“Hunter!” Inago looked up from his morning bowl of gruel, grinning. “Good day! Come, join us!”

  Fawkes, Wroth, and the three Aspirants were huddled around the campfire, eating breakfast in the relative quiet of the pre-dawn. Hunter made his way over and took his place next to Fawkes, Fyodor lying between them. The direwolf perked his ears and opened one eye long enough to give Hunter’s hand a lazy lick, then went straight back to sleep.

  “Good day, everyone.”

  “Elder Fawkes here was just telling us how you’ll be joining us again in sparring practice any day now,” said Wroth. Hunter couldn’t tell if the man was glad or frustrated by the idea. He exchanged a glance with a smirking Fawkes, who just shrugged.

  “Yeah, it seems that way.”

  “Come on, show us the hand!” said Inago, eager.

  Hunter flicked Yuma the bird with his good-as-new left hand. The alderman’s son frowned, his confusion and suspicion plain. Hunter couldn’t suppress a grin. That particular gesture wasn’t part of the Brennai culture – which made it all the funnier.

  “There,” he said, flexing his fingers. “Good as new. Now go get your glaives – I’m coming for all of your asses.”

  “Slow down, now,” Wroth raised a hand to temper Hunter’s enthusiasm. “You were lucky enough to recover from an injury that should have crippled you for life. You should be thankful for that. Not many get that kind of second chance. Let that be a lesson in carefulness and humility to you, Transient.”

  “Let that be a lesson in carefulness and humility to all of you,” said Fawkes, scanning the group. Her gaze lingered on Yuma, sharp and pointed, but he refused to meet her eyes. “In any case, Elder Wroth and I have been discussing your training. For now, we’ll continue focusing on the basics of glaivefighting – give Hunter the chance to make up for the lost time, catch up to the rest of you. Once he’s there, we’ll move on to more advanced fighting techniques.”

  “That could take a while,” Yuma started to argue. “We should –”

  “You should finish your breakfast,” Fawkes cut him off. “Then get ready for sparring practice. We all have a long day ahead of us.”

  Yuma clamped his mouth shut and grudgingly returned to his bowl, frown deepening. The other Aspirants followed suit, finishing their breakfast in silence. Once done, they carried their bowls to the nearby stream, washed them in the cold, clear water, and went to retrieve their training glaives. Ten minutes later, they were lined up by the totem pole at the heart of the Sacred Training Grounds.

  “You two,” Fawkes gestured toward Hunter and Inago. “Come over here. You’re with me. The other two, you’re with Elder Wroth.”

  The pairs separated, Hunter and Inago following Fawkes to the one side of the Training Grounds, Yuma and Tayen following Wroth to the other.

  “We’re focusing on forms today,” Fawkes told them. “Precision over speed. If your stance isn’t perfect, you start over and do it again until it is. Understood? Good. Show me what you’ve got.”

  The two Aspirants assumed their fighting stances and began working through the glaivefighting forms Wroth had hammered into them through relentless repetition. Hunter found himself mirroring Inago. He’d practiced those in his Shard with Mort, alongside the techniques drawn from the manuals of the old masters. But his practice hadn’t been as frequent – or as disciplined – as Inago’s. The difference showed in the ease with which Inago moved, the effortless precision of his strikes.

  Fawkes stood to the side, her eyes fixed on the two of them like a Hawk tracking prey, pointing out the occasional wobble or misstep, snapping corrections.

  “Hunter, your back foo – plant it firmly! And you, lad, watch your follow-through!”

  Wroth did the same with the other pair, his booming voice carrying across the Training Grounds as he barked instruction.

  “Yuma, focus! The glaive isn’t a club. Use finesse, not brute force. Tayen, your grip’s too loose – tighten it. No, not like that. Again.”

  An hour or so went by like that. The drills, designed to perfect their technique and burn it into muscle memory, demanded constant focus and balance. Still, Hunter would occasionally find himself quickly checking his HUD for new notifications. Nada. Despite all his hard work with Mort, it looked like simply going through the motions wasn’t enough to grant him Skill and Ability ranks.

  “Alright, take a breather,” Fawkes said. She looked at them both with an appraising eye, her arms crossed. “Inago, your form is near perfect. Well done, lad. Hunter, you’re not doing bad yourself. Much better than I’d anticipated, given your recent injury. Go get a drink, splash some water on your faces. Next, we’ll see how you do against each other.”

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “Does it hurt?” Inago asked Hunter on the way to the stream. “Your hand, I mean.”

  “No, not at all,” Hunter flexed his fingers for the thousandth time.

  “I’m happy for you. Tayen and I, we saw you meditate in Elder Fawkes’s tent the other day, you know. You looked like you were in a lot of pain. Got us a bit worried.”

