New Home

When Seth and Ulrich left the short house the sky was cracked with the first light of dawn.

Ulrich led him through the same meandering path way until they returned to the building beneath which Seth had spent the last few days. From there he took Seth to the buildings that he had seen in the beginning; when he'd been released from his time in captivity.

With the new light of the new day, Seth saw more. The buildings were the color of mud, a dirty brown with mild flecks of black scattered about them that truly encompassed them in an archaic veneer. The fields he had seen, wide as those used for wide range sports in the days before the first crack, was filled with children clad in grey clothes very similar to the ones in his sack. They wielded wooden weapons of varying kinds from swords to poleaxes to even spears and quarter staffs. The children sparred each other with determination, filling the air with the sound of wood clacking as each blow was parried or avoided or struck true.

He watched them with a mild sense of foreboding, not because of them but because of the priests that walked amongst them.

The boys were divided into evident clusters separated by wide intervals. The priests served as anchors for each group, barking orders filled with more profanities than encouragements, loud enough to be heard above the noise of wood as he and Ulrich drew closer.

Seth saw at least three priests who walked through their groups, cane in hand, eyes scanning in the odd colors of soul mages. They gave off the sense of predators hunting their preys. While he didn't understand the reason for this, events came to better explain them.

One of the boys in a group made a move, striking out at his partner. It was a deft turn, pivoting on his back foot to move into a pirouette. During the turn, his partner struck out quickly, catching the boy in the back with the tip of his wooden sword. In Seth's head he heard the boy's whine as he bucked at the strike. His footing failed him then, and he dropped to the ground with an audible thud drowned out by the sounds of clashing wood.

The priest that had been watching frowned in distaste, his lips curling up in a discontented scowl. He approached the fallen boy without hurry and Seth saw the boy's expression of pain turn to resolve. The priest met him with a cane raised and took to work.

He brought the cane down on the boy with quick strikes that looked heavy even from where Seth was. Each strike that met flesh resounded through the air, competing heavily with the sounds of wood clacking.

To Seth's surprise, the boy offered no sound, bearing the brunt of it all with a distant determination. There were muffled grunts and groans from time to time but nothing more. His partner, for his part, stood idly by and watched. There was no smirk or satisfaction or even distaste on his visage. Just nothing.

Is it because they're older? One of his minds asked. Because that must hurt like hell.

Seth had no answer for it as Ulrich led him around a corner and away from the sight of the boys. But it was likely his thought was right—perhaps age had thickened them. The children looked around sixteen, maybe seventeen. He thought about it for the briefest of moments and wondered if they were perhaps souled already, seeing as they were debatably of age. But he didn't ponder on it long enough to reach a resolute answer.

As he followed Ulrich farther still, however, his minds took up the debate in a flock of questions and answers, disagreements and compromises, deductions and estimates.

He paid them no heed.

He was led to a building of similar brown as the rest. It looked dilapidated and yet sturdy enough to weather the test of time. While he stopped and stared for the briefest moment, Ulrich continued on his march, unconcerned by his momentary pause so that he was forced to hurry after him.

They climbed a few flights of stairs with balustrades on one side Seth found was made of the same materials as Gareth's place. He forgot to count how many stairs they took before they debouched onto a balcony of sorts.

The priest led him down the balcony, Seth's only protection from falling—as a Baron would garner a mere scratch falling from this height—a simple balustrade that barely came up to his waist. It made him wonder how many children had died falling from this height.

"Don't go falling." Ulrich advised without looking back. "If you do, you'll be the first. Not that you'd be mourned."

Seth wondered if the tinge of disgust he'd just heard in Ulrich's voice was imagined.

And if it wasn't? a piece of his mind questioned.

The other fragments had various replies to it, but Seth did not. Instead, he held his tongue and followed the hateful priest.

He was led into a room at the far end of the corridor. Its entrance was merely a hole in the wall the size of a door. As for the door itself, there was none.

