Bertrand growls at me and bashes his shield across the left side of my face, sending me flying through the air a short distance before I crash onto the ground. He doesn’t give me the opportunity to regain my footing and rushes over to me before executing a huge overhead swing aimed at my skull. I’m barely able to get my shield up in time to intercept the attack and at the last second, I angle my shield so that his sword slides across my shield’s edge and lands in the dirt to my right.

If he’s being this aggressive today then he can’t blame me for responding in kind as I cast Flash at his eyes and aim a kick at his family jewels. Seeing what I’m trying to do, he loses his temper and closes his eyes before kicking me in the left side of my ribs, sending me skidding across the dirt. While I’m reeling in pain on the ground, he stomps over to me and smacks my sword out of my hand before smacking my head with his linen wrapped sword. Wincing in pain, I can hear him say, “C’mon, do better than that. If you fight dirty, then you need to expect dirty. Go get yourself cleaned up. We’ll go again early tomorrow morning.”

Bertrand leaves without another word or even checking up on my injuries. It’s been about a month since the incident near Mudrock and he’s been like this ever since. He was always rough on me during training before but he’d always patiently explain what I did wrong, how I could improve, and build up my confidence.

But recently it feels like he’s lost his patience with me and only beats me up while criticizing what I’m doing wrong without trying to correct me. I don’t know what it is or why he’s changed but it’s starting to get on my nerves. I’m pretty sure it has something to do with what happened at Mudrock but he’s not willing to say anything and only stonewalls me whenever I ask him about it. At least my Flash is useful enough now that it forced him into a corner of sorts.

Flash is the only rankless spell I bought from the mages’ guild back in Midriver because it seemed like the most useful and versatile spell out of the whole light family selection. Every other rankless spell of the light family required some sort of medium to cast and didn’t seem worthwhile for me. Many of them centered around brightstones and making them brighter or changing their shine color.

There was a spell called Shine that could illuminate an inanimate object for a few seconds that sounded interesting but that was already in the realm of fledgling spells which I can’t cast. Flash, on the other hand, didn’t require an external medium and I could cast it with just my pitiful mana. Ordinarily, Flash isn’t a combat spell because it only creates a small glow of white light that lasts for a few seconds. Honestly, when I first learned the spell, I was downtrodden for a few days because it seemed worthless to me. But that’s when Olin stepped in.

Olin told me he wanted to become a magic scholar eventually and I definitely think he’s qualified for it. We’ve talked quite a few times in the past about magic, incantations, and the Iazari language but I could never drum up much interest because I was always more interested in the practical usage while he loved discussing every aspect of it. He didn’t memorize the incantations for his spells like I did but rather learned the language itself. That’s how he helped me modify Flash into its current form.

Basically what he told me he did was edit the incantation to increase the light’s intensity while at the same time shortening its duration tremendously to one or two seconds. He told me by balancing both properties of the spell, its mana cost could remain about the same. The end product is a small flash of bright white light that can be cast anywhere within five feet of its caster’s body that will temporarily blind whoever sees the light. However, with my affinity for light magic added on, that small flash became bright enough that Olin likened it to a ray of sunlight instead of a flash of light. He wanted to rename it to Sun’s Flash but I prefer the singular Flash instead.

He did the same thing he did with Flash for his own spell, Wither. Wither is a fledgling rank spell that forcefully dries and ages plant material but it’s a spell with a long casting time and delayed spell effects. What he did was edit the spell to speed up the aging process rapidly but by doing so it increased the mana cost to a staggering amount. Even with an above average mana capacity like he has, he can barely cast it once or twice before needing a long rest. But time and time again, he’s shown how useful his modified Wither is both back in Midriver and in Mudrock.

I thought altering spells like that would be difficult and veer more towards high level magic practitioners but Olin said spell editing is a skill everyone can learn from the moment they start learning magic if they put in the time and effort. He told me magic is like a spectrum and spells are different points in that spectrum. Incantations are the verbal addresses of the points in the spectrum and technically all spells are just different forms of the same one spell but just located in different locations on the spectrum.

Yeah, I didn’t get any of that at all. Olin’s a really fucking bright guy but he has a lot of trouble relaying his knowledge to others. Regardless, he helped me modify Flash into a spell I could use in combat and after nearly a hundred casts of the spell, I can instantly cast it without the incantation now. Which is great because I found it pretty hard to weave spell casting into my swordplay and noticed I was always prioritizing one over the other making it feel unnatural.

Olin was surprised by me being able to cast without a chant so soon after learning the spell. He said it normally takes other mages years to become that familiar with a spell that they can cast without an incantation depending on the spell’s difficulty. Even rankless spells should normally take two or three years for an average mage to familiarize themselves with that thoroughly but I took less than two months. He attributes it to my natural talent with magic and once again reiterated what a shame it was that I wasn’t born with a better capacity for mana to my chagrin. At least my natural capacity lets me cast Flash three times at once before I need to let it rest for eight hours which has given me a lot more versatility and options during fights. But that’s enough about magic for now since it’s time for my horse riding lessons.

It’s getting a little late in the day and the entire caravan has settled down for the night. We should reach a town tomorrow where we can sell off the things we took from Millson and Mudrock. In another two weeks, we should reach Ocean’s Rest and at that point we’ll complete this escort mission.

