Once the trainees’ swords were safely stowed in the lockers, the soldiers escorting them left the registration room. The trainees were each issued a wooden practice sword before being taken to the bunker.

The bunker was actually two large buildings containing bunk beds with drawers built under the bottom beds for clothes storage. The larger building was for the boys, the smaller for the girls. Separating the two bunkers was a small dirt courtyard where the trainees were informed they were allowed to meet with each other when not in training.

Lolo picked a top bunk and quickly unpacked so she could wait for the boys in the courtyard. The courtyard was in terrible shape. Standing water had created pockets in the ground that remained perpetually muddy, and the courtyard itself was built on a gradual slope that was slowly eroding away the dirt.

Standig was the first of the boys to finish unpacking and meet Lolo in the courtyard. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this summer,” Standig kicked the conversation off.

“You too, huh?” Lolo said sarcastically.

“Lolo, I’ve been thinking about Shanti’s note.”

“What about it?”

“I think it might have been a warning.”

Lolo pulled the letter out of her pocket and read through it again. “You think there might be some sort of hidden message? Wait!” Lolo gasped. “Oh! It’s so obvious now.”

“What?”

“Look at the list of herbs. She literally tells us to take a close look at them.”

“Sage, Thyme, Arnica, Yarrow, Hyssop, Oregano, Mallow, and Eucalyptus,” Standig read aloud.

“S. T. A. Y. H. O. M. E.. ‘I wanted to warn you’, ‘please tell everyone’....”

“What should we do?”

“There isn’t much we can do, now. Oh! I’m such an idiot!”

“Hey, I read the same note several times and didn’t get it either."

“I wonder what Shanti knew when she wrote this and if she’s really ok.”

“And why did she feel the need to be cryptic and run the risk that this would happen-- that we wouldn’t decipher the note in time to do anything about it?”

“Why does anyone write in code? She was probably afraid of the letter being intercepted. We should destroy this note as soon as possible,” Lolo answered.

“But intercepted by whom?”

“Based on my one hour of experience in the Dragon Tribe, my money is on the military. Pahaad is essentially a village of healers and pacifists. I’m sure they have their share of clashes with the military.”

“Looks like we’re going to have to stay on our toes this summer.”

“Yeah, with toys to defend ourselves.”

Once all the trainees arrived at the bunker, Lieutenant Beraham had them march to the mess hall for dinner. Dinner consisted of bread and a thin soup. Lolo looked around. Of the eighteen trainees, thirteen were growing teenage boys; if the meal couldn’t fill her up, it certainly wouldn’t fill the boys up. Lolo drank her soup but passed her bread discreetly to Standig.

“‘You sure?”

“Take it.”

“Thanks.”

“Did you notice that none of the trainees this year are from the Dragon Tribe?” she whispered.

“Not specifically.”

“The first years are Fengli from my tribe, Bellechen from your tribe, and Ingenex from the Lion Tribe. Shanti didn’t come, and she was the only returning dragon.”

“Are you travelling down the coincidence or conspiracy line of thought?”

“Not sure yet, but leaning towards conspiracy.”

The doors to the mess hall opened, the trainees were ordered to stand, and two young men wearing all black with black hair and brown eyes walked in. Huo Lohse recognized the black dragons immediately.

“Cadets, I am Captain Tamkhee Yudha,” the taller of the two introduced himself. “This,” he said, indicating the person next to him, “is Captain Sattal Ajigar, the crown prince of the Dragon Tribe. We will be overseeing your training this summer. May the fittest survive!” With that, the black dragons exited the hall.

Lolo exchanged an anxious look with Standig. Tamkhee and Sattal were the fifth year students they had defeated in the partners tournament finals in her first year. A person’s swordsmanship style can tell you a lot about them. Tamkhee and Sattal both fought to kill, and Lolo knew that Tamkhee’s closing ‘may the fittest survive’ remark was more than just a saying. It was a promise.

Training started before the sun the next morning. The students were startled awake by soldiers pounding on the bunker doors and given five minutes to get dressed and be at the mess hall for a breakfast of plain oatmeal and a boiled egg. Lolo peeled her egg and gave it to Ernkit, a Bear Tribe second year that happened to take the seat next to her. They were given fifteen minutes to eat and then filed out to a large field.

