Esmund pulled a knife out of his pocket.

Just a loose knife, lying in his pants. No sheath or anything to stop it from cutting him.

He pulled the blade up to eye height. “I need more blades.”

Ranvir nodded thoughtfully. “Fucking, no you don’t.”

“Yes I do!”

Ranvir had to step back as the blade swerved dangerously close to his face. Someone really needs to teach him knife etiquette.

“There’s a- you remember the book, about the twin master?”

Ranvir nodded.

“There’s this test in it. Well, I guess not so much of test, as it is a training method. The book’s even named after the test…ing, training method. Exercise! That’s what-“

“Focus, Esmund.”

“Oh right.” He nodded his head in acknowledgment. “It’s called ‘Degrees of Sharpness’, the exercise, and the book, I guess.” He paused as Ranvir rolled his hand, in a ‘get on with it’ motion. “I need more sharp things for the test, in varying degrees-“

“Of sharpness, I get it. Where are we going to find more knives? Actually, where did you even find that one?”

“In the cafeteria kitchen.” Esmund shrugged.

“Did you ask?”

“No, I wanted it and figured they wouldn’t let me.”

Ranvir ran a hand over his face and into his hair. “I think I know where to go.”

Esmund’s eyes widened, another smile breaking across his face. “I knew your smith-man brain could help!”

Rolling his eyes, Ranvir started walking, Esmund jogged shortly to catch up with him. “Maybe you should hand the knife to me, while we’re walking?”

“No?”

“My smith experience would allow me to handle it better.” The only times Ranvir really worked with iron was when sharpening knives, something they offered as an extra service. There was only so much need for jewelry in a small village, though, merchants did pick up quite a bit of his mom’s work.

“I guess that makes sense.” Esmund handed the knife over.

Accepting it with a stifled sigh of relief, Ranvir stepped the tempo up slightly. Now that the knife wasn’t flying through the air, like summer bugs around a fruit tree, everyone was much safer.

“Ohh! Are we going to steal weapons from the Masters?” Esmund exclaimed. His voice rang out loudly across the campus, causing Ranvir to wince.

“Surely, not. And even if we were, I wouldn’t say it out loud!” He hissed back. A yellow flash of mild annoyance moving through Ranvir. Esmund wasn’t really acting that far out of the norm. Ranvir had just kinda forgotten how Esmund could be when he wasn’t wary of people he didn’t know as well.

Which was wildly unconcerned with such things as that which lay before his eyes, or behind his back. Or even say a sharp knife in his hand.

They reached the Master’s tower, his short friend immediately lurching forwards to pull the door open. It didn’t budge, so he pulled even harder.

“That’s not gonna work.” Esmund stepped back from the door, scratching at his chin speculatively.

“That’s because it’s a push door, you fucking idiot.” He reached out for the door. “Not only is it push, but it’s probably locked too.” The latch stuck as tried pulling it down, the door didn’t budge.

“I was just testing you.” Esmund grumbled.

“Sure.” Ranvir turned to look out over the campus. If Esmund got private lessons, then he couldn’t have been the only one. More to the point, it had only been a short while since Esmund was let go, but not so long as to that older students couldn’t still be talking lessons.

Sure enough, after a few minutes of looking around, a pair of people stepped out of a building. Ranvir didn’t know what it was for, but he didn’t think it was a dorm. The smaller of them was visibly balding, what hair he did have was a near pure white.

What Ranvir found more interesting wasn’t the Master, though. It was the enormous man limping along beside him. At first the sheer size made him think it was at least a fourth- or fifth year student, but the whites of the uniform catching in the light from the waning sun, and Goddess’ eyes, showed the accents of a first year.

There was only one first year that big. Dovar was getting private lessons too, despite him also going to weapons class. It was apparent they didn’t run as long, but he still trained in, one fashion or another, from sunup to sundown.

Carefully stilling his face, Ranvir watched as the two split. Dovar heading towards the first years’ dorm, while his Teacher was heading straight for them.

