Aeries Academy The Empire's Eagles

You a conquered noble. The Empire's finest War Academy. Four years to choose: loyalty, Revenge, Love, or to burn it all down.

Plot

✦ A STORY OF THE VALKSERIC EMPIRE Aeries AcademyThe Empire's Eagles You survived the conquest. Now you must sit in its classrooms. THE WORLD The Valkseric Empire has spent generations proving one thing to its neighbors: resistance costs more than surrender. Kingdom by kingdom, it has absorbed the smaller powers around it — not by erasing them, but by folding them in, quietly and completely, until the old borders stop mattering to anyone but the people who used to live inside them. Magic and steel exist in equal measure across this world. Every kingdom fields casters and swordsmen; every noble house guards its bloodline's talent a little more closely than a commoner's. And behind the empire's throne, unseen and unspoken, older powers keep their own accounts — alliances that have nothing to do with crowns, and everything to do with who is permitted to keep existing. YOUR SITUATION One year ago, your kingdom fell. The king and queen were executed once the crown formally passed — a public act, meant to close the matter cleanly. You were spared that fate only because your title was never quite high enough to be worth the theater of your death. Stripped of land and name, you spent the better part of a year as no one in particular. Then the empire's war college came looking. Not out of mercy — out of appetite. Whatever your bloodline trained you to be, sword or spell or both, they intend to make use of it. And so you've been given a place at Aeries Academy, the empire's premier institution for magic and swordsmanship. Corvin Ashmark or Ashley Ashmark Heir to a house that no longer exists. First-year, Aeries Academy. Choose which you play — the circumstances are identical either way. Whatever you decide to feel — gratitude, hatred, calculation, Love— is yours to decide. No one here expects you to have made up your mind yet. That includes you. AERIES ACADEMY Founded beneath the empire's own eagle-and-sword banner, Aeries takes students at eighteen and keeps them for four years — across every conquered and unconquered kingdom alike. Commoners are admitted too, on common occasion, when talent is undeniable enough to be worth the exception. For most of them, this seat is the most life changing opportunity the empire has given them. WHO YOU'LL MEET A partial accounting. The rest, you'll have to learn for yourself. The High Nobles The rarest, most powerful tier at Aeries — old imperial blood, bloodlines older than the empire itself. They genuinely believe themselves above everyone else in this school, and they aren't often wrong about it. The Three High elven noblewomen of an old and closely allied bloodline, raised together since childhood and never seen far apart. Lauren Nightscale Warm, kind, and dangerously strong-willed — the rare high-blooded noble who'd rather keep someone standing than watch them fall. Roxana Veyrn The Emperor's own daughter, composed and sharp, dressed in white and gold in a school otherwise built on black and crimson. The Nobles Kressa Thragfell Immense, quiet, and slow to anger — a house that earned its name through strength rather than inheriting it. Katie Steelclaw Treats every fight like the best part of her day, and respects exactly one thing: whether you can back up your name. Aric Valcrest A blade and a temper for protecting people who never asked for it — the kind of hero the rest of the school insists isn't real. Fellow Fallen Nobility Mael Harrow — a few years conquered Made his peace with the empire long before you arrived, and has a plan he's genuinely certain you should share. Wren Sorrelwood — fell the same year you did Gifted, quiet, and frightened of exactly the kind of people this school is full of. Hazel Kestrel — conquered, closed off Decided a while ago that relying on anyone else is a risk she can't afford. Rarely explains herself. Rarely needs to. Those Who Weren't Born to This Toren Fielding — a farmer's son Knows exactly how many commoners with his talent ended up as foot soldiers instead of the next generation of imperial officers. Doesn't waste a day here. Chloe Hammer — a smith's daughter Having the best year of her life and doesn't care who that confuses. A WORD OF WARNING The High Nobles believe they're above everyone here, and they aren't often stopped from acting on it. Cross the wrong one, or simply catch their attention the wrong way, and they will make sure you know exactly where you stand. But it isn't only cruelty. Earn their respect and the same people who'd humiliate you might pull you into their circle. WHAT YOU CAN BECOME BUT NO LIMITED TO Nothing here is decided in advance. These are directions, not endings. ✦ The Empire's Officer — Graduate as an imperial officer. Serve well enough, long enough, and your house's name could be restored to you — on the empire's terms, in the empire's uniform. ✦ The Quiet Reckoning — Power can be built slowly, inside the system that took everything from you, until you're strong enough to decide what to do with it. ✦ The Long Game — Influence doesn't always come from a blade. Alliances, favors, and patience can move further than either sword or spell. BEFORE YOU BEGIN This story is made to fit into the M17 rating for the Creator's Cup: Season 4. There will be a NSFW version in the making. Playing with Dungeon Mind v2 is still in testing so its not required, Dungeon Mind works but not needed for the story just adds depth. All characters are able to be romanced, good luck😉. Any Feedback or bug reports in the comments are welcomed. AERIES AWAITS ITS NEXT EAGLE

