by Bob Dattolo
I’m not even gonna try to guess that. I don’t know where to go with it and can’t really put myself into their shoes all that well. None of these fights were needed. Zero of them. And yet I have all of their powers mixed with mine now.
Huh, maybe the year three kids will have an easier trial without her there? I can hope. Maybe there’s a silver lining out there for others with her out of the picture.
Shower done, I dried and stared at myself in the mirror. So weird. I look just like I did before. No changes in height. No changes in weight. No changes in my skin. My hair looks the same. My eyes are still white. All white. They look exactly lik…
Oh…
“What the hell?”
Leaning into the mirror, I studied my eyes, moving them back and forth as I tried to see something that I swear isn’t really there.
Yet I think it is.
I have a pupil. One I never saw before. One that I can barely see now even though I’m looking for it. For a fire mage, their eyes are one color red all the way across. For a dragon, they’re red as well, but they have a darker red pupil in the shape of a scale. My eyes are pure white all the way across. No veins or anything like that. The pupil that I never saw? Yeah, it’s also white. It’s just that how do you have a darker white and still remain white? I’m not sure you really can.
Freaky as all hell. This is all freaky.
My hair got brushed and I put on deodorant before walking into my room. I wasn’t too shocked to find the silence spell I felt go up while I was soaking. I was surprised as hell to find way more people than just Parece, though.
Headmaster Anderson stood near the door. He immediately looks me up and down. Parece, Samantha, Paige, and Riley were spread between one of the couches and a chair. Angelica, Gage, and Kynal were on my couch. No Kaylee, which I’m not shocked by.
As I look across everyone, I have to wonder if one of them were responsible for everything being destroyed. I have my new laptop on my desk behind me waiting to be set up, which makes me want to question them.
Instead, I headed for my clothes, “I didn’t know I signed up for a peep show.”
Parece laughed, “Please, you don’t give a shit about that. You never have.”
She smiled back at me when I looked at her, “See now, I never said I cared. It’s still a peep show, though.” The three dragons in the room laughed with me.
Once I was dressed, I flopped into my desk chair and turned to face everyone. “Sooo…now what? Are people lining up outside to challenge me, or what?”
Headmaster Anderson looked so lost as he answered, “No. No one is lining up. At least that I know of. That’s not to say that people may not take advantage of your offer. I’m just not thinking they will.”
Samantha laughed again, “You have to be kidding me. I don’t see it happening. You beat Alison, which was tough as hell to do, but now you’re whatever the fuck you are? I don’t know that anyone will want to risk a serious unknown this close to our trial.”
“Right? Maybe if that whole craziness didn’t happen and you put that out there? Maybe then. Now? I don’t know anyone stupid enough or desperate enough to attempt it.” Angelica looked me up and down again, as if looking for something new or different.
“What about Levi?”
Samantha shook her head, “Think what you want about him, but he’s not stupid. Strong. Powerful. Pig-headed. Opinionated. Bossy. Not stupid, though.”
Hmm, “Okay, fine, I’ll give you that. I haven’t really seen anyone here that I’d consider stupid, but he’s not even on the lower end of things.”
“Oh my, a compliment for Levi? Whatever will he think?” Kynal smiled at my look.
Man, he’s good looking, “I’m not sure. Feel free to tell him. I can’t say that it’s a secret.”
Our headmaster cleared his throat, “Maddie? I’m sorry for interrupting your time with your…” he glanced at everyone, “friends.” It’s obvious that he knows where things fall here. “But I have to report all challenges up the chain, so to speak. We track all of this. I’m going to need to report what you did. How you shifted. What you shifted into. How…how did you shift into…that?”
Inquisitive minds want to know, or so it seems. “I have no idea. I didn’t know anything like that was even remotely possible. As much as I seemed to have the mindset of a dragon, at least somewhat, nothing else lined up. I’ve been feeling more and more pressure inside at times, but even that? I had no idea. I felt the movement a time or two, but it was nothing like what I felt in the circle. As for what I shifted into? I’ve never even heard of a dragon and human hybrid like what I think I turned into. Not that I could see everything, but that’s what it looked like to me.”
“That’s what you fucking were. You looked badass!” Angelica looks so happy that it pains me to think that she might be the one that messed with me.
The headmaster stepped back in, “I’ve never heard or seen of anything like what you shifted into. I’ve seen every dragon type in my life. Every size imaginable. From the smallest to the largest. None have ever had a two-legged form. None are ever rumored to have a two-legged form. Did you stop there on purpose?”
“Are you asking if I have a normal dragon form and then that one? As far as I knew, I didn’t stop anywhere in particular. Especially since I had no clue it was happening or going to happen. I don’t feel like I have another form in me. I just don’t know what that would really feel like.”
He sighed, “I’ll report that. Just so you’re aware? This will more than likely mean that we’ll have visitors wanting to talk with you. See you shift. Possibly study you.”
“Just so you know? Any attempts to strap me down or cut me apart or anything like that, and I’ll go down fighting. I don’t care who I have to kill to do it.”
