On a long-forgotten patch of Lufaria’s coastline, a plateau of stone defied the forest that covered most of the kingdom. Over the years, the gentle waves that slapped against its face had given passage to the odd fisherman, searching for a better catch in remote waters. To them, the plateau would look like just another cliff on the endless northern coast. When the last sunlight was sealed by the horizon though, and the twin moons began to climb into the sky, the plateau faded from reality. In its place, a ruined fortress began its rise into the sky.
To Delphin’s young eyes, the glamour of the surfacing city was ruined by its haunted visage. The pale gray buildings, set into rows, cast unnatural shadows from the moons, providing the perfect environ for unspeakable horrors to lurk. The stairs ascending the city’s great wall were built on the outside as if to lure visitors in—or offer its inhabitants up as sacrifice.
For all that, Delphin didn’t hesitate to follow his master as the great man made directly for the ruin’s open jaws. Being a sage’s disciple was no small honor. For Delphin and his cousin Caspian, braving a city from a child’s nightmare was just another of the many prices to pay. For a true warrior, nothing worthwhile ever came without a few healthy brushes with death. Danger was their master’s best teaching technique, and tonight was shaping up to be a big lesson.
Not one to break his stoic nature, the Sage maintained a sharp silence as they approached the ruins. He never explained himself without cause. Even so, Del could guess what was coming. It wasn’t the first time he had seen a structure like this.
A disciple of the sage of blades could glean no benefit from archaeological wonders, or abandoned city streets. It was a shame. Some of the buildings seemed to almost defy gravity in their construction. His master though only liked places like this for one reason. They were always full of bloodthirsty beastmen.
The Sage stopped in place right before the city gates. Foul wind howled down the street towards them, rustling the Sage’s cloak and throwing the hood from his head. Del’s master didn’t bother to adjust himself, instead he glared up the dark street in front of him. Whatever he saw, he liked. In a half turn, his head whipped backwards to take in his disciples. “We’ll meet again at the peak.”
The Sage moved again, and Del felt the man’s hand on his back. He found himself tripping through the portal, going to all fours for stability. A quick turn let him catch his master’s pursed lips curving slightly upwards. “Your ordeal of rain awaits you there.”
A surge of pride ran through Del’s body as his cousin was thrown through the gate after him. He wanted to leap up and celebrate. Instead, he reined himself in, calmly pulling himself to his feet.
An ordeal of rain was a huge moment, for most, it was a rite of passage out of childhood. That wouldn’t quite be the case for Del. He was fourteen now, four years older than was traditional. For so long, the sage had told his students they weren’t ready. Now though, Del thought with satisfaction, the time had come. The Sage had finally acknowledged their efforts.
Before Del had even pulled himself back to his feet, the Sage slammed shut the ruined city’s gate with his favorite reprimand. “Keep your minds sharp.”
The city streets were dead quiet as Del and Cas began their winding path upwards. The pair kept their eyes moving in constant vigil, hands on their sword hilts just as they had been drilled. To an outside observer, the boys gave no indication today was anything special. Every time their eyes met though; the night’s significance danced between them. Their long-held goal was finally within sight.
Watching your surroundings like a hawk forced you to soak them in, to notice the finer details. For being in ruins, the city was surprisingly well-preserved. The close-fit stone of the road hosted a smattering of weeds but was far from overgrown. The buildings were left standing as often as not. What really caught Del’s eye though were the engraved characters carved into the walls of every home.
In a place like this there was no way to know what they meant, but Del imagined they were the names of those who once lived in them. He had an early memory of his parents etching his name beside their own into a mantle. They had told him it was something of permanence, that no matter what happened, no matter where he went, that mantle would always show he was family.
An image of a blazing fire ripped through the happy memory, and Del snapped it down in irritation. His parents were still alive. The Sage had reassured him of that, and he never lied. The fire was just the nightmare of a homesick child.
It didn’t really matter anyway. As far as he was concerned, Cas was his only family. He barely remembered anyone else, and he had no plans to meet them again. He was the disciple of the sage of blades, destined to become a mighty warrior. It was a road that his parents could never have walked.
The first hint of trouble came as their road reached a branch. Flashes of green in the corner of Del’s eye triggered his instincts, and he threw himself backwards. Chunks of road stung his arms as they ricocheted away from where the fists of two beastmen landed.
