Worlds' Strongest

by Simon Archer

  “Good!” She finally let go of me and stood, walking back around to face me. “Doesn’t that feel a lot more sturdy?”

  I cleared my throat. “Yeah.”

  “Now strike,” she commanded.

  “What?” I frowned. “Elle, I--”

  “Strike!”

  “I have no idea how to do that,” I admitted.

  “Oh, come on!” She rolled her eyes. “Surely you’ve hit something before?”

  “With a big stick?” I shook my head. “Not since I was four.”

  “So be four again! Just swing. Here.” She took a step back and held her arm cocked at a ninety-degree angle. “Swing at my palm.”

  “Elle, I’m not going to swing at you.”

  The edge of her mouth turned up in a smirk. “You couldn’t hurt me if you wanted to.”

  My brows pulled together, and I narrowed my stare. “That’s an awfully cocky thing to say.”

  “It’s not cocky if it’s true,” she shrugged. “Come on. Swing.

  “Elle-”

  “Swing.”

  “Elle-”

  “Ren!”

  I gave an exasperated sigh and rolled my eyes before sinking down into my stance. I locked eyes with her and took a deep breath. After a moment, I pulled the staff back and swung it at her like a baseball bat.

  At first, I was completely shocked when the momentum from the staff suddenly halted. It took a couple of seconds to process that she had caught the staff with her bare hand. My jaw dropped, and I stared at her.

  “How did you do that?”

  “Experience and breath.” She shrugged and dropped the staff. “You’ll get it.”

  “No, I’m serious. That’s not possible. If I did that, it would have shattered my hand.”

  “Probably,” Elle giggled. “That’s one benefit of higher classes. They reinforce your strength and power.”

  “Wait, seriously?” I dropped the back of the staff so that it was upright and moved closer to her as if I could see what she was talking about.

  “It’s not like I’m made of metal, you know,” she chuckled.

  “Could’ve fooled me,” I blinked.

  She rolled her eyes before starting in on the criticism. “Okay, first, your breath was disconnected, and your swing was sloppy. Instead of just following through and hoping it hits something, you’d do well to find the exact target you want to hit, and only extend the staff to that point. Then whether you hit or miss, you’re able to return your weapon to a defensive position without leaving yourself open or wasting time trying to recover. Does that make sense?”

  “Um,” I reached up to rub the back of my neck. “I think so. Sort of. Yes, actually, it does.”

  “Good. Now we can cover the--”

  “Wait, you said my breath was disconnected. What does that mean?”

  “You weren’t using it at all.” She smiled as though she was talking to a child. “It was totally unfocused. You need to use all of it.”

  “You’re saying that like it makes sense.” I frowned. “It really doesn’t. Am I just supposed to breathe deeper or what?”

  She tilted her head. “You’re not serious, are you?”

  “Of course I am.”

  “Oh my--” She scoffed and shook her head. “Do you live in the stone ages?”

  I raised an eyebrow, clueless about how to tell her how ironic that question seemed coming from her.

  “Your breath doesn’t just mean your literal breath,” Elle explained. “It refers to the life that flows through your body, and you access it through breath, so we just call it that. It’s the power that accompanies your spirit. It’s what lets me catch a staff with my bare hand. It’s what--”

  “Actually, Elle,” I stopped her, “I appreciate this, but I think we should keep moving. We have no idea how close the soldiers, maybe.”

  Elle nodded in agreement and helped me put the staff back on the sling, though she didn’t hesitate to accuse me of trying to get out of looking like what she so kindly described as a toddler learning how to balance. Honestly, I was just starting to get overwhelmed with everything she was saying.

  I knew Solem had said the town was at least a day and a half away, but I couldn’t break away from the hope that we had a specific destination to reach tonight that once we reached, we could stop for the night. Instead, we walked for three and a half more hours before Elle suggested we stop for the night. The sky was a warm pink and orange marble as the sun set behind us, so she said it was going to be safer to stop while we still had some light.

  Elle began making a fire and had me set up the blankets for our makeshift sleeping bags. By the time the sun was completely gone, her fire was up and running.

  “You’ll have to teach me how to do that at some point,” I smiled. “I guess I’ve got a lot to learn.”

  “Yeah,” she laughed. “But everything you learn will help you progress.”

  “What’s it like?”

  “What’s what like?”

  “When you change classes? How can you tell? How do you track your progress?”

  “It’s hard to tell.” She furrowed her brow while she walked over to one of the pallets. “I think the higher your class, the easier it is to tell when you’re close to the next one. You become more in tune with the spiritual energy of the world and how yours fits into it. When the shift happens, you feel your body adjust. I say it feels like my blood is brand new. I know how to move, but something about it is different, and you have to get used to it. Strength is the hardest thing.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “When I first jumped from Copper to Nickel, I didn’t think about how much stronger it made me,” Elle explained. “I went to shut the front door, and it broke off its hinges. I turned the knob in the shower, and the whole thing broke off.”

  We both laughed at the thought. “I can picture that. It must be nice to have that kind of strength.”

  “It can be.” She giggled a bit as a memory struck her. “When my dad first passed into Platinum, he practically didn’t touch anything for a week because he kept getting frustrated when he broke things.”

