“Some days everything goes according to plan and no one behaves in an entirely unreasonable manner. I tell myself that. I invest my faith in that. I bend my will to shaping the cosmos for that to be a Thing Which Is True. There is, I am coming to believe, no greater or more powerful magic I could ever shape than to make that belief into reality for at least one damn day and despite the centuries which have shown me otherwise, I will persist in my belief till the stars themselves are ground down to dust if that is what it takes.”

-Xindir Harshek Doxel of the First Flame

The screams which wrenched my eyes opened started at most a few seconds after Jalaren called for the match to begin. That seemed  remarkably fast given that the Cadets seemed to like to play with their victims. The first scream was one of simple fright, the kind any sort of jump scare might provoke. The quiet that followed was replaced by more screams only a heartbeat later.  It took me about that long to work out that it wasn’t Mellina who was screaming.

My innards were a mess still and for a moment I was left wondering if I’d scrambled the visual feed from my eyes or perhaps my brain as a whole. 

In the arena, Mellina was sitting down in the blue quadrant. Her legs were folded beneath her and her arms were outstretched in a highly dramatic and, I suspected, wholly unnecessary pose. At first glance she looked like she was concentrating fiercely, but the tremor that ran through her body wasn’t one of dire exertion.

She was laughing.

She was laughing and doing an excellent job of hiding it. The crowds seemed to fooled, with the applicants, cadets, and even most of the spectators buying her performance.

Of course said performance was helped by the Cadet who was flailing viciously at enemies that were either invisible or purely figments of his imagination. Since he wasn’t dead, or even bleeding, I assumed Mellina’s magics were messing with his senses somehow, and I gained a new appreciation of how horrifying illusions could be.

I’d ripped a Cadet into multiple pieces, but the poor fool who’d been so eager to face Mellina looked like he would have preferred it if I’d jumped into the ring instead.

Not that she was totally safe it turned out.

In a desperate bid to defeat some horror only he could see, the Cadet flung a curtain of burning tar out with a wave of his hand. By luck more than anything else, he’d picked a direction that was facing Mellina and she went from pretending to be concentrating to dodging as fast as she could.

To her credit, Mellina was pretty fast. She almost avoided the whole stream of fiery tar. Sadly ‘almost’ still meant that a fair bit splashed on her and I had to fight to stay in my seat as I watched enough fall on her arm and shoulder to give her a nasty burn.

My reward for keeping a cool head was getting to watch what the Cadet did. The moment his tar hit Mellina, he seemed to snap out of whatever spell she had on him.

Emphasis on ‘seemed too’. 

In a blink, he went from desperately thrashing at the air, to regaining his compose and focusing on his quarry.

The sound amplification spell made sure we all heard the various profanities he hurled at Mellina and the Cadet’s cheered him on as he began to stalk towards her, raising walls of burning tar on either side of her.

Or rather where he apparently thought she was. As the walls went up, we saw that the space he hemmed in was entirely empty. The real Mellina had been forced to flee from his attack into the basic green quadrant, but the Cadet was moving and throwing his attacks as though she were standing a few feet to the left in the red quadrant.

I’m not sure if he even saw it as the red quadrant though since Mellina wouldn’t have had any reason to position herself there given that her ‘attacks’ were all magical in nature.

He got about halfway into the red quadrant before he reached out, grasped empty air and mimed throwing someone to the ground.

“Beg for your life,” he said. “Beg for it and maybe I’ll let you be one of my slaves.”

I probably shouldn’t have gotten out of my seat at that point, and this time Doxle was nearby enough to do something about it. In this case he didn’t paralyze me though. He simply laid a hand on my should and said, “Watch.”

I don’t know if he could see the illusions Mellina was casting – he probably could – but he was right. If I’d jumped into the arena and disemboweled the Cadet like I’d planned to, the poor boy would have had cause to thank me.

Instead, he seemed to hear an answer to his demand that he didn’t like and struck out with another stream of burning tar, enough to drown and immolate his imaginary adversary. If Mellina had been there she would have died in agony and I would have had to make good on my threat, and then probably die after jumping into the Cadet’s box and taking out as many more of them as I could manage in an effort to purge some of the madness that had clearly gripped the world when I wasn’t looking.

Instead, he turned away and raised his hands in victory, waving his hands to drink in the cheering of a crowd which simply wasn’t there. 

His waving froze and his body shuddered as Mellina got back to her feet. 

She was in pain and she wasn’t laughing anymore.

With deliberate slowness, the Cadet began to turn back to the spot where he’d ‘’killed’ Mellina. I couldn’t see his face but every muscle in his body was rippling with the terror that was running through him.

He turned and ran and, for a moment, I thought Mellina was going to force him to run off the platform and fall to a potentially messy demise.

She wasn’t that kind though.

Before he could reach the edge of the arena, she cast something in front of him that was even more horrifying than whatever was chasing him.

I didn’t want to have a clear view of his trousers gaining a sudden pool on their front, but it was difficult to look away from the spectacle he was making.

With another, still more shrill scream, he collapsed and started scrambling backwards. Burning tar flew in front of him, to both sides of him, and (somewhat disastrously from his point of view) above him.

Casters are not always, or even often, immune to the effects they summon, anymore so than someone who lits a fire with a match is immune from the blaze they create.

The Cadet’s screams as he was covered in his own burning tar were no worse than his earlier ones had been, but they weren’t going to stop when the illusion ended, which was nice.

Or maybe nice isn’t the right word.

I wasn’t feeling terribly nice. 

I probably still needed to fix my brain. 

Or the world.

I blinked and shook my head. I definitely needed to fix my brain if that’s where my thoughts were running.

Glancing back at the arena, I noticed that I might not be the only one whose brain wasn’t firing its neurons in anything resembling peaceful harmony.

Mellina’s eyes had rolled back and she was twitching in a manner that looked neither painless nor intentional.

That was the last sight of her I had before a curtain of deepest blue rose from the platform like a geyser and washed the world away into a sea of darkness.

It was not a friendly sea either. Things lurked in its depths and the island I stood on was not going to shield me from them. 

Not going to shield me from it.

It was rising.

Vast and terrible and unknowable.

It had slumbered for aeons out of mind and it was waking.

As it rose it brought with it the shattering of the world. The sky was going to crack, the ocean boil and the land drown as madness poured from the heavens.

Of everything wrong with that, the second worst part was that the calamity to come wasn’t going to bring death in its wake.

It wouldn’t let humanity die.

It would never grant a single human release.

What was the very worst part?

The worst part was that it knew my name. 

It knew who I was. 

It knew what I was.

And it was calling me home.

Welcoming me.

The whole world filled with screams and I was pretty sure mine were some of the loudest.

And then, as fast as the darkness had flooded over us, it receded.

In the arena, a weird rainbow of light danced over Mellina as she pounded his fists against the floor of the arena, clearly fighting to regain control of herself. With a scream of her own that was amplified by the arena loud enough to ring out across the city she smashed through the magics around her and the light she was gripped by swirled one more time before pouring back into her eyes and mouth.

That she collapsed after that was not surprising in the least. What I didn’t expect was Doxle’s reaction.

“Well now that’s a shame,” he said with a wistful sigh.

“What is?” 

“That she stopped so soon,” he said. “That was rather delicious. I suppose Holman would do something unpleasant if I asked her to do it again though. Ah well.”

That told me either his experience or his tastes were very different from mine. Comparing notes to work out which was true would lead to the sort of questions I had no interest at all in answering though so I kept silent.

“This match is ended. Are there any who will speak for this applicant?” Jalaren asked as Mellina picked herself up off the arena floor looking spent and bewildered.

That last bit hadn’t been a stunt. She’d legitimately lost control of her powers and been on the verge of magic-induced madness. Or maybe more than just the verge given how wobbly she looked.

“House Lightstone will speak for her,” their representative said. His box was floating nearby to Doxle’s so I could see that he was just as stone faced as he’d been before. His scent was different though. He was hungry for her power, and not in a nurturing sense. He wanted to hurt people and he was thrilled at the idea of how well she could do that.

“House Astrologia will speak for her as well.” Astrologia’s representative was farther off so her scent was more obscured but from her tone I had the sense that she assumed Mellina’s loyalties had already been bought and paid for since she was a scion of their family.

“House Greyfall speaks for her as well.” He was close by too, and had more or less the same scent as Lightstone did. Apparently almost defeating a Cadet made her valuable and turning into a psychic bomb accentuated that, even if it was possibly something she could only do once.

Unless the “only once” was the part they desired.

“House Riverbond speaks for her too!” I said, shouting to make sure I’d be heard.

I had no idea what Astrologia’s plans for her were, but I’d be damned before I let Lightstone and Greyfall be her only options.

Apparently proclaiming yourself the speaker for a Great House was a good method of attracting attention, maybe ever more so than tearing a Cadet into bloody chunks in a berserk frenzy.

The gazes I received from the people nearest us were anything but friendly, bu if they expected me to back down, they’d never met anyone Grammy Duella had raised.

“Multiple offers have been made,” Proctor Jalaren said. “Which will the applicant accept.”

The right answer was almost certainly Astrologia’s offer. No one would question it or get bent out of shape over a daughter of the House taking the House’s offer. Lightstone and Greyfall had probably only made their offers as an opening bid towards working with her years hence once her cadet training was finished. It was never too early to start recruiting talented staff after all, and House alliances through marriage were about the farthest thing from uncommon that there was.

“Riverbond,” Mellina said. “I will accept House Riverbond’s offer.”

“The world spins on. If we’re ready for it or not, the world keeps moving, ignoring the great moments in our lives as though they were entirely irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. I used to feel a great deal of frustration, and rage, and finally despair over that. 

Certainly my trials and tribulations were deep and meaningful. Certainly my world falling apart meant that everyone’s world had fallen apart.

That, however, is rarely ever the case. The worse day one person has may be completely unremarkable to another and the best day in the life of a third. 

Which is comforting in its own strange manner. Our failures and triumphs, our pains or exaltations, from within the perspective of our lives, they may seem to eclipse the stars and drown out all reason, but the world spins ever on, and so long as we move with it we find that even the great moments are ones that take up only a part of our life rather than swallowing the whole of it.”

-Xindir Harshek Doxle of the First Flame, very drunk on the occasion of his 37th wedding

Idrina arrived at the dueling arena without any special fanfare. Her opponent on the other hand, drew a round of cheers (from the Cadets) and groans (from the applicants who seemed to know who he was). He was a blank to me, but the relaxed gait of his walk coupled with the quiet focus he showed in acknowledging and then sizing up Idrina spoke volumes.

For her part, Idrina looked calm and collected. At least to a cursory glance. The subtle shifts of her weight, her measured breaths, the focus in her gaze though? They all spoke to the enormous amount of energy she was holding back.

She wanted this fight.

Everyone else so far had been nervous and concerned, even Nelphas and the others for whom the outcome wasn’t even slightly in doubt. On some level they’d all known that battles were never predictable. The Cadet who’d been paid off to allow them an easy entrance could always have been paid off a little bit more to put them in the ground, or even just humiliate them a little in the process of letting them win.

That wasn’t a concern for Idrina. Not from the stance she took, or the set of her shoulders. We were too far away for me to read her expression but I knew there had to be a fire burning in her eyes. She was too good to not be ready for this. Too good to not have been planning, and training, and striving for this moment for years.

Proctor Jalaren called for the match to begin, and both of the combatants lived up to my expectations and beyond.

Idrina didn’t waste any time playing for points by keeping her distance like the other applicants had done. The same as she’d done in our fight, she flashed forward conjuring a spear as she moved.

Her opponent was ready for that, meeting her rush with a blade just like the one that had carved me up.

I think it may have been a sign of respect, rather than homicidal malice, that he didn’t hold back at all. With an upward arcing slash, he cut the spear in half and deflected it so that it passed to the left of his chest by an inch or so.

With his other hand he unleashed a spell which formed a glowing blue ram. It was perfectly positioned to crush Idrina’s chest and easily would have except for the part where she rolled away from its attack, evading it by a generous two hairs’ breadths.

That placed her directly in line to be split from head to sternum by the Cadet’s downward stroke, but again when the blow landed, she wasn’t there.

