kurtherian gambit 23.7 - tales of feisty druid 07

by Michael Anderle

  Because of that, they couldn't go as hard as the druids while training. Still, there were several punches thrown that landed hard.

  The students moved quickly, jabbing and dodging one another’s attacks. They used a mixture of street fighting and trained combat, though the skills they focused on in the Academy were for basic self-defense, so they could expertly take care of themselves.

  Though it was new and impressive in the city, Amelia knew that the advanced class was essentially learning what they taught twelve-year-olds in the forest. While the students still had a lot to learn to become true warriors, they were definitely on the right path.

  Nathaniel called out the end of the match, and everyone halted. The crowd once again screamed and cheered, the Boulevard residents cheering the loudest.

  Amelia once again stepped forward and lifted her arms out, a wide smile on her face. As everyone began to quiet down, she spoke. "This was my first time seeing them as well, and I’m just as impressed as all of you. This is only the beginning; this is just what they have learned since our last battle. I wanted you to see exactly what we have been doing in the Academy, and what your children have been learning. They are our future.

  "Without further introduction—as I know all of you are excited to go to your homes—I wish all of you the best, and sincerely thank you for your hard work and dedication to our city."

  With that, Amelia pulled a knife from a small sheath on her lower back and reached toward the ribbon. Before cutting, she looked up and said, "Once you have seen your homes, come out and join the fun. This celebration is far from over."

  As Amelia finally cut the ribbon, colorful explosions filled the sky. Waylon had been given his own assignment for the occasion, and he absolutely delivered.

  As everyone made their way into the Boulevard, Amelia saw the look of wonder on their faces. Everything had gone exactly as she had hoped—even better. She felt a sting in her eyes as she watched families hold each other and cry as they stepped over the threshold into their new homes.

  Homes that had indoor plumbing. Running water. Magitech lighting.

  They would be able to lead normal lives. Bathe and feed their children, have clean water to drink without fighting with the rest of the Boulevard over a single pump in the middle of the street.

  Today was the day that Arcadia was officially reborn.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Christopher held up his favorite sword, a katana that his late wife had commissioned for him. It had grown dull over the years, so he had spent the day sharpening the weapon. He wouldn’t be able to use it during his current training, but he sure as hell planned to use it if there was ever another attack.

  When Arryn had gone to get newly forged weapons from a man up north, she made a pit stop in Arcadia to retrieve his old swords for him. She had believed it would mean a lot to him and remind him a bit of who he was, but he doubted she knew just how much that act of kindness meant.

  He sheathed the katana and set it aside, making his way out of his cabin and toward the trial pit. Today, he would be training with Ryel. It was the best decision for now, until he got his speed up.

  “How are you feeling this morning?” Ryel asked.

  Christopher smiled. “I’m feeling pretty good. Since the battle, I’ve been feeling quite a bit better about my abilities. Still, I don’t feel it would be wise to go against Nika.”

  Ryel laughed. “I know what you mean. There are days when I don’t even want to, and I feel like we are pretty evenly matched.”

  As they walked together, they passed the younger children making their way toward the Chieftain. He imagined they were off to learn how to heal and grow things within the forest. It seemed the Chieftain never stuck to one topic at a time; he taught them all.

  As they made it to the pit, Christopher saw two students salute one another before backing away. Each of them had a combination of black eyes and bloodied noses and mouths, but they were still all smiles as they made their way out of the pit, where they would be healed.

  Several students stepped back, smiling and bowing their heads in respect. While they didn’t yet consider him one of their own, as they did Arryn, they did understand and have compassion for everything he had been through. They respected his ability to come out on the other side and maintain his humanity, though he felt his sanity wasn’t yet fully in check.

  Ryel tossed Christopher a blunted practice sword, holding one of his own and rotating it in the air at his side with only the flick of his wrist. Taking a deep breath, Christopher stepped forward, his eyes never leaving Ryel’s.

  The warrior gave a nod before lunging forward, Christopher immediately jumping back in response and swinging his sword. Steel clashing against steel as he successfully thwarted Ryel’s attack.

  It’s slow, and it’s sloppy, but I did it, he thought to himself. Get your shit together and kick his ass. Your daughter can do it, so can you.

  Ryel lunged forward again, and this time Christopher leaned back, the sword narrowly missing his throat. As Ryel’s swing missed, Christopher recoiled, dropping down to the ground to hit his opponent in the side of his dominant knee with the hilt.

  As Ryel’s knee gave out on him, Christopher whipped his blade around and had it at the warrior’s throat before Ryel could even counter.

  Both men smiled. Ryel nodded. “Nice shot. Glad to see you still have it in you.”

  Before Christopher could even thank him, Ryel lunged at him from his kneeling position to take a cheap shot. Christopher took a hard hit across the face, Ryel now on top of him with his fist pulled back and ready to deliver another.

  Christopher slammed the hilt of his sword in Ryel’s ribs, causing him to lean over in pain. As the warrior showed that brief moment of weakness, Christopher took advantage and threw his head forward, smashing Ryel’s nose.

