He tossed the bag to the older boy. “See for yourself.”
Zech stabbed his wooden sword into a pile of snow that had been gathered after the most recent snowfall for the sole purpose of holding their weapons, the young tavern hand hurrying to retrieve his coat from the side of a little fire that had only recently been started. Both he and Jaden wore belted tunics over loose trousers, their clothes showing signs of constant mending.
“Any change, Alistar?”
Frowning, he shook his head. “I’ll let you know if something happens.”
Zech had asked about Vanessa’s energy imprint almost every day since Team Tempest had gone missing. At this point, they could only hope that the fact that the Silent Swordsman was still alive meant that their acquaintances had simply embarked on a new adventure after giving up on exploring the Iron Dungeon. More than anything they hoped that those five weren’t in dire straits, a fate that many suspected had befallen the hundred or so other frontiersmen that had failed to return from the increasingly infamous labyrinth of tunnels.
“Still,” sighed Zech, who caught a piece of bread that Jaden had just thrown in his direction. “I’ve been stopping by at the guild lately, asking around for any information on them. There still isn’t any word of them giving up on the assignment, which needs to happen if they want to take on any other tasks.” He took a bite of bread and chewed it in silence for a time, blue eyes appearing a bit paler in contrast with the cold waters of the Greyline and the pretty, snow-covered woodland. “I just wish I knew what happened to them after they left.”
These days, Zech’s hair was about a hand’s length of thick sandy strands, much of which was matted with sweat that was freezing in some areas now that the boy had stopped using his swordsman’s aura. About a finger’s length taller than Alistar, Zech’s shoulders were a bit broader than before, with more muscle to his lean frame than had existed in the past.
“So do I, but they should be okay. If Vanessa’s still alive, then the others probably are too, right?”
Nodding half-heartedly, Zech didn’t seem convinced. Although his eyes were glued to the ground, he reflexively caught a piece of cheese that Jaden had just fished from the bag.
“Hurry up and eat. We’ve still got to finish the last bout.”
“Who’s ahead today?” asked Alistar, retrieving a few more logs from the small pile that the three of them always kept stocked.
“It’s a tie,” said Zech. “But I’ll be changing that in a minute.”
“Yeah, by losing.”
“You wouldn’t even have won if I hadn’t slipped on that ice earlier.”
All of the snow within a radius of about ten paces had been compacted into sleet after the countless footfalls of their most recent sparring sessions. In the past three days alone, Alistar and the other boys had spent over fifteen hours practicing within the little clearing that they had settled on as their training grounds. Because of this, the rest of the Dozen were growing impatient with their constant absences and thus had taken the initiative to invite themselves this time around.
“Don’t be sore, Zech,” chided Alistar, who fixed his friend with a mentor’s smile. “Once you become a frontiersman, I’m sure there’ll be times when you have to fight on surfaces like this. This type of training is a good way to prepare for that.” With this thought in mind, Alistar drew some frigid waters from the Greyline and carefully dispersed them over the training grounds before freezing them in place with a calm exertion of magic.
Stolen story; please report.
Jaden prodded the uneven sheet of ice with one of his boots. “Is that really the same spell the butchers use to freeze meat?” Freckled face painted with jealousy, the older boy cursed and then said, “Why am I the only one who can’t use magic? Even Corrie can freeze things now. What if he becomes more capable than me one day? I hate thinking that a runt like him could best me in a fight just because of some stupid spell.”
Alistar wanted to tell him that Corrie could only freeze about a finger’s worth of water while only being able to gather about twice that amount, though he held off as he sensed Corrie’s life signal idling behind one of the thicker trees in the area. It seemed that some of the content of the notes, journals and books that he’d been reading were now being put into practice. Corrie had made a habit of trying to make his thieving fingers and silent steps as swift as possible. In all honesty, if Alistar didn’t have such a sensitive magical awareness, he wouldn’t have noticed that his friend had been tailing him from a distance since the moment that he’d run off without a backward glance.
“Then keep training so that doesn’t happen.” Finishing off his food, Zech slipped out of his coat and then retrieved his sword before carefully making his way to the centre of the training grounds. “Alistar, you’ll spar with whoever wins. Are you okay with that?”
Adding the fresh logs to the fire, he discreetly fueled the flames with his inner energies and then said, “As long as the winner rests up for a while. I don’t want anyone complaining about being at a disadvantage."
“If he beats you, apparently you can just blame it on the ice.”
Looking at Jaden’s smirk, Zech gave a wry smile. “So you know deep down that I’m going to win this match.”
A haze of swordsman’s aura suddenly enveloped his body, mirroring the thin layer of energy that covered his opponent. Nothing had changed on the surface, but the invisible energies were easily perceptible to those that were familiar with them, as well as to anyone that possessed a magical awareness. The only way one could see this aura with the naked eye was if it had been condensed to a significant degree and arranged in certain ways, such as when Alistar had created a tiny knife at the tip of one of his fingers back when Tramon had strung him up from the tree outside of his home. Due to the dangers involved in manipulating this energy in such a way, the three of them had agreed to only use the most dulled arrangements of it during combat. For their intents and purposes, they simply used it to strengthen their bodies as well as to boost the sturdiness of their weapons.
Jaden pounced forward with a measured lunge, footing unaffected by the ice beneath his feet. While his opponent was concentrating more energies around his limbs, he was going out of his way to ensure that he had stable footing. While this technique wasn’t as effective as the basic stability spell that Mr. Albeck had taught Alistar, its uses were similar.
Swatting away the probing strike, Zech quickly adopted the third-tier defensive stance of the apprentice stratum, which for the Crown Style involved a two-handed, vertical grip with a situational tilt. Faced with a series of rapid lunges, Zech swatted each one aside while subconsciously adjusting his footing as well as constantly altering the tilt of his sword.
When the lunges didn’t work, Jaden began alternating between the basic strikes of the apprentice stratum’s first tier, which forced Zech to respond with the basic defensive stances.
He never listens…
If it were Alistar or Zech on the offensive, they would have employed a healthy mix of every offensive skill that they knew in order to always keep their opponent unsure of what was coming next. Although Jaden had successfully learned all of the skillsets of a third-tier apprentice swordsman, he wasn’t one to rely on intricate or cunning combinations of said techniques when in combat. Even after all of his training, he tended to use his previous lessons as a foothold for subconscious, intuitive fighting, relying on his trained reaction times and the muscle memory that he had developed in recent years rather than using even the slightest bit of tactics. The only reasons why he could fight toe-to-toe with Zech and Alistar were his innate athleticism and his surprisingly delicate reflexes, along with the fact that he was significantly stronger than both of them when it came to unaided physical force.
Sliding backward after taking one of Jaden’s strikes head on, Zech adopted one of the first-tier offensive stances of the adept stratum, holding his left hand in front of him with a white-knuckled fist to distract his opponent while pulling back his right arm and raising it so that the hilt of his sword was level with his chin. The tip of the wooden blade faced forward, unmoving as Zech considered his friend with cool blue eyes.
“I’ll show you a real lunge.”
“Thanks for the heads up!”