Chapter 15 - A Test

  Plop.

  Plop.

  Plop.

  Water kept dripping somewhere deep in the tunnel, each drop striking stone and throwing its small echo down the dark, but Elrin barely registered it, the sound sliding past him as if his mind had decided it could only hold so much madness.

  He had already endured too much that should not exist, a Demon King controlling his body, healing that stitched him together while he slept, horrors that would have shattered any sane boy, and yet Tova’s words still managed to land as the most impossible thing of all.

  “Kill Gunwald?” Elrin heard himself repeat, as though saying it aloud might prove it had not been said clearly.

  He had never even seen Gunwald, not once. He had no measure for the demon’s strength beyond the way everyone flinched at his name. But fear did not bloom without reason in a place like this. Gunwald was the one the guards spoke of with tightened mouths and the one the miners avoided naming unless they had to.

  Tova watched him, unblinking, while the idea turned over and over in Elrin’s mind. He offered no reassurance and no explanation. The silence itself was an answer; it told Elrin that this was not a cruel joke.

  “You want me to kill Gunwald,” Elrin said again, slower this time, as if repetition might make it sound reasonable.

  Tova’s amusement did not show in his face, but it surfaced in the faint softening around his eyes. “No,” he said at last. “That would be unwise. I need your help in killing him.”

  “My help?” Elrin frowned. “If you mean unleashing that cursed demon, then no. It is uncontrollable and you’ve seen what it did to my body.”

  “I agree,” Tova said. “That is why you need to control it—whatever it is that lives inside you.”

  “And then what?” Elrin pressed, “I let Gunwald cut me to pieces so I can regenerate overnight, and that is supposed to help you?”

  “What do you suppose would have happened if I hadn’t been there to intervene?” asked Tova.

  Elrin bit down on his lip, he already knew the answer and had no desire to give it voice.

  “And what do you suppose would have happened to your little cat?” Tova continued, his gaze sharpening as it fixed on Elrin.

  Elrin’s eyes flew open and his jaw clenched tight. He could endure imagining the consequences for himself, the torture, the drawn-out suffering, the certainty of a painful death, because those were familiar shapes his mind had learned to survive. But Lancelot was different, small, loyal, and defenseless in ways Elrin was not, and the thought of that same cruelty turned on him made his stomach twist violently.

  “You mentioned wanting to find a friend of yours,” Tova went on relentlessly. “What would you do if that friend was in your place? How would you save him if you cannot even save yourself, let alone a little cat?”

  “I…” Elrin faltered, the word collapsing in his throat because there was nothing honest he could put after it. The truth sat there, undeniable and suffocating.

  “You could cause damage,” Tova allowed, a measured concession. “I will grant you that much. But against any trained Bloodkind, you would not last long enough for it to matter.”

  Elrin swallowed, his fingers curling weakly against the stone as he looked up at him. “So what do I do?”

  Tova did not answer right away, he studied Elrin with quiet precision. “That shovel,” he said. “It must have started to feel light in your hand.”

  Shovel?

  Elrin’s thoughts snagged, confused, and then the memory slid into place. The tool had grown easier to lift, easier to swing, the weight turning familiar and then becoming almost nothing.

  “You’re nothing like the others,” Tova continued, his gaze fixed on him as if he were reading a secret written under skin. “You limp after a full day’s work, barely able to stand, and then, the next morning you walk unscathed. Not only unscathed, you walk with a spring to your step.”

  Elrin swallowed. “You want me to push my body until it tears apart.”

  “No,” Tova said, calm as ever. “I want you to go beyond that; to push your body to its absolute limit, and then push again.”

  Elrin opened his mouth to retort—

  “Do you know how long it would take an ordinary person to heal from the beating you took?” Tova interrupted.

  The memory answered before Elrin could stop it, pain flooding back in flashes of sensation rather than images: torn muscle screaming, bones ground wrong beneath his skin, his body reduced to something barely capable of drawing breath. “Months,” he said at last.

  “Months,” Tova echoed. “And during those months you would have lain still and broken for so long that whatever strength you had gained before would rot away, progress erased by immobility and weakness.”

  Tova leaned in slightly and lowered his voice. “What I can accomplish in three months of training,” he went on, “you can accomplish in a single day.” Then his tone shifted, sharpening without growing louder. “And if you believe this mine is difficult, you are mistaken. You are protected here. Nothing enters or leaves without Gunwald’s orders.” His eyes held Elrin’s without mercy. “Out there, life is far harsher, and I assure you, you would not survive a single week.”

  Elrin’s thoughts lurched forward against his will, dragging Wean into the dark with them, imagining himself reaching too late, moving too slowly, failing miserably to rescue his friend. When he finally opened his mouth, the word came out stripped of everything but resolve.

  “Train me.”

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  Tova rose to his feet with a low hum, as if he already knew the answer and this was merely its acknowledgment. “You do not leave this room unless I am with you, and you do not wander.”

  “What about—”

  “And when I am not here,” Tova continued, “you make no sound, no footsteps, no pacing, and no whispering—not even to your cat.”

  “Am I supposed to stay here all day?”

  “They do not know what you are hiding inside you,” Tova said. “To them you are simply a Bloodkind, and a rebellious one at that, which means they will search for you the way hounds search for blood, through every nook and crevice under this mountain, until they either find you or convince themselves you never existed.”

  His gaze narrowed. “And Erhart is not the sort to forgive and forget,” he added, as if stating a rule of nature. “He will remember your face. He will remember his own embarrassment. He will pull this place apart if he thinks you are still breathing somewhere inside it.”

  Tova drew in a slow breath. “Even I am in danger for having been seen with you,” he said, and there was no self pity in it, only calculation. “If you are discovered,” he continued. “I will not save you a second time.”

