Chapter 193: 193: The First semester XVI

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(1 day time skip later.... Story for later Chapters)

Dawn found them already moving. The road into the Black Jungle staging ground began as a hardpack and became a guess. The trees ahead weren’t technically black. They were green with a dignity that black wears when it wants attention without admitting it. Vines clung to trunks like ideas that refused to be shaken off. The air went damp and clever.

A field had been cleared at the edge — tents lined in rows, cook smoke asking the sky’s permission, a tall frame holding a board where names were collected like brave insects. A proctor tent studied the chaos with the patience of old paper. Already, groups of students milled with that specific panic of young soldiers before the first marching order: enthusiastic, under-informed, beautiful in their ignorance.

John rolled the M15 in quietly from the shade of some alder and didn’t bother to let anyone see he had not walked it the whole way. He slotted it back into nowhere and shouldered his pack. Fizz smoothed his whiskers into an arrangement that said respectable professor and then ruined the effect by stealing a grape.

They approached the proctor. A woman with crow-feather hair and a scar that told a long, boring story looked up. "Register," she said. "Team or single."

"Team," John said. "Two for now. Others if we find them."

"Team name," she said, chalk poised.

"Team Lord Fizz," Fizz blurted, chest swelling. "Quality. Value. Warm soup vibe."

The proctor wrote it down without judgment, which was its own kind of judgment. "Rules posted," she said, jerking her chin toward a placard. "Cores to the left table with names attached. We weigh, we note, we don’t argue. No leaving the ground with rope. No fires after the second bell. Third-class beasts only. If you leave parts, the jungle will collect interest."

"Understood," John said.

"Try not to die," she added in the tone of someone who didn’t have time to be sentimental.

"Working on it," Fizz said.

They moved through the staging ground, reading faces the way men read clouds. There were the nobles in good leather who believed a crest could intimidate a tree. There were the farm-strong kids who had never been curious about a crest and could lift a goat with one hand. There were the sleek ones who had read ten books about jungles and had seen none.

Ray Flame stood by a stack of crates, pretending the crates were beneath him and also an adequate wall. He looked very awake in the particular way people look awake when they have not slept and want you to think that was a choice. He saw John. He considered ignoring him. His jaw made a decision his pride would have challenged if it had eaten breakfast.

"East House," he said, which was not a greeting and also was.

"Ray," John said.

Fizz waved with two fingers and then held them to his lips like a whistle he did not blow. Rhea Flame’s voice drifted from behind the canvas wall, laughing at something that did not deserve it. When she stepped into view, the red ribbon was there, bright as the inside of a pomegranate, and a flame-mark stitched across the lapel of her coat with a designer’s confidence. She looked from Ray to John to Fizz and made an assessment the way generals assess bridges.

"You," she said to Ray. "Stop sulking. You," she said to John, measuring him with honesty, "did you ride here?"

John blinked. "Sometimes," he said, thinking of wheels that weren’t supposed to exist here.

"In the hunt," she clarified. "Fast feet. Loud hands. Will you run at a scream or at a map."

"A map," John said.

Rhea nodded once like a judge asking the next question in her head. She tapped the notice board at their shoulders. "Teams are forming like bad soup. Try not to pick cabbage." She held his gaze an eye-blink longer than courtesy. "If you do not have a team by the second bell, meet me by the west rope. I prefer competence to conversation."

She turned and vanished into the tent again like a magician who liked ruining other people’s magic.

Fizz made a tiny fan with his own tail. "Red Ribbon cute girl speaks," he said. "She speaks like a sword that knows where your throat is and chooses not to be mean about it."

Ray glared at both of them with the energy of a man being forced to admit that other people existed. "If you two form a team," he said, as if it were a dare, "do not get in my way."

"We prefer being under people’s feet," Fizz said, perfectly cheerful. "We trip them politely."

Ray stomped away to be dramatic at another angle.

John breathed four in, four out, and read the board again like it might learn a new word if he stared hard enough. Team Bent Penny needed two more souls who would not complain if the plan involved quiet and returning with dirty boots rather than stories. He preferred the kind who carried rope because they knew why rope mattered, not because rope made them look competent.

