The Path of Ascension Chapter 341

Chapter 341

Kai sighed as his view changed from the brief stint of sunlight back to the monotonous stone of the tunnel. As he shifted in the very comfortable train seat he contrasted it with the uncomfortable lobby chair he had been sitting in almost a month ago with a snorting laugh.

Contrary to the consistent low level excitement he felt now, he had been filled with trepidation.

He had thought it was his moment, his big break, his time to shatter the shackles of mediocrity. He had just needed to perform well in his interview and everything could be his.

Looking back it was almost funny how much he had invested into something he hadn’t even signed up for himself.

His mentor, Professor Jhall, had suggested he apply to the Young Architects Great Redesign thanks to his Masters final project and how he incorporated the newest structural materials to come out of the War Department. While it was the first in its field he knew others were already copying his designs and that any pause would see his ideas overtaken. He had felt it was a bad idea and declined.

Looking back he could now see that Jhall hadn’t taken it well, but Kai had figured the subject was closed after the application date passed by with only a few more pleas for him to change his mind.

Or so he thought until he was called down to the dean’s office, who profusely congratulated him for his passing the preliminaries and bringing attention to their small university.

Kai had been stunned until he saw the smug face of Professor Jahll, who simply hung back and smiled. It didn’t take a genius to understand what had happened, and Kai had been too shocked to do anything but nod along at the time and afterward he had felt far too awkward at the thought of disappointing everyone by mentioning the misunderstanding.

Everyone else in the program were the children of established architects, who had connections and illustrious careers even before they graduated, helping their parents on much more important projects.

Then, there was Kai, the only child of a single mother who had worked two jobs to send him to secondary school, taking a place among the twelve slots.

It was a great honor, but he had also taken the slot of someone more worthy and he couldn’t help but worry about underhanded schemes such as claiming he had stolen someone else’s work or the like. It was unlikely, but even the accusation would ruin his career and prevent him from working in the field.

He had never encountered it himself, but he had heard rumors of such things happening to anyone without a sufficient background who tried to break into the upper echelons of academia.

It was almost funny to think about how far he had gotten into his own head but with the advantage of retrospective Kai knew he had just been covering for his own self doubt and wanting to assign any bad things to a perceived boogeyman. Not that such things didn’t happen, he was sure they did but the Young Architects was hardly the place for such underhanded tactics to go unnoticed. A dozen newspapers reported on each stage of the event and any such drama would be endlessly speculated on and taint the eventual winners’ careers irreparably.

And he had done well. His third round submission, a redesign of the Belfor Bridge that had been destroyed in the war with Tiefland, had actually been accepted and approved for construction which Kai had never expected.

He had been in school for so long and his first real build was going to be a bridge that was the lifeblood of the country.

That win also secured him a spot in the finals. The top three.

The final task was to redesign the Capitol building, which had reached its hundredth year standing and was slated for renovations. When the Democratic Republic of Noricum had been established, the Founders declared that every hundred years the youth of Noricum should be given the opportunity to direct their country and keep the old and stodgy from stagnating the country.

Part of that was that all elected leaders over forty years old had to step down after their latest appointment and that all major governmental buildings should be redesigned as a symbolic rebirth of the country.

It was a noble aspiration and Kai was incredibly proud that he could have even a small part in the second such rebirth.

To that end, he had put everything he had into the project.

He had been a nervous wreck as he presented his design, doubly so when he realized that three of the five architects on the committee were part of the established upper echelon architects.

Bradin Tru was a bit of a legend as his mother had designed the tunnel system through the Palatine mountain range, opening up the gentler coast of the continent to Noricum and her allies just twenty years ago. Untold riches were pulled out of the untamed wilderness, which had made the country one of the wealthiest in the world.

Next to him was Hallie Adam, whose grandfather had designed the interchanging dual lock system of the Tunja canal which had almost entirely eliminated water loss of the pinnacle lake and her family was elevated to the highest rungs of society thanks to the wealth the rebuild brought them.

Finally, there was Yagat Gall, who was the oldest architect there and without a doubt the most notable thanks to her design of the Ballar Wall, which had been the main reason Noricum had been able to resist the invasion from the Tiefland communists in the south twenty years ago.

The other two, while not part of the upper echelon per se, had deep connections to them via their working at their firms in the past and they collectively overawed Kai.

With his notoriety at an all time high, Kai had finished his Masters and started looking for jobs, even though the places he had interned at politely declined his applications.

Believing that the entrenched architect families were trying to strike back at him for competing by preventing him from getting an architect job Kai slipped through the security doors at a firm he had interned at to go to find one of his direct bosses who had seemed to like him while he was an intern, Jeremiah.

