I woke with a shiver as a cold breeze wriggled its way into my robe – looking down, I realised I had shifted in my sleep and my leg was now sticking out from under my travel blanket. I noticed movement off to one side and sat up quickly, but it was only Darina practicing in the pre-dawn mist. The many-coloured lights of the Blacksands had already faded, which meant that it was about time to be up and about anyway. Glancing around, I noticed that Reff and Riffa were still asleep – the two of them were usually pretty punctual so I decided to let them sleep; I was sure that Darina would have woken us all without hesitation if we had overslept.
Rising, I stowed the blanket in a ring and stretched. It had been harder than I thought it would be to sleep surrounded by the lights, but whatever amount of sleep I had got seemed to be enough.
Recalling my thoughts from the evening before – about wanting to do better and try to get to know the angry apprentice – I drew in a lungful of chilly air and let it out in a gust of slightly thicker mist, before walking over to where Darina was running through a series of aggressive kicks, punches and headbutts. I wanted to wait for a pause in the motions, but after only a few moments, the diminutive woman’s movements came to a halt and she turned to look at me, a glare on her face.
“What? I am trying to practice.” Her voice was full of frustration and I wondered what would drive a person to take losses in practice so hard, especially against somebody further along than you were.
“Uh, sorry to interrupt, Darina. I just, uh, realized that you’ve asked about my background, but I’ve never really asked about yours. I was going to wait for you to finish though. Sorry for interrupting?” I was not sure if I had interrupted, given that I had mostly been standing there doing nothing, but I was trying to build bridges, not burn them. Peace had to start somewhere.
“Why?” The glare she wore deepened and I held up my hands in mock defence.
“We’re traveling together, obviously, and I just think it would be easier on us both if we could get along with each other. Just trying to bridge the gap, you know?”
“Your Master has given you a task, as has my own. That should be enough – there is no need for us to ‘get along’.” Her voice was clipped now and I could hear the condescension in the slightly lecturing tone.
“Walker didn’t ask me to do this, it was... somebody else. But even if he had, I would still make the effort. There’s no reason for us to be so antagonistic; surely it would only lessen our odds?”
“You would leave your Master’s side at another’s request? Where is your loyalty?”
“I’ve told you before, I’m pretty sure, that Walker isn’t my Master. Although, I guess he is now, technically since he started teaching me the sword... it doesn’t matter. Walker is my friend and he understands that this is something I needed to do, and that it’s beneficial for everyone not to piss off an Elder phoenix.”
“You are a disgrace. To be as deficient as you are, and to still be chosen by an Apex, and then show such disrespect? When our mission is over, I will challenge you again and this time you will not come away from it so unscathed.”
I took several deep breaths; willing to make the effort I might have been, but my body was still pretty aggressive, and I wanted to react to the challenge in her voice, but I held onto the edges of my temper and breathed through the surge in aggression before continuing.
“Well, you’re welcome to. In the meantime, I’m not going to just give up – I’m going to go full anime protagonist on you. We’re going to be friends eventually. It’s just how the trope works.”
“Again, you speak like an idiot, using strange words. Whatever place you are from, I hope I am never asked to visit, as I am not sure I could hold myself back from beating more than one of you.”
“Well, I’m pretty sure there’s no way for you to go where I’m from, so you need not worry. Though, with an attitude like that I’m sure you could make a lot of money on the Internet...”
“More stupid words! If I tell you some of my past, will you shut up?!” Her raised voice sounded like a shout in the empty desert, and I glanced around to see if she had disturbed our other friends; luckily, they still seemed to be asleep.
Turning back to the small bundle of barely repressed irritation, I shrugged and gave her my best grin.
“Sure. For a while.”
I honestly thought she was going to punch me for a moment, but she seemed to regain control of herself just in time to avoid it. I saw her take several deep breaths, much as I had earlier and she closed her eyes for a few moments. When she opened her eyes again, she seemed calm, so I turned the power down on my grin so that I was just a polite smile, waiting for her to proceed.
