Life in the seminary wasn't exactly as Seth had expected. There was the pain and the struggle, predicted from the very beginning. But there was also the friendship and camaraderie which had taken him by surprise. Priests, he had always thought, were designed to be machines that peaked in the study of soul magic for very brutal purposes, substituting emotional attachments of any kind for a greater achievement in this. At least this was the essence of every rumor of them. One year in the seminary proved it fallible.
He and the other children lived under the tutelage of their instructors, most of whom he'd come to learn bore the title of Reverend, drowning in an enforced determination to strive for perfection. They trained, and ate, and slept, and struggled, and trained some more. The unending struggle was anything but monotonous and they took the oddest motivation from its diversity.
When winter came, they were given cloaks of fur that, according to Timilehin, rumors had it were from one reia beast or the other, killed and skinned in a certain way that most people did not know how to do. It brought a little warmth to their days and nights which they agreed was a worthy compensation to how much they struggled under the weight of them. Because of this, their trainings in the winter suffered, and they suffered in turn. They executed skills in each training poorly and the Reverends took to the cane like hungry men to free food.
Perhaps the most notable oddity was how much pain they were able to inflict despite the cloaks of fur protecting the children. It could protect them from the chill, they seemed to teach them, but nothing could protect them from the priests.
Their training schedule was patterned by days, giving them at least a sense of order to it. Every day they would rise before the crack of dawn, racing their path to the training yard, knowing that to delay was to be punished.
Once, Seth had slept in late for no more reason than he'd slept in late. The luxury of a child of a Lord of gold authority rearing its head in a moment of weakness. For it, he had garnered the considerable ire of Igor. He'd been woken to the pain of cane strokes, flogged in the discomfort of his bed until he feared his consciousness would flee him and the pain. It did not.
Suffice to say, the error was never made again.
Mondays were given to the way of the sword. In this, Igor tutored them. He would stand before them and observe. He would let them stretch so the quiet and slow actions scraped away at the remnants of sleep clinging to their bodies and minds. Then he would set them to the task of their dummies. With bellowed commands and the names of colors echoing through the wind, they would strike and attack with the vigor of children who did not want to be flogged. Vigor, though, they came to learn quite quickly, bore no correlation to the floggings. Anyone remained a possibility for pain. Still, they were children in the hands of puberty and knew enough to decipher much. One of such things deciphered was that the more skill displayed, the less pain came down on them. This was evident in how little Barnabas was flogged.
After a few hours of this, Igor would release them to the comfort of breakfast. Like dinner, breakfast was a buffet of everything edible. There were meals that ensured their diet remained constantly balanced and sufficient enough to fatten them, which it did blessedly.
After breakfast they would—along with their counterparts—clean out the dining hall, washing plates and cleaning tables. Then they would return to the punishment of training, tasking themselves in the ordeal of encompassing the sword, as Igor had once poetically put it.
Igor would show them a display of sword strokes in the end, weaving and turning with a grace unbecoming of one so cruel to children. He would perform these in a dance of measured steps, never fast but never sluggish. Whenever he brought his display to a close he would have them emulate him to the best of their abilities. They would do so knowing each time that they would only prove subpar.
Barnabas set himself as a standard at least a level above the rest of them easily. When he attacked, his attacks were precise. They were rarely ever loud, making them more silent in their early weeks than Seth felt they ever had the right to be. When asked how exactly he did it after they had noted how often Igor nodded to him—the man's only existing form of praise—his answer had been simple.
"I don't know," he told them, "I don't even think I'm doing it right."
In the weeks that followed the single response had garnered him a sort of reputation that left him not worthy of trust amongst them.
Despite this, Jason was the first to show any difference in his strikes. As time went by, his wooden blade struck quieter with every lesson until he, too, was rewarded with Igor's nods.
Though it took a while longer, it was only a month before the rest of them realized the secret of it all. Seth learned it next, barely a week after Jason, and it was a snowball effect from there. The truth—one he would not admit to his open mind—was that he couldn't have done it without his fractured minds. They had done what they did best, bickering and taunting and observing, and from it they had spilled the truth of how Jason had achieved it.
There's no force at the end, one of them had thought. He's always letting it slide off at the end.
Seth hadn't thought it made sense in the beginning. He hadn't thought to even trust his minds which was more of the norm than all else. Mostly, he doubted them because Igor's display of graceful sword strokes bore strikes that emulated the force of battering rams on the few occasions when he showed them what the techniques were meant to look like.
