Sleep Cycle - 2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Breakfast is uneventful.

I spend the time by stirring my baked beans around and around and staring at Annette. She insists on sitting with me and I have no choice but to let her.

Survival is the first rule at this estate.

Good manners are the second.

The owner here makes a point of being perfect when it comes to dining room etiquette. Well, no one’s perfect, so we act like it.

On second thought, I don’t know why we bother with manners anyway. We’re soldiers; we’re supposed to be anything but. Maybe it’s because we’re all girls here, and our dorm matron thinks that we all need to conduct ourselves like refined ladies even when we’re slaughtering troops in a gory saturnalia of cruelty.

Redundant, much?

But maybe I’m getting ahead of myself.

Isn’t it funny how you always understand what you mean in your head, yet when you open your trap you get nothing but cross-eyed looks of incomprehension?

That’s what’s happening to me here.

Let’s go back and start at the important details while I attempt to explain myself.

We’re called Immortality Seekers. Stupid name, I know, but else are we supposed to call ourselves? There are only six of us, including Annette and me, and we’re all incorrigible bastards. The way I understand it is that we’re mages, which, while not uncommon in our country of Finalträumen, are exceptionally gifted in the field of magic.

Or so I’ve heard.

I can’t help but wonder why if there are so many Immortality Seekers, we don’t have more trainees with us. What I know of our militant program is that we switch units of six every five years so that the forces remain strong. When we show exceptional magical talent at a young age, we’re registered with the aristocracy, and once the old forces are dried out, new names are picked out of a hat or something to replace them. Don’t ask me what happens to the others—I haven’t met one of my seniors except Nen, who doesn’t fight as much as teach us. An Immortality Seeker can be either male or female, but this time around we ended up with all girls for some reason. That’s just the way it goes.

So I continue rambling on and on. Last summer, my older sister’s name was selected, and the aristocracy thought it was a good idea to just bring me along. She and I were taken from our home village to this manor, and we’ve been living here ever since. I’d rather not talk about what the parting was like, but let’s just say that we don’t speak much anymore.

While I’m certain that my life is thrilling and enlightening, I did get off on a tangent whereas I was supposed to explain why the hell everyone and his or her dog is out to kill us.

Neighboring countries like to refer to us Seekers as their number one enemy. I mean, once we’ve been trained and our powers exploited, we’re fairly dangerous. Apparently, we are also looking for something that everyone wants, too. Nen says it’s something evil that would threaten our very existence if it fell into the wrong hands, and being miss magic-pants herself, I can’t deny the possibility. I guess that Finalträumen is the right match to take care of said infinite power.

Like how every other nation says they are.

I can’t help but wonder why, then, that the units before us have not yet retrieved this object. I guess that being in a constant state of war distracts you.

Speaking of distraction, Annette stabs my hand with her fork to grab my attention. I don’t pull it away or anything, and I just look at the little beads of red bubble up from where my flesh was violated.

“Are you trying to give me tetanus?” I ask, licking the blood away. More rises to the surface, and I give up on cleaning myself.

“Yeah,” she answers, rolling her eyes. “I’m trying to lock your jaw up, sure.”

“I wish I could lock up yours…”

“You’re a bitch. I just noticed you were nodding off and all. Daydreaming?”

She knows I’m not prone to that crap, so I sigh and advance our riveting conversation.

“What do you want?”

Annette shrugs, and points her nose at my plate, bobbing it back and forth like how a deer or chicken does when it walks.

“You gonna finish that?”

“Seriously? You’re willing to make me bleed to death over your appetite?”

“Yep.”

I just can’t win against her. Wrinkling my nose up, I push my food in her general direction and she starts to ravish it. She’s the freakin’ Casanova of cuisine.

“Are you excited for beginning training today?” I ask, trying to save the awkward moment. Silence with Annette and her creepy staring habit is the arguable equivalent to Chinese water torture.

What’s a “China”, anyway?

Sounds like my favorite body part.

Oh, that’s right… it was one of those mythical countries that my parents read to me in fairytale books when I was little.

Annette chews my kippers with her mouth wide open, and her head lolls in pensive thought. Well, as pensive as Annette-thought can get.

“Aw, yeah,” she says, eyes lighting up. “I can’t wait to start! I kinda wanted to begin training when you first got here, but Nen was MIA in another country so we couldn’t learn yet… but now she’s back!”

I’ve never heard Annette speak so excitedly about Nen before. As far as I understand, she hates her guts, and Nen hates hers. I’ve met her once before, and didn’t impress me much, so I couldn’t care less if she’s our teacher or not.

“You know, I’ve always wanted to be a soldier…”

Good for you, Annette. Good for you.

And once again, silence.

At last, the moment is saved as two women approach us. Their heights are comically different, but the shorter one walks with more dignity and what one could perceive as happiness. The other is slower, and her eyes face the floor. She’s super tall, like at six feet something or other, but she looks tired and jaded.

This is our landlady-gone-dorm-matron, Lady Gabrielle, and the Nen I’ve been talking so much about.