  As she spoke, I went over and sat next to her on the other pallet. I’d figured it would be safer if we were close enough to wake each other in case of trouble, so I put them on the same side of the fire.

  “Your father is a good man.”

  “Yeah,” she smiled. “I know. I’m proud to be his daughter.”

  I opened my bag and pulled out the rolls I hadn’t eaten earlier. I’d been too nervous, and my stomach didn’t feel like it could handle food. It only took a split second of wishing the bread could be warm again for a marvelous idea to hit me. I grabbed the dagger from where I’d laid my belt on the ground, wiped it off with a cloth from my bag, and stuck the roll on the end of it.

  “What are you doing?” Elle laughed.

  I reached out and held the roll near the fire like a marshmallow. “It’s something we do back home. I’ve never done it with bread before. Usually, you use marshmallows. Do you know what marshmallows are?”

  “Yes,” she rolled her eyes.

  “Okay, okay! I don’t always know what exists here and what doesn’t!” I grinned as I continued. “Anyway, you roast the marshmallow over the fire, and then you put it between crackers with chocolate.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” Elle scoffed.

  “What? Why?” I laughed.

  “That sounds so messy.”

  “Oh, it’s incredibly messy,” I assured her, “but it’s so good!”

  Elle shook her head and smiled. “I don’t believe you. I have to try this for myself.”

  “You’re gonna love it,” I grinned, pulling the roll away from the fire and off of the dagger. It was warm and crunchy like it had just come out of the oven.

  I took a bite of the roll and looked over to see Elle putting her last roll on a dagger as well. She saw me looking at her and gave me a look. “What? That’s a good idea.”

>   I chuckled and took another bite. After a second, I reached over to grab her hand and pull it back. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. If you put it too close, it catches on fire and burns. That can work with marshmallows, but I don’t think it would go over well with bread.”

  “Thanks.” She turned the dagger in her hand like a spit. There was one spot where the roll was darker than the rest of it, but it wasn’t burned. After a minute, she pulled it out and off the dagger and took a bite. “That’s so much better!”

  “You’re welcome,” I winked before finishing my roll. I rested one arm on my knee and waited for her to finish eating before I decided to ask a question I’d been wondering. “Why did you want to come with me?”

  “Seriously?” She asked with the last bite in her mouth. She swallowed before continuing. “I didn’t want you to die.”

  “And I appreciate that,” I chuckled. “But I’m serious. Besides some kind of altruistic sense of duty, why would you give up your life to escort me through the country? What do you get out of this?”

  “I don’t get anything,” she shrugged. “It’s hard to explain. I just… I felt like this was what I was supposed to do.”

  I glanced over at the fire, leaning against my hand, assuming that was the end of it.

  “Honestly,” she muttered, “something felt wrong. I always knew I wanted to be a fighter. I always wanted to train to reach Diamond Class, if I could. That was it. Then… I don’t know, at some point, things just stopped making sense.”

  I turned to face her fully. “What do you mean?”

  She shook her head and sighed. “A while ago, I started feeling wrong. I mean, imagine that I spend my whole life training, and I make it to Diamond Class. What then? What’s the point? I’ll be a war machine, assuming there’s another war. If there’s not, I’m just going to sit at home, swinging swords at training dummies. If I really want something to do, I can train younger classes to achieve the same feat. This meaningless…”

  She trailed off and leaned her head on her knees. “Honestly, every time I start to think about it, I just feel sick.”

  “Wow,” I blinked. “I don’t blame you. This whole society seems so rigid, so… Utopian. It’s kind of creepy.”

  “I don’t think it was always that way. I don’t know… When my mom was alive, the way she talked about her childhood, being my age, she sounded happy and excited. I just feel stuck.”

  “What did she do?”

  “She was Eon’s only Gold Class citizen. She was an herbalist. It’s why Kaia decided to study it. Mom used to baby her so much. I swear, it’s why she’s such a brat now. She wants to be just like our mom.”

  “What happened to her?”

  She paused and looked up at the crescent moon above our heads. “We’re not sure. I was young, and I didn’t pay much attention. She used to go on trips all the time to trade supplies or deliver inventory. She left, just like usual. She said she might be gone a few extra days. Then… She came back in a box. Someone found her body on the road on the other side of Solivann. She could have been robbed, it could have been an accident, or wild animals. We just… Don’t know.”

  I gave her a sympathetic look. “I honestly can’t imagine what that would be like. I’m sorry.”

  Elle rested her head on her knee and looked at the fire. “I had questions before she was gone, but they didn’t feel so overwhelming. After she died, I just didn’t know what to do. I’m closer to Silver than anyone else my age because I threw myself into training.”

  “I’m sure she’d be proud of you.”

  Her lips pulled up in a half-smile. “I think she’d like you. Honestly, it was a little selfish of me to come with you. I want to make sure you’re safe and all, but this just feels… It feels like my chance to do something important. I can learn things I’d never find in Eon. Maybe even find some kind of answer. Or maybe it’ll just be a detour from the straight path that my life is on right now.”

