The steady buzzing of a phone disturbs the large room. It is the very model of a palatial bedroom, complete with floor to ceiling windows, a four-poster bed, and walk-in closet with multiple stories. For the lithe girl lying in the middle of the massive silk sheets and plush pillows, however, the room is relatively unremarkable. What is remarkable, in contrast, is the steady noise of the phone as it disturbs the slumber of one Ginny S. Napp.

Hair in disarray, she slowly rolls her way across the goose-feather pillows to her mahogany nightstand. Hand fumbling about, she eventually reaches her phone and answers it. Pulling it sleepily to her ear, she is entirely unprepared for the screeching voice on the other end.

“WAKE UP!” Hailey screams loud enough that Ginny is unpleasantly, and immediately, awake.

“Uuuuuggghhh,” she groans into the phone, acknowledging Hailey.

“You have exactly seven and a quarter minutes to get to you butt out here Ginny or we’re going to be late.”

Snapping awake, and rushing out onto her balcony, Ginny reaches down to her ankle and taps at a silvery bracelet. A second later, the sound of snapping fingers rings out. A few seconds after that, a giant metal bird leaps up and away from the mansion. Safely ensconced in her suit, Ginny murmurs, “Text me the GPS coordinates Hailey, I’m going back to sleep.”

Ignoring the undignified reply she gets for her temerity, Ginny falls back asleep, securely ensconced in her suit.

An hour later, she wished she were still asleep. Pushing herself through the mud, Ginny curses, “Why are we out here again?”

Standing on the edge of a tree branch and looking down at her, Vicious replies, “Survival training is about going beyond your limits. You need to hit the wall where your body tells you to stop, and then push past it.”

Groaning, Eldritch drags herself forward through the muck. “But did it have to be so dirty?” she whines, her question falling on deaf ears.

Vicious continues, ignoring her, “In a fight, the enemy will do anything to gain the advantage. This includes psychological and conventional warfare. This exercise ends when you draw blood, not before.”

“Yours?”

Vicious does not bother with a reply, instead simply resuming his activity. Reaching out with his hand, he begins to manipulate the barbed wire hanging above the two girl’s heads, sending it writhing in slow bursts that travel down the long coils. Rolling to avoid the slow-moving doom, Eldritch huffs. Ginger, in contrast, has her suit to defend her from the metal.

Showing her just how wrong she is, Vicious’ wire tears right through her suit and leaves a minor score on her back. Livid, she shouts, “Hey! Unfair!”

Unmoved, Vicious says, “I don’t have to make the metal black. Want to explain what she did wrong, Eldritch?”

Pausing to catch her breath, Eldritch answers, “She made an assumption about the opponent’s power.”

“Exactly.”

The slow moving coil of barbed wire begins to move once more as a bored Vicious stirs it again. This time, Ginger is the first to move. Rearing upwards, she punches through the wire and jumps at Vicious, who entangles her suit in a slew of barbs and drags her back into the mire.

“Not fast enough,” he says from his perch.

“Are you going to untangle me?” Ginger pouts.

Casually, Vicious begins tossing blunted daggers at her. “I start using the sharp ones in two minutes,” he says before beginning to count audibly down.

Escaping the mesh with seconds to spare, Ginger falls back into the mire and continues to crawl forward across the forest floor trying to catch up to her uninterrupted counterpart. When the two finally reach the other end of the training ground, Vicious says, “Ten seconds to stand and prepare for combat. Once I beat you, you go back the opposite direction.”

Struggling to their feet, Eldritch and Ginger leap into battle against the mercenary, who promptly slams them back into the mud in a few exchanges. Sucking in greedy breathes, Eldritch says, “I. Am. Too. Tired. For. This. Shi-”

Interrupting her, Vicious taunts, “This is the limit of your stamina? I thought you were prepared to fight the A1s like Becca. What will you do when the Tribulations come into town?”

Glaring at him from behind her cowl, Eldritch says, “I’ll fight!”

Ginger, not to be outdone, adds, “Me too!”

Kicking the two girls back into the mire, Vicious says, “Thirteen Trials for Thirteen Tribulations, each an hour minimum. You’d be lucky to survive the first two. How long before an enemy has the brilliant idea to engage you in a fight that lasts more than a few minutes? Don’t answer, just get crawling.”

Rolling over, the two trade looks of resignation and indignation before starting the long trek back to the other side of the grounds. This time, the moving sections of wire come from behind instead of in front and force them to stay wary. Wisely, both girls forego complaining, instead choosing to conserve their efforts in an attempt to keep fighting Vicious.

By the time the sun begins to set, dried and fresh layers of mud alongside bruises and minor cuts cake the girls, all curtesy of the inexhaustible taskmaster who harries their entire training regimen. Dragging herself up from the soft ground one more time, Eldritch weakly conjures her dagger and stumbles forward, trying in vain to keep fighting. A moment later, Ginger rises too, her suit shedding mud like water as she creates the shape of a blade and similarly lunges forward without any tact or grace.

Grabbing both their wrists, Vicious says, “Enough.”

Eldritch twists her wrist, breaking it free. Then she lunges again, staggering under the weight of her exhaustion. Seeing her cue, Ginger does the same, retracting her blade back into the suit and reforming it once free. Seeing the display, Vicious lets his mind trace back to a different display of youthful bravado, or at least sheer stubbornness.

“Harold,” Black says with a grin, “ya been workin’ hard an’ it’s time ta take a break.”

