Melmarc didn’t like the room. It was not that there was anything wrong with it, he just didn’t like therapy as a whole. He wasn’t sure whether it was because he had recently discovered that Uncle Dorthna did not like therapy, or if it was something else.
Still, Melmarc sat in his chair and kept his hands flat on his laps. Silence was his only tool, the only one he had any use for right now, so he held his silence and said nothing. But there was a consequence to silence—an old friend that had walked side by side with him for quite a while now. Thoughts.
When Melmarc was silent for long enough—which wasn’t very long—his thoughts began to encroach, to keep him company. Right now, they were more than happy to keep him company.
And the main question in his mind was if he was finally fine or not.
Since [Optimum Existence] had hit forty-nine point nine, nine percent, he could not remember his mind falling into the consumption of any of his aspects. When he’d had his altercation with Sanders in class that one time, he had looked on the boy and everyone else present with some level of contempt.
Or maybe contempt wasn’t the word.
He had felt like an adult forced to sit among children who thought that the stakes in their lives were stakes worth dying for. It reminded him of something Uncle Dorthna had said in passing once. The exam that you read and cry about is nothing but a piece of paper to the adult that set it for you to read and cry about.
That was how it had felt, like sitting among children. He had recognized it as his pride eventually. The problem was that he did not know if it was an aspect or if it was completely normal for him. Why? Because there he had been—he still was—a boy who had helped to kill a demi-god, then slain a corrupted Oath and almost lost his life doing both things, sitting among children who hadn’t even stepped a single foot inside a portal.
In a world of life and death, childish squabbles were not but paltry nonsense. Even now, sitting in a room he would rather not be sitting in, he still felt like all this was beneath him. Like the world had no idea what it was supposed to call important.
His pride was understandable. Whether it was justified or not was something else entirely. So, no. He did not think the pride and possible disdain he’d felt for Sanders was an Oath’s aspect. It was probably just simple human pride and disdain.
However, within the weave of all that, it was not what had his attention captive. No. It was something else. It was the fact that he had not fallen into the clutches of his aspects. He had fought Sanders with a clear mind and put the boy in his place without his mind having to break a sweat.
When he’d sparred with Diret, while the boy had given him a run for his money, it had not been anything to make his mind hesitate or question. It had not drawn his Oaths.
The question now was this: Were his current problems deemed to paltry to shake the Oaths within him, or were the Oaths within him asleep because of the mastery level of [Optimum Existence]?
If the first was the case, then it implied strength, which was a good thing. He could still remember almost cracking mentally when he had been forced to deal with Anji and Ariadne back in the accommodations Naymond had given him during his mentorship program. If the latter was the case, then it worried him. Why? Because it would mean that it was merely the calm before the storm, and the storm would be a real problem.
There was also mystery option number three. It was possible that this would be his life from now on. He had somehow mastered the aspects at the currently percent of mastery and his mind was now wholly his.
Melmarc snorted. He couldn’t help it. Like I’ll be that lucky.
Beside him, Ark turned to look at him. “You good?”
Melmarc shrugged. It was all the answer he had.
“Uhuh.” Ark nodded as if he understood. “What have you got running around in your head?”
“I think I’ve not run into a problem that I consider a problem in quite a while now,” Melmarc answered easily.
Ark cocked a brow. “Not even in your fight against Diret?”
“Nope.” Melmarc shook his head slowly. “I think it was because I knew it was nothing but a spar, nothing serious with basically no stakes.”
Ark nodded like a sage. “That makes sense. Besides, even without our skills, I doubt there’s anybody in this school that we can’t take with our eyes closed.”
Melmarc gave his brother a look. “Really?”
“Come on, think about it.” Ark turned his head up, eyes on the unassuming ceiling ahead of them. “I’ve watched the way everyone in the combat class fights, even the way everyone in the Promise program fights. They fight well, but not that well.”
Melmarc pressed his lips into a thin line. A part of him felt as if he should’ve known this if it was true. If Ark had said that he could fight them with his eyes closed, that would be a different conversation. But he was saying that they could fight them with their eyes closed and still win.
“I don’t think I see it,” he said in the end.
“That’s because you already have the advantage of size, you’ve beaten Donovan, and you spend most of your time holding back because of your size.” Ark sighed. “But that’s not what I’m talking about. How sharp is your memory?”
“Sharp enough,” Melmarc answered.
“How much can you remember about how everyone fights?”
Melmarc thought about it for a moment. He did his best to remember what he could about people sparring around him. Surprisingly, it came easier than he’d expected. From what he could remember, he called up memories and attention to it.
His eyes widened in realization. He could see it now. They fought like children. He’d always thought they fought that way because they were sparring, but what if Ark was right? What if this was simply how they fought?
“See?”
Melmarc focused on Ark, realizing that while he had been looking at his brother, he had not been paying attention to his brother because of his own thoughts.
“They don’t know how to fight.” Ark folded his arms in thought. “It’s as if all they know how to do is flail around with some levels of basic self-defense and improvised instincts.”
