Victoria

That felt good.

The Entity trial had started, and after escaping the dome I found myself running alongside my peers in a gently curving hallway. We were on a collision course with another group, but with so many people behind me, I couldn’t risk getting past them. I had to go forward.

I’d kicked off a wall and dashed away from the Entities. Though, I had no idea it’d work. If I were being honest, pure adrenaline and an unhealthy does of theatrics guided my actions. And fear. Pictures of Entities didn’t do them justice. Being in their presence sent a primal fear rushing through me. It wasn’t fight or flight. More like flight or curl into a ball and cry and pray for a quick death.

But, I’d survived. My training with Octavia had paid off. I hadn’t wanted to wake up regularly at six o’clock to run and spar with her, but she insisted a Fornax shouldn’t rely solely on their fire. The fire, she claimed, needed to be internalised and applied to every action and thought. A constant flame. I had my doubts, especially since Octavia only talked that way after attending a seminar on magic philosophy.

Back to the trial…

If I guessed right, the hallway I sprinted down led back to the dome. Assuming the Entities had followed students, by now there should be fewer in the dome. Hopefully none. Two of my future classmates ran behind me. One, a towering boy with great loping strides. Second, a girl stumbling along behind, wheezing and on the verge of collapse. She’d have fallen by now if not for the boy.

Forget them, I thought. Needed to focus on the trial.

I made it back to the dome. Mrs Geisler and the other faculty were gone, though I couldn’t see any doors or floor hatches. I should’ve investigated further, but within minutes other students and Entities poured into the dome. Evidently, lots of us had run through the circular hallway and looped back to the starting point in the hopes of safety.

I had enough stamina left to keep away, but I didn’t know how long the trial would last, thus couldn’t decide how to pace myself. Keep to the walls for now, I told myself, only for a sharp pain to explode in my leg. An Entity’s attack? No, but the real source of pain wasn’t much better. My left foot and calf cramped. I might’ve ran too hard, too fast, and with too abrupt a stop. I hobbled to the wall as more and more students, and Entities, poured into the dome. Jaw clenched, I gingerly lowered myself to the floor.

The elevator had taken us too far down for the glass ceiling panels to be effective, and in the resulting gloom the figures of students and Entities blended into a chaotic mix of attacking and dodging bodies, of silence and screams. But so long as I had time to massage the cramp, I could sneak away into a hallway and repeat the evasion until the trial ended.

Except, I based all my success on chance. The chance I wouldn’t be spotted by an Entity, which I was. And the chance it wouldn’t attack, which it did. I tripped trying to stand and winced as the pain intensified.

It seemed stupid, then, but part of me truly expected to get a Sentinel licence a mere year after enrolling at Vandagriff. Perhaps that was my downfall: Hope without willpower. I tried raging through my cramp, but the emotion wasn’t in a useful form. It was the rage of self-loathing for not doing well enough during the trial, for a lack of perfection, an emotion the colour of muted, dull, shameful red.

The Entity, shaped like a dog-botfly hybrid, drew closer. Eyes averted, I raised my hands, as if they’d be an effective shield, and awaited new pain, but nothing happened.

‘Over here you creepy piece of shit.’

I knew the voice. Elliot Fletcher stood between the Entity and I, goading it to attack him. When it did, he dodged sidelong and sprinted, tracing the perimeter until he lost the Entity among the others. In a couple minutes, he looped around, stopped beside me, and rested his hands on his knees to catch his breath.

‘You owe me, Fornax,’ he said, smiling.

I could reconcile being helped, but I wished it hadn’t been Elliot. Friends usually didn’t make a big deal about favours, but Elliot had a tendency to quantify debt, along with a knack for remembering who owed him and vice versa, a system complete with reminders, interest, and collateral. Knowing our shared history, I’d owe him at least a date.

While I went back to massaging my cramp, I observed. Screaming. Running. The girl with dark auburn hair grabbed a student by the collar and used them to block an Entity’s attack. I pushed to my feet, with an urge to avenge the student. Surely the Academy wouldn’t permit her actions? What did it prove about the student who’d been used as a shield? In fact, how did the trial in its entirety prove we should be Sentinels?

How much longer did they expect us to run around?

The Entities simultaneously froze, before turning to smoke. Confused students froze, too, coming down from the rush of survival. I jumped as the wall an arm’s length away from me faded and got replaced by a door. Mrs Geisler entered the dome, followed by a remarkably ordinary man.

Mrs Geisler held a microphone and her voice came over speakers. ‘Students, please gather in the middle of the dome.’

Kids in the hallways and dome marched to Mrs Geisler, like ants to their queen. Or moths to a flame.

It didn’t take long for disgruntled students to make their voices heard. If they were frustrated before the trial, they were livid after it. Forgetting decorum, and emboldened in a mob, students screamed in Mrs Geisler’s face, threatening intervention by parents or friends or God. Yet in spite of this, Mrs Geisler’s countenance gave little sign of fear – or care. I may have admired her apathy under different circumstances, but I shared my fellow students’ view: The trial was, excuse me, bullshit.

Mrs Geisler gestured to the man who’d followed her into the dome. With a flick of his wrist, demonic faces manifested in the air, scaring away the students. The scent of ammonia came with it.

