Yellow Jacket

By the time they got up, she was gone. Just vanished. No sound. No retreating footsteps. No breath in the underbrush. Just the empty forest and the fading echo of their own stupidity.

"What the fuck is happening?" Jurpat said, looking around like the trees might explain themselves or start handing out maps.

"I think that was Alorna Peace," Elian replied, still breathless, eyes wide like he wasn't quite convinced they were safe yet.

"That lady who doesn't talk?" Vaeliyan asked, brushing clumps of forest muck from his shoulder, trying to make sense of the sudden ambush.

"Yeah," Elian nodded. "The one who led the Creslar war front to victory without saying anything. Zero spoken commands. Just signals and movement."

Chime blinked at him. "How the hell do you lead if you don't say anything? Doesn't that break every rule of command theory?"

Elian just shrugged. "I think that's the point of the class."

Vaeliyan suddenly pointed past Elian.

"She's right behind me, isn't she?" Elian muttered, already regretting everything.

"No, Lord Sarn," Vaeliyan said dryly. "There's a note stuck to the tree behind you."

"Why would she be behind you?" Sylen asked, raising a brow.

"I don't know!" Elian snapped. "In the holos, when someone's talking about a terrifying silent figure, people always point behind them. That's just how it works. Narrative structure or something."

Jurpat nodded sagely, completely serious. "He's right. You start talking about some creepy ghost-lady commander, then everyone goes quiet, someone points, and then you say, 'It's right behind me, isn't it?' And then it is."

The whole group went quiet.

And then, perfectly synchronized, they all pointed behind Jurpat.

"Very funny, guys," Jurpat said, unimpressed.

They didn't say a word.

Ramis looked pale. Ghost pale. Like something had walked over his soul in combat boots.

Jurpat turned slowly. Very slowly.

And… nothing.

The whole class exploded with laughter. Chime fell against a tree, clutching her side.

Then, out of nowhere, a clump of nearly solid mud slammed into Vaeliyan's chest.

"What the fuck...?!" he barked, staggering backward.

Mud rained down on them like divine punishment, exploding in wet splashes and dense impacts. It was surgical in its chaos. Clods flew from all directions, perfectly timed, zero sound beforehand.

The group broke apart, flailing and scrambling. They ducked, rolled, shielded with arms and jackets, but it didn't help. It was everywhere.

"Why is the dirt tactical?!" Sylen shouted, nearly slipping.

"What is happening?!" Chime screamed, trying to cover her face as another wet clod caught her shoulder.

"Elian! What in the hells does the note say?!" she yelled again, nearly drowned out by the continuous splatter of impact.

Elian wiped a thick line of grime off his face and held the note up. "It's not words! It's just, pictures!"

He flipped it around.

"Stick figures," he explained. "A lot of them."

They crowded close, shielding the paper from flying dirt like it was sacred text.

There was a stick figure being bombarded by clumps labeled "M" probably mud. Another panel had stick cadets flailing, while one pointed clearly toward a giant 'S'. The next drawing showed a lake, oversized ripples and all. One stick figure stood calmly at its edge, arms raised.

Then came the final panel.

A crude but unmistakable stick-figure Alorna stood, face blank, hurling massive projectiles labeled with jagged little 'R's.

"Is that supposed to be... Alorna throwing rocks?" Vaeliyan asked.

"I think so," Elian confirmed, squinting. "She's not using mud anymore in that one. Just... big-ass rocks. Like boulders."

Chime's face twisted. "Once we leave the starting area, no more mud."

"Just escalation," Torman finished grimly.

Varnai stared in absolute deadpan awe. "She really conveys a lot with stick figures. Like... disturbingly effective."

Another clod of mud nailed Fenn right in the side of the head. He staggered.

Before they took off running, Jurpat threw an arm out and shouted, "Wait, wait, hold up!"

Everyone froze mid-sprint, mud still raining down in bursts like the sky itself had decided to punish them for existing. The clumps hit hard and wet, slapping against tree bark, shoulders, boots, and faces with sickening, squelching thuds.

"We need to figure out what we can while it's only mud," he said, hunching behind a half-rotted stump, eyes darting between trees. "Because this is going to escalate. And I don't want to figure out how to dodge rocks mid-concussion."

"He's right," Varnai added, crouching beside him. "If we can't deal with this now, we're not surviving whatever comes next."

"How is she even doing this?" Rokhan hissed. "Is it a Skill? Is it a trap system? Is it, what? Like, a swarm of feral children with elite-level aim?"

"Maybe it's all three," Chime muttered. "Maybe she trained a squirrel militia. I don't know anymore."

Vaeliyan didn't answer. He just stepped out from behind his cover with the slow, calculated grace of someone who thought maybe, just maybe, he could outthink the forest.

