We have been wandering out in the commercial district as Santi leads the way to this blacksmith he knows. He hasn’t been talking too much on this trip in the first place. When I do get almost lost however, he immediately takes notice and grabs me for a bit and makes me follow him. He’s been rough with that part that I could tell whenever he yanks me back to him.

We continue on like this until we get into a place called “Kio’s blades and axes” We get inside the store and I see a Meran with soot around his body, working in the forge. He then says.

“Oh it’s you Santi, what do you have for me this afternoon?” Santi then replies to him.

“Well I got a new customer for you.” He points to me and continues.

“Her name is Prina, she’s my new apprentice or partner or whatever Veron labels it to.”

“Name’s Kio, it’s a pleasure to meet you Prina.” He initiates a handshake to me and I return it to him and say.

“It’s a pleasure for me as well as Kio. Santi tells me that you can make or sell me an axe.”

“Of course I do, it’s in the name of the shop.” As he looks to be offended at the statement I say. He continues

“Still I’m sure I still have some in stock in the back if you don’t mind”

He goes to the back of the store and I hear him rummaging through his weapons making noises inside the store with all the clanging metal that is happening in the back. After several minutes of waiting inside the store he comes back with a handful of handaxes, battleaxes, and a halberd somewhere there. Kio then places it on the desk in front of us and presents them to me.

“That’s a lot of axes you got there” I comment.

“Well the Meran do have a thing with wielding axes, every guard you see in one of the mountain cities always uses an axe as their weapon.” He replies to my comment. Then he continues.

“For now what do you prefer to use, a one-handed axe? Or a two-handed axe?”

“Hmm I don’t know actually I prefer to be able to swing it faster to be honest.”

“I see maybe a handaxe for you just pick from these selections and maybe you’ll find something you fancy.”

Kio then sorts them between the handaxes and the other axes. I take my time in inspecting the axes while Santi is standing against the wall waiting for me to pick one. I give each of them a swing to make a feel for them to see if I can use this in battle.

After some time testing the handaxes that've been given to me, I haven’t been able to make my decision between two of the axes that I like. Santi, noticing my distress, says to me.

“You know you could dual-wield them right? Like wield them with your own two hands, try it out; it suits the type of jobs that we’re doing.”

I then try his suggestion and try to use the two axes I currently choose. I give them both a swing and feel that one may be heavier than the other. I still test them out and change how I swing them and how to use them. After several swings I think I got the feel of the axes.

“Ah I see you like those two huh?” Kio remarks at me.

“I tend to go for the feeling of the weapon instead of looking at how well it’s made.” I reply to him

“If you want to, I could make some axes for you, custom made by me. Of course you still need to pay me for it and find some materials for me. Continuing on with the topic, those weapons you picked would cost maybe around 10 silver at the least.” Santi comes up to him and asks.

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“No discount for a friend?”

“Pfft, you sell me stuff I wouldn’t use properly and ask for a friend discount? Yeah no Santi, no discount take it or leave it.”

“I tried.” he replies back to him.

I take out my money pouch and pull out 10 silver pieces carefully from the pouch and hand them to Kio.

“It seems everything is in order, so if you got anything else you need just tell me and I’ll do what I can to provide for you.” He then heads back to his forge and proceeds to do whatever blacksmithing he’s doing.

I watch him for a moment and try to understand the craft even if it’s in vain in the first place. Just him hammering and looking inside of his forge doing whatever he does best. Looking at it properly he seems to be proud at his work, hard-working and making sure that every swing of his hammer does something.

As my begins to wander Santi touches my shoulder to bring me back to reality

“Hey are you okay? You seem to space out a little there.”

“Yeah yeah I’m fine so what should we do for the rest of the day?” I ask him

“We could try practicing your fundamentals on magic first, I just want to gauge on how you fare on your magic skills since we’re going to be using them a lot during the jobs.”

“Sure sure although I prefer somewhere quiet at least hopefully at the library back where I am staying right now.”

“Oh that one I’m just worried about misfires to be honest, I don’t have enough money to cover if the whole place gets burned to the ground.” He begins to ponder for a moment until something clicked in his head

“How about we go outside the city and go for the hills? Besides I’m sure that the guards and mercenaries cleared the surroundings area in the morning.”

