“Ha-na, Ha-na, Ha-na.”
The knights erupted in loud cheers, chanting out her name. From my perspective the place just went bonkers before Hana even started combat. Without skipping a beat, Hana approached Karato at a steady purposeful lope. When the attack finally came, it started with a metallic clash of swords followed by an eruption of noise from the spectators. I didn’t even see the attack. Karato successfully defended and immediately counter attacked but Hana’s actions were so fast it took me totally off guard.
The next few rounds were tactically similar. Hana used her superior manoeuvrability to evade Karato’s attacks and more often he found himself defending more and more as her attacks became increasingly effective. But overall, they seemed evenly tied. As much as Karato enjoyed the sparring, he had to step down to allow the others who eagerly awaited their turn. King Leopold just couldn’t help himself, blatantly misusing royal privilege to jump to the head of the queue. King Leopold and Hana were close to completing their sparring when some royal attendants came in and whispered few words to Karato. King Leopold seemed to understand why the attendant came there and promptly finished that round with Hana, eager to move on to the next part of his agenda with us.
“Hana. I’ve truly enjoyed sparring with you and Shane. Now, please accept lunch with us as compensation for your time.”
Well, how could we even think of saying no to that? Would anyone say no to the king’s invitation? I thought we would head to the palace, but surprisingly, they instead led us to a small table on the neatly trimmed lawn under the shade of a large tree, one of the few in the area, if not the only one from what I could see. Cutlery and crockery lay neatly on top of a crisp white tablecloth with cloches covering our already prepared meals. Both King Leopold and Karato joined Hana and I for the best meal I enjoyed since coming to that world. It was a lovely variety of sandwiches and tea, a bit like I was having high tea. The delicately balanced flavours of sweet, tart and savoury pointed to the touch of a first-class chef. What really tickled me was seeing King Leopold and Karato nibbling on sandwiches and holding fine porcelain teacups while still dressed in plate armour.
“So Mr. Karosaki. Thanks again for a good sparring session this morning, I hear that you’ll be coming around more often to spar.”
King Leopold casually commented out of nowhere.
“Whatwhywhenhowwherewho?”
Seeing my sputtering response, he laughed loudly at the making of his own joke.
“Ha, ha, ha. Just kidding. But on a more serious note though, Karato must be the best swordsman in the kingdom, and he is willing to personally train you. That is not a light offer to someone looking to improve their fighting skill. Besides he has got a lot of fighting experience too.”
I had to admit as much as I disliked the physical punishment, my sword fighting technique had really improved since I trained under Karato. But the king wasn’t finished.
“Besides, you now have someone else that could benefit from his training.”
He could only be referring to Hana, of course.
“That’s a good offer Your Majesty…”
“Greg. Call me Greg.”
“Um, sorry…Greg. We are adventurers and we normally leave early in the morning on our quests and go away for the day.”
The king smiled. He didn’t even bat an eyelid because he saw me coming from a mile away.
“Surely you can come every seventh day without any problems, after all, even you must rest?”
In what way did His Majesty think that would be a rest day for me? No matter what excuse I dreamt up, I wasn’t getting out of that one, I may as well concede my loss and consider the day sacrificed on the altar of good friendship.
“What do you think, Hana?”
Nothing like passing the on pain when looking for someone to share it with. She started at my unexpected question and then looked down at the table, staring at the crumbs in her plate. In a meek voice she asked for something I should have expected from her.
“Um. I, I, I would really like to spar with Mr. Karato and Mr. Greg.”
King Leopold looked impressed. Finally, someone agreed with him.
“Well, there you go. We will get you here at the sparring hall, first thing in the morning, seven days from now.”
He exclaimed loudly, as if broadcasting to the universe at large.
When we finally moved on, visiting the royal stores turned out to be a lacklustre affair. Don’t misunderstand me, I wasn’t complaining, I considered it a vast improvement from the hell I experienced in the sparring hall. The king didn’t join us, instead he offered to meet up with us later in his office. I think he wanted us to make our selection without feeling intimidated by his presence. We followed Karato towards the backend of the palace, through a service door and after a few turns entered a guarded dungeon. Finally, we found ourselves in a dead-end passageway with five locked doors constructed of solid wood and steel. The scene reminded me of some black and white horror movie from the fifties.