I raised a brow. Now it made sense. The Academy had a mage conjure the Entities with Vulpecula-class magic. Illusions. Powerful stuff, too, given the verisimilitude. But “mage” didn’t do the man credit.

‘In case you have not yet realised,’ Mrs Geisler said, ‘this trial was made possible with the help of Connor Duncan, the Erudite of Illusions.’

Sparse, uncertain applause.

‘You wouldn’t pick him in a crowd, eh?’ Elliot whispered beside me. ‘Unless his looks are part of the illusion.’

Connor Duncan wasn’t famous like most Erudite mages. He wore a white office shirt, khaki slacks, and frameless spectacles, items complemented by his dull posture and unassuming face.

Mrs Geisler continued, eyeing a clipboard. ‘If I call your name, please vacate the facility.’ She pointed to the door she’d entered from. ‘Now, the students who did not qualify for this year’s Sentinel licences are…’

‘Pretty brutal,’ Elliot whispered, while Mrs Geisler began down a list of names. Some left quietly, while others argued things like: I tripped, I wasn’t ready, I got grabbed and used as a human shield. Mrs Geisler didn’t call upon the Erudite of Illusions again to scare them away. All it took was a quick dose of eye contact from her to dissuade further argument.

‘As everyone knows, running is a Sentinel’s most valuable skill,’ Elliot joked.

He had a point. Why make a running-centric trial? Unless…

Theory: The Academy created the new trials to train combat-oriented Sentinels. I’d heard rumours from family and associates that certain figures of power feared an upcoming conflict. With Entities? With the clans? Worst, with another city? Whichever, perhaps they weren’t testing our running ability, but rather our reaction to danger. Those who acted survived, and those who panicked did not.

I may have ascribed meaning because I didn’t want my efforts to feel pointless, but it wasn’t a bad theory. In my opinion.

When the disqualified students left the dome, around a hundred remained. Mrs Geisler flipped to a new page on her clipboard. ‘Now, for the second trial…’

#

Mrs Geisler explained the next trial would require us to form groups of ten. Any students without a team would be disqualified. We had twenty-minutes to form groups. That may have seemed like an unnecessarily long time, but among the children of prominent mages, Sentinels, city officials, and railway magnates, forming a group may as well have been negotiating an intercity trade agreement.

If I were to be frank, the group dynamics of scions such as myself gave me a headache. If I had a preference of person, of course I’d pursue it, but I didn’t, so my ideal scenario was to wait until most groups had formed, whereupon I’d convince any group to swap me with someone. Bit cocky, don’t you think, believing I could simply integrate myself into any group? Well, behold the reason:

‘How about it, Victoria?’

‘I promise you, Samara—I mean, Victoria.’

‘Hello, my name is—’

‘Fornax and Fletcher have been linked for decades.’

Within seconds of Mrs Geisler’s explanation, various students crowded me with offers. They didn’t want my help; they wanted to help me. If they did, they’d have a member of the Fornax family who may or may not feel indebted to them.

My face contorted into my best impression of polite and apologetic, while I retreated to the darkness of a hallway. Like I said, better to wait.

Other teachers and hierophants came, likely to help organise things. I overheard some of them mention a unique smell. They joked that one of their co-workers had bought a new and terrible cologne, but I wasn’t one to ignore what I termed “stars-of-fate”, little details that mattered more than you’d think. After all, fate favoured me. If it had something to show me, I needed to pay attention.

You did not need premonition magic to see the future, only eyes willing to focus on the little things in life. There may have appeared to be a vast difference between the big and small parts, but the big were merely a collection of small things. To see the meagre was to see the vast. Besides, we had twenty-minutes, so I wandered the hallways we’d sprinted through. At an intersection—the one I’d escaped through—indeed there lingered a unique smell. Intense and minty. I assumed the most dramatic reason: Magic. But Vulpecula-class magic, the illusions, didn’t cause a mint smell. It smelled of ammonia. Were there other faculty assisting the Entity illusions? Even so, I didn’t know any magic category that resulted in the smell of mint.

Mint. Mint? At best, I was dramatic. At worst, paranoid. It really could’ve been cologne or perfume. And paranoid or not, I needed to attend to the next trial.

When I returned to the dome, around two-thirds of the students had formed groups. A few dedicated Fornax sycophants rushed to me when I arrived, but I gently explained I had other plans. I walked around, talking to a few people, only to realise with alarming clarity that I, in fact, did not have other plans, and I didn’t have a group and didn’t want to join any. My plan to wait for stragglers had worked, but among them I was left indecisive.

Someone, a certain auburn-haired girl, was evidently in more trouble than me, because she sat against a wall and glared at anyone who came near. She had used another student as a human shield, but I’d rather a demon than faux-angels.

‘Hi,’ I said, weathering her glare. ‘I’m Victoria.’ The girl grunted. ‘Do you have a group?’ She shook her head. ‘Not much for talking.’ Her glare deepened. I sensed a possible mistake. ‘You don’t talk?’ Again, she shook her head. My eyes widened and mouth opened and closed, unable to chart a course through the conversation. ‘I am so sorry,’ I finally said, grimacing at my insensitivity. I’d heard rumours that one of the clans cut out their tongues as children. Gruesome, but apparently it helped them keep quiet around Entities as they traversed the Dusk.

