"Self-study and individual training sessions will be arranged. You are basically ready. You just need to maintain what you've learned so you won't fall behind." Ravel stood, and Saphir rose with him. "Besides, I will be testing you myself, with Shaman Saphir supervising."
Had he meant what I thought he had? Were they going to pass us no matter how we did on the final exams?
It felt like cheating, but on the other hand, what choice did we have?
The five of us were part of the prophesied seven. We had to become riders.
"Get some rest and then hit the books," Ravel said as he opened the door for Saphir. "You are not to leave these quarters today."
"What about tomorrow?" Morek asked.
Ravel smiled. "Tomorrow is another day. We'll play it by ear."
Then they were gone, the door clicking shut behind them.
For a long moment, no one spoke.
Codric was the first to break the silence. "Well. That was reassuring."
"Was it?" Morek ran a hand through his cropped hair. "Because I'm not feeling particularly reassured."
"The sarcasm was implied."
"I don't understand," I said. "How does an Elucian, someone raised to worship Elu, to value truth above all else, end up serving Elusitor? The deceiver. The destroyer. Everything we're taught to abhor."
"Fear," Alar said. "Fear and desperation and the need to believe in something."
"But we believe in something. We believe in Elu, in the Precepts of Truth, in?—"
"In a god who abandoned us." Shovia's voice was flat. "Maybe some people get tired of believing in a god who has forsaken us. To some, it might seem as if the followers of Elusitor are the winning team."
She was right. After two extinction wars and centuries of Shedun attacks and entire villages wiped off the map, people were exhausted. The faithful kept fighting because what else was there? But faith could only sustain people for so long before they started looking for alternatives.
"The Sitorians offer certainty," Codric said. "That's their appeal, isn't it? No more doubt, no more questioning. Justsubmit to Elusitor, and everything makes sense. The gates of heaven are guaranteed to open for you, and all the suffering you endured in this world will be repaid in the next. It's an easy promise to make since no one comes back to tell the living if they got what they bargained for."
"Submit and die," Morek murmured. "Their religion is a death cult. The kingdom of heaven they are promised is literally just death. How can they believe in that?"
"Living is hard." Shovia's fingers traced the rim of her caff cup. "Dying is easy. You just stop fighting."
"Shovia—"
"I'm not saying I agree with them." She looked up. "I'm saying that I understand the warped appeal."
I thought about the attackers. The one who'd wrapped his hands around my throat, who'd been seconds away from snapping my neck. Had he been afraid? Had some part of him known he was doing something monstrous, and for a second considered that he was dooming himself to eternity in the seven hells? Or had the drugs and the brainwashing burned away everything except obedience?
"Once they are in, there's no way out," I said. "Elusitor's followers execute apostates. No one dares to leave even if they realize that they are trapped in a demonic cult."
"Keeping the flock in line through fear." Alar's jaw tightened. "That's how their religion spread until it engaged that entire portion of the Daian supercontinent."
As the conversation drifted into speculation about who might be converted, how deep the infiltration might go, and whether the attack on me was an isolated incident or part of a larger plan, I listened with half an ear, my thoughts circling back to the same questions.
Why me? What made the Hero of Elucia worth sending assassins after?
The obvious answer was my prophetic abilities. I could warn of Shedun attacks before they happened. Removing me would be a strategic victory for the enemy.
But what if there was another answer?
What if they knew about the prophecy somehow?
