Seth watched in confusion as his brother wrestled a Silver rank reia beast. Domitia had taught them a variety of unarmed combat techniques but there was no lesson in the seminary that advised them on how to tackle a reia beast of any kind in unarmed combat. It was always attack from a distance or use a weapon. The only form of unarmed combat against a reia beast was the use of skills.

Watching Timi duck and weave, grapple and toss a reia beast taller than a man, wider that three placed side by side and as long as eight foot was disillusioning.

We think we should close our mouth and take aim, one of his minds offered. We don’t want to lose those three seconds.

He said he could hold it longer, another thought.

And wouldn’t we be so happy to force him to go above and beyond.

The mind chuckled. If we don’t grow him, who will?

The seminary, fool. What do we thing they’ve been doing with him for the past three years?

Seth grumbled quietly. He closed his mouth and hefted his rifle. He reached into the pocket of his cassock and counted three bullets. Three seconds might not be enough for what he intended. However, if he could make the first shot count, three seconds would be more than enough.

Timi wrestled with the beast like a child born to the way of combat. Every evasion was nigh precise. He stepped away from a vicious swing and closed back with a powerful blow with the side of his arm. It struck the beast in the snout with enough force to stagger it. Staggered, he took the initiative and rounded the beast, wrapped his arms as far around its side as he could—which wasn’t far by any definition of the word—and threw it. Both of them went down with enough force to shake the ground.

Seth braced himself, back against a tree as Timi did the heavy lifting. He took aim with his rifle and adjusted his position. He needed a position that would absorb the entirety of the recoil from his shot. If he could absorb all of it, his aim would be that much better.

So close to the fight, feeling the violence of two monsters—for that was what they were—clashing, he had no need for his scope, so he turned it aside and aimed with his eyes.

Then he waited.

His moment came after three more throws and eight more blows. Both Timi and the beast had somehow managed to upend a tree in their chaos, pulling it with its root from the soil beneath them. The beast struck Timi with a charging head and he countered with a low tackle. It was not the force of him that brought the beast to the ground. It was in the way he forced its body from its place, shifting its momentum and taking it down.

Partially successful in his pin, he raised his eyes to Seth.

Seth needed no further motivation. With a silent apology to his minds, he activated [Fractured Mind] and his reia reserves tanked.

The world sharpened around him. Mist. Air. Tree. Brother. Blood. He ignored all the information rushing to him and zeroed his mind on the beast. He adjusted his position against the tree and pulled the trigger.

His aim was true.

The reia beast shrieked in unbridled pain as his bullet pierced its good eye, rendered it as useless as the other. It bucked in Timi’s hold, throwing him off like a piece of rag.

Timi landed as if unharmed, though Seth could not be sure, and dusted himself. Then he laughed.

Good aim? He signed to Seth.

A grin cracked Seth’s lips. “Good aim.”

He raised the rifle again and Timi went to work. In the next five minutes the reia beast was a heaving, sluggish thing, crawling away from Timi. Surprisingly, its pitiful escape drew it to Seth. It was almost as though it didn’t simply run from Timi; it intended a piece of Seth as it went.

Seth wasn’t certain how to respond. [Fracture Minds] was already wearing off, not that he needed it, and he was out of bullets with no idea where Timi’s rifle was. But none of that mattered. Someone had walked into his space of awareness and he held his hand out to the person.

“Bullets,” he instructed.

Fin reached into his pockets then paused. “Why?”

Seth ignored the boy’s demanding, and somehow annoyed baritone to look at him. “Because the beast is not dead. And we would all love it to be.”

Forlorn stepped out from behind a tree. Seth ignored him, having been aware of his approach already though the world around him was dulling into the mundane now. He caught the boy spare a glance between the bleeding beast still crawling to Seth and Timi. It was all the sign needed to know he had watched everything they had done.

Should be enough to put some fear in his toes, eh? A mind chuckled.

We think we’re beginning to like this accent.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

“We are not,” Seth hissed, then returned his attention to Fin. “Bullets… Please?”

“You have nothing to say to this?” Fin asked Jason as he stepped into the growing gathering a few seconds before Barnabas.

“He knows how to kill it.” Jason shrugged. “Let him.”

Fin shook his head and put his hand into his pocket. He brought out three more bullets and held it out. “Is this enough?”

It was. Seth crossed the distance between them and took them.

As he walked back, loading his rifle, Forlorn made a motion, an act of defiance perhaps. A glance from Timi silenced it. Seth ignored them, although what had truly happened did not escape his notice. Where Forlorn had simply returned to silence, his brothers had flinched. No. Flinched was the wrong description. They’d grown alert. It was in the tensing of their bodies. It was in the way their shoulders had tightened and their attentions sharpened. It was involuntary; an instinct honed in the forge that is the seminary. It was a seminarian’s uncontrolled response in the presence of a threat.

They fear our brother, a mind observed.

And rightly so, another confirmed as Seth stood in front of a bleeding reia beast of silver rank, rifle loaded with its barrel on its eye.

“Now,” he answered them with low words. “They fear our friend.”

