“What did you speak about?”
“It was when I got the coin of honor. He told me how to use it.”
“I see. Have you ever spoken to the snakeborn instructor?”
“Yes.”
“What did you speak to him about?”
“I asked him about...manipulating essence.”
“Do you truly intend... Do you truly intend to kill the girl?”
“I do.”
Sister lowered her head, falling into thought. After questioning me for at least another ten minutes, she pulled me back from my hyperfocused state.
“Thank you,” I said. “I can see the potential for improvement in my handling of essence now.”
“I’ll be happy to take another look if you get stuck. You’ll want to concentrate on your efforts more so that you can manipulate your essence more expertly than the others.” Sister turned around casually, as if nothing untoward had happened at all.
She had asked me questions, and I had answered them. Why would I think there was anything amiss? However, I recognized she made me spout truths I had no intention of sharing. Perhaps the noctisbane or whatever it was not only calmed me but chipped away at my mental faculties, preventing me from coming up with the idea of lying to her. It was similar to a truth serum.
Fortunately, she didn’t get anything earth-shattering out of me. It felt more like she was trying to confirm if what I told her before was true or not. As I made my way back to my room, I ground my teeth. This incident meant that I couldn’t be careless about lying to her going forward.
I opened the door, mulling over how I could escape Sister’s questioning in the future. The dragon girl was breathing steadily on the other side of the room, engaged in her daily meditation. Her concentration was growing stronger by the day, to the extent that she was so deeply focused that my coming and going made no difference to her. The room was so tranquil that my heartbeat seemed to roar, so thick with essence that I struggled to breathe.
The intensity of the pressure made my knees feel like they were going to buckle at any moment. If I tried to fight back with my own essence, I would fail to muster enough and be swept away. Essence repelled other essence. Even if I did learn how to output enough to resist her, it would become a test of stamina. I would be swept away all the same.
With that being the case, I needed to consider a different perspective. I restricted the amount of essence in my body. When I did, the pressure in the room stopped pushing against me and instead flowed past and behind me. I could breathe again. I had learned to suppress my essence without the aid of an instructor, so this was a relatively easy state to maintain.
I went to sit on my bed, which was just a little bit closer to hers than before, and crossed my legs. I needed to train whenever she did. Otherwise, I really would fall too far behind to ever catch up. Sister’s instruction had changed my views. Changing the way I approached things had helped me to overcome one obstacle. I was sure now that trying to force my skills to improve with no direction wasn’t going to cut it. I had to fill every second of my time and work every corner of my mind.
Test out every single idea and stuff every card I can up my sleeve.
I needed to think. How much of myself would I have to peel away to have any power over her life?
✦ ✦ ✦
The morning started with long-distance training. It wasn’t the snakeborn instructor supervising this time but Konji. He led us down a route we didn’t usually take, which ended with us outside. Unlike the training grounds, there were no walls. Just a forest, spread out before us.
“Today, I will be teaching you the art of tracking.”
The children grew restless at the prospect of learning a new technique. I was curious about how easily they were riled up by excitement over tension, but more than that, I wanted to know whether this forest—a place I hadn’t yet encountered in my current life—was safe.
“Beasts dwell within this forest. Keep your wits about you as you walk.” That was all the instructor said as he set off between the trees.
Though the other children each pushed to be the first to follow him, I trailed after them. That was when I noticed something felt off. Perhaps it was because the vegetation here differed from the forests in my previous life. If I had been educated enough, maybe I could have carried out an in-depth analysis, but it seemed I had never studied plants in my last incarnation. At the very least, I couldn’t spot any plants with man-eating fangs, any grasses with pink leaves, or any trees that used their roots to walk. It looked like an ordinary forest.
“Rabbit prints are symmetrical. Study them and commit them to memory. This is the way it went.” The instructor didn’t criticize the children for being distracted by their new surroundings. Instead, he just continued to feed us knowledge.
Now that I thought of it, these children were more familiar with races that sprouted leaves from their heads than trees that took root in the ground.
“Broken branches can tell you about the creature’s size. Here, below your knees.” The instructor pointed at a snapped twig. “Once you get used to identifying footprints, you can start inferring weight from their depth and the ground’s hardness. Ah, and see how the right print is deeper than the left here? The creature changed direction. Perhaps it sensed a predator and fled. Eventually, you will learn to glean such information for yourselves.”
He turned back to the kids. “Everything that’s alive leaves traces. Sound, weight, consumption, and essence. Process all that information, and use it to hunt them down. The opposite holds true when you need to hide. Think about what your enemy is using to track you and conceal yourself accordingly.”
As interesting as the instructor’s lecture was, I was distracted by the realization of why he was taking over our training today instead of the usual teacher. Thanks to my pit organ, I had spotted the rabbit prints before he started explaining. By the subtle change in heat where the animal had brushed past the leafy branch, I could figure out that it was big enough for me to hold in both arms.
A snake’s senses were too good at tracking, enough that I didn’t need any instructions to hunt down a rabbit in this forest. Presumably, the same was true for the snakeborn teacher but not necessarily for my diverse cohort. No instructor in the world could teach what was given by senses that one didn’t possess. That was why Konji, whose race was as average as they came, was teaching us how to track. I nodded quietly to myself.
It was then that realized that I had let my guard down, all because we were in the presence of an adult. I had forgotten that this man was not to be trusted.
A cry sounded as a predator which had been chasing the rabbit bared its teeth at its newfound prey: one of the children. It was a wolf-shaped creature surrounded by what seemed to be a black mist. The tall beast towered above us, its fangs lodged in the dogborn girl’s neck.
The other kids screamed. The wolf shook its head from side to side, tightening its grip. Eventually, the girl breathed her last, the tension leaving her limbs.
“I did say to keep your wits about you.” In one swift movement, the instructor pierced the wolf’s head with a multitude of knives.
The beast didn’t have time to yelp before it flopped to the ground, the dogborn girl falling from its jaws. The mist faded like dirt being washed away by water, leaving it looking exactly like the wolves I was familiar with. The instructor did not explain what this creature was, nor why the mist disappeared when it died.
I finally realized what threw me off about this forest. There was no birdsong, although I didn’t think that meant there were no birds. Rather, they were staying quiet, because they sensed the presence of a predator.
The instructor pulled his knives out from the top of the wolf’s head. “Take this to the treatment room.”
“Yes, sir.”
He had spoken over the children’s heads, and the response came from a group of men standing behind us, wearing the same black robes as he was. The voice sounded young. The instructor left them to deal with the dead and continued to teach us how to track. Not one of the children seemed excited anymore.
I was more interested in the hidden men than the fact that one of our members was dead. My serpentine senses failed to notice them, yet they were close enough to hear Konji’s command, which hadn’t been especially loud.
As a snakeborn, I wasn’t unique here, meaning they must have known how to avoid pit organ detection. I should have been doing more to understand the abilities of different races. The lack of available information was frustrating. What if there was a race that no one could see or hear? Should one choose to kill me, I could do nothing to fight back.