Crash Courses

The axe bit into the target, and stuck. Rusty tugged hard to get it free, but it took a few seconds of wiggling, and he closed his eyes and tensed his shoulders.

CRACK! The padded stick came down on his back, and he yelped anyway.

“Too slow! You’re dead!” Jand roared. “Do it five more times and quicker!”

Rusty thought for a second, just a second, about whirling around and burying the axe in Jand’s head. It wasn’t the first time he’d thought that, but he knew even without looking to Roz, that was a horrible idea. And even if somehow he did kill her, then there’d just be another, probably angrier trainer.

And… well, all of this was kind of necessary. They were going to the front, tomorrow. They were going to help out, and even though nobody had told them what exactly they’d been doing, the classes had gotten harder, and a lot more intense.

Rusty focused on chopping and getting the axe out cleanly, even though his arms ached, and his breath was wheezing in his lungs like an old furnace rattling in the winter. And when he’d managed the smack and draw out five times in a row, he shot a look over at Gunther, saw the bigger kid hunched over, sweat pouring down his face and staining his white robes. Rusty figured he didn’t look much better, himself.

Down the way a bit, Ken and Alice were lunging forward and jabbing long spears into small straw targets. This was the third day they had been at it, and they had slashed today’s targets up pretty well, but it still wasn’t enough for Jand, who slapped Alice on the back with her padded club and told her “Faster!”

Alice sobbed. Ken shot a look at her, flinched as Jand raised her club, and doubled his pace. But in his frenzy, he missed the target a couple of times, and Jand thumped him, too. “Aim better!”

Then she looked back to Rusty, and said “Show me.”

He gave it the cleanest shot he had, and his back screamed as he used his whole weight to yank the axe out as soon as he was sure it couldn’t bite any farther, and to his great relief, she nodded. “Good enough. Sit down. Drink water. You too, big kid.”

Gunther and rusty staggered back to the buckets by the benches, and dipped the ceramic cups in, sipping it slow so it wouldn’t twist up their stomachs. Ken had made that mistake on the first day, and Jand had kicked him while he was barfing the water back up. Then she hadn’t let him drink any more until he’d done a full turn of the drills and exercises.

Reevian had taken one look when he’d come to pick them up and just quietly used his magic to restore what he could, then had a quiet word with Jand. Presumably it was to ease up juuuust a little on that.

That said, nobody wanted to try their brutal instructor again. Or give her any real excuse.

Eventually she let Ken and Alice stagger back and get their own water, and studied them as they gasped and recovered. She leaned on her padded club, and rolled her eyes. “Soft,” she said, finally. “But you aren’t soldiers. So it will have to do.”

Rusty focused on controlling his breathing as she spoke. Terathon had taught them that, as a way to help focus. He’d said that they had been breathing wrong, that it helped the chakra more if you went slow and measured, and pulled the air as far as you could down to your belly. Rusty couldn’t tell, but he did think that he was recovering better than he had on the first day Jand had put them through this particular hell.

Jand thumped the club on the floor, and all of them flinched. “So you might be wondering why spears and axes,” Jand said. “Why not swords? Two reasons. One is that swords are for heroes, and you’re not heroes yet You’re still sorting that out. Prove that you are worth all this fuss and the Tower Lord himself will open the armory to whichever one of you brats is the Chosen One. And two…”

She lifted her club, gestured at the training dummies that were shaped roughly like Grach. “These are the weapons that the enemy uses most. Occasionally you’ll see one with something like a big mace. None of you could handle anything like that, and the only way to defend against that is to DODGE!” Jand yelled the last word suddenly, and sneered as they all flinched and scrambled away.

“Good, now you’re getting it. So now you’re going to spar against each other, and try to defend against the different types of weapons.”

Rusty looked at his heavy axe, with the nicked iron blade. Then he looked to Gunther, and found the big guy’s eyes were just as wide as his own.

“No, not with those. Don’t want you killing each other off before you take the Dark Lord’s head,” Jand said. She strolled back to the racks, and pulled out more padded wooden weapons. “These are about the right shape, but lighter. Try not to take out each other’s eyes, Reevian says that they never come back right. All right. First round, same weapons on same weapons. Get your shit, get in those rope circles on the floor over there, and go to it. No running outside the circle.”

