Master Vigo cleared his throat, bringing Ranvir attention back to him. It seemed a lot of students’ focus had fallen away after his last announcement. “I’m sure this is a lot to take in. You might not yet know how you feel about this exercise. All the teachers currently at the academy will therefore have an open consultation with any student at our offices, whose location you can get from administration. From now, until the end of the second trimester.”

“What was the purpose of the ‘exam’?” A student yelled from the crowd. His voice was gruff, but it had an unstable edge to it. Just hearing it made Ranvir uncomfortable.

“What the purpose of the test was?” Vigo repeated loud enough that everyone could hear. “Simple. To test you. To give you an answer, no words or lectures could ever explain properly. This wasn’t some insane attempt at assaulting our students, but a limited recreation of an actual event. I implore you to visit the library, ask them for accounts of the ambush of Drymarsh.”

Someone Ranvir didn’t recognize spoke up from Master Vigo’s direction. “I’ll explain it quickly for you. The United Alliance had just made a big push to move the front further away, and we’d succeeded. The alliance celebrated only the newly reclaimed land with wine and ale, while their brothers-in-arms stood watch.”

The man, another Master presumably, had a good voice. Deep while still allowing him to hit higher tones for emphasis, and he could add grit when he felt the need for it. It was dynamic, speaking sometimes slowly and other times rushing through the words as though they were trying to beat each other out of his mouth.

He must have some kind of skjald training. Ranvir thought, listening intently.

“This turned out to be a mistake. For the Ralith are more cunning than the alliance gave them credit for. They’d been preparing for this battle for months, possibly years, beforehand. As dusk swelled on the horizon and dragged its curtains over the skies, the celebration continued in full force. It wasn’t until late in the night, when most of the soldiers had drunk themselves into torpor and all but the most vigilant sentries were slouching on their positions, that they struck.”

He paused. Ranvir couldn’t help but feel the atmosphere he’d set and marvel. The students had rapidly been turning against the masters, but this man with his story had done enough to captivate them and stall their tempers.

Our tempers. Ranvir thought, listening to the man.

“They crawled out from holes they’d dug into the ground and covered their tracks with dirt and ash. Emerging like a viper from its den, they snuck through the camp. But they didn’t kill at will. They picked only a single segment of the alliance and struck there, concentrating their forces on a smaller group of enemies. With this advantage, they nearly killed two people for everyone of their own, before the bells of alarm were even raised.”

There was a long bead of silence, then the snap of fingers so loud it Ranvir startled slightly. “Three thousand elusrians. Dead in less than three hours.” He made whiffing noise. “Gone. All of you and all of us and then a handful more… From one moment to the next. Before the dawn could break dusk’s curtains of shadow, more than a third of our presence at the camp was cut to pieces. Only then did we discover them. Getting dragged to a campfire in the middle of the night really doesn’t sound that bad, does it?”

Ranvir could hear his footsteps walking away in the silence that followed. A hand laid itself gently on his shoulder.

“That’s why we need to take our training so seriously.” Master Vigo said, his words echoing over the compound. “All of you were eventually dragged here by a ‘flesh-torn’, but they don’t take prisoners like this. They’d leave you dead or bleeding out, drowning in your own blood.”

From the sounds of the footsteps, Master Vigo began pacing. “But! There’s a big difference between that reality and now. You will be five years older and have received many times the training and education you have now. You wouldn’t recognize yourself in five years! I can guarantee that!

“This test was not to see if any of you could escape until dawn. Getting captured doesn’t mean you failed. It’s one factor in which we measure how you did. For now, I think I would like to spread out some credit among the students who deserve it! What do you say?”

There was some muted cheering. Ranvir didn’t take part, feeling too introverted to really join in.

“I guess we could all just back to training immediately, if that’s how you feel about it. Or do you want to know how who did well?”

More cheers this time.

“I thought more people wanted this. What do you say?”

Even louder, to the point Ranvir winced at the noise as multiple students roared, getting caught up in their own energies. Esmund bumped against him as he roared.

