The Arena (11 page)

T
he blaring beeps
from my alarm pulled me out of a deep sleep. God, I really needed to change that tone. Maybe not; it sure got the job done, but it had to be one of the worst sounds in the world. I had just enough time left before class to toss some water in my hair to even it out a bit. After the grueling morning workout, I probably could have slept until tomorrow, but missing the first day of class was not an option. I had a feeling missing classes around here would have more than a bad grade for consequences. All of my muscles had grown stiff from sleeping on the couch after such a long workout.

I grabbed my bag on the way out the door and headed to class. This was going to be interesting: my first taste of what I was going to be doing here. The awkward shuffle I had went away about halfway to the classroom. It gave me a little more confidence knowing that I would not be walking into class looking like Gollum.

Entering the classroom, I was relieved to see that many of the other students looked as tired as I did. In fact, a few of them had their heads resting on top of their desks, cradled in their arms. Exhaustion still tugged at the end of my senses, but this was my first opportunity to really find out about this new world that I found myself in. I had to take advantage of that. As tired as I was, it was time to man up. The only open seat was in the front of the class, and I was ok with that. I generally found it was harder to fall asleep when you were sitting three feet from the teacher.

The professor walked into the room and, after a quick look at all of our faces, indulged himself with a little chuckle. “Well, from the looks of things, we will not be accomplishing too much today. I see Sarge has started his course off with a bang as usual.”

A little chuckle escaped from a few students around the room. It broke the tension of our first class rather nicely. The pause in action also provided me a moment to size up our new teacher. He was the exact opposite of Sarge in almost every way. Where Sarge had been tense and came off as all hard edges, our new teacher was relaxed and slightly round. He was the kind of person you instantly felt drawn to. Something in his demeanor cried out
you can trust me
.

After taking stock of all the students in the room, he started to speak. “The good news is, for most of you this will just be a review. I still expect you to stay awake and contribute when called on. For those of you who are new to our facilities, there is a chance you could find this review enlightening. During the next month we will be discussing some of the basic principles of your gift. I also hope to shed some light on what the Ascendancy does out in the world.”

I already found myself totally fascinated with what we were going to be learning. A quick glance around the room told me that I might be the only one. For almost everyone else here, this was just a review of information they already knew. For me, this was the start of my training, and I had to take it seriously.

The teacher turned toward the blackboard behind him and wrote his name on the board. Professor Howard Small. Kind of ironic if you thought about it too hard, like calling the biggest person you knew tiny.

Professor Small continued to write on the blackboard while he was speaking. “There are four basic principles of magic. Each principle has a distinct use that can be applied to change the world around us. Some of you will find that spells from one of the four basic principles are easier for you to cast. When this is the case, we call it an affinity. Can anyone tell me what the four basic principles are?”

Only one hand was in the air: the boy I had seen last night with the dreadlocks. The professor pointed at him. “And your name is?”

He looked at the professor for a second before answering. “Marcus.”

“Ok, Marcus, tell us the four basic principles.”

“The principles are not to be confused with the elements such as earth, air, water, and fire. The principles refer to the way someone harnesses their gift and what the outcome is directly. So while using the elements in magic is a principle, the element itself is not.”

The professor made a motion for Marcus to continue.

“So the four basic principles are summoning, enchanting, conjuring, and elemental.”

The professor smiled at the class. “Bravo, my boy, two points to Marcus for being spot on.”

Someone I couldn’t see spoke out. “Two points, sir?”

The professor looked back at the class. “Sorry, just a reference toward a show I was watching last night. Don’t worry, the points don’t matter.”

Professor Small surveyed the room. I got the impression that he was looking for people who were not even trying to pay attention. Luck was on my side; since I had never heard any of this before, you couldn’t tear me away. I wondered just how they had known I was one of the Gifted, anyway. Stillman had referenced my burst of energy in the desert, but how would I know if I could really cast spells?

The professor finished his mental checklist and started to speak again. “I like to use the elemental principle of magic for my example. The ability to control the four elements and make them do what you want will be one of your first lessons. So while fire can be cast at someone or something to burn it, it can also be used to protect something.”

The professor took a piece of paper off his desk. In a blink, the paper was covered in bright blue flames. The paper stayed standing upright in the professor’s hand, and the fire that burned so brightly did not seem to be touching his hand. “Let’s see, someone in the front there. What is your name?”

“Jackson, sir.”

“Ok, Jackson, rip a page out of your binder and crumple it into a ball for me. Once you have it ready, toss it so it hits the paper in my hand.”

When I threw the ball of paper as instructed, it completely disintegrated into ash. It amazed me how fast it had happened, not even a second after it came into contact with the professor’s spell. All that was left of it was grey ash floating gently toward the floor.

“All right, anyone else in the front mind losing a pen?”