Her spears where though, pair of them shooting up from the ground, to catch the Cadet in both shoulders and knock him back a step. He’d been lucky they hit his pauldrons, and losing them in the exchange clearly saved him from losing the arms instead.

Two more spears followed as Idrina coiled up and launched herself at the Cadet before he could regain his balance. The first spear, she stabbed upwards towards the base of his throat. That one he blocked with the strange sword he was carrying but at the cost of exposing his right hand to the other spear in Idrina had conjured.

A hawk made of starlight deflected the second spear before it took the Cadet’s hand off at the wrist and he used the moment it hit Idrina’s spear to land a solid kick to her midsection.

With space open between then, Idrina extended her hand and three more spears flew at the Cadet, one targeting his head, the next the center of his chest, and the last one his left shin.

The Cadet slammed his hand against the blade he was carrying and a pulse of energy disintegrated the spears before they could reach him. That move seemed to cost him though and I saw the sword reconfigure itself, venting steam in the process.

I also noticed that Idrina had pushed him back enough that when she attacked, she was always in either the red or blue zones as was appropriate to the sort of attack she was launching.

So she wasn’t just fighting him. She was dancing across a fairly narrow space to earn the maximum points she could, which made everything she was doing at least ten times harder.

Both of the fighters accelerated at that point and I lost track of exactly what they were doing. From the bits I could make out, Idrina was avoiding all of the sword blows, despite the armor that she wore which should have been sufficient to turn aside most glancing hits.

Then again, a sword like that had blasted Tantarian mail apart and cleaved through the armor Doxle had given me like it wasn’t there, so avoiding hits entirely wasn’t necessarily a bad idea.

That kind of speed came with a horrible stamina cost though. Two minutes in I could see her measured breathing had become ragged and pained.

And that did not slow her down in the slightest.

It did however impact her aim though.

Or so I thought.

With each exchange, she left more and more spears behind. Most flew off into the air and vanished when she conjured them back, but the one’s she used for downward thrusts were left embedded to various depths in the arena and began to impeded her unbelievable dance for points.

The Cadet didn’t fail to notice that either, and pressed in through the thicket of spent spears to force her back into the battlefield where she would have to give up her dance or fall prey to his attacks at last.

This was apparently exactly what she’d been planning on.

With a quick dash to the blue section, she paused, took a breath, and exploded every spear in the dueling arena.

The Cadet got his blade up in front of him right as the spears went off but even the field of force he conjured couldn’t hold up to the pressure wave of the explosion. As his shield broke, the sword was ripped from his hand and went spinning over and off the arena while the Cadet was tossed back and landed a few feet from its edge.

Idrina flew at him in a golden burst of speed, a new spear outstretched to run the Cadet straight through the heart.

Without even rising, he met her charge by raising a hand which summoned a green glow in the shape of a bear. Before she could land her blow the bear slammed her with a massive paw knocking her sideways hard enough to pitch her over the edge too.

Idrina stopped herself with the spear she was carrying, coming to a rest just as the whistle blew for the round.

Cheers went up from the applicants (led by her brother) and at least a few of the Cadets. I couldn’t tell if she heard them though because for a moment she was still.

With how hard she’d fought I might have believe it was exhaustion but when she rose, she did so without betraying any sign of weakness. 

Something was bothering her though. I could see that in the flexing of her fingers and rigid set of her neck.

I would have thought it was because of something the Cadet did, but  her first action was to walk back to him and offer her hand to help him up.

He accepted it and said something to her I was too far away to hear. 

She said nothing in response, which drew a small shrug from him. 

They backed away from each other as Proctor Jalaren returned to the arena.

“This match is ended,” he said, “Are there any who will speak for this applicant.”

It didn’t seem like the right question to ask. ‘Is there anyone who wouldn’t speak for this applicant’ was a better question, even if the answer should have been ‘obviously no, we all want her’.

Despite that though, there was no immediate answer to Jalaren’s question. Two more heartbeats passed before a familiar voice finally spoke up.

“House Ironbriar will speak for this applicant,” Enika said breaking the unfathomable silence.

Part of me wanted to speak up too. 

I had no idea what I would say, but whatever was going on was…I stopped myself. Whatever was going on was not something I had to put my nose in. I could be rational about things. Sometimes.

Idrina nodded in response to Enika’s offer, without any joy or excitement at the prospect. And why would she? Her admittance had been as guaranteed as Nelphas’ had been even though she’d worked a lot harder for it. Had there really been anything surprising here for her at all, or was this whole thing a tired, predictable pantomime? 

I don’t know what drew my thoughts down that line, possibly my brains were still scrambled from the beating I’d taken but, predictable admittance or no, I was surprised when Idrina didn’t float over to sit with the Cadets like the other successful applicants had. Instead she boarded a disc and was delivered to the box Enika was watching from.

“Are you fully healed up yet?” Doxle asked.

“No. That sword did some bad things to me.” Admitting that wasn’t something I would normally have done but I was reasonably certain Doxle already knew what condition I was in and was merely checking if he could trust the self-appraisals I gave him.

“You may want to hurry that along if you can,” he said. “One of your new friends is up next.”

The arena had my complete and undivided attention at that, because Doxle’s meaning was all too clear.

“Next applicant, Mellina Astrologia, report to the dueling circle.”

And just like that I was going to lose someone else.

I watched as the Cadet’s traded out and I could see that the newcomer was hungry for blood.

Apparently my threat hadn’t been clear enough?

Or after a few fights, they’d forgotten exactly what I’d done to the Imperial Cadet?

Which was hard to believe. 

I was still wearing rather a lot of his blood.

People can be stupid though.

Like me.

For thinking that I could trust the Cadets to behave reasonably.

I knew better than that.

This time though I wouldn’t let it go so far.

The gap to the arena was larger than it had been from the applicants platform, but I could still make it if I got enough of my body back in shape.

I closed my eyes as Mellina began floating over and started piecing the messed up bits of myself back into their proper shape. 

It wasn’t great work. If someone dissected me, they wouldn’t be fooled for more than a minute, but I wasn’t planning on being dissected. I just needed the circulatory system and muscles to be able to actually function to take some of the load off my magic.

I thought I’d be able to get everything done in time. 

I can work with amazing speed when I put my mind to it, and I had plenty of incentive to set a new record at it.

As it turned out though, I wasn’t fast enough to finish before the screaming started.

“It is the decision of this review board that the Imperial Academy of Middlerun bears no fault in the untimely demise of Cadet Donswell [No House]. As he voluntarily entered the Applicant Third Trail testing arena, in the full knowledge that combats therein are placed under no restraints, our unanimous conclusion is that he willing accepted the risks entailed and bore the full liability for preserving his own well being. 

In answer to the claim that the match in question was not sanctioned and therefor his demise should be prosecuted as a murder, the review board finds that it was not at fault for admitting Cadet Riverbond into the arena. Cadet [No House] was provided the opportunity to refuse to engage in the proposed combat, and was granted a moments reprieve before the final blow was struck. As such, and in view of House Lightstone’s official disownment of the Cadet, the review board’s consensus is that Cadet [No House]’s demise, while regrettable, was both avoidable and of his own making and no further actions will be taken at this time.

On the matter of the sum paid to House Lightstone in the amount of a full Blood Restitution by the Academy, a review has shown that the funds were the repayment for services and considerations rendered by House Lightstone and the fact that the sum equals the value assigned to a third year Cadet’s life was mere coincidence and nothing more. No further comment will be made on the subject at this point.”

– the Imperial Academy Grand Review Board, in a missive clearing itself of any wrong doing

Doxle’s claim that I was a noblewoman had about the impact I expected it. The Greyfall representative almost choked in disbelief, the Greendell rep rolled her eyes and shook her head, Lightstone didn’t react visible at all, and the fourth representative maintained her rather pleasant silence.

“You have proof of this claim?” Lightstone asked. He was angry, probably livid in fact. He wasn’t good enough at hiding his scent to cover strong emotions but none of that passed his lips.

“Please,” Doxle said somehow adding three levels of unnecessary dramatics into a single word. “Need you really ask?”

“Yes. I must,” Lightstone said. He wasn’t interested in entertaining Doxle’s foolishness, which I was beginning to suspect simply encourage Doxle to play the fool even more deeply.

“Well, I suppose your request isn’t entirely unreasonable since this is, in factm a formal statement of intent on the part of House Riverbond, ,” Doxle said.

“And the first Riverbond’s made in, what, fifty years?” Greendell said.

“Forty seven years and three months,” Doxle said. “To be fair, I couldn’t recall the date either, but I made a visit to the Grand Cathedral in Palencia, or rather the Grand Cathedral’s Undercroft. Fascinating place. So much history there. So much we let ourselves forget about much too easily. I do recommend chatting up the dead once in a while though. They have fascinating stories to tell. Greed. Murder. Betrayal. The past was such a very bloody time to live in. We are truly blessed by our present civilized age.”

I had no idea what Doxle had found in specific to support the claim he was making or how serious he was about being able to speak to speak with the dead. From what I knew bringing back the dead to any degree wasn’t possible, but I’d been wrong about a lot of things that magic could or couldn’t do and ultimately all that mattered was whether he had something to back his claim up. Whether I was the heir to Riverbond or not being far less important than whether people would choose to believe that I was.

I didn’t say anything in support of Doxle, despite knowing what his claims were likely based on (in general terms), in part because there wasn’t anything I could say that wouldn’t obviously be in my own self-interest and in part because I wasn’t Riverbond’s actual heir.

“You need more proof than some conjured whispers,” Greyfall said.

“Of course,” Doxel said. “Which is why I also arranged for this.” He pulled a sealed scroll case from thin air.

Lightstone didn’t waste time. He reached for it and finally let a scowl break across his face when Doxle yanked it away.

“I believe the only one here who is required and allowed to pass judgment on this matter is you my dear friend Jalaren,” Doxle said, handing the scroll to the proctor, who took it with another sigh.

He’d only just broken the seal and begun to glance at it when he paused, rolled the scroll up and turned to the others.

“It’s the official house seal, with her name on it,” Jalaren said. “I am bound to honor this.”

“According to both rite and custom,” Doxle said. “If the others here would like to contest it though…”

“They can take the matter up at the next High Council session. For now we’re done,” Jalaren said. “We have many more trials to get through and we’ve wasted enough time on this one.”

A fresh wave of anger rolled off Lightstone, but Greyfall and Greendell seemed more curious with the verdict than anything else. The final one, the representative for House Astrologia I later learned, smelled vaguely satisfied. That was probably more worrisome than all the rest put together, but not something I could exactly act on. 

Despite the fact that one or more of them was probably going to try to have me killed, they turned and made no more outwards fuss about my passing the trial.

I wondered where I was supposed to go next. The Cadet box seemed somewhat fraught. For the Cadets. Several of them were still glaring at me as sound returned to the arena. If I had to go sit with them, I definitely wasn’t going to be receiving the sort of congratulations they’d showered Nelphas with. Unless I missed my guess one or more of them would try to sneak in some unsanctioned violence. I would probably throw them out of the floating box and the lucky ones would be injured enough to remain on the ground. If any came back, or if they all decided to get in on the violence then there were going to be a lot more corpses joining the Imperial Cadets, probably including my own.

Doxle, having more sense than most probably grant him credit for, apparently saw that too and directed me to walk with him. 

Feeling the weight of the Cadet’s glares though I held up a hand to get him to pause for a moment before turning back to the proctor.

“A word if I may?” I asked him. 

He looked at me warily, which marked him as also being fairly sensible, and nodded, probably hoping I was going to make some innocuous request or offer my thanks.

Instead I turned to face the Cadets.

“If anyone else dies, I’m taking this trial over again,” I said, trusting the amplification spells to ensure all of them could hear me.

It seemed only fair to warn them, though in hindsight I can see that I was offering them a clear opportunity to avenge their fallen comrade. Kill and applicant and then get to fight me. That wasn’t what I wanted and fortunately the ones with the most animosity toward me understood my words for the threat they were.

The crowds were silent for a moment after that, with the usual buzz of conversation resuming as Doxle and I stepped onto a disc to float back to the spectating box.

“Congratulations on passing the trials,” he said. “And with remarkably fewer enemies than I expected.”

“It didn’t look like Lightstone or Greyfall liked me too much,” I said. “And I’m pretty sure the Cadets want to kill me too.”

