Page 52 of Into the Isle

I was more than just a bear.

“No peace for the grim,” the gang used to tell me in jest. I didn’t think it was very funny, using my name for their little wordplays.

Ravinica was blissfully naïve to the ways of Vikingrune Academy. It was only her first day. I hoped she wouldn’t remain that way for long. Being stubborn was the quickest way to get hurt here. The academy trained us to be soldiers, not thinkers.

In that, I excelled. I had a feeling she could, too, if given the chance to show her capabilities. Long as she doesn’t let her name drag her down in the mud.

This radiant initiate had more working against her than most. She would be ostracized because of her hair and ears. Ostracized like me. She would be made a pariah and an enemy as an excuse for other people to direct their animosity and vitriol toward. To get out their aggressions.

People like Sven Torfen and his kin reveled in bullying those they perceived as weak. That’s where you’re wrong, Torfen. This girl is not weak. She is simply inexperienced.

The academy was founded on our differences. Our powerful bloodlines that, when mixed and teamed together, created amazing things. Stalwart soldiers, working off each other to create brilliant results—a commingling of physical strength, defense, and magic-craft that made our soldiers terrifying.

Yet, somewhere along the way, we had become too homogenous. Too focused on our sameness, not on the differences that made us stronger.

Vikingrune was not a united front, as it should be. As it was founded to be. Rather, it was a den of cobbled-together groups made up of people who found comfort in their likeness to each other.

Cliques.

I fucking hated them.

I’d been here two years, and realized that fact in my first. I hoped Ravinica could learn sooner rather than later friends would only bring her pain and misery here.

After attempting to form camaraderie in my initiate year, and seeing it all go to shit, I now preferred my solitude. Most people were foolish to roam the woods at night. I walked them because people were scared of me.

Happenstance had led me to the little sneak, as I’d told her. The woman had a powerful scent, like a lingering cloud of lavender and stone. The bloody Torfens had a sharp odor of fur, fire, and treachery.

I didn’t think Sven, Olaf, Edda, and Ulf wanted her dead. If that had been the case, I would have never made it to her in time.

No, they had wanted to break her. To get her to kneel before them, as many weaker folk before her. The lack of backbone many cadets showed these days was worrying. I felt proud knowing the little sneak had resisted the Torfens’ fear-driven actions. That she had thwarted their games and fought.

The Torfens underestimated Ravinica Linmyrr.

She must surely be a follower of the Old Way. She had been bloodied when I arrived, yet ready to continue fighting to the death.

A woman like that deserved allies to prop her up, as contradicting as it was for me to think that. I couldn’t be the friend she needed, because of what I was, yet perhaps I was wrong . . . Perhaps she can show people how things ought to be, rather than how they are. I sense in her the qualities of a leader.

Would that I could, I’d lead myself. Instead, perhaps I will follow her to see how far she goes. It will be an interesting journey to observe from afar.

It wasn’t often my mind was changed. And so quickly. Yet in the minutes it took me to walk through the woods, I’d gone from chastising Ravinica for seeking allies and friends, to hoping she could break the mold and bring worthy people to coalesce around her.

As I marched toward my pile of tattered clothes where I’d shifted out of them, a small smile cracked beneath my short beard. It was a foreign expression for me, smiling.

I crouched and gathered the blown-apart rags from the forest floor, then tied some of the scraps together to make a loincloth.

Wrapping the article around my waist, I grunted when I stared down. It mostly hid my modesty, and would suffice until I reached my dwelling. At least it would have hid my modesty . . . but thinking about Ravinica, smiling about her potential, made blood course through me.

I frowned at the growing of my cock, making the loincloth irrelevant. Grunting, I thought of trivial things until the lust passed, and then I kept walking.

Thinking about the Torfen pack did wonders to stifle my arousal. It took only a few seconds before the sudden lust was changed into sudden anger. I had half a mind to march to the den the Torfens called home on this campus, and continue our battle. Yet I knew it was foolhardy. It was the kind of thing I hoped Ravinica would learn to let go of—revenge, stubbornness, naivety.

Easier spoken about than doing, of course.

It would get me nothing. Even if I killed their entire family bloodline, it would only serve to strengthen the animosity against people like me. It would widen the gap between community and individuality I was trying to close.

At its heart, the Torfens were not my enemy. They were a byproduct of a wayward academy system. Others, however . . . well, there were others who deserved a talking-to.

With a growl, and my burgeoning of lust for my little sneak abated, I staked off out of the woods.

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