7. Leah
Leah
They make us choose our weapons before we know what we’re up against.
It seems unnecessarily cruel as I watch the fledglings agonize over their options in the armory. I see some of them closing their eyes as their hands hover over the table loaded with weapons, and I guess they’re hoping their foresight will give them some sense of what to choose.
“They must want us to be strategic,” Filippa murmurs to me when it’s our turn. She looks gray under the usually warm tone of her skin. “There must be a way to show wisdom in our choice. Anyone can load themselves up with weapons—”
“But in some battles, it’s better to travel light and be quick on your feet,” I finish for her. “Or wings, I guess.”
“Make up your mind!” instructor Baxir barks from the end of the table. “Good warriors don’t hesitate!”
I grab a bow and quiver of arrows as well as a small knife. They’re the weapons I’m most comfortable with anyway, and they shouldn’t weigh me down too much. Filippa selects a single sword.
“I’m a bad shot,” she explains as she buckles the sheath to her waist.
It doesn’t seem much compared to what some of the others choose. Keros is wearing half the armory, his whole body glinting with sharp objects.
They wait until we’re all gathered outside the front of the academy to talk to us again.
“Now you’ve made your preparations,” Captain Hasteed says, looking us over with her serious gaze, “you will proceed to the Eyrie.”
“The Eyrie?” I repeat under my breath.
“It’s an arena on the other side of the city,” Bianca answers.
Panic bubbles inside me at yet another reminder of how little I know about this process and this place.
“However, there will be no flying until we reach the arena,” Hasteed continues. “You must walk there.”
“What?” snaps Eteine—the thin woman who backed up Keros on my first day. “Why can’t we fly?”
“Because your trial has already begun,” Baxir says smugly.
I exhale in relief. I really didn’t like the idea of having to be flown anywhere by my peers, or worse, getting left behind. Making us choose our weapons makes even more sense now, because the more heavily armed we decided to be, the more tired we’ll be when we actually have to fight.
I look over at Keros, enjoying the furious look on his face.
“Now,” Baxir says, “get marching.”
It takes us nearly two hours. By the time the Eyrie comes into view, I’m starting to feel the awkwardness of my quiver as it bumps up against my spine, hitting the exact same spot with every step I take.
Thankfully, there’s no mistaking the arena—it’s a huge glass dome that, like the rift gate, sits on the other side of a bridge, jutting out from the main body of the city.
When we started marching, we were all quiet, lost in thoughts of what might lie ahead.
But the boredom of the trek eventually had people talking—throwing around theories about what the trial will be, exchanging last-minute advice and even some banter about who is going to come out on top.
But as we file into the arena, we all fall quiet again, the tension stifling as it wraps around us.
Inside is a circle of dirt floor surrounded by a stone wall.
The wall turns into glass twenty feet up, stretching overhead so the pale sunlight filters lightly through.
There are a few features dotted here and there among the dirt—three clusters of boulders, a pyramid of wood stacked about ten feet high, and a deep ditch carved into the earth over to one side.
Halfway up the glass dome hangs a row of spectator boxes.
I can’t make out the faces of the ephilium standing inside it, but I can take a guess who they are.
“Are the seraphim up there?” I ask Filippa.
“Yes,” she says, her voice coming out a little croaky. “The general will be up there too, you can bet on it.”
But my eyes are already being drawn back to the wall that surrounds the arena.
Three pairs of large iron doors are set into the stone.
Something about their size and thickness is instantly ominous, promising that whatever they’re holding back isn’t going to be small and fluffy.
We all spread out once we’re inside the arena, and when the shuffle of the fledglings’ footsteps at last quiets, I think I can hear something moving behind the doors.
Three somethings, to be precise, snuffling and scratching.
A loud clang cuts through the air, and one of the iron doors shakes violently. Some of the fledglings jump, and a whine comes through the door furthest to the left—the hungry frustration of a predator that can’t reach their prey…yet.
All around me, the fledglings’ hands go to their weapons. For all their height and strength and armor, they look like a bunch of terrified kids trying very hard to hide their fright.
Then a light flashes from up in one of the spectator’s boxes, glinting like the sun catching a mirror. A voice behind us speaks.
“The time has come,” Hasteed says, and this time I nearly jump.
