image [https://i.imgur.com/jpOYNWV.png]
“Again,” Elias’ cold voice commanded of me in his peculiar Scandinavian accent.
I coughed. I didn't know what was worse, being beaten down like a dog in the street, or the indifference it was done with. There wasn’t the faintest trace of enjoyment or dislike on his face.
Blood ran down my chin from a split lip and I spat on the ground. I glared hatred at the man while I got up. This was going to bruise. Shit. Mom would be pissed when I went on one of my rare home visits tomorrow.
Levelling my staff in a battle-ready stance, I turned and spread my feet, advancing on him slowly. Standing evenly at five feet two, we had roughly the same build and range, but his balding head testified to his age, and the years of experience he had on me.
We exchanged exactly seven blows before his staff smacked across the left side of my head again. I reeled from the blow, falling on my ass, dark spots dominating my vision briefly. Tears welled up in my eyes, not from the pain but from the embarrassment I felt.
Eleven years old and all I felt when this grown Swedish man beat me in combat, was embarrassment. I was damaged, wasn't I? I blinked the tears away, grit my teeth and stood up for what felt like the fiftieth time today.
“Watch your footwork. You’re telegraphing your moves in advance, making you predictable and easy to read. Go with the flow of combat, stop thinking too hard on your moves and make reactionary decisions. Come.”
Reengaging, we clashed, and I tried to do as he said. It was really hard. I stopped counting our hits and blocks, instead concentrating on becoming one with the staff. Left, right, left, sweep, chop, thrust, my movements came faster and faster, until suddenly-
*WHACK*
-my staff connected with Elias’ groin, and he collapsed to the ground.
Uh oh.
Most of my instructors were prideful creatures. That wasn’t good. I threw my staff to the floor and ran from the basement before a beating came my way—or worse, he could force me to eat a banana pizza, a staple in Swedish cuisine.
Opening the door, I found my father standing on the opposite side. He took in my appearance, then looked past me at Elias.
He nodded once in acknowledgement.
“It is about time we find you a new instructor, Ethan," he told me.
I breathed a sigh of relief.
image [https://i.imgur.com/jpOYNWV.png]
I awoke in the darkness, escaping my recurring dream. Not because it was a particularly scary nightmare, it was just a memory that had lodged itself firmly in my brain for some reason. My addled thoughts recalled sparring with the Swede six years ago. He had been a gloriously apathetic instructor. A quality I’d come to miss a couple of years later.
No, my sleep was interrupted because someone was hammering on my bedroom door. I sat up and shook my head to clear it, using my palms to rub the sleep from my cloudy eyes. The steady pounding was almost in sync with my heartbeat.
Uncanny.
“What?” I yelled angrily through the steady pounding after a handful of seconds.
I was used to waking up on my own at 6 AM, which was early enough in and of itself. I didn’t need people coming to my room and forcing me to get up even earlier than that. I checked my alarm clock—4:34 AM. I groaned.
Following my outburst, there was a smattering of young-sounding muffled sniggering penetrating the hardwood. Oh, it was those damned kids again. I swore under my breath.
Irritation warred with amusement, and I got up and moved stealthily towards the door. I didn’t know if they heard me or simply decided that they’d been loitering in the hallway long enough, but when I was five feet or so from surprising them, I heard the tell-tale sound of running footsteps diminishing down the hall.
I bounded for the door and opened it with a flourish, yelling down the hall, “And stay away or I’ll eat you!”
More laughter followed in the wake of my statement. I couldn’t confirm or deny whether my voice was perhaps tinged with mirth at their antics.
A decade I’d been at the boarding school and I never had to deal with any shenanigans. Well, that wasn’t true. When I was thirteen there was a case of wanton bullying from a couple of boys that were older and bigger than me.
I thought about the school's competitive encouragement. Its military-like academy merits. Leaderboards, gold stars and written honours kept even the best of friends dishonest, ready to stab each other in the back to gain an edge. It was all the same to me, I didn’t have any friends who could stab me in the back to begin with.
I snorted into the darkness.
I generally kept to myself and had done so for all the years I’d been here, and it must have made me seem like an easy mark to my aforementioned wannabe tormentors.
Their somewhat harmless antics had escalated into full-blown physical contact after a couple of weeks, and I’d been forced into an altercation. When I put them both in the hospital, that was the end of that. Coincidentally it was also the end of any fleeting contact I’d had with some of the other kids. As I said, not that they had been my friends, but there’d been an amicable and polite sort of neutral relationship.
