“My students have not seen me perform a demonstration of blade fighting at a high level yet. Abrial, do you have time to help me demonstrate to them with a short match?”
Abrial’s eyes lit up like lanterns. She whirled around to Finley.
“Is there time?”
Finley lifted her hand to shade her face and squinted up at the sun. She nodded.
“Is one third of an hour enough, Master Wei?”
“Yes, that will be plenty.”
“Yes! Awesome!” Abrial’s exclamations were so loud that they echoed over the clearing, causing the group of students to shift where they sat. Several winced, their hands jerking up to cover their ears. So loud! How excited must she be to shout like this? Oblivious, Abrial pumped her fists in the air, a beaming grin splitting her face.
Abrial glanced over her shoulder at Finley, her grin shining.
“Don’t worry. I won’t make you late to your lesson, I promise!”
Finley nodded, the tips of her ears pink. Abrial turned and tugged on Instructor Wei’s pale blue sleeve. Several students gaped. What the—?! They’d never seen anyone act so familiar before with their Teacher Wei, the Head of the Wei Camp! How could she just tug on his sleeve like that, like he was her big brother or something?!
“We should move to the center of the clearing!” Abrial proclaimed, pulling Instructor Wei along with her by the sleeve. “We need more room, right? Don’t want to hurt anybody!”
“Yes, it would be safer to have more room,” Instructor Wei laughed, allowing her to lead him along. “All of my students, spread out along the edge of the clearing to watch—that will be safer. This is not an opportunity to daydream, but rather a lesson. Watch Abrial’s foot movements and her various grips. But do not worry if it is difficult; just observe what you can.”
The students glanced at one another, baffled. Never in all their lessons had Instructor Wei had them move to the edge of the clearing for a sparring match! Did he really see this hot-headed girl as capable of putting on a better match than any of them? What the heck? No way!
Deiter seemed especially miffed by this. He stood and stalked to the edge of the clearing like Instructor Wei had instructed, leaned against a white tent, and crossed his arms. He was studying Abrial with a distasteful look on his face.
Other students followed suit, lining the tents along the clearing and chatting quietly as Abrial and Instructor Wei positioned themselves in the clearing center. They muttered to each other in disbelief about this situation.
“How good do you think she can really be? If Teacher Wei thinks she’s good, I mean?”
“She can’t be that good, can she? Everyone says Teacher Wei is fond of his students. He must just be being nice. He’ll probably go easy on her to make her feel better.”
“Maybe he’s exaggerating for an old student he hasn’t seen in a while. I mean, have you seen her around camp at all? She must have gotten here recently. She’s just a newbie!”
“Master Wei is not exaggerating.”
The students who had been chatting along a tent at the end of the clearing turned. Sitting in the grass with her legs crossed beneath the skirt of her pale dress was Finley. She was watching Abrial with soft hazel eyes, following the way Abrial’s long, slender fingers wrapped skillfully around the leather hilts of her daggers in an expert grip.
“What d’you mean?” asked one student, an arrogant teenage boy who had been sneering about Abrial being a newbie a second earlier. “Also, um, who are you?”
“Master Wei not exaggerating,” Finley repeated coldly without answering the second question, glancing at the boy out of the corner of her eye. Her gaze was devoid of warmth. “She simply deserves Master Wei’s respect, as she is that good.”
CLANG!
The sharp sound of clashing metal reverberated through the clearing.
“Whoa!” The students framing the clearing whirled around and stumbled, covering their faces. The impact of the clash was so intense that a gust of wind actually fanned out from the center of the clearing, bursting outward and rippling the grass and students’ robes and hair! What the hell?
It seemed Abrial and Instructor Wei had begun their fight without any notice. All anyone surrounding the clearing could see was a blur of river blue and shadowy black and blood red swirling together, with flashing of silver and obsidian interspersed in the whirlwind.
Dieter gaped.
The rest of the students cursed. Some were shocked into silence.
Was that flashing mass of color…really their Teacher Wei and that girl, Abrial? Could they really be moving so fast that they couldn’t be seen? But that wasn’t humanly possible! This was—this was like watching two gods clash!
Finley watched, sitting properly and unphased with her pale hands resting calmly in her lap. Her heart shaped face remained expressionless, but in her light eyes there was a slight twinkle of pride. Her pupils darted back and forth at an astounding speed, never once losing sight of that black and scarlet blur that danced across the clearing like a shadow.
The grass in the clearing continued to rippled as the force of the sparring match raged on, small breezes ruffling the watching students’ hair and robes. Perhaps “raged on” and “battle” weren’t the right words. It was more…
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“Beautiful! How is it…beautiful?” one student stammered.
“So graceful,” another mumbled.
“Like they’re dancing!”
Indeed, the movements of the two blade fighters that could be seen were fluid and swift as water,smooth as the velvet of the night sky. Anyone could see that they shared a similar style: one student, and one teacher, flowing around one another in a rapid rhythm, the strength of their strokes almost matched. The blue blur was the slightest bit quicker, and the glint of the sword was a little fleeter than the glare of the two black daggers — but the difference was small enough that it was hardly perceptible.
At last, when almost ten full minutes had elapsed with no sound but the clashing of blades filling the clearing, the two blurs spun apart from each other and slowed to a stop.
Two forms became visible:
One, the blue-clad, lithe and graceful frame of Instructor Wei. He was already sheathing his sword, a pleased smile curving his lips and a twinkle in his warm brown eyes. There was not a single drop of sweat on his forehead.
