Young Cubs and Adopted Cubs
(With credit and help to
@Mortis Nuntius )
Moura opened her eyes only to shut them at once, the light hurt. She forced them open again anyway. Everything hurt these days, her eyes, her head, her skin, her bones, everything. But she still propelled herself out of bed as she did every morning, however stiff her joints. When the changes first started she had spent her nights whimpering and shaking with pain, things had gotten better since then but even during the worst of it she had never spent a single minute longer than she had to in her bunk there was too much to do!
She had spent her life hidden away by her family, no school, no friends, no challenges, no escape. All she had was her family and that had been enough, more than enough, she had often told the Galaxy that if it was a choice she'd go straight back and never complain or act out again, she'd be the perfect shut in and never give her family any hassle as they smothered her, sometimes she wanted it so badly she would cry. But the Galaxy never offered her that choice, the only choice it did offer was to make the best out of this or not, that wasn't really a choice either was it?
She enjoyed it here, loved it even. Yes it hurt, yes she felt she wasn't any good, yes the other girls could be mean, but she loved it all the same. She had never had so many lessons, so much time around other people. And they could be as mean as they wanted, she'd seen things back on Stormgard, she had done things as well, she wasn't scared and she knew she would be a good Space Marine even if the others didn't believe it yet.
The room itself was carpeted stone, with a window overlooking one of the lower terraces just now lighting with the light of the rising sun reflecting off the gold coating and flowing streams of the lower palace. From questions and testing, Moura had found that her room was about 200 stories above the next terrace. Nowhere near as high as her former hive spire, but a far longer drop if she were to go out the window. In the distance, a flash betrayed one of the skyfire emplacements around the city driving back the local animals.
It would be an hour before she would be expected at the first test of her initiation, the first of the four tests of the Tequital, a word that she was finally getting used to rolling off her tongue with the proper flavor and accent to not stand out too much. The staff weren't allowed to mention it at all, except to say that if she failed that she would be dropped from the program and entered into the ranks of the serfs. She told herself that would not happen but it did not seem too bad a life all told, but she was going to be a space marine, she knew it and was not shy about letting anyone else know it either.
The route to the cafeteria wasn't too far, maybe ten or fifteen minutes walk. The halls were wide, with a sort of stepped and buttressed roof that was unlike anything that Stormguard had in architecture, and intermittently there were statues of the local Felinids in military clothes, or what she assumed were military clothes, furs, studded leathers and equipped with spears or bladed clubs of dark black stone. Clearly these were older than this planet's joining the Imperium. She loved to walk amongst them and try and imagine their lives. Each one's face told a story she thought.
The path wound down one of the wide, curving stairs to the next level down, each level split into sub-levels with balconies and paths that let cool air flow through the building by some unknown process, especially nice with the heat and sticky humidity outside that sapped your energy in long exercise. Finally, the next level down she found the cafeteria for the serfs and aspirants, and got in line. A few of the Felinids glanced back at her, ears flicking in amusement, whispering unintelligibly.
As the line shuffled forward, the food came into view. Meat, as usual, was prevalent: a rack of ribs the size of a small table was being carved, each rib cracked in half to give an aspirant a full portion that would have been two meals when she wasn't growing a whole new body plan and building so much muscle. The scent was spicy and with a hint of sweetness, and spice tolerance had been another thing that had been difficult to learn coming to Cipactli. The Felinids loved their spices, food hot and savory in equal measure.
Next was a small bowl of seeds surrounded by a deep red jelly, almost like fish eggs, but she had been told they came from fruit and had seen the dark red fruit cut and washed to gather the pips inside. A mix of rice and corn followed, with strips of leafy green vegetables interspersed, finished off the now hefty plate. Turning, she could see Kamla waving from a table in the corner of the cafeteria, the other non-abhuman aspirant being one of the few who had struck up a fast friendship with Moura.
Moura had learned not to shout out a greeting, that lesson had been a painful one, but she did wave excitedly before grabbing everything, two of everything if she could get away with it, she was a growing girl and her eyes watered at the aroma rising from the food. As her sense of smell improved so too did the ecstasy each meal offered.