“So, uh…” Ken asked, as he drew out a pole with a padded ball on the end of it, “do we go to three hits, or first hit that we think would be lethal, or…”

Jand looked at him like he was the world’s biggest idiot. “Same rules as my bedmates, boy. You go until I tell you to stop.”

Gunther half-snorted, Alice looked disgusted, and Ken and Rusty shared a confused glance. But they didn’t have a chance to resolve their confusion, as Jand’s yell got them trotting to the circles.

Rusty eyed Gunther, as the big kid stepped over the rope. Gunther stared back, exhaustion showing in every move.

“Ma’am?” Alice asked, and Rusty winced at her tone. “Ma’am, please, we’re exhausted. How can we have a good fight when we got nothin’ left? We need a rest.”

Rusty half expected to hear the THUMP of Jand’s club descending on Alice’s back. But evidently their evil instructor was in a good mood today, because she spoke instead of beating up Alice.

“Tired is when you have to fight the hardest,” Jand said. “It’s easy to swing that weapon around when you’re fresh. But when you’re fucked up and hungry and thirsty and going without sleep, and there’s sixty satyrs about to jump your tanglebriar and ram spears so far up your ass that your brains leak out? That’s when you need to keep going. And I’m going to give you some practice with that BEFORE you hit the satyrs, or the grach, or whatever they throw at you, so ATTACK NOW YOU LITTLE ASSWIPES! MOVE!”

They fought as best they could. Rusty learned fast that they couldn’t get away with holding back, as Jand took her club to them whenever they tried to put on a show, or miss each other deliberately.

At first Gunther got him pretty good with a few quick swipes, the last one knocking him sprawling so hard that Jand stopped the fight to check if he’d broken his hip. But no, it was just a big, nasty bruise, and she made him hobble back and keep going. And when Gunther started to wear down, losing speed, his robes practically gray and dripping with sweat, Rusty managed to give him worse than he got. And when he managed to get inside Gunther’s reach and jab him hard right under the rib cage, the big kid toppled like a tree falling.

Rusty felt triumph then, until he looked down at Gunther’s beaten body, and then he reached down, offered a hand up… and froze, when he heard movement behind him.

But no club came, and as he looked back, he saw Jand quickly shift from a smile to a scowl. “You two! Enough! Go sit down,” she commanded.

Ken and Alice were already waiting for them. Alice was lying on the ground, staring up at the ceiling, and Ken was wobbling on his seat, hands trembling as he drank from a cup slowly, slowly, forcing himself to take his time.

Jand gave them three whole minutes. It wasn’t enough.

“All right,” she told them. “Switch off. Blonde guy with browner little guy. You with the girl,” she pointed at Rusty and Alice.

Alice gave him a despairing look from the floor.

“Ma’am?” Rusty asked. “I was raised not to hit women—”

Jand’s fist caught him high on the cheekbone and everything went blurry for a moment as his head hit the floor. He hadn’t even seen her move.

“You were raised stupid.” Jand said, glaring down at him. “You use your dick to swing an axe? You think we use our cunts to hold spears? No, boy. Everyone has hands. Weapons don’t care what you got down below.”

Shamed, Rusty rose, trembling. He was angry, and not just because she’d sucker punched him. He couldn’t articulate WHY he was angry, and Roz was silent.

Jand didn’t care. “I don’t know which grach are men and which are women, but they all die the same. Shillrats will tear out your hearts and eat them in front of you if they capture you, and the women will feast as well as the men. The dark lord’s got all of those and more, and he doesn’t care about whether they’re men or women. Now pick up that axe and hand that girl her ass, or she’ll beat you down and I’ll laugh while she does it.”

Alice was sitting up now, and Rusty could almost feel the anger rolling off her in waves. She shot him a look, grabbed her spear, and marched to the circle.

Rusty followed her, and the second they were inside she turned and tried to hit him in the face. He barely managed a block, and then they settled in, him trying to get inside her reach and blocking, and her trying to keep away and catch him square on with the padded ball that was the head of the spear. Occasionally she’d sweep it in short, stinging swings, and he moved with them as best he could, but they pounded on already bruised arms, and the pain was worse with each hit.

It wasn’t one-sided. There were times when he trapped her up against the curve of the circle and got a good hit or two in, and he felt bad whenever she’d scrunch up her face in pain, or grunt. But they both knew what would happen if they pulled their attacks.

And after what was only a few minutes but seemed like hours, Jand called a halt. “Enough. Time for the final test.”

