After uncle and I set up our ger, elder Cyrus and auntie Kay come to talk to me. Elder goes over the battle and explains the process we took. He shows me the signs in the area that indicate the presence of the chthonic. Elder Cyrus explains that we hadn't stopped where we did solely because he noticed the tunnel entrance. He explains that the geography of the ravine would funnel the enemies into a concentrated point, which allowed us to fire upon them easier. This is where he ordered us to stop. He also tells me that the flank group's task was to create as much fire in the chthonic tunnels as possible to force them out, which led them into us.

After a long lecture about the battle, he leaves me alone with Auntie Kay to learn spearmanship.

“Olvy. Are you ready?” she asks.

“Yes! Let's start. Let's start!” I exclaim. Jumping on my feet, I am so excited to finally start, especially after having sat through Elder’s boring lecture.

Auntie laughs and passes me one of the wooden sticks she brought with her.

“A stick?” I can’t help but ask.

It is a straight bit of wood without even a sharpened point. Any attack from an adult would destroy this thing in a second.

“Of course,” she says, as if it’s obvious. “A proper spear will be too heavy for you, so you get a stick.”

“But won’t we burn it when we attack?” I ask.

She seems amused by my words. “Oh, I didn’t think your control was that bad.”

I know I have poor control, but it’s not that bad. I don’t want auntie Kay to think of me that way, so I immediately deny her. “It’s not! But don’t we coat our weapons in flame? How would that not burn the wood?”

Auntie is smirking at me now. “Of course, by controlling your flame. How else?” She proceeds to show off and coat her own wooden stick in fire, before stopping the flame and showing it still in the same condition as before.

I know I can’t do that, so I look at my feet, disappointed I will not be allowed to learn to wield the spear. It’d be easy if we treat the wooden stick like we do our clothes, they can handle some heat, but tinder like that would burn in a moment in my hands. I’d been so excited to learn the spear, I’ll be letting my mum down if I can’t learn her weapon.

“Ah. Olvy, sorry. I was just messing with you. You don’t need to control your fire that well yet. Keep your flame in your grasp and you’ll do fine.” Kay says.

“Really? But how can I attack without fire?” I ask, relieved but still not understanding how I can use a weapon without fire.

“Well, the base of spear arts doesn’t use fire. We enhance our weapons with flames because it is natural for us. There are races out there that use these same weapons but cannot use fire.”

It seems strange, another race that can use weapons but can't use fire? I imagine a cute fennec fox standing only on its hind legs and trying to swing a sabre in its forelegs. I giggle to myself at the strange image.

“Why don’t you show me where you are in your control, Olvy?” Kay asks.

I bring my eyes away from Auntie and stare at the dusty stone below. I don’t want her to think I suck at it any more than she might already.

I am about to refuse, but her expectant face makes me reconsider. She is trying to help me. The least I can do is be honest with her.

So while I bring up my arm, I try to lower her expectations. “I’m not that good, I still lose control sometimes.”

I start by creating a flame on my hand, the crimson flame pops into existence without issue. I grow the flame in my palm until it reaches about as high as my hand is wide and begin to concentrate.

It is easier to make larger flames than to control the minuscule changes to the flame. So I want to try and push myself to do something I still struggle with. I try to keep control over the flame while also separating it from my form.

At the edges of my palm, it begins to separate. I raise the flame until only a strand is left connecting me with the flame. I take a breath and concentrate, focusing with everything I am to remain in control for the next part.

I cut the thread, splitting my attention into parts. I struggle to keep control over the flame hovering above my palm. It is a lot like dividing myself into sections. I need to focus on this now separate flame, but I also need to focus on myself at the same time. The flame flickers and falters under my watch. Not wanting to fail with Auntie still watching, I push more of my attention away from myself until the flame steadies.

Success! I did it! I have a small bit of flame hovering a finger length above my palm. It may not be very impressive compared to the others in the tribe, but this is the first time I’ve properly been able to do this.

I proudly show it off to auntie Kay, grinning up at her.

She is sharing my grin at the moment. “That’s amazing Olvy! Good job.”

After holding the grin for a moment, she smiles sheepishly while not making eye contact with me. “That’s great Olvy. But, uh…” she doesn’t continue. Instead, she moves her hand to pull some of my hair from behind my ear.

The hair she pulls into my sight is blazing with my red flame. I gasp, and the small ball above my hand dissipates as I grab at my hair, forcing control over myself again.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

It’s so embarrassing. I was so happy to have succeeded, especially with auntie Kay there to see. But having lost control of myself like a little girl, I can’t help but feel ashamed.

“C’mon, you did well. You still separated your inner fire from your body. That’s a great achievement. I’m sure in no time at all you’ll have better control than me,” Auntie says, trying to cheer me up.

I am relieved a bit that she doesn’t think too badly of me, and I can’t help but imagine a time when I can get control as good as hers. Everyone knows she’s extremely skilled for her age, only losing to the elders who have years of experience.

“C’mon, why don’t I show you how to hold a spear?”

She has me pick up the wooden stick again. I put more effort than necessary to make sure I don’t lose control of myself again. Embarrassing myself in front of her once is enough.

“The first thing you should know is that there are different styles for fighting with the spear, the core of these styles is the stance you should take.”

She picks up her stick and places her hands near the blunt end.

“The first stance is the simplest, used with a basic style focused on thrusts.”

She moves her feet and body into a stance and I try to imitate her, placing my hands on the bottom of the makeshift spear and spreading my legs like Auntie.