“I was born in the Sha Forest, in a village within the territory of the thundering apes. Both my parents had been killed in the war against those that wielded the dead as weapons,” she paused in her story to spit to the side, disgust clear on her face. Her voice was mostly flat, but there had been a flare of anger at the mention of the dead. I recalled Sidona mentioning something similar. “As an orphan with no other family, I was provided a place to live by the village, but was otherwise left to my own devices. My parents were fighters, while the other villagers cultivated plants to supply to alchemists. I was somewhat reckless as a child, so they did not trust me around their crops. As an orphan, and children being what they are, I would often get into fights with the other village children. They were often older and always bigger than me, and as a result, I developed a Focus based on healing, so that I could keep fighting until I beat the arrogant vermin into submission.”
Darina paused and I did not inject that she was treating me much as her peers had apparently treated her; I considered this a sign of my regrowing maturity. I did however think about her fighting style – it was super-aggressive and seemed to centre around beating her opponent while simply ignoring damage. I could see why she would develop the Focus she did, and while I was no psychologist, I thought I could see why she was taking losing so badly.
“Eventually the other children were no match for me, of course. They were not fighters, and it turned out that – like my parents - I was.” Her voice was proud when she mentioned her parents, and she raised her chin minutely. I felt bad for her loss, which only worsened as she continued. “The village elders did not take my victories well however. In my fourteenth summer, I was cast out after thrashing several of them. The Sha Forest is a dangerous place, especially for a child, but there was little I could do – even though I was by far the most skilled fighter in the village, skill alone cannot overcome cultivation. Growers they may have been, but the elders were all much stronger than I was. I left without a glance back and went in search of another village, which I found after days of travel. The children there were no less cruel to a strange orphan than the children of my own had been to one they knew, and it was not long before I was cast out again.”
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
“Darina, I’m so sorry-” The apprentice's eyes snapped to my own, so wide that I could see the whites all around the red jade of her irises. I stopped speaking, a warning from Instinctive Precognition telling me that to continue would be stupid.
“I do not need your pity! I lived in the wilds of the Sha Forest for years, fighting people and beasts both, surviving. I don’t need pity...” Her voice trailed off at the end, but I stayed silent. Moments passed, drawing out the quiet and I was almost ready to throw wisdom aside when she finally continued.
“By the time Master found me, I had grown bold. My Core was nearing completion and I was daring to face stronger and stronger beasts. I was facing a young thundering ape, or trying to; the thundering ape is one of the strongest beasts in existence, able to chase off even dragons from their territory and I was no match for even an infant. I was close to the limit of my healing when Master intervened. Afterwards, she asked me why I had been fighting the ape, and upon hearing my story she asked if I wanted to be strong. I said yes, of course. It was all I had wanted for years, to be strong enough. She said I had an interesting Focus, and with her help, I could be truly strong. That same day, we shattered my Focus and I became her apprentice.”
Well, I think I now have a pretty good picture of why she was how she was, given her story. I could not really say that I blame her and it definitely made her view her attitude towards me in a different light. From her perspective, it must seem like I had been given something I did not earned – to be made the apprentice of an Apex - without any of the hardships she had been through, and almost certainly without the same apparent drive.
“Darina, it must have been tough, living alone in the wild like that. I can’t imagine how you managed to reach the Path stage again after breaking your Focus after almost completing your Core. It must have been hard.”
She looked at me, no longer glaring, but I was having difficulty placing her expression. I opened my mouth to continue, but she beat me to it.
“You said you would shut up if I told you about my past. I’m going to travel ahead for a while. Please tell Reff and Riffa.”
“Wait-” I held up a hand and began to ask her to wait, but before I could finish, she had turned and sprung away from me, soon just a speeding dot against the desert backdrop. I quickly drew a line in the cool sand in the direction she went and shaking my head, went to wake my friends, not wanting her to get too far ahead.
*
***
*
Reff, Riffa and I were running in the direction Darina had gone earlier that day – the apprentice was a lot faster when she did not have to wait for me, and we had not been able to catch her. I hoped she had not gone too far – I thought we were running in the right direction, but I was not a tracker and I was not sure how well I would do at following her tracks in a desert even if I had been.
The sun was high overhead when we spotted something on the horizon – I had been happy to see the sun again, after many days under the near perpetual grey of the clouds, but it was quite a bit hotter than it was normally, so I found myself sweating a lot under the thick traveling clothes I was wearing.
As we ran towards the bulge on the horizon, I could soon tell that it was far too large to be the wayward apprentice, and Reff positioned himself closer to me as we moved towards it.
“With concern, that looks large enough to be a sand shark, Hunter. We should avoid it, if possible.”