In a heartbeat, Del’s sword was in his hand, and he was reaching his senses out to the world. The first lesson the Sage had ever taught him was how to inhale toral, gaseous energy. Now, it was easier than breathing. Del pinpointed the force toral the beastmen’s blows had kicked up from the spirit realm and pulled. The toral came into him, diffusing as much through the pores in his skin as through his mouth or nose.
The second lesson the sage had taught was how to process that raw toral and condense it onto a sword’s edge. It was one of the most simplistic techniques a warrior could learn. Most would barely consider it a formal technique, spending maybe a day before moving onto bigger and better things—Del had spent the last eight years focused on perfecting it.
Del knew his sword better than anything else in his life. It was a stout saber with a single edge, blunt from the moment he had laid hands on it. According to his master, that didn’t matter. The technique did the cutting. The blade was just a conduit.
Del reached deep into the world around his sword, feeling where the wind toral met the metal toral of the weapon. That exact curve was where he sent the processed force toral, crafting it into a blade bordering the edge of his real one.
It had taken Del two years before he could cut anything. At the time, they had been staying in the training barracks of a rundown city in the south. From the very first, the master of arms had scoffed at the idea of cutting anything with a blunt weapon. That had earned a raised eyebrow from the Sage. The day Del had cut the leg clean off his stone mannequin was the same day the master of arms begged the Sage for his teachings. That had been six years ago.
The beastmen split up, one of them driving Del to his right while the other drove Cas to the left. Del grimaced. Working together, they would have the advantage. Ultimately though, they weren’t the ones to decide. It was the right of the stronger party to decide the terms of battle, and the beastmen were clearly stronger. A single blow from them would break nearly every bone in Del’s body. They were faster too. It was all Del could do to backup, narrowly dodging each blow.
Del’s beastman snarled, spitting saliva across his forehead while the face and teeth of a wolf gnashed at him, forcing a duck. When the attack missed, the creature took time to register it and threw a punch with its grotesquely muscular, green-scaled arm. Only to Del, that hesitation barely gave a wide enough window to slide away. He took another step back, still building his technique. As pressed as he was, he had been in enough fights to know the downfall of rushing things.
The beastman was powered by a deluge of liquid toral from its own spirit. Del’s technique powered by the mere wisps escaping into the world had no business hurting it. That was exactly why Del put everything he had into building his technique, taking all the time he could. All that really meant though was that his first blow didn’t just need to hurt it, it had to end it.
Ten more steps back, and at least a dozen near dodges, Del ran out of time. His back hit a wall. A moment later, the beastman’s claws swept a crushing arc towards his knees. With no space, Del resorted to using his hard-won athleticism to jump the blow. The soles of his feet briefly met the wall.
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The technique wasn’t as perfectly formed as Del knew he could make it, but it would have to be good enough. Del pushed forward, pumping his last sips of processed toral out through his feet in a bid for more momentum. For a moment, his sword met resistance as the beastman infused its body with more toral, then it cleaved straight through muscle, sinew, bone. Del rolled out from under his opponent as it fell in two, cleanly bisected.
There was no time to celebrate his victory, or even check up on his cousin. Del swung through a window in the same wall he had just been pinned against, crossing his legs to land on the floor. His focus swung into himself, already tearing and rending.
The ordeal of rain varied from place to place, person to person, but during his travels with his master, Del had seen a few examples. He had sat on a fence watching a village of smiths march their children across a junkyard where metal from discarded projects still simmered with forge’s fire. The children best able to protect themselves from the rampant toral emerged as apprentices…the others did not.
Another time, the Sage had decided to make a stop somewhere in Lufaria’s endless forest. They had found the cozy berth of a wandering clan of rogues. Del had been treated as an honored guest as the cutpurses tossed their young initiates into a pit of venomous snakes. Fewer survived that ordeal than the smith’s, but those who did emerge were far more deadly.
Regardless of the means, the process was always the same. Put a child into a situation where they had no choice but to inhale huge amounts of toral, and some of that toral would start to crystallize in their spirit. In time, the resulting torm would fill with liquid toral. Toral that could be harnessed and used in far greater quantities than anyone could inhale from the world around them.
The problem with that was that Del had inhaled more toral building his technique than most children ever would in their own trial, and a torm was beginning to form. It was too soon to climb that ladder. His real ordeal still waited above at the crest of the ruined city. Del couldn’t afford to let his torm form here. His master surely had far greater plans.
