In the black mirror of his eyes, I caught a glimpse of the faint, blue glow pulsing from the pendant against my neck. His lips parted slightly, his eyes fixating on the glow, but then a shaft of morning light streaking in from the high windows touched his face, and he squirmed against it, shielding his eyes and slinking into the dark, away from it.
“Wait here,” he said, when he’d recovered, “Your group will arrive shortly.”
As quickly and as suddenly as he’d appeared, he left me alone in the gym surrounded by equipment and weapons—weapons I could maybe use to help me bust out of this place. There was only one problem with that plan, I had no idea where in the hell Fate was, and considering the size of this place, finding her in a hurry would be a problem.
CHAPTER SEVEN
I wasn’t alone for long. I’d barely reached the rack with all the swords, knives, and whatever else on it when the door opened up and people stared heading into the gymnasium. All of them were wearing black jumpsuits with silver trims, there must’ve been about nine or ten, and they all filed in slowly over the course of the next minute, one at a time, sometimes two at a time.
Some obvious cliques started to form as I watched, groups of two or three moving away from the main body of what I assumed were prospects, since they were all wearing the same jumpsuits, all with bronze trims. Then there were the stragglers who looked like they wanted an in with one of the groups—any of the groups. Then there were the loners; one, a girl with deep, plum hair and tattoos crawling up her neck, who stood on her own, watching the others with her arms folded in front of her chest, and another, a man who…
“Oh, you son of a bitch,” I said aloud, immediately catching everyone’s attention and hushing whatever conversations were taking place.
The man, who had been snaking his way around the small clusters of prospects, froze and stared at me from across the gym. “Well, well, well,” Abvat said, “What do we have here?”
Because they were within reach, I stretched an arm out toward the nearest rack of weapons and pulled a knife into my hand. “What the hell are you doing here?” I asked, aiming the tip of the knife at him.
“I could ask you the same question,” he snarled, “Though I’m guessing they did to you the same thing they did to me.”
“Oh, yeah? They snatch you out of your house in the middle of the night and drag you to butt-fuck nowhere to fight some beast?”
“No, instead they picked my unconscious body up from an apartment that wasn’t mine, and by the time I woke up, I was already tied up. They’d locked me in some dark, wet cage and told me to find a way out. I had to chew my own hand off to get out.” Abvat presented an already rapidly healing stump of a hand that made my stomach turn upside down.
“Ew…”
“That was your fault, you did that to me, and you’re gonna pay for it.”
I flipped the knife’s orientation in my hand so I was holding onto the tip, and wound it back over my shoulder. “We’ll see about that!” I hurled the knife at him and watched it sail through the air like a dart.
Abvat, who didn’t think I’d had it in me, hadn’t moved until the knife was already almost on him. His eyes widened, his face twisted with fear, and he went to move out of the knife’s path, but there was a bright flash of light so intense I had to turn my eyes away. I heard the knife clatter harmlessly across the floor, and only then did I dare to look. What I saw then took my breath away.
She has wings.
A woman stood in front of Abvat, her right wing tucked around her body in a defensive manner, the other spread out to full extension. They were gorgeous, huge, and so white they seemed to glow. The woman, whose skin was dark in contrast, was strikingly beautiful. Her black hair was pinned up and held in place with sharp, metal skewers, loose strands of it framing her feminine, but powerful facial features.
She turned around slowly, and as she did so, her wings retracted into her back until they disappeared entirely. Her black jumpsuit had a gold trim, but just above her left breast, embroidered into the fabric, there was an emblem I couldn’t quite identify from where I was standing. I was too far away.
“If anyone’s going to die on their first day,” this woman said, “It’s going to be because they’ve failed to internalize my teachings, and not because some prospect wanted to settle a score from the outside.”
“Holy… shi—”
“Is that understood?” she asked, looking directly at me and then shifting her gaze to Abvat; she had piercing, bright blue eyes you couldn’t stop yourself from falling into.
“Y-yes… it is.”
“That bitch tried to kill me,” Abvat grumbled.
“And next time I may let her. Who shies away from a knife like that? Now, the two of you, go and join the others.”
I did as she asked without questioning her, walking over to where the other prospects were gathering to form one group of attentive eyes and ears. I made sure not to be anywhere near Abvat, which saw me winding up next to the girl with the plum hair and tattoos. I glanced over at her neck, trying to get a bead on what kind of ink she was rocking, but she turned her head and looked at me.
“It’s Japanese,” the girl said. She had a husky voice, deep but soft. “Nice work out there.”
“That guy is a prick,” I said under my breath.”
“Looks like one. Naga, too. Can’t trust any of them. I’m Felice.”
“Seline. They pick you up last night, too?”
Felice shook her head. “A week ago.”
“A whole week?”
“It hasn’t been that bad. Full room and board and it’s all free. Hard to beat that.”