“Would you have wished to have them as allies?” Doxle asked.

“No,” I said.

Having someone like the Imperial Cadet as an ally would have been unpleasant to the point of provoking me to murder him when I wasn’t in a sanctioned death battle.The representatives for the Great Houses didn’t feel like people I cared to spend time with either. Thinking about what I knew of them, and what Doxle had said, I guessed that I had even more reason to dislike them than I’d thought.

“They killed House Riverbond, didn’t they?” 

“Not this generation personally, but yes, Lightstone and Greyfall were two of the three House who decided to end Riverbond’s tenure as a Great House.”

“Did they have a reason?”

“Oh, there’s always a reason. Usually several dozen reasons,” Doxle said. “The primary one, as always though, is that Riverbond had resources others desired and made the mistake of being too successful at opposing those whose wrath it wasn’t prepared to survive.”

“Did I just make that same mistake?”

“It’s always hard to tell,” Doxle said. “As you are my pacted apprentice however, I can assure you that you will not face the consequences of your actions today alone.”

“That doesn’t seem fair. I did what I did on my own. You even tried to stop me.”

“Did I? I don’t recall preventing you from taking any actions and as your Advisor any actions I don’t prevent can be assumed to be ones which meet with, at the very least, my tacit approval.”

“So it’s okay that I killed that guy?” I asked. I didn’t feel bad about what I’d done. I didn’t really feel anything about it in fact, which probably wasn’t a good sign. 

“At this moment, you would be best served if I was not evasive in my answers,” Doxle said as we reached the viewing box. “Which is why it pains me to answer your question with one of my own; okay in what sense? If you mean will you face legal jeopardy for your actions then no, none whatsoever. This is a lethal arena. None are held accountable for fatalities which occur within it. If you mean, in the eyes of your peers then the answer is more complicated. Some will likely cheer you for your actions. Some will despise you, some will be jealous, and some will fear you. How they react is largely a reflection of who they are and has little to nothing to do with you and your actions.”

“How about in your eyes?” I asked. It wasn’t actually important if he thought of me as a beast, I just wanted to know.

“I am not a good soul and not someone you should look to in order to mark a bearing on your moral compass.”

“I just want to know if you think I did the right thing there,” I said. That wasn’t going to tell me whether I had been right. I knew I’d been. It would tell me more about Doxle though.

“It was not what I would have done,” he said, closing his eyes and drawing in a slow breath. “You were far kinder and more merciful than I would have been had our places been reversed. It makes me think I chose well, and for that you have my gratitude.”

That hit me in the gut. It shouldn’t have but I hadn’t been expecting him to share what sounded and smelled like an honest confession.

I sat down in the box and felt a cacophony of emotions swirling my innards up almost as bad at the sword blows had.

Sword blows which I still needed to fully repair.

Closing my eyes I looked inside and saw that I was a mess.

Physically, emotionally, mentally. The last few days had just sucked.

Or make that the last few weeks.

Going home to Grammy and forgetting all of this was so incredibly tempting and for a moment, a long moment, all I could imagine was walking through our front door, heading into the main room and collapsing in a ball in front of the fireplace. It wouldn’t matter if there was a fire going or not. It wouldn’t even matter if Grammy had bread cooking for the stew. Just curling up on the floor and going to sleep with all of this behind me. Nothing would have been better that that.

Nothing except finding out about Trina.

I sniffed weakly, hoping to find some trace of her, some fresh boost to shore up my resolve, but there wasn’t anything on the wind aside from the blood that clung to me.

It didn’t matter.

I wasn’t giving up.

Keeping my eyes closed I got to work making myself a new heart only to be interrupted by the announcement of a new match. I’d been ignoring the last several as they called out names I was unfamiliar with. This one though? This one I had to see.

“Next applicant, Idrina Ironbriar, report to the dueling circle.”

“As an Advisor, our principal duty is providing the support our charges require. This can take many forms, from instruction in the use of their magics to acting as an emotional sounding board for the tribulations they are confronted with. When they make mistakes it is incumbent that we be there to provide corrections, and of course we should also recognize and celebrate the occasions where they manage to make the correct choices, should those ever occur.

Therefore, though it pains me to do so, in regards to my charges actions during the trials for admittance to the Imperial Academy, I am force to sternly offer the following admonition;

It is unseemly to wipe one’s hands on one’s own clothing after tearing the heart from an enemy. The extra laundering is simply wasteful when you have a perfectly viable corpse to use as a dishrag instead.”

– Zindir Harshek Doxle of the First Flame

I wasn’t supposed to kill the Imperial Cadet. It wasn’t supposed to be possible and I wasn’t supposed to do it even it was. There was no official rule to that effect. The trials were explicitly unrestricted combat exercises. But the Cadets weren’t supposed to die.

I think that’s why the arena was silent for a long moment after I let most of the Cadet fall to the platform once I felt I’d done enough damage to him. I’d heard that healing magics could repair amazing levels of injury, so I’d felt the need to be somewhat thorough before I stepped away. That didn’t seem to be what the crowds had been interested in seeing though.

Which was fine. I hadn’t been fighting for them.

I hadn’t even been fighting for Kelthas. If I wanted to claim that then I needed to answer the question of why I hadn’t jumped in sooner.

I could have saved him.

That thought bounced around in my head like acid, dissolving all the other thoughts it brushed up against.

“You’ll need to put that down,” someone said from beside me.

I turned with a growl but recognized that it wasn’t the Cadet come back from the dead. He was still properly inert. 

The proctor who’d dared get within claw range wasn’t him. 

Was I supposed to fight the proctor next?

He’d let Kelthas die too.

Except no. 

That meant he was no worse than I was.

“You can drop it,” he said and I squinted at him searching for what he could be referring too.

He glanced at my right hand and its rather meaty contents.

Which I suppose still technically belong to the corpse.

Or was it a prize I’d won through right of arms?

Right of arms with my right arm, I giggled at the idea and then scowled and threw the corpse back the heart it was missing. I didn’t want anything to do with that one and if he rose back up once his body parts were restored to him then all the better – I’d just get to take him apart again.

He didn’t get back up. He wasn’t going to get back up.

Which was good.

For him.

For me? I was tired. I felt exhaustion crushing me down that had nothing to do with the magic I’d spent, or the barely repaired state of my body. 

“This match is ended,” the proctor said. “Are there any who will speak for this applicant.”

The silence we’d been wrapped in exploded and I let the wave of angry voices wash over me.

I could smell blood and rage, but most of that was of my own doing. The distant crowds didn’t sound or smell properly enraged. Most of what I picked up in fact was fear.

The Cadets were trying to sound angry, protesting that the match should be declared in violation of some technicality or other. None of them leapt into the arena though. None of them even suggested that they should be allowed to pick up the challenge the Imperial Cadet had failed to complete.

There were calls from the patron boxes calling for a disqualification too. Several seemed to think that the guards would have a better time with me than the Imperial Cadet had.

I don’t know. Maybe they would have.

If they’d had weapons like his, it would have been unpleasant to discover how many I could stand against, and I was reasonably sure they’d be able to send at least that number plus one more.

The proctor sighed, and I almost laughed at that too. He smelled of long suffering aggravation and, surprisingly, it didn’t seem to be directed at me.

“Are there any who will speak for this applicant,” he repeated, enhancing his voice to ring out much louder than the bickering and bellowing Cadets and representatives of the Great Houses.

Silence returned once more.

Because they all wanted to see how alone I stood.

Because no one was going to speak for me. Not after the display I’d put on.

A crazed berserker girl who could tear apart one of the Academy’s best and brightest was valuable in the abstract but two concerns held them all back. 

First, there was the obvious question of whether they could control something like me and if it was worth it to even try. Anyone who spoke for me would be responsible for whatever mayhem I caused and I think everyone present was keenly aware that this was only the beginning of the mayhem I was going to be responsible for.

Second, and perhaps more importantly, the Imperial Cadet wasn’t a random nobody. To have the weapon and armor he did he had to be the scion of one of the more important Houses. For a moment I wondered if he’d be a cousin or sibling of Idrina and part of the Ironbriars. They were renowned warriors and could plausibly have provided him with whatever the hell that sword was.

The only problem was if the Ironbriars had access to the gear the Cadet had wielded and he had been judged qualified to bear it, I couldn’t picture Idrina not be given similar gear too. 

Also there were the glares coming from the Lightstone box. Plenty of clear and undisguised malice there. Almost as though I’d killed one of their favored sons.

Which I clearly had. Brutally and right before their eyes.

So, they wanted to kill me.

And were the most powerful of the Great Houses.

Doxle had probably been right about mercy.

“House Riverbond will speak for her.” His voice was amplified enough that I didn’t recognize it was Doxle speaking at first.

He might have had something to say after that but if so it was drowned out by roughly everyone in the world speaking at once.

The proctor let that go on for a minute or so but finally calling “Silence!” when it became clear that the only other alternative for quieting people down was going to be violence.

“With the representative for House Riverbond approach the dueling arena,” the proctor said. “Any other representatives who wish to weigh in on the matter may approach as well.”

I expected to see a flood of people come pouring at me but only Doxle and four others boarded disks to float over to the dueling platform. The moment they were all together, the proctor raised his hand and the sound amplification spell was inverted. All the outside noise went away and I was pretty sure nothing that was said would be transmitted either.

The assembled representatives didn’t rush over to the center of the arena, but strolled casually as though they were old friends, whispering little whatevers as they approached.

Seeing who was representing House Riverbond, the proctor gave another sigh.

“I shouldn’t be surprised,” he said. “But what foolery are you up to now Zindir?”

“I am wounded Jalaren,” Doxle said. “I thought we were still on a first name basis?”

“We were until the opera,” Proctor Jalaren said. “Now I ask again Advisor Zindir, what is this nonsense about House Riverbond?”

“No nonsense I assure you,” Doxle said. “And please, you must be fair. The opera was not my fault.”

“Riverbond is a dead house,” a heavyset woman in the uniform of House Greendell said.

“Silent, not dead,” Doxle said, raising his forefinger to correct her.

“Only because no house has been declared dead in two centuries,” said a weasely little guy who wore the colors of House Greyfall.

“A policy which has served to blur the distinction between the truly departed,” Doxle glanced over at the mess I’d made of the Imperial Cadet, “and those Houses which have been sufficiently diminished so as to allow their lands and duties to be managed by their senior House instead of placed before the High Council where they can be redistributed according to need and ability to manage the properties and revenues.”

“Are you making the claim that House Riverbond seeks to return to its duties and claim its ancestral holdings?” the representative from Lightstone asked.

He was worrisome. I couldn’t smell almost anything off him. Just the hint of granite and brimstone. He wasn’t lying through scent like Doxle could but he was as cut off from the world as he could make himself.

“Nothing of the sort,” Doxle said. “House Riverbond will leave its holdings under their current management, and will not be exercising its voice in vote during the High Council.”

“Then in what sense can they speak for this…” Lightstone looked like he wanted to use an epithet but diplomacy wrestled whatever word he’d chosen off of his tongue. “This applicant?”

“In the same sense any may speak for an applicant,” Doxle said. “House Riverbond offers financial support, and it’s official backing to vouchsafe the applicants suitability as an elite in the Imperial forces.”

“Suitability? You claim that this…this thing,” the representative from Greyfall sputtered.

“Take care,” Doxle said. His tone was light and his posture was unthreatening but the Greyfall rep retreated from his animosity towards me pretty quickly anyways.

“You claim that this young woman is suitable for training after the spectacle that we witnessed?” Greyfall reframed his question.

“Demonstrably so, based on what we witnessed,” Doxle said.

“You feel the destruction of one of our cadets should qualify for her admission?” Lightstone asked.

“I feel it should qualify her for your highest sponsorship in fact, though out of delicacy for the cadets immediately family I understand that you will be rightly hesitant to provide her that distinction. Hence why House Riverbond, which always had a warm relationship with your family, will offer its support instead.”

“Our sponsorship? And why would we extend that honor?” Lightstone asked, sounding more curious than appalled at the idea.

“The Trials are meant to be as much a test of the Cadets as the applicants,” Doxle said. “A Cadet who would fall before someone without Academy training was obviously a failed specimen and unworthy of bearing your name. The Academy let both you and he down by not exposing his weakness sooner, and so any reprobation for his current state must lie with them. Had he graduated though and been given a role in your service, he would doubtless have failed you as he so clearly failed them. This applicant has therefor performed a vital service for you in preventing the dishonor of the Cadet’s incompetence from staining the honor of House Lightstone.”

