If you are waiting for a speech, you will be disappointed. I do not do speeches. I do inventory. And coffee. In that order.
Two things first.
One - the Rust Room is honest. It tells you what you are without asking permission. Raizen and Hikari let it tell them, and they listened. That is rarer than you think. Yes, Mina, you can stop nodding like I just invented honesty.
Two - the city will not clap for you. Don't need it to. If applause paid rent, the Underworks would be a palace.
All right. You want to know what I think of them.
ALL OF THEM!? Alright, alright.
You want the story that came before they walked in here with real steel and a clean twelve.
Raizen is... What happens when stubborn gets happily married to patience. He still tries to win the room by breathing harder than everyone else, but realistically? He doesn't know ehen to stop forcing. His blade used to write too many sentences. If you read them, you'd probably think that his swords have dyslexia or something. Now it says what it needs to say and shuts up. He blocks because he intends to, not because he is late. That is a different kind of speed. He will tell you he is not ready. He't totally lying, but it is a useful lie. It keeps him from getting cute. If he gets cute, I make him hold a plank until he forgets the word cute.
Hikari makes me careful. Not worried, careful. Still a mystery, that girl... There's a line in her that moves too straight, too true, sometimes. The first time I saw it I thought she was a trick of the light. She isn't. She's a person who was taught to move like a blade before she ever held one. The Rust Room tried to trip her into proving she was human. She stayed on her feet anyway. She is kind in ways that do not announce themselves. That is also rare. If you blink, you miss it. Do not blink. Also do not stare. She does not like that either. Nobody does, in fact.
You've heard other names. Keahi. Arashi. They don't share a room with Raizen and Hikari much right now, and that is on purpose. Their work would have torn the rigs out of the floor if they kept going. Mina would complains about budget. I'd happily pretend to care.
Keahi came across water to stand where the Lotus could see her. Too young by the rules when she arrived. Old enough by the look in her eyes. I found her in the lower market studying a map that did not match the streets. Tourist face level ten. She watched every doorway like a veteran who had not had her first winter. I asked her why she had come. She said - the best is here. I said - and if they do not choose you. She said - then I will become the kind of problem they prefer to hire. That made me laugh. I do not laugh often. She has hands that remember fire, and a temper like a fuse that refuses to burn until it is time. She is where she belongs - in drills that would crack the Rust Room in half. We practice outside so Mina doesn't throw a chair at me. Basically? I agreed to train her.
Arashi is an older story. Ten years now. Back when I still wore the Phalanx crest and thought my bones would never get tired. I was 18, come on! You know how they are: young and restless, chaotic here and there, chasing butterflies. Back to the Phalanx - we were moving people out of Velarion while the sky tried to fall on our heads. I found a boy in a stairwell holding a stripe of silk like it could stop a building. Six years old and already wearing the face of a man. The coat he had on used to be expensive. I pretended not to notice so he could keep his dignity. He didn't remember his family name. He remembered a door that wouldn't open and a room that got very hot. That is enough to grow a teenager who thinks mistakes are personal. He is relentless and too hard on himself. He'll either become a standard or break trying. I'm cheating the odds toward the first outcome. Sometimes by yelling. Sometimes by tea. Both work.
Basically both of them want to fight Nyxes. I took them both under my wing... Quite the babysitter I've become!
Velarion. Everyone speaks of it like a story that happened to someone else. In reality it didn't. It happened to all of us. A rich, clean city that thought the old rules were forever. Lamp lit parks. Dinner on balconies, multi-leveled gardens... Gates that swung easy and guards who smiled like their work would never be tested. The Nyx attacks started the way they always do - wrong shadows where there should be none, pets going quiet, birds leaving the sky.
Then the Anathemas stepped out of rumor.
People will tell you there are twelve of them. People also tell you street noodles are healthy. Both are optimistic. I have never seen all twelve in the same list written by the same hand. What I know is smaller, and I trust small truths.
They took the form of evil things, human malice's, that are present in our lives. Either people made that up, or I'm just too pessimistic...
Greed was a mountain that kept learning how to be taller. It ate matter like a habit. Stone, wood, iron, breath - all the same meal. Every bite made it larger and lazier. We cut it to make it hungry for itself. It did not enjoy that lesson. It learned it anyway. I strongly would not recommend. That thing took hours to finally get rid of! Good thing it are too much that it could barely move...
Ignorance wore a shape that would not let your eyes agree with each other. You could shoot and swear you had missed the air on purpose. I never got close enough to decide what it truly was. I was not with the line that dropped it. I was at the east gate pulling children through while the west side burned. I'm fine with that choice. Someone else can write the hero story. I will write the list of names that made it out.
