Page 111 of Guiding Desire
“But—”
“We need to train for the mission, Orrey. This is the best training I can give you.”
Orrey sighed. The bot turned toward the door but didn’t move.
“Okay. Fine. I’ll try my best.”
“Exciting. Let’s get started. It’s going to be a little weird at first.”
Weird didn’t even begin to describe it. Orrey felt a tingling at the back of his throat, just before the room vanished. In its place, something like a park appeared, only it wasn’t a park at all. Orrey found himself standing on a road, not as well-made as the ones in the city, but passable, and Vin was still behind him, standing on the road too. Ahead, the street curled into large tree growth, creepers, bushes, mosses, and fallen trees mingling to create something so dense, Orrey’s eyes had trouble making sense of it.
“Is this…what it looks like?” he asked.
“Yeah, more or less. And here’s your warning that we’re getting started now, not something you get out there.”
Orrey focused on the gun in his hand, took up a shooting position. He remembered what the bot had said about kickback and adapted his stance, still focused on that when he caught sight of movement from his left.
The Hound was tall, Guardian tall, skin a dark indigo. His skull and the long hair didn’t look as wild as it always did when there were Hounds in a drama. And he sneered less, but the focus in the natron-yellow eyes was intense. Orrey saw the gleam of the blade the Hound was holding with practiced ease.
“Now is when you shoot,” Vin said.
It’s an illusion. It’s not real. This is not real.
Orrey lifted his gun, aimed, and squeezed the trigger. He hadn’t done so in several weeks, but it still came easily enough, muscle memory doing all the heavy lifting.
The illusion didn’t end with the shot finding its aim. The quick and flawless drop of an enemy was a thing of dramas as well, at least here; here, the Hound’s head exploded, bits scattering in a fog of red. The body dropped, heavy. It twitched. And bled. Orrey could smell it.
Behind it, more Hounds came, now snarling. Orrey just stood there. His gun was still raised, he was even aiming. He knew what his finger had to do, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. His eyes were on the body still.
One of them was close enough now to lift the serrated blade in his hand, aiming for Orrey’s outstretched arm, and brought it down.
Orrey screamed, fighting the itchy feeling at the back of his throat.
“Okay, another one of the difficult-to-fool Conduits, are you? Had a feeling you could shake off the illusions,” Vin said.
He put a hand on Orrey’s shoulder, and Orrey jumped. Looked at his arm. He was still in a ready stance, ready to fire, and he’d squeezed his eyes shut with terror.
He immediately lowered the gun. “That felt—” He looked at his arm, the one the Hound had aimed for, but there was no mark there. “It was real.”
Vin shrugged. “Wasn’t. Just illusion done by an A-classer. I told you not to shake it off.”
“But…he bled.” Orrey looked at the ground where in the illusion the Hound had fallen. It was once more just a regular floor, off-white and clean.
“Yeah. That happens when you shoot someone. It’s actually a good sign. Means you hit them to create sufficient leakage.”
The bot, who had moved closer to the door, made a tiny bot noise, something close to a sigh.
Orrey wiped his brow with the back of his hand. “I’ve never done that. Shot a person. With explosive ammunition.”
“Could tell. We’re trying again.”
“N-now?”
“Yeah. I bring you home like this, next time we come, Senlas will want to come along, and then he’ll coddle you, and we won’t get anything done at all.” Vin tilted his head. “By the way, Senlas isn’t a gun user. Gets more malfunctions than I do. You know Hounds can sometimes have resistance to our powers, to his. How about you imagine he’s behind you instead of me?”
Orrey frowned, remembering what Coldis had said about Conduits protecting their Guardians.It shouldn’t matter which of them is behind me.
“It’s not like I don’t understand the need, it’s just doing it that’s…it just doesn’t feel good.”