Eventually, despite his stubbornness and logical debate, but mainly his minds' refusal to let the subject be, he gave in and did what was asked of him. He learned that the aim of the dummies was not to be struck despite their actions being called 'strikes.' No. Igor required that they slice.
"You're holding a blade with a sharp edge, Jabari," Igor had once said to him quietly. "Not a fucking baseball bat."
Tuesdays were quite different from the way of the sword. They still rose early, as if in a race against dawn, and still suffered the wrath of Igor in the event that they proved tardy. However, on this day they were taught the way of the bow; a particularly pointless technique, considering the state of the world. What kind of reia beast can be harmed with a simple arrow?
They studied the way of the bow under a most surprising tutor. This tutor wore neither cassock nor bore the title of Reverend. Their tutor was a greater oddity in the seminary than the stable master who had only one working eye yet seemed unable to see out of it.
Their tutor in the way of the bow had bright green eyes and wavy red hair the color of blazing fire, laughed quietly with the Reverends yet was rarely ever seen associating with them. Their tutor was of a height comfortably above average with a round face, tiny freckles beneath the eyes and over the cheeks that burdened it with what Salem, one of the boys with a penchant for overenthusiastic use of words, would call a magic blemish. Whatever that meant.
But odder than all these qualities, what stood out was that their tutor in the way of the bow was a woman.
Her curves inspired a motivation in the boys that did not necessarily lean in the direction of training. She was soft spoken, with a voice like the morning dew, gentle and caressing—another of Salem's words. Every training she commanded, she did so in tight fitting jeans and a long sleeved shirt that hugged her frame. She was the only female in their bleak masculine lives and they were glad for it, perhaps too glad.
Despite their gratitude, in their earlier weeks they had looked to her with a certain measure of fear flirting with a touch of discrimination. In a Seminary where men built the foundation of all things, it was nigh impossible to expect she live up to any standard the Reverends set. That she was a soul mage changed nothing of this. After all, everyone knew a reia beast of equal authority was stronger than any soul mage. This was because of their biological makeup which left them stronger, faster, and more agile than any human.
Soul magic made the mages more powerful, but it did not make those blessed with the gift of reia equals. As was the case of a beast to a man, a man's muscles were larger and more powerful than a woman's by nature's design, their bones denser, their weights heavier. Emriss, their tutor in the way of the bow, might be of Baron authority as they were coming to learn all their instructors—contrary to the world's official Baron list—were, but she was no man. She was no Reverend.
There was truth in this. But at its edges deceit played dice.
Seth and his brothers soon came to understand that the scale of power between monsters only mattered to monsters. To the weak, power was power; greater, lesser, trifling, it was all the same. Emriss did not require long to impart it upon them that Reverend or not, she was a Baroness, and she could crush every one of them all the same.
Emriss taught them the proper way to string a bow, teaching them that not all bows were meant to remain strung at all times like in the comics making their rounds amongst the children of the outside world, or in the novels—for those of them who'd ever read any—where the characters always had their bows strung and hanging around their shoulders. Seth had an idea of her examples and so did a few of the other boys. Timilehin did not, and Seth found himself explaining to the child in simpler terms, not only on this subject but on any example or analogy Emriss used that he did not understand.
Emriss taught them that there were laws in the use of the bow, not laws laid down by men but those laid down by the bow itself. This was another analogy Seth had been forced to explain when Timilehin had turned to him with a troubled expression.
"Do they scare us on purpose?" Timi had asked. "Why would they want us to use weapons that speak so soon. I don't think we're ready for that. Rumor has it we don't want to be learning from someone that will tell us to use weapons that talk."
He had been forced to explain the use of metaphors and personification to the child, not that he understood very much of them either.
Emriss eventually came to show them the strength of a soul mage during a particularly disagreeing lesson, reminding them that a Baroness and a Baron were not much different.
On an unfortunate evening, Bartholomew, a stocky boy they had taken to calling Bart, had opposed her. He had belittled the bow, calling it an archaic weapon unfit for the current world and soul magic. He had said that by being a weapon used from a distance it belonged to the cowards.
"No soul mage worthy of the title would use something so cowardly," had been his choice of words before throwing down his bow with so much force the thin length of stick had raised a fickle amount of dust.
