“Friends are resources in this life, just like any other game of card and chance. Wield them correctly, and they win you the round. Clue them into your machinations, and ruin the whole damned thing.”

- Headmaster Rayna Felwirth (Private journals)

“Get out of the way!” A man screamed as me and my friends tried to navigate our way back to the dorms. We’d seen a familiar face in the old man that had treated me my first day at the academy. He cleaned Lysandra’s wounds and simply glared judgmentally at me when he saw the mildly swollen nature of my shoulder. After a long lecture on the importance of recovery, he sent us off through the dark academy with a letter that bore his signature.

Good thing, too.

Three times now were we stopped and questioned as to our intentions and commands. Men, women, elves and dwarves all slowed us down, even as their eyes communicated a fear and deadness I could barely understand. Their armor and uniforms were soaked to the bone and yet they took the time to make sure we weren’t cowards. That we weren’t deserters.

“Alright, we’re moving!” I said once again, and I helped steer a tired Lysandra around the group of warriors as some groaned in pain while others breathed heavily. A yell pierced the general volume of the crowd and we all turned as a lone figure was dragged out by his hair. It took me a second to recall his name.

Pietrich.

It was one of the nobleborn that had bullied me my first day of classes. Now, in the middle of the night, his bulk and combed hair felt flimsy and superficial. Compared to the haggard warriors around us, they were everything he wasn’t.

“You can’t do this!” Pietrich screamed as we watched, and a sense of foreboding crept its way up my spine. I was suddenly acutely aware of the heavy draft that poured in from the ajar central doors as it tickled the exposed hairs on my arms and neck. The surge was in its final stage, whatever fury that fueled it satisfied for now. “Stop! I order you to stop!”

Tonight was a night for familiar faces as the dwarf who dragged the large boy down the flight of stairs caught the light of the everglow lamps. It was the same dwarf who wielded a giant axe and prevented other nobility from killing me where I recovered in the medical tent. His face was dripping and he ignored the mad wails from the young man he mopped the ground with as he approached the front doors.

Behind them, a few students I recognized from our year stared numbly at the ground, and they shuffled their feet even as their armor dripped onto the stone floor of the academy.

“Let’s go,” I whispered to my friends, but thick hands padded by leather stopped us.

“No. Best you see this now. It’ll motivate you when it’s your turn to guard the wall,” the man who’d called for us to move said. His voice was thick with condescension as his eyes followed the slow trail of the dwarf and the dragged nobility. Through the antechamber of our institute and home. The tone of Pietrich’s cries shifted when they reached the first marble step. The dwarf tossed the boy down the steps like he was dirty laundry.

“I will find out who you are, dwarf, and make sure my father has your head on a pike, do you hear me?!” Pietrich bellowed. Anger and fear came together in his eyes as he rose to his feet. He was nothing but his undergarments, but even the faint aftermath of a surge was enough to soak him in an instant.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

“Cadet Pietrich Palelake, I hereby condemn you with high treason for willfully abstaining from the call to guard the high wall during a surge. What say you?” The dwarf demanded of the boy loudly enough for all of us gathered to hear and bear witness. Now that he mentioned it, Pietrich did vaguely resemble Gavin, but I had no idea they were related until now. Pietrich, for his part, stood tall.

“I say that your claim, commoner, is preposterous and folly in the extreme! Know your place.” Pietrich somehow managed to look down on the Orion in full battle gear even as he stood at the bottom of the steps in naught but his underwear. I groaned, recalling those same arrogant words spat down at me by the same boy.

“Were you not given notice of your call to action?” The dwarf requested with just a touch of caution to his otherwise terse tone.

“I was not!” Pietrich declared boldly. “I wasn’t in my room where the letters were sent. I—I was otherwise preoccupied in another’s dorm space.” Heat flashed through my cheeks, though whether it was his gall or the embarrassment I felt for him, I wasn’t sure.

“How did you know where the letters are sent if you didn’t receive one, cadet?” Others murmured their approval while some of the color drained from Pietrich’s face. I looked around to see if there was a way out of this for me and my friends, but no path was made evident to me. We were boxed in.

“I—A second-year told me.”

The dread I felt built in my chest reached a crescendo.

“Odd thing to mention from a second-year. What if I said that you received a letter regardless of your location, as it was guided by your aura signature notated by the most recent threshold you passed through. What If I said that your preoccupation wasn’t consensual and the dwarf I found you with cried with relief when I tore you out of that room?!” At his rage, flames began to dance along the axehead the dwarf bore on his back. He unclasped it and let its metallic edge clatter against the marble step he was on.

“I—She said she wanted to try something new. It isn’t my fault she didn’t communicate her distaste. Besides, we’re getting off topic. I demand you drop these senseless accusations of cowardice,” Pietrich stammered.

“I never called you a coward,” the dwarf whispered, but everyone heard him. His chin was tucked as he studied the edge of his axe. Blue flames as dark and vibrant as the moonless sky on a clear night raced excitedly across the edge of his blade. “But I will now, you görnaching fool. I name you defiler! I name you spineless! I name you coward!” Each statement was echoed by a metallic thud as his axe blade dragged behind each slow step he took toward Pietrich.

“Your own cohort informed me of your absence and my investigation has proven their claims true! And as commander of tonight’s guard, I hereby declare your life forfeit!”

“Please, spare me! I’m not suited for the high wall. I lack the experience! The expertise! It was suited for hunters better prepared than I!” Pietrich wailed, his courage fleeing him as he stumbled down the stairs.

There was no warning.

Pietrich died before his next breath. Two wet thuds were the only sounds as the final remnants of the surge petered out. A few droplets of blood rose through the air and disappeared into the night sky. To the east, dawn approached. The dwarf heaved in breaths for several moments before he twirled his blade and flicked away what little his blue flames didn’t eat up from his most recent kill.

“Commander Jarl, a word.” It was headmaster Felwirth that spoke up, and I used the crowd’s distraction to steer my friends back up the academy’s lobby to the stairways. My heart throbbed in my chest. Lysandra looked ready to vomit. I wasn’t far behind her. A coldness poured from Gwyn’s expression.

“Did you know her?” I asked my dwarven friend. She shrugged but otherwise didn’t respond. We took the stairs without any more words exchanged. All I could think of was how irrevocably awful this place was.

Kill-school, indeed.

Any lingering romanticism I had on what it meant to be an Orion disappeared tonight. This was not a place of heroes. It was an institute for killers.

When we reached the crest of our hallway, Lysandra spoke up.

“Stay with me,” she whispered. Gwyn and I nodded, and together we stepped past the corpses and into Lysandra’s room.

We didn’t sleep that night. Instead, we huddled together until morning and watched the sunrise as the darkness of the night bled away to the light of a new day.