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The forested mountain range extended far and wide, seemingly endless in its green, rolling stretches and steep, grey inclines. In between the peaks the plant life grew thicker, healthier for all the rain that channeled down the slopes. The canopy sparkled like a trove of emeralds in the weak morning light, bejewelled by the recent downpour.
I took in the vista hungrily, lungs full to brimming with crisp air, wallowing in a feeling of stasis. It was as though, looking out over this ridge, I was experiencing a moment that transcended time - what else could explain the tightness in my chest, that felt so like my heart had seized, trapped between one second and the next?
I supposed my lack of fitness could. The air was pretty thin up here.
"The school was named after this view," Lawrence announced to the tour group, breaking my reverie. "Ridgeview Academy — pretty intuitive, huh? Not on the nose at all."
Louise, our second tour guide, laughed at that. The shrill sound grated on my nerves. I was still on edge after she'd pulled me aside at the PAC, demanding to know what I was doing here — only to go red in the face and stammer out an apology, for mistaking me for someone else.
Now she had the audacity to act like it had never happened; to lord over me, in this ridiculous school tour that was a thinly veiled attempt to suss out the competition. I wanted to shake her by the shoulders and see if her perfectly square teeth came out, like the dentures I suspected they were. Surely something about her stupidly perfect everything had to be fake!
"I think you mean the lookout post was named after the view," Louise corrected Lawrence, and I knew from the sudden lack of deep voices in the background that most of the boys in our tour group were paying her the utmost attention. "Our ancestors chose this location in colonial times because it was rumoured to be near a vampire stronghold. The height of the plateau helped our soldiers scout for enemy activity. It's also a great defensive location, because of the slope; attackers have to climb uphill, putting them at a disadvantage."
I scrunched my eyes shut, riding a wave of irritation. If I was at Swan Hill Academy, I could have commanded her silence — all of their silence. Their obedience would have been immediate, if I was still...
But I'm not, I was forced to remind myself. At the peak of my power, I'd been oblivious to its perks, but they were sorely apparent now.
So I forced myself to be civil and took part in their impromptu history lesson. "Did they ever find the stronghold?" I asked, stepping away from the precipice to rejoin the group. None of the others had dared to venture so close to the drop of the cliff. "The vampire one?"
"I'm not sure," Louise admitted, after a moment of quiet thinking. I hated that she even looked beautiful when she frowned, her perfectly tapered eyebrows bending with all the grace and synchronisation of ballet dancers. Her eyes were a little more grey than blue, lending them a smoky quality that even I found grudgingly alluring. "I think I must have zoned out in that history class, because I can't remember."
Louise looked to Lawrence for enlightenment, and he held up his freckled hands in mock-alarm. "Don't look at me! I never rock up to class."
"Now that I believe." Louise smirked, tucking a strawberry-blonde tendril of hair behind her ear. When she turned back towards me, the candour in her voice had been layered with the honey people typically reserved for customer service roles or small children. "Sorry honey, but I think you're going to have to hit the books for the answer to that question. You remember where the library is?"
I nodded, recalling the small, lonely building on the outskirts of the sprawling campus. As frustrating as it was to be reminded of my fall from grace, I had to admit that the High Pack's compulsory tour of Ridgeview Academy was proving helpful. "Yeah," I affirmed. "Thanks."
"Righty-o," Lawrence hollered, demanding the full attention of the group. "We'll be wrapping up this tour with a visit to the colosseum. Do you all have your shifting leathers?"
There were various murmurs of assent. We were all older students, transferred from other finishing schools. It was entry level students that tended not to have shifting leathers, as they were yet to finish growing, and the suits tailored from the dead of our kind were expensive.
Personally, I'd changed into my shifting gear the moment I stepped foot on campus, paranoid that someone would try to fight me and that morphing would ruin what little clothing I had left. The other students must have felt the same way, because they'd donned theirs as well.
"Brilliant," Lawrence said, rubbing his hands together. "Cheerio, off we go!"
He set off, and we trailed after him like a flock of gullible ducklings. I chewed on the inside of my cheek, wondering why we'd need our shifting leathers for a simple tour of the colosseum. Was it possible that we were about to fight for our new ranks? At Swan Hill Academy, we allowed transfer students a week to settle in before the tournament, but I could see the strategy in ambushing students on their first day.
The others in the tour group didn't seem too concerned; least of all Roland, who spent the entire walk frowning at his phone, hoisting it overhead like Simba from the Lion King to find better reception. I let the others pull ahead and took up the rearmost position in the group, wondering if I should voice my suspicions, try to prepare the others somehow.
