Cinder O’Leon was bored. Representing the family in the Choosing used to be fun. He had been excited to find the next great swordsman or swordswoman who would blossom under his grandmother’s tutelage, and this time, he would get to be a part of it.
His excitement fled after years of nothing. No one his grandmother approved of had come through the Choosing since Jen. That had been 50 years ago. There wasn’t one promising prospect in all that time. Granted, he knew his definition of promising in this context was slightly skewed, but come on. Fifty years!
Phevona could have been an excellent swordswoman, but no! She had to follow in her mother’s footsteps. Cinder wasn’t still bitter about that decision at all. Not. At. All.
He was bored of clearing out realm after realm. He needed a bit of a break from the monsters and constant travel. Pheobe felt the same way. They had both taken a hiatus when Phevona was born, but raising a baby had its own challenges. Since then, it has been full speed ahead, only taking time to return home between delves to make sure they didn’t neglect Phevona.
Having a student would be a great excuse to stay around home for a couple of years and get back in the kitchen for more than a couple of rushed meals. Making cooking his non-combat Subject had not been the most popular choice among his family members, but he thought it paired nicely with his combat Subject. Blades could be used for more than fighting, after all. Plus, Pheobe and Phevona loved his cooking.
He also thought it would be fun to put someone through the training he’d been forced to endure before and after his own Choosing when he was 16. The thought of one of the kids sitting over in the stands running laps around the O’Leon estate and drilling endlessly in the training yard excited him.
Then he remembered—50 years without a new student. With most of the day over, it looked like today wasn’t the day that streak ended.
Cinder took his less-than-rapt attention off the current fight between young Lucan Moretz and a dwarven prisoner to look at Phevona. Despite his lack of enthusiasm for representing the family that year, he was glad to be here for his little girl’s Choosing. He and Pheobe had finished their most recent delve into a tier nine greater realm less than a week ago, so they had made it back with time to spare. He knew they wouldn’t have heard the end of it for weeks if they’d missed their daughter’s Choosing.
Soon enough, the match ended, and the announcer called for the next participant. “For the next fight, I invite Phevona O’Leon to the arena.”
Finally! Cinder sat up a little straighter as they called for Phevona. He watched her as she descended the stairs, and he found himself quite nervous for the first time in a while. ‘You tackle high-tier realms full of monsters and other people trying to kill you for resources, and this is what makes you nervous?’ he laughed to himself. He supposed most parents cared more about the small things in their children’s lives than the big things in their own.
‘Now, let’s see who you're up against.’ The guard was escorting a human boy wearing a torn-up uniform to the weapons rack. He was stretching and loosening his muscles as the guard walked beside him. He moved pretty well for a kid.
Cinder took more interest in the boy when he approached the swords, then even more when he began to test them. He held each for less than three seconds, then quickly moved on to the next. Eventually, he finished his testing and returned to a double-edged straight sword near where he started. ‘Nice choice.’
With both participants now ready and in position, the announcer gave introductions. Nothing in Phevona’s description was a surprise to Cinder. It was the boy’s information he was more interested in.
‘Espionage? They must think Corvelin sent the boy.’ Cinder had met some Corvelin military realm delvers in the tier nine realm he had been in the week prior. While they hadn’t been wearing uniforms, he’d seen some in the past when he visited Corvelin as a mercenary when he was younger. ‘No one sent here to spy would be dumb enough to wear a military uniform. What are they playing at?’ In the past, he had called some of the clan’s officials thick-headed, but even they weren’t that dumb.
Before he could reflect on the oddness of the charges any longer, the match began. It took less than a few seconds for Cinder to forget the weird circumstances around the charges. The boy was good. Despite being slowed down by Phevona’s splinter shots, he never lost his cool. Each move was in rhythm. Each swing of his sword was designed to disrupt his momentum as little as possible.
Then, Phevona made her move. The wall of roots formed in front of the boy. He used an impressive combo of strikes and a skilled application of his sword’s spell deflect enchantment, but it wouldn’t be enough. Phevona had slipped a vine whip in when the boy’s sight had been blocked by the wall. She took control of the roots; they snared the boy, and it was over.
Or it should have been. A blast of mana from his sword’s mana storage, a quick slash to free himself, and a few quick strides were all the boy needed to escape his inescapable cage and close with Phevona. Now, it was over.
The crowd was silent, Cinder included. A brief moment of caution ended when the boy immediately dropped the sword and backed away from a stunned Phevona. As soon as the immediate threat to her safety passed, Cinder was thinking. The nervous father about to watch his daughter during her Choosing was gone. Phevona had fought well, and he knew Boetin could see that. The support specialist would Choose her, just as she had wanted. Now, it was time for him to be a sword master, evaluating a potential student for Choosing.
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The boy was a prisoner. Who knew where he had come from and what kind of person he was? With the training the O’Leon family could provide, he could do a lot of harm. There were many risks to choosing the boy.
But the boy was good. Really good.
Despite facing a mage and being unable to show off any true prowess with his weapon, it was clear to everyone in the arena that the boy was gifted. Cinder knew this most of all. Well… maybe not most of all.
