The Olympia Military HQ was, by any measure, large.
Levi stood in the reception and looked at the building the way he'd looked at the Blaze mansion on his first day there — recalibrating the scale of the thing, adjusting expectations upward. The academy had been big. This was the institution the academy fed into, which meant it operated at a different order of magnitude. The ceiling of the reception alone could have contained two floors of the average building.
The receptionist directed them upstairs, left at the end of the corridor, where the other new recruits were already waiting.
Dwayne saw them first. "The three musketeers arrive," he said, with the smirk of someone who had been saving this.
Sylvia's expression communicated, without words, that he should never say that again.
"Where are Kevin and James?" Levi asked.
"On their way." Dwayne checked the door. "Probably."
They'd been there about five minutes when Colonel Theo walked in. He looked at the five of them, looked at the empty space where two people should have been, and said nothing. He leaned against the wall and waited with the expression of a man updating his assessment of the situation.
Two minutes later, Kevin and James came through the door at speed.
Kevin was mid-sentence: "—told you we made it, I said we'd make it—"
He saw Colonel Theo. Stopped.
The room was very quiet.
"How," said Sylvia, "did you manage to be late when the receptionist gives directions."
"She said left," Kevin said. "I went left."
"She said left from her perspective, which is right from yours—"
"Well how was I supposed to know which left she meant—"
"There's only one left—"
"From whose perspective—"
Colonel Theo pushed off the wall. "Right," he said, with the energy of a man who had made a decision about how this morning was going to go. "Everyone's here. Let's move."
✦ ✦ ✦
The armoury took up most of the ground floor's east wing and had the organized density of a place that took its inventory seriously. Weapons on every wall, tech in glass cases along the central aisle, a weapons supervisor named Kris behind a counter at the far end who waved at the recruits with the mildly resigned expression of someone who did this every intake.
Levi walked the aisle slowly. He already had the daggers — Gabriel's new blades, his mother's handles, the right weight at his belt. But he was thinking about range. The Electric Vortex and the Bondage chains covered mid-range. What he didn't have was anything for distance.
He stopped in front of a display of disc weapons — flat, circular, edged, the kind that could be thrown with spin for distance and accuracy. He picked one up. Felt the balance.
"Shuriken discs," Kris said, from behind the counter, apparently tracking his interest. "Military grade. Weighted for spin stability up to forty metres. You can put an ability through them if your Flux conducts well."
Levi thought about electron chains running along a disc in mid-flight. About the Electric Bondage activating on contact rather than requiring a magic circle.
"I'll take six," he said.
Behind him, Priscilla had found the section of the armoury dedicated to pole weapons and was examining a rack of spear shafts with the focused attention of someone comparing manufacturing quality to what she was already carrying. She set them back, one by one. None of them were the Gravitonia spear. She left the armoury satisfied.
—
The training room had twenty spatial simulation chambers — individual booths, each one capable of generating a full combat environment. Colonel Theo described the specifications. Levi listened and made calculations.
Twenty chambers meant they could run individual sessions simultaneously without scheduling conflicts. The HQ was open twenty-four hours. Between missions, between sleep, in the hours that would otherwise be recovery time — he could be here, working, developing.
"We need to come here," he said quietly to Sylvia.
"I was already planning on it," she said.
"Daily?"
She looked at him. "Obviously."
Priscilla, on his other side, said nothing. But she was already looking at the chambers with the same expression.
—
The rest of the tour moved quickly — infirmary, lounge and kitchen, the Gate Portal lobby with its array of destination portals each labelled for a different city or town in Olympia. Colonel Theo delivered each section with the efficiency of someone who had done this orientation many times and had compressed it to its essential information.
In the lounge, Priscilla nudged Levi and Sylvia.
"The Colonel specifically said don't eat everything," she said, with the serene expression of someone delivering a public service announcement.
"Thank you, Priscilla," said Levi.
"Just making sure you heard it."
"We heard it."
"Good." She smiled. "I'll be monitoring the fridge."
Sylvia stared at her. "You will not be—"
"Moving on," said Colonel Theo, from the doorway.
✦ ✦ ✦
Mission room six was a medium-sized space with a table, chairs, a situation board on the wall, and the specific quality of a room where decisions got made and then people went out and executed them. Colonel Theo stood at the board while the recruits took seats.
"First mission," he said. "Celia. Large town, countryside region of Olympia, about forty minutes by Gate Portal." He looked at them. "Last night, myths breached their defences — two wall sections, north and south simultaneously. The local MKs contained the incursion and held the town. No myths currently inside, but the breaches haven't been repaired. They're exposed." He paused. "They need bodies to hold the line while the walls are rebuilt. That takes approximately two weeks."
