Chapter 28 Combat Fundamentals
Combat Fundamentals meets in the lower training hall twice a week and is exactly what it sounds like... supervised practical development of supernatural abilities in a controlled conflict context, which is the academy's careful way of saying they teach you how to use what you have when someone is actively trying to stop you from using it.
Professor Dane runs it. Tall, laconic, the kind of person who communicates ninety percent of what they mean through the quality of their silences and the remaining ten percent through very short sentences. She has been teaching this class for twelve years and has the specific energy of someone who has seen every possible supernatural ability expression and found all of them mildly interesting rather than impressive.
"Pairs today," she says, the moment everyone is assembled. "Mixed house. I'm assigning."
Murmuring through the group.
She reads the pairs from her list without looking up and the assignments land with varying degrees of enthusiasm around the room, and I'm listening for my name when I hear it paired with someone unexpected.
"Calladine and Vance."
I look up.
Across the room, Sera is already looking at me.
Her expression is composed and unreadable and she holds my gaze with the steadiness of someone who has decided how to play this and committed to it fully.
I hold hers back.
"Valecrest and Holt," Dane continues. "As usual."
Cassian makes a theatrical sound of suffering that gets him a flat look from Dane and a short laugh from two thirds of the room.
We spread out across the training hall in pairs and I walk toward Sera and she walks toward me and we stop a few feet apart on the mat and look at each other and the air between us has the specific quality of something that has been building since the first day and is now being handed a structured context.
"Calladine," she says.
"Vance," I reply.
"The council filing," she says quietly, so only I hear it. "My family was notified this morning."
I watch her face. "As intended."
"You moved fast," she says. Not accusatory. Observational.
"We had reason to," I reply.
She's quiet for a moment. Professor Dane is moving around the room setting pairs up and we have approximately ninety seconds before she reaches us.
"My family is going to recall me," Sera says. "Probably within the week."
I look at her carefully. "Is that what you want?"
Something moves in her expression, quick and complicated. "What I want," she says carefully, "is not the primary consideration in my family's decisions."
"I know that feeling," I say.
She looks at me with something that isn't warmth exactly but is the absence of hostility, which from Sera Vance at this particular moment feels significant.
"The bond," she says. "Between you and Rhydan. Is it..." she stops.
"Real?" I offer.
"Chosen," she says.
I think about that. "No," I say honestly. "It wasn't chosen. It presented itself and we registered it for protection reasons." I pause. "But it's real. And it's developing." I hold her gaze. "And I'm not going to pretend otherwise to make this easier."
She looks at me for a long moment.
"He's not easy," she says, and it sounds different from when she said it in the corridor, less strategic, more genuine.
"I know," I say.
"He doesn't let people in," she says. "I've known him for four years and he has never once..." she stops. Regroups. "He's different with you. Already. In two weeks." Something crosses her face. "I noticed."
I say nothing, because there is nothing to say to that which wouldn't be either cruel or dishonest.
"Okay," she says, straightening slightly, the composure coming back into place with the precision of long practice. "Shall we?"
She raises her hands in a ready position and I raise mine and Professor Dane arrives beside us and says, "Good. Calladine, your ability is tamer class. Vance, full witch expression. Let's see what happens when those two interact in a controlled context."
Sera's eyes find mine.
"Full expression?" I say to Dane.
"Controlled context," Dane repeats, completely unconcerned. "Dampening panels are active. Nobody is getting hurt." She steps back. "Begin."
Sera moves first.
The ability she projects is clean and cold and precise, a binding pressure that reaches toward me with the specific targeting of something that has been trained to find tamer ability and suppress it, and I feel it hit the edge of my awareness like cold water and my instinct fires immediately, not thought, not decision, just response.
My right hand comes up.
The warmth surges outward.
Sera's binding pressure stops.
Not deflected. Not broken. Just stopped, held in place, suspended in the air between us like something that has been paused mid-sentence.
The room goes quiet.
Sera stares at my hand.
I stare at what's happening between us, the visible shimmer of her ability held suspended in my tamer warmth, and it's the first time I've seen my own ability doing something externally visible and the sight of it is simultaneously fascinating and deeply strange.
"Hm," Professor Dane says, from somewhere behind me. Just that. Hm.
I lower my hand.
Sera's binding pressure dissipates.
We look at each other.
"That was stage two," Sera says quietly. "At minimum."
"Yes," I agree.
She looks at my hand with an expression that has left strategy entirely and arrived somewhere closer to genuine awe, and underneath the awe something else, something that looks like the beginning of understanding something she didn't expect to understand.
"You stopped it without trying," she says.
"I didn't think about it," I confirm.
She's quiet for a moment.
"My family's ability..." she says carefully. "The binding. Against a fully developed tamer..." She pauses. "It wouldn't work. Would it?"
I look at her steadily. "No," I say. "Probably not."
Something settles in her expression. Something that looks, surprisingly, like relief.
Across the training hall, I feel Rhydan's attention on us without looking, that cold-window pressure change, and I know he's been watching this entire exchange.
"Vance," Professor Dane says. "Again. Different approach."
Sera looks at me.
"Ready?" she asks.
"Yes," I say.
And this time when her ability reaches toward me there's something different in it, less targeted, more exploratory, like she's testing something rather than attacking something, and my tamer warmth reaches back with the same quality, and for thirty seconds we stand on the mat doing something that is less like combat and more like two abilities having a conversation neither of us fully understands yet.
Dane watches in complete silence.
After class she keeps us both back.
"Calladine," she says. "Your ability is responding faster than your classification suggests. I'm recommending you for advanced assessment."
"Okay," I say.
She looks at Sera. "Vance. The interaction between your ability and hers, document everything you noticed. I want a written account by Friday."
Sera nods.
Dane walks away.
Sera and I stand in the emptying training hall.
"For what it's worth," Sera says quietly, not looking at me, gathering her bag. "I didn't know about what my family did twenty years ago. Not the full extent of it."
"I bet," I reply.
She looks up.
"People aren't their families," I say. "Usually."
She holds my gaze for a moment.
Then she nods once, short and precise, and walks out, and I stand in the training hall and flex my warm hand and think about two abilities having a conversation on a mat that neither of us planned.
Rhydan appears in the doorway.
"What happened in here?" he asks.
"Something interesting," I reply.
He looks at my hand. "Your ability is visible now. Externally. I could see it from across the room."
"Stage two," I say.
He's quiet.
"Rhydan," I say. "Your dragon nature. Has it surfaced at all since the forest?"
"Twice," he says. "Both times it settled faster than before." He pauses. "Without me doing anything."
"The bond stabilising it," I say.
"Yes," he replies.
We look at each other in the empty training hall.
"We're moving into stage two," I say.
"Yes," he says again.
"That means the ability communication is going to get louder," I say. "More frequent. Less controllable."
"I know," he replies.
"You're going to feel things," I say carefully. "From me. Through the bond. When I'm distressed or when my ability spikes. And I'm going to feel things from you."
"I know," he says, staring directly at me.
"That's..." I start.
"Intimate," he says flatly, like the word is a fact rather than a loaded thing.
"Yes," I say. "It is."
We stand with that.
"Okay," he says finally.
"Okay," I agree.
He turns toward the door.
"Rhydan..."
He stops.
"Thank you," I say. "For this morning. Staying. Reading the file with me."
He looks back over his shoulder.
"You're registered," he says simply. "Where else would I be?"
He walks out and I stand in the empty training hall with my burning hand and the echo of that sentence and the very specific feeling of something that is moving too fast and not fast enough simultaneously.