Leaving Thomas to the board and walking up to the familiar doors of the training room he has resided in for the last 6 years, Taryn suddenly sneezed violently. An action, or reaction, he has grown rather used to for the past year.

Entering the age of eleven, the boy has grown both in body and sense. The increase in sensitivity, however, has resulted in his nose reacting rather easily to stimuli such as the brisk morning air blowing through a window near the door that was always opened at the hour.

Steadying and bracing himself, Taryn unloaded the remaining two sneezes that the agitation of the first sneeze caused.

Finished with the minor annoyance, the boy reached up to the handle of the door and turned.

Opening the door, He entered the room and expected to be greeted by his rather peppy friend.

Only to notice a trying and failing fighter of sleepiness sitting on one side of the room. Divining that this was another one of Monica’s famous escapades of self-sleep deprivation, he let out a question to check her faculties like numerous occasions before.

“What was so interesting last night to make you like this again?”

“It...Was...A...Mystery...Story...Had...To...Finish.”

“Okkk...Time to pull out the mattress.”

Saying thus, the boy went to retrieve the padding and lay the zombie elf down. His friend down and out for the foreseeable future, the boy pulled out a book of his own from their shared shelf and busied himself.

Lanna has stopped giving them lessons and supervision during meal times. The furthering of their knowledge was now entrusted to the books provided according to their interest.

Opening up the page that he had marked the previous day, the boy went over the fighting tactics of the lizardmen from the desert. He had already studied their various weapons of choice and was now looking into how they were employed in combat to hopefully supplement his own fighting style.

The stances Thomas taught him were mastered already, but now he wanted one where he could incorporate his tail within.

The ancestral martial arts of his race was too orientated towards barehanded fighting and biting to fuse with swordplay. He still managed to single out a few maneuvers to use but the rest required too much flexibility to use effectively.

The lizardman techniques proved to be much more applicable in comparison. Though one problem in this arrangement was the length difference between his and the lizardmen’s. The book stated that theirs were roughly as long as their body.

His, fluffy as it was, was only stretching to roughly the length of his torso. A measurement acquired after snuggling into his own tail for past few years.

Thinking on ways to rectify this little problem, the boy called out his [blessing]. The wispy aura began to congeal around his entire upper body, a vast improvement from their original quantity.

Moving the substance from his body over to his tail, the boy pushed the excess out in a bid to lengthen his appendage. As the grayish aura began to build up and extend beyond the tail to the length that he deemed sufficient, he let the power settle into, as he dubbed, harden mode.

The aura shifted, the once billowing construct of a tail seemed to gain solidity as it pulsed with power.

Deciding to see if he could make the tail gain an edge, Taryn willed his aura into sharpen mode. This seemed to fail as the length was immediately lost as the aura darkened and tried to wrap around an edge it could find on the tail to no effect.

Sighing, the boy was rather dejected that he had once again failed to weaponize one of his body parts.

The last attempt had been to make his arms into blades and cut people who has managed to enter his guard. This only resulted in him gaining ability to enhance his nails. Something that is arguably useful if he did not have a sword and shield. An ultimately pointless power in the boy’s eyes that never saw him without the two articles of weaponry.

Accepting once again that the sharpen aura only worked on objects already with an edge, the boy noted down the new use of his [blessing] before picking up his wooden sword and heading for the dummies, installed a few years back, to practice the newly acquired techniques.

He first simply reformed the tail extension and followed the stances listed in the book to find what was comfortable. A few swings in and he was interrupted by some grumblings from the elf.

“Urg. Stop with the noise. I’m trying to sleep here.”

“Quit your whining. You did it to yourself.”

“Come on. Don’t be mean. Just be a pall and sit down.”

“Hmm. Maybe.”

“I want a ‘yes’. Your ‘maybe’ is always ‘no’.”

“But I just found something new to do. I can try to be quiet. I won’t hit the dummies. Just air. Alright miss sleepy-head.”

“Hmm. Fine. Keep it down.”

Conversation ending, the elf plopped down again to return to her dreams while the dog attempted to mimic a lizard.

The morning wound by and Monica woke up, but was still remaining idle. Taryn eventually moved on to changing his [Aura shroud] between armor and tail extension to make the process actually fast enough to be viable.

After familiarizing himself with the transition, he attempted to implement it. Turning on the harden mode armor, he went through the basic stances before adding a tail swipe at the end.

