Motus was led out of the meeting room, down several twisting hallways, until he found himself looking up at a purple night sky, filled with thousands of glittering silver stars. It was mesmerizing in a way that nothing save the glowing golden-leaved trees that dotted the area ahead of him could hope to match. Between two of the largest trees that Motus had ever seen, golden-leaved, obsidian-barked, and gnarled together by time, lay an archway. An archway that led down into what could only be compared to an arena of sorts, Motus mused.

  Leonidas led him into that arena and barked several sharp words at the group of young men and women who were currently engaged in mock combat with one another. Motus barely had the time to do more than glance at each of the combatants before they scattered at Leonidas’s command. He caught glimpses of a dark-haired boy, just as he blasted bright orange flames from his hands that sent him hurtling through the open ceiling of the arena, and a girl with pink hair that vanished in a flash of lightning that blinded him. Motus was enraptured enough by the sheer fantastical nature of the two that he didn’t notice the other three slip out of the training area until Leonidas coughed once to grab his attention.

  “How?” Motus breathed softly; it was all he could manage.

  “Their gifts,” Leonidas said, a faint, almost grandfatherly smile on his face.

  It looked rather out of place on a man who looked like he could be no older than thirty if Motus felt particularly mean-spirited. At his confused look, Leonidas continued, not particularly bothered by the need for explanation.

  “Each Falem possesses a gift, an expression of their parents' power that allows them to do something truly fantastic,” Leonidas explained before brandishing his right hand, with his palm facing the sky. “You may gain another as you age, as I have, but this was my first.”

  At his words, Leonidas’ eyes blazed that glowing orange once again, and before his very eyes, Motus watched as the commander’s outstretched hand burst into flame. The man’s hand burned so brightly that for a moment, Motus was surprised to glance up and see it was still night. The flame blazed for a few more moments before Leonidas clenched his hand into a fist and extinguished that brilliant fire.

  “My gift allows me to set my body ablaze,” Leonidas said calmly, pausing to dust his hands before continuing. “When I first awakened it, I could only maintain the flames across my arms.”

  The commander’s eyes burned orange as his entire right arm suddenly went up in flames briefly, before snuffing itself out; the fire gone as swiftly as it appeared. Motus’s eyes were wide, and his thoughts were clearly displayed on his face for Leonidas to read.

  “I cannot tell you what your gift is, as it could manifest in any number of ways,” Leonidas said simply, his gaze impassive as Motus’s expression drooped.

  “However, I can place you into a situation where your gift is likely to manifest.”

  Motus felt a sudden pit of dread forming in his stomach at the words, but to bring clarity, he asked a question he truly did not wish to.

  “What kind of situatio—” Motus began, only to be forced to dive into the lightly sanded floor of the arena as a ball of roiling orange flame streaked across the space he had just been. When it struck the wall behind him, Motus witnessed in stunned silence as it erupted into a small plume of fire that marred a patch of the stone wall black. Fear-filled eyes snapped towards glowing orange orbs that stared down at him with a grim determination.

  “Your blood is that of warriors and gods; it will respond in kind to danger, danger, and your need,” Leonidas said.

  Motus didn’t have time to so much as formulate a proper response to that absurd statement as the silver-haired man lobbed another ball of flame at him. It was fast—far faster than the first, forcing him to roll across the sand to avoid the eruption that followed. This continued for several minutes until Motus’s luck finally ran out. He threw himself to the side to get ahead of the next ball of flame in this twisted game of dodgeball, only to realize in horror that he had jumped the gun. Motus looked up, petrified, to see the newest fireball impact the ground less than a foot away from him.