His punishment had been swift and immediate. Emriss had done what they had learned was a gift of Barony. She had unveiled her core and the world—every fiber of it—had opposed them. Every child in the hall had fallen face flat to the sand, breath fleeing them like prey from a predator. Even the very act of gasping had not been allowed them. Paralysis clung to their very bones like a venereal disease, unearthly pressure enforcing itself upon them like gravity turned twenty times over. Notifications screaming at Seth from all over.
It had lasted but a moment, all of them collateral damages in the punishment. But the damage had truly been done. On their release, Norman, a child who'd grown uncomfortably close to Forlorn, came to with an ear shattering scream. From his thigh, the shaft of an arrow poked out. It seemed he'd been interrupted while nocking one, and the rest was self-explanatory enough. Seth wondered how horribly it had been to have felt the arrow pierce his thigh and be unable to scream, the power of breath taken from him so abruptly and absolutely.
He did not blame the boy for the baleful tears running down his cheeks as he wept. He doubted any of them did.
The cause of the chaos, Bartholomew, did not rise. He remained sprawled in the sand so that they feared the boy dead.
Emriss, on her part, had simply shooed them away, commanding that they take Bartholomew and Norman to the healer. One of Seth's mind had caught what it described as a hint of remorse in the woman's face as she turned away from them. For what was left of that day's lesson she had done naught but let them use the bow whichever way they wanted, only replacing their targets and staring at nothing. Seth did not allow it bother him, neither did he allow the bickering of his minds on it.
Wednesday was the day of the staff. This day was ruled by Reverend Nehemiah, a man with lush reddish brown hair he kept held back in a ponytail. He was a Reverend who never wore a cassock, settling for a simple jogger of brown coloring and any shirt he seemed to come by on any given morning.
The lesson of the staff was spent training with a length of wood that was five feet long. While Reverend Nehemiah's was fashioned from black wood and was the color of tar, beatified in carvings and runes of defying magic, theirs were simply five feet long pieces of wood. Whoever had carved theirs had simply gone for purpose, putting in mind their fates. It was like someone crafting a mug to be used for ale in a tavern somewhere, knowing its fate was to be broken in some useless brawl or the other.
They learned to use the staff in the ways of the seminary; in the ways brothers of the seminary should—according to Nehemiah.
Every Wednesday they learned to use the knife. Their instructor on this, Reverend Oscar, was a brown skinned man who had apparently lived since before the first crack. During his time then, he'd been a soldier in one of the African countries.
He liked to regale them with stories of his time in the army when men couldn't crack boulders with a single blow or paralyze lesser men with a stare so effortlessly.
They practiced with wooden knives, Timilehin informing Seth that they were to leave their hunting knives given to them behind on his first Wednesday night.
Seth took to the knife like leaves to a tree. The weapon moved in his left hand with rhythmic grace every single time, finding a path to his target each time. He learned the techniques Reverend Oscar taught with surprising ease. But his footwork held him back more often than not. Whatever Jabari had taught him played well with his knife-work but something always seemed to be missing. His reach was seamless but always seemed to come up short. Each time he would have to bring a conscious reminder to himself so that he could recalculate each move, his steps not closing in enough, his wooden blade often a few inches from reaching his opponent. It forced him to pay greater attention every time. It was a sharp contrast to his use of the sword where it left him often over extending.
The only time his moves where effective was when he simply pretended he was fighting unarmed. It left the knife feeling like an extra fist.
On Thursday they trained in close quarters combat. Seth had wondered what they had been doing all along if they were now training in something called close quarter combat when he'd learned of the lesson.
On the day of the lesson he had come to know it for what it truly was.
Unarmed combat was the domain of Reverend Domitia. In the art of unarmed combat, he taught them to bring harm without weapons. This, he taught them, was the way men fought men. Yet he let them know that there would be times when they would be at the mercy of a reia beast, perhaps even a soul beast, and unarmed.
"When you find yourself in that position, know that you will die," he told them. "But you belong to the seminary, and those that belong to these walls will never die without a fight. With your bare hands, you bring the beast to its knees."
"Like Samson," Josiah, one of them who had somehow smuggled a Christian bible into the seminary through methods the rest of them still found incomprehensible, offered.
Domitia had spared the boy a moment's glance before adding condescendingly: "The Nazarite beat a mere lion, Ninu; one without reia of any form. That is something you will be able to do in your sleep. So, no, Ninu, not like Samson."
