Chapter 277: On the List
Jin woke on the final day with a tender arm and nothing scheduled in the arena.
He ran the quarry that morning and banked the development. Real Glitch remained Rank 1 Novice, at the peak of seven-Star, Silver (Peak), and was content to spend the session resting after breakfast. The cut above his eye was healing, and he had walked without favoring the foreleg.
Flicker had spent most of his Engine session on the perch by the window. She had eaten and settled without needing help, leaving him free to concentrate on the route.
He was still getting used to that. For so long, working on anything had meant checking her between tasks: her temperature, whether she needed feeding, whether she was resting comfortably.
When he finally looked up from a run, she had moved to the next perch. He had missed the flight entirely. For a moment he felt disappointed, then found himself smiling at how little it had mattered to her.
She still needed gradual flight conditioning and practice with landings. Jin had no intention of taking her into an arena because she could now cross a yard. There were plenty of ordinary things for her to learn first.
She flew to the sill when the sun moved, then returned to her perch later. Jin left her to choose which spot she preferred.
Jin checked his own dressing before settling at the desk. The graze pulled when he lifted his arm too quickly. He had the feeling it would remind him about yesterday every time he reached for something.
He put two messages out about the footwork thing. One to the combat conditioning office, asking whether any of the movement instructors took individual students. One to his father, which was shorter and said only how did you learn to not get hit, and which got a reply forty minutes later that was eleven paragraphs long.
The conditioning office sent an instructor’s name and an available session. The first assessment would cover retreating, changing direction, and keeping his attention on more than one threat.
Jin booked it before he could decide he ought to study a few more recordings first. He had done plenty of studying before Talren. What he needed now was somebody beside him who could stop him putting his foot in the wrong place.
Arthur’s reply was better. It did not contain a single drill. It was eleven paragraphs about where to put your eyes when something was coming at you, and how a tamer who watched the weapon lost his beast, and what his own instructor had done to him in his first year to break that habit, and it ended with a line Jin read twice:
You’re trying to watch the attack and keep your beast’s fight in mind. That takes practice. Don’t expect the bond to teach your feet everything.
Jin wrote back with the time of his booked session. Then he asked which mistake Arthur had made most often.
The reply arrived almost immediately: The same one. Backing away until there was nowhere left to go.
That made Jin feel a little better. He saved the exchange with his training notes.
Doyen checked Glitch at noon, taking her time over the shoulder and the cut above his eye. Jin held his head steady while she worked, although Glitch’s attention stayed on the feed cupboard.
"The foreleg’s settled," she said. "Ordinary training is fine. Keep the same limits on the claw and breath for now."
"One claw. No full-power breath," Jin repeated.
"And we’ll review him under load before changing either." Doyen glanced at Jin’s dressing. "You had that checked?"
"After the match. It’s only sore."
"Try to keep it that way."
Jin took Glitch back to the yard. The lizard inspected the empty bowl on his way past, then settled where he could see Flicker’s perch.
The board closed at six.
Jin was in the yard with both beasts when it happened, and he had promised himself he wouldn’t watch the countdown. His phone was already in his hand.
His name stayed at twenty. Jin checked the remaining time, looked away to answer Elsa’s message, then checked again.
At six, the timer disappeared. The qualification list loaded in its place.
[Third-Class rankings — final, qualification period]
[20. Jin Astor]
[Regional League qualifier requirement: Top 20 — MET]
[Status: qualified]
Jin read it about six times.
Then he sat down on the low wall and looked at the yard for a while without reading anything at all.
He remembered the fifty thousand Credits his family had spent on Glitch’s egg. It had been their savings, given to him because even a modest contracted beast could help him make something of his appraisal talent.
He had wanted to prove they hadn’t wasted it. For a long time, that had meant getting through the next examination, earning enough for feed, and finding one more thing Glitch could do.
Now his name was on a Regional League qualification list.
We actually got here.
He let the thought stay without opening the next ranking profile or calculating how far he still had to climb. The wins counted. So did the work before them, and yesterday’s defense, and the fact that he could look across the yard and see both beasts comfortable.
Glitch was asleep across the yard with his chin on the ground and his horns catching the last of the light, two hundred and sixty-one kilograms of animal that had come out of a crate. Flicker was on the wall beside Jin’s hand, having flown there, because that was a thing she did now.
The message from Elsa arrived before he’d worked out how to tell anyone.
IS IT UP YET
Jin typed back, Yes.
AND????
Twenty. Qualified, he told her.
I’M GETTING MUM
He put the phone face-down for a second and looked at the sky over the training blocks.
The next competition would bring students from beyond the ladder he’d spent so much time studying. Jin would learn the arrangements at the briefing. Tonight, he had news he wanted to tell his family himself.
Flicker hopped onto his wrist while he opened the call. Across the yard, Glitch raised his head at Elsa’s voice and stayed awake long enough for her to demand a look at him too.
"Both of them?" Jin asked. "Or do I get to be in this call?"
"You can hold the phone," Elsa said.
Elena laughed somewhere behind her. Then Arthur came into view, smiling, and Jin found he was smiling back before anybody said another word.
He told them the list was final. His mother asked him to say it again, and this time he had no difficulty doing so.
An official notification appeared at the top of the screen while they were talking.
[Regional League qualifier briefing]
[Qualified student: Jin Astor]
[Attendance required — details to follow]