Chapter 1 #2
They operate ballistas from the ground or in towers to hurt or kill the invaders, but the real battle happens in the air.
Suspended by wings of linen and bamboo, the sentinels confuse and disorient the invading dragons and their riders.
I’ve never seen them stalling an attack, since we always take shelter when the warning bells ring, but I’ve watched the sky sentinels training, jumping from the Outer Hill, then gliding in the air like birds.
Like dragons.
Powerful. Free. Majestic.
I close my eyes. It’s going to be me there, one day, brave and fearless, defending my land. Protecting my kingdom.
The Castle Hill rises in front of me, the academy and castle etched on its rocks.
With the numbered note in my hand, I approach the wooden gate leading to the training grounds, my pulse quickening.
A guard points to the side stands, where five rows of stone seats are partially occupied by other aspiring sky sentinels and their families.
In the middle, small canopies cover four tables standing on the sandy grounds by the white stone walls of the academy.
Two towers of about five stories each stand on each side. They can be used for defense and have ballistas and windows on top, but they’re mostly for practice—and for the Trial.
The setup hasn’t changed. Applicants approach the table, reach into a curtained box, and pull out an hourglass.
That timer dictates how long they have to scale the left tower, grab a flag from the top, and get back down.
I never had any issues with that part of the Trial, but I’ve seen confident applicants fumbling this simple task.
It’s true that it depends a little on luck, as the hourglass can be for thirty, forty, or sixty seconds.
If you get the smallest one, you need to be extremely fast.
That part doesn’t worry me; I trained for it.
It’s the second test that twists my gut: the table in the corner with three cups.
Guess which one hides the ball. A test of Foros’s blessing, they say.
Not everyone has to take it, and I’ve never figured out why.
Never figured out why I was always sent to that table, when most people aren’t.
The last candidates from the one o’clock batch are running up and down the tower, and none have been sent to the Foros table yet.
A wave of relief hits my chest. Maybe they won’t send me there today.
The instructor standing behind the cups looks young for his position, although he’s wearing the typical black academy uniform in rigid leather, with a dragon skin patch on his chest. His dark hair isn’t pulled back like most sentinels, leaving his black waves loose.
He looks up—and his gaze meets mine. Dark eyes with eyelashes that are long like spider legs. Stunning spiders.
I realize we’re staring at each other and look away. I don’t want to flirt with a young Sky Academy instructor, and I don’t want to desire someone like that, too beautiful for me. It was just a glance. I doubt he even noticed it.
My eyes focus on a skinny young girl, wearing loose linen pants, a white tunic, and a white lace headband.
She reaches into the box and pulls out a small hourglass.
Thirty seconds. Her eyes widen, and she turns and runs to her tower as the instructor clicks open the connection in the hourglass, allowing the sand to flow through the opening.
Every grain is a physical marker of the time she has. We can’t see inside the towers, so I don’t know if she’ll make it or not. When the final grain drops, she comes out, flag in hand, breathless, reaching the table right at the last second, perhaps slightly after it.
A gray-haired woman takes her flag and looks at the man beside her. I wonder if they’re going to tell her she failed or send her to the Foros table.
The woman points at the forsaken table, and the girl’s shoulders slump as she heads to that corner.
My eyes follow her—and meet the instructor’s eyes again.
There’s no question that he’s staring at me, but it makes no sense.
I haven’t seen him before, not in my last two trials, nor anywhere in Dracolius City.
Even if I had some note on my file saying “stupid girl who doesn’t quit,” he wouldn’t have read it. Not yet, at least.
I look away at another applicant, a bulky boy, probably seventeen, but who seems much younger, pulling an hourglass from the box. He’s lucky and got a white, fat one, which should give him more than enough time to climb up and down the tower.
Still curious about the skinny girl, I look back at the table with the cups and see her covering her face with her hands, as if they could hide her shame.
My body feels rigid like old bread. For a second, I’m that girl, staring in disbelief at the empty cup. For a second, despair clouds my thoughts and taints my mind, as I’m unable to accept that I’ll need to go back to the restaurant—if Laristella even accepts me back.
“What now?” echoes in my head. What now? The dreadful question that once shook me to the bone. But that moment is in the past. Today is different.
The girl walks to the stands and hugs an older woman. Her mother, likely. We couldn’t be more different. A bitter taste fills my mouth.
The bulky boy hands over his flag, and the instructors wave him toward a large table where the newly-admitted recruits are bent over their paperwork.
They’re getting in. Candidate after candidate clears the tower without trouble, waved straight to sign their papers.
The only exception is a tall boy who takes too long in the tower and is dismissed.
Not much later, a young man is sent to the Foros table.
I don’t dare to look, trying to avoid that instructor’s eyes, even if I convinced myself I’m just imagining that he’s staring at me.
And yet I have to see what happens, and focus on the boy.
To my surprise, he picks the cup with the ball.
The pretty instructor smirks, sends the boy to sign his papers, then looks at me.
His stare feels like soft fingers trailing my neck, but I pretend I don’t notice it and turn my attention to the other tables and the line of aspirants.
The sundial on the wall is past two o’clock already, and yet I don’t see them calling the new group.
When the final candidates in that batch end their trials, the instructors pause and go inside, replaced by guards.
I’ve always wondered what they do during these breaks.
Do they just pee and relax? Debate something?
Or do they check if they’re hitting their quota?
Quota. The word lands in my stomach like a stone. What if they do have a quota and send the rest of us home, telling us to try next year? But they need sentinels. Too many of them die.
It might be me, consumed in a blast of fire one day. Laristella warned me many times that it’s dangerous, but all I can think is that it would be a glorious death. Not that I want to die. I want to live, but live fully, or else I’m already dead.
The sundial marks half past two when the officers call the two-o’clock batch. There are about thirty of them, many too skinny, perhaps underfed, hoping for their chance to improve their lives and leave starvation behind.
Mayara, you’re not even suffering from hunger! Laristella yelled at me when she first heard I wanted to join the Sky Academy. As if there was only one type of hunger.
Sometimes the candidates are not poor; they just want the status of being a sky sentinel.
Marcus didn’t even care about defending Dracolius from the invaders, and didn’t seem much interested in flying. He still applied. Still got in. Then never came back, not even to say goodbye, as if I lived miles and miles away from the academy.
He thinks he’s better than me now, I suppose, just because he was accepted and I wasn’t.
The worst is that, for a moment, I thought I could find happiness outside the academy.
I thought I could lead a simple life with a fisherman’s son.
It wasn’t love, but companionship, serenity, maybe just wanting to hold on to something that felt safe at the time.
Perhaps it was my body reacting to the moments when he brought me to the beach meadow, his skin against mine.
I used to tell myself it was like plain bread, not delicious, but satiating.
The more he satiated me, the more that hunger grew.
He made me think I could one day love him, even if I had sworn never to let a man become the center of my life.
At least the illusion didn’t last long. He wasn’t really my type, even if he was good looking, with tan skin, green eyes, and light brown hair.
I wouldn’t have chosen him, but he insisted; he was always there, always coming to the restaurant to see me.
Perhaps it was what drove me to him; the thought that someone would always be there.