Fizz tugged his sleeve. "We should find two who think our banner is beautiful."

"We will find two who think our banner is real deal," John said.

He stepped toward the left edge of the field where students who did not look like announcements were quietly pairing off. A lanky boy with callused hands checked knots without showing off. A narrow-shouldered girl with a strange calm to her eyes fed a hawk bit by bit from a pouch, not coaxing, not bribing — conversing. Both glanced up when John approached as if the road itself had introduced him.

"Team Lord Fizz," John said. "We listen first. We count breath. We don’t run at anything without a reason."

The boy grinned with an economy John liked. "I’m Sedge," he said. "I hate running."

The hawk-girl nodded once. "Nayeli," she said. "I’m here to learn what the jungle thinks of me."

Fizz hovered lower, approving. "Lord team," he whispered, and John did not correct him.

They added their names to the board, chalk squeaking like an animal warning its young. A nearby group was arguing about whose crest went first on their banner. Someone else was already sharpening a blade with the grim efficiency of a student trying to impress fear itself.

Sedge leaned on his spear. "You know they say the jungle moves sometimes," he said. "Like, actually moves. Roots changing, paths swapping places."

Fizz rubbed his chin. "That’s fine. I move too. We’ll meet halfway."

Nayeli tilted her head at the canopy, where light had started to bend into gold. "It listens," she murmured. "But it doesn’t like boasting."

Fizz clapped his tiny paws. "Perfect. We will boast quietly. Like polite thunder."

The sun leaned toward a point it had agreed upon with the horizon years ago. From the jungle’s hem came one sound, then another — branch-snap, leaf-sigh, an animal clearing its throat in a dialect that dared you to translate.

John checked his pack. He checked Sedge’s rope. He checked Nayeli’s calm and found it still there. Ray glared from the far side like he had invented glowering and was disappointed to find himself outclassed by a tree.

Rhea adjusted her ribbon with a flick that could have been a choice or a habit. The egg tugged in the void without hurry. The M15 slept, dreaming its honest dreams of the open road to ride.

Fizz rolled his shoulders and whispered, "Now the soup boils."

"Not yet," John said. "Tomorrow, it simmers."

"Then it will taste of victory," Fizz murmured.

"Or dirt," John said.

"They’re the same thing if you eat with pride," Fizz countered.

"Shall we," he breathed at last, a little spark tapping the air twice the way a man taps a door he is about to open.

"We shall," John said.

They stepped toward the green that wasn’t black and the dark that wasn’t night and the test that would turn points into a sentence they could pass or fail. The jungle breathed. John breathed back. The line inside him stayed straight.

Meanwhile in the capital city...

The goddess temple lay quiet under the late afternoon light, its marble steps blushing gold. Sera sat by the reflecting pool, where prayers and whispers shared the same air. The water carried the sky in it, and every time the ripples moved, she thought of John’s voice — calm, deliberate, never loud, always sure.

She had tried to focus on her duties. The incense. The petitions. The long, gentle labor of blessing the sick. But every pause between words turned into a silence shaped like him. She caught herself looking toward the gate whenever footsteps sounded on the flagstones, heart betraying her with a lift that never quite settled.

Her fingers brushed the twin communication stone on her lap. It pulsed faintly, the same rhythm it had when she first pressed it into his hand. "Try it when you can," she had told him. Now she whispered into its stillness, "I’m waiting. Just say my name once."

The wind from the upper terrace teased the folds of her robe and the small loose tendrils of her hair. The scent of honey and old prayers wrapped around her like a memory. She closed her eyes and let her mind find him — maybe on the road, maybe in some half-lit camp — and she smiled because she knew he would be thinking of her in that quiet, steady way that made the world seem arranged on purpose.

Her pulse betrayed her calm. Her body leaned toward the stone as if it might answer. The ache on her pussycat wasn’t good; it was wet and warm, like wine poured too close to a fire. She breathed his name into the temple air, so softly that only the goddess could have heard it, and waited for the stone to warm again, hoping it would be soon.