"I-I see, your majesty. I apologize for mentioning his name, but he was the one that warned us after all," I said, bowing my head. "It's alright, Thoma. There's no way you could've known what he did, so all is forgiven," Aurae said in a level-headed tone.
I'll tell you what happened later, my mother said through her mental transmission. Aaah! I'm still not used to you being able to hear my thoughts, much less send me some of your own, I thought, trying to hide the surprise on my face, knowing she was still listening. You will, eventually. Just know, for now, that it's not as bad as you think. He just… gets his dick in a knot over it, she said, a grin tugging at the corner of her mouth.
I fought for my life to stifle both the snort and smirk at her last comment.
"In any case, that creature he mentioned, we haven't seen or heard anything about it until just now," Aurae said, taking over the conversation. "I will be sure to post guards to be on the lookout for this new development. For now, however, it is getting late, and we all have a big day tomorrow," she said, nudging the king to rise first. As he did, she removed her napkin from her lap, and straightened her dress as she stood up, nudging her daughter to do the same. Ysevel also rose, and moved identically to her mother as if they had rehearsed it for a competition.
"O-of course, your majesties," my mother said, bowing once the rest of us had stood up. "Thank you for the lovely meal, your majesty. I hope that our time here in your country will be fruitful," I said, bowing to Aurae as she led the king away. She nodded in response, and after a moment's pause, she looked at me, and then her daughter, then back to me.
"Ysevel, dearest, won't you escort Thoma back to his room? It's his first day, after all, and I don't want him getting lost," she said, a childish smile tugged voraciously on her fine features. Ysevel, blushed, but this time, we had all seen it happen. "O-of course, mother," she said, bowing her head. "Thank you, dear. I would also like it if you helped him tomorrow at first light by guiding him to the training area," Aurae continued.
"That's alright, your majesty. I'll be the one to wake this little shit-head up," Bernar said, punching my arm. "Language, son. You're in the presence of royalty," my mother said, punching his arm even harder than he had mine. Aurae chuckled softly. "It's quite alright. I've known Bernar long enough to have heard all kinds of interesting insults. After all, I did help train him, remember?" she smiled.
If my mother's face could've killed a person, Bernar would have disintegrated instantly.
Heh, nice going, fuck-ass, I thought. Shut up, he muttered through his thoughts.
As we took our leave, Ysevel took my arm once more. The once golden light of the forested city now shone with a blueish light of fireflies and mana-flame lanterns scattered throughout the city. I tried to strike up a conversation with her to try and break the ice,though this time she was a little less playful than before.
"Is something the matter, princess?" I asked, laying it on a little thicker than I had intended. "N-no. I'm fine," she said, looking away from me. "When were you going to tell me that you were royalty? Might have been nice to know before I nearly became a piece of skewered meat from your father's glare," I nudged, hoping to lighten the mood a little.
"I wasn't going to, but my mother all but forced me to when she asked me to attend the dinner," she said dejectedly. "Why weren't you going to tell me? Or is that one of those reasons I'll just have to guess until the day I die?" I asked, a hint of sarcasm in my tone. "I just… I didn't want to be treated differently because of my family's status," she said softly.
I paused.
I hadn't really considered what it must be like for her. Not having visitors, friends, or anyone even remotely close to her age, or maturation point, as the king had put it. I knew she was much older than me, but that factor could've played a role within the palace walls. It must have been difficult for her to develop socially, hence the childish behavior when she first met me.
Not so different from me after all, huh? I thought.
"I won't pretend I understand what you've been through growing up the way you did, but if it helps, I promise I won't treat you any differently than I would if you weren't royalty," I said. The light in her eyes returned, as she gleaned at me in surprise. "Really? You'll just mentally block the fact that my father could have you skinned alive at a moment's notice if you hurt my feelings?" she asked, pursing her lips to one side as she raised an eyebrow.
