“My first rule is this, if you use Cran, I’ll use Comharmion,” says my father pacing around the arena, “the next two rules are these, I’ll increase the intensity of our sparing every time you manage to subdue me, and you must continue fighting until I say to stop. Also, before we begin, I wish to apologize in advance, I can’t always control myself in a fight.”
“But Comharmion is your sword, and Cran is a staff and tree. How is that fair, and safe in a sparring match,” I protest looking at Cran who didn’t like the comment I made whatsoever.
“I’m not just a staff and tree,” says Cran stabbing his top portion in the ground. He removes himself violently from the earth to reveal a metal blade, “I can be your spear as well.”
“How did you do that?” I ask looking at the intricately made spear head.
“Manipulation based external essence techniques,” says Cran floating horizontally next to me, “like grandfather said if you know how the planet works it becomes your friend. I merely sent my essence out and collected iron and carbon from the mountain, and then combined them in a way to make steel. I figured my roots can take up nutrients from the soil, why not my essence, and well it worked.”
“The stick is a prodigy,” says my father laughing heartily, “who knew that your spell book would also be a celandil.”
“I’m not a stick!” says Cran soaring over to my father and bopping his head with his blunt back end.
“I’m sorry,” says my father still chortling as he tries to ward off Cran’s blows, “your just as sensitive as Cluasmhor.”
“Who’s Cluasmhor?” I ask not knowing who this name pertained to.
“He was my best friend. We were so close, he might have stolen a piece of my soul,” says my father staring at Cran who retreated back to my side satisfied with his revenge, “In fact, I know the little rascal does have a fraction of me in him. I found him alone as a cub in the mountains during a blizzard and to save him I gave him a piece of my soul. He then grew into a noble steed that served me until I came here… I wonder if he’s still alive after all this time.”
The sword isn’t his living reservoir then. Comharmion is just like my grandfather’s gloves, it’s just an inanimate object given a portion of my father’s soul, but not bearing a soul. This Cluasmhor my father spoke of must be his living reservoir, but it seems like my father doesn’t know that Cluasmhor was more than just a pet to him. He had made a legend a reality unwittingly. The mystery of living reservoirs continues, I guess.
“If that bastard is still alive and you find him, tell him I found what I was looking for,” says my father still watching Cran, his eyes darting to wherever Cran floated.
“What is Cluasmhor, just so I know who I’m looking for?” I ask curious for more information on the legendary reservoir that my father never knew he had.
“Well, he’s a mountain cat almost as tall as you are,” explains my father, “his kind are much smaller than him, so it was weird to see him grow the way he did. It was stranger still that he learned how to speak, and at times I swore he could use magic like I could.”
He has no idea, that Cluasmhor was more than capable of using soulcraft and I almost find it amusing that both Cluasmhor and Cran were accidents in way. I respond to my father restraining my laughter and say, “I’ll be sure to tell him that if I run into him.”
“As for your question of safety, I’m an incredibly skilled swordsman and will blunt my sword with magic,” says my father raising his sword into the air to rest it upon his shoulders, “My own safety will be my problem, and believe me when I say that you won’t leave a mark on me even if you hit me.”
“When do we start,” I ask and my father lunges at me. My mind barely had time to react, and when time slowed my father’s blade was already upon me. I try to read his essence, but almost a wall of text and noise erupts into my mind. He already had hundreds of different slashes planned and his arsenal is immense. I couldn’t predict what he was going to do next. I feel his sword dig into my arm in slow motion, and I already know that I can’t react in time. I’m hit!
I crash into the stands and my father jumps from the ground and is onto me again. Cran, still hovering where I once stood, flies to my aid and blocks my father’s blade from crashing into me. I kick off the wall to create distance between me and my father, and my mind is brought to my arm as it flops at my side, the bones having been shattered by my father’s first blow. My father quickly swats Cran aside and I just barely avoid his next swing at me.
“Fight Skath! Don’t just run!” yells my father and the flat of his blade flies toward my back. I know I can’t have my spine break, so I try to force essence toward my spine to brace for the impact of his sword, and I go flying into the arena unconscious.
When I wake, I see Cran chasing my father around the arena. Every time Cran goes to stab my father, he knocks him away effortlessly. I get up and try to get my bearings, but immediately my father is upon me again.
