Lunch was awkward. I didn’t know anyone well enough to think my presence welcome at their tables, and people, mostly, stuck with the groups and people they knew. I wound up at a table near the training yard door so I could people-watch as they filtered into the common room and got lunch. The food provided was a hearty meal of grains and meat. It wasn’t the best thing I’d ever had, and wouldn’t hold a candle to the food back home or what was at Widow’s, but it was warm and filling and that was enough.

  Shortly after everyone from my group settled in for lunch, the ranged fighters shuffled in. Every one of them looked exhausted, and some nursed minor injuries and cuts. The image the group painted wasn’t one of confidence or grace, but one of tired, hurt teenagers. Which is what they were, to be fair, but I hoped I hadn’t looked so exhausted as I dragged myself into the common room.

  When the magi finally entered the common room, they looked less physically exhausted than the ranged fighters, but it was still clear they were tired. I waited until they’d all gotten in line for food; and got into another to hand my empty dish back to the kitchen staff.

  When I approached my table again, a [Mage] sat opposite from where I had. Head down and thoroughly enraptured in her food. I debated finding a new table, but she wasn’t in my seat and I’d been here first; so I slid onto the bench across from her. Her head shot up like a startled doe. Her surprise only fading when the haze of exhaustion cleared, and she fully registered my presence.

  “Do you mind if I join you?” She asked, spoon held loosely between her fingers. Confident I wouldn’t say no.

  “Not at all.” She was right.

  The next few minutes passed in not uncomfortable silence. She was completely at ease, but I was wary. I let her eat, however, and she didn’t look up until she cleared the plate.

  Deep, honey brown eyes glimmered in a face framed by long dirty-blond locks of wavy hair. I wasn’t sure how to start a conversation with the stranger, but that didn’t seem to be a problem for her. She focused on me like a curio from a [Wandering Minstrel’s] cart. Eyes darting from feature to feature on my face but lingering the longest on my eyes.

  “I’m Nora. Nice to meet you.” She said, a small smile gracing her face.

  “Bran, it’s a pleasure to meet you as well.”

  “Where are you from?” she asked. Her eyes still traced the features of my face, weighing me against some unknown expectation.

  “Twin Oak, it’s a village in the Weeping Forest.” I said, guessing she wouldn’t have heard of my home village before.

  “Really? Hillhome or cult?”

  “Cult.”

  Nora’s eyes widened slightly and darted over to where the Smallbard woman sat with the man who piloted the golems only to flick back to me a moment later, a new calculating gleam within their depths.

  “Well…” She said, chewing on an idea. “What brought you out of the forest?”

  I couldn’t tell if she asked out of genuine curiosity or a desire to avoid talking about the cult, but either way, I answered honestly. My reasons for being away from the forest weren’t on the restricted topics list, so it was up to discretion what I revealed.

  “My daughter.” Her eyes flashed with hidden meaning and again her gaze darted to the table with the Smallbard woman. “When she was born, the Grace Mother granted me leave to spread her name and seek resources for Helena outside the Emerald Ocean.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Sixteen.” Nora’s expression melted from curiosity to concern, a reaction I was sick of already.

  “Y’know. I’ve never actually met someone from the cult before. Is it true you guys never take off your armor?”

  “How would we clean it if we didn’t?” I asked in return.

  Nora opened her mouth to answer as if she’d had another question ready, but paused and stopped to consider before she looked back up at me and spoke.

  “You could inscribe a self-cleaning rune. I know those are pretty easy to make.”

  Rather than answer, I waved down to my visibly rune-less armor. Nora followed the gesture and gave me a ‘you win’ nod of the head in return.

  “Alright, then, is it true that you guys sing to each other rather than talk?”

  “The Grace Chant, our language, is based on music and follows a couple of rhythms, but we do not sing to each other constantly.”

  “Can I hear some of it?” She asked.

  “The iron fist rusts without the velvet glove.”

  I chose that idiom because it transitioned from Winter’s Cadence into Summer’s at the midpoint, and I figured that would better showcase what we typically sounded like. Nora tilted her head quizzically at me before she asked.

  “What’s that mean?”

  I answered most of her questions, mainly speaking about daily life, but every time an answer had to do with our rituals or traditions, I stopped. To teach an outsider anything of our traditions or especially our rituals required the express permission of Ylena or one of her daughters.

  The lunch hour passed quickly, engrossed as I was in the conversation. About halfway through lunch, however, I noticed the topics kept coming back to me. I tried several times to steer the conversation onto Nora and her life, but every time I did, she wove the conversation back to me like a [Clear Spring Seamstress].

  When the trainers entered the common room from the training yard, it was with Ruth at their head, a mother duck leading her ducklings. Ruth paused at the lunch counter while the rest of the trainers continued onto where they’d introduced themselves this morning.

  This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

  Ruth ignored the eyes that drilled into her back as she greeted the women working the counter. A small trick of aura cut off their conversation from hearing. Ruth laughed as one woman looked to the crowd and said something. The trio spent five minutes engrossed in conversation before Ruth put a hand on each of their shoulders in thanks and turned to face the room she’d ignored.

