“Thank you for agreeing to this, Familiar Sentinel.” A Neame General named Trygve said.

“It’s my pleasure. Besides, you’re helping me out too. Oh, and you can just call me Jake.” We were going to a training hall in the castle. General Trygve asked me to assist in training the Royal Mages. He’d heard of how strong my magic was, and wanted his soldiers to get experience fighting humans, just in case of another Harbinger. I agreed on the condition that I was allowed to continue my runecraft while in the royal capital. Since I will be working with Sela-Car soon, I will need that Rune-Maker’s permit anyway, and this was a good excuse to cut through some red tape; especially since it would be a lot harder to get one outside the army.

“Here we are,” General Trygve. He’d been perched on my head, an apparently favorite spot for Neame to choose for some reason, as I walked into a large outdoor area. There was a court with a floor made of easily two dozen different materials. Some spots were stone, dirt, vines, metal, water, grass, wood, and some stuff I couldn’t place. Surrounding the court were metal beams, with fifteen Neame of various sizes, colors, and heights perched in a few groups of five.

“Squads, listen up!” General Trygve loudly shouted from atop my head. “This is Sentinel. He is a Viking.” There were some murmurs from the squads, and more than a few icy stares. “Not only is he a guest of the Queen, and has generously agreed to help train you all today, but he is also a soldier in her majesty’s army. He will be treated as an equal. He will not be ridiculed for purging those Court Mage traitors. You will give him the respect he deserves, or you will get your tail feathers plucked in this match. Mountain Squad, you are first!”

(Could’ve done without the Court Mages remark, but alright… Wait, traitors?) I thought, just as General Trygve left my head, and five Neame landed on different terrains around the court.

“Sentinel, please choose your preferred terrain.” The General said, and landed on a metal beam nearby.

“I don’t really have one.” I said.

“An all arounder? Good. That means better training. Stand anywhere then. The match starts on my signal.” The rules had been explained to me before I’d even agreed to do this, so I knew what to expect. And I’d already summoned all my gear, so I was fully armed and armored.

“Okay. Wait, what’s the signal?”

“BEGIN!”

“Was that the signal?!” I shouted, and pulled my shield up just in time for a massive spike of ice to slam into it and shatter. “FRICK!” Without much time to think, four more attacks slammed into my shield, armor, and legs. As quickly as I could manage, I cast my magnet shield spell, just in time to catch and trap another entire round of attacks. Whispers came from the sidelines, but I was too distracted to pay attention to them. With a few seconds to breathe, I cast fireballs. The purple flames formed in the air, and launched at their targets without hitting a single one. Each of them spread their wings, and took to the skies. Like bees they zipped around, some too fast for me to even keep track of. All the while more and more attacks pelted the magnet shield, but none made it through. I found out in an experiment that launching a fireball from inside the shield ended with me surrounded by plasma, and getting bad burns in the resulting uncontrollable inferno, so I made sure to create my attacks outside my spell.

“How is he doing that?” One of the Neame flying around me at Mach-ridiculous asked. “Nothing is getting to him.”

“Ground level.” Another shouted.

“I tried. But nothing happened.”

“Did he even notice?”

“I did not!” I shouted, mockingly. Then cast fireball again, but this time I did it with a plan. Since I clearly wasn’t going to be able to hit them with singular attacks, I would just have to attack the whole area instead, and hope the shield, my armor, and my actual physical shield, could protect me.

“We got a funny one here, Capt… does anyone else feel a whole lot of mana suddenly?” One of them shouted.

(Oh yeah, I forgot they could sense mana.) I thought, as I filled the whole area with a cloud of my Inversion mana. Odens taught me this game when he was alive. He called it ‘Display Dominate.’ It rushed out of me like a rolling fog cloud in the wind.

“I lost sight of him!”

“Up!” Another shouted, but it was too late. I used that mana to cast a wind spell that created a massive downdraft. After hearing five meaty impacts, someone on the sidelines called for a healer. Once the dust settled, I noticed I was surrounded by five injured Neame. Two unconscious, one with a broken wing, and two moaning from injuries I couldn’t see.

