17.

Our team decided to hold our practice sessions in the morning so the other groups couldn’t see our progress. We weren’t the only team with that idea, but at least the mist on the mountain provided natural cover in the early hours. It also freed up a slot in the early evening, which I spent meditating near the locus. It was a risk since the forest was more dangerous at night, but the locus wasn’t that deep in the first layer. So, the chance of meeting a powerful entity was low.

Still, May often came with me to the locus. One, because the raw maura levels were enough for her own meditation. Two, to ward off any would-be assassination attempts.

And that’s how the days passed: sparring with our team and training my core and manipulation skills. But there was one other activity I’d picked up.

18.

Downstream from the locus, the river passed an algae-filled pool created by rainwater. When the sun was right above, and the light could penetrate deep enough, shadows could be seen passing underneath the surface—beasts, all of them.

The view reminded me of home. Not the academy but of Aunt Clavis and the farm. There was a great barn on our property that I sometimes slept in. I would pick a heap of straw and roll straight to sleep. But to keep the heat from killing me, I kept the barn door open on a crack. Sometimes, when I woke in the middle of the night for no reason, and the angle of the moon was perfect, I saw shadows dancing on the empty grassland right outside. ‘Dead souls,’ Aunt Clavis called them—spirits of the animals we had butchered. Afraid, I questioned if they were haunting us or preparing to take revenge for what we did to them. Aunt Clavis had laughed at me, rubbing a hand through my hair and said: ‘They don’t hate us, child. They understand their deaths were necessary for us to survive.’

Necessary deaths, I thought. Perhaps so. After all, the best way to level my striding skills was to duke it out in the water with whatever I could find. So, I went into the lake. Imagine my disappointment when I discovered the shadows were what the system called Whipper Fish, small game that ran at the sight of me and didn’t offer much in the sense of a fight. No training my striding skill for me. Yet I kept coming back to the lake.

While the fish didn’t dare hunt me, they were perfectly fine hunting amongst themselves as I watched. It allowed me to try one of Mother’s methods. The experience made me understand a tiny bit why she studied aquatic life as much as she did.

The tiny, piranha-shaped fish swam in two schools of twenty, testing the sharp teeth inside their jaws against each other daily. It was a brutal melee. And those injured were left by their companions to be gobbled up by the winners. Because there were numerous deaths in every battle, one of the groups should have died out a while ago. But there was a catch. Neither school ever fully eliminated the other, even when given the chance. They allowed their enemy time to mate, produce more members, and regrow. The victors even helped newly born Whipper Fish from both sides to feed on the smaller creatures in the pool so that they reached adulthood sooner.

Stranger still was that the losing party never tried to grow past twenty members. If too many infants were born by accident, the parents killed them themselves. All to reach the holy, round number. That disturbed me and caused me pause. Would the children curse their parents, or did they understand it, too—that their deaths were necessary?

Asking that, I swam in the pool for days, watching the schools tear each other apart again and again. It’s like a ritual—an act of worship instead of some barbaric battle. It seemed so…peaceful and organised that I coined it: The Cordial War. I think it was on the sixth day of the Cordial War that there was a change in the agreements of the battle. And not because of something the fish did themselves.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

From beyond the walls of the pool, like a titan breaking through, a new predator joined the ecosystem. Calling it a snake wouldn’t do it justice. The head was too big, the mouth too wide. Neither did a snake have that many sharp teeth. But the general shape of the body was that of a snake.

It killed and devoured all of the Whipper Fish but two in an hour.

Slack were the features visible on its face. Not once did it take more than a single bite to kill any fish or try to delay the death of its prey and play with them. This was business. If I didn’t know better, I’d say another beast had paid it to enact the massacre. The dispassionate murders struck me so much that I remained in the lake even after the beast left the sole two surviving Whipper Fish to wade in the blood of their entire race.

Savage, I deemed the beast. I wanted to berate it further but was interrupted by the brutal echo the creature left in its wake. It corrected me, saying: ‘Necessary.’

I went silent, then whispered in my head, ‘I understand.’ I’d killed for survival before. Should the same situation repeat itself, I’d do it again. Yet this time would be different. This time, the enemy knew I was coming and wouldn’t be caught off-guard like Felix. They would be calculating, plotting. Gathering information on their targets to ensure a clean stroke of the knife. ‘They’ could be any number of people. Was I ready to combat such a force, a force ready to kill me to take my place?

I didn’t know. Levelling my core went slower than I liked: my capacity for maura had only increased a single point since I started training. Which meant fighting long-lasting battles just wasn’t in the cards for me.

But that’s what I must do. My eyelids drooped with the heaviness of that realisation and everything it entailed. I exited the pool, reached for a towel I’d stashed on the low arm of a nearby tree, and dried myself off. Right after I finished, rain suddenly poured from the heavens in droves, ushered in by the whistling of many species of birds who fled to their homes that would shield them from the godly wrath. It wet the earth, mingling with the blood in the lake, clearing it some. It also undid all the work my towel and I had put in. I sighed and let the shower consume me, feeling the slightly warm water glide down my skin.

‘They’re alike,’ I whispered.

The rain and the approaching war. Both were phenomena I couldn’t stop, ones that could undo me in their entirety if they so chose to.

‘You can refuse to participate if you’re scared,’ I said, chin pointed at the heavens. The thought didn’t survive longer than it took me to pronounce it. ‘Mother wouldn’t run.’

A fact and not a question. My feet dug into the drenched earth as I returned to the dorm. The entire time, I asked myself: What ways did I have of dealing with the incoming battle?

19.

‘Stop acting like you’re in this by yourself,’ May said the following day inside the grotto.

‘I didn’t say anything,’ I said, half opening one of my eyelids and peering at her.

I swallowed a chuckle. Though she’d tried to blow-dry her hair with her flames, the ends were still dripping with water. She should just accept it. But then the girl seemed to have a strong dislike for being wet.

‘Your brooding is like a radio wave,’ she said. ‘Anyone who’s listening in can hear it.’

I huffed.

‘But am I wrong? The two of us can’t fight ten people at once. Let alone dozens, or worse: sixty.’

‘We’ve got a group,’ she said. ‘Besides, Kate and the other Rankers won’t allow the rejects to wipe us without cost. We’re manpower if anything.’

‘The same Kate who Taran saw leave the academy on the first day?’ I said. ‘Anyone can be an assassin, May.’

Hero, Boris, and Fahim included. That I was on good terms with them was one thing. That they were cleared of suspicion was another. Boris and Hero had chosen to support us when the near-brawl during Physical Cultivation broke out. But that meant they’d had their eyes on us from the start. Fahim was a good guy…so I wanted to think. However, a person with that image was the perfect candidate for an assassination attempt on me. More than anything, though:

‘What you say solely works if the other Rankers are in a position to help us.’

May raised an eyebrow.

‘You still think it won’t be in the forest?’

‘More by the day.’

Two days ago, Elder Muyue and Elder Kang took a day off from class, allowing substitute teachers to take their place. That was too much of a coincidence to be for anything other than preparation for the test.

‘They’re brewing something,’ I said. ‘Something big.’

And who knew if the groups would be split in a way that allowed other Rankers to help us?

Both of us turned quiet after my statement.

May closed her eyes.

‘We’ll be ready,’ she said, then she went back to meditating.

I exhaled deeply, then followed her lead. But part of my mind remained occupied, keeping me from achieving any sense of focus.

May sighed.

‘Let’s go hunt. That’ll get your mind off things.’