It was well past midnight by the time I finally made it out of the Sprawl and back to the Citadel. The guards waved me through with minimal questioning the second I dropped the glamor concealing my identity. The safety protocols were meant to keep others out, but being a Vigil was a rubber stamp that moved things right along. Knowing that I needed to be up in just a handful of hours, I headed to my room, brushed my teeth, washed the dried blood from my hands and face, then passed out.

I slept rough, tossing and turning in my sleep, which was odd because usually I slept like a fucking rock. Images of scaly monsters with wings like the night sky chased me through my dreams and a shadowy figure lurked in the crevices of my head.

I crawled out of bed a few hours later feeling like a bag of shit. Honestly, it was like I had the worst hangover of my life. Sure, I downed a couple of brews the night before while gathering intel, but not near enough to explain the way I felt the way I did, especially with my enhanced Verve.

I decided to hit the baths on the first floor and take a quick soak in the sulfurous hot springs to clear my head.

Despite the early hour, there were a few other Vigils sulking around, but they didn’t seem any more interested in chitchat than I was. The hot springs did wonders for the knots in my muscles and once some of the tension had melted away, I braced myself and dove headfirst into a pool of crystal cold water. Icy liquid sluiced over my skin and my heart tried to jump right out of my chest, but it did wonders to wake me up. Better even than a good cup of piping hot morning joe. I swam a few laps, letting my body loosen up, then hopped out and toweled off, feeling significantly better than I had when I pulled my exhausted, sleep-deprived ass from bed.

Like the morning before, I snagged a light breakfast at the attendant’s mess hall, then leisurely ambled over to the courtyard while I munched on a fried egg and some succulent ham, splayed out across a chunk of crunchy, freshly baked bread.

I finished licking my fingers free of grease and crumbs by the time I got to the fountain, and I was still fifteen minutes early to formation. Niels was waiting for me, a beaming smile on his face, just like always. This morning he wasn’t alone. Kerra was there too, doing some light warm-up stretches in her linen training garb. She curtly informed me that she’d finished with the preparations for our upcoming hunting excursion into the countryside. She and I would be leaving tomorrow with a group of bright-eyed, bushy-tailed Vigils who’d all just recently earned their brands.

While Niels gathered the assembled recruits and barked out the day’s training routine, Kerra pulled me aside and put me to work immediately. She slapped a pair of Suppression Bracelets around her wrists without so much as a grimace, then handed me a pair and waited patiently for me to follow suit. With the lingering specter of a hangover still haunting me, I loathed the idea of putting the damned things on, but if she could do it, so could I. Especially since I’d brought this down on myself by requesting her as my personal trainer.

Still, as the cold steel clicked in place and the spikes bit down, I was seriously regretting my petty, dickish behavior.

Without my supernatural Verve and Stamina, the slow building headache returned with a vengeance and so did a renewed wave of exhaustion. But it wasn’t like I could ask her to take it easy on me. Kerra was the nosy sort. She’d want to know why I was feeling so shitty and I couldn’t exactly tell her that I’d been out until the ass-crack hours of the morning, pursuing leads on the bounty she’d explicitly told me to drop. Instead, I grit my teeth and pushed through, just like I’d done during a thousand drunken PT sessions back in the Marine Corps.

We ran the agility course, once, twice, three times, until sweat matted my hair and trickled down my skin in a sheet, plastering my training garments to my chest and back. Then we moved on to the calisthenics portion, working through the same set of grueling routines we’d performed during our initial training session. Endless variations of pushups, prolonged L-sits, handstands, balancing routines, and weighted rope climbs. I’d assumed that she’d been trying to break me that first day, but it turned out that was just an average workout for Kerra the Valorous.

She was a goddamned machine, but that was a feature not a bug as far as I was concerned.

Yeah, it was brutal, but she also pushed me to the edge of my limits, never letting me stop before I’d left everything on the training yard. We took a small break after the first two hours, removed the suppression bracelets which gave me a second wind, then went for a run, which was a little out of the ordinary. For being so short, Kerra was surprisingly fast and set a demanding pace, but with my long legs, natural aptitude for long distance running, and my significantly enhanced Verve I kept up without too much trouble.

At first, the run was nice.

We left the Citadel behind, taking to the streets of Wildespell. The city woke up almost as early as the Vigils did, it seemed. Even though the sun was just barely above the horizon the streets buzzed with the hustle and bustle of activity. I enjoyed watching the shopkeepers and street peddlers plying their trade while workers scurried about, heading to their jobs, and wagons plodded along the winding roadways, loaded down with everything from hay and livestock feed to vegetables and fabrics and huge casks of ale.

The run became less fun as I realized the path we were tracing almost perfectly mirrored the same route I’d taken through the city the night before. When we passed through the eastern gates and headed directly into the Sprawl I knew it wasn’t a coincidence. Kerra didn’t say anything, but she didn’t need to. The message came across loud and clear—I hadn’t been nearly as slick as I’d imagined. I was a little offended that she’d had me tailed, but I also wasn’t surprised. Not only was Kerra a rule follower, she was also competent, capable, and, most of all, thorough.

