by Bob Dattolo
My sigh fills the room as I collapse into my desk chair, staring at my line of grimoires. I’m up to 47 of them now, and they’re all protected out the ass. My perusal falters as someone fills the doorway. I left the door open on purpose, although I didn’t have any particular expectations. I guess I just wanted to feel like people walking by in the hallway might be coming in to see me.
Instead, it’s Eva. No Tiffany this time.
She blinks slowly at me as she moves away from the open door and grabs normal clothes. I really expected her to close the door or go into the bathroom to change, but she shocks me by doing it without doing either. Not that she’s in front of the door or anything, I’m just still shocked since she’s normally not that brazen.
She finished changing and dropped into her desk chair and rocked back and forth slowly as she studied me. That lasted a solid five minutes as I listened to conversations taking place in other rooms. Nothing too interesting happening.
When she spoke, I really wasn’t expecting it, “You have no idea where the rumors come from, do you.” It wasn’t a question.
“Not a fucking clue.”
She blinked slowly at my response, “These things have been happening since last year?”
“Yup.”
“For how long last year?”
“Umm,” I thought through everything, “I didn’t join the class until like two months before the trial, so…shoot, maybe a month or so later? Prior to that I think it was mainly normal rumors about me because I’m a freak and had a challenge my first day and had the gym teacher die like four days later.”
She shook her head and leaned back, “Is it the same person spreading them?”
“At a guess, yeah? Why do you ask? Do you know who’s doing it?”
“No. No clue. If it was happening last year, then it has to be someone that was there last year.”
“Right. And as far as I can guess? I’d put money on them being a mage and not a dragon.”
“Umm…huh, okay, that makes the numbers drop.”
“It does. Just too many people to easily pick through.”
She shrugged, “You ever think about corralling them and asking them?”
Huh? “What do you mean?”
She spread her hands, “It’s easy. You can smell a lie. What if you went up to each person that was here last year and asked them some questions?”
“That…that might be possible? Assuming they even answer me? They may not.”
“True. Very true.”
“What made you bring that up? You, Tiffany, and Brody haven’t exactly been chummy with me.”
She didn’t answer at first, “It’s…I’ve…” more silence, “I’ve been watching you. We’ve been watching you. And everyone else.” She looked back towards the open door, “When we were forced back here, none of us knew what to do or think. To us, this was a fucking disaster waiting to happen. Some of us haven’t lived in the states for most of our lives, so being forced here with a class that we knew was fucking torn apart in year one? We all knew, we were positive, that we were being set up to die.”
“And now?”
She shrugged, “Well, it’s Sorrowfeld Academy, right? We were being set up to die, but so are all of us. It hasn’t turned out like most of us expected. Yeah, we don’t have a massive amount of integration between the groups, but there’s more than I ever would have guessed. Just look at us connecting with Brody. Or any of the other groups that aren’t all one school.”
“Point. I’m not sure I can easily think of any group of three or more that doesn’t have someone from a different school.”
“Exactly.” She rocked forward, then leaned back again, “We’ve made it so far through this year. Way longer than I ever would have anticipated. I expected challenges galore. Deaths by the…well, dozens, honestly. I thought that first week was going to be a fucking bloodbath. Completely and utterly.”
“What do you think stopped it?”
She tilted her head and gave me a look, “You did.”
“What now? How did I do that?”
Another look, “You’re something else. I swear, if I didn’t see you in action, I’d totally be trying to make you my bitch. Most of us would. We’ve said it before, you come off as…not submissive, but almost. Not a pushover, but almost. You don’t exude power and strength until you do. And when you do, it’s like a fucking reactor going into meltdown. From what I’ve seen, and others commented on, what stopped the challenges and deaths was watching you kill shifted dragons like it was nothing.”
She sighed again and studied me for like a minute, “You left the room and gave me time with Tiffany. Then we heard the thumps and roars and went out there. Three massive as hell dragons and little old you. You walked out there like you were queen of the fucking world and gave them shit.” A tiny smile formed, “The whole thing about learning their lines and monologuing? It was hilarious at the same time it was terrifying. Most of us thought you were dead. I’ve only met a few people that didn’t think you were gonna be dead from that. And then…that fucking water dragon hit you with his breath. It shoulda killed you. Maybe not instantly, but in seconds. Instead, you popped out of it and killed that fucking dragon so fast. Then tore apart the other two.”
More silence for a bit. “That made us sit back and really think about things. Not just towards you, but others.” She flexed her hands and flared power, pulling orbs of water in that she began juggling, sending the balls high into the air. Something about that hit me hard, I just couldn’t quite place it. She continued that for a bit before letting them go into an orbit around her. “It made people really think about what they might be doing. If someone that comes across like you can be that devastating, what about others? Maybe that person that seems like a pushover isn’t as easy as we think?” She shrugged, “We had plenty of challenges and deaths last year. Most of the fights went pretty much exactly the way I would have thought that they would. Granted, some didn’t, but most of them? Yup. You fucking them up made us really think about the possibilities. No one wants to walk into a fight that they’re gonna lose. We may be raised to be vicious dicks to everyone, but we’re also raised to look out for ourselves. And walking into something that isn’t a certainty, or at least close, isn’t how we were brought up. So when I say you? It’s nearly a hundred percent you as far as I’ve seen and heard. You shocked the shit out of everyone to the point that looking at someone that you know you can destroy in a fight makes you wonder if they’ll pull out a win.”