Harold doesn’t pause as he pushes to recreate the gun, feeling the weight of it fall into his hands as he brings it up in a swift motion and aims at the target down the range. With a quick pull, he fires once, twice, thrice. Each bullet is less accurate than the last with the third missing the target entirely. By the fourth, the gun is nothing more than slag. Frustrated, Harold lowers the weapon, sensing the metal. Internally, he winces as his senses run over the shattered firing pin. He formed it using weak metal, incapable of handling the stress of repeated gunfire.

He turns to face Black, trying to put words to his emotions. A year ago, he was living in dumpsters and eating out of trashcans. Then, like some angel, Black plucked him out of the slums. Together, they sold illegal weapons made by Harold and developed a nest egg. Working with criminals instilled fear into Harold, fear that someone would hurt Black and take him away. So he decided to protect him. They’d turned the nest egg into teachers, gym memberships, and time at the firing range.

“I can’t stop,” Harold says, trying to get Black to understand that he’d rather his savior spend less time with him than die. “The world is dangerous, Black, and I’m the only one with powers between the two of us.”

“We cin hire bodayguards, if’n that’s what’cha worried bout,” Black offers.

Harold shakes his head. “You’re the only person I trust.”

A strange emotion fills Black’s eyes. Harold spent two months working with a former CIA interrogator and he still can’t puzzle it out. It looks like some degree of pity, fear, affection, and… something else that Harold still can’t figure out. The failure is a reminder of how much further Harold has to go to protect Black. If he doesn’t understand the most important person in his life, how can he do this when it really matters?

“Boy,” Black begins, “let’s make a deal.”

“A deal?”

“Yah,” Black smiles wide, his yellow teeth shining in the light of the range. “And ya know mah policy, right?”

Dutifully, Harold replies, “A deal matters. A man does what he says he’s gonna do.”

Vicious moves his head to the side, dodging a strike back in the present. Slamming his foot down on the weapon and kicking its owner back into the mud he says, “Enough.”

Placing one foot on the girl’s back and applying pressure, he shoves her into the mud. Then he easily grabs her partner’s arm and twists it behind her back in a smooth motion that brings her to heel as well.

“You won’t get anything out of this anymore. Just give up.”

“Training, ends, when, we, draw, blood,” huffs Eldritch from her position on the ground.

Smiling underneath his mask, Vicious shoves both girls back into the mud and begins walking back to the other side. The ritual continues long into the night, past the point of exhaustion for both girls. Somehow, they continue to drag themselves through the mud and into the swordfight. When the moon reaches its zenith, Vicious pauses and glances upwards. Then, glancing down at the two crawling figures he begins to speak again.

“Perseverance is useful, but survival is more important.”

On the ground, Ginger retorts, “We can keep going!”

“Yes,” Vicious agrees, “you can. This exercise is designed to go until you quit. Crawling costs just enough stamina to exhaust you without taking so much energy that you literally cannot continue. The fighting is both weapons training and a change of pace that allows me to either quickly defeat you and grant you a momentary reprieve or draw it out and further exhaust you.”

“Why tell us?” asks Ginger.

At her side, Eldritch grimly hunkers down and continues to crawl.

“Because you two have two more hours to finish.”

“I thought you said we would go until first blood?” huffs Ginger, hauling herself over a muddy wire.

Vicious pauses, and then tosses a few blunt caltrops in the path of the two girls. “Two hours. Then I leave. You two can keep crawling if you want.”

Surging to her feet, Eldritch swings at Vicious. Vicious, half-paying attention lazily swats away her dagger. Then he kicks Ginger Snap in the knee, preventing her from standing. Bringing his elbow around in a circle, Vicious slams Eldritch in the small of the back, dropping her back into the mud. Mechanically, he grabs Ginger by the collar and punches her in the face. He continues to hit her until Eldritch can drag herself up and launch herself at him. Receiving her attack, Vicious spins and backhands Eldritch into the dirt. Then he drops to one knee and grabs the two girls by the neck. Driving them into the dirt he holds them down as they squirm and struggle.

Spinning her knife into a hammer, Eldritch tries to hit Vicious. Simultaneously, Ginger transforms her suit into a massive fist and slams it on Vicious’ leg. Before the hits connect, Vicious snakes his foot back and dives into the mud. Then he grabs on to the wire and throws it like a net over the two girls. Snaring them, he spins the wire and begins to draw it taut.

Seeing the two fully entangled, he rolls out of the mud and tosses the wires back on the ground. As he does, Ginger slaps a hidden bit of wire in the mud. Bringing it up, she slides a piece of the razor at Vicious. Simultaneously, Eldritch transforms her hammer back into a dagger and drives it at his abdomen. Vicious leaps back and slaps both weapons down to the ground.

As the two girls fall back into the mud, Ginger smiles and says, “We win!”

Confused, Vicious glances down, looking for evidence to back her claim. A second later, he curses, realizing how they won. Vicious kicks the barbed wire underneath his foot.

“You maneuvered me so that I would roll onto the wire. Clever.”

Too exhausted to exult in the victory, the two girls simply roll on their backs and drink in the night air. By the time they can stand, Vicious is gone. The only evidence left behind is a metal plate with the words, “Two days’ rest, then we go again.”

Commiserating with a pair of tortured groans, the two girls begin to pick themselves up and out of the mud.

Their training will continue, dear reader, but as they suffer, we turn our eye to a different location. Next week we come face-to-face with the inscrutable wizard in his home for the first time. Next week we witness the foul sorcery of Thorm Athow in… “The Prison at the Edge of Everything!”