He walked in, a new found timidity seeping into his bones. During his traveling captivity at the hands of Jabari, he had felt fear and a tiny touch of excitement at the adventure. The trainings Jabari put him through were tiring, exhaustive, even irksome. But they had been things to keep him busy, things to keep him occupied. He had known, even then, that he had not yet felt loss, his mind too occupied to account for it, perhaps. But now, standing in a new room with fifteen beds placed orderly so that they made two opposing rows on both sides of the long rectangular room, he felt the loss of the house of Darnesh in title and geography.

This was to be his new home.

Panic flooded through him in this instant. Would they like him, whoever his dorm mates would be? Would he fit in? Would he even be able to make friends here; friends he never had. Would he be as close to any of them as he had been with Natalie.

A piece of mind gave him an emphatic answer. That's gay.

Another picked the conversation quickly. No, it's not.

But we liked Natalie, and not just as friends.

Well, we should know we meant the friend part, not the feelings part.

Wait, another interrupted, Seth could feel the curiosity in it, what's so wrong with being gay?

A deep silence suffused Seth's minds and he chuckled. He hadn't known his minds were capable of shutting themselves up.

Ulrich turned to him at the sound and frowned. "I would ask you what is funny, child, but I don't think you know either."

Seth looked down and away from him, cowed by his attention, but returned his gaze when he looked back at the room.

Ulrich's yellow eyes brightened lightly so that they looked golden even though the room wasn't dark. They stayed that way for a beat, before deeming back to their unnatural yellow.

"There are five unoccupied beds," he told Seth. "Choose wisely, and choose quickly."

He pointed them out as he spoke and Seth moved, quick but uncertain. Two of the five beds were sequestered away at the end of the walls, pariahs in the pond of beds. Not wishing to become a pariah of his own, he steered clear of them. The remaining two laid randomly scattered between others, and he picked one without any conscious criteria.

Ulrich made a sound that could have been acknowledgement or disinterest. "Good. Now bring your sword. You are already late for the morning lesson."

Seth guessed the morning lesson was the chaos downstairs.

................

When Ulrich brought him down the stairs it was not to the group of supervised children they had passed. He took Seth around the building, guided him down a path and into a wide courtyard that was scanty enough to be empty. Here Seth noted the children he guessed would be his lesson mates.

There were about twelve of them, each holding a wooden sword much like the one he had in his left hand. With it they stood before colorful wooden dummies as tall as the average thirteen-year-old which made it taller than Seth by at least three inches. With legs spread apart for balance and swords in double handed grips they struck their dummies in odd but practiced manners. The sound of wood striking dummies was muffled and quietened. Seth attributed it to the padding of something that could be straws of some kind that suffused them well enough to give them their beefy appearance.

Watching, he could tell which of the children were more accustomed to the task than the others. There was a boy who struck with more practiced ease and seemed to vary his techniques, sometimes adding a bit of flair before each attack. Sometimes it seemed fanciful, boastful, like the empty arrogance he'd seen in most of the Lord's children when he was littler; when they were too small to truly understand just how much cruelty they were capable of. Then there were times when the moves looked skillful, guiding him from one strike to another far more seamlessly than the way the other children did it. Somehow it made his strikes look easier, linking one to the next.

Beside him was a sharp contrast of a boy who bumbled through each strike. He was a chubby boy, almost banking on corpulence. Watching them from their backs Seth noted the boy's chubby hands wrapped uncomfortably around the handle of his sword each time he raised it for a strike. His shoulders heaved in unhidden fatigue as he struck, trembling with the impact. In truth, his contrast in physique was to every other child here, even his clothes fit him a bit snug.

The distance between him and Ulrich grew and Seth noticed he had slowed down. Not wishing to annoy Ulrich more than he already had, he hurried along, doing his best to ensure he held the wooden sword out beside him.

In time, they grew close enough to the children to hear the voice of the man that instructed them.

"Green. Black. Royal wheat. Yellow," An aged priest bellowed beside them, guiding their strikes. "I said royal wheat then yellow, Naberal," he swore. "You can't be stupid and color blind at the same time, you bumbling fool. Pick a handicap and stick to it!" Then his attention shifted, and he barked louder. "We've not been here long enough for you to be tired, Adio. If you're already panting like a broken whore after ten minutes, how do you intend to survive the after lesson?!"

