Time went by very quickly during Core development class, and it seemed like mere moments had passed after Sange spoke to her when Adaida was shaking Olivia’s shoulder, letting her know it was time to move on. Olivia stood and stretched. She’d been trying to feel differently attuned currents of Energy around her, and she’d felt like she was just sensing a tickling feeling of something different when Adaida had shaken her shoulder. She honestly had to bite down to keep from saying something rude. Her exaggerated stretch was a way to push back the impulse while her rational mind resurfaced. “Uh, that feels good. Okay, thanks, Adaida.” She followed the others to the shoe rack and noticed that Sange was nowhere to be seen. “Sange left?”

“Yeah, after he finished ‘interviewing’ us.” Veena snorted.

“What? You don’t like him?” Oliva looked around to gauge the sentiment of the cohort.

“Oh, he’s fine. I just never liked the meditative, soft-spoken, mysterious type. It seems a bit forced.” Veena grunted as she pulled on her shoe.

“Hah, true. He definitely has a way...” Rald trailed off. “Anyway, let’s go before we’re the last ones to combat training.”

Olivia followed the cohort through the hallways and down two flights of stairs. They entered a long, wide hallway with big double doors at the end. One of the doors was propped open, and as they advanced, Olivia could see a brightly lit, airy room with wood plank flooring. The closer they got, the more it resembled a high school basketball gymnasium to her. When she stepped in, she saw that the roof was a good thirty feet up and had an angled slope with the high side on the west. There, a bank of windows let in the bright afternoon sun. A row of benches lined the room, and sitting and standing around them were several cohorts that had arrived before them. Olivia and the rest of Copper cohort moved to an area away from the other groups and waited.

“Cohorts! Line up, single file, at the western wall. Stand silently while I give you instructions!” The voice that shouted the instructions was loud and piercing and decidedly condescending in tone. Olivia hurriedly followed her cohort while she looked around for the speaker. She’d just started to line up when she finally saw the big otter-like person wearing a loose, flowing white robe striding toward them. “I am Commander Grobak! You will address me as Commander, Commander Grobak, or Sir. Is that clear?” Many of the cohort members said yes, some nodded, and others just muttered. “What in the fates was that?” Commander Grobak screamed, his voice echoing and reverberating from the walls. “When I ask the cohorts a question, you will answer loudly and in unison. Stop fidgeting! Now, do you all understand how to address me?” In their defense, it sounded like the cohorts tried to follow his directive, but some students were loud, some were quiet, some spoke quickly, some slowly, and it all just sounded like a mess. “That’s it! Run and touch the wall, and back again! Do it until I tell you to stop!” He paused to see their response, and when the cohorts looked around uncertainly and only a few students started running, he screamed again, “Go! Now, now, now! Run!”

Olivia stopped waiting and watching what others would do and started running. Commander Grobak’s voice chased her as he screamed at the others to get moving or to move faster. Olivia had seen enough movies involving basic training and taken enough psychology classes to understand what was happening here: Grobak was going to spend some time breaking them down before he tried to build them up. She wasn’t worried; she could play the game. She’d do what Grobak wanted, and the whole time, she’d know she was just getting through the experience. She’d had professors that hated her and tried to make her drop their courses, and she’d swallowed her pride and written some drivel to match their theories and appease their egos and finished with perfect marks.

Grobak made them sprint back and forth four times before screaming at them to line up again. “Now, let’s try again! When I ask you a question, you will loudly answer in unison! Do you all understand how to address me?”

“Yes!” The students shouted, coughed, and sputtered, but the word came out mostly together.