"Kamla!" She beamed as she clattered somewhat clumsily onto the bench beside her friend, her friend! "Are you excited? I'm excited. Today is going to be great! Are you nervous? I'm not, I know we'll both get through!" She gushed in an stream of verbal chain-bolter fire.
"It's a bit scary, honestly, but they say it isn't too much about your physical strength so we can probably do it." Kamla was from Void City, which she had said was around a planet called Last Light that the Jaguars had liberated from the oppressive government that had controlled it and looked down on her people. Moura wondered how anyone could look down on a ten year old girl who was almost five and a half feet tall, with chalk-white skin and hair and the general body shape of stretched taffy, but the idea stood anyway. Ironically her closest friend here had been the much more standard Moura. The two of them, both undergoing the somewhat uncomfortable Helix implantation, were united by shared struggles.
Kamla tore a strip of meat from her rib, chewing stolidly. "I finally got my eyes all in the right order. They got slitted and everything. I don't even bother turning my light on in the room anymore." Indeed, on inspection, her red eyes were now divided by the tall, slit-oval pupils of the Felinids, and ears were beginning to separate from her scalp and grow fur.
"Wow!" Moura exclaimed, "They're so pretty. I'm jealous." She confided. Her own eyes stubbornly remained electric blue orbs in a thin ring of white. There were nubs around her own ears but other than a few stray hairs of a darker shade than the rest of her there as yet little additional evidence of the changes in her body. She felt self conscious about it.
The apothecaries had told her that between her Psyker powers and certain abnormalities in her genes from warp exposure the process was working slower than most, she'd not liked how…interested they had sounded. Once when she had tried to run away as a little girl her parents had shouted at her, asked if she wanted to be experimented on. She had a feeling that some of the Apothecaries wanted to do just that. That it made her stand out even more amongst the other aspirants did not help.
"You're going to be coughing up the f word soon." She did not exactly project the thought, nor did she whisper it but somewhere in between, it had been a fun trick to learn even if she'd not figured out how exactly to do it with anyone but her best friend. But some things were not safe to say, even if they were funny! She had never even heard of a furball before she had arrived but apparently jokes about them were expressly forbidden on pain of violent correction. Naturally Moura delighted in making them, but only to Kamla and only in the privacy of their minds.
"Can you imagine if your tongue hurt too? Ugh! I'm so glad that's not included. I thought getting used to gravity was bad." Kamla leans in close. "I hear they're sending a special instructor to watch this Tequital. One of the famous Legionnaires, but I didn't get the name." Kamla had once mentioned that while her natural ears were not quite so large, that any voidborn worth their weight could hear rumors. That talent hadn't seemed to go away even with her new environment. "What do you think they're gonna have us do? Four tests, takes all day, and they either choose to pass or flunk us into the Marines over it. It has to be something interesting."
"Nothing here is boring. So I think you're right. I can't wait to find out."
"Either way, I hope it's not on the terraces. It's supposed to be even hotter today than yesterday! I think I drank three gallons of water and most of it got sweat out." Kamla shuddered. "Even if they are pretty."
"Agreed! Its so hot here. The only thing I don't like about it." Her friend nodded.
"I wonder if they'll have us hunt one of the big animals out there." Kamla mused, looking at the chunk of rib in her hands. "I mean, someone must bring these in for us to eat. I wonder if they do it from a valkyrie or something…" She ripped another chunk of meat from the bone. Another cultural change for them both: so much food here was perfectly acceptable, even encouraged, to be finger food or to otherwise make messes. "Ooh, do you want sour cream for your rice and corn? I got a few extra packs."
Moura did not seem to hear her, a bizarre turn of events given her usual obsession with food. "Wait…what? Is that what this stuff is?" She asked, holding up her own rib and staring at it in wonder and discomfort both. She hesitantly lowered it back onto her plate. "I don't feel so good…"
"What? They keep these things away from the city with those big skyfire guns that go off around the edge. They'd eat *you* if they could. It only seems fair…" Kamla gave Moura an appraising side-eye. "If you don't want your rib I'll eat it."
"NO!" Moura screeched before stuffing the rib, bone and all in her mouth. "I'mbf mmnm doo comfejfefuh punkh!"
Kamla laughed, quick and light. "I didn't get any of that! And I didn't think they were turning you into a mouse. How did you fit that all into your mouth at once?"
