Page 45 of Legacy Elite

Voss lowers the board.

"If you can only shift when you believe you're about to die," he says, "that isn't control."

"I had excellent control with the bear."

"You killed it."

"Exactly."

"That is not the definition of control."

Somewhere behind me the third-years have started laughing at something.

"And there's a second reason," Voss says, "which is that whatever you become is considerably larger and stronger than what any of them become. That doesn't make control less important. It makes it the only thing that matters." He picks the board back up. "Again."

The next forty minutes are a tour of everything that doesn't work.

We try calm first. Breathing. Eyes shut. Voss talking me through the physical memory in that flat instructional voice — the temperature change, the pressure at the base of the skull, all of the things.

Nothing happens.

Being told to relax is one of the least relaxing things a human being can experience.

We try movement. He runs me until my lungs burn, until my body has stopped consulting my brain about anything, and then says "shift" mid-sprint, and I keep sprinting, being a person.

We try pressure. He puts on pads and comes at me hard — properly hard, the way he did in first-year combat when he wanted to see what I'd do — and the months on Luke's mat come up out of my arms and I hold for four exchanges before he puts me on the ground.

I get up.

Still a person.

My body knows I'm safe. That's the infuriating part. Some deep animal committee has convened, assessed Professor Rurik Voss and a padded training ground, and voted unanimously that nothing here justifies the paperwork.

"Again," Voss says.

"That hasn't worked the last six times."

I stand in the middle of the training ground with my hands on my knees.

"I did this already," I say.

"Once."

"Do you—" I straighten up. "Do you understand that I spent an entire year with everyone in this place waiting for me to shift? A year of Faris looking at me like a clerical error. A year of being the experiment. And I finally did it, I finally did the thing, and it turns out that wasn't enough either, because now I have to do it on cue."

Voss looks at me with absolutely no reaction whatsoever.

"Yes," he says.

God, I hate him.

I don't. But I do. And I still can't do it.

I'm the miraculous extinct direwolf who can't become a direwolf.

Over on the other side of the ground, someone's stance gets corrected.

I look up because the voice carried, and it's Soren — sleeves shoved up, standing with a student who's been struggling with something, and he isn't being encouraging about it. He says maybe nine words. The student adjusts. Soren nods once and moves on.