The end of the month approached fast. Between his exercising, training and self-improvement Neal almost didn’t notice. At least until Sable once more called his guards out for readiness training, and ultimately scoring.
He was prepared this time thought! He could feel it in himself. Or maybe that was his muscles complaining about mucking out the dungeons last night. Even for Sable that felt a bit much. Even after a shower he could still smell something unpleasant on shoes. At least he hoped it was just his shoes.
Rubbing at his side and back, he shook off the tension, that was yesterday. Obviously, the magic and strength tests were outside of his ability, but agility, that one he would do better in! In fact, he was hopeful that the people who had been following him would do better too! Mithril, Teuta, Hastam, Delibis along with the two bats RedFern and Aspen had all joined him in the end, with the last too coming in just this week.
The squad was lined up in Guardian Park, right by the track, same as always. As before, the run came first after all, which was more of a sprint than a run.
The first to start and finish was, “Mithril hammer… 15.01 seconds, poor.” Sable almost struggled to say the words.
The dark wolf tapped at his clip board rhythmically, his face twisted in confusion and mild annoyance. “Mithril your time went up; I thought you were practicing?”
The minotaur shrugged her shoulders, “I was… maybe I was just practicing the wrong thing.”
Despite her slower time, and additional effort it took, Mith found herself breathing normally, if a bit heavy. She didn’t feel out of breath, though perhaps a bit tired. She knew her time had suffered, but physically, she still felt better. In fact, if Sable told her to do it again, she probably could have though without a change in time.
“Well, I’m disappointed.” Sable shook his head and moved to the next name on his list. A slight smile crossed his muzzle but vanished just as quickly. “Neal. You’re next. Go.”
Taking a deep breath, in and out, Neal pushed with all his might. Each thrust of his legs felt more like jumping than running. Each foot pounded on the ground until,
“19.35 seconds, Neal failed.” Sable’s voice had an almost happy sound to it. As if saying those last words brough him immense pleasure.
“Hey, my time improved!” Neal smiled a bit even as this captain nearly snarled at him for it.
Whatever happiness was in the captain’s voice, vanished. “Not significantly, you’re still failed.” The wolf shook his head and yelled, “Next.” Louder than was needed.
Each squad member ran the course, each squad member had their time recorded, only for Sable to again be disappointed. “It seems like some of your times have suffered. I don’t understand?” He protested, but having no answers could do nothing more than move on. Trailing behind, as usual, was Delibis, who seemed just a slight bit more able and less out of breath.
The frail elf walked next to human and whispered, “Neal! I just wanted to say thanks! I’m sure I saved those 40 seconds because of you!”
A small smile crossed the human’s lips. At least he had helped someone! Delibis time was about 140 seconds, far too long, but also far short the 3 minutes it was last time. Ahead of the two the captain’s sensitive ears twitched, catching the air of something unpleasant. His face twisted into a scowl as he made a note to check on something later.
Strength came next. Each squad member lifted and held the weights as prescribed. Perhaps mimicking the weight of a large hammer, axe or even sword. Neal, for all his strength training, still could not manage the 40Kg weight.
“Neal, failed at strength.” Again, Sable spoke louder then necessary. Yet, for some reason, he now squinted at the human. Like he was trying to see through him, to some truth burred beneath his skin.
None of the squad’s members had changed much in this category, for better or worse.
Agility was next, and it was hard for Neal not to smile. This was his time to shine!
With a smug smile, he grabbed a bow and an arrow and ran to the base of the tree. As soon as he saw the path he was going to take, he took it without waiting. Time started from touching the first branch, and he spent no extra on his assent. Pull, step, pull, step, each branch was a new challenge, but one that he knew and was quickly conquered. Reaching the top, he knew his time was faster than last. It must have been enough for a bad or maybe even a poor time! He had to believe that anyway. Holding the bow, he readied the arrow, careful with the fletch, and let it go.
It hit!
Not the bullseye, but the edge, possibly a poor score, if he made it up the tree in time. At the very least it would have to be ‘bad’ as opposed to failure. He smiled and gave himself one fist pump in celebration as he made his way down.