The secret was one part leaving most of the rib outside her mouth, four parts apparently choking to death.
"Do you need help? What will they say if you get killed by lunch before you even take the test?"
She rolled her eyes, her friend was such a dummy sometimes, it was breakfast not lunch. It also could be her final meal so she nodded urgently to confirm she did in fact need maybe a tiny bit of help.
A few minutes and one heimlich maneuver later, the two of them were trudging down the hall to the aspirant halls. While they'd both been in the gymnasium or the combat ring before, the small rooms off to either side had been off limits. Now, a serf stood in front of each door, with a tablet in their hands. In the center of the hall was a marine, helmet tucked under one arm. She was dressed as an Apothecary,
Tepatiqui her brain corrected, with a hair tucked back into a messy and spiked spray of blonde behind and above her that somewhat resembled a ponytail. She gestured, and the assembled aspirants came to attention.
"Good morning, children. I am Huellacuani Etzli, and I'll be overseeing your Tequital today!" The voice was bubbly and exuberant, not at all what Moura expected from a marine, especially a 'legend of the Legion.' "I used to be a Tēlpochyahqueh, so it's nice to be back working with new aspirants again, but I won't be going easy on any of you. Now!" she clapped sharply, "It's time to explain the first test. Each of you will go into one of these rooms. Inside is a small, wooden box for each of you. Your job is to open the box, and bring me the item inside intact. You have one hour once you enter your rooms to complete this. So, gather up four to a team and go to your rooms. The serf at the door will keep your time."
The room broke into frenzied conversation.
"Opening a box? This is going to be easy!" Moura exclaimed but her face fell instantly when he saw who was coming over to join them. "Oh no."
Chipahua swaggered over, long red hair swishing behind. A dark, tanned girl with purple slashes of tattoo across her cheeks that represented some long line in the local military nobility, from what Kamla could gather, and she certainly acted like it, followed by her loyal and lickspittle second, Nenetl.
"So, flatfoot, when will I see you cleaning my rooms? This evening, or tomorrow night? I know serfs have a busy schedule."
"I'm not going to be a serf." Moura mumbled, not meeting Chipahua's gaze, suddenly very conscious of the fact she'd need to look up to do so, being almost a foot shorter despite being the same age. Kamla was taller still but she never made Moura feel small whilst Chipahua seemed to want to do nothing else.
The girl in question crossed her arms, looking down like a raptor from its perch. "So lets go. I only have an hour to watch you flail at this and I don't want to waste it."
"Y-you want to be on our team?" Moura spluttered, confused and stunned.
"No, I'm generously letting you freaks be on mine, entertaining true Tlaxcala may be the only honor you ever hold, I am generous like that. Now come on. I won't ask twice." Chipahua grabbed Moura by her neck so brazenly the smaller girl froze as she was steered towards the nearest door, Kamla stepped forwards only to find Nenetl standing in the way, the sidekick was smaller but her claws were sharp. "Try it." She purred, invitingly.
The serf simply nodded at the four as they approached, keying the door open. The room was the usual stone, lit by an even, blue-white light, and four wooden boxes were at the center of the room. Chipahua let the smaller girl's neck loose, rushing forward to scoop up one of the boxes.
It was perhaps the size of Moura's head. Smooth, light wood, with a slight weight and a low rattle when she turned it. The surface was covered in thin, light lines. The taller girl turned it, this way and that, pushing on the surface, running an extended claw over the seams.
Moura did the same but only with a finger, she held it up to the light and shook it gently. "What do you think?" She whispered to her friend, glad that Chipahua was occupied.
"I think it's set like this to hide a piece that slides or presses down. But it's gonna be really tight, otherwise it would be too obvious. So we should start on one corner and go over it all in order and really carefully."
She started wiggling one corner of her box.
Moura did as she was told, but had a nagging feeling it would not be so easy, otherwise what was the test and why the hour time limit? They kept at it fruitlessly, nothing they tried seemed to work and frustrated grunts and sighs came from all corners, it took a quarter of an hour for Moura to come up with a theory, and almost twice that before she had the nerve to speak of it.
"These aren't the puzzles." She said.
