By all rights, it should have been the best weeks of Wren’s life.
If he was forced to write down his goals in life in the past, he would have only listed two. The first was to escape the mining town that was his hometown, and the second was to learn magic. Beating a visiting student of Nemean school impressed the boy’s master enough to achieve both.
It was only three months between that and the time he could leave, three months that should have been filled with joy and bittersweet goodbyes. Instead, every night Wren’s father was coughing. Long, ragged spurts only broken up by brief moments where he sucked in air like the dying man he was. In the few weeks it had been going on Wren had learned to dread the moments where exhaustion forced his father asleep during the day, as that meant not a soul in the house would sleep that night.
He knew that the correct course of action was to lean on friends, to distract himself, to numb the sorrow with what joy he could find. But the emotional are the poorest at caring for themselves, and he instead had been spending his exhausted waking hours studying combat and the cold shoulder.
He was currently practicing both.
He and Craai were hosting another spear training session. Craai was a short girl the same age as Wren, and together they had begged Old Boya, the village elder, to buy spear manuals using the limited money the village had. Both were maniacs, and their eventual success led to them opening a informal ‘spear school’ in their town.
It was Wren’s third spar of the day, and as it started Wren saw its end.
He dodged the spear, put both of his hands on it, and dug his feet onto the training house’s wooden floor. He yanked it inward, throwing his opponent, Gale, off balance, before planting a knee in his stomach.
“Gale, your thrust is good, but you need to be a bit quicker. Wren, just because we don’t have training dummies doesn’t mean you can treat him like one.” Craai remarked.
“Pain is instructive.” Wren replied, eyes not moving from a wheezing Gale.
“Falling down is painful. Taking a knee to the stomach just means they’ll sit out of the next one. Look, you’re already out of challengers”
“Cowardice bri-”
“Cowardice? Come on, I know you’re sad and all but no one wants their teeth broken by a pompous angry little -“
“I do.”
Wren did not recognize the voice. That was a rare occurrence, and all the more puzzling was Gale’s apparent terror.
The entrant was a girl, around nineteen if Wren had to guess. A year or two older than Craai and him, or as old as Glen was. Her hair was golden, unlike the black hair which everyone in the village younger than fifty had. He had seen a few traders with brown hair, but nothing as shiny.
“Oh thank god! We have a third girl! Gale, you know her?” Craai rejoined.
“Welcome to the Koushan spear school! Classes are free.”
“What kind of school lets its teacher beat up students?” The girl replied.
Craai arched an eyebrow towards Wren, who was losing patience. If they were angry at him, he thought they should do something about it. He could take them in a fight, and it might actually force him to focus on the present moment. He came here to avoid pitying gaze, not to have people dance around him.
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Glen decided this was the moment for him to join the conversation. “Look, he’s going through - ”
Wren stomped next to his still prone body. “If you don’t think you deserve to be on the ground, shut up and stand up!”
When Glen looked back at him, there was no fear. No shock at his actions, just stupid, stupid, pity. And so before Wren really got his thoughts in order his foot lifted the boy off the ground and sent him careening into the wall.
The seven other students were agape, and Wren watched Craai have to master a bit of anger before responding.
“You want a fight. Alright, ya can fight everyone here, including Gale’s pal. I’ll Beat you until you get a grip, then beat you up for hurting my student.”
Wren nodded. “Toss me my spear.”
Craai shook her head. “Pain is instructive. Go!”
Nine people. It was Wren’s first time with that many people, but he had beat everyone but Craai unarmed. His students had formed a very rough spear wall, but his immediate priority was to avoid fighting Craai until he was armed. He dived towards them and they stabbed forward. Unfortunately, they had the wooden tipped training spears and were unprepared for him to run at them. In a fight with real spars or a spar, being touched by the sharp end would be Wren’s defeat. In a brawl, he could grab two of the roughly shaped points and use them as leverage. He pulled on them and leapt off his left leg, kicking off one body to push a second into a third. The ensuing chaos gave him a spear to use as a bat, which knocked down someone. Of the two left, one had jumped away and the other had fallen down in solidarity.
He was being foolish, but it was the best he had felt in a while. Now there were only two people left. He jumped towards Gale’s friend, and things got weird.
He was moving as fast as he could. It would take two strides to reach her, and he had already come up with a plan. A sweep with his leg would send her to the ground. He could grab the spear behind her. He would then fight Craai on even terms.
In the middle of his stride, he felt a numb cold snaking up his left leg. At first he thought it was a breeze, but it intensified with each passing moment. Soon his entire calf felt cold.
Just as the cold touch pulled up towards his knee, a different sensation spread across his chest. It wasn’t heat like hot armor. It was burning, as if someone was holding a fire to his chest. He lost concentration on his plan. lost concentration on the battle. As his legs slowed down and the raging heat spread to his chest, he realized it wasn’t natural. It was -
“Diana, I did it! I used magic!” Gale screamed in joy.
Wren panicked. He was on fire, on fire, and his legs were weird, were cold, were slowing -
Craai did not waste a moment of Wren’s stupor to knock him to the ground and plant a leg as well as the butt of the spear on his back. Thankfully, being hurled to the ground smothered the fire.
“Sorry you had to see that, mage-lady.” Craai smugly spoke above him.
Gale chimed in. “Diana, this is Craai, Craai, this is Diana. Wren’s on the floor. The two of them taught me the spear.”
“He’s the one going to the magic school thing? Why him?”
“First of all, its the Nemean academy, and second, you saw him take on an entire room unarmed! What more do you want?”
“Yeah but he’s an asshole. You want him representing your village?”
“Yeah as I was saying, he’s been having a rough time because his dad -”
Once again, pity. Already the rush of the battle was leaving, and he was back where he began.
Fortunately, Craai had pinned him within arm’s reach of Glen’s leg.
“I’M” He grabbed Glen’s leg with his left hand.
“RIGHT” He yanked to the side, sending Glen tripping on top of Craai.
“FUCKING” Craai moved to catch Glen, which was a mistake. He jumped out and knocked her off balance.
“HERE!” He screamed down at them.
He looked to the shocked mage-lady. “You,” and turned to the now recovered class, “and you. Act quicker. Stab me like you mean it, and if you’re going to incinerate someone go for the face.”
They were shocked. But not one face was poorly masked pity, and as he walked out Wren couldn’t help but feel a little bit better.
He stopped and turned around. “Sorry if I was harsh today, you all did well.” It was barely an apology, but he didn’t wait for a reply.
Wren normally would have gone back to the Old Boya’s hut to read, but he didn’t want to explain his bruises or burns at the moment. He just needed to think. He went into one of the many cracks in the mountain. If he was being honest to himself, it was as much to hide as to think.