Later that afternoon, she was woken up from her nap by the blast of a horn.

“Ahh!” She half-clawed, half-stumbled her way outside. There she saw warriors dashing through the streets, flooding in one direction.

Ruyi almost ran into the person standing outside her tent flap; she nearly fell over herself trying to avoid her. It was a short girl sucking on a sweet on a stick, and she had blue whiskers—Ruyi had seen her before. She was one of Drusila’s warriors! She grinned at Ruyi.

“Go, go, go!” chirped the girl. “You don’t want to be late.”

“Where’m I—”

“With them,” said the girl, gesturing to the surging crowd. “Quickly now!”

Ruyi stumbled over herself to join them. Soon she was one in the torrid flow, surging into one of the outer rings of the camp. They poured into a clearing there. This ring was bound on either side by tents that could’ve been several li apart—and she was shocked by how many warriors there were here, buzzing, chattering so loud she could hardly hear herself think, packed in so dense she was constantly jostled about; here an elbow at her ribs, there a mindless bump of the shoulder. Most weren’t even Core, most were Feral! She saw cow ears dangling from folks’ heads, or hooded feet like a satyr, their demonforms bleeding through their humanforms.

She’d spent all her time in the camp’s Inner Circle. It was easy to forget how small it was. There were meant to be more than ten thousand folk in camp—that meant thousands of warriors! In this square alone there must’ve been hundreds. These folk weren’t like the warriors she’d met. They had only one or two blue whiskers on their faces. Sabina and the rest had three. They hadn’t given Ruyi her whiskers yet—wasn’t she supposed to have some? Wasn’t she meant to be joining Sabina?

What was she doing here? Where was Sabina? She needed Sabina. Desperate, she cast out for someone near and tapped them on the shoulder, then, when that didn’t work, yanked them on the arm.

It was a girl with floppy cow’s ears. “Sorry!” cried Ruyi.

But she didn’t seem offended. She didn’t even seem to hear Ruyi’s apology over the din. “Hello!”

“Do you know what’s going on?!” said Ruyi, louder.

“Excuse me?” said the girl. Ruyi said it again.

“They’re saying a true monster has come to camp!”

“What?!”

“Drusila went personally to recruit her! She single-handedly slaughtered one of Marcus’s battalions!” The cow-girl looked awed. “Even Praetor Rufus is scared of her! Well, that is only what I heard. I never saw Rufus scared.”

Ruyi got up on her tiptoes to get a closer look, but she could only see the backs of heads, or horns on the backs of heads. Where was this monster? Rufus had beaten her up so bad she cried a little afterwards. If even Rufus was frightened of whoever this was…

Was whoever this was joining the inner circle warriors, the ones with the three streaks—Sabina’s folk? Ruyi was suddenly quite nervous. Would she have to fight this monster? She didn’t even want to think how badly she’d get beat up.

A hush sank through the crowd. Up at the front, Sabina had stood up on a speaker’s block.

“Today, a new elite warrior joins our ranks! You have heard of her by now, no doubt. She is powerful now. She may yet become the best of us. But to join us she skips centuries of tradition! It has always held that only the greatest of the milites gains admittance to the praetorianus. We gather you here today in the name of tradition. Let us make known her strength. Let us silence all doubt.”

The whispers were swelling now.

“Behold, the mighty Ruyi Yang!” cried Sabina. She pointed straight at Ruyi, and the crowd flexed away from her, and Sabina beamed like she was showing off one of her prized treasures.

For a second Ruyi just stood there, gaping.

Then she was washed with relief and pride at once. Of course it was her! Who else could it be? She was strong, wasn’t she? And super talented, and they’d called her a monster, too! They were in awe of her! She saw it on all their faces, even cow-girl’s a stride away, and their awe went down like really good wine. She basked in it for about a heartbeat.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Whoever takes issue with her ascension, here is your chance! Defeat her, and you shall become a praetor in her stead.”

Ruyi froze. Then she said, “Ahhhhh!!”

They fell on her.

***

“That was simply a formality,” said Sabina, helping along a limping, disheveled, bleeding, quite annoyed Ruyi. “They must know you. They must respect you. Here, respect must be experienced; it must be shown. Now that it is, none will think to challenge you.”

Ruyi was still mad she hadn’t been told, but it was hard to stay mad at Sabina. The woman looked so happy.

“You did well,” said Sabina, and she ruffled Ruyi’s hair, and when she smiled it was so pretty Ruyi’s heart felt like it was melting a little and she forgot what she’d been so mad about. Now she was mostly mad at that Titus person.

“Where are we going?” she said stupidly. She sounded kind of drunk.

