“Right,” Sam said. “No, left!”

  Erianna opened her left hand to reveal a pen cap. “Good. Trust your instincts,” she said. “At this point, you’re still grasping in the dark. You don’t have enough experience and knowledge to make truly informed decisions and observations. So instead, focus on trying to improve your skills while still letting your gut reactions guide you. At the end of the day, you’ll never have enough time to completely forgo relying on your instincts. So it’s a balancing game between relying on them and letting them develop, and relying on them too much and hampering your training.”

  Sam nodded before uttering the groan he’d been trying to suppress for the last five minutes. “Can I turn it off?”

  Erianna laughed. “Yes. We’ll take a short break. I know it’s hard, but there is a reason why I’m not letting you turn the Sight off until I say so. I hope you don’t think I’m being needlessly strict,” she said as Sam took a big gulp from his bottle of water.

  Sam wiped his mouth. “And I hope that you don’t actually think and worry that I think that. I know the deal, princess. We’re developing my discipline and control, as well as just the general ability with, and to withstand, the Sight.”

  “Just making sure.” Erianna smiled. “When I was going through the same training stages you are now, I had it a lot easier than you. So I don’t have the experience of knowing what it’s like to be pushed like I’m pushing you.”

  “Won’t be needing any of your fake platitudes or sympathy, thank very much.”

  “It’s not fake! I’m serious. In what world would I, at fourteen, have been worked as hard as you are now?”

  “Maynil, I’m guessing.”

  “Screw you, I’m telling the truth.”

  “OK, OK.” Sam held his hands up. “Whatever you say. Ah…” he sighed wearily. “I’m gonna go wash my face if that’s alright with you?”

  “Of course it isn’t.” She said as Sam got up. “If you do that, then you’ll have it easy enough so that I can’t pat you on the back anymore.”

  “I said I agreed with you,” Sam said as he stepped into the bathroom.

  “Well it didn’t feel like you believed it.”

  He splashed water onto his face. “I’m not in charge of your feelings, princess. When I say something, I mean it.”

  “Since when?”

  “Since I needed to use that phrase in order to win the argument just now.” He got down into a crouch and started doing some lunging stretches.

  “You know, in another world, you’d be the perfect sociopath. You’ll just say whatever it is that you think will make the other side like you.”

  “What’s wrong with me being a sociopath in this world? I already do that.”

  “Nope. You can do that, but you very rarely do. That’s the difference between you and maniacal Sam. He doesn’t actually care about other people, so he doesn’t have a sense of wrong and right, nor the need the showcase his real thoughts. You, on the other hand, the most you’ll do is just nod noncommittally when someone says something you don’t agree with.”

  Sam nodded noncommittally. “That’s good that you believe that I care about other people. Show’s that my acting has worked out so far.” He let out a grunt as he straightened up and stretched his whole body to the left. “God, I love having a good body.” He let out another self-satisfied grunt as he stretched to the right.

  “Stop peacocking and sit down, will you?”

  “You modern royals will never understand what it feels like not possessing a healthy body. So you can’t appreciate it like the genetically poor like me do.”

  Erianna roller her eyes. “Stop exaggerating, your old body wasn’t that bad. At least your genetics weren’t.”

  “I beg to differ. Did you know that my left foot was 4 cm shorter than my right? You call that good genetics?”

  “I call being able to utilize all of your five senses good genetics.”

  “Spoken like a true high-bred aristocrat. There are also more than five senses, by the way.”

  “Is any of them the sense of time being wasted by you talking and not practicing threads?”

  “Probably,” Sam said before closing his eyes and steeling himself for another round. “Ready.”

  The rest of the hour passed placidly enough, if forcing yourself to confront a deluge of information and the dizziness, nausea, and headaches that accompanied it could be called placid. Then again, compared to only a couple of weeks ago, not to mention to when he first started, today counted as a measure of calm even greater than tranquility. Didn’t prevent him from complaining, of course.

  “Ugh… I’m so tired.” He covered his forehead with dramatic flair while lying back in his chair.

  “So?” Erianna shrugged as she took a bite of one of the many candy bars Sam started storing in his room for her. “It’s almost your bedtime, shouldn’t you be happy about being tired before bed? What with all your whining about how hard it is to fall asleep and have a good night’s sleep?”

  “How hard it was.” Sam straightened and gave her a withering stare. “Don’t put that evil on me. If I have to spend another night dreaming four dreams in a row, I’m going to kill someone, probably myself.”

  Erianna took the final bite. “How hard could’ve been? Dreams are dreams.”

