by Heath Pfaff
“I’m sorry, Lillin. I told you that you wouldn’t like what you saw.” Ghoul said, coming forward. He plucked the knife from my hand. “I can’t let you ruin my work. It is as much a part of me as your rage is a part of you. If you destroy what I’ve created, you destroy me. I understand why you want that, but I can’t let you do it.”
“Please, choose someone else, Ghoul.” I begged him, though it was hard to talk.
“No, it has to be one of the best, but one who has fallen. It had to be her.” He said.
Rage rippled through me and I screamed and pressed back against the Will holding me to the ground. My arms shook, my chest heaved, and for a moment I thought I might break free, and then the crushing force around me increased and I was pressed harder to the floor.
Ghoul laughed, a dark, empty sound. “That was impressive. I’ve never felt a student push that hard before the water test. Now I see why we’re here today. I think we just woke you up. It makes sense. I didn’t understand until just then. “ His laughter died away. “It’s over, Lillin. You can’t do anything here. This wasn’t about you having a chance to fix this. You just needed to see it. I’m taking you back now.”
I moved against my own will, standing up stiffly and walking toward the door, my legs unable to control themselves at all. From behind me I thought I heard some kind of silent scream for help, but perhaps it was just my imagination. It was impossible to say.
“I’m going to tell everyone.” I said, voice dark and angry as tears streamed down my face.
“You can. I won’t stop you, but the Wardens know what I do. You’ll just draw attention to yourself, and it will probably end in your expulsion from the program. We both know what that means for you. You knew that this would be terrible, Lillin. You invited this into your life, and now you’ll live with it. You’ll live with it as I do. It will change you. It already has changed you. The question is, what will you do with the changes that have been made here?”
I couldn’t imagine this change being anything but negative. The hurt inside of me was so profound that I wanted to crumple up and die. I surged against the hold Ghoul held over me, and there were small moments where I thought I might even break his grip, but in the end there was nothing I could do. He walked me back out of the pit and back through the halls in a strange way. We didn't take the same route we had coming in, and the halls all seemed different.
Finally he released me and I rounded on him. “You’re a monster!” I growled the words, fists shaking at my sides.
“Yes, I am.” He answered calmly. “So are you. We all are. This is what it means to be a Warden. You can’t look at the world in two colors anymore. There isn't a wrong and right side to things. Sometimes bad things are done for good purposes. No, sometimes bad things are done for our purposes, I won’t be so naive to call them “good” and I recommend you don’t either. I think I will see you again, Lillin. Don’t die in the meantime.” With that he turned and walked away. I thought about following him, but knew it would do me no good. He could pin me with his Will at any moment and vanish.
In a rush of stupidity I waited for a bit and then attempted to sneak my way back into his hidden catacombs, but the halls worked against me. It seemed no matter which way I went I ended up back at the place he’d deposited me. Finally, dejected and angry, I returned to my rooms. My roommate looked relieved when I came in.
“I thought you were dead.” He said with a sigh.
“No, not dead, but I would be better off that way.” I snapped an acidic reply before slumping into bed.
Sleep didn’t come for me that night. Instead, I was haunted by the memories of one of my few friends split to pieces and screaming. In my mind she never stopped screaming, and her eyes never stopped pleading for me to release her, even if it meant releasing her to death. Ori. I wouldn’t forget her.
Chapter 6
City of Chaos
6.1
People came and went. Death was just a part of the daily game we played, and it was hard to remember who had been with me a long time, and who had been with me only a short time. My roommate never returned from training one day, and he was replaced by an angry girl who was struggling against the world. She was there for a while, but then she was cast out of the program when she was caught fucking another student in his room.
After that there was another male, and then a female after him. My group for group sessions changed as well. Clover was severely injured and taken from the program. The dark clerics could heal the wounds, but not the mental trauma that came with them. Clover was ruined. Unnya failed out at some point, and I guessed it was intentional since she was quite intelligent and not weak. That left just Kavack and I. He refused to fail. He was clever enough to make it through the tests, even if just barely, and he was violent and strong willed enough to keep pushing through the physical challenges. I hated him. His cruelty was exceptional. He relished hurting other people, and he never hesitated to take a moment to exert dominance over anyone he encountered.
The exception, of course, was me. Ghoul had been right. What I’d seen in the catacombs had changed me. It seemed that I never felt anything but anger anymore. I couldn’t find time to smile or enjoy myself. I fought anyone and everyone who challenged me, and that meant Kavack as well. He was strong. Very strong, and his training was only making him more so, but every chance I had, I beat him down. He loved to challenge me. Every single group event became a battle between us, and each time I forced him down again, violently. This led to us being disqualified twice and forced into double punishments. We also began to lose more events than we won. We were never last, but it wasn’t good either.