"I-I'll do my best," I allowed nervously, rubbing the back of my head. She smiled brightly, like a ray of sunshine had been borne into the blue-light night. "Promise?" she asked, turning to face me, her tone was still light, but serious nonetheless. "I promise," I said, mustering a warm smile.
She dropped me off at my room and bid me farewell with a turn and wave of her arm. I slipped out of the formal attire, and noticed there was a brand-new training jerkin set out for me on the table that lined the far wall. "How the…?" I asked softly to no one in particular. With no answer readily available, I brushed my teeth, and got under the covers of the moss-lined bed with a root-like frame once more.
Dawn came, and with it, the sound of my brother banging on my door. "Thoma, get the fuck up already!" he shouted from outside my door.
I'm sure his voice is ringing throughout the city. I should probably get up before he pisses off the neighbors. Wait, do I even have neighbors here? I thought, forcing myself out of the comfort of my bed.
"I'm up, I'm up," I said, hoping he would stop banging. A few minutes later, I managed to get into the training attire provided for me. It was lighter, much lighter, than my normal jerkin and I could tell that it would offer me much more protection from slashes than stabs. The leather armor padded my shoulders, chest, back, abdomen and legs. It had a lot more open spaces than I was used to, particularly allowing for much more movement between the joints, but at the sacrifice of more protection.
I guess that has to do with their fighting style, I thought, rotating my bent arm in a short circle, testing the fit.
Opening the door, I found my brother in the same kind of armor, though he had removed his pendant, and one leg raised as if to kick the door in. "I… wasn't… going to," he stammered, lowering his leg as he saw my face non-verbally questioning just what the hell he was doing. "Sure you weren't," I said sardonically.
"A-anyway, we'd better get going. We don't want to be late, as mom will not take lightly to that," Bernar said, starting to walk away. "Speaking from experience, huh?"I asked but got no reply.
We made our way through the remainder of the palace, greeting the guards as we went. Even though they promptly returned the greetings, I could tell there were more than a few confused looks. I just chalked it up to there rarely being visitors to the royal palace, and left it at that since it continued all the way to the palace gate, where Ysevel, clad in her own training attire, was waiting for us.
"Good morning, Ysevel," I said warmly. Even though I was still sleepy, I tried my best to feign being awake. "Good morning, Thoma," she returned just as warmly. My brother, however, stared at us questioningly. Pulling me aside, he pushed his face right next to mine. "What about Meliss, huh? If that's out the fucking window, at least let me know so I'll know who to blame for my feelings of solitude after I marry Leona," he hissed.
I could just see Ysevel craning her neck to try and overhear our conversation.
"Nothing happened," I hissed back quietly. His golden eyes narrowed as they peered into mine. Finding no lie, he shoved me back and huffed lightly. "Good," he said, clearing his throat and straightening his gear with a tug. "What was that all about?" Ysevel asked with a raised eyebrow. "Nothing," we replied in unison with bright grins on our faces. She looked at us curiously, but probably decided it was best to leave it be.
Finally, we made it to the training area just outside of Myrdin. I looked around at the facility, and tried my best to understand what everything did. While much of the training equipment was similar to that of Codrean's, there were plenty of artifacts that I didn't have even the slightest clue of what they did. Towering sequoia trees loomed overhead, breaking up the early rays of the sun into bright beams that pierced the canopy and scattered across the training ground.
The humanoid, and partially translucent, training dummies silently standing in formation were also expertly crafted, though I couldn't quite tell whether they were static or if they could move, as the bases of their feet appeared a little worn.
Maybe it's just from moving them around a lot, I surmised.
I very quickly realized that both Ysevel and Bernar had both backed away from me as I observed my surroundings. Feeling something was off, I activated the second stage.
Maybe it's that creature Gwili talked about? I thought, moving my hand to my sword. Not quite, my mother's voice rang in my head. Without much else in the way of a warning, I felt a tendril of mana from my right. Reactively, after having trained so much with Bernar, Pyle, and Taegin, I reactively drew my training sword, swinging it in one, fluid motion in the direction of the tendril, biting into something I couldn't see until a second later.