Only to fumble with the aura relocation and trip over his own leg. His face-plant was further supplemented by the hitherto catatonic Monica bursting out in laughter.

“Hahahahaha. I knew you would fail. Sitting there was so worth it.”

Face heating up lightly from his failure, the boy still kept his face blank save for a few twitches of his lips and turned around to the still giggling elf.

Letting out a long calming breath, he turned around to greet her, trying to shove the blunder behind and change the topic.

“Finally awake huh? How was your little nap? I didn’t bother you too much right?”

“It was fine. The after nap entertainment was great too,” she giggled a bit before continuing, ”How long was I out anyways?”

“A day, they left you in overnight.”

A narrowing of eyes was replied with a shrug, “Or it’s close to lunch. Your stomach should tell you the right answer.”

Letting out a long yawn and stretching, the girl continued.

“Sooo. Did you eat those pickled vegetables mom helped me made?”

Taryn seemed to pause a bit before replying.

“Yup, they taste pretty good. When can you give me some other food?”

“Out with the truth. I know you are lying when you do that,” the girl indicated towards his tail.

Said appendage has been swaying in a rather erratic rhythm since he began talking, the only indicator of nervousness with his blank expression. Looking behind himself to see the dead giveaway, Taryn chuckled nervously before turning towards his friend.

“They smelled funny. And looked kinda weird too. Couldn’t you just make the other stuff like meat. I like those.”

“But you ate every other dish I made. Why can’t you eat something pickled? I even made it less smelly.”

“Can’t you have me taste test something else. Why is pickling bothering you so much? Or is it a personal thing for you to drown the hated ‘veggies’”

“Urgh. It’s not a thing between me and veggies. It’s a tradition thing for elves. Mom told me so. And I need your uncaring reviews because mom is just going praise me. So suck it up and eat it the next time I give you some.”

“Err. Fine. But you are making me some more jerky. My mouth is not for free.”

“Deal. You’ll get your jerky, jerk. I’m off to reading now. Nanoc the hunter has a second book already.”

“Oh. So that was what kept you up last night. What’s it about? Another romance?”

“No. I read other stuff besides romance. The Nanoc guy just hunts down criminals and uses really cool reasoning from clues to find them. Wanna see for yourself?” Monica handed him a book.

“Hm. why not? Can’t be worse than the stuff you have shown me before.”

Accepting the book, Taryn moved to sit next to Monica like many times before where she had convinced him to try something and hoped it was a good book. Monica’s rating tended to be unreliable as he found out over the year.

He liked the odd scary books, found the rare monster documentary interesting and loathed the convoluted romance novels.

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So it was with hope on the horizon that the boy opened the first pages and read. The tale, against the expectations associated with a piece of fiction Monica liked, was actually not bad.

The expected bad guy was actually not the target. The reasoning and deductions were sound too. He only had one objection against the book.

“Why did the hunter guy suddenly get turned into a kid? And how did he still fight and convince people?”

“That’s because the major villain did him in. And he’s got skills and experience to help with that.”

“It doesn’t work that way. I got skills. Still can’t beat the old man because he is way stronger and heavier too. I can still beat you though.”

“Shut up. We had a deal of me just shooting you if I got you those rare survival books mom had. And Nanoc is just better than you and this is not real anyways. So enjoy the weirdness of it and just keep reading.”

“Alright. Still saying the kid transformation is iffy. Makes no sense.”

His last comment made known, Taryn resumed reading.

The two sat in comfortable silence all the way until lunch.

As Lanna brought in their meal and left for her own, the two put down their books and began to put away the chicken and corn dish.

The removal of entertainment left Monica rather bored and in need of conversation.

“Hey. When do you think you will be out of here?”

“Huh? I don’t know. Why do you ask? Something wrong?”

“No. Mom just mentioned me being old enough for some hands on stuff pretty soon. She also didn’t want to pull me from you. So I was told to ask when you are leaving here.”

“Oh. I don’t know. The old man didn’t mention anything about adventurer work. He did mention things about the Mercenary Union though. At least from what I remember. We don’t talk much.”

“Can you ask him then? It would be fun. Me, you and mom out in the woods doing things. I used to be out there before, it’s really nice.”

“Wait. You were complaining about walking all the time in the woods when we were six. What gives?”

“Hey. It is nice. Just too much of a good thing is bad, alright.”

“Yeah. Yeah. What are we going to do out there anyways?”