“Rule Three!” yells my father as he swipes at me, and I lunge to the side to dodge him. A scroll floats from his satchel unfurls in my father’s sword. Fire from the braziers floats into my father’s blade and when he swings his sword a crescent moon of flame shoots forth from my father’s sword in my direction. I narrowly dodge the fiery projectile that collides into the stands. He’s so quick, that even if I slow my perception of time, he moves much faster than I do in slowed time that I cannot even prepare to react to him before he is already onto me. He won’t stop until he is satisfied, and if I keep running, I’ll just keep getting knocked around.
“Come on, fight! Don’t just be my prey!” yells my father his voice taking on more of guttural, growling sound. Before he could finish his yelling, his sword was already slamming into my chest, and again I try to use essence to blunt his blow. I’m sent flying across the stadium. If I hadn’t used essence to defend myself more than just my arm would be broken, in fact that hit should have killed me. The hit to my back should have killed me as well, then again, I used essence during my training with my grandfather to protect my body from the added forces that using essence generated on my body so using it to make myself more durable makes sense. Recovering from the impact, I see Cran run interference for me as I stand back on my feet.
“Cran fall back,” I say, and I jump at my father, “I know you can make fireworks. Can you make a smoke bomb?”
Cran disengages and as I struggle against my father grabbing him with my one good arm to buy Cran time, a black fruit emerges from Cran. Cran removes it from himself and ignites its stem and tosses it at my father. I release my father from my pathetic hold and dodge away as the bomb explodes. Smoke fills the entire arena, and I flip my vision to see essence.
“You do know that I can read your thoughts. We kind of share a soul after all,” says Cran reuniting with me, “you could have just given me an order in your head rather than aloud alerting our dad to our plan.”
“Good to know,” I say looking for my father and I see him standing still taking a deep breath.
The essence within his body was like small spider threads that wrapped around every muscle fiber in his body efficiently strengthening him, and essence also formed what appeared like plates of metal making an armor around his vitals. Outside of his internal armor, he also had essence outside of his body acting as an external shield. The nerves in his body that I knew were for pain appeared to be extinguished, and with each breath it appeared that places in his brain associated with restraint were being restrained. The areas of his brain associated with rage and the fight or flight response were intensified in activity. The smoke felt thick as my father seemed to fill it with his own ire.
My father unleashes a loud ear shattering roar, that makes my legs quake in fear. The smoke as if blown away by the very sound of my father’s bestial yell fades as quickly as it had formed. My father was hunched over carrying his sword on his back, swinging his free arm side to side and with each swing an orb of flame circled around his arm.
I try to quickly replicate what I saw in my father’s body by making armor plates of essence to no longer have to focus on protecting myself from each blow individually. I also fuse my muscles and bones with thin fibers of essence to strengthen them. However, in my attempts to copy my father’s techniques to defend myself better than I had, his blade was already pounding into my chest. He appeared like a whirlwind as he bounced off of walls spinning violently like a bladed top. I didn’t have a chance to hit the ground before his next blows hit me. Cran in a desperate attempt to defend me lunged in front of my father’s path, his blade bending as it hit my father’s essence armor. My father changing targets in midair swung with all his might.
Cran fell to the ground lifeless in two pieces. I landed on the ground shortly after he did, and what armor I had made inside myself with essence was just enough to survive my father’s intensified assault. If I hadn’t made the plates of essence in my body, I most likely would be dead or in critical condition. Though I was still capable to continue, my broken arm on the other hand was hanging on by a thread, and as I forced myself to my feet it fell from my body. My father killed Cran, and he’s going to kill me.
I watch as blood drips from the stump that used to be my arm, and I see essence intermingling with blood that is pooling on the ground. I remember what happened when I created Cran and how I was able to move my blood like a scarlet vine with the essence that bled from my body within the blood. My father was coming in for another attack, and as if moving a limb of my body the essence reacts to my will moving the pool of blood in a way to make a shield. My father’s blade connects with my essence infused blood and his sword bounces off my sanguine shield. My father continues to beat on my shield that weakens with every swing, but seeing my bloody shield, I realize that I can use external soulcraft, just in a horribly morbid way.
