The next morning, we found ourselves in the forest. I woke up to trees in every direction. They must have carried us here in our sleep. I hadn’t noticed a thing. Maybe they used gas or something, like they had in the reflection rooms.
Children were waking up around me one after another. I felt around my body for my knife. There was one sheathed on the ground nearby, and I picked it up. Taking it out from the sheath, I checked that it was mine before tucking it away inside my shirt. I glanced around—there was nothing but the dense forest, and yet strangely the trees in the area we lay in had been cleared.
“What are we meant to do?”
“Don’t...yet...”
“Get...of here?”
Each group of children seemed to be deliberating on how to proceed. The survival training had probably already started. We didn’t know how long it would last or whether there were any specific conditions to fulfill beyond not dying. However, we were familiar with this forest; it was a dark, dangerous environment where beasts roamed. The children still had the image of the dissected dogborn girl on the surgical table etched into their minds. Although we all got through escape training, waking up in the forest without warning had the trauma resurfacing for some of the kids.
“No! No, I can’t do this!” a girl cried, running off at once to try to get back home.
She had shared a room with the dogborn girl, and that proximity must have made the memory of the wolf mauling her roommate settle deeper in her psyche. She didn’t have the composure to determine which direction to go. The moment she ran past the other children and into the forest, a bear trap clamped its spikes into her leg. She screamed and pitched forward, and her head came into contact with a wire. Her hands touched the ground, and a weighty mass slid from her body. The other children suppressed their screams as they watched it roll.
Looking away from the corpse and focusing on our surroundings, I saw that the trees that stretched away from the clearing had a few of those same wires, some more visible than others. Someone had taken great care turning them into arcane tools and setting them, someone who was obviously hungry for blood.
The children had yet to get over their agitation. We would all be sitting around for hours at this rate. I got to my feet, drawing their attention.
“Our instructor called this survival training. That means we’ll have to gather food and survive. We’ll have to go into the forest for that. Anyone who’s good with their hands should start disarming the surrounding traps.”
I didn’t know how many traps we were dealing with, but I doubted they would be this concentrated throughout the whole forest. It would have taken too much effort.
I was confident in what I said. However, just because I was right didn’t mean everyone else would accept it.
“Who the heck put you in charge, Hardhead?” The most physically impressive of all the children stood up. Tiger thought himself a leader. That was why he couldn’t stand it when he felt I was taking over his role.
The kids who’d started following my directions by heading into the forest stopped. The ones who had been too stunned to move before came back to their senses and gathered around Tiger.
“You disarm the traps,” he went on. “Unless you only told everyone else to do it ’cause you didn’t wanna risk getting hurt.”
That much should have been obvious. I preferred that any risky work go to someone else over myself if possible. Tiger had to feel the same way, or he wouldn’t be trying to get me to do it now. It meant he didn’t have to risk one of his pawns.
“I’m the leader here. You don’t wanna obey me, you can get lost,” he said.
“Fine, I’ll do it.”
I didn’t see any advantage in having everyone turn against me. Besides, all the traps seemed to be types we had seen in previous training. I was confident I could seek out any new traps too, as long as I kept my guard up.
I decided to be obedient and step among the trees. As I was disarming the densely laden traps one by one, Monk took a seat next to me and started doing the same. I glanced at him once before looking back at my hands.
“It’s not fair if only you have to do it,” he said with his stammer, sincerely answering the question on my mind that I hadn’t voiced.
He was about as good at perceiving traps as I was, and I wasn’t sure of myself at times. I wouldn’t have made the choice to help anyone with the task.
“You’re coming hunting with me, Monk. Leave the rest of the traps to him,” Tiger said, apparently not liking the elf boy’s decision. The larger kid must have been hoping that Monk would be an asset when it came to fighting. His fantastic command of essence meant he excelled in combat training too.
Monk tried to carry on. “Oh, um, okay. But w-we need to do something about these traps, or we can’t go into the forest.”
Tiger clicked his tongue. “Not listening to me, huh?”
“I-I promise to come hunting with you in a minute,” Monk stuttered, not yielding to the tigerborn’s threatening attitude.
With another click of his tongue, Tiger called for Pipsqueak. “Take Monk’s place and deal with these traps.”
“Sure thing,” Pipsqueak said with a sigh. Knife in hand, he set about the task.
“You too, dwarf kid. And you. And you, catborn.”
The chosen children accompanied Pipsqueak, proceeding in different directions as they started disarming traps. They would probably all finish way faster than me. I decided to slow down a tiny bit and slack off.