Let Quad Phoenix come.
Royal roared, picked up the steel block with the ring, and hurled it at the charging Impetu woman. She bashed it aside with a gauntleted hand. Brom heard her forearm crack, but she did not break stride.
“No!” Oriana said. “Don’t fight your counterparts. Remember the immunities!”
Two weeks ago, Oriana had shown them an obscure text unearthed in the library. It theorized that each path of magic had natural immunities to a specific other path. It said that an Impetu should be able to throw off the mind control of a Mentis by sinking into pure physicality, essentially reverting to an instinctual, animal state, leaving higher mental functions behind and leaving the Mentis nothing to work with. A Mentis could shield herself from the emotional twisting of a Motus by retreating into pure intellect, cutting herself off from human emotions completely. A Motus could glut the soul-sucking drain of an Anima with rage while keeping her soul undamaged. And an Anima could bring down an Impetu by mapping their soul, seeing every weakness, and staying one step ahead of them.
But they were only theories, and Oriana had found no other texts to support them. So far as they knew, no Quad had ever attempted this, let alone succeeded. It was common wisdom that, in a primer, Quad mates fought their counterparts.
“Remember that—” Oriana was suddenly cut off, and Brom’s Quad mates were no longer connected mind-to-mind. Oriana staggered back, hand to her head, obviously under attack by the opposing Mentis.
“You heard her!” Royal roared, spinning around the strike of the opposing Impetu with a speed and grace that belied his size. He charged past her, bearing down on Quad Phoenix’s Mentis. The thin man’s eyes flew open, and he fell back. Oriana gasped her relief as the attack on her faltered.
If Oriana was right, this strategy could only work if they attacked quickly, before the opposing Quad knew what they were up to. Vale scurried forward near the wall to get to the Anima.
The female Impetu hissed at Royal’s escape and incautiously turned her back to Brom. He snatched a sword from the practice rack, dove forward, came to his knees right behind her, and swung. But she was an Impetu. She felt him coming and leapt straight up. His blade whistled beneath her feet.
Brom looked into her soul, looking for her weaknesses. Despite her hulking stature, she was behind the rest of her Quad in her progress. Her confidence was brittle, and she saw all of her fellow Quad mates as having crossed more thresholds than she had. She worried that they looked down on her, that they saw her as the weak link in their chain. She worried she would be the one to die in the Test of Separation.
Brom rolled through his strike as she jumped over him. He had no wish to engage her physically. Not yet. If he cut her, she would heal, just as she had already healed her broken forearm. She’d simply growl though the pain and come up swinging. No. Brom had to play to her weakness.
Humiliation.
He had to take her vulnerability and display it to her Quad mates. If she felt they were judging her, that she was failing them, she would falter. She would make mistakes, leave an opening for him to exploit. Then he would strike.
He rolled to his feet and stood up in front of her.
Astonished, the Impetu hesitated, then brought a crushing, gauntleted hand down at him. But he saw it coming a split second before she struck, and he stepped to the side. She roared, swinging sideways. The Soul of the World flowed through him, and he saw that thunderous strike coming, too. He ducked gracefully beneath it.
She wailed, brought both fists down at him, but he sidestepped, this time only barely avoiding her. Gods, she was fast! One small misstep and he was a dead man.
Staying connected to the Soul of the World, he pushed his magic back into her. Her frustration was mounting, growing quickly into anguish. She swung again, low at his knees. He hopped over the swing, danced around the next strike that was so swift and so powerful she fell to her knees, cracking the stone with her steel gauntlets. He slid behind her, imagining this as another test like the Gauntlet, and he let the Soul of the World guide him.
Before she could lift her head, he slammed the pommel of the dagger into the base of her skull. It was a mighty blow that would have killed anyone else, but she just staggered drunkenly, blinking and spinning about to find him.
Of course, Brom hadn’t intended to put her down with the strike, only to humiliate her. She’d been driven to her knees by a scrawny Anima, right in front of her Quad mates.
And it worked.