  When it struck the ground, it erupted in a blast of fire that sent Motus flying, his world naught but a sea of orange—orange followed by pain. Burnt and in cinder-tinged rags masquerading as proper clothing, Motus groaned into the sand that cradled his battered form. If Motus were in a better state of mind, he would have realized he wasn’t nearly as hurt as he likely should have been. Unfortunately, any thoughts that could have led him to that realization faded as the sound of a flame roaring to life like a freshly kindled bonfire reached his ears. Scrambling to his feet, displacing the sand beneath his fingers in his haste, a frantic Motus cried out, arms raised. “WAIT—”

  If Leonidas heard Motus’s plea, he made no indication that he had; another, much larger ball of flame blasted towards the raven-haired boy who stood before its radiant light, terror-struck. Motus had once again found himself playing the part of a deer, one caught in burning headlights. In a moment of fear-borne reflex, his arms were raised in a meager defense, his anxiety all but burning a hole in the pit of his stomach. A heat that rivaled the sun beating down upon him grew in his chest, just below his heart; a heat that he soon felt in his skin, as his fear grew. With every quickened beat of his unsteady heart, that heat spread further. Moments ticked by as Motus waited with clenched eyes for pain to strike, to feel the blistering of his skin as fire scorched him—yet it never came.

  Opening a tentative eye, Motus nearly fell back in his shock. In front of him was a large ball of flickering flame, which moved through the air at a sluggish pace. It moved as though the air around it had thickened, and it now struggled to make its way to him. Motus quickly realized that while slower, the flame was far from stationary. And it was drawing closer. In an attempt to get out of the path of the fire, Motus found himself nearly kicking at the ground in his efforts to flee, backpedaling. When his feet touched the floor, a spray of sand was kicked far into the air, and Motus found cool stone pressed to his back, far faster than he would have thought possible.

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  “Wait, but how…” Motus trailed off, taking a moment to ponder the absurdity of it all. He had gone from the middle of the large arena to one of the far walls in several quick strides. As his heart began to slow, Motus rapidly looked around the arena, attempting to orient himself, his eyes quickly snapping towards Leonidas. He was moving towards Motus with a purpose, flames beginning to ignite atop clenched fists. However, he was moving as if through honey, his movements sluggish. It was then that Motus noticed the blue tint to his vision; everywhere he cast his gaze, he saw faint, flickering traces of blue, as if he were looking through a pane of cyan-tinted glass.

  When he went to push from the wall in an attempt to continue running from the fire-throwing man, weakness blossomed within him, forcing him to stumble once, then twice. Suddenly, a deep hunger moved through Motus with all the grace of a ravenous beast. It brought him to his knees, and he felt more than he saw, the blue tint to the world beginning to flicker. With each flicker, Leonidas sped up dramatically until the older man pointed that burning closed fist behind himself in a swiftly opened palm. He let loose a torrent of fire that appeared to rocket him forward; Leonidas was crouched next to Motus seconds later, and the blue had vanished fully from the boy’s vision.

  “Motus, on your feet,” Leonidas said, his tone soft.

  Heavy hands pulled an unsteady Motus to his feet, and the boy wobbled briefly before he stabilized himself, vision blurring dangerously. When Leonidas went to open his mouth, likely to question him on his well-being, Motus’s response was swifter than the question.

  “Hungry—” Motus said, voice faint, a loud growl sounding from his stomach. “So hungry.”

  The dining hall Motus found himself in was quite possibly the most beautiful thing he had ever seen; it was incredibly ornate. Sleek silver and warm wood dominated the space, trailed by a slew of different colors that Motus couldn’t quite pin down. He found it difficult to truly appreciate the beauty, however, as the incessant hunger he felt nagged at him like nothing he had ever known. The hunger bit at him with all of the viciousness of a hungry dog. He sat, uncomfortably, atop a bench of beautifully carved darkened wood, resting his arms on a table of similar construction.

  Leonidas had half-dragged him here and unceremoniously set him down onto the bench before ordering him to stay put and disappearing further into the dining hall—perhaps the kitchen—but Motus wasn’t sure. He’d been gone for what must have been nearly thirty minutes, and beyond the hunger—that was starting to morph into more of a dull ache—a sense of boredom and general unrest began to bubble within the chest of the golden-eyed young man.

