“How could they see anything but the shadows if they were never allowed to move their heads?”

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Monday, Avril 30th, Year 1722 in the Thorian calendar

“Master Dupuis, are you paying attention?”

Simon started. The Monsieur had a tendency to ramble on for some time before their workouts, and he’d gotten quite bored. Simon was sure the history of the various martial art forms were fascinating to some people, but for him, well, it bored him to tears. He’d much rather be doing the forms than listening to the various details about them. He had taken to staring outside the room’s open windows, towards freshly cut spring gardens, while waiting for the Monsieur to start the physical lesson. The gardens always looked so serene and beautiful to him in the mornings. Simon quickly looked away from the windows and towards the Monsieur.

“Why yes Monsieur Lefebvre! I just thought I heard some commotion in the gardens, that was all.”

“Did you now? Well would you mind telling me the use and history of the dueling form we will be using today?”

Simon's cheeks flushed red. “Uhh… The uhh… Badger form… was first developed during th- the Sun King’s reign, and is best suited for public dueling, especially if women are present, for it is less likely to lead to deep cuts, serious injury or—“

“Wrong. I was talking about the Badger form earlier, but I never said we’d be using it today. What form did I just spend the last ten minutes of my time talking about Master Simon?”

“The… uhhh… the…” Simon racked his brains for an answer, but came up short.

“I- I don’t know ser.” Simon honestly replied, casting his gaze downward. He seemed to shrink into his seat after giving what he knew was such a feeble response.

A storm seemed to pass over the Monsieur’s brow, and his voice gave out a hardened retort. “Master Dupuis, you are lucky I so enjoy your company, as most of my students would get the switch for such a lackluster answer, no matter their rank or station.”

The Monsieur continued to give Simon a stern gaze for a few more moments, then his anger seemed to leave him just as quickly as it had come, and his face softened.

“See that you do pay attention now. I will not be repeating myself again for you. I must confess that my original question was something of a trick on my part. I hadn’t been talking about any dueling form. I had been talking to you about combat, specifically the dishonorable kind.”

“Dishonorable combat ser? Why would I ever need to learn how to fight dishonorably? To do so would make me a pariah across high society, an outcast.”

“Ma foi! No no no my boy, I wouldn’t ever want you to use what I’m about to teach you for dueling. This is only to be used for real combat, actual combat, and even then only against the lowest scum and villainy of life.”

“Monsieur, forgive me for asking, but don’t you think that a lecture on what is basically backstreet combat... unnecessary? Once my magic comes in, no thief, beggar, or ruffian, no matter how deranged, would ever dare accost me. It’d be suicide on their part. The only physical fighting I’ll ever be doing will be in competition.”

“And what if your magic doesn’t come in Master Dupuis? I know that this is a rough topic for you, but you must acknowledge that both your sisters and your brother have already shown skill in the magical arts, while you have not. It may simply be that you lack the talent. I of course do not mean to insult you Master Dupuis, there is no shame in being a blank. Four out of every five members of the nobility lack magical talents, you would not be a freak if it were so.”

Simon swallowed hastily, his mouth suddenly dry. All the anxieties of the past few months and years came bubbling up into his throat. “I- I’d rather we not talk about this Monsieur.” Simon replied.

“May we return to the lesson?”

“Certainly, Master Dupuis. As I was saying dishonorable combat is best avoided unless absolutely necessary, but it just may save your life one day. It is also important to not let squeamishness or sentimentalism get in your way. We will be focusing on the eyes, throat, nose, groin, and shins today, and tomorrow I will show you when and where to best bite a man if you are losing in unarmed ground combat. Are you good to begin soon?”

“Yes, Monsieur... I am.” Simon half heartedly replied.

“Good. Oh, and Master Dupuis?”

“Yes Monsieur?”

“I’d almost forgotten. Happy fourteenth birthday.”

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Thursday, Août 6th, Year 1734 in the Thorian Calendar

This wasn’t good.

My entire plan on surviving this Earthquake involved using an air mask, and if I now wanted one I’d have to go through Alexander to get it. Worse still, I needed to do it fast, before more of the support timbers snapped and crushed us both under what remained of the ceiling.

What I needed to do was simple enough, there was just one problem.

I was fairly sure I’d die in the attempt.

