It had been a week since Motus had left his home. In that time, Motus had come to a few conclusions—in between his current schedule of trying to familiarize himself with his gift until exhaustion gnawed at his bones, and sleeping like the dead—the first being that his gift had quickly proven that it had an old mare’s temperament. Like an old engine that stubbornly refused to start when he turned the key, unless he spent time coaxing it to the surface. Time, Commander Enka had spared no effort in impressing upon him that he wouldn’t always have. The second conclusion Motus came to was that he was being kept from the other falem for some reason.

  Motus thought it might have been a strange sort of grace period; perhaps something like giving him time to process all the changes he had been forced to rapidly undergo, or something like that. He hadn’t seen another person aside from the commander or, occasionally, the silent, angry boy with red eyes that brought him his meals after training. Motus hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Wade or Zemora; they had been the ones to bring him to this place—there had been others with them, according to Wade—but he hadn’t seen or met them.

  The third conclusion came to him while he walked the winding sand-coated path to the arena that was beginning to feel quite familiar to him. Something about the walk felt different; he couldn’t quite place whether it was ‘good’ different, or something else entirely. Set slightly off-kilter by his inability to place his unease, Motus was nearly floored when he opened the heavy doors of the arena to see more people than he was expecting. He was reminded of his second time here; gone was the blonde boy, but the white-haired boy—Sieg, if Motus remembered correctly—was still there. As was the young woman who had nearly walked into him when he had been lost in his swirling thoughts.

  They were both turned away from him, speaking to the commander who caught his eye moments after the doors swung open. He broke the conversation and spoke to Motus directly.

  “Motus, good morning.” He said.

  “Good morning, Commander,” Motus responded slowly, still not entirely comfortable with the word. “What’s going on?”

  “A change in your training, your hunt approaches, and you need to prepare,” Leonidas said quickly.

  A pit of dread formed in Motus’s stomach as he glanced at Sieg, who had turned to face him. There was an ever-present frostiness in Sieg’s eyes that Motus wasn’t entirely sure had anything to do with him.

  “Change in what way?” Motus hesitated to ask, sweat beading on his brow.

  “Sparring, combat between you and your fellow falem,” Leonidas responded, glancing at Sieg with a meaningful fire in his eyes. “Mock combat, now that you are comfortable enough with your gift to call upon it at will, we need to work on your ability to defend yourself.”

  Motus swallowed audibly before he turned his gaze back towards Sieg briefly. He had never so much as thrown a punch before, and while Sieg wasn’t as densely packed with muscle as the black-haired boy that brought the food had been, he was covered in wiry muscle that spoke of a strength that Motus frankly did not possess. His fear and apprehension must have been written on his face, because Leonidas grunted before speaking up in an attempt to alleviate it somewhat—he failed miserably.

  “This first bout is more about seeing where you stand, so I know who to put in charge of your training. It also serves to give me an idea of what weapon to send you into your hunt with.”

  There was something in the way he said it that made Motus almost certain that he was not going to enjoy this experience. Nevertheless, he nodded and slid into what he felt was an acceptable fighting stance; unfortunately, the snort it drew from Sieg chipped away at the validity of that idea. He was just about to ask what the rules for their ‘spar’ were when he heard Leonidas bark out a single word.

  “Begin!”

  Motus barely had a moment to turn back to face Sieg before the older boy was upon him. A closed fist was thrown towards his face, and Motus scrambled to throw his suddenly all too heavy arms up to block and protect his face. For his troubles, he got a stinging sensation that radiated across both limbs from the hit, and his legs swept from beneath him. It happened swiftly; one moment, he was blocking a punch, and the next, he was airborne. Being slammed to the ground knocked the wind from his lungs and had Motus gasping like a fish left out to dry.

  He lay there for a moment, the world spinning in lazy circles around him, waiting for Leonidas to call the fight—clearly it was over—but the order never came. Instead, pain blossomed in his side as Sieg kicked him across the arena floor—hard. The sand scratched at his skin as he was sent rolling. His tumble left Motus sprawled across the floor and winded, but he fought to his feet once he managed to get his hands under him. Motus could already hear Sieg racing towards him and panicked. Clearly, this was going to be more than he thought it was, but then again, maybe that was the point.