“Diret is good, though,” Melmarc argued.
Ark nodded. “He is,” he agreed. “But he’s just a step above the others. His case is talent and experience, but not skill. They don’t fight like they have been trained.”
Melmarc was sure that he was picking up what his brother was putting down. “But it’s just self-defense. I don’t think it’s because they don’t pay attention.”
Ark snapped a finger at him as if he was making his point for him. “And most of them are from rich families, even Gifted parents. I refuse to believe that they wouldn’t have put their children through self-defense classes like mom and dad put all of us through.”
“And all of them can’t be unserious.”
Also, it wasn’t that they were unserious, anyone with half a mind could tell that they were actually fighting to the best of their abilities when allowed. It was more along the lines of them being undertrained. It was as if their self defense teachers did not complete their training. They were taught how to disarm a person who came at them with a knife but not how to take the knife from the person, not how to drive the knife into the person’s neck… so to speak.
“I have a theory,” Ark said, a smile on his face. It was the smile he had when he realized that the answer to a question had been staring everyone right in the face but he was the only one to figure it out.
Melmarc adjusted on his chair to face him bodily. “I’m listening.”
“What if what we were taught wasn’t self-defense?”
Melmarc raised an eyebrow. “Mom said it was self-defense. The instructors said it was self-defense.”
“But what about dad?” Ark tapped the side of his nose. “Dad never said anything about our self defense class. What does it say that the only person in the house that we know is incapable of lying has said nothing about our self-defense class?”
Madness was not incapable of lying, that was merely a misconception from Melmarc’s experience. Lying was merely very uncomfortable. Then again, there was a chance that the effects were heavier on Madness since it was his father’s only Oath but lighter on him since he was potentially an amalgamation of Oaths.
“So we weren’t taught self defense,” he said.
Ark nodded. “I always knew we weren’t taught self-defense, but I just thought we were being some level of advanced self-defense. You know.”
“Both our parents were Gifted, and we lived with Uncle Dorthna when they were not around.” Melmarc pursed his lips as the words came to him. “Then there was the attack in the house. It only stands to reason.”
“It does, doesn’t it.” Ark’s smile was growing wider. “What if we weren’t taught self-defense at all. Remember what coach what’s his name taught us.”
“Belu or Bev?”
“Belu.” Ark snapped his finger randomly, not trying to remember the coach but what they’d taught them. “The thing about the choke hold.”
“How long to knock them out, how long to kill them.”
“And how long to achieve that sweet spot to deprive then of enough oxygen to risk putting them in a vegetative state.” Ark sat back confidently. “No one teaches a kid that.”
“He was being overly enthusiastic,” Melmarc answered. “He got caught up in his own fun.”
Dissonance.
He frowned. Well, that answered that. He was just making excuses.
“Then remember the knife attacks?” Ark asked smugly. “Who teaches a kid in self defense that if someone comes at them with a knife, they should accept that they are going to get stabbed, then go the extra mile to teach them how to not just disarm the person but the most efficient way to take the knife from them.”
“And drive it into their neck,” Melmarc finished for his brother.
“Remember what he said.” Ark looked at him, focused on him. “Pain means you are human. It will hurt…”
“Let it.”
In hindsight, none of it sounded like self-defense anymore. But how could they have known. Immediately their mother was out of the hospital they had been enrolled in the self-defense program. Things like this were a normal part of their lives, and telling anybody about it had been frowned on. It hadn’t been treated as some extreme secret, but they had been told not to go talking up and about regarding matters of what they learnt in self defense.
It had just been self-defense.
Ark laughed now. It was comfortable, and a little bit proud. “They got us.” He smiled at Melmarc. “I hope you’re not mad.”
Melmarc searched himself and found that he was not. Their parents had done what they had to do, teaching all their children how to defend themselves and, apparently, defending themselves was not the only thing that they had been taught.
“They had to know that we’d talk to others, though,” Melmarc pointed out, as if it was a type of flaw in the whole thing.
Ark shook his head then pointed at himself. “A general rebel who obeys his younger brother and keeps no real friend.” He pointed at Melmarc. “A loner who rarely ever has more than the two friends. And Ninra who was smart beyond her years.” He shook his head again. “They were blessed with predictable children. I’m sure they saw all the ways we could fuck up and knew how to deal with it.”
Ark was right. Regarding this specific matter, their parents had been blessed with the perfect children.
“That’s why we can take them,” Ark said. “They learnt self-defense and are figuring it out as they go. We learnt how to kill people. We’re arguably child spies.”
Melmarc sighed. “We are not child spies.”
“Whatever helps you sleep at night. Anyway, that’s that. We are basically the Aces in the team. Although,” he turned thoughtful again, “I find it hard to believe that no Gifted parent thought of making child soldiers of their children like mom and dad did us.”
“Maybe we just assimilated to it better.”
Ark raised a doubtful brow. “While circumstances have proven that we are indeed special and have always been, I find it hard to believe that we are that unique. If not for Spitfire, I wouldn’t have gotten a class.”