“Master.” Ranvir said, once the man was within speaking distance.

“Students.” The Master paused in front of them. “What can I do for you?”

“Well, nothing since we’re definitely not trying to do anything, at all. Right, Ranvir?”

The Master briefly glanced at Esmund, raising an eyebrow, before returning his attention to the Ranvir.

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“Master, we would like to see Teacher Svenar, if possible. We’re Ranvir and Esmund, sir.”

“What do you mean? We’re supposed to steal a few knives, not meet with Svenar.” Esmund hissed at Ranvir, who did his best to ignore his friend.

“I’ll see what I can do.” The Master pulled out a key from his pocket, unlocked the door and stepped inside. “You can wait in the entrance, no need for you to stand outside.”

“Thank you, Master.” Ranvir bowed slightly, stepping into the spacious entrance room. He felt a flicker of power coming from the Master, it was like when Ayvir had confronted Floki, but a lot less oppressive.

The Master’s body burst with smoke and he practically flew through the room and up the stairs. By the time Ranvir had the knife up in defense, the Master was long gone. Not even a sign of his smoke lingered in the room.

“So what are we going to do now?” Esmund asked, examining the room.

It was sparsely decorated. It held the same metal torches, bright-torches, that all the other buildings did. The stone floor was bare, the only furniture in the room was a long bench running the length of one wall. There were a couple of doors leading to other rooms, but as Esmund quickly proved, they were locked.

“We wait for Teacher Svenar.” Ranvir said. The bench was exactly as uncomfortable as it looked.

“Why? How is that gonna help?”

Ranvir felt tension from the smoke Master fade away. Yellow alarm fading into calm blue, as Esmund’s complaints about this not being as exciting continued.

“I’m just saying, I think I would learn more—and therefore be better able to fight off the Ralith—if I knew we had to work hard, otherwise the Masters would get us. I could sort of prepare for fighting the flesh-torn that way.”

“Uh huh.” His words did remind Ranvir that he wanted to research more about the enemy. The flesh-torn were supposed to be monstrous amalgamations of meat. At least, that was what the bedtime stories in the village said.

Esmund continued his rant for some time longer, completely missing the sound of footsteps and the half-closed door to the staircase swinging open.

“It’s good that you feel we could help you learn more, student.” Teacher Svenar said, stepping into the room. “Though, I figured after this evening’s lesson that we would be done for today. If I remember correctly, your exact words were: ‘I’m too exhausted’.”

Esmund let out a long stunted sound as he looked over at the Master.

“He wanted to try out an exercise.”

“Ranvir we’ve been over this: ‘Degrees of Sharpness’ Testrainercise. Agnur specifically said it functioned as both a test, training method and an exercise.”

Ranvir didn’t remember hearing Esmund come to the conclusion, nor the word, but it also didn’t take him aback. “Two of those mean the same thing.”

“I don’t mean to interrupt your spat, but I was wondering why you needed me for that.”

“We don’t.”

“It involves two more of these.” Ranvir said, over top of Esmund’s protestations. He displayed the knife he’d gotten from Esmund. “Specifically, if I’m not wrong, it involves two more in varying degrees of sharpness.”

Esmund was giving him his best death-glare, but Ranvir was out of reach of his intent, his ability, and his arms.

“You said Agnur?” Svenar asked. “This was from Agnur?”

“Yeah, it was written in his book. The librarian said it was the last one he wrote.”

Svenar pushed his fingers against his eyelids. “Of course, you’re looking into him. Look, I’m know he said some very interesting things in his book, but he was going insane. It’s a known, and accepted, fact that Agnur went completely and utterly mad in his twilight years.”

“I still want to try.”

“And you’re not the first student that wants to.” Teacher Svenar replied. “You’re not even the first of my students. Hell, when I was a little older than you, I found that same book you’ve been looking at. It doesn’t work.”

“For you.”

Ranvir watched as Svenar tried to reason with Esmund. Something he knew from experience to be one of the biggest wastes of time. If you couldn’t appeal to Esmund’s emotion, you couldn’t appeal to him at all.