The boy next to me gently lobbed his pen toward the professor’s paper. When it hit the burning paper, again it completely disappeared in a brief flare. All of the ink and the entire pen were gone almost on contact; the slight smell of burning plastic was all that remained. The professor made a show of tossing his sheet up into the air. He must have reversed the spell, because the paper burned almost instantly.

“As you can see, your gift can shape the spells that you cast. You are only limited by your creativity and execution of the magic. Practice does tend to make perfect in the magical world. So can anyone tell me what the rest of the basic principles of magic are used for?”

Marcus raised his hand again, and since there weren’t any other takers, the teacher nodded for him to continue. “Summoning is the ability to call something to you. The object, person, animal, or creature you summon must be real and something you have interacted with before. Conjuring is almost the polar opposite of summoning. Conjuring is creating something from nothing, or the ability to slightly change an item’s purpose. Finally, enchanting is the ability to place magic into an inanimate object. The best enchanters can make these enhancements permanent.”

“Again, spot on, Marcus. I see that you have spent some time reading about the gift and not just using it. Moving right along in our lesson, let’s talk about mana. Our ability to use the gift comes from everything around us. Mana is the life blood of the Gifted. Our ability to harness it and shape it is what we call the gift. Some of the most talented Gifted can actually harness mana from the world around us. Unfortunately most of us have to be content with our power well.”

The professor let his eyes roam over the class again. I got the feeling he was double-checking that mental list he had previously made. “Your power well is the amount of mana you can store safely inside of yourself. The amount you can hold and control will grow with time and the use of your gift. When your well is extinguished, your ability to shape mana will be lost. That is why we also focus on physical training. In a long drawn-out battle, you could find yourself in the position of being unable to call on your gift and needing to fight a different way. As you continue with different classes here at the academy, you will learn just how far you can push yourself. Staying alive oftentimes means being the last one able to cast a spell.”

I coughed a little bit. Had the professor just said
staying alive
? I knew they’d mentioned dying at the orientation, but what was this place, some kind of death camp? I wasn’t sure just how I felt about having to fight with the possibility of death. This magic thing had better get real good, real fast, or I was out of here.

I looked up at the professor. “Sir, did you just say ‘staying alive’?”

I caught a few snickers from around me, and one person mumbled something under their breath about my lady parts.

The professor gave the room a quick glare, the first thing he had done since I met him that showed that he could get angry. “Becoming a member of the Ascendancy is a dangerous profession. You will be asked to consistently place yourself in harm’s way, to place the success of your mission above your own life. We protect humanity from a threat they cannot see and we do not want them to discover. That is the reason your training here is so important. It could literally mean the difference between life and death.”

The professor walked toward me and gave me a simple pat on the shoulder. “We all die, Jackson. It is what we do while we are alive that matters.” He stepped back from my desk and addressed the class. “I think we have had enough for today. I’m going to let all of you go early. Do not, I repeat, do not be late for Sarge’s class in the morning. He hates that!”

Some audible groans escaped while people thought about next morning’s workout. If working out would keep me alive, then I was going to work out harder than I ever had before. I still wasn’t sure about this whole thing, but I hoped being here was the right decision. My dad and mom had both made it into the Ascendancy, but both of them were dead now. What would they have wanted for me?

I
headed back
to my dorm room in a semi stunned kind of silence. I was going to have to sit down and think real hard about what I wanted from this place and if it was worth it. Stillman conveniently left out that there would be a risk of dying in the future. Not to mention having to fight for a living, and against what? Pretenders, what did that even mean? I wasn’t sure that was the kind of life I wanted. On the other hand, it was what my parents had done. That seemed not to have worked out so well for them, but just how many people had they saved before their lives were cut short? I found it harder and harder to be mad at them, knowing they’d put their lives on the line to save people they didn’t even know.

Just what was magic, anyway? I had yet to see any of my fellow students actually cast a spell. What if it was all just smoke and mirrors? I was starting to wonder if I had just found myself trapped in some kind of weird cult. Then I remembered Alby and what she had said.
You are one of them
. I guess I was one of them, but what exactly did that mean? I had been excited to go to college and was looking forward to a normal life. Being one of the Gifted meant I would never do anything normal again. It was still a bit of a shocker. We’d better get to the magic part pretty soon so I could see if working somewhere where I could die daily was worth it.

Swiping my card on the door panel and opening it, I almost missed the note taped to the front. Great, just what I needed: some asshat leaving a note on my door. As if I didn’t already have enough to think about tonight. Isn’t that how it always worked out? Just when you thought you couldn’t take it anymore, something else always landed in your lap. I plucked the note from the door and headed inside.