“I wouldn’t expect anything less. I don’t know that anything like that would be proposed in the slightest. Blood work? I can see that. Hair samples? Maybe a scale? I’m not sure what else they might want. If anything. I will let you know when I file my report and what they say. I don’t believe we have any pictures of what you shifted into, so I may need you to shift so that I can include one. I doubt they’ll believe me otherwise.”
“Umm, okay? I can do that.”
He grabbed the knob, “Thank you for your time. Congratulations on another challenge win. Alison was the most aggressive student that I have seen in several years. She took out more people in challenges over the past three years than most would realize.”
“I was wondering if that would make the third-year trial easier or harder for people.”
“Easier. Definitely easier. We had estimates of a third to 40 percent being killed during it. I have to think that has drastically gone down. Now that people don’t need to protect against her, that will reduce their attacks. We should see many more weak students making it through than any of us expected prior to today.”
“Well good. I don’t get why we allow this crap, so at least this may have helped others.”
He nodded to us as a group, then walked out without saying anything else.
That left me with a mixed group that stared at me as if looking at something totally new.
Angelica spoke first, “You still don’t smell like a dragon normally would.”
That had me sniffing my arm, “Yeah. I sorta noticed that. I expected to smell more like one, but apparently not? I still smell the same.”
“I can’t believe you’re a fucking dragon…thing.” Riley looks over at the bathroom door, “No wonder you broke my spell.”
Too bad I didn’t do it on purpose. “Maybe one day I’ll have a clue why I am this way.”
Kynal gave me an approving look, “Don’t get me wrong, I still love the free boobs and all, but Angelica’s right, you looked freaking badass. You really had no idea?”
“None.”
The three dragons exchanged quick looks that I picked up on. Did that happen before, and I was oblivious?
“Boobs aside,
since I have my own, you really left an open challenge out there to everyone?” Parece rubbed her face. “I can’t believe you did that.”
“Sorry. That wasn’t really my initial thought, you know? Frankly, that bitch attacked faster than I expected and fucked me up. I wasn’t at all sure I was going to be able to pull it out once she got her first hits through the way she did. When it was done, I was just pissed off. With her freshly dead and me with wings, I figured I stood as good a chance as any to make people second-guess wanting to do it. Plus, if the know that they have one, then they don’t fuck with my food.”
Laughter from the dragons. “Yeah, now you’ll see. You were eating a normal amount before, but we always eat more.” Angelica patted her stomach, “It’s weird that you didn’t eat more beforehand.”
“I didn’t notice much before other than starting to get hungrier recently? I didn’t pick it up, but it sort of grew along with the pressure inside of me.”
“Makes me wonder if the mortmagi somehow slowed your development. I know we lose our ability to shift when blinded along with our magic, so maybe? Then again, she fucking got that thing into your eye…I thought I was gonna piss myself.”
Gage looked down, “Yeah, well I did just a little. That was horrific.”
“Honestly? It was worse from my perspective. That hurts way beyond just having an eye cut out and those things rammed into bone. Thank God I was able to get it out.”
“How did you do that, though? And the healing?” Kynal, this time.
“Bunch of no clue answers there. My magic was feeling fucked. Kinda fading. I grabbed at it and sort of built pressure in my head behind it. That’s what started pushing it out, although it took a massive amount of power to do it. Then the healing was just the healing.”
“Hmm, a massive amount of power when you can’t cast any spells? Interesting.” Parece left that one out there.
“Riiight. As if this group doesn’t know that I can actually cast spells.”
“Ha! True. You’re gonna have to suck it up and show people at some point.”
“Probably, but let’s wait for the trial. I just want to get the fuck out of here. I get that you guys have schemes within schemes, but I don’t. I had no plans to get into fights to begin with. Sure as fuck no plans to kill anyone. Now we have the trial, and everyone around here is plotting and planning and trying to figure out who they can kill. That’s not me. As much as I don’t care at all that I killed people, I didn’t want to do it. Well, I wanted to kill Alison, but that’s because she was a bitch. I sure as hell didn’t want to kill Daniela. Colin was only challenged because he hit me. I would have settled for just beating him for a bit if I could have.”
“What makes you think everyone has plans to kill someone during the trials?”
“Don’t even, Paige. Given what I’ve seen here? It’s all freakishly connected moving parts. If you can kill someone weaker, then maybe you don’t worry about someone in the middle. Maybe you get too powerful for Levi to come after you. All the while trying to get through the trial itself. The weaker kids that are gonna be forced into this are looking at each other and anyone they can trick somehow. The powerful are looking at everyone in case they get threatened. If we all simply agreed not to go after each other, then maybe the only deaths would be from fucking up in the trial itself.”
“That won’t ever happen.” Angelica spoke with conviction.
“I agree with her.” Samantha as well. “I looked into it before coming. I wasn’t able to find any record of any academy class where a trial was completed without at least one person being killed by another student.”
“I found four.”
“Holy shit, really?” She didn’t seem to believe Angelica, yet we could both smell that she was telling the truth.
“Grain of salt for those four. Two classes with only one tester. Another had a sister and a brother as the only kids. The last had two as well, but one died by the trial itself. No record of any numbers above that that made it out safe.”
