True to Igor’s words a new class was created for them within the next month. This class, unlike all the others, was held in an actual classroom with walls and a ceiling. Unfortunately, there were no desks, and they had to manage with the discomfort of the concrete floors.

Within the month Barnabas was returned to them, his right hand securely and uncomfortably wrapped in a white cast. His sword hand, decommissioned for now, he was forced to start from the basics. Luckily, Reverend Igor proved himself uncharacteristically patient with him.

So while they moved through the advanced techniques he taught them now, suffering his degrading rebukes and floggings, Barnabas had it easier. He stood before a dummy as they all had years ago and struck at colors commanded of him. It was odd to understand how poorly each strike landed with naught but the sound of the stick hitting the dummy. It was grating and made them wonder if that was how bad they had sounded in the beginning.

That Igor had had to put up with eleven children making such a horrid sound in the name of sword practice almost justified the level of violence he’d been prone to in their earlier years. It is not to say he was no longer violent, but they at least understood the reason for it now. After all, they were trained well enough to understand when they made mistakes they should not have made.

While Barnabas relearned the way of the sword, developing a new sword arm, they all navigated their new class.

It took place in the early hours of Sunday, two hours after first light. The first lesson was in getting to the venue of the lesson. The first time Igor had shown them to the class they had stared in bewilderment, hoping in some way there had been a joke Igor was about to prove himself capable of. There had not.

“Your new lessons will take place here,” he told them, standing before a large body of water. “You will come here every Sunday morning, two hours past first light, and learn about soul magic.”

Behind him, the body of water stretched as far as their eyes could see from one end to the other. Across it was over a mile long and experience had thought them it would take no less than an hour to swim.

“Best not to get a cramp in there,” Fin had joked, blandly.

Josiah’s response had been like dry ice. “We’re mages now, we don’t get cramps.”

Beyond the stretch of water was a tower so tall it towered over the rest of the seminary. Each of them had needed to tilt their heads back just to follow the length of it. In their hearts they had prayed for stairs within to lead them, but the heart was always a fickle thing. Their minds knew there would be no stairs. And Igor proved a strong supporter of their minds.

With a great level of nonchalance, he told them, “You will all swim across…”

“Won’t we get wet?” Barnabas asked.

“You will,” Igor answered. “But you will be dry by the time your lectures begin.”

“What of me?” Barnabas raised his hand still held in a cast that seemed to blacken with every passing day.

Igor studied it for the briefest moment before shrugging. “Try not to drown. And try not to fall. Now, as I was saying. Every Sunday you will swim across, get to the other side, and climb to the top. There, you will have your class on the study of cores. And Josiah,” his attention swiveled to the boy, “you are merely a souled. You have barely grazed the threshold of the level of soul magic required to earn the title of mage. Remember that with your new lecturer. I have seen him throw students from his class for far less than that level of inaccuracy.”

His next words were brief and simple, bidding them a happy lesson with enough sarcasm to drown a cat. After his explanations, which weren’t much in honest truth, he left them, strolling away like a man free of some venereal disease.

When they were alone, Barnabas strolled forward with light effeminate steps as was always the way with him and placed himself between his brothers and the body of water. “So,” he turned to them, leaving the water behind him and held up his cast. “Who wants to go first?”

Silence met him in its varying forms. Fin looked at him like a child who never learned the right time to joke. Josiah watched him like someone who refused to accept his joke on nothing but principle. Jason would probably have sighed on a different occasion. Timi remained indifferent, standing behind Seth as a younger brother would behind his older brother, a sharp contrast to the size of him. Seth simply raised a gentle questioning brow.

“Come on,” Barnabas protested. “We’re brothers. A team. As such, we have to look out for each other.” He waved his cast in emphasis. “We’ve already lost enough brothers as is.”

Silence met him again. This time, it didn’t seem so united as it had the last time. This one was contemplative, speculating on words that had forced minds to think.

They had lost brothers over the years, that much was true. But did they really miss them? If they were to be honest with themselves, the losses almost seemed inevitable. Not the loss of their brothers, that was definitely inevitable, but the loss of those specific brothers didn’t seem random.

In their first year, they’d lost three brothers.

No one had truly cared much for them. Borriovani had, in truth, been the outcast who tried to fit in somewhere but never had. Norman had been the shadow to Forlorn’s arrogance, a servant to serve the purpose of fanning his constant hubris. His death had been no more important to Forlorn than the loss of a nameless, faceless slave in a palace. Blake had quite simply been a nobody, his only true relation to them being his survival of the seminary’s cruelty alongside them.