  “He’s been gone an awful long time…” Motus muttered in growing unease.

  The staccato of his sneakers striking the ground in an anxiety-endorsed rhythm filled the otherwise dead air. Motus had tried to call upon whatever he had done in the arena and found himself left wanting. Nothing had happened, which was frustrating in and of itself. It reminded him of what had happened on his birthday. Though the longer Motus thought about it, the more he came to realize that it was…different somehow.

  Slower, or maybe it just happened…faster? Motus thought, unable to quite figure out what word choice best described the phenomenon. When he had knocked the glass off the counter while trying to get his nightly cleaning done, the glass seemed frozen in place, and even the water hung in the air as if someone had pressed the pause button. When Motus compared what happened in the kitchen to what he had done in the arena, where Leonidas and his balls of fire were definitely slower than they had been before, but were still actively moving towards him, it was bizarre. Before his circular musings could pick up more speed, the large double doors at the far end of the dining hall swung open with a dull ‘bang.’

  Out walked a rather scrappy-looking young man; his hair was dark and cut close to his head. He gave Motus the impression that he got into a great deal of fights, most likely ones he started. His eyes glowed a fierce and unnaturally vibrant red—it reminded Motus mostly of blood. That glow held Motus’s attention for but a second before he took in two things at nearly the same time. First, the mouth-watering smell of cooked meat danced in the air, and his stomach made its displeasure at being without it known, loudly. The second thing Motus noticed was that the red-eyed young man carried a platter of food with one hand. The platter of food was wider than Motus was tall, and with its contents piled as high as they were, it dwarfed him equally in height.

  For the briefest of moments, Motus half-toyed with the idea of questioning the other boy on how he was carrying the food; however, that idea was discarded with frightening speed as the platter was set down in front of him. The boy who served him didn’t spare Motus so much as a word as he turned and gruffly made his way back through those large twin doors. Motus reached forward to grab at the various cooked meats and fruits in colors and shapes he’d never seen before, when he flinched. He wasn’t sure what the rules were here; Motus had accepted this was somewhere wholly alien from what he knew, but knowing that didn’t give him an understanding of what was okay here.

  Am I allowed to eat this? Should I wait? Are these even for me? They were put in front of me, so I figured—

  Motus’s thoughts were once again interrupted as the rumble of Commander Leonidas’ voice rang out from those large double doors—the kitchen. Motus quickly put a name to the space behind those doors.

  “Keep staring at it, and it’s going to get cold, Motus,” Leonidas said, craning his neck to gesture at the platter with his chin.

  “Y-yes, Sir.” Motus stammered out in reply.

  To say Motus ate his food would be doing what happened next a disservice. He nearly inhaled the meats and oddly colored fruits on the table, shoveling them into his mouth with none of the grace that had been beaten into him as a child. It took him mere moments before the platter was clear, and that nagging hunger finally stopped nipping at him. The golden-eyed boy let out a contented sigh as he finished his meal and turned his gaze to the still stiff but clearly amused face of the commander.

  “Satisfied?” Leonidas asked.

  “Very,” Motus admitted.

  “Good, now we can talk while you settle.” The commander opted to sit on the bench across from Motus, an action that made Motus wonder why exactly it was just the two of them there. Had the commander cleared the dining hall for him—for this?

  “What else do we—I mean, what would you like to talk about?” Motus stumbled over the words in his confusion. Embarrassment colored his cheeks as he realized the commander had never asked him any questions; Motus had only peppered him with his own. That one-sided conversation would leave some things to be discussed. It hadn’t occurred to Motus that there would be questions the older man would have for him.

  “Nothing you need to worry about, Motus. I am just eager to get you up to speed on what will make up your immediate future.”

  “My future?” Motus asked, confusion soaking the words.

  “Training,” Leonidas said by way of explanation.