“Dawn, Eaglebow.” Rauk’s voice cut through the room.

Liliana turned her attention to the ring, where the two girls stood across from each other as the shields dropped into place. As with the other fights, once Rauk called the start, the students moved. Shadows boiled around Dawn, rising and coating her until she was nothing more than a wraith made of shadows and darkness. A trailing cloak of pure Darkness fluttered behind her. Two wicked, serrated short swords appeared in her hands. Across from her, Eaglebow had summoned her own weapon, a rather ironic choice in Liliana’s opinion as it was a bow.

All she needs is an Eagle Bond to complete the pun. She thought in amusement. Her amusement was short-lived as the girl pulled back her string and an arrow appeared, one swirling with white and black denoting a Chaos affinity. She fired at the shadowed form of Dawn and Liliana shivered. She could swear she felt the power of that arrow even through the shields, the promise of utter annihilation that the Chaos ability always carried with it.

Dawn moved, her form almost seeming to flicker as she avoided the attack. The arrow hit the ground and tore through the rock, demolishing the area Dawn had been standing in seconds before. If Dawn was perturbed by the attack, she showed no hint of it. She dodged with an effortless grace between the following attacks sent her way without hesitation. As Dawn moved, Liliana noted her shadow separating and pulling away from her, rising up. By the time Dawn had cleared half the distance between her and Eaglebow a second Dawn, this one made entirely of shadows, was pursing the girl in a pincer formation with the real Dawn.

Eaglebow stepped back and, faster than Liliana could follow, began sending out volley after volley of arrows, some made of Light, some Dark, some Chaos and several illusions, based on how some arrows vanished when they hit the ground. Dawn flickered between the attacks. Either her Speed was so high it looked like she was teleporting or it was some [Shadow Step] skill. Eaglebow cursed when Dawn got close enough to engage with her weapons, raising her bow to deflect the hit even as she pulled back the bowstring to fire an arrow pointblank at Dawn. As the arrow released, Dawn vanished, startling Eaglebow enough that she lost precious seconds in her confusion.

The fight ended in those seconds as Dawn’s shadow clone closed in and Dawn herself emerged from Eaglebow’s shadow. Four blades empowered by skills mercilessly drove into Eaglebow, turning her shield red.

“Dawn win.” Rauk called out as the shields came down.

Eaglebow was on her knees, hands on the ground, her bow laying on the ground beside her as she panted. Dawn canceled her skills, the shadows receding from her body even as her clone melted back into her shadow. Dawn didn’t hesitate before exiting the ring, not even bothering to glance at her defeated opponent. After a few moments to catch her breath, Eaglebow vacated the ring and headed for the wall to sit down, resting her head on her knees, and even at a distance, Liliana could see how the other girl was shaking.

Death. They’ve never been so close to death before. Liliana thought as she looked at the students sitting on the wall, all of them going through some type of shock or another. It wasn’t all the student who had lost, Liliana noted, just it seemed the ones who had never been confronted with their own mortality. Marianne, for example, was rather chipper even after her loss, but with her illness Death had been a close companion to the princess for many years. Her eyes narrowed as she turned to look back at Rauk, who was focusing on fixing the ring once more.

The point of this was to introduce us safely to death or the possibility of dying. Liliana realized. It was why Rauk had tired them out before the fights, though she was sure there were other reasons on top of that. The main one, she was sure, was to make it so they were more likely to make mistakes. So the losses would be more startling, more disturbing.

“Kastrioti younger, Baker.” Rauk called out.

“Huh.” Liliana murmured, earning her the attention of her friends.

“What?” Marianne asked, leaning close to Liliana.

“Just… didn’t expect that combination,” Liliana murmured as she watched the two students walking into the ring with interest.

“What do you mean?” Alistair asked next.

“Rauk’s been assigning people who are well matched. Support types against support types. Casters against casters, speed types against speed types, weapon focused, etc,” Liliana explained as she watched the two combatants waiting for the shields to drop.

She remembered Koth’talan being a caster type, though his character had so little story importance he was barely featured. If Rauk was matching people based on their classes, then it meant Diana had chosen a caster type. She had almost expected the girl to follow her normal routes, where she was the perfect fit for the hero’s team. It would’ve meant she’d pick up a ranged speedy attacker, like an archer, as Emyr filled out the caster role.

“I just wasn’t expecting those two to have a similar class,” Liliana trailed off, her eyes glued to the ring as the shields formed and Rauk called the battle start.

Diana immediately summoned a pillar of earth to raise her ten feet into the air and give her the high ground. Even as the pillar rose, so too did spikes erupt across the ground, aiming to impale Koth’talan. A haze of heat billowed out from Koth’talan, brushing against the earth spikes. Liliana expected nothing to happen. Heat versus Earth was a weak matchup, but to her surprise the spikes began to melt, turning first a dark orange, then a violent red as the earth shifted to lava. The heat haze continued, turning the ground between him and Diana to lava that roiled and rose, a tidal wave of deadly magma that crashed towards Diana.

A credit to the girl, she didn’t balk. Instead, she jumped from the pillar, summoned wind keeping her airborne as she summoned a wave of her own, one made of water that collided with the lava. Steam billowed out and filled the ring, trapped by the shield and obscuring visibility. The steam did not lessen as the seconds ticked into minutes and Liliana had to assume Koth’talan was summoning more lava and Diana more water, keeping the cover up. Flashes of light and what could be fire lit up the steam, but it didn’t lessen, leaving an increasingly curious class to wonder what was transpiring in the hidden ring.

