“Left turn! Shields, brace!” Aven commanded.

  Twelve warriors in the center of the courtyard pivoted left, facing the oncoming charge of a second formation. The dozen in the center locked into formation, bracing against the charge. The attacking group struck the defensive wall, but the defenders held, keeping their feet and their position as the attackers crashed against them. Initial charge stymied, the defenders retaliated with blunted spears, tipped with wooden balls to avoid any greater injury than bruises. The attackers retreated, giving the defenders a second to collect themselves.

  Aven gestured for the third dozen warriors, now directly behind the defenders, to charge, “Full turn! Shields, brace!”

  The defenders scrambled, this time sloppy in the maneuver, earning a few of them bruises as the formation collapsed.

  “Hold!” Aven commanded, drawing their attention and halting the exercise. “That was too slow; all of you are dead now. Voidspawn won’t come at you with blunted spears.”

  “Yes, captain!” the chorus came wearily.

  Aven repressed a sigh, wondering how much harsher he needed to make the reprimand. The bruises would be incentive enough, hopefully. Ouron was far better at berating sloppy maneuvers, but the veteran had just left Hellfrost that morning with Etrani’s permission to collect his family. Now Aven was left as the disciplinarian. He gave Logash a glance, the giant zhagra ogre standing behind the last dozen soldiers at the north side of the courtyard.

  Logash gave a wink and shouted out, “I’ve seen children faster on their feet! You look like godsdamned babies crawling around! Are you godsdamned babies?”

  “No, sergeant!” the replies came out.

  “Good, because your mothers aren’t here to suckle you!” Logash struck his spear butt against the stone tiles like a drumbeat. “You’ve only got me. Again! You repel three rushes and you can rest your dainty arses. Into formation!”

  Aven watched the ogre roaring the troops through the exercise. Even without Erdrak’s malice, the sight was a bit too familiar for comfort. Still, it wasn’t so different from Father’s scathing words during training. With Logash, it was obviously a performance, but one that struck Aven as slipping not into a fictional persona but putting on a past one like old clothes. Logash’s rage and harshness at moments like this felt too real, yet when the moment for such severity passed, the calm returned just as swiftly. Like a lake returning to stillness after the briefest of storms.

  Aven took over the command again, sending in the attacking waves of warriors one after another. This time, the defenders in the center held off all three groups, and the defenders traded positions with one of the attacking groups for the next round of exercises.

  They were far from a true company of an imperial legion. Just a mishmash of former guards and prisoners forced to work together. Still, fighting voidpawn had at least served to break down the barriers between the groups. Harder to hold on to prejudices and grudges when the threat of being ripped apart by inhuman monsters loomed over every hunt. Four dozen warriors, in teams under four sergeants, with Aven as captain. Half the strength of a proper company, though they had another twenty soldiers helping guard the quarries under Akra’s leadership as long as her pregnancy allowed. More than enough for daily hunts. Enough to face deathsingers?

  With the ace up their sleeve, it just might be. Aven glanced to where Janaya trained alone in the corner. Too volatile to work in a proper formation (both in terms of power and temperament). Explosive enough to serve only as an emergency option, given that her hellfire destroyed normal voidspawn thoroughly enough to render them useless to the tanners and smiths. For now, the creatures Aven had glimpsed in the darkest depths of the abyss beneath the void, though...for that, she was exactly what they needed.

  * * *

  General training ended, and Aven gathered the vis among his troops together. Twenty in total, about evenly split between former guards and prisoners. If they were under-manned for a typical company of the legions, their vis strength was actually at least matching that of a typical unit. Strength, however, didn’t tell the whole story. A legionary company generally had twenty vis of the first circle, specialized in particular roles common to the legions: stoneshields such as Ouron for defense and fortification, casters such as Akra for ranged support, and so on. Here in Hellfrost, things were more ragtag. Not only in the powers at their disposal (with ranges from traditional body domains to more esoteric abilities like Katrin’s spirits) but in knowledge. They came from vastly different traditions of power, some with completely different understandings of basic vis principles.

