"Oh shit, I'm late!" Balair said to himself as he ran out of his quarters, bolting down the hallway.
"What's the time?" he muttered, glancing at his hand—only to find he'd forgotten his AulWris.
"Crap! My first day! Ain't I so freaking lucky!" He spun around, dashed back to his quarters, grabbed the device, and shot back into the hallway.
As he ran, he glanced down at the AulWris. Four minutes left.
Just four.
He wasn't the only one running late, thankfully, but that didn't make him feel any better. Not a great first impression. The training field was still a ways off, and time was ticking.
Thanks to his regular gym training—forced on him by his father—he made better time than most of the late cadets. Sure, he couldn't match the natural speedsters, but he wasn't far behind either.
With less than a minute left, he made it. Balair skidded into formation, breath ragged but victorious.
Others weren't so lucky.
"Stand in place, tardy maggots!" barked the same Sergeant from the Mess Hall yesterday. As the time ran out, every late cadet froze in place. The fury on the sergeant's face was unmistakable.
Balair silently thanked every sweaty gym session his father had ever dragged him to.
"Move out to the edge of the field! And be prepared to sweat out every muscle of tardiness from your system!" the sergeant roared.
"Isn't that Sergeant Macrone? The cadet killer?" came a whisper behind Balair.
"I knew I'd seen that limp before—brother warned me about it," someone else said.
"I heard he got it from Head of House Mall… back when he was still a cadet."
"Wait—what!? How's he still a sergeant if he's been in this long?"
"They say he declines every promotion… just to keep beating up cadets."
Balair listened closely, heart thudding faster now—but not from the run. He muttered a silent prayer of thanks to his dad again. That limp, those rumors—if they were true, he'd just dodged a serious bullet.
He looked down at his AulWris again. Out of 200 total cadets, 27 were marked tardy.
His name wasn't one of them.
Good.
An officer began to speak.
"Listen up, Boots! First Sergeant Bahen here!" His voice thundered across the field without a mic. "I want you to form up in five files and ten ranks! That's five columns and ten rows! If the amount is reached, create a new platoon!"
"You'll be standing shoulder to shoulder, toe to heel, and belly button to belly button! Let's move, move, move—we do not have all day, Boots!"
He stormed across the field, waving his arms and barking orders like a drill machine.
The punishment grunts of the tardy cadets echoed across the field—early training drills, while everyone else formed up.
"File leaders, step forward and mark your positions before the sergeants in front of you! Now bring in your files and form up! Dress right, dress! Close ranks, close! Let's go, Boots! Move with purpose!"
His voice somehow got louder with each command.
"Remember! Five files and ten ranks! That's fifty recruits in each platoon! Move, move, move! Recruit over there—'file' means column, 'rank' means rows! We're gonna make soldiers out of you, not babes!"
After a while of ear-ringing instructions and positional chaos, the recruits were finally in formation. They had been cleanly divided into three full fifty-man platoons, and a final underfilled platoon due to the missing cadets still sweating out their punishment.
Two sergeants stood at the front of each platoon, arms folded behind their backs. The rest of the recruits stood with hands over their hearts, silent and still—finally ready for what came next.