Away from all the fairy tales people liked to tell themselves about the small, gallant hero defeating the evil Giant, in real close combat fights one thing matters above all. Size. While fighting skill could take you far, it could only do so much. It didn’t matter how skilled a fighter a man with dwarfism was, he was going to lose a hand to hand fight with a colossus.

And size was not on my side in this fight.

My heart was pounding as loudly as an orchestra within my chest, and I felt my stomach twist until I was almost certain that I'd throw up. I'd always hated this feeling, this feeling of pure terror that came to me before a fight. I slowed my breathing as best I could in a weak attempt to calm myself. It usually did help some, but never enough.

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If I had any chance of winning a fight against Alexander, I needed to strike first, and fast. There was no use in talking to him, even a priest wouldn’t sacrifice his life for a man he hated.

Resolute in my decision, I quickly fell to my knees and rummaged like a madman through the rubble on the ground for a right sized rock. Too big, and I wouldn’t be able to handle it deftly. Too small, and it wouldn’t pack enough force to deliver killing blows to Alexander.

In my peripheral vision, I could see Alexander stirring. I still hadn’t found the right sized stone. If I didn’t find it soon, my window of opportunity would close, if it hadn’t already.

After a few more moments of searching, I finally found the right sized stone I was looking for. It was heavy, solid, and just slightly bigger than my hand. It would have to do, I wasn’t going to get a better weapon.

I stood up, and not daring to waste a moment, charged Alexander at a full sprint. The rock was poised firmly in my right hand, ready to strike a killing blow.

Alexander was leaning on his knees, and looked to be shaky on his feet. If luck had been with me, I’d have ended his life right then and there. I’m not sure whether it was the sight motion at the edge of his vision or the sound of my feet slapping hard stone, but he managed to look up and see me right as I began to strike.

Reacting on instinct alone, Alexander threw his head out of the way of my blow. He was only partially successful. The hand rock in my hand dealt him a harsh, glancing blow across his skull. Though the impact had clearly hurt him, Alexander’s dazed mind still possessed a low animal cunning, and rather than back away to recover his wits, he charged me.

Even charging bent over as he was, the man was still simply too large for me to carry out my prefered defense against charging men. If he'd been a smaller man, I would have jumped up and slammed my elbow onto the back of his neck before he could connect, driving us both into the ground. But Alexander wasn’t a smaller man. I needed a different strategy.

In less than a second, I had formulated a new plan in my mind, and then set about enacting it.

I braced my feet to best absorb the impact from Alexander’s charge, and then just before Alexander connected with me, I violently thrusted his head onto my right hip, wrapped my arm around his neck, and let the force from his run push me to the ground. Wrapping my legs around his waist in a lover's embrace, I flexed every muscle in my right arm with all the strength I possessed, trying to crush the Arteries and Jugulars in his neck and prevent his blood flow from reaching his brain. I just needed to last thirty seconds in this position, that was all, and then Alexander would be no more.

However, Alexander had no intention of giving the time I needed. At first he tried to break my grip through sheer might alone, using the muscles of his legs and back to strain against the grip around his neck, and almost succeeded. I felt as if my arm was going to pop out of my shoulder socket and that my fingers would snap in two, but I somehow managed to maintain my grip against his excursions.

His first plan a failure, Alexander quickly switched to a second. Wrapping his arms around my back, and putting one foot firmly under him, he attempted to stand himself up. If he could manage to gain some height for himself, he could then slam my body back onto the stone, likely cracking my spine and skull.

Realizing the danger I was in, I unlocked one of my legs and kicked out his right knee with all my might, sending his planted foot and leg sprawling back behind him. As big as he was, Alexander seemed to possess no ground combat training whatsoever, and I started to have hope that I might actually survive this encounter.

My feelings were premature.

Every move of the fight had occurred over just a few seconds, but the relative calm that had come over the ground couldn't even last that long. The violent vibrations were back with a vengeance.

The vibrations threw us both across the ground, and I furiously tried to maintain my grip around Alexander's neck, but the extra push from nature was all he needed to break free from my choke hold.

Panicking, I unlocked my legs from his waist and kicked violently at his midsection, trying desperately to push myself backwards and create some distance between us so that I could recover. It worked, somewhat, but Alexander, not daring to give up the advantage he’d won for himself, scrambled to get on top of me. I sent a four fingered jab towards the front of his throat with my right hand and shoved on his chest as hard as I could with my left hand, still desperately trying to create distance and to scurry away from the massive man.

