Ramsay took a long hit of lunar weed as he dangled his feet in the water. The walls of Nightbane grotto were covered in countless blue and green hues thanks to the caves glowing flora. He let the numbness embrace him as he took another hit and exhaled, the smoke taking on the color of the cave.

He watched the smoke and tried to forget the pain that the drug couldn’t quite erase. His father’s screaming face appeared in his mind, as did the looks of disgust and disappointment he wore every time Ramsay messed up. According to his father, that was a lot.

He set his pipe on the shore, leaned forward, and let himself fall into the glowing lagoon. His heavy robes immediately took on water and weighed him down. The pool relieved a bit of the pain from his wounds and he let out a breath of pleasure. Bubbles appeared on the surface. Without any air left, his lungs soon began to burn and the pain made it easier to forget his father's voice. The pain washed away the screaming and the beating, the constant training sessions and the failure that followed. His father worked him every day until he failed then punished him for that failure.

His lungs were on fire.

He turned his body toward the beautiful light coming from the other side of the surface. It was so far away as he sunk toward the bottom. Even though his lungs burned it didn’t hurt as bad as that look. The one he received day after day. His brothers face replaced his father's. No rage resided in it, only sorrow and pain. Pain similar to his own.

His body kept telling him to swim up, to let it breath but his mind told him to stay.

His brother probably had those same thoughts before he left. Why did he leave? How could he? Ramsay asked himself that same question every day. That question became the only thing that hurt more than his father’s chastising.

Ramsay’s lungs cried. His chest felt like they were clawing at it.

He wanted to hurt him back. He wondered if that’s why his brother did it, if that’s why he killed himself, to hurt their father. Didn’t he know that wouldn’t work? He had to, hadn’t he? He must have known their father cared for nothing, nothing other than himself. Ramsay knew that, That’s why he wouldn’t make that same mistake.

With a silent and gentle thump, His back met with the sandy bottom of his brothers grave and in that moment every drop of water disappeared. He gasped, taking in huge breaths and savoring every one. His mouth was wide and consuming every bit of oxygen possible. Ramsay circulated his qi, it flowed through his meridians from his middle dantian and back. His body immediately felt replenished and stronger. It was time to train, his father didn’t know just how terrifying he truly was.

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He looked up and floating in the air above him was the body of water that had suddenly disappeared. The formless mass of liquid hovered there for a moment. Ramsay stared at the water for quite some time and after about five minutes it changed. Suddenly, above him an enormous mound of ice glided through the air. Ramsay’s disc appeared above him and then three more of the razor sharp objects. He called it his ultimate defense.

For a moment nothing happened. All remained quiet. Then he began. A sliver of the ice shot down toward him, ready to impale. One of the discs blinked in and out of existence, appearing directly in front of the ice spear, it shattered. Suddenly hundreds of the spears were erected from the giant ice mound and heading directly toward him. The four discs suddenly began to disappear and reappear, sometimes only an inch away from Ramsay’s body. They protected him from the onslaught flawlessly, all the while he didn’t move a muscle. This went on for some time as Ramsay’s ultimate defense easily nullified the ice Spears.

When this became to simple the spears grew in size, dwarfing even himself and the discs could no longer block them, lest they be destroyed. Ramsay dodged the first one himself then his discs began to rotate rapidly, spinning so fast that a faint buzzing sound came from them. These newly formed ice Javelins launched at him. The spinning discs moved so quickly that instead of four giant spears reaching him all that remained were tiny chunks of sawed up ice. The javelins simply fell to the ground in pieces when they came close to him. Finally Ramsay reached the last stage of his workout. The ice mound returned to its liquid state and then thousands of droplets formed. The countless raindrops froze again and then shot at him like a hoard of angry insects. The discs disappeared. A practitioner couldn’t rely solely on their unique abilities.

There were three types of skills a cultivator could use. These types were offensive, defensive and support. Ramsay, being an earth and water specialists, focused mainly on defensive techniques. Earth was primarily defensive due to its hard and durable nature and water the same for opposite reasons, it gave the user agility and speed. Ramsay favored his water affinity as it was what he had the most practice with. He took in a large amount of water world energy, fusing it with his qi and circulating the yuan through his meridians. This gave him a massive boost in speed and the world around him seemed to slow. The water yuan helped him to sense where each pellet of ice was without looking at them. Ramsay closed his eyes.

With no more than the use of his two index fingers he launched into a flurry of movements barely visible to the untrained eye. Each pellet he nullified with a poke and each time he made contact the ice turned back to water, soaking him. The abundance of water on his body fueled him with more world energy and making him even faster. In no time the thousands of ice pellets were gone, the pit of moist sand now filled half way back up with water and Ramsay standing on a pedestal of ice. The water had hundreds of chunks of ice still floating around which Ramsay made turn back to their liquid state and the water level rose immediately in response. He floated to the shore and turned his pedestal back to water as he stepped off.

The young man looked himself over as he stepped onto dry land and instantly his stomach dropped. A trickle of blood slowly slid down his arm where he had been struck by one of the pellets. His father’s words rung out in his mind.

“You’re a failure Ramsay and always will be. Your brothers more useful to me and he’s dead.”

He sat down, dangled his feet in the water once again, and picked up his pipe. He would always be a failure.