by Bob Dattolo
“And makes the ones that do make it out that much stronger?”
“That too.”
We fell into silence at that point, which allowed me yet more time to stew in my own juices. This is sooo messed up. I feel like I’m being thrown to the lions. I really do. How long do I have before someone tries to challenge me? I get that they have to have a good reason to do it, so maybe I just try to stay to myself and see if I can make it through long enough to get some spells to protect myself?
While that’s a solid plan, it’s not much of a plan.
He spent his young life working towards being strong enough to make it through. To make up for his sister doing what she did. He failed. Or, didn’t make it. Going to the second year sounds like a decent bit of success for him. I can feel his upset and anger over it, but he’s alive. He’s making it. Yet if he’s telling the truth, and I think he is, he barely made it out. Even his friends were planning on killing him.
Seriously, I made it through all of this shit to be killed in a school I don’t even want to go to? This is messed up. Seriously messed up.
He didn’t speak again for the longest time.
Chapter 8
We pulled through the small town that supports the academy. He’s been telling me about each of the stores, keeping it pretty basic. He didn’t elaborate until he stopped at a stop sign maybe a block from the huge gate for the academy. “I hate to say it, but most challenges come from people getting into things in town. Fights. Someone disrespects someone and there’s a fight. Cuts in front of them. All sorts of reasons. I’d say stay away from the town if you can. There’s very little you can’t buy on campus that you can buy in town. Most everyone does go there…but that means everyone goes there. The classes are separated, so you should never really run into anyone from a different year, but here in town? Everyone is here. Keep that in mind. It’s not just your immediate classmates that are a danger to you.”
“Uhh…okay? Is there anything that’s not a danger to me?”
He grimaced, then frowned, “Umm, no? Not really? If you were powerful? Then I’d say that most of it shouldn’t be too bad. Don’t mess with people. Stand up for yourself but be prepared to be challenged over it if you do. You probably already figured it out, but once your name is known? The kids’ll come out of the woodwork for you. The fact that you’re coming in late and so close to the end of the year? They’ll want to know how that’s possible. Don’t lie to them. That’s a challenge waiting to happen. Tell as much as you’re willing to tell, but don’t tell a lie. Even if they don’t challenge you, some kids will try to fuck with you in classes and things like that. Watch out for stuff in your room.”
“Stuff in my room? Like what?”
“I’ll loosely call them practical jokes? Someone destroying your books? Things like that? That doesn’t always happen, but once people pick up that someone’s weak? It’s not too uncommon to have a ton of people jump on the bandwagon.”
“Wooonderful.”
“I’m sorry to have to tell you that. There’s a reason suicide isn’t at all unknown in school. Kids get pushed too far and then decide that it’s easier to check out. I’m not recommending that, I’m just saying.”
“Even more to watch out for.”
“Always.” He started forward, pulling through the colossal gates before too long, “Welcome to Sorrowfeld Academy. I’m happy as a pig in shit that I’m out of here. That’s for sure. Watch out for yourself. Do what you have to to protect yourself.”
“I’ll try. This is so messed up.”
“That it is. Very much so.” We made it up a picturesque driveway through manicured lawns, to a massive stone building. I know from the paperwork that I have that the school is made up of four main buildings.
This would be the Admin building. It houses the administrative offices and medical. Given what I’ve heard so far, I can guess why the medical portion of things seems to be as large as it is. And has a surgical room.
God, this is so messed up.
The second building that should be off behind this one to the side is the general building. It has a name, although I can’t recall what it is. It houses the cafeteria, stores for buying things, the gym, and the theater.
The third building, which should be opposite the general one, is the actual school portion. It houses classrooms, magical workrooms, and dragon shifting rooms. Those rooms are able to be opened to the outside and have huge perches for them to get onto to practice flying from.
The last building is the dorm. The pictures in the paperwork make the rooms seem pretty nice. Two to a room, with a shared bathroom between two of the rooms. I know there’s a name for that style arrangement, I just can’t remember what it might be. The spaces are pretty large. Mages and dragons are mixed and matched. It seems they used to do them specifically by what you were, which then caused larger issues by exacerbating the hatred between the groups. The paperwork even said that.
This way, at least some of the students make it through the general dislike for the other side.
Ugh. This is soooo messed up. I think that’s my new mantra. I should get a tattoo or something. Then I can just look at it every few minutes instead of thinking it.
Wait, I’m also forgetting one main thing. These buildings are for first year students only. There’s another set of buildings farther onto the property for year two, then another set for year three. The Admin building is smaller, but they have the other buildings. No idea why they’re so separate.
He parked and stared at me. “I don’t…I don’t envy you right now. At all. Good luck with it all. The fact that you can see and have magic is no small miracle, so maybe you’ve got more behind you than I can dream of.”
“I hope so. I really hope so.” I don’t know what else to say to that.
I gave him a tip for the drive, then grabbed all of my bags and headed towards the door. I can feel him watching me from the truck, and it’s even more evident once I can see him in the glass on the door.
