The bay was waking.

A new day was breaking.

In the dawn sunlight, I could see the white crests of small waves running their nimble, foamy fingers over the polished sand.

Sitting on the shore and hugging my knees, I watched the large, sleepy gulls stroll along the surf on their thin legs. At times they would lift their dirty-gray wings and fly around the baby crocs puttering by the water.

Twina-Twin, motionless between the rocks, was mistaken by birds for another strange stone; they would even sit down on its comb.

Crunching on the sand behind my back were the four newborn Budrahs we’d taken from the Budrahrium about a week ago.

They had changed a lot since then.

After the Budrahrium, with its low ceilings and sticky smell of dead flesh, my eyes feasted on the smooth sea sprawling ahead, and my lungs enjoyed the salty breeze.

Waking in the Bloody Basin cellar in the morning, I saw nothing from the previous night’s dreams. No arena. No dazzling spotlights. No ringmaster with a handlebar mustache. No loud audience.

The round pool of boiling lava had been reduced to a shallow pit with melted edges. It looked like a giant manhole cover recessed into the floor, brown with dried blood. Two wooden pens flanked it, with wickets leading to the building’s ape and horse wings.

As Kasamarchi explained, the parts of animal bodies ripped off during the rite were discarded into the lava that was carried away to the sea by a long underground channel that branched extensively. Springwater came from some of the branches to wash the rotting remains away. Others pumped more lava up to the “manhole.” A complicated system of valves and airlocks regulated these processes.

What I saw now was drastically different from last night’s spectacular show. I struggled to believe that all of it had been a hallucination created by Kasamarchi’s medical taffy. Anyway, I was happy to leave this place behind.

The four newly created Budrahs, hastily washed from blood, were dogging Kasamarchi’s steps, obeying him implicitly, although I could not hear him give any commands. He seemed to have a telepathic contact with these monsters.

Each ape’s waist was ringed with a fresh, thick scar.

As we came out of the Budrahrium’s grated jaws, my eye caught a rider in bloodied clothing and his gray, red-stained horse sprawled not far from the Ashline.

He couldn’t have come out of the tower to fight us. Only the Budrahs had. Who is he?

I turned to Kasamarchi.

“The Magister’s messenger,” he said.

“When did he come?”

“At dawn.”

“How did you kill him?”

“Hornets.” He tapped the pouch on his chest. “He rode up to the Ashline, saw the dead Budrahs at the gate, and turned away.”

“Why kill him then? It would take him at least three days to reach the Magisterium. Enough time for us to leave.”

“I wouldn’t have killed him if he had turned back. But he turned along the Ashline, to the hollow blocked by soldiers. He was going to warn them…or to check if we had reached them.”

I clenched my teeth. His words made sense. The sprawled body was rather far from the path running up from Lerk. The rider had apparently turned to the hollow after seeing the dead bodies.

But I still rejected the ease with which Kasamarchi took lives. I knew that he was doing the right thing, but how he did it was something I could not accept.

Those dead men in the tower…

“We must bury them.” I nodded at the Budrahrium, then slid my gaze to the rider. “And him too.”

The ground here was hard and rocky, and our combined strength was barely enough to move even a single grown man’s body, one of dozens scattered all over this place. Not to mention the Budrahs…

“We could dump them into the Bloody Basin, but a rite is needed to activate it, and we have no time for that. The messenger is expected back in three days. When he doesn’t come, the Burned One will know something is wrong in the North Budrahrium. Three days later, half of the Creali Guard will be here, with monsters scarier than our worst nightmare. Let them bury the bodies. We must hurry. We need this week to train our Budrahs. It’s barely enough time as it is, but it’s better than nothing.”

“Train?”

“Yes. Look at them. They move around like toddlers.” Kasamarchi slapped the nearest Budrah, who was staring at him with loyal eyes, on the rump. The creature gave a happy hoot and waved its spear awkwardly, hitting its left neighbor with the shaft.

By the end of that day, we had descended into this bay, where I was amazed to see Twina-Twin and their baby crocs again. The crocoboat family had started down the Lizard once we’d headed off for Lerk. Then, they moved north along the shore this entire time!

Seeing the crocoboat on the shore, I asked Kasamarchi what the point was of taking the great risk of storming the fortress when we could just bypass the guard post in the hollow by sea. Asp and Angel could fly, as could the hornets.