  The rapid thumping in his chest preceded the intense, almost burning sensation of his gift. It bloomed to the surface as if buoyed by his fear. Motus reached out to latch onto that feeling; he called for it, and it listened. With every beat of his heart, Motus saw his vision tint blue at its borders. The sounds of Sieg’s movement were beginning to slow dramatically, and Motus worked to solidify his focus on the heat that lived below his heart. When he finally raised his eyes to face his attacker properly, Motus was forced to fight the smile that threatened to split his face, as an idea came to him. With a series of quick steps, he rapidly backtracked to the far wall of the arena, pressing his fingers to the cool stone.

  Hopefully this works, or—well, I sure hope it works. Motus thought with a sudden flash of trepidation as he pressed himself further into the wall for leverage.

  With a final sharp breath to steady his fraying nerves, Motus pushed off the wall with enough force to chip the stone. The moment his feet hit the ground, that heart-bound heat flared. Motus exploded in a surge of momentum, the wind that whipped past him throwing his hair every which way. The blur Motus became approached Sieg rapidly with a cocked back fist, and with all the training of a glorified custodian, Motus swung for the fences.

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   Crack!

  His fist struck with all the momentum of his forward charge, backing it, and something crunched beneath his fist before Sieg was thrown from his feet and sent flying backwards. Motus watched in wide-eyed horror as the white-haired boy sailed through the air and was sent careening into the wall of the arena with a solid smack. He took a step towards Sieg, intent on asking him if he was okay, only to freeze mid-stride. A sharp hiss left his lips when pain radiated out from his hand. When he raised the offending appendage to his eyes, Motus nearly lost the lunch he fortunately hadn’t had yet; his knuckles were an angry red that was nearly purple.

  “Commander!” Motus called out, cradling his aching hand close to his chest.

  “Lesson number two about Falem,” Leonidas responded as if they had been speaking all along.

  The Commander stood tall, right where Motus had left him, his arms crossed. His gaze held none of the concern that Motus had been expecting to see for either of the two boys. Instead, his warm brown eyes burned with a fiery gleam as he continued his ‘second lesson.’ “You are down but never out, unless it kills you—walk it off,” Leonidas said firmly.

  He gestured with his chin at the wall Motus had sent Sieg spiraling into, and what Motus saw temporarily made him forget how to close his mouth. The sound of cracking bones shattered the brief stint of silence that blanketed the arena. Sieg was pulling himself free from the crumbled heap he had become; his limbs snapping back into place after hitting the wall, with a sound like metal wrenching back into place. There was murder in his eyes. Such was his awe that Motus nearly missed the fading pain in his hand; he glanced down in time to bear witness to the bones in his hand knitting back together, sliding into place. Motus then heard the strangest sound, so bizarre that it drew him from his stupor of watching his hand heal in moments. It was an odd mixture of ‘clicks’ and the dull keening of a spinning motor.

  When Motus looked up, what he saw made him freeze. Sieg was on his feet, and clenched in his hands was the odd weapon Motus had previously thought was a javelin. Now that he could see it properly, it wasn’t a javelin at all. It was a slim metal cylinder just a hair’s breadth longer than Sieg’s arms; surrounding the cylinder were fragments of metal tethered to it by bright blue jags of electricity. They spun slowly at first, shifting about almost aimlessly. This slow drift faded into a harsh spin. It rapidly increased in tempo as Sieg pressed a button on the shaft that Motus could not see. As a bright blue glow traveled up the sleek pole of the weapon, electricity fanned the shards outward in their spin. It almost looked like—

  “Is that an evil umbrella?” Motus asked, his eyes wide.

  Whatever Motus had to say next was drowned out by the bright flash of light that suddenly erupted from the tip of the umbrella, which lit up the entire arena. Suddenly, sharp, burning pain wracked Motus’s body as a force slammed into his chest far quicker than he could have hoped to see. It sent him careening into the far wall, slamming into it harsh enough to crack the dark stone. A deafening boom echoed out moments after he was thrown from his feet in that flash, as if the sound had been chasing the light that struck him. Sieg had just shot him—he had shot him with a bolt of lightning.