Selfishness is the one the songs never tell correctly. They sing about a monster that wanted the city. It did not want the city. It wanted itself, and when there was nothing left to take, it turned inward and ate its own heart. The blast that followed erased half of Velarion so completely the maps still refuse to draw those ruined streets back in. People say that was the day the city died. They are wrong. That was the day the city learned how to live with a piece missing. Maps sulk. Cities adapt.
We lost three of seven Phalanx in those weeks. Good ones. Useful. The leader went to face something we did not understand. We called it the Nyx Queen because we needed a name to hold our fear. I didn't see that fight. No one I know of did. The last time I saw our leader, his back was straight and he didn't say goodbye. That was the last time anyone saw either of them. Yes, I still stand up straighter when I think about it. No, it does not help. Habits aren't for helping. They are for holding.
This is where you wait for a moral. I won't give you one! Who do you think I am? I prefer facts. And lessons learned on your own skin.
Fact - numbers help until they lie. Twelve percent is only a number. It proves a thing. It doesn't finish it. Less than one in ten make it through the Lotus entrance exam. I've seen better odds on a rigged gambling table and worse odds at lunch in the mess. What matters is not the so called ten percent. It's whether you become someone who does not appraise themselves by a crowd. If you need a crowd, buy a drum. Don't bring it to training. Come to think of it... Those things are so satisfying to break! I should get one and smash it against-
Oh. Ok. Sorry.
Now, because you insist on hearing about the Lotus - a little and no more. It is not a school the way people tell it. It's a sieve. It'll shake you until only the part that needs to stay does. I like sieves. They tell the truth about tea leaves and people. People sign up for all the usual reasons - glory, coin, a story to tell, a bed that isn't stone. The exam does not care about any of that. It cares about whether you keep your feet when the floor refuses to be still. It cares about whether your breath returns to your body when the room decides it would rather you borrowed someone else's. It cares about whether you learn a new thing while you are still bleeding from the old one. If you faint prettily, I won't catch you. I'll move the chair so you don't break your teeth or something, and then I'll make you stand.
Oh, you want gossip? I can hear it in the way you lean. Fine. The entrance thing - exam itself changes every cycle, every year. Don't believe anyone who says they know the exact shape of it. The only constant is surprise. They don't test what you practiced. They test the part of you that had to practice at all. Sometimes it's teams. Sometimes it's alone. Sometimes they give you exactly what you asked for and make you fail with it in your hand. That's my personal favorite. It ruins bad habits fast. If you're offended by that sentence, good. That means that you're really paying attention.
Raizen and Hikari will be looked at twice. They won't like that. They shouldn't like it. They have something the exam cannot measure well - the ability to stop before they become what the room is trying to make of them. The Rust Room taught them to listen when the Luminite sings a beat early. The Lotus will see if they can hear it when everything else is screaming. If they cannot, I will be very loud later.
Keahi will meet the thing she came for - an institution that doesn't need her and therefore might finally deserve her. Arashi... He'll meet a mirror he probably won't enjoy. He'll learn to walk past it anyway. If they pass, none of them will thank me. They will blame me when they are tired. Good. That means I did my job. Complaints are the flowers of progress. Don't send me actual flowers, tho! Don't get me wrong, I love them, but Mina is allergic. One more risk of a chair being throw at me...
I keep thinking about the line I tell them every other day and pretending I do not mean it. Don't try to impress anyone. Be hard to knock down. Be honest about what you are bad at. Mercy is not weakness. It is the only thing that will keep you from becoming a knife that forgot why it was forged. If you argue, I will make you do wall sits until your soul apologizes.
You want one last secret. Here. The Lotus isn't the best because it breaks more people. It's the best because the ones who make it through know how to carry someone who is falling without falling with them. If Raizen and Hikari learn that, they'll be fine. In fact, they'll be fine either way! If they teach it, they'll be dangerous in the right way. If you hear me call them dangerous, that is a compliment. If you hear me call you interesting, that is not.
The entrance exam is close. You can feel it in the way the Underworks holds its breath just before the shift whistle. Papers on walls stop pretending to matter. The Rust Room looks clean again and stays that way for an hour. People stand a little straighter without noticing they did. Even the pipes try to behave. Briefly.
When it comes, it won't be poetry. It'll be a horn and a list and a door that does not open until you stop asking nicely. Don't wear your good shirt. There is no good shirt.
I will not be in the hall when they go. I have already said what I am allowed to say. I will be where I belong - counting, watching, ready to catch the ones who break in useful ways and send them back in smarter.
Raizen. Hikari. Keahi. Arashi. If you are reading over my shoulder, stop. Go drink water. Go sleep. Go sharpen something that... isn't a blade. No, Arashi, you can't sharpen butter knives again!
Again! Quite the babysitter I've become!
The rest of you - save your applause. Keep your eyes open.
The exam is not kind. Be worse (or better) than it.