077 – Teacher
***
The citadel experienced two varieties of weather. Either gusty winds lifted the giant devil-birds to the clear skies above, or thick mists congealed at the mountain tops and flowed down to the valley. The mists were not quite rain but wetter than fog; they slicked the sides of the Ancient citadel. The moisture couldn’t reach the innermost portions of the structure, but rivulets dribbled in through windows of the sub-buildings on the periphery.
The Hall of Discipline was notoriously leaky. Its large windows faced windward. Originally glass panes kept out the elements, but now the iron grates and heavy curtains let in cold winds and rain and mist. Groskip and his two henchmen huddled in front of the burning hearth to warm themselves.
“We went too far, I think,” said Chunk.
“It serves them right,” Skip said.
“But those things looked expensive.”
“So what? Impudent commoners deserve punishment. If this were Vrinellia, those two would be hanged for laying hands on their betters.”
"But we're not in Vrinellia, are we?"
The three disciples had barricaded both the front door and the balcony. Heavy wooden beams crisscrossed the entrances. It would take a battering ram to get in that way.
“Maybe we shouldn’t have come here,” Lump said. “Your great-grandfather ignores us. The other disciples hate us. We’re trapped in a filthy castle with a horde of monsters. This adventure isn’t like I imagined.”
“It’s too late for second thoughts. We’ve committed to this. Becoming legendary swordsmen requires legendary hardships and trials. I wouldn’t have asked you two to suffer with me if the rewards weren’t equally as great.”
“Yes, but–”
A loud crash interrupted the disciples’ conversation, the sound of metal on stone. They jumped to their feet and drew their swords. Being ambushed so often had honed their senses. They were constantly alert for danger.
I entered the training hall through the girl’s dorm, soaking wet from the mists. Water trailed behind me. In my left hand were a set of steel chains that dragged across the floor.
“Three vandals,” I growled.
For the first time I came to them alone. Hwilla was not with me. The juniors outnumbered me three to one. This fact did not give them extra confidence. They backed away as I approached.
“Y– you forced us to do it! We had no other choice.”
The disciples moved slowly, as with a movie being projected at a lower frame rate than it was filmed. Their voices warped. The tensing muscles in their legs and arms foretold their movements. Battling with them every day had taught me the limits of their abilities and the weaknesses in their form. When Chunk and Lump fought alongside Skip, they gave up their own initiative and watched him for cues on how to proceed. This left them paralyzed for precious seconds. I darted in.
The rattling steel chains swept toward Skip, forcing him to dodge out of the way. I focused my real attack against Lump, who wavered from fear. My new sword cut through the air and clanged against his blade. He fell back desperately across the training floor. I knocked aside the tip of his saber and thrust my sword neatly between the ribs into his left lung.
“Ah!” Lump clutched his side. Blood soaked the fabric around the wound.
The other two faltered. They had always been the aggressors while I fought on the defensive. I usually parried their attacks until they exhausted themselves and then, at the end of the lesson, delivered a stunning punch or kick. Not so this time.
The other two split to attack from the front and back sides. But they didn’t know how to counter a spinning chain. Skip dodged out of the way. Chunk parried the chain only to have it wrap around his saber and smack him in the face.
I yanked Chunk off his feet. He hit the ground gracefully. The juniors were excellent at taking falls and rolling back into a fighting stance. But before he had a chance to right himself, I stomped down on his leg. It snapped into a V shape, bent the wrong way at the knee. He screamed in agony. Chunk looked in horror at his crippled leg.
“I’ve had enough of you pompous idiots. This is the end.”
Only Skip was left standing. His two henchman crawled away in pain.
“You insulted my pride and that of my ancestors, Strythe. You deserve worse than what you got. Since you have no sense of honor, we attacked your pride as a craftsman. That’s justice.”
I crossed blades with Skip. He was the most proficient of the three and had a stronger fire. We raged back and forth across the Hall of Discipline. My new sword bit into the metal of his saber, sending out sparks and grains of steel. I didn’t even need to outperform him as a swordsman. I had already out crafted him. His blade snapped at the forte, leaving him with a useless grip and hand guard.
I thrust my sword into one arm and then the other and then his left leg. I whipped him with the chains until he fell to the ground defeated. Blood splattered across the training floor as I beat him.
“Cease, you villain!”
I clamped a steel collar around Skip’s neck and two manacles at his wrist. One of the chains wound through his restraints and held him as a prisoner.
“You should have been more thorough in your vandalism. You left my newest project intact and so volunteered yourself to be its first test subject.”
The array in the collar leeched away his mana and returned searing hot agony. The more he tried to resist, the fiercer it burned. It converted his fire to pain. Much like the iron cauldron, these were chains specially made to capture a mage. Skip grit his teeth.
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“You deserved to lose your smithy. Eye for an eye. Your anger with me is unjust.”
“Anger? You should be grateful to my anger, junior, for it’s the only thing that stays my sword. You live by my anger. Were I more clear headed, I’d slit your throats and feed you to the trolls. That’s the rational thing to do. But rage clouds my thinking.” I dragged Skip by his chains back toward his two friends. “I will not allow myself to give in to such violent impulses. Your deaths will be delivered cold.”
“Ha. You can’t kill me! You’d earn my grandfather’s undying enmity.”
“Undying? That’s laughable. How long will that walking corpse last? A year? Two years? The man was an antique when he followed his lord into exile. That was six decades ago.”
“He’s still a legendary warrior.”