I need something to tether my father or tie him up. If blood has iron as a component, maybe I can make steel from my blood, and use essence to force my body to make more blood faster. I force essence into my bones, and it feels like they are becoming molten within my body. I release my direct connection to the blood shield, and it continues to float and take my father’s beating. I then make a new sanguine limb, which I plunge into the ground to source more nutrients like Cran does with his roots and essence. I increase the depth and rate of my breath to pull in the various components of the air to fuel my desperate effort.
The shield breaks above my head and I leap away from my father’s sword’s trajectory. I then sacrifice all the blood and materials I gathered from the air and dirt and make my sanguine limb a chain of steel. The chain as if still my bloody limb is infused with my essence and moves in accordance with my will. Moving like a snake the chain slithers through the air toward my father. My father swipes at the chain with all his might, but it buckles and absorbs the force, instead of taking it directly. The chain then wraps around my father and constricts his movement. I fling my stump upward and the chain digs its way upward through the rock to secure itself into the roof.
My stump had healed itself over, and blood no longer seeped from it. My father continued to struggle against the chain and roar his blood curdling yell. He didn’t seem to be in control of himself anymore, and what was my father was now a feral beast. He warned me about this, but I had no idea he was serious about the risk.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
The chain began to buckle and crack under the sheer amount of strength my father was summoning in his body. He won’t stop, and I feel lightheaded. I had lost a lot of blood making the chain, but I may need a little bit more. I bite into my wrist, and rip some of my flesh from it to have more blood and essence to use. From the newly seeping blood I form a bubble and cast it toward my father in the air. I focus on my essence as to ignite the blood bubble and the bubble bursts into energetic light. A blazing ball of plasma connects with my father’s face. He lurches back, and I launch myself from where I was on the ground and with the remains of what little strength, essence, and energy I have I take a swing at my father’s face and my hand buckles backward. My wrist and fist shatter as I go for a full force punch without the essence necessary to keep it in one piece.
I lie on the ground, my soul trying to painfully escape my body, looking at my father from my stomach. His face is burned, and his eye is black, but he isn’t struggling against my chains anymore. He’s taking deep breaths, and I see him physically relax. The flames gathered around his arm melt their way through my chain and he is free from my trap. He takes a few steps toward me and bops my head with the flat of his blade.
“We are done, until you recover,” says my father and I pass out for the second time in the bout.
When I awake, I rub my face with both of my hands. Wait, both of my hands? My vision hazy, I look to see that my arm that had been severed had been reattached to my stump. A ring of celandilic script formed a band of scar tissue around where my arm had been blown off my body from the impacts of my father’s dulled sword.
“How?” I mutter, and as I come to, I realize that I’m lying down in my father’s lap.
“You’re a celandil, and I merely had to place your severed arm next to your body and it reattached itself using what remaining essence it had stored in it,” says my father his eyes not meeting mine.
“The essence held in your arm reacted as soon as your body had recovered enough,” says Cran floating next to me, somehow being in one piece.
“Cran your alive! but how? You were split in two,” I say looking at Cran. He looked as if nothing had happened to him.
“I’m a plant. Losing a leaf or branch means very little. I just had to graft myself together again and my soul did the rest, kind of like what happened with you and your arm,” says Cran spinning happily to see me awake and okay.
I look to where I bit myself and it had healed as well. Though it also had a ring like scar where I had bit down and unlike my arm where trying to read the entire script was difficult, I could read the ring of script on my wrist. The ring of text read, ‘open the flesh and release blood infused with essence,’ and a second smaller ring inside the main ring read ‘form a bubble of blood and ignite into plasma then move to where I desire.’ Looking at my arm the text was fairly similar, except there were two rings of text underneath the main ‘open the flesh’ line. The second ring said something about chains and the third line underneath the chain line said something about a shield. Looking at these rings of text I become extremely confused as this seems to be inscription based soulcraft. I had no idea that inscription could be done on my own body.
Cran as if sensing my thoughts says, “I inscribe things on my body as well. The leaf that has your father’s spell on it is an example of this. I like you may not know all the minutia of inscription, but it seems like the written word itself can act as a body to store essence. Your flesh like my leaves appear to be capable of becoming inscribable platforms for soulcraft.”
Remembering the fight, I recall that I somehow made a chain from my own blood and say, “it seems like I can alter my body, and use it as materials for soulcraft, which I didn’t know before either.”