“I may have overdone it.” I whispered, shocked that a little wind was so effective.

“Nonsense. They underestimated you, and paid the price.” General Trygve said, suddenly beside me as if he’d just appeared out of thin air. I jumped slightly from surprise.

“Yeah, but I didn’t mean to hurt them so much.” I said, feeling guilty as one of the Neame’s wings popped back into place with a crackling, crunching noise and a loud scream.

“You may not have noticed, seeing as how slow you were moving behind that barrier spell, but they were casting powerful magic at you. If you had been hit by any of them, you would not be in much better shape. This may be training, but we train for real combat. Besides, Odinthian breaks his wing every time. Is that right Odinthinan?”

“Y-yes General Trygve sir.” One of the Neame, the one who’d screamed a few second earlier, replied with a groan.

“He is a good soldier. Has a bad habit of landing wings first, but we think we can beat that out of him before he gets put into active rotation for Queen Ompera’s private guard.”

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

“General Trygve…” I said, uneasy.

“Yes?”

“You are a very frightening Neame.”

“Yes.” Odinthinan groaned.

“Desert Squad, you are next!”

As they flew up, I heard a bit of their conversation. “That round was so long, but they barely did anything to him.”

“After the first few attacks, nothing landed. Did you see what he did?”

“No, but I felt several massive waves of some really weird mana, one of which never left him.”

“Enough squawking, BEGIN!” The General said, and I was immediately slammed in the back by a whip made of vines. It bounced off Jericho, but still pushed me a bit. I felt something hit my knee, making it bend in the wrong direction, a split second before my magnet shield went back up.

“AHHH!” I yelled.

“Got him!” One of the Neame said, and landed on the ground. By then, the healing runes in Jericho were almost done fixing my knee, so I cast a wind spell, and knocked some of his feathers off.

“Warned you.” General Trygve said simply from the sidelines.

“Healing-Magic!” One of the Neame called out. I started to cast the down draft spell again, but just as I was getting ready, they all dived down to the ground and landed.

“You won’t catch us with that trick.”

(Fine.) I thought, and cast another spell instead. Slowly, I began to cover the entire court in a thin layer of water. While I did that, the Neame went back to attacking me from all angles while making me dizzy by zipping around. Once that was done, and the ground was coated, I got ready to cast a spell. Just like before, they all quickly dove and landed.

“He only had one trick- AHHH!” They all cried out sharply and clenched up as a small bolt of lightning hit the wet ground.

“Healers!” Someone shouted, and once again, a swarm of Neame crowded the court, tending to the injured.

One of them flew up to me. “How is your limb? It broke, yes?”

“It’s fine. My armor healed it. Thanks though.” I said. The Neame nodded, and flew to one of the others.

This time, I saw the General fly up to me, and we talked while the others were being treated. “Good thinking. They were too focused on attacking, and missed the subtle spell with the water. Though, I am not sure if I can blame them too harshly, I almost missed it too. Good work.”

“Oh, thank you, sir.” I said, panting. After two rounds of using the magnet shield, I was almost tapped out. It may have only been less than seven minutes since we started, but that spell uses a lot of mana. “I’m just happy it didn’t explode in my face… again.”

“Right, I was told about that training accident when you were in basic training. Half a year ago now, yes?”

“More like a year.”

“Fourteen months ago.” He said.

“So, a little more than a year.” I said.

“How many months are in Viking years?”

“Not a Viking. They’re an extinct culture, not the name of our species. Twelve.”

“Twelve?”

“How many do Neame years have?”

“Twenty-three.” He said, to my shock.

(Well, this explains why Suma and I can never agree on how long ago something was unless we talk about it in months.) I thought, and a lot of things began to make more sense.

One more, rather intense, sparing session later, and I was back in Suma and Luna’s room. I was being treated for the injuries I’d received during the third round. It was a simple place. Stone walls, those glowing braids sewn into the walls and hanging from the ceiling. The furniture, if you call it that, were just metal and wooden bars and poles placed around the room. In the corner of the room were two boxes, with drapes hanging over the only opening, and a cushion made of animal pelts to sleep in. Lying on the floor, Suma was standing at my side, casting healing spells.