“Better!” Grobak nodded, walking back and forth in front of the lined-up cohorts. Olivia was just happy that he didn’t say they had to finish all their responses with “sir” like in the movies about basic. She’d never had to do any military training, even for the Pilgrim mission. She knew most of the colonists had done so, but Director Paulson had just been happy to get her on board. A simple health evaluation, and she’d been green-lit. “Now listen up! Take a good look at me! That’s right; I’m a Vodkin! I know the ideas you have about us. I know how you high-Energy races feel about us! You’re right; I don’t have much Energy affinity. Guess what? That means I’ve earned my levels a hell of a lot more than you lot ever will. I know how to fight, and I don’t use fancy magic tricks to do it. If you want to learn to survive when everything’s stacked against you, on your worst day ever, you’ll pay attention to me. Put away your misconceptions, open your minds, and you’ll leave this place better off, even if you never learn any new magic. Are we clear?” He shouted the last question with renewed ferocity and reverberating volume.

“Yes!”

“Better! Now, listen: this is the only easy day you’ll ever have in my class. Today, I’m going to check out your exercise robes, and from now on, you’ll arrive here wearing them. Never wear shoes in my hall again. Are we clear, cohorts?”

“Yes!” Olivia thought the cohorts were getting better; their voices were loud and almost in unison that time. Commander Grobak walked to the far wall and started producing large wicker baskets. In all, he put nine baskets on the wooden flooring, and then he started calling the cohorts over, one by one, to give them robes. Every cohort got a set of white, cottony robes and pants. In addition, they were each given a belt colored to match their cohort - brown for Wood, off-white for Bone, gray for Stone, copper for Copper, and so on.

“Now, put your robes away and line up again!” The cohorts hurried to get into their lines, stopping their hushed conversations. “Today, you only have one activity: my assessment of you. I’ll stand before your row, and, one by one, you’ll punch my hand as hard as you can. Are we clear?” Once again, his voice rose by several octaves and decibels as he shouted the question.

“Yes!” Olivia screamed it with the rest of the students. She watched silently as Commander Grobak stood in front of first Wood, then Bone, then Stone. He held up one meaty palm and allowed the students to punch it, one by one. Olivia never saw his palm move by so much as a centimeter, even when the bigger, more muscular students hit it. After each cohort punched his palm, he nodded and dismissed them. Soon it was Copper’s turn, and Olivia watched her friends punch his hand, and then it was her turn. He looked down at her and nodded, angling his palm so that she could punch up at it. Olivia cocked her arm back and grunted, punching out at the otter-man’s hand with all her might. Her fist connected with a soft thwap, and he smiled at her and nodded.

“Okay, Copper. See you tomorrow. Be sure to eat a big breakfast!” Grobak didn’t wait for a response, moving over to Silver cohort’s line. Olivia looked at her cohort, and they hurried from the gymnasium.

“That guy is insane,” Veena huffed as they cleared the doorway.

“Yes, I’ve never been screamed at that much in my entire life!” Shani looked genuinely upset. Olivia walked over to her and put a hand on her shoulder.

“Don’t let him get to you. That’s typical military training. He must be some sort of military man back home. I’m sure that’s why they chose him for this job. He’ll berate us a lot while we’re learning, but then when we improve, his praise will seem so much better. It’s psychology 101.”

“What?” Hanwol said, looking oddly at Olivia.

“Oh, nothing, just an idiom from my world. I mean, it’s basic. This is how they operate. Just do what he says and try your hardest to improve, and we’ll get by.”

“What was the deal with us punching his hand?” Veena asked, looking around at their faces while they walked toward the cafeteria.

“I guess he’s using it as a metric for our improvement,” Rald ventured. “We get a score from his course as well when it comes to the competition. I bet he’ll see how much we improve our punch and rate us.”

“Well, I apologize in advance - I’ve never been much of an athlete, let alone a fighter.” Olivia looked down and subconsciously touched the scar over her eye.

“Bleh, us neither,” Adaida said, indicating her sister.

“Well, that might not be a bad thing,” Rald said. “Think about it - it’s a lot easier to improve from zero than it is to improve from an already solid position.”

“Hmm, I like the way you think, Rald.” Veena grinned up at him, her blue-green lips pulling back to reveal white teeth.

That evening, they all were back in their dormitory early. Olivia was reading through her list of runes when she felt a chill in the air and heard Shani grunt in frustration from her bed across the room. “What’re you doing, Shani?” she called.

