1. Step One

The hopefuls (or hopeless) of the new, perhaps someday esteemed, order of Theolin Knights practiced a schedule referred to as “pits and plums” by its victims.

The name didn’t sound too terrible, based as it was on a villager’s game wherein the plum pits were freed of their trappings, then rebounded back and forth between players or ricocheted against some hard object. Players were usually kept hopping, trying to keep the small projectiles in play and to achieve the highest speed or sharpest bounce. It was lauded as a game of wits and agility by its participants and spectators alike, given onlookers often also had to dodge errant throws.

In this metaphor, however, the recruits were not players, nor unfortunate spectators. They were the pits, and they were the plums.

Now, whomever had given the practice its title might’ve been waxing poetic on the rigors of training; on how new recruits were ripe and fresh plums, with all the joy and wonder and taste cut away from them in favor of a small, vaguely rounded lump good for breaking teeth. Or borrowed from an instructor’s warnings on how those who were too soft would be left behind and discarded for the harder lot. Far more likely, they had simply compared the snapping back and forth of the pit between players to the students’ tendency to snap from subject to subject, getting battered on the way.

Every day alternated between physical training and theory crafting, for the poor souls who presumably at one point dreamed of knighthood. A revolution had dashed their chances of being the chosen of the Dawn’s Children, of course, but the new King and Queen were just as royal, really, and so long as the title and the fame were the same, who gave a pit?

Such was one of many lines of thinking the instructors did their best to rid their students of, by logic one day, and brute force the next. Today was a brute force day.

“Look now, Kavi, you’ve got no reason to be like this.”

Kavi Thergoode, the very same an exasperated instructor had now cornered without any need for walls, looked up in exhaustion. They’d barely done the first of the day’s exercises - the warm-up really - and he was already red faced and slightly dizzy. This wasn’t abnormal, but eventually everyone ran out of patience for him to ‘toughen up.’

“You’ve calluses a’plenty that tell me y’know what it is to work, and you’re rangy as any drought born farmer’s get I’ve ever seen.”

That, at least, was accurate. Though he might’ve been born a shade after the drought had ended, the technical discrepancy didn’t seem worth bringing up. What relevancy did that have? Ah, he was still talking. Kavi forced himself to pay attention again.

“Y’ve got all your limbs and digits, you’re younger than my own stone-blessed kids-“

Was he? Davins, their current physical torture overseer, didn’t look that old. But then, they did say he was City born, and fairly well off before the revolution. Good food, good shelter, good looks, or so the saying went.

“-so get out there and run off whatever this is that’s shakin’ ya.”

Kavi winced as Davins flapped a hand at him. The older man scowled at him, deeper than usual, and gave a very pointed look towards the arena track. No more than a beaten dirt ring a few horse-widths wide, it was well trodden already. Though empty now, it was used by most of the militantly inclined as a warm-up ring and by the more light hearted for foot races.

Kavi hated few things more than he hated the track.

The outside of the track was ringed with several levels of platforms - a leftover from Orelli culture. Stone supports and wooden seats provided for a crowd that had never really shown, given the arena’s structure had only just been finished when its contractors had been ‘called to attend other matters’ like digging trenches and building housing for an influx of angry revolutionaries and their refugees. It was an ugly thing, but sturdy. And it served its purpose for Knighthood trainees.

Inside its sandy confines his fellow recruits were sparring with practice weaponry and fisticuffs alike, which was a small mercy. At least he wouldn’t have to watch them lap him over and over again, and there was a small chance they’d even be too distracted for the usual comments.

Even if they had harassed him, however, Kavi wouldn’t have noticed. He was too hard pressed to keep the air moving through his lungs and the gangly parts of his body moving in some semblance of order. By the time the first half lap was over, he tasted copper. By the full lap’s completion, he had lost control of his breathing. It wouldn’t be long now until his vision went blurry.

Grimly, Kavi kept putting one foot in front of the other. He wouldn’t be excused from the exercise, he knew, so there was nothing for it but to accept the pain and hope he didn’t break anything when he inevitably fell.

Part of his mind had a habit of withdrawing whenever this happened. It wasn’t as though he had the energy to spare on fantasy or deep thinking; he rarely remembered whatever his mind had rambled on about while he ran. Half the time his thoughts weren’t even coherent. They provided some distraction from the rawness of his throat though. That was nice.

Today’s mental topic was why he was even here in the first place. Kavi was an only child, not the kind usually sent away from farmland, but he’d proven himself fairly useless by now. And the war for independence had left the countryside poorly off - games were no longer played with plum pits in smaller villages, not when they could be used to replenish what had been lost in later plantings. It was that necessity, in the end, that had seen Kavi and several other students sent to the capitol after the declaration of the Order. The bottom line had been that their parents or communities could not support them.

That had made quite a divide between those who sought fame or came out of a sense of newborn national pride. And not everyone sent or volunteered had stayed either. More left every week; many at first, slowing to a trickle as everyone eventually found their stride or gave up. Kavi should’ve left with the first batch, he knew, or slipped from the wagon before even reaching the city. But he was still here. One foot in front of another.

So the question wasn’t so much how he had gotten here as it was why he was still here. The Knight and Mage Commanders had established a policy that they would train anyone who exhibited drive, kept to their codes of conduct, and did not overly disturb the other trainees, so they hadn’t kicked him out yet. And it wasn’t like he had anywhere else to go. The odds any of this would actually work and he’d become a Knight were laughable, and one had to have magical talent to become a warmage. Kavi didn’t have a sneeze worth.

Trainees did receive food and board, regardless of their status. They received a basic education, at least ensuring everyone could read, write, handle basic supply and demand equations. And he liked learning about the history of the region and beyond, whenever he could stay awake through the class.

That was the answer then, he thought as his steps became more and more jagged. He stayed because he had no other choice. The hopes of Theolin’s future. Perhaps he was waiting to lie down and die.

Distantly, he noted he’d lost his peripheral vision, and that he could hear his heartbeat over any other sounds. His balance wobbled. Gravity claimed him. By luck more than design or skill, he landed on his shoulder instead of his face, rolling onto his back and heaving for air.

Ah, his thoughts chimed, as the world dimmed. There was step one.