My scores had fallen off in the educational portion of the course. I didn’t feel like studying for their tests anymore. I did the minimum I had to and scraped by. I knew it was a dangerous game to play, but I also knew that what they were telling me, at least parts of it, was little more than lies. I didn’t want to become vested in lies. I would find my own truths once I became a Warden. I would find those truths, and I would use them to change this place, to erase the nightmares that happened here.
I believed that to be my purpose. Something had brought me to the pit to see what Ghoul was doing, and what other purpose could there be for that? I felt like an arrow that had been loosed at a target, and that target was the Wardens. I would become one, and then I would destroy them from the inside.
It was this determination that carried me through my third year. Even with all the trouble Kavack gave me, I kept going forward. Part of it might have been specifically because of the trouble he gave me. Darkness grew in me, an anger that had no bounds. They’d stripped me of friends and companions, so anger was all I had to fuel me when things grew harder.
Just as I was strongly considering killing Kavack secretly during one of our group excursions, my third year ended and I was told to gather my things and report to the public square. As Ori had done long before, I gathered my few belongings, some clothing and some boots, and headed to the square. Everyone left from the three years of training I’d undergone was there. There were much less of us remaining then there had been to begin. It was difficult to count since I'd never seen us all together in one place like this. I guessed there was maybe a third, if that.
There was a single Warden in the square. He stood atop a small wooden box, and as the last of us arrived he raised his hands and a hush fell over us. I could feel the press of his Will, the urging to silence, but it was just a light touch on me. Others looked as though their mouths had been forcefully gripped shut. The Will of others had been greatly diminished for me since the change I’d undergone in the catacombs. I supposed I should thank Ghoul for that if I ever saw him again, but I couldn’t bring myself to feel grateful for anything to do with him.
“I am Warden Shaw. Today I will divide those of you with true Will potential from the rest of you. Congratulations on completing the first part of the Warden program. For every ten of you that came into the program, le
ss than three of your remain. To get here you had to be better than seven others vying for these positions. You should take strength and pride from that.” He hopped down from the box and began to walk around our group, his voice still loud as he spoke.
“I said that I will divide you, but the truth is that you will divide yourselves. From here on out, failure is death. You cannot quit or fail from the program without losing your life. That’s what it means to go forward. You will succeed or you will die, and most of you will die. At the most maybe ten of you will make it through the second phase of training, and there are currently 297 of you in this square.” He let those words hang in the air for a while. The silence was staggering.
“The good news is that you don’t have to go onto the next part of the Warden training. For many of you, this is the end. You can leave. You’ll be handed a certificate stating that you completed the first segment of Warden’s training, and you’ll walk out of here and into an easy, comfortable, well-paying position with the private guard, or some other private military position of your choice. You’ll do well for yourself, and it will be easy for you to provide for any family that you wish to have.” Again, he paused to let those words sink in. He didn’t talk about the deadies. We had no choice. We had to go on. We couldn’t just leave, not like the others.
“This is how you are separated. Those of you too weak to go on will leave now, and those of you with true Will are going to go forward. Most of you won’t make it to the end of training, but you will have proven that you had the Will to at least make the effort. Things are harder from here on out. The next year of your life is going to be the worst year of your life, at least until it kills you.” His voice was cold and dark, deadly serious. “So, without further time wasting, make your choices. Those staying, stand here, and those leaving may go to the front gate now.”
It was immediately clear that those who’d chosen to leave, at least most of them, had made that choice long ago. The group split quickly, most of us headed for the front gate. It was a silent affair. No one said a word. There was no taunting those leaving. I wasn’t sure what the others were thinking, but I was envious of those who could walk away from it. I wished I could.
When the crowds had cleared, there were just under a hundred of us left. I saw Zark not far from me, but after searching all the faces I could see that he was the only other skull tattooed person in the crowd. We’d certainly dwindled, though there hadn’t been that many of us to begin.
On impulse I approached Zarkov. He turned as he heard me coming and he smiled. “Lil, good to see you’re still here. I’d been hearing rumors that your team fell apart.”
I growled but nodded. “They placed me with a piece of shit who got off on cruelty and felt like he needed to be stronger than me. I wouldn’t let him.” I ran a hand back over my shaved head and sighed. “Wouldn’t it be nice to be walking out that gate now?” I asked.
Zark nodded. “Yeah, I’m as done with this place as possible. I suppose we’re in it until we’re dead though. Have you heard anything about Ori? I know she made it through to the next part of training. It’s supposed to be two years, right?”
I froze a bit, nodding slowly. I couldn’t tell him much. I mean, technically I could tell him everything, but what would it accomplish? He didn't need to know, and I knew he’d be better off not knowing. Knowing she was gone would be hard enough. He didn’t need to know that she would now be one of the academy’s silent guardians.
