The Academy of Erebos

I stood gawking at the palace that defiantly stood amidst the swirling snowstorm. Barren, naked trees flanked the palace on all sides, creating a radial pattern that spiralled outwards towards the property wall. A lone dirt path pierced through the middle of the forest, meandering from the front gates to the foreboding palace. 

The Academy of Erebos was renowned for transforming juvenile drug traffickers into graduates of the most prestigious universities from all corners of the world. 

That was precisely why I discovered myself walking within the Gothic hallways of the castle-like institute on a freezing December evening instead of spending a cosy evening sipping hot chocolate, escorted by a tall man with raven-black hair, bronze skin, and black eyes while struggling to drag my suitcase behind me. 

“This is the way to Wing Seven, where you will find the science labs,” Mr. Hyperion droned. He had a small scar resembling an ebony shooting star embedded into his neck that stretched and squeezed with every word he said. “And take that staircase up to the second and third floors to find the classrooms dedicated to the fine arts.”

Mr. Hyperion continued onwards towards the thousandth spiral staircase that I had encountered since the entrance to the building, and this time he started climbing the stairs. Each stair was composed of antique wood, with a regal red carpet fitted perfectly onto its centre. Not a speck of dust was caught on the surface of the carpet. 

“These stairs will take you to the administrative wing of the academy, which is off-limits to students unless your presence is requested by the administrators,” Mr. Hyperion explained as we climbed stair after stair that stretched endlessly up towards the towering, pointed ceiling fitting for a cathedral. “Ms. Marwood, the superintendent, is looking forward to meeting you.”

“Wonderful,” I grumbled as my suitcase bounced off each step with a resonating boom. 

Two minutes later, we arrived at the level reserved for the administrators, which overarched the entire school. Four doors were placed on either side of a dimly lit hallway that extended deeper into the level. 

Mr. Hyperion breezed past the eight doors and reached the final door at the end of the hallway, with the glittering golden word “SUPERINTENDENT” etched onto it. 

“Bring the student in,” a voice commanded before Mr. Hyperion knocked on the door. 

Mr. Hyperion mechanically opened the door, and frigid grey light filtered into the hallway. 

“Hello, Aurelio Russo,” the superintendent greeted. “You may sit on the chair over there.”

She was seated behind an oak desk centred in front of a large window overlooking the barren forest far below. The superintendent was a tall woman of pale complexion, with frigid ice-blue eyes and platinum-blond hair done in a neat updo. The flawlessness of her skin contrasted her striking maroon-coloured lips. 

I wordlessly sat down, staring at the grandfather clock that was ticking in the corner of the room. The phrase amplectere verum was painted onto the centre of the grandfather clock. 

“Let’s do some introductions,” she purred. “My name is Layla Marwood, and I am the superintendent of the Academy of Erebos. You are going to have a life-changing experience here, Aurelio. My job is to help students make their dreams a reality. That is why our motto is amplectere verum, or embrace the truth in Latin.

“Lessons are held every day of the week, from eight in the morning to eight in the evening, with allocated times for meals. Time afterward is reserved for homework assignments, and by eleven, all students are expected to go to bed.

“We offer lessons across all subjects to ensure that our students can tackle anything universities may throw at them. 

“Already this has proven to be a success. The thousands that we have graduated from the academy have found successful jobs following our educational program.”

“What about holidays?” I asked urgently. “When are the school holidays?”

“The time between eleven and 7:30–when you are expected to go to breakfast and attend the morning orientation assemblies–is a holiday. What more could a student want?”

“An actual holiday, away from this campus, for weeks at a time,” I clarified. “That is what all students dream of. And did you not just tell us to make our dreams come true?”

As soon as the words left my mouth, Ms. Marwood’s fist flew onto the desk, slamming it so hard that her teacup jiggled around. Her ice-blue eyes grew more frigid as she narrowed them on me. 

“Several things, Mr. Russo,” Ms. Marwood snarled. “Firstly, that is the kind of unruly thinking that the institute aims to eradicate. Starting right now, you are not to even dream of leaving the campus. It is why you signed up for boarding school until you graduate from a prestigious university. Secondly, you are to address me as Ms. Marwood, not as you. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, Ms. Marwood,” I murmured. 

“Excellent.” She finished her tea as she set centimetre-thick stacks of paper in front of me. “Your dorm room is in Wing 10B, along with the other new Year 9 students. You will be woken up at the crack of dawn, and you are to wear the formal uniform. You are dismissed.”

She started ruffling through more stacks of paper on her desk, making it clear that she was done with me. 

Mr. Hyperion opened the door, escorting me out of her office. 

As I filed the stacks of paper into my suitcase outside of Ms. Marwood’s office, one thing struck me as odd: there were no windows within Ms. Marwood’s office looked towards the hallway, which meant she could not have known who was standing outside. 