“Well, I can do that too. How do you think I can speak to you now? I altered my body so I could have a vocal system,” says Cran excitedly explaining things to me that he apparently knows that I do not, “altering my physical form was the first thing I learned to do. I can transform freely from staff to tree. I’m even planning on taking iron into my structure so that I won’t be broken in two like our first fight.”
“I’m just hoping that I don’t have to lose an arm or bite a chunk out of my wrist to make more inscriptions,” I say staring at the rings of inscribed spells on my arms.
“I’m so sorry about that,” says my father biting his lip still not letting his eyes connect with my gaze, “It’s been so long since I have engaged someone in combat that something just kind of snapped in me. I was trying to gauge your abilities by going harder on you in the first bout to determine how to begin your training. As we fought, I began to lose control of myself, especially as you darted around like helpless prey. My mind faded as we fought and I saw you as an easy kill especially as I saw your arm slowly rip off your body, and my more bestial persona clawed his way out of where I shackled him inside me. When you fought back and used the smoke bomb, it was as if I was fighting a celandil I hunted from the past and I fully lost control. My mind kind of went blank and it took all I could to fight back and regain my senses. If it wasn’t for your chains, I may not have been able to overcome myself and calm down. I should have done more to prepare you and myself for your training. I severed your arm and could have killed you. I’m so sorry. I’ll do all I can to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”
“Dargot would not have shown me mercy,” I say getting up from his lap and standing up to stretch, “if anything you taught me that some of the things that I relied upon in the past don’t work in all situations. I mean I couldn’t read your essence to predict your movements and I couldn’t slow my perception of time slow enough to prepare myself to get away from you. I’m slower than you, and it was only desperation and leaning into hunches that I even learned what I have. I have learned to overcome one of my major weaknesses, and I can now use external based soulcraft, and I wouldn’t have been able to learn that without you losing control.”
“You can read my thoughts?” asks my father honing into that detail of what I just said.
“I’m not sure if it is thoughts necessarily,” I say shrugging, “It’s more like when a person is doing something, I can read their intentions in the moment. When I smashed Gehenna’s hands, I was able to sense he was going to punch me from behind, and where he was aiming while he was in the process of swinging at me. I then was able to react and dodge his punch, without seeing him with my eyes. However, with you, it was like your mind was going the speed of lightning as every swing you made was like you had hundreds of plans and backup plans to go to and I couldn’t predict what you were going to do next. I haven’t actually tried to read someone outside of being threatened.”
“Try to read my thoughts right now. If you can read minds, we do not need spies, we can know Gehenna’s plans right now,” says my father raising a hand to his chin.
I switch my eyes and ears to see and hear essence, and I home in on my father. My focus is so singular that he appears to be the only thing I can see in a void. I strain my ears, but I hear silence from his essence. The silence is all consuming, and I can only hear sound if I focus on his kidney or some aspect of him. When I focus on an organ, I receive a brief explanation of its purpose, but when I focus on his essence as a whole, I hear nothing.
I was about to give up, but then he moves to stretch his arm and the silence breaks, “I’m stretching my arm as I think by not swinging my sword for so long, I might have pulled something.”
“Just now, you were stretching your arm because you haven’t used your sword for so long and you think you might have hurt yourself,” I say now realizing the extent of my abilities.
“That wasn’t what I was thinking, but yes that is true,” says my father looking at me skeptically.
“It’s like I said, not necessarily thoughts, but I can read actions and intentions within said actions, which can sometimes give me details on what a person is planning to do next,” I say a bit disappointed that my ability didn’t extend as far as my father had hoped, “Then again, I can also track essence to an extent and have been able to see Dargot and what he’s doing without being close to him.”
“That may still be useful to us,” says my father getting up from the stands, “Being able to know where your enemy is and what he is doing can be just as valuable as knowing their plans, so your ability though limited to read minds may still be extremely valuable for that reason alone.”
I nod and feel a change in the atmosphere in the room and my father says, “Rule three.”
I smiled and summon a plasma ball from my wrist, which surprises me how easy it was to do, but felt so natural all at the same time. The letters on my wrist open up and fill with blood to be at my disposal, and I feel my arm burn as the bloody letters open and a thin tendril of scarlet plunges into the ground collecting what it needs and makes a chain that is connected to my arm by a shackle of sorts. Cran floats into my hands, a new spearhead attached to him, and the ball of plasma launches at my father.
