GRAVESKIES

Chapter 6

Nine years ago...

At twelve years old, Ryujin had never known something more harrowing than military training.

Learning the rules by heart was even harder than physical combat.

Every day, wake up at five, eat to build muscle, eat just a bit less than you actually need, because hunger keeps you awake. Keep your mind sharp, because it's your burden to figure out your messed-up body; but not sharp enough that you actually start to see things. Sit outside the ring and watch. Watch. Watch. Learn how your friends fall until you cut your teeth on such spineless disorders. Don't forget, don't lose track of what matters. The gap. The God. The goalpost. And here, just like then, just like every day, splintering pain and splitting ashes and spit-out, pent-up, touchdown anger.

It's time to put together excuses for surviving this far.

"Everything I have, everything I am, I owe to this place. I owe to Nyrin. If you can't make yourselves worthy of him, then they've kept you alive for nothing." When General Kran says those words, you listen. You drill them into your brain. You dream them in repetitions of four. It's rythm. It's music.

Don't look. Don't ask where your colleague is wandering at night and why it quite reminds you of the route to Colonel Razhan's office. She'll smell funny in the morning and she'll be dizzy, so she won't be able to answer, anyway. It's a beat. It's theatre.

Don't half-ass the chase. Fear it instead. You'll be four hours in the Temple. You'll be four mansions famous. You haven't slept in four days. You have to sleep tonight because five isn't perfect, but four is. Four. It's all four, it's a quivering quadruple of senseless quandaries, meant to dig out all sense from you. It's a trip. It's a starving, speechless night.

Until you see something so bad you can't stay silent anymore. Like Ryujin did that day.

She headed to Storyteller's home with tears in her eyes.

Storyteller lived on the training camps to tend to the new generation of soldiers, and sometimes trained the best of the new crop separately. She hadn't wanted a suite, so they'd given her a humble, shabby, barely functional shack. For some reason, throughout the three years Ryu had been there, the Commander had taken a liking to her. Ryu had gotten into a couple of ugly fights with the other kids in the barracks, so Dianne had taken her in.

At the sight of Dianne, Ryu blinked against the tears brimming in her eyes. The kindness and concern in the leader's eyes felt inappropriate against the affair Ryu had witnessed.

"What happened?"

Ghastly, glassy-eyed, lips shivering, Ryu swallowed and attempted: "I... He..."

It took several attempts to get the words out. Storyteller walked her through it all, helped her breathe, squeezed her close to calm her down.

"They stoned him." When she exhaled the words, she made them real.

"What? Who?" came Dianne's alarmed answer. "Is anyone on camp, Ryujin?"

"No. No, it's... This kid. Mutant. He made a mistake and bruised a colleague. Wielder girl who changes weather. Two other guys hit him back, 'cause she was a girl, or some shit." Ryu shrugged shakily. "We were in hand-to-hand, so there were no weapons around. No teachers. He tried to defend himself, and it wasn't even an attack, but the others... More and more joined. The Wielders and Sages had no change against him in combat, but they found weapons anyway. Stoned him."

The scene had engraved itself so clearly in the back of her eyelids, in such vulgarly explicit detail, that she could paint it a picture. A boy's skull carved in with rocks. Blood splattered on the grass. Tiny limbs askew. Hair tangled with brain matter. After the deed was done, all the children had shut up. They hadn't been that silent in three whole years. When he arrived, Kran told her not to concern herself. Told her he wasn't important, but she was.