Over the next few days, the tamers at camp sank into a routine: get up, go through training drills all morning and then spend the afternoons working on tactics and other classroom work. After day one, the home coaches joined the tamers for their drills. In spite of his less-than-calming presence, Jackson still appreciated Briggs being there to offer advice and critiques in a gruff, yet constructive, manner, even if he offered no easy way to get Jackson’s Djinn to stop fighting one another.
“It’s all about trust, kid,” Briggs said, seemingly growing frustrated with the question.
“I have trust,” Jackson said. “They have trust.”
“Trust in you, maybe,” Briggs said. “But trust in each other?”
Jackson opened his mouth to argue but quickly saw the logic. “So how do I get them to trust each other?”
“How the hell should I know?” Briggs said with a snort. “Ain’t no two Djinn alike. Time is the biggest factor. Were you not under such time pressure to get these two working, I would’ve recommended a slow introduction over the course of a month or two. You had less than two weeks, and your trying to shove them in each other’s faces from the get-go — while the Magglecaw was still injured, mind you — didn’t help much.”
“A lot of good that does me now,” Jackson said.
He stopped asking the question after the second day, and while he couldn’t think of a way to get the two Djinn to trust each other during his time at camp without losing significant points, he logged that away in the back of his mind.
The days of drills continued.
Nobody mentioned any scoring, but Jackson saw Coach Vanova entering things into her tablet before and after each tamer and their Djinn went through their drills. He did his best, hoping it would be enough to keep his name off of the cut list ever looming at the end of the week.
After the first day’s agility drills, the workouts became progressively more complex and varied. Instead of simple dodging, many of the courses and exercises involved multiple attributes at once. For example, one drill challenged the tamers to move a large square weight in any direction at least one yard. Appleby addressed the issue by commanding his Moldune to dig underneath the weight until it dropped into a hole in the ground.
Drills were also personalized for different Djinn body types. Water-Elemental Djinn worked in the indoor pools and surrounding lakes or whirlpools and current pools. Earth-Elemental Djinn worked in a specified section of camp that allowed them to work their Element without fear of destroying some important part of the building. Wind-Elemental Djinn had courses set up on poles high in the air, and Fire-Elemental Djinn exercised in large furnaces and other Elemental setups. All were designed to enhance and strengthen a Djinn’s Elemental Power — at least, that’s what they were told.
From what Jackson could tell, these drills didn’t do a whole lot to increase the Experience of their Djinn. How could these actually make them stronger if it doesn’t help them increase their levels?
Coach Vanova smiled at the question. “Now we’re thinking,” she said before turning to the rest of the group. “A good question from Mr. Hunt here. Given how little XP these drills seem to give compared to battles, why bother with any of these when we can go straight into leveling up?
“You may have grown up thinking that the base number of points your Djinn moves up in each core category when leveled up was random, but I assure you, it’s anything but random. If you spent a large chunk of your time in Level 5 working on Speed, when you make it to Level 6, your Speed will get a higher boost than it would have otherwise. In many ways, it’s actually better for us to work out the Djinn as much as possible prior to battles aimed at leveling them up. It increases their chances of higher stat boosts.”
Of course, Jackson thought. Briggs had actually told him something like that during their first training session all those months ago. He hadn’t thought to ask more about it, and in the months that followed, completely forgot. No wonder Asena’s base core stat boosts had inched up only slightly in the levels she gained after the invitational. He hadn’t worked hard enough on any specific core stat before leveling her up. Her Experience came mostly from general battles — battles against lesser Djinn.
“The goal here,” Coach Vanova continued, “is to try and get the most out of the levels gained here. Your Djinn are only low-levels once, and if you focus entirely on battles for Experience, you’ll end up with a sub-optimal partner.”
At the end of the day, all of the coaches from the different barracks gathered their tamers together for what was called The Challenge. Tamers teamed up with their barrack mates to compete against the other groups in all sorts of games and contests of skill.
