The next morning I was slightly tired, but still made it out for my training with Volgan. I knew something was up as soon as I saw him, as he was relaxing in a chair with a grin on his face. “Good morning. Are you ready to step it up again today?”

“Sure. What do you have in mind?”

“Well, I have a choice for you. We can move to advanced swordsmanship, or advanced footwork. What do you want to do?”

I stared at him for a moment, wondering where the test was. Volgan loved his tests. “Whatever you recommend. Wait, scratch that. Whatever is the most difficult. Give me longer to get training on it.” I finally answered, getting a grin from the trainer.

“Oh is that so? Congratulations, you’ve chosen advanced footwork. Give me a moment.” He said, before heading off across the way and setting up ten more pells in varying rows. He came back and lugged a chest over to where he was setting up, ordering me to follow.

“Alright, here we are. Now, I’m sure you have had fantasies of slaughtering your enemies, driving them before your might. It’s ok, everyone does it. But there is one major difference between fantasy and reality. Care to guess what it is?”

I stared at him for a while, looking back and forth between the pells and him. “Ummm, not really. Maybe that the enemy isn’t going to flee without something terrible happening?”

“True, but not what I was going for. Bodies! When you stab, slash, or otherwise kill someone, their body doesn’t just magically disappear, and maintaining footing is essential toward survival. If you fall down, your chance of dying doubles. Not only that, but you have just created a weakness in the shield wall that can get your brothers killed. What are your foot movements in close quarter fighting?”

“Minimal steps? I don’t think we have really gone over them.” I answered uncertainly.

“Minimal steps is good, but not what I was looking for. First, your left leg is always forward. Always. This gives you bracing for your shield. Weak shields kill people. If you must take a step forward, do not lift your foot high, if at all. Slide it forward, so that you don’t accidentally step on what was once a person. Flesh makes a poor foundation for solid stances. So this is our new drill. You will strike the pells like normal, and I will occasionally drop these pieces of wood on the ground to simulate dead bodies. Some are smaller, whole logs as if someone lost a limb. Some are half or quarter logs to simulate a body. None of them will help you if you step on them. Eventually I will knock down the pell in front of you. That is your cue to advance forward and engage the next set of pells. Can you make it to the end?”

I gulped, but nodded. Just before we began, there was a rumble of thunder in the distance. Volgan looked over his shoulder to see the bank of clouds slowly working their way toward us, before turning back and giving me a manic grin. “Congrats boy! You just upgraded to the most difficult course!”

“But it’s going to rain!” I protested.

“So? Vampires love the rain! Blocks out the sun and lets them send their younglings after us! Better get used to fighting in the rain now!”

I’ll be honest. Training in the rain sucked. I didn’t even bother trying to limit my fatigue, there was just too much to concentrate on. I had to keep my grip on my sword and shield, mind my footing, get my angles of attack right, strike smoothly, the list went on. Volgan laughed at the cold rain, tossing more and more chunks of wood into the sloppy mess of mud that was rapidly forming at my feet. It was the third set of pells where my first major screw up occurred. I didn’t keep my balance, and my left foot hit an unexpectedly slick spot. It slid out too far forward, and Volgan pounced.

*THWACK*

He used his own practice gladius to deliver a flurry of blows to my shield and any exposed limbs, following me as I tried to retreat. “YOU’RE IN IT NOW BOY! YOUR ENEMIES HAVE YOU ON THE GROUND AND THE SHIELD WALL IS EXPOSED! FIX IT FAST, OR YOUR COHORT WILL CRUMBLE!”

That was everything I needed, I wasn’t about to be the reason for a battlefield loss. Howling in rage, I took one more blow to my shield before reaching forward and slashing at Volgan’s exposed legs. The unexpected attack had him off guard for just a second, but it was enough for me to get both legs under me. Despite his continued onslaught, I managed to stand back up and fall into line.

“Good, GOOD! Back into the fray again! The battle doesn’t end just because you got a little muddy!” He cried, happily slamming his sword into my shield again. Something clicked while he was striking, and I got his rhythm. Smack! And one and Smack! And one and Smack! And one thrust forward! Before he could strike, my scutum closed the distance between them, disrupting his attack, followed closely by a stab towards his abdomen.

“That’s it! I’ve been waiting for this! Never let your enemy dictate the battle! Disrupt his focus, shatter his rhythm! Make him fight on your terms!” Volgan laughed, backing off and letting me attack the pells. I think the difficulty was starting to get to him, and his excitement was infectious. I now had to contend with counter strikes from random angles on the pells, along with my own attacks.

