It had been hours now, perhaps a day since Malik had come to the Academy, and he was already hard at work.
The Shams beat down on a long and wide flat bed of stone atop a massive hill.
Old training dummies, inscribed with runes all over, half-rotted from time and overuse, littered the edges of this platform.
Grass, ever present in this land, poked through the cracks, and birds nested in the surrounding watchtowers.
It was apparent that nobody had touched this place in decades, preferring other less physical methods of teaching.
Well, that was going to end now.
Malik, without any introductions, had dragged them all here.
Ten students.
His eyes scanned them.
And they paused only on three.
For only them he bothered to remember.
Noor, surprisingly the same dancer he saw yesterday, an abandoned heiress to the Al-Ayan throne, was now elbow-deep in dirt, pulling thorny vines from the base of a rusted weapon rack.
