A Dreadful Thing

13: THE FIRELORD

THIRTEEN: THE FIRELORD

Orla

Orla's breath puffed in and out of her lungs as she jogged around the forested track.

Her first class on Monday was Kinesiology and Physical Education, taught by Master Brooks—a tall, Amazonian woman, muscular and fit with her fingers tipped by nails that best resembled claws. The lesson began in a classroom buried in the forest, close to the Saturn Complex holding the House of Terrahl, and it outlined a review of the physiology of Talents manifesting in the body. Apparently, how someone used their Talent—and what they used it for—could stress muscles or cause injuries, and Master Brooks was meant to teach them how best to mitigate that damage.

The second part of the lesson took place outdoors, in the cool morning mist, the class changing into gym clothes before Master Brooks led them through a series of stretches and had them complete laps on the track.

"A well-stretched and exercised body is one less prone to injury!" their instructor barked as they set off with a rumble of complaints. "And no cutting through the woods! I'll know if you do!"

Orla was thankful she'd found a set of gym clothes in her things from Uriel's—then snorted at the absurdity of having bespoke attire for running in and getting sweaty. She set a brisk pace, lost in her own thoughts as she jogged, passing beneath the canopy shaped to grow over the flattened trail. She left the others behind, grimacing under the attention of more of those strange, watchful statues.

It was by far the easiest class she'd attended so far, much closer to something she'd expect to learn at a normal high school, and she could only hope more of her lessons would be so simple. Orla doubted she'd be so lucky.

Up ahead, a clearing appeared between the trees, set off from the track but visible to Orla as she passed the bend. She slowed to a walk and caught her breath, watching a class of older students listen to their Master. Orla couldn't hear what was being said, but she saw the instructor gesturing around a severed trunk, and the woman beckoned one of the students closer. The student mimicked the teacher's hand movements, concentrating—and a new sapling began to crawl its way free of the stump's clutches.

I'll never be able to do that, Orla thought, frozen in place. I can barely get my shoes on the right feet in the morning. How can they expect any of this from me?

She could hear the heavy stride of her peers drawing closer, and Orla set off at run again.

She'd filled her weekend with reading—tedious, dry reading about Talents and Seraphs and Sanctums, half of which went in one ear and right out the other. It was too much. She would never manage to catch up, and what would happen then? Would they kick her out? Push her back a year? Master Porter said it was important that didn't happen. Christ, it would be embarrassing after everyone had already seen her as a second-year. What if something worse happened? What if they found out Orla simply had no Talent?

She pushed herself to run faster.

Afterward, once class had ended and Orla took the shortest shower she could manage to avoid lingering in the locker room, she met Vera outside the classroom's wooden door.

"We'll be lucky if we're not late," she grumbled, hitching her bag a little higher on her shoulder. "They have to keep Gatrell's class all the way over in Deimos Tower because he's—well." She exhaled through her nose. "He prefers the Mars Commons, and it's across campus."

Vera led Orla away from the Saturn Complex, and they all but ran along the cobbled paths meandering the woods, heading toward the foothills that spilled in unnatural waves from the mountain's feet. In particular, Deimos Tower rose high among the shorter amphitheaters and wings, comprised of terracotta bricks and large iron columns. A bridge formed from rock crossed between two sharply cut cliffs, and in the ravine below, lava churned against sleeves of obsidian. The temperature steeped the area in an abnormal fever, causing the mist blowing in from the rest of Bilarthus to rise off the rocks in rills like smoke through a dragon's broken teeth.