The afternoon sun beats down on the training yard, turning the packed dirt into a skillet. The air is thick, tasting of copper, dry dust, and the sour ozone smell of fifty terrified teenagers sweating through their tunics.
We are gathered in the center of the yard, a sprawling expanse of dirt and gravel enclosed by high stone walls. Our brutal training grounds where the head Proctor gets off on murdering our bodies and egos.
While the total First Year cohort numbers nearly three hundred, only a fraction of us have been pulled for this specific torment. Fifty students a random, unlucky selection stand huddled together like sheep waiting for the butcher, while the remaining two hundred and fifty cadets run drills on the far side of the grounds, watching us with a mix of pity and relief.
The demographics of our group reflect the Academy's population. The bulk of the cluster is made up of House Luxor and House Vespera students. There are about twenty-five Luxors, looking pale and annoyed, and fifteen Vesperas. Scattered among them are a handful of House Melruth students and just two from my own House, Apophis: me and Imara. There's a single kid from House Umbra who looked particularly upset with his current life.
We are wearing standard-issue training leathers all holding the normal training swords with dulled edges to prevent deaths as with the current war explosion the acceptable amount of dying Awakened has been reduced.
And facing us, fifty yards away, stands head Proctor Evanora.
She is not wearing the black plates of war I saw in the arena. She is wearing the pristine, snow-white robes of a High Proctor. They billow slightly in the hot wind, stark and terrifyingly clean against the grime of the yard. Underneath, I can see the glint of functional, polished steel greaves, but she wears no helmet. Her pink eyes are sharp, unblinkingly focused on the mob in front of her. A smile of promised violence making me cringe.
"No Marks," she announces. "I will show you why using the gods as crutch will never be enough"
She smiles. It is thin, cold, and utterly devoid of mercy.
"Fifty of you. One of me. The objective is simple: Win." She pauses, letting the absurdity of the statement sink in. "Good luck my dear children."
Beside me, Imara shifts her weight, gripping her training sword until her knuckles turn white.
"Fifty to one," she mutters, sweat already beading on her forehead and dripping into her eyes. "Those are good odds in a bar fight. Here? I feel like we're about to be fed to the wolves."
"Just don't die," I whisper back, rolling my shoulders to loosen the tension. My body is still aching from the week's relentless drills my calves burn, my back is tight but the adrenaline is starting to pump, flooding my veins with a cold, sharp focus.
"Begin," Evanora says.
It isn't a shout. It's barely a whisper.
For a second, nobody moves. The sheer aura of her presence holds us pinned to the dirt.
Then, the arrogance of House Luxor takes over.
From the right flank, a group of about twelve Luxor students break ranks. They fancy themselves the honorable 'duelists,' the ones who grew up with sword instructors and expensive private tutors in marble courtyards. They crave the glory of the first strike. They want to be the one to say they touched the Proctor.
One of them screams a boy named Titus with perfectly coiffed hair that is about to get ruined and they charge.
It's a disorganized, frantic rush. They hold their blades high in textbook stances that look ridiculous in comparison to the singular woman they were charging. They are shouting, pumping themselves up, unaware that they are running into a meat grinder.
I groan internally. Fools.
They crowd each other, their spacing nonexistent. They are a wave of bodies tripping over their own eagerness.
Evanora doesn't move. She stands perfectly still, her white robes hanging motionless, her sword still sheathed at her hip. She watches them come, her expression bored, like a woman watching rain streak down a window.
When Titus enters her striking range, launching a thrust aimed at her throat, she finally acts.
She doesn't even draw her sword.
Her left hand, encased in a simple leather glove, lashes out in a backhand swat. It connects with the flat of his blade with a deafening CLANG, knocking the weapon wide. The momentum spins him around, exposing his back.
In the same fluid motion, Evanora steps inside his guard and plants a boot behind his ankle and shoves his shoulder.
He goes down hard, face-first into the dirt, breath exploding from his lungs in a dusty wheeze.
Before he even hits the ground, she is moving on the next one.
A Vespera girl, caught up in the Luxor charge, tries an overhead cleave. Evanora catches the girl's wrist mid-swing with one hand, stopping the blade dead inches from her face. With the other hand, she punches the girl in the solar plexus. The white fabric of her sleeve snaps with the speed of the blow.
The girl folds in half, dropping her sword and vomiting onto her boots.
The rest of the charging group falters. Their momentum shatters against the reality of her violence. They try to stop, to regroup, but they are too close together. They bump into each other, tangling swords and feet.
Evanora moves among them like a fox in a henhouse.
She uses her scabbard like a baton, cracking it across knees and elbows. She uses her shoulders to check them, sending them flying. It is brutal, efficient, and humiliating.
