Helen never had any weak friends. In fact, she made a point of avoiding weak people. It was a tremendously unfunny stunt by the gods that as she took a step off the cloudship she was surrounded by such weaklings for peers.

She started fighting at an early age. Since she was taken to the orphanage in the lower city when she was three years old, she had to scrap for her meals. There never seemed to be enough food for all the children, so the oldest kids took it upon themselves to redistribute what limited resources there were. The way they devised was to turn the basement into an arena. Helen spent hours every day fighting on that damp stone.

She made a promise to herself when she left that orphanage as its champion. After spending her first year mostly scraping by on leftovers, she lost only three fights in the 7 years she spent there. She looked at her arms, covered in bruises and scars and told herself that no matter where she went, she would remain a champion. She would be the strongest, and for that to happen, she would surround herself with equally strong people.

She had been successful until now, as the choice was taken away from her. She didn’t understand what the qualities that Skybreaker was looking were, but she doubted their legitimacy.

Ollie wasn’t that bad, Helen trained together with him under the same master for a while. Although, if she had a choice she would take his twin brother in his stead. While he had an unnerving aptitude for it, he lacked the aggression to make it as a real fighter.

The giant blooded boy and pink haired little girl were absurd choices for recruits, to say the least. Neither one knew which end of a sword was which. The boy had some raw power, but he seemed unable to muster up the courage to use it, and the girl had trouble just carrying the blade and spear given to them by the riders. At least they had stopped holding hands like a couple of schoolchildren when Helen pointed out they were being watched.

Her cursed cousin was a different topic altogether. When Dahlia was just some distant concept who Helen saw once a year, she had no trouble flat out hating her.

Dahlia was the reason she had to spend her whole life fighting for survival. She was the reason for Helen’s unending loneliness, the impossible to fill void she had in the middle of her chest. Only if her cousin wasn’t born weak, spent three years on death’s door and finally let go of her life. Only if she, in her weakness, didn’t drive Helen’s aunt to use blood magic to save her; Helen’s parents would still be with her.

At least that was what she told herself all her life. But now that Helen saw Dahlia as a person, spent night after night listening to her nightmares, saw the toll those same events that destroyed Helen’s life took on hers; it was difficult not to find her a little relatable.

She still had a visceral reaction at the sight of the girl’s white spotted black hair and her sickly skin. Her muscles trembled with anticipation every time Dahlia appeared at a doorway, itching to bury a knife in her neck as hard as she could.

Aside from the fact that Helen was rethinking the way she looked at her cousin; after watching her train for this past week or so, she wasn’t sure she even could kill her if she tried.

Dahlia’s muscles were surprisingly well trained. Her form with a sword showed some rust but it was solid and well balanced. As the recruits made their way on the wooden planks of the docks, Dahlia was the only one who Helen wasn’t embarrassed to be next to, angering though it was.

Syllan stayed behind on the deck of the cloudship along with the other riders and a handful of members from the grounded force. Amryn was among them, he had acknowledged her with the smallest nod when she was leaving the ship.

Helen’s whole body was tense with the familiar sense of walking into an arena. She felt at least a couple of dozen eyes on her from the walls of the two castles on the spire. She forced her eyes to stay on the gates that Syllan told them to walk through. It was on the opposite end of the wooden dock. She was thankful for the stability of the surface after spending so much time on the wobbly ship, even though it felt weird to walk on wood. She would have felt so much better if she could have dependable stone under her feet.

“Keep your eyes level,” she whispered to others, mostly targeted towards Dahlia whose head darted around trying to gauge their spectators. “You guys look like animals being walked to slaughter.” She was angry at herself for giving away what she considered a trade secret, but the state of the other recruits reflected directly on her.

“What does that mean?” Lilia whispered, leaning forward to look at her. “Why are you so tense?”

“This is a performance,” Ollie answered in her stead. He wasn’t whispering but his voice was low and level. “Those up there watching us, they are looking at us like we are fresh food on the table. We need to show them we are not pushovers. Not all riders will be as welcoming as Syllan or direct as Faelix. There are all kinds of monsters here.”

“Syllan was welcoming?” Doppan said, but his back was straight, and his eyes were locked forward.

Dahlia just sighed and her head movements became less erratic. Helen saw her body jolt in place when a dragon roared loudly above them.

They kept walking in a line towards the gates and entered a pristine hallway carved from polished stone. The ceiling was high enough to fit a three-storey building inside. The walls were lined with paintings depicting dragons of varying shapes and colors. The ominous air caused by the sudden silence overshadowed the relief Helen felt from leaving the heavy gaze of spectators.

They followed a flight of stairs wide enough for all five of them, until an emerald door appeared on their right just as Syllan had described. The main hallway slithered leftward towards the center of this part of the spire.

Their footsteps echoed in the empty interior. Dahlia was the one that made the first move towards the door, while the others were still busy with appreciating the artwork. The other recruits followed behind Helen as she followed her cursed cousin.

