Spring had somehow turned into summer and Malin was hot, coming from a mountainous cool country like Trieste this was a big shock to my system, and it turned out that whilst I thought our knight uniform was quite stylish, it was not in fact very cool and yet we still had to wear it regardless of the blazing sun beating down on us. All around us other Malinese had stripped down into billowing loose shirts and blouses and airy skirts or trousers but not us. The only concessions knights seemed to make to the heat was to not routinely wear armour of any kind.
To make matters worse I was currently sweating away in the fourteenth’s training yard, heaving a saw too and fro across a block of wood. Now it was summer, I had more days to spend with my company, and less at the fifteenth and Sir Micah had taken it upon himself to round out my education in some of the other areas the fourteenth specialised in - in this instance carpentry. No one was expecting me to be an expert but it seemed to be a point of pride that all members of the fourteenth had some sort of skill with field engineering. Currently I was cutting lengths of wood and then finely sawing dovetail joints into the end as part of the construction of a new set of training dummies. It seemed a lot of effort for something that would be bashed apart in a few short days but Sir Micah kept saying it was a valuable learning opportunity.
And if it hadn’t been for the heat I actually might have quite enjoyed it. There was something satisfying about producing the neat little joins that held the wood together so firmly without any further intervention. I had found out that much of the squad room’s furniture - the cabinets and chest of drawers - had been made by Sir Micah, he really was an impressive carpenter although he claimed that he was nothing compared to the knights who actually specialised in field engineering.
Anyway, it was worth suffering through the heat as after lunch Sir Micah had declared I could have the rest of the day off - well for additional training but it was something Alex had organised so I was thinking of it as an afternoon off; extra training was not something I’d personally have bothered with but Alex and Dene were both keen so Fig and I had agreed. I was, however, interested in seeing the headquarters of the first company though - they were stationed in the Old City, near the City Hall and I had a feeling it was going to be more impressive than the fourteenth or fifteenth!
So after a quick wash and lunch, I was dressed again in my uniform, my jacket open so that I could get some air at least and walking to meet Alex outside the first’s headquarters. I wasn’t disappointed - it was a grand and imposing building that basically took up one side of an entire major street. Massive columns, as wide as a man was tall and towering thirty metres into the air held up a massive roof fronted with a carving of some of the gods peering down over the street below. There was no gate, simply some steps up to the columns and then behind them the grounds of the first’s headquarters spread out, besides each column stood two fully armoured knights and that was sufficient deterrent to keep out anyone who shouldn’t be there. I felt nervous about even approaching but I could see Alex and Dene sat on the steps waiting for me so I gathered myself and went up to them.
“Afternoon,” I said.
“Alright Neesh?” Dene said, looking up.
“Yeah not bad thanks, so what are we doing?”
“Waiting for Fig,” Alex said with a grin.
“I’m here,” a voice shouted behind me, and I spun round to see the young pixie man sprinting up the steps.
“Great - follow me,” Alex said, not even waiting for Fig to catch his breath. Alex led us through the main courtyard, where knights on horseback were doing some complicated looking manoeuvre drills, to a smaller wooden building on the west side of the complex. I say smaller, it was easily the size of the whole of the dormitory block back at the fourteenth, but that was just in comparison with everything else. Inside I realised it was a dojo, the main space opened out into a large gym area with equipment and sparring rings. Alex led us past all that though and into a room at the far end of the building.
The room had a think ironclad door, which Alex bolted shut behind us, it was windowless, illuminated from oil lamps in sconces all across the wood panelled room. Even the ceiling was panelled and the floor was a herringbone parquet. Altogether it felt both grand and deeply unnerving.
“Where are we?” Fig asked suddenly.
“One of our training rooms,” Alex said, “this one is a bit special though. It’s a magic proof room.”
“Magic proof?” I asked.
“Yes, the whole room has been clad in cedar wood, which naturally absorbs and dissipates magic,” Alex explained.
“Um Alex,” Fig said nervously, “why are we here though.”
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“Well Dene and I were talking and we thought it would be useful to get some experience of fighting an opponent with magic.”
“A mage?” I said.
“Well that’s probably who we’d be fighting in real life,” Dene said.
“Well you know none of us are mages don’t you?” I said, thinking Alex and Dene had gotten ahead of themselves again.
“Of course we do,” Alex laughed, “but Fig here is a Fey Knight, which means he can use magic.”
“Mmm-mmm-me?” Fig said.
