Re: From Elf Mage to Overlord Slayer-Chapter 34: The Gaze of the Forge

Chapter 34: The Gaze of the Forge
My little "spar" with Kaelen came with a price tag.
A really, really big one.
The rumors about me weren’t just whispers in the hallway anymore.
Crap. They were the number one topic on the mess hall hit parade, in the barracks, basically everywhere.
The Rank 3 scrub who fought Gandalf to a draw? Okay, that was a fluke, a one-time thing.
The Rank 3 scrub who turned Kaelen’s hand into confetti without even throwing a punch? That was starting to look like a pattern.
A very, very "oh hell no" kind of pattern.
My quiet, happy life of being totally underestimated was officially six feet under.
Now, I was some kind of freak show.
A math problem the high-rankers suddenly decided they needed to solve, like, yesterday.
Seraphina, of course, was the first one to try and crack the equation.
She didn’t try to corner me in some random hallway this time.
Pfft. That was apparently beneath her royal highness.
She sent a freaking messenger.
Some junior instructor found me hiding in the archives, trying to read a dusty book on divine energy signatures that was putting me to sleep.
"Initiate Quinn," he said, his voice way too respectful for my taste. "Lady Seraphina requests your presence in the upper training halls."
Yeah, right. "Requests." That’s a good one.
I found her in one of the private, super high-tech training rooms.
You know, the kind with glowing crystals and energy shields that look like they’re straight out of a video game.
The kind I definitely did not have a key card for.
She was standing in the middle of the room with her arms crossed, looking like the queen of this little kingdom of psychos.
"Quinn," she said, and her voice was as cold and shiny as the floor. "We need to talk."
"I’m good, thanks," I replied.
A tiny little spark of annoyance flickered across her perfect face. Heh. Gotcha.
"You will listen," she snapped. "I have reviewed the logs from your spar with Kaelen. I have cross-referenced them with the data from your match with Captain Gandalf."
She started pacing back and forth, moving like she was planning a checkmate in three moves.
"Your movements are illogical. Your power output is inconsistent. You flip-flop between the clumsiness of a total newb and the spatial awareness of a grandmaster."
She stopped dead and turned to face me, her sapphire eyes burning with this weird, nerdy fire.
"You are a contradiction. A variable that does not compute. And I do not tolerate variables."
Wow. She was trying to analyze me.
To break me down into a bunch of numbers she could plug into a spreadsheet and then beat. Good luck with that.
"What do you want, Seraphina?" I asked, keeping my voice as flat as possible.
"I want the truth," she said. "I want to know what you’re hiding. I believe your power is unstable. A danger to yourself and to the rest of us. I am considering making a formal request to the Warden to have you contained."
Oh, I get it. It was a threat.
A political power play, academy-style.
She was trying to use the rulebook to shove me in a box because she couldn’t figure me out.
"My control is absolute," I said. Total lie, obviously, but what else was I gonna say?
"Prove it," she challenged. "Spar with me. Right now. No tricks. No ’oops I slipped and won’ moments. Show me what you’ve really got. Or I will assume the worst."
So this was a different kind of test.
Kaelen wanted to smash my cage open and see what came out.
Seraphina wanted to measure it, slap a label on it, and then file it away under ’D’ for ’Dangerous Weirdo’.
Before I could even answer, another voice cut in from the doorway.
A voice that sounded like grinding rocks and old regrets.
"He’s not fighting you, Seraphina."
Gandalf. Crap.
He was just standing there, leaning against the doorframe like he owned the place.
He wasn’t wearing his dumb training uniform.
He was in his old, beat-up leather armor, with the broken hilt of his dad’s sword hanging at his side.
He looked exhausted.
But his eyes, when they locked onto mine, were clear and sharp.
The burning, ’I want to kill you’ look was gone.
What was left was this grim, tired understanding.
He saw my memory in that Echo Chamber thing.
He saw where the monster came from.
Seraphina spun around, totally surprised to see him.
"Captain Reynolds," she said, her voice losing a little bit of its razor edge. "This does not concern you."
"It concerns anyone who has to fight next to him," Gandalf said, his eyes still glued on me. "And I have."
He walked right into the room, stopping between the two of us.
He looked at her, then at me.
"You’re looking at him like he’s a puzzle," he told her. "You’re wrong. He’s not a puzzle. He’s a bomb."
He then turned all his attention to me. Well, this is awkward.
"I don’t know what you did in that fight with Kaelen," he said, his voice low. "And I don’t care. But I know what you’re capable of when you lose control. I’ve seen it."
He took a deep breath.
"Whatever our differences, Quinn," he said, and it was the first time he’d ever used my name without making it sound like a curse word. "We have the same enemy. And we need every weapon we can get."
Was he... offering a truce?
A practical, don’t-get-us-all-killed alliance.
He still didn’t trust me.
He probably still hated my guts.
But he was a soldier before anything else.
And he knew that aiming a bomb at the other guys was a hell of a lot better than letting it go off in your own base.
Seraphina just stared at him, completely blindsided.
Her perfect, tidy world of ranks and spreadsheets was getting all messed up by gross things like trauma and tactical necessity.
Just then, a loud, clear chime echoed through the entire academy.
It was a sound none of us had ever heard before.
An assembly bell.
A voice, the big, booming, robotic voice of one of the Sentinels, blasted from hidden speakers.
<System notice: All initiates, to the Forging Ground immediately. The first Culling has begun.>
The air in the room suddenly felt like ice.
The Culling.
The real-world final exam.
The mission they send you on to see who’s a real weapon and who’s just scrap metal.
All our little power struggles and stupid rivalries were over.
The tutorial was finished.
Gandalf gave me one last, hard look.
"Don’t get her killed," he said.
It wasn’t a threat this time.
It was a plea.
He was talking about Elara.
But we both knew he was also talking about someone else.
I just gave a single, sharp nod.
We walked out of the training hall together, three very different weapons all heading to the same stupid war.
There was Seraphina, the perfect, shiny blade.
There was Gandalf, the heavy, beat-to-hell shield.
And then there was me.
The bomb, with a crappy timer, that they were about to aim at something for the very first time.