  “Bold words from someone who never had to wake up more tired than when she went to sleep because her stupid brain decided that it was going to force upon her vivid dreams at every sleeping moment.”

  “I don’t know, I guess I’m just built different.”

  “Come back to me after dreaming the same sequence of thinking you’ve woken up only to find out you’re dreaming three times in a row. Or, after spending months dreaming about going back to highschool while you still have to juggle your university duties and then, having a dream when you go back to do a highschool level test—in your elementary school for some reason—and then complain within the dream about having dreams where you go back to highschool as an adult.”

  “That’s… oddly specific.”

  Sam gave her a ‘now you see?’ gesture. “If there’s one thing I’ll never run out of details for, is the shitty dreams I had. Being able to sleep normally again is almost as good as being able to walk.”

  “Well, I’ll take your word for it. Let’s hope neither of us will dream of going back to highschool and… all the other bits, ever again.”

  Sam sighed. “If I could get a lobotomy for the part of my brain that makes you dream, I would.”

  Erianna nodded. “That’s perfectly sane and reasonable. And it makes it very clear to me why your hatred and vitriol towards dreams was completely absent from your file.”

  “Oh, boo hoo. You have to spend time with a person in order to get to know them. Princess Erianna Ninae can’t learn all there is to know about someone from a piece of paper.”

  “It was a digital file, but point taken.”

  “Is it still being updated?”

  “I assume so. By someone at least. Not by me certainly. Of course, Farris has his own highly uninformative file on you as well. That one he did give me in a paper folder.”

  Sam laughed. “I also want one. I’ll frame it on a wall if I ever rise high enough to get my own office.”

  “That’s not that high of a rise, you know?”

  Sam shrugged. “For an active combat posting? It’s not immediately out of the gate, at least.”

  “True, I guess. Although for me it probably will be. But I’m willing to frame that folder on my own walls until you have walls of your own to put to use.”

  “That’s the kindest thing anyone has ever said to me.” Sam rubbed his misty eyes.

  “What can I say? I’m the kindest person I have ever met. And on that note”—she made to get up—“I’ll leave you be for today. Make sure your practice doesn’t cut into your personal time.”

  Sam sighed. “Sure, sure. Thank you for the overbearingness, Ma’am.”

  She gave him a thumbs up. “Goodnight.”

  “Goodnight.”

  Thankfully, the night passed without Sam having dreamt—or at least, with no dreams prominent enough for him to have remembered them after waking up. Which was always something to be thankful for, he reminded himself with a thump on his chest as he stepped up to the sink. Sure, he might be dealing with a completely different class of problems nowadays, but as his past had shown him again and again, it can always get worse. So one had to be thankful that one only had to shoulder the fate of the Web on one’s shoulder and not also the burden of not having any rest at night.

  Morning ablutions quickly done with, he finished waking up with some light spear exercises before sitting down to spend the remainders of the half-hour cultivating—still with the old methods, although he was beginning to slowly switch over on some of his evening sessions. The next couple of weeks will see the techniques he had been slaving over and with for half a year relegated to the dustbin. Only to be picked up if he’ll have the misfortune of having to teach anyone about them.

  He shook his head as he headed down the stairs. Enough with the talk of fortune and misfortune; of worrying about bad things that haven’t happened yet and awful things that have happened in the past. Today was going to be a good one. He was finally going to make the jump from “prodigy who must get special dispensation to study here” to “prodigy who’s not that far behind to be completely isolated from his fellows.”

  Of course, joining a physical fighting class wasn’t what he was really after. That distinction belonged to the crown jewel of most basic courses in the curriculum: patterns and tracings. But it was a start. As long as you ignored the fact that he wasn’t quite good enough to actually join this physical fighting class.

  But hey, what kind of idiot would complain about someone with Sam’s potential being treated a little differently than your average student? Especially not when you had that half a year of progress to measure Sam’s worth with and to prove that he also had the ability to possibly capitalize on that potential? Well, an idiot would for a start. But surely prestigious military academies don’t allow such low quality personage within their ranks.

  They definitely do, Sam thought with a laugh. And since he had the tendency to take the role of a devil’s advocate, he had spent quite a lot of time recently telling Erianna that the Kingdom of Sarechal wasn’t the only nation with less than a stellar record of quality cadets. Liberal democracy might be the best soil for meritocracy, but it was still a far cry from being able to prevent any nepotistic or misjudged weeds from growing in its back garden.