"What?" Kamla asked,
"Shut up freak, don't distract me." Hissed Chipahua so violently Moura lapsed into silence.
But she did not resume fruitlessly playing with the sphere, instead watching the others grow increasingly frustrated and nervous.
"What were you going to say earlier?" Kamla asked.
Moura opened her mouth before glancing at Chipahua fearful of more harsh words or worse, when she noticed the other girl's ears were twitching, they were listening! Her words died in her throat.
"Ignore her, listen to me, none of use are going to end up serfs because no one listened to the only one of us to think of anything in an hour. You're smart Morua, prove it!"
Moura managed a determined, and grateful, nod.
"I don't think these orbs are puzzles," she began.
This time Nenetl was the one spoke up to silence her but was stopped in her tracks by a subtle shake of Chipahua's head.
"They are pieces of one Puzzle, each one is a key to another one." Moura pressed on.
"How?" Kamla asked the obvious question.
"I…don't know." Morua admitted to hisses of derision. "Stop that! Think about it, the test doesn't make sense if you could just move the orb around until it opened suddenly, what would that tell them about us? We've got an hour we could get lucky! And why put four of us together if anyone could pass themselves and the others just watch them do it!
Her logic is that why if it was an individual test send them in teams and every single combination of movement could be done in an hour so if just twisting the thing around the right way did it what does that tell them? Huellacuani Etzli is a genius, she'd not waste time doing things without any reason, what reason would she give four of us four orbs in the same room separate from every other four, why not forty?"
Kamla shook her head slightly disappointed, despairing even. "I don't know Moura, maybe she just…did?"
Chipahua's laughter cut like claws to the throat. "Duuhh I dun know Moura, Maybes she uh…just did?" She mocked mercilessly through cruel imitation. "Looks like the pipsqueak has all the brains.
She strode over, "give me those, we've wasted enough time."
Kamla shrank back. "Back off!"
Chipahua grabbed at the puzzle, but a quick toss put it in Moura's hands. She scrambled with the box as the other two struggled, and a moment later there was a click. The two were connected, locked together somehow.
"Look its working!" She cheered.
Chipahua's look could spoil milk. She glared at the two aspirants, before holding out one hand for her sidekick's puzzle and snapping the two together in the same way. Now, the room was split, two pairs of puzzles joined, but neither moving any further without the other two.
"Give me your boxes." Chipahua finally snapped, holding her other hand out expectantly.
Moura by instinct began to comply. Kamla, however, was faster, snatching the other two from Chipahua's hand and pulling Moura back. "Put them together Moura, I'll hold them off!"
It was a bold aspiration, not that she could take on both of the Tlaxcala at the same time even briefly but that there would be coherence and structure to the ensuing conflict. The illusion lasted all but three seconds before the room became a maelstrom, of biting scratching, punching, hair and tail pulling. Mourna tried her best to avoid it but her best was not good enough, the orbs were knocked out of her hands and at some point she ended up crawling along the floor desperately searching for them as all hell broke loose above her.
The fight only ceased when the door creaked open and the Serf entered, looking expressionlessly at the four girls in tattered and blood stained garments.
"We're finished." Moura declared shoving the obsidian shards forwards, we uh did it together."
The Serf nodded and walked away wordlessly, they followed her after a few moments and emerged into the hallway immediately the subject of many surprised looks. It seemed most of the other teams successful or not had chosen a less violent approach.
The look on Etzli's face when presented with four beaten, bruised, cut and bleeding aspirants and four handfuls of broken obsidian shards was best described as that of a mother watching four kittens bowl each other off the table fighting their own tails.
"Well we usually prefer the butterflies in one piece per person, but I suppose we can let you all past, this one time. Try to remember that if you all pass, you'll be sisters. You can't fight each other when there are xenos to kill!"
Understanding that they had nearly ruined their lives for no good reason they smiled and nodded and plotted bloody murder against each other for putting them in this situation in the first place.
"I'm sure that won't be a problem, Huellacuani Etzli" Chipahua assured her.
Moura was fairly sure there was something nasty hidden in the words though, she'd not spent much time with people but had quickly learned even when they said nice things they could be anything but when her back was turned. She was just glad that they didn't have to stay together now, it was funny but she was more nervous and frustrated with Chipahua than of the tests to decide if she could truly become a Blood Jaguar.