Domitia led them through deliberate techniques, slow as Igor was in his teaching of the sword. Each technique always flowed into the next, open hand strikes evolving into closed fists. Bends and turns often moved from evasions to throws. The choreography of techniques seemed to blend into each other so that every move seemed capable of leading to any other. It was a beauty to behold, and it held Seth in awe every time.
A very deadly beauty, Seth's minds never failed to remind him.
Regardless of the beauty, he along with his brothers all came to hate Thursdays, save Salem and Timilehin.
For Salem, he discovered his gift in the art of evasion, weaving and ducking every strike his opponent gave whenever they sparred. For Timilehin it was the sheer force of his weight, second only to Fin. His time in the seminary had thickened him, replacing fat with heavy muscles so that he took most strikes without effect while every one of his seemed to bear with it the force of a frenzied bear.
Apart from the pain that came with it, Seth found he also exceled in unarmed combat. His strikes were always true, especially those executed with his left hand. Unfortunately, attack was the only aspect he proved good at. Defense had a habit of spitting in his face with his opponents' fists.
Friday was given to the body, and Reverend Typhon put them through it with the interest and motivation of a religious fanatic. In a world that possessed gyms and weights and mechanisms designed to strengthen the body, Seth and his brothers were disappointed to find the seminary favored the more archaic process.
To train their body they were made to run the length of the seminary. Under Typhon's guidance, it was the second of two days when they ventured deeper into the seminary, the part of it shrouded in trees and wild life, free of the taint of civilization—no matter how old—that blessed the seminary. There they would continue their run, sprinting through uneven terrain, finding balance as the trees blurred past them.
Their run through the forest would bring them to a large river. Here, Typhon would have them swim.
The water was always cold, regardless of how high in the sky the sun was or how blistering the heat proved. And every time they would leave it with shivers and tremors, cold bumps littering every surface of their skin before they would return in a sprint. For those who did not know how—because there were—Typhon allowed them teach themselves. Throwing them into the river and letting them struggle not to drown was a lesson in the seminary's teaching techniques. Each time, at the moment they gave up their struggle to survive, he would have one of the children save them. The times Seth was called from his swim to play savior, he learned the truth of how close to death a savior came when pulling someone from it.
On Saturday they learned in the healer's room. The master healer was a Reverend whose name they never learned. He taught them what he liked to call the biology of plants. He showed them the way what plants were poisonous and what plants were edible. He showed them what plants could be antidotes and what plants helped with injuries. All these he categorized into three. Those that were indigenous to the world, those that came after the first crack, and those that had reia.
At midday he would chase them from his place, always with a shooing motion, and hand them to the capable hands of Reverend Clint, a man who would return them to the forest within which they ran when training the body. He would then teach them how to hunt the simple animals. Rodents, hares, even serpents were not safe from the list. That the priest referred to animals such as serpents as simple had baffled Seth's minds until he reminded them that the man was most likely a Baron if he wasn't a gold mage.
The first part of their lesson with Clint was spent hunting, but the latter part, the period when darkness began pressing on the world, was spent differently. Clint would gather them around a small fire as the darkness came, and teach them the hand signs of the seminary, words and fingers working together to teach and interpret.
This class was favorite to Seth's minds. Only one mind—he did not know which—preferred the day spent learning the bow over it.
Seth and his new brothers found Sundays to be their favorite. Save the boys who were sent to help out in the stables, it was a day of freedom, a day they were left to do with their time and lives as they pleased. Unsurprisingly, this time was not spent as a group. They would run into each other often when making their way back to the room for whatever reason or debacle spurred them, before setting out again on whatever adventure beckoned.
All this they did as winter thawed to the life of spring, and summer filched the world away as most accomplished thieves do before the descent of autumn like a goddess to her people and the gruesome return of winter as it choked the life from her with its cold hands.
It was at the dawn of new winter, one year into their stay, that Igor brought to their attention the existence of the seminary's tests.
He brought it to them in their room as they settled in to sleep a night before it and Seth doubted a child existed there who did not hate the putrid priest more.
What it was, he did not tell them, but Seth's mind cooed and groaned as a notification came alive before his very eyes.
Quest Imminent….
Calculating… Calculating… Calculating…
Calculation Failed.
Divining… Divining… Divining…
Divination Failed…
Divination Skill Not Found.
Predicting… Predicting… Predicting…
…
Quest found…
…
Prepare for Coming Possible Quest…
…
New Quest: ????????
…
Possible Reward: Potential Skill.
Possible Consequence: Potential Death.
Seth read it twice in the discomfort of his mattress and sighed.