  Erianna was already waiting for him when he got to the gym, which meant that one of them had to moan about being forced to wait for Felix and Yvessa. “They wouldn’t dare be late if Sarah was coming,” Erianna took the initiative.

  This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  Sam nodded gravely. “Lazy bastards. Just because Sarah has an early morning course, they think they can bunk off. Absolutely deplorable. I blame their upbringing, honestly.”

  “Quite right, quite right. Parents nowadays… they spare the rod a bit too much for my liking.”

  “Indubitably. And besides, it’s a sign of a rotten culture that has forsaken all of its traditions for—Oh, here they are.”

  “Good morning,” Felix said with a smile.

  “Is it?” Erianna asked as she started going in.

  Felix rolled his eyes. “It’s your fault, you know,” he told Yvessa. “Before she got here, Sam had no ally for his shticks.”

  “Maybe I wouldn’t need an ally if you guys would get here on time,” Sam said.

  “We got here two minutes early.”

  “Well that’s true.” Sam and Erianna exchanged nods. “You can’t fault them for not being as conscientious as us and not being here three minutes early.”

  “Four in my case,” Erianna said.

  “Alright, let’s not start splitting hairs.”

  “You ready for today, Sam?” Yvessa asked.

  Sam raised his fist. “More than ready. I’m still not sure of how much use it would be to me at this point. But it’s not like it’d be that big of a tragedy if it proves a little less efficient than my training up till today.”

  “It wouldn’t?” Erianna asked with wide eyes.

  “No… So long as it would result in an external inquiry whose job it would be to detail the best plan going forward.”

  “Of course. Efficient as always.”

  “You know me, I’ve learnt from the best.” He looked around. “Damn, Sarah’s not here.”

  “Nor would she have been old enough to understand that joke if you hadn’t explained it to us half a dozen times,” Felix said.

  “Ehm… I don’t know about that. Twelve is old enough to watch a show or two that satirizes, yet displays rather accurately, the British political system.”

  “Is it, though?”

  “Maybe not. In other news, I’ll be joining you two for lunch if that’s OK.”

  Yvessa shrugged. “Fine with me.” Felix nodded.

  “You sure? Weren’t planning to eat with anyone else, were you?”

  “Well actually no,” Felix said. “We have a really short break for lunch. Combat practice starts early, and our previous lesson ends late. So we were just going to grab something to eat on the go.”

  “Do you guys eat with other people sometimes?” Erianna asked.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Just… what it sounded like.”

  “Sounded like you were worried about our social status.”

  “Maybe I am.”

  “Well don’t be.” Felix draped his arm around Yvessa’s shoulder. “Me and Yv here are doing fine. We’re two of the most popular kids in our year.”

  “Huh ah. Who’s the most popular?”

  They both pointed at Sam in unison. “Me? Really?” Sam gave a self-satisfied smirk. “Well it makes sense, most of them haven’t actually spent any time talking to me.”

  “Yep.” Felix nodded. “Your tower of fame is due to come down in just a matter of hours.”

  After warming up, they each split to their own objective, and Sam decided to alter his usual morning routine a bit in order to follow Erianna. “Hey, princess,” he whispered to her as he settled down on a nearby bench. “I get that you’re worried about your best friend, but there are better ways to alleviate those worries than to come off as a concerned helicopter mom.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Sure you don’t. Just remember that Yvessa’s a big girl. And she’s got Felix around her most of the day, so you can be sure that if there were any problems, we’d have heard about them.”

  “I’ve only heard about the one problem, really.” She gave Sam a meaningful look. “But that’s up to Yvessa to deal with. You need to stop seeing Sarah in me so much, Sam. I’m was just genuinely curious. You, for example, can count the number of people you eat your meals with on one hand.”

  Sam did so for effect. “One, two, three, four… Sometimes I eat with other people.”

  “You can see what I meant, though.”

  Sam shrugged. “Well, I like what I like. And what I like is to listen to music or watch something when I’m eating by myself.” He grimaced. “Doesn’t prevent people from trying to strike up a conversation sometimes, though.”

  “I know what you mean…” Erianna nodded. “Anyway, like I said, I was just genuinely curious. Well, mostly. The point is, you can never have to many friends, yeah? So I’d like to get to know the friends of my friends.”

  “Well, you know all of mine.”

  “Do I?”

  “Ah, I don’t know. What is a friend, really? Still, don’t think I completely bought your argument, princess.”

  “Buy whatever you like… peasant.”

  Sam shook his head and clicked his tongue. “That doesn’t really work. You keep working on it.”