I’d forgotten she was still here. But when I turn to look at her, I see she’s already walking toward the entrance we came through.
Baxir’s waiting on the other side, looking like a slightly bored audience member at a theater rather than a teacher about to see some of his students for the last time.
At least Hasteed looks somber when she reaches out for the entrance gate.
“Remember, be brave and wise and honorable. May the ancestors smile on you.” She slams the gate shut, trapping us inside the arena, nodding encouragingly at us through the bars. “For the glory.”
“For the glory,” some of the fledglings repeat with various levels of enthusiasm.
My breath feels shallow in my chest, like I can’t get enough air. Needing something to do, I check once again that I can easily reach my bow and grab my knife. But I don’t arm myself with either yet, wanting to see what I’m up against—and whether I’ll need my hands free—before I make a choice.
The iron doors start to groan open.
I try to take myself back to the plains after a battle, the ground smoking and blood heavy as I picked my way around corpses. This is just like that—another day scavenging, another few hours of danger and tension, and then it will be over and I can retreat back to relative safety.
Most of the fledglings around me stretch out their wings and start to rise into the air, putting space between themselves and the doors. They’re nearly completely open now, my heart picking up its pace as they reveal a trio of tunnels, each housing an animal.
No, not just an animal. A monster, bigger than any beast I’ve seen before. Each one is between ten and twenty feet tall and is straining against the reinforced harnesses securing them to the tunnels with thick rope.
They’re as different as they are big. The creature in the left-hand tunnel looks like some kind of wolf, with a thick, shaggy ruff of sandy fur around its head and a mean, fang-filled muzzle.
It’s scrabbling at the dirt, nose sniffing the air as it tries to break free of its restraints.
In the central tunnel, there’s a bird at least twice as tall as me, the wicked curve of its brown beak fully on display as it tilts its head to survey us with pin-pupiled eyes.
Its head and body are white, but its wings are black as night, and it flaps them now, feathers catching against the edge of the tunnel as it shrieks with frustration.
The third tunnel contains an animal I don’t even have a name for until I hear one fledgling mutter it to another—a dermison.
It has tough, gray skin whirled with wrinkles and two curling tusks.
Wide-set eyes blink darkly out at us from between a pair of huge, plate-like ears, its face tapering down into a thick trunk.
It would be majestic to look at if it wasn’t for the fact that I might be impaled on those tusks very soon.
My hair ruffles in a breeze as a figure drops down beside me. I look over to see Filippa, clutching her sword tightly and looking almost as gray as the dermison.
“Are we meant to kill them?” I ask, horrified.
“If we want to distinguish ourselves, sure,” Filippa says, speaking quickly because she knows we don’t have much time. “Personally, I’m aiming for ‘don’t die.’ My mother said the arena tasks don’t usually last that long. The seraphim get bored of watching after about an hour.”
An hour? I can’t imagine surviving five minutes in the same space as these beasts, and I’m still intensely aware that I’m the only one who can’t get off the ground.
I frantically scan the space for places I might be able to hide or climb, trying to ignore the snarling of the wolf-beast still trying to yank itself free of its ropes.
“Maybe I could carry you?” Filippa says weakly, obviously thinking the same thing I am.
“No.” My reply is instant. “That’ll just get us both killed. You need to be able to hold your weapon, and you’d struggle to lift me on your own.”
“Plus, with your flying, you’d probably just drop her straight into that lammer bird’s beak,” comes a low voice from above us. I look up to see Keros staring down with a smirk.
“Fuck off, Keros,” I say, too frightened right now to come up with anything cleverer.
“You’re done for, runt,” he growls before banking away from us.
“Go,” I say to Filippa. “I’ll be all right.” She and I both know I have no guarantee of that, but she kindly doesn’t point it out.
“Let’s hope our ancestors are on our side today,” she says grimly before rising up to join the other fledglings fanning out around the arena.
Blades are sliding from the edges of the doorways now, slicing through the ropes until the harnesses are completely untethered.
Plans and strategies gallop through my head, only for me to quickly throw them out again.
For now, I’m sticking to the basics. First things first, I need to get high up off the ground—that should protect me from at least two of the three animals.
I’m a good climber; I just need something I can actually climb—and these smooth stone walls don’t qualify.