She grabs a boy by his expensive silk collar and throws him into the path of another student's swing. The two collide in a heap of limbs. She sweeps the leg of a girl trying to flank her, sending her face-first into the gravel.
Within twenty seconds, the vanguard of twelve is groaning in the dirt. Broken noses, bruised ribs, shattered egos.
Evanora hasn't broken a sweat. Her white robes are still spotless. She steps over a writhing Luxor student, her eyes locking onto the remaining thirty-eight of us.
"Pathetic," she spits, I hate her. I admire her.
The voices in my head growl, agitated by the display of dominance. She thinks she is the apex, they whisper, vibrating against my skull. Show her the teeth. Show her she bleeds like the rest.
"Circle her!" a voice bellows.
It's a student from House Melruth. A big guy, carrying a two-handed greatsword that looks too heavy for him. "Don't let her focus! Surround her! Strike from all sides!"
Well finally something sensible. I guess the others do have a few working brain cells.
I move. I grab the House Umbra kid by the shoulder and shove him forward.
"You heard him," I snarl. "Move left. Keep your sword up. If you die, try to fall on her so she trips."
"What?" he squeaks.
"Go moron!" I shove him again harshly.
We scramble into a loose circle. Most of the other students looking determined but faint understand that the odds of us actually beating the psycho woman in front of us are low.
Thirty-eight of us against one woman and I still don't like our odds. Sad.
Evanora watches us fan out. She tilts her head, her white robes fluttering. A flicker of genuine amusement crosses her face.
"The wolf pack circles its prey," she muses. "Or perhaps just wild dogs yapping at a lioness."
She begins to walk toward the center of our collapsing circle. Slow. Deliberate. The crunch-crunch-crunch of her boots on the gravel is a metronome counting down our demise.
"Now!" the Melruth boy screams. "Take her!"
The circle collapses.
It's not a coordinated strike. It's a mob. Twenty swords swing at once.
Evanora disappears into the blur of steel.
A Vespera girl lunges for her back. Evanora doesn't even turn. She drops her center of gravity and pivots on her heel, her white robe flaring. Her sword comes up in a hanging parry, catching the girl's blade on her own.
CLANG.
With a subtle twist of her wrist, Evanora binds the girl's blade, forcing it down, and then snaps a fist into the girl's nose. The Vespera student drops like she was shot.
Two Luxor boys attack from the front slash and thrust.
Evanora sidesteps the thrust by an inch - literally an inch. She lets the blade pass through the fabric of her sleeve without touching skin. As the slasher comes in, she steps into his guard. She slams the pommel of her sword into his wrist, shattering his grip, and sends his weapon spinning into the air.
She catches the falling sword with her free hand and throws it hilt first into the chest of the thruster. He wheezes and collapses.
It is a masterclass in economy of motion.
She is constantly moving, never letting anyone get set. She manages the distance perfectly, keeping the horde stumbling over itself. She uses the students as human shields against each other.
I watch a House Luxor student wind up for a massive, heroic swing, only for Evanora to shove a House Umbra kid into the path of the blade. The Luxor kid pulls his swing at the last second, unbalancing himself, and Evanora kicks his legs out from under him.
"Stop bunching up!" I scream, dodging a wild backswing from an ally. "You're hitting each other!"
I see an opening.
Evanora is engaged with three students. Her back is momentarily exposed so I lunge aiming a low, crippling cut at her hamstring.
She doesn't look. She just knows.
She pushes off her back foot, sliding sideways with unnatural grace. My blade hisses through the empty air where her leg was a microsecond ago.
"Sloppy, Ayato," she chides, not even looking at me as she parries another student. "You can do better"
She spins, her white robe whipping around her like a shroud. She slams her blade into mine causing me to grunt at the power behind her swing.
WHACK.
Pain explodes in my side. I stumble back, wheezing, clutching my chest that she somehow kicked.
"Fuck," I gasp,
I scramble back, putting distance between us.
Around me, the bodies are piling up. The sounds of combat are being replaced by groans of pain. The circle is gone. It's just a field of broken children.
A few minutes later, the noise dies down.
I look around.
The yard is littered with writhing bodies. Forty-plus students are down. The dirt is stained with sweat, vomit, and a little blood.
Only a handful are left standing.
Me. The big Melruth guy with the greatsword. Artemis from House Luxor, looking grim and determined, her rapier held in a classic dueling stance. And Imara, who looks like she's about to pass out with her left eye hefting a nice swole.
Evanora stands in the center of the carnage. Her white robe has a few smudges of dirt on the hem, but otherwise, she looks like she just went for a light stroll. She isn't even breathing hard. She rolls her shoulders, looking at us with mild disappointment.
