Vartu, Lord Leton’s duel master, was an asshole.

Nilda gritted her teeth and trudged along the length of the pebble beach while shouldering a boulder’s worth of stone on her back. She had plastered the stone there with a twist of the Solvent but Vartu was the one who picked out the boulder and waited until every last bit moved onto her body. Then he commanded her to start running.

She thought he would teach her to fight. He was called a ‘duel master’ - maybe he was lying. People often liked to lie about their titles and achievements.

“Kid, that’s more a crawl than a run,” he hollered from his spot on the beach. He had not moved from his spot since she started running. He found a nice flat boulder to set his butt on and was just sitting there. “We’re gonna be here all night before you finish ten laps.”

She glared at him over her rock covered shoulder and seriously tried to form a spike right where he was sitting. They were surrounded by rock after all. But the rock he was sitting on was too far away and she found she was unable to form spikes when she concentrated on holding the manipulated stone on her back. Judging from the smug look on Vartu’s face, he knew that too.

“Faster!”

She collapsed with exhaustion after barely finishing one lap along the length of the beach. Vartu gave her no sympathy. He hauled her onto her shaking legs and pointed towards the other end of the beach.

“More!”

The subsequent days were no better, if not worse. Her legs screamed in pain in the mornings and she was tired right when she transferred stone onto her back. Vartu had her change the location of the stone, making her move the rock to her ankles and wrists on some days, or to her lower back on others. They always used the same rock so the amount of stone she carried was always the same. When she was too tired to move at the end of their session, he made her reform the stone to a certain shape of his choosing.

Once he asked her to form the sharpest edge she could. Nilda all-too-happily formed a giant spike headed straight to his brunette head. She had meant to graze him, but he moved back with unnatural speed and none of it touched him.

“I see, this is what killed Ulo,” Vartu said. Nilda knew he was talking about the fist fighting champion Lord Leton had tried to enter into the fighting pits - the one who tried to kill her. The duel master didn’t sound bitter nor angry that this Ulo was dead. “That man could pack a punch but he couldn’t dodge shit. I’m not surprised you got him with this.”

From what Nilda could discern from scattered conversations with Vartu, Ulo had been a guard for Lord Leton but showed more propensity for fist fighting. Vartu had dismissed it as an ‘offshoot, experimental venture’ for Lord Leton. Nilda didn’t know what to believe, but it did make sense that it didn’t seem like the usual thing Lord Leton did.

The day after, Vartu asked her to use a bit of stone to form small daggers in her hands as she ran. It took all of her concentration to both keep the stone on her back and to manipulate some into small shivs in both her hands. She was only able to do one at a time. At least it was a good distraction from her aching limbs.

“Aren’t you afraid of giving me something to stab you with?” she called out breathlessly as she jogged by him.

Vartu laughed loudly, his teeth gleaming in the sunlight. Parts, she hated him. He pushed back a tangle of dark brown hair and smirked at her. “I’d really like to see you try.”

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“If I didn’t have rocks on my back, you wouldn’t be laughing,” she said bitterly.

“Fine. Drop it. Do your worst, kid.”

Almost immediately, the rock coating her back disintegrated into crumbling pebbles and she lunged at the duel master. Like the guardsmen who worked for Lord Leton, he wore fine leather trousers and owned a brown and maroon uniform tunic. But while he trained her on the beach, he only wore a white shirt loosely tied at the shoulder with no clasp. The sleeves stopped right before his elbows, showing off thick forearms with several scars along it. Despite the casual clothing, Vartu almost always looked annoyingly clean and refined.

She had dreamed of staining that clean and refined white shirt with blood ever since she started.

Also like the guardsmen, Vartu had his sword strapped to his hip at all times. Before he could draw it, Nilda swung her stone daggers at him. He caught her wrist without any effort. “Hmm, slow,” he said thoughtfully. “But stronger than I expected.”

Snarling, Nilda twisted from his grasp and swung again. There was a terrible scraping sound of metal on metal as he drew his blade and it sidled up to her neck as she swung at him again. His hand not holding his sword caught her wrist again, but her other daggered hand thrust up to stab him in the belly.

Despite her dreams, she dulled the dagger before jabbing it painfully into him. His sword was still at her neck, the cool blade barely touching her. Like the way he dressed, his movements were clean and impeccable. Parts, she hated him.

“Reckless,” Vartu murmured. “I would have slit your throat before you could stab me.”

“I still stabbed you.” Nilda thrust her chin out at him, daring him to argue.

“Kid, you’ll make a poor bodyguard if you accept death as a good trade-off for a stab at your opponent.”

“Vartu, what in Part’s name are you doing?” a voice suddenly rang out.

Startled, both duel master and Nilda parted from their mock death-hold on each other and watched a figure in a maroon dress stumble down the beach towards them. Behind her a servant woman exasperatedly followed.

“Lady Taurin?” Vartu sheathed his sword. “My Lady, you shouldn’t be…”

“Are you beating up a little girl?” Taurin shouted from across the pebble beach. “What is wrong with you?”

“Er… I wasn’t…”

“You had your sword on her neck!”

Nilda blinked up at the duel master, then at the noblewoman stumbling her way towards them, then back at Vartu. Through her week of training, she had never seen the man so flustered before. When Taurin finally made her way over to them, she straightened her clothes and stood between Nilda and Vartu, as if shielding Nilda from him.

Lady Taurin was a full head taller than Nilda and her hair was the exact same color as Lord Leton’s except without the gray streaks. She turned her head to grin at Nilda over her shoulder, showing a pretty profile with fine eyebrows and a feminine nose.

“Dad told me about you already,” Taurin said. “He also told me about these ‘lessons’ Vartu was giving you, but he never said anything about fighting.”

“My lady, Nilda’s meant to be your bodyguard, of course she should be trained to fight,” Vartu said, sounding annoyed.

Taurin sniffed. “Fine. But I didn’t see much training going on. It just looked like you were bullying a child. And just look at her! Why does my handmaid look so exhausted? And why in Part’s name are you doing this outside?”

Vartu was about to sputter out another answer but Taurin ignored him. She spun around to inspect Nilda, then took her hand.

“Enough. We are moving inside. And you are done for the day with her, I have many things to discuss with my handmaid.”

Vartu opened his mouth to say something but ended up just giving Nilda a dry smile and waved goodbye as the older girl dragged her inside.