Without even bothering to say hello, Kai burst into the office and asked. “Why was my application rejected out of hand?”

Even thinking about the memory caused Kai to blush but the train was dim which prevented anyone from seeing the darkening of his cheeks.

Jeremiah had at least rolled with the sudden interruption and was a straight shooter.

It was just that Kai didn’t get the answer he expected. “Kid, after your success at the Young Architects competition, no one expects you to stay here. This is a third rate city existing only thanks to the old dried up steel mine. We don’t have a ton of growth opportunities here. The city isn’t growing so fast that someone with your skills can stick around in a company and move up. Everyone expects you to take a job at one of the top five. Anyone who even gets into the preliminaries of the Young Architects does. Someone like you who got to the top three? Our firm isn’t going to waste a month onboarding you for you to just leave when they give you an offer we can never match.”

He and Jeremiah talked a bit more, but the shock and anger had at least given way to understanding and his mentor had been proven correct.

He placed second in the competition. His design was flawed, but he had done well enough that news outlets started running biopsies about his life’s story as a sort of zero to hero story. Amusingly enough none of them had even bothered to ask for an interview but then that wasn’t the point of the articles.

The day after the results were announced, his life changed in a far more measurable way.

Dozens of first rate architect firms in the three largest cities reached out to him offering jobs with yearly salaries higher than his mother had made in the last decade. There were even promises of guaranteed promotions and raises built into the contracts which meant even with the higher cost of living in the cities he would still be well into the upper brackets of earning potential.

If only one had come in, Kai would have jumped on it and thanked his ancestors for their accumulated luck but with dozens of them, he was so numb to it all that he was able to look through them without getting overwhelmed.

None of those offers were the ones that caught his attention.

The coastal cities were long since established with little room to grow his skills unless he wanted to design highrises or suburban homes for the rest of his life. If he wanted to push himself he needed to look to the center of the continent where Noricum was trying to push back the aggressive wildlife. It was dangerous but the thought of being at the forefront of such exploration and settlement sounded… enticing.

From the reports that make headline news there would be dozens of challenges for a young architect to overcome. From creating buildings for living in a dozen different conditions, to diverting rivers, or repairing the walls of Gates Rest. It would push him in ways he hadn’t known he had wanted until he was presented with the opportunity.

Looking through his offers he found seven that were related to the center of the continent but five of those companies only seemed interested in trying to capitalize on the increased settlement of the coastal side of the Palatine mountain range. It was no doubt safer but it was also more of the same he could do in any other city.

That left just two final offers and Kai spent almost an hour going over everything he could find out about the companies.

The offers were a little less grandiose, with bonuses barely breaking the hundred thousand mark which was less than half of what some of the larger firms had offered but that was more than he had ever expected to be offered. It was also more than he needed.

Thanks to his mother’s efforts he didn’t have much university debt and this was more than enough to not only pay that off but buy a house in a nicer part of town, away from the haunted mansion down the road, as well as give his mother enough savings that she could go from working two jobs to working part time if she wanted.

While he had never been bothered by the supposedly haunted house his mother talked about how odd it made her and everyone else feel when she was younger. The feeling had seemed to go away twenty or so years ago but that didn’t stop her from consistently warning him from getting too close.

Like any kid had done the exact opposite and he had seen a few things he had no explanation for.

Still starting over in a place of supposed endless opportunities seemed… freeing. It was like he could leave everything he was behind and turn into something he wanted to be instead of remaining as the poor kid who had only ever had barely enough thanks to government or neighborly assistance. That identity felt like a wet sweater that he just couldn’t shed if he remained at home.

Decision made he accepted the offer and at the insistence of Professor Jhall, he even took a first class flight to the Palatine mountain range. Having not only substantial room in his chair, but personalized service by a flight attendant attractive enough to grace the cover of a magazine was a new experience, and Kai was sure he had stuttered more than a few times when ordering his in-flight refreshments. All of that had been overshadowed by the sight of the Palatine mountain range as they came in for their landing.

Large, huge, and massive were all descriptors that might be technically correct, but they vastly undersold the majesty of the mountain range. The average peak was just over twenty thousand feet with the tallest mountain reaching a massive thirty two thousand feet, and all of them were, at least in geological time frames, new mountains that were still growing taller as the two continental plates slowly pressed together.

The Palatines were not just the source of large quantities of metals pulled from the depths of the planet bringing riches and resources to Noricum but they also cut the Susran continent in two unequal halves.

While mountaineering experts had crossed the Palatines even as early as the Founding of Noricum, they were few and the ones that returned were fewer still. It wasn’t until technology had progressed enough that helicopters and airplanes were able to reach the heights necessary to cross the mountain range that they could facilitate large scale crossings.

