“You will exchange pointers with myself and my brother,” Lim Fortson said. “Ah, but an ordinary bout isn’t very interesting.”

Kal listened as he proposed what was at stake. The merchandise, at its original price, was around fifty silvers when Lahrs Sarnasia was here, now elevated to a hundred.

If Kal wins, the two cultivators would leave and cut down the price to ninety silvers. If he lost, he would only have to pay seventy silvers, but the servant goes to them. The woman, Pria Summerborn, did not react.

The only rule here was that the cultivator hasn’t lost yet unless they yielded.

Kal made them wait. He returned to his room and looked for a proper attire, but they were all robes. He sighed, reached for his chest, and listened to his heartbeat.

Cultivators were far stronger than him physically. But he was a patrician of the republic, and he had his skills to spare. The armory housed various a dozen weapons. He found himself taking the old ones from the barrel and placing them on the ground. Then, he took an arrowhead. He turned it around his hand, feeling the cold touch of iron.

Kal pricked his palm, and sliced it down to his wrist. Droplets smeared the floor. He encircled the weapons with his blood, slowly, and carefully.

“Father,” he whispered. “I’m afraid I still can’t create an avatar.”

It was a couple of minutes later that the swords bent and twisted in shape. He felt a part of his spirit leave him and infuse itself with the swords. The irons melded and stretched together until they were unrecognizable. What was left was a thin, man-shaped creation, with needles for limbs and a hollow body.

“Hand.”

It raised its needle-tipped hand.

Then he mentally ordered it to spin around. It did. He began to think of his brother’s joviality in creating theatrical entrances, and how it intimidated his opponents, or rather, pissed them off.

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Kal rolled over the ground coughing. He tasted dirt and sand, and as he tried to clutch on his stomach, a shadow loomed over him.

“Kal Sorvenn,” the boy said. “How does the sand taste?”

He bit his lip and apologized.

“What?”

“I yield,” he muttered.

A kick of a dirt, and dust scattered to his eyes. He felt his hand being stomped on, and he groaned.

From the distance, the crowd of boys parted, and a familiar figure appeared. “My brother yielded,” Art Sorvenn said. “Are you deaf?”

The boy spat. “Another patrician. This is a public gym. Your father will not suffer the shame of saving you. He’ll watch.”

“Oh, I’m not the one that needs saving,” Art said. He smiled, looked around, and found a chair. He dragged it to the ring. “Make me yield, and I’ll give you ten of my fingers to play with,” he paused. “If I win, I’ll take one of yours.”

Kal crawled back, then he found himself running past the crowd of other boys and through the door. He was twelve then—and his brother, fourteen.

Later on, Art Sorvenn ended up taking one of the boy’s fingers with a knife and making him wear it until he reached a healer. Later on, Kal asked him why he would go that far.

“Because you’re my brother,” he had said.

Kal didn’t want to believe it. “Did it feel good, cutting his fingers off?”

The silence he received rang in his ears.

“He was a bully,” Kal said. “And I lost. I deserved to fall. I’m skinny, father said so. I’ll never be like you. Everyone loves you, Art. You never lost a spar, and people flock to you.”

A pair of girls once went up to the household to gift Art Sorvenn a bouquet of flower buds that hadn’t yet bloomed. Whenever Kal walked with his brother, patrolling soldiers would stop him on the street for a conversation.

Kal didn’t have the gift of charisma nor the strength to protect himself.

He thought about it all night, he couldn’t sleep. The bloody finger, the bully, and he guiltily wished to see it happen again.

Kal, rolling over his bed, walked out of his room to the privy. He spotted his father holding his brother’s hand. The two men were frightening in the darkness.

“Is this all you are?” His father, Jaeran Sorvenn said.

Art cringed away. “Father, please…”

“Hand!”

He didn’t resist. His father forcefully pressed his brother’s hand on the tablet. Kal had used the tablet many times. It pricks you with needle tips with holes, designed to take blood and transfer it through the tubes easily. It then surrounds whatever item was on the offering table. There was a sword there.

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“Turn that sword into an aspect. Now.”

The sword groaned, and twisted in shape, but as seconds passed, the iron didn’t bend any longer. Art closed his eyes.

“You are my son,” his father said. “My eldest son. And you can’t create an aspect.”

“I’m… sorry.”

“No,” he sighed. “I should have known. If you can’t create an aspect, your brother will take your place.”

For a moment, Kal froze up. The darkness shrouded his brother’s expression.

“The runt?” his brother said. “He’s worthless. He hasn’t even won a spar. I’m your successor.”

“Then prove it.”

A dagger clattered on the cobblestones. Trembling, Art looked stiff and weak as he reached for it. His father held Art’s wrist, holding it down.

“You’ve taken a boy’s finger, I hear,” his father said. “Is that something to proud of? Is that how I raised you?”

“No,” he whimpered.

“Does cutting someone’s finger pleasure you? Do you get off on it?”

“No.”

“It should.” At this moment, Art looked up. “But you need to reserve it for your enemies, not your countrymen.” He took his brother’s other hand. “A finger for a finger.”

Kal looked away. He cupped his ears on his ear. He heard his brother’s cry, and scream, and then sobbing. He would rather not hear any of it, and he wanted to forget this ever happened at all.