The next test, she would have to do alone. A room awaited, where a Tlaxcala auxiliary stood with a chapter serf, and a small box.
"Come, child." The serf intoned, low and dour.
"Another box?" She asked hoping to be proven wrong.
"A different box. You will place your hand inside." There was a slight rustling behind her, and Moura saw the shadow on the wall raise a pistol to her back.
"And you will not remove it until I say, or the man behind you will shoot you."
Moura was about to ask how long it would take but paused, looking behind her at the armed Auxiliary and then back to the expression of the Serf.
"Okay," she nodded tamely.
She raised her hand and gingerly placed it in the box's small opening wondering what was waiting for her inside, her mind already imagining small animals or sharp objects or maybe something gross and disgusting? But there was nothing, she could feel the inner walls with her wiggling fingertips.
She looked in askance at the Serf and opened her mouth to ask the obvious question, her new found reticence fading with confusion.
"Speak and Fail," came the stern warning.
She stayed silent, looking down at the empty box, wondering just what sort of game this was. Her first clue came in the form of a tingling sensation, like her fingers were numb from being sat on for too long, painfully so. The numb sensation soon gave way however the pain remained, intensified even. She kept her mouth shut, sealing her whimpers within her shivering body.
It felt as if she had placed her hand inside an oven, every hair was a burning candlewick but the pain did not remain on the surface, it burrowed deep into her skin, worming its way through her dragging razorwire behind it. She wanted to scream, she wanted to bite off her own hand, it would hurt less. She fell to her knees, but kept the hand upraised but this did not impress the Serf who began to raise the box higher.
"Stand or fail." The Serf insisted mercilessly
Moura stood, tears flowing freely. The skin had fallen from her flesh, her bones were splinters, her blood was liquid phosprex. Energy crackled in her free hand.
"Strike and fail." The hateful Serf warned but it was a different voice that spoke, a colder, darker one, the voice of the Psyker who had tried to kill her, who had hurt her brother, who had tried to feed off both their souls as if they were nothing but spiritual meat.
'I beat you once!' She screamed in her head.
The memory was painful, she remembered watching Val be torn away, having to reach out and drag him back, what was left of him, she remembered before that when she had first left wandered the streets, lost and alone, frightened and guilty and weak. She had survived that. She survived that every day. What could a box do to her that was worse?
The box sensed her defiance, the pain got worse. She raised her other hand, the serf began to repeat the warning, Moura placed her second hand in the box along with the first and
smiled.
This time it was a much smaller gathering waiting in the halls, but at least Kamla was still there, her ears flattened in discomfort, there was a trickle of blood running down the corner of her mouth. The looked at each other in relief and excitement.
"You made it!" They cried in unison.
"You made it!" Came a sarcastic echo as Chipahua strutted up to them. "As if it was an accomplishment, all you did was keep a hand in a box. Of course you succeeded, doing nothing is your greatest skill."
"If its so hard where is Nenetl?" Kamla asked, angrily.
Moura realized that Chipahua's friend was gone. Chipahua did not seem too upset about it judging by how she rolled her eyes.. "Who cares where a serf is? At least she did the decent thing and got rid of some dead weight, maybe follow her example?"
"She was your friend!" Moura gasped.
"What are you? Six? I'm becoming a
Telpochcalli. Maybe you offworld freaks don't understand what that means. We're warriors, hunters, the night belongs to us, all foes are prey. Strength, stealth, speed and sharp claws are what we can rely upon. She wasn't worthy of the legion so she's not worthy of my time. Maybe take a lesson from that and spare yourselves some pain."
"An interesting perspective, young one."
Moura gasped and then felt angry with herself, Chipahua couldn't have noticed the
Tepatiqui sneaking up behind her but she gave no visible sign of surprise.
"I stand by it, as I do all our traditions, Huellacuani Etzli" she affirmed in tone that was at once deferential yet supremely confident.
"One must sacrifice to prevent the return of the Long Night, that is certain. What makes a sacrifice worthwhile, aspirants?"
"What it brings back into the world, those who offer their lives for the greater glory and salvation of their kin." Chipahua stated confidently.
