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19. War and Death Reach All

11.

The fight didn’t start immediately.

May stepped away from our previous targets, and Jax tried to use the offered space to slither away like the snake that he was.

‘Stay where you are, Jax,’ I said, and he stopped mid-stride.

Good. I wasn’t letting him run now that’d it’d come to this.

‘That may be true, Mrs. Lightreach,’ Fahim said, responding to May’s earlier remark.

He put a hand on Taran’s shoulder to keep him from getting closer to the forward-storming May.

‘Yet I cannot ignore injustice when I see it.’

May snorted.

‘I don’t care—’

High-pitched laughter cut her off.

‘Good one, Fahim,’ someone said.

All seven of us turned to the source of the noise.

It appeared the entirety of the girl squad had come together, because the last of our sex (Mrs. Tall and Wary from the first day), was sitting down a little way to my left.

Her voluminous black hair hung over her shoulder as she lazily leaned on her elbows. Two boys flanked and mirrored her, and a wicked grin played on the faces of all three like they looked forward to what was going to happen next.

‘That’s not what you said yesterday,’ the girl spit. ‘Where was your White Knight act when the rejects started robbing us at the gate?’

My gaze narrowed. I didn’t remember her assessment, but her confidence was not a performance. That I could tell. She was a far cry from the wary girl I’d seen two days ago. I guess May and I aren’t the only ones who went through rapid change, I thought.

Fahim crossed his arms.

‘Which was a mistake I already apologised for, Mrs. Hartman. It’s also why I’m acting now.’

The girl solemnly shook her head.

‘Boys who change their mind too quickly aren’t attractive,’ she said, and her two friends snickered together with other members in the audience.

‘Who asked you anything, Kate?’ the freckled girl at Fahim’s side said.

There was a pause. Then, sand flew as a puff of air shot through Kate’s nose.

‘I can say the same of your skinny boyfriend, Evelyn,’ Kate said.

Evelyn apparently wasn’t the best at comebacks because she didn’t respond. I expected Taran to pick up the slack for his teammate. But the boy wasn’t as gung-ho about squaring up against Kate as he was May.

Instead, he rubbed his stomach and kept his peace. Even when Kate rose to her full height and stood out like a tower over most of the gathered throng of students.

‘You have my support, May,’ she proclaimed. ‘Rejects should be punished before they start thinking too high of themselves.’

In Kate’s mouth, the term was a slur that bounced and echoed between the initiates.

Kate threw up her hands, spun and looked over all the accepted students.

‘They stole our cores yesterday!’ she said. ‘How long till they start stealing our tokens? Which one of us will be the first to fall victim?’

Her words reverberated over the field. Accepted students shared looks. Slowly—yet surely—their throats and fists started to tremble. When Kate’s words made their way to the other half of the coin, the rejects’s faces scrunched up, bundling together in solidarity.

I breathed out. Though I’d thought the sentry significant from the start, I’d underestimated the effect they could have in a single day. Two months of guaranteed safety wasn’t a lot of time. Everyone was on their tiptoes, requiring the smallest of nudges to explode.

Our conflict with Jax was just the right spark.

The spectators stopped watching us discretely. They drew closer, circling us and standing behind whoever they thought made the most sense. None of them left their sparring weapons on the ground.

Since the rejects formed most of our year, the biggest group walked towards Jax. A rough guess would put them at around sixty, and the blond boy accepted the tide of sudden supporters without a word, only dragging Lynne to his side by the neck to stand proudly next to him.

He stared straight at us, his gaze followed by a dozen set of students, and May and I both had to keep ourselves form biting our lips. They were rejects, sure. But sixty was a tall order, and I wasn’t that tall to begin with.

I glanced at Kate and Fahim.

When around ten students came to stand behind Fahim and some thirty gathered towards Kate, one of my earlier observations was proven right. Fahim had lost supporters. The cause of which must’ve been the sentry and his inaction.

I hesitantly looked over my shoulder.

To my surprise, there were a few initiates that’d angled themselves, so they stood behind May and me. I spotted a bamboo hat in the crowd and what I thought to be a boy holding a type of flute, who winked at me. But the shock and novelty wore off quickly when a fact I’d let speed past me pushed on its brakes and crashed into my forehead.

