Mum and dad had been shocked to learn I had been injured during the obstacle course, after the first time, they had hoped some effort would have been put in place to prevent it from happening again.

I had explained to them what had happened after that event and to be honest it was the best thing that could have happened to me. A part of me kind of wished it had happened during the first progressive test, if it had I would have skipped out on those pointless years spent with Instructor Willis.

Dad was pleased I had accepted Master Lance as my master, but why wouldn’t I when it was either him or Instructor Willis. I had basically jumped up to even higher heights than Tigra; hearing that certainly put a smile on my face.

“Lance has more experience teaching others than I have, so for combat he will be the best choice of masters, but he only has a basic understanding for talismans as he is one born with a natural ability over ice,” informed dad at breakfast the next day. “He will be far stricter than I have been on you.”

“Really.” I didn’t quite believe him.

“Don’t take him lightly he is a fierce warrior,” warned dad.

“Alex.” Mum came over to me. “Please take your training more seriously, when the time comes you must be strong enough to deal with the challenges you will have to face.”

“What challenges?” I questioned, what could be so challenging in a time of peace.

“I do not know, but you are the only one who can face them,” answered mum, but even she did not understand her own words.

I shrugged. “I’ll try, but don’t blame me if he’s just as boring as Instructor Willis.”

Dad smirked. “I expect you’ll be too tired most days to come train with me so early in the morning.”

“Yeah right.” I did not know how right he was.

Master Lance’s training was tougher than I thought. Dad had been right his training plan was far harder than I thought. He was even stricter than dad, I put that down to me being his son.

Master Lance’s training started out pretty slow, but I remembered how dad did things, working me up to the much harder stuff, so I kept my patience, at least I was now doing far more than I had been doing in the last six years.

I had already been doing laps around the castle with dad in the mornings, but Master Lance added to that, having me do even more.

“To begin your training with me, you must run one hundred laps around the castle,” informed Master Lance, looking at me.

“Sucker,” laughed Loki.

“Who said he was doing them alone.” He looked at Loki.

“What?” Loki was dumbfounded. “I’ve never had to do laps before.”

“With a new student, I need to get you both up to the same skill level and that begins with laps, Prince Loki.” Master Lance kept a relaxed tone as he responded to Loki.

“No problem,” I nodded. “I do laps with dad all the time.”

“But you haven’t done one hundred yet, have you,” he commented.

“Watch me.” I broke into a run.

“Go on Loki.”

“Augh,” he responded, but I heard him quickly follow.

I quickly realised one hundred laps was far more difficult than I thought. I had been slacking with my training with dad, just casually hanging around doing about thirty every time I trained with him, but a hundred.

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I struggled with it, getting at least a few extra laps in each day. Loki on the other hand could barely keep up, tripping up before he’d even gotten started, compared to Tigra he was absolutely useless.

I saw how other Animalia treated Loki even though he was royalty, but if Master Lance saw the same potential I had within him, perhaps he would one day be an unrivalled warrior of Cathopia in the future.

Master Lance was strict but also encouraged us when we did fail, sometimes he even taunted us, trying to get us to go further than we had before, most of the time it worked.

“Your father and I could do one hundred laps blind folded and going backwards.”

“I doubt that!” I shouted back but found out from dad he wasn’t lying.

“It was actually a joke Alton came up with, a bet to see who could do a hundred laps blind folded and backwards, can’t say Alton ever finished, but Lance and I were always neck and neck.” Dad laughed as he told me the story. “Have to admit I tripped so many times the first time we did it.”

“You came home covered in cuts and bruises,” added mum, shaking her head. “So, rash.” Dad continued to laugh, perhaps more out of embarrassment.

Everyday Master Lance would come out with some speech about training, todays was about being sibling students, it stuck with me as we ran together.

“While you train under me you are brothers, you run together, train together, fail together. This is the same with an ally, you cannot succeed without each other.”

“I can’t do this,” cried Loki as he’d fallen over again, he was just so clumsy.

I would stop just to help him get back to his feet. “Come on Loki, we need to prove everyone wrong, that we’re not useless.” I tried every day to encourage him, he needed to work much harder than me to reach our goals.

“I want too but I am no good at any of this!” moaned Loki.

I kneeled down beside him. “Loki, sometimes it takes time before someone sees results, but I know with hard work, just like me you could become unstoppable.”

“You think so?” He gazed up at me.

“Yeah.” I touched his shoulder. “Now finish todays laps with me.”

“Alright.” And Loki would get up and we’d continue on. I have to admit we did reach a hundred laps, eventually.

I thought doing one hundred laps was bad enough, but as we began to reach a hundred laps, Master Lance began increasing the amount of stuff we were doing, focusing on other things to build our bodies up, from sit up to push ups, basic sword techniques and strategy planning. He never gave us a break for the entire six hours we trained with him.

I took really quick to strategy planning, seeing everything around me as something that could be used, or a clue to something that may have happened, a fight or even evidence left behind from a break in.

He would get us to search for such clues in events he set up, even dad had helped out. “Now tell me what happened here?”

“Well from what I can see, a thief stole the bread from dad’s stall, from their dad chased him down, then pinned him to that wall using Zekon’s bow form,” I answered as Loki looked about confused.

“Well done, your good at this,” commented dad, who was present for this one.

“Your son has so much skill at everything he is tasked to do, I fear I’ll run out of stuff to teach him,” admitted Master Lance.

“I doubt that, he is still young,” smirked dad. “Battle stance!” He suddenly raised his voice. I drew my sword and posed myself for battle. “Quick, not bad.”

As the weeks passed, even Loki was improving a little, Master Lance claimed it was my influence, he finally had someone to push himself further than he had gone before, hearing his words made me think about dad telling me how he influenced a young King Alton in the basic’s class.

After a couple of weeks, I managed to complete one hundred laps, absolutely exhausted by the end of it, but I had done it. Unfortunately, Master Lance still wouldn’t continue my main training until Loki had also done one hundred laps and well I had to do them to until he did.

During our runs when passing other Feles they would always laugh at us, they really did think nothing of us, even Loki who was royalty.

On numerous occasions I noticed a young Jubatus, a yellow Feles with black spots, tear like markings down his face and unlike my claws his always seemed to be out. He was always being picked on, most probably because his spots were glowing for some reason.

“Hey Loki,” I called as we ran. “Why does that Jubatus’s spots glow?”

“Heck if I know,” shrugged Loki.

“It is because he is naturally gifted with lightning energy,” informed Larana. “Uncontrolled power can often leak out like that, mostly when one is portraying certain emotions such as fear or nervousness.”

“That would be pretty useful instead of taking crystals with you,” I commented.

“I suppose,” responded Larana.

I kept my eyes on him for a moment, before returning my focus to my running, I needed to finish todays run, if I were too slow Master Lance would not be happy, he had a strict time frame for when we did what, increasing the time for running the closer we had got to one hundred laps.

I felt sad for the Jubatus, but I didn’t think there was anything I could do for him, causing trouble was something Master Lance said not to do, with so many being affected by the darkness I didn’t know who I could really trust.