"I don't know." Moura confessed. "I've seen a lot of people sacrifice themselves, for their friends, their world…their family but most of them didn't want to make a sacrifice they just had to because that was how it happened, and the ones that did make a choice…" She trailed off looking at her feet. "I don't know." She repeated.
"You can't sacrifice anything you do not possess. It is the voluntary nature of the sacrifice that is important. Whether you give up money, some future course of action, or your life, you cannot know the outcome beforehand. But you can decide what you consider the decision to be worth, and you can spend your time, your effort, or your life to see it through. Not every sacrifice will be repaid alone. Sometimes others will have to carry it through for you. But that is the spirit of the legion: To find the most efficient, most precise level of force, the minimum price, for victory and stability, and then to seize it no matter what stands in our way. Not to waste or sacrifice something we do not value or do not possess."
She crosses her arms. "Keep that in mind, Chipahua. I can train anyone to fight like a Jaguar. I cannot train anyone to think like one. Now go. You have two more tests to fulfill and the three of you will have to work together."
A single outstretched finger points to the next room.
The Aspirants moved, each lost in their own thoughts but Chipahua's saunter was back within three paces.
The room was cluttered with knicknacks, items of varying shapes, sizes and colors littering the walls and floors. At the center was a table with a deep-set indentation of a complex, vaguely ovoid shape and a clock. The door slid quietly closed, clicking shut, and the clock began to tick.
A single small paper sat on the table: Escape as a group or fail as a group.
"Another puzzle. Great." Kamla sighed.
"I don't like them very much actually." Moura admitted.
"Do they just not have sarcasm on Stormgard?" her friend inquired disbelievingly.
"I don't know? I've never seen one but I didn't get out a lot." Moura explained, red faced.
"Shut up, the both of you." Chipahua commanded.
"Who put you in charge?" Kamla demanded angrily
"You did by being half of the stupidity in this room. Maybe more than half, now be quiet and let me think!"
"We can't fight!" Moura exclaimed.
"No one asked you Flatfoot." Chipahua hissed.
"She was agreeing with you, you!"
"It doesn't matter!" Moura exclaimed urgently. "I'm sorry for speaking out of turn," she offered towards Chipahua who seemed as taken aback as Kamla. "You are right…ma'am, we need to focus on getting out of here, together."
The redhaired aspirant inclined her head gracefully, "If you spoke sense more often maybe I'd not have to tell you to shut up, learn from your…friend Stretch. This clearly a multi part puzzle, probably similar to the one in the first room. We need to collect the right parts of the key, do what I say and this won't take long."
Moura shrank under the look of betrayed disgust from her friend but she knew Chipahua would simply never back down, so they had to give her what she wanted if they were going to get anything for themselves.
"Stretch, Flatfoot, you each take a corner from the table to the corner of the room. We need something that fits that hole in the center of the table. Find that first. Work from the walls down towards the center and split things up by general shape, we might need them later."
Moura nodded and scurried off, Kamla stared resentfully for several moments before sniffing and followed her meeker friend. The room was even more cluttered than they first imagined, Chipahua even found a loose tile in the floor that revealed a hidden stash so they had to start all over again, and that was before they even fully knew what they were looking for. It was tedious and frustrating and somehow only became more so with progress, by the time they believed they were one piece short…
"Fuck off! Check your own side again," Kamla did not take the ninth or so insinuation she had missed something any better than she had the previous eight.
"I
know its not on my side." Chipahua retorted.
"We're running out of time." Moura reminded them quietly.
"So stop wasting it and keep looking, its in here somewhere." Chipahua barked as she crossed the room and started methodically searching once more, now entirely and unmistakably on Kamla's side.
"You fucking arrogant-" Kamla began before Moura jumped in front of her, palms open.
"If we fight each other we all fail!" She reminded her friend.
For a moment she feared Kamla cared more about hitting Chipahua than she did becoming a Telpochcalli, it was close, too close.
"Fine but I'm searching
her side." Kamla grunted, earning a dismissive snort from Chipahua for her trouble.
The trio continued their imperfectly cooperative effort, scouring the room as the seconds ticked by. Moura kept stealing glances at the great clock, relentlessly ticking off the last seconds of their one chance to become Astartes.
