Three sets of eyes landed on her, and she froze, trying desperately to think of what to say.
“No,” was all she could muster.
“Francis, that's absurd! She’s been to the Wiltwood only once, and I do believe Glimpses tend to be showy, don't they? I think I would have noticed.”
“Maybe, but I don’t think it happened in the Wiltwood. It’s been shown that close proximity to undead, even outside the forest, can give people Glimpses of Undeath. Now, I can think of one rather miraculous instance where Omia would have come into close proximity with an undead, and a powerful one at that.”
She saw recognition flash across her fathers face, but she didn’t know what they were talking about. Her stomach dropped though, as she could see that her dad was starting to buy into it.
‘Wait, why do I care if they think I have a Glimpse? I just don’t want them to know about Jane.’
The thought put her at ease. She was all but caught, but now she wanted to know more about why they thought she had a Glimpse, and when she’d run into an undead. ‘It might give me a hint of why I have Jane’s memories at all.’
“When did I… get close to an undead?” she asked unsteadily.
Neither of her parents answered, too busy looking off into the distance. She could almost see them connecting dots she didn’t know about.
Francis though, did. “Just over ten years ago, there was a titanic undead that attacked the walls of Darien. It was too strong for the Death Eater grass to handle, which happens occasionally. The towns around Wiltwood are placed here to ensure that instances like this are caught early and pushed back.
“When the giant crawled out of the forest, the guards on duty could see the Death Eater grass wilt under it, and knew what that meant. A break. When stronger undead push back the fields like that one did, it all but guarantees a swarm of smaller ones will follow in their wake.
“I won’t bore you with the details of the battle, but the giant smashed the walls of Darien and a lot of undead broke into the town, including the giant itself.
“When it broke into the city though, those with Glimpses of Undeath sensed the giant's power draining rather quickly. In around a minute, it ran out of energy and turned to dust. After that, it was a standard cleanup of the remaining swarm, yadda yadda. Everyone assumed the Death Eater grass had simply responded violently, finally draining it of all its energy, but I’m starting to think something else happened.
“What if, perhaps, you had suddenly formed a Glimpse in your mothers womb? Your father was right, Glimpses tend to be very showy when they form, and that might’ve been the display. All the energy was drained from the undead and into you, forming your Glimpse.
“When I got the idea in my head, a lot of things started making sense. You always seem to cover yourself in the stuff after workouts. You rejuvenate a lot faster, and you’re stronger than you should be. I thought that, perhaps, your Undeath Glimpse manifested itself in life-absorbing properties.”
“But… I don’t have white hair” she said, trying to justify it. It was starting to get convincing enough that even she thought she might have a Glimpse. There were a lot of things she suspected were the root cause of her visions and ability to see the undead energy a lot easier than everyone else, but for some reason, a generic Glimpse had never crossed her mind.
“No, but white hair isn’t the only option, it's just the most common. White eyes have also been recorded before, so it's safe to say that the color scheme of undeath is unnatural white. And, if you would hold out our arm for us please?”
Carefully, she held out her arm for them to inspect. “Karee, if you would?” Francis asked.
Her mother held out her arm too. Omia could see it now.
Compared to both of her tan parents, she was pale. White skin.
‘Huh… I do have a Glimpse.”
“Ohhh” she said.
There was an awkward silence where Omia didn’t know what to say. “Soooo… What does this mean?”
Francis shrugged. “Nothing really, you’ll just keep going through guard training. Maybe you can explore what your Glimpse can do in your free time, but that’s for you and your family to decide.”
“They’re different? I thought they’d all be the same!”
“Nope.”
She thought he would elaborate more, but he didn’t. Instead, it was her dad that spoke. “You know, a lot is starting to make sense. You’ve always been a little odd, and I remember your reaction to undead when you first saw them… what, exactly, did you think when we walked into the forest for the first time?”
What ensued was half an hour of her parents grilling her on everything while she tried tiptoeing around certain topics.
She absolutely did not want to admit anything about Jane or whatever called out to her from within Wiltwood, but she could admit to everything else.
Slowly, they found out more concerning her abilities. She was better at absorbing life energy from the grass, and could easily sense undeath energy in the air. She also admitted that eating the grass drastically accelerated up the process of absorption.
Francis suggested that she might’ve inherited the giant undead's abilities. When the grass started wilting under it, they assumed its powerful energy was choking it out, but that wasn’t necessarily true: It might have been absorbing it and becoming more powerful. In which case, it was genuinely a lot more dangerous than anyone had suspected, and Omia gaining her Glimpse had probably saved the entire town. If it had to fight against the Death Eater grass, it would get weaker over time and they simply had to hold it off. If it was actively getting stronger from it? There was little the guard could have done.
