designed to use mana only where needed most.
Iris had contributed much more to designing the giant eagle saddles and armor for the future Eagle Battalions. Out of all her projects it was her favorite. She dreamed of flying through the sky on the back of one of those great eagles. She planned to request it specifically. The boys could have their Golem Armor, she wanted to fly on an eagle through the clouds.
One of the other students had told her earlier the officers would get to pick where they would serve. She hoped that was true and not just a rumor. Fae girls loved to gossip which she found it was mostly harmless and usually about love, but she noticed many of them embellished often and were lost to their imaginations and dreams. She paid them little mind as she had no current interest in love.
She spent her free time practicing with the MR1 during her time at the Academy. Father had found her practicing alone one day and encouraged her to keep trying. He assured her that mana capacity just like physical strength could be increased with consistent practice. So, for three years she continually used and exhausted her mana with MR1 shooting practice. She could now fire it a little more than three thousand times before mana exhaustion. It wasn't quite to the Elven level, but she was proud of her progress regardless. Most Dwarves could barely manage five hundred shots she was without a doubt the top Dwarven shooter.
She wondered about the war to come. It was hard for her to imagine. She assumed most Fae felt the same way. No one really talked about it, instead they talked around it. Fae killed only when they hunted and never in excess. Fae did not kill without a cause, and they certainly would never kill one another. To imagine fighting one another over the lands like Father said the humans once did seem illogical and counterproductive to her. They killed each other just to destroy the land in the end. They hunted for sport and drove the creatures of the land into extinction. They polluted the seas and dumped toxic wastes as they pleased.
She wondered if humans could really be so selfish. She like most Fae had always assumed humans were just fictional monsters in Father's lessons and stories. Something he had made up to teach them right from wrong. She always thought it comically that humans never seemed to make the right choices. The answers and solutions always seemed so logical to her. Father told her tales of how even the old human god used to get angry and punish them often.
I guess nobody liked humans...
"Ranked thirty fourth Iris." Father called her name, but she had been lost in her thoughts and daydreams.
She smiled shyly with embarrassment as she took her Diploma, "Thank you Father for your guidance."