The start of the sixth year was an exciting time for me. The household of Raynes Ha Presella had become familiar, though Presella herself had insisted I refer to her as ‘Mother’. To this day that doesn’t sit right with me. I knew the halls and the rooms, the surrounding grounds had become my domain, and I had found the library and all its worded wonders. My new sister was the center of most of his inquiries.

Sprikket was a fireball even in the Raynes house. She never really grew past the 5-foot mark, and she more than made up for in loudness what she lacked in stature. My memories of her are few, but she was bossy and commanding at the best of times. Presella had made a point of keeping us apart, and while I may not have seen her often, her voice rang out over the house regularly.

The Manor itself was of a minimalist quality, the rooms were spacious enough but there was little overdone, each room had a purpose and had just enough space for that task, the halls were all just wide enough for two, all decorated but not burdened by design. Despite the state of disrepair facing most of the house; Presella not exactly being one with the upkeep of a manor in mind, there was an underlying tone of quality beneath the layer of dust.

There were many rules in the house, no fighting was mentioned, but the single most stressed was that no one was to leave the grounds. This was not a terribly difficult rule to follow, the grounds of the Raynes manor extended far beyond what a young boy would be able to explore. They had stables and training grounds, a building beside the house that only Presella could enter, and a barn filled with ancient giant machines. I had been given free reign to do mostly as I wished. “There is nothing inside these grounds that will bring you harm…” Presella was not one to curb words “If you’re dumb enough to kill yourself, that's your lot.” The freedom resulted in most of my first year being spent exploring, climbing, and taking things apart.

I had only been foolish enough to break the rules once on purpose. Late one afternoon when I thought that Presella had gone I took to the old barn and found a metal bar to pry the boards off the old locked shed.

A younger me figured he could pry one of the baseboards off and sneak in. Never once considering the board would later need replacing for my plan to succeed. It mattered little, I’d barely stuck the pry bar into the wood the first time when I felt Presella’s gaze stop me in my tracks. The resulting beating left me unable to sit for nearly a week.

Sprikket received more of these beatings than I did, though it seemed my new sister was much less harshly reprimanded. Still once a month or so I would catch a glimpse of her holding her backside tenderly, and she would glare at me. Five years my elder I always wondered where her hostility came from. In the few moments we were allowed together under Presella’s supervision she picked on me relentlessly, one time even drawing me out to throw a wild punch. The blow was caught effortlessly by Presella short of its mark, and we both walked away with some very painful forms of regret.

The two were odd and confusing company, but the house had many advantages, the library held more books than I could imagine myself reading in a lifetime, I’ve read them all now of course. The woods provided a constant escape to adventure. The beds were soft and spacious and the window into my room saw a clear view out into the stable grounds where the horses grazed. Presella was prone to sing when she thought she was alone.

For both of our sakes, maybe leave that out of your report.

One of my favorite pastimes was to watch Presella at the training grounds. I would climb up into the rafters where she couldn’t see and watch her movements with wide eyes. She was, despite her quirks in all other aspects of life, a product of clockwork. Every day before sunrise she would do the exact same movements, they looked to be martial arts, but a painstakingly slow form. Without sitting down to really observe, it would have been easy to say she wasn’t moving at all. Then when the sun crested the horizon the stillness would be replaced by fury, her hands and legs would begin to whip in a mad frenzy of movements. After a few minutes of the wild dance, she would take a rest and drink, then begin again striking a post in the center of the training grounds. The post was impressive, its girth nearly a meter across. The sound of the strikes of her foot against the post always followed with the same crack that shook my bones as I watched, but her hands always landed with a dull thud, as if she had struck the post with a sword or an ax. Finally, when no piece of the sun was blocked by the horizon she would make four strikes faster than I could keep pace, the resounding crack sounded as if it was one blow, and echoed far enough that it had woken me every morning when he had first come to the house.

It had taken months of watching to discover that the movements were all the same. The slow moments were easy to track, but the faster ones were impossible to see in one sitting. I began to take notes every morning. It hurt my eyes a bit at first but I learned to see the forms in the fluid like motion. I noticed that the strikes all had final positions, but the way in which Presella’s hand reached its target varied greatly. Over the course of the first three weeks, I was able to map out that each hand struck seven different points on the target post, striking each in unique movement four times.

This was a process that I would have described as painstaking, but I had little else to do, so it fascinated me. It was not just where she struck the post, it was how the strike came to land there. Three months of studying, and hundreds of stick figures drawn in the dirt later, I felt I had begun to comprehend the vicious dance. It was now ingrained into my memory, and I found I knew the movements that would come next before they came.

Only the final four strikes were left unknown to me, I was only aware there were four by paying attention after the fact. From my perch, the movements were much too fast, and I suspected they would be so up close as well. There were four deep marks on the post, much deeper than all the rest. This became a great mystery and fascination to me… a thing unknown to me that needed investigating. I watched each day in great anticipation of Presella’s barrage. It was another two months of watching and learning before it occurred to me I could attempt any of this myself.

The wicked crack that signaled the end of Ha Presella’s morning ritual rang out especially loud. The post she was striking was formidable, and still, I couldn't help but feel like one day it was going to give out. The autumn day had traces of summer heat still on its winds but the trees had already begun to turn. It had now been 8 months since my sixth birthday, and almost a year since my arrival to the house.

I waited the first time until I knew for certain that Presella had cleared the fields, and let my bare toes slip into the heavy sands of the training grounds.

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I did my best to imagine the slow movements as my bodyweight sunk low and slid into the first position. Left arm straight in front, right extended out at shoulder level, bent so your hand nearly touches the left elbow. Holding onto the image of Presella’s form in my head I shifted his body weight as slowly as I could… back and forth between my legs as my hands traded positions.