The representative from House Greendell laughed at that.

“You are still the most slippery eel I have ever had the misfortune to known Doxle,” she said. “And I still for the life of me can’t make out how much of that donkey dung you actually believe.”

“Every word of it my dearest Lufina,” Doxle said. “And you know I am always true to my word.”

“You won one bet, that’s not always,” Lufina said.

“One bet and one wonderful night. Perhaps you would be willing to make a similar wager here?” Doxle said.

“You are a vile tempter,” she said, entirely without malice.

“Which means, I would hope, that you are tempted?” Doxle said, projecting an air of delighted expectation.

Lufina sighed.

“It is years too late for me to give into such temptations again.”

“Oh I don’t believe that to be true,” Doxle said. “Not at all.”

The proctor cleared his throat, bringing all eyes back to me.

“How will this matter stand then,” he said. “Will the other Houses speak against the claim of Riverbond?”

“I would have some proof that House Riverbond still exists and that our friend here,” Lightstone indicated Doxle though I was reasonably certain it was the sort of friendship that involved knives planted in unsuspecting backs, “is not laying claim to unattended authority.”

“Oh please. You know me. I despise wielding authority,” Doxle said. “And, as for the proof that House Riverbond still exists, the House Heir stands here before you.”

“Those who trade in power without conscience or compassion, who argue that because they can do something it is naive to suggest that it matters whether or not they should be able to do it, they are often the first to cry foul when someone reminds them that kindness is not weakness but rather a choice, one which their actions have placed them beyond the reach of.”

– Xindir Harshek Doxle of the First Flame

I think there was a moment of silence. I don’t know. My head went a little funny after Kelthas died. 

He was the armor bearer. 

He was the one I wasn’t supposed to need to worry about.

I hadn’t known him for more than…than what? Two minutes? Two hours? How long had we been taking this stupid exam?

He was supposed to be fine.

He was supposed to pass without a problem.

He was a shoe in for a spot with one of the Houses. One of the big houses. His power was great. Everyone wanted someone whose magic was literally ‘be indestructible’.

Except he wasn’t.

But he should have been.

Yarrin said he should have been.

No one was supposed to be able to break Tantarian Mail like that.

And he’d…

The black quadrant of the ring filled my mind.

It was a lie.

It was supposed to be safety.

It was supposed to be the end of the Trial.

I think laughed.

I think the people around me moved away.

He’d surrendered.

He’d given up his dream.

He’d done what they wanted.

I remember thinking that and I remember the world sort of dissolving.

Everything was solid. Everything stayed where it was. Nothing changed.

Nothing except me. 

“This trial is done,” the proctor said and people were carrying Kelthas away.

No.

Kelthas was already gone.

They were carrying away the meat and bones and fluids he’d left behind.

The ones he’d spent a whole life building.

They weren’t him, he was something so much more than that, but they were still important. They were how we had known him.

“The trial is done,” the proctor said and I focused solely on him. Was he repeating himself because the crowd was yelling? Was everyone silent still? I don’t remember and I’m not sure I knew at the time either.

“For the next trial we call…”

No.

They were not getting to choose anymore.

I leapt from my seat. The other applicants had waited for the transport disk to carry them over. I…waiting wasn’t an option.

“Me. I’m next.” I wasn’t asking or suggesting. I was giving the proctor a chance to leave.

“You were not called,” he said, searching the papers he was carrying. “Return to your seat.”

I didn’t reply to that. 

I wanted him to try to make me. I wanted him to lay one finger on me. I wanted him to order the other proctors to carry me away. I wanted him to give me an excuse. Any excuse.

“No, let her stay,” the Imperial Cadet said. “She’s clearly another mongrel that needs to be put down.”

“You are not scheduled to fight this one,” the proctor said.

“Then change the schedule. This one didn’t learn from the last example, so she gets to be the next one.”

I smiled.

It wasn’t happiness. Happiness doesn’t shrink your vision down. It doesn’t make the world seem oh so distant. It doesn’t hunger for hot blood to wash over lips and a death rattle to ring in ears.

The proctor vanished.

Or he walked off from the platform.

I don’t know. I didn’t care.

I wasn’t waiting for the whistle to begin either.

I wanted the Imperial Cadet to be ready.

He needed to know exactly what was happening to him.

Surprise. Panic. Despair. Begging. Those were all for later. He needed to think he was ready for what was to come.

A whistle blew anyways. Somewhere far away. Beyond the mountains, across the oceans, outside the circle of my world where it didn’t matter.

I sank into a crouch. I might have been breathing, but I probably wasn’t. I was waiting. I needed to see the look in his eyes. The one that said he was sure he was going to win.

“Paralyzed with fear are you?” he said and his expression shifted, but not to the right one “Here, let me make it easy for you.”

He put his blade down, thrusting it tip first into the platform and stepping forward so that it was out of easy reach. He threw his arms wide, inviting a strike.

I kept watching him. He wasn’t there yet.

After a moment of standing there with his arms out, irritation crossed his face. He looked like an idiot. That was a small delight but not the one I was looking for.

“I see, you’re just wasting time, hoping to win by running the clock out. Well we can’t have that.” He turned and picked up his sword again.

It was the perfect moment to strike.

I didn’t want the perfect moment though.

 He needed to understand that what was coming wasn’t cunning or trickery. He needed to understand that he wasn’t the predator he thought he was.

With his sword in hand, he turned back and began stalking towards me.

He expected me to dodge, or flee, or maybe even dash in with a lightning quick attack.

Instead I finally let myself look up and match his gaze.

“You should run,” I said. “If you run now, you might get away.”

I all but whispered the words, but I knew the sound amplifying magics on the platform would carry them to his ears.

“I will never run from a mongrel…”

I came out of my crouch and began walking directly at him.

I think that was when he sensed the danger he was in because he shut up mid-sentence and brought his sword into a defensive posture.

“Now this is more…” he started to say but I punched him before he could finish.

I don’t have Idrina’s speed. I didn’t need her speed though. What I needed was enough force to put a fist sized dent an inch deep into the armor he was wearing.

That knocked him back to the center of the platform and I kept walking towards him at the same measured pace I had been.

“That’s enough of this,” he said and his sword did the same strange thing it had done when he fought Kelthas. This time it wasn’t alone though. The dent in his armor vanished as it seemed to reassemble itself from tiny pieces and reform into a subtly different configuration.

He didn’t waste time with banter after that.

With a long arcing leap he brought his blade down in a brilliant, blazing path at me.

Apparently he assumed I would sit there awestruck and watch it happen.

I did not.

Stepping into his jump, I let him pass over me so that I could grab his ankle.

He did not land well.

I lifted him up by the ankle and swung him in another arc making sure he did not land well again. It was a balm to my soul to hear bones breaking. I might have been content to continue on with that until the armor I was gripping was nothing more than a well mixed bag of stew but the Imperial Cadet had other ideas.

He hadn’t lost his grip on his sword despite my treatment of him and since I was focused on reducing him to a chunky beef stock, I wasn’t paying much attention to what he was doing.

So of course he stabbed me.

Normally being stabbed in the arm will damage muscle tissue and may break a bone. It wasn’t something I was familiar with from experience but I knew the structure and composition of my arms pretty well. They got used a lot so I’d take extra care with them. Enough that I knew a single stabbing strike was not supposed to sever my right arm about two inches above the elbow.

I had nerves to scream at me about the pain, but I wasn’t available for those sorts of messages at the moment which meant all I felt was annoyance.

The Imperial Cadet was able to get away while I picked up my fallen arm and reattached it. As I knit the two parts back together the Cadet got to his feet and I frowned. Cutting off my arm wasn’t completely out of bounds. Bodies are pretty squishy, but he’d cut through the nice new armor Doxle had given me too.

It was silly to complain about that given that he’d managed to cut through Tantarian Mail but I wasn’t in a particularly rational mood at that moment.

“Ah. A form shifter,” the Imperial Cadet said. “Probably thought that was going to save you.”

I hadn’t. What I could do with my body was helpful, but I hadn’t put any thought into how I was going to survive. That wasn’t what this was about. 

His armor and blade reconfigured themselves again, and it smelled terrible. 

And familiar?

Most of what I could smell was blood. My own, his, Kelthas’, so I wasn’t really parsing what I was experiencing well but something about his magic sent a shiver crawling over my skin.

The next time he struck, he stabbed me through the heart.

Which also took out my left lung.

Which was really annoying!

I had just rebuilt both of those!

His strike was a good one. Swift. Clean. No hesitation. I probably couldn’t have dodged it even if I’d cared to try. It did have one problem however. It left his right hand within arm’s reach of me.

So I tore it off.

He was less than happy about that.

Which was delightful.

I wanted to get up and follow him as he stumbled back, clutching the torn stump and howling in disbelief but the sword in my chest was a problem.

It shouldn’t have been

I like having a heart and lungs but I don’t need them exactly.

The sword was doing something else though. 

It was messing up my magic on a level I wasn’t used to.

I couldn’t tell what it felt like either. Usually magic has a smell to it and a texture if I’m touching it. This was embedded in me and it felt like nothing at all, while outside, my tactile experience of the world was wobbling and bending like an image would in a twisted mirror.

That made no sense at all to me either.

With my newly reattached right hand, I yanked the sword out of my chest and dropped it just as quickly. I hadn’t meant to but whatever weird effect it was generating my only-sort-of-functional right arm did not appreciate.

“You die for that,” the Imperial Cadet growled. “You die now.”

He extended his remaining hand and the sword flew back into it.

Because, sure, why not.

This time he came in with a crossbody slash, burying the sword through my collar bone and diagonally into my spine. It was less pleasant than I’m making it sound.

I’d had enough of him at that point though and so when I grabbed his arm in both my hands I not only stopped the blade from going any further, I shattered his elbow by reversing the direction it bent in.

“That’s…not possible. You…you can’t be doing that,” he said after screaming in a reasonably satisfying manner. We’d finally reached the begging phase.

To an extent he was right though. His sword was really messing me up. The horrifically fatal wound aside, whatever weird magic it was generating was shutting down my access to bits of my magic I actually needed.

And it was the sword doing it.

Not him. 

I couldn’t tell much about its magic, but that part was clear.

So I broke it.

And his armor went with it.

Even in the state I was in, that struck me as interesting.

Not interesting enough to spend any more time playing with him though. He was shaking and had lost the ability to form coherent sentences. 

We were done.

Raising my hand, I let my no longer impeded magic flood through it and grow my fingers in a beautiful set of talons.

Right before I could strike though, I froze.

Which wasn’t my idea.

“Mercy now will spare you from a rich harvest of troubles later,” Doxle said. He wasn’t anywhere close to me but I heard his voice like a gentle whisper from just behind me.

The scent of ashes and lightning wrapped around me like a comforting blanket.

It was almost a sweet moment.

But then I smelled oil and brass and another spell began to strangle me.

This one wasn’t Doxle’s but I recognized it anyways.

It was the same effect the mana suppression cuffs had held.

Looking down I saw seething hatred in the Imperial Cadet’s eyes.

“No magic to save you now,” he said, completing the last gesture of the power dampening spell.

He’d jammed the stump on his right arm into the pile of his fallen armor and it had reformed into an apparently working gauntlet. 

And he’d cast a spell on me with it.

And I was paralyzed by my Advisor.

“Forget I said anything. Do as you will,” Doxle said and the paralysis faded.

Before the Cadet could say or do anything else, I slammed my taloned hand into his chest.

Through skin.

Through ribs.

Through lungs.

And wrapped my hand around his heart.

He was gurgling in that moment but still alive so I shared one final piece of wisdom with him.

“You should have learned what surrender meant.”

“Anger is a misunderstood force. It is so easily equated with fire and destruction, but that is not its genesis, though it does burn, and it does destroy. The seed which anger blossoms from, wrongly in so very many cases, is the desire to protect ourselves from pain, and loss, and powerlessness. That anger fails to serve its intended purpose more times than not does not mean that it is wholly without merit however. Sometimes things should burn.”

