Chapter 82 — Scattered

Chapter 82: Chapter 82 — Scattered

~ Raven ~

The Hunt Warden stepped up beside the Headmaster with her register under one arm.

"One reminder," she said. "As I told you at orientation, a Founder Seal announces itself the moment it recognises a bearer. Every competitor close enough will know one has been claimed."

Somebody down the line muttered quietly to the person behind him.

The Warden gave them a flat look. "Yes. Which means finding one is the easy part. Keeping it is the Hunt. Good luck."

The Headmaster raised one hand.

"Begin."

Raven crossed the line with Brielle’s shoulder almost brushing hers and the rest of Hale close behind, exactly as they had drilled it.

Four steps in, the forest bent.

The trees ahead seemed to tilt sideways without moving. A long tear of warped light opened in the air to Raven’s left, twisting everything behind it out of shape.

Then another appeared.

And another.

They ripped open all along the starting line.

The roar of fifteen hundred spectators vanished as though someone had slammed a door between the Hunt grounds and the rest of Valerius.

"What the fuck—"

"HALE!" Garrick shouted. "REME—"

Raven grabbed for Brielle.

Her fingers closed on empty air.

Then the world folded around her.

Pressure crushed in from every direction. White light streaked past too quickly for her eyes to follow, and for several horrible seconds Raven couldn’t tell whether she was falling, spinning, or standing upside down.

Then the forest came back all at once.

She struck the ground on her hip and shoulder and skidded through wet leaves.

Silence.

Raven stayed down only long enough to catch one breath before pushing herself upright. She had no idea where she was, and lying politely on the ground until something found her seemed like a terrible opening strategy.

She checked herself quickly.

Harness.

Straps.

Line coil.

Knife.

Her fingers found the registration seal at her collar, whole and cold beneath her thumb.

Fine.

Nothing broken.

Raven looked around.

No Brielle.

No Garrick.

No Mara.

No Dorian.

Her mouth slowly tightened.

"Of course."

Far off through the trees, somebody shouted a name. An answer came from somewhere else, much farther away. The forest carried both voices strangely, flattening them until Raven could barely judge the distance.

Twenty people.

Twenty different directions.

Raven stayed there with leaf mould soaking through one knee and slowly worked out, with rising indignation, that her teammates had known this was coming.

Three days.

Three days of drills, equipment checks, Mara making them repeat routes until Raven could hear them in her sleep, and not one of the three bastards had thought to mention, By the way, the Ward is going to pick you up and scatter us somewhere else before you’ve taken six steps.

You’ll find out.

That was what every upper-year had been saying whenever a first-year asked what happened at the start of the Hunt. Always with the same irritating little look.

Raven had expected a hidden rule. A trial at the gate. Something with teeth.

Not this.

Valerius’s idea of opening a team competition was apparently to tear every team apart and see whether they could put themselves back together.

Bastards. Every single one of you.

She was still angry when she noticed her hands weren’t quite steady.

Raven curled them once and looked properly at where the Ward had dumped her.

The forest was old here. The trees stood far apart, their trunks rising a long way before the first branches spread overhead. Grey daylight filtered through them, enough to see by but not enough to warm anything. There was almost no undergrowth, only deep layers of wet dead leaves caught between thick roots and the smell of damp bark and rot.

Nothing moved.

No birds.

Somewhere behind her, water ran steadily over stone.

She could see perhaps forty paces in any direction, and every forty paces looked exactly like the last.

One job.

Mara’s voice came back to her from three straight afternoons of drilling.

Say it again.

The bend in the stream below the split rock. North face.

They had repeated it until Raven could have recited the route half-asleep, and whenever somebody got it wrong, Mara simply made all five of them start over.

At the time, Raven had assumed she enjoyed making them suffer.

Now, standing alone in a forest where every direction looked the same, Raven finally understood why.

She turned toward the sound of water and started walking.