  The workout passed quickly enough with Sam and Erianna having spent most of it trying to workshop a “derogatory” yet accurate nickname for Sam (and, working out, obviously). The best Erianna could come up with was desk jockey, which proved that in some respects the plebes had it easier than the high nobility. Sarah joined them for breakfast and kept her barrage of congratulatory and encouraging comments for Sam to a minimum. Erianna and Sam walked together to Dan’s office, where they split up, Sam to his usual spot and Erianna to another member of the faculty and her own private lessons.

  They were prevented from meeting up outside a couple of hours later due to Sam leaving his own lessons earlier than usual to join Felix and Yvessa on a bench table, which was a two minutes walk from the gym where they had their regular combat practice lessons. “Thanks,” Sam said as he took the boxed lunch offered to him by Yvessa. “So wait, you guys have three different gyms you go to?”

  “Four,” Felix said between bites. “Our magical combat practice takes place somewhere else.”

  Sam took a bite of his sandwich and leaned back. “That’s annoying.”

  “It’s not that bad, really. After all, two of those are our choices.”

  “So what did you and Erianna talk about?” Yvessa asked, causing Sam to almost breathe in a piece of lettuce. He coughed and clapped himself on the back, mostly to buy time, but not just. And he made sure to take a very slow and measured sip from his bottle. “Well?” she asked again.

  Sam fiddled uncomfortably under her gaze. “You know… about how… how…”

  “Oh, just come out with it, mate,” Felix said. “We can’t be here all day.”

  Sam shot him an angry glance before sighing. “Alright, I tried telling her to not worry about you or whatever, you know?”

  “Do I?” Yvessa said.

  “Yeah, just that… to not be the Sarah to your Sam.”

  “Great allegory, that,” Felix said.

  “Fuck off, will you? I just wanted to make sure that she’s not unduly worried, and, more importantly, that she won’t keep asking you leading questions and whatnot.”

  “I’m not really sure it was your place to tell her that, Sam,” Yvessa said. “But thank you nonetheless. Maybe I ought to have a talk with her. Let her know she really doesn’t have anything to worry about. God knows I’ve had plenty of these talks with my mother.”

  Sam inclined his head apologetically. “I am sorry. Just felt responsible because I’m the one who brought it up. Sort of.”

  “To be fair,” Felix said to Yvessa, “the first time you two met, you did give off the impression that your social situation wasn’t all that great.”

  Yvessa swiped at his shoulder. “Maybe so, but it wasn’t even all that bad then, and things have definitely changed since.”

  “Exactly.” Sam nodded. “You’ve met me, for one.”

  “True, not all for the better.”

  Sam smiled in self-satisfaction. “Well the important thing is that we all have friends and that none of us need to disguise our true social situation in order to calm the people close to us.”

  “And that you can do the opposite,” Felix said, “and exaggerate how bad you’ve had it.”

  “I don’t think I exaggerate. At least not about past circumstances.”

  “Really? Because you make it seem like you’ve been some sort of social pariah in your previous life.”

  “Let’s just agree to disagree, then. Which is what I’ve had to do plenty of times in the past in order to maintain what dregs of friendships I’ve had. If you can even call them that. Besides, it’s not like I have all that many friends nowadays.”

  “Yeah, but it’s by choice. Also, you still definitely exaggerate your social skills and personability.”

  “You say exaggerate, I say give people a taste of my true self before they really get to know me.”

  Yvessa chuckled. “You’re definitely a lot less socially inept that you make yourself out to be.”

  “Ah ah! So you admit I am somewhat socially inept.”

  “Only when people get to know you,” Felix said. “Can we go now, please? We haven’t got all day, after all.”

  Sam nodded and stood up, picking up his trash in his wake. He twirled his fingers. “This is it, boys. The big moment. Oooh, I can’t wait to look back at this day and reminisce about all the people I’ve since left in the dust. You two included.”

  “You wish.” Felix snorted. “But he does raise a good point.” He turned to Yvessa. “Doesn’t it feel a little bit like we’re escorting him? What’s that ceremony called when the Sarechi royal heir is introduced to the realm?”

  “There isn’t one.” Yvessa said. “Royals, heir apparent or not, take part in official proceedings from an early age, and none of these have to do with introducing them to people. It’s expected that people are already familiar with who they are.”

  “Yeah, but you get what I’m talking about, right?”

  She gave him a reluctant nod. “In a way. And this is nothing like it. For a start, it’s not like we’ve kept Sam hidden. Nor are we his guardians and handlers.”

  “You aren’t?” Sam asked.

