The next few days were absolute chaos for Helianna. Her meager introduction to the facility didn’t do her any favors as she found herself constantly asking for help on the simplest of things, such as where she would be eating. Her imperfect familiarity with the language didn’t help either. It turns out that a whole portion of the staff was dedicated to cooking for the residents of the tower. She could either eat at the ‘scheduled’ times that meals were eaten, which were eaten in the courtyard, or at the time and place of her convenience. The food was also incredible every day and the cooks seemed to never run out of new recipes.
After a few days of settling in, she was woken up late morning by a knock on her door. She opened her door to see a kinuze standing before her. Unlike what her father said about tijatans, kinuze looked much more similar to humans. They typically had skin varying from ash-grey to sand colored, or even perfectly white skin, but what always stuck out to her the most was the glowing eyes, which perpetually danced in a way that was reminiscent of fire. Instead of hair, they had much thicker almost tentacle-like protrusion from their head, which they called perras. These were up to two inches in width and typically fell slightly below their shoulders at full maturity, and provided a way to regulate their temperature much better than other species, although she wasn’t sure how. These perras were the reason they could survive living out in the deserts. Additionally, much shorter and flatter perras also appeared in patches in other spots of their body, such as their elbows and shoulders, which were clearly seen on him.
The kinuze standing before her looked to have pockets of blue fire in their face instead of eyes, stunning her for a moment. No matter how many kinuze she met, she always found their eyes captivating. After regaining her composure, the young man led her into the elevator and down a few floors, where they exited to a sight that left Helianna stupefied. Over a dozen students were in the center of a wide-open space and padded floor. The students themselves were wearing a strange form-fitting uniform that made her slightly embarrassed to see, but she didn’t look away as she tried to identify what they were doing. After a few moments, she saw what some were practicing, and figured it out. They were training in some kind of martial art.
Before she had time to process the information, she found herself getting dragged through a door that she hadn’t seen when first arriving. Her measurements were taken, which felt incredibly intrusive, but after thinking about the clothing she had seen being worn, she couldn’t be surprised. Before she knew it, she found herself back out with the others in the main room, who had already started their formal training. The kinuze who had brought her in separated from the rest and started training her in the basics. That was when hell started.
Every morning, Helianna and all the other first years were woken in the early hours in the morning. But it wasn’t at the same time every day, that would be too simple. Every day was a different time, and some nights she barely even got to bed before being woken up to train. The second years were the ones that would wake up the first years, but they got to rotate who did it. She didn’t have that luxury. Regardless of what time they woke up, be it three in the morning or seven in the morning, they would train until noon with only a single break for breakfast.
Lunch was their saving grace. There was always a large amount of food, and it was heavenly, doubly so after the intense workouts of every morning. After lunch they would go to their basic classes, which resulted in more intermingling of the students. A couple of the first years had to take classes in reading and writing, which Helianna was grateful to avoid. She couldn’t imagine trying to take her other classes while barely able to read.
At some time in the afternoon that she couldn’t determine, they would switch into the introductory classes, although they couldn’t really be called classes. They’d spend a week or two with different staff members, each learning the basics of what they do and trying out their profession. Very quickly she discovered that she truly hated most of the jobs. Each time they switched to something new, there’d be a day or two of excitement before reality set in and she started hating it. The only one she enjoyed was cooking. For as long as she could remember, she’d wanted to be a cook like her father and that desire didn’t go away now. That didn’t mean she was good at it, but she could practice. Half of the fun of cooking was learning and getting better. She just had to make sure she was good enough that they’d let her pick it.
Despite how much she typically disliked the afternoon classes, she found she enjoyed them much more than the martial training. Those classes, she despised. Between the ungodly hours they had to wake up in, the brutal conditioning almost everyday to the actual training itself, it was grueling and painful. The training was rough, if a little boring, but what sealed the deal was sparring. It didn’t take long for them to start sparring, and every time she came away miserable. Even when both fighters were beginners, it didn’t take much for Helianna to realize she wasn’t good at it. She almost always lost, and when she didn’t, she still came away battered and beaten.
And the other students… well they were alright. The problem with them is that they wouldn’t leave her alone. After spending most of her waking hours working to the bone, she almost always wanted to just go to sleep or work on her magic. Of course, she had to be alone for that as she didn’t know what would happen if she was discovered to have magic as a null. The issue ultimately was that she wanted to spend her free time alone, and they didn’t. They made her very aware of that, and she often found herself getting physically dragged out to participate in the social events.
The worst of them all was Oblo. Oblo was a davraki, meaning he was massive. He hadn’t finished growing, and was already eight feet tall with enough muscle to grind Helianna to a pulp. The davraki were a large and powerful people, even if they were stereotyped for being slow, in every sense of the word. They were large humanoids, but contained a large, but short spiked tail. The spikes ran up their partially protruding spines up to the middle of their back. From there, it split three ways, with spikes arcing up to their shoulders and ending in large horn-like spikes protruding up and forward out of their shoulders. The last path continued up their head and split into two that curled like ram’s horns. They lacked any hair, but their skin and eye pigment were almost as varied, if not moreso, than humans. Like humans, they also had a few colors that were most common, being dark blues and greens.
Oblo was one such example of their varying pigment. His skin was an almost iridescent pink, which combined with his slightly slow mentality and poor background, something which was discovered by other students before Helianna had even arrived, led to a poor combination. Their instructors worked hard to ensure camaraderie between the students, but tension and drama is inevitable when over eighty young adults live in near proximity.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
Helianna had chanced upon one incident. A few of the other students had been allegedly tormenting Oblo and he started retaliating, Given his size, strength, and aptitude for combat, it had been going poorly for the other students when Helianna arrived. After a few minutes, Helianna had managed to break it up, but now Oblo seemed to have a grudge against her. Anytime she ever had a chance to herself, he’d find her and drag her out to engage with others and he often brought up her wuuvish accent. It didn’t take long for her to try finding more hidden and obscure spots to hide, which Oblo almost always found anyway. He seemed to have some strange sixth sense for her hiding spots, preventing her from slipping away from everyone.
