Hovercars belonging to the rich families stood outside the gates of Skyfall Academy. Students compared awakened beasts and pretended not to notice the mud on my uniform.
Lenny noticed.
He had served Leon Li since before enrolling and treated every sign of weakness in someone else as a chance to remind people how close he was to the heir. Beside him sat a C-rank crushing ape: broad-shouldered, wearing a metal breastplate, its arms reaching almost to the ground.
"Rex Wang came after all," Lenny said. "I thought that dead egg would have you applying for a cleaner's post straight away."
He spoke loudly enough for the students at the gates to hear. Several people stopped.
Styx stirred under my collar.
I touched the cloth with two fingers. She went still.
"Going to show us your pet, or are you afraid the wind will blow it away?" Lenny reached towards my chest.
The ape leaned towards me and bared its teeth. Styx could pass through an eye or an ear before the beast raised a fist. After Brutus, I knew something else as well: with death, part of the victim might pass into me.
I stepped back.
Lenny took it for fear and laughed. He had no idea how close he had come to his own death.
The judge at the gates ordered the participants through into the training hunting zone. Lenny withdrew his hand, but promised to meet me in the central arena.
Beyond the fence lay a forest where the academy released weak beasts for the first trial. The students scattered along the paths with their beasts. I waited until the noise died away, then released Styx.
Our first prey was a grass rat. The mosquito went in under its jaw, and the little beast died before it could squeak. The System displayed the points again, but this time they brought no image from someone else. They brought hunger.
It came through the bond so clearly that my own stomach seemed to cramp.
We hunted for several more minutes, and Styx grew faster, but the hunger did not fade. After the next kill, the voice reported that division was available.
A red split appeared along Styx's back. A second mosquito climbed out, then a third. They were smaller and paler, almost transparent.
The newborns could not hunt, so they covered the rat's carcass and began to drink. Their abdomens darkened and their wings grew stronger. Within minutes, the first soldiers were holding position beside Styx.
The first brood nearly died on the next target. A stone lizard pressed its belly to the ground and covered every soft part of its body. The soldiers battered blindly against its scales while I tried to direct each one separately. Styx flew aside and sent me a brief image: not dozens of separate points, but a single ring.
I gathered the mosquitoes above the lizard's head. They descended together, forcing the creature to watch the cloud. Meanwhile Styx went in beneath its tail, where the plates parted.
That was how the first rule of the swarm came about. I did not have to see through every soldier's eyes. I only had to give the nearest ones a target. The rest copied their movement.
The rule worked more smoothly with every hunt. Some soldiers distracted, others searched for an opening, while a third group stayed with the carcass and carried blood to the new clutches. The System showed our growing numbers, but the figure now concealed different tasks. A lost scout could not be replaced with a heavy soldier simply because both occupied a single line.
The System offered exact numbers. I stopped listening after the first hundred. Something else mattered far more: every new mosquito needed blood and flesh. If the swarm went hungry, it would not disappear. It would start hunting for food on its own.
I led the brood deeper into the forest, choosing beasts that would not have time to raise the alarm.
Branches cracked beyond a fallen tree.
Lily Lin burst out of the bushes. Her uniform was torn at the shoulder, her face smeared with mud. The small light spirit she had bonded with was fading in her arms.
Lily saw the swarm and stopped.
"Is that your dead beast?"
Thirty metres behind her, an armoured rhinoceros was smashing through young trees. Black smoke covered its horn. The beast had trampled Lily's spirit and was now following the scent of blood.
She could turn me in to the teachers, tell Lenny or Leon. The System was already marking her as a possible human target.
Styx did not wait for an order. She flew up to my face, then turned towards the rhinoceros.
She had chosen the threat.
"If we get out of this, tell no one what you saw," I said.
Lily looked at the dark cloud around me, then at the dying spirit.
"Get us out of here and I'll even forget your name."
Lily tried to lift the light spirit. The creature flickered and almost went out.
"Leave him behind the rock," I said.
"He isn't a thing."
"If you carry him, the rhinoceros will follow his energy."
Lily clutched the spirit to her. There was no time to argue. She took off her academy cloak, wrapped the creature in it and hid him among the roots, leaving one edge of the cloth open.
"I'll come back," she said to the spirit, not to me.
The rhinoceros lowered its head.
I told Lily to run for the narrow passage between the rocks. She did not argue. The swarm spread out low over the ground, and Styx rose above the rest.
I did not need to pierce the beast's armour at once. First I had to make it choose the wrong target.
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