  “Yeah, well, all’s well that ends well,” Hunter shrugged.

  They drank from the nearby stream, washed the sweat off their arms and faces. Fyodor went with them, bushy tail waving like a flag.

  “Hey, Inago,” Hunter began once they’d both had their fill. “Remember how I asked if you’d be willing to help me with sparring practice a few days ago? You know, just the two of us?”

  Inago looked up, his expression brightening as he wiped his face with a sleeve.

  “Sure, I’d be happy to.”

  Hunter hesitated, glancing down at the ground as he searched for the right words. He wanted to explain himself without sounding either overconfident or like he had no clue what he was doing.

  “It’s just…” he started, then paused, looking back up at the other man. “Look, when we spar, I want to try a few things that are… well, not what Elder Wroth has been teaching us. Techniques from my world, things I’ve been studying while waiting for Fawkes to come up with a way to fix my hand. Figured I’d give you a heads-up, so that you know what you’re signing up for.”

  Inago’s grin faltered slightly, and he gave Hunter a puzzled look.

  “Techniques from your world?” he echoed. “Are they dangerous?”

  “I mean, they’re fighting techniques. They’re all dangerous.”

  “No, I mean… what’s different about them?”

  Hunter gave it some thought.

  “Compared to what we’ve been taught, I guess I’d say they are smarter. More cunning, if you want. Blocks, ripostes, feints, that kind of thing. It’s just that… Well, Elder Wroth might find some of them to be kind of underhanded, is all.”

  That seemed to put Inago at ease.

  “Oh, is that what you meant?” he said, half-relieved, half-amused. “That’s fine. It should be interesting, even.”

  “Wait, what did you think I meant?” Hunter blinked.

  “It’s nothing.”

  “Didn’t sound like nothing.”

  “It’s nothing, really,” Inago said, but there was a reluctance there that suggested otherwise. “Yuma was saying… how you might weave dark magics to take vengeance upon him for that accident. He said you’d threatened him.”

  Hunter raised an eyebrow as that familiar sense of slow, simmering anger began to mount in his gut.

  “Did he now?”

  “I don’t think he was being serious,” Inago held up his hands as, his tone almost pleading as he rushed to smooth things over. “He was just venting, you know? He’s under a lot of pressure.”

  “An ass is what he is,” Hunter shot back. He crossed his arms, glaring off toward the Training Grounds. “And not just to me. I don’t know why you defend him.”

  “He’s my friend,” Inago shrugged.

  “You might be his friend. I don’t think it’s the same the other way around.”

  That hit Inago harder than expected, though he quickly tried to hide it behind a forced smile. Hunter sighed. It wasn’t his place to meddle. Inago was a grown man, capable of making his own choices, even if Hunter didn’t agree with them. And besides, the last thing he wanted was to hurt his feelings. It wasn’t worth driving a wedge between them over Yuma.

  “Look, I don’t like Yuma, and he likes me even less. That’s no secret. We had an argument a few nights after he… After that sparring accident. Tempers rose, things got heated. He said he needed a challenge, not a hindrance.”

  Hunter paused, took a deep breath to steady himself. Even thinking about that night irritated him.

  “It pissed me off, alright?” he said. “The guy had just crippled my hand. So I told him if he wanted a goddamn challenge so bad, I’d show him one. That was all. Words traded in anger. Nothing more, nothing less.”

  “I see,” Inago nodded. “So you won’t assault him with dark magics? Because he really believes you might, I think.”

  “No,” Hunter scoffed. “I don’t like him. He’s an arrogant ass, and there’s nothing more I’d like than to humble him in a sparring match. But I’d never go so far as to do him ill.”

  “I never doubted that, sai,” Inago said, his usual good cheer back in his voice. “Come, let’s not keep Elder Fawkes waiting.”

  Hunter hadn’t lied, of course. He’d no desire to do hurt Yuma – not any more than a good trashing with a training glaive would hurt him, anyway. But that did not mean he wasn’t petty enough to mess with him in other, more creative ways. And since it seemed Yuma was worried about his dark magics…

  “Biggs, Wedge,” he reached out through the mental link he shared with his familiars. The two ravens had been keeping watch in the woods surrounding the Training Grounds but responded instantly.

  “New standing orders. At least one of you is to follow Yuma at all times, and make damn sure he sees you. I don’t want him even taking a piss behind the bushes without looking over his shoulder. Understood?”

  “Roger, roger!” came the reply, and it was a giddy one. Trickery always tickled the two windbags pink. Hunter smirked to himself too, already imagining the paranoia on Yuma’s face.

  “Something funny, sai?” Inago asked him, smiling too.

  “No, no,” said Hunter, and his smirk widened into a grin. “I’m just happy to be back training with you all.”

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