Viktorija Adelyte Kazlauskas

Chapter Fourteen

Cut in half? Ismay thought to herself, looking at the blackboard in front of her. The same one she looked at her during her years in the Academy. She didn’t want to look at Xavierra, the blonde-haired woman merely wore a black bra with black mesh over the top of it; how that protected her, Ismay didn’t know.

The thing was, it made her insecure about her body; since the woman had breasts the size of coconuts. What made her happy was that Viktorija at least wore loose clothing, but Ismay had a feeling that she was starting to develop a chest before she did.

“Is she always like this?” a voice asked.

“That she is,” Viktorija told her. “Moronic Banshee.”

“Now that’s an insult to banshees.”

Viktorija grinned at her before hitting the back of Ismay’s head, since she seemed to have her eyes glued to the blackboard. Both she and Jakoba had been trying to get her attention for the last five minutes; and Viktorija promised Aldona and Azuloas that she’d deliver their teammate to them before the second round started.

“Everyone’s gone or have you gone blind?” Viktorija asked her, Jakoba putting her hand on her shoulder; keeping her some stabbing her teammate. As much as she wanted Ismay dead, she didn’t want to show that side of her angry to Jakoba. “If your blind, then I don’t know how low Nestanha have sunk to get people into the Soldat Unit.”

“Unless you won’t to be forced out of the tests, I would suggest moving,” Jakoba told her.

“At least she’ll die quicker,” Viktorija muttered to herself.

Ismay blinked before looking around the room, there was no left and she glared at Viktorija.

“It’s not her fault, we’ve been trying to get your attention for five minutes Misses air head and not notice,” Jakoba snapped at her. “I can’t believe I let Mama think it was okay to be like you.”

Viktorija only looked at her, she didn’t want to let her older sister or her cousins down, Hyacintha might’ve killed Ismay if Azuloas had stayed with them. Rolling her eyes, she took Jakoba and Ismay’s arm into her own, if she ended up with bruises in the morning; well, it was her fault for not moving fast enough.

--

Xavierra nodded her head as Viktorija appeared at the meeting place with Jakoba and Ismay at her side. Jakoba hugging Viktorija before moving towards her own team, Ismay huffing as her head spin around in circles, not noticing that Viktorija was leading her towards Etienne.

“Good, now you’re all here,” Xavierra said as she showed them a stack of forms in her hands, she had wrapped more then she needed, but then, she didn’t know many of them were left now. Many knew about their Nightmare Forest, but she didn’t know many people would go into it. “I’m going to hand out forms, sign them. I don’t want to be responsible for any deaths in there. You there!”

“Me?” the brown-haired male, Albion, from Wittenin asked pointing to himself, Xavierra didn’t point at anyone, but she found saying ‘you there’, always made one person reply and she’d just run with it, make them do it.

Albion knew he shouldn’t have asked; Farrell and Findabair, would be disappointed in him. His team had agreed that there were three teams one from Sashan, Nestanha and Losrusern Village.

“Hand these out,” Xavierra told him.

“Yes,” Albion told her.

“Your name?”

“Albion.”

“Here’s some advice, Albion; don’t die.”

“Yes ma’am.” Albion only looked at the forest behind her, before moving to hand out the forms, even going near the ones that made him want to run and never return. Two females and two males, one no bigger than a child.

He really was a coward.

“Now, for this section you’ll get a necklace with a charm on it,” Xavierra told them showing them the two necklaces; one with a full moon charm and the other with a sun charm. “You’ll have five days to steal the matching charm. When you’ve signed the form, go into one of the tents and they’ll give you one. Now, there are many, many ways to fail. The top three are dying, opening the necklace and not finishing in the mission in the time given.”

“Five days?” Ismay whispered, she didn’t know what she would do for fives, but she would be Etienne for those five days. But Viktorija as well, along her little Sashan tag-alongs. But she didn’t know if she had enough supplies, maybe she would have packed more if she had known, but she didn’t know she’d be spending days in the Nightmare Forest. “What are we are going to do about food?”

“Find food and water,” Viktorija whispered behind her, making her jump and blink as Viktorija just pointed to her bracelets. She must have known what the second part of the tests would be, since she seemed the most prepared for them. “The Nightmare forest is a forest; some of them are big enough to eat your skinny ass. Anyway, more importantly; I usually carry enough supplies for two years anyway. Seals are useful like that.”

“Really, Viktorija, are you trying to scare us?” Ismay her fixing her hair from her small jump, after all, Viktorija was the dead class in their class. But Viktorija was also a cold-hearted murderer, whose kill count was in the hundreds.

In the last she had been so sure that Viktorija would pull out, she didn’t know anything. It didn’t take brain power to put a sword into someone when their back was turned, or a dagger into the neck of someone who was asleep.

You didn’t have to be smart to kill someone; Ismay just had to remind herself of that. It didn’t help if it was her back that Viktorija was putting a sword through her back or if it was Ismay’s neck the dagger was going through.