– Zindir Harshek Doxel of the Fire Flame

I’m not sure why the dueling elite of the Empire had decided that falling out of bounds should lead to a fatal drop, but the fact that the platform for the third trial rose exactly as high as the one in Doxle’s dueling room left me wondering whether he an Enika had been conspiring to give Idrina and I a preview of the challenge we would have to face. 

A part of me hoped she understood the lesson Doxle had imparted about not being able to use boundaries outside the arena since in this case there weren’t any.

That part of me was foolish because if Idrina passed her trial we would certainly come to blows again, and after her performance in the first trial I was pretty sure our next fight was going to turn out worse for me than our first one.

‘If she passed’? I don’t know who I was kidding. I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that Idrina Ironbriar was going to pass the third trial, probably with the highest marks out of the incoming class. It was possible her brother wouldn’t make it, but even that seemed unlikely. He trained with her. She wouldn’t have bothered with that if he was hopeless and compared to her even a fairly impressive level of skill didn’t have much hope of keeping up.

“We’ll want to watch the fights carefully,” Mellina said. “The Cadets will be holding back against the people who’ve bribed themselves into a position in the Academy, but even then we might learn something.”

“Yeah. The Cadets like to show off,” Yarrin said. “They might miss, or pull back on the force behind a blow but we should be able to see some of their better moves if we wind up going later. Hopefully we won’t get called in first though.”

“Why? Do we really need to see what they can do if all we need to do is survive?” Kelthas asked.

Yarrin’s jaw took on a hard set but it was Mellina who answered the question.

“They like to make examples of the first few applicants,” she said. “They think it unsettles the rest.”

“They’re not wrong about that,” Yarrin said.

I didn’t want to ask which sibling he’d attended a trial to watch, not when it was exceedingly unlikely that the sibling in question was still alive.

“Oh, well I hope it is me then,” Kelthas said. “I can take a beating better than most of the folks here. It’s what I’m built for.”

Yarrin gave a pained expression at that and I smelled the certainty in his fear that Kelthas was wrong as well as the hope that it would never become an issue.

I couldn’t argue with that, even with all the candidates who’d been eliminated  there were still close to a hundred applicants left. Random chance said we were likely to be somewhere in the middle of the pack.

But random chance was not what controlled our fate.

The first applicant called forth was Nelphas Lightstone. 

“Seems unfair to start with the setting the bar so high,” he said, a ring on his hand flaring as it amplified his voice. It was unnecessary. The arena was already enspelled to amplify whatever was said within it.

His opponent, the first Cadet to take the field floated on a small disk dispatched from the larger one where the other Cadets were waiting. 

“Yeah, yeah, let’s see what you got hot stuff,” the silver haired Cadet said, rolling his shoulders as he walked to the center of the arena without a care in the world.

“Get ready for a show that’ll blow you away then,” Nelphas said and that’s exactly what it was.

The whistle to begin sounded and the arena filled was more flashy dramatics than a midsummer’s parade. Nelphas opened by summoning a bow of light that threw explosive star bolts at the Cader, who in turn parried them with a sword wreathed in silver fire. 

The poison blast Nelphas had used in the first round appeared next only to be frozen in mid-air by the Cadet.

The Cadet sent undulating dragons composed of silver flame at Nelphas but Nelphas dodged away from them with a wholly unnecessary sumersault which took him into the blue quadrant.

The rest of the battle proceeded just like that. The Cadet would attack with a big showy spell that only ever succeeded in moving Nelphas from the blue to the red quadrants and back again. Nelphas would respond with an even more dramatic attack with was so unfocused as to pack no more punch than a light breeze. I had almost zero experience with watching caster duels and it was still blindingly obvious that they were only playing with each other. They both seemed intent on running the clock out and filling each second with as much spectacle as possible.

The crowd, both the applicants and those who’s managed to score seating in floating guests boxes, loved every bit of it. There were cheers, gasps of breath and even a chant of Nelphas’ name as the three minutes drew to a close.

When the final whistle sounded, the two ‘combatants’ met in the center of the ring and shook hands.

“The match is ended. Are there any who will speak for this applicant?” the lead proctor asked.

“House Lightstone speaks for this applicant,” a tall and almost skeletally thin gentleman in one of the bigger guests boxes said.

A cheer went up as though the outcome had been in slightest bit of doubt. Nelphas drank it in as though he’d proven himself a Hero of the Empire with his exhibition match. A disk was dispatched from the Lightstone’s guest box to take him off the platform but the Cadet waved it away and insisted that Nelphas take another disk back to the Cadet’s box, an honor Nephlas seemed to be only too happy to receive. 

The next two people called were other nobles, and while they didn’t put on quite the same show that Nelphas did, the general flow of the ‘Trial’ was more or less the same. The silver haired Cadet seemed quite happy to allow his opponents to take their best shots at him and refrained time and again from delivering blows that would have knocked them out of the ring or into the black quadrant.

I should have been happy about that. After the brutality of the last two rounds, I should have been delighted at the return to something resembling civility.

“Next applicant, Kelthas Greenfield, report to the dueling circle,” the proctor called out.

My edges went wobbly and I smelled vomit as my breakfast made a bid to escape.

He couldn’t be going in. It was much too early.

But he was.

“At least he’ll be able to put on a better show than the last two,” Mellina said.

I expected Yarrin to say something in response but his gaze was locked straight ahead. I followed his sightline and saw what had captured his attention.

A new Cadet was being called in.

“Who’s that?” The Cadet was too far away for me to smell but my instincts were screaming about him anyways.

“I don’t know,” Yarrin said, no happier than I was.

Mellina looked between the two of us and caught the gravity of the situation like an infection.

“He did well enough in the first two rounds. He can run to the black quadrant and he’s still sure to get picked,” she said, willing that future to come to pass.

Neither Yarrin nor I challenged her.

It was possible.

It could happen.

“A peasant?” the Cadet said as he took his place in the center of arena, surprise and malice dripping from each word. The tabard he wore over his armor bore a variation on the Imperial logo, so I couldn’t tell if he was from one of Great Houses that despised the general populace more than the others, or if it was purely a personal issue “How disgusting. Someone will need to show you where you belong.”

“I belong right here,” Kelthas said. “And in three minutes, I’m going to belong over there.” He pointed towards the Cadet box where the former applicants were sharing congratulatory ribbing from their new Cadet companions.

“No. You won’t be,” the Cadet said and my nose caught an alien smell that I knew had to be coming from him.

I drew in a deeper breath and almost missed the whistle blowing to start the match. There were too many scents still to isolate anything about the Cadet aside from a few whiffs of a sour-bitter acid that felt like it was melting my nose when I focused on it too much.

The clash of steel on steel brought my awareness back to the scene before me and, surprisingly, it looked like Kelthas was doing well.

Rather than racing towards the black quadrant, Kelthas had leapt towards the center, meeting the Imperial Cadets first thrust with a solid shield block that knocked the Cadet back two paces into the black quadrant.

Kelthas waited for the Cadet to step forward again, avoiding stepping any closer to the black quadrant and allowing the Cadet the chance to change his stance and fix his grip.

Then they were fighting again, blow after blow of steel crashing against steel but to little avail. Kelthas’ armor was justifiably renowned for its durability and, for a duel where he only needed to survive for a short period of time, it was one of the best possible options to have.

“Oh. Yes. I see,” the Imperial Cadet said, informing no one of anything, just flapping his lips to hear himself speak.

He adopted a new posture and I saw a weird effect pass though the blade of his sword. It swelled slightly and shifted bits and pieces of it around, though it happened so fast I was only able to construct that impression well after the fact.

His next blow struck at Kelthas’ left knee and a shower of sparks erupted. Worse, Kelthas dropped to one in response to the hit.

I could smell blood but looking at the arena, there hadn’t been much spilled. I tried to cling to that as a hopeful sign. I really tried.

Kelthas rose to his feet in time to parry the next blow, but the move cost him his sword as the Imperial Cadet’s blade cut right through it.

Throwing away the blade, Kelthas staggered back and tried to summon a fresh one to his hand. He wasn’t Indrina Ironbriar though. He still needed to speak the words and perform the hand gestures and the Imperial Cadet did not give him time.

With a double handed overhead chop, the Imperial Cadet shattered the Tantarian Mail from Kelthas’ right hand’s armor and broke the arm at the same time.

Kelthas tried to draw a dagger with his left hand but the Imperial Cadet kicked him and sent him flying to the side to land in a heap on the border between the blue quadrant and the black.

On shaky legs Kelthas stood again and for a moment I thought he was going to end the fight by taking the one step he needed to take into the black quadrant.

Instead he raised his left hand and began gathering the spell force for the bolt he’d used in our first trial together.

It was a desperate plot and a stupid one. The Imperial Cadet was on him before he was half finished and slammed Kelthas with another blow had shattered the mail from Keltha’s left hand too and broke that arm too.

“That’s not possible,” Yarrin said. “You can’t break Tantarian Mail like that. It’s not possible.”

And yet, as we watched, it happen again and again. Kelthas tried to step over into the black quadrant but the Imperial Cadet blocked his movement, forcing him back with a series of blows which blew away huge chucks of the Tantarian Mail from Kelthas’ chest, back and thighs.

With a final blow he shattered Kelthas’ helmet and let Kelthas fall to the ground.

Broken and bleeding, Kelthas  crawled the three feet to the black quadrant before saying, “Okay, it’s over. I surrender.”

The Imperial Cadet cocked his head at that.

“I wasn’t taught the meaning of surrender,” he said.

And then his blade fell on Kelthas’ neck.

I could have survived the blow.

But Kelthas couldn’t.

“It is neither uncommon nor unhealthy to yearn for the approval of others and to be concerned about their approbation. We are social creatures and it is in our bonds where much of our strength lies. Those who are close to us can provide more strength and wisdom than any one person could hold within themselves. 

Sadly this same coin bears another face, on which is written our greatest weakness and most deadly vulnerability and every time we let another person understand who we are, the coin is flipped.”

– Zindir Harshek Doxel of the Fire Flame

I wasn’t sure returning to my human form would matter, but I did it anyways. Thankfully, going back was the work of only a moment; my body knew that form without a need for me to consciously shape myself into it. For better or worse, it was who I had become and who a part of me would always be.

I expected some debate on that subject however. Too many people had seen me become something else. The question of how they could know that I was who I claimed to be followed naturally from that and was a particularly perilous one. For me. For them. And for people who I absolutely would not allow to be harmed.

The whistle sounded the end of the trial as I finished pouring myself back into myself. Apart from moving the extra mass away, the most challenging part of the transformation was ensuring my clothes and the new armor I was wearing wound up distributed properly around the outside of my body, rather than folded into it as I’d done when transforming.

Typically the organs would have been the trickiest bit. Circulatory systems are just the worst to get connected properly, but since I’d needed only the outer shell of a Felnarellian I’d been able to keep my innards intact. Most of the work I’d done in transforming had been modifications to my limbs, spine, and face, with a bit of general muscle bulk thrown in on top of it to complete the look and let my body hang correctly..

Getting rid of the bulk was the simplest bit. Human muscles were built to size up and down. Granted I’d oversized them well beyond what a human could ever become, but the right pathways were there for them to shrink away. 

Next up in complexity were my limbs. I hurried through that since no one was likely to notice if I left an arm a half inch longer it had been. 

My face I took a bit of extra time with, covering it with my arm as though I was wiping away sweat. Getting all the angles and proportions right was something I couldn’t have managed if I hadn’t had more than a decade of practice at it already. I didn’t need the extra tactile sense of what was happening to my nose and chin from touching them with my arm but it didn’t hurt either. 

I thought I was finishing up when I heard Mellina call out my name and smelled the proctors getting close but that was when I noticed I’d put my hands on backwards.

Not a brilliant move, I admit. Sometimes hurrying the simple things is a terrible idea. I made a show of folding my arms in front of me and then throwing them open as Mellina appeared through the fog. From a distance it might have approached a natural gesture but the important thing was my hands wound up in the correct direction on my wrists.

“Sorry, there were traps around the pit where they placed the trigger so it took me a bit of extra time to reach it,” Mellina said. “How bad was the beast?”

“I’m glad you needed the extra time,” I said which earned me a puzzled look.

