“This is where we train the Children.” Michael leaned against the back wall as Colton looked around the wide space, swathed in shadows. A poorly made mat covered the center of the floor, as if the room were trying to be a dojo, and dummies lined the walls next to a small rack of wooden sticks. She pushed off the wall and tossed him a wooden sword from the lowest rung on the rack, “Show me what you already know, kid.”

Colton fumbled the sword as he tried to catch it, earning a cocked eyebrow from Michael, and quickly pulled a dummy from the wall. He cleared his throat and steadied his hands on the hilt of the wooden sword. Michael’s gaze burrowed into him as she waited for him to do something.

He closed his eyes, running through every training that he’d received before landing on something he thought was best to showcase his skills. Colton’s arms flowed through the motions of the session that he had nearly perfected over the years he’d spent learning and pushing himself to be the best, this time managing not to break the practice sword as he went.

Perfection was the goal. He needed to be perfect to save people from Evan’s fate. He couldn’t let the next two suffer the way the previous four had. He had to be more than they could be. He had brains on top of brawn; he knew paths they wouldn’t have thought of.

Chamuel will be the last, or he’d die proving his worth.

“If I didn’t already know…” She mumbled to herself as he finally stopped his showcase.

Chamuel looked to Michael, his confusion written all over his face. “Know what?”

“How Bation caught onto you being anything special.” She replied simply, “We have starving children with better skills than you just showed me.”

“That’s impossible.” He tried to defend himself, “Starving children are better than me? I had the best trainers money can buy.”

“Clearly, money cannot buy focus.” Michael pushed aside the dummy with clear annoyance before setting her focus back on him. Her first strike hit him squarely in the chest with enough force to bruise for weeks. “You aren’t even going to try to dodge? And you want to be trusted in the field?”

She threw blow after blow at him, slowly ramping up her speed as he began to successfully dodge her attacks. Soon, he had more bruises than he had skin. Blood leaked out from underneath the golden bands wrapped around his arms, but that wasn’t the pain he felt.

He felt humiliated. A teenager with less experience than he had could somehow beat him that badly without even breaking a sweat? It was hard to wrap his mind around. She might have experience on the streets, but he had actual training with people who had dedicated their lives to the craft. He had his own winning streak, longer than her recorded history, that she had just ruined.

Michael watched him recover, watching the anger flood his face as he caught his breath. She waited for as long as he needed before moving to the other side of the large room and opening a door leading into a pitch-black nothing he cared about anymore.

He was sure that whatever she was leading him into was just more ammunition to beat the remnants of him down into dust she’d use to line the beach or study his every flaw as though he were a picture book that she could read to the children that were apparently better than he was.

She looked back at him, waiting in the breeze that came from the portal to nothing. Her eyes were gentler as she waited for him to rise from his knees, but the judgment never left them.

I asked for this. The words echoed in his mind as he finally rose, taking several shaky steps toward the open door. Colton prepared for the worst, half expecting the opening to lead into a bottomless pit that she was going to ask him to find a way out of.

He was shocked by the cool ocean breeze that rushed by him, picking up tufts of hair and rustling his sweat-soaked tank. As his eyes adjusted to the dim light, he approached the railing that Michael was using as a chair and was greeted by a breathtaking sight of a city he wasn’t expecting on what he’d assumed to be a completely rural island.

It was like the island had been frozen in a time he’d never seen. Some of the streets had street lights with bright LED bulbs and perfectly paved paths alongside the crumbling buildings. While others were mostly gravel, where groups of people stood together, talking and laughing with each other over a fire where they cooked their dinners.

Some of the windows were lit with the soft glow of candlelight, while others were lit from the front by the fires. Some people still walked around the city, going about their days without a care in the world on dates, outings, or just going home from a long day at work.

The Island of Magnolia was beautiful at night; he could only imagine what it was like in the daytime when more people were out. It seemed like a perfect paradise with a slow pace that no one seemed to want to speed up.

No one seemed concerned about anything bad that could happen. No one seemed haunted by past losses like the ones he carried on his shoulders.

He didn’t think he could get sick of watching the tree line sway in the breeze and the window lights blow out, the boats being tied up in the docks for the night, and the last of the stragglers make their way into their homes.

It reminded him of what the Garden of Eden was described as. A paradise free from sin and anguish that the rest of the world suffered through.

“Could you believe this used to be a war zone just a few years ago?” Michael spoke softly, breaking through the buzzing of bugs flying around and the gentle crashing of waves on the nearby beach.

“I would not,” Colton tore his eyes from the scenery in front of him.

