Before I knew it, it was the weekend before the winter solstice, meaning winter was just around the corner and the end of the year was only a month away. It also meant that it was time for me to attend the only faculty meeting I somewhat regularly attended. And because of my willingness to attend this meeting, it was being held on one of everybody’s precious Ymirdays, the first day of the weekend and last day of the week.

  I entered one of the conference rooms in the main administration building with some degree of reluctance. The others were already there, and clearly waiting for me, as Iakovos and Lupa had managed to start arguing about who was stronger again.

  One of my more recent excuses for why I didn’t attend these kinds of meetings more regularly.

  The conference room was as one would have expected: plain walls with some historical paintings hanging on it, a couple of large windows, and a large table in the centre. Not that I cared for the supposed significance of those paintings, as I was a strong believer in that we shouldn’t venerate the past. Nor did the slight chill, caused by an early cold snap, coming in through the windows bother me.

  Eweleanor was seated at the head of the table with Iakovos and Lupa on each side of her. Next to Iakovos were Ravi and Croaxana, whereas next to Lupa were Fēnhóng and my empty seat.

  Who were they? Well, none other than the heads of each of Paideia’s departments. Iakovos Haddad was the stubborn and overly competitive human man in charge of the mage department. Lupa Cacciatore was the equally stubborn and equally competitive wolfkin woman in charge of the knight department. Ravi Patel was the easily distractible man in charge of the artificer department. Croaxana B?lt?rescu was the taciturn frogkin woman in charge of the tender department. Lóng Fēnhóng was the eccentric dragonkin man in charge of the general studies department.

  The general studies, mage and knight departments were rather self-explanatory, however the other two tended to need some explaining. The artificer department was in charge of teaching enchanting and alchemy, with some minor attention to artisanship like blacksmithing, leatherworking and other such crafts. The tender department taught animal handling and herbology, as well as tending to the surrounding lands and the animals Paideia housed.

  I sat down at the empty seat and placed Fluminix down on the table in front of me, keeping her from wandering off with a few barriers.

  “Mister Haddad, Miss Cacciatore, if you please?” Eweleanor asked insistently and the two of them ceased their bickering. “Now, seeing as we’re all finally here, let us start this meeting.”

  Right, as for what this meeting was about and why I was attending, it was the annual meeting to plan the field trip the school organised every year for the fourth-years. Well, saying that it was the school which organised it was a bit of a stretch, because I was the driving force behind it.

  It all started centuries ago when I was frustrated with the lack of corpses around to give my students a practical exercise in reanimating corpses the size of humanoids. So, I impulsively took them on a trip that lasted for about a month without informing the other teachers. The results were... mixed and quite the scolding on my part.

  I had kind of… forgotten about the existence of other teachers at the time.

  Anyway, since then the headteacher, the department heads and I had been holding a meeting like this each year. Though, technically, I had a seat at each department head meeting, but I just never felt like attending except the ones pertaining to the planning of the field trip.

  “We all know why we’re here, and why we’re meeting during the weekend,” Eweleanor continued. “Morgana, do you have any suggestions for this school year’s field trip?”

  “Pontikiz in Altyn Yalga,” I replied curtly, as my attention had already managed to drift back to entertaining Fluminix.

  “Why there specifically?” Fēnhóng asked, with more patience than Eweleanor was about to. Though, I couldn’t help but notice, from the corner of my eye, how he leaned closer in excitement.

  “Never been,” I answered with a shrug, my focus still more on Fluminix than the meeting. The little rascal was trying to take playful nibbles of my fingers.

  “You have somewhere you’ve never been to before?” asked a somewhat baffled Croaxana.

  I finally refocused on the people I was in a meeting with. Though, I looked almost as confused as Croaxana and the rest of them.

  “What?” I asked in response, probably more coldly than was necessary.

  The others shared a look with each other, and I could feel myself starting to get annoyed.

  “It’s just... We all, kind of, assumed you’d been,” Fēnhóng hatched, after clearing his throat. “Considering it has some impressive ancient ruins.”

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  I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. Of course they’d assumed that. The ancient lich must have naturally visited all the ancient ruins before.

  “Well, I’m sorry for being so poorly travelled,” I grumbled back. “Of course, I’ve visited the general region and the Khanate of Altyn Yalgan before. Just never Pontikiz.

  “In any case, the city’s surroundings offer plenty of biodiversity for the tender department to showcase. The fighting style of the Khanate of Altyn Yalgan is very different from what the knight department teaches here at the school. The city houses its own magic school, which offers an exchange possibility for the mage department. And there are plenty of corpses for me to play with.

  “Oh, right, and I’m sure there will be something for the artificer department as well.”

  “Hey! Kindly don’t just dismiss us out of hand like that,” Ravi protested, but I pointedly ignored him. The dismissal was completely intentional, after all.