“Well, if you are,” Ismay told her, taking a deep breath and glaring at her. Etienne would have her back, right? She was his future wife; someone who’ll live him despite his past and pain that he kept hidden behind gorgeous brown eyes. “It’s not going to work; Etienne will realise I’m his perfect partner.”

“You’re funeral,” Viktorija told her as she looked behind her. Aldona and Azuloas would be fine, Viktorija told her; they were part of a five-men team; no one would attack them unless they were sure they could take them on.

Jakoba, Montgomery and Launce will keep them safe; along with Hyacintha and Melanthe, who were always attached to them.

Her cousins would be fine; she had to trust the members of Team Justus to keep them alive, it wasn’t like she could trust her own team to do the same. Signing the form; it felt like she was signing away her life on a small whim.

A risk that she would be strong enough to survive.

“Are you two ready to die?” Viktorija asked as she walked past Etienne and Ismay on her way to a free tent, there were six of them. But she guessed it was to make it harder for someone to guess who had what necklace.

Viktorija looked at the necklace in her hand, Etienne and Ismay walking in behind her; she showed them before sealing it away into her arm. No one would be getting that, even when she died, and it was the only to be sure that neither Ismay nor Etienne tried to kill her in her sleep.

Etienne just glared at her before sighing. Ismay huffed and puffed up, like she was about to demand she give the necklace to Etienne, like her ability to seal the necklace was useless. Even through it made the most sense, even someone went through Etienne and Ismay’s thing, they wouldn’t find it, nor would they find it on their person.

Make them think that they had already lost it.

--

It’s only been a few hours since they’ve been allowed into the forest, but already she’s been forced to sneak a seal onto Ismay’s shoulder. Something to keep the illusion seals from affecting her as much as they did as soon as they walked into the wooded area.

She knew this forest like the back of her hand, didn’t mean she had to like training in it. That didn’t matter to Ismay or to Etienne, that the training sessions she spent with Xavierra meant nothing to mean either.

They had a plain that they were following, but they, Viktorija meant Etienne did and Ismay was following him like the love suck puppy. Viktorija also had a plain, which included the group that had been following them for the two hours.

Which was better then wondering until they ran into someone with a Sun necklace. Since both of her moronic teammates thought they were better than her, thus they knew more than she did and were superior and this their word was law.

Fuck that, Viktorija thought to herself. So, she kept their little followers a secret. They would one day that Academy scores meant nothing in the real word, that in a battle a dead last could kill someone at the top of their class.

“I’m going to the bathroom,” Viktorija told them, leaving before Ismay could anything about her words. Her face told her enough about she thought about them, she didn’t care if what she said wasn’t lady-like.

Viktorija killed for fun, she wasn’t normal in the eyes of civilians. No one in this line of work was normal in the eyes of civilians and Ismay would have to learn that before it ended up with her life being cut short.

She had heard words that would make Ismay faint in fright when she was a child; barely physically able to work. She had learnt to run before she learnt to walk, her caregivers gave her enough to live and nothing more.

Even that it was barely enough, since she hasn’t grown in years; and she could remember more then one illness that would have killed her if her healing wasn’t quick as it was.

“Okay, you little shits,” she said a smile on her face; when she turned around and spotted three morons from Bargeauvil Village. The three stood in front of her, but all of them were stick skinny and Viktorija noticed that they relied too heavily on illusions. “Are you going to hide again? Or are you going to show me your faces and die facing me like a man.”

Sure, her chakra draining seals were now circled around them. She had to be careful, make sure they were wide enough to drain their illusions, but also small enough that it wouldn’t attack Ismay’s childish chakra-level storage.

But they didn’t need to know that, and they’d never know that. One of them ran towards her, but Viktorija didn’t move and it disappeared before her eyes. The rest of the illusion clones disappeared as well, the real Soldat’s were hiding in the trees.

When they jumped down, Viktorija’s eyes glowed blue and soon all three of them were trapped in spheres of water. Putting her hand into their back pouch, now she was glad that her dress was sleeveless. Pulling out a necklace, she grinned as she looked at the sun pendant, along with another Moon and Sun necklace.

“You already got two teams, to think you might have lived if you stuck to the one and gone to the tower,” Viktorija told them as she looked at them, sealing them away with her first one. “If only you haven’t gotten greedy.”

Walking backwards, putting her hands behind her back. Standing in front of them, she tipped her head to the side. They had thought she was weak, that she would fall for it or they thought that they could prove Apoloniusz wrong.

“Now I hate… no, that would be a lie, I love this part,” Viktorija told them, she wasn’t allowed to kill her own teammate. She had promised Aldona that she wouldn’t kill Ismay; she had also promised Emilek. “Since I can’t kill my annoying b***h of a teammate; so, you must suffer in her place, sadly you must suffer in her place. That means, that your deaths are going to be slow and painful.”