The gentle light of the dawn sun warming my face was what slowly stirred me from my sleep. Opening my eyes blearily, I stretched happily under the blue silk sheet, giving a satisfied purr. I felt completely refreshed, and surprisingly, my sleep hadn’t been disturbed by any intruders. Yawning, I sat up and flicked my fingers, watching the watery hound as it slunk to the bath and returned to being normal water. Tossing my legs over the side of the bed, I stood up and lazily walked to the bath.
Slipping into the refreshing water, I submerged myself entirely and sank to the very bottom of the pool. My gills lifted open and I took a deep breath, the freshwater feeling a bit strange in my lungs since I was used to saltwater. I let my mind drift, merging with the water in a peaceful meditation. It had become a tradition for me to commune with my elements in the morning whenever it was possible. I had been too busy to do it during the tournament, but now I could.
A faint smile brushed my lips as the water in the pond whirled around me happily, gently caressing my skin in greeting. It was a times like these that I wondered if the elements were alive, that they could think and feel normally and weren’t just some force that existed. It certainly felt like the water knew me, that we were friends, but that could just be a trick my own mind was playing on me, subconsciously making the water act like this. After letting myself drift for a few lovely minutes, I pulled myself out of the pool and settle cross legged besides the pool. Fire burst up around me, flickering warmly around my skin. More natural the element the better it was to mediate in, but although this room did have a fireplace, it was summer so there was no fire or even would in the hearth to sit in, so conjured flame was the best I could do.
The fire warmed my slightly chilled skin, flickering in it’s own little chaotic dance. My own body answered it’s call, filling with a frenetic energy that urged me to start the day. It was better than any sort of caffeine potion a mage could come up with, with no chances of addiction or severe withdrawal symptoms to boot. I let the energy fill my entire body, then after a minute at full power, I dispelled it and the fire, my muscles still energized, but at a lower level. The fire had also completely evaporated and water on my body and dried my hair. Moving to stand on my feet, I walked over to the table where my bag and sword tree were. I took a moment to gently stroke a few of the silvery leaves before digging through my bag to grab a clean pair of leather pants. Glancing down at my scale covered legs, I focused, making the scales melt into my skin and vanish. I began pulling on the tight brown leather pants, soft and broken in from use, the leather hugged the bare skin of my legs as I slid them on. I paused with them halfway on as a thought occurred to me and I turned to look back at my sword tree.
-I should probably feed it….and get it a pot….-
Pulling my pants on the rest of the way, I reached down to the bottom of the bag, grabbing a handful of the small shards of sea glass my people had given me when I had left. I didn’t have any metal on me so this would have to do. I carefully poured the glass all around the twisted metal roots of the tree, and watched as the little roots slowly began to moved, reaching out to wrap around the glass. The spell I had used on my broken sword was actually one of the highest level ancient common spells I knew, it turned metal into a living tree that grew by absorbing other materials, the purer the better, though for some reason, it wouldn’t absorb wood. Maybe since it was technically a tree, it considered that cannibalism?
Noting in my mind to find a large wooden pot and some materials, I let my chain mail shirt surface, the black mail hugging my skin tightly and supporting my breasts so that I didn’t need a corset or binding. The Azure Dragon was emblazoned boldly across my chest. My clothes all on now, I turned and walked to my harness with the double sword sheaths, my sole sword safely snuggled in the right sheath. Picking it up, I stared at it. I had ignored the problem during the tournament, but…...with one sword, the harness was unbalanced, making it uncomfortable. Making a new sword takes a while, so I would have to get a single sheath harness to hold my sword in the meantime. Buckling the harness on, I mentally added the single sheath to my growing mental shopping list.
It was at this moment that there was a polite knock at the door, followed by a hurried, more energetic one. Raising an eyebrow, I snapped the last buckle in place and walked to the door. Opening it, I was slightly surprised to see Brom and Ren standing in front of my door, both of them glaring at each other. Had these guys guarded my room again? No wonder there weren’t any intruders last night, but…..why had they knocked on my door? And why were they glaring at each other, ignoring me, Again.
Reaching out, I pinched each profiled nose and pulled down, making their foreheads bang together.They both made muffled exclamations of pain and, doubled over, backed away from each other. Rubbing their heads, they both straightened and glared grumpily at me. I just look at them, one eyebrow raised, they totally had it coming. Brom was the first to break his glare, morphing into a sheepish grin.
