Printing Press & The Enemy Of Natural Order

In the week leading up to his enrollment in the Pakhangba Monastery, Korou was filled with innumerable paperwork, most of which he never expected. Not from this world.

His past attempts at periodisation, blatantly painstaking and chaotic, had reached its conclusion over a year ago. It was the disparities with his knowledge, provided by the environment and the world's vastness.

They had magic, but the process wasn't explained. They had coins, but the economic framework was abstract. There were career paths and an education system, but the society was agrarian and rural. It lacked planned urban structures. It was an amalgamation of the best of all periods from his previous world and less.

Defeated, once again with a twitching brow, he glanced at the piece of paper cast to his side. On it were fonts, printed, not scribbled, printed. Although rudimentary, with an ink spill; it still was an advancement this era shouldn't have had.

"I want you to fill it." Anemone, his mother, sat cross-legged on the jute-woven chatai. Her fingers, calloused by the housework, tapped on the first row of the form. "They are asking for your name, your father's name, mine, and your age. It's nothing that you don't know."

Korou gave it a scrutinising gaze. His eyes squinted; the letter print was tiny. The block space beside it was barely enough to fit in the letters.

"We have a printing press in Lamphi?" He pulled the paper to his side.

"You know what a printing press is?..." Her mother's voice drifted away as she mumbled a few words in another language. "Yes, we do. Though it is only used by the Monastery. And sometimes for letters to the Imperial court."

"But then how come I never saw the book? The only one I know is what Atla brings, and even that is handwritten" He probed. "Actually, forget books, there's not even a scroll at home."

"There is, though." She rolled her sleeves and draped her phanek before producing a bamboo pen. "It's in our attic..." She tilted her head towards the master bedroom. "Under our bed, Nono...your Baba only ever reads it at dawn or late at night. Plus, the language used is tough, so I never brought it to you."

"Fair enough," He accepted the pen. "Would I get more in the monastery?"

"An entire collection." She gave him a warm smile. Her bun-trimmed hair bounced as she crawled to his side, peeking at the form. "They're in the Sanctorum. Printed and handwritten texts have been archived for over four thousand years there...Now fill out the form; you must turn it in by dusk."

Writing came naturally to Korou. He wasn't the one to brag, but he was prideful about his handwriting. He had worked hard on it. With each letter carefully jotted down, he glanced at his mother's proud smile. A warm feeling spread across his chest. He loved the validation.

It was rudimentary, unlike his postgraduate and PhD, and this form had no section that required his cognition to process at maximum, or so he thought.

He paused, his brows furrowed, as he sailed his finger over the final column; Write your choice of study, if not decided, write down at least three that interest you.

"Can I leave it blank?" Korou asked.

"It's mandatory." His mother declared.

"I am not sure, Ma..." He scratched his temple, giving a silent plea towards his mother.

"Don't give me that look, Ko," She shook her head. "I don't run the Monastery, Naobi does. If you don't fill that section, the form won't be accepted."

"I am only six..." He mumbled an excuse.

"It's not a final choice," She said, tracing the options beside the column. "They even gave you some choices, Shaman, Hunter, Agriculture and Warrior."

He pursed his lips and stared at them. There was an inherent wish for the letters to break the bounds of paper and dance off, saving his cognition from taking a step for the future.

"Just pick any three." His mother said after a pause. "You can always change it after your second year."

The Monastery, despite its enchanting construct, was poorly placed at the summit of Mount Pakhangba. With over a thousand earthen steps carved into the ridge, Korou took the hundredth step, his chest constricting as his tongue seeped dry.

"Water?" Atla, who walked down a few steps, offered her erum flask.

"Thank...you." He huffed and accepted. After a quick gulp, he landed on the steps. His arms stretched out, gazing at the valley below. From his height, Lamphi was framed into a compact tableau, with its gabled houses, the Bazaar, and the Pakhangba Lampak all clustered deep within the valley.

His house rested nearly four hundred steps below.

"We won't make it in time if you rest now," said Atla, but scooted beside him. She pulled up the sleeves of her Cyan chuba, revealing a three-beaded Karunglai—bracelet—it symbolised her year as a student in the Monastery's educational Institute. "Plus, Grandmother...Headpriestess Naobi despises tardiness; she won't accept your form, and you'll have to wait another year."

"She will surely not do that," Korou replied lazily. "I mean, we are barely six years old. What do we know about time?"