“Good, Good! Opening! Stab the pell to your left! Backhand slash the stomach in front of you! Too slow! Counter incoming!” I had hesitated on the unknown slash, and Volgan took advantage. A flurry of blows countered, all coming from overhead.

“Better figure out a counter Brandon! You’re facing a battle crazed berserker! How many overhand blows do you think your shield could withstand if this were an axe instead of a gladius? Not all enemies fight with swords!” He taunted, and I knew he was right. Even under a lighter assault, I could feel my left leg starting to slip backward. I tried to time it so that my body surged forward after his blow struck, raising my shield above my head. If all his blows were from that direction, then that’s the direction I would defend! I unleashed several thrusts into the body of the pell in front of me, dropping back into a defensive posture as I struggled to catch my breath.

“Yes! Perfect! If your opponent limits their lines of attack, then you can limit your lines of defense! Excellent work kid!” He chuckled, shoving the entire pell over so that I had a choice to make. There were still two more rows of pells, but there was no way I was safely making it over the fallen body. Instead, I shuffled forward and stopped. I tried to set it up so that if I thrust forward without overextending, the tip of my blade would reach the midpoint of the fallen body.

“Nicely done. You’ve set yourself up a nice little trap there. Come on, let’s call it for the day. We’ll get under that balcony and clean up.” He finally said, bending down to clean up the wood he had thrown everywhere. To my surprise, when he got back he got out a second brush and started helping me get the mud out of my lorica.

“So, how did you like your first hint of the trouble a battlefield can give?” He chuckled.

“It sucked.” I groaned, scowling at a particularly elusive bit of mud. It took several tries, but I eventually got a few of the brush hairs deep enough into the joint to get it out of there.

“Good. That means it is only half as bad as true battle. And I’m glad you got over here and started cleaning. Yeah, it sucks that you are tired and sore and dirty, but cleaning wet muck out of your armor is easier than cleaning dried on muck out of your armor. Best to get in good habits now to save your ass later.” After that bit of wisdom, we fell into a sort of routine. It took nearly an hour, but we finally managed to get the muck out of both of our armors and get them hung up to dry.

“Right, I’m off for a bath. Leave the armors here, and go ahead and take the day off from your shield training if you want. I’ll see you tomorrow, where we will work in those extra sword moves you haven’t seen yet.” Surprised at this extra bit of kindness, I headed inside and took a relaxing bath myself. The rest of the afternoon I spent with Devon, and to my surprise he didn’t have any challenges or changes for me. It was more boring work on mana control, though I still threw myself into the training.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

I headed into the library that night, nodding at the desk clerk but otherwise ignoring him. I made my way to the restricted section, happy to see Alfonse was already there and waiting on me.

“Good evening, Alphonse.”

“Ah, Brandon. Welcome and good evening. I take it you are ready to begin your lessons?” I nodded, and he handed me a rack of vials. There were twenty-four vials, in three rows of eight. “This is what we will be working on tonight. Each column of three vials came from the same creature. First, I want you to drink the vial on the far left. Once it is in your stomach, concentrate on it. Do not digest it! When you have it isolated, I want you to permeate it with your magic. This will be the beginning of your first blood spell. Well, the first of your ingested blood spells. Making that dagger with your own blood is a completely different application.” He explained, waiting as I drank the slightly sour blood down. I shuddered a bit, as it didn’t taste nearly as good as what I had been drinking.

“Ugh, by Solaris that’s nasty! What did I just drink?”

“Blood. You’ll find the source soon enough, as that is your first task. I’ll walk you through the spell. Feel the blood. Saturate it with your mana, overwhelming its natural resistance. Once you have that done, make the blood work for you. Call out with it, blood to blood. Imagine a thin red thread connecting the blood you have consumed with the blood that was the source. You’ll have to fight it a bit, as those two vials near you are the same blood and they could interfere. It is one of the simpler ways of stopping the blood tracker spell. Once you have the thread, go ahead and follow it.”

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His directions sounded simple enough, but I was still trying to fight my stomach from consuming the blood. I hadn’t even worked hard today, but it was still trying to steal that essence. Eventually I fought it down, and went on to try the next steps. Knowing that there were three sources of blood, I didn’t try and limit it to one thread. Instead, I let all three shoot out, and I sat there trying to feel the difference between them. Unfortunately, they all looked identical. I tried grabbing them, but they were intangible as well. With nothing else to lose, I sent a bit of mana into the threads. That’s where something strange happened.

The first two, the ones going to the nearby vials, I could actually taste in my mouth a bit. They were both stale and gloopy, like porridge that had been left out to cool. The last one though, that one was vibrant. Alive. I could feel the heartbeat on my tongue, could taste the vitality. I immediately focused on the string, and started following it. Three corners and a hallway later, and I found a small black rat scurrying around in a wire cage. The thread went straight into its body, and I shrugged as I picked it up and carried it back.