The first three attempts at a coastal settling, done by Noricum’s southern neighbor, had failed spectacularly as the beachheads had been overrun by beasts of uncanny strength.

While the coastline of the continent was moderate in both flora and fauna, the other side of the Palatine range might well have been another planet. The wildlife was incredibly dangerous, with academics suspecting that the isolation created by the Palatine mountain range had allowed for a brutal ecological arms race, creating more and more ferocious predators and stronger and tougher prey animals until they reached the seemingly monster-like fauna of today. Even to take this train he had had to sign over a dozen forms stating he knew the risks that were shown on a hour long video he had to sit through.

It wasn’t until Noricum had completed the tunnel that the continent truly opened up. That was just twenty years ago and it had taken almost a decade to finish creating a single well defended settlement on each side of the Palatine tunnel protecting said tunnel.

Showing his architect schooling once Kai boarded the train he had marveled at the construction necessary to facilitate the crossing. The tunnel through the Palatines was six hundred miles long and almost entirely underground. That caused the five hour train ride to be done in sealed cabins as there was just too much rock overhead to bring enough air down.

That had been one of the largest hurdles the original digging of the tunnel had faced and the few disasters had been well taught in Kai’s early years of his architect degree.

Still that was only so interesting and why he let his attention drift.

In the dim light of the cabin his across the seat neighbor flipped a lighter and a small ball of flame appeared in his hand.

Kai’s mind stuttered as he analyzed the brief instant of image that he had seen before the flame went out but he hadn’t seen a lighter.

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His attention was pulled away from the man’s hands to the woman next to him who backhanded his chest. That movement caused her chest to ripple in a way that made his mouth go dry. He didn’t know what it was but he had been seeing more pretty women in the last few days than he had seemingly seen in his life. As he noticed that he also noticed that the man was uncommonly attractive, clean skin, symmetrical features, and piercing eyes meant he could have graced the same covers as the woman without batting an eye.

He was sure the woman diagonal from him had her own story but Kai couldn’t understand why someone who had chiseled abs even when sitting down combined with such a beautiful face would be going to such a dangerous area instead of taking an easier path through life.

He must not have been as subtle as he tried to be as he caught a smirk on the woman’s face the one time he looked away from the window when their in-travel meals came. The woman after finishing her meal started eating her dessert of caramel popcorn one at a time darting her tongue out to grab each kernel at a time. It might have been innocent enough if she didn’t watch him the entire time.

Kai almost got up and ran as the teasing reached a tipping point but thankfully she ran out of popcorn and pulled out a pillow to take a nap.

Not having brought his own pillow, Kai did his best to copy her. He wasn’t sure when he fell asleep but he was awoken with a metaphorical punch to the face as daylight returned to the world.

His breath wasn’t stolen by the light however, but the sight of the forest on the other side of the Palatine that they could see below the city. The train made a few long and slow switchbacks to reach the lower elevation of the city, which gave Kai almost half an hour to gawk, but he couldn’t help it and he wasn’t alone.

It was truly like entering another world. The trees he could see were all on average at least twice the size of normal trees on the other side of the Palatines and here they seemed to stretch out forever.

When the train car unsealed, Kai got a second shock.

He felt like the air was hyperoxygenated as the first breath seemed to course through him like a shot of the first true breath he had ever breathed. The feeling faded quickly, but it was a better pick me up than any coffee he had even choked down during his studies.

He wanted more, but no matter how deep he breathed he found there was nothing extra like there had been in that first breath.

His phone pinged and directed him to where he met his guide, who took him to the Falkner Architect firm. The building itself was simple and coarse like most other buildings in Gate’s Rest, but Kai didn’t miss how well built they were. The outer walls are a full three feet thick and the outer doors made of heavy steel and no glass but a peephole. He also noticed the windows had interior shutters made from the same material and with similar sturdy construction. He had read there were attacks on the city but he still swallowed at the thought of what such sturdy defenses were meant to keep out.

The woman who greeted him was a bit of a surprise with lighter skin tone than the typical dark chestnut of most citizens of Noricum, more reminiscent of the old continent countries around Arilanding and their burnished oak skintones.

“Bree Falkner, nice to meet you.”

Proffering his hand to his new boss, Kai tried not to let his surprise show, but Bree clearly noticed. “Yes, my family came from the old continent. I emigrated shortly after the Palatine mountain range was opened up for the opportunities this offered. I even have Noricum citizenship. Any more questions about me or can we start the onboarding?”

Kai felt himself blush for what felt like the dozenth time today but pushed through it. “Sorry. I just never meant anyone from the old continent. They are so insular after the last world war and all. But it’s nice to meet you and I’m ready to start working. I have all of my credentials if you’d like to review them.”