Rusty about peed himself as the door to the classroom slammed open, and Reevian burst through. “Van schir! Mak rool ten Verikes! Ignin—”

An explosion rattled through the classroom. Alice and Gunther screamed and dove under their desks. Ken froze. Rusty whipped his head around to see that Terathon was gone.

Another explosion, and Reevian stopped, held up his gauntlets, the sparks on them whirring like fireflies. His eyes went wide.

“Shni farra ken ral?” Terathon said from behind him, resting a hand gently on his shoulder.

“Imis, Terathon. Wol farra na ban. Verikes sombo. Ignin bas a frak.”

Terathon grunted. Reevian relaxed, putting his hands down, and stepped away. Rusty caught a flash of metal as Terathon pulled his other hand away from Reevian’s back, and nodded. The two wizards locked eyes for a moment, and Terathon sighed. Then he turned to the students. “I must go and see to a wizardly matter. Remain here and remain practicing until one of us returns.”

“Is it the Dark Lord?” Ken asked.

“Worse,” Reevian said, then froze as Terathon glared at him.

“Come, Reevian,” Terathon said, and the gauntleted mage shut the door behind him, leaving the four children alone in Terathon’s classroom.

Rusty looked at the others. The others looked back to him, glanced around at each other.

Then Gunther shrugged. “We must keep practicing, I suppose,” he said, and turned to look directly at the window to the balcony, glaring at it and smoothing a very torn piece of parchment in his hands.

“Okay, that was pretty weird,” Ken said. “You just want to keep practicing? How can I concentrate after that?”

“Reevian looked really scared,” Alice said. “He chose you Gunther, you ain’t worried none about how scared he looked?”

Rusty let them banter for a second, because he was busy. He’d learned over the last few days, that he could replay memories over and over in his mind, and slow them down or freeze them. And he swallowed hard, as he saw just what Terathon was holding.

“Oh shoot,” Roz whistled. “That’s a knife. Um. I don’t know how we feel about this. Wait, hold on. We’ve seen this guy blow up people! Why does he need a knife?”

“I mean, Gandalf had a magic sword,” Rusty whispered. “Wizards can stab people. Maybe they carry weapons just in case someone tries to be like Saruman?”

Roz started to reply, then paused, and pointed. Rusty looked over to see the other kids staring at him. Oh yeah, I said that out loud.

“Terathon woulda tanned your hide for that,” Roz told him.

“Rusty? What was that about swords?” Alice asked. “Your familiar got somethin’ to say?”

“I don’t know that I can keep focusing,” Rusty said.

“Then you won’t be the chosen one,” Gunther said, sneering. “Fine. And keep talking. It makes it harder for me to concentrate, so I will have training you do not.”

Rusty felt a surge of anger up his spine. “You’re all the time trying to be the teacher’s pet, and you’re mean mugging me when they aren’t looking. I don’t like that.”

“I don’t care what you don’t like,” Gunther said.

“Well you should,” Rusty said, standing up, and now he knew his mouth was running but his temper was up. “Because I don’t like Nazis who think they’re better than everyone else!”

Gunther’s eyes went wide. For a second, he just stared.

“Oh shit,” Ken whispered. “Daddy-o, that was exactly the wrong thing to say. You don’t know—” he started. He never finished. Gunther leaped up out of his seat and charged Rusty, screaming. He went low, caught Rusty around the waist and ran him toward the wall.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Gunther was bigger. Gunther had big muscles.

But Rusty had about a decade worth of farm chores and errands, and a whole mess of brothers.

And while his muscles weren’t as big as Gunther’s, he’d come by them honestly instead of being born with them, and as the chairs went crashing to the side and Alice and Ken scrambled to get out of the way, Rusty made himself go limp and put his head down, dragging Gunther’s arms down and slowing him, and made what would have been a concussion for sure into a painful but not-too-horrible backwards slam that made Rusty’s ribs ache.

The second they rebounded, Rusty kicked off from the wall and now it was Gunther’s turn to stagger back, as he overbalanced, and Rusty slammed his forehead into Gunther’s face. There was a pop and a crunch and Gunther gasped in pain and let Rusty go, threw wild punches. One of them grazed Rusty’s jaw and hit was his turn to stagger back, so Rusty put up his arms like he’d seen Rocky Marciano do, and tried to ignore the blood in his mouth.