It was a simple circular room. There were only two doors, the one they came through and a wooden one on the opposite side. The empty place left along the walls were occupied with a strange assortment of decorations. On the right side, nearest to them, was a fountain with a winged fish as its head, spewing clear looking water into a marble tub. Next to it were a window that looked out over the cloud floor and a brazier filled with flame that gently flowed in the breeze coming in from the window.

Lastly next to the door across them was a white onyx statue of the goddess Lightbearer holding a glowing diamond. The statue was mirrored on the other side of the door by another similar statue, one of Lightbearer’s sister Naysayer. That one was carved from black onyx. The statues looked similar, but instead of holding a diamond like her sister, Naysayer was holding her hands closed over each other on her chest.

To the immediate left of where they entered the room, mirroring the fountain like the goddess’ statues did each other, was a simple stone carving of a badger. Between the badger and Naysayer were a pretty little tree with yellow flowers on its little branches and a rack filled with steel weapons.

Right in the middle of a beautiful, spotless floor stood a large semicircular table with five chairs at the round part and three on the straight side. Atop the table sat the most extravagant feast. Salted and dried meats, steaming vegetables, and crisp pieces of bread made Helen’s mouth water. There were bottles filled with chilled vines and pitchers full of fresh smelling juices.

Lilia immediately started towards the food, but Dahlia stopped her by putting a hand on her shoulder.

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“Well,” Doppan said after they closed the door behind them. He was stretching his arms up like he had just woken up. “That was definitely someth-”

“Hush.” Ollie cut him off. He toured the room examining the decorations carefully.

Helen wondered what Ollie and Dahlia were seeing that she might have missed. She took another long look around the room and her eyes staggered when they passed over a weird formation of veins on the floor. She knelt and passed her palm over it to feel the bend in the stone. She couldn’t exactly understand why, but it felt wrong.

Helen didn’t have an especially close connection to stone, but she was still born and raised on the Seventh Spire. Even if she didn’t know it herself, her body knew. She turned to Ollie and her hands moved in rusty motions they learned from the teacher they shared.

‘Fake stone?’ her hands asked. The other recruits looked at her with curious eyes. It was a simple language, one that can be learned in less than a month. It allowed those who know it to communicate simple ideas across.

‘Yes.’ Ollie’s hands answered her. ‘Why? A trap?’

‘I don’t think so.’ Helen signed. And added vocally, “A test?”

“Testing what? If we can tell fake stone from real one?” Dahlia chimed in, following along with them. “That doesn’t seem to me like a skill set required for riders, no?” She flinched at the end like she had a sudden headache.

Helen pushed down the sudden desire to punch the girl and tried to think logically about her surroundings. They were definitely being observed right now, the fake stone was probably a magical substance that was see through from the other side.

“Don’t touch anything,” Helen ordered. She disliked puzzles with a passion and hated playing games that she didn’t know the rules of even more. “Just sit down and don’t talk. We are being examined even now.” She took a seat on the middle chair on the circular side.

“If it helps anyone make sense of it,” Dahlia said with a strained voice as she took a seat on the chair to her left. “That badger is the only real stone in this room.”

Helen glanced at her cousin without turning her head. She couldn’t tell the badger was carved from real stone herself, and if anyone asked her, she would guess it was fake as well.

Doppan and Lilia took the seats to Helen’s right without muttering a word. Lilia’s eyes darted between Helen and Dahlia as if asking if she could eat. Helen shook her head slightly. ‘Just wait’ she mouthed silently.

Ollie paused in front of the statue of Lightbearer before joining them at the table. When he turned her back to it, Helen thought the diamond in the statue’s hand glowed a little brighter.

They waited and silently stared at the three empty chairs that lined the straight side of the table. After about ten minutes of uncomfortable silence, the wooden door opened, and the three most weird people Helen had ever seen in her life entered the room.

She knew that dragon riders were a weird breed. The longer a rider was bonded to their dragon, the more dragon-like their appearance became. It was clear in Faelix’ eyes and Syllan’s green, scaly scalp.

The first person that entered the room and took the seat right across from Helen was more like a dragon than a man. He was short, almost as short as Lilia was, but made up for it with a width that would rival Doppan. On anyone else, that might have looked goofy; but this rider’s exposed shoulders were covered with almost steel-like scaled spikes that gave him a most threatening posture. The spikes and his arms were all covered in bright blue scales. His face clearly showed annoyance. His mouth was hidden behind a coal-black bushy beard, leaving only a couple of sharp teeth exposed that bit down on his lower lip. His eyes were large and had more red than white under his crazy eyebrows. His gaze kept bouncing between the recruits filled with angry disappointment.

Creating the most bizarre contrast, the woman that entered the room behind him was the most ordinary old lady ever. She wore crescent moon shaped glasses on a small nose that looked like it had been broken more than once. A pearl necklace sat on her bony neck. She had calming, kind green eyes. Her silver hair was bound in a tidy ponytail. She wore a long blue dress and a dark green cloak. She took her seat to the right of the annoyed man.