"Well," she says dryly, flicking a speck of dust off her sleeve. "The chaff is cleared. Now for the wheat. Assuming any of you actually qualify as wheat."
She turns her gaze to me. Those pink eyes bore into mine, stripping away the bravado.
"Ayato," she says. "We've been working on your skill these past few months do not disappoint me"
I sneer, wiping blood from my lip. "Come find out."
Artemis moves first. She is noble, proud. She attacks with a flurry of precise, fast thrusts, her rapier a silver blur aimed at the joints in Evanora's defense.
It's beautiful technique. She really is talented but It's useless.
Evanora parries every single thrust with contemptuous ease. Clang-clang-clang-clang. Her heavier blade bats the rapier aside like a toy. She isn't even attacking; she's playing with her.
On the fifth attack, Evanora steps in. She catches the rapier's blade against her crossguard, binds it, and twists. Artemis is forced to turn with the torque or have her wrist broken. As she turns, Evanora slams a shoulder into her shoulder. Artemis goes down face-first into the dirt, her rapier flying from her hand.
"The way you fight will get you killed girl how many times must I tell you," Evanora says coldly.
The Melruth student charges with a roar, swinging his greatsword in a massive arc. It's a brute-force attack, telegraphed a mile away.
Evanora doesn't block it. You don't block a greatsword. She steps inside the arc.
She brings her pommel down hard on the back of his neck as he swings past her. He drops like a sack of potatoes.
Imara tries a feint, a clever little flick of the wrist. Evanora just kicks her in the stomach. She folds.
And then it's just me.
Just me and the demon in white.
Kill her, the voices demand. She dares?
I crouch low, holding the sword loose in my right hand, my left hand free. I let my posture slump, looking small, looking defeated. I let my breathing become ragged and loud.
It's bait.
Evanora takes it or pretends to. She walks toward me, sword held casually at her side, expecting me make a desperate, clumsy lunge.
"Done already? What did i say about disappointing me?" she mocks, stepping closer. "I expected more from the top of the first years."
I wait. I wait until I can see the stitching on her white robe.
Then I explode upward.
I don't swing the sword. I throw a handful of gravel right into her face and it works... for a microsecond.
The cloud of rocks hits her face. She doesn't gasp or flinch back like I hoped. She simply closes her eyes instantly.
She doesn't need to see me.
In that split second of blindness, I close the gap. I drop my sword. It's useless against her guard anyway. I launch myself at her attempting to knock her to the ground I wrap my arms around her waist, driving my shoulder into her midsection, trying to use my momentum to tackle her to the ground but It's like trying to tackle a stone pillar. She barely budges as if her center of gravity is rooted deep in the earth.
Before I can try to trip her, before I can even think about my next move, her free hand grabs the back of my tunic.
With a terrifying display of core strength and leverage, she uses my own momentum against me. She spins, hauling me off my feet like I weigh nothing.
The world spins. Blue sky. White robe. Ground.
WHAM.
She slams me into the ground.
The air explodes from my lungs. My spine screams. I bounce off the earth, gasping, my vision starring out.
I look up, wheezing, just in time to see the tip of her sword hovering an inch from my throat.
She stands over me. A smirk on her face. She isn't angry. She isn't triumphant. She just looks... contemplative.
"That was clever," she admits, her voice calm.
She withdraws the sword.
"But the tackle was stupid. You gave up your reach. You engaged a superior opponent in a grappling match where strength matters most. I taught you better then that no?"
She leans down, her face close to mine.
"You fight like a cornered animal, Ayato. Vicious, yes. But predictable. No worries we will fix that problem of yours together"
She straightens up and turns away, addressing the field of groaning, broken students.
"Fifty of you," she calls out, her voice ringing over the carnage. "And not one of you landed a clean touch. You have no cohesion. No discipline. You rely on your Marks like crutches, and without them, you cannot even walk."
She sheathes her sword with a sharp snick.
"The Federations Awakened aren't going to duel you honorably. They aren't going to wait for you to form a line. They are going to murder you in the dark. They will ambush you with numbers and obliterate you. They will murder, rape and destroy every citizen of this Empire if given the chance."
She looks back at me, still on my back in the dirt, clutching my ribs.
"Right now, you are all easy meat." She adds quieter "Perhaps Charles is right in delaying the deployment of the year ones and twos.
She turns on her heel and walks toward the gate, her white robes billowing behind her like a sail.
"Class dismissed. The Medics are on the way."
I fall back, staring up at the blinding sun. My back screams in agony. We got slaughtered. It wasn't even close.
I close my eyes, the bitter taste of defeat mixing with the iron taste of blood in my mouth.