Rusty backed up, held his out to guard just in case Alice hadn’t heard the call to stop. But she had, and they nodded, turned to look at their brute of an instructor.

She had used the time while they were flailing at each other to drag four of the grach-shaped training dummies over. One of the grach dummies was carved to have exaggerated hips, Rusty noticed.

“You. Brownish kid. This is your target.” she tapped the one with the hips. “That brown unbound wizard told me you’d need that to work. Whatever.”

“How do we fight them?” Gunther asked. “I mean, what do you want us to do? Show you how we hit them?”

“No. You had plenty of that during the second class,” Jand said, strolling back to a weapons rack, and retrieving a padded axe and a spear. “When I say go, each of you has to use your magic to kill one of the dummies while we pretend that a squad of grach are trying to kill you.”

“That’s easy enough,” Ken said. “What’s the catch?”

Jand twirled the spear in one hand, and pointed the axe with the other. “I’m pretending to be the squad of Grach. Go.”

And she launched herself at them.

Much later, Rusty would reflect back on this moment and realize that she had actually been pretty impressed at how far they’d come. That was the reason why this cruel and brutal woman had worn them out first, before she put them through this particular hell, was so that she stood a chance at stopping them.

But that was much later. Right now, all Rusty had time to do was scramble back and take a padded spear thrust on the shoulder rather than the sternum, and go ass-over teakettle as she charged past him, already moving on to the next target.

He struggled to get up, rose just in time to hear Jand yell “Close your eyes and you die, shorty!” and hear Ken squeal in pain.

Rusty hauled ass after her and tried to swing at her back, and her axe caught him in the side as she whirled around and danced away. It didn’t quite knock him over, but he knelt, wheezing, as she chased Alice and Gunther back, forcing them to go side by side. He shot a look back at the dummies and looked back just in time to parry the spear thrust before the padded ball smacked him in an already-blacked eye.

He backed off a few steps…

…then went and stood over Ken, axe up and guarding. “Get the dummy!” he hissed to Ken, as Jand turned her attention toward him…

…and Gunther tackled her from behind.

For a moment, she wobbled, and stumbled forward.

But Jand was solid. Her legs were like pillars, and her body was padded and sturdy, and she swept the shaft of the spear back one-handed, cracked Gunther’s arm and made him let go. Then she kicked backward with those heavy boots, and caught Gunther a glancing blow on the head. He went down, hard…

…as the dummy with hips snapped in half, as its “waist” shrunk to the point it was too thin to support its upper body.

Rusty saw her charging, tried to hold his ground, but she slammed into him full-bore, and he went flying. He felt something in his back give and screamed, as red-hot pain rushed up his spine.

When he came back to himself, Ken and Alice were standing in front of him. “Get yours! Get yours, Rusty!”

Rusty turned his head, stared at the dummy, and tried.

But the words wouldn’t come. He had nothing left. He was hurt, and exhausted, and done. And he just wanted to go home.

The seconds crawled by like minutes…

WHACK.

Alice gasped.

“You’ve killed him!” Ken blurted out.

“He’ll live. But his head will hurt like hell when he wakes, again, and he might be stupid for a while.” Jand said. “Stop. The test is done. You failed.”

And with a surge of anger, Rusty found something left, some shard of willpower, and the gray letters snapped into place to match the words he was focusing on.

“Hole that”, he whispered, staring at the dummy.

Create hole in mixed materials target dummy!

Committed chakra: 15/44

Cost: 3 chakra.

Remaining free chakra: 26/44

With a puff of straw, the dummy rocked on its base as an invisible force punched clean through it.

Then Rusty let his head fall to the floor, barely listening as Jand lectured. “What if blonde boy here was the Chosen One? What if you needed HIM to do something to the dark lord? You had a good idea, going to cover each over so you could get your target. But you lost the second you left me alone with one of you.”

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

From behind them, Rusty saw Alice and Ken lower their heads.

Jand sighed. “You got one of them. Two if I’m being generous. Listen closely. I wasn’t teaching you to kill. I wasn’t teaching you to fight well. What I taught you was how to deal with an enemy right in front of you, how to maybe stand a chance at surviving for more than a few seconds until somebody who’s been trained to kill them comes to save you or you can magic the shelldicks down. And I think you might manage that, if you keep practicing and the officers at the front use you correctly. But if you get a bad officer, or the fates fuck you over? You’re going to die. Practice hard when you can, because your life literally depends on it.”