“Jake, these injures are terrible! What happened?” Suma asked. Luna was out with Ciel and his son at the moment, getting seeds and other things from the local market.

“I ran out of mana in the third round of training, and got hit by easily thirty spells in less than ten seconds; from all sides.” I groaned, wincing in pain with every other breath.

“Well, after training with the Royal Mages, I suppose I cannot be surprised that you were injured. How did your other teammates fair?”

“No, it was just me versus them.” I said. Suma gasped snorted in shock.

“W-what?! Then it is no wonder you were injured so badly! Why did they not stop after the first round if they were not going to at least heal you?”

“I wasn’t hurt until the end of the third round. Actually, they ended it because I was injured. They had healers there, but I wanted you to heal me instead since you know-” I coughed hard, feeling my chest rattle and bringing my hand to cover my mouth as I did. Pulling it away, I saw some blood and a cold chill ran straight down my spine and into my stomach. “Oh, that’s probably not good.” Suma immediately fluttered over to my chest, and started another healing spell.

“Never before have I been so grateful for all those confusing lessons on your people’s anatomy.” She said in a frustrated huff.

“Just wish I could have made it through that final round. If I hadn’t run out of mana, my magnetic barrier spell would have stayed up.”

“Jake, it is nothing short of a miracle that you lasted one round, let alone two. And alone no less!”

“You know I won those first two rounds.” I said, smugly.

“You have a head injury, Jake.” Suma said, unfazed. “Once you have stopped spitting up blood, I will treat that too.”

“No, really!” I protested. “And I think I could have won the third one too.”

“If they had not pelted you relentlessly with attack spells?” Suma asked, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

“Exactly.” Reaching a hand into my pocket, I pulled out a small wooden plank, engraved with runic symbols and the Queen’s seal, and showed it to Suma. “Got this though.”

“Oh, a Rune-Maker’s permit?”

“Yup. Totally worth it.” I said, just before my toe suddenly popped back into place, sending a sharp and stabbing pain through my entire foot. “AHH! Son of a… ow!”

“That was the last of your injuries. Please, in the future, if you plan on breaking every bone in your body again… change your plans.”

“It wasn’t every bone.”

“But it was quite a lot of them.” She shook her head, probably annoyed. “What are your plans now that you have your license?”

“Nothing immediately, but when we get back to Zach-Ashem, it’ll help with my work with Sela-Car.”

“And what about for the rest of the day? Not another sparring session, I hope?”

“No, but I wish it were.” I said, suddenly feeling anxious. “It’s time.”

“For?”

“To learn how to heal myself.” Holding up my missing hand, she suddenly realized what I meant.

“Ah, do you want me to stay with you while you do?” Suma asked, trying to be gentle, but I’m sure she was still nervous after what happened in the desert. She was no more excited about this than I was.

“Yeah, that…” A deep guttural sigh escaped my lip, almost without me even noticing. “That’d be nice.”

Lying down on the floor, Suma by my head for moral support, it was time to delve into Deyja’s memories. Falling into darkness, I felt that haze wash over my whole body. Searching for information about how he healed himself, despite famously having Death-Mage, I opened the first memory I found. Slowly, everything came into focus as the memory took shape. The first thing I noticed was how high up I was; Deyja was tall. On my, or rather his, left, stood Ashem, who looked different from the last time I saw a memory with him in it. He looked younger, smaller. Both were in a field of rolling hills, surrounded by flowers; some of which came up to their knees. He was using magic to create illusions, and they both were watching them.

“Let us begin our lesson.” Ashem said, his voice rolling like thunder, even despite his youth.

“Thank you again, my friend. I have been wanting to learn to dual-cast for a century now, but have had little time while managing my sections of the project.”

“It is my pleasure, Deyja. I know how hard you have been working with the Neame, and am more than happy to help.” The illusions began to take shape, however it was not pictures, but words written in a language I did not know, floating in the air.