  “No need to get your attention, I see. Alright kids, here’s what’s going to happen; my colleagues and I have just spent the last hour dividing you into groups based on who we think you’d mesh well with. Once you’re with your group, you’ll spar with one another, then together against another team. That done, we’ll shuffle groups and repeat the cycle twice more. After that, you can all go home.”

  Ruth took a step back to continue her previous conversation. Regis filled the silence by calling out the first name. Once he had four, he told them to wait outside and called another four. Finished, he joined the two groups outside and Tammy took his place. Matt was next up after her, and he called out five names this time before he began his next group.

  “Ellen Smallbard, Bran, Nora, Morris Hollow, and Cecil. Head outside and join my other group please.”

  Outside, Matt explained we could keep our armor, but all weapons had to be relaced with wooden counterparts. I thought that was a little strange since it would prolong the ends of spars, but complied and grabbed a well shaped wooden war hammer off the rack he’d pointed to.

  Matt set us up so that two pairs from each group would spar at the same time while the spares waited beside him. In the first round, he had Ellen and me against each other, while Nora matched up against the person I was ninety percent sure was Cecil.

  Nora and Cecil wore clothes of a similar fashion; but while Nora wore loose, comfortable robes, Morris dressed in finery and had more jewelry on one hand than my mom had in total.

  Switching focus, I stared across the sparring grounds at Ellen. The chain-mail veil of my helmet fluttered against my chest gently, in time with my breathing. Across from me, Ellen stalked back and forth like a panther. Her shoulders tense and her hands repeatedly tightening against the haft of her practice maul. Matt watched from the center point of the arena; his attention blanketed the sparring ground we occupied, each pairing granted an equal share.

  When Matt called a start to the spars, Ellen prowled forward, maul held loosely across her chest. She swept her maul forward in contained arcs designed to push my shield off balance rather than deal harm. I held firm where I’d planted my feet and she backed off, and I let her. Curious why she hadn’t committed herself this match as she had with Tammy.

  She struck out like a cat. Gentle test strikes tried to see if I would give ground or falter; but like my style’s namesake, I stood steady. I swayed and bent where I had planted my roots, but never gave ground. With each negated attack, I watched the eyes beneath her helmet grow frustrated at having nothing to show for her efforts.

  Ellen screamed and feinted forward with a thrust of the maul, then committed to a wild overhead strike that would have driven me into the earth like a tent spike had it connected.

  I stepped to the side and allowed the momentum from her wild strike to carry her past me. She tried to abort the swing, but I punched my shield into her shoulder. The strike made her stumble to the side, off balance, and I pounced. Shoulder, wrist, ribs, legs, I punished anything she exposed with a punch of my shield.

  Ellen growled in pain as my shield connected with her exposed thigh and swept down with the haft of her maul, knocking my shield aside. She pivoted and followed through the blow by driving her knee into my ribs. Shoulder checking me away from her.

  Ellen limped slightly as we circled each other like boats in a whirlpool. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the [Mages] engage one another. Spears made of sand exploded out of the ground around Nora as she dodged out of the way and sent a volley of water bolts back at the man. To our left, another spar had just concluded. An armored man stood above another. Practice spear held against the hollow of his opponent’s throat.

  I rushed the Smallbard, and she jumped back to avoid a swing of the wooden practice hammer. Ellen danced backwards just far enough away to stay out of reach until we got to the end of the sparring circle and she decided she’d had enough.

  She screamed and charged me. The head of her maul led like the tusks of an equarrel. She let me block a feint, caught the edge of my shield with the head of her maul and yanked it towards herself. Shield out of the way, Ellen dropped her maul and launched herself at me in a tackle. I let her get close to me and brought the blunted spike of the mallet down on her liver. Ellen’s shoulder connected with my hips and knocked me back a couple of steps before the pain registered and she dropped to her knees.

  When she dropped, Matt’s attention blanketed over us like a physical weight as Ellen heaved from the pain. I knew what he wanted. Growing up, trainers always used similar tricks of aura when they thought someone would refuse to pay their debt to Decay. Not feeling so bad about it because of the painless healing, I drove the rim of my shield into the base of her exposed neck.

  Millimeters before the shield connected. My hand simply froze. There was no external feeling of pressure or of anything that could have stopped my arm. Confused, I pulled my arm back, and tried to finish the spar with my hammer.

  Dread spiked, the hairs on the back of my neck stood, an animal part of my brain screamed at me to run. Muscle memory kicked in and I spun, hammer already lashing out at whatever was behind me. The muscles in my shoulder screamed as my hammer froze in the air, all momentum canceled out in a moment.

  Matt stood inches from my chest. Furious blue eyes glared daggers up at me.

  “Bran.” He said, voice carefully controlled. “What in the Hells do you think you’re doing?”

