Chapter Twenty Seven #3
“Better, not great, but better,” Gideon said.
Verena stared hard at him looking like she might combust. Without a word she turned, grabbed her bag, and stalked toward the exit without waiting for dismissal.
“Verena,” Gideon said, calm but commanding.
She stopped just shy of the door but didn’t look back, not right away.
“You’re expected at afternoon drills. If you skip them, I’ll report it.”
Verena looked over her shoulder. Her smile was cold as ice. “Then I suppose I’ll see you there.”
She left without another word.
Cassara exhaled, long and quiet. “Do we get a medal for surviving that?”
Gideon didn’t flinch. “No. But I’d call this progress.”
The words startled her, not because of what he said, but how he said them. Not as a backhanded note or passive formality. It almost sounded like praise.
She blinked. “Did you just say something nice?”
“You saw what needed fixing,” he said. “And you acted, they listened. That’s the whole point of the exercise.”
Cassara hesitated. “Thanks,” she said, quietly.
“I didn’t say it was perfect,” he added.
She arched her brow. “You really don’t know how to make a compliment, do you?”
Again, a corner of his mouth twitched. Not quite a smile, but close. “Take a break. Get some water. Reset your ACS. We’ve got two hours until combat drills.”
And with that, he turned and left. Was he going to look for Verena? To apologize for being so harsh to her in front of the team?
Cassara didn’t have time to dwell on it. Her attention shifted to Oliver, who was watching Flicker with more interest than she’d ever seen him direct at something living.
Flicker was sitting in front of him like a very fluffy statue, lazily scratching his ear with a back paw and sending faint ripples through the mana lines beneath him.
“You’re triggering the circuit,” Oliver murmured, fascinated. “But not through pressure… you’re syncing with the ley pattern. How—?”
Flicker yawned wide enough to show all four little fangs.
Oliver blinked. “Right. I’ll try again after you nap.”
“I’m starving,” Liri announced, bouncing to her feet. “And if we stay in here any longer, I’m going to eat part of the ACS paneling. Cassara, come on.”
Cassara blinked. “What?”
“We’re going to lunch.” Liri grabbed her arm like this had always been the plan. “You’ve earned real food and gossip.”
“I don’t—”
“Too late, I’m already dragging you.”
Barrett fell into step behind them with quiet inevitability. Oliver followed a beat later, still scribbling a note into his Codex while occasionally glancing back at Flicker, who now trailed behind them like a smug cloud with ears.
And just like that, they left the training annex.
Together.
For the first time—not as strangers. Not as rejects.
But as a team.
The drills blurred together.
Day after day, the team returned to the same hex-lit training annex, rotating through cohesion exercises, formation tests, and mana sync calibrations. The circuits changed, but the outcome rarely did.
Cassara called formations. Sometimes they worked. Usually, they didn’t, but not because they couldn’t. Rather, because the unity between them was fleeting.
Liri stayed upbeat until the bruises on her shins outnumbered her jokes.
Oliver scribbled theories between sets and tried to fine-tune his ACS interface mid-run.
Barrett was steady but slow to adjust when the formation shifted under pressure.
Verena never passed up a chance to throw blame, usually at Cassara, occasionally at everyone else.
Flicker stopped glowing during drills. He curled by the back wall or wandered the edge of the mana field, occasionally flicking a glyph with his tail, but he no longer brightened when Cassara made a correct call. He seemed bored. Disappointed, even. And Cassara hated how that bothered her.
Every success felt like a fluke while every failure felt earned.
“Hold left!” Cassara barked, skidding into position as the light-trail pattern changed mid-rotation. “Rett, you’re late—Liri, cover the gap—Verena, shift back, you’re out of—”
“I know where I’m supposed to be,” Verena snapped, voice hot with venom. “Maybe if the rest of you kept up—”
The formation broke.
A flare of red light pulsed beneath their feet: failure signal.
Again.