She stayed close to the larger trunks instead of cutting across open ground. She placed each foot carefully through the leaves, stopped every twenty paces to listen before crossing anything exposed, and checked behind herself often enough that her neck started to ache. Twice she went around fallen trees rather than climb over them and put her whole body on display.

By the fourth stop, she had started negotiating with the universe.

I’m not asking for much.

Brielle would be ideal. Brielle would already know exactly where they were and would probably be annoyed that Raven had taken so long.

Garrick was also acceptable. Garrick would take one look at the situation, start giving orders, and Raven could temporarily retire from having opinions.

Mara would be excellent.

Dorian...

Raven stepped over a root.

Dorian was acceptable.

At this point, anyone wearing Hale colours would do. She wasn’t going to be difficult about it.

"See?" she muttered. "I’m being reasonable."

The forest offered no congratulations.

She had gone another eighty paces when she caught a light.

It was faint, close to the ground, and unmistakably different from the grey daylight around it.

Raven dropped into a crouch behind the nearest trunk.

She waited.

Nothing.

She counted slowly to thirty.

Still nothing.

Thirty again.

Only the distant water.

Raven moved closer one careful step at a time.

An old tree had fallen halfway years ago, ripping a knot of roots from the earth taller than Raven herself. Beneath them was a dark hollow, and wedged between two roots sat something that gave off a slow, muted glow.

Raven crouched.

A metal disc.

Palm-sized.

A pattern had been cut into its face, and pale light moved through those lines in a slow pulse that almost looked like breathing.

Her eyes widened.

A Founder Seal.

One of twelve.

Twelve Seals in a forest that had just swallowed twenty competitors and scattered them everywhere.

Raven looked left.

Right.

Then behind herself twice.

No Blade colours.

No Ashbourne.

Nobody hiding behind a tree waiting for some idiot to reach for it.

Raven slowly sat back on her heels.

Then she looked through the branches toward the grey sky.

You listened.

After the First Howl, Bellringer, the Court, and everything else Valerius had thrown at her, something had finally appeared in front of Raven without first attempting to humiliate, injure, or arrest her.

"Yes," she whispered.

Her grin broke loose.

"Yes, yes, yes—"

She made it approximately two seconds into a small and deeply undignified victory dance before freezing.

The broadcast.

Garrick, holding up his fist during orientation.

Everything is watched.

Raven’s smile vanished.

Very slowly, she turned her head.

There.

About twelve feet up the trunk behind her, fixed into the bark like an old iron nail, was a black ring no larger than her fist. Dark glass filled its centre.

A tiny point of light glowed inside it.

And it was aimed directly at her.

Raven stared at it.

The observation sigil stared back.

"Fuck."

Over fifteen hundred students.

Her instructors.

Nikolai.

All four Cardinal heirs.

Every single one of them had just watched that dance.

Move. Move before you make this worse.

Raven reached between the roots and grabbed the Seal.

CHIME.

The sound travelled through her palm, up her arm and somehow into her teeth.

White light flooded the carved pattern.

Then a pale ring burst outward from the Seal.

Raven watched it sweep through the forest, passing straight through trunks and roots as it expanded in every direction until the trees swallowed it from sight.

She remained crouched there for one increasingly terrible second.

Then the Warden’s reminder came back to her.

A Founder Seal announces itself the moment it recognises a bearer.

Raven’s stomach dropped.

"...Oh, you stupid bitch."

Something crashed through undergrowth behind her and to the left.

Fast.

A second noise answered from somewhere farther north.

The forest that had been completely silent moments ago had suddenly become very fucking occupied.

Raven shoved the Founder Seal inside her jacket, lurched to her feet and ran.

Her boots caught the roots the way Brielle had laced them to. She dodged around one trunk, jumped another root and heard movement building behind her now.

More than one direction.

Closer.

"Five minutes," she gasped, pushing faster. "I lasted five fucking minutes."