His captain looked over the checkboard for nearly a minute before scratching something on it and mumbled to himself. Finally, he came out and just said, “Neal, failed. Next.”
The smile he had fell hard. He was so sure of it this time. He must have made it up there in good or at least better time. “I felt faster than last time, you sure I didn’t at least make a ‘bad’ time?”
“You spent more than 30 seconds up the tree. Hitting the target or not, that’s a failure. Next.” Sabel couldn’t even look him in the eye, and his voice was dismissive.
This wasn’t what he wanted to hear, he tried so hard, but there was improvement at least! He knew that much, “Sir, may I ask what my time was at least? I’d like to know how much I improved.”
Hiding away the clip board, Sabel snapped at him, “Recruit, you did not improve, your time is still a failure. Mithril Hammer you’re up next.”
The minotaur’s climb up the tree was less than graceful. But, by appearances she at least improve, just a bit.
“Mithril Hammer, you failed at agility.” Again, sable tapped at his clipboard, seeming lost in thought. “Were you training on agility?”
For a moment, Mith had a vacant look in her eyes. As if she didn’t quite understand the question. Then a small smirk came over her, “Why, did my time improve?”
The wolf squinted; he wasn’t about to let his question get turned around on him. “No. You still failed. Delibis, next.”
Again, the weaker elf struggled with the exercise, yet, by far had the greatest improvement in time. A hair under 90 seconds. His arrow strike was also just as true as before, a pinch off dead center. Well within the red bullseye target. The elf’s smile was even more true than his arrow strike. Never had he seen such drastic improvements in himself.
Yet again, Sabel stared at the clipboard. “Delibis, failed agility.” The last remaining exercise was magic, something Neal has no hope of achieving, yet still he stood in the field to ‘try’.
“Neal, failed at Magic.” Sabel’s voice was quiet and almost timid. It was as if his thoughts were suddenly elsewhere rather than here mocking his recruit.
With the exercises concluded, the squad lined backup. There was silence for a while as the captain looked between them all, his face and tail hanging down in clear disappointment.
“I don’t understand. Why did some of your scores go down? The only one who’s made any improvements is Delibis!”
Again, the fair haired and frail elf smiled at himself. To be fair, he did deserve it, and humans knew that. Neal’s bitter smile was both partially happy for him, but also, scornful that nothing he did was recognized.
It was tempting for him to blurt out how Teuta, Mith and Hastam’s agility time were all a bit lower too. Their stamina had improved too and they were all able to continue on easily after each test as well. Had Sabel asked, or even demanded they do each exercise again, no doubt they’d be able to. Just as well as the first time, if not better!
It was an improvement, and the human knew that. Even if he couldn’t see the larger picture his captain had to work under. The policies of the guard may not have made any sense to the human, but they remained the binding edicts of Illania’s forces. Despite his best efforts, Neal remained unaware of the burned that befell the larger organization of the squad.
For the remainder of the exercise time, Neal opted to try practicing with a sword again. Perhaps, hoping to swing out some of the poison he felt in his heart.
Much to Teuta’s lament that, “You’ve have learned nothing.” The dark elf declared as he then stabbed Neal in the stomach with the blunt wooden tip, again.
Laying on the ground for a moment, the human stared up at the mid-spring sky, watching puffy clouds float freely passed. What was the point of all this? He once more asked himself.
“You giving up?” Teuta mocked with his flat tone.
A smile crossed Neal’s face as he jumped up and again tried to match swords with the better opponent. Only to be stabled with the blunt wooden tip, yet again. And again, and again. Perhaps one day he would learn, just not today.
The weekend came, and the weekend went. Each day, Neal continued to improve himself, running, climbing, building body strength, even trying to hold a sword on his own. He was certainly becoming proficient at looking at them. It was challenging though. He was good with a rifle, not the best, but certainly in the top of his ROTC contingent. For better or worse, this world had nothing like guns at least so far as he had seen. The closets being bows and arrows. While he was, ok with them, nothing could beat a rifle for range and accuracy.