  Motus blinked swirls of darkness from his eyes some time later as a soft green glow flitted through the haze of sleep. When his vision cleared, Motus was able to place what had been causing the glow. He was laid on a bed of flowers—some of the most beautiful he had ever seen—with a wide range of colors, a few that Motus couldn’t quite name. Yet each of those vivid colors was cast in a bright green luminescence that reminded Motus of the forest in the middle of summer. Glancing up from his bed of flowers, Motus blanched at the sight of the moon; at least what he believed to be the moon, it was the wrong color. Yet he could not dwell on the strange shade of yellow the moon was; instead, his mind had ground to a halt about its very presence in the sky at all.

  Motus thought frantically, staring up into the sky with concern etched into his features.

  A warm chuckle drew his eyes from the sky, and Motus came face to face with the young woman he had nearly run into that day outside the arena, the one with the chestnut curls.

  “Hiya, sleepy.” She said, smiling brightly, before she turned to call out to Leonidas. “He’s awake, Commander.”

  “Affirmative, Chelsea.” Leonidas acknowledged with a firm nod.

  Leonidas walked closer to Motus, crouching to be on eye level with the boy. He glanced down at his chest, making Motus do the same, and to his surprise, he was unharmed; beyond a faint soreness that was already beginning to fade. Startled, Motus began,

  “I’m—”

  “Okay?” Leonidas finished with a knowing gaze.

  The Commander rose to his feet and chuckled, a low rumbling sound. He reached for his hip and drew what Motus could only call a dagger. It was a sleek thing, with gleaming black metal forming the blade and tightly bound dark brown leather for its handle.“You’ll find Falem are damn hard to put down and even harder to keep down, Motus,” Leonidas said calmly.

  This calm was mirrored in his body language even as he ran the blade across his ready and waiting palm. It sliced his open palm far too easily for Motus’s liking, and he watched in muted shock and horror as blood flowed freely from the wound. Leonidas did not so much as grunt as his hand soaked the sand beneath it crimson.

  “C-Commander!” Motus broke himself from his stupor and managed to stutter out in a half-shout of concern.

  Leonidas waved his concerns away with his other hand, which still grasped the knife firmly. Instead of acknowledging Motus’s shout, Leonidas pointed his palm at the boy. Fear of the supposed grisly sight made Motus reach up as if to cover his eyes, only to gasp and fall short of obstructing his vision. Leonidas’s palm was drenched in streaks of crimson, but to Motus’s shock, where the black blade had sliced his hand was not a gaping wound; instead, it was only marred by a thin, angry, red line that was slowly fading. Motus babbled nonsensically as he sat up fully, his lingering soreness forgotten entirely.

  “Wait, but your hand—”

  “—Is good as new.” Leonidas interrupted with the faintest upturn of his lips, a ghost of a smile. “My gifts—our gifts—Motus, don’t end at throwing fire or outpacing a horse.”

  The older man clenched and unclenched his fist only a single time before he allowed his hand to fall to his side, seemingly right as rain.

  “We are one and all stronger, faster, and can sure as hell take more of a punch than mortals.” He grunted in mild amusement.

  Leonidas stared down at Motus once he finished speaking, who wilted slightly under those burning eyes, standing in his bed of flowers, nervousness clear in his hunched posture. Leonidas did nothing for a good long while, nothing but stare, and Motus could almost see the gears working in the commander’s head as he worked through his thoughts. A familiar pit, one filled with nothing but the frigid water of anxiety, opened up in Motus’s stomach, the longer Leonidas silently watched him.

  It felt like an eternity had passed, yet for everyone else, it was only a mere moment, and then the commander finally spoke, freeing him from his mind.

  “I’ll leave your training to Sieg; you have the instincts your blood affords you, but not the experience to use them. He’ll fix that and get you up to speed with a passable grasp of weaponry. I trust him to pick something suitable for you and your gift, though it will change after your hunt regardless.”

  Leonidas had very likely said something else in the wake of that statement, but whatever it was, it was lost to Motus. His mind had ground to a halt, stuck on the fact that the boy who had left him sprawled in the sand with a chest full of lightning of all things was going to train him. Leonidas was effectively giving Sieg the go-ahead to run him ragged. Motus was suddenly overcome with an incredible amount of dread regarding his immediate future.