“To finish our initiation! The Tribe has its initiation. We have ours. We have seen what you can do. But before you may join us, we must know who you are. We must know your heart.”

“Um,” said Ruyi. “How?”

She found the rest of the elite warriors gathered around a raging bonfire. The sunset was a dusk orange, the same color as the fire, as though they’d stolen a chunk of the sky.

They were waiting for her cross-legged, facing her with kind faces.

“Sit,” said Sabina, patting a spot at her side, and Ruyi was happy to.

She passed a pipe to Ruyi trickling green-gray smoke. “This is your final trial,” said Sabina. “And perhaps your most difficult. You will have to open yourself to us, and in return we will open ourselves to you. It is a trial of the heart, and an exercise in trust.”

Ruyi hesitated. They were all looking at her; they’d set up this bonfire, they’d gone through all this trouble… slowly she nodded.

“Then drink deeply of the smoke,” said Sabina. “It will free you.”

“Of what?”

“Yourself. It is a drug, like wine, perhaps, but less—”

Ruyi was already sucking at it.

“Alright,” said Sabina, laughing, wrestling it from her after about a breath. “That’s enough.” Coughing, Ruyi made a feeble grope for it. But Sabina was already puffing it. Ruyi made a sad noise as she passed it on.

A warm lightness drifted over Ruyi, dabbing her head, making her arms and legs feel like they weighed nothing at all, ready to float away into the sky. She felt like smiling. She was smiling. The world seemed suddenly hazier, painted with softer fuzzier colors. She felt a sudden strong urge to kiss Sabina. She asked Sabina if she could, and Sabina ruffled her hair and laughed and said she was a silly girl.

When they’d all taken a drag of it, Sabina said, “Let us begin by telling where we are powerful, and where we are vulnerable, in matters of the soul. If we are to do be as one flesh, one heart, we must know this—so that we know where we can cover for each other, and where we can boost each other. I shall start. I am a very happy person. When I wake up I am smiling, and when I go to sleep I am smiling. Often I lose battles smiling.” She pursed her lips. “I am… not comfortable in sadness. That is not the right word. I despise sadness. I do not like staying in it. I am not good at helping others through it. I am not good at admitting when I am sad. When Fenris died—that is, my last lover, a warrior here—I did not shed a tear for him. I cheered up the rest of us—” She gestured to the warriors seated around the fire, eyes shaded with shadow. “I smiled for them, I was strong for them. Then, late in the night, I left the camp, drank a vial of Nightshade and threw myself off of a Desolate Mountain peak. ‘Threw…’ I make this sound violent—it was not. It seemed perfectly natural to me; logical. There seemed no reason for me to be while he was not. I did it feeling peace. Happily. Is that not strange? Alas this did not kill me, as I had hoped.”

Sabina turned over her arms, where ghostly streaks of white haunted the skin. They were all over her thighs too, her belly—so many warriors here had scars Ruyi hadn’t thought much of them. She gasped as Sabina smiled sadly at them.

“That was a betrayal,” continued Sabina. “That was selfish. I see that now. A praetor’s first duty is not to themself, but to the tribe. And selfish, too, because I did not trust these, my blood-partners, to share in my feeling. We are all of us weakest alone. Now you.”

She gestured at Ruyi, who was still reeling. She had nothing but a poignant sadness in her head—she wanted to hug Sabina. She couldn’t even remember what she was meant to do.

“What am I supposed to say?” she said.

“Where you are powerful, and where you are vulnerable, in the soul,” said Sabina.

Like a strength and a weakness? Ruyi tried racking her head. Maybe a month ago she would’ve said she didn’t give up easily, but it felt like she’d been giving up a lot lately. She could think of all kinds of things she was good at. She was good at fighting and alchemy, she supposed, but those weren’t parts of her soul. She didn’t feel powerful at anything in her soul. Wasn’t the whole point of being good at Alchemy and fighting that people would love her for that, even if they didn’t like her for who she was?

“I guess I’m good at deluding myself,” she mumbled. “And sometimes if I delude myself hard enough, it becomes reality. I guess that’s something.”

They weren’t smiling at her, but they weren’t nodding either—except Sabina, who was nodding, like she was saying, go on.

“Vulnerable… Um.” She could think of so many, but one had stuck with her ever since her last meeting with Father. “I’m too emotional,” she said. “I think I feel things too much. I wish…” she was getting a little choked up. “I don’t, um, not want to feel things, but I wish it was half as strong. I think I would be a lot less sad all the time.”

“Thank you, Ru-yi” said Sabina, patting her. “Passion is good… passion is better than apathy. I should rather have a sister-in-arms who feels than one who cares nothing at all.”