Elder Kang’s training had left me out of maura. Which meant I would be nearly useless in a fight.

Suddenly, the circle eyed more like a cage. I took a step towards May, whose field of view was darting around, trying to uncover where the first threat would come from.

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The cage followed me.

It shrunk and grew denser.

Weapons of all kinds clanged on the prison bars. From beyond the bars, a thick, tangible tension rose from the floor like smoke—shepherded by the chime of metal on metal. The fumes twisted and wrung as you would a wet towel, coiling into a string ready to snap.

May and I stood back to back.

This is bad—

A low rumble grabbed hold of the breaking cord, preventing it from tearing apart.

‘Violence truly is youth.’

Everyone whirled around. Elder Kang was grinning like a proud grandfather and strode forwards with mountainous steps. Burning hearts froze as the Elder’s presence dominated the field.

‘You cannot ignore injustice, is what you said, wasn’t it, Mr. Skeleton?’

Fahim, who had his hand on the cork of his gourd, straightened his back.

‘Yes, elder.’

Elder Kang waded through the barrier that had formed around us without issue, striding into the middle.

‘The weak should bow to the strong,’ Elder Kang said. ‘That is the truth.’

Cores activated, and the maura of over half our class thrummed, their drumming like a song of war.

Fahim’s shoulders set, too, yet when he tried to speak Elder Kang continued over him.

‘But!’ he yelled, smiling. ‘Even the weak and unfortunate are entitled to their pride—’

Elder Kang came to a stop beside us. He blocked out the sun, his shadow consuming our own.

‘—and it appears this year’s batch of weaklings are ahead of the curve,’ he finished.

His bloody eyes locked May in place.

‘You want what’s owed to you, child? Respect and revenge?’

May didn’t answer. Her flames were still alive, flickering and sizzling.

The elder scoffed.

‘Bad luck. Student on student discipline isn’t allowed on my field.’

May looked away, teeth clattering. But I sighed in relief, and my muscles relaxed all at once. The elder had just saved us from a poorly chosen fight.

Then, Elder Kang placed a gentle hand on May’s shoulder that nearly pound her into the ground due to his sheer size.

‘Which is why I’m announcing a group battle,’ he said, ‘where all of you can fight and settle your growing grievances. Of course, stealing tokens will be allowed, too.’

The war drums went silent. So did the rest of the students.

A group battle…

‘Elder,’ Fahim began in a very soft tone. ‘We’ve only trained for two days…isn’t it too soon to stake our tokens?’

‘Oh?’ the elder said, raising an eyebrow. ‘You looked rearing to go a moment ago, boy.’

Elder Kang chuckled when Fahim remained quiet.

‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I was going to announce such a battle either way. You’ve just created more incentive and haste for it.’

He raised two digits.

‘Two weeks. You’ll get two weeks to prepare for combat. Those who refuse to show up lose permission to attend my lessons afterwards. I don’t raise cowards or hypocrites.’

Fahim sucked in a sharp breath—

‘No more on the matter,’ Elder Kang said. ‘Since you’re fine wasting sparring time, you’re all running laps for another hour. Start.’

With those words, the last of the swelling tension vanished. The cage broke apart like drenched paper, and we all began to run.

Students grumbled beneath their breath. Others outright called others names, plenty of which were directed at May and me. But whenever someone spoke up, the elder added ten more minutes of running, so everyone eventually shut up.

Yet the war drums didn’t go mute. They could be heard between the tired footfalls of a hundred initiates. Lurking. Steadily increasing in volume with every step.

Music could tell a story, they said. This song told me one thing beyond a doubt: a target had been painted on May and I’s back—one that could be seen from a mile away.

In two weeks, more than sixty students would be after us. How were we going to beat them, especially now that I’d lost my maura capacity?

That question jogged with me in my head during the entire session, barely audible above the drumming.

12.

I dragged May away from the field before she could start a verbal fight with the dozenth person to cuss us out beneath their breath.

She yanked her arm out of my grip the moment we reached a secluded space on the pathways towards the bathhouse and whirled on me.

