When I was first sent to the Legion I had refused to try and learn how to control my magic. My mind kept insisting it had to be some kind of mistake, and if I didn’t use any powers again, they wouldn’t keep me here and I could go back to my home.
The Legion would have nothing of it, and to force me to learn, the instructors started using me for target practice. Grounding and shielding were the first thing any Mageia learned and was the basis for many other spells. Day after day they inflicted cuts, gunshots, whippings, and burns. I stubbornly refused, insisting I wasn’t Mageia.
By the time I had been here for three months, a senior Lochagos figured out a way to force me to learn.
I’d come to the training yard one day, mentally prepared for another day of target practice and saw a dozen kids, one as young as five, huddled in the corner of the training room. They were the children of the servants who managed the kitchens and maintained the grounds. I’d seen many of them in my time here and had developed a fondness for them as I tried to fill the void the loss of my twin and Luke in my life.
Lochagos Procopios stood in front of them. He was responsible for managing the training of all the Mageia, especially the Neos and Cadets. He was the one who gave the instructors the directive to start using me for target practice to try and provoke the use of my gift.
The kids were dirty and had tears running down their faces. They were obviously terrified. Several sported bruises on limbs and faces.
Procopios pulled one of the children away from the group, a little girl named Ella. She was the daughter of one of thelandscapers. We had wandered through the gardens together as she taught me about all the different kinds of plants and flowers there. She couldn’t have been more than eight.
The Lochagos held his weapon a few inches from her head.
“Cadet Kataramenos, have you learned to shield?” His voice was as calm as if he was asking if I had learned basket weaving.
“N-no, sir,” I’d said, looking around wildly at the guards and other Elusians gathered around. Surely, he wouldn’t hurt a child, especially a human one! None of them reacted.
The sharp retort of the gun firing rang through the small courtyard, and Ella’s body dropped to the ground. The sound of her small form hitting the ground is one that would haunt me the rest of my life.
“No!” I screamed, running to where Ella lay. Her blond hair was matted with blood, skin torn away revealing blood and brain. Her body twitched a few times, then was still.
“Why?” I screamed at the Lochagos. “She didn’t do anything! You should have punished me and not her!”
“Punishing you wasn’t having the desired impact, Kataramenos,” he said. “And a Mageia is more valuable to me than a human slave.”
He pulled me up and turned me to face the remaining kids.
“Now learn to shield, or we will be doing this every day until you do,” he said.
I’d learned to shield.
“How’s Vlakas?” I asked, pulling myself out of the reverie and trying to sit up, but the pain in my body refused to let me do more than twitch.
Her smile dimmed.
“Not great, Kat, but you probably knew that, already,” she said. One of the things I loved about Leonia was that she didn’t sugarcoat anything. Unlike some of the other medics who’d say stupid things likeyou’re fineoryou’ll be great! We weren’t fine. We weren’t great.
“He’s lost a lot of blood. He’s got a fractured arm and several broken ribs. They cracked his skull,” she said. “He’s in a coma, Kat.”
I remembered the one vicious blow Maalik had landed before Vlakas had spat on him and my vision went red.
“I’m going to kill that son of a bitch,” I said, shoving at the blankets, struggling to force my body upright.
“No, you’re not,” she said with authority as she grabbed my arm. “You aren’t in any better shape than he is, for all that you are conscious. You have enough wounds on your body that you look like a jigsaw puzzle. We placed almost one-hundred stitches on your skin, Kataramenos. You have four broken ribs,” she said, pushing her face into my field of view, holding up her fingers. “Four. Move the wrong way, take a hit before they heal, hell, sneeze wrong, and you could pierce your lungs.”
I froze. Four broken ribs. That explained why it hurt so much to move and breathe. And there were other, more humiliating sources of pain.
She continued inexorably. “And if you don’t want to shit out of a hole in your gut for the rest of your relatively short life, you’ll let us take proper care of you until you heal,” she said. Then her tone softened. “We almost lost you twice, Kat. You lost so much blood, I’m not sure how you survived,” she said.
“Spite,” I whispered.
“That sounds like the Kat we know and love,” she laughed.
“Maalik needs to die,” I growled.
“Agreed,” she whispered softly, glancing over at Vlakas. “But not today.”