“Sorry…….Ah, I came to get you. We all usually spar with Edric before going to breakfast in the mornings, it keeps our skills sharp and we work up a good appetite. I’m guessing Popsicle here had the same idea…...
Oh, so they were just here to have me join in morning sparring? That probably means they didn’t guard me all night…..now that I think about it, it would have to be a pretty stupid assassin to attack their target when their room was located in a hall where overpowered guards lived…..The idea of sparring with the king sparked my interest, from what I saw of him, he looked quite strong…….Darting back into my room, I swept the sleepy Firesong onto my shoulder and returned to the open door. Smiling, I gestured for them to lead the way, Ren still looking a bit grumpy with me.
I trailed behind the to men as they lead me to a spacious inner courtyard filled with sand much like the arena I had fought in during the tournament. King Edric was already there, dressed in a simple pair of loose trousers and a sleeveless tunic. He was jogging easily around the edge of the yard, warming up his muscles. He smiled and nodded in greeting when he spotted us and continued to jog. I settled Firesong on top of the rack of sturdy wooden practice weapons, positioned safely at the farthest edge of the yard where attack were less likely to land. Then moving a little ways aways to an open area, I began to stretch, my muscles were already nice and warmed up thanks to my fire meditation, but there was no harms in doing some stretches to further limber my muscles. Brom and Ren moved away to other open area and began going through their own personal warm ups. My muscles were stretching like soft taffy by the time Edric finally finished his warm up and walked over to me.
“Delta! If you’re ready, would you like to spar with me first? It’s sort of become a tradition of Serac for a new royal guard, that their first morning duel is with the King, though this is the first time I'll be doing it myself. Anyways, it’ll be good for you to get a picture of my abilities so you can better know how to protect me.”
I nodded and rose from my seated position on the ground, having just finished stretching my legs. After each of us selected a wooden we walked to the center of the practice yard, Brom and Ren stopping their warm ups to watch us. Stopping so that we were ten paces away from each other, I readied the single wooden sword I had selected (I would have to get used to fighting with one blade for a while) and King Edric did the same with his own well-worn wooden sword, which looked to be a mix of a heavy cavalry sword and the average long sword, long and heavy looking, yet still giving of the sense that it could move very quickly through the air. Our real blades remained safely in their sheaths, no need to use them for a simple spar and risk unwanted injury.
The King and I began to slowly circle each others, waiting for the right moment to attack. After a long moment of shuffling, I saw the edge of Edric’s mouth twitch, as though he was holding back a grin. Instinctively, I leapt backwards in a flip, just in time to see the loose sand my feet had been in turn rock solid. So he was an earth mage…...Not fair, all this loose sand will be easy for him to use his magic with….Pulling on my fire element, I barely let my boots hit the sand before sending myself back into the air. Twisting midair so my feet face the ground, I shot an intense wave of heat into the sand below me in a one meter radius. When my boots landed, they hit rough, hardened glass that was a dark obsidian color. I raised an eyebrow at Edric, I had been under the impression that this would be a pure sword fight, he just shrugged and pretended to pout.
“Man, it’s more interesting to use magic as well, but you established a safe foothold already…...guess I’ll have to try something else~”
I was forced to leap away from my circle of glass as a stream of sand shot towards me. Sending out another heat wave, I landed on a new circle of glass, but immediately had to duck as Edric suddenly appeared in front of me, his blade whistling over my head instead of hitting my shoulder. So fast...Does this guy have the wind element too? Earth and wind was another rare elemental combination, like my own fire and water…...Slapping my hands down onto the rough glass, ignoring the painful prickles as the rough edges pressed into my skin, I pushed out with both arms, sending my legs toward Edric in a vicious kick. I only managed to clip him in the stomach as he sped backwards. Yep, definitely wind magic…..I needed to slow him down somehow……
Keeping on the move, with only small steps of glass bursting out around my feet, I divided my mind and pulled on my water element, there was only so much water one could summon, but water that was already there…...Hah, there. As a castle, it was only natural that they have a water system, and the underground lake full of fresh water was a source of water I could easily use without having to waste energy summoning. I pulled water up from the lake, feeling the liquid creeping through the cracks in the solid rock that contained the lake before moving much more quickly through the softer earth beyond it.