“Look Igor! Here I will create life. Ha, ha, ha, ha.”
I orated in theatrical prose, hands clasping at some invisible object in front of my face. The echo reverberated down the passageway as I finished my best impression of Doctor Frankenstein, getting me nothing but silence and weird stares from everyone else.
“Sorry. Tough crowd.”
“Does he normally do this?”
Karato asked Hana worriedly.
“Pretty much. He’s weird in that way.”
With my theatrics out the way, only the ‘Ye Olde Second Hand Store’ awaited us behind those doors.
“Before I open this door, the king said you may look through these storerooms and see if there are any items you want to claim, excluding kingdom treasures of course. Take your time, I’ll wait.”
Karato opened the first door and held the door open to allow some fresh air into the room of about twenty meters square in area. Naturally, there was no lighting underground, so we used oil lamps. I expected an overwhelming damp odour but surprisingly I couldn’t smell anything except dust, leather, and rusty metal.
Anyone would be expecting a room full of chests overflowing with jewels and gold, gems sparkling with magical light, right? Well, it was nothing like that. In fact, it was a brutal let-down. Think of a house’s dusty attic where the retired folks stored their old forgotten furniture, only something that would excite the local antiques society.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
Dusty armours, shields, swords, and monstrous axes lay here and there. I noticed wooden boxes of things and even oil-light lampshades. Heaven only knew everything what lay there because I doubted anyone took inventory judging by the layer of dust on everything.
I was barely able to scan the room, not because of the size of the room, but because of the sheer clutter it contained. In fact, if it wasn’t that the room was limited in size it may have been a bridge to far for me. We discovered nothing worth keeping. Karato was still holding onto the door when we left, feeling somewhat disappointed. It seemed he really wanted to join us in fossicking around the room, but he patiently allowed us to look through at our leisure. I got the feeling these rooms were like treasure chests to Karato. He obviously relished pottering around there because by the third room we investigated, he couldn’t contain himself any longer and joined us looking through the stuff. Although I confess that by that time the occasion lost any appeal to me and I started regretting not asking the king to give me the gold. That room contained mostly family hand-me-downs and I couldn’t make sense of a lot of items because no-one could explain their background or their function.
With only two more rooms to go, I made ready to leave when Ara suddenly stopped me.
I picked up the glass tile about half a meter wide. It felt weighty but much lighter than a glass tile that size should feel. Its surface looked strange as if someone covered a black, velvet cloth with a glass slide. The tile looked defect free, I could see no surface scratches or chipped edges. Hard to believe the tile looked so good, in fact not a grain of dust coated it.
“Hey Karato, what’s this?”
“That? No idea. We’ve been using it as a convenient doorstop for decades.”
Now that’s my kind of thing. I might be a mechanical engineer, but PLC programming remained key to modern manufacturing machinery, and I fully appreciated what I held in my hands. Except I couldn’t see any programming interface.
Forgive me if I was a little hesitant to do that. The last time I did the very action she described to an object, I created her transdimentional existence in my head, something that nearly killed me. Not that I minded her presence, I just remembered the experience as being particularly painful and didn’t intend repeating it.
I trusted Ara. Granted, my ocular upgrades were always painful, but besides that, Ara was always straight forward with me when it came to things that could negatively impact me. I sighed, there was no point in further agonising about it, so I transferred EE into the creation core. And then nothing happened.
To Hana and Karato it must have looked like I undertook some sort of strange ceremony when I put my hand on the core while staring out into the distance.
“I think this tile will suit me fine Karato.”
“Huh? Please don’t take this the wrong way; because not only am I in danger of getting my butt kicked if His Royal Majesty sees you’ve only chosen this bathroom tile, he might also consider it an insult from you.”
Royal pressure, goodness, I wondered what piece of scrap I wanted.
Ara’s request sideswept me. I had never even considered her participation as part of the reward. I felt really bad to the point of feeling disgusted with myself.