The thickly-muscled woman flicked a guilty glance at her Quad mates. Her exposed vulnerability seemed to drive her mad with rage. With a scream, she lunged at him.
But Brom had already seen how she’d react, and pure confidence coursed through him. He danced backward like he’d choreographed the moves, and threw the lever on the Gauntlet, activating it.
The machine started up, blades whirling, stones rising and falling, thumping as they hit the ground. To Brom, it was painfully obvious what he was about to do, but this Impetu didn’t see it. She was actually keening with rage. He dove into the Gauntlet, and she charged after him like a bear. She was so fast that her first grab nearly had him, her fingers brushing his ankle.
That was the only chance she got.
Brom closed his eyes and relied entirely on the Soul of the World. He leapt, spun, danced and dashed. Blades whipped over his head. Poison darts zipped past him. Crushing weights launched sideways or from above. Oak cudgels swung left and right. Buckets of poison rained from above, but he saw them a second before they came. And he avoided them all.
Behind him, he was vaguely aware of the Impetu’s grunts, growls, then howls of frustration and pain.
When he emerged from the far end of the Gauntlet, he turned. The Impetu lay in the middle of the apparatus, half-buried under one of the stone weights, unconscious. Bright wounds slowly closed on her arms and legs where she had been wickedly slashed. A dozen darts stuck out of her back, and she lay in a bubbling pool of poison. She twitched twice, then lay still.
Breathing hard, Brom came out of his trance, blinked, and looked around the practice room.
The enemy Mentis lay crumpled underneath Royal’s hulking form, dropped after one punch.
Their Anima was on her back, Vale kneeling on the woman’s chest and punching her bloody face over and over, dagger still in hand but not used. The woman’s head groggily wobbled with each strike, and she was barely able to bring her arms up, ineffectually attempting to fend off the blows.
The enemy Motus scooted backward on his butt, one leg scrabbling for purchase while he dragged his injured leg, which had an arrow sticking out of it. He hit the wall with his back and clutched the wounded leg with both hands. Across the room, Oriana held one of the practice bows. Smoothly, she nocked another arrow and leveled it at the Motus. He held his bloody hands up in surrender.
“No, please!” he said. “I yield.”
Vale continued punching her foe.
“Vale!” Brom yelled, and she hesitated, bloody fist raised in the air for another strike. With a hiss of disgust, she stood up and stepped back. Then she snarled and lunged forward, stabbing the Anima in the thigh with the dagger. The woman wailed and passed out.
“Vale!” Brom barked again.
“I left her alive,” she growled, wiping her dagger on her enemy’s black cloak. She crept back, watching all of them like she had that first day they’d met. Distrust. Veiled malevolence.
The battle was over, and they were the overwhelming victors.
“Gods,” Brom said, realizing how swiftly they’d just put down the finest Quad in the school.
The Collector, who hadn’t moved from his position next to the door, was also clearly stunned. His cowl had crept back to his forehead, and they could see his entire face now. After a moment, he wiped his shocked expression away and narrowed his eyes, regarding them all with a glittering black gaze.
His jaw worked. He should have congratulated them, should have told them that they had
overcome the final hurdle before their Test of Separation. He didn’t.
“You will report to the Testing Dome tomorrow at noon,” he snapped. “There, you will take the Test of Separation.”
A harpoon of fear stabbed into Brom’s guts, a sense of doom so profound he wrapped his arms around his belly. “Test of Separation...” he gasped.
The Collector opened his mouth, as though he was about to say something more, then he snapped it shut and exited the room.
Royal, having obviously descended into his animalistic nature to avoid the Mentis, stood hunched over like some beast. He growled, and then, with effort, pushed himself to stand upright. “They...” he rasped, then cleared his throat. “They can’t be serious.”
“They are serious,” Oriana said in a monotone, looking more cold and distant than ever.
No, Brom thought. It’s all wrong. This is all wrong.
“We can’t take the Test,” Brom protested. “We’re not ready. We’re just second-years.”
