Chapter 31 - Good morning, good morning, GOOD MORNING!

Characters – 

Felix Sutter: Poor boy living in Sacramento, recently found out magic existed. Hard worker, knows the price of everything.

Alexandria Renard: Wants to be the next Morgana Le Fay. Can’t speak louder than a whisper.

Christopher Mau: The black cat. 3rd year Dragon student. Possibly has nine lives. Unusually lucky and dexterous.

Beatrix Brynwyll: 3rd year dragon student. A little uptight.

Leona Thorne: 5th year Commander of Dragon house. Long black hair, casually throws around huge amounts of magical power.

 Bjorn answered.
With a wave of the hand and a rune carved in flame,
All foreign holdings within the Emerald Isle were seized.
Temples, tradehouses, noble villas - gone.
Turned to state use, or ruin.
He made clear: The Isle is mine.

The Saga of Bjorn, Verse 44

=================

Felix was woken up to the sound of trumpets blaring. Short, crisp, and upbeat, they were impossible to miss.

He spent a wild, sleep-deprived moment wondering where he was, before remembering he was at Camelot. Then he tore out of his room without even putting his shoes on.

Fire! Fire! That was the fire alarm! Where was he supposed to go? What was he supposed to do! It was only the first day, he had no idea how to get out of the castle! The place was a gigantic death trap!

He sprinted out of his room and slammed right into Chris, who was lazily yawning in the hallway.

“Whoa!” He said, catching Felix. “Where’s the fire?”

“I don’t know!” Felix wailed. “And I don’t know how to get out either!”

Chris blinked, yawned, and rubbed his eyes.

“What?” He asked stupidly.

“The fire!” Felix said.

“What fire?” Chris stretched.

“The… fire… causing the fire alarm?” Felix said. A feeling that he was missing something vitally important was starting to creep over him.

“The alarm?” Chris tilted his head, puzzled, as the trumpets continued to blare all around them. Other boys from Dragon house were starting to fill up the hallway. Fortunately, near the end, Felix and Chris were only blocking the two 2nd years, who easily passed them.

Chris’s eyes widened.

“OH!” He laughed. “No, that’s reveille. Wake up call.” His eyes flicked up and down Felix’s outfit. “You should get in your exercise clothes. Don’t forget shoes!” He snarked.

Felix flamed red and practically sprinted back into his room. A quick change of clothes later, and he was hopping down the hallway as he tried to put on his shoes. 

“Let’s go, don’t want to be late.” Chris said, holding his staff. The two of them hustled into the common room, where the rest of Dragon house was standing in formation, staves held in neat rows. The two boys slipped in the back. Felix tried to mime the pose everyone was in, but without a staff, it was awkward. Just holding his hand out like he had something.

“Officer Merton?” Leona asked. The man turned and threw up a crisp salute.

“Everyone’s present and accounted for.” He said.

She nodded.

“Good. Dragons! Welcome back from your summer break. I hope you all had an excellent solstice, but I know I was laying around, eating delicious food and getting fat.”

Felix eyed Leona. If she was fat, then almost everyone he knew was a hippo.

“We’re going to ease into things. Only ten laps today, pick your environment. Ten push ups, twenty sit ups, forty jumping jacks at the end of each lap. Take a break when you’re done, then we’ll move onto the next activity. For the hoard!”

“For the hoard!” The rest of the students roared in ragged unison.

Leona turned around, focused a moment, then flung open the door to the polymorphic room. Row by row, the Dragon students jogged into the room. Chris and Felix were in the rear.

“Sutter, Mau, a moment.” Leona called out. They paused.

“Commander?” Mau asked, straightening up.

“The two of you are excused after your laps. Mau, I want you to teach Felix the basics. Standing, marching, saluting, the works. Felix, learn quickly, learn well. You’re a Dragon now.”

“I will.” Felix tried to be enthusiastic, but the lack of sleep, the different environment, and his crashing adrenaline levels were doing him no favors.

