Gabriel
The next morning, apparently nobody had decided we deserved punishment.
No disciplinary warning, mandatory meeting, additional duties, messages telling me I had disgraced Sablegate, violated some obscure banquet regulation, or needed to report to an office so someone could explain why throwing punches in formal clothing was frowned upon.
Elias had checked his account before we'd even left the dorm and seemed almost disappointed.
"I had an entire defense prepared."
I looked at him. "For what?"
"Yesterday," he said.
The strangest part was that none of us had received anything. Nadia hadn't. Elias hadn't. I hadn't. I'd suppose Reyna hadn't either. Whatever Instructor Draeven had written in her report seemed to have made the institution decide we had reacted rather than started anything.
I should have been relieved. Instead, while I stood in the cafeteria line waiting for breakfast, I found myself thinking about one sentence.
'You know what you got yourself into.'
The blond-haired guy had said it while walking away, and I hadn't even known his name.
Somebody had vaguely threatened me the previous night, and I hadn't learned enough about him to properly attach the threat to a person.
I picked up my tray.
*What did I get myself into?*
Being Lina's friend? Apparently.
If that was supposed to frighten me, it wasn't doing a very good job. It was irritating me, though.
I spotted the others at one of the tables near the windows. Nadia was talking with her hands while Elias stared at his phone, only half listening; Lina sat across from them, noticeably less folded into herself than she had been on our first morning.
As I approached, she looked up.
"Good morning, Gabriel."
I paused for half a second. Not because she'd said anything unusual, but because she had said it first.
"Morning."
I put my tray down beside her.
Elias glanced up. "She greeted you before you greeted her."
"…Yes?"
"Getting warmer."
Lina looked at him. "I can take it back."
Nadia nearly choked, holding a laugh.
Elias pressed a hand to his chest. "That's unnecessary."
Lina's eye twitched slightly.
I sat down.
"You're getting funnier," I said.
She immediately looked toward her food.
"I wasn't trying to be."
"That doesn't help it," Nadia said.
We ate for a while. Elias eventually lifted his phone and turned it toward us. Apparently someone had already uploaded a blurry video from the banquet. Most of it was useless: like people moving in front of the camera, somebody screaming, chairs obscuring half the fight, but there was one frame where Reyna appeared to be smacking the pink-haired girl sideways so cleanly that the image looked staged.
"It's beautiful." Elias zoomed in.
"Delete that," I said.
"I didn't post it."
"But you saved it."
"Okay? I saved it for good purposes."
Nadia leaned over.
"Oh, my God."
Lina hesitated before leaning slightly too.
Nadia pointed. "Look at her face."
Lina immediately looked back down. "I'm not looking."
"You already looked."
"No."
"You literally moved closer."
"I didn't see anything."
Elias nodded gravely. "Lina is exercising her right to lie."
She glared at him.
I looked between the three of them. Four days ago, Lina would have sat through that entire conversation smiling politely and saying almost nothing. Now she was glaring at Elias.
Elias swiped to another video. This one caught the moment Instructor Draeven appeared as he slowed it down frame by frame.
Nadia frowned.
"How fast did she even move?"
"I don't know," I said.
"That's terrifying."
Elias replayed it.
"Look at the tablecloth."
The cloth visibly jerked from the air displacement a fraction of a second before Seraphina entered the frame.
Lina quietly said, "I think if she ever tells me to do something, I'm just going to do it."
"That is currently my strategy," I replied.
Nadia nodded. "Same."
Elias looked offended. "Cowards."
"Didn't you bow to her from across the ballroom?" I reminded him.
"That was respect."
"No, it was fear."
"It was respectful fear."
Before the argument could continue, the cafeteria intercom crackled, and the conversation gradually softened across the room.
"Good morning, Sablegate cadets."
The voice was calm, painfully awake, and far too cheerful for the hour. A few people groaned.
The speaker continued through the usual announcements. A classroom relocation, a reminder regarding dorm inspections, something about the recreation facilities closing early for maintenance, another reminder that unauthorized spiritual supplements were grounds for immediate review.
"Initial Echelon Placement results from this week's pre-assessments have now also been finalized."
The entire cafeteria changed. Phones and tablets appeared immediately, and the talking doubled.
"You may access your individual results through the Sablegate campus network. Placement is determined by combined physical, knowledge, and spiritual-readiness evaluation. Initial Echelons are subject to revision through future review periods."
Elias already had the website open before the announcement finished.
"Ohhhh, here we go."
Lina and Nadia reached for their phones. I hesitated because I knew my spiritual assessment had gone badly.
There was, though.
And then there was how badly?
I opened the campus portal. My name appeared at the top.
CADET: GABRIEL ASTER CAIN
and underneath it:
INITIAL PLACEMENT: CINDER ECHELON I
I stared. For a second I didn't even look at the category scores.
Cinder. That was the lowest named Echelon.
Granted, Grade I was the highest grade inside Cinder, but that felt like congratulating myself for reaching the highest step of the basement.
Then I saw why.
Fitness: 70. That's above average.
Knowledge: 55. I Could've been better.
I hadn't expected the theories and demon identification to carry me anyway.
Then...
Spiritual: 4
I stared at the number.
Four. Could have been forty or even fourteen, but it was just four.
Elias leaned slightly toward me.
"What'd you—" Then he saw my screen. "…Oh."
That was somehow worse than if he'd laughed.
Nadia looked over too, and her expression changed.
"Four?"
"Apparently."
Lina leaned forward carefully.
"Your fitness is seventy."
I kept looking at the four.
"There's another number beneath it," I said. "I'd prefer we acknowledge that number."