Even just a few days in, Jackson became fast friends with many of the tamers in his barracks as a result of the challenges. He found it interesting that they all seemed driven by different things, and as different as those things were, they all wanted to end up in the same place. He tried not to think about the fact that many of them might not realize their dreams this season or maybe ever.
The first few days of camp passed by in a flash. In a brief moment of idle thought, Jackson realized he hadn’t felt nervous or anxious since they’d started drilling on day two. He didn’t have time to. Sure, there were the tense moments that came before each new challenge and exercise, but other than that, Jackson’s life operated on a strict schedule: early mornings, workouts, drills, lunch, more drills, tests, the evening challenge, dinner, rehab, and bed.
Usually tamers were given an hour of “free time” at night. Most used it to further study with their Djinn or do private work with their coaches. Jackson did both, but made sure to save enough time to call his grandma and Kay each night, even just to tell them hi before he went to sleep.
“It sounds like you’re doing great!” Kay said. Her holographic head beamed through the blue light of the projection. “See, things are starting to look up.”
“Maybe,” Jackson said. Tomorrow was Friday and he’d heard a rumor that the camp would be posting the new rankings list in the morning — a day earlier than everyone expected. Although he felt good about his Djinn’s performance throughout the last few days, he couldn’t banish the gnawing anxiety.
“Are Scrappy and Asena getting along any better?” Kay asked.
“Not really, but luckily, all the drills and exercises have been with only one Djinn. Briggs says it’s just going to take time. I usually get about an hour of free training each night to work on whatever he thinks I need.”
“Oh? How does that go?”
Jackson didn’t have the heart to tell Kay the he spent most of it keeping Scrappy from pecking Asena’s eyes out and Asena from toasting the obnoxious trickster Magglecaw with Fire Bark. Though, on the plus side, so far Jackson hadn’t suffered any serious injures, either, other than a few toasted fingers. Though, according to Briggs, these were the necessary growing pains Jackson had to go through as a tamer — especially since Scrappy was his first new Djinn.
“It’s easier to introduce new Djinn to each other once your starter realizes he or she isn’t the center of your universe,” Briggs had told Jackson earlier that week. He reminded Jackson of the various scars he had obtained from his Hurricanther in his early days. Hopefully Jackson’s injuries wouldn’t get that extreme.
“It’s…going,” Jackson answered Kay after a long beat. “I’d better turn in. Everyone says Fridays are a big day before we do half-workouts on the weekend.”
“Oh…goodnight,” Kay said. He gave her a sleepy smile and the projector winked out.
The next morning, he awoke to a half dozen blinking texts on his watch from Appleby and a couple of the others. They were all short and basically said the same thing: the rankings were posted.
Chapter Eighteen
Jackson made his way down to the commons with a tentative excitement. Part of him knew there was no way he could have been cut after his week’s performance but the other half refused to discount the possibility. He
chalked it up to the ghosts of his loss in the championship round of the McAllister Invitational and hurried down the stairs. Not one of the texts he’d received from his barrack-mates had included a shot of the ranking list.
On the bottom floor, Jackson passed by Akamu. He leaned against the counter eating a pear and showing no emotion, even with the morning news.
“Curious to see where your place is?” Akamu asked.
Jackson kept walking, but Akamu still got in another parting shot.
“It was nice seeing you around!”
Jackson did his best to ignore Akamu and twisted his way through the small crowd gathered around the posted ranking. For some reason, their rankings through the app had disappeared last night and were still absent this morning when the updates had been posted. Jackson guessed it was so everyone had to gather in the common room around the screen but it felt a bit cruel for those at the bottom of the list.
A few people were chatting and laughing — those who had obviously made the cut. Some had grim or vacant looks on their faces — were they the ones who’d been cut or had they just squeaked by?
