Holden found himself at the clinic. He was sitting on the edge of a bed with his shirt pulled up while a nurse pressed two fingers along his left side, checking for broken ribs.
"Breathe in," the nurse said.
He breathed in.
"Do you feel any pain?"
"A little," he said.
"Does it hurt like 'ow,' or does it hurt like 'something is wrong with me'?"
Holden considered it. "The first one."
"Good." The nurse made a note on her clipboard and moved to the next spot. "You're going to be purple tomorrow, but you're fine, okay?"
"Great."
"You fought a Shadow Jaguar."
"Mm."
The nurse looked at him for a moment. "You're seventeen."
"People keep saying that," Holden said.
She stared at him, looking so confused that she forgot to keep checking his ribs. Holden looked back at her.
"What?"
The nurse blinked, then returned to her notes without saying anything else.
The VIP box overlooked the arena from the north side of the building, accessible only through a corridor that required a key given out by senior staff. Holden had never been up there and had no reason to think about it. He thought about it now because he'd noticed her. She had been standing on the far left side of the box during the end of the fight. She was tall and dark-haired, and though he'd only seen her face for a moment through the cage bars, he'd noticed where she was looking. She hadn't been watching the Jaguar. Her eyes had been fixed on the way he held his sword.
He didn't know who she was, so he pushed the thought aside and focused on breathing slowly while the nurse finished her work.
They left him alone eventually. One nurse remained at the desk near the door, filling out a form, while a second had gone to find him something for the bruises. A curtain was half-drawn around his bed. It didn't give him much privacy, but it was enough for him.
He lay back on the bed and let the system screen come into focus above him.
[Unclaimed Rewards: 2]
The chests had followed him. They floated patiently at the corner of his vision, the bronze one from the Gore-Boar and the other one from the Jaguar.
He sat up carefully and reached for the bronze chest first. The latch opened, and the lid swung up on its own. Inside, arranged in neat rows, were Vanguard Credits. They were heavy gold tokens that the academy issued as internal currency, each one worth more than a week's food budget in the Village Quarter. He counted them twice because the first count didn't seem right.
There were twenty of them.
Holden stared at the coins for a moment. Twenty Vanguard Credits. In a chest that had come from a Rank 1 Gore-Boar.
He closed the bronze chest and reached for the second one. This latch was different. It wasn't harder to open, it just had a trick to it, like some doors that required you to push slightly before they would pull. Holden applied the right pressure, and the chest opened.
Inside, sitting on dark foam, was an Aether Core.
He knew what it was from the same district library where he'd read about Gore-Boars. It was roughly the size of a knuckle bone, deep blue-green in color, and pulsed slowly with a light coming from its center. An Aether Core was, in the simplest terms, a battery. A very dense battery, made from condensed ambient energy. Usually, it took years of hard training to build up that kind of energy in your body, but using just one Aether Core could save you months of work.
The nurse near the door sneezed.
Holden closed the chest instantly, making it vanish back into his inventory.
Behind the curtain, Holden sat on the bed with his rewards: twenty credits and an Aether Core. He knew he shouldn't have gotten something this valuable from an exam beast. The world was usually very mean to him, so this felt strange. He looked at the items and thought about Maeve.
He thought her standing in the quiet apartment that morning, finding the note he'd left her and eating that slice of bread alone while he was here.
Twenty Vanguard Credits.
He could finally get her a thick coat for the winter. He could buy her real food instead of the stale bread and cheap scraps he usually found at the end of the day.
Holden rubbed his face with both hands and sat in silence for a moment.
"You need anything?"
The nurse from the desk had appeared at the curtain, holding a cold compress.
"No," Holden said. "I'm fine. Thank you."
The nurse gave him the compress anyway, nodding toward his left arm. "For the bruising."
He accepted it without arguing.
"The examiner wants you in the results hall when you're cleared," the nurse said. "No rush. Whenever you're ready."
"How long do I have?"
"An hour. Maybe more." She paused, glancing toward the papers on the desk. "They're still figuring out what to put on the official forms."
Holden looked up. "Why?"
The nurse gave him a small, almost embarrassed shrug. "Apparently, the section for 'Shadow Jaguar encounter' has never been filled out for an unranked recruit before."
She hesitated.
"Actually, I don't think it's ever been filled out for a ranked recruit either."
Holden stared at her.
"At any level," she added.
"That's reassuring."
The nurse gave him a strange look, as if she wasn't sure whether he was joking.
"Anyway," she said, turning back toward the desk, "they're still checking."
She went back to her desk.
Holden pressed the cold compress to his arm. Outside the clinic, the academy grounds were noisy with voices and movement. The crowd from the exam was starting to leave, and the arena was already being cleaned up.
It had been one morning since he'd left Maeve a note and left for this exam.
He stood up.
Pain ran through his body the moment he moved, reminding him of the Jaguar and everything that had happened in the arena. He ignored it, kept the chests safely in his inventory, and straightened up.
He was going to pass this exam, collect whatever stipend they gave him, and then he was going to walk back to the Village Quarter and fix everything.