Taking a look at the note, I was surprised to see that the envelope was imprinted with the same symbol as my necklace. Underneath the symbol, the words “Novus Ordo Seclorum” were printed. “New order of the ages,” I thought. Just like on the back of the one dollar bill. Placing the note on the counter, I moved into the kitchen to get a frozen pizza ready for dinner. Yeah, it was only four thirty, but hey, when you have to be up by six for a two-hour-plus workout, it pays to get in bed early.

Plucking the note off the counter, I plopped down onto the couch to open it up. I had to read the note a few times before I grew frustrated by more cryptic shit.
Not everyone who helps you is a friend
. Seriously, what the hell did that even mean? It was like when we used to just add
Confucius says
in front of things to make them sound like sage advice.
Confucius says this note is bullshit.
See how awesome that sounds? Since my adoptive parents had died, I hadn’t really met anyone who offered to help me except for Stillman. Was this person trying to warn me about him?

Underneath the note, it had the same symbol of the all-seeing eye. Although, just like on my necklace, this symbol was slightly different than the back of a dollar bill. The eye was in the center of the triangle. I rubbed my finger over the symbol, and the note burst into bright blue flames. Startled, I dropped the paper. Thankfully, the fire burned out before it hit the rug below my feet. Then I looked at my hand in shock. I wasn’t burned at all. Hadn’t I just seen this trick earlier today? How interesting. If things kept going like this, it was going to be a fascinating year even without magic.

The next month flew by, mostly due to my constant state of exhaustion. I was starting to feel this impending sense of dread. It was like a cloud hanging over my head. Exceling at physical training was one thing, and learning the basic of magic on paper was another. But soon I was going to have to actually use magic, and I still had no idea if I could. I asked the professor about it one day, and he just smiled and shrugged. That, of course, was a great help. Apparently spending time learning the theories behind the magic before actually using it was a recommended technique. With the month coming to an end, my guess was that it was time to move on to the actual application of magic. I was a little worried about combat magic. If I couldn’t cast a spell, how would I defend myself against one?

Our new schedules had been delivered to our doors overnight. We had been granted two days off before the new schedule started. Getting some much needed rest would be nice, but I had too much work to do. My schedule was slightly different than before, but still included a morning workout. So I was still going to get grilled by Sarge every morning, but for less time. Then it was off to Simons for history, principles of magic, and bestiary. All of those subjects were crammed into one class, kind of like a magic 101. The entire afternoon block had been dedicated to a new class simply called spellcraft.

The excitement at the thought of actually using magic almost thrummed through my body. I could hear my heartbeat in my ears as it grew stronger. Here it was; I was finally going to get to use magic. Hell yeah! My excitement was quickly replaced by fear. What if I couldn’t cast a spell? What would I do then? Oh, man, this was going to be a nightmare. I really did not want to turn into a laughingstock. I didn’t have anywhere else to go, and I had the feeling if you couldn’t use magic, then you didn’t have a place here. The only thing I could do was try. If I failed, then I would deal with that when it happened. They wouldn’t have wasted all this time with me if they didn’t believe I could do it. Right?

While my morning workouts had kept me in impressive physical shape, and the yoga had added to my flexibility, I still hadn’t progressed as far as I would have liked in combat drills. I had never been much of a fighter. I mostly just kept my head down and stayed out of the way. If something got really serious, I always thought I could handle myself, but the last month had proved me wrong. Some of the students had been trained in multiple forms of hand-to-hand combat before coming to the academy. The speed at which they could execute moves left me in awe.

Sarge must have decided to take some pity on me. I wasn’t sure why, unless he had noticed the extra hours I was putting in at the gym during the night. If this school was built around combat, I needed to get better and quickly. I was working out with the heavy bag when he approached.

“It’s good to see you can hit a stationary target now, Jackson,” Sarge said as he dropped a bag of equipment down by his feet.

I could see the smile on his face, and I knew he was joking with me. I also had the feeling whatever he had in mind would lead to some new and interestingly shaped bruises. “What’s up, Sarge?”

His smile grew wider; now I knew I was in trouble. “Grab a helmet and some gloves, and meet me in the ring. It’s time you learned how to hit a moving target.”

Oh man, this really was going to hurt. I picked up a light sparring helmet and a set of gloves. In class, we didn’t use boxing gloves, because out in the real world, who walked around with a pair of those tucked in their pockets? I mean, when would you ever be able to slip them on before a fight?
Excuse me, sir, can you wait a moment while I put on my boxing gloves?
We practiced with lightly padded gloves that still let all your fingers move individually. The gloves gave us the ability to still grab and throw our opponents. They weren’t good for too much else except saving you the smallest amount of wear and tear on your knuckles. That was something, though, since every other part of me hurt from being hit during training.