The loss of Salem and Bartholomew had seemed nothing but fortunate to both brothers. Salem would be missed for his stories, and he was. But they hadn’t missed him for long. After all, most of his stories had gone into the ears of Bartholomew. It was odd how the only two boys who would’ve truly missed each other dearly had gone together.

Seth looked from his brother before him, cast raised and waving, to his brothers around him. Even now they remained divided. Broken into tightly knit cliques. Only Fin would miss Jason. Only Barnabas would miss Forlorn…

…Only Timi will miss us, a fragment of his mind whispered.

“Was this what we were bound to become?” he asked under his breath, speaking more to himself than his minds.

Nonetheless, one of them answered, we cannot all be friends.

“Fin,” Jason began with a sigh, “Can you assist with—”

Seth almost chuckled as his awareness felt Fin pass them by. The large boy passed him in a run, shocking Jason to silence and pulling behind him a powerful following of wind strong enough to ruffle Seth’s hair that now touched his shoulder seeming to refuse further growth.

The boy ran past Barnabas, got to the end of the land they stood on, and dived. He hit the water with a noticeable splash. The body of water swallowed him happily, rippling out in rings from where he entered before it calmed. A few seconds later, he erupted a few feet away and started swimming towards the tower.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

Jason was the only one shocked by the boy’s action, lips held tight in a grim line. No one else seemed confused by it. Not even Barnabas. From the look on his face he had clearly expected it.

Seth turned to Jason, noting the contemplation on his face. True to his nature, he wanted to be the necessary leader, the solution to their problems. But he could not be. Whatever, he was considering right now, it would be beyond his execution.

Our turn? A fragment of his mind asked and he nodded.

He looked at Timi and found the boy staring at him. His request was not necessarily a simple one, but it was one his brother could handle. All he had to do was phrase it right.

He reacts better to commands, a fragment offered.

“I know,” he replied. To his brother, he said, “Take him across.”

Timi’s lips pursed in the way they always did when he tried to understand something, perhaps the reason Seth was helping someone who’d tried to kill him barely over a month ago. Seth shook the thought from his mind. He needed to remember the boy had not tried to kill him, not entirely, merely to harm him.

Timi’s hands came together and signed, Do I have to?

There was a barely concealed joke in the sign that made Seth smile. It was amusing to know the boy had become so proficient in the seminary’s hand signs that he could read emotions in them. At least he’d been surprised the first time he’d read a touch of sarcasm in one of the boy’s signs.

Sarcasm or comedy? He signed back.

Timi smiled. Comedy.

Without further communication, he stomped past Seth, unrelenting, until he stood before Barnabas. He stared down at their brother for a few seconds before picking him off the ground by the waist with a single arm and tossing him over one shoulder. He looked back at Seth with a frown before he turned, the hem of his grey cassock billowing from the action, took a few more steps, and dived.

The last expression Seth caught on Barnabas was shock.

He took a step forward but paused at the sound of Jason’s voice.

“Why?” his brother asked.

Seth didn’t have to turn to look at him to pay the boy any attention.

“Why did you help?” Jason repeated.

Seth shrugged. “Someone had to get him across.” Now he turned his head to look at his brother. “And I wasn’t the one who helped. It was Timi.”

Turning back, he headed forward and made his dive.

He hit the water with a splash. He couldn’t tell how loud it was, its sound drowned out by that of rushing water as he sank. There was a moment were he experienced panic. It was a moment where he found the water thicker than any he had ever had the displeasure of swimming in. It was heavier than it had any right to be, viscous. Another test of the seminary, he wondered.

His mind took only a moment to recalibrate, to adjust to his new situation. Once it did, his panic left him like winter’s chill in spring’s command. He waded through the water, pulled himself forward and up, then broke through the surface.

He swam forward in simple, quick strokes, intent on getting out of the water as soon as he could. Not only was it heavy and irritating with the sense of wading through syrup, it was cold, cold enough to make his teeth want to clatter.

Behind him, in a space of the awareness of his collective fragmented minds he was beginning to realize was getting wider, Jason dived into the water. The time difference between his submersion and his emergence was shorter than that of Fin and Timi. It reminded him once more that if there was to be an ace in their group it would be Jason. But an ace did not a leader make. Perhaps one day his brother would come to understand that.

All of them made it to the other side of the water successfully, and contrary to how it had felt Seth noted it soaked their cassock just as any water would and dripped from it the same way. They were still shaking out the water, Seth and Jason squeezing out their hair since they were the only ones with hair long enough to retain water as they took stock of the tower before them. Barnabas’ hair was long enough to drip, but with only a single hand at his command, he let it.

“Should we rest?” Jason asked, staring up at the tower a few paces from them.

It was far enough that they needed to walk to it but close enough that it wouldn’t be considered a journey. In a brisk walk they would be at it in perhaps ten minutes.

