The thudding vibrations of touching down on the ground roused me from my slumber. Keen to get onto the land, I jumped off Teival’s lap and bounded towards the exit – pushing past several people already walking through it. As I reached the bottom of the steps, I rolled around in the familiar sandy soil of the Main Stadium before seeing the beautiful moon shining in the night sky. After a few moments, my master finally caught up to me and sighed in relief and exasperation over my eager flight.

“You really don’t like flying, do you Kia?”

“Of course not! I don’t like the sensation of falling from a great height! It hurts, you know? The impact, I mean!”

Weaving through Teival’s legs so I didn’t get trampled on by the crowd beginning to form, I observed my surroundings and came to a realisation. “Why are those people all the way over there?” From the opposite end of the Main Stadium was another gathering of SAC crystal beasts dropping off several groups of children, although they seemed different compared with our side. Analysing the differences, I soon found the children opposite to possess at least one of these traits: severely injured, looking depressed and despondent, or lacking a crystal beast.

Wondering why their group was separate from ours, I observed them a little longer before searching for where Dinara and Tabitha ended up. Scanning the area, I soon found them both on our side with barely any injuries at all – which both made me happy and frustrated. Just as I was about to drag Teival in their direction, Liesel came over with a beaming smile on her face.

“Congratulations on passing the first major trial! I’m so proud of you all! Since you’ve been such good boys and girls, we instructors have decided to give you all three days off to recuperate! Just remember, my little lieblings, that you’ll be reassigned classes based on your trial rank. Ooh, it’s so exciting, isn’t it?!”

With this revelation, I turned to the opposite group and noticed how the Head Instructor was there giving a speech to them with a stern face. I swear that, by the end, I saw some of the children collapse to the ground and cry once she left. “They must have failed the trial…” Putting those thoughts aside, Liesel dismissed us all, resulting in Teival and I rushing back to our dormitory room – while others seemed to be more concerned about eating something.

Reaching our much-missed black room, I jumped onto the bed and snuggled into its softness while wagging my not-so-fluffy tail in happiness. With the reacquainting myself with my current home, I then began the gargantuan task of thoroughly grooming my fur. “I’ll give you a deep clean tomorrow morning, Kia. For now, let’s sleep.”

“Excuse me?! You will do no such thing tomorrow! We shall go to the communal washroom right now!” I jumped off the bed and began tugging at Teival’s trousers towards the door. “I absolutely refuse to sleep in a nice bed with such a smelly boy who is covered in dirt!”

“Hahaha, I think maybe Anders was right about you being a spoilt princess. You won’t even let me sleep until we’re clean. All right, let’s go get rid of the dirt.”

I whipped my tail against his legs in protest at being called by that ridiculous name Anders used. “How dare you stoop to his level! I thought you were more cultured and civilised than him, Teival!” In a huff, I stomped towards the door before pawing at it to suggest my eagerness for cleanliness.

+++

“Ahh, baths are such divine things! Whoever invented them was a genius!” I enjoyed Teival massaging my body with a spongy thing as my fur soaked in the warm water. I have to admit, I may have drifted off for a few minutes at some points before being woken up by a cascade of water. My master even paid extra care to my poor tail that had been ravaged by that most evil of crystal ants! I wept a single tear at the damage to my perfect beauty.

Returning to our room after being blow-dried by a loud crystal device filled with a grey and red crystal, we both slipped into our soft bed and promptly fell asleep. Our fatigue from the past two weeks left us as we enjoyed the peace and safety of our room and bed. “Ah, c’est la vie!”

+++

The next three days proved lackadaisical compared to previous times we had free time. For one, we barely left the room as we lounged in bed – or in my case sometimes the floor – as we fully relaxed from the hard work we’d been doing as of late. As for training, Teival just focussed on channelling mana through me instead of running laps – allowing me to hear his soothing songs once again.

When we entered the classroom after the third free day, I noted how several classmates were no longer present – most noticeably one of the three large groups that split off at the beginning of the trial. I wondered if they ended up losing their crystals to other people, or even forfeited for safety reasons. Either way, I held no sympathy or remorse over their absence since it meant less people to call out my master’s lack of close combat skills.

As for being reassigned based on our trial rank, we ended up changing instructors – though I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing, or not. Most surprising, though, was how Armin ended up being reassigned to the same class which somewhat confused me over whether our class was good or not. I mean, Armin was quite easily the top inductee in our class so…what did that mean about our trial rank?

As for our new instructor, it was a man called Otto with a vast amount of muscle mass who sported several red and brown crystal piercings in his ears, nose, left eyebrow and even his tongue! He seemed to have a love of painting his face with black, since under his eyes always looked darker than everyone else’s and his lips were often coated in black too. His personality was…unique, to say the least. I perceived him to be a font of energy that constantly needed expelling, otherwise he might implode – at least, I assumed that was the case with the amount of pacing and jumping around he did while he introduced himself. He even punched the air at several points…

One thing to point out about our new class was the significant reduction of children in it. Instead of the usual twenty plus people we had experienced in both of our previous classes, this one only had ten. I wondered if this was due to there being less inductees than before, thus allowing more chances for one-on-one interaction between the instructor and student but didn’t think more about it for the time being.

As for Armin being with us…well I thought it was more tolerable than having to endure the abrasive personality of Anders for all those weeks in Penfallow. “Urgh, those days were awful.” Shuddering at the possibility of meeting that incorrigible man once again at some unknown point in the future, I shifted my ruminations towards our future in general. From what I had been led to believe, these trials we’d partake in were only going to get tougher. I worried for my master’s well-being for the times ahead as I recalled the three-way battle I witnessed on the penultimate day. “Will things like that become more regular with each trial?”

Thinking such things, I ignored whatever the full-of-life Otto was lecturing the class about as I splayed out over Teival’s feet and chose to go to sleep. I mean, who would find lessons fun?