The dean had called me into his office for a little one-on-one, but ultimately it was decided that there wouldn’t be any fallout from the fight. My family funded the school, but I was sure that had nothing to do with it. Politics being what they were.
Recently, some of the younger kids—who probably hadn’t heard the rumours yet—had decided it was funny to periodically annoy the weird loner guy, and it was the third time they had woken me up like this. Brats.
I walked through my darkened room and sat down on the edge of my bed. I was fully awake now, my mind whirring.
Ten years.
It was a long time for someone who was only seventeen. Blurry memories came to the forefront of my mind and my mood soured—past recollections making themselves known unbidden.
The summer I turned seven, I’d been informed that I was leaving home to join the Bellington-Margrave Louisiana All-boys Boarding School and a week later I was unceremoniously shipped off. Goodbye Mom and Dad, hello snooty high-class one-percenter outfit where I felt completely out of place.
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I didn’t have any say in the matter. It was a part of our glorious family Tradition, after all. At the time, I hadn’t even thought to protest it. The pamphlet and website information I reviewed with my mom, showed me that the school grounds were old—but pretty—with plenty of forests and hills surrounding it. They'd sold it well.
I remember thinking it would be a good place to make some friends and perhaps have an adventure or two. How wrong I'd been.
As soon as I was situated properly, enjoying the worries only a seven-year-old could have, tutors and instructors were brought to the school to coach me. In the daytime, I attended classes normally with the other kids, but in the afternoons and evenings, I was taught a variety of more unorthodox skills. Martial arts, weapons training, wilderness survival, and so on. Dad made sure I was kept busy, even to this day.
As competitive as the school was, perhaps these “privileges” had made the other kids jealous. Or maybe my busy lifestyle made me seem standoffish and arrogant, I wasn't sure.
Regardless, I still felt out of place. My lonely existence had made me somewhat cynical and closed off, with a short fuse and bitter thoughts to keep me company. I wandered the school halls like a ghost. Present, but invisible. Ignored.
Deciding to clear my head of negative emotions, I put on some sweats and a pair of running shoes and went for a 5K morning jog.
During my run, I absently thought of my dad who hadn’t visited for months. He used to come here every Sunday. We'd have a polite and superficial supper together where we would talk about how training was going and how school life was treating me. When my mom died, he'd stopped coming by as much. I could count on two hands the number of times he'd been here since I turned fourteen.
He’d even gone so far as to assign someone, a man named Hagen, to help me manage my schedule and after-school activities when he ramped up my training. Hagen lived in the school during the weekdays, and I’d come to appreciate and care for him over the years. As much as you can care for someone who keeps an obvious professional distance.
What is up with me today?
I didn’t know what was prompting me to reminisce about my past like this. It was just one of those days, I thought. Still in a melancholy mood, I headed back to my room and took a shower. Afterwards, I put on my school uniform and went down to have breakfast
My first period today was calculus which started at eight, and when I was done eating, I got up and ambled through the halls to my classroom. The room was filled already, and nobody registered or acknowledged my presence.
I’d only just sat down when the announcement system crackled to life and the dean’s secretary’s droning voice filled the classroom.
“Ethan Margrave to Dean Summer’s office, please. Ethan Margrave to Dean Summer’s office.”
One of those days indeed. What the hell? I hadn’t been called to the dean’s office since that day four years ago. I noticed that everyone in the class was looking at me. Some even wore gleeful expressions. I hoped I wasn’t in any trouble.
Getting back up, I walked to the dean’s office at a brisk pace. I muttered a polite “good morning” to Miss Calgieri and she told me to head on in.
Knocking on the door, I opened it and presented myself.
“You asked to see me, sir?” I asked the dean.
“Ah, Ethan, good! Come on in and sit down,” he told me with a smile.
I noted that it looked a little strained.
His office was roughly two hundred square feet, neat and well-cared for. Designer lamps and a large number of shelves with books stood parallel to the walls, on which hung a bunch of paintings by artists I didn’t know.
A pair of comfortable padded chairs stood in front of his large and old mahogany desk. As I sat down in one of them, I saw two small packages and an unopened letter adorned his desk. The letter and one of the packages were addressed to me.
“Ethan,” Dean Summers began gravely, “I’ve just read through a letter from your father that arrived with this morning’s mail.”
He gestured to a piece of paper that was lying open in front of him. A letter? It annoyed me instantly. That was so like him. He couldn’t even pick up the phone and call.
“There’s no easy way for me to put this, so I’ll just put it bluntly,” he said next, breathing deeply, “Your father is instructing me to expel you from the school effective immediately.”
I froze in my seat.
“What? Why?” I managed through my shock.