Edric frowned, and I knew he had felt the disturbance in the earth as the water rushed upwards. I charged him, swinging the flat of my blade at his stomach in the hopes of distracting him from doing anything to stop me. He simply stabbed his sword into the ground and leapt high into the air, a large boost of wind magic sending him a dozen meters above me, out of reach of my sword. I sent a stream of fire after of him, the magical flames twisting in the thin form of a snake. I could feel it getting harder to pull the water up, the earth below the arena turning harder, making it harder for my water to flow through the compacted earth, greatly slowing the entire process. My rope of fire wrapped itself around the King’s right leg and started pulling him down.
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He had been using wind to greatly slow his descent to earth, but my fire was now bringing him closer to my reach at a much faster pace. I could have just used a massive fireball to blast him out of the air, but I had a feeling I would need to conserve my mana for the rest of the fight. Anyways, I didn’t want to risk actually hurting him, I wasn’t really eager to find out how to tight the strings were to protecting and not hurting the king were just yet. While some oaths simply make it impossible for the oathed to do any true harm, others had recoils added in that could be quite unpleasant, and the worst part was that you couldn’t tell the difference until you triggered the requirements for a recoil. Oaths were inscribed through runes, but somehow, recoils were not actually written in the oath, they were simply attached somehow, it was one of those bits of ancient knowledge that even we mer had lost.
Forced to pause in his attempt to block my water, Edric shot a blasted of condensed air at the shackle of fire that was blackening the leather of his boot, successfully extinguishing the flames and further using the power of the blast to shoot himself further back into the air. I used his momentary pause to quickly gather all the water I had drawn up from the lake at one point where there was still a crack. I jerked sharply on the water, causing it to blast up through the crack and force it wider, successfully breaking past the hardened layer of earth Edric had formed. The force of my pull continued cause the torrent of water to blast upwards, boring through the softer earth rather than passing through it, creating a hole that Edric would have to undoubtedly have patched up after this fight if he didn’t want the castle’s foundation to be weakened. Whoops, I was trying to avoid that, but I pulled a bit too hard because I was trying to move the all water before the king recovered…...Well, at least I’m not the one who has to clean up the mess~
My concentrated geyser of water suddenly slammed into an impenetrable block of earth only meters away from the surface. It must have cost Edric quite a bit of mana to do that so quickly….I used the force of the impact to let the water disperse in a sharp layer, flowing speedily through the earth until it was beneath the entire yard. Edric was already starting to harden the earth again, but this time he just didn’t have enough time, water surged into the sand, turning the whole arena in muddy mess. Edric landed on the ground, grimacing as his legs sunk in the sandy mud, all the way to mid calf. I grinned at the sight, my feet stood cleanly on top the watery mud, now the arena was more advantageous to one of my elements. The mud would be much more difficult Edric to use his Earth element on since the water would naturally keep trying to dissolve the solid element, I, on the other hand, didn’t have that problem. Pulling on my element, a wave of mud surged under my feet and swiftly carried me towards Edric. Seeing me coming, Edric stopped trying to free his legs and lurched to the side to grab his sword and pulled it out of the mud. Flicking his muddy blade at my, he sent the layer of mud towards me in a flurry of muddy globs, which somehow expelled all of the water in them mid-air, turning into harden balls of earth that were sure to leave a bruise if they hit me. Crouching as I leaned to the left, the mud wave swerved to the right. All but one of the mud balls sailed past me, the last one clipping my shoulder painfully, but doing no real damage. I threw my weight to the right and the wave swerved to the left, returning to the original straight course I had been on. Edric had used the time his attack bought him to pull both of his boots free, and was now just barely hovering over the mud with swirling balls of air at the bottom his feet. He had his sword, now mostly clean, ready and waiting to receive my attack. It looks like Edric is ready to turn this into a battle of blades now, but I wasn’t quite ready to do so just yet~
Barely out of the reach of Edric’s sword, I suddenly twisted my body, throwing my weight quickly to the back and left, forcing the wave to make a sharp right. The resulting force sent a wave of mud out that smashed into the king, completely covering him in the sandy sludge. Immediately, I dispelled the wave and took control of the layer of mud, forcing his arms down and encasing Edric in an entirely liquid binding, I could feel him trying to used the earth particles in the mud straight jacket to break free, but in cases like these, water is stronger than earth, and it was even easier since my affinity was higher than his. Then I froze, feeling a sudden pressure on my throat as a rope earth I hadn’t noticed tightened just enough so that I could feel it. When had that happened? I would have noticed if Edric sent a rope of earth after me…….Realization hit me and I glanced down at my sore shoulder, the splattered star of sand the earth bullet had left behind was gone, Edric must have used it to form the choker without my noticing, how sneaky of him….Well, it looks like this spar is a tie….though I definitely came out on the better end.