  Some, such as the beastkin Iskir or the Ondrar women Gretchen were stronger individually than any non-vis soldier, but strength alone didn’t qualitatively change their role. They were, in the end, still mortals battling monsters. Understanding and working together mattered more than individual strength.

  That left Aven teaching things that to some soldiers were absolute basics and to others were complete unknowns.

  “In Octarnin tradition, vis springs from three core domains,” Aven recapped the previous lectures. “They are...” He gestured to Wally, the canin beastkin nervous as ever but looking increasingly determined in the aftermath of Ko’jan’s death.

  “Body, soul, and mind,” Wally supplied the answer, scratching behind his ear in a self-soothing manner. The young man had an easy grasp of the basics. Not that it made up for his limitations in actual combat. Still, his enhanced senses were useful in spotting dangers early on the hunts. If they could just build up his courage and confidence...

  “Last session, I asked you what domain your senses would fall under,” Aven said. “What did you decide?”

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  Wally squirmed, “I...um...I couldn’t decide if it was mind or body. It...uses my ears, but it’s also a mental thing? Sorry, I-”

  “No, you’re actually on exactly the right track,” Aven gave an encouraging smile. He gestured to one of the other vis present, a man named Dashul who had the same Brightcaster domain that Akra did, a domain of the soul that formed raw vis energy in woven light. Unlike Akra, he lacked the power to create blasts of light that could tear through voidspawn carapace. His control, however, let him shape light into more complex forms. A careful application of both mind and soul domains: a mystic art.

  Dashul conjured the image they’d worked on last time, manifesting three spheres above their heads with symbols of the body, mind, and soul domains. At Aven’s instruction, three more spheres formed below, each connected to two of the original three by glowing lines.

  Aven directed their attention to the lower spheres, “Some call the next three ‘hybrid’ domains or ‘half’ domains, Senses such as your hearing are a combination of mind and body domains.”

  “But...” Wally still looked confused, brow furrowing and furred ears dropping in concentration, “I can’t use any other domains. How does a combination of two things I don’t have form something I do have?”

  “No idea,” Aven said cheerfully. “There’s more we don’t know about vis powers than we do know.”

  “Then what’s the point of learning theory?” a soldier called from the crowd. A genuine question, not a challenge, Aven thought. And one that Aven himself had often wondered during the Father’s interminable lectures. He located the speaker. Warren, an archer who’d once disobeyed Erdrak’s orders to aid the hunting prisoners against the voidspawn.

  “To give direction,” Aven pointed to Wally, “With your senses already developed, forming a mind or body domain would be a good next path. Warren, for you, since you already have a soul domain in channeling vis into your arrows, you’ve got a couple paths. If you forge either a body or mind domain, it could then combine with your soul domain.”

  Warren nodded, “Mastery or arts, right?”

  Aven nodded as Dashul inscribed the symbols for sense, mastery, and arts into the three hybrid domain circles. “You can talk to Logash or Dashul about mystic arts. I don’t know if anyone in Hellfrost has mastery-”

  “Shakra the smith and Hammec the butcher do,” Dashul noted. “Mila the spellwright knows mystic arts as well. So does Krashel the healer.”

  Most names Aven wasn’t familiar with, even free for months now. Being a patricide and voidtouched didn’t exactly lend itself to easy acceptance among Hellfrost.

  “There you have it,” Aven looked about at the soldiers gathered before him. “Each of you needs to decide for yourself how much you want to dedicate to becoming stronger. We’ll train as a group and figure out how to incorporate your abilities into the formation, but the limits of those abilities are up to you.”

  They nodded, a more cohesive unit than their predecessors, though it would be hard to be less. A few even looked thoughtful. The training would take months or years before bearing fruits, but that was all right. For the moment, the worst danger they had to face were the regular voidspawn. And that was something Aven was more than prepared to take care of.

  Wally raised his hand as they wound the lecture down, “Sir, how does...how does being voidtouched fit into all that?”