The proctors arrived before she could ask me to explain and we both allowed them to escort us out of the fog and over to the winners area for those who’d be moving on to the final Trial. I wanted to give Mellina the details of what had happened but we were surrounded by the other winners before we could get a second alone.

I’m not overly fond of crowds, especially unnecessary ones. The proctors had us squished into a tiny corner of the seats despite the increasingly obviously reality that there wouldn’t be enough winners to come close to filling the space. Knowing that there were many of the ‘favored nobles’ still to go though it was easy to guess who the extra space was being reserved for. 

“Fantastic work you two!” Kelthas said, pulling me out of my scowl of thoughts, as he and Yarrin pushed past a few people to get to us.

“Were you able to watch what happened?” I asked, looking to Yarrin  and dreading but already knowing the answer.

“Most of it,” Yarrin said. “I saw you fighting the Reaving Beast until Mellina got to the banishing spell. You and it were really going at it so I’m sure I missed some of your moves but it was impressive anyways. It looked like you were trying to ride it when the banishment spells went off?”

I had not been fighting Cathoas or trying to ride him. He’d already returned to his home plane by the time the spells triggered. 

Was Yarrin lying to protect me? If so questioning him with all the other winner’s ears around wouldn’t help that effort at all so I shrugged and said, “Things happened pretty fast,” which at least had the virtue of being technically true.

“Did you have any problem with your beast?” Mellina asked Kelthas.

“A little,” Kelthas said. “It laughed off my attacks and tried to chew on me for a bit but when I wasn’t crunchy enough for it, it turned and went looking for Yarrin.”

“Your ‘a bit’ was long enough,” Yarrin said. “They didn’t hide the traps on ours all that well, but I did need some time to get by them.”

Which meant we’d gotten lucky in how we’d been split up. If the teams had been Kelthas and I, neither of us could have found the banishment spells all that fast, and a team of Yarrin and Mellina wouldn’t have had anyone to keep the beast away long enough for the other to trigger the spell.

That might have been luck, but I had a suspicion growing in my mind and it bore the mark of Doxle’s claws on it.

“We’re alone for the next one?” I asked

“Yes, though our opposition won’t necessarily be,” Mellina said. “They sometimes send in multiple Cadets against the applicants, depending on the scenario they’re running.”

“But we don’t need to win this round right?” Kelthas asked.

“An applicant can still be admitted if they are defeated in the final round, based on their performance throughout the trials,” Yarrin said, his voice taking on the quality of someone reciting text he’d had drilled into him from the official rulebook time and again.

“Also based on how much a Great House thinks it can earn from the applicants brand of magic,” Mellina said. “You should be in good shape there. Everyone knows how good Tantarian Battle Scourger Mail is and almost everyone wants some in their House Guards.”

I wasn’t clear on how indebted we would wind up being to whatever Great House selected us, or how much agency we would have in approving our selection by the Great House which ultimately spoke for us. My guesses the those answers to those questions were “very” and “virtually none”, but that was something I could deal with if I survived the next trial. Mellina had said House Astrologia would speak for me on her word, but I wondered if that would still be true given what I’d revealed about myself already.

The rest of the second round of the Trials passed by in a blur. Yarrin was able to narrate some of the events, sparing us from spending the whole time staring at a wall of fog helplessly.

I’d shaped a few more cheats inside my nose to see if I could pick up any hint of my sister’s scent but the stink of the arena drowned out everything else. It wasn’t a useful endeavor but that was possibly true of the trials in general.

On the other hand, I’d at least made it past the second trial, which was more than many could claim. In all, only around half of the applicant who entered the fog managed to reach the banishing spells. Of the other half none emerged under their own power though maybe half of those were still sufficiently alive that they were brought to the medics tents.

I couldn’t see what happened to the other Reaving Beasts and part of me decided that was probably for the best. I was angry enough at the senselessness of the trial system, it was not going to do me any good to dwell on the fact that the Trials had a far greater body count than anyone was willing to acknowledge due to all the people from other worlds who were swept in, driven mad with pain, and then dispatched by the equally terrified applicants.

In the end, the survivors of the second round were called into the arena together. They cleared the fog away, revealing a dueling platform, similar to the ones Doxle had in his house except much wider. An array of discs, also familiar from Doxle’s house, were arranged in a ring around the dueling circle and the proctors didn’t waste any time shuffling us onto them.

“For your final Trial you will face a senior member of our Cadet Corp,” the oldest looking proctor said. “As you can see, your dueling circle has been divided into quadrants, blue, red, green, and black. You will begin in the green quadrant at the rim. Your opponent will hold the center. While you are in the green quadrant you may use any skills or spells you possess, but your time will only count towards survival. Survive for three minutes and you will have finished the trial. Finishing the trial does not mean you have passed it however.”

That was puzzling. What was the point calling the trial done if we hadn’t passed it? I was not alone in wondering that, though I opted not to wonder aloud as some of my fellow applicants did. The proctor took no notice of the muttering though and continued on.

“Should you move to the blue quadrant, you may only assault you opponent or defend from their attacks with magic. The use of martial weapons will result in disqualification. While you are in the blue quadrant, you will earn one point towards your magical rank ever three seconds. The reverse is true with the red quadrant and your martial rank. No spell casting at all in the red quadrant.”

Which left one obvious question and another that I was more interested in the answer to.

“Should you enter the black quadrant you will be declaring your surrender even should your entry into the black quadrant be forced by your opponent,” the proctor said, answering the obvious question at least. “You will retain any points you have accumulated if you end your match by entering the black quadrant.”

That was surprising until I considered the nobles who’d bought a pass into the Academy. The black quadrant was their ticket out of a brutal beating. All they needed to do was sprint through one of the other quadrants, and tap out in the black in order to finish with some points towards a rank they could probably buy up later.

“Leaving the arena will also result in disqualification and the loss of all accumulated points,” the proctor said. 

“What if we beat the Cadet?” Nelphas called out, his voice dripping with arrogance.

“By all means, we encourage you to try. Defeating your opponent will set you to sixty points towards both your magical and physical ranks and end the trial immediately in your favor.”

“Except for the part where you’ll be very dead for even making the attempt,” Mellina whispered to me.

I wouldn’t be, and I knew she and Kelthas would be okay but Yarrin’s fate was looking somewhat dire. His best bet might be to follow the rich nobles’ game plan and sprint to the black quadrant so that he would at least survive? Stepping out of the arena and forfeiting his chance would be even better at keeping him alive, but he seemed intent on going through with the trial so that wasn’t an option.

“Are there any questions?” the proctor asked, to which my answer was ‘yes, several dozen at least’, but before anyone could respond he turned his back with a “good, then let’s begin”.

The dueling arena rose into upwards and the discs we were on joined it. Dark storm clouds had gathered over the course of the trials and as we ascended to meet the final challenge before us, the boom of thunder growing ever closer shook the sky.

“If you’ve ever wondered at the Empire’s callousness in the face of the various institutional cruelties enshrined in so many of its functions, it is important to remember that each horrible practice is not an intrinsic part of our reality. They are, one and all, choices. Choices which were made before you were born, choices which are still being made today, and choices which will persist on and on until and unless someone chooses otherwise.”

– Zindir Harshek Doxle of the First Flame

I’d been right that Kelthas could summon armor, but that had been easy to guess. What I’d missed was that the armor his magic called to him was Tantarian Battle Scourger Mail.

“Glad he blew up the flag,” the soldier I had in a headlock said.

“Couldn’t have blown us up with his girlfriend here with us,” a soldier I’d lightly stabbed said.

“You’ve never seen these Elites really fight have you?” a third soldier said. “Surprised he didn’t blow us all up on principal.

Which was not the most encouraging thing to hear at that moment.

“We done?” I asked, not letting the soldier I had grappled move just yet.

“Yeah, you’re good kid. Congrats on passing this round,” their sergeant said.

That dropped the odds they were going to keep attacking me enough that I let go of the guy I was holding and handed the weapons back to the soldiers I’d taken them from. The few that I’d injured shuffled off the field and were replaced with fresh bodies as I walked back to the stands and rejoined the rest of my small team.

By the time I got there another match was already underway and the crowd’s attention was focused on that. Kelthas had reverted to his unarmored form, and was following the once-again-visible Mellina and Yarrin.

“That seemed easy,” I said after we sat down.

“It wouldn’t have been if they kept shooting at us,” Kelthas said. “I need a good amount of time to charge up that attack, and my armor only protects me.”

“Our skills aligned well for the task,” Mellina said. “Even with orders to eliminate Yarrin, they weren’t setup with the engagement or the tools needed to deal with us.”

“You can see what happens when they are,” Yarrin said gesturing our attention back to the arena. 

The team who followed us had tried to replicate my maneuver. Like me they’d avoided a fair portion of the initial gunfire. Also like me they hadn’t avoided it all. That was where the similarities ended. Of the three, two were down and trying to crawl to cover while the third was struggling forward and his hands and knees, building up a swirl of fire in his hands.

One of the soldiers hopped easily out of their trench and booted the poor fool in the head. The fire sputtered out and the applicant dropped to the ground like a dishrag.

It was an ignominious end to their trial, but given that the soldiers could have simply shot them again there was as least a spark of mercy present.

“Will you be in danger in the second trial too?” I asked Yarrin, the rest of the trial candidates holding no interest for me.

“The second trial should be more fair,” he said. “The Reaving Beasts they call are fairly random and not exactly interested in bribes.”

“Couldn’t they sic bigger ones on you though?” I asked.

“Yeah, but they can only make the rifts so large or they run the risk of something really dangerous coming through,” Yarrin said.

“Wait, they summon the Reaving Beasts here?” I asked. From what I knew, that wasn’t possible, but from the certainty in Yarrin’s eyes I was pretty sure that what I knew was fundamentally wrong.

“Well, yes. Where did you think they got the monsters from?” Yarrin asked.

“I thought this is what they usually did with the Beasts they captured when they were cleaning up the Reaving Storms,” I said.

“They don’t capture the monster that are brought over by Reaving Storms,” Mellina said. “They kill those.”

“Not all the time,” Kelthas said. “There’s a circus that comes through my town every summer with all kinds of Reaving Beasts in cages.”

“Those aren’t real Reaving Beasts,” Mellina said. “Those are creatures from outside the Empire or regular creatures with things glued onto them. Real Reaving Beasts are too dangerous to keep around. They’re closer to living spells than natural creatures and they breed Reaving Storms just by existing if they’re kept around too long.”

She was wrong but not about what people familiar with Reaving Beasts probably understood or expected to be true.

“I thought magic that broke the Soul Kindled Wards was forbidden?” I said, glancing between Mellina and Yarrin since they seemed to know more about what was coming than Kelthas or I.

“There’s forbidden and then there’s Forbidden,” Yarrin said. “If we pass these trials we’ll probably learn more than a few ‘forbidden’ spells.”

“That makes sense,” Kelthas said.”We’d need to understand the spells that can cause problems if we’re supposed to stop the people who are casting them.”

Mellina and Yarrin shared a glance. That was absolutely not the reason we would be learning forbidden spells. Kelthas didn’t seem ready to process that though so I stayed silent.

That might have been one of the times when silence was a mistake.

The remainder of the first round continued but I missed most of the other matches, being absorbed in thoughts of what the Great Houses willingly invoking Reaving Storms might mean. I didn’t like where any of those thoughts led me, but I couldn’t ignore them either.

My attention was pulled away from the dark tides swirling inside me by someone I should have been paying more attention for. 

Idrina Ironbriar and her brother were in one of the last groups to be put through the first Trial. The two people they were with strolled onto the field, laughing like it was a drunken outing rather than a deadly contest. Idrina’s brother on the other hand walked calmly, taking it seriously but without any hint of nerves slowing the flow of his gait. 

As for Idrina? There was no mirth in her. She marched out to their assigned spot, unafraid and unexcited. I looked for any sign that she might be concerned about the Trial but all I saw in her was poise and focus.

I glanced over at the Imperial Regulars. ‘Random chance’ had put them between the applicants and the flag, which was surprising. Ironbriar was definitely powerful enough to buy an easy placement for Idrina and the others. 

The question was would she have let them? I couldn’t claim to know her at all, but I still knew the answer was ‘no’.

The whistle sounded and the match was done before its echo faded.

The rest of the applicants didn’t seem to be paying much attention to the matches but what I’d witnessed left a cold pit where my stomach had previously been.