“Today. But what about tomorrow? If he coughs too hard, his bones will turn to dust. He’ll be entirely legend soon.” Chunk tried to rise from the floor, so I kicked him in the ribs. He spat out a mouthful of blood.
“Lord Hrolzek will take back the throne to Olzban,” Skip said. “When he does so, he will restore my grandfather’s titles and land. Everything will return to its rightful state.”
“Not this lifetime. Hrolzek was exiled from his homeland. Then he was driven out of his temple by the Paladins. Now he’s hiding in some Ancient ruins on the opposite side of the continent. That’s quite a setback. How long will it take us to conquer Sandgrave, raise an army, sail back to the north, and invade a hostile island? You’ll be even older than Grotrok by the time that happens. If you planned to inherit his county, you’re an incurable idiot.”
“That’s not why I joined him here. I don’t care for titles. Parcels of land come and go, traded in wars or marriage. Duty to my family is what matters, both to my ancestors and descendants. I joined my grandfather in exile to learn our family’s swordsmanship and pass it down to future generations. That’s what it means to belong to an ancient dynasty.”
“So you thought you were attending another fancy academy. One where you could take a few classes in the day and spend the evenings drinking and chasing girls. You thought you could maintain your lofty status and privileges here.” I gave him another kick in the side. “That was a bad assumption, Skippy. You’ve left civilization behind. This is the wasteland. There is no law here except force. The mighty rule through blood, not that which runs in their veins but the blood they shed.
“You can never go home. You betrayed your principles. You threw away all claims to honor when you joined this heretical cult. This is a place for witches, necromancers, assassins, and madmen. We’re something worse than monsters. We’re Void Phantoms!”
Groskip glowered at me from the ground. “True nobility exists wherever a noble heart beats, in the city or the desert. Even as an outlaw, I will hold my head up high. Life has no meaning without honor.”
“Then your lives are over.” I wrapped a chain around Lump’s throat until he turned red. “You know. I think the part of the problem is that you brought these two idiots with you. It’s impossible to adapt to new circumstances with two manservants attending to your every whim. I’ll have to get rid of them.”
I dragged Lump across the training hall toward the balcony.
“Unhand him!”
“Why should I? Lump doesn’t have a great-grandfather to look out for him. No one will care if he disappears. He’s too low rank.”
The barricade still blocked the door. I threw aside the wooden beams. Lump groaned in misery.
“Don’t worry. A ten story drop will crack him like an egg. Lump won’t feel a thing.”
Groskip crawled after us on his knees. The collar burned him cruelly. “Unhand him, bastard! Your fight’s with me. Kill me if you dare, but leave my friends out of it.”
“No. None of my words have penetrated your thick skull so far. You need a lesson. Maybe seeing your two friends splattered on the roof tops will teach you to face reality.”
I kicked open the doors to the balcony. The thick mist flowed inward across the room. Lump gasped as I lifted him by the neck.
“Stop! Stop. Don’t drop him.” Groskip’s fire flared up in panic, and thin smoke rose from his neck.
“You’re not worth the bother. I’ll murder you and be done with it. No punishment will be worse than the trouble you give me.”
“Fine. We’ll comply. Just don’t kill him.”
I tossed Lump over the edge of the balcony. He dropped a short distance and then the chain went taut around his neck like a noose. My left foot pinned the chain in place. It was the only thing keeping the young nobleman from dropping a dozen stories onto hard stone.
“You can either be a Phantom or a corpse. Chose.”
“A Phantom.”
“You will obey your seniors.”
“I will.”
“You will pay back the damages you caused and more besides.”
“Yes. Please. Just pull him up.”
I glared at him for a moment. Lump made desperate gargling sounds. Finally, I pulled him up and dumped him on top of his friends. They were all writhing in pain from their injuries.
“It’s the duty of junior disciples to keep the training hall in order. Clean this blood up before morning.”
***
My workshop was still a mess. It would take days just to get in order. The only thing to be thankful for was that the three vandals hadn’t destroyed my primitive rune tablet. They either hadn’t seen the agate cube or hadn’t understood how valuable it was. It still imprisoned the spirit of the rogue golem. They ruined my library, but I had already transferred the contents of those books into my notebook-ring. So I wasn’t starting over from scratch.
“It’s even worse than I thought,” Hwilla said.
“It’s a catastrophe. Maybe I should have just killed them. No one would blame me, right?”
“Wow, Strythe. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you so angry before.”
“That’s because I’ve never been this angry before.” I picked my broken staff up from the rubble and wiggled it. “I very much don’t like the feeling of anger. It’s a sort of burning sensation that rises from the stomach to the head. But the worse part is losing self control. Being overpowered by an emotion makes me feel so powerless.”
“Maybe you should vent your feelings more often. Let them out. Otherwise they build up until you have to explode.”
“No. That never works for me. Shouting doesn’t make me feel better. Complaining just aggravates my feelings. Blaming other people for their faults doesn’t lessen the harm they cause. The more I give in, the more miserable it makes me later on. Instead, I’ll bottle up my rage until the feeling goes away.”
Hwilla took a step away from me, as though I might literally explode. “It probably won’t go away while your workshop is in such a state. Looking at it even makes me angry.”
“I’m going to make the juniors clean it up. They need to do it personally.”
“Have they really submitted?”
“Their other choice is death. They understand that now.”
I felt miserable. Beating the juniors had done no good. It was only when I threatened Skip’s friends that he relented. He sacrificed his pride for their sake. I exploited his one belief that really could be called noble.
The three juniors might obey me for now, while they feared me, but they’d graduate to officers some day. They’d grow as strong as me or stronger. And none of them would forget my abuse.