Lysander left the Merchants' Guildhouse that evening with a sealed piece of parchment; a letter from Danton himself to the Swords Guild promised to serve as a recommendation.

The Swords Guild was essentially a group of mercenaries, fighters, and moderately publicly upstanding brawlers. The idea was that they’d handle any issues that people with money had that titled knights wouldn’t or couldn’t bother to deal with.

That was the original idea, anyway. Over time, they’d become a stand-in for knights in general. The lords, ladies, and sirs of the big cities no longer had to dirty their hands hunting down beasts, goblins, ghouls, and daemons once the Swords had established themselves. Not if the threat wasn’t big or profitable enough.

The mercenaries of the Swords basically got the scraps and lesser conflicts all to themselves. Still, they’d grown rather fat on those scraps, as they were always abundant in number if not in quality.

But the warriors weren’t known for sharing. If you wanted their jobs, then you had to pay dues for them, earn them, and build a reputation. Mostly to make sure you didn’t fumble a client’s ask and only partially to make sure too many dumb city urchins looking for adventure didn’t kill themselves on a local constable’s dime.

Lysander, however, wanted to skip all of that. Call him impatient, but he was confident he could handle a few monsters. His one-handed proficiency may have only been novice level, but it was right on the brink of reaching the next tier, which meant he’d essentially reached the maximum skill a normal person could hope to achieve. Apprentice level was next, and hitting that would essentially mean he was twice as deadly as the average swordsman.

He couldn’t get cocky; he knew that, but the simple fact was that he’d been bottlenecked at one hundred out of one hundred novice proficiency points since just after he’d turned seventeen. He needed real combat to break through, not just a little duel or the dispatching of a few goblins; he needed to push his understanding and skill to their limits.

If he managed to do that? He’d ascend his one-handed proficiency, and if he did it especially well, he might just unlock a skill.

Skills were closely related to proficiencies and attributes, but something altogether different They were elevated combinations of those things. A skill would optimally combine your understanding and physical or magical capabilities to perform a specific function.

Skills could be gained in numerous ways. They could be taught, but this had the highest chance of failure and rarely worked; they could be gained through the skill stones that would sometimes manifest in the corpses of skilled enemies; or they could be created in moments of proficiency or attribute ascension.

Creating your own skill was easily the best route. It would be born from your own understanding and inner capabilities, and more importantly, it would even draw out some of your unrealized potential to push you a little beyond what you’d be able to do with just your attributes and proficiencies alone.

Not all skills were created equally; some were stronger than others, but one thing was universally true: it was better to have them than not.

The only problem was that it was possible to attain a higher proficiency or attribute without unlocking a skill. You had to get lucky, or, if what Lysander’s swordsman brother had said was true, you needed to be pushed to crystalize your potential in a moment of true need as you ascended.

The streets were dark, shadowed. Lysander knew he shouldn’t be traveling towards the rougher part of town where the Swords Guild purposefully chose to situate itself.

He also expected he’d be perfectly fine. He didn’t expect trouble, but he found himself to be wrong as a knife was pressed into the cloak at his back.

"I’m wearing chainmail under my tunic," he said aloud to the cutthroat. "A rusty dagger might get through it, but it’ll take a moment longer than flesh. Do you want to risk that?"

Hot breath washed over his neck. Breath smelling of plaque and sickness. Disgusting and uncomfortable.

"Just give me your money; I don’t want to stab you anyway," the cutthroat’s course voice said in a whisper, "but we will."

"We?" Lysander asked, but he didn’t have to wait for an answer to his question.

A few men stepped out of a nearby alley. They were dressed in a mismatch of laborer’s clothes, all holding clubs or knives. No castle-forged steel could be seen among them; they were street thugs, if you could even call them that.

"I know you've got some coin. You're dressed all fancy like that, with a nice sword on your hip, but you ain’t a Sword because we haven’t seen you around here before and you don’t have the armband their lot wear," the cutthroat continued, moving his knife blade up to the base of Lysander’s skull. "Actually, let’s start with that so you don’t get brave or something. Don’t move, or I’ll stab you where there’s no mail."

Drums began to beat in Lysander’s ears. His body started to shake. Just as the cutthroat reached around to unbuckle his swordbelt.

"Just don’t move," the cutthroat said as he undid the silvered buckle and grabbed the sword’s scabbard. "There you go, nice and easy, just like th—"

Lysander probably wouldn’t have been able to draw his sword in time to completely avoid a stab in the neck. Not when it was on his hip, but with the space the cutthroat was making by pulling the sword away from him? It was enough.

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The swordsman’s physical attributes made him twice as quick, strong, and dexterous as the average person. His body control was far greater and more subtle than a normal man’s as well.

He knew he was strikingly fast for the uninitiated. His control over his muscles was just adept and fast enough, in fact, that the cutthroat didn’t notice his hand softly grabbing his sword’s handle as it was being pulled away. The robber had only just begun to notice it when Lysander separated his head from his shoulders.

The blood spurted, covering Lysander’s face in a bubbling bath of warm, dirty, and crimson iron. It wasn’t the first thing he’d killed, but it was the first man all the same.

The drums in his skull beat louder.

Lysander turned back to the rest of his assailants, rising up from the half-crouch slash he’d used to dodge away from his victim’s dagger.