“She was holding back,” I said to no one. Or maybe to my past self? It didn’t matter, I couldn’t speak across time, and it changed neither the outcome of the battle I’d had with her or the trial she’d just completed.

She hadn’t called a spear this time.

She’d called six of them.

In the blink of an eye she’d lunged past the Regulars, reached the flag, sliced through its pole, and slashed it to pieces with a barrage of spears leaving the remnants of it fluttering in the wind.

She hadn’t been that fast when we fought.

And she hadn’t summoned such an overwhelming offense either.

And from how she was leaving the field, I was convinced that she’d been holding back for the Trial too.

Our next fight was not going to be fun.

“She’s an unusual one,” Mellina said, curiosity flickering in her eyes. “The Ironbriar’s aren’t known for fighting their own battles anymore.”

“She seemed quite ready for this battle,” Kelthas said.

“I wonder if that was why the two others with her were so unconcerned?” I asked, not expecting an answer.

“Probably. It’s a common complaint about this test,” Yarrin said. “Some people get through just because they have a strong team.”

“And other fail because their team is weak,” Mellina said. “We’ve seen both today.”

“They’ll start correcting for that with the next test, right?” Kelthas said.

“Yeah, we’ll be split into pairs for that one,” Yarrin said.

“What will the objectives be? Beyond survival I mean,” I asked.

“They change things up from year to year, but the general theme is banishing the monsters,” Mellina said.

“And if we haven’t been taught how to do that yet?” I asked, trying to decide if I needed to murder Doxle for sending me into this without giving me a clue how to pass it.

“Oh they always have banishing spells setup in the arena before you go in,” Kelthas said. “And they’ll tell you how to work them. You just need to manage it without the monster eating you.”

“People sometimes try to kill the monster too,” Mellina said. “Occasionally it even works.”

“Will they let us pick our partners?” I asked, trying to decide if I should be the one to go with Yarrin, or if one of the others would be a better fit for him.

“Officially no,” Yarrin said.

“Which means the weak and wealthy candidates will be paired with people who are strong enough to win the trial all on their own,” Mellina said.

“How does that help them?” Kelthas asked. “If they can’t handle this trial, won’t they just wash out in the third round instead of the first or second?”

Mellina didn’t laugh in his face, but the smile she wore bore a similar intent.

“They’re not taking these trials,” Yarrin said. “Not really. They’ll go through them all but they’re here for the prestige and the authority that comes with the position. They’re allowed through with only the pretense of being tested because it’s their money that funds Academy.”

“Or because their parents are friends with someone on the Academy’s board,” Mellina said. “Most things like this aren’t a case of direct bribery. If it was, common people could save up and manage it too.”

“But they’d be a liability to whatever force they were assigned to?” Kelthas asked, the idea of gross incompetence being common place among the elites of the world apparently too painful of a concept for him to swallow.

The first round of the Trials ended and the next began without any great fanfare. If your team passed the trial you were still in the arena. If not, you were limping away, in the infirmary, or being prepared for burial. 

To be fair though, the dead numbered far fewer than I’d expected among the number of failures. The Regulars had to have been taking some care with their attacks to leave as many alive as they did, though even careful shots were sometimes fatal, no matter then intention behind them.

The second round of Trials began with one of the proctors venturing into the center of the arena and casting a spell. It took him almost ten minutes to complete it and he spent the entire time reciting verses from a language native to some other world. He drew sigils in the dirt as well but his words erased them over and over again.

I could feel the power of the spell building and I could smell the hundred different scents it evoked. The proctor wasn’t casting the spell alone. He was merely acting as its focal point.

When the crafting was finally completed a dark cloud bubbled up from where the caster was standing. It rose until it filled the area to a depth of at least ten feet and from the scents I was picking up from it carried the magics from a dozen different realms.

Then I smelled the worst odor I’d ever encountered.

The first one I’d ever smelled in this world.

I fought back a wretch, and willed myself to see through the fog, trying to find the rift that I knew was open. But eyes don’t work like that.

Or at least mine didn’t.

“They’re hiding the activation points for the banishing spells,” Yarrin said. “I can help with this one.”

“How?” Kelthas asked.

“I can see where they all are,” Yarrin said.

“You should go with Kelthas if you can,” Mellina said. “Tantarian Mail dulls the senses, doesn’t it?”

“A little bit,” Kelthas said. “Will you two be okay?”

“Depends on what they summon for us,” I said. I could have tried to be reassuring, but we all would have known it was a lie.

“The key to a successful team? Don’t have me on it. Or anyone like me. Or really anyone at all. Yes. That is definitely it. The key to a successful team is to limit its membership. If there’s anyone else on the team beside yourself, then I’m afraid at the most critical moment of your grand enterprise, someone will reveal themselves to be a turncoat, someone else will crumble under the pressure and, for the rest, general panic and mayhem will ensue. The only hope of avoiding a complete catastrophe is to do it all yourself.”

– Zindir Harshek Doxle of the First Flame, three sheets to the wind with a liver in full mutiny against the abuse it had suffered.

It wasn’t just the smell of blood that drenched the arena. All the myriad aromas of death were present. 

But that didn’t make sense.

We’d only just been allowed in and from how the crowd was moving, no one was plucking random bodies out of it to be slaughtered indiscriminately.

But the scents were fresh.

The arena, and I was being charitable calling it that, wasn’t a permanent structure. The beams of the walls had been cut no more than a week ago, and the joins between them were made for easy disassembly. It hadn’t been the site of countless battles before this. 

I racked my brain to think of why it smelled like an abattoir and was still struggling to figure it out when we exited from behind the stands to see the fighting pit. It wasn’t as large as I’d imagined it to be. Maybe a hundred feet long by fifty feet wide and filled with rocks and trees and a surprising amount of ground clutter.

Basically inconvenient for me to the greatest extent that it could be.

Larger and I’d have been able to play Hide and Shred. Smaller and I could have skipped straight to the “Shred” part of that equation. A flat and open arena would have meant no obstacles to closing the distance with our attackers. The broken and cluttered terrain meant a charge or any other effort to close to melee range would be delayed significantly. If they offered us our choice of weapons like Doxle had I could select a ranged option, but since I hadn’t trained with them I had to imagine my performance would be substandard at best.

“That’s not a good sign, is it?” Yarrin said, pointing back into the arena as we climbed the stairs up to the fourth row of the stands.

I glanced where he was pointing and noticed at last where the smell of death was coming from.

The many splashes of blood which were splattered over the arena at chaotic intervals.

“Looks like some of the late applicants survived though,” Kelthas said, nodding towards the opposite side of the arena and a group of young people who were standing slightly apart from the crowds which were still filing in.

“Late applicants?” I asked, noticing the haunted, yet grimly determined expressions the odd group all wore.

“A lot of people can’t afford the application fee,” Mellina said. “They have the option of showing up here and being ‘processed’ before the trials begin.”

“And the processing has an unreasonably high mortality rate?” I asked, not needing to guess much on that point.

“The late application exam is supposed to be more challenging but it’s not supposed to be more dangerous than the rest of the trials,” Kelthas said.

“That’s the official story,” Mellina said. “In practice it varies year to year. This year we have a bumper crop of applicants, so…”

So the numbers need to be thinned.

It didn’t make sense to me. How did the Empire benefit from killing off any caster? Non-fatal tests to determine aptitude would leave them with so many people who could contribute to all the easier yet still vital tasks required to maintain the Empire’s basic existence, like recasting the Soul Kindled Wards that protected us from the Reaving Storms. Those broke far too often and the excuse was always the same, ‘there are only so many Imperial casters to go around and they are stretched very thin.”

We took our seats in time to see the first group of applicants take the field. 

“That’s Nelphas Lightstone’s group,” Yarrin said. “They’re guaranteed to make it in.”

Because High Lightstone was the strongest of the Great Houses and could afford to purchase safety for their scions? Greyfall wasn’t a weak house either though and somehow Yarrin didn’t rate that expenditure.

When the opposing forces from the Imperial Regular Army took the field there was only the barest pretension that the trial was meant to be anything like an actual fight.

The starting positions were assigned ‘randomly’ the proctor explained, and the objective was simple; destroy the enemy’s flag.

For the battle the flag of Zamashash, the Empire’s age old enemy to the east, was flown from a ten foot tall pole in the center of the arena. Lightstone’s forces were deployed twenty feet from the flag while the Regulars were stationed fifty feet back at the edge of the arena.

A whistle was blown and the Regulars charged forward. No run, however valiant, could have prevented Nelphas from casting a bolt of corrosive poison he tossed at the flag, which proceeded to melt it, pole and all, into a runny sludge.

The whole “fight” took five seconds, if that, and yet the crowd still erupted in cheers when Nelphas called out “Ever the Empire’s Enemies Fall!”

With their victory secured, Nelphas and his team were ushered to the quarter of the arena which had been kept empty when the crowd was brought in.

“That’s not much space for winners,” Yarrin said.

I met his gaze and nodded. It was possible the proctors would reuse space as it was cleared, or they might intend to eliminate two thirds of us in the first trial. Of those two possibilities, I knew which one I felt safer placing money on.

The next five groups were also scions of the Great Houses and while the positioning of the teams and the new flags did change somewhat, the overall positioning remained largely the same. The applicants had a clear advantage over the Regulars, and what advantages the Regulars did possess they never pressed into service.

“Darrowwood,” the proctor called out, bringing the next team forward.

“I don’t know them,” Yarrin said.

Because they weren’t associated with one of the Great Houses.

Which was also why the random placement of the flag wasn’t quite so favorable towards them. Instead of it being closer to the applicants than the Regulars, ‘purely random chance’ had placed the flag at the far end of the arena with the Regulars between it and the team of doomed young people..

When the whistle blew, the Regulars didn’t charge. They didn’t have to. They simply took up their regulation Imperial rifles from where the guns had been laying on the ground and commenced firing immediately.

Darrowwood’s team had three members in it before the whistle blew. That dropped to one before the whistle’s echo faded. The two kids Darrowwood had brought with him were down, not dead yet but grievously injured. 

Darrowwood made a valiant stand in front of them conjuring sheets of ice to act as cover as he turned and dragged his two teammates behind one of the rock outcroppings they’re been positioned near. The move would have protected them from further fire, except in the time it took him to drag them to safety, two of the Regulars crossed the distance to the ice wall, scaled it and shot him from the top.

The three were still alive when the medical crew gurneyed them off the field, but I had to wonder how much attention they were going to receive.

“The medics will stabilize them and pass the bill onto their families or sponsors,” Yarrin said without my needing to ask.

“That’s not going to be easy for them to pay back,” Kelthas said, looking more grave than he had when the victories look like they would all be easy ones.

“If they shoot me, don’t waste time trying to save me,” Yarrin said. “Just keep yourselves alive, and burn that stupid flag.”

“They’re not going to shoot you,” Kelthas said. “They’re going to shoot me.”

“I’m pretty sure they’ll have orders contrary to that,” Yarrin said. “Or at least to shoot me first.”

“Good,” I said. “Let’s use that.”

“No!” Kelthas said. “We’re not letting them shoot Yarrin so we can win.”

“Of course not,” I said. Why would anyone think that? Yarrin was flimsy. “If they have orders to shoot him though, that makes them predictable.”

“I’m confused,” Kelthas said.

“I’m not,” Mellina said. “We can definitely use their focus on Yarrin. I’ll handle him. Can you two take care of the flag?”

“I can take care of the soldiers,” I said.

“Fighting them is a bad idea,” Kelthas said. “They’re used to battle.”

I wasn’t, but they weren’t using magic so the number of tricks they could pull was manageable.

“You’ll need an opening to get to the flag,” I said. “I’ll make one for you. Destroy it quick though. They’re using basic tactics. We don’t want to give them time to switch to something complex.”

The next team up was noble led and the Regulars gave them more of a challenge than the others. Two of the four sustained disabling but non-life threatening injuries, while the other two lost a little blood but pulled through to win despite the ‘heroic effort’ required.

The following team was low born and five strong. They were good casters, managing to jam or shatter the Regular’s rifles and force the soldiers into melee where they held their own for almost a minute.

The soldiers superior coordination and stamina paid off though and as the team of applicants was forced back to the edge of the arena, their leader offered their surrender.