  Veins in the man’s neck pulsed furiously, and his hand flexed against the hilt of a small belt knife. His eyes drifted to the still kneeling Smallbard, and a small muscle beneath his eye spasmed. Yet, that didn’t make his anger any less confusing. We were sparring. He’d ordered me to pay the debt. Why would he be mad?

  “Combat training?” I asked, worried I had misunderstood what sparring meant in the Trade Tongue.

  Matt’s eye twitched, and he took a deep breath to calm himself before he continued.

  “Correct. So why, in the name of all the Divines, would you attack Ellen after she collapsed?” Matt bit off the end of every word. His anger threatened to boil over.

  “I was paying the debt.” I paused, expecting some clarity to come over Matt’s face, but when nothing changed, I expanded. “Decay requires someone crippled or maimed before the spar can end.”

  “Excuse me?” Matt asked, some of his anger exchanged for abject confusion.

  Using the brief lapse in anger, I turned to look at my group mates who were all looking at me as if I had grown another head. Even Ellen, who managed to stand, looked at me as if I had just spoken in the ogre tongue.

  The fire of shame crept up my face and reddened my cheeks as dots finally connected. Tammy’s strange mercy, the relaxed nature of everybody I’d seen today, and now their confusion.

  “I have made a mistake.” In the heat of the moment, it was a struggle not to slip back into the Grace Chant. “In my homeland, we spar until one of us is crippled or maimed. I should have asked if the tradition remained the same in the outlands.”

  I turned from Matt and gave Ellen a small bow of remorse.

  “I was ignorant and made an assumption, and for that you have my apologies, Miss. Smallbard.”

  “What the actual fuck are you talking about!” Ellen shouted. Not bothering to conceal her anger, which was understandable. I would have been angry as well.

  I opened my mouth to explain again, but Matt grabbed me by the shoulder. Beneath his grip, pain flared along my collarbone and I could feel the scales of my armor strain and bend.

  I moved with him, but still he dragged me along to where the other trainers had gathered and were glaring at me. As we walked, Matt called back instructions for how to carry on the drill. The trainers all glared at me with varying levels of subtly. Tammy glared openly at me while the mana trainer conveyed her scorn without a glance in my direction.

  “What’s his excuse?” Ruth asked.

  “Tell her what you told me.”

  “I incorrectly assumed you conducted sparring the same as in my homeland. You have my deepest apologies, teachers.” I gave them a deeper bow than I had Ellen, as their positions demanded.

  “What exactly does that mean?” Ruth continued; her glare unabated.

  This was a grey area, as it neared on the traditions of the Cult. However, because it was more about our religions core tenets, I decided it fit within what I could tell her.

  “In order to pay the debt sparring incurs to Decay, it cannot end until a participant is crippled or maimed. When Matt’s aura focused on us, I assumed he was ordering me to pay the debt and moved to comply.”

  The rest of the trainers looked at me in shock or confusion. Regis looked up at me as if I was a wild animal he’d never seen before. Ruth was the only exception. The woman stepped forward and truly looked at me for the first time. Her eyes lingered on my eyes, but when they reached my shield and the insignias painted on its face, she cursed.

  “You from the forest?” She asked, and I nodded. That was no secret. “What Order?”

  I looked at the small trainer in shock. We kept the existence of the Orders from outsiders almost as strictly as we did rituals. Even though Ruth was aware of their existence, I could not reveal them to the others without permission.

  Grace Mother, I ask permission to reveal the existence of the Orders to those before me, trainers from the Guild and potential teachers.

  I felt her attention flood the bond, though she limited it so the only manifestation of her presence was the slight swaying of the leaves carved into my armor.

  You may, though they may only be made aware of what is known to all.

  With that, her attention receded from the bond, and the minor manifestation of her domain faded back into inert metal.

  “Order of the Black Hand ma’am.” I answered, only a couple of seconds having passed while I spoke to Ylena.

  Ruth cursed in a language I didn’t understand, and the other trainers looked at her with concern and confusion.

  “Alright kid.” Ruth spoke. Her voice was quiet, almost whispered, as if she spoke to a skittish animal. “I just want three things from you, then I’ll let you get back to sparring.”

  “Ruth!” Tammy hissed.

  “Relax Tam, this was a simple mistake on the kid’s part. Now that he knows out here, we go till surrender. It’d be graceless for him to take it any further. Wouldn’t it Bran?”

  My eyes widened; the depths of my mistake clear now. I owed Ellen a formal apology at the least.

  “See, he gets it. All I need from you, Bran, is your mentor’s name, the number of kids in your class, and how many you graduated with.”

  The questions she asked were all public record, so I had no issue in answering.

  “The [Paladin] assigned to my training was Eric Witherrose. My year’s class was sixty-four, and I graduated alongside five others.”

  Ruth cursed again, which she seemed prone to, and used that trick of aura to cut out the sound in a bubble around her and Matt. They spoke for a moment before she released her aura

  “Head back to your group. Matt will get you back in the lineup.”

  Regis and Tammy hissed their protests at Ruth, but she told them to shut up and before Matt dragged me out of earshot, I heard.

  “What do you know about the Siblings?”