Lady Gabrielle is an elf, or half an elf, but somehow she managed to make it out of the mother country and shmooze it up with the former owner of the estate, thus inheriting it. She’s a member of the aristocracy herself, so maybe I shouldn’t be too surprised. Like most of the rest of the wards under her care, her hair is also dyed, but it’s an obnoxious shade of orange that makes me want to puke cheese puffs upon seeing it. She dresses in a swishy blue gown with all the trimmings and a load of jewelry that would probably cost me a limb or two.

Nen isn’t as flashy. She has a load of brown hair that she ties back in a ponytail and a crappy sweater dress that barely hugs her curvaceous figure. Whenever she bothers making contact with whomever she’s speaking to, one can see a pair of dull amber eyes that water and sparkle. The effect of it all is akin to staring into a vat of boiling caramel, although I doubt that Nen is quite as delicious. She also has these huge tits she can’t ever seem to get to stay still. That’s an important aspect of her to mention.

Well, it is to me.

“Hello girls!” chirps Lady Gabrielle, giving us a wave. She peaks over Annette’s shoulder, sniffing it. She’s always peppy, energetic, and exceedingly annoying. “Ready for your big day?”

I grunt something in reply, and so does Annette.

“That’s good. Well, I’ll see you all later. Have to settle some affairs with the aristocracy and all that. Ta-ta, and tell me how your first lesson goes later tonight!”

And… she leaves.

Skipping.

“Please excuse her,” says Nen. Her voice is low and has the consistency of sanded flypaper, if that makes any sense. “We were just speaking about the old Seekers. Also, good morning, Maia… Annette.”

Annette’s eyes flash and she returns to the food, grumbling. Nen’s shoulders tense up, but she soon returns her attention to me.

“Are you almost done? I was just thinking that maybe we all could start early. The first lesson is always the hardest, you know.”

“Yeah, I’m finished,” I answer. “Are you done pigging out yet, ‘Nette?”

She grunts. In Annette-speak, that means she isn’t, but she can give her food up.

Nen gives what passes for a smile, and she rubs her nose. She has a big scar running across it, which I guess is the reason she doesn’t like looking at people since they have this habit of making a big deal out of the slightest imperfection.

“Excellent! I already have the other three ready to go. May I take your plates?”

I take advantage of the kind gesture, but Annette shoots her a glare and gets up, waddling over to the dishwasher’s station herself. Nen follows after her, but they don’t spend much time away from me, and they promptly return, both tight-lipped and uneasy around one another.

It’s quite a relief when we join the other Seekers and make our way to the training grounds.

The grounds are a good distance away from the estate, about the size of a football field, and unkempt with dead weeds that tumble over and tangle up with our shoes. I’ll never understand why we take so many precautions to stay safe at the mansion, but we allow ourselves to be exposed like this in the open where we could be attacked at any second.

Ah, logical fallacies.

It’s cold and rainy out, and all the Immortality Seekers except Nen and I huddle up together, trying to shield them from the rain.

They don’t all get along just chum-chummy, but I guess that when one is cold enough, old grievances don’t matter.

It’s cold as a bitch that died in childbirth out here, and I wrap my jacket more tightly around me, observing my colleagues without much interest, but I’m bored anyway and it makes a good diversion from this piss-poor weather.

Let’s see here…

There’s Annette, of course. She snuck out some toast with her, and now she’s smacking her chops like her burnt bread was the feast of a lifetime.

All right, moving on.

To Annette’s right is my sister, Saeya. See, my parents thought that it would be cute if they gave us rhyming names. I fail to be amused.

She’s about half an inch taller than me, and Lady Gabrielle turned her groundhog brown locks blue. We look a lot alike with the tiny face and uneven skin, but she’s somehow prettier than I am. Basically, she’s this girl-next-door type who even acts the part. Saeya is the epitome of goody-goody-two-shoes whose infallible sweetness and love for small animals makes me want to cringe.

Then there’s Rhododendron.

She’s only ten and comes from an affluent family in the west, but she’s more intelligent than the rest of us, and she knows it, too. She’s one of these smartass little kids who think they’re better than everyone else just because they’re precocious. Rhodo’s hella short, and has freckles that erupt all the way down to her collarbone. Somehow, she managed to evade the customary hair dying (I think she threw a temper tantrum that couldn’t be controlled—even with magic), and she wears her coffee locks in pigtails, tied up with flouncy red scrunchies.

And last, and also probably least, is Sarin.

She’s in her late twenties and almost as old as Nen. They’re the best of friends and she’s gregarious around her, but otherwise she never says anything to the rest of us. She’s of average height and stature, with boobs of a reasonable size, and has messy violet hair she manages by tying it up on the side. She’s really beautiful, but she doesn’t seem to care much about her looks.

Nen, Rhodo, Saeya, Sarin, Annette, and me.

Six Seekers in all.

Five girls who were taken away from their homes to be turned into war machines.

Three I don’t really know that well.

Two sisters who have to resist going at each other’s throats.

And a partridge in a pear tree.

Nen claps her hands for attention, and what little chatter there is subsides. She looks us over with a cold glare, and then I know that we’re in for something serious.

Today, we’re going to have to learn to tolerate one another without any blood getting spilled.

Oh, and magic.

That too.