Surrendering disqualified them from progressing but the soldiers weren’t forced to carve them up, so in a sense it was a victory for everyone.

“Greyfall” one of the proctor’s called and we were up.

Despite Yarrin being affiliated with one of the theoretically most powerful Great Houses, the random placement for our positions came up in line with what the low born applicants had been given.

“Find cover before the whistle blows,” I said. It should have been safe to assume that’s what people would do, but after watching all the teams before us I’d come to the conclusion that safe assumptions were anything but.

We were eighty feet away from the flag with the Regulars only thirty feet from us when we got to our starting position. 

I gave the area another scan, taking in the shallow trench that was just behind us, the mid-height tree stump to our left and the shrubs on our right. The Regulars were standing in another small trench, slightly deeper than the one we could fall back to. The ground sloped up towards them so they enjoyed a small height advantage but it wasn’t going to matter.

The whistle blew and several things happened in the same instant.

Shots rang out, as they always did, so no surprise there.

The ricochet sound however was new. I didn’t waste time turning to see what had happened, but I had a strong guess that Kelthas’ magic allowed him to summon armor like Idrina could summon weapons. He’d jumped in front of Yarrin as a shield and would likely be able to protect the smaller boy until the Regulars swarmed us and flanked around him.

Except the Regulars weren’t going to do that.

There was no point swarming forward to take out the target they’d been paid to kill when he wasn’t there anymore. I knew that because Mellina understood me, and I knew what she could do.

Also, the Regulars lost interest in shooting at Yarrin becuase there was a person running at them on all fours, her body stretching out exactly as human bodies are not supposed to.

It didn’t take them long to choose me as their target but Imperial rifles don’t have the fastest rate of fire and their accuracy against targets running in a fast zigzag pattern wasn’t the best.

Some of them still hit me, but it wasn’t like they or anyone else could tell that for sure.

All they saw was something that had left humanity behind twenty feet ago, was focused only on them, and wasn’t stopping.

They didn’t panic, or at least they didn’t break ranks. They did however fail to switch to their melee weapons fast enough.

That was fine with me. I was more than happy to draw a sword from the nearest one and a knife from his neighbor.

I didn’t stab anything vital, in part because I’d seen them gracefully accept the last groups surrender, and in part because they served as better meat shield alive than dead.

I was wondering how long that particular equation would remain true when a dull explosion came from a spot fifty feet away.

I dragged the soldier I had in a headlock back but stopped stabbing at the others as we all looked to confirm that, yes, Kelthas had used the window of opportunity I’d bought him to blow up the flag.

“In my role as an Advisor, people have asked if it is it not the duty of an adult to provide boundaries and structure to the younglings who are placed in their care. Generally they are red-faced and screaming and phrase the question somewhat less coherently than that, but the overall philosophical point is common no matter the rage they’ve been provoked to. In response I have been uncharacteristically consistent in my answer.

No.

Younglings must be free to explore the boundaries of their world.

Even if they occasionally fall over the edge.

That is the joy of being young and the terror of adulthood.”

– Zindir Harshek Doxle of the First Flame

I’d expected the staging ground for the Arena of Trials to contain the best and brightest of this year’s casters, and in that I was badly mistaken.

It didn’t contain the best and brightest.

It contained all of them.

The gifted, and the clueless. The confident and the weeping. All in a fairly narrow band of ages from probably just a little too young to properly enroll, to old enough that they should have applied last year.

In theory that meant the entire mob were adults, but any honest observer would have seen nothing but a sea of children being massed together for a slaughter.

Or at least that was my initial impression.

It turned out things were dire but not quite as bad as I’d first imagined.

Of the several hundred applicants assembled more than three quarters were not applying for the Elite Cadet program. Instead they were taking the tests for admittance to the “Common Tier” and, as a result, those wise souls were not going to be facing a trial of mortal combat as part of their entrance exam. They were also more or less guaranteed to remain lower valued soldiers in the Imperial forces for the entirety of their career. To my mind that was the vastly smarter choice and, had I a chance of passing the tests involved, one I would have jumped at. Doxle was right though. I lacked both the education and magical aptitude to gain entrance to the Academy through that route.

Mellina and I were ushered over to the side of the mob that was being processed for the Elite Cadet trials, with Doxle trailing helpfully behind us. I’d expected Holman to rejoin him for Mellina’s sake but he had apparently drawn the short straw for shepherding both of us.

“I don’t think we’ll get to pick our teams, but if we remain close together the proctors may take the easy option and group us accordingly,” Mellina said, moving close but not touching me. “If you want that, that is?”

“Yes,” I said, because I’d be an idiot to let someone who could turn invisible wind up another team. Also, she wasn’t horrible. And she smelled nice. “We should look for anyone else who seems competent but doesn’t have a team.”

As ‘brilliant plans’ went it was neither brilliant nor much of a plan, but Mellina nodded and began casting her gaze around. Since she was slightly taller than I was, she could, in theory, see farther. In practice there were enough people who towered over each of us that our options were pretty limited.

Scent however doesn’t differentiate by height.

I reached up to scratch the side of my nose to cover a few adjustments I needed to make to it and then breathed in slow and deep.

It was a good thing I’d been to cities with Grammy reasonably often when I was growing up. The scent of a few hundred young adults hit me like a sledgehammer of stink. I’d run through choking gasses in a necromantic swap that didn’t smell as bad as the only barely enclosed area I was in, but I’d known that would be the case.

Fighting to keep Pastries’ wonderful breakfast down in my stomach where it belonged, I tried to sort through the ‘aromas’ clouding the air.

Lots of fear, lots of hope, and lots of false bravado. None of that was a surprise. The scent of a calm breath however?

“Over here,” I said and took Mellina’s hand so we wouldn’t get separated in the crowd. I didn’t bother with Doxle since he seemed to be fairly adept at moving through crowds on his own.

The calm breaths turned out to belong to a sandy haired boy in a drab tunic and pants who was sitting down with a smaller boy in nicer clothes who was much less put together.

“It’s not too late to switch,” the sandy haired boy said, his eyes closed as he continued to breathe in and out slowly.

“If I don’t get in to the Elites, I don’t get to go home,” the smaller boy said. He was sitting facing the other boy, also with his eyes closed but while he was trying to mimic the slow and calm breathing the sandy haired boy was demonstrating, his efforts weren’t yielding the same results.

“If you die, they’ll send you home in a box,” I said, sitting down beside them.

Yes, I know that wasn’t the best thing I could have said. If I waited until I could think of the best thing to say though, I wouldn’t have said anything. 

Which is why I’m usually silent.

The smaller boy gave a rueful laugh at my intrusion. “That seems to be the plan.”

“Push that thinking away,” sandy haired boy said. “You’ve got to picture yourself winning if you’re going to make it.”

“It’s not easy,” the smaller boy said.

“Why?” I asked, wondering if he had some magical ineptitude which placed him below the other candidates around us.

“Because I know what’s waiting for us in the trials,” the smaller boy said.

“You saw the monster they captured for the second wave?” Mellina asked. She hadn’t been invisible but the two boys hadn’t noticed her until she spoke.

That was interesting information to have.

“The monsters aren’t the problem,” the smaller boy said. “Or, they are, but every class faces them. It’s the seniors who’ll be taking part in the third trial. They’re what I’m worried about.”

“What’s different about this class of seniors?” Mellina asked. 

“I know some of them,” the smaller boy said.

“Will they be watching for you?” I asked, remembering Doxle mentioning that the casualties of the trials tended to include the offspring of the Great Houses when another House was upset at them.

“I haven’t done anything to them, but, yeah, I think they will be,” the smaller boy said.

“To disqualify, maim, or kill?” I asked.

“With a candidate pool this large?” the smaller boy asked in return and I saw his point.

“Disqualification would work just as well as anything to cut down the number of applicants,” the sandy haired boy said.

“Yeah, it would,” the smaller boy said, nodding though he didn’t smell like he agreed with that sentiment at all.

“What about you?” I asked, turning to the sandy haired boy.

“I’m no one important,” he said. “My Dad is a tailor and my Mom owns a Tack shop in Mist River.”

“Why come here then?” I asked.

“I was saved by from a Reaving Storm by an Elite Guardsman when I was kid. I always wanted to follow in her footsteps after that. How about you?”

“I think someone I know is in the Imperial Academy. I want to see if I can find her,” I said, leaving out the part where Trina had been dead for more than decade.

“You should just ask one of the guards,” the smaller boy said. “It’d be a lot safer than this.”

“I know.” But asking a gate guard at the Academy ‘hello, have you seen my dead sister walking around in here?’ wasn’t going to get me the answers I needed.

The smaller boy stared at me for a moment and then nodded. I don’t know what he saw but it left him feeling charitable.

“If you have to go through with this, you should get away from me,” he said. “All of you. Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful for your help,” that was directed to the sandy haired boy, “but if the wrong people see you with me, you’ll be in a lot more danger than if you’re just on your own.”

He wasn’t wrong. If we were linked with him, his enemies would become our enemies. I weighed the peril that would put us in and didn’t like the results.

“You should team up with us,” I said.

What I didn’t like was that alone, the small boy was going to die. It wasn’t my job to protect him, I just hated how the Trials were setup and wanted to break this especially awful part of them.

Also, he hadn’t freaked out when I sat down and started talking.

“Us?” the sandy haired boy asked.

“Mellina and I. You should join us too.”

“I don’t think we get to pick who we’re teamed with,” the sandy haired boy said.

“Then why are so many other groups of three and four already forming up?” Mellina asked, gesturing towards the crowd around with a nod.

The boys looked surprised and, to be fair, I hadn’t noticed it either. 

From the area near the entrance to the Arena a commotion kicked off but the upsurge of voices in the crowd made it impossible to hear what was being said. I looked around for Doxle, thinking he should be familiar with whatever the next steps were but, of course, he was nowhere in sight.

In fact no actual adults were. When the crowd started flowing in the direction of the arena I was able to guess the reason; the Trials were starting and it was time for the applicants to be led to their doom.

We were at one of the edges of the mob and progress into the arena was about as far from swift and orderly as it was possible to get but we stood anyways and began shambling forward like the mindless flesh automatons we were being treated as.

“I’m staying with you,” Mellina said and I caught a flicker of sincerity in the bare trace of honey and woodfire scent that I could make out.

I turned my head and nodded, adding in a probably unnecessary “Thanks.” She knew I was grateful for her presence. I think.

“Kelthas,” the sandy haired boy said, jostling close to make sure the crowd didn’t push us apart.

“Yarrin,” the smaller boy said. It was easier for him to stay with us since he took up less space. That would stay true until someone bigger decided they wanted his space at which point we’d lose sight of him in an instant. I cast another glance at Mellina and replied with a quick nod of understanding before taking up a position just behind Yarrin.

“Kati,” I said.

I wasn’t sure if Mellina’s idea would work, or if we’d be able to have a team size of four. The front of the line was maddeningly hard to see and more than once I was tempted to climb a particularly tall girl in front of me like a tree to get a better view. Fortunately for her sake, and my dignity, the crowd’s pace gradually picked up and before I went completely out of my mind the entrance gate was in sight.

A moment’s observation as we drew close to it revealed that teams were being assigned by the proctors who were directing the flow of applicants into the arena. There might have been more bored and disinterested people in the Empire, but if so the man and woman at the gate were giving them a solid run for the prize spot.

“Three, I need the next three,” one of the proctors said when it was our turn to at the front. I looked to see if the group behind us was a three or four person one but before I could do a headcount I felt an unseen hand nudge me forward.

So I walked forward.

When you’re working with an invisible partner, not drawing attention to their presence is more or less the best strategy at all times.

“Ranking member of your team?” the proctor asked. I was going to answer that, as weird as it would have felt, but Yarrin stepped forward. 

“Greyfall,” Yarrin said, placing him as a scion of one of the five most powerful Houses.

The proctor checked his list, snorted, and handed Yarrin a a brass coin from the pile of brass, silver, and gold on the desk between them. After waving Yarrin through, he gave a similar coin to Kelthas and me and passed us on too.

I was watching for it and still almost missed an unattended brass coin vanishing from the stack.

My smile of satisfaction faltered a moment later though when we entered the arena proper and I was able to smell all of the blood in the air.