  With a thrust of his hips, Christopher easily tossed Ryel off to take the dominant position, pulling the knife from the warrior’s belt as they rolled before holding it to his throat.

  Blood streamed down each side of Ryel’s face, his eyes watering as a natural effect from his nose breaking. He nodded, and Christopher backed off, carefully handing the knife back to his opponent.

  “I’m so sorry,” Christopher said. “I don’t know where that came from.”

  Ryel reached up, pinching each side of his nose and squeezing, the sound of bone fragments snapping and grinding back into place filling the small area between them as he healed himself.

  Ryel shook his head. “Well, I think I learned something today.”

  “What’s that?” Christopher asked, obvious worry on his face. He hadn’t meant to break anything. He had been watching Arryn spar more and more, and had even snuck in to watch Nika train.

  He didn’t think watching would translate into movements, but somehow, he managed to take Ryel not once but twice. While he felt terrible for breaking the warrior’s nose, he felt triumphant that he was able to do it.

  “I think it’s time for you to move on,” Ryel said before standing.

  Christopher looked at him in confusion as he followed suit, standing. “I don’t understand.”

  “I think it’s time we let Nika get a hold of you. You’ve clearly learned a lot more in your short time here than we anticipated. Then again, you had prior training, so this is probably partly due to that, and partly you being an incredibly fast learner. Just like your daughter,” Ryel said.

  Christopher smiled. He was supposed to be a role model for his daughter, not the other way around, but that was just how it was. He could argue it in his head, telling himself that he was wrong for allowing that to be, but he didn’t care. It was just the way their lives turned out, and having a strong daughter who was capable of not only taking care of herself, but of everyone around her…

  Well, he couldn’t have asked for anything more.

  Except for a higher pain tolerance. Because despite what Ryel thought, Nika was far scarier than he was.

  “Sendi
ng me to the Wolf is punishment for breaking your nose, isn’t it?” Christopher asked.

  Ryel smiled. “‘Wolf’. I can’t tell you just how appropriate that name is for her. And yes, this is definitely repayment for you breaking my nose.”

  Christopher laughed, but it was quickly extinguished the moment Nika walked up with a smile that was a bit too broad.

  “Did I just overhear that I’m getting a new student?” Nika asked, mischief in her expression.

  Christopher nodded with a bit of hesitation. “Ryel thinks I’m ready.”

  Nika looked at Ryel and laughed harder than Christopher had ever seen. “Aw, poor baby. I think he just got his little feelings hurt because the man that’s been stuffed in a cave for a decade whipped his ass. That’s okay, Chris. Looks like you needed a real man to teach you, anyway. I’ll be that man.”

  She smiled again and gave him a wink before turning and walking away. Christopher and Ryel looked at one another, Ryel shaking his head.

  “You realize sh—” Christopher began.

  “Mmhmm. Yep. She’s gonna kill you. Don’t worry. I’ll tell Arryn you love her.”

  ***

  The sun glared off the gentle waves rolling in along the Farriage Coast. The water had a beautiful aquamarine color, allowing it to cast off the sun’s rays, making the sea look as though it twinkled.

  Brann smiled as he stepped forward, placing his slightly webbed toes in the water, wiggling them around as they pushed further into the sand. He sighed in contentment, taking another step forward, and then another.

  Brann’s people had lived in and by the water for a very long time. His grandparents were among the first settlers there. After traveling all over during the madness, there wasn’t much land available that wasn’t taken over by the remnant.

  Those beasts had ruined everything for many people, forcing them to scatter to wherever they might find a plot of land large enough to survive on, no matter how small it may be.

  His family, however, had gone to the ocean. There was absolutely nothing they couldn’t get from the water. Over the years, with the magic that had grown inside of them, their bodies had begun to change.

  Their fingers and toes were webbed halfway up, allowing them to swim faster than a normal human, but still allow them the ability to use common tools. Their ears had grown tighter against their heads, as well—not quite flat, but certainly set at a different angle than on any other human they had ever come across.

  While in the water, they each had the ability to regulate their body temperature, allowing them to swim even when the water was cold. That was more than likely due to the fact that the Daoine people spent the majority of their days in the sea.

  Brann dove in, immediately swimming farther out and heading downward. Off in the distance, he could see the dolphins playing under the water. Every day he paid them a visit, swimming with them and playing with them. Several had swum very deep, two of them now racing for the surface.

  He knew if he were to watch from above, he would see a beautiful aerial display before their long, pointed noses broke the surface of the water again as they dove.

  Brann’s eyes glowed a beautiful aquamarine shade, as he moved his hands through the water, pulling oxygen from it to create an air pocket around his head. He inhaled deep before letting it go, propelling himself forward.

  The magic flowed through his body, allowing his legs to propel him faster than any of the dolphins could swim.

  Though the dolphins and whales had become accustomed to the water dwellers’ presence years ago—at the very least for as long as he had been alive—it had only been in the last two years that he had surpassed his loved ones to become truly accepted as one of the pod.

  While Druids were capable of speaking to land animals, because of their magic and because of living among them in the forest, the water dwellers had never been able to communicate with the sea creatures. His mother had always said it was more than likely because fish weren’t mammals, so their brains were different.