"Look for the puzzle not the clock idiot!" Chipahua hissed.
Her strained voice betrayed her fear, Moura had never heard the Tlaxcala frightened before, part of her enjoyed it, she was tempted to wait a few more seconds, who knows when she'd hear it again and Chipahua had made her life a misery…doing just that sort of thing.
"That's what I am doing, they are the same thing, the clock is the only part of the room we've not searched, its the only place we can be."
"If we break the clock they will think us cheating the test!" Chipahua warned.
"What's the penalty for cheating?" Kamla asked, a grin growing transforming her anxious features.
"Enserfment." Moura answered.
"Right, what's the penalty for failing?"
"Enserfment." Chiaphua giggled, moving over to the clock staring intently at it. "There is a seem! The offworlder was right!"
The barest pressure of her claw was enough for the clock to split in two revealing the final piece within.
"We did it!" Moura shrieked, hugging Kamla.
"Yeah we did!"
Chipahua rolled her eyes at the as she sauntered over to the rest of the puzzle and causally slid the final piece in as if it was of no importance to her even as the door to the chamber opened once again.
The chamber now is much more empty. Of the perhaps 100 aspirants, only 40 remained now, between the three tests. But Huellacuani Etzli still stood there, looking at them proudly.
"Good, girls. You have made it to the final test. Behind me," She hooked a thumb at the door, last unused in the test chamber, "Is a locker room with padding and knives. Each of you will go through. Each of you will take the armor in your locker. You will line up, two by two, and pass through into the ring. One of our last group of graduates is there, a Aspirant Scout. You will have to beat her in a fight."
The room is quiet and sullen at the news. A full Tlamanih is not so bad as a Jaguar, but they are a decade older, fully trained and implanted with all the organs.
"To win, you must either push the scout from the ring, draw blood, or remain in the fight for two minutes without leaving the ring, yielding, or dying. Good luck to you all, and those who succeed, I will see you on the other side. Now go."r
Moura and Kamla stood besides each other.
"Don't let it get to your head, its just two minutes." Kamla advised. "User your magic thing, they won't be ready for that."
"I'm not sure if that's allowed…"
"Anything that is not forbidden is permitted," Came Chipahua's voice from behind them, surely even you aren't dumb enough to discard your main advantage in combat."
"Quiet in the ranks." Came a commanding bark preventing any retaliation from Kamla and leaving Moura pondering the advice.
The group filed quietly into the locker room. It was almost eerie, passing the lockers with names of those who had not passed the tests. Moura found her own quickly, unlocked with a thumbprint. Inside was a small knife, and a loose suit. A padded helmet, chestpiece, bracers and sabatons. A skirt of linked padded leather straps covered the waist to the knee.
It was fast work to change into it, though she needed a bit of help from the aspirant next to her to get the back straps of the cuirass and returned the favor, looping the tight leather line through its eyelets to keep her cuirass in place.
"Good luck." The other girl said quietly, as Moura finished. "We're all in this together."
Moura nodded back. "And you."
But the conversation was quiet and fast, and soon she was in line, waiting. Each two minutes, two more would go in. Nothing could be heard from the other side. No cheers. No groans or screams. Nothing but waiting, knowing you were about to go into the fight. Anticipation and terror mixed and swirled like the water through Stormguard's pipes, or the rain into the terrace canals of the city, but they flowed through Moura's mind and into her gut.
She was standing at the door. It was time. A serf nodded and pressed the button. A cylinder set in the wall revolved, revealing a door to the inside. She stepped in and as the cylinder rotated, the door behind her vanished and the one ahead opened, setting her into a room. A pair of walkways, perhaps two feet wide, led to and from a circle four meters in diameter, suspended over a pool of water below. Above, a glass dome separated the chamber from seats for watchers. Nobody was there, bar one…
Xochimitl was sat alone, in the front row. A scout herself, but a veteran. Even still she was out of her armor and in loose Tlaxcala dress, draping twists of fabric that represented her rank and branch even out of armor. Without the armor Moura could see the deed tattoos that covered her arms and neck fully. But still.. She was here to watch. Like Chipahua's parents would be, she assumed.
Moura showed no emotion outwardly, she would not embarrass the woman who just by being here to witness had marked her as family. Moura loved her for that and so much more.
