The War of Elevens| Book 1 of the Space Thief Chronicles

Chapter 12| Feral

That boy was definitely worth a few more hearty insults.

He was in the rest of Lilly's instruction periods; he spoked terribly about anyone and anything anytime he got the chance and, as he was incredible with magic, everyone had to know about his amazing skills. Lilly, who was too terrified to even try twisting her hands or position them the way the loony-looking Instructor Benjami showed them, watched with painful indignation as he gloated to anyone who would listen about his skills. 

Lilly could not stop seeing Hailey Vatakai inside him.

Kaitlynn leaned over as Instructor Benjami admired the patch of grass grown in the boy's hand. "Don't let him get to you, Lilly with two ls."

"How were you just going to walk away from him earlier?" Lilly asked, planting her hands on her hips. 

Kaitlynn wiggled her fingers like she was waving to an invisible friend, and seven silver droplets of water drifted from her palm into the air. "He's just not worth stealing my joy." 

"You are awfully positive."

"And you are awfully negative." Kaitlynn waved her hand, and the water droplets disappeared.

"All you pansies," Instructor Benjami announced proudly, "watch Maxy here! He knows how to grow vines from his wrist, and that shows some serious control!"

"It's Max," the boy corrected him.

"That's what I said." 

Instructor Benjami looked like a mad scientist—his dark hair stood up in every direction like it had just been jolted with static electricity. He had a spiral-shaped scar curving around his left eye and wore a patchwork jumpsuit of many faded orange fabrics. He was barefoot, extremely jittery, and spoke in a squeaky nasal voice.

The training room they stood in was about the size of a classroom in Eldnac, an airy, colorful space with many windows. Tiny humanoid creatures with gray leathery skin and ruby eyes peered at the Privates from the plants at the windowsills.

Instructor Benjami said his job was to teach them the art of perfecting the thought-process behind summoning magic. "Become one with the spirit of the magical river," he would say, wiggling his fingers like a wizard or a psychic. "Don't think of yourselves as trainees. Think of yourselves as trees bending to the bright rays of warm summer sunshine. Drink in the sweet milky taste of magic. Be one with the sweet milky taste of magic..."

"Is he on something?" one boy asked Lilly and Kaitlynn at one point in the instruction period. Lilly didn't doubt it for one second. 

For the next two instruction periods dealing with magic, Lilly's anxiety decreased. Things were going well. Many kids struggled to make their magic work the way the instructors wanted, and Lilly was happy to slide into that group. She kept her hands low, her eyes on the ground, and her breathing deep so she wouldn't give in to the sweaty, shaky catastrophe anxiety made of her body. 

She could keep her magic a secret. She could. 

Lilly believed that until the last instruction period of the day, where everything went to hell. 

The moment the Privates stepped into the training room, a large rotunda capped with stained-glass supported by dark mahogany walls, the atmosphere settled into a general feeling of creepiness. Perhaps it was the picture-less, colorless walls, or the shadows that seeped out from the edges of the room and created long round shapes that spread over the granite floor, or the fact that there were no plants save for a patch of rotten roses poking up from a hairline crack on the far side of the room. It was, in the purest sense, very un-Shifter World.