Somehow, he'd lost consciousness from all the pain. Which pain though? He couldn't remember. And why was it so loud?

He opened his eyes, but the light was too bright. And somehow he was in the middle of a press of bodies. It was anything but comfortable.

And the smells. He was in a press of bodies, and that liquid that was pouring everywhere, it was red and it was familiar, and it smelled tangy.

A person in front of him got his head crashed. Something viscous fell on his face. He knew what it was, and he almost lost his lunch over it. His hand was confined, it couldn't move to free his face, to raise his weapon. He was in the middle of battle, somehow, even though he didn't know how he'd ended up here. He was going to die, again.

Again, he thought questioningly, when did I ever die? All around him, warriors got in each other's way, and he was right in the middle of the melee. An explosion went off behind him.

He could feel the heat on his back, seinging his shirt, pushing him towards the back of the man or woman in front of him. He bounced on a bark hard back, and this time there was no one behind him to keep him in the scrum. The whole backline had been obliterated by one spell.

He fell slowly, and the ground behind him was filled with boiling gore.

He could see the whole cluster falling towards him, their balance messed up with their support in the back obliterated. The column collapsed. He was there, the nameless soldier was, and he fought to breathe as he found himself struggling not to drown in a sea of bodies of which he was at the bottom.

He struggled, as did everybody, and it seemed like hours before he finally made it and was able to breathe in anything that wasn't disgusting and tangy and sweaty and or smelled like excrement. His relieved breath didn't last long.

Their whole cluster of what could only be amateur soldiers was vulnerable, and the large spell he watched gathering power was ominous.

It was a large spell, slow. The soldier thought it was the kind of spell a mage couldn't use in the middle of an intense battle. When your opponents were stuck on the ground though, unable to dodge or counterattack, almost four dozen opponents, to be wiped out in one fell swoop.

The ice spiralled outwards, and an aura of intense cold emanated from the building mana. The heat of bodies pressed together and the residue heat of the fire spell were useless. Not to mention the swirling storm of cold that kept building was hypnotizing. Still, his fingers were already starting to freeze. And the spell was still just building power.

And then he appeared, someone the nameless soldier could have sworn he'd seen before. It was a boy, a young boy with long hair tied to the back of his head and terrible scars on one half of his face and strands of white hair mixed in his pony tail.

He came from the sky, like an avenging god, and cut that swirling representation of power in twain with a descending slash. By the time the view cleared, tens of enemy combatants lay on the ground in front of him, groaning and screaming in pain, some quiet in one final rest. The mage was in the latter group.

Stolen story; please report.

The boy crouched, his blade held loosely in one hand, it's tip touching the ground. He added his second hand to the hilt and started performing a series of diagonal slashes, so fast were they and graceful.

Those in pain were granted early release, and the few who tried to ambush him were summarily dealt with with the simplest swings. None of them was even a match for him.

The nameless soldier clenched his empty fists. He did not have a weapon anymore, but he would one day. And he would be like that angel of death too.

It took the fallen soldiers a while to realise the swordsman was waiting for them to collect themselves before he'd move on.

He didn't stop there though. Once he realised they were all standing, he instructed them to follow him, and cutting up humans like stalks of wheat, he led them to a rest area.

“Your first blooding, wasn't it?” the boy asked them after they'd reached the resting area. “Well, it's not pretty, but you need to get experience somehow. Now, hopefully you'll know it isn't good to crowd like that. Makes you susceptible to those simple destructive fire spells.”

No one felt like responding just then, and some even seemed offended. They just might have forgotten this little man saved them a few minutes back, and that he'd killed at least twice their current number, of experienced soldiers no less.

Before the boy could totally disappear into the background, the nameless soldier stepped forward.

“I want to be like you. I want to be a swordmaster too.”

The boy stopped and turned to look at the soldier. He smiled indulgently, like he was talking to a precocious child.

“I'm not a swordmaster yet, chap. I'm pretty close, but I'm not quite there yet. Not in this scenario anyway.”

The boy looked away for a while, then he spent a few moments studying the darkening sky.

“You are in a war. This is the perfect crucible to build a fighting spirit. Too bad you're an amateur yet. You'll likely pick up many bad habits…”

He seemed to be talking to himself, so the soldier didn't reply. Finally the boy shrugged and looked at the soldier with a smile.

“Listen, I like you man. Here's a deal, survive to the end of the war, swing your sword at least a thousand times everyday, no, a million times, make that movement as natural as breathing to you. At the end of this conflict, whenever that will be, I will take you to my home with me, teach you the finer points and take care of any bad habits you'll learn from this whole ordeal. What do you think?”

It took him a few moments to understand the offer, but once he did he nodded his head sharply, and then again, and again.

“Yes-s…sir,” he replied.

The boy nodded his head in acknowledgement and turned away with a smile on his face.

****

A month after his cousin's graduation, Rafe called his aunt again for the hundredth time. He sighed. Her phone was busy, again. He wondered when she was planning on coming back.

He shrugged, cleaned the house, went out to get the mail. It was weird. Why the hell was his aunt's house addressed through his father's Kingsley name?

One of the envelopes was empty but for a small rectangular plastic seeming thing. Rafe saw the envelope, the somewhat familiar writing, more formal than he remembered.

It was addressed to him, a credit card. He didn't know what to think, he didn't want to think. The amount on it was crazy, too crazy. A fifteen year old boy bought a sports car.

And in another world, a nameless soldier woke up with sweat beading on his forehead. It was hours before that day's deployment, and hours was what he needed.

He didn't know how long they'd been fighting this damn war, but he had something to look forward to. At the end, the greatest swordsman he'd yet seen would take him on as a student. He went through a couple of the stances a few reliable veterans had taught him, swung his sword again, again. He didn't count, he just swung vertically, diagonal from the right, from the left, rinse and repeat.

His muscles throbbed, the light of the rising sun glistened off drops of his sweat. He did not stop. His breathing was rugged, he could hear the whoosh of the sword's movement through the still air. He smiled inwardly, making his movements faster and faster. His feet moved in the most basic of patterns he'd seen over many battles.

The rest of his platoon woke. A new platoon once more. He'd lost three or more by now. He always survived though, always the last man standing somehow, not through better battle awareness or anything. He couldn't explain it.

How did he survive all those massive spells. He didn't want to say it, acknowledge it.

Five hours later, his troop fell into a trap spell. They did not stand a chance. All their bodies were evaporated, his too. There was no possible way he could have survived that.