Nadia pointed at the screen. "You're Cinder One. That's basically sitting right under Flint, so you're not at the bottom..."
"I scored four."
Elias attempted encouragement.
"Technically there are people who probably scored three."
I turned my head toward him.
He slowly lowered his fork. "I guess that didn't help."
"No."
"Sorry."
I looked at everyone else's results.
Lina had received Flint Echelon I. She seemed almost surprised by it.
"I thought I'd be Cinder."
"You did way better than you thought," Nadia told her.
Lina stared at the screen.
"…Apparently."
Nadia had placed Iron Echelon I.
"Wait." Her eyes widened.
She refreshed the page.
"Iron One?"
"Okay, damn." Elias leaned over.
Nadia grinned.
Then Elias checked his own.
Iron Echelon III.
"I'll take that." He slowly nodded.
"You were expecting higher?" I asked.
"No. I was expecting lower. But this means I can pretend I expected higher."
Lina looked between the three of them before quietly glancing toward me again. I knew what she was doing. Trying to decide whether saying something supportive would make me feel worse, but I saved her the trouble.
"I'm alright."
Nadia stared at me.
"You said that way too fast."
"I've had worse scores," I said
"Have you?" She asked.
"No."
She sighed.
Then the cafeteria exploded with noise.
"HE HAS OBSIDIAN?!" Somebody several tables away shouted
Half the room turned, and people immediately began standing.
Another voice yelled, "Obsidian Three!"
Elias stopped eating, Nadia looked over my shoulder, and even Lina raised her head.
At the center of the growing crowd stood one guy who looked like he wanted absolutely nothing to do with the attention surrounding him.
His hair was the first thing I noticed. It almost looked patterned. Black and deep brown formed most of it, but sections of burnt orange and muted red ran through the layers in irregular patches. They weren't stripes exactly, but more like the coloring on some strange fox.
He wasn't celebrating. That made him more noticeable.
People around him were staring at his result as if he'd just won something, but he looked mildly inconvenienced
"Obsidian Three," Elias repeated.
I opened the Echelon chart.
Cinder III
Cinder II
Cinder I
Flint III
Flint II
Flint I
Iron III
Iron II
Iron I
Steel III
Steel II
Steel I
Argent III
Argent II
Argent I
Obsidian III
Obsidian II
Obsidian I
Pinnacle III
Pinnacle II
Pinnacle I
I counted from mine. Thirteen grades. He was thirteen grades above me.
I looked at the spiritual score on my screen again, then back toward him.
The distance between us wasn't theoretical anymore. There was an actual person standing thirteen grades higher. Someone my age. Someone training in the same institution.
I didn't feel jealous, or at least I didn't think I did.
I could work with thirteen, I thought, as I locked my phone.
One day, I would stand where he was. Maybe higher. I didn't know how yet, but that was tomorrow's problem.
***
During passing period, Nadia and I were sent across campus to return a case of equipment to one of the auxiliary offices.
By "we," I mean I carried the case, and Nadia walked beside me, providing unsolicited commentary about absolutely everything we passed.
"I still think this campus has too many stairs."
"You said four days ago it looked elegant," I said.
"Yeah, it does."
"So what's the problem?" I asked.
"Elegance shouldn't involve cardio."
"Well, it is a training academy."
"That is so irrelevant."
We crossed one of the enclosed skybridges connecting the academic buildings.
"And why are there four identical hallways on the west side? This is psychological torture." Nadia continued.
"You've been here four days."
"Exactly. I should know where I am by now."
"You could use the map."
"Gabriel."
"Yes?"
"Don't insult me."
I smiled faintly.
We came around a wide corner, and Nadia suddenly slowed. I nearly walked into her.
"Oh!"
She looked ahead.
"Reyna!"
A girl walking in the opposite direction stopped.
Reyna turned.
She wore a uniform now instead of the sharp suit from the banquet. Her short brown-and-blonde hair fell around her neck in that strange layered shape I remembered, and her blue eyes settled on us with little expression.
Another girl stood beside her. She was light-skinned, with straight black hair and blue eyes. She looked at Nadia, then me, then back to Reyna. She didn't look hostile, but she was assessing us.
"Hey. We just wanted to say thanks." Nadia smiled.
Reyna tilted her head slightly. "For what?"
"The banquet?" Nadia blinked.
A second passed before recognition finally appeared.
"Oh." Reyna shrugged.
"They were being annoying."
"That still doesn't mean you had to jump in," I said.
Reyna looked at me. "I know."
Then nothing. Apparently that was the entire explanation.
Nadia gave a little laugh. "Well… we appreciated it anyway."
"Alright." Reyna nodded.
I was about to say something else when the girl beside her glanced at the time on her device.
"Reyna."
Reyna looked over.
"We have somewhere to be."
There was something subtly final about the way she said it.
She didn't say 'we should probably get going.' Or 'sorry,' but just 'We have somewhere to be.'
Nadia immediately moved back slightly.
"Oh. Yeah, alright."
I nodded. "Didn't mean to hold you."
The girl gave a small acknowledgment. Reyna looked back at us, then they continued walking, and that was it.
Maybe thirty seconds.
Nadia turned her head and watched them go. After a few dozen steps, Reyna suddenly turned her head too, and their eyes met across the hallway. Nadia immediately faced forward again.
After a few seconds, Nadia said, "Her friend didn't like us."
"I don't think it was personal."
"How would you know?"
"Well, she never asked who we were."
Nadia looked at me.
I shrugged.
"If she disliked us, she'd probably care."
Nadia considered that.
"…That was strangely reassuring."
Then she immediately resumed complaining about the stairs.