‘We’re going to roast all of them alive!’ she yelled.

The funny part was that she was literally steaming. But I couldn’t laugh. The stress and tension had long left the atmosphere. Yet inside I was still churning.

‘May,’ I said, my voice gone soft. ‘I ran out of maura during training today.’

She stared at me and remained quiet, not understanding.

‘I won’t be able to fight that many opponents for long,’ I explained.

I wouldn’t be able to fight one of them for long, I thought, rubbing my forehead. Then, there was the entire thing with the curse, which I simply wanted to forget about…how was I going to juggle all of this? I only had two weeks.

May rolled her eyes and swatted away my hand.

‘We’ll figure it out,’ she said. ‘We’ve got two whole weeks.’

I paused and looked up. Her pink lips said “stop being stupid” without moving. Should I be happy or worried that she was glossing over my issues like this? From the way I had to control my smile, I knew which one I was inclined to believe.

May considered me.

‘We’re starting your weapon training tomorrow,’ she said. ‘A little speed and skill should be able to get rid of most of the trash targeting us.’

Right, I huffed. There was that, too. I seriously had my work cut out for me.

Not waiting for any answer of mine, May started walking down the curving, stone pathways again and I followed.

Elder Kang’s extra prescribed hour of running had turned into two. Now, the stars were out, making May’s fiery hair like a fairy guiding me in the dark. I let it.

But as I stared at her rear, the back of my head began to itch. Something about what she said nagged me. The culprit was her last statement. The training? No…trash? Trash…getting rid of the trash. I frowned. What about getting rid of the trash? Was I that doubtful of our chances?

That wasn’t it either. So, then what—

‘Losing a single person on the first day is bad enough.’ Fahim’s words resurfaced to my consciousness.

I breathed out slowly. A single person. As in, if we’d died, that would make three? That Math was a little off, wasn’t it? Kite died, making one, yes. But Felix had killed someone, too, right?

‘Hey, May,’ I said.

Her hair twirled, and her chin extended over her shoulder.

‘Did we take Felix’s journal with us?’ I said.

‘Yes. Why?’

‘You sure he mentioned killing another student?’ I asked.

Her head tilted at the question coming out of left field.

‘It’s been a while,’ she said.

It had, in fact, not been a while, but I understood what she meant. We’d gone through a lot in two days.

‘I’m ninety percent sure,’ she said after thinking on it. ‘I’d need to look again to be certain, but he definitely mentions one of us dying and taking their token.’

A glaze covered her pupils as she lost herself in thought.

‘Did the skeleton say a single person died?’ she asked.

Let no one say the girl didn’t have a head on her shoulders when she wasn’t annoyed.

That’s kind of blowing my own horn, I thought. But whatever.

‘The student died on the first day,’ I said. ‘That’s when Fahim had the most supporters in the academy. Kinda strange that he didn’t hear about a missing person, no?’

A pause.

‘Maybe a loner,’ May said. ‘Felix found them by themselves and offed them without anyone noticing.’

‘Possible,’ I said.

‘You don’t think that’s it,’ she said.

I shook my head.

‘Would someone really enter the forest by themselves?’

‘Me,’ she said, speaking with pride.

‘You had a legitimate reason to do so,’ I said.

She was afraid of the assassins, so she needed to jump start her growth right away.

After I had that thought, I stopped in my tracks. May stopped, too.

If someone didn’t go out alone and still died without anyone saying anything, then there remained a few options.

‘Scenario one is an accident kept quiet,’ I said.

Perhaps someone broke their neck while running or got caught in a trap set by some monster. The dead person’s previous teammates simply chose to remain silent. For what reason? I didn’t know. Maybe they feared being blamed. But the fact was that it was possible.

May’s face turned sharp.

‘Scenario two,’ she said.

‘Assassins,’ I whispered.

Elder Kang hadn’t given intimate details of the test yet, but he did say after the lesson that it would take place in a secluded area and warned that ‘death was a definite risk.’

So, if our conclusion was even remotely true, we had just handed a killer—or killers—the perfect, chaotic playing field to do their job and get away with it unseen.

‘They really got us good,’ I said.