Wow, he does not look good right now. It’s like he’s watching someone go to their death. That’s funny, since I’m pretty much fighting watching the same thing. I’ve gone to my death. Twice, from my perspective. No, three times. Once when I was stricken. Again, when Reggie took me. Then again when I fought back.
Will I die here? Maybe. Maybe I will. I just know that I have a chance, so I need to do everything that I can to succeed and make it through. I’m so tempted to aim for dropping out at the second-year trial, yet…I want my revenge. I think I’ll need as much power as possible to be able to do that. That means I’d have to make it through every trial and stake my claim.
Here’s hoping I can do that.
The office is to the right as I pass through the doors, so it’s simple enough to enter. A woman behind a desk sees me immediately and perks up, “I’m sorry? Are you lost? Classes started…” her mouth falls open and she stops talking.
A crazy tall man steps through the door behind her. I can just see Headmaster on it, but not their name. He’s got to be close to seven feet tall and has the telltale light blue eyes and darker blue cornea of an ice dragon. “It’s okay, Marie. I’ve got this one.” He looks me over and nods, “Maddie Stricken?” His voice doesn’t give away any feelings about my name.
“I am?”
“If you’ll come with me? I’ll get you through everything and you can get on your way.”
“Okay?” There doesn’t seem to be an easy place to leave my bags, so they get dragged with me into his office. Headmaster Marcus Anderson is written on the glass of his door. Once through, there’s enough space to lay everything out, so it all goes down as I move to the seat he indicates and take it. My folder stays in my lap until he points at it.
“Is that your information?”
“Yes?”
He takes it as I offer it, then starts flipping through it. Periodic grunts don’t tell me much as he goes through every page, then hands it back to me. “Good. What you have matc
hes my own.” He nods to a manila folder to the side of his desk. “Now, welcome to Sorrowfeld Academy.”
His calm voice makes me fight a smile. “Sorrowfeld? You use the unofficial name?”
His shrug is colossal, probably like everything he does in his life. “Why fight it? Students call it that. Parents call it that. The only time it’s called the full official name is in the paperwork, the news, or things like that. So, when in Rome?”
I’m not sure what to say to that.
He sniffs, then nods, “I can smell your agitation. I have to assume numerous people have warned you about being here?”
I wasn’t expecting to be called out like this, “Yeah, you could say that.”
“As I expected. I won’t add to your concerns. They’re obvious to me. They’ll be obvious to any dragons here. I will say one thing, though. If you act like prey, people will think of you as prey.”
The hell? “So, what, don’t smell upset or afraid?”
“Exactly. I won’t get into psychology of why it will help, but look at it this way? If you’re walking into a dangerous situation and you’re not afraid, then either you’re stupid, or you’re confident. People will assume stupid, but some will hold off because confidence could mean bad things are headed their way.”
“I wasn’t expecting you to say something like that. Everyone makes this place sounds like the killing fields.”
He shocked me with a nonchalant shrug, “It is, and it’s not. During my tenure we have had years where 90 percent of the first-year class makes it through the first year’s trial just fine.”
“What’s your worst year?”
“23 percent made it through.”
“What the hell?”
He nodded, “My thoughts exactly. My classes weren’t anywhere near that bad. We had more people bow out of the trials than we did deaths. For the year with 23 percent? I forget the specifics, but almost half of them bowed out of the trials. The students at the higher end were bloodthirsty and motivated.”
“That’s…that sounds like hell to me.”
“Me as well. Don’t think that because I’m a dragon and the headmaster that I think this is a walk in the park, because I don’t. I find it a…necessary evil, I’ll say.”
“Does that mean that things happen here specifically to limit the number of crazy powerful people in the world?”
His eyes lit up, “You know what? You’re the first student in at least 20 years to outright ask me that. I’ve had some hint, but they either don’t get it or don’t ask. To be clear and bring it down to brass tacks? Yes. There are other reasons, but that’s a huge portion of things. I’d be just as fine graduating every student, although I understand the desire to minimize the magical impact to the world. You’ve seen the fighting out there. Mage against mage. Dragon against dragon. Fighting between us. Dragons are territorial when dealing with another with the same affinity. We’re nothing if not brutal to each other until a pecking order is established. Mages have some of the same tendencies, although they don’t have the same biological drives that we do.” He sniffed again. “Your paperwork didn’t lie? You don’t know what you are, correct? You don’t smell enough like one or the other for me to be able to nail it down. I thought for sure…”
“Yeah, no, it didn’t lie,” I touched my scars, “You see my face. I’m sure the paperwork mentioned it. You know my last name. I was supposed to be a mage. My eyes are all white, so that makes them think I should be a mage still. Yet there are enough signs of being a dragon for them to think otherwise.”
Slow nod, “Can you elaborate on that? The paperwork didn’t outright say why they won’t classify you as a mage.”
“Umm, my magical signature, I guess? It reads just enough not like a mage for them to question it. Yet not enough like a dragon. My healing? I shouldn’t have been able to heal most of what’s been done to me over the years. I should be a mess of scars and poorly healed broken bones, yet every bone healed perfectly. The only scars I have are from the mortmagi. My eyes healed. They’re weird and white, but I can see out of them. That makes them lean more towards dragon than mage. Then my thinking?”