That night, he didn’t sleep in his room. He slept in the old tower, where they used to cage ravens and pigeons. He had spent his time here when he didn’t want to be found.

He had a tablet with him and small, rectangular pieces of iron. Upon prickling his fingers, Kal molded a figure into a miniature soldier. A helmet, breastplate, grieves, a shield, and a spear. He made it move. And he created another. And another until he reached around ten total aspects. It made him think why his brother couldn’t create one, but he pushed it out of his mind.

He arranged the battle in a five versus five scenarios, having named each of them and designed them in their own way. There were flankers and vanguards, and he spun a story around them, making them move simultaneously around each other. It looked like a dance.

Then, “Kal?”

Kal stopped the aspects and jolted up. His brother was standing there, staring at the fallen irons, then at him. He had a dark expression on his face.

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The Fortson brothers waited outside the manor. Shortly after, Kal passed through the gate, dragging a chair in one hand. The servant Pria Summerborn followed him behind.

“A chair…” Lim Fortson said.

“A story worth telling, I hope,” he said. “A cultivator drags a chair to a match. Or was that too provocative?”

He unsheathed his sword. “Enough with this foolishness. Leave that with your servant and unsheathe your iron.”

“Oh,” he paused. “No. This isn’t for her. It’s for me.” He distanced himself from the cultivator, placed the chair, and sat down. “My iron is on its way.”

He sighed, remembering his brother. He wouldn’t take anyone’s finger today.

“He’s mocking us,” the stocky brother, Kraun Fortson said.

The man stepped forward. “I am Kraun Fortson,” he said. “3rd realm of cultivation.”

“It’s customary to introduce yourself,” his brother added.

“Lahrs Sarnasia. 1st realm of cultivation,” he guessed.

“1st realm?” the stocky brother said. “Look forward to the martial techniques of your senior, junior cultivator.”

Kal shrugged.

“I cultivated myself with a crystallia arachnea core,” the man said. His lower arm crystallized to black. “Yield before I crush your ribs.”

The man charged, and his aspect, a hollowed piece of iron mimicking a human, sprinted out from the gate and jumped over to the Fortson and dragged him to the ground.

The man tried to free himself, but Kal had already looped the iron around his neck and his legs. His frequency to the gym allowed him to see a variety of different grappling techniques, and immobilizing someone was one of them.

It wouldn’t bend for that long, however. The iron was brittle, and it wasn’t something he could find himself getting emotionally attached on. It would break. Already the edges are showing signs of fracture.

“The more your brother moves, the tighter the iron will be around his neck.”

“Kraun,” Lim Fortson said. “Yield. In under a minute? That’s impressive. And quite anti-climactic.”

“Most battles are decided on first contact,” Kal said. “As it should.”

The man gritted his teeth.

“What is that thing?” Lim Fortson asked.

“It’s a wonderful story, don’t you think?” he said. “A 1st realm cultivator, son of a Sarnasia, exiled to the northern prison. He has enough silvers to buy your merchandise. He has a servant, and a manor to live in.” He looked at Lim in the eye, whose head must be spinning. “Has my father gone mad, to accommodate his son with all these, when being here up north is as good as dead?”

His aspect tightened around a thigh, pressing it deeply. The cultivator tried to move, and managed to free one of his arms, breaking the iron. He tore off another, and another, and Kal felt his soul slip.

The cultivator forced himself up, gasping and coughing. “Your blood,” the man rasped. “Your blood will fuel my cultivation.”

The man walked forward. Kal stood up abruptly, and licked his lips. He thought, he should’ve at least had some wine by a hearth. He had lost too much blood making that aspect, and this body wasn’t his to begin with.

Then, Kraun Fortson, steps away from him, froze in place. He looked as if he’d been suffocated out of his air. His brother slowly walked toward him and put a hand on his shoulder without taking his eyes off Kal.

“I apologize for our rudeness, senior brother,” he said. “How about you yield now, Kraun?”

“I…” the man seemed at a lost for words. “Are you denying me this?”

“Yes. For now.”

“I yield.”

Lim Fortson turned to Kal. “How much is it again?”

“Our agreement stands,” Kal said. “A discount of ten silvers.”

“We’ll uphold that agreement. I meant to say how much you’re willing to lighten your pockets off your silvers and teach me this—“ he gestured at the iron on the ground. “—this martial art.”

Kal would’ve bounced from joy if they hadn’t been here.

It had been a day since the cultivators left. Kal was reading a book in the parlor, near the hearth. He didn’t have it in him to ask what merchandise that was, since they could suspect he wasn’t what he appeared to be.

The servant, Pria Summerborn, didn’t question his “martial art” and remained in silence by the door. He couldn’t figure out what she was thinking.

The last time she announced her thoughts was yesterday, after they left. “You were tricked,” she had said.

She looked up at him curiously, and cautiously.

“How?” He asked.

“They never meant to leave without a duel. The young master chose to be cautious, and they latched onto that cautiousness and took it as an affront to their honor.”

The games these cultivators play made him wonder how they managed to create an empire without fracturing itself.

The two cultivators would return in the future. And perhaps they were expecting to be taught what he knew. If he didn’t, well, information could easily be shared. They knew where he was, and this idiot of a Sarnasia seemed ignorant about his place in this northern prison. He hoped the merchandise was worth that much.