“For this stance, keep your legs about shoulder width apart and keep your hands the same length on the shaft of the spear.”

She relaxes from her stance and comes over to me. I try to hold the stance as she inspects me.

“Bring your front leg back a bit and turn your foot to face where you’re looking. Your back foot should face in the perpendicular direction.”

Kay twists my body with her hands so I’m facing in the direction my left leg is pointing. Moving up to my hands, she pushes my rear hand further back on the spear.

“Your hands should be far back on the spear, but do be careful to keep some sticking out a bit so you can readjust without losing your grip. For this stance, you want to keep your left hand on the pole with your palm facing away from your body, while your right palm should face towards it.”

She flips the direction I am holding my left hand in the way she says. Holding it like this feels a bit unnatural, I would usually keep my hands facing the same way when picking things up. I know Auntie Kay knows what she is doing though, so I let her move my hand without complaint.

“Finally, you want to keep your back hand at your hip and you have the basic stance,” she says, giving me a once-over before continuing. “Good. Now we can move on to how to properly thrust. The first thing you should know is the task each hand has. Your forward left hand is your guide and will be what you use to control the aim of your spear. The guiding hand helps you target either an opponent's head or chest.”

Kay shows this by moving her left arm up and down while in her stance. I mimic her, moving my stick up and down.

Tempted to try striking, I push both my arms forward, trying to thrust like I’d seen done by others.

“Nice try, but you’re doing it wrong. If you’d let me finish, I would’ve told you how to strike correctly.”

Worried that I have annoyed her, I look up as she tries, but fails to suppress her smirk.

“You don’t want to thrust with your forward hand, just leave that to control your thrust. Your back hand should be where all the strength comes from. Keep it at your hip and try to move it as little as possible until you thrust. When you do thrust, you should be twisting your body to give yourself more power.”

As she tells me what to do, she guides my body through the motions slowly with her hands.

“Now I want you to try a thrust yourself.” She says and I do as told. I stop myself from pushing with my left hand and only push with my right. When I do so, it feels weak, even in my hands.

“You’re not twisting your body, Olvy. Try again. Move your hips and legs.”

And so, for the next few hours, she teaches me to throw a simple thrust.

I am disappointed we spend so much time on only one move, but auntie seems happy. She compliments me whenever I do the strike correctly and eventually moves on to introducing footwork into the strike. It is essentially just taking a step with the thrust, but Kay says it increases the strength of the thrust by a lot.

By the time the sun set, my body feels like lead and the moment I make it to my bed in the ger, I am out.

❖❖❖

It’s been a few weeks now since I started my spear training with Auntie. She’s had me working until exhaustion every day since. The rest of the tribe was busy mining in the tunnels the chthonic left for whatever resources they could find.

Those first few days of training were intense, but mostly filled by doing the same few movements over and over. It was tiring and boring. On the second day, auntie taught me a few more attacks achievable with the basic stance, which I was then forced to repeat until I couldn't feel my arms.

I thought learning the spear would be fun. Memories of watching my mum dance with her spear made me want to learn it. I found it interesting. Even if I thought it would be challenging, I never imagined it’d be as boring as it is. We eventually moved onto a new style, this one far more interesting.

At least it was at first.

This new stance and style rely much less on thrusting strikes and more on sweeping strikes. Auntie Kay says this style is better when fighting by yourself, compared to the thrusting style, which is best when standing side by side with allies.

As interesting as the style sounds, the process of learning it is the same as the first. Many long hours of repeating the same movements, until the boredom almost hurt more than my arms.

Well, I complain about the boredom of it, but it’s not much different from the tedium of walking for ten hours straight. Once we began travelling again, my training time reduced to a few hours in the evening after we set up camp for the night.

Apparently, the tunnels the chthonics dug were much more beneficial than expected. There were deposits of both cobalt and coal, which is an incredible find for us. The elders even said we could skip the mining site we planned our next stop at, much to everyone’s relief. Those hunting us had been waiting at a few of the áed communal resource deposits in the area. Somehow, they have information exclusively shared amongst the áed. Considering we aren’t local to this part of the wasteland, we have to rely on information from generations ago. This is particularly annoying because there are some places we found completely stripped of resources.

Enya spotted the hostile groups waiting in ambush a few times. Finding supplies now is great as we were running low and the location we planned to go has a decent chance of us running into our unknown aggressors again.

It is a good thing we found coal. My reserves were running low and relying only on hunting animals is not reliable. Of course, it was possible, but I’d spend most of my day angling to get only barely enough. Other animals could be hunted, but I can’t do that myself yet.

For me, and any other young áed, coal is important. My inner flame is not yet hot enough to sustain myself from other rock types like cobalt that the rest of my tribe do. Coal burns at a low enough temperature that even my flames can burn it. If I consume enough coal, I can easily go a week without eating again. We can consume animals to strengthen ourselves, but they aren’t the greatest for actual lasting energy.

Now we're heading towards a known timber acquisition site. With as scarce as wood is in the wasteland, there is an understanding held between all the tribes to only take what is necessary.

This is especially important because the charcoal created with this wood makes up most young children’s diets, where they are too young even for normal coal.

The timber site is west, so I only have a few more days to enjoy the rocky landscape before we are back in the sands of the desert.

I can only hope that we will be given a few days again to rest when we reach it. I don’t enjoy having to continually travel, even if I am used to it.