Three weeks passed, and the face that looked back at him in the mirror was a stranger.
Shion scowled at the face of the boy in the mirror wall. The boy in the mirror had the same hair, the same eyes, but other parts of him was different. His face was more angular now...like someone had carved away at the softness he used to have. Even his arms, muscle-strained and creased, looked like they belonged to someone else
But most of all, it was his eyes that disturbed him...Hollowed.
Whose were they? The question danced in his mind. Here and there before he could grasp hold of it.
There have been a great many such thoughts recently. Important, but somehow out of his reach. Like trying to remember a dream after one has wakened.
"Ah, admiring the new you?" Hyacline's voice came behind him.
Shion didn't flinch...Hadn't learned to...Found that emotion earned more of those sessions in the twisted training centers. Drill and pain until he no longer reacted.
"I see differently," he said. His voice was hollow even to himself.
"You're stronger." She moved up beside him, her body merging with his. "What do you see when you look at that face?"
Shion knew what she was asking for. He'd completed all three weeks' worth of responses she required...Having a hard time with them had been.
"Someone who won't fail again…"
"Good." Her smile was one of satisfaction, and some wayward part of him was grateful not to be chastened again. "Today, you meet the others."
The arena tended to adapt to them as they walked...et another topological variation in the dimension that his fatigued head had lost hope of comprehending.
This was a greater space than training fields...Tiered seating carved out of black stone that seemed to have been constructed for spectators.
There were four figures at its center...
Shion's heart tightened with something that might have been recognition, or something that might have been fear. They marched like broken clocks wound to the same beat, no choice in the ticking. All wore the same empty look he'd seen on his own face.
What was done to them?
"Your new family," Hyacline said. "All taken from weakness. All reforged into strength."
The white-haired girl moved forward. Her voice, speaking, sounded metallic. As if reciting lines to which she had been compelled to memorize.
"I'm Kira. I was once Kira Setsuya of the Northern Academies. Stupid dreams, I had, to become a healer." Her smile was a little short of her eyes. "Now I grant the blessing of ultimate peace on those too weak to realize their destiny."
Something in Shion winced at her statement. They were too rehearsed. Programmed. What does Hyacline do to Hyacline that she talks like this?
The dark-haired boy next.
"Daven Koresh, formerly of the Eastern Sanctuaries. I thought there was justice. Protecting the innocent." His laugh was hollow. "Now I know innocence as another name for ignorance."
The twins spoke their words together with each other, their voices piling artificially.
"We are Ren and Jin Mizushima. We were brothers and wanted to fight together with heroes. Now we see that heroes are nothing but villains who haven't accepted themselves yet."
Each introduction made his stomach knot...not from the words themselves, but because their voices sounded borrowed, rehearsed, like they were speaking with someone else's tongue
How long did it take to kill them so thoroughly?
How long before he'd sound just like them?
"Before you can stand among them in good standing," Hyacline declared, "you must show that you've outgrown your old weakness. You must show us that Shion Enther.the failure, the dreamer.is dead."
No. The thought flashed through his head before he could suppress it. I'm not dead. I'm alive.
But he'd learned not to voice such words aloud.
The floor of the arena shifted. Combat space rotated, ringed by step benches on which the reanimated disciples reclined.
Space puckered before Shion. Someone passed through.
His heart missed a beat…
It was Itsuki...Not perfect, but close enough...Same black hair...Same eyes...Same assured silence.
The imitation clad in robes of Zenkai Dojo and strode with that same calm.
"This is a construct that holds your memories," Hyacline told him. She spoke to him in clinical iciness. "It will fight with all the guile you remember your friend to have possessed...Overcome it, and show you've overcome weakness. Fail."
She rolled her shoulders in a smooth gesture.
"Failure is no longer an option for you, anyway."
The fake Itsuki raised his hand...Shion felt the familiar ripple in the air that meant his friend's power was waking up.
For a moment, the vision stirred something deep in his chest.
An intense need to say his friend's name.
Then Hyacline's fingers touched his shoulder, and the feeling choked like a blown-out candle.
"He's not real," she whispered. "A memory. A flaw in a familiar face."
Shion wished to believe...Was required to believe, for if not then the truth was witnessing what she was essentially demanding of him.
"Prove it," Hyacline commanded.
The construction reacted as exactly as Itsuki reacted.
It was perfect in all its intricacy except one..it was devoid of the very warmth that had shaped Itsuki into what he became.
That alone would have been enough to make Shion hesitate.
Something cold, rather, moved in and nestled in his chest. numbness.
"You're not him," he declared, calling on his talent.