“He doesn’t say. There’s a letter for you, however,” he told me unhappily and handed me the letter on top of the packages. “He asks that you read it now.”
I opened the letter and recognized his handwriting.
Ethan,
You will soon turn eighteen and be outside of my sphere of influence as your parent. You have completed the tasks I have set before you admirably. Some were harder than others, but we cannot hope to excel at everything in life.
Your mother would have been proud of you.
In my astonishment at his kind of compliment I still registered that he didn’t write he was proud of me. I kept reading.
Circumstances have conspired against me, and I will need for you to leave school, today. An associate of mine will come by later and pick you up. You will go with him to New Orleans and be in his care going forward.
I gripped the letter in both hands and almost crumpled it without reading the rest, anger suffusing my body. He didn’t care about my education or the impact it could have on joining our family company, intent on shipping me off to do who knows what. Reluctantly, I continued.
I realise that having you leave school without finishing your exams like this is unorthodox, but I cannot tell you any more specifics. Suffice it to say I would have preferred adherence to the Margrave Family Tradition, but you will not be joining the family business. Hagen has been instructed to help you prepare.
I ask that you accept the conditions of this letter and Dean Summer’s instructions without making a fuss and that you work amicably with my associate to try and find your path going forward, please.
Your father,
Benjamin Margrave
Scratch that. He didn't want me joining the company, period. Raging emotions pounded through my skull and I crumpled the letter into a tiny ball with vehemence. I’d wanted to leave the school for years and now he was pulling me out when I was nearly done? Casting me aside? Who the hell did he think he was?
And he hadn't even bothered showing up in person. It was pathetic and I held back a scream of frustration.
Something in my face must have alerted the dean because he shuffled nervously with his hands and looked at me with wide eyes. Before he could talk, I addressed him.
“What are my legal options?” I asked him in a stony voice. “Sir,” I added belatedly.
Through my overpowering anger at my father, I realised that I couldn’t take it out on anyone immediately and the impotency of my situation only served as fuel for my emotions.
“T-There are none, E-Ethan. I’m sorry, but your father is still your legal guardian and he is within his rights to withdraw your admittance to the school. Your tuition has been dropped and he’s left me some instructions, b-but that’s all I know,” he told me in a stuttering voice.
“What was it all for, then? All the training, all the extra tutoring sessions, rarely going home? What was the point if he’s just decided to cast me aside?” I asked the dean rhetorically.
The Dean had known all about my struggles over the years. I knew he didn’t have any answers for me, but he tried his best to assuage me.
“I don’t know, Ethan. Your father seems unpredictable at the best of times. It’s all above board, even if it’s sudden. I’m sorry.”
Nodding absently a couple of times, I came to a decision. I’d do ask he asked. But when I was eighteen, I was done. I would make my own way.
Following orders like a good little soldier.
“Will that be all, sir?” I asked Dean Summers and stood up.
I was glad there wasn’t a mirror on his desk. I was pretty sure my expression was thunderous.
“Almost. You need to gather your things and be out of the school tonight. It shouldn’t be an issue since your father wrote to me that his associate should be here in the afternoon,” he said with trepidation.
“Very well, thank you, sir”
“I’m sorry, Ethan,” he muttered at my back.
Yeah, me too.
The good cheer the kids' antics had brought on had long since evaporated and I kept on walking without looking back. I thought I heard a sigh of relief when I opened the door.
I wanted to run back to my room and scream into a pillow but settled for walking at a brisk pace. There was a way for me to burn off my anger and excess energy and I was itching to get started. When I entered my hallway, Hagen was standing outside the door to my room, waiting for me.
Short, average, and unobtrusive he had this… uncanny ability to appear when I needed him, or blend into the background so I wouldn’t notice him. Everything about him screamed, "ordinary". Everything except for his eyes.
They were a sparkling green colour and held two pupils each. A condition called polycoria. The first year or so of knowing him, his eyes had given me the creeps. When I turned fifteen, I had finally mustered up the courage to ask him about it and scolded myself for being silly, when he told me what it was. Just another medical condition.
He opened the door and gestured for me to go through.
“Sir–” he started, but before he could get any further, I’d walked past him, speaking all the while.
“Hagen, sorry, before we do anything else I need to blow off some steam.”
The anger had flooded my body with so much energy I was practically vibrating and if there was one thing my combat training had taught me, it was to work off my frustrations as soon as possible.
“Is Alfred in yet?” I continued as I headed towards the basement entrance at the other end of the hallway.
“He is, sir,” Hagen replied following into lockstep behind me.
"Good."
I squared my shoulders and got ready for a fight.