When Jackson reached the board, he saw that all of the members of Barrack 4 were highlighted in yellow on the spreadsheet. Jackson scanned down. Fiona, Akamu, and Moto Rine were all near the top of the list, within the highest twenty-five or so tamers in the camp. Jackson kept scrolling and found Hayden and then himself, somewhere in the middle.
He looked again, hardly believing it was his name. Then he breathed a long sigh of relief. One more week.
Curiosity overcame him and Jackson continued down to find the rest of the barracks on the list. Tak Rito was in the last quarter, and at the very bottom, just two spots above the red “cut” line, he found Appleby’s name. He had the lowest score in their barrack but he’d still managed to stick around. Their whole group would be going back for another week which he internally felt should be considered some kind of victory.
Another screen next to the individual rankings showed a list of each barrack and their overall score — a combination of the average placing of the tamers in that barrack along with additional points for the few challenges they’d completed against one another so far.
Jackson felt only a small pleasure at seeing Barrack 4 in yellow holding the third place spot. Akamu, unsurprisingly enough, did the bare minimum whenever one of the group challenges took place. He either held his Djinn in reserve to ensure they didn’t take too much damage or would jump in at the last moment to snipe the knockouts from other team members. So far, Coach Vanova hadn’t mentioned much about it, leaving Jackson to wonder how much the teamwork even really mattered when it came to rankings. As far as he knew, none of the actual Bronze League competitions involved any regional teams. It made sense that the Granite Region wanted the best of the best, but working together seemed like a waste of time.
“Looks like we made it, huh?” Appleby’s voice made Jackson turn around from the screen. “Close call for me, though.”
“Hey, man, you made it,” Jackson said. “That’s all that counts. One week at a time, right?”
Appleby shrugged but didn’t seem very confident. “I guess. I just feel like I’m constantly on the ropes, you know?”
“Yeah.” Jackson knew exactly what he meant.
The camp staff had a way of making all of the tamers feel like they were always doing something wrong, no matter how well they performed. And, while Briggs busted Jackson’s butt as hard or harder than any other coach, the few interactions Jackson had seen between Fiona and Vance McAllister — her own mentor and region sponsor — almost made him feel thankful he hadn’t won the invitational. The tough training seemed to be working, though. Fiona and her Djinn battled with such intensity that Jackson had to question how bad he really wanted a rematch with her at the moment.
“Do you…do you think you could help me work on mental commands?” Appleby asked in a hesitant voice. “Now that the first week is over, they’ve told us we’re going to be doing individual challenges at the end of every week. The rumor is this one’s a maze — there’s no way I’m going to be able to get through it if I can’t communicate better with my Djinn.”
“I — I dunno what to say, man,” Jackson said. Sure, he seemed to have an edge over the other tamers in Barrack 4 with his telepathy — a fact that clearly rubbed Akamu, of all people, the wrong way — but it didn’t seem to be that big of a deal. He tried to change the subject. “We don’t even know for sure if that’s what it will be.”
Appleby nodded. “Check out your app, dude. They don’t give a ton of details but it’s pretty clear.”
Jackson dialed up Granite Region Camp on his watch and flicked through the projected screen until he found the challenge section that Appleby was talking about. Sure enough, it gave a brief description of the challenge and its parameters, but still left plenty of questions so that Jackson wasn’t entirely sure how or what they would be scored on.
The Week Two Challenge will be comprised of a maze held inside the Central Training Arena. Each tamer will release both his or her Djinn into a maze and then direct them to the finish line from a small observation tower in the center. The tamer and their Djinn will be timed on how quickly they can complete the maze as well as how well Djinn handle the various obstacles within the maze.
“That doesn’t mean you’re going to need to rely on mental commands,” Jackson said. “You could probably use your command whistle or —”
Appleby gave him a rare, hard look. “Dude. If you don’t want to help me, just say so.”
“No , no, it’s not that, I promise,” Jackson said. “I just…I don’t really feel qualified. I’m not even sure why I was able to develop it so quickly, and I must not be that great at it, otherwise I could keep Scrappy and Asena from fighting.”