“That’s all I ask. I recommend you start on the mist course, I made it easier by design. Now get to it!” Leona chopped one hand into the other, and Felix ran through the door.

He almost paused in disbelief, but managed to clear the doorway.

It was like they had stepped outside, not into another room. The ceiling was high overhead, shrouded in fog. Four ‘tracks’ appeared in front of them, with a central field in the middle that the tracks went around. One was a thin corridor of blinding snow, with driving hail and howling wind confined to a thin strip of track. The second was filled with swirling mist thick enough that Felix couldn’t see into it at all. The third made Felix’s mouth dry up just looking at it. Baking hot sun, scorching sands, and the occasional flicker of flames had the Dragons entering it grab for a bottle of water first. The last one was simply a wall of pitch darkness, and was the least popular by far.

To Felix’s surprise, the students weren’t picky, looking for a challenge. More of them than he expected went into the snow, sand, and darkness path.

All around the room was exercise equipment, but none of them looked like anything Felix had seen before. Not that he’d gotten a chance to be inside many gyms, but he was assuming the movies and TV shows he’d seen were accurate. Floating rings had featured in none of them. There was plenty of water, towels, mats, and other exercise supplies heaped in nice piles all around.

Chris slapped Felix on the back.

“Let’s get to it!” He said, and plunged into the mist, holding his staff like a lance. Felix followed a moment later, swallowed up into the swirls.

The first thing that hit him was how humid it all was. Felix could tolerate the heat well. He tolerated far greater heats regularly back home. But this was an entire level again.

Felix suddenly had a great understanding of the phrase It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity.

He could see the hot, sandy wall on one side, and the howling blizzard on the other, but just barely. What hadn’t been mentioned or obvious from the outside was the flooring. It wasn't a simple track, like he was expecting. It was a layer of oozy mud, interspersed with logs, sticks, and fallen leaves. Chris was jogging in place, waiting for him.

“Much better than doing this for real!” He cheerfully told him as he took off. “No insects, no bugs, no crocodiles pretending to be a log.”

Felix stumbled at Chris’s words.

“You’re joking, right?” He said. “You’re just razzing me? Chris!” He shouted after the older boy, who turned around with a grin.

“You’re right.” He said. “It was an alligator.”

“But we’re protected by-” Felix cut off as Chris’s grin grew wider.

“We’re not. We’re Dragon house.” Chris said. “The wards very marginally stifle the growth of your core, but worst of all, they stifle your mindset. The WORLD is not safe, wrapping people up in extra layers of cotton and spells at school does nobody any favors.”

Felix rapidly reviewed what Paracelsus had said about school safety in horror. Dragon house was optional. It was a choice. It was outside the usual parameters. He hadn’t stuck to the usual course at all, had he?

Right then and there he swore his mother would never find out. She’d been worried enough as is.

“Damn you, Chris.” He said, already starting to pant. He thought he was in shape, but the rough terrain and thick, muggy air was testing that assumption.

Felix ran and ran and ran. He jogged, he walked, he sprinted when a crash behind him made him jump. He nimbly leapt up onto a log, almost lost a shoe in the mud, and had branches whip into him. Chris kept pace, being encouraging and jogging in place whenever Felix was slowing down, spinning his staff like a baton.

“You can do it! Push through! We got this!” Chris said.

Occasionally one of the other Dragons would lap them, usually one of the older students that simply blazed through the course. Leona burst out of the snow side at one point, hail and a flurry of snow following her, only for the raven-haired woman to jump right back in. One of them had snow-white wings coming out of her back, and was flying through the course, quite literally.

Felix sagged in relief, sweat pouring off his brow, as they broke through the wall of mist.

“Done.” He panted out, hands on his knees.

“Done?” Chris asked. “That was the first lap! Pushups, sit up, jumping jacks, let’s go!”

Felix moaned, but dropped down and started to do push ups.

“No, no, no, your form’s all wrong.” Chris said. “Straighten your back. Nose touches the ground. Hands at the shoulder. There we go. And, down!”

