When Seth and Alnon left the short house the sky was cracked with the first light of dawn.

Alnon led him through the same meandering pathway until they returned to the building beneath which Seth had spent the last few days. From there he took Seth to the buildings that they had seen in the beginning; when he’d been released from his time in captivity.

With the new light of the new day, Seth saw more. The buildings were the color of mud, a dirty brown with mild flecks of black scattered about them. It truly encompassed them in an archaic veneer. The fields he had seen, wide as those used for wide range sports in the days before the first crack, were filled with children clad in grey clothes very similar to the ones in his sack. They wielded wooden weapons of varying kinds from swords to poleaxes to even spears and quarter staffs. The children sparred each other with determination, filling the air with the sound of wood clacking as each blow was parried or avoided or struck true.

He watched them with a mild sense of foreboding, not because of them but because of the priests that walked amongst them.

The boys were divided into evident clusters separated by wide intervals. The priests served as anchors for each group, barking orders filled with more profanities than encouragements. They loud enough to be heard above the noise of wood as he and Alnon drew closer.

Seth saw at least three priests who walked through their groups, cane in hand, eyes scanning in the odd colors of soul mages. They gave off the sense of predators hunting their preys. While he didn’t understand the reason for this, events came to better explain them.

One of the boys in a group made a move, striking out at his partner. It was a deft turn, pivoting on his back foot to move into a pirouette. During the turn, his partner struck out quickly, catching the boy in the back with the tip of his wooden sword. In Seth’s head he heard the boy’s whine as he bucked at the strike. His footing failed him then, and he dropped to the ground with an audible thud drowned out by the sounds of clashing wood.

The priest that had been watching frowned in distaste, his lips curling up in a discontented scowl. He approached the fallen boy without hurry and Seth saw the boy’s expression of pain turn to resolve. The priest met him with his cane raised.

He brought the cane down on the boy in a single stroke. The force of the strike looked heavy even from where Seth was. The wooden can met flesh once and resounded through the air. The single stroke competed heavily with the sounds of wood clacking.

Seth’s mind went back to his first days with Jabari and he winced, expecting a second stroke of the cane. It never came. Surprisingly, the priest simply stared at the boy and Seth knew a messaged had passed between them.

To Seth’s surprise, the boy offered no sound at the stroke of the cane. He bore the brunt of it with a distant determination. There was a muffled grunt and a groan but nothing more. Alnon, for his part, stood idly by and watched. There was no smirk or satisfaction or even distaste on his visage. Just nothing.

Is it because they’re older? One of Seth’s minds asked, marveling at the punished boy’s silence. Because that must hurt like hell.

Seth had no answer for it as Alnon led him around a corner and away from the sight of the boys. But it was likely his thought was right—perhaps age had thickened them. The children looked around sixteen, maybe seventeen. He thought about it for the briefest of moment and wondered if they were perhaps souled already, seeing as they were debatably of age. But he didn’t ponder on it long enough to reach a resolute answer.

As he followed Alnon farther still, however, his minds took up the debate in a flock of questions and answers, disagreements and compromises, deductions and estimates.

Seth paid them no heed.

He was led to a building of similar black as the rest. It looked very old yet sturdy enough to weather the test of time. While he stopped and stared for the briefest moment, Alnon continued on his march, unconcerned by his momentary pause so that Seth was forced to hurry after him.

They climbed a few flights of stairs with balustrades on one side Seth found was made of the same materials as Gareth’s place. He forgot to count how many stairs they took before they debouched onto a balcony of sorts.

The priest led him down the balcony. Seth’s only protection from falling—as a Baron would not garner even a scratch falling from this height—was a simple balustrade that barely came up to his waist. It made him wonder how many children had died falling from this height.

“Don’t go falling.” Alnon advised without looking back. “If you do, you’ll be the first. It is a sad thing to watch a child die, but in this place you will not be mourned.”

Seth wondered if the tinge of care he’d just heard in Alnon’s voice was imagined.

And if it wasn’t? a piece of his mind questioned.

The other fragments had various replies to it, but Seth did not. Instead, he held his tongue and followed the priest.

Seth was led into a room at the far end of the corridor. Its entrance was merely a hole in the wall the size of a door. As for the door itself, there was none.