“Mom is going to hunt things. Maybe we can get some fighting too. Haven’t really discussed anything. But I bet we get to use a real sword and bow. At least you do, I get to fire arrows that don’t just bruise.”

“Hmm. That is nice. I can see you miss other things than me. I’ll go ask Thomas when he picks me up. Well. You do your things. I have strength training now.”

Ending the conversation, the boy went away and started attaching weights to his wooden sword, wrists and ankles.

Done with the preparations, Taryn began to go over stationary exercises to start building his muscles.

After an hour of that, the boy moved on to more dynamic activities. He began to swing the sword with all of his weights on. Yet these were not the basic swings that followed his stances. They were intentionally flawed ones, designed to make him lose balance and improve his ability to regain it.

Another hour passed before he moved on to a more peculiar exercise as he called out to Monica.

“Yo. Shoot me please.”

“Give me a sec.”

As the girl went to fetch her bow, Taryn moved towards his shield and moved up onto the balance training platform at the center.

Footing somewhat secured, he gave a thumbs up. The hail of arrows began. Monica pelted him with arrows at a rate of one every other second all the while moving around the room. Splitting the full body armor up to cover both sword and shield arms, Taryn began to block and deflect all that he could.

He transitioned smoothly from shield to sword in a well practiced manner, all arrows heading for vitals were intercepted with precision and grace.

Yet there were still holes in the defense and arrows still landed every now and then. Their little impacts slowly building up the boy’s fatigue. But the archer was growing tired as well. The arrows may weigh nothing, but the bow and drawing of it still sap strength from Monica.

Slowly the battle increased in pace with Monica moving faster and Taryn started to jump from platform to platform. The skirmish continued for another half an hour until rather undignified thump was heard once again in the room as an arrow finally broke through to end the battle of attrition and brought Taryn down.

There was no laughter to greet his union with the floor this time, however, as Monica was too busy panting to produce any. The one who fell first was also the first to recover.

“Wow. I lasted much longer. You’re panting a lot more.”

“Please don’t say it like that.”

“Why not?”

“Erm. I read something that had that phrase. I liked it. But mom found me reading it and told me it was bad.”

“Okk. Well, I’m too tired now. You do your thing and I’ll be lying over here. It’s almost time to be picked up anyways.”

Nodding, Monica plopped down and pulled out her unfinished book. Taryn removed his weights, laid down and closed his eyes. The two slipped into silence to wait for their guardians to arrive.

Waking up groggily and alone, Taryn yawned and stretched out. A bit more wakeful after the light exertion of his body, he sat up and continued waiting for Thomas, unaware of how long he had slept. His wait continued for about an hour before Taryn started to worry.

Did he really forget me? Really? He can be pretty focused with whatever he is doing. Like training me. But he couldn’t forget me right. Unless he left me. But why? I did things right. Handled the sword well. Kept my face blank like his around strangers. I even did the annoying-your-friends thing we saw the adventurers did in the dining hall. But he never talked to me much. Maybe he lied those first few days. No, he wouldn’t. Then what happened. Maybe Lanna knows, she did teach us a lot of stuff. Yeah, let’s ask Lanna.

Conclusion reached, the boy walked out into the guild hall and stopped.

The time was night already, the guild hall was lit with intermittent light fixtures glowing a soft orange. Even more confusion entering his mind, Taryn started walking towards the familiar smell of Lanna from behind the desk.

Reaching the adult, the child waited for her to finish her business with a guild member before speaking up.

“Hey. Lanna, where is Thomas?”

“Oh. Your awake already. And we don’t really know. I asked Agatha to go look for him already. You were still sleeping then so I didn’t want to wake you up and worry you.”

“So he didn’t leave me right. And why just Agatha?”

“She’s a really good tracker. Now just sit down and wait a bit ok. My shift is over pretty soon and I can go and get you some dinner from the staff kitchen.”

“Ok.”

Taryn finally settled down after his worries were alleviated and waited. Yet new worries were beginning to stem as the wait continued even after dinner was had and he want back into the training room.

Sitting with his body against a wall, Taryn now fidgets over the new prospect that Thomas was very hurt because of adventuring.

A few pessimistic thoughts even suggested the scenario of death. A fear well-grounded from the few times he saw adventurers returning with less people at his inn and looking sad. The boy knew enough of death. He might have gotten over the image of the incident, but he still learned that people can just sometimes leave you like that and never return.