Appleby’s shoulders sank and a defeated look crossed his face. “Okay, no worries.”
“Look,” Jackson said with a long sigh. “I just have no idea why I’m able to do any of this and don’t think it’ll be much help. I just…do it.” And he wasn’t lying. While he seemed to have innate ability to communicate with his Djinn, he felt he couldn’t say anything more than he already had. In fact, the first time he’d communicated telepathically with Asena, he hadn’t even realized he’d done it.
“I understand,” was all Appleby said in response.
The rest of the day actually seemed pretty routine to Jackson. With the threat of cuts six more days away again, he buckled down and focused on his training. Scrappy and Asena didn’t attack each other at first sight anymore. That was a start but didn’t mean they got along. Jackson had a sneaking suspicion that they only held off because they thought they could get a better cheap shot in later one when the other wasn’t paying attention.
Briggs cussed them out during their private session together, but Jackson had no idea how to fix the problem. Both Djinn seemed to want to please Jackson but only at the expense of the other. They didn’t understand that they didn’t need to compete for his attention and praise; that they’d get more of it if they could only work together. It made Jackson want to scream.
After their morning workout routine, the Barrack 4 tamers gathered in one of the smaller buildings surrounding the Central Arena. It was the first time Jackson had been in the facility. With the wooden floors, padded walls and dimmed lights, it reminded Jackson a bit of a yoga or meditation studio. Speakers whispered out the sounds of running water and soft string instruments. Coach Vanova left them at the door and sent the tamers in alone. The large open room looked deserted until a small, robed figure walked out from one of the side chambers.
Their teacher for the session was a little old man with a perfectly round bald head and small eyes that made Jackson wonder if he was sleepwalking across the room. He wore a plain tan robe and walked barefoot across the wooden studio floor.
“Welcome, tamers,” he said in a soft but commanding voice. “I am your instructor for the day, Mr. Sakosha. We will be learning to
expand the connection with our Djinn through meditation and telepathic energy.”
Jackson felt a weird tingling on the back of his neck at the man’s peaceful, soft spoken words. The sensation shattered when Akamu snorted a minute later. Several tamers — Fiona and Moto Rine included — shot him a dirty look. Akamu rolled his eyes but kept his mouth shut for once.
“Please, have a seat,” Mr. Sakosha gestured to the woven rush mats spread across the floor. “Choose any position you like — all that matters is that you are comfortable.”
The tamers shot skeptical glances at one another but took their places in short order. Jackson stifled a yawn. The dimmed lights, air conditioned climate, and peaceful atmosphere was putting him to sleep after an early morning and grueling workout regimen with his Djinn.
“Now,” Mr. Sakosha continued. “As you probably know, the Bond between Djinn and tamer is an essential part of success at any level. Today marks a new chapter in your journey as a tamer of Djinn. The basic principles we learn today will take a lifetime to understand and master. They will be a key stone in the foundation of your partnership with Djinn.”
It sounded pretty hokey to Jackson but he tried to pay attention. Things were bad enough between Scrappy and Asena, so he was willing to try anything.
“We will begin by focusing on one of your Djinn at a time,” Mr. Sakosha said. “Look down at your hand at the stone of your ring belonging to the Djinn you have been partnered with the longest. Now, take a deep breath. That’s it, now another. Now, close your eyes and focus on the stone of your Djinn ring.”
After his third deep breath, Jackson felt his body relax. He focused his attention on the flaming orange stone of Asena’s Djinn ring and pictured her in his mind. At first, he felt nothing. Unlike when he commanded Asena in battle, there was no connection there for him to grasp.
“Keep breathing and focusing,” Mr. Sakosha voice instructed above the trickle of water and string instruments. “Find your Djinn.”
Djinn Tamer - The Complete Bronze League Trilogy Page 39