Standing on the balls of my feet in the sand my legs strained to keep balance, I had to consistently focus on the ground beneath me shifting or my footing alone would topple me. My shoulders and arms began to shake with the stress of holding them up in minutes. My legs burned from holding low to the ground and soon my whole body began to tremble violently under the strain.

I gritted my teeth and sped up the movements, forced my body to complete the ritual like patterns before collapsing into the sand. Every muscle felt like it had been torn to shreds. I lay there in exhaustion and tried to comprehend it all. It had seemed so easy when Presella had done it, boring almost, like a stretching ritual or a warm up. I tried with every part of my being to move as slowly as possible, as she did, but the results were nothing alike. I worked out that I must have moved through the routine in less than a quarter of the time it was supposed to take, and done so badly.

I remember that moment well, the wind on my face and the sand underneath me… It spurred me somehow, I remember feeling like I’d found a great challenge.

I slept hard that night, for the first time in ages my eyes refused to open and my body rejected drawing itself from the bed to observe Presella in her morning routine. The thunderclap that woke me so often when I first came to the house signaled that the warm sheets I hid in had kept me prisoner too long. Vallis was a normal enough place, but the temperature between the days and nights seemed extreme, my bed made a refuge I was most grateful for from the chill that swept in with the dark. I forced myself up, and quickly and quietly snuck out of the manor. Today, I decided, would be better.

It was much worse.

Not thirty minutes later I lay exhausted, drenched in sweat, on the sands of the training grounds. My goal had been valiant but in vain. Today my sore legs and arms trembled worse than the day before, and my body held out for only a quarter of the entire movement.

This became the new routine, arising before the sun and studying Ha Presella before sneaking down to the sands and forcing my way through the routine. I ended up collapsed and spent beneath the autumn sun every day until the leaves on the trees had all properly fallen. Two months later was the first time I finished the movement still with the strength to stand. Only just, I dragged myself to the side of the sand pit before plopping down for a much-needed rest.

If, and when there was nothing definite about this… I had the energy to do other things I would dig around the books in the library. Long were the shelves and all full of mystery. To a boy with a body too tired to move, they were a haven. Another month passed like this till the winds started to bite with a winter chill.

It was a particularly cold day when I looked up at the house gate. The metalwork once fine and detailed had now rusted to the point that it no longer distracted the eye from seeing the gate was once intended to be a line of defense. It was the only gate in the entire wall that surrounded the Raynes grounds. The wall itself was no less impressive, it stood certainly three times as high as he did and looked firm and unyielding. I’d never seen the outside of that gate once it had closed behind me, I didn’t really remember it. Today, however, I stood to stare because this one had done something that gates did not normally do, it rang.

I had been on that side of the grounds when the giant steel gate erupted as if it had been hit by a battering ram. That not being a standard action for a gate, I went to investigate.

From across the other side of the gate a deep and powerful voice echoed out “I’VE BEEN EXPECTED FOR FIVE YEARS AND YOU DON'T UNLOCK THE DAMN GATE?!?!”

The voice shocked me at first… It boomed with a deep, almost grinding resonance. I raised my own voice as much as I dared. “The gate isn’t supposed to be unlocked. Mother doesn't like it to be open.”

A frustrated rumbling came from the other side of the wall followed by the same voice in a much calmer tone. “You don’t think you could help me out and unlock it, do you kid?”

Younger me considered it, I know because I then realized that even if I’d been willing to open the gate for the stranger, I had no idea how it opened. There were no handles or knobs, no locking mechanisms or chains to pull. “I don’t think mother would like that…” I called back over.

There was a huff and a heavy sigh. “Stand back, kid.” the new voice came over the wall again, followed by another giant crash of the gate. At first, I wasn't worried, the gate seemed sturdy and if the stranger kept making this kind of noise Presella would be there soon. It wasn’t until the next hit that the hinges started to give way and I had the sense to scramble a few yards back.

The fourth and final hit saw the great steel gate clean off of its mounts onto the grounds inside, puffing up a cloud of dust as it came clambering to the dirt. One of the hinges had refused to give and had taken a chunk of the stone wall it was connected to with it. The noise, I was certain, had alerted the entirety of the Raynes estate.

Over the door and through the dust came a massive, broad-shouldered, short-haired man. His fists were the size of my head and a claymore was strapped to his back that looked as if it had been designed to be wielded by giants. Despite this being the first time I met him, I felt no fear at his grand entrance. As the dust settled I got my first clear look at the new face, adorned with a cocky grin and a scruffy patchwork beard. He had what appeared to be two bars piercing his upper left arm, one round, and the other square.

“Mother will have heard that…” my eyes flickered toward the manor. We didn't’ get many new and exciting things each day. I wanted to know more, but knew precisely what was coming next.

“I’m betting she did,” the stranger replied, his eyes scanning up and down my frame. “You must be the new street urchin… What's your name, kid?” he bent down softly to one knee, even so still slightly taller than me.

“Verna… Raynes Verna” I looked back over the man's shoulder at the fallen gate. “But Mother will be angr…

“Oh, James you brute of a man,” the calm but chilling voice of Ha Presella announced her approach from the house. “Women will never find you attractive if you always kick in the front door…” It was the innocent voice that Verna knew all too well. The one that preceded only the harshest of punishments.

Verna quickly tugged on the sleeve of the big man once more. “You should run,” he warned him in a whisper.

The smile on the man's face grew into a beaming grin as his left hand reached for the greatsword on his back. “Nice to meet you, Verna... I’m James.” his voice was cool and composed as he stood and drew the massive weapon “Let me give you a lesson in life…” he took a brief moment to look back at me, using one hand to guide me a safe distance away. “A man never runs.”