Looking away from where the boy was being led back to his place with the other prisoners, Cinder met his grandmother's gaze. She and Pheobe sat in her usual spot in the stands, disguised and blending in with the rest of the spectators. She said being up with the other masters always took the attention away from the kids, where it should be. It was not often the matriarch of clan Kunora appeared in public these days, so people took notice when she did.
Cinder was not surprised to find his grandmother staring right back at him as soon as he found her in the crowd. His tier nine body had given him enhanced eyesight, and he had a pretty good perception Ability, so he could see the slight smirk and almost imperceptible nod she sent his way just fine.
‘Well, I guess that settles it,’ Cinder thought. Excitement began to fill him as he turned his attention to the next match that was about to start. ‘Looks like we’ll be getting that break after all. Hmmmm. I wonder what I should make the boy do first. Run up Mount Myphen? Master the family kata? Fight a rabid moon fox? I’ll think about it while I make dinner later. Ha. This will be fun. I can’t wait to see how everyone reacts?’
***
The crowd was yelling. Most of them were shouting in surprise. Others wanted to know if choosing a prisoner was allowed.
Through all the noise, Duncan sat on the ground, silent. Almost five minutes passed this way. The man, Cinder O’Leon, just stood there. Nothing seemed to faze him as he ignored the shouts directed at him in favor of watching the masters.
Most of the masters sat silently, though many had surprised expressions. Some of them, however, were most definitely not silent. They were yelling right along with the crowd. Duncan couldn’t make out what they were saying over the rest of the shouts, but he thought it was pretty obvious they were not happy.
Eventually, the announcer decided to take control. “Silence! Everyone!” The amplified command rang through the arena, drowning out the crowd. “I will have silence.” The crowd grew quiet at the order, including the masters who had been shouting. “Cinder O’Leon has expressed his desire to choose the boy. Duncan Tell, was it?”
“Yes,” Cinder's voice carried throughout the arena as he walked away from Duncan. With one leap, he jumped from the arena floor back up to his spot above the rest of the masters.
A short, dwarven woman stood from her seat just a few people away from Cinder. “He can’t be chosen! The boy is a prisoner, not a participant.” Duncan could tell that the woman’s face was red with fury from all the way down on the arena floor. Unlike many myths he had heard at the Academy on Earth, female dwarfs didn’t seem to wear beards. This one didn’t, at least.
“Geana, calm down,” another man responded. This was the man who had Chosen Phevona. Boetin Moretz, if Duncan remembered correctly. “There is no rule to prohibit a prisoner from being chosen. The boy did participate, after all. He’s the right age. Besides, I would like to see what the boy could do after a while with Cinder and the matriarch.”
“And what exactly would he use that training for? He’s a Corvelin rat. You want to train one of those elitists?”
The arguing grew. Soon, the noise from the masters cut off as their section of the stands was covered in a barrier of what Duncan thought was air. Minutes passed, and still, the barrier stayed in place. People in the crowd once again began to talk, but they kept their voices subdued after the announcer’s earlier chastisement.
Duncan just continued to sit there. Despite being the center of more than a bit of attention, he took no notice of anything other than the bubble surrounding the masters. He was still trying to understand Cinder’s actions. Why had he chosen Duncan? Did the man just want to punish him for beating Phevona?
“Hey.” Duncan was startled out of his thoughts at the word. He was startled even more as he saw who it had come from. “You don’t have to worry, you know,” Phevona said as she walked towards him. The rest of the kids that had been through the Choosing were milling around the arena floor. Some were excitedly talking with each other, while others were clearly still upset about not being chosen themselves. Many of the second group were looking at Duncan with anger. They probably wondered why he was chosen when they hadn’t been.
“Sorry, what?” Duncan asked Phevona, who had stopped a few strides from where he sat.
“It’s all over your face. My dad didn’t choose you to take revenge for beating me.”
“Oh. Yeah, I was a little afraid of that.” Duncan tried to reach up to rub the back of his neck, but the chains he still wore caught before he could. “Uhhh. So he’s your dad. That makes sense. My name is Duncan, by the way. Nice to meet you, I guess.”
“I’m Phevona. Same to you. Nice fight, by the way. I usually trounce even tier one sword users because I’ve been watching them all my life. My family is pretty well-known for swordsmanship, so I have met a lot of them.”
“Thanks. You too. Being a support mage in a duel is never easy. You had me dead to rights in those roots.”
“How did you even get out of that? That mana completely messed up my nature control.”
“I overloaded the enchantment on my sword. A few years ago, I found a way to…”
Before he could finish, the noise from the masters' section returned. There was still a little yelling back and forth, but most of the masters sat silently once again.
“Well, I guess they are done.” Phevona gave him a slight wave. “Good luck. I expect a rematch if they let you stay.” With that, she left, and Duncan was again left to face the crowd’s attention alone.
The announcer stood to address the crowd. “After deliberation, it had been decided that no rule prevents a prisoner from being chosen. Given that Duncan Tell is around the right age, he has been deemed eligible for choosing. If he accepts an offer of instruction, he will be required to work off his crimes after receiving his Subject. The exact details of that work will be negotiated by Duncan’s chosen master.”
Duncan looked up to Cinder O’Leon. He couldn’t make out the man’s expression from there, but he could practically feel the smug satisfaction wafting off the man. ‘Well,’ Duncan thought, ‘I was just thinking about how I wanted a master of my own. I wonder if he’s any good.”