Standing on the track he wondered if he couldn’t build a gun here? He had engineering training, and was working towards a degree. Certainly, he could try. But where would he start?
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Gun powder would be a good first place. This world had fireworks, of some kind. He had seen them enough times. But supposedly they didn’t use black powder and made use of magic somewhere along the way. It probably wouldn’t work in a gun, at least not a traditional one.
His feet moved him steadily along the track, while his mind wandered about aimlessly on the empty streets of his mind. Perhaps that isn’t the fairest comparison, his thoughts weren’t so much non-existent as just parked, in front of expired meters, collecting tickets.
How do you make gunpowder, he asked himself again? Some kind of salt and carbon? No, not just any salt, salt petter which was made of something with potassium? His mind aimlessly drifted back to his sophomore chemistry course. But all he could remember was the stupid poster on the wall:
A cat emoji, followed by the letter’s ‘ion’ on one line.
The word ‘are’, on the center line.
Then finally a cat’s paw emoji with the letters ‘sitive’ at the end of it.
Much like a blind runner jogging the wrong way down a one-way street, his wandering mind was stuck by a rare thought going the right way.
“Cat-ion are pos-itive!” Neal spoke aloud to himself with a smile, as he finally put the words to the posters image and then paused mid thought. He still didn’t get it, which probably explains the ‘D’ he got in that course.
Shaking his head, his mind dropped the thoughts of guns and gunpowder, returning back to track continuing his circular journey to nowhere. Despite all evidence to the contrary, Neal was not dumb, he was just unable to focus on much of anything. Sunday would end, and with it the weekend.
Monday afternoon rolled around once more.
It was getting warm, but far from hot. The sun was still blotted out by the frequent clouds, and even the occasional drop of rain from a short spring shower. Rain bands covered the horizon, and storm clouds were once more about to hit the city. But, not for some time. Surely long enough for the small squad to complete a few exercises.
Mith, Teuta, Hastam, Delibis, RedFern and Aspin were all present today. His growing cohort caused Neal’s face to grow into a bold smile.
He had no idea what he was actually doing, but the fact that people were following him on his aimless journey of self-improvement gave him some hope.
“Halt!” A familiar voice barked loudly behind them all.
As much as Neal wanted to ignore it, tried to ignore, he couldn’t ignore his squad stopping behind him.
Their run was well and truly interrupted.
Sabel had decided to join them on the other wise pleasant day. He glared at each of them as he said their names. “Teuta, Mith, Hastam, Delibis, RedFern, Aspen and… Neal.” The last word was deep, almost a growl.
“I can see why your scores all fell. You’ve been following this human. Why?” Sabel continued.
“Sir, if I may. My scores actually improved.” Delibis protested.
Hastam’s ears were flat but perked up at hearing Delibis defending the exercise. “The run and climb on Friday didn’t tire me out this time. I feel better, sir.” The white wolf’s stance grew as he gained some courage, only for his body to sink back in on itself as Sabel loomed over him.
“Sable sir. This is my doing. I started running to try and improve myself. Everyone here wanted to follow me because I said it felt good.”
“Recruit, I don’t care. Do you all understand what the guard’s standing orders are? Do you all understand why we train the way we do?” Sable boasted as if he had insights he didn’t. But it was hard for anyone to argue against them, he was after all their captain.
He continued, “Your scores fell this past week because you aren’t training, you’re hurting yourselves.”
“Sir, none of us are hurting ourselves. We’re doing better than we were weeks ago. I can keep pace with the human now, and it feels good. I can feel myself getting stronger.” Mithril spoke up in defense of her human friend.
Neal could only smile, she couldn’t keep up with him yet. Not really anyway. His smile quickly dropped as he saw the black wolfs glare land back on him. For a moment the monkey part of his brain froze in terror as it recognized the predator in front of him.
“Do I understand you all correctly? You are willing to disobey my orders, the standing orders of the guard.” The question seemed rhetorical, but the silence afterwards left some of that to doubt.
