by Heath Pfaff
That was day two. It was grueling and awful, and there were even a few times when I wondered if it was worse than the Rift. It wasn’t, of course, but I was just far enough removed from that experience that I allowed myself to ask that question anyway.
Another exhausting day passed.
When we woke again it was on the dawn of our first trip to the place Ori called the Codex. It was where our education would begin. Unlike the three training yards, this place had a separate building with a normal set of doors that we passed through.
Warden Emeline was on the other side of the doors, and as we all gathered she began her introduction. “Part of being a warden is understanding the world and how you fit into it. Knowledge is a weapon that is every bit as powerful as those you picked up yesterday in the Forge. Intelligence and knowing how to act on information will get you just as far as brute strength, further still because the real mastery of Will is the mastery of your own mind.”
She smiled, a strangely warm expression for one of the Wardens, however her milky blue eyes were a bit disconcerting when set above that smile. I tried not to focus on it much, but the Wardens all looked like they had dead eyes, as though they’d stolen them from a corpse. Every single one of the Wardens sort of had that look about them. I looked at Ori and other third years and didn’t see that in their eyes at all. When did that happen to them? I wondered if it was some part of the training we hadn’t yet been exposed to, or if it was simply a look they intentionally cultivated to separate them from others. That seemed possible, though how it might be done was beyond me.
The Warden went on. “Years two and three, you know where you’re supposed to go. Year one, you’ll be splitting up into individual classes on different topics. You’ll be scored on your performance in these topics and every two weeks the lowest score will be cast from the academy. If you are tied for the lowest score, you’ll be cast out as well. This is one of the most common ways to be kicked from this program so that should tell you how much we value intelligence and reasoning.”
She began leading us down a hall in the same direction the other students had gone when we split off. “This is Year three’s hall. “ She pointed as we went by. It was a single hall with several doors down its length. I caught sight of Ori for a moment before she vanished into a room further down. “This is the Year two section.” She pointed it out as we walked by. I could see the hall where they would be studying, and it looked like there was an open door at the end that joined to another area. It was telling that this section was bigger than the last. The number of students got lesser all the time. We continued on past that until Warden Emeline stopped.
“These next three halls will be yours. In this first year you’ll be educated on the history of our order and the properties and sciences of this world. You will learn to figure numbers and to read or improve your reading skills. All Warden’s are well educated, and we expect a great deal from you. Those of you who can’t read yet will be at a disadvantage and will probably fail out of this school, but not necessarily. We have teachers who will work with you. Your failure or success will depend upon your Will to learn.”
With that she began to split us into groups, handing us off to assistants down each of the hallways. Zarkov and I both ended up down the second hall, though we were split into separate rooms from there. Inside the room was a rather severe looking man who identified himself as Horvix. Without much preamble he began to instruct on the history of the Wardens.
“Will is the most powerful force in this world. In the earliest of days humanity was weak, barely able to sustain itself in this world. Nature and beasts of the wilds were an ever constant danger. Skolbala drove us to the ends of the world and tried to force us into the oceans, and they would have had not we discovered the force of Will to resist them.” He began his lecture, though this was, so far, all things I’d learned in regular school when I was little.
“As our last settlement was shattered, the walls collapsed and the Skolbala came flooding in to consume what was left of our people, but Reas stepped before them and demanded that they leave us in peace. Everyone thought she’d be destroyed, but instead her words carried a weight of Will unlike anything we’d seen before. The Skolbala stopped and took note of her, though they still didn’t understand what it was they’d come upon. They attempted to charge again, but this time Reas laid them flat, drawing her Will into the very first concentrated use of Will magic. Yet they still thought to challenge Reas’ Will. They came back again, but this time she touched with the Everburn and brought down its fires on the attacking horde.” He had a small smile on his lips. It was clear he liked to tell these stories.
“Which of you will tell me what the Everburn is?” He asked, looking amongst us. I had no desire to talk in front of everyone, so I sank further into my chair, even though I knew exactly what he was talking about. An excited boy towards the front jumped up from his desk.
“The Everburn is the eternal fire. It was lit at the dawn of time by the first men and it has never stopped burning. It is the source of true Will.” He said enthusiastically, clearly hoping to be rewarded for his answer.
“Wrong.” The teacher snapped, and the boy’s face fell immediately. He crawled back into his chair as some of the other kids laughed at him. “Shut up.” The teacher scolded. “He has more Will than the rest of you. He was at least willing to try, even if he didn’t know. Part of Will is confidence. Who has the right answer?” He asked, looking amongst us. I tried not to meet his eyes. The answer already given was the one that I’d thought had been correct. That was what we’d always been taught.
“You, tell me where he was wrong.” I looked up to see who’d been called, and realized that it was me. My heart hammered in my chest as I stood up.
“I don’t know, sir.” I answered, and I could hear the shake in my voice.