Timi dropped Barnabas on his ass unceremoniously and turned to Seth, awaiting an answer. Seth had one but held back from offering it. He would lead his brother, command him when deemed necessary, but he would not make decisions on subjects thrown at the group. When he made decisions, it would affect him and Timi alone. He would take responsibility for his friend but not his brothers.

“Is there a reason to wait?” Fin asked, then gestured ahead of them. “The tower’s just there. And I doubt we want to be late.”

Jason spared Seth a sideways glance. It was intended to be discreet but it did not escape Seth. At this distance Seth doubted much of anything his brothers would do would escape him.

“Any of us could be tired, though,” Jason explained. “Timilehin carried Barnabas across.”

Fin shook his head. “Timilehin isn’t tired. And Seth is panting like a kicked mule but he’s always panting like a kicked mule. It doesn’t mean he isn’t tired.” He turned to Seth. “Are you tired, brother?”

Seth looked at him with concealed confusion. What was happening right now? Was Fin rebelling; taking over? Was he tired of listening to Jason? Did he fancy himself a possible leader of the group now?

He must have done a poor job of concealing his confusion because Fin added: “I do not mean it as an insult. It is simply that that is how you breathe, like a man who’s been in a long winded fight. Always has been, even in your sleep. It’s just annoying that despite that you never get tired.” He frowned. “It’s almost as if your stamina is endless.”

Seth nodded. The boy just might be a better leader than Jason.

Just because he complimented us? one of his minds mocked.

Seth shrugged. “I like compliments.”

Fin’s brows furrowed in mild disgust. “It was not a compliment, brother.” Then he paused, realization dawning on him. “You weren’t talking to me, were you?”

Seth walked passed him, patting him on the arm as he did. He smiled warmly. “Nope,” he answered. “No, I was not.”

Hands clasped behind him, he fell into an easy stroll and Timi followed beside him easily. His cassock was wet, the breeze was cool, his friend walked beside him, and he still had voices in his head. It was a good enough day as far as the seminary was concerned.

It wasn’t long before the rest followed them and not much longer before Barnabas asked: “Anyone considered how exactly we’re expected to climb a tower?”

Seth figured it was another test. One that involved them figuring exactly that out. Although, he doubted it required any form of team work: despite putting them in teams, the seminary wasn’t very fond of team work.

The tower’s surface is rough enough, one of his minds thought.

He perked up at that. “It is?”

“What is?”

Seth ignored Barnabas.

Of course, another mind acquiesced.

“You can tell from this distance?” he asked. “The building’s like a thousand paces away.”

It’s your eyes, though, a mind answered, nonchalant. So technically, you can see from this distance. We’re just using it for you.

“He’s talking to himself again,” Barnabas sighed.

“He’s always talking to himself,” Jason chided. “Leave it.”

Seth squinted and his sight sharpened. He saw the motes of dust in the air, increasing with every step they took. But it was not what he sought, and he looked beyond them, passed the plateau of sparsely grassed land upon which they walked, all the way to the building. It strained him a little to do this but he saw it in the end. It wasn’t as clear as his minds had made it seem, but it was clear enough.

The building was fashioned from bricks as black as his hair, perhaps blacker, and there were grooves between each brick. They could serve as hand holds for anyone with a strong enough grip.

He sighed, seeing the training now. In getting to this class, the seminary had fashioned a training to strengthen their grips.

He frowned at the thought, his steps slowing, and his minds laughed.

Doesn’t make any sense does it? one chuckled, echoing his exact thought.

“It doesn’t.” He picked up his pace so that he caught up to his brothers. “Maybe there’s something that requires a strong grip as a soul mage?”

Unless we’re beating our meat I don’t see why—

He pinched the bridge of his nose in exasperation. “I guess it’s time for you to shut up.”

“Brother?”

“Yes, Jason?”

“Now that we’re souled, our senses are sharper. All of them heightened. Maybe not by much, but enough for us to notice.”

“I am aware.”

“So… I’m not sure how to put this delicately, but… could you…”

“Could you learn to shut up if you can’t learn to talk quieter,” Fin finished harshly. “I can’t hear myself think with all your mumbling about.”

Seth held up a deterring hand without looking at Timi, like a commander instructing his troops to halt. He did not need his minds to tell him Timi had a response to Fin’s tone for him to know. A response fashioned in unadulterated violence. These days his brother was quick to anger on his behalf, not that his brothers gave him reason very often.

With a gentle nod he replied. “Noted.”

That ended it, and he sealed his lips for the rest of the walk.

Still think he’ll make a good leader? One of his minds snickered as they continued. His others minds laughed.

Seth did not.