“WHAT DO YOU SAY?”

Es shook Ranvir as he cheered, the noise more powerful than the toll of the bell as it enveloped him. Ranvir had once heard that people would take any excuse to break tension. He hadn’t believed it then. Listening to the crowd of students going from shook, to morose and scared, to screaming with excitement, he was beginning to believe. It worried him a little that humans were so easy to manipulate.

“Come on!” Es yelled.

Reluctantly, Ranvir lifted his free arm a little joined in. Half heartedly, he let out a holler.

“WHAT. DO. YOU. SAY?” Vigo screamed.

The noise battered Ranvir as he joined in. The energy of the crowd overtaking him. Slowly, as the cheers went on and on, Ranvir felt himself loosen up, losing the hesitancy. The lingering pale violet fear and nauseous green bubbles popped and frothed as excitement, white and raw, overtook it.

“Let’s get to it then!” Master Vigo shouted once they’d finally quieted down some. This, of course, immediately brought out another scream. Ranvir could feel the weight of people jumping as they screamed. Esmund pulled him to his feet. He winced as his ribs stretched, but the masters had poked at him a few times and determined they weren’t broken. He’d just taken a good hit.

“Let me start by saying that you, as a whole, did a fantastic job. Much better than we normally anticipate.” More cheers, but they died quicker even though the energy seemed to remain. “Usually, there’re only a couple of students I’d pull out as saying they did a job well above the norm, but today I can definitely say that it’s a number far higher than I’m used to.

“These are the students who put out a terrific performance, the ones that worked harder than they had to and brought out more effort than could ever be counted on. These are the students who’re already doing well. These are your rivals, your goals, your targets! You want to join them! These are the boys you want to stand amongst the next time I call the year forth!”

There was another round of cheers, though this one was edged with a hint of nervous anticipation. Even Ranvir felt it, like shivering green and yellow light, both energizing and nauseating.

“Dovar of house Sworden, come up here!” Ranvir couldn’t see anything, but he heard the murmurs and muted cheering in the crowd as they saw him. He didn’t know how well word had spread among the student body. “Dovar is the first student of the year to achieve the first stage and he impressively did so in the Discipline of Body. It took a full six of our people nearly three hours to capture Dovar and bring him back.”

Ranvir joined in the applause with the crowd, even though a part of him didn’t want to out of sheer stubbornness.

“Grevor of house Starstone, please come up here!” Master Vigo said next. Ranvir hadn’t heard Grev arrive at the bonfire, but obviously at some point he’d had to, since Master Vigo had said they’d captured all the students. “Grevor, along with some of his friends, who you might see up here too, infiltrated the administration building to break out one of their friends and then escape into the forest next to the academy. To follow that statement, let’s bring Sansir up here as well.

“Sansir joined him and they both nearly escaped from the academy. In fact, they were the closest to do so, despite them having brought a non-combatant with them.” Master Vigo said. “They both used the tools available to them impressively. Wielding their weapons with skill worthy of renown.

Master Vigo continued pulling students up, cheering them for their efforts. At first, Ranvir thought some names were vaguely familiar, until he finally put it together. He didn’t know if all of them were, but the vast majority were in the weapon class.

By the end, Master Vigo called up more than a hundred people and touted their achievements. There was absolutely no way he knew about most of them personally, but of course, their opposition had been working for him, so he had his own information sources.

“Other people of note-“ Master Vigo said, and listed more students with exploits that didn’t quite warrant getting in front of all the students. This was, therefore, a lot faster, even though there were more names on the list.

How does he remember all of this? Ranvir thought, listening with half an ear. Maybe he has a list.

“Esmund, who fought alongside Sansir and Grev. He fought against the capture, giving them a nice lead. Ranvir, who was part of the same group and despite prior injuries, fought well. Rugbrod who took four ‘flesh-torn’ to bring under control.-“

Ranvir blinked. He just mentioned me. He was a little surprised that Es hadn’t been called up to join the others at the stage, but he didn’t really understand the grading yet.