Chapter 10

I froze.

The others had made it all look so easy. Well, some struggled, but it was far from their first time using magic. I got the sense that Sarah and I were the only outsiders here, the others all in little groups of familiarity; even Christopher was being talked to as if the boy speaking to him knew him.

I had no one. Almost no one.

I focussed my energy, pushing what I know realized was the power of my very soul through my chest. And it was different. It was also… her. I felt her. Every laughter, every movement, every word she spoke, whether I ever heard it or not, now coloured the essence of who I was as I used magic. I was no longer just myself, but a ‘we’ that existed within ‘me’.

And then I stopped. It felt wrong. Using her like this perverted the wonder I had felt a only day ago.

Scolffice twitched, an unpleasant motion to watch, even more so as it was directed at me. “You may proceed,” he grunted as if permission had not been clearly implied.

I couldn’t bring myself to do it. No mana flowed through my body, not even a residual trickle as I held it all back.

“What’s going on here!?” one of the blue cloaked mages growled. I whirled as he came up to me, a goateed scowl leering down on me, carrying the dagger that Christopher had just used. “Why did you stop!? Get on with it! We don’t have all day for this!”

“I-I can’t,” I stuttered, cowering under him just a little.

My body stiffened but it was not at all of my own volition this time. I struggled, muscles straining, but my bones felt locked in place. “If you refuse, then you fail.” He leaned in close, slowly digging the dagger into my frozen right arm.

“Brontus,” Bradey growled threateningly.

“I see no reason to waste taxes on a sure trial,” the mage, Brontus, replied. “Save us all trouble if we carry out the sentence here quickly.”

“His failure is not your judgement,” Scolffice spoke up, but he didn’t really argue against the military mage.

I looked around, seeing the indifference on most faces. There were a few exceptions; Christopher took a cautious step forward while I swore I saw Sarah start to glow softly. But there was no concern from the eyes of the adults that were starting to surround me, contrasting looks that all lacked genuine empathy.

“Wait! I’ll do it!” The hold on my body relaxed and I almost fell forward. Brontus tugged the tip of the dagger from my forearm as he stepped back, letting a small trickle of blood begin to run down to my hand. I held that arm up, palm up like I had seen Scolffice and other recruits do. The mana flowed again, back and forth from my chest to my hand and back, building momentum, leaving more power in my hand as it moved within me. It warmed over my hand as it started to create a small ball that glowed red and orange and yellow. It danced, the air aflame as I looked at it.

And it looked back.

I saw her in it. Her sky blue eyes, her body, her blonde hair, flashing in and out of existence. My hand closed in a mixture of horror and respect, extinguishing the glow of the past and flow of mana. Brontus took a step forward as I again ceased to channel my power, but Bradey was already behind him with a hand on his shoulder.

“You said we just have to hit the lower ring to pass, right?” I asked Scolffice as he watched, his scaly forehead scrunched.

“Yes, you just have to hit the lower target. The higher one is extra,” he affirmed with a nod.

I stepped over to the closest tree in the courtyard, and the rocks that formed their little enclosures, separating exposed soil from grass. One about the size of my fist sat on top, right in front of my feet. I bent down and picked it up, tossing it just above my eyes a couple times as I walked back to the starting position.

If they were expecting me to project or move or manipulate it with magic, they were mistaken, as I threw the rock as hard as I could, smacking the side of the target.

There was a stunned silence as no one quite knew how to react to that.

“...What was that?” Bradey finally asked. It wasn’t judgemental or all that confused, but questioning in the way one would ask a child why they did something nonsensical and pointless.

“Well, you said that all I needed to do to pass was hit the target.” I pointed to it. “I hit it.”

Scolffice didn’t comment on that, just began writing on his page. Unlike for the others though, his hand was slow and hesitant and I worried what the implications of that could be.

Brontus looked around, seeing our instructor recording the assessment, his commander just watching with his same disinterested expression, our instructor quietly writing as if I had done what was expected, no one objecting to what I just did. “This is a mockery!” he roared, furious at everyone involved. I wouldn’t disagree. But I couldn’t do much of anything as I felt my body again caught in place and he charged at me with the dagger that had already tasted me. I tried to move for a second, but just stopped and closed my eyes, waiting for the strike… It never came. I looked again as I felt myself free of Brontus’s invisible grasp to see him writhing on the ground, breathlessly gasping and grabbing at his throat.

Bradey slowly walked up to me, stepping over Brontus who failed to grasp at his apparent commander’s heel. Those red eyes were again wide open and I actually was able to properly meet his gaze without the personal panic of not being able to breathe. I had to look away. “You wish to count that as your attempt for your evaluation?” he asked.

I stiffened, nervousness pumping adrenaline through my veins as his question was calm and ominous. “...Yes.”

“Hmm.” He stepped back, eyelids lowering again while Brontus shakily got to his knees. “Well, you are correct in what you were told the qualification of the assessment was.” He nodded to Scolffice. “So I suppose that we can’t necessarily fail you.”

“But Lieutenant,” Brontus tried to speak up, only to silence himself under Bradey’s eye.

“As I was saying, while we can’t fail you, you are aware that you are going against the purpose of the assessment, right?” His one eyelid cracked a bit more open, a fleck of red boring into me.

“Yes,” I nodded. I couldn’t deny it; that would look even worse.

He nodded back, mulling it over. “Very well, then we’ll leave the final call up to Captain Hector.”