  “Furthermore, it lies within the maximum set travel distance that has been set out for a field trip. It would take us about ten days by ship from Portisola, which, combined with the travel time to the port city, would still leave us with roughly one and a half weeks to spend in Pontikiz,” I finished my reasoning for my choice.

  “Just within the maximum travel distance,” Eweleanor warned, whilst narrowing her eyes at me.

  I shrugged, because she had a point. Pontikiz was between ten to fifteen days sailing from Portisola. That isn’t even factoring in the time it would take to reach Portisola from here, which was another day of travel by river boat. So, all together, the journey there would take between eleven to sixteen days, which…

  “We’ll make it,” I rebuked, without a hint of concern. We would be travelling with some of the best mages in the world, myself naturally included, and we should be able to smooth out any foul weather we’d encounter, ensuring that we’d arrive in roughly eleven days.

  Eweleanor looked wholly exasperated with me, whilst Iakovos gave Ravi a smug look. I felt a bit guilty for unintentionally making Eweleanor’s life more difficult, however I rolled my eyes at Iakovos’ competitive nature. He just had to try and assert his dominance.

  “Obviously mages can do anything that artificers struggle with,” Iakovos challenged Ravi. “Like, oh I don’t know, an airship?”

  Ravi crossed his arms defensively and frowned.

  The airship had been an aspiration of enchanters and mages alike, for several centuries. It was already something people were dreaming about when I was still young and non-undead. However, it always stumbled upon similar difficulties. For one, the mana efficiency of keeping something afloat, let alone flying, was atrocious and thus not viable. Secondly, dragons.

  Dragons were the apex predators, and the younger ones tended to be… territorial and prideful. Not unlike humanoid teenagers, I supposed. Though, with the firepower to back it up.

  “We’re working on it,” he grumbled. “Besides, it’s not as if one airship will get all of the students to wherever we decide to go.”

  It would have been foolish not to agree with that and Iakovos looked at least somewhat chastised. The biggest problem that the faculty faced each year when planning the yearly field trip wasn’t necessarily where to go, but logistics. Each year had exactly nine hundred seventy-two students, courtesy of my insistence on teaching basic magic theory to every single first-year. Considering there were only fifty possible hours of classes each week and each class lasting one and two-thirds of an hour, I could only teach thirty classes each week and three of those were the fourth-, fifth- and sixth-year necromancy classes.

  Including teachers and adventurers, for added security, which meant we were talking about just over a thousand people travelling together. One thousand thirty-two, to be precise. Which would require somewhere between nineteen and forty-two river boats, depending on their make, and eight Portisolan tarides, freight galleys.

  It also meant I was going to have to deal with merchants. I… disliked dealing with merchants. Especially, when it pertains to disrupting normal trade.

  “As fascinating as the subject is, I believe we are getting off topic,” Eweleanor said, as she leaned on the table with her head propped up on her intertwined hands. “We still have a lot to iron out. If we all accept Morgana’s proposal, of course.”

  After a quick discussion the others all agreed that the upcoming field trip would be to Pontikiz, not that I expected much else. Over the centuries since the first field trip that I’d organised, the headteacher and the department heads tended to agree with whatever I proposed. Obviously, this meant that I didn’t always propose any destination and let them decide for themselves. Or deliberately fail to attend the meeting. It has happened a few times before.

  Still, the following discussion over the specifics and logistics was one I quickly tuned out, having heard it hundreds of times already. Most of it would fall onto me, anyway.

  Instead, I nodded and hummed noncommittedly at the appropriate moments, whilst I started to play with Fluminix, and give her belly rubs. She had really started to like those recently, and I, as a doting and depressed lich, was very much obliged to indulge her.

  After a few hours of back-and-forth discussion, we, or rather they, had reached a preliminary plan for the field trip and divided the necessary work between the six of us. Each department head, as usual, would be responsible for planning their respective department’s activities, Eweleanor was responsible for the scheduling and smoothing over any ruffled feathers, and I, as predicted, was responsible for the rest.

  Though, I would probably be smoothing ruffled feathers myself, just not diplomatic ones. I’d have my hands full with wrangling the merchants, and I didn’t feel like having to rehash old complaints and points of contention.

  The disruption of trade and availability of adventurers, due to the field trip, is one that was often raised by both the Portisolan Republic and the Luminous States, the two rivalling powers on the Umbrean peninsula and the school’s next-door neighbours. Neither were overly happy about the resources that we tied up for an entire month, and they had been trying to enforce restrictions on the field trip. With no success, I may add.

  As soon as the meeting wrapped up, I picked up Fluminix and said my quick goodbyes, before I set off for a little stroll on the school grounds with the rascal hanging off my shoulder. She was really starting to get too big for that, though, as she was already larger than the average house cat.