Legendary Beast Tamer: Every Beast I Raise Makes Me Stronger

He went up to the Academy at first bell.

The gate was the same gate. He saw the system of it now the way he saw a lamp: what it was for, what it was not for, where the seal sat on the slip and where the slip sat in the desk after it left a man’s hand.

He had a slip of his own in his coat. He took it out at the window.

The clerk read it.

"Vell."

"That’s me."

The clerk wrote a line. He stamped the slip. He gave it back.

"Lower yard. Northeast post. You wait there."

He went to the lower yard.

The lower yard was where admits got their orders. He had been a flagged admit on a slip seven days ago. He was a flagged admit on a slip now.

He stood at the northeast post and waited.

The other admits walked by without looking at his coat. The coats they were looking at belonged to senior tamers and registrar clerks.

His coat was none of those.

His coat had a Stalker on the shoulder, Nyx in the dark of it, and a slip the panel would read at second bell.

The proctor came at quarter.

The proctor was the same older man with the older Hearthcat, the proctor of the gate, the man who had signed off on his Live Combat Assessment the day after the chamber.

He came out of the registrar’s door with the cat at his heel. He walked to the post and stood at the rail across from Aiden.

He set his hands on the rail. He did not need it. He looked at the ground inside the yard.

"Vell."

"Sir."

"You walked here."

"I walked here."

"The lower yard is a yard for admits. You know that."

"Yes sir."

"I am going to walk you up to the senior yard. The walk is a courtesy. The senior yard does not have a rail for you to stand at. You will stand on the flagstone. I will run you through three drills. The drills will not be the drills the admits get in the lower yard. They will be the drills a senior tamer would have given you if you had come up through the gate I came up through. I do not ask you to do them well. I ask you to do them. The panel is at second bell. You have an hour and a half. Walk with me."

He walked.

The senior yard was the senior yard. Stone walls. No windows. The Academy’s blue-white light making every coat the same colour and every face ten years older. A target post on the long wall, scarred at four heights. A grate in the floor for blood.

The proctor set him at the rail.

"You have a Stalker and you have a thing you do not name. Let us start with the Stalker because it is the one I know."

Aiden brought Miasma off his shoulder. He set her on the rail. He felt Nyx in the dark his coat made. He did not speak to Nyx.

The proctor did not look at the dark.

The proctor’s Hearthcat watched the rail with professional interest and personal reservations.

"Pulse. Out from the rail. Ten paces."

Aiden gave the word.

Miasma’s green came up off the spines. The pulse went out at the line of the rail, ten paces, a yard and a half wide.

The proctor’s Hearthcat at his heel stopped what it was doing, which was nothing, and stayed stopped. The pulse died at ten and the air came back.

The proctor’s pencil came up off the page. Miasma had hit the same line at the same width twice. Controlled. Precise. Not a thing the forms expected from a Vesperian.

Aiden let the silence do its work and set up the next call.

"Thread. Same line. Half ten."

Aiden gave the word. The thread went out at the half. Five paces. Fine, fast. Caught the air at the end and held it.

"Bring it back."

Aiden gave the word.

"Now the other one. Out to the line at ten."

Aiden looked at the line.

"It will not stand on it."

The proctor looked at him.

"I know what it will not stand on. I asked you what you can do with it. Show me what you can do with it."

Aiden thought.

He looked at the corner of the yard where the lamp’s light did not reach, the corner the proctor had set him with his back to. The corner was a small patch of dark in a yard the Academy lit.

He took the kit bag off his shoulder. He set it on the flagstone in front of him.

He said, "Across the line."

Nyx left his shoulder. One blink and it was in the far corner of the yard, where the lamps didn’t reach.

The proctor’s Hearthcat had stopped. The Hearthcat stayed stopped.

The proctor looked at the corner. He saw empty dark. Nyx was in it.

"Bring it back."

Aiden said, "Back."

Nyx came back into the dark his coat made.

The proctor wrote a line on a page he kept in his coat.

"Formation."

He set the rail. He set the post. He set the boy with the lamps.

The boy was the proctor’s apprentice. Twelve. A small Hearthcat at his boot. He lit one lamp on each end of the post, another over the rail, stepped back, and held the slate.

"The Venomspine sprays the rail. Threads the post. On a count of three, the other one crosses the space between them. Both come back to you."

He set Miasma at the rail with the spines flat. He set Nyx at the left post. He had done something like this twice. The corridor. The yard. Both times by instinct. He had never done it on command.

He had never drawn it on paper. He could not have drawn it if a senior tamer had asked.

He ran it.

Miasma sprayed the rail. The acid mist cleared the air at the rail-line, the post catching the edge of it a beat behind. Miasma came across and went up the second post. The thread came off her from the high position, catching both posts in a web that hardened on contact.

Nyx crossed the space between them while the thread held. It took the top of the post Miasma had not climbed.

The yard at second bell held its morning shadows in hard lines. The flagstones had been scrubbed pale by forty years of boots, and the two posts wore the scars of every demonstration the Academy had ever asked of them.

He ran it twice.

The second was cleaner than the first. He felt the difference without counting it.

Frost still sat in the seams the sun had not found. Somewhere behind the rail, a clerk’s pen had stopped moving.

When both beasts were back on his shoulders, the proctor was looking at the dirt between the two posts. Not at the posts. At the space between them. The Hearthcat had not sat back down.

Aiden understood what the proctor was seeing because he had only recently learned to see it himself.

The beasts were not two answers to two separate problems. Miasma controlled the place where things had to move, and Nyx controlled the places where things were assumed to be empty.

The formation was not stronger because both were powerful. It was stronger because each one changed what the other could do.

That was the difference between a beast tamer and a person carrying two weapons. The Academy could teach control. It could not teach that understanding.

The proctor turned his head a fraction. The boy with the lamps came back and laid a single chalked mark on the flagstone, three meters from the rail. The mark was the size of a small coin.

"Step. Mark to mark."

Aiden stood at the rail. He looked at the mark.

He had not run the trait in front of the proctor since the Griffin. The yard had happened too fast for the man to write anything but the line about a man crossing without moving his feet.

This was not a yard full of a thousand people. This was a chalked coin, one set of eyes, and a pencil.

He stepped. The world folded.