By the time Nic arrived the human side of Winterhome was filing out. They looked rough; battered, bruised, and soaking wet. Nic called aside Kang-Dae, Shakes, and Elisa. The three of them arrived looking like cats that had just taken a bath.

“Hey chief…” Kang-Dae grunted out. He was naturally the best off; his rubbery form was the kind of defensive talent Nic could be jealous over.

Elisa just grunted. Shakes sat down, wringing out his hair in his hands.

“C’mon, cheer up. I bring gifts!” Pulling out the claw he tossed it into Kang-Dae’s hands.

“This is…” For a moment he looked over the strange weapon, before his eyes lit up. “Wicked. It’s a beauty boss.”

“These weapons…” Nic dropped the bow into Shakes’ lap. “Have a spirit beast inside. If you treat it right and let it face strong enemies, it will grow alongside you. I don’t know how alive they are, or how alive they might end up being, but…” He smiled. “Treat them right.”

Shakes admired the workmanship for a moment, before silently bowing his head and tucking it away.

“Elisa, you’ve got your own thing going on, so I figure you need to make your own weapons. But…” He brought out the beautifully tooled firearm he’d taken from Samuel de Vega. It was a masterpiece, with twin barrels and a smooth break action. “I figured you could start with this.”

Despite the flop of water-logged red hair over her face, Elisa smiled. “Perfect. And thanks.”

Nic nodded, leaving them to get acquainted with their new toys as he walked into the training grounds.

While Nic and his chosen few had been on the hunt, Winterhome’s workers had completely rebuilt the pavilion to incorporate the training arrays Nic had brought back from the convocation. Now a ring of standing stones marked the edges of the field. At the center of the training grounds grounds was a tall, rune-marked pillar, topped by an octahedron of white stone.

Beside that pillar stood Ettrai.

And with the humans gone, the beasts were coming out of the woods. Monsters of all sorts made their way to the platform. Some were almost human - Nic saw goat-headed beastman and small, frog-like amphibians - while others were wholly animal in nature.

As for why they didn’t train with the humans…

Trust.

The monsters and the Natives of Winterhome were essentially two cities. They had come here because they wanted peace, but it was difficult to communicate, and trust between the two sides was low; for the Natives it was hard to accept that these beasts had human intelligences behind their eyes, especially after so many had been hunted by monstrous before finding Winterhome.

A terror lingered in their hearts.

As for the beasts, they came from worlds like Nic’s own. After lifetimes of fighting for scarce resources, they were being asked to believe that the Natives would share with them, out of a common goal. And they knew as well as any of them the Natives had cause to fear and hate them; many had hunted humans when they’d had the chance.

It wasn’t an easy ask, to expect the two sides to put their lives in the others hand.

And truth be told…

Nic showing such favoritism to the Natives hadn’t helped; he was thought of as a human, not one of them.

But if Nic knew one way to bond two unlikely comrades together, it was to put them on the same side of a hard fight.

“Five of you.” Ettrai said, in her psychic voice, which was both cold and commanding. She walked up and down the line. “Will be joining the human hunting squads, come tomorrow. The five best. You will have the chance to prove yourself to Winterhome, and by doing so, prove the merits of all your kind. This will reflect on me personally- I will not be kind to carelessness or missteps.”

“And neither should you be kind to yourself, when so much is on the line. You are all weak, and this stands as your one chance to power.”

“Being weak is like a grinding stone. It wears you away in layers. First to be scraped from your skin is your safety and security, the ability to sleep soundly at night; you felt this weakness when your world ended. Next, your freedom. You would be pushed down and made to bend yourself to another’s will. Days of serving and begging would wear your dignity to the bone. Still, the wheel would not stop grinding.”

"I say these things, but only you can feel the truth in them. Only you can learn to love your own strength. And only by loving power itself, by pursuing it night and day, will you become a true cultivator."

Now, with a stamp of Ettrai's hoof, she brought life and light to a ring of arcane symbols around the training ground. At Ettrai's signal the octahedral stone atop the pillar lifted up- the air shimmered and a massive curtain of illusory water fell from the stone. It smashed into the ground on all sides of the pillar, pouring outwards to flood across the practice arena.

The water only stopped at the edge of the ring. It reached the runes and vanished, dissolving into a thin mist of energy.

The roar of the waterfall was deafening. It hit the ground with the force of a giant’s hammer.

“You will go in groups. The five individuals who manage to come closest to the pillar and remain there for ten breaths will be allowed to join the hunters.”