Right before the five-minute mark before there was a scream, a distinctly feminine scream.

“Win, Kastrioti.” Rauk announced, and with some magic of his own, the steam was banished.

Liliana blinked in astonishment. The entire ring had been demolished, turned into a wasteland of abstract obsidian and stone sculptures, with some pockets of lava still bubbling ominously even as they cooled with angry hisses. Diana was collapsed on the ground, her shield a cherry red, a circle of blasted rock around her, and Koth’talan was standing across from her, looking around as if he was bored.

Koth’talan bent down and helped Diana to her feet. The girl was shaking but seemed to be less shell shocked than many of their class. Without waiting for her to speak, or thank him, Koth’talan dropped her hand and wandered out of the ring. Diana followed a few seconds afterwards on shaky legs, but she didn’t retreat to the wall.

“What happened?” Marianne voiced the question rattling around in Liliana’s own brain. How had Koth’talan beaten someone with all the affinities? And done it where no one could see?

“Dunstan. Mildenhall.” Rauk evidently was not as befuddled as the rest of the students because no sooner had the ring been repaired than he was calling out the next students.

The last two fights passed quickly. Dunstan summoned automatons made of earth and metal, using what Liliana assumed was Animation to give them some semblance of life and sent them off even as he continuously summoned more creatures made of earth and metal to harry Mildenhall, who tried to disable Dunstan with attacks made of gases even whilst she fought off his automatons with water and ice. Dunstan won quickly, as Mildenhall didn’t have enough defenses to give her the time she needed to take out Dunstan.

Remrence won, in a surprise to everyone as Chiverton started out strong, using a Combustion affinity to charge in at Remrence even as he began detonating explosions around her, but her Muck affinity quickly left him neck deep in a pit of mud he couldn’t escape. From there, it was only a matter of her throwing Earth attacks at him while he couldn’t move until his shield turned red.

By the time all the fights were done, nearly half the class was against the wall.

“You lot, to the infirmary.” Rauk ordered to the students who were still suffering shock at their ‘deaths’. It took several minutes before the order seemed to register to them, then they stumbled out of the training room looking more like phantoms than students to Liliana. Rauk watched with something a very generous person might call concern in his eyes, but mostly disappointment.

“The rest of you, I’m sure you’re expecting me to congratulate the winners. Puff up your egos and tell you how amazing you were, right?“ Rauk asked as the training room door closed. The students left shuffled nervously. It was clear many of the winners had thought exactly that. Thought they’d impressed their teacher.

“You beat school children. Pampered kids of nobles who have never faced a real life or death battle against something or someone as smart, or smarter, than them. That doesn’t make you special, or a prodigy. It means those of you who won were lucky, or perhaps had better training than them.” Rauk’s scathing voice and cold eyes raked over the class.

“What I saw out there was sloppy. Children playing around with powers they barely understand. Maybe how you fight works against dungeon monsters, or maybe it works because the adventurers your parents pay for are there to cover any of your frankly deplorable mistakes. But there is a large difference between fighting low ranked dungeon monsters and fighting against humanoids, or fighting against higher ranked dungeon monsters and beasts. Creatures that can think, that can strategize, most definitely better than you lot can.” Rauk ripped into them and the students ducked their heads, or glared at Rauk with eyes full of righteous fury. This might be the first time many of them had ever been told they weren’t the best thing in the world, that they weren’t perfect.

“A few of you show some potential. But mostly I’m just disappointed. This is the best we have of this year? None of you are what I’d call fighters.” Rauk sniffed disdainfully as he crossed his arms and leveled them with a glare, “but I’ll make every last one of you into one by the end of your time here as long as you manage to keep your spots. Not that I’m feeling very optimistic for the majority of you.” Rauk looked over at them all before shaking his head.

“I want an essay from all of you, three pages. On everything you did wrong in your fight, and how you could’ve done better, due at the end of the week. Class dismissed.” Rauk barked out before turning on his heel and stalking off. The class stared after him, some in fear, some in anger, others in embarrassment. After a long moment of silence, the class began to move, some crowding together to complain, others leaving the training room presumably to take a shower and change to clothes not soaked in sweat.

“He was kind of…” Marianne trailed off, her voice soft.

“Amazing?” Liliana asked, her voice awed as she looked off to where Rauk had vanished.

“Did… Did you take some brain damage during class?” Marianne asked with concern, moving towards her friend and activating some healing spell as she waved a glowing hand over Liliana’s head. Liliana frowned and waved off the princess

“Mari, I’m fine. I just think Rauk is an incredible instructor.” Liliana said primly as she turned and walked towards the doors. She needed a shower and a change of clothes. She felt disgusting.

“He just insulted all of us.” Marianne said, deadpan.

“That’s how you know he’s going to be a great instructor! He doesn’t bother with false flattery, or trying to get close to prominent noble families by going easy on their kids.” Liliana said with confidence as they walked towards the stairs.

“He didn’t have to be so mean, though,” Marianne whined.

“Battle isn’t a nice place.” Alistair said with a shrug.

“Exactly. He can’t be nice to us, can’t give let us think we’re better than we are. Overconfidence will just kill us.” Liliana said with a nod.

“We don’t have to like him. He just has to make sure we don’t die.” Emyr said quietly. Marianne groaned but gave up the argument, clearly outvoted.