“Your thinking?”
“Did the paperwork mention where I was when they found me?”
“No? It alluded to you being held by someone, but that’s it.”
That started a short walkthrough of what happened with Reggie. Not that I went into details. Not even close. His expression didn’t change at all during the recitation except when I mentioned putting my neck in his hand.
Finally, he grunted, “I agree with what they said. When you recognized his dominance? That’s when things changed. He tested you, but you held firm. You put yourself at his mercy and became his. I’m sorry you had to go through that. You’re right, though, your viewpoint and how you’re handling things there is almost entirely a dragon viewpoint. We’ve tried explaining things to humans to help them through traumatic experiences, but they just don’t get it.”
“Yeah, well, I can see that.” I didn’t tell him about the voice. “It’s still weird because I can see it from the other side…then I fall back into how I am. Maybe that means I’m a dragon. Maybe it doesn’t. I can’t even guess. Just about the only thing I know is that I don’t know any spells and I’m about to be doused with salmon blood and thrown into the bear den.”
Okay, I was not expecting such loud, happy laughter from him. To the point that he had to wipe at his eyes. It took him a bit to be able to talk again. “I needed that. What you said isn’t wrong. You will most definitely cause a ripple in your class.” He nodded slowly and ruffled through some paperwork. “There are currently 65 year three students. They started with 101 in year one. They’re housed in their buildings, so you should never come into contact with them unless you go into town. There are 100 year two students. They started with 135. They have their own buildings. Same deal with them. For your class? There are 91 students in your class. I won’t say how many opted out of attending, but we have had three challenges already. All three were killed. As I said, you will cause a ripple. If all three classes don’t know about you before the end of the day, I will have to assume the apocalypse is happening. Enough students make ties with other levels for that to happen very, very quickly.”
“Which means people will come hunting for me and looking for a reason to kill me and suck me dry?”
He nodded, “Very much so. They cannot challenge for just any reason, but you can be sure they will try to force you into something.”
Then, as much as he didn’t seem to want to scare me off, he proceeded to give me an update on things.
Seriously, what the hell? This is such a nightmare.
We talked for most of an hour, which did include an update on the school grounds and where we’re allowed to go and all of that. The grounds are extensive. We’re far enough away from year two and three buildings that we shouldn’t run into them by accident. Unless I’m a dragon and can fly. Then I’ll be able to fly quickly enough to reach them before I’m even aware it happened. Something to be said for being able to fly crazy fast.
He didn’t belabor the danger aspect of things. In fact, he tried to pull things back towards learning and school. I have to give him a silent bravo for the attempt. As if my mind would be focused on anything other than the part where I die.
Would you?
I mean that. Seriously. Why the hell do parents allow their kids to come here? If your kids are weak, it’s a death sentence unless they’re lucky. Are mages and dragons such vicious bastards that your kids dying is kinda okay to you?
Well…maybe, I guess? I mean, the people I have to assume are my parents hammered fucking blades into my eyeballs when I was nine years old. How do you do that? I know that was the first day I got my period. I know someone, I don’t know who, tried to make me feel better about it. About the cramps. I have to assume it was my mom. Maybe my dad. More than likely her, though.
Then they proceeded to strip me of everything a
nd hammer those fucking things into my skull and threw me away in an alley. After beating the ever-loving shit out of me.
That’s my last thought as I reach my room. The hallways in the dorm are empty at the moment, but I do hear voices in some of the rooms. It’s dinner time, although it’s late. I have to think most people are there at the moment.
The line of thinking has my anger flowing pretty heavily, which gets me to vow to hide everything that I can. I want people to assume that I’m weak, even if I’m not. Not that I know for a fact, but it’s the same idea. I want them to think I’m physically weak. Slow. Clumsy? I can work at that. I want to be so underestimated that, when it’s needed, I can take some utter bastards down if and when I have to.
I don’t want to kill anyone, but I will. I killed those two and have more on my list, so I can add others to it if they decide to force their names in among the others. Far be it from me to stop them from achieving their dream of being killed by me.
I just wish it wasn’t needed.
My room has a key and a spell on it to only open for the people that live here or at our command. Not even a recording will work. It has to be us saying that someone can come in. That won’t stop others from coming in at the same time, but it will stop the door from opening.
The key works without a problem. The spell feels me for a bit, then opens. He warned me about that and said it should only happen the first time as it really gets used to me. One day I want to figure out how that works, because that’s a cool idea for a spell. Not that I have a clue what I’d use it on.
The room’s empty.
Well, of people. There’s furniture here, don’t think it’s an empty room. Just no roommate. I have her name, but not what she is. Parece Howell. I have to assume I’ll meet her at some point. I have no idea what way to expect that to go. Will she be nice, and we’ll get along? A bitch? Will she be indifferent? Two of those options are easy to deal with. I won’t even bet which way I think this is gonna go. Given my introduction to this place by everyone, I’m thinking Garrison’s warning about watching everything is really what has to happen.