  I raised my eyebrows and nodded. “Well. Now I feel a lot less guilty that you walked away from your family just to babysit me.”

  She laughed considerably loud at my dumb joke. “Glad to hear it.”

  I smiled at seeing her laugh. “I bet I reach Silver before you do.”

  Elle whipped her head around to face me with an incredulous and amused expression. “You can’t be serious.”

  “Oh, I’m dead serious,” I shrugged, laying back on my pallet. “You don’t stand a chance.”

  “Oh yeah?” She scoffed. “What makes you think that?”

  “I dunno. I’ve got a good feeling about it.”

  She shook her head and laughed, then grabbed her pillow and hit me on the stomach with it.

  “Ow!” I winced, the pillow hitting me a little harder than I thought a pillow could. That must be what she meant by strength improving along with your class. “Don’t be bitter! It’s not a good look. Don’t worry. You’ll reach Silver, eventually. Once I reach it, I can totally help you.”

  “Oh my word,” she groaned, rolling her eyes and laying down on her pallet. “Nevermind. I’ll let Draco’s soldiers know their job is done. I’m just going to kill you myself.”

  “You won’t be saying that when I outrank you.”

  I turned my head to see her when I heard her laugh. She was looking up at the stars. When she didn’t say anything else, I did the same.

  “You know,” I began, “I know it won’t necessarily help you with fighting, but I can teach you some of what I know too.”

  “What?” She rolled over, so that she was on her side, facing me. “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know anything about combat, but I know a lot about science, a few other things,” I shrugged. “If you’re interested, I could teach you.”

  “Would you really do that?”

  I turned my head to look at her. The expression on her face was even more bright and hopeful than I’d seen the past two days. I smiled at her. “Yeah. It’s the least I could do after everything you’re doing for me.”

  “That would be incredible!”

  “We can start tomorrow then.”

  She had a massive smile on her face as she laid back down and looked up to see the sky again. I watched her for a second before looking up at the stars myself.

  “Ren?” Elle said after a while. “I’m really glad I found you.”

  8

  “Are you ready to block my attack?” Elle challenged.

  I sighed. “Probably not.”

  Thanks to her, I saw the sun rise that morning for the first time in, honestly, maybe ever. She insisted the early hours were the most important of the day. The four years’ worth of college assignments I’d finished well after two a.m., and I begged to differ, but she was unswayed.

  We walked for four hours before I asked for a break. Was this really how people traveled? Just walking for days? Suddenly that scene in Forrest Gump where he ran coast to coast seemed infinitely more impressive.

  If we were going to take a break, Elle insisted on using that time to train.

  “Come on!” She rolled her eyes. “You’ve got this.”

  She’d spent twenty minutes showing me defensive moves with the staff, and she had it in her head that I was now an expert.

  I took a deep breath that I thought seemed ‘connected’ and nodded at her. The next thing I knew, her staff was coming at my left side. I reacted, slipping right as I threw my own staff to the left. When a loud clack of wood on wood echoed in my ears, I flinched instinctively and shut my eyes.

  “Ren!”

  My eyes blinked open to reveal the staves connected at about a fifty-degree angle.

  “You did it!” she cheered as though I had successfully fought off an army single-handed. I bit my lip and gave her a half-smile, but I did actually feel proud.

  “It was just a reflex,” I shrugged.

  “Reflexes are vital.” She returned her staff to a resting position. “Sometimes they’re all you have to protect you. Rarely will you meet
an opponent who gives you a chance to think about how to beat them. It’s another reason you have to train your breath, your energy, so that the connection is second nature.”

  “Okay, you have a point.”

  “I usually do.”

  “Okay.” I laughed and shook my head. “Put your weapon where your mouth is.”

  Elle licked the edge of her lips before turning them up into a smirk. She lifted her staff from the ground and tossed it into her other hand before spinning it in two circles. With a deft twist, she flipped the weapon around behind her back, caught it in her left hand, and finally, in a flurry of movement, the edge of her staff appeared suddenly about three inches from the edge of my nose.

  I immediately stumbled back, tripping over my feet, and falling flat on my ass. Without another word, Elle brought the staff back to a vertical position and kissed it.

  “Was that what you meant?” she quipped.

  “Uhm, yeah.” I cleared my throat, trying not to think about how hot that was as I pulled myself to my feet. “That was kind of cool, I guess.”

  She let out a bright laugh. “Thank you so much for your graciousness. Now I’m going to do that again. Block it this time.”

  “How do I block something coming at me from the front?” I asked curiously.

  “Pull the staff across the plane,” she answered, eyebrow arched as she waited for me to put her instructions together.

  “What does…? Oh, okay.” I thought I understood, at least. I watched her prepare to attack, and as soon as her staff moved back, I pulled mine from the left across to the right.

  It was at that point that I realized she hadn’t actually attacked yet, which she so patiently noted with one high cocked eyebrow.

  “Okay,” I began, “I know, I know-”

  “No, that was good,” she said in a playfully sarcastic tone. “That was great if your opponent were… Um… No, I don’t even have a joke. It was just wrong.”

  My jaw dropped, albeit into a smile, and I couldn’t help but laugh. “How was the move at least?”