The moon glimmered off the eighteen-year-old’s dilated eyes. He hadn’t enjoyed killing just then, but he hadn’t not enjoyed it. Honestly, it just felt like a waste of time. There was no challenge or honor to what he’d done.

The act of taking a life still wasn’t the same as killing monsters with his father’s hunting parties, however. It felt heavier and emptier all at once.

"If you’re all just doing this because you’re hungry or poor, then leave. I’ll let you. I don’t want to hurt you," Lysander said to the group.

The men weren’t soldiers, at least not anymore, if any of them ever were. They all froze in shock at the sight of Lysander’s rapid execution of their spokesperson.

Then, suddenly, they all broke into a run back into the alleyways, but Lysander knew it wasn’t because of him.

Every inch of skin on the back of the young man’s neck tingled; he was even more on edge than he had been before. It was like fire had been lit all up his veins as he felt a surge of red-hot killing intent wash over his body, permeating his pores from the outside-in.

He could barely twitch; his muscles were both superheated and immovable. If he didn’t run, then all he could do was not move. He recognized the feeling. It was the presence of a warrior he knew well.

His teeth ground together hard as he fought with everything he had to not drop his sword onto the ground. His body was completely locked up, but only because, after refusing to run, clenching every fiber of every muscle he possessed was all he could do to not just fall to his knees.

Great warriors who had pushed their skill well beyond the expert rank could begin to turn their proficiency with killing itself into a physical force. They could turn intangible intent into a real thing that others could feel. It was not magic; it was merely will and skill taken to such a height that they had begun to spill out from a fighter’s very existence.

"Lysander, what have you gotten yourself into?" a light, nondescript voice came from behind.

And, just like that, the aura was gone. Lysander almost fell over, sweat beading at his brow, but he didn’t. He wouldn’t let himself.

"Darby, why are you here?" the swordsman asked through a voice that he barely managed to keep monotone.

"Because, young master, the Lady Anabelle has gone missing. You wouldn’t happen to know something about that, would you?" The man asked as he stepped out in front of Lysander.

Darby was not at all like the aura he’d emitted. At least not physically. He was smaller in form than Lysander and half a head shorter. He had a dapper moustache that went well with his well-manicured blonde hair. His evergreen-dyed doublet and trousers spoke of a moderately high station and a classical style.

Frankly, Darby looked like an old man. He didn’t even carry a sword. He appeared more like a butler than a warrior. And yet there was one part of him that gave off at least a small fraction of the power that his sword aura had so unabashedly unleashed: his eyes. They were like unflinching brown oceans of depth, perhaps kind but equally impenetrable.

"Not a thing," Lysander said as he swallowed to regain some of his composure.

Darby crossed his arms. "Do you know why your father sent me here?"

"You already said it was for Anabelle," he replied.

"Not what I was asking, young master. You also didn’t flinch when I said your sister was missing," the old man said.

"I can barely stand after that, let alone flinch," Lysander replied.

"That was to keep you from having to kill anyone else. I’m sure the guards would understand your predicament, but they also wouldn’t like it. You’d also never admit my aura had hurt you if you weren’t trying to use it as an excuse," Darby explained and countered.

It was true, but why wouldn’t Darby know that? He’d practically raised him. He was indeed Lysander’s family butler, but also his father’s master at arms.

"I don’t know where she is, Darby," Lysander said as he took a few more deep breaths.

Darby looked down at the corpse of the cutthroat. "Are you okay, son?"

Lysander shook his head. "I’m fine."

"The cities are different than a keep. People can be desperate," Darby admitted. "If you need to talk—"

"I don’t," Lysander said as he returned his scabbard belt to its proper place around his waist, "but thank you."

The butler made a disapproving noise from between his teeth. "Very well; that still leaves us to talk about Anabelle."

"I have business to attend to," Lysander said.

"After killing a man? I’d think not," Darby said. "Where are you two staying? I’ll take you there and—"

"No," Lysander said. "Anabelle isn’t with me. Go find her."

The butler narrowed his eyes as Lysander tried to push past him.

The eighteen-year-old found himself stopped under the firm and powerful hand of Darby. It was a light touch, but Lysander knew it could dislocate his shoulder with just a squeeze if Darby wanted it to.

"Even after what your father said to you, you’d never disavow Lady Anabelle. Which means she is in fact with you," Darby said.

"What are you willing to do to prove it, Darby?" Lysander asked.

The eighteen-year-old met the man’s eyes. For a half-moment, he saw the butler internally shift as his eyes flared, and Lysander felt another moment of primal terror rouse up inside himself, but just as soon as it came, it was gone, and Darby just sighed.

"She disappeared around the same time you left, but I can’t very well beat it out of you," the butler said. "I also can’t return to your father empty-handed. I will be present, young master. I will be watching."

"I’d expect nothing less from you," Lysander said, shrugging off Darby’s hand and continuing forward past him.

"Lysander," Darby called after him, a bit of concern in his stern voice.

The young man he was addressing stopped in his walk.

"I’m not your enemy," Darby finished.

Lysander didn’t look back. "Unless my father told you to be."

"That’s hardly fair, son," the butler trailed off.

Lysander’s fists clenched tightly before he continued walking. "Tell that to my mother."

"Lysander!" Darby raised his voice, but no killing intent followed.

The swordsman merely continued on his way, leaving the old man alone in the night.