“That sounds great.” I’m walking out the door and I tell him.

“So what are we waiting for? Let's go!” I shout to him as I walk out to the door.

He’s following me whilst I’m bouncing around on the way there. Feeling the weight of these axes I have on me. Something about the thought of having my own thing rather than giving them to me or someone forcibly passing down something I didn’t want. Strangely enough I feel excited to use my axes to cut down something. Must be from Master’s nature.

While walking to the eastern gate of Winstow. I notice a few things while observing. There is a large amount of children playing around in the residential district of Winstow. I don’t know for sure but something about it makes me feel worried about them or something. OR MAYBE I’M JUST HUNGRY. Aughhhh gotta get that thought out of my head. Hate it when that happens.

We get to the eastern gate, if I were to describe it I would say it’s just a simple iron barred gate with a stone wall and furthermore it seems that for a city this independent and flowing with commerce there aren’t many people using this gate, maybe it’s for the people the actually live in the city.

I see that Santi is talking with the guard. The guard does seem fond of him based on the guard having a smile while talking with him and as Santi comes back to me he says.

“Just present your identification card and we could head out and back in without any trouble.”

I hand him my mercenary card and he proceeds to investigate it for a minute or two before handing it back to me saying.

“Everything checks out, you can go outside.” He turns to Santi for a second and whispers something to him. After that Santi beckons me to follow him. I do so following him until we get outside the gates

Outside the wall I still see the same scenery before I went into Winstow. The dry lands devoid of greenery with traces of dried grass trying to grow. We wander around this land in search of a proper place to test out my magical abilities. At one we arrive at a hill overlooking the town itself.

You could see the town itself and see the ruins within Winstow with the destroyed buildings and the vibrant life beside it. Outside the city you could see the dry land blending in with the fertile land miles away from it. Santi finally says

“We’re here.” He says with a sigh. He then continues

“I think this is a good place to see how good you are with magic. Now you do remember how to cast your magic right?”

“Yeah yeah, I’ll start already.” I close my eyes and breathe deeply. I try picturing a sight that Master gave me during his training. A field of ice so beautiful under the moonlight that it gave me temporary relief from everything that happened.

“Niyontia, show me the beautiful sight that I saw that day, the beauty describing the winter that he gave under that moonlight. That field of your embrace filled with so many pretty things that my memory keeps until this day. Fill it with flowers of ice, that one can see the beauty that you can bring unto this world of ours. Ice field.”

In that instant I fill the area around the once dead land with the power given to me and encase it in ice for Santi to see. Flowers made of ice sprouting up from the ice field as if they’re growing like ordinary flowers. The grass unmoving from their place with a whiff of cold air spreading outside their area.

I look at Santi and see his face that says ‘as expected’ if I were to describe it. He then comes up to me and puts his hand on my shoulder.

“You should probably end the spell before anything else happens to you and the surroundings.” I nod at him and release my power over the spell

The icy field immediately melts and turns into water. I swipe off my sweat from my forehead. I couldn’t properly recreate what Master did yet, but I’m gonna try my best to live up to his expectations. I still wonder why he left after all the trouble he gave me even with that note of his.

“Well at least you know how to control your magic and put it in a wide area. The flowers are a nice touch as well and I didn't think that someone could put a large spell like that and put some additional flavor on it.” He compliments me

“That’s bound to get some attention, let’s get back and go to a tavern I like.”

I feel a headache for a bit, aw shoot I think I pushed myself too hard on this one. Still need to make sure that my protection goes on until we get to this tavern at least. Would be anticlimactic if I just turned into ashes on the way just because I wanted to impress a guy I just met yesterday. I try to alleviate my headache by massaging them a bit with my hands. Hopefully I can keep up before I start to see hallucinations on the way to this tavern

Thinking properly, if I train under Santi, I might be able to live up to Master’s expectations that he won’t kill me off the bat once he sees me. Although I expect that things won’t go smoothly in a year from now that’s for sure. The most important thing is I’m going to enjoy this phase before everything goes sideways, at least I got my mercenary certification if I have to run away.

Even if I had to deal with this dead body.