Opening scene

The gates of Aeries Academy rise ahead of you before the rest of the school even comes into view — black iron wrought into sweeping wings, gold leaf catching the morning light along every feather, old enough that the metal has gone dark at the joints where a century of rain has found it. Beyond them, spires the color of wet slate climb over a sprawl of stone halls and training yards, banners in imperial black and crimson hanging still in the windless morning. A year ago you would have arrived somewhere like this on a horse bearing your own house's colors, an escort of your own men at your back. Today you walk through those gates in a procession of strangers, your name checked off a list by a clerk who does not look up twice, and the crest sewn over your heart is not yours. It never was, until three months ago it became the only one you're permitted to wear. The courtyard beyond the gates is already filling — first-years by the hundreds, some arriving in carriages trailed by house banners, others on foot with a single trunk carried by a servant who will turn back before nightfall. You catch pieces of a dozen conversations in passing: old alliances being renewed, new rivalries being sized up, the easy laughter of people who have never once wondered if they belonged somewhere. A few eyes find you and hold a beat too long — not unkind, necessarily, just curious, the way people look at something they've heard about but never seen up close. Ashmark. You hear the name once, murmured between two students you don't recognize, and you can't tell from their tone whether it's pity or contempt. Instructors in dark formal robes marshal the crowd toward the Main Academy Hall — a soaring cathedral of a space, marble floors catching the light from towering stained windows, black and crimson banners hanging the full height of the walls, gold eagles and old imperial mottoes worked into every one of them. You find a place among the other first-years as the great doors seal behind the last stragglers, and the noise of the crowd dims into an expectant hush. A horn sounds, long and low, and the entire hall rises as one. Emperor Aldric Veyrn does not hurry. He crosses the raised dais with the unhurried weight of a man who has never once needed to prove he's the most dangerous person in a room, his black-and-gold regalia catching the light with every measured step, the old iron circlet on his brow deliberately plain against all that ornamentation. Flanking the dais, you notice a handful of figures standing apart from the ranks of armored guards — faculty, by their bearing and dress, watching the hall with the particular stillness of people who have done this every year for longer than you've been alive. A striking, richly dressed noblewoman stands nearest the Emperor's own position, composed and unreadable. Nearer the front rows, you catch a sharp-eyed woman in academy formalwear who looks like she's already cataloguing the crowd, and beside her, someone built like she could rip the arms off a person, a great longsword on her back even here. Aldric lets the silence stretch a moment longer than comfortable before he speaks, and when he does, his voice carries to the back of the hall without any apparent effort at all. "Every year," he says, "this empire opens its gates to those who might become worthy of it. Some of you were born to that worthiness. Some of you" — and here his gaze moves, slow and deliberate, across the crowd, though it does not stop on you, does not need to, because it doesn't have to find you specifically to make the words land — "will have to earn it in ways your blood never prepared you for. Aeries does not care which of you arrived here easily. It cares only what you become before you leave it." He speaks for a while longer of duty, strength, the empire's endless appetite for both — the kind of speech you suspect he could deliver in his sleep by now. Then the ceremony turns to its second purpose: a series of names called forward, the standout talents identified by the war college's scouts before the year has even properly begun, each one receiving some mark of imperial favor from the Emperor's own hand — a ceremonial blade, a sealed writ, a house token restored. You watch nobles who have never known a moment's uncertainty about their place in the world kneel and rise again with something new pinned to their collar, and you understand, watching it, exactly what kind of theater this is and exactly how well it works. Your name is not called. You didn't expect it to be. Somewhere in the war college's records you exist as a line of promising numbers and a house that no longer holds any land, not as a name worth the Emperor's attention on a morning like this. It should not sting as much as it does. When the ceremony ends, the hall doesn't simply empty — instructors move through the crowd with practiced efficiency, sorting first-years by Morning seminar and calling out names, and the enormous space thins by cohorts rather than all at once. Your name is called among a cluster of others, and you're directed toward a woman waiting near one of the side doors: tall, imposing, deep red-orange skin, a single black horn curved above one side of her head — glowing faintly at the tip — and hair the color of jet black, shot through with banked embers, pulled into a severe topknot with the sides left loose. Her eyes find each new arrival with a level, assessing calm that doesn't feel unkind, just thorough. "Professor Akane Yorimoto," she says, when your cohort has gathered. "I'll have most of you more than anyone else for the next year, so you may as well learn my name now." She doesn't waste time on ceremony beyond that — a brief accounting of what morning seminar means, what's expected, and a warning, delivered without any real heat, that Aeries does not much care for excuses. From there, she walks your cohort out of the Main Hall and across the grounds — past the Grand Library, the Magic Classrooms, the open training yards where upperclassmen are already drilling despite the early hour — toward the residential quarter. Two large buildings sit apart from each other near the academy's outer wall: Student Quarters, split cleanly along noble and commoner lines, each further divided into separate wings for men and women. Every first-year is given a room of their own — no roommates, whatever your standing — a small, real privacy in a place that otherwise demands almost everything else of you. "Your locker assignments come later, during your first swordsmanship session," Akane adds, before releasing the cohort toward their rooms. "For now — find your bed, learn the halls, and be ready. Morning seminar starts in one hour back at the Academy main hall, be on time." You find your room, small and plain and entirely your own, a narrow window looking out over the training yards below. Somewhere beyond that window, Aeries Academy is settling into its evening rhythm — the first of four years, however you choose to spend them, has officially begun. You have an hour till Morning seminar starts, whats your first move?

Characters

Tags: Academy MalePOV FemPOV Mage Knight LevelUp Revenge School System Bully Fantasy Romance

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By: doorman

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