“I’m trying to modify a spell. I have a cold affinity, and I’m trying to do what the professor showed us in class - change my light spell to give off cold Energy instead of light. I can’t get it to stick, though.”

“Well, I felt the wave of cold air. It must have been a lot if I could feel it over here. Maybe try smaller at first? Aren’t you worried about leveling, though?”

“Why would I be?” Shani looked at her, and Veena also looked up.

“Well, because we aren’t supposed to be higher than level ten, right?”

“Only at admission. We’re free to level now, but if you think you’re going to win the competition, you might wait to get to level ten before it’s over - the rewards might improve the classes you get offered. I’m only level seven, though, so I can mess around.” Shani held out her palm and concentrated, creating a tiny point of light hovering above her palm. Olivia turned back to her book but then set it down, unable to focus. After all, she was still only level eight; it wouldn’t hurt for her to do some experimenting.

She’d managed to add electricity to her Icy Shards spell, but she still didn’t have any pure electricity or earth spells. She thought about how her Fiery Burst spell worked: she knew she could already modify it to send forth a tiny stream of fire or a massive torrent of fire by simply modulating the amount of Energy she fed the spell. What if she didn’t let the spell automatically grab her fire-attuned Energy? What if she carefully pushed air-attuned Energy into it when it started to activate? She decided to try it, sitting up on her bed and holding her palm out toward the empty space between her sleeping area and the door. She looked inward to her Core and clamped down on all of her Energy with an effort of will. Then, she activated her Fiery Burst spell, but when she felt it start to draw on her fire-attuned Energy, she held it back and, instead, tried to push some air-attuned Energy into it.

Her first attempt failed - she hadn’t gotten the air-attuned Energy flowing into the spell fast enough, and it simply faded away. She tried again; this time, she didn’t clamp her air Energy at all, and as soon as she cast the spell, she sent the air-attuned Energy flowing. She felt a cool tingle in her arm, and then a blast of air flew out of her palm, kicking up motes of dust from the wooden floor.

***Congratulations! You’ve learned the spell: Wind Gust - Basic***

***Congratulations! You’ve achieved level 9 base human.***

Olivia flopped onto her back as the stream of Energy motes flooded into her chest. “Oh my god! I didn’t realize I was that close!”

“What’s going on? Adaida stood up from her bed and walked over to Olivia. “Did you just level? You bitch! Did you already make a new spell?” She was smiling, so Olivia didn’t take the insult seriously.

“Yeah, I did. I’m level nine now. Do you all think I could make another spell without leveling? I don’t know how much the System will reward me.”

“It depends on the spell!” Shani chimed in. “You should hold off, Olivia! What if part of our test is to create a spell? You should keep working on ideas and start practicing the different steps, but don’t finish a new spell until you have to for class. In fact, you should start thinking of more and more complexity - try to come up with something great!” The others generally echoed Shani’s sentiment, and Olivia nodded, scooting up on her pillow. She was starting to worry that she’d made a mistake. What if she gained another level through her efforts in her classes over the next month? She might not benefit from any award she got if it had to do with class selection.

Olivia put the thought out of her mind; none of the professors had warned them about leveling or practicing what they’d shown them. She supposed that could be because the professors assumed they wouldn’t do anything stupid, but what could she do? Olivia hadn’t been one to cry over spilt milk, even back on Earth. She was the type of person who did her best to control what was within her control and try to let the other stuff work itself out. Smiling slyly, she pointed a finger at Shani’s bed and concentrated, casting Wind Gust in a controlled burst at her silvery-blond hair where it hung down over her right shoulder. The cool flood of air Energy traveling through her arm gave her a bit of a rush, and then she saw Shani’s curls fluttering in the breeze.

“Hey! Is there a window open or something?” Shani sat up and yanked her folded quilt from the foot of her bed up over her, pulling it close in around her neck. Olivia snickered, imagining the other types of spells she might come up with.