Days were passing and our detachment was still in the City of Mirrors, in the same barracks. The first days that followed the recruitment were very difficult for all of us. First we got uniforms, and all the accompanying equipment, and then our Captain drove us out of the city walls with a running step. There, in the fields, we were supposed to train military maneuvers. But for five days we just ran under full warfare and nothing more than that. After these five days, we started exercising with the set first independently and then as a unit. Days passed slowly, and were just physically distressing. Even after so many days of everyday exercises, I did not seem to have learned anything with that spear, but I had to continue with exercise. I have accepted my destiny, I will have to go to this war for the Empire that has forgotten my people. That young man, so nervous on the first day, now after all these days of the exercise proved to be one of the most capable. He was promoted and now was corporal. I mostly talked to him, although I must admit that everyone in the company was very friendly. Captain was a decent man, though very loud. He liked order and discipline, and this involved taking care of the equipment to cleaning the barracks.

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The week after week was passing and we seem to have started to look like a military unit. Everyday repetition of the same moves led us to a certain level of ability that our Captain considered satisfactory. We practiced and practiced all the time, and the only thing we did was sleep and practice again before the sun got up the next day. The trouble was that we did not know how long we were going to be in the barracks, will we ever go from this city, or where we will go... In fact, we were not sure whether our homeland was strained or we were going into a conquest. We did not get any official notice and everything we had was guessing and rumors.

Among us there were various profiles of people, some were carpenters, some were bakers or cooks, some worked in the field, others worked for the masters of horses, some worked on the market. But nobody wanted to become a soldier, and that was common to all of us. Everyone knew about my art of seeing wounds and illnesses and they addressed me for advice. We were really a compact unit, family in fact or something similar. Slowly, day after day, what the elderly officer said on the first day, we became a family. We knew that no matter how long the war lasted, we would have to stay in the army for at least seven years, so it was prescribed by law.

One evening, just when we were hiding in a barracks from the coming storm, the captain came in with a scroll in his hand. We received orders to march towards the Capital of the Empire and we will join the other detachments there. It was the two weeks of marching. On the way we headed off the next day, tired of the night we spent in the packing.

We traveled in the same rhythm as we practiced at the barracks, running till noon and after that a light walk, and two hours before night exercises with spears. Since we spent so much time walking, I had too much time to think. All my journey from my village to this moment passed through my mind every day again and again. I regret that I did not find the opportunity to learn about medication and illness. I could not help but all of these days of exercise distracted my desire to make this world better. Now, when I had time to think, this desire woke up again. I did not feel depraved anymore, and that was the greatest progress for me. Now I belonged to something, something great and that was enough of comfort. Now, I was not an Outcast anymore.

But those thoughts that kept coming back were always cut off Captain's voice, and then a strenuous march down the imperial road.

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