***

I discovered that I happened to share my dorm room with three other students. While Athamus and Narcissus, who shared a bunk bed, remained aloof towards me, Efram Eburnus, who was short with brown hair and green eyes, was cordial, which I found welcoming after experiencing both the literal and figurative blizzard of the academy. 

“I swear, Ms. Marwood wants us to become soldiers,” Efram grumbled over dinner, which was chicken soup. “She instructs all of the teachers to make sure that our hair is combed rigidly towards the right, our ties are impeccably done and we sit ramrod straight. Anyone caught disobeying the rules is punished severely.”

“Punished?” I gulped. “How?”

“In a range of different torture methods, the most common one being reduced sleeping hours. Mr. Hyperion, the Dean of Discipline, drags you to his office and forces you to write ‘I will follow the rules’ two hundred and fifty times on the blackboard, after which they strike you across the back.”

“Have you ever been punished like that?”

“Oh yes. Multiple times.”

I discovered that Efram, like all of the other students, was from a wealthy family that had failed to discipline him properly. Eburnus Incorporated the most prominent oil trading industry in the world, and Efram bragged that with the word of his father, the global economy could sway. 

I, too, had heard of Eburnus Incorporated through discussions between my father and mother, who were the owners of the space exploration company worth trillions called InterStellar. 

While I was eating my cold soup, I noticed that the majority of the student body had the scar of the shooting star I had seen on Mr. Hyperion’s neck etched into their necks as well, with the only exception being Efram and Narcissus, one of my other roommates. I also noticed that Efram and Narcissus were the only ones who were eating dirtily or talking; the other students were all mechanically scooping the soup into their mouths while staring off into space. Meanwhile, the teachers were methodically striding back and forth, with their eyes scanning students from seat to seat. 

“You better be careful,” Efram warned when my spoon went flying off of the tray and clattered noisily onto the ground. 

“Why?”

Efram pursed his lips as the teachers all simultaneously glared at us. “I don’t know if I trust you well enough to tell you that yet.”

The gong at the clock tower, located at the side of the main building, went off, signalling the end of dinner. 

***

Life soon fell into methodical order at the academy, with breakfast in the early mornings, and rigid schoolwide assemblies conducted by Ms. Marwood afterward, followed by intensive lessons. In total, there were eleven subjects spanning over eleven hours a day, each with its homework assignments. 

After a month of attending the academy, I no longer craved the freedom I once used to enjoy. How could I dare frolic around in meadows when there were textbooks to read and worksheets to complete and pencils to sharpen?

However, while I began to assimilate into life at the Academy of Erebos, Efram, who grew to become my best friend, became more and more fretful. His effervescent nature was dimmed into a vexed and depressed husk of his former self, and he began to fail in his studies. 

One night, after the lightbulb flickered off and Athamus and Narcissus began snoring, Efram crept down from the top bunk and plopped down next to me. 

“What do you want?” I whispered.

“I have something very important to tell you.” The window filtered in enough moonlight to unveil the dark circles under his eyes. “Do you feel anything off about this place?”

“In what manner?” 

“Everyone behaves in the same way here,” Efram answered, casting a glance at the shadows in the room. “It’s like no one has their own personality. Everyone does their thing mechanically and rigidly, like preprogrammed machines rather than living humans.”

I felt a cold, steel hand gripping my windpipe. I had noticed something off about the academy when I had first met Mr. Hyperion, but I couldn’t quite place my finger on it then. Now, the blurry puzzle was sharpening into focus. 

“Everyone has the mark of a shooting star etched into the side of their neck,” I recalled. “Except for us.”

“And one other person.” Efram shuddered. “Ms. Marwood.”

“You think she’s doing something?”

“Oh, I don’t think. I know she’s doing something. A few days ago, when you were sleeping in the nurse’s office after you got food poisoning, I was woken up to the sound of Narcissus screaming.

“I thought he had a nightmare, but I realised that the screams were coming from outside our room. It sounded like he was being dragged off somewhere, and I heard Ms. Marwood’s artificially sweet voice amidst the screams. 

“The next day, a shooting star mark formed on Narcissus’s neck, and his personality was gone. I asked him what happened to him, and he just said, ‘I’ve embraced the truth.’”

“Amplectere verum,” I murmured, recalling the motto of the school. 

“Ms. Marwood is pulling the strings of a sinister game,” Efram continued. “She has the whole school under some kind of spell. Neither of us are safe here.”

“What do you propose we do?” I countered. 

“I have a lot of money with me hidden inside my sack. In three nights, we’re going to sneak out of the campus. It’s only a two-hour walk to London, and from there we can go anywhere we want.”

Before Efram crawled back into his bed, he gave a final whisper: “She’s going to come for us soon.”