Several months passed and Helianna felt like she was slowly losing her sanity. She wasn’t good at any of the test jobs, nor did she enjoy them. She was commonly in pain from sparring, and she still sucked. Worst of all, she never had enough sleep, which wasn’t helped by Oblo constantly dragging her to social events in her only free time. He even had help now from a short kinuze girl that she could never remember the name of.
Something finally changed during sparring when the instructor decided to do something different. Before sparring started that day, he brought all the first-years into the back room of the training floor, where none of them had been yet. It was immediately obvious that this room was used for storage as it was incredibly cluttered with equipment. Contrary to expected, he then chose two of the students and told them to get started with a spar. After a moment of disbelief, one of the students he called on spoke up.
“Excuse me sir, but what?” he asked incredulously. “Could you please explain a bit more?”
“Sure. I want to see you try to fight in a less controlled and perfect environment. This place is perfect for that. We’ll be doing individual spars as opposed to multiple at once and you will have the whole room to fight. You may begin.” The student who spoke up shook his head with a disbelieving look. Unfortunately for him the other student picked, the only tijatan, realized what the instructor wanted.
She rushed over the bewildered student and struck him in the gut before he could react. He tried to recover but never managed to gain his footing, finding himself cornered against several large pieces of floor padding, resulting in a one-sided beat down. After that embarrassing lesson, other spars began. However, as Helianna was watching, she kept finding them disappointing. They were still fighting as if they were in the normal room and trying to avoid what made the room unique. It kept frustrating her to the point where she started to get antsy. The instructor quickly noticed and singled her out.
“Helianna, you want to have a go?” Despite normally hating sparring, she found herself looking forward to it.
“Yes, sir.” The instructor smiled a mischievous smile which immediately made her quite concerned.
“Oblo, you’ll be her partner. Go.”
Oblo stood there for a brief moment, shock apparent across his face. Due to how well he fought, he was very rarely paired with Helianna in spars as their skill gap was too great to be beneficial for either of them. Helianna capitalized on his shock, quickly running to the opposite side of the cramped room, knocking over one of the mats in the process. Oblo ran after her, but right before he got to her, she threw a bucket at him that she had picked up on the way. He raised his arms to block his face, and in that moment Helianna bent down to grab the edge of the mat he was now standing on. Before he could get a sense of what she was doing, she pulled on the mat with every ounce of strength she could muster.
Oblo stumbled, momentarily flailing his arms to try to maintain a standing position. She kicked the bucket that he had blocked, nailing him in the shin and resulting in a pained grunt that made her smile despite her own foot aching. He was still recovering from the combination when she sprinted past him, kicking him on the side of the same leg as she ran. Seeing a large group of staffs bunched against a shelf, she threw them to the ground behind her, keeping one in her hands. She continued running and climbed over a pile of punching bags that was barring the corner of the room. She stood on top, waiting for Oblo to catch up. Now having the space to swing the staff, she grabbed the staff by the end. He started to get closer to her, now having to be careful to avoid stepping on the staffs and slipping, providing her an opportunity.
At a moment when he was looking down instead of at her, she jumped forward and started an enormous diagonal swing. He tried to dodge backwards, both got tripped up and couldn’t get away fast enough. He tried to block, but there was a massive crack as the staff came in contact with his arm resulting in a curse of pain as he cradled his arm. Not hearing the instructor stop the spar and not wanting him to gain his bearings, she looked around for anything she could use. The shelves nearby had nothing useful, but that didn’t deter her. She dashed over to one and pulled as hard as she could. Anger in his eyes, Oblo carefully rushed towards her, but he wasn’t fast enough. The shelf fell on him and he cried out in pain as it pinned him to the floor.
She knew he was strong enough and that he should be able to push it off, but his arm was clearly making it much more painful for him. She hopped on top of the partially downed shelf to cross it, putting more pressure on him in the process. Before she could get to the other side, he yelled out.
“I yield! I yield! Now get the fuck off me!”
She hopped off and after a moment to catch her breath, she helped the instructor lift the shelf off him. Between the three of them, it came off quickly and Oblo shot to his feet, adrenaline still pumping. Oblo turned towards her and while the anger was still there, it was much dimmer and he was more occupied with his arm. Before either of them could say anything to each other, the instructor spoke up.
“You can go to the medic in just a moment Oblo, I want you to hear this too.” He turned towards the rest of the students, who were standing around the door. “Why do you think I brought you in here to fight instead of the sparring room?” Silence was his only response.
“To make things more difficult? To make a mess of this place? No, I brought you here because this is real life. A sparring room is an empty and controlled environment, which you will likely never have the chance to fight in. We won’t be training like this often, at least not yet, but I wanted you guys to experience this and keep it in the back of your mind. Use whatever you have to your advantage. This room is filled with obstacles and objects you can use to your advantage.” He paused for a moment to scan the students watching him.
“Fighting isn’t just about your fists. You need to think. While anybody with any experience would have destroyed Helianna thanks to her own mistakes, she used the room to her advantage and came out of a fight against someone stronger than her with barely a scratch.” He turned to Oblo and Helianna before continuing much quieter.
“Get yourself to the infirmary, Oblo. Helianna, that jump was really stupid but it worked out in your favor. I look forward to seeing more of you when we work on this some more.” Still cradling his arm, Oblo shuffled off and the instructor called the next two people to spar.