The barely awake, underfed group was ordered to run fifty laps around the field, about ten kilometers. It became apparent pretty quickly which students were in shape and which ones were not. Students from the Bear Tribe that lived solitary lives high up in the mountains plowed through their laps with minimal indications of exertion while students from the Phoenix Tribe, a tribe that emphasized brain over brawn, started struggling only a few laps in. Most everyone else fell somewhere in between these two extremes.

To add insult to injury literally, Lieutenant Beraham made it a point to scream at the trainees every time they passed him for the entertainment of his men that stood jeering from the sidelines. He mocked those that were getting lapped, degraded those that were doing the lapping, and insulted everyone who fell in the middle.

“Fortus,” Lolo said as she caught up with the lion, “you’re the son of a general. Is this normal for military training?”

“Every tribe does things a little differently, but this isn’t completely out of line.”

“What’s the point of yelling at us like this?”

“It toughens you up, spurs you on. Why?”

“It just seems so unnecessary.”

Fortus shrugged. “I’m more upset that they took our swords away and aren’t feeding us enough. But even that isn’t an unheard of training tool.”

“What is starving us supposed to accomplish?”

“Mind over body. Willpower. It also prepares you for the real possibility of food becoming scarce in a warzone.”

“Is everything in military training supposed to prepare you for the worst possible scenarios?”

“Can you think of anything worse than war? Military training is preparing for the worst.”

“Why do you think the Dragon Tribe is choosing to put us through military training for their exchange this year? Isn’t the exchange supposed to emphasize culture and promote understanding?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

The punishment for completing the fifty laps before everyone else had finished was doing more laps until they did. By the time Sarnai, a fifth year from the Phoenix Tribe, finished her fifty laps, Standig had run nearly twice that.

“We will run like this every morning after breakfast,” Lieutenant Beraham informed them. “I expect you all to improve your times.” The lieutenant smiled nastily at Sarnai. “Where is Durfein Anam of the Badger Tribe?”

Durfein raised his hand while holding a stitch in his right side.

“You are to report to the armory.” The lieutenant nodded to a couple soldiers on his right, and they stepped forward to escort Durfein there. “The rest of you will follow me.”

He led them to another field set up with an impressive obstacle course and gave a signal to two more soldiers. The soldiers took off to demonstrate the course. They started by climbing a rope fifteen feet into the air to the top of a stone wall. By standing on the wall, the soldiers could reach a wood pole suspended by scaffolding and ropes above a deep pond of water. They grabbed the pole and hoisted their legs up, wrapping all four limbs securely around it to shimmy across at a slight downward angle. The pole connected to a large net of ropes hanging loose back down to the water. The soldiers grabbed the net and had to swing it back and forth to gain the momentum needed to snag the first of many staggered monkey bars. The bars brought them to a series of six zig-zagging boulders spaced in such a way that the soldiers had to get a running start to jump between them. The last boulder stood about five feet high at the edge of the pond, and the soldiers jumped back to the ground to army crawl through a claustrophobic series of tunnels, grasses, and muddy terrain back to the start.

Under normal circumstances, Lolo thought the obstacle course had the potential to be a lot of fun, but today, the trainees were exhausted, thirsty and hungry, and a few of them, including herself, were a little short to get through some of the obstacles safely.

“Who’s first?” the lieutenant demanded. There were no immediate volunteers. “How about the little wolf princess? You certainly had plenty of fighting spirit yesterday,” he provoked her.

Huo Lohse stepped forward, wiping the sweat from her hands onto her pants.

“Go!”

She ran to the wall and used it to launch herself an extra foot into the air before grabbing the rope. She climbed the rope quickly; years of climbing trees made this the easiest part of the course. The pole at the top of the wall hung about seven feet above the wall, just out of reach for her, so she had to jump to grab it. Once on the pole, she decided to shimmy down it head first instead of feet first the way the soldiers had done. This meant that at the end of the pole, Lolo could grab the netting with her hands and swing her legs over her head and down to hit the net below her. Kicking the net started that swinging momentum needed to get her to the monkey bars.