“Prospects, attention,” the winged woman said. “My name is Aaryn, I am a Prime Enforcer of the Obsidian Order, and I am also your instructor. Under my tutelage you will learn the basic skills required for you to pass your trials and become fully-fledged members of the Order, with all the benefits that offers. Listen to me, and not only will you pass your trials, you’ll start remembering pieces of your history, the parts that make you who you are. The better the result of your trials, the higher your position in the Order shall be. Screw around, and you’ll die. Pretty simple, wouldn’t you say?”
Her question was met with silence.
“Answer me,” she insisted.
To that she got a resounding yes, including one from me. I was in awe of her. Even just standing there, watching us, she looked resplendent, graceful, and dangerous. Then I caught Abvat staring at me from across the way, his too-wide-set, reflective eyes glaring. I wanted to walk over to him and wipe that look off his gaunt, reptilian face, but I knew that doing so was probably going to land me in some fresh hell I didn’t have time to deal with. Instead, I ignored him and focused on Aaryn.
“Now,” Aaryn continued, “Some of you have been with us for a few days, others a little longer—others still are about as fresh as they come. You have all, however, gotten through your first trial which means you have potential. It’s my job to bring that potential out of you and, hopefully, succeed where the first trial could not. I want to help you discover your true self. However; this isn’t a high-school gym club. We are training to become guardians and warriors, the situations you will be faced with are life and death, so it is only fitting that your training mirror those circumstances where possible. Do you understand so far?”
She received another resounding yes from the prospects assembled in front of her.
“Good. Now, in order to see your physical capabilities for myself, I will be pairing you off with another prospect. The two of you shall spar using whatever weapons and forms of protection feel most natural to you.”
Aaryn pointed at one prospect, then at another. The two of them were then asked to head over to the weapon rack and start choosing their instruments of war. As I watched them form up and start moving around the gym, I realized they were all different kinds of supernatural, some of which were easily recognizable than others.
The Naga, f
or example—there were three of them, including Abvat—were obviously Naga; each had black hair, olive skin, and those sharp, almond-shaped, reflective eyes. One of the tallest prospects present could’ve rivalled Crag for size, his muscles rippling and shifting as he moved around, but he wasn’t like Crag; his long, pointed ears gave him away as one of the Trolls, while Crag I had a feeling, was an Earth elemental. I didn’t know much about their race, but I’d met at least one other Earth elemental during my time in this world, and he’d been a douchebag too.
Many of the other prospects, including myself and Felice, looked way more human than the others did, but we all had some feature or other that identified us as different. For me it was my hair and my eyes. For Felice, it was just her eyes, though they were so bright and green, they almost seemed to glow from the inside. For one of the other guys whose name I hadn’t yet caught, it was the occasional static discharge his body gave off—a clap of electricity between his fingers, or curling around his shoulder, or sparking off the top of his head—that told me he was an air elemental.
What there were none of, though, were natives; I didn’t think the Order took those in, nor did I think there’d be any natives who wanted to join.
As the number of unpaired prospects thinned, and Abvat hadn’t been picked, I shut my eyes, crossed my fingers behind my back and prayed silently in my mind. Please pair me with him, please pair me with him, please pair me with him. If we got paired, I’d have a chance to give him a serious beat-down in front of everyone else, and then find out if he really was the reason why Fate and I had been picked up and brought here.
“Seline and Felice,” Aaryn said.
I opened my eyes and looked at the woman next to me. “Looks like that’s us,” Felice said, extending her hand.
I took it and shook. “I’ll try to go easy on you,” I said, bluffing as hard as anyone who had ever bluffed before.
Felice’s grin deepened. “Don’t. I won’t.”
She started walking over to the rack of armor and weaponry first, and I followed. Abvat, I saw, had been paired with a bubbly girl whose voice rose above the others in the room, not because she was loud, but because she was always talking. She was small and scrawny, and she reminded me of Fate a little bit. Fate. Was she okay? Had she gone into a fit? Was she deteriorating like she always did?
Fate had periods where she was fine, and then suddenly, her physical state would plummet. She’d hack and cough, she’d have trouble catching her breath, then she’d be unable to even hold herself upright. When that happened, all she could do was rest, maybe sleep it off, though sometimes sleeping only made it worst. I could help her, my words had some kind of soothing power behind them, but I could only help with the pain and the discomfort, I could never make her better.
I really hoped she was okay, wherever she was.
“Hey,” Felice said, waving at me. She was holding a sword in one hand, a real-life longsword. “We gonna do this or what?”
“Yeah…” I walked over to the weapon rack and picked out a dagger. I held it in my hand, feeling the weight of it, switching it from hand to hand. Then I picked out a second dagger and held them both firmly in my hands. Something moved through me, then; a feeling, a memory, a rush of adrenaline, I couldn’t say, but it felt… right.
Felice arched one of her eyebrows at me, then shook her head and headed for a clear spot where the two of us could face off. Once the others had all been paired up—there were ten of us in total—Aaryn stepped into the center of the room and addressed the prospects.
“This will be a simple test of your physical skills,” she said, “You will go three rounds with your opponent, or until one of you delivers a fatal blow. I won’t lie to you and tell you there’s magic in place to prevent you from being killed, or that these weapons have been blunted for your safety. These weapons are real, and lethal. If you do receive a fatal blow, we will do our best to get you to the infirmary where our healers will try to keep you alive. Murder within the Black Fortress is forbidden, but death during training is part of life. Understood?”