He took a dirt clod to the face.

Square in the jaw.

The impact knocked his head sideways. He stumbled back, blinked mud out of his lashes, and spat out a gritty mouthful of earth. His eye twitched.

"Nope," he muttered. "That didn't work."

He'd been hoping Moment would trigger. That creeping sense of real danger, the flicker of instincts sharpening, time stretching. But this wasn't life or death. It was just precision embarrassment. He'd thrown himself into a test with the hope of seeing more.

Instead, he got slapped by a dirt missile and a bruised ego.

Then, in the lower part of his vision, transparent white text bloomed quietly. Cool. Clean. Mocking.

[Analysis Complete]

Weaponized dirt trajectory suggests earth-manipulation Skill.
Trace nanite signatures detected in compound.
Source confirmed: direct impact on user's face.
Conclusion: You got hit.
Good job, user.

A beat.

Then another prompt appeared beneath it:

Was this personality helpful?

Vaeliyan stared at the display for a full second, unblinking.

"Did my AI just sass me?"

The overlay didn't reply. It pulsed softly in the corner of his vision, as if smug.

He sighed, wiping a clump of sludge off his cheek. "Yeah. Okay. I deserved that."

"Did randomly taking a face full of dirt help?" Fenn called from behind a log. "Did you figure anything out?"

"Technically, yes," Vaeliyan said, still trying to scrape mud out of his hair. "My AI says the mud's laced with nanites. She's controlling the dirt."

Jurpat blinked. "She's... controlling dirt?"

"Weaponizing it," Vaeliyan corrected. "Like a dirt-based missile that humiliates you."

"Gods," Chime muttered. "We're going to die by soiling."
"Nope," Wesley muttered. "We'll be stoned to death when she starts using those boulders she drew."

"Only if we're slow," Sylen said, peeking out from behind a tree. "The stick figure said to go south, right? Toward a lake. We need to move."

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Another clod slammed into the ground right between them, splashing mud across everyone's legs like a warning shot.

"Yeah," Jurpat said quickly, getting up. "Let's move now. While we still have faces."

They started running, they kept their heads low, eyes up, and minds racing. Because if Alorna Peace could do this with mud...

What came next was going to hurt a lot more.

"Fuck!" one of the twins screamed.

It was the first time anyone in Class One had ever heard either of them speak out of unison, except, of course, for that brief and unfortunate moment earlier when they'd been exploring the back of Ramis's mouth. That didn't count. That was something else entirely.

"Leron!" Vexa shouted, voice cracking in a way no one had ever heard from her. The usually composed twin looked panicked as her sister was yanked violently upward, vanishing into the dense lattice of tree branches with a sharp rustling snap of motion and rope.

They'd forgotten the first lesson already.

This was enemy territory.

And they had just been running like fools.

Not tactically. Not coordinated. Just pure adrenaline and panic.

Now that they could finally tell them apart, it was Leron who hung suspended in the trees, legs bound and limp above her, arms flailing tying to fend off stones, completely exposed like an offering to whatever punishment Alorna had decided was next.

The rocks came before she could even shout.

Small pebbles at first, no bigger than marbles, but launched with pinpoint accuracy. They whistled through the branches with terrifying speed, snapping off bark, hitting with surgical precision, and leaving stinging welts on exposed skin. The first few hit her legs, then her shoulders, then her back. It was targeted. Deliberate.

She was a perfect target.

A sitting duck.

By the time they managed to get her down, the damage was brutal. The twins weren't interchangeable anymore. Not today. Leron was covered head to toe in bruises, welts blooming purple and red across her arms, legs, her ribs. Her lip was split. Her left eye swollen nearly shut. There were small cuts where sharp stone edges had grazed skin. Her hair was matted with leaves and blood. The perfect picture of what happened when you forgot what kind of place the Citadel really was.

And it had taken them far too long to reach her.

They'd had to stop every few feet to check. The terrain was rigged like a paranoid engineer's fever dream. Every tree, every root, every pile of leaves hid a snare. Trip lines were buried just below the surface, and half of them weren't even meant to trap, they were meant to distract, to slow, to frustrate. There were branches strung with tension lines that flung spikes of wood. There were noisemakers and rope whips and pits so perfectly concealed they nearly lost Sylen to one.

"Where in the hells did someone get all this rope?" Roan barked, swatting aside a dangling tangle of braided cord as they pushed through the underbrush.

"I don't know," Sylen growled, eyes darting. "She must've raided a store specializing in rope. A goddamn rope emporium. A warehouse. A nation built on rope."

"She has a rope economy," Chime added. "We're fighting an entire GDP."

It should have been funny. A line like that should've cracked them open with much-needed laughter. But no one laughed. Not really. Even Alorna, watching from whatever hidden perch she'd chosen, almost cracked, almost, but not quite.

