Germaine Pov

After a while of silence, my master slid off the railing he sat upon and strode to the stairs, and then beckoned me to follow him as he strode along the simple path into the forest. I followed him, speeding up instead of slowing down when we reached the end of the path and entered the forest true. After a short time, he stopped in an open field surrounded by forest, gazing up once more at the moon.

“Come on then, your blade needs a refresher.” He spoke without turning.

I assumed a guard position and asked, “Any rules?”

“I won’t use any magic, you're still recovering” was his reply.

I felt my upper lip twitch. We would see if he could stick to that. I advanced, fast enough to be a blur. My blade arcing towards him in a gleaming crescent. I watched him move, slowly, so slowly. Human slow. Just a casual shift of his body, a twist of the wrist, and suddenly I had to wrench my body to a stop with magic. My wrist, only an inch or so away from Dawnbreaker’s edge.

“One.” He said.

I grimaced, but now that I was in close, I stepped back and then launched forward, another blow, this one from below. He stepped back allowing the blade to arch upwards, but I had given myself more leeway this time and mid swing it turned into a thrust. Only to find I could not move, this time held in place by my teacher's magic. Preventing me from slicing my own arm into shreds, the tip of his blade pressed lightly against my wrist. Poised to angle forward into my own thrust, my blade had slid between his arm and his chest, just below his armpit.

“Two,” His count continued. “Haven’t you been teaching this to the girl?”

I grimaced and reset again, another strike, another crippling injury prevented by magic.

“She is learning a lot; the hunter’s blade wasn’t as important as making sure she wouldn’t die to any random nightbeast horde.” I answered.

“Five, and instead she will die or be crippled by the first elder vampire she meets.” He chided me, this time his blade held across my knee, able to slice it apart had I continued forward.

“Six, Seven, Eight.” The count kept going up. I knew the proper way to face the hunter’s blade. I should have been doing better than this. The answer should have been to slow down, regulate my speed and adjust faster than he could react. But the foe was my master, and even if he was only moving at the speed of a human, there was no way I could move faster than he could observe. So, he moved, his entire body adjusting and shifting in minimalistic ways to always take advantage of my movements.

When I moved slow enough for a human to match, he simply met me blow for blow, when I sped up to inhuman speeds, he wielded the hunter’s blade with a casual expertise. It didn’t matter that according to my master he simply cheated by being able to warp his perception of time and place himself perfectly. I could do the same, and I knew it was not so easy to maneuver oneself in that state, to not burst forth with magic and power to bring one's movements up to match the rate at which your body thought it should move. I watched in excruciatingly slow motion as his body adjusted just enough that I could not harm him, in a way that was perfectly timed that I could not stop.

Even with me regulating my speed and trying to move just fast enough to overwhelm him or speeding up and slowing down in different ways. He was always ready, the edge of his blade positioned to guarantee injury or death should my blow continue. I retreated at the twenty second time I had failed to reach him. My breath was heavy in a way that was rare, normally I would use my magic to regulate my body, repair fatigue and heal myself, the moonlight was a good magic for such things. But I was still recovering my magic, and every drop I could spare was going into analyzing my master's movements.

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For someone who claimed to be a terrible swordsman, I had never been able to win against him in a sword fight. The closest I had ever come was my graduation, in which he declared me fit to stand on my own two feet in this world. But he had not wielded a sword in that battle, and even now I do not know how much of his power he had really used in that battle. I blinked the sweat from my eyes and pulled out a kerchief to wipe my face.

Then he spoke. “Did you hear that punk? He didn’t even know who’s keep he had assaulted.”

I looked at him. “I thought it was a castle?”

He paused before admitting. “I am not sure what the difference is?”

I just stared at him. “Well…I don’t know either.”

For a moment we just stood there, then we both broke out laughing. For all the things we knew, there was always something more to learn.

It took a moment for us both to catch our breaths, and I once again readied my blade. Only for him to wave me down.

“That's enough, for now.” He said and I raised an eyebrow, the Crimson Sorcerer turning down a chance to beat knowledge into me? This was a rarity.

“You wanted me to assist in your training of the Verain correct?” He continued, and I understood.

Nodding, I said “Aye, have you considered it?”

He looked at me, and for a moment the being before me shifted. He was not the enigmatic monster, he was not my teacher, he was…something else, something terrible, something twisted, something tired, yet something that would never stop. For a second, just a second, I was looking at a monster torn between decisions. It scared me. Unsettled me in a way I had not felt for many many years. He did not hesitate. HE did not show weakness. He turned away from me and walked a few steps away gazing up at the moon again.

“Do you know, how many are left?” He asked me.

“How many of what?” I asked.

“...My students.” His voice seemed to echo from somewhere and everywhere.

“No.” I answered slowly and carefully, as if afraid of what the word leaving my mouth would do.

He continued to stare up at the moon and I waited. This was not something I was expecting. That was bad. I respected my teacher, even cared for him as family, but…he was old, and had ties to forces that were at war with humanity and had been since the dawn of time. Him acting in unpredictable ways always meant something could go horribly wrong for someone. It usually did. I had even been there once as he condemned an entire country to death. I had been on the opposing side of him that day, shielding refugees, battling hordes of beasts and vampires, while his magic simply erased an entire city.

I squeezed the handle of Moonlight to remind myself I was just asking him to teach a Verain. Something he had seemed happy to do repeatedly across the centuries. Something he seemed to be considering doing now, even if the consideration had caused him to be…different. I really hoped he would say something soon, because the pressure around him was growing. Literally the shadows were lengthening, the air beginning to distort. And then he sighed, and it was simply a normal night, with the moon high in the sky.

“I apologize, I let myself become out of sorts and my control slipped.” He turned back to me, and I nodded, trying to ignore the sweat dripping from me.

“I will not train the Verain.” He said, and for a moment I was torn between disappointment at his refusal and happiness that it seemingly was just a refusal and not some kind of emotional explosion that resulted in a massacre or something. Then he continued talking.

“Not alone at least, get me an entire class of them, I don’t care who, as long as they have the heart and will to stand forth. Send them to me, and I will return unto you a force to walk the dark of Night and stand before its fangs and claws.” His voice was as calm and certain as steel.

My heart froze. “Are you certain?”

The eyes inside his head glowed, eight crimson orbs staring at me as I heard a cruel edge to his voice. “The world seems to have forgotten who I am, it is time perhaps to remind them, why you do not provoke a dragon in its lair. You should rejoice my apprentice; this time I am on humanities side.”

As his chuckle turned into a full-on laugh, I found myself wishing that I still prayed to God. So, I would have someone else to ask to ensure that this did not go horribly, horribly wrong. Perhaps I would call HER and ask if she could pass a message along to the heavens? Even if she and I were not on talking terms this century, she would likely consider this a worthwhile exception. Then again, considering the ripples this was likely to cause, they would know soon anyway.

With a merry air about him replacing his previous atmosphere, my master readied his blade and called out. “There is still time until dawn, let us knock some of the rust off of you.”

I grimaced and readied myself. Maybe if I was truly lucky there would be an unfortunate training accident and I would die before having to get the Holy Church, the Shielding Council and the United Forces to agree to send their people to be trained by one of humanity's greatest foes. After a moment's consideration of whether it would be worth it to die to get out of this, I remembered what was waiting for me in heaven, and decided I would in fact rather deal with the world's politics than meet my ex-wife again.

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