Rusty closed his eyes. Everything hurt.

He heard the straps of Jand’s helmet jingle as she took it off. “Wait here until Reevian arrives to pick your asses up. I’ve got business to tend to.”

Heavy boots pounded the floor, as she strode away. And that was the last they saw of Jand.

*****

“We did fine,” Rusty told Alice. “That wasn’t a fair match. She’s probably killed like a million grachs. We’ve never killed anyone.”

Ken opened his mouth, then shut it again and shrugged. Gunther snorted. “Ken had to fight his way back from his rune trial.”

“Wait, what?” Rusty sat up, winced as his ribs creaked. Reevian had restored the worst of their injuries, but it had strained their bodies to do it. Still, that tingling ache in his muscles was nothing compared to his curiosity. “You didn’t say anything about that, Ken.”

“There wasn’t much to talk about,” Ken said. “I ran into some Grach on my way south, booked it out of there, and hid until night. Then I tried to sneak past them, but one of them saw me. So I had to, you know.” Ken’s eyes flicked downward. “It was pretty messy.”

Rusty wanted to ask more questions… but Ken’s voice had gone soft like Cyrus’ did, whenever he talked about the war. “Wow. Glad you’re okay,” he said instead. His mind went back to the training dummy that Ken had wrecked, and the way his magic had basically pinched it in half. It didn’t take a lot of imagination to visualize how “messy” that would have been.

“Well, that’s as it may be, but I’m starving,” Alice said. “Where are the mummers? They usually bring the oatmeal by now.”

Gunther’s stomach growled, almost on cue. Rusty chuckled, and looked around the great hall. It was empty, and that wasn’t usual at all. Oh, they’d been made to wait plenty of times before, but usually there were mummers cleaning up, or preparing the tables, or otherwise running errands through the wide and central room. Now there was a suspicious lack of activity.

“Man. I used to like oatmeal,” Ken sighed. “Now I never want to see it again. Shoot, I don’t even want to stock it again, and that’s a problem. Lots of middle aged folks go in big for their oatmeal. They grew up on it back in the depression, you know? It’s one of our big sellers.”

“Are you a farmer, too?” Rusty asked. They hadn’t talked much about where they’d come from. He got the sense this was because he was the last of the chosen one candidates to join, and he’d lost a few days getting over his fever while the others had more of a chance to talk. Yeah, he and Gunther had talked, but that was mainly patching things up after they punched things out.

“A farmer? Nah, no, daddy-o,” Ken said. “My old man’s a grocer. And since my brother passed, I’m supposed to inherit the store. So it’s up every day bright and early, and go meet the truck drivers for the shipments, and cash up front after every count’s verified. Then it’s putting them away, while Jen works the register and smiles real pretty for the early risers. You know, all that boring stuff I couldn’t wait to get away from. Same life every day in and day out. I couldn’t wait to run away, head up north to be a lumberjack up in Vancouver.”

“You would have deserted your family?” Rusty blurted out.

Ken snorted. “They wouldn’t have cared so long as I sent money back home. And eventually a kid or three, to make my Mom happy. As long as I had at least one son, they’d be fine. My old man always bashed my ears about how I was eating so much and working so little, so I figure he would have gotten used to it. But… well, that plan’s in the can now, pal. We’re here. And once I get back, I don’t think Mom and Dad will ever let me out of the house again until I’m forty or so.”

“It’s rude to accuse him of deserting his family,” Alice said, scowling at him. “Y’all are here, too. Don’t figure you had time to ask their permission to come along?”

“No ma’— no Miss,” Rusty corrected. “But it ain’t like we’re going to be gone long. It’s only been a couple weeks. They’ll be sore I left the way I did, but… well, we have to stop the Dark Lord, right?”

“There is a Dark Lord, right?” Roz said, from his perch on the back of an empty chair.

“We do,” Gunther said, folding his arms. “You will see when we go to the front lines. We must stop him here, and not at our world, where we have no wizards and no way to stop magic.”

A snippet of memory ran through Rusty’s mind, some politician on the television talking to a reporter. Of course we have to fight them in Korea! It’s either that, or fight them in our streets when the reds rise up!

“It’s the world doors,” Ken said, suddenly. “That’s why this is the Lasthold. They can’t let the Dark Lord take those trees, or else he could go anywhere. We’d be stuffed up the duff if he did that.”