  But Brann had noticed a change in the dolphins, in the way they interacted with him. Deep down, he knew it was because of his persistence to learn when his family hadn’t truly cared to. It didn’t hurt that dolphins were intelligent creatures.

  A shadow fell over him as he swam, and he suddenly felt cold. Dolphins and whales frequented the very water he swam in, but sharks also came. His parents always told he and his siblings to be careful, because the sharks had been changing their migratory patterns for quite some time.

  While they preferred sea lions and other such creatures, a human was certainly not off the menu.

  With his heart racing, and his adrenaline pumping, his need for oxygen came much faster than usual. He surrounded his head once again with a bubble, inhaling deep as he looked around. His magic began to crawl across his skin, ready for whatever might come.

  Then he heard a familiar call.

  He turned abruptly to see a nearly full-grown, but rather small, dolphin stopping short of him, a fish in his mouth. It was Finn, the first dolphin to have accepted him as more than another presence in the water.

  Finn opened his mouth, dropping the dead fish for Brann to take. The dolphin often tried to feed Brann, providing him with fish, which the twelve-year-old boy always accepted. Brann lifted the fish to his mouth, taking a squishy bite out of the belly.

  Though he preferred his fish cooked, eating them raw was normal among his people because they spent so much time swimming in the water.

  After Brann took his third bite while slowly swimming along, he gave the rest back to Finn, who happily finished it off. The dolphin then darted forward, spinning around and swimming straight for the surface, his deformed tail fin moving him at an impressive speed.

  It always warmed Brann’s heart to see the two-year-old calf swim as fast and with as much excitement as he did. Finn wasn’t born with that deformity, and Brann would never forget how he got it.

  As usual, he had been swimming close to the dolphins’ play area. He had seen a female’s belly swelling more and more every day, and stayed close, wanting to watch the birth out of curiosity.

  While it was the most disgusting thing he had ever seen, it was also the most beautiful. A perfect, dark gray, male dolphin had been born. But sharks had smelled the blood and came to attack.

  The newborn wasn’t able to swim fast enough to get away, and a shark snatched him by the tail. He had only landed a single bite, when several dolphins attacked from either side, ramming the shark in the gills with their long noses.

  Brann, disobeying everything his parents had ever told him, called on his magic and swam as fast as he possibly could. The calf could no longer move his tail, not that it would have helped him anyway. He was sinking fast, and Brann knew he would soon drown if he didn’t save him.

  He managed to grab the newborn, cradling him tight against his body as he used his magic to propel himself through the water. He went straight up, narrowly missing a chomp from a great white, before the other dolphins swarmed that one, as well.

  When Brann breached the surface, he brought the calf up, allowing him to breathe. Once he was certain the dolphin had taken a breath or two, he surrounded its blowhole with a large bubble of oxygen—hoping his magic would work on the mammal—and swam toward the shore.

  When Brann had gotten close, he carefully laid the calf on the sand in water that was just deep enough to cover his small body. Blood poured out of his little tail, and tears filled Brann’s eyes.

  He had watched the mother carry the calf for a full year, and now the baby was dying. He reached out, putting pressure on the tail, but it was too badly mangled. The blood continued to flow. The fins were still intact, but a mess.

  He felt the magic swelling around him, and he pushed it forward, not knowing what else to do. Mother dolphins were terribly protective, and even though he had tried save the baby, he knew the mother would be devastated.

  But then, the bleeding stopped.

 
; He looked down to see that the wounds had closed. The magic he had felt moving through him, the heat he’d felt growing in his hands, had closed the wound. It certainly wasn’t pretty; the tail fin was still mangled, scarred, but learning to move in his mother’s current, the baby would grow stronger until he would finally be able to swim.

  After the immediate threat of the sharks was gone, the dolphins came as close to the shore as they could.

  Brann picked up the calf and swam out to the pod. To his surprise, the mother seemed very grateful, despite the damage that had been done. While he knew she would be relieved the calf hadn’t died, he was worried she might not understand that he had tried to save the little guy.

  But from that day forward, Brann had been accepted as one of them, and had appropriately named the calf ‘Finn’.

  A loud cry from the pod now alerted Brann, pulling him out of his thoughts as he played with Finn underwater. The dolphins were swimming erratically, and Finn’s mother was coming to retrieve her calf.

  Brann surrounded his head once more with air as he looked around for danger. Another shadow fell over him, and he immediately looked up.

  Thinking about Finn and the way they had met had distracted him so much that he hadn’t noticed the storm that had begun to coalesce over the water, nor the large ship that now floated well over his head.

  Dolphins were highly intelligent animals and were used to seeing boats and ships out on the water. But they could also sense danger from a mile away, as well as sense magic—something his parents had told him long ago.

  Brann could also sense magic, and there was a lot of it coming from the bow of that ship.

  If the occupants of the ship were strong enough to call storms and scare away the dolphins, who were used to seeing magic on a daily basis, exactly who were they, and what could they possibly want from his people?

  CHAPTER FIVE