“Yes,” I said, joining in with the others.
“Good. Now, commence.”
I turned my eyes on Felice. “You ever dueled someone before?” she asked.
“I live in Brooklyn,” I said, “I’ve been in plenty of fights.”
“Alright… show me what you’ve got.”
I nodded. Felice went into a defensive stance, moving her feet in such a way that it’d be difficult for me to get a blow in without her being able to counter. She had a longer reach than I did with that longsword, but I was going to be faster, more agile. The best thing I could do was to get in close so that I could hit her, but she’d have trouble hitting me.
I launched myself at her, dashing quickly into her threat range with one of my daggers thrusting toward her. She pulled the longsword up and was quickly able to deflect the blow, but by the time she managed to do that, I was already coming in with the second dagger, aimed directly at her midsection. Felice dodged out of the way of that strike, then she kept dodging and weaving around my strikes with incredible agility, almost like she could anticipate them, even if her sword was too heavy for her to be able to do much with it.
Her answer to that was a swift right hook to my jaw, which sent me staggering back and hurt like a mother— “Are you alright?” Felice asked, moving closer to check on me.
I spat blood. She’d busted my lip. “That was a good move,” I said. “Your point. Let’s go again.”
“You sure about that?”
I readied my stance, daggers poised. “Yeah, I’m sure.”
Felice grinned. “Alright, then. Come at me again.”
“I don’t want to hurt you…”
“Just come at me, already.”
I dashed toward Felice, making it look like I was going to thrust with my right hand like I’d done the last time, but instead I twirled to the left and struck with my left hand, catching her by surprise and cutting a line of red into her bicep. Felice stared at the blood, touched the wound with two fingers, and winced.
“Shit, are you okay?” I asked.
Her grin became a smile. “Looks like you can fight after all.”
She launched herself at me, her sword moving much faster than I thought possible. It took all I had to keep the edge of that blade from finding my skin, but I was doing it, ducking and weaving, blocking her attacks with my daggers like it was something I’d been born to do. I’d been in fights before, but they were usually quick fights with the handsy guy on the train, or the handsy guy at the bar, or the homeless guy who likes to spit at people that walk by him; I’d never been in a swordfight before.
At least, not in this world.
Aaryn hadn’t been kidding about the lethality of this combat training. One guy had been stabbed right through the abdomen and had bled all over the gymnasium floor. Another guy got hit in the face with a shield and a whole bunch of his teeth got knocked out and clattered to the floor like marbles. I’d never seen anything like it before, the brutality of it. I’d also never seen anything quite like the magic that followed.
A man and a woman rushed in after the first guy got stabbed. Between the two of them, they pinned him to the floor and turned him on his back. The woman then placed her hands around his stomach and started whispering to Batva, the Mother Who Heals; a Goddess. A soft, green light radiated from the woman’s hands, light that started flowering in small, green streaks across the injured prospect’s body.
Not for the first time since I’d been introduced to the Order, I could feel real magic around me. This magic was warm and inviting, it made me think of a wide, lush forest and put a fresh, flowery scent in the air. When the magic was gone, the prospect was urged to sit upright. His blood was still on his hands, but the wound looked like it’d closed completely.
It was a similar thing with the other guy who’d gotten his teeth knocked out; they hadn’t even bothered to go looking for his teeth—they just gre
w back in a flash.
When it was clear we’d had enough, Aaryn called the first half of the day’s training to an end and invited us all to one of the dining halls for lunch. Abvat, I noticed, didn’t get close to me during the walk over to the dining hall or even during lunch, but his eyes were rarely anywhere else. He was watching me, analyzing me, maybe even trying to formulate a way to kill me. The worst part was, he seemed to have conscripted the other Naga prospects to his cause—they all looked like they wanted to take a bite out of me, and I didn’t even know them.
The banquet we were presented with, though, sent those worries to the back of my mind. The food was warm, perfectly cooked, and it all smelled divine. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was until I saw it, so I ate until I’d had enough and then allowed myself a second to drop my guard and relax for the first time since I’d gotten here.
“What’s the matter with that guy?” Felice asked, looking in Abvat’s direction. “He your boyfriend or something?”
“Gross, no,” I said, “Though I’m pretty sure he wants to do nasty things to my body, if that counts.”
“It doesn’t. Who is he? Why does he keep looking at you?”
“Abvat and I go way back.”
He perked up at the sound of his name. I waved at him, then flipped him middle finger. That’s right, I’m talking about you, prick.
“Way back? How?”
I lowered my voice. “I was the one who found him when he fell through the rift. He’d landed in the Hudson and despite the stormy weather, he’d managed to swim to land, but he had no idea where he was or who he was. He was too scared to climb the emergency stairs to get out of the river and onto dry land, so I went down, got him, and dragged him out. Then he punched me, stole my money, and ran off into the dark.”
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