The Morning of a New Cycle

Which idiot was it that made it a norm to wake up at such a despicable time of day?

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Of all things to despise in this world, the worst of them must be the sun glaring through my eyes and into the back of my head.

As if for the sole purpose of making sure no part of his head was left unaffected by the fogged-up discomfort. The rest of the day was doable. But the mornings. The mornings never held back torment.

Szak flipped beneath his sheets and slammed his fist onto his bedside table, still tremendously lethargic but utterly too frustrated to go back to sleep. He wanted to challenge the sun. Who did the sun think it was? Pushing him around in his bed.

He didn’t groan outwardly when he pushed himself up to sitting. The crimson satin sheets that once covered him slid down and revealed his toned torso, and he felt the rays escaping past the glass window to burn the left half of his body. Along his right side, from his fourth rib down to his hip, ran a brown scar, the remnants of a crooked, once-poisonous gash from years ago. With another heave, he turned and sat along the side of his bed, back-facing the sun.

He sat there for quite some time, eyes closed, breath relaxing to a sloth’s pace. The morning, though bright and lively out the window, was quiet and still in his chambers, where strings of glaring sunlight revealed bits of dancing dust wavering in and out of sight in the air. The doors of his shared academy residence opened and closed in the levels below.

He glanced up. His roommate’s bed was left untouched, his desk as tidy as any scholar’s who never used it.

In the hall just outside his chamber’s doors, scholars were already walking and flying back and forth, greeting each other for the new season of learning. Even though lectures were not until after noon time. Where did all these people get such energy in a morning where there was no such urgency—Szak was not sure if he wanted to know.

I could skip morning combat…

He fiddled with the idea, mind flying off to all the sleep he’d get with that decision, though the reality of him losing his rank made him reconsider. He also knew that if he caved in and fell back down, he’d have to go through the wretched obstacle of getting up again, so he stayed sitting where he was.

The door to his room swung open and slammed into the stone wall beside it.

“Oh! You’re already awake.” Iago crossed his arms and leaned against the frame, a grin curling up one cheek. “That’s not like you at all.” He ran his fingers through his dark brown and ivory hair to push them away from his face. “And here I am, coming all the way back to our room just to make sure you didn’t want to attend morning practice this season, either.”

“Iago,” Szak heaved. His voice weighed down the air, allowing annoyance to roam the room to its miserable content.

“Yes?”

“Stop talking.”

There was no way he could go back to bed now. Even though he stopped considering it, the fact that Iago took it away completely had also completely irked him.

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Iago only nodded, smile still stuck on his face. He closed the door behind him and leaned against the edge of his desk. “How was Alea after the ordeal yesterday?”

“You know more than I do,” Szak said with an exhale, pulling his head through his carmine shirt, its top layer decorated with dragon scales.

Iago considered his answer. He watched Szak reach for his pants of fine dragon leather. The pants were soft, pitch black, and bent easily to Szak’s grasp—softer, yet stronger, than any lambskin available in Essensia. “You look like you’re dressing for combat practice.”

“And?”

“You plan to actually practice, Commander?”

“You underestimate me if you think I need it.”

“Oh no, no,” Iago said with a light laugh. “I wouldn’t dare underestimate you. I’d like to live another day.”

Szak scoffed. “Hilarious.”

“Did you get your choler levels checked out when you happened by the hospital yesterday?” Iago smiled.

Szak closed his eyes and took in a deep breath. When he opened them again, he picked up a heavy gold ring, silent. Its band held dark plum rubies of different cuts and sizes plastered along the gold in a mosaic pattern. It was intended to be worn on the left index finger of its original owner, but for him, it had to be on his right pinky.

“What woke you up, today?” Iago raised a brow. “You’re in a poutier mood than usual. Did a harpy squawk too loudly by the window?”

“Were you expecting one?” Szak retorted, picking up the sword partially translucent and crystalline red leaning against the seat of his chair. Its ruby hilt slept under intertwining gold-and-silver-plated strands of iron crawling up and thickening toward the guard, twisting like vines along a pillar before letting the blade disappear underneath its scabbard scaled by the molted armor of dragons. “Thessphyria, was it? Or Zuki?”

Iago laughed genuinely. He shook his head. “Zuki’s too much of a family girl to visit us through the window.”

“Visit you, you mean.” Szak scanned his side of the room, where a vibrant collection of blades varying in cuts and colors hung on the wall and leaned against furniture—if not toppling onto the floor—all waiting to be used. “You should recall I leave whenever it happens.” He traded the ruby one in his hand for one with a grip bound by tattered leather.

“Okay, visit me,” Iago sang with a shrug. “It’d definitely be Thess visiting me. Zuki prefers the attention without the risks. You know what I mean.”

Szak tried excruciatingly hard just then to not roll his eyes, and that made him lift both his brows to extreme heights instead. “Sure.”

“So if not a harpy, then what?”

Szak was about to respond as he stepped past his window, but as he opened his mouth, a passing movement caught the corner of his eyes. He turned back for a second look at the grounds below. He was three stories up, but he was sure he saw it.

Searching through the mess upon the evenly paved cobblestone, there were groups of men goofing off and friends calling out greetings as one stepped faster and caught up to the other, talking in excitement up and down the plaza. He glanced over to his left. A harpy conversed with a water faerie while others flew back to their towers after daybreak practice. To the right, a school of merfolk swam through the river that cut across the center of the square, headed toward the nearby village. And then he found her.

Alea.

He could not have mistaken her blue and ivory hair for anyone else’s.

But the colossal gold longsword fastened to her back as she crossed the square was concerning. Szak only knew of one kind of gold that could be strong enough to keep a sword’s longevity, and it was the kind not allowed on this side of the world. And to add to that: she wants to be a combatant? For Aideyllian military??

“Something on your mind?” Iago asked as he approached the window. He saw Szak fix his eyes below them, and he also turned to look. A bit of his heart jumped much too hard in his chest when his black and gold eyes caught the last of Alea just as she turned the corner and walked away from view.

Neither spoke for a long time. They kept looking below, long before Alea had already disappeared from human sight.

“Let’s go.” Szak was the first to leave the window, fastening his sword onto his belt.

Iago had half a mind to pick at Szak’s pause just then, wondering what business he would have with Alea of all people, but he ultimately didn’t want to reveal his reasons for his own pause, either.

“Breakfast?” Iago asked instead.

“No.”

“You’ve got to eat, honey. A balanced breakfast is part of a healthy diet, they say.”

“After practice,” Szak said, pushing the door open. Iago followed.

“I believe that would be lunch?”

Szak ignored him.