He pulled the trigger. Three times he squeezed. Three times his ear rang. The beast squealed for only the first two. The third shot solicited no response.

He looked up at Timi and smiled.

Dead? His brother signed.

He nodded. Dead.

None of them were surprised when Emriss came for them barely five minutes after. It was a time long enough for conversations of varying kinds. But it was spent in silence. Save Seth and Timi, no one spoke. Barnabas did not talk to Forlorn. Fin did not speak to Jason. Theirs was a pregnant silence. One full with the oxymoron of a mutual discordance. At the heart of it laid fear for something uncontrollable.

While they pondered on it, Seth and Timi went in search of his rifle. They did not find it.

When Emriss arrived, she showed them their first true display of rune magic. She tossed a careless hand over the dead beast, fingers writing in the air. Each rune disappeared as her finger carved it in a trail of deep blue reia. When she was done, the world around the beast rippled, then the beast was no more.

“Illusion magic,” she told them when she saw the look on their faces. “It’s nothing special. Not even powerful. But for Iron magi like you it will suffice. I don’t need you getting distracted as I make my corrections.”

“Corrections?” Barnabas asked.

“Yes.”

“But we killed it,” Forlorn objected.

She met his objection without batting an eye. “Seth and Oluwatimilehin killed it. Meanwhile, the rest of you did whatever you did.”

Then she went into a rendition of grades and scores, corrections and amendments. She had much to say on the subject. First she spoke on Timi’s recklessness. It was not the place of an Iron to face a reia beast of higher authority in a battle of strength, especially one unarmed. Apparently, a smart soul mage knows to assume all reia beasts of certain sizes are physically stronger than them. Then she emphasized on the fact that her lesson was in ranged combat; the use of the rifle—in this case.

After categorically stating that Timi’s method of attack will not be tolerated, going forward, she moved on to the rest of them. Barnabas was chided for not knowing when to shoot. She pointed out his lack of self which would have him killed in his indecisions if he ever found himself in a situation where he had no team. His inability to shoot straight was touched on lightly, almost as if done in passing. Fin was scolded for merely trying and giving up. Apparently, the boy had fired a few shots, found it difficult, then took it as a waste of his time.

It surprised Seth. Fin was not one for abandonment. If anything, he was the one of them that worked the hardest. He was hard work in the midst of everything.

Emriss spared the barest words for Forlorn. He was an average shot, neither good nor bad for his level of training and experience. His arrogance, however, would get him killed as a sniper. Left with a choice, he should never take the position. If it didn’t kill him, it would kill someone on his team.

Jason was more decisive with all else, but Emriss’ conclusion on him as a sniper was poor. He was lacking. His decisiveness put him on the negative. He was too quick to fire, as if he worried he could not strike it fast enough.

“You might be far from your target,” she told him. “But the distance between it and your bullet when you pull the trigger is less than a second. It is fractions of it. You cannot attack any faster even if you were right beside it.”

They did not need a Baron to tell them her last words were false. Closer was always faster. For Seth, her words were simple.

“Be better.”

Then she offered them a single compliment. “You did nothing while your brothers fought the beast because you could do nothing. Should one of you have taken a shot, you would’ve harmed your brother. Do not feel bad about that. It is the reason I train you. So that one day you will be capable of offering support from a distance, firing at an enemy even as your brothers engage it in close combat.”

The events after that were simple. As far as what became of the reia beast’s corpse, they could only speculate. Timi thought it went into the kitchen for the priests, considering Barons ate reia beast meat. Barnabas tried to convince himself it was used as fertilizer of some sort. It was odd how a boy raised in a compound so violent and devoid of good, was friend to a scumbag as repulsive as Forlorn, and could bring carnage to anything with a sword, could think up using the corpse of a reia beast as fertilizer and make it sound like the right thing to do.

Fin was ever the practical brother. He was quite adamant none of it went to waste. The bones used for whatever they could be used for. Flesh for the same. Skin and core and muscles were not left out. He almost sounded like a farmer’s child. Or a survivalist.

It made Seth wonder how exactly the boy had lived before joining the seminary.

The truth about the speculation was that none of them really cared. In actuality, none of them could even bring themselves to. What birthed this sense of curiosity was Emriss. The rune magic she’d displayed had somehow centered the beast in their minds, led them to refuse its expulsion from their minds.

Yes. No one could care half an inch about the beast. They were simply enamored by her display. It was what every child envisioned magic was supposed to look like. Unfortunately, while they weren’t too old to be curious and fascinated by it, they were not young enough to talk about their amazement so freely. What they were was old enough to be too proud to share the truth of their emotions.

Or perhaps their pride was not something born of age, perhaps it was not even pride, at all.

Sometimes Seth would catch himself or his brothers in an almost complete display of a true emotion, only to find themselves seize its action. It scared him mildly, but not a lot. The truth was they hid their hearts from each other simply because they felt it was the only way they would survive; because they trusted no one. Not the priests. Not each other.

They were children in a sea of a community wearing masks as all else had learned to. Yet they would one day live the rest of their lives trusting each other with their lives.

They’ll make monsters of us all.