“Yes, closest thing the militia has to a mage you are,” Alex said, “so come on tell us what spells you can cast and Dene and I can think of how to turn them into a training exercise.”
“I’m really not sure this is a good idea,” Fig said.
“Come on Fig,” Dene encouraged, “it’ll be fun and useful for all of us.”
“Ok,” said Fig, visibly deflating, “but you’re going to be disappointed. I only have three spells right now. Windslash is the most useful, it lets me attack from range if it’s already windy. Glow, which basically just turns my sword into a torch and explosion, which basically detonates a small explosion at the tip of my sword.”
“They sound really cool,” Dene said, “but I guess there’s no wind here so we can’t use windslash for our training and although glow sounds useful it would depend how bright you can make it.”
“Not much brighter than a torch,” Fig said.
“So limited use in a fight,” Alex said, “but if you level up the skill and it gets super bright it could actually be really useful, you could blind your enemies. But no good for today. You’d better just show us explosion then.”
Fig paled, and I felt for him, he wasn’t someone who liked being put on the spot and I knew from talking to him over the past months that he didn’t really like to talk about his magic in particular. I think he was still sad he hadn’t become a mage, even though mage classes were incredibly rare and usually ended up being passed down in mage families.
“I’m not sure it’s a good idea,” Fig said again, “it’s dangerous.”
“Exactly,” Alex said, “we need to know what we’re facing if we ever come across a mage in the field. Besides, as I said this room is magic proof, you can’t damage it with magic”
“It’s not the room I’m worried about damaging,” Fig protested.
“It’s alright Fig,” I said, “you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”
“Yeah I guess,” Alex agreed.
“Thanks,” Fig said, before he sort of sagged his shoulders and turned and faced us, “how about I show you once but I won’t do any training exercises with it.”
“Ok,” Dene said eagerly.
“Alright, everyone needs to be at least four steps behind me,” Fig said, and we all moved behind him, spreading out so we could see him clearly.
Fig, planted his feet apart and drew his sword, normally from what I understood a mage would need to recite a spell or draw a rune to focus their mana onto a conduit object, usually a staff, before unleashing a spell. However, I knew from talking to Fig that this wasn’t how a fey knight’s magic worked; it was something to do with the patterns he made with his sword’s movements and the sword itself was the conduit. Confirming this Fig started to move his sword through a pattern, it started slow but with each movement he sped up until he was moving at an incredible speed just before he suddenly stopped, his wings opened and he thrust his sword forward. I watched as a flash of green light shot across the length of his sword and as it reached the tip of his sword the world blinked.
I was staggered, the shockwave from the explosion forced me back a few steps, struggling to stay upright, my ears were ringing from the sound of it and spots still littered my vision from the flash it had created. I don’t know what I had expected but that was actually pretty scary, if Fig had used that on an opponent, it would have blown apart any armour they were wearing and probably most of the person inside the armour as well. As I said, magic was terrifying.
“Shit, that was incredible,” Alex said, looking completely awestruck, “I can see why you said we can’t train with that.” Thank the gods Alex wasn’t a complete idiot, I thought.
“Yeah,” Dene agreed, “I can see why you were warning us, that attack looked unstoppable.”
“Thanks,” Fig said sheepishly, “but it’s not very practical, I have to complete the whole form before it activates, I’ll just be painting a kill me quick sign on myself in a real fight.”
“I don’t think so,” I said, “I mean there’s not many fey knights, are there? Chances are even if someone is finding time to observe you they won’t know what you’re about to do. At least the first time you use it.”
“Yeah, it’s got an hour’s cooldown as well,” Fig said.
“So it’s like a skill?”Alex said.
“Mine is but I don’t think it works the same way for mages, at least that’s not what a mage I talked to once told me,” Fig said.
“You talked to a mage,” Dene said shocked, and he was right, unless they had official business, mages didn’t tend to talk to non-mages, or if they did they didn’t advertise the fact they were a mage. They certainly didn’t usually explain how magic worked. Perhaps someone had been trying to recruit Fig as a mage and it hadn’t quite worked.
“Yeah, a long time ago,” Fig said, “from what he said, as long as you have enough mana mages can keep casting spells indefinitely.”
After that awkwardness we couldn’t really carry out Alex and Dene’s extra training plan, so after some token sword sparring; which was entirely unsuccessful thanks to the huge gulf in skill levels between me and the other three, we ended up at a loose end, left the first and ended up just goofing off wandering the streets for the rest of the afternoon, looking for new food vendors to try. At least that’s what I wish had happened.