“We are Brilliant,” Vale whispered, a maniacal smile on her face, and then she started laughing.
CHAPTER SIX
Brom
They didn’t practice any more that day. The Invisible Ones, undoubtedly by some mental command, stood up and began carrying each of the injured—or possibly dead—out of the room.
Brom was sick to his stomach both by the carnage and by the horrible foreboding in his gut. Each of his Quad mates, though, seemed lost in their own thoughts. A deep distrust had fallen between them in the quiet.
“I think that’s enough practice for the day,” Vale said, walking toward the door. There was no saunter there, nothing playful. She’d said she had one goal here at the Champion’s Academy: to become a Quadron. She hadn’t come to make friends. She hadn’t come to fall in love. She’d bonded with the Quad because it was required. And now she had what she wanted—a chance at the Test. She glanced at Royal and Brom and saved a final glare for Oriana before leaving the practice room.
Looking half-scared and half-stunned, Royal regarded his remaining Quad mates. “I...must be alone right now. I will see you tomorrow morning.” And he, too, left.
Oriana turned to Brom. He considered reading her soul, delving into her to see if he might find some truth to Vale’s words, but for the first time Oriana’s emotions were written on her face. She looked wounded, frustrated. She had spent so much effort trying to bring this Quad together—they all had—that it must be killing her to watch it crumble right at the end, right when they’d nearly reached their goal.
Of course, maybe this was the way it was supposed to be. Maybe a Quad could only be united this far, and no farther. One of them, at least, was likely to die tomorrow. No Quad had ever graduated together. Once they’d been invited to take the Test, it was every Quad mate for themselves.
Brom had been sure Quad Brilliant would be the first to succeed together, to pass as a full Quad. But he couldn’t feel that certainty anymore. How could they stand together in the Test if they couldn’t come together now?
“Tomorrow it ends,” Oriana murmured. “Two years ahead of schedule. We should be exultant.” Her voice was anything but exultant.
“We can’t take that Test,” he said.
“We are ready. The primer is meant to indicate our readiness.” She waved a hand at the blood flecks on the floor where Quad Phoenix’s Anima had been before the Invisible Ones took her away. “They came for us. We destroyed them.”
“There is something terribly wrong about this,” he insisted, but he didn’t know why. “Don’t you sense it?”
“What is wrong?” Oriana asked, again waving a hand at the empty room. “How else might they judge that it is our time? We worked hard, Brom. This is our reward, to graduate so early.”
Her words twisted in his gut. It was as though she was speaking an elegant lie, and he’d caught her. But he didn’t know what the lie was. He didn’t understand why his body rebelled against what was happening here. Oriana was right. This was the official way Quads were tested, and they had passed. No, they had dominated.
He hesitated, trying to come up with the answer, but he couldn’t. He was so certain, but he had no proof.
“I’m...the Anima,” he said. “It’s my job to bring wisdom. And this...” He trailed off.
“Yes?”
“This is...”
“What is this?” She measured the words, seeming to grow impatient.
“I...don’t know.”
“Are you frightened?” she asked bluntly.
“Of course I am!” he blurted. “We should all be frightened. But that’s not why I think this is going to be a disaster. Ask yourself, why would The Four test second-years? Why?”
“Because we are exceptional,” she said coldly. “It is a fact.”
He opened his mouth to speak, and he expected that some convincing bit of proof would come tumbling off his tongue. “Yes, but...” He faltered. He could think of no reason that could dispute her, only a sick feeling in his stomach.
“This is the reason we came,” she said. “The reason we made our sacrifices.” Her indigo eyes glinted angrily. Perhaps she was thinking about everything she, personally, had given up to bond with Quad Brilliant. “Feel blessed, Brom. You worked hard. I worked hard. We all did. And we are ready two full years early. Go rest. We will meet in the morning beforehand.” She walked to the door.
Finally, he said the only thing he could think of, the thing he knew was on everyone’s mind that no one would say.
“It doesn’t bother you that one of us is going to die tomorrow?”
