With two two wooden training blades in hand Tulip walked over to me, tossing the one in her right hand around, she gripped it by the tip, handing it towards me by the handle.

I gently pushed my hand forwards towards Tulip, taking the training blade by the handle, and spent a moment adjusting my hands around, finding a comfortable position to hold it from. Though the look Tulip gave me made me question if I was just utterly holding it incorrectly.

“Hold it like this, one hand near the pommel- the base of the handle, and another near the guard. It’s one of the better ways to hold it while you’re learning how to hold a blade.” Tulip explained as she showed the same grip, shifting her hands around and moving them around gently to show how to move the blade. “It’s up to you which hand is near the pommel, and which one is near the guard, I prefer keeping my dominant hand at the guard for my power in my strikes.”

“Like this?” I asked after a moment of shifting my hands around. It was a struggle for me to find the position in which my hands were properly comfortable holding the practice blade in, as everywhere I shifted my grip to, and whichever order I did it just felt clumsy, like it would fall from my hands by a single half decent strike.

“Almost, move your hands further apart, the hand near the pommel lets you guide the blade easier, and can shift up next to the guard hand to have both of them swinging down and increase the power behind your blows.” Tulip answered my question with a calm smile, showing what she meant as she raised the blade, using the hand near the pommel to turn the blade with one motion before it slid up and turned to a two handed strike in the guided path.

“It takes a lot of work to really get the experience you need, in the end brute force doesn’t mean much if you have to fight using a sword. It’s a lot more technique based, and some weapons can help your magic by being designed to channel mana. But that's for later.” Tulip continued, after a few moments I found how to hold the blade more properly.

“Alright, I think I have it.” I spoke out once I had some confidence in how I was holding the weapon, shifting it around some I did a few sloppy, practice swings to test how it felt. While it didn’t feel right just yet, it did feel substantially better than how I had held it previously.

“Alright, let's go over some practice swings. There’s a lot of ways to swing a sword around, so most of the time you’ll be improvising unless you’re trying to parry or counter strike. For now, lets just do these two, an overhead, and a sidelong swing.” Tulip showed the first swing, bringing the blade overtop of her head and she took a single step forwards. The blade came down before her, stopping with the tip of it a few inches from the sand as she turned the edge to the side to stop it from crashing into the ground.

“Raise it over your head first, it’s usually best to take a step in, or back when going for a strike. It puts more of your muscles to use, and makes you a moving target. Then with your dominant side take a step forwards and strike down, turn it about when you hit chest level and you won’t have to worry about hitting the ground.” Tulip gave step by step instructions, showing each motion and motioning for me to follow and mimic her as she did.

After several clumsy attempts I got the process down to repeat, though I struggled to turn the blade to the side in time to not hit the ground underfoot. By the time I had any semblance of it down I had carved a decently sized divot into the sand.

“Alright, that’s good enough to add the next step.” Tulip stated after I finished my next swing, I barely stopped the blade in time from hitting the ground again, maybe eight out of about a hundred managed to avoid crashing straight into the sand.

“I can barely even do this part… And there’s another step?” I spoke out with dread, my arms were already growing tired. I could feel the sun still, barely past the midday height we had woken from.

“Don’t worry, we’re just doing these two parts for today. We’ll probably keep this up every night before heading to sleep just so you can get some practice in.” Tulip smiled innocently, moving back to her position next to me she moved through the basic steps, stopping once her blade was pointed to the ground, to her side.

“Once you get here there’s a few things you can do. Either come up like this-” She brought the blade up, shifting her pommel hand, using her forearm to reinforce the side of the blade in a rising block using the width of the blade. “-to do a block. Or, you can do an upwards strike using the same motion, but keeping your hand on the pommel instead.”

She moved her blade back down, showing the same full motion both ways a few times on repeat. Once I began slowly replicating the motion Tulip nodded, taking a step away to sit down by the fire and continue getting food cooking.

“Well then, not much else I can say now other than keep doing that.” Tulip said as she pulled some rations from her ring to begin heating.

“Guess, I can ask, questions.” I spoke in half beats between the swings of my blade. “Darek, the guard that brought me from the Prison to Arcadia, couldn’t say all that much, so, what can you tell me about the Archmages in Berinia?” I glanced towards Tulip, who shrugged at my question.

If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

“Well, there’s fifteen in Berinia. And a handful in the other countries, you already met the one, Levi. He’s probably one of the younger Archmages, in his sixties… You saw how he was, he’s like an immovable object given a personality.” Tulip stated slowly as she thought over the information. “What did Darek tell you?”