My father deflects the plasma orb with his blade, and charges me, this time more in control and moderating himself to a more manageable pace. My chain darts and collides with my father’s sword nocking his swing to the side and I go in for a stab to his chest with Cran. My father’s free hand faster than the wind swings upward and he elbowed Cran downward before I could make contact with his external essence plate armor.
Cran catches himself in the air to keep me balanced and juts upwards to try and catch my father’s elbow. Before I could react, my father was already spinning around and even my chain which was on the side he was attacking couldn’t make it in time to prevent the blow. A sanguine shield appeared from my arm and soared to intercept the blow. It then returned to wander around my body, and then separated into three smaller scarlet shields that began to orbit with the first. I now had an active defense, to intercept my father’s blade, but each bloody spell was also draining me in a way that I felt lightheaded and physically weaker. Almost sensing my weakness, the bones in my body felt like they were bursting into flames within me, and my eyes attune to essence to see that every bone in my body was inscribed with a spell to help speed up blood production, at the expense of nutrients, materials in the air I breath, or essence.
I feel my soul begin to jostle in my chest, and I know that I need to take a break from using essence so heavily to combat my father. My father swings his sword in a barrage of blows coming from all sides and angles, and my shields and chain do what they can to deflect his new assault. Cran shakes himself free from my hands, and darts around behind my father. Almost knowing what he is doing without saying it aloud I sent my chain to try and grab my father’s sword arm and send my shields to pin his other arm. Cran’s blade then bursts into flames activating my father’s spell that I had empowered days ago and spins himself in the air to almost replicate my father’s cyclone of slashes I had endured before. Cran appears as a disk of flame as he charges toward my father’s spine.
I know that if Cran isn’t enough we will be in a bad spot having expended all our trump cards and knowing my father will continue until rule three is satisfied, I decide to go for my own attack from the front. I summon an orb of plasma from my wrist again, to my soul’s dismay as it begins to crash against my essence flesh barrier. I launch the plasma ball at my father’s face and lunge forward like I had in our previous match and plasma punch his face, while Cran saws into his back. My wrist shatters again, and I fall to the ground. It takes a second for me to get back onto my feet as I still sometimes struggle to separate my soul from my physical body and have to cognitively shift to physical movement.
Straining to get back to my feet, my body feeling heavy, I turn to face my father. He takes a few steps toward me and claps his hands saying, “You did fantastic! You still have a long way to go, but I think I can mix in some of my own spells now. However, you did successfully subdue me at the lowest level of intensity of my training.”
Half of my father’s face was burned, but quickly healing, and I saw some blood dripping from his back. Cran had gotten through his first layer of armor. The chain that was still attached to my father’s arm and my arm hangs limply between us, and like the last time my father melts through it to free himself. With a thought the bracelet connecting the chain to my arm loosens and slips off with a clatter onto the floor. My blood shields were now just red puddles, utterly lifeless and void of motion. The rings of celandilic script had resealed themselves and no longer were filled with blood. My head spinning, I hobble over to the stands to rest.
“I believe the people of my day would have called you the Sanguine Sorcerer,” says my father joining me to rest and recover, “take all the time you need to recover, we may be in a rush, but we still have plenty of time.”
“How many bouts do I have to win to get out of here?” I ask my breath coming in labored gasps, my head feeling light and it’s pounding with a severe headache, and my body is giving out on me, “Martog’s maw, I need a nap, and some food. My body is taking just as much a beating as my soul is from using my spells, and you whooping on me is just icing on the sweet roll.”
“When I believe you are strong enough” says my father placing his hands on my shoulders to keep me stable, “You are plenty strong already, and might be able to repel Dargot but not kill him, and I don’t think a day’s worth of training would appease Argentum. I’ll tell you when you’re ready, and just know you won’t be facing me as the berserker again, for both of our sakes. I’m deeply sorry that the berserker came out today, I really didn’t mean for that to happen. Anyway, having more time to train you also gives me a chance to bond and spend time with my son before he heads off into the world.”
“You ready for round three then,” I say, my speech slurring, and my body slumping to the side onto my father’s shoulder, “I think I’m ready. Let me at’cha.”
“Your punch drunk. No, Skath, you need to recover your essence and blood, and definitely need some rest,” says my father adjusting my body to lie flat on the stands of the arena, “When you wake, I’ll have some food ready for us, then we can go another round.”