My mother's training sword.
Through my struggle, I could tell that the blade held a gentle curve, though a lot less significant than a scimitar. Its thin blade had a wave-like pattern that ran along its length near the edge of the twin-colored blade, and a small, rounded guard that was only a little larger than the handle. There was no pommel on this blade, at least not one that I could visually identify in the traditional sense of a pommel, but she held it with both hands as one would a normal sword; one choked up on the guard, the other down near the base of the handle.
"Well done, but you're late," she said, her golden eyes meeting mine as I struggled against her strength. For her slim, toned frame, she was extraordinarily powerful, but I could tell she was holding back. "Sorry. I had to learn how to wear an entirely new set of armor in a matter of minutes," I strained, even though it was amply clear she could overpower me at any given second.
"I knew you were good, having bested not one but two ochelons, but I didn't think you were that good," she said, a subtle hint of surprise in her tone. "I might be a little better than that, now," I said, pushing mana into my legs and arms to dash away.
To the naked, un-enhanced eye, it would have looked like a blur had just passed from one side of the training ground to the other. Unfortunately for me, however, Siraye followed my movements with absolutely no difficulty.
"Impressive," she said, cocking her head, her downturned lip pursed outwardly. "Let's see if you can keep up, then," she said, flaring a bit of her mana.
Taegin used to do the same thing when he was teaching me to read mana, I thought. You might not want to let those kinds of thoughts distract you, my mother said in my head again as she dashed forward with a speed I could hardly match.
It was like she could see exactly how fast I could react to something, a lot like how I saw the fear shooting down Irun's spine during our battle.
She swung from below in an uppercut motion, forcing me to side step and parry the blow away from me. As if unaffected, she swung again and again, aiming blows at my hips, legs, and stomach. I dashed away, hoping to get another angle on her, but she was faster than I ever could've imagined. Within an instant, she was right in front of me.
"Running away?" she asked coyly. "No, just looking for a better angle," I said, starting a combination of blows I'd trained so often at Codrean. Swing after swing, I felt her parrying and deflecting my blows away from her body like she was swatting at annoying flies. As a grin began to form on her face, I decided to surprise her.
During one of my swings, I cast my Whip of Doom from the tip of my sword as the tendril shot off to my left, wrapping it around one of the training dummies I'd spotted earlier and quickly pulled it towards us. The dummy, now soaring through the air, shot like an arrow towards my mother. A mild twitch of surprise hinted across her features, but without any form of hesitation, she reached her arm out and pulsed her mana like Nenvalur had when he held the portal open.
"Oh, shit," I allowed, seeing the grin on her face turn into a menacing sneer.
While parrying my sword with her own, she used her free hand to pick up and slam the dummy at me, shattering it right where I had been standing only a half-second prior. Noticing she'd pushed me back, she began pulling more and more items from the training area, in attempts to crush me to the ground, forcing me to roll and pirouette out of the way as they came.
A little savage, don't you think? I asked, knowing she was listening. "Savage?" she asked aloud, her once coy tone now engulfed in full-on rage. She began moving even faster, slamming training artifacts without even moving her arms, as she seemed to levitate them without even using something like my Whip of Doom. She swung and swung, forcing me to backpedal and parry as best I could as she pushed the limits of my ability.
"You're keeping up decently, but how will you manage this?" she asked, stomping her foot on the ground. The ground seemed to grow distant, as I began to realize what had just happened. With her stomp and perfect control of her mana, she managed to use it to cut out a perfect circle of earth around where I was standing, and lift it into the air.
I leapt off, thinking I would land back down on the ground, but quickly found that she had conjured another one just like it behind me. I repeated this process again and again, beginning to wonder just how many she could have up at one time.
I never discovered the limit.