Glancing at my tall friend, I raised my eyebrows at him. It was the first time he had ever recommended going around trouble. I almost agreed in reflex, but I recalled Darina’s story from earlier and worried that she might have taken the large thing’s presence as a personal challenge...
“What if Darina is over there? Do... sand sharks... are they... wouldn’t they be in the sand normally, rather than on it?” I had never heard of sand sharks before, but it seemed like an odd name if they did not live in the sand.
“In concerned agreement, they do normally live under the sand. It is strange to see one on the surface not fighting something.”
“I think we have to risk it, Big Guy. If we close in and see she’s not there, can we get away?”
“With consideration, it is possible if it is not too old. Otherwise we will need to fight. However, if Darina is engaged, it is unlikely she can prevail alone.”
We quickly agreed to check it out – if she was not there, we may be in for a fight, but that was better than abandoning a... well, not friend, yet, but a companion to her fate.
It did not take us long to approach close enough to make out that there was indeed a fight in progress; Darina appeared to be being batted about by a creature that did actually look like a shark, if a shark was literally armour plated and had six legs. The thing was at least fifty feet long, not including the tail. It had two sets of legs at the back and one set at the front, and a long-finned tail.
I heard Reff sigh, and after a moment I felt the heat of this armour burst into existence as it flowed over his body. For her part, Riffa came to a dead stop, and after another moment or two Reff and I were being followed by six sand puppets. Feeling much less impressive, I Focused and felt the world slow around me as crackling light flickered in and out of existence around me. For a few seconds I surged ahead of my companions, but was soon overtaken once more by my large friends glowing form as he closed the distance with the shark. With an audible grunt of effort Reff delivered a blow to the creature’s side that I could feel through my feet.
The shark staggered to the side before steadying itself and twisting about to bite at him. Reff did not move, standing his ground as the massive mouth tried to close about him, before jerking back suddenly, a faint puff of smoke floating up before scattering on the wind.
The puppets closed in on the legs while it was distracted, also having outpaced me. Five of the six clamped around the front leg closest to us and an effort to limit its movement, or so I assumed. It seemed to work, though I knew there had to be some kind of energy manipulation involved, since this thing apparently literally swam through sand.
I reached the fight just as I saw Darina sit up from where she had been laying in the sand and I heard a dull crunching pop from her direction that made me wince. I was glad that she seemed to be alright, having been given the time to regenerate from her wounds, as spectacularly fast as she could do that.
As I ran in, I attempted to do the same thing Reff had, which involved jumping, given the disparity in our sizes. I leapt, shooting through the air and contracted my body around my core just as I reached the huge bulk of the sand shark, driving my fist into the thick, articulated armoured plate of its side. There was a crack and I was catapulted away from the monstrosity by the power of my own blow. I did not go too far – I may not have been braced but the momentum of my leap had at least countered some of the reactive force.
My blow did not however have a great deal of effect on my target; seemingly completely oblivious to my punch, the shark twisted its body around, to swing its tail into Reff’s side. The appendage barely missed me as it passed, blowing sand into my face even as it smashed into my friend, who was sent skipping along the sand a short distance before he was able to arrest his movement to run back in.
Riff and Darina had not been idle during all of this though; they were both attacking the things face, with Darina now holding onto a segment of its armour while trying to punch it in the eye. The sand puppet had its arms wrapped around the huge muzzle and was kicking it in the nose with audible thuds. I winced – if this thing had anything in common with a real shark, it would not like that.
Darina trying to punch it in the eye did give me an idea – I did not know what the armour was made from, but it did seem to be resistant to lightning. I wondered how resistant and eye would be to a bolt of electricity.
With a fierce grin, I took off running again, watching the tail complete its backswing above my head, not wanting to experience the same thing as my friend. I did not think my unarmored body would hold up nearly as well as his seemed to.
The shark snarled as it tried to lift its restrained leg to brush off people on its face, but unable to, it instead turned to my approaching form. As I ran there was a flicker of warning that I was doing something stupid, but I was committed to my course of action. With a yell I jumped, hoping to land on its conveniently directed head and make my way to its eyes. As I sped through the air however, the warning from Instinctive Precognition still echoing in my mind, I remembered my decision not to jump too much in combat. I remembered the reasoning behind that decision, as the behemoth simply opened its wide, toothy maw and took me in like a long-awaited snack.