My magic didn’t always work, especially if I were exhausted or had cast out too much in one day. Still, it was a clear improvement. I just hoped it would continue to grow.
It was one thing to have magic, but it was another to have so little to start. I was no longer at the very bottom of our class in terms of casting, but I was also nowhere near the top, or even the middle. Though I had only completed orientation for Restoration and Alchemy, I had seen enough successful castings in the past two weeks to make me worried. Tomorrow we’d be beginning Combat, and given that it was the most popular faction, I had no doubt there would be even more competition to contend with.
Thinking back to that first day with Piers and Cedric, I saw the magical spectrum I’d be chasing for the next eight months. At one end, whimpering Ralph clutching a twig that struggled to burn. At the other, Darren, and the two imploding trees far out in the distance.
It was bound to be a very long trek.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Faster!” Piers roared, his booming voice carrying across the stadium. “This is what all of you consider trying? You are pathetic excuses for mages. I’ve seen war horses with more spirit than you!”
He is trying to kill us.
I swallowed back a mouthful of bile and continued heaving my way down the long track. I might as well have been a limping fowl chased by a pack of rabid wolves, only instead of the many haired beasts of the forest, I had Piers’s insults tearing me limb from limb. My legs burned, my arms ached, and my entire chest felt as if it were on fire. I could barely breathe.
I had fifty more minutes. Fifty minutes of sprints, endless sprints, and the horrible obstacle course we were required to complete at the end of each mile’s lap.
Today’s drill, Piers had promised, would make it clear whether we were “cut out for the hard life of Combat, or the cushy life of the other two factions.” None of us had wanted to disappoint him with that kind of introduction. Unfortunately, his new routine was proving quickly how difficult that would be.
I ran my fastest mile ever—seven minutes exactly—only to lose the momentum I had been building during the second portion of the sequence. Running, it turned out, was the easy part.
The obstacle course was Piers’s worst invention yet. Somehow he, his assistants, and the constable’s staff had created a breeding ground of pain and misery. Now we had giant sacks of barley to haul, a rope to climb, a tightrope to cross, flying arrows to dodge in the pathways between each station, and, last but not least, a quick three-minute joust with one member of the constable’s staff.
All ten of the constable’s men just happened to have some experience wielding a pole. They weren’t very apt, but after twenty minutes of trying to complete Piers’s course, it didn’t seem to matter much.
“I am not joking. Pick up the pace first-years!”
I kept running, trying to block out the scattered curses around me.
My feet were in pain. Raw, excruciating pain. A couple slivers of glass had somehow made their way through the supple leather of my boots, and it was all I could do not to sit down and pull them out. I’d managed to avoid any flying arsenal, but I was afraid of the three more laps I was still expected to complete. As Piers had pointed out at the beginning of class, we had healing mages on staff to treat us once we completed his program, but unless we were near the point of immediate death, we had “better run fast.”
“Master Barclae informed me today that no one has left yet!” Piers bellowed. “That, apparently, I haven’t been hard enough. I don’t agree. I told him you were just a resilient batch. But if the Master of the Academy has declared my course too easy, then it is too easy.” He continued to pace the field and eye us all challengingly. “I promised him that I would break at least five of you by the end of this week. The fact that you are all still here brings a bad stink to my name. I can’t have people thinking I’ve gone soft, now can I? So it’s time to sink or swim, my children, sink or swim.”
I was halfway into my second lap when I started to notice a change.
When we had started the trek, it had been hot and sweltering without a cloud in the sky, but somewhere in the last ten minutes the temperatures had plunged dramatically. Now, I could hear the soft rumble of thunder, and the sky was drenched in a purple haze.
“D-doesn’t… look… good,” Alex panted beside me. “Not… natural…”
I had a feeling my brother was right. Five minutes later, as I was dragging a weighted sack to its designated location, I felt the first drop. Seconds later the entire class was being pelted with rain and small pellets of hail.
Lightning flashed, and I scrambled to make it to the next destination: the climbing rope. My arms were still weak from my last attempt. Luckily, there were three people ahead, so I had a couple minutes to recuperate before the next ordeal.