Oriana froze, her graceful footsteps ceasing, and she held very still. Finally, she half-turned, speaking to him over her shoulder. “It bothers me that you seem to have lost your spine,” she said. “Weren’t you the one who said we could be the first Quad to graduate together?”
“Not like this,” he replied. “Not with Vale waving her dagger and Royal crawling inside his own head. Not with you calling me a coward.”
Annoyance flashed across her face and spots of rouge colored her pale cheeks. “Now is the time to rise, Brom. We have been challenged. We stand. There is no other option. Would you have us run away after we have fought so hard to get here? Take the path of the Forgotten?” She practically spat the last word.
“Tomorrow, one of us is going to die,” he repeated breathlessly.
Her lovely profile was outlined by the light of the grand foyer. “Yes,” she said. “And I told you to prepare your mind for that. I told you last year. Apparently you did not listen.”
“Oriana—”
“Listen now, Brom son of Brochan. Prepare yourself now. If one of us is to die, make sure that the dead one isn’t you. I will do the same.” She swept out of the room with a flare of her dress.
Dazed, he stood in the practice room for a long time, his gaze unfocused.
Finally, he left and made his way back to his dorm room. He’d only used his first Soulblock in the fight against Quad Phoenix, but he felt completely exhausted. He lay down on his bed, knowing he was missing something vitally important.
I could stop this, he thought. I should be able to stop this.
He felt the answer niggling at the back of his mind, loitering in the depths of his heart, but he couldn’t see it, couldn’t find it.
He lay down on his bed, and exhaustion swept over him. The afternoon sun slanted in through his window and made his eyelids heavy. Troubled, he sought the answer to this riddle for a brief, wandering moment, and then he fell asleep.
* * *
He jerked awake early the next morning, fully dressed in his clothes from yesterday. The sky had only just begun to lighten outside. He shook his head, groggy. His rest had been so profound he hadn’t dreamt.
His Soulblocks were fully restored. He felt better than yesterday morning, but the moment he woke, his gut began to twist with that same foreboding. He felt a need to run out and stop his Quad mates from taking the Test, but he didn’t kno
w why.
He got up and put on his other set of clothes, which were now dry. He pulled on his boots, breeches, and tunic, all black for the path of Anima with the silver piping that designated him as a second-year student. He included a dagger to wear at his belt. First-years weren’t technically allowed weapons—though Vale had flaunted that rule—but second-years were allowed daggers for eating and other tasks.
Of course, it was well-known that weapons weren’t allowed in the Test of Separation, but he was going to wear it anyway. Deep down, he felt that somehow he was being cheated by this school, by its masters. He didn’t know why, but if he didn’t trust his own intuition, then he was no Anima at all.
He spent the next hour until the sunrise working at his right boot, hollowing out a straight hole through the sole and inserting a thin metal spike. It had leather wrapped on one side, a makeshift handle.
After, he sat on his bed trying to settle his mind, trying to chase down that feeling of having forgotten something, that he’d overlooked something critical. He went over Oriana’s spiteful words from the practice room, trying to find a flaw in her logic, but there simply wasn’t any.
He tried another tack and searched his emotions. Was Oriana right? Was he simply scared to take the Test? Was he a coward?
The sun filtered between his black curtains, and he watched the dust sparkle in the air. By this time tomorrow, it would be over. Either he would be a Quadron...
Or he would be dead.
Both prospects left him feeling ill, which made no sense at all. Becoming a Quadron was his deepest desire. It was his singular goal in coming here. But to have it at the expense of one of his Quad mates, to have everything they’d endured, the unlikely bonds they’d formed with one another sacrificed...
Which was more precious? His connections to his friends, or becoming a Quadron? Oriana knew her answer. So did Vale and even Royal. But Brom didn’t. The idea of backstabbing his friends, of allowing one of them to die so he could grasp at power... He’d known that was the price before he’d ever entered the academy, so why did he balk now? Did he not want to become a Quadron anymore? What was wrong with him?
The Test Page 6