He walked into the room, a new found timidity seeping into his bones. During his traveling captivity at the hands of Jabari, he had felt fear and a tiny touch of excitement at the adventure. The trainings Jabari had put him through were tiring, exhaustive, even irksome. But they had been things to keep him busy, things to keep him occupied. Seth had known, even then, that he had not yet felt loss, his mind too occupied to account for it, perhaps. But now, standing in a new room with fifteen beds placed orderly so that they made two opposing rows on both sides of the long rectangular room, he felt the loss of the house of Darnesh in title and geography.

This was to be his new home.

Panic flooded him in this instant. Would they like him, whoever his dorm mates would be? Would he fit in? Would he even be able to make friends here; friends he never had? Would he be as close to any of them as he had been with Natalie.

One of his minds gave him an emphatic answer. That’s gay.

Another picked the conversation quickly. No, it’s not.

But we liked Natalie, and not just as friends.

Well, we should know we meant the friend part, not the feelings part.

Wait, another interrupted, Seth could feel the curiosity in it, what’s so wrong with being gay?

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A deep silence suffused Seth’s minds and he almost chuckled. He hadn’t known his minds were capable of shutting themselves up.

Alnon turned to him at the sound and frowned. “I would ask you what is funny, child, but I don’t think you know either.”

Seth looked down and away from the priest, cowed by his attention. He returned his gaze to the room after a while.

Alnon’s yellow eyes brightened lightly so that they looked golden even though the room wasn’t dark. They stayed that way for a beat before deeming back to their unnatural yellow. Seth had a feeling the priest had just done something but couldn’t begin to guess what it was.

“There are three unoccupied beds,” Alnon told Seth. “Choose wisely, and choose quickly.”

He pointed them out as he spoke and Seth moved, quick but uncertain. One of the three beds was sequestered away at the end of the walls, a pariah in the pond of beds. Not wishing to become a pariah of his own, Seth steered clear of it. The remaining two laid randomly scattered between others, and he picked one without any conscious criteria.

Alnon made a sound that could have been acknowledgement or disinterest. “Good. Now bring your sword. You are already late for the morning lesson.”

Seth guessed the morning lesson was the chaos downstairs.

………………………….

When Alnon brought him down the stairs it was not to the group of supervised children they had passed. He took Seth around the building, guided him down a path and into a wide courtyard that was scanty enough to be empty. Here, Seth noted the children he guessed would be his lesson mates.

There were about twelve of them, each holding a wooden sword much like the one he had in his left hand. With it they stood before colorful wooden dummies as tall as the average thirteen-year-old, which made the dummies taller than Seth by at least three inches. With legs spread apart for balance and swords in double handed grips they struck their dummies in odd but practiced manners. The sound of wood striking dummies was muffled and quietened. Seth attributed it to the padding of something that could be straws of some kind that layered beneath the wrappings well enough to give them their beefy appearance.

Watching, he could tell which of the children were more accustomed to the task than the others. There was a boy who struck with more practiced ease and seemed to vary his techniques, sometimes adding a bit of flair before each attack. Sometimes it seemed fanciful, boastful, like the empty arrogance he’d seen in most of the Lord’s children when he was littler; when they were too small to truly understand just how much cruelty they were capable of. Then there were times when the moves looked skillful, guiding him from one strike to another far more seamlessly than the way the other children did it. Somehow it made his strikes look easier, linking one to the next.

Beside him was a sharp contrast of a boy who bumbled through each strike. He was a chubby boy, almost banking on corpulence. Watching them from their backs Seth noted the boy’s chubby hands wrapped uncomfortably around the handle of his sword each time he raised it for a strike. His shoulders heaved in unhidden fatigue as he struck, trembling with the impact. In truth, his contrast in physique was to every other child here, even his clothes fit him a bit snug. He was the only child present that was not slim or fit.

The distance between Seth and Alnon grew and Seth noticed he had slowed down. Not wishing to annoy Alnon more than he already had, he hurried along. He did his best to ensure he held the wooden sword out beside him.

In time, they grew close enough to the children to hear the voice of the man that instructed them.

“Green. Black. Royal wheat. Yellow,” An aged priest bellowed beside them, guiding their strikes. “I said royal wheat then yellow, Naberal,” he swore. “You can’t be stupid and color blind at the same time, you bumbling fool. Pick a handicap and stick to it!” Then his attention shifted, and he barked louder. “We’ve not been here long enough for you to be tired, Adio. If you’re already panting like a broken whore after ten minutes, how do you intend to survive the after-lesson?!”