Gunther yelled louder and beat on him, nose bloody and flat, with red spattering out and spraying everywhere, and Rusty let him go to town for a bit. Then he stepped in close and up came the haymaker.

Gunther’s head snapped up, the big kid staggered back, and Rusty saw blood with a tiny white speck fly, knew it was a tooth, and for a second he thought that was it. Then Gunther shook his head, glared at him with absolute malice, and Rusty could feel his will gathering, could feel him calling upon his rune…

“STOP!” screamed Alice, and then what felt like a dump truck full of rocks poured over them both.

When Rusty could think again, he thought Ow. Immediately followed by Where am I?

“We’re under a whole lot of gravel, pal,” Roz told him.

Rusty tried to move an arm, felt the rocks shift, slightly. He couldn’t get it more than an inch away from him, and as the rocks shifted, he felt the space he’d just vacated fill in. The air was tight down here, and rocks were right up against his lips, so he couldn’t open his mouth.

“Y’all gonna behave now?” Alice asked, her voice sterner than he’d ever heard it. Gentle, mild Alice was gone, and whoever this was, she knew how to use the Mom voice.

“Mmm-hmm?” Rusty tried.

“Ya—” Gunther started to croak, then stopped, coughing. “In my mouth! Agh.”

“I’m sending the gravel back now,” Alice declared. “Y’all start fighting again, y’all gonna get rocked again.”

“Mmmhmm.” Rusty groaned. His jaw throbbed where Gunther had punched him, and two of his molars were all wiggly. They sent spikes of pain up his skull, so he stopped wiggling them.

The gravel clattered and rattled away. Rusty stood up, wobbly and with a hot surge of pain all along his shoulders that told him he’d have a huge set of bruises there later. But he did see with a little satisfaction that Gunther was wobbly too.

They glared at each other, as Gunther mopped blood off his face. “Don’t ever call me a Nazi again,” the big blonde boy said.

“I’m sorry,” Rusty said. “Ain’t your fault. You must have just been a baby or so.”

“My last name is BERGMANN.”

Rusty stared. “So?”

Gunther laughed. Ken laughed. Alice joined in.

And when they eventually explained it to him, Rusty felt like ten day old cow shit. Gunther shrugged it off when he tried to apologize.

“You didn’t know. And I was being an ass,” Gunther said. “I thought you were weak and you’d get us all killed. Now I see I was wrong. Friends?” Gunther offered his hand.

“Friends,” Rusty said, and they shook. “Let’s train hard and kill the heck out of that Dark Lord.”

*****

After they cleaned up as best they could, the kids realized that they might have actually gotten themselves in a whole lot of trouble. But when Reevian returned, he only nodded approvingly and commented: “I wasn’t aware that Terathon was teaching you advanced techniques, already. Who is most injured?”

“Gunther,” Rusty said. “And I’m a little banged up, too.”

“But not a scratch on the others…” Reevian’s eyebrows climbed up towards his hat. “Perhaps I misjudged you,” he said, and Gunther turned pale.

“It’s not like that,” Alice began, but Reevian waved a hand. “Hold still, the two of you,” he said, and pointed a gauntleted hand at Gunther, and then Rusty. Rusty sighed as he felt the pain fade from his back, and had the very strange sensation of feeling his gums wrap back around the loose teeth, as the pain faded. Across the way, Gunther’s nose filled back in like a balloon re-inflating.

Reevian beckoned, once they were whole again. “Come. Terathon will be busy for the rest of the day. You can practice his techniques in your quarters. But tell one of us should you wish another bout. We shall assign you some space to practice in.”

As they followed Reevian back up to the dormitory floor, Rusty and Ken shared a glance. “Terathon?” Ken mouthed.

“Sir?” Rusty asked. “Is Terathon all right?”

“Yes and no.”

“Was it the dark lord after all? Or one of his servants?” Rusty said, his mind filling with images of black riders, dead men on evil horses.

“No. It is something far worse,” Reevian said. “It is politics.”