Another shot rang out when the boar resumed its charge on Forlorn and Emriss watched Seth reload his rifle. His first shot had missed but not woefully. In fact, he’d shown he was paying attention. An attention highly uncanny for an Iron mage by aiming for the beast’s leg. Either he’d noticed Barnabas’ bullet hit its leg when it stumbled or he was simply aiming for its leg. The latter was impressive, the former was terrifying. That an Iron mage had enough awareness to see such a shot was terrifying. Emriss knew Golds who did not have such awareness.

She watched the boy take a moment to breath then squeeze his trigger again. This time his aim was true. He shot one of its legs and sent it stumbling.

It turned its head in Seth’s direction and Emriss snorted a barely withheld laugh. The way Seth froze up, stilled himself in panic like an Iron under the spiritual presence of a Baron was hilarious. It was a good move, yes. But its execution was nothing short of hilarious.

The boar sniffed the air in searched, turned its head one way and another. It was nowhere near finding him when someone fired a terrible shot that struck a tree ten paces away from the beast. Emriss picked Timi out without surprise. Clint always said the child was born for the outdoors and he was right. She found him poised and hidden within the groove of a particularly massive tree. How had he even found it?

When he squeezed his trigger again, the shot was no better. It did not surprise her. While his spot was a perfect one for hiding, it wasn’t good enough for shooting. It was too cramped for his size and it made aiming difficult. Annoyed by it, the boy stepped out of it and into the open. He hefted the rifle, took aim, buttressing the weapon with nothing but his size, and fired.

Emriss sighed as the bullet missed as horribly as its predecessors. She made a mental note of the boy. The position of a sniper was no place for him.

Seth shot again and Emriss pumped a celebratory fist in the air. “Boom! Right in the kisser!”

The bullet took the boar in its one true weak spot, piercing the eye and damaging it. All the boy had to do—all any of them had to do—was reenact the same thing. Puncture the next eye and the boar was nigh useless. It was the point of the training. Precision. If they couldn’t take out its eye, they weren’t sufficient enough snipers. Not that she expected it to be easy the first time.

As expected, when the boar got back to its feet, Seth was its only quarry. Their maddened rage was another quality of theirs. Contrary to popular opinions of anger, theirs heightened their senses and gave them an uncanny focus. It is the reason soul magi are advised to kill a boar before they get the chance to anger it.

The events that followed were as boring as they were interesting. Seth fled in interesting ways, moving with speeds only possible through the employment of skills.

The next line of interest was when Oluwatimilehin made his big reveal. He charged the boar from the side in a force and action unbecoming of any Iron mage and surprisingly forced it into a tree. When he began pounding away, Emriss stared with wide eyes and an open mouth. The madness of an Iron devastating a Silver rank reia beast so vehemently was implausible.

She winced when the beast tossed the boy aside like a rag doll. Noting the child was out for the count, she returned her attention to Seth. The force of the boar’s strike was powerful enough to incapacitate the Iron seminarian, but since it had not struck with its tusk, the boy was in no grave peril. At Iron authority, his wounds would heal, it was only a matter of time.

Seth, however, proved himself unprepared for a direct confrontation with the boar. A sufficient marksman, though he was proving himself to be, he was merely Iron regardless of how interesting Reverend Igor had claimed his convergent skill was.

When the boar roared at the boy Emriss was sent into another moment of confused surprise. Off in the distance where an incapacitated Iron lay, Oluwatimilehin roared back.

She turned her entire attention to the side and found the boy angry and unharmed.

“How?!” she asked no one, confused.

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It made no sense.

Then again, Igor had made no sense when she’d met him after the children had returned from their training to Iron.

He’d sat behind his uninteresting desk, clean and perfectly neat—a sharp contrast to his brother Ivan. On the table had been a bottle of Alaskan blue, a trending alcoholic beverage. It was the only one of perhaps three brands capable of sending a Baron to drunkenness.

He’d been tipsy enough to be uncharacteristically loose lipped. So when she’d asked him what had happened he’d spilled the contents of his mind like an open tap.

“The seminary has no idea what it has done.” He shook his head. “No. Monsignor Faust has no idea what he has done. The boy cannot be controlled.”

“What boy?” she’d asked.