"What class of myths?" Levi asked.
"Mixed S and SS, based on the breach pattern. Nothing above SS confirmed." Theo looked at him. "Before you ask — yes, the coordinated timing on the breaches is consistent with the pattern we've been seeing across the kingdom. North and south simultaneously isn't random."
Nobody said anything. The room absorbed that.
"You will report to Colonel Damian on arrival. He runs the Celia HQ. Do what he tells you, support the local MKs, keep the town intact." Theo looked around the table. "You are A-class ranked for this mission — lowest entry rank. Your actual ranking gets assigned after. So what you do in Celia determines where you start." He let that sit for a moment. "James, your mission room is different — come with me after this and I'll take you there."
He looked at all of them one more time.
"Don't die on your first mission. I mean that as an instruction, not just an expression." He picked up his folder. "Armoury first. Gate Portal in thirty minutes. Go."
✦ ✦ ✦
The Gate Portal to Celia deposited them in the lobby of a military building about a third the size of the Olympus HQ — functional, worn, the kind of place that had been doing the same job for a long time without much ceremony about it.
They were looking for Colonel Damian's office when they ran into him instead — a compact man in his forties, moving through the corridor with the purposeful speed of someone managing seventeen things simultaneously. He stopped when he saw them.
"Olympus reinforcements?" he asked.
"Sir, yes sir," they said.
He looked at them. All six of them, in their new uniforms, carrying their chosen weapons, first-day energy visible even through the composure they were all working to project.
He looked at the ceiling briefly.
"Six," he said. "They sent me six rookies."
"Sir," Levi said, "with respect — they wouldn't have sent us if we weren't enough."
Damian looked at him. It was the specific look of a senior officer deciding whether a junior's confidence was arrogance or accuracy. He held it for a moment, reading something in Levi's face, then moving his gaze across the others — Sylvia with her fire sword at her hip, Priscilla floating a precise half-inch off the ground without appearing to notice, Kevin with the steady expression of someone who had been through five trials and come out the other side of all of them.
"Hm," he said. Not agreement. Not dismissal. Something in between that meant he was withholding judgment until he had more data. "We'll see."
He briefed them as he walked them to their accommodation — two wall breaches, north and south, MKs holding both perimeters, reconstruction crews working in shifts. Two weeks minimum before the defences were restored. Six of them to split between two positions.
"You decide among yourselves who goes where," he said, stopping outside two adjacent apartments on the second floor of a residential block a few streets from the HQ. "Thirty minutes, then report to your posts." He looked at them. "Questions?"
"None, sir," said Levi.
Damian held the look for one more second. Then: "Good. Don't disappoint me, Baron."
He walked away before Levi could ask how he knew his name.
—
"Girls in one, boys in the other," Sylvia announced, as they stood in the corridor between the two apartment doors. "Kevin, Dwayne — I want to be clear. Any nonsense and you will regret it. I cannot be more specific than that because the specifics would be alarming."
Kevin and Dwayne both nodded with the energy of people who believed the threat completely.
Levi nodded as well, which made Sylvia look at him.
"You weren't included in that warning," she said.
"I know. I'm nodding in solidarity with the general principle."
She looked at him for a moment. "Fine."
They went into their respective apartments. The boys' apartment had a single bedroom with two bunk beds, a small kitchen, and a window looking out over the rooftops of Celia. Levi took the lower bunk nearest the window, dropped his pack, and sat on the edge of the bed.
The apartment was quiet. Kevin and Dwayne were settling in behind him, the ordinary sounds of people putting things down and opening doors.
He looked out the window.
Celia was a working town — not the capital, not a military city, just a place where people lived and worked and had been doing so until last night when something had breached their walls in two places simultaneously and tried to take that away from them. He could see the rooftops, the market street below, the distant smudge at the horizon that was probably the damaged wall section.
People were out there. Going about their morning. Trusting that someone was standing between them and what was outside.
He thought about his mother moving through Velvetia's streets with her daggers out. He thought about what she'd said by the pool, the first night: *the road that lies ahead of you is a painful one. Are you still sure?*
He pressed his hand against the new blade at his belt. Felt the handle underneath. His mother's grip, his father's leather, Gabriel's steel.
Yes, he thought. Still sure.
"Thirty minutes," Kevin said, from behind him. "We should get moving."
Levi stood. Put his jacket on. Checked the daggers.
"Yeah," he said. "Let's go protect something."