She looked to be part of that clan. The clans lived outside of cities, nomadic groups who evaded Entities by constantly moving. They collected valuable things in the Dusk and traded with towns or cities, though most had tenets about not staying in cities for longer than necessary.

At best, people knew them as scavengers. At worst, savages. Realistically, they were clusters of people who, in isolation, developed their own cultures, fierce loyalties, and sense of how life should be conducted. It wasn’t my place to judge them, given my comfortable life, and the auburn-haired girl had passed the exam and recent trial, so clearly she possessed intellect and endurance. If she was mute, I’d work around it.

‘Would you like to make a group?’ I asked. Her glare held, but I sensed a slight defrosting. I used Father’s tactic: Waiting. I lacked his imposing figure, but it worked. The girl nodded and got to her feet.

Great, just eight more…

‘Vic, Vic.’ Elliot jogged over. ‘We gotta make a group, or you’ll be screwed.’

What Elliot failed to mention was that he, too, would be screwed. But, he wasn’t wrong. I assented, and Elliot fell into step with me. Seven.

I went after lone targets who hadn’t approached me yet. First, the tall boy from earlier. He’d kept another student safe during the last trial, and he was fast. ‘Wanna join us?’ I asked, to which he shrugged. I’ll take that as a yes, I thought. Then I glanced between him and the auburn-haired girl, checking if they were from the same clan, but he said in a deep, level voice:

‘My name is Elidred Griggs.’

‘We’ll call you Griggs,’ Elliot decided. ‘Elliot and Elidred are too similar.’

‘Very well,’ Griggs replied. ‘Might my associate join us?’ When we agreed, he waved to a boy rushing between groups. The boy sprinted over with a greater speed than any of us in the last trial, skidded to a stop, and rambled:

‘Thank God, Eli. I was getting nowhere. I tell you, these folks give no ground. I tell them, I told them—I gave what I thought was a good pitch to our strengths and weaknesses, but they blew me off. Every. Single. Time. What’s with that?’

‘Don’t call him Eli,’ Elliot ordered. ‘Going forward, he’ll go by Griggs.’

‘Nice, yeah. Griggs. Very cool. Kinda noir-like. What about me?’

Elliot gave him a withering look. ‘Many years ago, your mommy and daddy probably chose one.’

The boy laughed. ‘My name’s Trench Oyun, from Mount Evelyn.’

Griggs and Trench. That made five.

Unfortunately, we miscalculated. Four sycophants wanted to join my group, and we were forced to accept them to fill the numbers, but then I realised everyone else had a group of ten. We were the nine extra. Leftovers. Those to be disqualified. A few minutes remained.

‘Vic, we’ve come too far to get screwed out of a licence,’ Elliot said, before lowering his voice to a fierce whisper. ‘I bet they planned this. Everyone else, they intentionally made groups so we’d get eliminated.’

‘Gosh, all that coordination just for us?’ I replied, sarcastic, though Elliot didn’t catch my tone.

The sycophants looked anxious. Any second, they’d rush to other groups. That might’ve been my only option, too. ‘Don’t split up,’ I said. ‘It’ll be easier to convince someone to join us, not the other way round.’

Elliot scowled at the other groups. ‘I’m not begging.’

‘Neither am I.’ A flicker of my true frustration must’ve come out because Elliot looked taken aback. No time to worry about feelings. We had four, maybe fewer minutes.

There would be two difficulties. First, convincing someone to leave their group. Second, dealing with the nine from that group who’d argue against us. Weeks ago, on the evening of the gala, I’d used my family’s influence to remind Officer Renshaw that he should treat me with greater respect, but it gave me no pleasure to so flippantly invoke “Fornax” for my personal benefit. Samara and Dust may do it, but Octavia didn’t. The difference between Octavia and I was that she didn’t need such tricks.

If it came down to it, I’d use promise of favour from my family to convince someone to leave their group. Thus, steeling myself, I approached the nearest cluster of ten students. ‘Hey,’ I told them. ‘I’m going to be blunt. We need one more person to join us. I know what that means for the other nine in your group, but—’

‘I’ll join.’

I paused, my various arguments falling aside. Bewildered, I hummed, as if contemplating whether to board a life raft. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Bray.’

‘Bray?’

‘Short for Bravery, duh. Bravery Sansing.’

His name sounded familiar. Had circumstances been less dire, I may have listened to the shiver across my shoulders and between my ears.

Mrs Geisler’s voice broke over the general chatter to announce we had one minute left. The group we poached Bray from broke into a frantic mess, either giving up or rushing to other groups, blabbering wild, impossible promises in the hopes of getting accepted. But the minute elapsed. I had denied nine kids, like me, from getting a Sentinel licence that year. You might be thinking: Bray was responsible. But I blamed myself.

The students in groups of ten stayed with Mrs Geisler, while nine were disqualified, fairly or unfairly, devastated all the same. I couldn’t suppress a twisted smile of relief.