Perhaps out of pride or maybe even fear, but Neal felt it was necessary to break the silence and defend himself. “Sir, I don’t think that’s fair. Some of our scores improved, Mith and Has-“
The amber eyes of the black wolf glowed an almost crimson light. “No! You will be silent now. I’m your captain, your commanding offers you will not talk back. I don’t know how humans do it in their ranks, but we respect the chain of command in the Guard. Am I clear?”
“Yes sir.” The gaurds all spoke in unison.
“Ok. You all want to run, then you’ll do it by the Guard’s standard. None of this slow nonsense. Now run!”
The Guards looked between each other, as if they couldn’t quite believe what Sable was saying. It was like he was punishing them for training in their off time. Which was only half right, his main target was, “Neal! You will run at pace with the rest or I’ll find something worse than scrubbing toilets for you to do!”
“Yes sir.” Neal did his best to run to sprint. But he just couldn’t do it. The only one he managed to outpace was Delibis, which didn’t feel like it counted. The poor elf nearly collapsed as Sabel literally barked at him to keep moving.
The elf couldn’t do it, and collapsed off to the side of the track. Eventually, Neal was forced to follow. It really was a soft patch of grass.
“Recruit Neal! You will get back up and continue!” Sable barked.
The human suddenly missed Sargent Gayjoy. At least his runs seemed fair somehow.
Night came, and the night court was again sans the princess. It had been several weeks so far, since she was last in court. But none of the guards seemed particularly concerned, perhaps because they weren’t focused on that. Each of those forced to run earlier could barely stand. Even Neal found his legs burning in pain from the sprints.
Each guard was given an assignment, but as Sable reached Neal Teuta tried to stop him, “Sir I could use help with the crates.” He tried to pull the human away from what ever punishment Sable had planned.
It didn’t work.
The dark wolf didn’t even take his eyes off Neall as he spoke, “Then you can take Mithril Hammer instead.”
Sable’s glare turned particularly wicked as he almost smiled at him. “Rookie Neal, you’ll be down in the dungeons again.”
The human was confused, “Sir? I cleaned them last week.”
Sable almost laughed, “Oh, you’re not mucking out the cells tonight, I want to you down there, clean out the sewer canals.”
The sewer for the castle ultimately connected next to the dungeon. There were several open pathways that the various black water pooled into and flowed out of. It was not usual to clean them, in fact, it was only done when their were actual issues.
“…You can’t be serious?” The feeling of disgust he had crept over Neal’s face. A few of his fellow guard seemed to have a similar look at hearing the order.
Sable closed the distance between the too of them. His muzzle almost touching his nose. The acrid breath of the wolf drifted out, even when he wasn’t speaking, “Are you talking back to your captain, recruit?”
Closing his eyes, the human forced himself back into attention, “No, sir.”
“Get moving!” Sable barked to everyone.
It took Neal a few extra minutes to actually get started. This wasn’t going to be a fun evening. The channels were hard to get into, some of the spaces were tight. Thankfully they were wet and slick, unfortunately, they were wet, and slick.
By the end of it, his body was sore, and more than a little gross. Sorer than it had been in a long time. Even when sergeant Gayjoy had him run all those laps he hadn’t hurt this much. Sable was pushing him harder than he had ever been pushed before. Normally he might think it was a good thing. You don’t get better without some measure of pain, but this was a different level.
The vague sound of hoof steps echoed around. It was hard to tell if they were Mith’s or some other minotaur. But it didn’t matter, Neal was in no condition to get drinks. Between the smell and the pain, it just wasn’t happening tonight.
The walk back to his apartment was long, and the people avoided him more than usual. Even the high guard who would watch him tried to keep their distance.
The lights for his apartment turned on automatically. Light crystals could sense his presence and would glow until he made them stop. The space was clean, and well taken care of. One of the benefits of this space was the maid service that came with it. The level of privilege Neal had would normally weigh on him a bit, like his armor did.
Which, despite his recent desire to care for his armor he dropped it to the plush carpet of his apartment floor. He never really took the time to apricate the space he lived in, it had always just been an apartment for him. But, the opulent trim, the plush carpets, the rather plump and soft bed and even more his private bath and shower were a sharp contrast from Mith’s place and presumably others.