The scout was there, holding her own knife.
"Ready?"
"Are you?" She had meant to sound confident, like a seasoned warrior, but to her ears it fell flat, an insecure boast from a scared little girl. "Yes." She amended quickly, "I am ready."
The older girl said nothing, just dropping her stance and holding her arms apart wide. Watching. Moura had started to be able to identify what the Tlaxcala felt by their ears and tail, it was focus. Hunters gaze. Slight twitches of the tail as she judged balance, prepared for fast movement. Ears focused with slight twitches of peripheral attention. Eyes narrowed, keeping focus only on Moura. She seemed to be expecting Moura to move first. Though of course, that couldn't last for long. If Moura didn't move, the scout would.
Did she know about Moura's powers? It wasn't sure one way or the other. Moura decided to mimic the stance, preparing, wreathing her mind in power to strike when… there!
The Scout leapt, low and straight like an arrow for Moura's chest, and Moura dropped to one knee, hands flying out in a broad arc as she let the power flow through her and burst out in a crackle of static like a shield before her. The scout's foot dropped, trajectory changed as she leapt high and bounced back off the ceiling in a driving kick that Moura could only scramble away from before impact. The clang of her boot hitting the floor brought a hitch to her breath: a blow like that would be seriously painful if not debilitating.
She barely had time to think before the Marine was on her again, claw going high over her head as she ducked and directed a wedge of force at the scout's feet, aiming to drive her to the ground, and it worked momentarily as the scout fell, turning that fall into a shoulder roll and driving back at Moura's chest with a kick that knocked her back and nearly drove the wind from her lungs.
"A little librarian, are you?" The scout said, pacing quietly to Moura's left, more casual now. "But you're not just throwing bolts and strikes at me. You don't have anything that cuts, do you."
Moura only had a moment to react before the scout was on her again, a low sweep against her own balance that she hastily jumped over, letting the knife drive down… Not even a chance. The scout caught the blow easily, twisting the knife from her hands and throwing her to the ground, knife clattering away.
"Too aggressive, little sister. I guess you lose this one." She drove a powerful fist downwards in a strike that would have broken Moura's skull had it connected with her flesh instead of the shard of ice she had ripped from the warp into its path, there was a hideous sound of thunder, breaking bones and tearing flesh and armor before the two were thrown apart.
Moura stared in dismay at the ruin of the other fighter's fist even as the buzzer announced her victory.
"Damn. Good showing, kid. Got right through my pads." The scout called back, waving a ruined gauntlet and multiple twisted fingers, despite the clear pain in her voice she was smiling a disconcertingly pleased grin.
"Our foes are going to have a real bad day when you arrive on the field little sister." She pointed at the door with the other hand. "Go on through. Make us proud."
The same sort of cylinder door, but on the other side was a courtyard with all those aspirants… no, the Youths who had passed. Full Jaguars now, if not yet trained or equipped. She spotted Kamla waving, bruised and bleeding but still standing, next to Chipahua sporting a torn ear and black eye.
"KAMLA!" Moura shrieked sprinting over and practically leaping into her friend's arms. "I knew you'd make it! I knew it!"
"Sure, that's why you're so calm about it." Kamla joked wincing, "Looks like you had a softer landing, maybe I should get powers too."
"Sorry…and you don't need them." Moura mumbled, hopping back.
"Guess I didn't, it was close though. She had me right on the line when the buzzer went, longest two minutes of my life."
"Or just flip them out of the arena. They're bigger and stronger than us, that means it's harder for them to stop." Chipahua remarks casually.
"You're missing half an ear." Kamla snarked back. "Don't pretend you're miss perfect."
"None of us are perfect, but we're all Jaguars now, sisters." Moura tried to calm the waters.
Both of them grunted dismissively at that and then upon realizing they symmetry turned away from each other, leaving Moura briefly pained and then inspired. "See! You have so much in common, you're both stubborn jerks!"
This time the grunts held some begrudging amusement.
"We'll get there." Moura promised them.
"Well we have the next ten years, I suppose." Chipahua shrugged. "And you did make it through the tests."
She did. She had. This golden city, the Jaguars… they would be her home now. She'd made it.
That, in the end, was enough.