He raised his head and stared at her with unflinching eyes. She found terror in them. A Reverend’s fear. A rare thing.

“Faust has chosen to raise a monster,” he said, finally.

When her brows furrowed in question he continued. “Oluwatimilehin has converged a skill unlike any soul magi I have seen within these walls and without. The boy is a walking disaster.”

She smiled softly. “It can’t be that bad.”

“Do you know what his soul named it?” he scoffed as the tipsy do.

“What?”

“Judgement.”

“Sounds like one of the arrogant soul magi, don’t you think?”

Igor waved a dismissive hand. “It does. But not for him. Forlorn calls his die, like some kind of decree. That is arrogant. This boy calls his judgement. And it is a fitting name.” he looked at her wide eyed, as if trying to pass a message with more than his words. “Even now, I fear standing against the skill. I know I should be able to overpower it, but I fear I might not succeed.”

Emriss had noted the panic in his voice and eased herself into the chair opposite him. He offered her another glass cup he extricated from one of his drawers and she poured herself a drink.

She took an easy sip and met his gaze. “That bad, huh?”

Igor nodded drunkenly. “His convergent skill breaks the world. The boy is a walking fissure at Iron. Imagine what he will become at Gold. Or worse, Barony.”

“The seminary will have control over him by then.”

Igor shook a solemn head. “We can’t control him. We don’t know how to. Besides, with all that power he answers only to one person, and the seminary has not necessarily been fair to the boy.”

Emriss massaged her scalp, knowing the boy in question. She’d seen Oluwatimilehin differ to him in her class enough times to know.

“Have we been that mean to Seth?”

Igor nodded. “Since the day he stepped foot on seminary grounds. And we’ve been instructed that should he return, we are to continue in the way we’ve treated him.”

“The seminary is harsh, but I don’t remember it being intentionally cruel as an institution.”

“Well, the Monsignor has spoken.”

Emriss paused in thought, then frowned. “But the boy went missing during the test. No one can survive for so long in the mist. Especially one not even Iron. I’ve heard rumors of Golds and Barons who hadn’t been taught how to map it go missing and die.”

“And there’s the reia beasts,” he agreed. “But the Monsignor seems to believe his return is within the realm of plausibility.”

“That makes no sense.”

“It does not.” Igor poured himself another drink, found the bottle empty, and reached into his drawer. He pulled out another bottle, opened it and poured himself a drink. He sipped it generously. “Whatever mysteries surround that child, Faust is well aware of them, which means Ulrich and John are, too. But none of them will speak of it. All they allow is that he is special and the seminary must make him suffer.”

“Suffer?” she asked, confused. “Are they punishing him for something?”

“No. John’s real word was ‘struggle’” he shrugged. “But what’s the difference? They’ve sabotaged his tests in one way or another; made them harder to pass. In the test of the mist, he wasn’t given the complete concoction.”

“That could’ve killed him!” Emriss hissed, appalled.

“Yet,” he met her eyes, confused, “it did not. He woke up with a clear mind, as if nothing had happened.”

He downed the remaining liquor in his cup in one go and continued. “But he is not the problem. Oluwatimilehin is. An Iron who can scare me should not be raised. At least, not this way. I suggested we do to him what we did to Josiah and Faust refused.”

Emriss grimaced. She’d learned a lot about the seminary but had been remiss to find one of its dark secrets. If a seminarian was found too powerful, they took them away from their group. What they did to them remained a mystery, but she knew enough to know they did not kill them. She’d heard the rumors about Josiah amongst the Reverends already. Apparently, the child had manifest a convergent skill the world ranked as divine. It was power on a religious scale, strong enough to have the seminary perform a disappearing act on him.

That Igor would suggest another seminarian’s disappearance meant his skill was just as powerful. But for Faust to refuse meant it was not divine. Just what type of human manifested a skill of their own accord powerful enough to rival a divine one?

She watched the boy exchange a few words with Seth then charge the beast again. She should stop them now, before someone got hurt.

She did not.

As she watched the seminarian charge down a reia beast one rank higher and kick it across a distance, she was convinced he was too strong. This was a test of shooting skills. Such close quarter combat was meant to be unacceptable. She was meant to stop it. But curiosity was the boy’s ally. She wanted to see him use his convergent skill.

She wanted to see the skill that had terrified Igor so.