It wasn’t the first time this had happened, so disassembling the partially formed torm, and purging it from his body was no problem. It still hurt as much as it had the first time though. It was a wrenching that happened as much in his spirit as in his body. When the black sludge came out his mouth and stained his shabby traveling clothes, he had to pound his chest, forcibly restarting his breathing.
It took a few minutes for Del to feel himself again, but eventually, he got up and started prioritizing. The first item was to find Cas. He had every confidence in his fellow disciple, but the beastmen here were stronger than anything they had ever faced. A single slip, or mistimed dodge would be all it took.
Del’s heart didn’t stop pounding until he found the body of the other beastman, its remains showed a nearly identical bisection to his own. Cas was nowhere to be seen though. Eventually, Del was forced to move on. He wanted to call out for his cousin, but he was just as likely to find another beastman.
The second item of priority was to reach the top of the fortress, meet his master, and pass his ordeal. Before he did that though, Del took the time to clean his blade of the beastman’s foul blood. In the last two years or so, the Sage had demanded they treat their blades with respect that bordered on reverence.
The rest of the trip was as harrowing as its start. He ran into beastmen on two more occasions. Fortunately, this time, he was the one doing the ambushing. The fights were much shorter and safer, but he was still forced to purge himself on both occasions.
Just as he was finally nearing the top of the hill, the sky decided to contrive against him, forming a sullen and wholly unwelcome rainstorm above. Taking shelter wasn’t an option at that point either. Whatever was at the cursed city’s crest was well-protected by the beastmen. A shocking variety of traps had been set up ranging from spiked pitfalls to nasty pots of burning oil strung to dump their contents on intruders.
In the time it took for Del to make his way safely through the traps, he was soaked through. He also had plenty of time to scrutinize the wall engravings. They had progressed from unfamiliar characters into images as he had climbed. Del much preferred the characters. The images were disturbing to say the least. Most of them seemed to show people in various stages of being horribly twisted or crushed. It made Del grateful the people who used to live here were long gone.
Eventually, just when the night was reaching its darkest point, Del made it to the crest. His master stood waiting for him there, cutting an impressive figure. His whole body was a crystalline green and looked nearly twice the size of any other grown man. The intimidating features were courtesy of his reforging in a crucible, the final step one had to take before they could call themself an apex warrior, a sleetborn.
Del moved forward, finding himself in a broad courtyard with more open space than he had seen anywhere in the streets below. The whole middle was pressed down into a massive basin which was gradually filling with rainwater. Glimpses of the unfamiliar writing and horrible images he had seen on the city’s buildings came through the murk. The place made him feel like he was in one of his nightmares. The far more pressing concern though was the beastman that waited cross-legged on the opposite side of the courtyard.
This beastman wasn’t like the ones he had fought earlier. For one thing, it was smaller. More terrifying though, it was holding a sword that looked nearly identical to Del’s own. He had never seen a beastman wielding a weapon before. Traps sure, they used them as if on instinct, always the same ones, but never a weapon. The meaning took a moment to sink in. Every creature started out with a certain level of connection with the spirit realm. Usually, only humans ever bothered to push beyond what they started with, but that didn’t mean other creatures couldn’t. One of the most common symptoms of a creature advancing was new, unusual behavior.
Del couldn’t help but look to his master for reassurance. Surely, he couldn’t be expected to fight a beastman that had fused its torm into its physical body. The regular beastmen were already dangerous enough, born with fully formed torms. By using a powerful material to fuse the body and the torm through an ordeal of snow, the physical form would grow stronger, and the material lent unique, often powerful benefits: magic. This beastman would tear him apart before he could so much as react.
Del’s master gave no reassurance though. Instead, he motioned with his hands, a motion he had used in training before. Combatants approach.
Del felt a prisoner being sent to execution, but he did as his master wanted. He walked into the basin with sword drawn, feeling his shoes soak through in the pooled water. The sage kept his hands raised. Del hoped the man would never drop them, that he could just stand in the basin forever, but that was not to be. Arms lowered and with them came a wave of crushing force.
Del had to pull in gushes of force toral just to keep from being broken against the ground. He had no time to evaluate the change though. The beastman was rushing forward, preparing an all too familiar technique on its sword.
Del started building his own technique, roaring his defiance. The idea that the creature had the nerve to challenge him with his own technique made him feel an ungrounded anger. He reined himself in forcefully. Anger was the enemy of skill. He had to keep his mind sharp now more than ever.
