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It was a heavy weight to carry with me as we said our tearful goodbyes in the lobby. Since those without the Calling weren’t allowed to go any further into The Academy.
Even after all these years, it never stopped being surreal when I moved past the very standard, bland lobby, and back into the actual guts of the place.
You walked down the Hall of Heroes first. A long, stone wall hallway lined on both sides with the best demonslayers of all time.
It also didn’t stop being off-putting that not a single female face was on those walls. I couldn’t tell you for sure if no woman had genuinely distinguished herself from the others, or if misogyny was a major factor.
What I did know, though, was I was going to be the first female face on those walls. I was going to be immortalized. I was going to be recognized for all the hard work I had done. And I was going to be proof to future generations of female demonslayers that their work mattered, that they could climb all the way to the top.
Off either side of the Hall of Heroes were a few offices to the more higher-ranking members of The Academy until the hallway opened up into a giant living space.
Again, there were the stone walls, but one whole wall was lined floor-to-ceiling with bookshelves peppered with demonslayer memorabilia from times gone by.
A plush red and cream-colored oriental rug spread across most of the space. Deep red crushed velvet chairs were scattered around, encouraging you to sit with one of the tomes and study more about our history, about demons, about how we could remove them from the human plane.
A massive, stately wooden desk sat closest to the wall of windows opposite the fireplace that was going from the first breaths of fall until the early spring thanks to the drafty structure.
Usually, you could find Gideon sitting there, his body bent over a book or paperwork, always one-upping everyone around him, constantly proving that while he’d taken a talon to the Achilles Heel when he’d been younger than me, cutting short his field work, that he was one of the most valuable members of The Academy.
He was also my personal mentor.
Which was why I went ahead and breathed a sigh of relief when I didn’t find him seated there.
My reasons were two-fold.
One, I hadn’t closed the case. I hadn’t slain the demon.
Two, well, I had this sort of irrational fear that if someone got too close to me, they might be able to smell Minos all over me.
I mean, it was ridiculous. It wasn’t like demonslayers had superior senses of smell that would allow them to sniff out demons.
But I couldn’t shake the feeling either.
“Hey, Dale!” a soft, feminine voice called, making me turn to find the newest girl to The Academy sitting in one of the chairs with her legs cocked under her, and her blanket draped over her thighs to ward off the chill.
She was a slip of a girl, so small that I couldn’t help but wonder if I had been the same at that age, or if she was just unusually tiny for her age. What she lacked in height or muscle tone, though, she made up for with hair. Long, thick, wavy red strands that went a little too perfectly with her freckles and her big blue eyes.
There were fingerprint bruises on the sides of her throat and one big one right on her jaw.
Training was never easy.
But it was especially difficult in those first few weeks.
I remember finding it hard not to be upset that full-grown men were punching, kicking, and attempting to strangle me. It had been equally as difficult to curl up in bed at night, every inch of my young body throbbing and aching, and not being allowed to even cry about it. Because if I cried, it would leave puffy evidence on my face, and my classmates would have even more ammunition to use against me.
I’d once been teased for months because after my instructor grabbed me the wrong way and broke my wrist, I’d cried out in pain. That was it. Just a howl of pain. But because it was in a female voice, it was cause for ridicule.
“You have to be better than all of them.” That was the advice my mentor Gideon had given me when he’d wrapped my wrist in elastic bandages since we typically healed too quickly to require actual plaster casts. “It’s the only way they are going to respect you. You need to be the best.”
I don’t think I even realized at the time how much pressure that was to put on a young girl. All I knew at the time was I was sick of being underestimated and picked on.
Looking at this new girl, Maggie, though, I couldn’t help but think that, one day, I would have to give her the same speech Gideon had given me. I would have to put that pressure on her small shoulders. It was the only way she would survive. Because from the looks of things, the younger generations hadn’t exactly gotten much more accepting of female demonslayers either.