“She didn’t make it.” I said quietly.
His expression fell and he shook his head. “I always thought if any of us was going to make it, it would be her. Do you know how she died?” The last question was hard to answer.
I looked away, unable to meet his eyes. I hoped he took it for an emotional response. “She . . . it wasn’t good. From what I’ve heard it was very bad.” I managed to utter, unable to go any further into it.
Zarkov put a hand on my shoulder and squeezed it. Things fell silent between us then, no doubt because he was thinking about his lost friend, and I was doing my best to forget what I’d seen beneath the school again. It was difficult to do. Anytime I remembered those passageways the visions I’d seen there would haunt me for a while, a ghost that lived in my head and came randomly to terrorize me.
The public square was clear now except for those of us who’d stayed, and the Warden again stood atop his box. “Up until this point we’ve told you there would be two years more of training before you became Wardens, but that isn’t true. There is one more year. I told you the next year of your lives will be the hardest, and I meant it. By the end of this next year those of you who are strong enough of Will shall become Wardens, and the rest of you will die. The training won’t be done at that point, but you’ll know whether you’re a Warden or not. It’s going to be a struggle. Those of you who chose to stay and face this struggle are brave. You should be proud of yourselves. If you don’t make it the rest of the way, your families will be compensated. That has always been our way. Tonight, once you’re in your new rooms, you’ll be given paper and pen to write to your families. The letters will only be delivered in the event of your deaths. Think carefully about what you’ll tell them. No details of the training are allowed. We’ll be reading these before they’re sent to your families, so don’t try to sneak information out.”
He hopped off the box and gestured for us to follow him. “Come along. I’ll show you to your new rooms.”
I wasn’t sure who I would write. Who would care what had happened to me? Who would want to know how I was doing, and what would I tell them? Thinking about it made me sad. It made me miss what I had left behind, perhaps for the first time in years. I told myself I wouldn’t bother writing a letter at all, but some small part of me wouldn’t let go of the idea.
We didn’t exit the courtyard through the door we’d always taken before. We were lead to a smaller door, one that looked like it might lead to a storage closet or something equally unimportant. It was short, some of the taller of us had to duck through it, and not that wide, but as we passed through it we entered into a wide hallway. The Warden stayed behind and as the last of us passed into this new area, he closed the door and locked it behind us.
“None of you will go back through that door unless you do it as full Wardens.” He said as he turned a key in the lock. It occurred to me that this was intentionally symbolic more than anything else. If the Wardens really wanted to lock a door to stop us from going through it, they could use an internal lock that could only be activated by Will. I knew that because I’d seen such doors. This was just a show, and it seemed to be working on the others. I could see the determination setting in on their faces alongside the realization of what they’d just committed themselves to.
I thought for many of them this was the exact moment that they realized that they were committed to something that would drive them to either their death or completion of the course. There was no turning back. For Zark and I, there had never been any turning back. This was just the next step in the process.
The Warden moved to the front of our group again and led us onward until we reached a section of halls. He broke us up into groups of about twenty and sent us down the halls to find rooms. They were all the same, so any one was as good as any other. We each had our own, though. There was no sharing at this point. I opened the door onto my own space and took a step in. There was one small bed in the room and a tiny desk with no chair. The room was just larger than the bed. The desk was pressed into the corner next to the bed, looking almost like a nightstand more than a desk. I had seen larger closets before, but it didn’t really matter. I would probably only be sleeping in there, nothing else, so it wasn’t as though the size was important. At least it was private. I could think without being bothered, and I hadn’t had this much privacy in a long time.
Back out in the hall the Warden was waiting for us. “I’m taking you to your first training exercise. When you return, your paper and quill will be in your rooms so
you can write to whoever you choose.”
He was moving again then, and we followed after him. He led us down the hall and out past an area he identified as the shower room, and then the cafeteria. After that we reached a door and I felt a pulse of Will push out from him before he opened it. I could sense the strange vibration of a magical doorway before he even did so. It seemed to come from the stone just beneath the door, and to rise up through the frame. The door opened onto an outside area. I could smell the water before I saw it, but once I was through I could hear the lapping of the waves and I found myself in front of the largest expanse of water I’d ever seen before. It seemed to stretch forever.
Warden Shaw led us up the beach and then stopped. “Undress. Leave your clothing here.” He commanded.
We all did as we were told. We were far enough into this process that nudity meant nothing to us. We undressed and then Shaw directed us forward. Now that we were closer I could see that there were poles sticking up out of the ocean. There had to be nearly a couple hundred of them. Each one was about two large hand spans around.