***

One night later, a shrill shriek startled me from my sleep. Cats scratching against blackboards could not even begin to compare to the blood-curling nature of the scream. It took me a second longer to realise that Efram was not in his bed anymore. 

My heartbeat lurched into my throat, and the room began to spin as I waited dreadfully for Efram to return. 

Five hours and forty-five minutes later, when the first weak, grey rays of sunlight began to break through the blizzard, Efram dreamily came back with dilated pupils. 

“Are you okay?”

“I’ve embraced the truth.” The sunlight bounced off of the glittering shooting star that was now engraved into his neck. 

***

It was clear that escape was of utmost importance, now that Efram had fallen into Ms. Marwood’s plot. After everyone else fell asleep that night, I shoved the wad of Efram’s cash into my suitcase, slipped into my winter jacket, and silently slithered out of the room.

Every little rustle I heard served to accelerate my pounding heartbeat, every shadow morphed into the outstretched claw of a corpse, every speck of light was the glint of a sword, and every unopened door I ran by concealed Ms. Marwood. The hallways stretched in every direction as I failed to find the right path toward the exit. 

“Ow!” I roared as I crashed into a door. 

Bile burned my tongue and my hands turned clammy when the doorknob began to turn. 

I flew at light speed, colliding with statues, shattering vases, and kicking stray chairs out of the way. I finally entered the same hallway that led to the main entrance, with the ominous reverberations of the clock striking midnight echoing in the dead stillness of the night. 

I thrust the front door open and ran outside into the blizzard…

…to find Ms. Marwood waiting patiently. She was clad in a black cloak that contrasted her eyes, which glittered like diamonds. 

“Where do you think you’re going?” she asked sweetly. 

I turned back, only to find Mr. Hyperion blocking my path. 

“Too little too late.” Ms. Marwood clucked her tongue at Mr. Hyperion. “Let’s bring him into my office, shall we?”

***

My arms and legs were bound onto the wooden chair with leather straps, while Mr. Hyperion forced my head onto a headrest that was locked towards the grandfather clock. 

“Aurelio Russo,” Ms. Marwood purred. “You’re a bright one, aren’t you? Incredibly, you’ve managed to piece together almost everything going on here. Let’s clear up some details, shall we?

“All current and former students and teachers of the Academy of Erebos, except yourself, are part of a grander, collective consciousness that psychologists call a hive mind. No one who attends the Academy of Erebos is an individual, once they come here. They become extensions of my consciousness.”

“Why?” I snapped. “All that will do is give you a massive headache!”

“Well, obviously I can’t consciously control the hundreds of thousands of people that I’ve hypnotised,” Ms. Marwood corrected. “They become programmed, I should say, to follow my orders. And I exert my influence upon everyone to gain power, fool.

“Every university they graduate from, every prosperous job they find, it was all thanks to me. All I request is for them to do things how I see fit. The world is already becoming my oyster, Aurelio, whether you want to admit it or not. How else do you think the wealthiest children on this planet are all concentrated here, under my influence?”

“So, you scheme to control the minds of everyone who steps foot in this godforsaken academy to make sure that the world runs your way?” I summarised. “That’s insane.”

“No, that’s practical.” Her eyes flashed hungrily. “Do you know how much money I’m making, how many people I’ve murdered, how many businesses I’ve corrupted, and how much political power I’ve gained? I’m building a global empire, Aurelio. And to start, the most influential people of the planet need to be subjugated.”

“You will never get away with this,” I growled through gritted teeth. 

“Darling, I already have.” Her smile was as frozen as the raging snowstorm roaring outside. 

Ms. Marwood plucked an ebony hairpin from her updo, letting her wavy hair stretch below her shoulders. The end of the hairpin was marked with the emblem of a shooting star. 

“This will be far easier for both of us if you hold still,” Ms. Marwood warned as she stalked towards me, brandishing the hairpin like a sword. 

“You’re not going to do anything to me!” I shrieked. 

Mr. Hyperion clamped his hand around my mouth, muffling my cries for help. 

A mad glee glittered in Ms. Marwood’s eyes. “Count to ten, Aurelio. I’m letting you embrace the truth.”

She stabbed the hairpin into the left side of my neck, while the smell of melting caramel began burning my sinuses. 

The world turned black. 

***

The young man in his early twenties slowly exited the taxi cab and meandered towards the outstretched arms of his parents. 

“Aurelio, we’ve missed you!” the father exclaimed. 

“Interesting,” he replied without a trace of emotion in him. 

The parents exchanged glances. 

“What is that black scar on your neck?” the mother demanded. “Why does it look like a shooting star?”

He didn’t answer. 

“Have you learnt anything useful during your four years in the Academy of Erebos?” the father tentatively inquired. 

“I’ve embraced the truth.” Aurelio continued onwards, into the house.