He went back to barking colors and the children continued to labor through. In the brief berating, Seth had been unable to deduce who either of the children he’d mentioned were of the eleven, knowing he would have to learn their names eventually.

Preferably as soon as possible.

Alnon led him to a free dummy two places removed from the rest of the children. The closest boy to him, a tall boy with at least five inches on him paused for the briefest moment to look at him. This earned him their supervisor’s ire as he missed a color on his next strike.

The priest instructing them moved, his hand blurring a path through the air. The sound of his cane cracked the air to strike the boy on the neck.

The boy howled in pain as he dropped to his knees. Sword forgotten to the ground at his side, he wrapped his hands around his reddened neck but not before Seth saw the welt the cane had left. As if the very action was a trigger, the priest whipped him again. The cane rose and fell once. The sound of wood meeting flesh and a child in uncontrolled pain rend the air as the child tossed and rolled on the ground. But like Seth had seen once before, the priest stopped and stared. It was as if each failure or crime was designated a single stroke of the cane. He wondered what the crime that gained the second stroke was.

“What soul mage drops his weapon?!” the priest barked just as Alnon barked an order.

“Black!” he commanded, seamlessly taking over.

The children, save the weeping victim, struck their targets where they were painted black. Seth wasn’t sure what was happening but knew he had to draw his attention away from the crying boy.

“Orange!” Alnon continued, and the thudding sound of wood strikes fought to drown out the child’s wailing.

Alnon turned his attention to Seth where it had been on the other children. “Red!” he said, and Seth stood idly.

Alnon sighed and flicked Seth on the forehead. It was a gentle flick but it hurt Seth enough to make him wince.

It was a simple thing but from the hands of a priest it rocked Seth back so that he staggered at least three steps and into the punishment behind him. The priest gave the child writhing on the ground a reprieve just to handle Seth’s presence.

Seth felt it the moment the aged man’s attention turned on him and a sense of wrongness settled in his gut. Without hesitation, he ducked low so that with his lack of balance and the pain flaring in his head only a single leg was forced to bear the brunt of his weight as he pivoted on it.

The pain in his forehead blurred his vision. While he saw nothing, he felt something whiz past where his chest had been moments ago. All the while his minds chorused an onomatopoeia of confusing words that gave the vivid illusion of a bunch of people tumbling around in a barrel. Seth had barely paid them any attention when his other leg struck something as he was repositioning itself. The force of it jarred him and he stumbled over something else.

As he fell, helpless in his chaos, recent memory in his most contemporary history hit him like a tidal wave and he tightened his grip around the hilt of his wooden sword. He knew worse may come should the weapon fall from his hold.

His back hit the ground with a thud, knocking the wind out of him even though he’d braced for the impact, eyes tightly sealed shut. At least his sword remained firmly in his grip.

That was one thing he wouldn’t be flogged for.

Are we sure we aren’t closet sadists? One of his mind asked quietly, ignoring the throbbing that remained in his head as Seth garnered his faculties.

We know right, another mind replied. We’ve adjusted to accepting all this pain as a part of our life quite quickly.

“Shut up,” Seth mumbled as he came to his feet. He froze when he saw Alnon’s raised hand. It was as if the man was instructing him to stop.

Slowly, Seth turned, knowing Alnon wasn’t looking at him, and followed his gaze. His eyes moved, trailing it to its destination behind him and found the new priest with a frown on his face, cane raised above his head.

Three minds chuckled in Seth’s head as one thought: That would’ve left a mark.

Is that reia infused? Another mind asked.

The response to it was immediate: We can’t see reia, retard.

True, another mind answered. But it sure as hell looks powerful.

It could’ve taken our head. What exactly did we do to piss him off this bad, Seth?

Seth bowed his head, scooting away from the armed priest slowly as he got to his feet, answering himself at the same time in mumbled whispers. “How would I know?”

That’s just lazy of you, came the response at the same time Alnon spoke.

“Stay your hand on this specific matter, Igor,” he said. “There are certain circumstances surrounding the lad, and this is one of them. More will be explained after.”

Igor’s frown, which was actually a scowl, did not change, but Seth was glad to see his hand descend to his side without wrath.

“Pick up your stick, fool,” Igor said to the boy still sniffling on the ground. To Seth, he added: “Face your opponent and attack on command. Strike the colors as I call them and do it properly. Nothing else.”

That said, he turned away from him.

When next the priest spoke, Seth joined the children in attacking a defenseless lump of padded wood.