“He just said a few things about Levi, and that I should be weary of someone called Carmine?” I I continued between the swings of the blade, the pattern was growing more fluid as I kept moving, each attempt kept making it feel more complete.

“Yea… That’s a good idea to avoid Carmine if you can, she’s as cold as the Archmages come. I know for a fact she’s the youngest one in their ranks, she was the last one to even successfully pass a test to be marked as an Archmage. And she’s only thirty.” Tulip sighed, shaking her head a bit. “It probably doesn’t help that she was the executioner of your father. Volunteered to be able to do it too.” Tulip continued, it left me to pause as the words hit my ears and slowly registered.

“How is an Archmage measured?...” I forced myself to ask, trying to not think on the information of knowing who killed my father.

“The only ‘reliable’ way, without them just flattening land in one blow, is with a measurement crystal. It’s an item that when you put mana into it, shows a very distinct Magenta color if you’re a Archmage, there’s different colors for the known ranks. Though it’s not guaranteed to show perfectly since it relies on how well you can control your mana to push it in efficiently, so a lot of the time Arcadians are measured yearly once they’re in Silver Sky.” Tulip answered quickly once more.

“Do you have anything you think I should know?... About anything here?” I was honestly out of questions, my mind kept wandering over the information Tulip had spared for me, trying to register it fully.

“There’s a lot you should know about Kirin, about this world, about magic, about everything. But it’s too much to explain right now, everything from how strong mages are to other things. I can answer specific things you get curious about, but as broad as what you should know about the world? I can’t really give you much about that.” Tulip sighed, shaking her head. “Food is just about done. Let's try a little sparring match then we can eat.”

“Alright, sorry if I keep asking stupid questions. I just want to learn about everything I missed out on.” I gave a small smile, I was thankful for Tulip after all. Even if I probably wouldn’t be here right now if I hadn’t gone with her.

“It’s fine, better to ask questions and just get an ‘I don’t know’ than to never ask them at all.” Tulip grabbed her practice blade again, she kicked some sand into the fire gently, killing it near instantly so that the food wouldn’t burn while we practiced.

Afterwards she took a stance across from me, with the sun to our side, it didn’t give either side a direct advantage. Taking a stance, Tulip held her blade close to her right shoulder, with her left leg in a forward position.

I spent a moment mimicking her stance with little else to do in an attempt to have a chance in a sparring match with her. With a mutual nod Tulip made the first move.

She stepped forwards in the same motion she had shown me before to be practicing with an overhead strike. Coming down towards me I pushed off my front leg, hopping backwards away from the strike, and the likely counter strikes range.

Landing on my feet I pushed forwards with a single step. I brought my blade across in a sidelong arc from my left side towards my right. Tulip brought her blade across in a block, coming from her left to right the two blades collided in the center.

We pushed our mass into our blades, trying to overpower the other, but as soon as the clash began I knew I was going to lose. I was so much lighter than Tulip that I had no chance at all to fight her head on, which forced me to step backwards and to the side.

Tulip kicked one leg out, taking out my feet and sending me sprawling onto my back straight into the sand. Before I could even react she had the blade tip pointed at my neck, an inch away from contact. With a sigh I raised my free hand to surrender.

“Hey, that wasn’t half bad.” Tulip spoke with a smile, reaching forwards she took my hand and pulled me up to my feet out of the sand. “Especially given I only taught you two and a half moves.”

“Not like I had a chance…” I muttered, but Tulip just shrugged in response before walking over to the food, pulling a few freshly cooked pieces of now dehydrated meat from the pan.

“Everyone starts from somewhere, I never once beat my teacher. But she still said I was one of the best swordsmen she had the pleasure of training. And I’d recon Lotus has a pretty good eye for that when she trained multiple personal guards for the High Noble children.” Tulip remarked, offering me a piece of jerky which I took gratefully. It was quite pleasant to eat while cooked, softening the hard meat substantially into something far more edible.

“Yea but that doesn’t mean I won’t just die if I get forced into a swordfight.” I replied calmly, it came out as a blunt statement, which wasn’t exactly my intention.

“Hey, any training is better than none. Besides, we have plenty of time to keep it up. We can go again after we eat for a while to exhaust ourselves and actually sleep through the night.” Tulip stated before falling to silence to focus on eating.

While I ate I glanced towards the sky, the sun was beginning to set in the distance. Half of the day sure seemed to fly by fast when practicing, which was at least reassuring, there was something to look forwards to any given day. I placed my right hand on the training blade, pushing it into my ring with the motion instead of letting it just sit out.

After eating we went back to training until well into the night, the rapidly cooling air giving us a second burst of energy to keep clashing until neither of us could stand. Having to crawl back to the tent to actually rest for the remaining two thirds of the evening.