The other was the black and red-clad, slender form of a young woman—Abrial. Strands of shining black hair had come down from her bun and were blowing around in her eyes, obscuring part of her face. Her chest was heaving, and the hair along her forehead was plastered to her skin with a sheen of sweat. But she was grinning so widely anyone who saw her out of context probably would’ve thought she’d just won a thousand free bowls of dumplings. As she sheathed her two daggers away, she wiped sweat from her upper lip on the sleeve of her robe, her grin not disappearing for a moment.
“All right!” she beamed, rolling her neck and shoulders. “That felt great! I haven’t really fought it out for a while. And last time we met, you didn’t let me go full strength because of my injuries! That was awesome! Didn’t I get faster, Instructor Wei? I got some practice!”
“You have indeed improved,” said Instructor Wei, his eyes softly crinkling with a smile. “As expected. You have practiced since we met last.”
Abrial’s eyes sparkled with pride, while all of the other students continued to gape in disbelief, faces pale. Abrial stood up very straight with a self-satisfied expression and pointed to her own chest with her thumb.
“You know, I’ve fought some people one-handed since we last met,” she explained, a cocky, crooked smile spreading across her face. “I’ve got some real-world practice under my belt now! Like a real blade master!”
Instructor Wei’s gaze seemed pleased, but if you looked closely enough, you might see a flicker of concern in his gaze. But as he opened his mouth to ask something, a student burst out with amazement,
“That was crazy! Miss, are you even human? Are you some kind of martial goddess, or what?”
Other students followed suit, the silent clearing bursting with exclamations and murmurs of awe.
“Did you see that?! You couldn’t even tell who was where, just see the color of their robes flapping around like nuts!”
“Instructor Wei, You never told us you could fight like a god! Why don’t you spar with us like that? Aren’t we good enough?”
“Miss, how long did Instructor Wei teach you for you to fight so well? Can you teach me?”
“If she’s this good that young, who says we can’t get that good ourselves? If we keep receiving lessons from Instructor Wei, we’ll be as good as her in no time! Plus, she’s a girl—we can get way better, too!”
“Yeah! I want to be as damn fast as that! Instructor Wei! But there’s no way she just got that good! What secrets did you learn to get good fast? Some special technique to make things easier?”
Abrial’s face gradually transformed from a proud grin to an unsure frown. All the students seemed to be praising her for her fighting skills, but there were a lot of comments piping up about how Abrial must have learned some secret tricks to fight so well.
That…wasn’t fair! At all! She’d put blood and sweat into every lesson she’d ever received from Instructor Wei, and she’d practiced for so many days out in the paradise garden courtyard in between that the cobblestones were all scuffed up by her boots. On the days that panic attacks crept up on her, she would go out into the gardens and twirl and slice for hours until her hands burned red and her skin was raw and bloodied. She had put all the hard work in! She hadn’t learned some kind of secret tricks to get good quickly!
Just as she clenched her fists and opened her mouth to shout this irritatedly, a hand landed gently on her shoulder. When she looked up in surprise, she saw that it belonged to Instructor Wei, who gave her a reassuring nod and a slight smile.
To all the students in the clearing, he called out in a calm voice that echoed over the grass:
“There are no secrets to becoming an exceptional blade fighter, just as there are no secrets to cultivating depth of spirit and wisdom of mind.”
“But then, how did she get that good?” called out one student, puzzled. “Some of us have trained with you at this camp for years, but none of us even come close to that kind of fighting!”
“It is diligent practice and determination that brought Abrial to the level of skill she has achieved,” Instructor Wei answered. All of the students were listening intently now, leaning forward; Instructor Wei was using his serious, instructive voice, which meant this was something very, very important. “I see the potential in every one of you to grow to great heights of skill in blade fighting. It is perseverance and a willingness to practice fighting with the blade until your hands are raw and your legs shake with strain that is needed to carry you from where each one of you is, to where you possess the potential to be. Do you understand this?”
“Yes, Teacher Wei!” cried out the young male students from all around the clearing. Some of them pumped their fists with excitement. There was a new vigor gleaming in all of their eyes, like they were completely ready to throw themselves back into the art of blade fighting and swing around swords until their hands bled like crazy.
There was only one young man who didn’t look very convinced. Dieter stood leaning against a tent with his arms crossed in the same position as he had been during the whole fight, stiff from the shock of what he’d just seen. His emerald eyes were crooked with disbelief and annoyance, reflecting Abrial’s proud stance as she stood in the clearing center.
“Oh, come on,” he muttered under his breath, low enough that no one else could hear. There weren’t any fellow students near him, anyways; as usual, they’d given him a wide berth. “She thinks she’s so great! Pah! Whatever! Even if she can fight with a sword, I’d crush her in archery, like a real Roatian warrior. What a conceited Gongkuan bitch!”
If Finley was nearby, Dieter probably would have lost the ability to speak by now, whether due to Finley magicking his voice away or discreetly crushing his windpipe. But, thankfully for him, she was all the way on the other side of the clearing, close as possible to the fight, gazing at Abrial with a slight smile and sparkling hazel eyes.
Finely and Abrial set off after that for the lesson with Bi Gho at a brisk pace. They’d been held up by a group of young men who tried to bombard Abrial with questions about her techniques on the way out. Abrial had tried to stop to talk to them, since she was always excited to discuss blade fighting, but Finley had shot an ice-cold glare at all of them and pulled Abrial onward without a word.
“We can talk about it later! I’ll come another day and we can talk blade fighting then!” Abrial had called back, waving cheerfully. The gaggle of young men waved back, more than a few grinning.
Finley’s hand had tightened on Abrial’s wrist. Abrial stumbled as Finley dragged her along even faster.