“That’s enough for today,” the man said after making sure most of our candles were out. And so, our essence training came to a close.
In the end, I failed to work out what essence was. The frustrating thing was that I didn’t think I was lacking. It felt more like I was overlooking something.
“You have received today’s honors.” The man gave his coin to the elf boy. I couldn’t contest his choice. I had witnessed the boy’s supernatural aura for myself. The man clapped his hands. “Off you go for dinner.”
Surprise colored the children’s faces, mine included. It felt like it had only been two hours since lunch, but his words meant that it must have been six. Now that I realized it, I was hungry. I stood up from my seat, only for dizziness to crowd my head, causing me to wobble. It had been six hours.
I rolled my tense shoulders—a habit from my previous life, perhaps—as I made my way to the dining hall, the coin that I could give to Sister in exchange for meat coming back to mind. I was grateful for that; I was sure I needed to put some weight on after that period of fasting. I was sure, too, that the world beyond these walls was dangerous enough that I would need all the strength I could get. Skill, technique, those were things that I could constantly work on, but the foundation for all that—a robust body—wasn’t something that I could build overnight. I decided I would strive to be at the top of the class as much as possible. No compromises.
✦ ✦ ✦
After dinner, we wiped ourselves down with damp cloths. There seemed to be a river nearby, so it wasn’t like there was a shortage of water, but apparently the adults didn’t want to indulge us too much. Each room was given a bucket of water for us to share among ourselves. It gave me a chance to study my body. I noted that my tail grew out from around my coccyx, and that there were scales on my sides too.
“You were in a reflection room before yesterday, right?”
My male roommate addressed me as I was wiping down the scales on my tail. It felt nice to gently trace the gaps between them.
“Hm? Right.”
There were three of us sharing this room. The one who had spoken was a small boy with horns. The other was a girl with cat ears. I spent last night in what I assumed was a sick bay, so this was my first time sleeping in a communal space since my baptism. The cat girl was already asleep and purring. I didn’t blame her—the physical training had been exhausting. It was a wonder we didn’t all fall asleep during meditation.
“I’m impressed you survived in the dark for that long. I only lasted two days.”
“Really?” I wondered whether the difference was because I had worked to preserve my strength or if there was something more to it than that.
“I guess having a bigger tail lets you last longer.”
“It’s probably more to do with being beastborn.”
“Beastborn” referred to any race that was part-human and part-animal. That included me, a snakeborn, and the catborn girl sleeping nearby. What were “humans” in my previous life were called manborn here. In this world, the term “humans” was a general term referring to all humanoids, including beastborn, who lived as typical people did. This boy’s horns didn’t resemble any animal but looked like what I would associate with demons. That likely made him demonborn. He didn’t say anything to contradict me when I implied he wasn’t beastborn, so I was probably right.
“You think? But that girl with the huge tail, she’s still in her reflection room, right?”
I twitched. “I didn’t know.”
That instinctive reaction hadn’t come from me, but from the boy who this body belonged to. Apparently, the girl in question had caused him some trauma. When I searched through his memories, I could see why. They’d shared the same chamber before our baptisms, and because they had slightly similar appearances, they were often paired together. However, as much as they looked similar, the truth was that they were completely different. As different as a snake was to a mythical dragon.
✦ ✦ ✦
Three days passed. I woke up before sunrise and put my bedding away before roll call. Every day had this routine: breakfast, then endurance training until the early afternoon, then essence or long-distance training until the evening. Long-distance training meant running as hard as we could. At first, it would just be going around the training grounds, but then they started adding more obstacles. Eventually they would probably have us run through the forest or something.
Endurance training progressed from striking the air to practicing with partners, though our knives weren’t allowed to make contact. It was like watching real fights in action. I must have been good at copying the teacher’s form, because I managed to secure a second coin for myself.
Essence training was a different story altogether. Though I told myself I would pick it up eventually, I had yet to sense whatever it was lying deep inside me. The number of children awakening to their essence was gradually increasing—now around a third of the class. Most of them were elves. Theirs must have been a race proficient at handling spiritual energy. Conversely, beastborn made up the fewest of the successful children. While they were suited to physical labor, they struggled with the more delicate task of manipulating essence. Though I was beastborn myself, my physical prowess was only a little better than average. I supposed the existence of my third eye, the pit organ, was meant to make up for it.
Regular humans, the manborn, were in the middle when it came to both physical and spiritual practices. In short, I had yet to find a race that defied my expectations when it came to their talents. Incidentally, the elves were also known as forestborn and were part of a wider category called fae. So, just like how I was a snakeborn, which was under the umbrella of beastborn, the elf boy was a forestborn, which was under the umbrella of fae. Also, among those I referred to as “elves,” some of them were not, strictly speaking, forestborn. I was confident that those with darker—or even green—skin were of a separate race. Perhaps it would be best to just understand that those with long ears were fae.
And then there were those who didn’t fit into the other categories: magicborn. For example, the demonborn boy I shared a room with. Magicborn was a miscellaneous category, and it could be tricky to remember that the races that fit into it, such as demonborn and vampires, had no real relation to each other.
The girl before us also fit into that category. Right now, she was roaring.
“What an utter savage.” Our endurance instructor dragged the dragonborn girl along with him. This was the child who had terrorized my other self.