“Oh, huh, I missed those. Still, though, we have way more than that in our class. I’m not sure what we’d have to do to agree to not go after someone if they can.”
“That’s just so fucked up, though! I don’t get it. Like at all. How can you guys look at each other and plan to kill them to make yourself stronger?”
They all exchanged looks, with none of them looking embarrassed by my question. At all. “I think you’re missing the point.” Angelica turned back to me. “It’s not that we want to do it. It’s that we’re pretty much driven to do it.”
“Why, though? I’m not?!? Was it how you guys were raised?”
“In a nutshell? Yeah.” Nods from everyone at her response. “We’re all raised from little kids knowing that our parents’ friends were once planning or trying to kill them. We’re all raised knowing that power is what rules for us. It’s what gives us our place in society. Those of us that want to succeed? It becomes one of the main ways to do it if we aren’t born with way more power than I’ve seen anyone being born with.”
“So you guys can’t just, I don’t know, vow to not go after each other?”
She sighed, “You’ve seen what it’s like here. You may have forgotten what you knew when you were little and then missed out on for a few years, but you belonged to a dragon for a while. You said he was a psycho killer?”
“Mass murderer, but yeah?”
“Right. Yet you still missed out on most of what we were taught or raised with. We don’t want to kill each other, but if I’m taken down somehow and I’m too weak to defend myself? It would be a huge debate in my head whether or not I call Kynal or Gage to help me.”
“Because they might kill you?”
“Because they might kill me. My best option would be to get both of them there at the same time, because then they may hesitate long enough for me to get helped. One wouldn’t want to go for me, only to present his back to the other. It’d be so freaking tempting for one of us. Kill the one that’s up, then the one that’s down is like free power.”
“God. Damn. The fact that you guys don’t have a problem with that is the worst thing to me. We shouldn’t be so casual about killing each other. At a minimum, it should be hidden, yet you guys don’t seem to have a problem with it.”
“That’s just it; we do.” Samantha looked at her allies, “We want to make it through together. We want to go in strong and defend each other and make it out, it’s just that we know that if we’re hurt enough or not paying attention, they may attack. Just like they know that about us. We’d rather not be like that, yet when we’re raised to expect it, how do you change? Even if we vowed, can we really trust the other person? When the end result is death if we’re wrong, can we trust them? Should we? We’d be stupid as fuck to end up being wrong, you know? So we go in hoping that none of the plans to attack or defend are needed. I’m sure everyone would prefer to make it through the trials and come out with lifelong friends. Then again? Enough power will get you so much money that you can buy solid gold friends that shit diamonds and platinum. Just look at Alison. She wasn’t making friends, that’s for sure. She was trying to build up so much power that she’d test crazy well and slot way up there on the outside. Given her track record, I’m betting every ally she had was more than willing to fuck her hard as soon as her back was turned.”
None of them really seem to get my confusion. “I guess. It just shouldn’t be like this. I don’t understand trials for school that can kill us. Does it restrict who leaves here with power? It does. But who gives a shit? It’s not like we’re not restrained by laws as adults. Why force kids into it, with penalties if they don’t want to do it? Does it really matter if someone skips the first trial and is weak or if they make it to the second and bow out with 25 percent of their power? Some of those people are stronger than the weak kids that don’t want to do the first one. Yet they feel forced to do it or some fucker pounds mortmagi into their skulls. Having had that done twice, I’d ri
sk the almost certainty of death over the agony of those things. At least death would be quicker. Those fucking things were agonizing from the moment they went in until they came out.”
“Yeah. No idea. It’s just how things are.”
“Maybe we should change that.”
“How, though?” Paige had an honest expression on her face.
“I’m just not sure yet. Maybe if we get powerful people to watch out for a bunch of weaker ones? Work as a group? No idea. I’m still not sure I get what the trial is for this year to begin with.”
Laughter from them, with Angelica finishing first, “We’ve all asked our parents and every adult we could get to about it. They used to change every year, at least way back when, but they changed it. It’s a mess of things. It’s not a maze, but it is. Sort of. It’s not a test, but it is. It’s not a competition, but it is.”
“Awesome, that explains everything. Thank you. It’s like you painted me a picture and gave me a blueprint or something.” More laughter.
“It’s like this. We start out in a room. All of us. There will be some weapons on the floor and along the walls. No guns or anything like that, but knives and sticks and bats and even swords and things like that.”
“The fuck? Why?”
“Why do they do anything? Tradition. I’m not sure how many exits there will be, but there will be a number of them on each wall. We can take any exit we want but doing that puts us on the same path with others. That’s where the watching comes in. There will be places where we will have to demonstrate spells. Our power level. Things like that. There will be places where we have to use magic to continue. Roadblocks, if you will. There will also be places where the paths we take will cross with other paths. So you head down one thinking you’re away from powerful people, only to find that they’re coming up behind you when you’re dealing with being hurt or stuck in a hole or crap like that.”
“How does the trial kill you?”
“Some of the tests will be timed. So, create a ball of light the size of a basketball in red that then flashes yellow, or rocks get dropped on you. Crazy crap like that. It varies depending on what path you go on.”