By the end, Francis was rather impressed by her abilities, and said she had one of the more powerful Glimpses he’d seen. Perhaps fifth from the top, he ranked it.
“What’s the first?” she asked.
“I met a man once who couldn’t die, as long as he was in the Wiltwood. Undead energy healed him and kept his body together no matter what.”
“What happened to him?”
“Dunno. I think he moved to a big city and I never really heard from him again. We weren’t exactly close though, so that’s not surprising. Either way, I’m pretty sure you become stronger the more life energy you have, because you’re already past normal human boundaries based on your size and muscles.”
Omia shrugged. She was honestly tired after all these questions, so she started answering them with one word each. After two hours, her parents were finally satisfied, and they moved on to other, more mundane topics.
It felt odd, talking about something that seemed so important, only to transition over to Francis asking about Joseph, but Omia was pretty sure that they could see she was getting cranky and didn’t want to push her more.
Omia at least had one more answer. Her condition wasn’t entirely unknown, which provided a sense of comfort.
Ever since her father told her more about Torei, Omia had two theories as to why Life Grass interacted with her differently. One was that she was an undeath mage, and the other was that she was undead.
She would have been happy to know she was an undeath mage, but she couldn’t command the black fog to do as she pleased. That made her afraid she was wrong, afraid she was some weird type of undead.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
She remembered the fear she first felt when she saw Life Grass, and thought there might be more to her Glimpse than Francis expected. What if she was something in between? An undead, and a living person with a Glimpse?
She wasn’t in the mood to talk for a long while, and even failed to stop another flash of Jane’s memory. That managed to shake her free of her spiraling thoughts.
‘I can’t get in my own head. I can’t doubt myself. I’ve already put myself on the path of fighting the Wiltwood and its pull, I just need to keep walking.’
* * *
Fall progressed and the trees around town lost their leaves. Now that the secret was out of her absorbing life energy, she didn’t even remotely try to hide it anymore. Plucking some of the Life Grass during her breaks, she would put one side in her mouth and watch as the blade would rapidly shrivel up, turning brown.
“How are you doing that?” Jack asked the first time she’d absorbed the grass.
“I have a Glimpse.”
“WHAT?!” he screamed, and the rest of the class glanced over, none of them indicating they’d heard what she said.
“Shh, you’re too loud” she whispered to him.
“How… why didn’t you tell me…” he said airily.
“I Only found out yesterday. Long story. Ask my mom when you see her, I don’t wanna get into it again,” she said, before continuing to discreetly absorb the energy, now making sure none of the main class saw her do it. She didn’t want to distract them and get kicked out.
Jack seemed off for the rest of their workout, not as “into it” as he normally would be. That wasn’t for her to worry about though. She knew he was just jealous, he always was whenever she did something absurd, but she wasn’t going to apologize for being born with a Glimpse.
Over the next few weeks, she pushed as hard as she could, going as fast as she could, because she felt it was one of her last chances to pass a personal goal.
To make one of the official cadets tap out before she did.
She knew now that they really did watch her and try to match her speed, but she always had to slow down. They always beat her, but she felt like she was so close.
It was getting too cold though, and any day now would be the first snow. As the cadets all spread out in a circle, she hit a few of them with a glare, as if to get their attention.
They were confused at first, but when Francis told them to do their warmups, she went straight to full throttle, throwing her entire body into the motions rather than gently like they were supposed to.
The few that saw her caught on, and started pushing themselves harder too, some of them smiling at her to show it was all in good fun.
Jumping jacks, pushups squats, mountain climbers, lunges. They quickly transitioned away from the warmups, going through the entire set. After the first few cadets copied and exceeded her speed, the others soon followed suit, figuring out what was going on as most of the class glanced at her.
Francis, too, realized, and she saw a slight uptick at the corner of his mouth. He didn’t ask them to cut it out or stop, no, he simply removed the typical parts of their lesson where they might change things up or where Omia couldn’t follow along, which was essentially all the sword training and sparring.
Rather than stop with the exercises, he made them all timed instead with things like “pushups for sixty seconds” rather than a specific number. That way, they could all push themselves at whatever speed they needed to, and finish at the same time.
Her pace still felt lacking though. The others in the class weren’t pushing themselves as hard as she was, they simply didn’t need to. Her sprint was their run, and she tired out far faster than they did.
When she felt like she would fail though… she threw modesty out the window during one of their sessions of pushups, biting down on the grass below them.
She didn’t notice their expressions of absolute bewilderment because she was too focused on going as hard as she could. She needed to push them if she wanted the weak links to collapse. And if she wanted to maintain her maximum speed, she needed faster healing.
Their bewildered expressions turned to disbelief when the Death Eater grass rapidly wilted in her mouth, and she spit it out off to the side, only to get another mouthful.
