![]() ![]() Ketai Hanno, Wren’s father and leader of the Hannos, Ikhara’s most powerful Paper clan, liked to keep his army prepared. There’d always been drills and battle practice. Light lanced in through the gaps, flickering over one hundred focused faces. The circular wall was made of woven bamboo, and it trapped the midday heat. ![]() She didn’t usually perspire so much when she fought, but she wasn’t in her Xia state, her magic keeping her cool the same way normal shaman magic was warming. Her sparring partner yelled with each movement while Wren parried in silence. She needed to move, to fight, to feel the reassuring, body-shocking crack of a weapon meeting another. Wren’s father had ordered her to monitor the drill, not participate in it, but Wren craved distraction. ![]() Sand from the pit’s floor whipped her cheeks as she danced and spun her bo with split-second precision, locked in formation with one of the Hanno warriors. It was earsplittingly loud, echoing off the round walls, as though the pavilion were a giant drum and the warriors within it living batons, all beating to the same fierce rhythm. The smack of a hundred oak staffs colliding at the same time reverberated through the training pavilion. ![]()
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