Keeper Training Montage — “Teach Us How Not to Die, Please”
The Academy gave Trixie five Keeper apprentices.
She mentally labeled them:
- Overconfident Eyebrows
- Shaky Hands
- Too Many Questions
- Zero Questions (deeply concerning)
- The One Who Thinks They’re Funny (they aren’t)
They convened every morning in the resonance theater — an oblong room whose acoustics made every failure echo like a slap and every success sound like a bell.
This is how it went:
Day 1 – The Loop Problem
Trixie: “The loop knot is tiny, gentle. Be nice to it.”
Overconfident Eyebrows immediately tried to brute?force the loop.
The wall vibrated.
Shaky Hands squeaked.
Trixie slapped her palm over the sigil before it could spiral. “This is not CrossFit for magic. Do it again. Softer.”
Overconfident Eyebrows: “Ah.”
Dixie from the rafters: “Hit him with a book.”
Day 2 – The Brake Catastrophe
Too Many Questions asked, “What happens if the brake knot is tied off-center—”
And proceeded to tie it off-center as a demonstration.
A ripple of marsh?tide energy burst across the room.
Zero Questions blinked as dust rained down from the ceiling.
Nolan: “Nobody move.”
Trixie scrambled forward, hands glowing. “Okay, okay, okay — breathe WITH it, not AGAINST it—”
She stabilized it with a Memory Catch.
Dixie: “And THAT is why the marsh wanted to eat us.”
Day 3 – The Vent Disaster
The One Who Thinks They’re Funny said, “So it’s basically letting the spell… burp?”
Trixie, horrified: “NO.”
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They made it burp.
A vent popped incorrectly and briefly stole everyone’s sense of direction.
Shaky Hands: “I can’t remember my left.”
Nolan, gripping the table: “I can’t remember if that’s normal.”
Dixie: “I can’t remember why we’re still teaching these people.”
Day 4 – Actual Progress
Trixie set three tiny practice seams along the lecture hall wall.
Bellamy (the senior Keeper) replicated her Catch perfectly.
Shaky Hands replicated it acceptably.
Zero Questions replicated it flawlessly, then went back to staring at the floor like they’d been born beneath a library shelf.
Trixie beamed. “YES. THAT. THAT’S HOW YOU DO IT.”
Nolan’s tether warmed. Her glow lit the whole room.
Dixie, lounging on a stack of papers: “Don’t praise them too much. They’ll molt.”
Day 5 – Synchronized Casting
Vance wanted them to practice casting together.
This should have been simple.
It was not.
Their rhythms collided like five drummers playing different songs.
On the wrong beats.
With spoons.
Trixie rubbed her forehead. “Okay — count with me. Four in…”
“Four in,” the Keepers echoed.
“Hold two.”
“Hold two.”
Nolan’s eyes softened: she looked like a conductor coaxing music out of people who didn’t yet know what a melody was.
Dixie: “If anyone misses the beat again, I’m putting a mouse in your boot.”
No one missed the beat again.
Day 6 – Crisis Simulation (Unintentional)
One corner of the room ruptured with a spontaneous seam.
A real one.
A hungry one.
Not planned.
Vance: “Positions!”
Keepers: panic noises
Nolan grabbed Trixie’s hand — tether flaring blue — and the two of them instinctively harmonized. Trixie cast the Memory Catch, Nolan braced her shadow stability, the Keepers followed her lead without thinking.
The seam collapsed cleanly.
Vance stared at Trixie like she had just rewritten the syllabus.
Harrow, watching from the doorframe, murmured: “She learns under fire.”
Dixie, grooming her paw: “She got that from me.”
Day 7 – The Bell Cadence Lecture
Trixie: “Okay, this next part is important: cadence always wins over force.”
Bellamy: “Why?”
Trixie: “Because the world runs on pattern, not obedience.”
Their faces lit up.
Nolan mouthed, that was hot.
Dixie pretended she did not hear that.
Day 8 – Catch Practice Marathon
Fifteen practice catches.
Four Keeper miscasts.
Two near collapses.
One brief vision of the Hollow King attempting to slip into an opening, cut off by the tri?copper ladder ringing like a bell.
Trixie nearly collapsed after the twelfth.
Nolan caught her.
Dixie hissed at a wall for dramatic effect.
The Keepers, shaken but inspired, worked twice as hard.
Day 10 – They Finally Get It
Shaky Hands tied the loop perfectly.
Too Many Questions anticipated a brake failure and corrected it before Trixie could lift a hand.
Zero Questions smiled.
(Everyone froze when they did.)
The One Who Thinks They’re Funny tried to joke again.
Trixie threw a chalk nub at them without looking.
Dixie: “My witch is becoming powerful.”
Nolan: “She always was.”
The room hummed.
The walls harmonized.
The seams stayed quiet.
For the first time since the Hollow King woke, Trixie felt like they were catching up instead of running.