One by one, the beasts readied themselves.

Nic watched with a mix of interest and amusement.

The first beast to shine was a red-furred ape. Its entire body was covered by plates of shiny, perfectly reflective metal, but as it approached the waterfall the armor melted away and receded under its skin. Two hooked blades emerged from either palm.

As Ettrai gave the signal the ape bolted forward on its short, bent legs. When it met the crashing fury of the waterfall it slammed both palms into the ground, hooking itself firmly in place. Then, step by step, it began to crawl forward using the blades to root itself between each movement…

It was a successful strategy. Of the first group, only the ape made it past the halfway point, much less stayed there for ten whole breaths.

When it was finally washed back out, the beast looked exhausted beyond measure- but it still found the strength to lift both blades to the sky and howl.

Nic clapped. It was a damn good start.

Of the next wave, the only impressive one was a white fox with a single brushstroke of black running from head to tail. It had a Shard that created portals in shadows, and it used them to dart ahead into the waterfall’s foaming tumble. Each time it was washed back, it simply conjured a portal to catch itself and reappeared deeper inside the crucible…

But in the end, it ran out of aura too soon. It was thrown out after remaining for only seven breaths.

The trials went like that. The figures that stood out with bright strategies weren’t necessarily the ones who had the stamina to survive the test’s fury.

The next one to make it through was a peacock. When it stretched out its fan of feathers, they exploded into seven streams of rainbow light and stabbed out like swords. The waterfall was cleaved apart. Again and again it chopped out, parting the roar and rush of the water.

It barely managed ten breaths at the mid-way point…

But brute force earned it one of the five spots.

Nic bit into a medicinal fruit and tossed a second one to the peacock as it staggered out of the water.

A small, misshapen cat with no face managed to take second place. It exerted no obvious force and barely seemed to lift a muscle. Instead, one by one the other creatures around it moved to block the flow of water with their own bodies, shielding the cat.

As soon as one ‘barrier’ had been exhausted, another stepped into the way.

It remained sitting and licking its fur for ten breaths, then turned and primly marched away. The other creatures that were sent in alongside it lay in exhausted, broken heaps of fur.

“Do we allow that?” Ettrai asked.

Nic just shrugged and tossed the cat a peach. Winning was winning.

Third place went to a long-bodied creature like a massive ferret with a leonine head, but shaved down to its skin, which was a bright red color and gave it the strange appearance of having no flesh on its face. It had wild, yellow eyes, and shaggy fur that smelled of death.

It devoured the waters by unhinging its mouth, a vortex forming and sucking in the waterfall for a moment.

But only a moment.

After five breaths, the vortex collapsed and the water came crashing down again. The beast survived the remaining five by brute force before being thrown out.

The ape and the peacock were tied for last place.

And then a huge being stepped forward. It was akin to a dark-feathered owl with tall and wicked antlers, but larger than a man in size, and with a strangely humanoid shape to its chest and shoulders. It almost resembled a harpy.

Ghostfaced Strix. E-Class // Sapient. Certain families of owl will, once in a generation, give rise to a strix. This creature bears the ancestral memory of all that lived and died within its clan, and is a holy guardian of sacred nocturnal groves.

It simply walked into the waterfall- and the water passed through it like a ghost.

It laid its wing against the pillar, and allowed the crashing water to surround it on all sides, with no clear effect on its body. When it returned after ten breaths, it wasn’t even wet.

But Nic had seen how its already-dark feathers had turned to absolute night while it was walking through the trial. He guessed Ettrai had too. The trick was to turn its body incorporeal…

Nic was strong, but anyone that made it to E-Class had at least one terrifying card to play.

Tossing a fruit to the ape and the strix, Nic looked over his new warriors. They were all intimidating in their own way. Ingenuity, brute force, cold-hearted manipulation, ravenous hunger…

And the fifth, most mysterious one.

They were waiting, Nic realized, for him to say something.

He swallowed the pulp and pith of the fruit, licking his fingers just to buy time. “Ettrai pretty much has it right.” He said hesitantly. “I think we’ve all known what it’s like, being without power in your own life. It can make you into a slave. But…”

“If you get too paranoid, if you cut yourself off from everything that makes you happy, remember, that’s just being a slave to your own strength. Strength is the things we buy with it. The things we build. It’s not the end unto itself. It’s a beginning.”

He shrugged. “That’s what Winterhome is.”