  Felix tsked. “Why’d you tell him? You know how hard it’s going to be to get him to go to bed now?”

  “Ugh. That’s a bit creepy, no?”

  Yvessa nodded. “Par for the course with the two of you, I would say.”

  “I can’t believe she’s lumping me together with you.”

  “I was just about to say the same thing.” Felix nodded.

  The biggest part of all the copy-paste academy gyms was occupied by a very large version of the private training rooms Sam had been practicing in. With an occupancy limit of about a hundred, the forty-odd people that made up a physical combat class left plenty of room for everyone to get their fair share of space, if not as much space as Sam was used to. About half of the class was already there by the time they got there, with a few people following in their steps and pretty much all eyes on Sam (unfortunately, he was quite the expert at this point at figuring out whether people were actually looking at him).

  “Let’s get you geared up, then,” Felix said and led the way to the storage room in the middle of the hall. He handed Sam a spear before grabbing one for himself. “And protective gear.”

  Sam sighed as Felix fastened all necessary straps before doing the Sam for Felix in return. “God, I hate these.”

  “Better than losing your eye.”

  “Check me,” Yvessa walked up to them.

  “You could do with a haircut.” Felix said as Sam got down to the job.

  “All good.” He raised a thumb.

  “Thank you, and screw you.” She gave Felix the finger.

  With only a few minutes remaining before the lesson started, the rest of the cadets started filling in, and one of them, after getting his gear ready, approached them.

  “Hi Felix, Yvessa,” he said before turning to Sam, “don’t know if you remember me, Sam.”

  “Philip, right?” Sam presented his hand.

  “Exactly.” Philip shook his hand. “I guess your joke about not remembering my name was just that.”

  “I wouldn’t count on that. I was mostly guessing. And if the circumstances of our meeting weren’t as pivotal as they were, I would’ve been totally guessing.”

  “How’d you meet?” Felix asked.

  “He helped me pick an ice-cream flavor.”

  “Of course.”

  “I didn’t know you were in this class,” Sam said to Phillip.

  “I’m not just a pretty face with a good taste in ice-cream.”

  “I would object to that pretty face description,” said another woman coming up behind him to join him.

  “And to be honest,” Sam said, “the flavor wasn’t all that great.”

  Philip put his hand on his chest. “The second one really hurt.”

  The woman ignored him and presented her hand to Sam. “I’m Tara, nice to finally meet you.”

  “Sam.” He shook her hand.

  “So you guys finally decided to let Sam mingle with us plebes?” She smiled at Felix and Yvessa.

  “Just for a trial run,” Felix said. “Besides, it’s not like we have a monopoly on him. You’re free to strike up a conversation with him whenever you see him on campus.”

  “No you’re not,” Sam objected.

  “He likes to play the antisocial grump, but inside he actually loves all the attention.”

  Philip laughed. “Well, I’m just super excited to get to spar with you. From what I heard, you didn’t have any fighting experience before you got here, right? So to be good enough to join us in only half a year… I have to tip my hat off, you know?”

  “Not quite good enough yet,” Sam said. “And it’s been more than half a year by now.” He furrowed his brow. “Incidentally, where did you hear that tidbit about my lack of fighting experience?”

  “Not from these two,” Tara said. “They’ve been pretty tight-lipped when it comes to telling people about your progress.”

  “Of course we are,” Yvessa said. “We wouldn’t gossip about our friend. Also, some of your questions had nothing to do with his progress.” She shot Tara a glance.

  Sam gulped and straightened his imaginary collar. “Well I hope not to disappoint. Although if it would lead to people talking less about me… Worth a shot?” he asked Felix.

  Felix shook his head. “Wouldn’t help.”

  “Yeah.” Phillip laughed. “People will talk about you either way. And not bad things, mind you. I’ve only heard good things about you.”

  “Like what?” Felix asked with a wide smile that only slightly morphed as Sam elbowed him in the ribs.

  “Well… just stuff about expectations and how you’re working hard and everything. The usual for the high-profile cadets. You two know what I’m talking about. Just a bit of a higher volume and intensity, I guess. I mean, no to put Felix and Yvessa on the spot but they’re like the type of cadets we’d put on our promotional posters if we had any. Super talented, famous—”

  “Do go on.”

  “But they still don’t come close to the type of fame you have, you know? People like you and Erianna Ninae, you’re like on another level.”

  “Wow…” Sam drawled. “I can’t wait to tell Erianna. She’ll be thrilled to find out people think she’s on the same level as me.”