“What up the what?” Rusty frowned.

“Never mind. Point is, Alice, we’re the ones who have to fix things. Or at least try,” Ken said, spreading his hands. “What’ve we got to lose? I took a chance, and now here I am, and I never have to worry about my waistline ever again!”

Gunther laughed, and then he stopped, suddenly. His eyes wide, he said, “I smell meat!”

Three noses lifted and sniffled the air, and three kids looked at each other with amazement at the mouth-watering smell. Meat! Cooked meat!

The doors on the south side of the hall creaked open, and four mummers shuffled in, bearing platters between them. And those platters were laden with slabs of something rich and brown and steaming. It was veined with marbled fat, and had ribs poking out of it, and it was the most beautiful sight Rusty had ever seen.

“Balangor!” Alice said, standing up.

The other three kids tore their eyes off the glorious meal heading their way to see that yeah, the blue-robed wizard was strolling in behind the mummers, looking amused. Pushing aside his hunger, Rusty rose with the others and hastily bowed.

“Be seated,” he told them. “Eat slowly, and do not gorge. Rest between bites, and drink water. Your stomachs will try to force you to fill them as fast as you can, and if you do that, you will be sick. This is a test. Do not fail it.”

They heard the words, and Rusty tried to keep them in his mind, but as the platter reached the table, he knew that this would be a harder test to pass than a full session with Jand.

“I’m starting to see why Edmund flipped sides over turkish delight,” Ken muttered, as he picked a knife off the table.

“What?” Rusty asked, eyes fixed on the nearest approaching platter.

“The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe?”

“Why are those important?”

“Rusty, my friend, I thought you were a big fantasy book nerd. This was pretty big over in England.”

“It’s a book?”

“It’s a book that’s pretty much what we’re living! It’s about a bunch of English kids that go through something like this, only Santa shows up, and there’s a lion, and—”

In a heartbeat, Balangor crossed the room, and pushed Ken’s chair back, caught the boy by the neck of his robes, and raised him, one-armed. “What did you say?”

The other children stared in shock.

“I…I… what?” Ken coughed, arms flailing.

“Who is this Santa! What does he have to do with the Lion?”

“It’s… a book! A made-up book!” Ken wheezed. “It’s for kids! It’s not real!”

Balangor held him there for a tense few seconds, staring into his face. Then he grunted, and lowered Ken back into the chair. Ken coughed, holding his throat.

“I… see.” Balangor said, sighing. “I have just come from the front. My reaction was… unwarranted. Do not speak of lions here again, the Inquisitors may assume the worst.”

“The what now?” Alice asked.

“Nothing of importance.” Balangor smoothed his robes down as he stepped away, and the silent mummers eased a platter down in front of each child. “You will not meet them. You are all here to aid us, and that is why I am rewarding you for doing well with your training.”

Rusty side-eyed Balangor, hesitant and more than a little frightened. He’d looked ready to kill Ken, if Ken had said the wrong thing.

But the meat was right there, and it smelled so very good. Reddish-brown juice ran out when he took the knife to it, and it tasted like buttered beef, only with a texture that was more like chicken. After a second he was forcing himself to put the knife down as he chewed, and the savory juice was running down his throat, salty and thick and glorious. His body needed it, CRAVED it, and he had to push the portion he’d carved off away, or he knew he’d be seeing it again shortly.

Instead he took the tankard that the mummer placed near him, and a long pull of water. He nursed it for a while, shooting glances down the table, waited until Ken was reaching for his own cup.

“I think that’s why I don’t know it,” Rusty said. “The book, I mean. If it’s for kids, then Cyrus wouldn’t have gotten it. His friends only sent him books for grown-ups. And I only got to read the books that he got, since the library shut down a while ago.”

“Ah,” Ken said, eyes flicking down the table to Balangor, wary. But the blue-robed wizard seemed happy to sit at the head of the table and watch them eat and drink. “Yeah. It’s a good series. I’ll uh, tell you about it later.”

“Cool,” Rusty decided, and reached for his second helping. “This is good, sir. What kind of animal did it come from?”

“It didn’t,” Balangor said, and for a second Rusty’s mind skipped to the wild notion that he was eating grach, or worse, people.