The monkey bars were challenging. They were spaced far apart and varied in elevation, and they were not designed for someone her size. Lolo caught hold of the first bar and had to swing hard just to catch the second bar with one of her ankles. She found that by alternating between her hands and legs, she was able to get across them to the boulders, but she wasn’t sure how to get through the rocks. The soldiers had simply jumped from the top of one boulder to the top of the next, but even full grown men had to get a running start to make it. There was no way she could do that safely.

“Why did you stop, little girl? Scared?” she could hear the lieutenant ridiculing her.

Lolo decided to try using the inside edges of the rocks to launch herself quickly between the boulders without actually landing on any of them. Fortunately, the rocks became shorter as they followed the zig-zag. As she looked closely at each rock face, she could see reasonable footholds on each of them. She calculated all five jumps, released a deep breath, and got a running start. One, two, three, four “oof!” Lolo landed hard on her stomach, knocking the air out of her lungs, but she managed to land on top of the last boulder. She recovered her breath and jumped to the ground.

The tunnels should have been the most technically easy part of the whole obstacle course, but Lolo struggled with claustrophobia after an unfortunate experience with forced isolation. She had to will herself through the tunnels while ignoring a growing sense of panic. Deep breaths. Her classmates cheered when she reached the finish line, muddy and struggling to not hyperventilate.

“Everyone, shut up!” It was clear from the lieutenant's sour expression that he had hoped for everyone to witness her fail horribly on the first run of the obstacle course. Instead of disheartened cadets, he now had encouraged teammates to deal with. “Form a line and begin!” he shouted. “Huo Lohse Lang, since the obstacle course was so easy for you, you can do push-ups.”

Lolo didn’t argue. Doing push-ups might actually help clear the adrenaline from her escalating panic-attack out of her system. She tried to keep tabs on her friends between sets. For the most part, the boys seemed to be managing the course reasonably well. Only Ingenex, the new Lion Tribe trainee, and Saikhan, a second year from the Phoenix Tribe, really seemed to struggle. Both fell from the monkey bars and had to swim out of the pond.

The girls, on the other hand, were a different story. Only Bellechen, the first year from the Bear Tribe, managed to get through the course on her third try, but she was exceptionally tall at just over six feet-- the advantage of being a bear. Ulana and Sarnai couldn’t get through the course at all, despite trying many times, and poor Et’zana, a tiny fourth year from the Sphinx Tribe, couldn’t even begin to reach the pole to get off the wall. Zhongyan went back to repeat the course so he could give Et’zana a boost, but then Et’zana couldn’t get enough momentum going to reach the monkey bars and eventually fell into the pond below.

Lieutenant Beraham enjoyed the opportunities to rub dirt in the trainees faces much more than he enjoyed admitting their successes. Once the trainees completed the obstacle course, they were sent to do push-ups with Huo Lohse. Ulana, Sarnai, Et’zana and Ingenex never made it across the finish line and got soundly chewed-out for their failure. Sarnai was brought to tears by the whole experience which, of course, only added fuel to the fire.

When the lieutenant was finished berating the “failures”, the trainees were taken to the edge of a forest to dig a trench and build a retaining wall. By this point, everyone’s arms and legs were shaking, making it difficult to wield a shovel effectively. Lolo was so dehydrated from sweating that she felt like she might faint. Sometime around two o’clock, the trainees were given a water break and led to a small stream of spring water. They each got down on their knees to scoop water up with their hands.

“How are you doing?” Lolo asked Haowan somewhat pointlessly.

“I’m so hungry, I feel like my insides are imploding. Do dragons not eat lunch?”

Lolo hadn’t even thought about lunch; she had been too busy trying to not pass out. “I don’t know, but now that you mention it, I’m pretty hungry too.”

“Drink, or go back to work!” the lieutenant barked at them.

Another meager meal was served at six. Despite her own hunger, she made it a point to share some of her food with another one of the boys, knowing they were hurting worse. From dinner, trainees were shown a river bank where they could wash up before being sent back to the bunkers for the night. Everyone was stiff, exhausted, and hungry, so no one really felt like talking or hanging out, not even Huo Lohse. They all went straight to bed. It was all Lolo could do to climb up to her top bunk before passing out. In fact, she didn’t even remember hitting her pillow when the soldiers pounded on the door the next morning.