  “Good question,” Aven said. “And I don’t have a good answer.” The battle mind was, rather obviously, a mind domain. The experience in the void had transformed Aven’s body, but that was separate from his ability to create voidhands and absorb the black blood that infected others. “For abilities like mine, the empire has traditionally just lumped them all together as ‘gifts’. Anything that comes from outside rather than being cultivated by the user.”

  “A gift?” Wally repeated, somewhat incredulously. No doubt he’d seen what so many others had: men driven to insanity by the mere touch of the void, turned suicidal or cannibal if they lived long enough.

  Aven shrugged. Thinking of the void as a gift was rather perverse, but it was indeed the sole gift Mother had left him. He’d do his best to put it to use.

  Gretchen was watching the exchange, a look of disgust on her face. She was often quiet during the lectures. Reserved in general. Or maybe that wasn’t quite right; he’d seen her talk to other prisoners easily enough. Just not to him.

  “Do you disagree with that assessment?” Aven asked.

  She blinked, looking disconcerted at being addressed directly. “…the void is a curse, not a gift.”

  “Gift or curse, it’s more or less the same. It comes from outside, and now it’s mine.” Aven said.

  Another look of disgust. Aven was beginning to get the impression she didn’t like him.

  “Connection to spirits is often considered a curse as well,” Katrin stepped up, hand on Gretchen’s shoulder. Vili floated up on Katrin’s head, and Aven caught Gretchen’s eyes glancing at the shadow spirit nervously. “Even absent that power, many consider maledictus like myself to be cursed. We make our curses into blessings, yes?”

  Gretchen murmured something incomprehensible that was probably agreement and allowed Katrin to lead her away. Aven nodded in thanks. At the very least, Katrin seemed able to get through to Gretchen, whatever personal dislike the Ondrar held towards him.

  As the soldiers dispersed, Janaya remained in the yard. She always sat at a distance from the others, given the way her hellfire had a tendency to ignite nearby materials and/or people at rather inopportune moments.

  Aven crossed over, sitting on a stone bench beside Janaya and letting the silence stretch out until she was ready to talk.

  “You’d classify my hellfire as a ‘soul’ domain, right?” Janaya asked.

  Aven nodded.

  “And in your last lecture, you defined a soul as the sum of all a person’s experiences and connections, a part of them deeper than the material and the conscious mind,” Janaya said.

  “That’s right.” It was only one definition of many that Tarnin philosophers had settled upon, but it was the one Aven’s tutors presented as closest to capturing the elusive truth.

  Janaya stared at her hands, “So my core, the deepest, most fundamental part of me is destruction.”

  “That’s one for the philosophers,” Aven said. “People make all sorts of claims about what the soul domain means for someone. Why?”

  “Among my people, all ‘vis’ powers are considered gifts from the gods, each for a purpose preordained ,” Janaya’s gaze turned towards the sky. At the turn of summer to autumn, the moon shone orange on the horizon as sunset fell to twilight. “My hellfire was a miracle of destruction. To purge the wicked and faithless from this world. I wondered...” she hesitated, voice softer almost than the faint breeze, “I wondered why I was given only a power of destruction while Zophia-” she paused, stiffening before moving on. “While...others were given miracles of healing. I hated the gods for making me only a weapon for their wrath. And now, you tell me that this terrible power is not theirs, but simply who I am?”

  “Could be,” Aven said. “And maybe I’m nothing more than a monster from the void. Does it matter?”

  Janaya glanced at him sharply, eyes narrowing as she seemed to search for something.

  Aven looked straight back. “I’m a monster from the void. I’m a kinslayer. The son of Gaius Avarnius. Captain of the Hellfrost legion. Which of those matters? Maybe you’re a destroyer. Maybe you’re a thousand other things too. Which of those matters?” he gestured about at the Hellfrost courtyard. “We have a chance here, to make something new. What that looks like is up to us.” Aven smiled, “So what will you become, Janaya?”

  Janaya grunted and rose, walking off without a word. Until she stopped a dozen paces away, turning around and giving him an aside glance, “...I’m glad I didn’t kill you.”

  “I assure you, the feeling is mutual.”

  * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

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