Fortunately, Balangor was quick to explain. “I was upset when my master bequeathed the Feast rune to me. But it’s proven handy more often than not. In this case, it will provide you food that you can eat while we are traveling… so long as I have the chakra to power it, in any case.”

“If this is what it can do, then we will do whatever it takes to help you preserve that power,” Gunther said, slurring his words as he chewed. “This is heavenly!”

“I do not know where the magic pulls it from,” Balangor shrugged. “This was around a fourteen. It’s a spell best used only in safe surroundings, so do not expect this much of a meal the next time I use it. Most likely you’ll have to settle for scrape and slop, like what the helots eat.”

“The what now?” Alice asked.

“The soldiers,” Balangor said. “The translation spell is imperfect.”

“Could we save some?” Gunther asked. “Even if it only lasts a day or two, we would have plenty to share, I am sure.”

“No,” Balangor said. “It was relatively cheap to cast because I only required it to last a day. Anything uneaten after that will decay swiftly and vanish. This is why I was able to call so much from essentially nothing. And you would not wish to share it, anyway. Your food would be poison to the h— to the soldiers.”

Another round of devouring followed, and Rusty filled his belly as best he could, then used water to wash the taste down. It was good, but he was starting to feel tired. The day was catching up with him, and he had been beaten to practically a pulp.

“Are you sated, Alice?” Balangor asked.

“I… I don’t think I could eat another bite, thank you sir.”

“Good. Walk with me. The rest of you, stay here. Your mentors will be here presently.” Balangor pushed himself up, and walked to the western door and out. Alice scrambled up and hurried after him.

Rusty drank more water, and ate a few of the more cooked shavings of the meat. It was crunchy, and helped offset the taste of the regular cuts. It needed barbecue sauce or something, he thought, now that he was past the initial surge of gluttony. Just something to spice it up a touch.

“Not sure our stomach could handle barbecue sauce after two weeks of nothing but oatmeal,” Roz said, poking his head up from below the table.

Yeah, but it’d fun to try, Rusty thought.

“Y’know, it’s interesting,” Roz said, putting his head to one side. “Balangor said that a spell that cost fourteen was something only to be cast in safety. Fourteen isn’t all that much. We’ve got like double that in free chakra.”

“Yeah, but that’s like half our chakra,” Rusty said. “It’s a lot. Figure he’s got more enchantments and things, and he probably flew back to get here, and his runes probably took a lot of his chakra to implant and stuff.”

“Yeah, but if he’s been fighting, shouldn’t he be soaking up the chakra from the stuff he kills?” Roz asked. “Eating souls grows your chakra, we found that out on the way here. Except wait, it goes to the biggest chakra pool around. Maybe he’s not that?”

“When they killed the Grach and that wispy thing on the roof, we didn’t get any chakra. I’ll bet it all went to Zarkimorr,” Rusty whispered. “Maybe there’s a bigger wizard out on the front lines that he has to fight near?”

“Maybe,” Roz said. “Something doesn’t add up, here. Let’s try to figure this out.”

Rusty pushed bits of meat and bone around on the table, uneasy. If what Jadar had told them was correct, then they were eating souls whenever they were harvesting chakra from the creatures they killed. That wasn’t a fun thing to dwell on.

The tapping of wood on stone interrupted his thoughts, and with some relief he saw Terathon enter through the western archway. The towering wizard nodded and beckoned, and Ken and Rusty exchanged glances and followed him out into the barren stone halls.

It was quite a contrast from the levels at the bottom of the tower, Rusty thought. The area around the Tower Lord had been lush, and well-used. Why weren’t they all living down there?

Then he remembered the Tower Lord raging at them, and decided it wasn’t a hard question to answer.

“You are leaving sooner than I would like,” Terathon said. “And you will be away for quite some time.”

“How long, exactly?” Ken asked.

“I can not say. Time is thinner, away from the doors. For you, it could be a relatively small amount of time. For us, it shall be a few months, at the very least.” Terathon’s staff tocked along the flagstones, as they walked. Rusty’s memory told him they were rounding an outer ring, probably heading to the stairs. “If I had my way, I would have given you more training, given you more time to learn and grow into your power. But Chosen ones are born, not made, and I must have faith that you will rise to the occasion if your foreseen hour arises before you return.”

“I…” Rusty bit his lip. “I have a question. Sir.” It had been burning at him ever since he’d found the other boy’s corpse. And though he’d tried to put it to the back of his mind, he couldn’t. If he was going to go to war, he needed an answer. “Who chose us? Who foresaw us? Is… what… what does the prophecy say, exactly?”