With the new thoughts taking hold of his mind, the boy was beginning to draw a conclusion. Thomas was gone. And Taryn had nowhere to go to. A constant in his life was gone. He wasn’t very close to Thomas, but the man was always there. Not talking to him, yet not leaving. He trained him, fed him and even asked Lanna to help when he can’t. All that was no more.

A question followed after the conclusion. What was he going to do now? The query dragged the boy’s spirit down even more as he pulled his knees up and laid his head on them. Tears started soaking his pant legs as the answer failed to arrive.

As the sadness began to build, he pulled his head up and started to bash it against the wall behind him. Each hit punctuated by a thought soaked with regret and self doubt.

Why, why did he have to go? Why didn’t he take me? I could have helped. Maybe I couldn’t. He didn’t take me because I wasn’t ready. I’m too weak again. That’s why he never mentioned any adventurer work. I was just not good enough.

The last thought delivered his eyes over to the training equipment. I just have to be better.

And so the boy was once again lost within his own world, trying again to better himself and get control of things. Simply doing something he knew he could do.

So the boy picked up the training sword again, strapped the heaviest weights he could lift, got into proper stance and began.

The stances flowed together, each move wove into the next seamlessly even with the added weight. The first standard moves finished, the boy employed his [blessing], stretching it to its highest limits, striving to cover even more of his body as the boy weaved defensive maneuvers into the routine.

Straining even more as the aura consumed even more energy than the weights, the boy kept going until he eventually dropped. Mind cleared from exhaustion, he was finally able to think more positive thoughts.

Maybe he is just injured and Agatha will get him back. She is really scary and good. I still have time to go with him. I’ll definitely ask to come when Thomas gets back.

Too tired to get up, Taryn simply opted to lie there and sleep. His previously positive thoughts bled into the dream to make a small smile.

The peaceful sleep was interrupted around midnight as a knocking was heard on his door.

“Taryn. Are you in there. Could you come out for a bit.”

Yawning, the boy replied, “Sure Lanna. Thomas came back right. How bad was he hurt?”

“It’s pretty bad, so I want you to stay calm no matter what happen ok.”

Heart tightening a bit, the boy opened the door and gave the woman a nod.

The walk to the guild hall was rather silent. The adult too focused on possible damage control with the boy. The boy too worried about the possible damage done to the other adult.

Confusion quickly replaced worry as Taryn looked around the guild hall they arrived in. The distinct lack of Thomas throwing him for a loop.

Finally settling his eyes on Agatha, a weight was dropped into his stomach. Thomas’ scimitar and shield was strapped to her sides, a faint smell of blood wafting off of them. A smell he knew very well every time Thomas came home with small cuts from working.

Rushing forward in disregard of the once scary woman, he snatched the shield from her hands and fixed his eyes on the heaviest concentration of the smell.

Having read the word in dried blood, he dropped to his knees and clutched the shield to his chest, quietly asking Agatha as tears dripped from his closed eyes.

“He didn’t come back right?”

The woman dropped to one knee and put a hand on his back.

“He didn’t. I’m sorry.”

“What killed him?”

“It was a chimera. It’s been hunting a few party already from the other bodies I found in the area. Thomas went out fighting alone and killed the thing before he went down and did us all some good.”

“Haa. You think I could have helped him.”

“No kid. You couldn’t have. I know you are sad. I am too. But he would have wanted you to move on ok.”

The boy silently nodded and sniffed a bit before curling further into himself. Sighing, Agatha turned towards Lanna who was looking solemnly towards the prone child.

“He has nowhere to go now. I’ll have to start getting some forms together to send him into an orphanage at the local church. Unless...,” Lanna looked towards Agatha anxiously.

“You know I already want something like this. I can’t really take him away from Monica. And the church is no good, he won’t be the same there.”

“Good. I don’t like the Church either. So how are you planning on taking care of him.”

“I’m not going to give him a free meal. He’s a good kid, but I can’t feed them both like that. I’ll take him out with me. I’ll let him take a simple retrieve quest everytime I get one of my jobs. That way he earns and I can teach him more. The stubborn bastard only taught the kid sword, shield and how to move.”

“Alright. That should be good. Just take him back to your inn for now. He needs some more rest. Maybe the morning will see some changes for the better.”

Nodding, Agatha scooped Taryn up and started moving towards her inn. Left alone in the guild hall, Lanna muttered to herself.

“I just hope the poor boy catches a break after all of this.”