He went back to barking colors and the children continued to labor through. In the brief berating, Seth had been unable to deduce who either of the children he'd mentioned were of the eleven, knowing he would have to learn their names eventually.

Preferably as soon as possible.

Ulrich led him to a free dummy two places removed from the rest of the children. The closest boy to him, a tall boy with at least five inches on him paused for the briefest moment to look at him. This earned him their supervisor's ire as he missed a color on his next strike.

The priest instructing them moved, his hand blurring a path through the air. The sound of his cane cracked the air to strike the boy on the neck.

The boy howled in pain as he dropped to his knees. Sword forgotten to the ground at his side, he wrapped his hands around his reddened neck but not before Seth saw the welt the cane had left. As if the very action was a trigger, the priest whipped him again, cane rising and falling in rhythmic cruelty. The sound of wood meeting flesh and a child in uncontrolled pain rend the air as the child tossed and rolled on the ground, the priest towering over him to inflict physical horror in the name of punishment.

"What soul mage drops his weapon?!" the priest barked with each strike just as Ulrich barked an order.

"Black!"

The children, save the weeping victim, struck their targets where they were painted black. Seth wasn't sure what was happening but knew he had to draw his attention away from the crying boy.

"Orange!" Ulrich continued, and the thudding sound of wood strikes fought to drown out the child's wailing.

Ulrich turned his attention to Seth where it had been on the other children. "Red!" he said, and Seth stood idly.

Then he slapped him.

The blow rocked Seth back so that he staggered at least three steps and into the punishment behind him. The priest gave the child writhing on the ground a reprieve just to handle him.

Seth felt it the moment the aged man's attention turned on him and a sense of wrongness settled in his gut. Without hesitation, he ducked low so that with his lack of balance and the pain flaring in his head only a single leg was forced to bear the brunt of his weight as he pivoted on it.

The pain in his jaw blurred his vision, but while he saw nothing, he felt something whiz past where his chest had been moments ago. All the while his minds chorused an onomatopoeia of confusing words that gave the vivid illusion of a bunch of people tumbling around in a barrel. He'd barely paid them any attention when his other leg struck something while repositioning itself. The force of it jarred him and he stumbled over something else.

As he fell, helpless in his chaos, recent memory in his most contemporary history hit him like a tidal wave and he tightened his grip around the hilt of his wooden sword, knowing worse may come should he lose it.

His back hit the ground with a thud, knocking the wind out of him even though he'd braced for the impact, eyes tightly sealed shut. At least his sword remained firmly in his grip.

That was one thing he wouldn't be flogged for.

Are we sure we aren't closet sadists? A piece of his mind asked quietly, ignoring the throbbing that remained in his cheek as he garnered his faculties.

We know right, another replied. We've adjusted to accepting all this pain as a part of our life quite quickly.

"Shut up," Seth mumbled as he came to his feet, then froze when he saw Ulrich's raised hand.

Slowly, he turned, knowing Ulrich wasn't looking at him, and followed his gaze. His eyes moved, trailing it to its destination behind him and found the new priest with a frown on his face, cane raised over his head.

Three minds chuckled in his head as one thought: That would've left a mark.

Is that reia infused? Another asked.

The response to it was immediate: We can't see reia, retard.

True, one answered. But it sure as hell looks powerful.

It could've taken our head. What exactly did we do to piss him off this bad, Seth?

Seth bowed his head, scooting away from him slowly as he got to his feet, answering himself at the same time in mumbled whispers. "How would I know?"

That's just lazy of you, came the response at the same time Ulrich spoke.

"Stay your hand on this specific matter, Igor," he said. "There are certain circumstances surrounding the lad, and this is one of them. More will be explained after."

Igor's frown, which was actually a scowl, did not change, but Seth was glad to see his hand descend to his side without wrath.

"Pick up your stick, fool," Igor said to the boy still sniffling on the ground. To Seth, he added: "Face your opponent and attack on command. Strike the colors as I call them and do it properly. Nothing else."

That said, he turned away from him.

When next the priest spoke, Seth joined the children in attacking a defenseless lump of padded wood.