Prophecies made things easier. You just had to follow the instructions, and you knew it would all work out. Prophecies guaranteed a happy ending up front.

Terathon didn’t answer for a time, and they came to the stairs. The wizard paused there, and said “Not here. Follow me until we are at the top, then we shall discuss.”

Rusty and Ken followed, but the day was catching up to him. His legs ached, and his body trembled as Terathon kept walking, higher and higher. Finally they came to his classroom, and he led them out onto the balcony. It was dark below, save for the golden lights of the elven trees.

“It is not the first time this question has arisen,” Terathon said, leaning his staff on the railing. “And explaining it would take long hours. Hours you do not have, and I suspect, would not enjoy. There is a prophecy, but I am unbound, and not privy to all the truth of it. I only know that it exists, and it has driven everything that Zarkimorr has arranged for you.”

“Then… how did you know we were uh, candidates for the Chosen One?” Ken asked.

“We had enough for locations, and times,” Terathon said, leaning on the balcony, gazing off into the darkness. “We had a number of children to find. And so we did. And one of you will be the Chosen One to save this world.”

Rusty felt a tension ease from his chest. It was almost enough to make him forget the dead boy floating in the pool of water. Almost.

“Well I’m happy to help out whoever the real Chosen ends up being,” Ken shrugged. “You’ve given me magic, it’s the least I can do to help.”

“It may yet be you.” Terathon said, looking down to them. “Do you know why I directed you both to minor runes? To what I THOUGHT were minor runes,” Terathon said, turning his weighty gaze to Rusty.

Rusty gulped, and shook his head.

“I did that because any fool can gain a powerful rune and think himself invincible,” Terathon said. “Especially with the raw potential that your world granted you. But one who finds their own rune, rather than being given it and limited by the teachings of their master? That apprentice can rise to true power. That apprentice learns. They grow to greater heights. And some few become strong enough to forge their own paths, outside of the Houses.”

“Houses?” Rusty blinked. He hadn’t seen any houses so far, only the tower and okay, maybe the elf houses, if that’s what they were, hanging from the tree.

“So what you’re saying is you dealt us deuces on purpose?” Ken burst out, incredulously. “What the heck?”

“It’s a moot point, boy,” Terathon snapped back. “There is a rune that Zarkimorr holds for the Chosen One. It is great and terrible, and holds all the power you could ask for. And we were to give it to the Chosen One, once we were certain which of you that would be. But now…” Terathon stared out into the darkness, again. “Now I wonder. The timing of this is suspicious. The Tower Lord chose precisely the wrong time to level his ultimatum. Someone is meddling, and I worry that we have lost sight of the objective.”

“What should we do?” Rusty asked. “Is someone going Saruman— uh, I mean, did someone betray us?”

“Betray the Throne? No. There is a prophecy. There are things that must happen to fulfill it. But I believe there is enough room for minor treachery. The Inquisitors would not care about a wizard seeking more power, and there is power a plenty to be had, here.” Terathon looked down at them. “And that is why at least one of you must be the Chosen One.”

“I… we’re trying, sir,” Rusty said. “We’re doing everything we can.”

“I know. But are you willing to give everything to succeed? Are you willing to do anything to see this through?” Terathon knelt down to their level, staring them in the eyes. “Or will you run home, if the opportunity arises? Will you flee, when your courage fails you?”

“I won’t!” Rusty promised. “I’m no coward!”

“What he said!” Ken folded his arms.

“Then we shall test that,” Terathon said, reaching into the pockets of his robes, and drawing out two small metal boxes. He opened them to reveal wrapped bundles of wire, that shone faintly in the dim light. They took them with wonder, feeling a humming vibration against their palms, feeling the power without needing to assense it. “These are keyed to your worlds. These are charms, powerful ones. Unwrap them when you wish to use them, and they shall take you home.”

“I… thank you,” Rusty said, holding the little bundle of wires in both hands. He felt his eyes tear over.

“Don’t thank me,” Terathon said. “Prove me right. Pass your test. Only use those when all hope is lost, and there is no escape.”

“I will,” Rusty and Ken chorused.

“Go now,” he commanded. “Rest. A long journey awaits you. Tomorrow, you shall see what we are fighting against, and you will understand why we have done all that we have.”