“It was a hellscape when I came here; no one trusted anyone who wasn’t blood, and sometimes not even then. People were dying left and right, some from starvation and some from murder. It was hard to dismantle why it was like that, and even harder to get our people to trust that we were trying to help. Auriel brought more food, and I brought order. Raphael helped fix the broken economy, and Gabriel brought trust.” Her expression held years beyond her age as she spoke, as though she had lived through centuries in her sixteen years. “It’s no secret that I don’t like that you are here. I cannot fathom what you could possibly bring onto this island that the four of us haven’t already.”

“But you have a plan.”

“I do, but you do not have a place in it. Not yet.”

Colton nodded, turning his head back to the darkening world. “How do I start?”

“You can attack, with more power than necessary, in everything you do. You cannot dodge, you cannot aim, and you have no consistency. All you have, kind of, is power and manners, and I’ve only been told of your manners.”

He let out a hiss of air from his nose, not liking anything she was saying but knowing better than to try to argue. Especially since he already knew that nothing she said was entirely wrong.

“First thing in the morning, I’m sending you back up here to meet with the Deacon teacher so he can go through Angel Basics.”

“Angel Basics?”

“Basic training. The rules, regulations, and basics of fighting alongside Bation’s Angels, if you somehow ever make it out of our offices.”

After a few more minutes, Michael hopped down from the railing and led him back to the Saint Wing for the night.

The next morning was harder than the rest. His body ached from his showcase the previous night, and his mind raced with every possibility for the new day. He wanted to find an in with others so that he could get their stories, and somehow tear the Princess away from what he assumed was an overly packed schedule that she had to keep.

He barely had time to make it into the kitchen before he was torn away from the group to start his lessons for the day. Michael walked faster through the back passages that never seemed to get any other traffic than she had the night before, not that she had been moving slowly the first time, and Colton had to jog to keep up with her.

In the new daylight, the “Deacon’s” training room looked welcoming and felt more like a space made for kids.

“Sit laus tibi, Chamuel, I did not expect you to be ready to train so soon. I’m glad to see you healthy.” A tall man crossed the room over to them as his reopened wounds protested the healthy comment, kneeling directly in front of him. Colton didn’t know any Latin, but he could still recognize it.

“S5 requires a lesson on our rules and basics.” Michael approached him and leaned over, adding more privately that she didn’t want Colton to hear. He wasn’t sure if he’d know what she had said even if it was spoken clearly, as it sounded like more Latin.

“Gratias tibi ago, Michael.” He nodded as she left them, going out through the main door instead of the back way they had taken in.

Colton had a sinking feeling as his new teacher looked up at him for what seemed like the first time. “I’m afraid I don’t know much Latin,”

“Quod est ignominia, Chamuel. Latine his diebus plerumque loquor.” He rose from his knees and motioned for him to follow as he continued to exclusively speak Latin for the entire time they were together.

As time went on frustration bubbled in his core, it seemed like that was the goal Michael had given the teacher, he rattled on and on pointing around the room wildly as though he were pointing out the posters on the wall in reference to what he was saying, but half the time he pointed there was no poster to be seen and more often than that the poster only seemed relevant to the children he normally taught.

He found himself lucky that the posters were mostly in English.

In an otherwise English-speaking country, he didn’t expect Latin to be his biggest obstacle at the beginning of his journey. He expected the hazing, hundreds of tests, distrust, and months of restrictive training.

If the immediate acceptance wasn’t suspicious enough, the intentional language barrier gave him extra pause. Not enough for him to want to turn and run far from the island and never return, but it was leaving him with lasting second thoughts that planted doubt in his head. Doubt that drilled into the folds of his brain.

By the time the kids came, his head spun in a thousand directions, having spent hours with a trainer who all but refused to train him. Several times, he had motioned for Colton to do something, usually spar, only for him to dodge and look to him as though he had missed some obvious cue. Something Colton believed until he spotted the teacher doing the same motions with the kids and receiving the same response from them.

“S3 left you here alone already?” Father Bation stepped beside him seemingly from nowhere as they watched the kids train, looking as though he were there to do rounds, ensuring everything was running smoothly. But the sudden chumminess of his demeanor, directly contrasting the behavior that he’d received from him since they met after the gala, gave him enough pause to be cautious of even that assumption.

“Yeah, and left no other orders.” He tried to echo the tone Bation had used.

He hummed thoughtfully as he watched the kids. “That is unusual for her; she always has everything planned to the second.” he patted Chamuel’s shoulder, “Come, you can help me out since your team does not need you today.”

Colton was disappointed as they left, but he wasn’t leaving entirely empty-handed. On the poster that the teacher pointed to the most, there were three rules that he assumed were the same rules and expectations that Michael wanted him to learn.

1. Do unto others as you would have done to yourself

2. Protect and serve the innocent

3. Destroy evil or die trying