A day passed on that island without us speaking to each other again. We found a stretch of flat ground and set up a camp there. We ate and sat around a small fire but didn’t even look at each other. We could see the pedestal from where we were. It was a physical reminder of the gap between us and the weight of our past.
There was only so much you could do on the island. I waded out into the river catching some blind white trout and harvested some edible mushrooms that I tested. Even if we ran out of rations we at least wouldn’t starve or dye of thirst here. I pulled out my grimoire and went to work on the trying to design a new enchantment based on my lighting burst sword. The grimoire was able to correct some of my work, but it was still all theoretical and would be until I actually carved them onto something and tested them out.
Guinevere began growing just as restless as me. Enchanting was all well and good, but I was first and foremost a fighter and any crafting I did was just to support that. She started hauling rocks over and constructing a hut using grey river clay to form a cement between them.
Three days passed like that. I tried out enchantments they didn’t work and flung them out passed the barrier. Interestingly the objects passed through harmlessly but as soon as they exploded the barrier blocked all the micro pieces of mana infused shrapnel. Guinevere finished the hut in our camp and moved our few supplies inside. There were three rooms, a main common area and two bedrooms. I didn’t bother to tell her I didn’t need the room since my immunity to exposure meant I could sleep anywhere just fine. I sensed she just needed something to do and didn’t want to take that away from her.
I brought out some furnishings I had in my storage space. A bunch of the junk the goblins had now served a purpose. I even brought out the massive mirror I’d stored away. My physical appearance was something to behold. My hair was long going six inches passed my shoulders and my beard made me look like an old testament prophet. Taking out a razor-sharp knife that the hardness to be able to cut my skin I shaved off my weeks of growth. Giving myself a haircut was harder but eventually I just hacked if off close the shoulders and tied it back with a length of cord.
Guinevere was the one who broke our silence five days into our imprisonment.
“I have an idea,” she said.
“What is it?” I asked looking up from the crystal I was busy engraving my grimoire open before me with my sketches, failed designs and notes covering its pages.
“I’ve never been able to trust anyone since my mother died,” Guinevere said taking a seat beside me as well. “Except for one person.”
“Who were they?” I asked.
“Master Sazu,” Guinevere said. “He was an easterner my father hired to train me; he was the man I looked up to and was more of a father than to me than my real one. He taught me how to fight the way I do but he also told me something else.”
Not saying anything I waited for her to go on.
“You learn who someone is in a fight,” Guinevere said.
“We’ve fought beside each other for weeks,” I pointed out.
“But we haven’t fought each other,” Guinevere pointed out. “That one time doesn’t count either I had my party with me then.”
“So… your solution to us not trusting eachother….” I said slowly. “Is for us to try and kill eachother?”
“No,” Guinevere said glaring at me. “I’ve seen you fight its obvious you have no real training, I’m going to start training you how to fight with a sword for real.”
My first instinct was to be offended when she told me I didn’t know how to fight but I pushed down my pride. She was correct and I had enough humility to push aside my ego and admit that.
“I don’t really see how this is going to help us learn to trust each other,” I said. “But all right. At the very least it will give us something else to do to pass the time.”
“We’ll train for four hours every morning, and another four every evening after dinner,” Guinevere said. She set down two identical swords that I noticed were very sharp.
“Aren’t you worried we might accidentally kill eachother with these?” I asked.
“We won’t be using abilities,” Guinevere said. “Even if we could, this is a test of our skill with the blade. You heal from pretty much anything from what I’ve see, and you’ll have to hit me first.”
The challenge in her words sparked a fire in me and I smiled a predatory grin. “You’re on then.”
--
Turn off all my passive abilities, I told Voidra.
Are you sure? Voidra asked. I’m pretty sure she’s already going to kick your ass and she has no way of turning off her own passive abilities.
I’m sure, I responded. If I can learn to fight effectively without my passives, I’ll be even better during a real fight.
I suddenly felt blind as my Foresight was turned off and all I could see was the here and now. Guinevere stood before me on the grey sand of the beach on the opposite side of the tower from the pedestal.
Guinevere raised her saber in front of her face then slashed it down in a fencer’s salute.
“Begin,” she said.
I lunged forward with my sword, and she parried and slashed her sword across my back my cloak kept the sword from opening up my spine, but it still hit with the force of a car crash. Growling, I cut up taking my sword in both hands and bringing it down in heavy two-handed attack. Guinevere blocked my attack, my sword striking and sliding off to the left as she angled my force away using the minimum effort required to rebut my attack.
“Your anger clouds your judgement,” she criticized me.