“Back already? Well done. And now you know what rat tastes like. Thoughts?”

“Rather foul tasting, but if nothing else it is drinkable. Is that because it is vermin?” I asked.

“No. I think it rather has to do with a combination of size and intelligence. Rats, while somewhat smart, lack in size. Dogs are better than cats, though they are roughly the same intelligence. But cow and deer, or other animals of similar size to those taste the best, excluding human of course.”

“Is there any particular reason for that?”

“Not to my knowledge. But then again, I was never a sanguimancer, simply a vampire. There are some archives I am not allowed in, but those you aren’t ready for. We still need to work on your lower level skills. And since you found the first subject here, you can get started on the other seven. But I want you to do it in a special order. For practice, you can do the next two rats one at a time. After that, you will push your limits by taking two samples at a time and unravelling them. Bring those two rats back, and you can start on the remaining three. Understand?”

“Yes sir.” I nodded, excited to get started. Tracking down single rats was incredibly simple. Even the double rat experiment was simple, though a stubbed toe led me to having to drink the second set of vials. It was trying to juggle three separate vials of blood that I was having the most trouble with. Not only was holding on to them troublesome, but they were also at opposite sides of the library. By the time I was halfway to one, I could feel the connection snap between myself and the other two.

“Ow.” I grunted, as it felt like someone had poked my chest with a stick. I turned around to see what was going on, and I saw both threads waving around in the air, searching as if they had lost something. “Where did they go? I know I only took a step or two.” I mumbled, taking a step back in the direction I had come from. The floating threads seemed to get excited, snapping to attention, but still not connecting to anything. At least, not until I took one more step. Then I could literally see the thread reforming. Before it could connect, I took a step back and went to get the other rat. Once I had it, I returned and grabbed the two whose threads had snapped. By the time I made it back, I had already drank all the vials of blood for those three.

“Did you have some problems with the last batch?” Alfonse asked.

I nodded, “Yep. Two of the ropes snapped when I got to a certain point in the hallway. I wasn’t sure how often they could reform and snap, so I tried to minimize that.”

He smiled, saying, “Oh, those ropes are magic. There are very few ways to break them permanently, and I guarantee the rat isn’t going to be able to accomplish it.”

“What could do it?” I asked.

“Well, the simplest is the remote destruction ritual, which I will teach you next time. It destroys any samples of your blood that isn’t protected by a magic stronger than yours. There are charms that can be made to prevent the connection from reforming, but an obfuscation charm won’t work if you have the connection formed already. You did notice how the rope tried to form a connection, right?”

I nodded, and he continued, “Good. That means I isn’t under one of those charms. If it was, the rope would have circled you several times and never tried to connect. Now, as you noticed they snap on occasion. That is the exact limit of the spell. Inside that range, you can be pulled directly to your target. Outside of that range, and it will only give you the general direction. Your range may increase with time, but it is good to know if you are in this range, as that is also your effective curse range.”

“I see, so all magic curses can only be cast within that same range or else they what, just fail?”

“If you are lucky. Some will rebound, some will backlash. You also need to be either stronger than who you wish to curse, or able to strike them unsuspectingly. If you can attach a curse through the blood link, you will be able to bypass the majority of automatic defenses. Understand? Questions?”

“Not really. Magic has limits, and trying to do it outside of your own limits is bad. Strength can determine if a magic spell is effective, and sneak attacks can overcome some barriers. Anything else?” I asked, attempting to sum up everything I had picked up on this lesson.

“Not bad for a youngster. Well done. Now, are you up for a challenge?”

“Sure.” I said with a shrug.

He smiled, “Excellent! This is a sample of the night clerk’s blood. Don’t worry, he gave it willingly. He has enough magical potential that he will detect your connection the tracking spell. His objective is to hold off your advances and hide for long enough that your spell destroys the sample. Your objective is to breach his defenses and locate him. He is hiding in the library, and in sections that you are allowed to access. Ready?”

I nodded once again, letting the excitement consume me. This was going to be fun. I downed the blood, and was almost surprised by the surge of my body to consume it. It took me nearly five minutes just to fight down that urge, and even then I could tell my body was just waiting for my willpower to slip. Once that was done, I started to send my magic into the sample. And that’s where things really got interesting. The mana innate in the blood fought me, and I could almost feel the clerk on the other side doing something. Not wanting him to destroy the sample, I engulfed it in my magic. It was the only option, as trying to catch it was like catching a greased up piglet.

