Private Tales Pride and Steel

"This is the last time I want to see you, Pirian," said Proctor Magomo. It sounded harsh, from his tone to the words themselves, but to Kristen's trained ear this, from Magomo, was high praise.

"Yes, Proctor," she said. Though she maintained her military bearing, standing rigidly before Magomo, it came at great effort—she was so excited! And containing it proved to be a worthy challenge.

"Remember: just because you earned a title doesn't mean shit yet. It's just the beginning for you, Pirian. You've got to earn it everyday from here on out." Proctor Magomo grinned, a rare sight indeed outside of a punitive context, and said, "And if you disgrace it, or do something stupid, or if you don't fight your best when you do get into a fight: I will find you, and I will fuck you up."

"Yes, Proctor," she said.

Proctor Magomo gave a jerk of his head toward the Academy dormitories. "Now go get your possessions, and report to me at the gate."

"Yes, Proctor!" Kristen said, and with that was dismissed. Whilst still in Proctor Magomo's sight she moved with a purpose, hurrying across the Academy grounds. At last she reached the dormitory, thinking as soon as she went through the doors the same thing she thought of the Academy gates.

Today, she would depart from them for the last time.

Today, she would leave the Academy as a woman having come into her own, having earned at last what she had long struggled to achieve.

Today, she was born anew.

Dreadlord Kristen Pirian.

At the sight of Zinnia, how could Kristen not return a smile of her own? Her excitement was such that within her she felt the mighty impulse to bounce gleefully the rest of the way to her friend, but her noble composure, her sense of propriety, kept the soles of her boots on the hallway floor. She did however throw out her arms in anticipated embrace as she approached. It was their last day in the Academy! It was now measured in minutes! What prying eyes, what naysaying judgments, could cast them low now?

Kristen hugged Zinnia, and said to her, "Yours has been a journey longer than mine, and here we both stand. Sisters in battle."

A cause for celebration—and an honor. For did they not both pass the Republic's very first implementation of the new way for Graduation? No foul plots from dissident elements, no sabotage, nothing of the sort. On the road which led to the future of the Dreadlords, they could count themselves among the number of those first to walk it.

Zinnia

Where else could the golden mark of humility be found in greater quantity than in Zinnia herself? Some of their former classmates, those of lesser repute, took it as their pleasure to scorn her mild-mannered demeanor, her stuttering. They knew nothing of the warrior within. And they did not recognize that though the Academy surely tried all of which it was once capable in the days before the Revolution, it had been soundly defeated; Zinnia emerged intact, not as the sword—the weapon—the Academy had wished her to be, but as the woman who wielded it, sound of judgment and sure of heart.

The greatest of tribulations made fertile ground for the blossoming of peerless virtue.

Kristen held Zinnia's shoulders and said, "Then let us walk out of those gates. Together." Others had made what choice pleased them; many opted for the military, allaying certain musings that the Reservist option would dominate; one Initiate, at least, among their class even choose the option of voluntary exile. For the most part, many of their erstwhile fellows were proceeding along on their own individual paths—which included walking out of the Academy gates for the last time. Many thought nothing of such a momentous occasion, much less of sharing it with someone.

Friends, actual friends, were still a rarity in the Academy environment, and likely it would be some years yet before the corrupt culture of old withered enough for the new to take prominence.

Kristen, in the very motion of starting toward her room, keeping her gaze on Zinnia as her body practically skipped along, said, "All else is done! I just need to collect my possessions!"

Her cheeks almost hurt from the breadth of her excited grin.

Zinnia