Snarling I redoubled my efforts my attack slashing and stabbing at her from a dozen angles and with the force of truck behind each strike. Guinevere didn’t even move from her spot bending around my attack, blocking, parrying and reposting a score of cuts appearing all over my body the ice creeping through my veins as my blood dripped to the floor.
“You’re not going to learn anything if you don’t take things seriously,” Guinevere said frowning.
“I’m taking this perfectly seriously,” I responded spitting out a wad of saliva.
“Then stop letting your emotions rule you,” Guinevere said.
“My emotions make me stronger,” I said slicing at her legs.
Her sword dipped down catching my blade and she flicked up the tip of her sword throwing my attack to the side.
“Not from what I’m seeing,” she retorted.
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I stood and slashed down at her shoulder. She stabbed forward her strike powerful but made halfheartedly, and I deliberately didn’t dodge letting it plunge through my left heart. My skin resisted it but the sword was strong enough and had enough power behind it to break through. Guinevere stared in horror having clearly expected me to block it.
I stepped forward plunging the sword deeper into me and met her eyes letting her see there was no pain in my expression.
“I can use my rage to turn off all the pain receptors in my body,” I explained. “I assure you that my emotions aren’t a problem. Stop going easy on me and train me.”
Guinevere pulled her sword out, blood splattered out across the sand, but the wound quickly closed.
“All right,” Guinevere said. “But before I go all out we need to go over the basics.”
She spent the next few hours of our training going over how I had to hold my sword. It was surprisingly complicated; you didn’t just grip it like a hammer but instead let it rock in your hands using your pinky and index fingers than switching to your pointer and index when you slashed forwards. When were done I had a headache from the amount of information I had just taken in, luckily my advanced attributes wouldn’t let me ever forget what I’d been told.
I set Mab out on a stone block I’d been using as my work bench. The grimoire automatically opened itself to the latest page an I looked over my notes. I wasn’t worried about anyone stealing my research anything that wasn’t written in magical glyphs was written in English so no one from this world would be able to translate it unless they could find someone else from my world.
Bringing out my stylus and set of chisels I grabbed a crystal from the crate I left sitting on the stone block. I spent the rest of the day drawing new designs and creating prototypes. While I knew this was possible the spell, I was trying to turn it into an enchantment was one of the most complicated I had ever seen. Granted that number was small, but still, spells were uncommon for anyone to use since those who could would just use abilities instead.
The day past quickly and I’d only made three prototypes. My stomach rumbled and I bound Mab back to my belt the heavy tome thudding against the armored skirt with each step I made. I sat down by our campfire and took a trout Guinevere handed me. She chopped up some mushrooms and adding them to the frying pan as I added fillets into the pan.
After eating we stood and returned to our training area. Next Guinevere started teaching me of all things…how to dance.
“I thought we were supposed to be learning how to fight with a sword,” I said.
“Master Sazu always told me that the reason he was such a great duelist was because he was a great dancer,” Guinevere said. “Dancing is all about moving with and reacting to your partner without having to say a thing. It’ll teach you balance and how to step without tripping over yourself.”
After three hours I had to admit she might be onto something she was all grace and smooth movements while I was a bull in china shop. I was starting to get used to the movements and steps of the dance she was teaching me. We didn’t touch a sword once during the training session, but I felt slightly nimbler when we were done.
“Do you have any training with a sword?” Guinevere asked me.
“Not really,” I admitted. “I was told that I lacked the focus and grace for the sword and didn’t have the time to properly learn it so I was just taught with maces and spears. I did get that title you offered as quest reward, but it doesn’t seem to have helped much.”
“Titles are no substitute for real skill and training,” Guinevere said dismissively. “Those other weapons are usually just as if not more effective than a sword,” Guinevere admitted. “But you’ll find that a skilled swordsman will beat a skilled spearman more often in my experience abilities just working better with swords than most other weapons. As for lacking focus and grace, I have to disagree with the first I think you can be more focused than anyone if your motivated and you can learn to be graceful.”
“What are we going to do have me fight while balancing a book on my head?” I asked.
That taught me not to make jokes about training with Guinevere since she thought that was great idea. We spent the next few days doing just that as she ran me through training while multitasking. I had to balance a book, my grimoire, since it was the only book we had, on my head while going through the steps of a dance and moving my sword through the moves she’d taught me.
Guinevere was an unconventional if flexible teacher. She took advantage of the terrain having me fight waist deep in the water while strapped with my weighted armor when she learned I had that. I had to fight up the steps against Guinevere all while dragging a boulder chained to my back. I don’t know if Guinevere was learning about me through fighting me, but I was learning a lot about her by having her as teacher.