They moved on after that. Slower now. Much slower. Cautious. Not because they were afraid, though they probably should've been, but because the traps demanded respect. Alorna had built this battlefield like a spider wove its web. Every strand meant something.

The rain of pebbles eventually stopped. Not with ceremony. Just faded, one shot at a time, until the forest was quiet again.

But it only got worse from there.

Because now they knew she was watching. And she wasn't improvising.

She was following a plan.

They hit a swamp.

Not a lake. Not a river. Not some scenic, glimmering body of water with soft moss and gentle reeds and conveniently placed stepping stones.

A fucking swamp.

A bug-infested, ankle-to-knee-deep, reeking pool of rot, despair, and betrayal. The kind of place that had never seen a clear day in its existence. It pulsed with heat and buzzing life, oozing with something that felt like hate. Like the ground itself was offended by their presence.

The water was black-green and slick, thick with algae and surface scum. It farted up foul-smelling bubbles with every footfall. Rancid gasses clung to their clothes. Their boots sank, slurped at by mud that felt more like a tongue than earth.

Flies gathered in clouds dense enough to choke on. Mosquitos the size of thumbnails dove in formation, carving blood from necks, wrists, eyelids. Vexa swatted one the size of a coin and missed. The bug winked at her. She nearly wept.

It wasn't just disgusting. It was hostile. Personal. Like the whole swamp had joined Alorna's class.

And yet, across that vile expanse, tilted sideways on the far bank, there stood a sign board.

Big. Crooked. Hammered together like everything else Alorna did, rough but effective, like a war crime with nails.

Painted across it, a giant stick-figure Alorna. Featureless. Blank-faced. One arm extended in perfect silence.

Pointing.

Still south.

Elian stared at it, jaw twitching with that special mix of disbelief and acceptance only cadets developed.

"Why have we not used our skills yet?" he muttered. He gestured toward the sludge around them. "I mean, I could've stopped those pebbles with my Soul Skill easily."

As if the world wanted to answer personally, a single boulder crashed through the air and flew past his face. It missed him by an inch, close enough that he could feel its breath.

Elian didn't flinch. Just sighed like he'd aged ten years. "Nevermind. I think she wants us to do it with out any assistance."

As if summoned, another wooden sign swung down from a vine above them, squeaking with cheerful menace.

This one: a new stick figure.

Still Alorna. This time, giving a big, wobbly thumbs-up.

A rock flew from somewhere in the trees and shattered the sign instantly. Splinters hit the water. Varnai ducked instinctively.

They took the hint.

No Skills. No shortcuts. Just swamp and pain.

They waded in.

The water resisted every step like it wanted them to drown. It sucked at their ankles, dragged at their thighs. Something squirmed near Chime's leg and she didn't scream, but her face turned the color of parchment.

They moved like they were in a dream, one of the bad ones where you know what's coming but can't run. Every step forward felt like defiance. Every breath filled with rot.

Then Jurpat screamed.

He flailed backward, arms pinwheeling, face wild with shock. He splashed hard, sending stinking water in every direction.

"Something got me! Gods! Fuck! Something got me!"

He lifted one leg, and the group recoiled in horror.

A caltrop.

A wicked little triangle of forged spite, straight through the sole of his boot, glinting with swamp slime.

It didn't belong there. And that was the worst part.

"There are traps here too," Chime whispered, voice flat and distant like she wasn't entirely there.

"In the swamp," Sylen muttered, lips barely moving. "She booby-trapped a swamp."

Varnai was quiet for a second. Then: "She premeditated the swamp."

"We're going to die out here," Roan said in a voice too calm. "We're going to die in a swamp."

Wesley looked like someone had told him bedtime stories about swamps and they'd all come true at once. His eyes were wet. He said nothing.

No one spoke for a long moment.

They helped Jurpat limp forward.

They moved again. Slower. Sharper. Every twig, every vine, every squelch of water was suspect. Fenn caught a tripline three seconds before stepping into it and just stood there, staring.

The mud thickened.

The buzz of insects grew louder.

And they all started to wonder if this was the test. Not the traps. Not the pain. Just this: keep moving while everything wants you to stop.

Because in Alorna's world, everything was a weapon.

Even the fucking swamp.

They had made it to the edge of the swamp, dripping, filthy, and wrecked. Covered in mud, welts, and the kind of insect bites that felt like they came from creatures smarter than most people. The sign loomed beside them, crudely drawn, nailed into a tree with two bent nails and a splatter of dark paint. Stick-figure Alorna stood tall on the board, pointing dutifully south like nothing had happened, like they hadn't just survived some living hell.