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But for now, I’m going to learn how to ride a horse from Angelene. Or should I say I’m going to continue learning how to ride a horse from her. Angelene has been teaching me how to ride horses for about three months now whenever we get the chance once the caravan settles down for the night. I learned the basics pretty quickly and it only took me about a month which she said was astonishing.

She said it looked like I’ve been riding horses my entire life but I’m pretty sure I only ever saw a horse a couple of times on Augustine’s farm. I’ve never even touched one before. Wait, that’s not quite true. I seem to remember cutting up a horse once when the farm’s workhorse broke its ankle and had to be put down.

From that incident on, Augustine swore off using horses ever again and started taking in more farm hands every chance he got to make up for it. I did touch one back then but it was already dead. I guess the first time I touched a living horse was when Angelene started teaching me three months ago.

Today’s lesson revolves around grabbing people up in an emergency. We’ve had to really dig in deep for new things Angelene could teach me since I learned everything she had planned to teach me in such a short time span. At one point, I guess she started imagining and creating different types of scenarios so that I have experience in all types of situations.

One time she had me block arrows Quinn shot at me while I was riding a horse and that was fucking frightening. Thankfully today’s lesson just involves me grabbing her by her outstretched arm and pulling her onto her horse which she named Sunshine. Sunshine is a beautiful creature with a golden coat and has a platinum blond mane and tail which makes her stand out from every other horse in the entire caravan. Sunshine is Angelene’s personal horse that she normally keeps in her family’s stable on the outskirts of Midriver. Although it’s her family’s stable, she told me one night a few weeks ago she was the only one left in her family.

…

I still remember that night pretty clearly. It was already nighttime and the caravan had already settled down for the night, making a defensive circle next to the main road using all of its wagons and carriages. But it wasn’t dark around the caravan because numerous campfires were burning bright inside the wagon encirclement as multiple different groups of people were preparing for dinner.

The caravan’s horses were tied a few yards away from the encirclement and set to graze for themselves. I had already finished up my horse riding lessons for the day and Angelene was brushing Sunshine’s coat. As Angelene kept brushing Sunshine, she said to me, “Another thing I’ll get you to learn to start doing is maintaining your partner every night. Sunshine’s my partner and I don’t trust you to do a good enough job for her but there’s dozens of horses all around us, I’ll get you to start practicing on one of them.”

“Alright, as long as you get me a brush, I’ll do it. Speaking of Sunshine, I never saw her when we were in Midriver, where did you keep her?”

“My family owned a stable on the western outskirts of Midriver, right next to the Upper Jaw River. That’s where I kept Sunshine and where all the other members of Candle kept their horses. I hired a stable hand to work there and make sure they were all well fed, had plenty of water, and were kept clean.”

“Oh, I didn’t know you had family in Midriver.”

“I don’t. Not anymore anyways.”

“Shit, I’m sorry.”

“Sorry for what? Not like you had a hand in their deaths.”

After she told me her family was dead, both of us stopped talking and we stood in uncomfortable silence for a few moments. Well, perhaps it was only uncomfortable for me. She kept nonchalantly brushing Sunshine while I fidgeted where I stood, unsure of what to say or what to do.

I was reminded of the time I asked Torban why he became a bandit and him storming off furiously while cursing under his breath. I didn’t want another situation like that to happen again. Once again, everybody has a story but not everyone is willing to share them because they’re not finished with them yet. They still have scores they need to settle.

But it seems Angelene noticed my tension as she said, “It looks like you have something you want to get off your chest. C’mon let’s hear it.”

“No, I don’t. Really, I don’t want to pry.”

“It’s alright. I’m not like Torban, I’m not gonna throw a hissy fit just by being reminded of what’s already happened to me.”

Taking a look at Angelene’s face, she really does seem alright with talking about her past with me. “Okay, well, could I ask you what happened to your family?”

“Sure, it’s not like it’s a secret or anything. It’s kind of a boring story, really. The kind that happens daily back in Midriver that goes forgotten because of how common they are. My family owned a stable for years and we lived a normal, ordinary life. That is, until the city lord’s brother tried killing the city lord and failed.

“Without anyone in Midriver to keep its order, a few bandits showed up to our stable one day and tried to rob us. My dad agreed to their terms because they outnumbered him but the moment one of them tried to touch me, he cut off their head. He used to be a city guard before the guards were dissolved and he taught me how to wield a sword since I was a kid. A big fight broke out and before I knew it, I was the last one alive.

“My dad, my mom, and my little brother died in the fight alongside the six bandits, but I survived. You remind me a little of my little brother which is why I’m telling you any of this in the first place. Don’t tell anyone I said that. I didn’t really know what to do with myself and jumped around a couple of gangs before I landed in Candle and I’ve been here ever since.”

“Wait, if bandits killed your family, then why did you decide to become one?”

“Ehh, what else was I gonna do? All I ever learned was how to use my sword and I didn’t feel like leaving the stable. Sentiments, memories, and all that shit, right? I was all by myself and it was just gonna happen again if I didn’t do something. Joining a gang seemed like my only option at the time.

“When I finally met Derriv and joined Candle, well, that’s become my home ever since. Besides, I hate the people who killed my family. Them being bandits doesn’t have anything to do with it. Maybe it should, but I don’t have the time nor the patience to hate every bandit out there, way too much hassle. Sometimes our circumstances throw us into a pile of horseshit but it’s what you do afterwards that matters the most I think.”