When Song turned away from us to walk back to his position at the front of the dojo, Hagar shot me a wink and mouthed the word, “smooth.”
She certainly was.
“Let us begin.” Professor Song clapped his hands sharply, and hidden trapdoors I’d never seen before opened in the floor. Six cages rose from those gaps, scrivened constructs hunkered down within their bars. The instant the bottoms of the cages were even with our feet, the bars vanished, and the artificial warriors leaped to the attack.
The creatures were short and squat humanoids with dark, almost rocky skin covered in complex, glowing patterns. They had heads, but no facial features. Despite their stumpy legs and lack of eyes, they moved straight at us with surprising speed. Before anyone on my team could react, they were nearly in striking range.
Eric was the first of us to respond. He leaped forward, flames burning around his fists. Rather than punching his enemies, though, Eric landed in a crouch in front of them and drove both hands into the dojo’s floor. Sheets of flame erupted from the point of impact and blasted away from Eric in every direction.
The two enemies closest to him aborted their charges and threw their arms up to defend themselves. Fire washed over their stony bodies, leaving behind scorch marks but little damage.
The same couldn’t be said for Eric’s allies.
The rings of flame blasted across Clem and Abi, who both yelped in surprise and abandoned their defenses to slap at their burning clothing.
The singed constructs ran around Eric, who was still crouched, to attack Abi. Each of the artificial warriors unleashed a haymaker punch at my friend.
Distracted by the fact that he was on fire, Abi didn’t defend himself and went down hard. The punches slammed him to the dojo’s floor and knocked the wind out of his lungs. He lay there, gasping, trying to cycle his breath to gather the energy needed for his defensive techniques. Unfortunately, if you can’t breathe, you also can’t cycle. His core had some jinsei in it, just not enough.
Clem slapped out the fire on her clothing in time to see one of the constructs barreling toward her. She leaped back, nearly collided with Eric, planted one heel firmly on the dojo’s floor, and unleashed a spinning kick at her attacker.
This was the technique she’d been working on the year before, and it looked like she’d finally mastered it. A blast of wind aspects and jinsei burst away from her kick like an invisible scythe and slammed into the construct an instant before it could punch her. Her Thunder Sweep hurled the foe across the dojo and slammed it into the wall. The construct slid down to the floor, squat legs out in front of it. Almost as soon as it had fallen, though, the creature scrambled back to its feet.
“Jace!” Hagar shouted.
I’d been so distracted by the constructs kicking my friends around one side of the dojo I hadn’t noticed a threat approaching from behind me. Hagar had one of the remaining opponents tangled up in sticky Blood Darts, but the other had slipped past her and was on a collision course with me.
There weren’t enough aspects lodged in my aura to summon my serpents. I’d started cycling my breathing the instant I’d seen the cages rise to the floor and had enough jinsei in my core to start summoning my fusion blade. Unfortunately, my attacker would be on top of me long before the weapon was in my hand.
My only option was to retreat. My disciple-level core had strengthened my body beyond what I’d dreamed possible in the labor camps. Before the delamination had begun, it would have been no effort at all to leap all the way across the dojo. At that moment, though, I was far from full strength.
My leap away from the construct was clumsy and ended with me crouched next to Clem. We’d nearly collided when I’d landed, and Clem had only avoided the impact with a quick step away. That put her directly in the path of the enemy she’d knocked across the room, which came at her with both fists flailing in the air.
Clem shouted in surprise when the construct’s blow knocked her flying past me. She landed hard on her tailbone and skidded along the dojo’s floor with a yelp.
“Enough,” Professor Song barked.
The constructs immediately abandoned their attacks and trundled back to the spots on the floor where the bars of their cages had reappeared. By the time I’d helped my friends back to their feet, our enemies were gone.
The look on Professor Song’s face told me that had gone every bit as poorly as I’d feared.
“Separately you are strong,” Professor Song said. “Against most foes that is enough. In the Gauntlet, though, you must become a team. As a team, against another team, the five of you are very weak.”
There was no denying that. In less than thirty seconds, two of us had been downed, and the rest hadn’t managed to take even a single construct out of the fight. I tried to imagine what it would have looked like if we’d faced off against the dragons.
It would’ve been a massacre.
And at least part of it was my fault.
I wasn’t fast enough. I wasn’t strong enough. I was supposed to support my team, and I hadn’t managed to do that.
“Teach us where we’re doing wrong,” I said to Professor Song. “Show us how five can become one, honored Professor.”
We all five bowed low to Song, and he returned the show of respect. He hadn’t been trying to needle us with his earlier assessment of our skills. He’d wanted us to see that we weren’t ready for this fight. Now that that had