The colosseum sprang upon us before I could decide. Despite having glimpsed it over the tops of other buildings, the structure still surprised me beyond speech, demanding attention like my lungs demanded air. It looked like it had grown from the mountain itself. Slabs of pitted stone formed rows of repeating arches, which stacked atop each other like the tiers of a wedding cake. Birds nested in many of the crevices, their perches padded with moss and lichen plucked from the walls.
I watched as those ahead of me were swallowed by a forebodingly dark archway, one by one. Soon it was my turn to be devoured. I had to blink to help my vision adjust as I followed the High Pack tour guides through a maze of crude stone passageways, which smelled like sweat and a hint of rust. Stray particles of sand scraped beneath my boots, increasing in frequency as we drew closer to the arena.
"This way," Lawrence said, turning into a wide space. Light streamed through the gaps of a lowered portcullis, turning his hair into a halo of flame. "Gather around, everyone."
As we shuffled into an awkward cluster, I looked beyond the portcullis to a field of white sand. The surface was evenly ribbed, attesting to the fact it had recently been raked. My heart sank. The arena was prepped and ready to go.
"Okay, this is how it's going to work," Louise said, meeting each of our eyes. "We'll lift the gate, and you'll walk out there as a group. The High Pack will address you in the middle of the arena. One by one, you'll be called upon to state your previous institution of education and your ranking there. After that, you'll be given a list..."
Having already guessed the information she was about to impart, I found my attention wandering. Would my place in the cafeteria line be influenced by my social rank, as it had been at Swan Hill? I hadn't eaten breakfast yet, and was wondering if I'd be able to secure a rank in the coming fight that would provide me with access to the hot food before it ran out.
"I'll say it one more time, just to be clear," Louise said. "Once you've picked a name from the list, that person will be summoned to the arena, and you'll fight them for their position in our society. Questions?"
The others glanced around nervously, evidently surprised.
"What happens if you lose?" Roland asked, scratching his beard. He seemed bored by the whole fight-for-your-quality-of-life affair, as if he'd been expecting this ambush all along. Perhaps he had; he wasn't stupid by default, after all, only stupid by choice.
"If you lose," Louise said slowly, so that her words could sink in. "If you lose, you will automatically be enlisted as the lowest ranked person in the lowest ranking pack of the school."
I bit my lip at the prospect. To graduate with a rank like that was to condemn oneself to the life of a commoner, with very few choices. Sure, it was a step up from the bleak, servile fate of those who failed to graduate altogether. Graduates could join any district pack of their choice and pursue any human career of their choosing. They could even receive educational funding from the City Pack if that career was beneficial to our shadow society. But the freedoms of such a fate were minimal in my eyes, akin to the freedom of a slack leash, and I felt uneasy at the prospect of another person making important decisions on my behalf. The only sense of belonging I would find as a commoner was that of property, my life subject to a district alpha's whim.
There was a lot on the line here.
"But if you win the fight, you'll automatically claim the rank of your opponent," Louise added. "And if you win, and it fancies you, you can pick another name from the list and repeat the process all over again."
"Do we lose the position that we earned in the first fight if we lose in the second one?" It was one of the more fashionably dressed girls who had spoken, and she hailed from America, if her accent was any indication. I would have thought she had good taste, had I not seen the way her eyelashes fluttered whenever Roland glanced her way.
"No," Louise assured her. "You may keep the position you earned in the first fight."
The girl nodded, subsiding into quiet.
Lawrence stepped forward, taking charge of the debriefing. "Some advice," he offered. "When you go out there, don't get cocky. Most people who come to this school overestimate their abilities. They pick a name that's too high on the list and they lose. You should also be wary of taking on leaders in the community, such as the alphas and betas of higher-ranking packs. Sure, you might be able to take them on. But the other members of those packs will react sorely to the deposing of their friends, and you could find yourself with more enemies than you can handle. So, for everyone's sake, think carefully before you decide on your opponent today."
It soon became clear that was all they had to say on the matter. Lawrence's face smoothed over as he concentrated on something only he could hear.
I knew that look. He was communicating telepathically with the other members of the High Pack. Telepathy was useful but difficult to achieve, only possible when the members of a pack shared a genuine understanding of one another and a mutual goal. It could take years to establish that kind of communication. I'd never even managed it with my old pack at Swan Hill Academy.
It was in that instant I knew for certain what I'd previously suspected: the High Pack of Ridgeview Academy would not tolerate an intrusion into their ranks. It was better, safer, to let them be.
The portcullis lifted. One by one, we ducked underneath the rising gate and were swallowed by the glare.