Clearing the mud away from his nose, mouth, and eyes (I wasn’t planning to do any more, it wasn’t every day you got to see a king covered in mud) I waited expectantly in front of him, the smile on my face growing wider as I heard the roaring laughter from Brom behind me and the quieter snorts from Ren. We may have tied, but Edric definitely lost in terms of dignity. Opening his tightly shut eyes, Edric spat out a mouthful of mud with a disgusted expression on his face, and then glared at Ren and Brom.
“Shut it you two!”
His words only made them laugh harder, Brom was howling now, barely even able breath and Ren’s snorts had turned into audible snickers. Sighing in defeat, Edric turned to me, a now sheepish and slightly admiring look replacing the glare on his face.
“It seems the king’s traditional streak of winning the first bout with his guards has already ended with my own first personally oathed knight………….I knew you were amazing at fighting from the tournament, but I didn’t realize you were so skilled in magic as well, Delta, though I should have known after that dress of yours last night, still…...how did you escape that earth trap in the beginning, you shouldn’t have been able to sense the earth element I was using since there was hardly any water in the sand, I checked first thing this morning to make sure…...”
I pointed at his face, but he didn’t seem to understand, so I forced my face into a serious expression and then let my cheek twitch just enough so that it was clearly noticeable, then I pointed back at Edric. Understanding blossomed across his face and his mud covered shoulders slumped with a slurping sound.
“I see, even though I was trying so hard to disguise it, my face gave me away in the end anyways….”
I reached out to pat him comfortingly on the shoulder, then paused, remembering the mud and deciding not to. He noticed my gesture and glanced down at himself.
“Ah, do you think you could help me get all this mud off?”
I stared at him, considering it for a moment, I really didn’t want to, he just looked so completely ridiculous....................but he was a king…...I should probably give him some face. Storing the memory of Edric covered in mud away for further reflection someday, I reluctantly waved my hand and the mud slogged off of him with a loud plop, leaving him so clean, no one would have believed he had just been a mud man seconds ago. Brom was still laughing uncontrollably, but somehow managed to gasp out some words anyways.
“You….Hahahaha…..should have…….Hahahahaha…...left him like that……..Hahahahahahaheheheheheheheheheeeeeeeeehihihiiiiiiiii!”
Brom was laughing so hard he was bent over double, and tears were streaming down his face. Ren was at least trying to control himself, but the hand covering his mouth did nothing to hide his desperately heaving shoulders. Hmmmm, these guys might be more similar than they realize……maybe that was why they hated each other so much.....
Glancing over, I saw Edric’s face turned sullen again, but he made no effort to stop the guards any more, clearly having given up stopping them. Hmmm, he could have used the mud near them since it doesn’t have as much water…..it seems like he’s the good type of king that won’t bully his guards too much…................still...........they shouldn’t be allowed to get this out of hand~
I waved my hand at the two laughing men, seeing this, Edric’s face suddenly lit up into an excited grin. Distracted, the two men didn’t notice the wave of mud surging towards them until it was too late. Now it was Edric’s turn to burst out into brilliant howls of laughter. Smiling, I urged all of the surrounding water to return to the underground lake, including what water was in the mud covering Ren and Brom. The mix of sand and mud quickly dried, returning the arena to a dry state and turning the mud around Brom and Ren into a hardened cask, which I added a bit of fire to to make it even tougher.
Smiling, I glanced back at Edric, who rolling around on the now dry ground, acting in a completely undignified manner. Well, he could use his magic to set them free when he was satisfied. Walking past the pleading statues of Ren and Brom (I had been merciful to leave their heads free of mud), I gathered up Firesong and headed for the exit, I was ready to have some breakfast.