Alexander, ignoring the pain jab at his must've caused him, refused to let me get away. Before I had fully escaped, he managed to get ahold of one of my feet and yanked with all his might in order to bring my body right back under him. Once I was in striking range of his meaty fists, he followed this move up with a power swing towards my head.

Knowing that if even one of his strikes hit me in the face the fight would be over, I frantically moved to raise my forearm in front of my head to block his blow. I managed to just narrowly get my arms up in time and block his blow, but it felt as if both the bones in my arm had been shattered under the impact. Try as I might, I couldn't stop a cry of pain from escaping my lips.

Smelling blood, I could see Alexander start to smile, and he raised his fists again to pummel me with another savage blow.

He never got the chance.

Before he could land his second blow, an enormous groaning sound reverberated throughout the chamber, and suddenly the ground close by us started to collapse in on itself, and fast. Abruptly thrown off of me by the force from the collapsing Earth, both Alexander and I slid down the slanted ground, towards where a rapidly expanding sinkhole had formed in a far corner of the chamber. To make matters worse, water from the connecting chambers was drawn into the room by the lower elevation and rushed towards us at astounding speeds. The torrential sound of thousands of barrels of flowing water stuck my ears as it came streaming into the room from all directions.

Realising I had only moments to act before I would be swept away into whatever depths awaited me below, I tried desperately to grab onto something and slow my descent. If I could just hold on, I would have time to search for the air mask and survive the coming onslaught. 

However, my desires were of no use. In moments the wall of rushing water hit with the force of a thundering carriage and shot me towards the sinkhole at an incredible speed.

Alexander fared no better. I saw him slammed violently into one of the cavern walls with a sickening crunch, then his limp form was carried by the torrent down into the sinkhole below.

Choking on water and unable to breath, I had absolutely no time to think of a plan, no time to resist, before the water dragged me across the chamber and a sense of weightlessness overtook me. I followed Alexander down into the bowels of the Earth.

After a few precious moments spent falling through the air, I landed with a crash, and a deep sense of wrongness washed over me, followed by pain. An unimaginable amount of pain.

It took a few moments for my mind to register all the sensations, but when it did it was unimaginable. Unable to cope, I shouted out a primal, animal wail of pure agony.

My vision became blurry from the tears of pain streaming down my face, and my mind was dizzy, but even in my confused state I knew I had to see what had become of me after the fall.

Not wanting to look, but not daring not too, I looked down at my body to see what had happened.

It was gruesome.

My legs were quite obviously broken, and my left arm was bent at an awkward angle. But that wasn't the worst of it all. Protruding from the left side of my stomach was a six inch spike of rock, and from the wound flowed a frightening amount of blood.

Horrified at the wound, I weakly tried to remove the protruding stone from my body with my working arm. After even the slightest bit of pressure, the pain became so overwhelming that I thought my entire mind would shatter into pieces and I had no choice but to stop.

Dizzy from the pain, I leaned my head backwards onto the ground. I just needed to catch my breath, then, I'd remove it. Just a small break to regain my strength, then I'd... then I'd...

I frowned. What... What had I been thinking of? I was in a cave... a cave... just like... just like... back in my childhood! I remembered now! Oh how much I loved these little adventures with Chasseur. I'd never known a better dog. Had we just discovered this little cave like that one down by the stream? Oh how happy he'd seemed the other day chasing those bats. Ah Chasseur, how I loved that dog. He’d never been just a dog to me growing up, he’d been part of the family.

Where was Chasseur? Why wasn't he here with me...

I frowned again. Chasseur wasn't here with me? Where was he? When was the last time I'd seen him? It must've been ages! Why hadn't I seen him in so long? I couldn't wait to see his face the next time I saw him... He'd always had the softest coat of white fur...

His fur... His fur... Wait… Why was there so much blood in his fur? No, No, No... Why did she have to go after him! It was me she was after! Come on Chasseur, breathe buddy! Breathe! Chasseur!

Wait...

Wait...

This couldn't be real... These were… Memories...

Where was I?

I was... in a cave. A cave?

I was in a cave, and there was... something... something important I had to do. I needed to... I needed to...

Dammit… Think... THINK!

I needed too...

Too...

"Oh Shit," I finally whispered. "I’m dying.”

And then darkness took me, and I thought of nothing more at all.