The afterimages that manifested were more detailed than ever...More substantial...Pain and fear had sharpened them into tools of war.
The construct defended with elegance, employing its power to manipulate weight and velocity. Causing attacks to miss or disperse.
But Shion had mastered new methods. How to make his echoes more than tricks.
When the construct evaded a sweeping ghost sword, Shion infused essence into the echo until it took on substance. The ghostly blade struck the phony Itsuki across the chest, ripping through robes and leaving a streak of blood.
"Impressive," hollered Daven from his position. "That's advanced technique."
Shion barely paid attention...
He was fighting on autopilot now. He swung because stopping meant punishment. Each strike was empty, automatic...like his body fought while his mind curled away from it.
The construct fought fiercely, but it was limited by fighting like Itasaki would fight. Defensive. Protecting. Unwilling to cause unnecessary harm.
Shion no longer had those inhibitions...Hyacline had trained that out of him.
When at last he speared an echo of the construct into its core, jolting it onto the arena floor, he didn't feel anything.
"Well done," Hyacline descended from her perch. "How are you feeling?"
Shion looked on at the form dissolving. Saw the features blur and vanish until there was nothing there.
He searched for grief. Regret. For any remaining bit of the boy who had loved that friendship.
There was numbness now standing alone. The same numbness that had been growing since the first day she'd started this process.
"I feel." he fumbled, remembering what answer would save him. "Free."
It was a lie...
But lies were simpler than truth here...
The room fell apart. They sat in an empty room surrounded by chairs in a circle. The rest of the converts relaxed with practiced ease. Shion was led to the final chair by Hyacline's gentle hand.
"Now," she said, taking the middle seat, "we discuss your final lesson. The one that will complete your conversion."
Kira leaned forward, mercury hair gleaming with non-existent light.
"Tell us about your friends, Shion. The real ones. What made them special?"
The question stung like a trap...Everything in this place was a trap.
"They were friends. Training partners. We grew up together in Silverstone."
"Names?" Daven asked.
"Names." Shion frowned, grappled for memories that felt somehow distant. On purpose distant, some part of him knew. "There was. the white-haired one. And the fire user. And."
He hesitated. Not that he forgot, but because it sounded unsafe to say. Such as giving Hyacline gas.
"Why can't I remember their names?" he lied.
"Because names are anchors," Jin said, and Ren nodded. "Anchors to a self that no longer serves you."
No, Shion thought...Names are anchors to who I really am...And you're trying to cut them loose.
But he did not speak...
"You still got attachment residue," Hyacline said, observing him. "I can see it in your micro-expressions when you're attempting to recall their faces. We'll have to work on that before field deployment."
"Field deployment?"
A fragment of him that was still Shion...still the kid who' failed the trial but had friends who had his back pulled back from the prospects.
"Oh yes." Hyacline's smile was famished. "Lord Tsuyari has a surprise for you. Something that will make you confront your past face-to-face. But we have to ensure that when you see those faces you're so accustomed to, you feel nothing."
She flicked her hand. Walls turned transparent, showing glimmering images of a place Shion knew at once.
Zenkai Dojo. Wooden floorboards. Training dummies. Students in robes going through forms.
"Where your old friends now train," Hyacline declared. "They look for you. They are concerned for you. They even feel guilty about your capture."
The visions changed...Three people that Shion positively knew, despite all that Hyacline had done to blur his mind.
A boy teleported frantically round deserted courtyards. Another torching training dummies in angry frustration...And...
His breathing caught.
Black hair. Turbulent eyes. A face etched with determination and fatigue in equal proportion.
Itsuki. He remembered the name with jarring clarity, as a barrage of recollections...Shared meals...Drills...Simple chatter.
For an instant, the fire returned to his chest.
For an instant, he recalled what it meant to have friends who cared if he lived or died.
The visions shifted to show Itsuki hunched over a messy desk scattered with maps. Exhausted in each fold of his body. Kairo and Takumi emaciated.
They're looking for me, Shion had believed. They've not given up hope.
"They're not as strong without you," Hyacline said.
No, Shion clung to that burning in his chest with frantic passion. They're hurting because they love. Because being friends is important. Because I'm significant to them.
But he couldn't say that. So he did something else instead:
"They are weak through their sorrow."
Poison on his lips kept him going.
"Right." Satisfied, Hyacline wrapped him in her regard. "And when you see them again...soon...you'll be able to free them from that weakness. Isn't that a kindness?"
Shion weighed this. Turned the proposal over as some part of him burned with enraged anger.
"They would be stronger," he said warily.