Finally, the last rider to enter the room and close the door behind them was a walking ghost. It was like the more Helen tried to focus on the frame, the blurrier it became. She blinked to try and focus, but it was like she was trying to focus on something that she could only see from the corner of her eye. The clothes they were wearing didn’t help either. They looked like rugs, flowing from the nondescript frame like a black waterfall. It made making out where their hair ended, and clothes began a struggle.

“Don’t mess with the children, Arachne,” the old lady said. Her voice was forceful, not what Helen expected from her demeanor.

The one called Arachne sighed and somehow solidified. What was exposed was a bony frame clothed in layers and layers of black clothes wrapped all over their body. It looked like an old, tattered cloak. Their face was androgenous, bony and scarred. Their hair and eyes were pitch black. Black veins appeared from their collar and climbed all the way up to their temples, dancing like shadows on her skin. They moved like their body had no weight to it, as if gliding on the floor.

They made every instinct of self-preservation in Helen scream in panic.

“Should make them keep it on for the entire meal to teach ‘em a lesson,” the man grunted as Arachne took a seat to his left. His voice was gruff, he spoke in a rushed way that had little authority to it. “Welcome to the Dragon Spire, you little spoilsports.” He almost spat the last word. “I am Captain Jinglo of the Azure Library, the squad responsible for the basic training of the recruits. These with me are my seconds, Lieutenants Phospha and Arachne.”

The woman named Phospha cleared her throat as the captain picked up a large piece of dried meat and bit a chunk off with his sharp teeth.

“Yes, welcome hatchlings,” she said with a faint, warm smile to her voice. “It is our honor to take you on this first leg of your journey as riders. This room normally functions as a place where we can learn about our students before talking to them. We gauge their reactions to group them in the most suitable team for basic training.”

Helen couldn’t contain a little smile that crept into her face. She traded a glance with Ollie who clearly felt as proud as she did.

“Normally, recruits pick up some sword and stuff or play with water or whatever. You rugrats didn’t even eat any of the food we had prepared for you.” Arachne spoke with a voice that was like the wind.

Once again, Helen was deeply unnerved by their lack of presence.

“And because yous went and fucked that up, we have to gauge you all separately.” Captain Jingle took another large bite off his meat. “We got about two hours to separate you into groups and settled in your rooms before the celebrations. And none of you get to eat any of my delicious cooking. The blood witch stays with me. Arachne, pick one and do an assessment in the next room. Phospha will take the rest and call Nester and Tampa down to assess them.”

“I will take the one that thinks she is smarter than she is then.” Arachne was already at the door before Helen realized they left their chair. “Come with me, blue one.”

Helen got up and followed the monster into a larger hallway and into another, smaller room with no decorations other than a set of armchairs and a coffee table. Bright light entered the room through four windows on the wall.

The door closed behind Helen and a chill traveled up her spine. Without thinking, she punched behind her as she turned. She was sure her fist would connect when it looked like Arachne disappeared and appeared five inches away from where they were.

“Sit down if yer done,” they said, there was a bored looking impression on their face.

Helen sat on one of the armchairs. Her body was still in fighting mode, with her muscles tensed and her heart in her throat.

“I bet you think you are so smart don’t you? You outsmarted us, figured out it was a test?” they said, taking a seat opposite her. They produced a flask from one of the slits in their wraps and took a sip. “Tell me, why do you want to be a Dragon Rider?”

Helen looked at them with confusion. “What do you mean? I was chosen.”

“That only means the rider corps wants you,” Arachne said, they sounded annoyed that they had to explain. “If you don’t want to be a rider yourself, there is no way you make it out of this spire alive.”

“Many people die in basic training, do they?” Helen said angrily. She was still on edge and the rider’s tone annoyed her.

“Just answer the question kid,” they said taking another sip of their flask. “I already talked to Faelix about you, I know most I need to know. The test you think you avoided told us much about you as well. I have already decided on your group, this is just a formality. I am only-”

“I want to be strong,” Helen cut in. “I want to be so strong that I never again feel like I am at the mercy of anyone other than myself. I have no delusions as to the nobility of a dragon rider’s duty or whatever. If a dragon helps me get stronger, I will take it. I will get strong enough that nothing bad will happen to those I love.”

Arachne took another sip and slowly swallowed as they regarded Helen with a glimmer in their eyes. “No delusions, eh?” they said with a slight smile. They paused for a long time before speaking again; “Another question, do you believe you could kill me if we fought right now?”

Helen unsuccessfully tried to force her back muscles to relax. Helen knew she had to say no, but something in her desperately wanted to try her luck at it.

Arachne exploded with laughter. “You actually do, fucking amazing.” They grinned, exposing knife-like teeth. “Just like Fae said, you are a maniac. I will train you myself.”

They got up and walked straight to the door. “Go back to the ship, pick your stuff up, I will send someone to take you to your room. I will pick up you and the others of your class in an hour.” They gave Helen a look over from the doorway. “And wear something with more character, will you?”