“Of course you don’t know.” The teacher said as though it had been obvious I wouldn't have the answer. “Sit down.” He snapped, and I did as I’d been told quickly, my cheeks flushed with embarrassment.
“None of you know because it isn’t taught correctly in other schools.” He replied cooly. “The Everburn was not lit by the first men. The answer is in the name. It is the ‘Ever’ burn. This is a fire that has burned for as long as time has existed and longer. There is no beginning and no end to the flame. It is the source of all things, not just Will, but it is the place where Will draws its power.” He explained, though I thought the difference between the explanation offered by the boy in the front of the class and his was hardly worth noting. It was clear he found it very important though.
He went on from there, and the lecture grew deeper, going into details of the politics of the era, and the early studies of Everburn. I could tell immediately that this was going to be a class with a great deal to memorize and learn. The story he’d told to start us off with was just a scratch on the surface of a much, much deeper subject.
It was a long day, but not at all physically so. After the week I’d had to that point it was almost relaxing. Back when I’d attended classes as a child I’d never thought to look forward to them. They’d been boring and tedious, but these ones actually were a respite from the physical chores of the rest of the week. At the end of the day we were given a written test about what we’d learned that day, and I realized I hadn’t been paying attention as well as I should have.
It occurred to me as I left the classes behind that I might have just put myself in a very bad position, one that could lead me to be kicked out of this place. I’d have to do far better the following week. I wondered what those who couldn’t read and write had done about the tests.
I returned to my rooms after eating with a mix of problems floating through my mind. I was worried about how well I’d done in my classes, and I was equally worried about the fact that the following day was Kingsday and that we’d be in the Rift again. It would be the first time that we’d done the Rift with everyone from all the classes and not just those whose
teams had entirely lost. It would be much more crowded. I wondered how Ori had lost her fight. It hadn’t occurred to me to think of that at all until that very moment.
That meant that there were people out there even better than she was. That was a frightening thought. I was also wondering about teams. We’d been placed into them, but it didn’t seem like there was ever going to be an opportunity for us to make use of these teams, at least not until the next year, assuming we made it that far.
“Ori, why do we get broken up into teams if we only ever do the fights at the beginning of the year?” I decided to ask.
“That isn’t the only time you do things with your team.” She answered. “Once a month there is an event that your whole team takes part in. You two are lucky.” She said, looking between Zark and I. “Generally they don’t room you directly with your team. You two can communicate and figure out how to tackle the coming challenges. I might not even see my other two team members until the day of the event, and normally winning and losing is done as a team. To count as a win at least half of your team must succeed. They say it’s important to work as a team, but apparently it’s not too important because they don’t give us many chances to do so.”
“What kind of events?” Zark asked, his interest piqued.
“They vary. Occasionally teams are pitted against each other in combat, but usually teams are sent through the doors. They give you a task and shut the doors behind you, leaving you to fend for yourselves for a few days in dangerous places.” Ori answered.
“They let us out of the Academy?” I asked, my mind spinning over the possibilities of such an excursion. If I could get out of school then I might actually have a chance of getting away from this terrible place. I didn’t think there was any way they could follow me if I got out into the crowds of the city.
Ori laughed. “Stop thinking about escape, Lillin. It’s not like you’re thinking. The training yards in the school can open up on different places. I’m not sure how they work, what magic dictates their function, but they open into controlled spaces that the Wardens in charge of the school can manipulate. They can shut the door on one place, and open it on another, but it’s all that same room. You can’t actually go beyond the bounds of the training yard, and the golems are never too far away.”
“That’s impossible.” I said before I’d really even thought about it much. It was, though. How could that happen? There was only so much space inside the Academy. The training yards already felt too big but if there was magic that let someone do something so spectacular, why didn't it exist in other places? Why had I never heard of it before?
“It’s not impossible. There are books about it in the Library. The magic is in the doors themselves. They existed before this school was even here. They open a space that is bounded but exists outside of our own world. Apparently if a person is strong enough in the Will they can manipulate what the door opens onto. At least that’s what the books say, so I guess that’s right. Some of the doors only open to other doors, ones that are far away. Anyway, the doors weren't all together originally like they are now. The early Will masters brought them here to the Academy so that the cult of the Way couldn’t get ahold of them.” Ori explained, and I guessed this was something she’d learned during her time here. It certainly didn’t sound like anything I’d heard before.
“What is the cult of the Way?” Zarkov asked. “Sounds stupid.”
“It is.” Ori answered with a chuckle. “When the Wardens were mastering the Will there were a group of people who didn’t want to accept the rule of the Iron Will. In their minds Will was weak because it relied too much on individual strength. They started developing their own method to achieve power, but it involved giving up your sense of self entirely and joining with a group of others. To them the only true strength was found in harmony with others. They called it The Way.”
Zark and I both laughed. That sounded particularly ridiculous
“How could anyone ever find strength by giving in to someone else? Who would lead?” Zark snorted. “They’d never get anything done at all.”