That’s an interesting viewpoint. “I’d love to take credit for that. As much as I’m a unifier, that was pretty much luck.”
“True. Still, though. We expected so many dead from coming, yet it didn’t happen. So, like I said? We’ve been watching you. Listening to the rumors. They’re getting better, yet they’re losing people.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve probably heard, hmm, conservatively? 500 rumors about you. You’re right, there tend to be several about any one thing. All of them conflicting with the others yet covering all of the bases. You’ve managed to skirt some of them by doing something completely unexpected, but it’s impossible most of the time.”
“I’ve sort of stopped trying to figure them out. People that are dead set against me don’t care about the truth.”
“True. Like I was saying, though, the rumors are getting better, yet people have had a year of watching you. Listening to things you’ve said. Yeah, you don’t say a lot and barely speak to anyone in a given day that anyone has seen, but you’ve said plenty that sticks with people. How you haven’t been the aggressor. How you only seem to fight when it comes down to people trying to dominate you. Hell, you let that kid go without draining him. Sure, you took off a leg, which was brutal as fuck to watch, but you didn’t do at all what the rumors said you’d do. So, yeah, people are starting to connect the dots. Since we are where we are, no one really thinks you have no plans to kill anyone. That’s just a given. I think most d
on’t think you’re planning wholesale slaughter, though.”
“Oh, huh, so things are looking up?”
“Maybe?”
“What about you three? You’re currently leading the hate-Maddie group in my eyes.”
Her eyes changed a little and her hair lit up as a spell triggered. I felt it and let it go without a fight, feeling the silence spell wrap around us, “We’ve continued being antagonistic, but you had to have noticed that it’s been…weak, maybe?”
“Umm, yeah? It seemed like you were sorta calling it in. Like it had become a habit.”
“Right. Exactly. People see and hear what they want to see and hear, and sometimes you need to feed them something that is normal. While we’re not friends and we’re kinda nervous about you, we’re not out for blood.”
“So no throat-stabbing knife in my sleep?”
She grimaced, “Yeah, that wasn’t a great plan. At all. I totally didn’t think through how that’d be a challenge and you could have killed us both. Thank you for not doing that.”
“You’re welcome. Still, though, no stabbing?”
“I threw the knife away.” She smelled completely honest.
“Did you buy a new one, though?”
She smiled at my question, which was sort of the intent, “I didn’t buy another weapon to go after you with.” More honesty. “Anyway, we’ve been keeping things up because it’s what people expect. We’ve been trying to nail down where the rumors are coming from. Look for ally groups. Things like that.”
“You find anyone yet?”
“Not really, no. We hadn’t quite narrowed things down to just mages from last year, so that might help.” She looked back towards the door, “Sometimes…sometimes I just wish we didn’t have to go to a place like this.”
More honesty from her? This is a nice trend, “I honestly don’t get it. I understand the desire to hold down on the powerful people coming out of here, but damn, we set our kids up to be slaughtered without a care in the world. I’ve heard from quite a few people where they expect their parents to kill them even if they make it through all three years and then don’t test high enough in the end. That’s fucked to me.”
“It’s part of our world. As sucky as that is to say, it is.” She waved and the water flew into the bathroom and sloshed into the sinks. She flexed her massive hands again and looked at them, turning them over a few times. “I remember coming into my power. Growing up was so cool. I think I mentioned it before, but my family is powerful. Very powerful. The extended family is powerful as hell. Some of them hold huge amounts of land and ocean. It’s just crazy. I grew up surrounded by luxury. Everything I could ever want. Except parents that I felt really loved me.” She looked up and focused on me, “They said they did. They played the role, you know? Gifts. Hugs. Time with them. Money. We were a family. Yet I always knew that in the back of my head, if I didn’t test high enough, I wouldn’t be their daughter any longer. I wouldn’t be a family member.”
“Would they kill you?”
“Depends on when it happened, you know? They never quite came out and said it, but I’m pretty sure that’s because I popped with a crazy amount of power.” More hand flexing, “I’m not quite at the top when it comes to water mages, but I’m…probably above 90 percent. Higher than my parents are. My aunt and uncle are higher, but I think there’s only one other in the family higher than that. The implied threats never came once they learned that I was way, way up there. I had better still test well, but they already know where I should fit. And yet? And yet I still grew up in utter terror of things going wrong.”
Her eyes darted back and forth between mine, “We had a room in our house that had family things in it. Heirlooms. Collections. Things like that. Paintings. One section had these black paintings and sets of mortmagi. I hated that part of the room. Fucking hated that.”
Something triggered in my head and I pictured a room exactly like that. Huh, I guess there really is nothing to connect back to my family with those memories. “We had something like that too.”
She focused again, “You did? Really?”
“Yeah.”
“You can, umm, you can remember that?”