Vaeliyan was the first to break the silence. He stood nearest the sign, blinking muck out of his eyes and wiping his face with a sleeve that only made things worse.

"This makes no sense," he said, shaking his head. "How is this Group Tactics?"

The others were too tired to respond, but they were all thinking the same thing. It had been chewing at the back of his brain for a while now. Since the start, honestly. Because what they had gone through hadn't looked like tactics. It looked like punishment. Pure, creative, vengeful punishment.

No commands. No orders. No coordination drills or combat formations. Just chaos. Mud, traps, screaming, falling. Ropes. So many damn ropes. And above all else, that constant, lingering feeling of being hunted.

But maybe that was the point.

Maybe all of it, the pain, the confusion, the sheer absurdity, was meant to do something else. Something deeper. Maybe it wasn't about movement or efficiency. Maybe it was about hate. Shared, focused, unrelenting hatred.

Their loathing for Alorna was the one thing that united them now. Even more than their will to survive. And maybe, just maybe, that was deliberate. Maybe trauma was the glue she'd chosen for them.

Vaeliyan was still chewing on the idea when he saw it.

A rock.

It came flying in low, fast, with the same unnatural silence they'd all come to dread. Not aimed at him. Aimed at Torman. But it would pass directly in front of Rokhan's face. Just close enough to be intercepted if someone knew to move.

Vaeliyan didn't move. He watched.

The rock slammed into Torman's shoulder with a sharp, meaty thud. Torman hissed and staggered, biting back a scream.

Ping.

Vaeliyan's AI lit up in the corner of his vision. A soft, transparent overlay of text bloomed into view:

"Pattern confirmed. Good job, user. You seem to have found a pattern."

His eyes narrowed, mind racing.

"Everyone, stop!"

Somehow, even the rocks stopped too.

The forest went still. The buzzing of bugs, the creak of branches. That eerie calm that only ever shows up in the middle of a nightmare.

Vaeliyan turned, voice steady now.

"They're not random," he said, scanning each face in Class One. "The rocks. They're not just coming for us one by one. They're coming in a pattern. Crossing into a blockable window. Not by the person being targeted... but by the rest of us."

They looked around. At each other. At the trees. No one cracked a joke. No one rolled their eyes.

Because it made sense.

Every throw. Every hit. Every narrow dodge. The rhythm of it. The baiting, the positioning, the pain. Alorna had been shaping them with it.

"This whole time," Vaeliyan continued, stepping forward, "she's been waiting for us to realize it. This isn't about dodging. This is about covering each other."

He looked at Elian, at Chime, at the bruised and muddied wreckage of his classmates.

"This is the class. This is Group Tactics. We either protect each other, or we all get taken out."

Behind them, something creaked. A branch swayed. A new sign dropped, this one already cracked from the fall. Stick-figure Alorna again, but now she was holding a little rock, offering it forward, like a gift.

Then the next wave came.

Not rocks.

Logs.

"Positions!" Vaeliyan shouted.

And this time, they moved as one.

The logs had been a new kind of torture. Swinging beams of death launched with perfect timing and malicious glee. Unlike the rocks, you couldn't block them alone. They had to work in groups of three or more to knock them aside, redirect the momentum, or brace against the impact to shield the target.

Sadly for Fenn's ass, it was the first and only victim of the logs. Sylen, trying to save him on her own, had realized too late that one person wasn't enough. The log clipped him perfectly, launching him face-first into a bush with a yelp that would be etched into Class One's collective nightmares forever.

By the time they reached the lake, an actual lake this time, not another swamp, not another mud trap, not another mosquito-riddled hell pit, they just wanted to collapse. Sit down. Breathe. Maybe cry. Never move again. Every single one of them. Except Fenn, because of his ass. His limp was pronounced, his glare sharp, and no one was brave enough to ask if he needed help. He did. Badly. But pride and pain made for a potent mix.

Even Elian. Perfect, poster-boy Elian. The boy who never let a speck of dust linger on his uniform. Now bruised, broken, and coated in a patchwork of swamp scum, dirt, and bark rash. He looked like something a cleaner droid would refuse to process.

But they had made it.

And more than that, they had actually learned something. In that hells-begotten forest of nightmares and pain, through screaming and flailing and shared suffering, they had become something closer to a unit. Not a team yet. Not really. But the pieces were there.

Then she appeared.

Alorna stepped out from behind them, silent as always. No fanfare. No entrance. Just... there. Like she'd never left. Like she'd been watching them the whole time.

She didn't say a word.

She smiled, not wide, not proud. But something close to satisfaction tugged at the edge of her face. Mud-caked, leaf-smeared, wild-haired, and entirely unreadable. And yet... there was something unmistakably human in that look.

Approval. Hard-won and grudging. But real.

They stood taller.

Even Fenn, still clutching his ass.