And if not for being attacked as a child I probably wouldn’t have been an [August Intruder].
Melmarc would’ve liked to say that he wouldn’t have been one at all, but Uncle Dorthna had told him that [August Intruder]s weren’t born. They were quite literally beings of circumstances. While Melmarc had taken a roundabout way to doing it, one of the things about becoming an [August Intruder] was being strong enough to be poisoned well enough by foreign mana and surviving it well enough.
In his case, he had used pure mana, which was in and of itself rare enough.
“I guess we have to be extra careful now,” Ark said then sighed as if it was stressful. “It’s already annoying enough sparring without all my skills and knowing that we’ll go to the tournaments when they start without being able to use all our skills.”
Melmarc reached across and patted Ark consolingly on the shoulder. “It’s for the best.”
Ark’s shadow fire was definitely not something he could go using on innocent children. It was one of those skills that Melmarc knew was definitely designed to kill its opponent. Apart from that, Melmarc was already doomed to a significant handicap. He doubted there was any [August Intruder] skill that was safe against his peers, and [Rings of Saturn] was already out of the equation, as for [Secrecy], well, he could not use it to its full potential.
He sighed. Even his latest skill [Where Desolation Leads] had been doomed to not growing because he could not find a safe place where he could use it. First, he doubted he wanted anyone to know he had such a skill. Second, considering how powerful it was when it had only been an Oath skill, he doubted there was anywhere on school grounds where he could use the skill without causing too significant of a damage.
“Sometimes it’s as if just living here is a handicap,” Ark muttered.
Melmarc could definitely understand that. At least in the portals, while it was far more dangerous than here, he could live to the full extent of what he was capable of as a Gifted. Back home, it all just felt like he was stagnating, unable to grow.
Ark lowered his head, his confidence and smugness at discovering that they had been taught more than just self defense as children dissipating. “I miss the portals.”
“Yeah,” Melmarc murmured. “Me, too.”
The door to the room opened and the staccato rhythm of stiletto heels against tile rang as their therapist entered the room.
She walked over to the table in front of them and looked down at them from her glasses.
“Good day, Lockwoods,” she said in that kind voice that Melmarc knew adults used when they wanted to present themselves as less than threats.
Ark rolled his eyes, clearly noting the same thing.
Melmarc was more civilized. “Good day, ma’am.”
“You’re late,” Ark said.
“Am I?” she asked with a knowing smile. Although what she knew was anyone’s guess.
Ark checked his watch. “Our session started half an hour ago.”
“And yet, it also began half an hour ago.” She folded her arms over her breasts. “Now tell me about this portal you miss.”
Melmarc saw the moment Ark’s eyes went dead. His demeanor shifted sharply, suddenly, he was ominous. Melmarc’s attention moved from Ark to the woman, then back.
“And,” Ark said very carefully, “just how much did you hear?”
The woman shrugged, oblivious to the danger. “Enough to—”
“This bitch.”
Ark moved. His movement was a blur, and he was out of his seat in the blink of an eye. But Melmarc had anticipated it, expected it. He moved at just the same time.
He grabbed Ark’s wrist at the last second, and aimed his hand to the ceiling while his other hand placed the woman back and away so that she was forced to lean back, almost lying down on the table, with his hand on her shoulder.
“Stand down, Ark,” he said carefully, watching the intent in his brother’s eyes. He said nothing about the black flames that currently still engulfed Ark’s fist pointed to the ceiling.
“She was eavesdropping,” Ark growled.
Melmarc shook his head slowly. “Nobody dies today.”
Ark gritted his teeth, his jaw ticking. Melmarc could tell that he was angry that someone had invaded on Melmarc’s privacy while he was around and had failed to stop it.
“Why?” Ark bit out.
Melmarc shrugged, affecting calmness. “Because I said so, Ark.” He met his brother’s gaze. “Stand down, and I’ll sort this out.”
There was a moment of silence during which unbridled fear continued to wash over Melmarc. It all came from the therapist in rivulets. It was a wonder she hadn’t pissed herself with all that fear.
It was a moment before the flames guttered out of Ark’s fist and his muscles relaxed. Melmarc released him, and Ark stepped back. He was greatly displeased.
And he was not sitting down.
Melmarc cocked a brow at him. “Sit.”
“This is unfair,” Ark complained.
Melmarc tilted his head slightly. “Ark. Sit.”
Frowning, Ark obeyed. He sat down and folded his arms angrily. Melmarc watched it all with only one thought. This was not going to be an easy mess to clear up, not on Ark’s side, and not on the therapist’s side.
Still, he turned to her and sighed. Removing his hand from her shoulder, he allowed her to stand back up to her full height.
“My apologies for the inconvenience,” he started diplomatically. “But you’re going to have to tell me everything that you heard.”
She opened her mouth to speak, and he interrupted her. He stepped up to her, towering over her, and looked down into her eyes.
“And please,” he added politely, “do not lie to me.”