She was uncompromising and unflinching when it came to training. I didn’t ask for breaks or quarter, and she never offered to be as merciless as any enemy would be against me. My days were never the same, Guinevere was always varying up how she taught me and the exercises she put me through and my attempts at creating an enchantment were growing more varied and creative as my experiments taught me more and more about creating enchantments.
Exploring the island also provided me with more insight into enchantments. I tried examining the pedestal to see if I could destroy it. No dice on that one, but I did learn many new runes and glyphs. Writing them down in Mab they disappeared from the page, then my grimoire flapped its page and I found it had organized all the words I’d learned and organized them into a dictionary. Interestingly the dictionary was organized from A to Z.
“How is your alphabet organized?” I asked Guinevere one night.
“What?” Guinevere asked.
“Your alphabet,” I said. “In my language from my world we have twenty-six letters, how many are in yours.”
“Twenty-six,” Guinevere said confused at this line of questioning.
“What are they called?” I asked.
“A, B, C...” Guinevere began.
“Wait,” I said holding up my hand. “We have the same alphabet.”
“I guess,” Guinevere said. “Our alphabet and writing system was established by Arthur the first.”
“Was this first Arthur from Earth?” I asked.
“I’m not sure,” Guinevere said. “Did he name all his companion’s stuff like Lancelot, Percival, Kay, Merlin, Gawain and Galahad?” I asked.
Guinevere’s mouth dropped open. “Wait did you already read our history or something I thought you’ve only been in our world for a few months.”
“Arthur is a mythical figure in my world,” I explained to her. “Did he choose a sword as his Artifact and name it Excalibur?”
“Your saying your world has stories of the first Arthur?” Guinevere asked excitedly.
“No,” I said. “I’m saying your first Arthur based everything he did off a story from my world.”
“How do you know?” Guinevere asked. “And how do you know so much about it?”
“I took the name of one of its characters as my name too,” I explained.
Guinevere’s brow furrowed in thought. “I’ve never heard it before.”
“I’m not surprised he left it out,” I said. “Mordred was the bastard son of Arthur; he was also the one who killed him in the story.”
“Why would your name yourself after someone like that?” Guinevere asked with horror.
“Because I’ve always admired him for managing to finish the job against his father,” I said. “And because the villain is the role I was set in on this world. Case in point you tried to kill me before you even met me and before I even interacted with the outside world.”
“I agreed to not try and kill you,” Guinevere said rolling her eyes.
“No,” I corrected her. “You said you’d wait until I inevitably did something that would lead you to attack me. You never said you weren’t going to try again.”
Our conversation ended after that.
---
Jeriah charged the city gates. Tobias beside him their brothers forming a phalanx directly behind them. Tobias and Jeriah hit the gate with their shoulders. Their combined weight and strength couldn’t break the enchanted steel bound doors, but they could rip them off their hinges. The dust settled a minute after the gates fell but the slaughter at the gates was already over. Goblins poured through the streets on the backs of their razor raptors. Myrmidons battled on the walls well the former bandits under Jeriah’s control rounded up anyone who surrendered.
Three hours after they had arrived the third city they had come to had fallen. The forces of Camelot were too scattered, and the Dracon natives felt no loyalty to fight beside them. Jeriah sat on the city ruler’s throne. Those who had surrendered stood before him nervously.
“Who are you?” one man brave enough to step forward asked.
“I am Jeriah Dragonbreaker,” the man said.
There was some murmuring from the populace when they heard that name. The Dragonbreakers were an infamous family tales of their ancestors’ exploits and of the fabled bandit king told throughout the country.
“Do not be afraid,” Jeriah said. “We have not come here to ravage or to steal. We are liberators! The dogs of Camelot have displayed the land of my ancestors for long enough and I cannot abide to see it any longer.”
The population of the city cheered at his words, but the surrendered soldiers looked at each other nervously. Jeriah turned to survey them.
“I give you one choice now, surrender the pointer finger of your dominated hand so you cannot wield a sword again and return home or die here and now,” he said his voice devoid of any compassion.
No one chose death. One by one the pointer finger of each other right hands was removed. Men wept in pain and regret, but they were sent packing without their weapons to march back to Camelot.
“Remind me why we didn’t just kill them?” Tobias asked.
“If you back an animal into a corner it will fight even more viciously to the death,” Jeriah explained. “By providing our enemies with a chance to live their will be more and more that surrender or desert rather than face what happens to those who keep fighting.”
They turned to the walls where the bodies of those who had stood hung crows and ravens perched on them pecking at their dead eyes.