We stopped for a breather in front of the thieves’ guild headquarters. Bramin was standing in the deep shadows cast by the overhead awning, watching us through hooded eyes. Kerra gave him a little wave.

“It has become clear to me that you’re going to whatever you please, regardless of what I tell you,” she said, eyes still fixed on Bramin. “That’s fine. I’m your trainer, not your babysitter, Boyd. You’re a grown man—a Vigil chosen by Raguel, as everyone keeps reminding me—and quite capable of choosing what you will or won’t do. I warned you to stay out of this mess for your own good and for the good of our Order, but if you feel compelled to hunt the Chaos Aberration then I won’t stop you. No matter how foolish I think your choices are. And they are foolish, make no mistake about that.

“But if you’re going to do something stupid, at least try to be smart about it. You’ve just barely reached Acolyte Class and Bramin there”—she nodded to the hulk who’d tried to pulverize my spine the night before—“is a well-known Steelborn who’s been breaking legs, and worse, on behalf of the Society of Vicious Whispers for years. I’ve never been on the receiving end of his fists myself,” she said pointedly, “but I’ve heard plenty of stories. Last night could’ve gone extremely poorly and you’re lucky that I didn’t end up fishing your corpse out of the Cut this morning.”

“I’m not trying to make stupid choices,” I said, folding my arms as I leaned back against the wall, “but I’m not going to drop this either. Something about this whole situation rubs me the wrong way, and I aim to keep kicking down doors until I found out why.”

“As I said, that’s your choice. All I’m asking you for is a week. It won’t make up for the years of training you missed, but if you listen to me, I can at least give you a fighting chance against something like an Aberration. Then, even if you die—which you likely will—at least I won’t feel culpable in your untimely demise. I’ll know that I’ve discharged my duties as your trainer to the best of my abilities and I’ll be able to sleep at night. Give me a week and I’ll leave you alone to do as you will. Do we have a deal?”

I only kicked around the offer for a moment. Kerra was uptight, but I got the feeling that she’d genuinely tried to do right by me so far. She took her job seriously and was only doing what she thought was best, just like me. I’d asked her to train me and now she was asking me to give her a week. It wasn’t a hard choice, especially since we weren’t going to be in Wildespell anyway.

“Yeah, okay,” I said, extending my hand. “We have ourselves a deal…”

***

Heart to heart concluded in the Sprawl, Kerra and I headed back to the Citadel in relative silence then switched gears from conditioning to weapons training with Niels. We ran through the same katas and forms we had from the day before, then spent some time sparring at half speed with the suppression bracelets latched in place. Even after only a day under Neils’s tutelage, the ax I’d been training with felt more natural and fluid in my hands. Kerra watched my progress with a critical eye, critiquing my footwork or my hand placement.

Any time I made the same mistake more than once, it earned me a trip up the “Reinforcement Rope.”

It was fifty feet of course rope, reinforced with a frayed metal wire that sliced at my palms, scathed at any exposed section of skin, and caught constantly at my clothing. After a few trips up, my hands were a bloody mess and gripping the ax became a real and painful challenge. I quickly learned that I fucking hated that rope and wanted to make as few trips to the top as possible, so my form improved quickly. I’ve always been a fast learner, so long as I’m properly motivated.

Pain is a good motivator.

After a sparse lunch, we launched into another hour of weapon forms—I even managed to land a blow against Niels during a sparring bout—then we spent the rest of the afternoon working on an odd meditation routine and hand-to-hand combat techniques.

I might’ve had a lot to learn about medieval melee weapon combat, but Kerra was as equally surprised as Niels had been when we spared for the first time, and I submitted her with a leg lock in under a minute. Given, we were wearing Suppression Training Bracelets, and I did have at least a hundred pounds on her, but she was impressed all the same. She and Niels spent almost as much time asking about my fighting methods as they spent teaching me theirs.

There were a lot of similarities but some significant differences as well. Although they did incorporate some kicks and a variety of hard strikes, their system most closely resembled a combination of Krav Maga, Brazilian Ju Jitsu, and LINE training, which the Marine Corps had employed from 1989 to 1998. I’d never personally mastered LINE—the Corps had switched over to MCMAP a year or two after I’d enlisted—but I’d spent plenty of time with Senior Staff NCOs who knew it inside and out.

Like LINE training, Vigil Combat wasn’t flashy, wasn’t meant for sport, and focused entirely on combat effectiveness. Although there were some techniques designed to disable or restrain, most of the moves were purpose-built to kill or, at the very least, maim.

The techniques were meant to be performed in low light conditions, or environments where visibility would likely be impaired since Mortka often lived in places of complete darkness. They largely disregarded skills that necessitated fine-motor control—such as wrist locks or precision strikes—since many Mortka didn’t have wrists, arms, or any semblance of human anatomy. And every move was designed to be executed while physically exhausted and wearing medium or heavy armor.

I taught them a couple of Judo-style throws and sweeps and picked up a few solid tips in return.