  Elrin heard Rinkler’s warning echo in his mind, the words returning with cruel clarity. No matter what happens, never reveal your ability….

  Too late for that, Elrin thought, realizing that the old man’s words seem to grow wiser each passing day.

  “Do you understand these terms?”

  Elrin nodded.

  “Good.”

  Elrin’s gaze slid to the rough stone walls, to the uneven cuts where the pick had chewed too deep, to the corners the torchlight failed to reach. “What is this place?” he asked. “Who made it?”

  Tova’s eyes followed Elrin’s for the span of a heartbeat, dismissive and distant. “I did,” he said. “It is my training room.”

  As strange as that sounded, very little about Tova surprised Elrin anymore, not when the boy opposite him wore mystery like a second skin, and Elrin did not even know which question to reach for first. Still, one thing had been lodged in his mind since the night he had seen Tova confront Dravan.

  He hesitated, then pushed anyway, because the name still rang in his skull like a bell struck wrong. “Dravan called you something else that day. Cavvato Zennod. Is that—”

  “To you,” Tova cut in without raising his voice, “I am Tova.”

  The finality in it shut the subject like a door bolted from the other side. Then, in one swift motion, Tova rose and stood tall. “Enough talking. Stand up.”

  “What for?” Elrin asked.

  “A test.” Tova gave him no time to brace himself, no explanation of what the test was or what success would even look like. He simply walked to the far wall of the crude chamber and placed his hand flat against the stone.

  “Back against the wall,” Tova continued.

  Elrin obeyed, dragging himself upright and moving to the opposite end of the chamber, where he set his shoulders against the wall and felt the cold stone press into his spine.

  “Now,” Tova said, “squat halfway.”

  Elrin frowned as he lowered himself into the squat, he braced his back against the wall, the position forcing him into the shape of a man seated on an invisible chair carved out of air. “That’s it?”

  Tova didn’t answer.

  Seconds passed, then minutes. The torch hissed softly. Elrin shifted his weight once, barely perceptible.

  Tova’s eyes flicked to his feet. “Do not move!”

  Elrin stilled immediately.

  His back began to ache first. A dull pressure between the shoulders. Then his thighs started to burn. “How long—”

  Tova raised a finger to his lips.

  Elrin swallowed the rest of the question.

  Time stretched. His calves trembled. His breath grew shallow without him realizing it.

  This is stupid, he thought. I can do this all day. I’ve pushed myself harder than this before.

  This was nothing, Elrin told himself, a lie he clung to because he had learned that lies were sometimes the only thing that kept you moving. He had endured worse than this, endured blood and screaming and the sickening sound of his own bones breaking under force, horrors that at least came with an enemy he could see and hate.

  But there was no enemy here, no raised weapon or snarling guard, no pain he could brace against and survive through stubbornness alone. There was only his own body, faltering and failing him inch by inch, betraying him in a way no outsider ever could.

  He hated that more than he had ever hated the guards, this weakness had no face to blame and no hand to strike back at.

  This failure was his. His knees buckled—

  Tova moved. He crossed the distance in a blink and struck Elrin’s thigh with the flat of his palm.

  Elrin yelped and nearly collapsed.

  “Failure,” Tova said calmly.

  Elrin stared at him, stunned. “What? I didn’t even—”

  “You moved,” Tova said.

  “I lost my balance,” Elrin snapped, heat rising to his face. “Anyone would!”

  “Yes,” Tova agreed. “That is how you die.”

  Elrin clenched his fists. “Then what’s the point?”

  Tova stepped closer. “The point,” he said, “is that you listened to your body.”

  Elrin opened his mouth—

  “You felt pain,” Tova continued. “You felt fatigued. You felt fear of falling. And you obeyed those feelings without thinking.” He stepped back. “Again.”

  Elrin scrambled up and pressed his back to the wall again.

  Minutes passed. His legs shook openly now. Sweat ran down his spine. His jaw clenched hard enough to ache. He thought of collapsing. Of letting himself fall and resting for a bit.

  No, he thought, a spark of stubborn heat flaring in his chest. I’ll show him how hard Heligsol trained me!

  Elrin began to grunt his teeth. The burn in his thighs sharpened into something uglier, like fibers peeling apart strand by strand. He forced his eyes open and looked at Tova—

  What!?

  Tova was seated quietly, utterly still. Nothing shook, nothing strained. His hands were not even braced against his knees but folded neatly in his lap, his posture relaxed and not a single bead of sweat to betray effort or fatigue.

  Just…how?

  The thought never finished forming. Elrin’s knees gave out completely this time, the strength vanishing all at once, and he hit the ground hard.

  Tova didn’t help him up. Didn’t move at all.

  Elrin lay there gasping, straw prickling against his skin, humiliation burning hotter than the pain ever could. He had been trained by ruthless masters at the academy, driven until his legs shook and his vision blurred, and he had earned praise for stamina that outlasted others, for refusing to fall when they did. And now he could not even remain standing, undone by something as simple and merciless as stillness.

  Pathetic.

  Tova finally spoke. “You failed again.”

  Elrin turned his face into the straw, fists clenched.

  “You think endurance is strength,” Tova continued patiently. “It is not. Control is.” He let the words settle before going on. “First lesson. Physical pain does not belong to you. It is a passing moment, nothing more. You acknowledge it, you welcome it, and then you let it go. Clinging to it only teaches your body fear.”

  Tova slowly stood up from his squat and looked down at Elrin. “If you wish to grow strong, you will learn to remain at peace while your muscles are torn apart, while your body screams for mercy, and while every instinct begs you to stop. Anything less is just suffering without purpose.”

  “And tomorrow,” he continued. “We begin training.”