Ori nodded. “They didn’t! The Wardens pushed them out and cleansed them from the kingdom because their lessons were harming everyone. That’s why history has recorded very little about them. They were just trouble makers who tried to cause issues after the Warden’s had put down the Skolbala. The Way users actually believed that we needed the Skolbala to achieve true synchronicity with their source of power.”
“Synchronicity? That is just . . . That’s so stupid. Were there a lot of them?” Zark asked.
“More than you’d think.” Ori nodded. “With the Skolbabla gone humanity got comfortable and started looking for new ways to cause itself trouble. The Way was just one of a few different cults that popped up afterwards, though they were the biggest of them. They were dealt with quickly.”
“I’m glad they didn’t last long.” Zark said, sighing and laying back in bed with a yawn. “Can you imagine all of us trying to learn how to hold hands so we can share power?”
“Well, I wouldn’t worry about it. No one wants to hold your hand, Zark.” Ori said, slipping deep into her blankets and turning her back to us. “Now sleep. Tomorrow is going to be a rough day.”
I hopped into bed next to Zark, turning my back to him. It didn’t seem like a good idea to be face to face with him today. That had brought forth too many strange urgings that I didn’t want to think about or deal with. As was normal when I got into bed in this place, my mind was spinning with a thousand different considerations. Still, it didn’t take me long to fall asleep. The Rift waited, and I would need the rest.
2.5
We collected our food bars in moody silence and made our way to the doors into the Rift. I wasn’t eager to see what would be beyond the doors this day. I couldn’t help but imagine that it would open on to the horrible, raining course again and I shivered at the thought. The chill hadn’t left my body for that entire night.
Warden Sedth was at the front of the students again as we approached the double doors.
“This is training yard Rift, and it is the single most important place you’ll visit while on your journey to becoming a warden. Everything else you do here is to prepare you for the Rift. You need to understand why this is important. The Rift is here to break you. It is here to push you to your limits and then beyond. Your body and your mind exist separately within you, one representing your physical limits, the other your mental limits, and spanning the distance between them is a Rift. You will never succeed in mastering your Will until you can cross that Rift. Body and Mind are one, but only if you have the Will necessary to make them so. Your mind cannot fail if your body does not surrender, and your body cannot surrender so long as your mind refuses to let it do so.
“For those of you who weren’t here last time we came to the Rift, the goal is simple. You will go inside, pick up a pack and put it on your back. Then you will run to the opposite end of the course and pick up a second pack and strap it on. You will then run back across the course and put a weight in the first pack, and then you will cross the course again and put a weight in the second. You keep this up until the day is over. You don’t stop. You never stop moving. If you stop for too long you will be dropped back at the beginning and forced to begin again. Every two weeks those bottom students, the slowest crossers, will be cast out of the school permanently. People die in the Rift frequently. It is grueling, painful, and exhausting, but you will never stop.” His tone dared anyone to question him, and no one did. He spoke of our deaths as though they didn’t matter, and I was again reminded that here, amongst the Wardens and their tests, our lives had little meaning at all. We were being ground away like burrs on the edge of a sword. They wanted only the finest edge. Nothing less would do.
The doors opened at Sedth’s back and we got our first look at today’s Rift. As the giant doors swung back an unnatural stillness and silence slipped out of the room beyond. Fog poured out of the doors. I heard a g
eneral sense of awe from those who hadn’t been in before, and a sigh of relief from some of the year two and three students. Fog was considered one of the better Rift’s according to Ori, but it still posed a problem for those of us new to the course. We didn't know the course well enough yet to be able to navigate without sight. We’d have to be careful.
Together we filed through the doors and began to grab packs. The golems were there inside, watching over us as towering, awful sentinels. I tried to peer up into one as I walked by, but I couldn’t make out anything beyond the visor of its armor. I wondered if that visor was locked into place or if it could be lifted. I shook the thought away for the moment and jogged forward to grab a pack. If I got close to one I was going to do it. I was going to try and lift the visor and get a look at what lay beneath the metal.
I wasn’t sure when the decision to do such a foolish thing had settled into me, but there it was. As I admitted this to myself, a strange contentment flowed through me, as though I’d just put myself on the correct course. The contentment was followed by a rush of excitement, and a tinge of fear. It was almost intoxicating.
Pack in place, I ran for the first hill. Without the mud it wasn’t as difficult to climb, though it still wasn’t easy. The fog made things slick but not nearly as bad as it had all been in the pouring down rain. For all that the weather made it easier, there was a new problem to contend with.
There were a great many more of us here this time, and the hill was soon covered in people trying to climb it. Of course the second and third years were up it much more quickly than the rest of us. I watched them go, and made an effort to pay attention to tricks that they used, and methods that they applied as they climbed. They followed certain lines up the wall. That was clear quickly. There was a pattern to the way they gripped and pushed with their arms and legs as well. Clearly they also had more strength and coordination than I currently had at my disposal, but the way they moved was important too.