"Exactly, this is a test." She replied ghastly, her eyes distant, reliving a past she would rather forget.

"For what?" He joked. "My punctuality?"

"Discipline." She replied.

Korou believed the stories of Naobi's strictness to be an overexaggerated tale until he saw her standing by the Sangathong—golden gateway entrance to the Monastery. She leaned over the sculpted dragon-lions, her arms over her staff as she scrutinised the forms.

He was fifth in the line, with at least twenty behind him. He peeked above, the clouds fleeted gently with hues of orange cast over their sides.

Dong

The chime of the resonant monastery bell echoed past Korou, filling the crowd with urgency. A flock of Crownbills flapped its wings; dusk was only a few moments away.

"Fail." Korou heard Naobi's voice echo; she waved the form and handed it back to the child. He couldn't see the boy, but he listened to his whimper. "Try again next year, Inshlemba, this time you mispelled your surname."

Mispelled his surname?! What is this?! A military academy?!

Korou was wide-eyed, casting a glance at Atla for explanation. She simply shook her head.

"Next time, try to write the Lamphi symbols with a clear line," Naobi said with a cold face. "It took me hours to navigate your gibberish, and it was still barely passable, until you wrote your e's as w's. Study hard, and maybe next time I will accept you."

By the time it was Korou's turn, the sun was barely visible. With its glowing arc peeking from the Western Meru mountain range, Naobi's cheeks glowed in twilight. Everything else was dark.

"If you were even a second late, I would have sent you back like the others behind." The twenty or more who had been painstakingly waiting for their imminent doom lowered their heads and retraced their steps. "Consider yourself extremely lucky..." Her brows furrowed as she paused.

"Korou?!" She exclaimed in delight and confusion. "Korou Koburu Kshetriba."

"Yes ma'am..." He spoke cautiously, slowly. "That will be me."

"The pup has grown so much." Naobi put aside her staff and knelt. Her palms flickered in sparks, releasing a spiralling flame. "Look at you, I wasn't expecting you to make it today. Nongyan told me you have been lazy but also brilliant...if I had known you were in the final cycle, I would have surely frolicked a bit more."

"Thank you then for not knowing." He replied sharply.

Naobi chuckled, her wrinkled face contorting into a smile.

"Here," She produced a single beaded Karunglai. "Welcome to the Monastery. Classes start next week. You are to reach the classes in the central Pagoda's second level 'Pou', right after the third ring from the Monastery's bell. Even a second late would lead to no classes for that day. Oh, and don't forget to buy the perquisites from the Pungthokpa Loukhat shop in the Bazaar." Naobi cast a glance at Atla, who gazed silently at their exchange. "My great-granddaughter here will guide you through the specifics. See you in class."

"Does your grandmother err...great grandmother hates me or something?" Korou asked, jumping off the final flight of the step to the rusted, soiled path. They were three tiers from his home, walking past the village chief's majestic mansion.

"Grandmother is fine, no need to add the great." Atla shook her head, waving her arms, calling for the Cyan trails; which Korou had learnt were insects akin to his world's fireflies, except with magical properties. "And no, she is just an eccentric, it's her way of drilling the importance of discipline in the young ones."

"We are barely six or seven, if some failed last year, too." He grimaced at the idea of repeating a grade because you were late in submitting an application. "And why? It's not as if we are at war or something."

"Not anymore," said Atla with a shrug. "But we were."

"We were?" Korou, being as lost as he was about the workings of this world, tilted his head. "But with whom? We share no borders-" He pointed over at the shadow cast by the Meru mountain range with a faint glimmer of moonlight. "-and last I remember..." He curled his fingers and put them over his chin. "Seven Silais despised violence after the err...what was that..."

"The Hundred-Year War?" She offered.

"Yes. That." Korou remember hearing that tale by the bards on the Bazaar street. "I am sure that might still be an anecdote, but things seem peaceful."

"War doesn't only mean humans killing each other." Atla stopped, her profile illuminated in cyan. Spring breeze trailed past her as she gazed at the starry skies. "Remember Asamahi?"

"How could I forget my own nemesis?"

"Neme-who?"

"Err, I mean the one who was going to eat me."

"Right." Atla shot a suspicious look but continued. "It's the beast of his kind that we were at war with, or specifically, this world is at war with."

"Explain, kind?" asked Korou, his mind racing with scholarly possibilities. "Is it a species or some kind of animal or-"

"We call it Demiurges, the enemy of natural order." She finished.