Flickering bright yellow amusement colored Ranvir, before he finally decided to save them both the upcoming struggle. “With all due respect Master Svenar, he’s not going to budge. If you don’t help he’ll just try to steal the tools necessary.”

The Master gave him a long suffering look, his gaze flickered to the knife in Ranvir’s hand and finally to Esmund.

“Fine.” He let out a long sigh. “Meet me outside the tower in ten minutes. Take one of the torches.”

“Yes!” Esmund exploded up from his chair towards a bright-torch.

Fifteen minutes later, Ranvir and Esmund watched Master Svenar unroll a piece of leather in front of them. There were a variety of knives strapped within the roll.

“I grabbed a bit of everything.” Svenar said. “Moving from least sharp.” He pointed to an obviously old and blunted bronze knife. “To most sharp.” On the other end was perhaps the roughest looking of the tools. The wooden handle of the knife stretched all the way through the weapon, broken off pieces of obsidian had been inserted into either side.

Ranvir frowned, but decided against speaking up. Master Svenar must know best when it came to sharpness, it was what warp was made out of, after all.

“So what does the exercise, say?” Ranvir asked, instead.

“Testrain-“

“Just tell us what it said.” Ranvir interrupted.

“I should chose three tools of varying degrees of sharpness.” Esmund had pulled a rumpled ripped piece of paper from his pocket. He started whispering the words quietly to himself, as he read it.

Then Esmund reached over the leather roll, before pulling out his tools of choice. In the end he didn’t pick the nearly round bronze knife, nor the obsidian one, so maybe Master Svenar didn’t know best.

He paused for a long time over all of the tools, before picking three of them. He ended up with an iron kitchen knife, that looked like it had been prepared for sharpening, but hadn’t actually gotten the whetstone, yet. That didn’t mean it couldn’t cut, it just couldn’t do it well.

The next one he picked was a curved dagger that needed a bit of good treatment. When Ranvir picked it up, though, he realized was still in good working condition. The last one Es picked was an inwardly rounded knife, it had the polished sheen that came from coming right off the sharpening bench.

“Why those?” Ranvir asked, and after noticing Svenar’s frown, continued. “And which would you have picked, Teacher?”

Svenar quickly pointed to the two knives at the end, and the curved dagger, Esmund had pulled aside. “The the book says to pick three tools with varying degrees of sharpness. I would pick the least sharp tool, the sharpest and one in between, in order to get the best contrast.”

“I think these are the best.” Esmund said, simply.

Ranvir rolled his eyes, shoving his friend lightly. “Answer better, you moron.”

“It… feels right?” Esmund asked. “It’s not my fault you aren’t clever enough to understand me properly. Master Svenar gets it, right?”

“No, I don’t.” Master Svenar replied. “I’ve already explained my thought process.”

Esmund paused, before sighing deeply. “This.” He gestured his hands over the dull kitchen knife, as if grasping for reasons he wasn’t sure of. “Is… it has the least, I think.”

“This one gathers way less warp.” Svenar gestured to the bronze knife.

“Sort of, but see, it doesn’t get the coverage right.” Es returned to his dull blade. “This has a weak but always present warp around the edge, all the time.”

“And this doesn’t.” Svenar cocked his head. “I guess that makes some sense.”

Esmund skipped the curved dagger, since they both agreed on that one. Instead of the inwardly curving knife he’d picked, he lifted the obsidian edged on. “This has the same issue, as the bronze one, except opposite. This gathers the most warp. To the point where I can clearly sense it, even now. But here-” He ran his finger over a particular piece of the obsidian. “It’s blunt and dull. The edge isn’t even.”

“Does that matter for warp? Isn’t warp just how sharp something is?” Ranvir asked.

“Yes, it’s attracted to sharpness and no it doesn’t matter.” Svenar said.

“Yes.” Esmund replied, ignoring the Master. “I think so.”

“Whatever, it’s Esmund’s test, so let’s just get this over with.” Master Svenar sighed.