That was how I started having nightly sparring sessions with Sarge. He took the time to walk me through the exercises and explain to me what I should be focusing on during the fight. I knew he was taking it easy on me, but I still left every night with at least one new bruise. I was sure all the other kids wondered why I kept getting new bruises and where they were coming from. At least no one actually asked me about them. It was already well known that I was the worst fighter in class, so a few extra bruises could be overlooked easily enough. It was a rumor I actually didn’t mind having spread around. I was going to shock a few people when we actually had to fight each other. In my opinion, it was always better to be underestimated. Slowly, night by night, I was learning.

* * *

W
alking
into class the next morning, I was shocked to see
Introduction to Lycans
written on the board. I mean, we all watched
Underworld
, right? Those things were terrifying, and now they might be real. Learning how to fight with Sarge was one thing; learning that werewolves existed and I might have to fight one was something else entirely. Seriously, werewolves were real. This place just liked to drop one bombshell after another on you. What was next—vampires, demons, and fairies? Well, at least I knew some of the things I’d started seeing during the summer were real. It made a lot more sense now than it did back then.

For our bestiary class, we had a new professor. His name was on the lower end of the chalkboard: Aaron Dreslin. He looked just like any other college professor that I had ever seen, maybe a bit more preppy than most. He was wearing a nice dress shirt with a tie and sweater vest. Everything about him was neat and tidy. I had been hoping that Professor Small would be teaching this class as well, but it looked as if we would have rotating teachers.

“Today we will be talking about Lycans, otherwise known in popular culture as werewolves. I know, for a lot of you, basic information on the Lycan is not needed, but for some of you, this will be new information.”

I felt the teacher’s eyes focus on me for a bit, along with some of the other students in the room.

Before I could get too embarrassed, Professor Dreslin continued. “Lycans are pack-oriented creatures. You will almost never encounter one alone, especially if they are out hunting. So keep your eyes open out in the field. Sighting one Lycan could mean several more are also nearby. When shifted, they can range in size from seven to ten feet tall. There are outliers, of course. The largest one recorded was measured at just over twelve feet tall.”

I heard a snort from the back of the class.

“Anyone have a comment about what I have said so far?” Professor Dreslin asked.

I was not surprised to find out that it was Ted who wanted to argue the point. “Twelve feet tall? Come on, Professor, that has to be a joke, right?”

The professor gave him a glare that would have withered plants. “It most certainly is not. In every species we see outliers on both ends of the spectrum; in humans, we have dwarfs and giants. It is the same in the Lycan world. Would I tell you to expect a twelve-foot Lycan around every corner? Only if that is what it takes to save your life. Outside of that, I would expect them to fall in the established range of seven to ten feet.”

No one spoke after the professor finished putting Ted in his place, so the professor continued. “You can expect a fully transformed Lycan to weigh anywhere from four to six hundred pounds.”

He looked back to where Ted was sitting to see if he had anything else to say before continuing. “Unlike popular mythology would have you believe, Lycans are not bound by a lunar cycle. They can shift wherever and whenever they want. The lunar cycle is not totally irrelevant, though. Those infected by a Lycan bite tend to take thirty days to transform. The first time a human changes into a Lycan, they are unstable. The pack plays a huge role in keeping them under control and guiding them through their first transformation.

“Not every human bitten will be able to handle the virus. Some die outright when bitten, and some die during the thirty days leading up to their initial shift. Just as breeding rates among top predators seem to be lower, so are the numbers of humans who can actually sustain the process of transformation. Most of the Lycans you see today were born as offspring to their parents. Bitten Lycans are becoming rarer as time goes on.”

The professor smiled as if thinking of a memory. “Some people like to think of them as animals, but that would be the wrong thing to do. A fully shifted Lycan retains human-level intelligence. Add to that a huge size and strength advantage, and you have an apex predator. Not to mention one who can heal almost instantly from any kind of wound. We have found, through extensive testing, that when shifted, the Lycans have a higher bone density than just about anything on the planet.”

I did not want to think about what extensive testing meant. Before I could get lost in the information, the professor continued speaking.

“You cannot kill a Lycan with a gunshot—yes, even with a silver bullet. A single shot from long distance would likely only leave a scratch. A high-caliber bullet to the head, even from a close range, would likely deflect off the hardened bone of their skulls, although if the shot went through the eye, it might cause enough damage to buy you some time to get away. The most efficient way that we know of to kill a Lycan is to cause direct damage to the spinal column to slow them down, and then to decapitate or burn them.”

He watched the class’s faces, looking to see how people reacted to that last statement. “Any damage that is not fatal to the Lycan can be healed over time. Even a broken back will only keep them out of action for about two or three days. Make no mistake: they are fearsome predators and will kill you for interfering in pack business. Our standard procedure for dealing with them is to let the packs police themselves. If they fail to curtail any violence against humans from their members, we take direct action.