“Twina-Twin can’t move away from the shore; its legs are too short, and it needs them to push off the bottom. And boating along the surf is not much faster than walking. But the main thing is, we don’t know what animated items the guards have. If they have something like the Ice Hawk or our hornets, we are doomed in a crocoboat. On the shore, we can at least try to dodge them. And now we have the Budrahs; the soldiers sure don’t expect any on our side.”

Coming up with no objections, I said nothing.

The next morning, Kasamarchi gathered the Budrahs and tried to make them form a line. He didn’t have much success. The Budrahs shifted their hooves awkwardly, bumping into each other and getting caught on their neighbors with their elbows and spear shafts.

I remembered my forest encounter with Budrahs.

Those had been a completely different sort, yielding a spear as if it were an extension of their paw, their moves precise and sparing, their mere presence paralyzing my will. The Budrahs I’d seen in Kasamarchi’s memories were the same.

But the ones that had galloped from the tower to repulse our attack looked much like the four in front of Kasamarchi now, trampling the sand in complete confusion. Just as clumsy and awkward with their weapons.

So we killed total newbies. I felt uneasy at the realization.

Kasamarchi, however, did not seem to be troubled by a guilty conscience. He marched the Budrahs knee-deep in water, on the rocks, then on the sand. Then, he wrapped the heads of their spears with thick bunches of grass and divided the Budrahs into pairs.

All of it looked a lot like the military training of recruits in Hollywood movies—with two notable differences. First, our officer was so much smaller than the trainees, I couldn’t help but worry that they might trample him by accident. Second, he didn’t bark orders or yell.

Sure, that was an understatement. He barely opened his mouth at all!

Overall, this practice on the shore looked rather strange: pairs of half-horse, half-ape monsters fighting each other with long grass-wrapped sticks, in complete silence. The clouds of sand raised by their hooves hid the silent Kasamarchi, whose small head sometimes flashed in between the darting horse rumps and tails.

By the end of the first day, the Budrahs were a pathetic sight: exhausted, disheveled, and gray with sand; they could barely stay on their hooves. Kasamarchi looked worn-out, too.

The next day was the same, except the Budrahs no longer bustled along the stone wall as a disorganized crowd; instead, they tried to form a line like Kasamarchi wanted.

More excruciating practice.

More combat.

On the morning of the fourth day, I was surprised to see the Budrahs’ pitch-black eyes had the same confidence and calmness as the eyes of those I’d met in the forest. Giving them an appraising once-over, I had to admit that the spears in our soldiers’ hairy paws no longer looked as out-of-place as on day one. They moved around with more confidence and even grace, raising less sand with their hooves.

By evening, they still looked vigorous.

On the fifth day, Kasamarchi removed the grass from their spears, revealing a dim glimmer of metal underneath.

I tensed in expectation of some Budrah running this sharp spearhead into another’s side.

But at dusk, our warriors put their spears down at the foot of the stone wall, and the metal heads had no blood on them. No matter how hard I stared at the bodies of Budrahs passing by in the firelight, I could not see a single bruise or scratch.

Bored by the monotonous drill, I’d totally missed the moment our ugly ducklings became beautiful swans.

Or maybe it’s pure luck? They may still be useless, just beginner’s luck helping them avoid injury this time?

The sixth day dispelled all my doubts.

The Budrahs no longer looked up at Kasamarchi to tell them what to do. Their grip on the spear shafts was as firm and agile as if they’d been born with them in their hands. Their moves were precise and sparing; with each step, they exuded an air of cold, merciless confidence.

Are they our Budrahs at all? Or maybe some impostors?

No. They still had the scars around their waists. Only their naïve stares and fussy moves were gone.

Enchanted, I watched the spearheads flash over Kasamarchi’s head, barely missing his hair. I couldn’t believe my eyes, even though I’d witnessed the entire process of these Budrahs’ creation, from their merger in the Bloody Basin to their rise as formidable warriors.

Kasamarchi touched my shoulder, waking me from my trip down memory lane. “Time to leave, Ana.”

The sun’s edge had already appeared over the smooth, lead-gray sea. I stood up, dusting off the sand.

Approaching Twina-Twin, Kasamarchi patted it on the nose. Today we were to say goodbye to the crocoboat once again, heading off for the pass and taking the baby crocs with us. If we made it through, we’d take them all the way to the Volcanites who, as Kasamarchi hoped, might know a powerful transformation for the crocs to make them into a stronger crocoboat we could use to cross the sea. If we died in the pass, the little crocs would find their way back to the bay where Twina-Twin would be waiting.

In either case, we would not see Twina-Twin for a long time…if ever again.