Their swords met in an intense clash of techniques. Del had a moment of satisfaction, feeling his blade begin to cut through his opponents, but then he realized his own blade was being cut too. For a heart wrenching moment, the blades were locked together, stuck in matching notches. Del reacted as he had been trained though, lashing out with his foot. The beastman did the same, leading to an awkward push-off that sent them both rolling through the water.
Del made it to his feet, already building up a new technique on his sword blade. The sage must have been pushing the beastman down with much greater force. The fight was far more even than it should have been. That was, Del realized, likely the point. What better way to force him to pull in toral than to pit him against an enemy of near identical strength and skill. How exactly the sage had found a beastman that mimicked his abilities so well remained a mystery, but there was no time to contemplate.
The fight took every scrap of focus he could muster. The beastman’s techniques made a dozen more notches in his sword. His spirit felt red-hot as he strained to pull in more toral for the next clash. Enough to break past his opponent.
Another dozen passes made it clear he wasn’t going to get anywhere fighting like normal. He was already panting, barely keeping the push of force toral above at bay, so he resorted to tricks. He threw water into his opponent’s eyes with bursts of toral and used his rudimentary grasp on wind toral to buffet the beastman’s sword. It gave him the advantage for the first time in the fight. The beastman started responding in kind, but Del had already gained a step on the creature.
A dozen more moves had him clawing at the toral around him. It moved slower than ever before, and it hurt. With every attack, Del’s advantage sent the beastman reeling, but he couldn’t break through, and each technique was slower to build than the last. Just as the pain was growing to be too much, the toral too slow, the beastman failed to pull their technique into place in time. Del’s blade cut right through, cutting the creature open from shoulder to hip. He let out a triumphant cry that started from deep in his spirit where he could feel a torm already solidifying, denser than ever before.
That cry ended suddenly as Del felt a horrible pain wash something off him. Then he was making a different cry because it wasn’t a beastman he had just dealt a killing blow. It was Cas, his best friend, his cousin, his only family.
Del caught him before his body collapsed, cradling him to his chest, asking for forgiveness before the light could drain from his eyes. Only, it wasn’t he who needed to be forgiven. It was their master who had betrayed them, somehow deceived them into fighting. Cas gestured, and Del moved to give him a view of the Sage who stood unmoving, his hands placed on a set of stones connected to the basin by deep grooves. Then a huge amount of toral flowed down those grooves making right for Cas.
Something about the basin or maybe the toral that flowed through it bent Del’s spirit towards Cas, and he let it, supported it, trying to support him however he could, so he felt his cousin’s body as it was crushed and compressed. He heard the screams that never made it through his best friend’s throat, and he unleashed them in Cas’ place.
Just as the pain blotted out his eyesight, the sword that had been split in two in their final clash rose into the air, both its components melting under the weight of toral. The molten metal reached what was left of Cas, and suddenly it was the same sword it had once been, only now it wasn’t just a sword. It was Cas, and Del could somehow feel him through his own spirit still living.
There was no way of knowing how much time passed. All Del would later remember was fighting against the black spots that crossed his eyes, defiantly avoiding being dragged into unconsciousness. All that time, he alternated between looking at his master in horror, and the blade that was laid across his knees.
He tried to get a response from Cas through whatever link they had between their spirits, but though he was there, all Del got was darkness, not the black of unconsciousness, he somehow knew, but a worse shadow, one of unresponsive wakefulness.
Eventually, his world was expanded again by a dot that approached at impossible speeds through the streets below. That dot soon proved real as it became a man in full armor bearing a huge selection of weapons on his back. When the man spoke, it came out in a hateful boom. “Garom, you bastard, what have you done!”
For the first time in his life, Del saw his master’s face show the slightest sign of fear. It was mastered in a fraction though. Musclebound wings, normally hidden under the sage’s cloak due to their grotesqueness, burst out, aiding a charge that moved faster than the eye could track.
The stranger launched a metal shield from his back to block the approach. Del’s master cut it in half, barely slowing despite the powerful aura of metal toral. A moment later though, hundreds of copies of that shield blocked every angle a dozen times over, forcing the Sage to a stop.
The powerful warrior fell upon Del’s master from the sky, a titanic hammer raised for a shattering blow. That was the last Del would see of his master. The scene was obscured as some of the shields came for him, locking him in a dome.
Del lashed out with the strength of a cornered animal. Picking his abused saber from the ground, he beat against the confinement. Eventually though, his strength betrayed him, and he collapsed. The last thing he remembered was curling around Cas, keeping him, what was left of him, out of the blooded water.