Each time, she was hit with another burst of energy that staved off her harsh exhaustion.
When they did lunges, she would grab a handful of grass on the way down and absorb it. If they didn’t go near the ground, she’d just suffer through the exhaustion until they reached the ten second breaks between each exercise, where she could grab another handful of grass and bite down on a part of it. Luckily, she didn’t need to eat the grass. Just having it touch her teeth was more than enough for her Glimpse to drain it completely.
Jack had tapped out almost immediately, and now could only sit back and watch.
The rest of the class couldn’t take their eyes off this odd child. None of them were particularly worried at first, but after the first hour, they were starting to sweat a bit. The ten-second breaks weren’t enough for them to rejuvenate fully.
The workout sessions tended to last thirty minutes, before switching to dexterity-based training to let the Life Grass heal their muscles. Without that?
Omia had a chance.
But a chance didn’t guarantee anything. She could not, for the life of her, regain all of her energy from the grass. It was just slightly too slow to put her back into top shape consistently, so it wasn’t a guaranteed game of endurance where she would just win.
Despite that, she just kept going.
Forgetting the pain in her muscles or the tingle of grass, she let herself fall into a trance-like state. This time, no visions plagued her. The rest of the world fell away as only her, the field, and Francis existed. He gave her an order, she threw herself into it as hard as possible.
Right as she was really getting into it though, as she was starting to forget about everything else, Francis shouted “WINNER!” while gesturing to Omia, causing the rest of the class to break out into a cheer.
Confused, she looked around to the tallest trainee lying flat on the ground, breathing hard.
‘I did it!’
Many of them came over to congratulate her but talked over each other, so she didn’t have a way to respond. She also saw the one who dropped first getting made fun of by his friends, but he was laughing along with them from the ground, so she didn’t think he was all that mad.
“Alright alright, break it up.” Francis said as he pushed through the crowd of thirteen year olds and pulled Omia over to where he usually stood, what they considered the “front” by this point.
More of them shouted their congratulations, so Francis had to wait for them to settle down before he continued.
“Now's as good a time as any to tell you all. This girl here is named Omia, and she received special permission to start training early because I thought she’d need it. Now though, as many of you have seen, she’s close to all of you physically. Not quite there yet, but she’s also three years younger.
“You see, apparently, Omia was born with a Glimpse.” He said as the rest of the class gasped.
“It lets her, as you can see, absorb the energy from Death Eater grass and turn it into strength or rejuvenate her stamina. Eating grass isn’t something she normally does, I assure you” he said, getting them to laugh. It seemed they were in good moods after the break in monotony. “But it helps her drain the energy faster. In light of this new development, I think it would be absurd to keep her as an honorary member next year, then start her in the program the year after, as the plan was originally. She’d simply have all the Skills by that point, so the class would be unnecessary.
“Instead, I’ve decided to induct her as a full member, and start as a second year with all of you after you get back from the winter excursion. She will train with you, and don't worry about taking it easy on her. I intend to give her family certain special permissions while we’re away in order to let her continue using the Death Eater fields, so she might even be stronger than you by the time we get back. She’s also been practicing her sword skills for around two years now, so she’s probably already better than you in that aspect.
“I hope there’s nobody opposed? I understand if you have some skepticism, so please say so now if you do.”
Despite her worries, nobody was mad about her joining them or technically skipping the first year. They’d seen her here every single day with them, usually more frequently than they were because she didn’t skip the two days that they did.
“No? Alright, guess it's official then. I think we all need a bit of a break too. So let's rest up some. You all can get acquainted with the new cadet, and I can go tell the staff they need to clean up a slobbery mess she’s made.”
Omia blushed as the rest of the trainee’s laughed, but they quickly broke formation, coming over and surrounding her slightly. Some of them pushed others back though, and eventually they all formed something of a circle, Omia sitting on the edge with the rest.
They went around asking about her glimpse and how she got it, getting awed faces when she told the story from Francis’ perspective of the giant. For once, she didn’t mind talking a lot. This seemed like a massive step forward in her goals, which helped a lot.
She also found out that the cadet she managed to overwork was named Jamei, and he wasn’t mad at all that she'd gotten one past him. She felt like he was most impressed by her of them all, which made her smile. She was glad she hadn’t made an enemy in the guard so early on, especially not of the biggest trainee in the yard.
She hadn’t noticed that Jack had disappeared somewhere, nor did any of the other Trainee’s think about how Francis had taken far too long to come back if he was only going for staff. He got back thirty or so minutes later and joined the conversation like nothing had happened at all.
Shortly after Francis got back, Omia watched a snowflake gently pass by in front of her. Looking up at the dark grey clouds, she saw hundreds falling towards them.
‘First snow… just in time.’