Cassara’s shoulders tightened as she froze in the center of the circle. Heat prickled behind her eyes, not from effort but frustration. Around her, the others pulled to a stop, staggered and breathless, no one looking at each other.
Flicker let out a soft, unimpressed chirp from where he lounged atop the bench, one paw dangling dramatically over the edge like this was a poorly rehearsed stage play.
“That’s the third failure today,” Verena said. “Maybe we should stop pretending this team ever had a chance.”
“Oh, please,” Cassara bit back. “You’re the only one who’s off every time we sync. You can’t hold a simple defensive pattern for more than thirty seconds!”
Cassara’s voice echoed off the training hall walls, sharp with a week’s worth of accumulated frustration. Sweat beaded on her forehead despite the cool fall air, and her ACS readings flickered—stress channeling at its finest.
“Maybe the pattern would hold if certain people stopped barking orders like they owned the place,” Verena shot back, Kaddock pawing the ground with barely restrained aggression. “News flash, Allencourt, being at the bottom of the rankings doesn’t make you team leader.”
“No, but understanding basic tactical formations apparently does,” Cassara retorted. “Which seems to be beyond your—”
“My what?” Verena stepped forward, green eyes blazing. “My abilities? My intelligence? Please, enlighten us all about what the great fallen prodigy thinks I lack.”
“Common sense, for starters—”
“Both of you, stop.” Liri’s voice cut through their argument, but it lacked its usual gentle authority. She looked exhausted, Nym’s glow dim and erratic. “This isn’t helping anyone.”
“Tell that to the princess here,” Verena snarled. “She’s the one who thinks she can fix everything with her brilliant insights.”
“At least I’m trying to fix something instead of actively sabotaging—”
“Enough.”
They fell silent as Gideon stepped forward, arms crossed, his face unreadable. Not angry. Just… done.
“Three days,” Gideon said, his voice deadly quiet.
“In three days, we face another squad in exhibition combat for the first time. Full tactical engagement, ranked evaluation, academy-wide observation.” His dark gaze swept over each of them in turn.
“The results will determine our standing for the next quarter’s prestige rankings. ”
He let that sink in for a moment. Around the circle, faces went pale as the implications hit home.
“Every team has been training together for the same week we have,” Gideon continued.
“The difference is they’ve been working as a unit while we’ve been playing out petty grievances and ego games.
” His eyes found Verena, then Cassara. “If you want to hand them an easy victory, keep doing exactly what you’re doing. ”
Rett shifted uncomfortably, his massive frame somehow managing to look smaller. “What happens if we lose?”
“Bottom tier placement,” Gideon said bluntly. “Reduced training resources. Limited advancement opportunities. And for those of you already struggling with rankings,” his gaze lingered meaningfully on Cassara, “potential review for continued enrollment.”
Cassara felt the blood drain from her face as the full weight of their situation settled over her. She’d fought so hard to stay at Vallemont, only to face the possibility of losing it all because they couldn’t function as a team.
Gideon’s gaze moved across them, pausing longer than necessary on Cassara and Verena.
“I said this at the start. You don’t have to like each other,” he said. “But you do have to work together. Because this team is all you’ve got. No reassignment. No second chances. And no one, no one, is going to carry anyone else through it.”
He looked at each of them again.
“So,” Gideon said, crossing his arms over his chest. “Are we going to waste the next three days repeating this performance? Or are we going to figure out how to fight together instead of against each other?”
“I…” Cassara started, then stopped. The angry words that had been building died in her throat as she looked around the circle at her teammates.
Oliver, clutching his modified equipment like a shield against his own inadequacy.
Liri, exhausted from trying to keep them all from destroying each other.
Barrett, protective instincts at war with team dynamics he didn’t understand.
And Verena whose face now showed a flicker of fear beneath all that rage.
Gideon took their silence for acceptance. “Follow me,” he said before turning and walking out of the annex.