Ara directed me to a heavy wooden box laying on a bottom shelf. There was no indication of what lay inside the enclosed box, but when I opened the lid, the spines of several thick books lay inside. The books still well protected from the elements were written in a different language I couldn’t translate.
“Karato, we’ll include these books that are written in high-elvish.”
“High-elvish you say. Well then, my original comment still stands. No one can read or translate high-elvish so these are next to worthless.”
In desperation I turned to Hana.
“Hana, is there anything you would perhaps like?”
“Me?”
“Please. I seem to be poor at picking out worthwhile stuff.”
She scrunched her brow as she thought.
“I did see a bow I liked in the first room.”
“Good. Then let’s go there.”
Karato cheerfully exclaimed as he briskly marched out the door. I think my item choices depressed him. Hana found her bow in the first room and I had to admire her choice. For a bow it suited her height, and it was lightweight to boot.
“Huh, Hana you have a much better eye than this guy.”
Karato said accusingly while looking at me like a witness in a trial pointing out the guilty party.
“That bow is called Compel.”
He obviously spent enough time in that room before if he knew the bow’s name off by heart.
“Hi Hana, could I appraise the bow?”
She allowed me to look at it. It didn’t help if I just held it in my hands. They wouldn’t believe it otherwise, I sighed internally because I had to put on a show.
“Appraise.”
I said in an unnecessarily loud voice.
Name: Compel.
Material: Greythril 80%, Orichalcum 20%.
HP: 150/150.
EE: None.
Attribute: None.
Cost: 15 Small Gold.
Although the bow looked impressive, it lacked any attributes. However, it still beat the second-hand wooden bows from the adventurer store.
“This is a good bow, look after it.”
We then headed to the king’s office where he received us with a warm welcome.
“Come in. Come in. Please sit down.”
I performed the usual curtesy bow, then sat down. Hana realising what was going on, quickly did the same.
“Please excuse me for getting personal for a moment. You need not answer if you do not want to. Hana I am curious to know how you became a slave?”
She stood quietly for a short while, considering how to answer his question.
“I was very young when the bandits destroyed my village. They pillaged it, killed my parents, and took both my sister and I as slaves.”
In the ensuing silence King Leopold’s eyes never wavered from her face.
“I’ve seen things I never wanted to see, while being forced to fight for my life. They took my family from me and my life. I cannot change anything now, but what I would give if I could hug them all one more time.”
The king sighed, breaking the tension as tears ran down Hana’s face.
“I apologise for causing you to relive the hurt. Thank you for sharing that with me.”
Something in that conversation triggered a change in King Leopold towards Hana. While at that moment a large portrait of a beautiful blonde woman above his desk caught my attention I’ll never know. The artist captured her in a beautiful moment, as if he caught her in the middle of a turn, her long hair waving in an invisible wind as a smile lit up her face. It looked hopelessly romantic for a portrait, and yet it caused me to wonder what caused her to smile at the artist.
King Leopold noticed my fascination of the painting.
“She’s beautiful isn’t she. That’s my dear wife Amelda. She’s still missing. Three and a half summer seasons now.”
His intonation became more personal.
“What happened?”
Asked Hana, wiping away a few of her remaining tears.
“She disappeared on a day no different from any other. She walked out of one room in the palace and disappeared out of our lives. We searched and re-searched the palace. We looked for her in the city and even scoured the kingdom. But she vanished as if taken on a breeze. That portrait… it feels like she only left us for a short while.”
He looked at Hana, tears forming in his eyes.
I too wish that I could give anything just to hug her one more time.”
Flipping heck, the whole meeting turned into a barrel of tears. There wasn’t a dry eye left in the room.
“I apologise, but I am going to ask if we can cut our visit short today.”
We all stood up as he turned to Hana, gently holding her hands in his.
“Please come see me again when you spar with Karato.”
That was all he said and briskly left the office. Karato placed his hand on Hana’s shoulder.
“Thank you. I know is seems a bit abrupt, but he needed this talk for a long, long, time. Please don’t feel bad, it’s something that he should have dealt with for a long time. I think this will help him.”
There was no doubt that Karato cared for King Leopold.
The trip back to the inn in the palace carriage turned out to be a quietly reflective one; each of us missed our families dearly.