Chris’s way was infinitely harder, but right. Felix half-collapsed at eight pushups, needed Chris’s help to finish the situps, but at least the jumping jacks were easy. Even if they counted in a way that seemingly doubled the number. 

“Are we done?” Felix asked, staring at the ceiling. His arms burned, and his legs were noodles.

“Done?” Chris asked with an air of incredulity. “Still only the first lap! Come on little tadpole, up!”

Felix groaned, but dutifully rolled over and back up. Beatrix emerged from her sand run, barely a drop of sweat on her.

“Oh wow, you’ve gotten two laps done already?” She said. “Impressive, keep up the good work!”

Felix glared at her and held up a single finger. His index finger, he wasn’t about to start flipping people off. The girl winced. 

“Oooh… yeah, it’s rough getting in shape. Keep it up!”

Chris smirked.

“Oh, I remember a certain dark-haired witch’s first-”

He dropped down as Beatrix tried to hex him. Interestingly for Felix, she didn’t need to wave her staff at all. Her only limit seemed to be how quickly she could say the curse.

“Narke! Narke! Narke!” She shouted, with a purple-pink magic bolt firing from her staff at every word. The first few flew over Chris’s head, skimming past Felix as they just missed, but the last one connected and Chris went limp. Beatrix triumphantly put one hand on her hip.

“Humph.” She looked down at Chris’s limp body.

“Brynwyll. Take 10 points for learning the stunning spell early.” Leona said, emerging from her standstorm. The girl swelled with pride.

“Lose 20 points for attacking one of your fellow Dragons with no good cause. Lose 10 points for interfering with morning exercise. Lose another 10 points for interrupting Felix’s training.”

Beatrix rapidly deflated.

“Apologies.” She said to Felix, while she nudged Chris with her foot. Leona dropped down and started to do the pushups at a rapid pace, one every second without pause.

“You can take over running with Felix and training him once your laps are done. Get to it.” Leona said.

Beatrix groaned and did her exercises. Felix hung around, unsure, as Leona finished.

“Get going, Sutter. Brynwyll will catch up quickly enough.” She said. 

“Yes, Commander.” Felix said, and went back to running on the pool noodles that used to be his legs.

Chris rapidly overtook the two of them a few minutes later, and Felix suffered through the entire exercise regime. He was not fit. Not at all, and felt terrible about it.

“Don’t worry too much.” Beatrix tried to tell him. His heavy panting was blocking most of his hearing, and everything hurting was distracting him. “This is designed to be exercise for people much older than you. Of course we’re going to struggle. Come on, push through it, we can do it.”

Felix had no idea how long it all took. It was a blur of mist, pain, and encouraging comments, but eventually, finally, blessed release came.

“We’re done! Good job sticking to it.” Beatrix said. “Now, the first thing I’m going to teach you is how to stand.”

To his mild surprise, he wasn’t the only one off to the side, getting lessons on how to do the basics. The second years were also with him, each getting 1 on 1 tutoring with one of the fourth years. Felix did eavesdrop a little - it seemed like they were getting the slightly more advanced course instead of the raw basics he was learning. The rest of Dragon house was in the center of the field, going through a round of stretches and exercises before marching around.

Felix was deeply regretting his choice to join Dragon house when the morning torture session - uh, exercise - was done. Surely the other houses weren’t this bad? His friends were probably snoring away, getting in their beauty sleep while he worked and sweated.

Then again, he supposed he had joined the house of hard work. 

He formed up with the rest of the house, and almost glowed under Beatrix’s approving nod as he stood in the right place, with the right pose.

“Solid work.” Leona said. “I’ll see you all tomorrow morning, same time. Go shower, clean up, eat a good breakfast, lots of protein to build muscle. Vault team, meet back here after breakfast. Dismissed.”

Felix froze as Leona’s words penetrated the haze his mind was in.

Wait.

They had to do this every day!?