“Yeah? The spell is fucked. The stricken spell? It’s…wow, I’m not sure I can really explain what it’s like to have it hit you. It’s fucking terrifying. They’d already pounded the fucking things into my face when the spell really started tearing me apart. I was actively thinking about my room when it wiped most of it out. I was crying and begging my mom not to do it and telling her that I couldn’t picture my dad any longer. I literally said my name and begged them not to take it from me and between one breath and the next, it was torn from my brain. I lost so freaking much. I can’t even tell what all I lost. Yet anything that connects me back to my family or who I was? Gone. I can remember pieces of our house, but not the whole thing. Not where we lived. No images out of the windows. Nothing about schooling. I remember pieces of my room. Pieces of the house. I remember a room like that. I can’t see most of it, but there’s a portion of the room that had paintings painted solid black. And a set of mortmagi. I used to have nightmares about those freaking things when I’d see them. Had I known they would have been used on me I probably would have preferred death. Granted, where I am now is pretty good, but breaking free was a fluke. If my only option was to have them in and stay like that? I can see why so many stricken kill themselves.”
Shared silence. “Then you know what I’m talking about. Every time I saw that section growing up, it’d mean days of problems sleeping. I’d have nightmares about being induced and something going wrong and becoming a stricken. Thank God that didn’t happen, yet it still changed things in me. Colored things. I don’t mean to have a reaction when I see you or hear your name, but I do. I lived in fear of it, yet it never happened. I’ve known of others that it happened to, but out of sight out of mind, you know? Coming here and meeting you? Knowing it happened to you? I can barely stop the instant reaction that you deserved it. That I’m better than you because it never happened. I’m also powerful. Huge in comparison to you. If we were normal humans, I’d put every dollar on me winning in a fight with you. If you were a normal mage, I’d do the same. Heck, if you were a normal dragon? If you were really how you come across? I’d probably put me winning like…90 percent of the time. Yet you’re not. You’re a fucking beast in a small package that triggers me on nearly every level.”
“And yet you’re not coming after me? Trying for a challenge?”
“I’m not. We’re not. Your fights were eye opening; they really were. It’s helped me get past the initial reaction. And, frankly, it makes me question our world. Just a little.”
“In what way?”
More looking at my eyes. My scars. “Stricken. What that means. Why we do it. I knew that was a possibility for me. I was 11 when I had my inducement ceremony. I’ve heard of two people disappearing in my life up to that point. Two of them. We think one actually died and they never found the body, we just can’t be sure.”
“The other?”
She met my eyes again, “Stricken. As much as I cried at the idea of mortmagi being used, when I made it through without that happening to me? It added to that superiority complex.”
“Sorry for messing up your worldview.”
“It’s all good. If we’re not dead, we can learn.”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to focus on. At least a little.”
She tilted her head, “You sound off. What’s up?”
The honesty and earnestness is really getting to me. She hasn’t been antagonistic even once, which is a total record. “It’s just this. Everything. The day has been weird. Weird on top of weird. Months of it. The rumors are getting to me. Being alone is getting to me. The fact that we’re like a month from the trial is getting to me. I’d love to walk into this fucking thing with a wall of allies and then we all make it out safe. I’m just not expecting people to do it.”
“You seem s
hocked by that?”
“I am. At least a little. I swear there’s something broken in me, because I don’t think that way. Maybe it’s because I didn’t live this life from 9 to 18, so that really could be it. I may have missed the formative years that really nail that crap in good. Either way, though, to me an ally is someone that you support. If they get hurt, you help them heal. Get better. Carry them if you have to. They’re not a sippy cup to be drained. Hearing last year that people couldn’t call an ally if they got hurt because it’d mean they’d be killed was just appalling to me.”
She grunted, “We’ve heard that you really did get half of your class through the last challenge?”
“Yeah. They told you?”
“Yeah. We heard it a few times and kept asking. None of us could really believe it.”
“Yeah. Like I said? I’m a unifier at heart. We’re all stronger if we all work together. So many of us dead, and I just don’t think the vast majority of it was needed. Outright fights. We had one kid that kept arguing with us about not coming any closer and the challenge killed him because he didn’t do it in enough time. We told him repeatedly just to get through the fucking challenge, but nope, he thought we were gonna cave in his skull or something.”
“We saw that too. As for you with the last one? It’s kinda eye opening, it really is. None of us believed it in the slightest until it was told to us by others as well. You risked your life to save kids that, as far as we’ve heard, pretty much hated you. Maybe not that bad, but pretty freaking close.”
“I did.”
“You even got Levi through?”
“I did. And Ryan. I threw Ryan across and then had to get Levi and do the same to him.”
“No words for that. None.” She shook her head, “It’s things like that that run through my head when I hear the rumors about you collecting the weakest and killing them. If I heard the same thing about Cleo, I’d assume it was real. Because I’d assume a rumor like that about me was real. Just like we did with you. Except everything we’ve seen and heard contradicts the living hell out of everything. It really does. Just like the rest of you. You’re weak yet powerful as hell. Small, yet you cast a gigantic shadow. It’s totally believable that you’d harvest us like wheat if you could, yet you went out of your way to not do that last year. Hell, you don’t even fight back when people say mean things about you!”