Gifted

9

"Again, scum."

Erin spat the blood out of her mouth onto the floor of the training hall.

"Again!" Kazi repeated.

Erin grunted and pushed herself up off the floor. Once again, she readied the wooden stave in her hands and faced off with the recruit opposite her. He was a sallow-faced boy a year or two older than Erin, and she had been far from surprised when Kazi had told her to pair up with him for sparring. From the skill with which he used his stave, Erin guessed that the House had taken him in many years ago: the ease with which he beat her down showed that, unlike Erin, he had undergone much preparation for the Crucible as recruits usually do before they become old enough to start Initiation.

Around her, pairs of recruits fought and grappled with each other using a variety of weapons. The group had been sparring non-stop for hours now and the pained, sweaty looks on the recruits faces told of their exhaustion.

"Fight," Kazi instructed.

Erin immediately lashed out at her opponent's head with a stabbing motion. He jerked out of the way then swung low at Erin's thigh. She was too slow to react his stave whacked painfully into the flesh of her leg. She grunted and hobbled back out of range.

"Don't overextend, scum. Make your attack then retreat quickly or Igor here will hit you every time," Kazi said.

Erin didn't respond. She was crouched low to the ground, watching for the attack that she knew was about to come.

Her opponent rushed forward with a flurry of small attacks and Erin shuffled backwards, desperately whirling her stave to defend herself. Suddenly, Erin stopped moving back and leapt forwards, slipping under her opponent's guard to hit him hard in the stomach with her shoulder. The boy staggered backwards, swinging his stave wildly as he gasped for the air that had been knocked out of him. Rage contorted his face. He stood still and started shaking in concentration. With a gasp of effort, he flung his arms wide and a perfect replica of himself burst out of his chest.

Erin blinked, trying to process this new development. In front of her were two identical beings, both smiling murderously and whirling their staves.

Erin was snapped out of her confused daze by the blow that cracked against the side of her head. She fell backwards and raised her stave, trying hopelessly to fend off her two attackers. They moved in perfect unison, sweeping and stabbing and slicing with their weapons, beating Erin firmly into the ground. A blow struck her knuckles and the stave dropped from her grip. She yelped and whined as strike hit home. She curled into a ball with her hands protecting her face, trying to ride out the vicious storm of violence. Her two attackers were laughing manically now, and Erin recognised it as the laugh of someone who delighted in inflicting pain.

"That's enough," Erin heard Kazi say at length.

The beating ceased, and Erin lay there on the ground, writhing in agony.

"That was fucking disgraceful, scum. No true member of the House of Bellator would let themselves be crushed like that," said Kazi.

"It wasn't fair," Erin mumbled through the sobs she was trying to stifle. "He u-used magic."

"Of course, he used magic, scum. Where the fuck do you think you are? This is a place for you to use you magic, to use it as a tool to beat your opponents."

Erin squinted up through her tears. All the other recruits had stopped sparring and stood in silence as they watched the scene before them unfold. As Erin watched, her opponent's doppelganger began melting back into his chest. Soon, it was gone.

"That's enough for today, recruits," Kazi said. "Get some food then go to sleep. Now as for the delightful job of washing the floor of today's dirt, that duty goes to Erin here as punishment for that shameful display of incompetence. Bucket and mop are in the corner."

With that, he marched out of the training hall, leaving silence in his wake. At length, the recruits packed away their training weapons and filed out into the mess room. Erin, though, still lay panting and shaking on the floor. Erin became aware that she was alone but for one person. Igor, her opponent, stood over her.

"You don't belong here," he sneered. "You'll never belong here."

He looked around quickly before kicking Erin viciously in the stomach. She curled around his foot, too broken to voice her pain.

Igor smirked then left for the mess room and the other recruits.

Erin lay on the floor for a long while, building up the strength to stand. As she had many times before after losing a fight, she checked her body for injury. She was mildly pleased to find and her teeth intact and she was sure that no bones were broken. Finally, Erin stood. She had the unnerving sensation that she was being watched and looked up to the viewing balcony that overlooked the hall. In the poor light of the hall's height, she saw Isaiah's silver mane shining. His face was expressionless.

Erin swallowed and shakily straightened herself, staring back at him defiantly. A small smile curled his lips and he nodded as if in satisfaction. She nodded back and then he was gone.

As on Kazi's instruction, Erin spent the next two hours mopping the day's blood and sweat out of the floor. The beating Erin had taken soon turned into an impressive collection of bruises, cuts and welts, all of which made the task a lengthy and painful process.

Once she was done, she limped to the mess room for some food: having been denied any at lunchtime, her stomach was a tight knot of hunger. The other recruits had long since finished their meal and had gone in to the dorm room as Kazi had instructed, so Erin ate alone. As she ate, she thought about the craziness of the day's events. That morning she had woken as a condemned criminal, a nobody with no mission other than survival, but this evening she will go to bed as a recruit of the magical House of Bellator, an aspiring Inquisitor with the goal of protecting the downtrodden. This idea made Erin smile. Never before had she had a purpose such as this, she had acted purely to survive and benefit herself, but now she worked to preserve something bigger than herself. A few days ago, she would have scoffed at the idea, but now that she'd met Isaiah, seen the House and learnt what it stood for, she felt different.

However, there were things that alarmed her. She was more than equipped to deal with a bully like Kazi, but the other recruits' attitude towards her was worrying. Kazi had cultivated a hatred in them that would make life dangerous for Erin. She needed to change their opinion of her, something Erin was usually good at, but her new environment made her doubt herself. She had little in common with these other kids and it showed. The glee in Igor's eyes as he had beat her had scared Erin. There was nobody she could rely on to watch her back and it made her afraid. If a similar beating happened again and Kazi wasn't there to stop it, she had no idea how far Igor would go.

Once she had finished her meal, she cleared her plate away and limped to the dorm room. Inside, the other recruits were already fast asleep, their indistinct forms illuminated only slightly by a fracture of moonlight that had been filtered down through the ceiling.

Erin crept through the darkness to the end of the room where she knew her bed waited for her. She reached out for its end, but she couldn't find it. Confused and teary, she fumbled about in the dark to find her bed upturned and broken, her mattress tossed away, and her sheets torn up. Supressing a sob, she did her best to straighten her mattress and fold her sheets before collapsing onto the messy pile. She was suddenly aware of the strong weariness in her bones and it didn't take long before her silent weeping changed to the peaceful breathing of deep sleep.