A shower, that’s what he needed right now. The stench of the sewers still clung to him. The steam and hot water, soften his tense muscles and cleaned off the filth from the day. Given how he felt, maybe he’d skip the run tomorrow. It was after all, just one day. What harm would there be? Beside, Sable would probably be there to stop him.
As he finished drying himself, he stood on the plush carpeting for a moment. Squeezing his toes between the fabric. It felt good, good enough to make him wonder if maybe he couldn’t have just been happy to spend the rest of his life in this plush prison. Perhaps, he could just stop everything he was doing? What was the point after all?
A final shake of his head, Neal threw his towel off to the side, not bothering to care where it landed so long as his body landed on his bed. There wasn’t any time to think as his eyes closed and sleep rushed over him.
Senseless hours would pass, as if they never existed. Eventually thought, like most sleeps, it began to end, and consciousness returned to Neal. He was acutely aware of something as he woke up, it was dark outside.
The human shot out of bed as his eyes frantically traced around the room, looking for the alarm clock that should have awoken him. He found it. Under his towel, the bell mechanism was trapped by the fluffy fabric. Lifting the towel, the ringing suddenly became deafening. It had been going off for over an hour. It wasn’t just late, it was already 6PM.
There was no time, he was already late. With a thought, he grabbed his armor, putting on the necessities and ran out the door half dressed. His legs still burned and stumbled a few times as he quickly and sloppily dressed himself in his haste. The stench of last night still clung to most of the metal and leather, but that didn’t matter. He could deal with the smell; he wouldn’t be able to deal with whatever Sable would do with him if he was any later.
Sprinting down the corridors of the castle, he was vaguely aware of a few calls from the other guards. He ignored them. Turning a corner, the court room was just ahead, the throne of the night was still empty. But it was flanked by his squad who were already being given orders and prepping to move out.
Thankfully the princess wasn’t present to see him running well passed the 6PM bell. Neal’s squad was already in full attention, being given the last of their orders as Neal took his place at the end of the line, next to Mith. The Minotaur was unusually quiet, not even a light ribbing or smirk that was so common.
“Mithril Hammer, I want you with Teuta tonight. There was a shipment of supplies he could use your strength.”
“Yes, sir.” Her voice seemed almost melancholy and as she turned to walk away, unable to acknowledge Neal for some reason.
Sable didn’t even bother looking at the human, as he also turned to leave.
“Sir, I’m sorry about my lateness. What are my orders?” The human called out.
The captain paused for a moment. Not even bothering to face him. The wolf’s words and orders weren’t even directed back to him, just stated in the direction the human happened to stand.
“Recruit, I don’t care what you do, just do it somewhere else.” The tone itself was dismissive, and completely devoid of anything resembling emotion or care. Sable began to leave the room once more.
Neal stood at attention, waiting for more to come. His punishment, what would it be this time? Maybe Sable would have him clean the hallways with a toothbrush for the next month. As everyone left the space, Neal continued to wait. Unsure of what was coming but wishing it would hurry up. He couldn’t quite process what Sable had said.
Seeing finally leaving the room, he called out once more. “Sir. My orders, I don’t understand?”
Again, the wolf didn’t bother to turn around, though he did stop.
“You don’t have any.” Again, the wolf’s tone was dismissive. Perhaps, a slight air of annoyance, but otherwise cold.
“I don’t understand?”
“I know you’re a simple human, but it’s not a hard statement to understand even for you. You don’t have any orders. I don’t have any authority to dismiss you from the Lunar Guard or even my squad. So be it. I won’t be giving you orders any more, I won’t be acknowledging your presence here. I don’t care what you do from hence forward. Collect your monthly coin and just stay out of my squad’s way.”
With that, Sable walked off not bothering to listen to Neal or his protest. Just leaving him there still standing. His form at less than perfect attention. The human wasn’t quite sure what to do at this point. Sable was his captain, his leader. Without direction from him, just what was he supposed to do now?
“Did I really screw up that badly?” He whispered into the void, as he fell from attention. He didn’t move from that spot, hoping maybe this was some kind of test. Perhaps, it would get better.
But it didn’t.