Twenty godawful minutes later, I finally managed to get a handle on things. The mana in the sample had withered, and without being able to connect to the source I eventually overwhelmed it. I could sense the clerk realized this, and was actively moving around the library, trying to confuse me. That was fine, as I didn’t know where I was going anyway. I was also smart enough not to try and head straight toward him, unless there was a main thoroughfare between stacks to travel through. Every so often, I would feel a pulse of mana attempting to disrupt and destroy my sample. A smart idea, but it was useless as I had ample warning. Not only was he doing it every five minutes, but he was also forced to stop in order to cast the spell.

It didn’t take but a few rotations for me to see what was going on. There were two sets of stairs in the library, and he was travelling between floors and taking a roundabout way to the opposite stair before heading back downstairs. This stopped him from ever being directly above me, and would have likely worked had I not been thinking like Old Klein. One of the best ways to get someone off your tail was to backtrack over ground you had covered before. So I set up a trap in the upper library, hiding in the shadows. Sure enough, the clerk came strolling through a few minutes later with a smile on his face. He paused by the top of the stairs and started doing something with his mana, but it was too late. I calmly walked up and put a hand on his shoulder.

“Gotcha.”

“HIYEEEEEEYAAAAH!” He leapt away, turning and shaking as he faced me, before relaxing when he saw who it was. “By Solaris man! Don’t do that! I swear you took a year off my life!”

“Sorry, but Alfonse didn’t really tell me anything about how I was supposed to indicate I had caught you. You ok?”

“I’m sure young Marcus will be fine, despite his scare.” Alfonse said, seeming to materialize from the shadows. He tossed a small bag that clinked toward Marcus, who caught it with a confused look. “Call it a consolation prize for being such a wonderful subject. Instead of the 50 gold for winning, 50 silver for the fantastic attempt. Perhaps next time.”

“I, uh, thank you sir.”

“You are welcome. I’ll finish up tonight, why don’t you take the rest of the night off?”

“Thanks again! See you around kid.” Smiling, he took off.

Once he was gone, Alfonse winked at me. “You know, any excess blood you should probably consume to increase your power. I didn’t hear him ask for it back, and it would be a shame to waste it. Come on, we have one last quick lesson to go through, and then I’ll send you home for the night.”

Following Alfonse up the stairs, I tried to keep an eye on how he moved to see if I could copy it. Unfortunately, it looked like how everyone else walked. How he managed it so silently would have to remain a secret. Once we were back at our table, he slid over a small sheet of paper.

“This is a ranking of the more popular blood spells. Some of them have multiple tiers, and you will be able to figure that out with more mastery of the spell. The prime example is blood tracking. You know the level 1 version, which just means it is an easy spell to learn. There are no concrete rules that determine the level of a spell, it is mostly consensus. The level four version is often called blood marker, and it lets you determine someone’s nuclear family. Blood dynasty is the level ten version, and lets you determine if anyone is related. Increasing the mastery makes it that much more powerful, though you wouldn’t want to use it in all cases. The other one I want to point out is bloody blades. I believe Devon is helping you work on that. I just wanted you to know that is considered a level spell, so don’t be discouraged if you can’t make one right away.”

“Now, those are the blood magic spells. There are other ways to use blood, and many of those are considered vampiric spells. This is really a misnomer, as the spells are a combination of blood magic and curse magic. Sanguimancers were not allowed to use some of the more powerful ones, but the weaker ones were perfectly fine. Take blood whips. At level one, you simply create a whip from your own blood and use it to slash at unarmored enemies. At level three, you can absorb some of the blood you draw. This is no different from biting someone and drinking their blood, you just do it through a whip. That is obviously not a truly evil spell, right? Especially when you look at something like hexsanguinate.”

“What is hexanate? That last one?” I asked, confused.

“Hexsanguinate. It is a level six spell that removes all blood from an enemy’s body. Tough to do, but if you can pull it off at the start of a battle it does loads to remove the morale from your opponent.”

“Yeah, that. That does sound rather evil. But the blood whips? I don’t know. It seems to be walking a thin line.” I said.

“Well, if you are uncomfortable with it, why not just use the whips without the level three effect? Surely that is no different than the blood blade you are making with Devon, no?” He asked.

I thought about it for a moment, before I started nodding. “Yeah, that does make sense. Plus, the whips would have a fair bit more range than the blades.”

“There ya go! That’s thinking like a sanguimancer. You have to weigh each weapon you are given, and determine whether it falls within the rules set forth by Solaris.” He said, smiling. “Now, you still need sleep and I have some things to prepare for tomorrow night. Get some good rest, you’ll be needing it.”

“Thanks Alfonse. See you tomorrow.” I said, getting up and taking the paper with me as I headed out the library and back to the Duke's.